Detailed Summary of Series 1: My Date with a Vampire

"My Date with a Vampire" (我和殭屍有個約會) is a succession of four Cantonese television series which had first started airing in 1998. It was produced by ATV, and is considered one of its greater successes. My Date with a Vampire usually airs overseas about a year later after its completion in Asia.

Cast

• Joey Meng Yee Man as Ma Xiao-Ling
• Eric Wan Tin Chiu as Kuang Tien-You / Fong Gwok Wah
• Kenneth Chan as Yamamoto Katsuo
• Kristy Yang as Wang Zhen Zhen
• Pinky Cheung as Yamamoto Mirai
• Chapman To as Gum Jing Jong

Synopsis

In 1938, a team of Chinese guerillas led by Captain Fong Gwok Wah infiltrated a Japanese base. They intended to sabotage a Japanese military operation. Although they were discovered, the charges went off, causing a leak in a toxic weapons room that killed the father and superior officer of the then Lieutenant Yamamoto Katsuo. Just as Fong left, Yamamoto saw Fong's face. It would be one he will remember for the rest of his life.

An injured Fong escaped to Red Creek Village and was rescued by father of eight-year-old Ho Fok Sung. He was taken care of by Ah Sau, who he would later fell in love with. Slowly, Fong recoverd back to health. As soon as he was back on his feet, however, Ah Sau was seen running back to the village, alerting them of Japanese troops searching for a guerilla. Fook Sang took Fong to hide in the mountains. The villagers tried to cover up Fong's trail as best as they can. Unfortunately, the soldiers discovered the burnt remains of Fong's military disguise. Yamamoto ordered the entired village slaughtered in fury. He was about to execute Ah Sau when Fong returned to face him. At the same time the guerillas showed up and battled against the Japanese.

Fong chased Yamamoto and they fought with swords, eventually falling into the Red Creek. The blood from their wounds diffused into the creek, fulfilling a legend for which the river was named after. When the king of vampires, Cheung Sun, who by legend hid in a nearby cave, came out to feast on human blood, the river will turn red: the more victims, the redder it would be. But in reality, it seems like it was the blood that drew Cheung Sun out.

The two battled into the night. Fong was winning when a Japanese soldier turned up holding Fok Sung hostage. The soldier shot and badly injured Fok Sung despite Fong's plea to not harm the child. He threw his blade at him and killed him, when the soldier had simultaneously wounded Fong with a shot. Yamamoto seized the opportunity to kill an unarmed Fong, just as Cheung Sun suddenly appeared out of nowhere, bit him, and pushed him off of a cliff. He then bit Fook Sang and Fong. The thirty-eighth descendant of the Ma Clan, Ma Dan Na, chased Cheung Sun away. By daybreak, Fok Sung and Fong had disappeared. Ma knew there were two more vampires on the loose, and commented to herself that the descendants of the Ma Clan will have a busy life.

Fong went back to Ah Sau to be with her briefly, but realizing he was no longer human, he left her without giving any reason.

In the sixty years up until 1998, Fong and Fok Sung lived a life of semi-hiding. Since they were vampires, they neither grew old nor die. Fong changed his name to Fong Tin Yau (we later learn that it was Fok Sung's idea for Tin Yau to be his new name ie. (in chinese) let the heaven/sky bless/protect him), and Fok Sung changed his surname to act as Tin Yau's son. The two relied on the blood of the dead during the war, and afterwards on expired blood supplies from hospitals. They did not bite any living victim, for fear of making their victim suffer as they were--freaks that never grow old or died, and relied solely on blood to survive. They also learnt that biting into living victims was to become an addiction and it was impossible to come off it.

By 1998, Tin Yau was a CID in the Hong Kong Police; after being many other jobs like a hairdresser, and Fok Sung has been studying in primary school for the last twenty-odd years (because he never physically grew up). Their arrangements for jobs, school and accommodation were handled by Ho Ying Kau, an apprentice to Taoist priest Mo Siu Fong.

Ho once believed that all supernaturals were evil, and tried to destroy every one he encountered, thinking he was doing justice. When he encountered Fong, Fong was forced to bite his right leg, as if he didn't Fong knew that he couldn't save himself from dying, but Fong then quickly chopped it off before the vampiric poisons can spread. It was then Ho realized the error of his ways, understanding that even "extreme evils" such as vampires could probably be more human than a true human. He retired from the business and started a gaming arcade, which was a home for many wandering ghosts when it was closed. He used his 'powers' to raise his son, Bor Jai, who he later blamed himself for his death. (He thinks that his wife and his son's deaths were his fault - ie punishment from heaven becuase he interpreted 'evil' wrongly) While he no longer caught ghosts, he still produced items for the fortieth descendant of the Ma Clan, Ma Siu Ling. On the surface, Ma opened a cleaning company called Ling Ling Tong. Only a few people knew exactly what type of "dirt" she actually cleaned.

By sheer conincidence, Ma and her best friend Wong Jan Jan, a pure and innocent primary school teacher, met Fong who was in Japan for an assignment, while Ma was there to "clean" a hotspring hotel of her client (for a substantial fee, and all facilities provided), Yamamoto Ryuichi, who was really Kazuo disguised as an elderly man.

Fong's assignment with his partner Go Bo to escort a wanted criminal back to Hong Kong failed due to treachery on the crook's part. The partners were separated, and Fong pursued the stolen police car. In the end he held the Japanese Interpol officer hostage, forcing Fong to give up, who tied up and thrown into a river below a bridge. The officer herself, however was not spared. Her blood in the water woke Fong from his unconsciousness. He went in pursue of the criminal with his keen sense of smell, only to find that the crook had fallen victim to a female ghost. This is the same ghost who was haunting the hotel of Ma's client, only the bones of the victim remained.

Fong later learns of the girl's tragic story by meeting her elderly father, who panickly beat Jan Jan, believeing her to be a sign of bad luck. The girl died the night she had found her true love, her body "without a drop of blood". At this point, Fong begins to believe he and his adoptive son were not the only victims of the vampire king.

A Buddhist Zen Master Master Peacock came to destroy the ghost, and became Ma's business rival for a considerable pay. Ma ultimately captured the ghost, just as the ghost uttered the name of the man she loved, and was subsequently deceived and murdered by-- Yamamoto Katsuo.

Fong would later come to suspect that Ma's client, who bore the same surname was in fact his old enemy. Ma handed the ghost over to Peacock to prompt her back into the reincarnation cycle, saying to do it herself will be likened to have the girl die in a foreign land. The monk eventually shared Ma's payment, much to her protest, but she softened once she saw the monk intended to spend the money on adopted children.

Returning to Hong Kong, Fong quickly discovered that they had moved into the same building as Jan Jan was living in, that was owned by and named after her mother, Auyeung Ga Ga.

At the same time, Yamamoto was also in search of his daughter, Mirai, who had come to Hong Kong. She would cause trouble for the people at the Ga Ga Manor. A tailor lived there with his elderly mother. The neighbourhood knows him to be kind and just, but also a mommy's boy. His mother died soon enough, only to be "revived" by a drop of Mirai's blood. The truth was she merely sealed his mother's soul in her own body, and made her an animated corpse. She imposes her own will on her son as she always did, believing it was all the best for him. She even killed two people in the neighbourhood: one a girl who took a dress she ordered for her mother's birthday without paying, the other a nightclub worker who was fond of her son (whom she despised for her occupation).

Gum Jing Jong, who was masquerading as a reincarnation of a god, and his mother lived at the building, and were planning a hoax ceremony to calm the spirits down after the murders, and after everybody saw ghosts (the girl who took the dress struck a deal with Gum), against Ma's advice. It was the day when the Yin (negative) energies were the strongest, Chinese Halloween, and burning incense drew all the wild ghosts to the spot. Ma arrived to seal them all in a car, just as Jan Jan was captured to be forcefully wed with the tailor. Ma expelled the soul of the tailor's mother from the body and caught it. Full of grief and hatred, the tailor took his mother's corpse and jumped off the roof top, landing face down on the car with the ghosts. He absorbed all of their hatred, and promised to take revenge on the neighbourhood with his last breath.

He could not have died in a worse scenario. His ghost was to return in a week like all others, but since he died on that particular day, full of hatred, and absorbed the other angry spirits, his ghost was to kill everybody who owes him-- an asura. The tailor's mother's ghost was trapped at Ho's place, and after being confronted with the nightclub worker's ghost, she realized she had been overprotective. In the end, it was she who confronted her son and made him understand what he was doing, after Ma and the others failed to help him reincarnate. The tailor lost his chance, instead went to hell, where, we later learn he had been learning from Mo Siu Fong.

Mirai was discovered and caught by her father, now under the disguise of Ryuichi's son, Yamamoto Take, with help from his assistant Ken (Domoto Shingo). She left again, still angry that her father had watched her mother labour herself to death, to support a Yamamoto who could not face what he was and shut himself in the house. She blamed him for turning her into a vampire out of selfishness, so that nobody will ever leave him. She later moved into the dead tailor's home, and began to adjust to a more human life.

Yamamoto was now consumed with illusions of grandeur, wanting to build an empire of vampires, as was supposedly predicted by Nostradamus, that the two thirds the world's population will die off in 1999, the remainder becoming monsters-- vampires.

Jing Jong, who by now understood the errors of his ways, and became an apprentice to Ma, meets a woman, Bak So So, through her sister, Auyang's land agent, Siu Ching. They were in fact snakes that had become elf-like creatures and assumed human form, apparently upon which the fictional story of the white snake was based. Jing Jong began to pretend to be the lover of the white snake, who had started the Waiting Bar to wait for her lover's reincarnation. Initially doing it for the money, and thinking her crazy, Jing Jong slowly developed feelings for her. It was then Fok Sung was kidnapped and forced to feed off addictive human blood. Tin Yau was forced to comply with the mysterious kidnappers to destroy the stone crab which had contained Fat Hoi. He and Ma Siu Ling did battle, where it was discovered he was a vampire. Their relationship became a strange one. They were friends, and yet enemies.

The White Snake's life was not to last, as she had come to the end of her lifespan, especially when in the end they faced their nemesis, the Buddhist Monk Fat Hoi, who had been trapped in a stone crab for 800 years by the sisters, and was from the beginning to the end bent on destroying the snakes. The Buddha in the end showed him how to let go of everything, and the White Snake was left in peace, only to see her lover in Jing Jong once more before she died. Her sister, the Green Snake, continues to run the bar.

Fok Sung later resurfaced, but could not resist fresh blood. In the end, having killed a number of victims and realizing he could not restrain his demand for fresh blood, he gave himself up to Ma to destroy. Ma was not impassionate, and put him under a freezing charm, until there was a way to help him. Fong was thankful that she did not kill Fok Sung.

Yamamoto met Jan Jan, who had started dating Tin Yau, at a staff ball, since Auyeung Ga Ga began working for the company. She resembled Yamamoto's long-dead wife, Yamamoto Yuki.

Tin Yau and Katsuo would later meet. At first they were hostile to each other, but were forced to stop fighting by an incarnation of the GuanYin bodhisattva. They and Ma cooperated to attempt to change history. They wanted to stop the king of vampires from biting their past selves. Yamamoto agreed to make up with his daughter. (The events witnessed soon explained how the guerillas found the Japanese in the village.) The plan ultimately failed, with the Buddha helping them and Mirai caught in the transdimension. Yamamoto was infuriated, and sought to bring the world to an end at any cost. Domoto slipped into a great depression with the loss of his love. He sought to speed up his plan to destroy his boss: He was never truly loyal to him, and wanted revenge on Yamamoto for turning Mirai, who in turn bit him, into a vampire.

The ultimate battle proved costly. As the rich and powerful of Hong Kong were all turned into Yamamoto's vampire cronies, Fong and Ma ventured to Japan to retrieve the scroll of Yuming, which allegedly contained all the information needed to kill Yamamoto. Ma and Fong succeeded in retrieving the scrolls, which was secured behind challenge after challenge. Unfortunately, the scrolls were fake, and retrieving the scrolls in fact revived an evil monk by the name of Yuming Supsam (Resignation Thirteen). Ma and Fong escapes back to Hong Kong, while Master Peacock delayed Yuming.

Domoto and Tin Yau infiltrated Yamamoto's home, where Jan Jan had tried to convince him to stop, in return for giving herself to him, stabbed herself in protest of Yamamoto's behaviour right before his eyes as he fought Domoto and Fong. Yamamoto went insane over the apparent death and betrayal of Jan Jan In the end, Mirai was returned to the real universe by the last efforts of the GwanYin, and she held Yamamoto long enough to let Ma Siu Ling and her grandaunt Ma Dan Na (a ghost) to kill him. Mirai's father died, feeling betrayed by his daughter; to Mirai, Yamamoto was her father and a monster who had to be stopped. All vampires steming from Yamamoto returned to normal. Tin Yau bit Jan Jan to stop her from dying, but for reasons unknown went into a frenzy and passed out after biting her. Ma, watching Tin Yau, for whom she had developed affection for over the time they met, shed a tear and lost all her powers, as dictated by a curse from the Ma family's distant ancestor.

Tin Yau remained in a coma for nearly a year.

All this time he had a series of strange, prophetic dreams. The GwanYin showed him the ancient past, where five heroes tried to stop a tyrant called Lor Hau from merging earth and hell into one dimension through the process of "Moon Burial". The GwanYin told him he must help the reincarnations of the heroes to stop Lor Hau's reincarnation from commencing and completing the ceremony in 1999. By the time he awoke, he found that Fook Sang was unfrozen, taking the [...] blood angel to restrain his blood lust, and that Domoto and Mirai were married and expecting a child. It was also clear that there was a tangle of relationships and emotions between, Jan Jan, Siu Ling and Tin Yau.

Tin Yau told Ho of the prophetic dreams he had. Ho, in turn borrowed an ancient text from the Lamas in Tibet to research this. The ceremony had indeed been conducted eons ago, but since everybody was alive and well, the ancient heroes must have succeeded. Fong also realizes that the prophecised end of the world was only about a month's time from happening.

Back in Japan, Yuming defeated Master Peacock and escaped, and fulfilled a promise he made to Yamamoto about 50 years ago, to assist him in his conquest. With a vial of Yamamoto's blood, he revived Yamamoto's corpse, and told him he was Lor Hau's reincanation. Yamamoto was in despair-- he was happier to be dead, the betrayals of Jan Jan and Mirai still fresh in his mind. Yuming manipulated him and controlled him, and soon all Yamamoto's vampires were back, including Domoto, but Mirai remained human due to her pregnancy.

The couple were attacked by Yamamoto, and died in front of everybody at Fong and Jan Jan's wedding (which happened quite abruptly). Ho Ying Kau was killed later after confronting Yamamoto. Soon, Jan Jan was abducted by Yamamoto. She was in fact the fiancee of the Hero of the Sky, the purest sacred woman on Earth. Her blood was needed at the Moon Burial. Jing Jong's mother and Siu Ching met their demise in the raid on Ga Ga Building.

As worded by the GuanYin, four of the heroes appeared. Go Bo, Peacock, Ping Ge (the tailor, suddenly stripped out of hell), and Peter a priest who Ma frequently conversed with and gave her information. Ma Da Na's ghost sacrificed her being to revive Siu Ling's powers, making her more powerful than before.

The heroes, Ma, and Fong infiltrated Yuming's base, fighting off the hundreds of vampires that have until now wrecked havoc all over Hong Kong. They eventually fought Yamamoto, but one by one, they died fighting Yuming, with the realization that in fact Yuming was the fabled tyrant Lor Hau. Meanwhile, Fong and Ma fought a losing battle with Yamamoto. At the revelation of Yuming's true identity, his memories of the ancient past flooded back to him-- and suddenly he was the Hero of the Sky. (Ironic, since he has been the antagonist for the whole show.) Lor Hau killed himself, so that he may possess Yamamoto's near-immortal vampire body to complete the ceremony without hindrance. Yamamoto eventually killed Lor Hau, and retrieved Jan Jan as the hero he was.

Fong and a mortally injured Ma were given a wish by the Buddha, who intended to destroy the world altogether, should they fail to stop the ceremony, to ease the pain of the living. Fong looked at Ma, who he truly loved, wished he (or perhaps he meant everybody) was not bitten by Cheung Sun about 60 years ago.

History was rearranged. Yamamoto eventually retired from military service after sustaining a crippled injury, but still held the fanantical dream to conquer China; Fong Gwok Wah apparently married Ah Sau, because Tin Yau (Fong's grandson) appeared at Ga Ga Building as a new tenant. Everybody went to the Waiting Bar for a dinner party. The Domoto couple, now aged, are seen in the background. Upon drinking the magical spirits made by Bak So So (her identity was not known by anyone anymore), Tin Yau and Ma seemed to recall some forgotten memories. (These are memories that would exist if history was not rewritten.)

References

The former contributors to the summaries for My Date with a Vampire, before narratives were removed

zh:我和殭屍有個約會