Fated to Love You

If someone would ask me to name my favorite Taiwanese drama, Fated to Love You is one of those which will come to mind. It’s funny. It’s lovely. It’s just freaking awesome.

Fated to Love You

The drama consists of two arcs. The first one revolves on how the two lead’s fates get entangled with each other because of that one (un)fortunate night.

The series starts with Chen Xin Yi (Cindy) showing her daily life as a sticky note girl “who runs errands for everyone even though she’s not a servant”. She never turns down anyone’s request even when she’s busy. Her existence is like that of a sticky note. “It’s very convenient. You can toss it out after you’re done with it. It comes in handy when you need it and it can be ignored when you don’t. It doesn’t take up space, and it always remains silent.” She’s a girl afraid of turning people down and making others mad.

Chen Xin Yi believes she’s like Cinderella and her prince charming will come and find her. Naively, she thinks she’s met his prince charming when a guy who used to work for her company approached her to take advantage of her kindness. Afraid of losing him, Xin Yi planned a two day and one night cruise for the two of them using her own money.

On the other hand, Ji Cun Xi (Steven Ji), a director of a soap company, is going to propose with her long-term ballet dancer girlfriend, Anna on the same ship.

On that night, Xin Yi, feeling dizzy because of cold medicine, entered Cun Xi’s room which is opposite to theirs. Before going to bed, she managed to turned off the lights as it’s hurting her eyes.  Cun Xi, feeling hot and drowsy as well because of some tonic, entered the room. He lies on the bed believing he was sharing it with Anna. And yeah, they did sleep together not knowing their spending the night with a stranger!

Fast forwarding everything, that one night made Xin Yi pregnant. Cun Xi’s grandmother who badly wanted to have a great-grandchild who will continue the legend of the Ji family insists that the two should marry. And they did under a secret agreement that Xin Yi has to leave Cun Xi after giving birth to the baby.

Anna is fully unaware of all of these things as she flew to New York the day Cun Xi was about to propose to her. It is a performance she can’t just give up. Their relationship continues even after Cun Xi’s marriage with Xin Yi.

And to complete the square, Dylan, an art director, met Xin Yi in a church. She’s mistaken him as a priest and from then on seeks him for advice whenever she’s having a hard time. Dylan started to feel sympathy towards her as he sees how Cun Xi doesn’t seem to value her that much.

The second arc revolves on how Xin Yi tries to find her dreams, succeeds on her own and totally gets rid of the sticky note girl within her. I love this “this is me now” Xin Yi to Cun Xi kind of thing. Err, it’s really hard to write something about the second half of the series without explaining the bridge connecting it from the first one. Anyway, this was set two years after they part ways. Oops, enough with the spoilers. I don’t want to spoil a really good drama.

I actually can’t think of a thing I don’t like about this series. I like the development of the story and the characters. I love how it managed to be funny and moving at the same time. I don’t know how it pulled off even the ridiculous Steven Zhou thing near the end of the series. It’s like the drama is so good that even these hilarious, unbelievable stuff presented comically were enjoyed by the viewers.

The ending is also a win-win. Anna may have lost Cun Xi but she has found her long-lost brother making the ending fair and square for the four leads.

I still remember the third year high school student me who watches this series every night on GMA. I only go to bed after I watched the next episode’s trailer. I also remember asking my younger sister to record a week’s episodes as I had to attend a seven day and six night seminar. (Internet isn’t that popular that time and you can’t have a decent stream using a dial-up connection.)

Also Fated to Love You is one of the few dramas that have Filipino version of its OST. Well, I can’t blame them, both of its ending and opening song are one of the cutest, really. I can say it’s indeed popular in the Philippines. In fact, when you google “Fated to Love You”, one of the top related searches is “Steven” (Ji Cun Xi’s name in the Filipino dubbed version).

I definitely recommend this drama. If still in doubt, one thing to add is it also has a Korean version under the same name. It became a hit as well and was aired in the Philippines by GMA’s direct competitor, ABS-CBN.

Still not convinced? Well, I rarely judged dramas based on its ratings but I must mention that Fated to Love You is indeed a legend recording its highest rating at 10.92 with an average of 7.44! That almost doubled those of other famous Taiwanese dramas including It Started with A Kiss and Hana Kimi. I may not have the data but I suspect it even got higher ratings than Meteor Garden!