House of Spirits (2016)

A theme that has eluded Hollywood for the last decade is forgiveness. Hollywood prefers the strawman approach to villainy – they will often create one-dimensional baddies who solely exist to debunk a talking point the creators disagree with. If their villain is making a pro-capitalist argument, you are supposed to dismiss solely because the villain is the one making the argument. It doesn’t matter if he (and it is usually a HE) makes some valid talking points, you must disagree with him or else you are part of the problem. Nuance has become a lost art.  If a character is deemed to be on “the wrong side of history,” they are irredeemable. Therefore, it was a bit surprising to see nuance in the Hong Kong comedy series, House of Spirits. On the surface, it is a silly comedy – after their father, Po Fuk, has passed away, four estranged siblings are forced to move into his flat in order to receive their inheritance. The provision of his will is that they must live together for nine months before selling the flat (which has a market value of twelve million dollars). Also, the flat is haunted by the ghosts of Bak Wah and his wife, Yi Lan, two movie stars from the 1950s.  The only two people who can see Bah Wan and Yi Lin are Po Foon, the oldest sibling, and his niece, Mui Siu-fei (Fei-fei). If this show were made in the States, the focus would be on slapstick comedy and there would have to be a main baddie who threatens to upend our protagonist’s peaceful co-existence. There is such a baddie in House of Spirits, the real estate developer, Kam Cha-lei, but he is more of minor subplot and is given surprising depth. 

Before I can dive into the plot, it is important to do a brief summary of the main characters, because they are all well-defined individuals, who are given their own unique character arc.

Po Foon (Bobby Au-yeung)

Po Foon is the oldest of the siblings. He left the family at an early age to pursue his dreams and to escape his father’s abuse. After he left, his younger siblings (especially his sister, Po Yan) view him with disdain. He rarely shows up at family functions and when he does, he usually arrives late and only stays for a few minutes. After their father Po Fuk passes away alone, Po Foon starts to have dreams of his late father, who urges him to bring the family back together again. Po Foon is convinced this is his father’s final wish and is determined to mend his broken family. He initially resorts to an underhanded tactic to get his siblings to agree to move into his father’s flat with him, he forges his father’s will that states the siblings must live together for nine months before they can sell it. His younger brother, Po Yue, figures out the ruse earlier but agrees to remain silent after Po Foon bribes him with a portion of his share after they sell the flat (two million dollars to be exact).

In his youth, he (along with his friend, Kwai Si-fuk) starred in a children’s show where he played the superhero, Captain Po, who always fought the Monster (Si-fuk in a shoddy dinosaur costume). After the television series ended, the two of the opened up an education center for children (Space Shuttle), with Po acting as the Principal and Si-fuk the CEO. After offending a prominent mother, whose son attends Space Shuttle, Po Foon is forced to resign. It turns out her husband is a prominent investor in Space Shuttle and, in order to avoid a lawsuit, Po Foon agrees to not only resign from the school but also not to work in the education field for a year. With his limited options, he agrees to work the late shift at his friend’s (Bak-chun) eatery. Bak-chun’s eatery is short-staffed after his wife gives birth, so Po Foon agrees to help out. The eatery also happens to be across the hall from a multi-purpose shop owned by Chu Chan-chan, who is a jack of all trades (electrician, plumber, and carpenter) and also happens to be a high school friend of Po Yan. In fact, it is Po Yan who put up the money that allowed Chan-chan to go into business for herself.

Po Foon uses this opportunity to perfect his father’s rice noodle roll recipe. When Po Foon was a kid, his father often forced him to slave away in the kitchen for hours until he perfected the rice noodle roll. His father was so determined to make Foon learn the recipe that he often kept him out of school.  This was one of the reasons Foon grew to resent his father.  Now that he has time on his hands, he decides to honor his late father’s wishes and perfect the rice noodle roll recipe. After a few failed attempts, he learns that the secret to rice noodle rolls is a specific brand of flour.  The biggest fan of his rolls turns out to be Chan-chan – they are a cure for her insomnia. After she finishes a plate of Po Foon’s rice noodle rolls, she immediately falls asleep. They are also a hit among the customers – Po Foon initially isn’t interested in selling them, but they demand for the rice noodle rolls becomes so great that he eventually gives in.

Po Foon tries to see the best in people, often to his detriment. When he runs into his ex-girlfriend, Joanne, he is still haunted with guilt over being partially responsible for ending her dancing career – when they were still dating, Po Foon got into a car accident which Joanne’s legs. He paid for her surgery and medical treatments, but they couldn’t overcome the awkwardness and broke up. Joanne initially puts on the mask of friendship when she approaches Po Foon, but her true intention is to swindle him of 300,000 dollars to pay for plastic surgery. She lays the guilt trip on thick – she constantly complains about the pain in her legs. She tells Po Foon she needs the money to get an experimental surgery in the U.K. that, if successful, will allow her to dance again. Po Foon is almost fooled – he just can’t believe that beautiful creature standing in front of him is capable of lying. It is Po Yue who exposes Joanne’s dishonesty, this sparing his older brother more heartbreak and bankruptcy. Yet, despite her deception, Po Foon does bear Joanne any ill well – he is not that type of a guy who holds grudges.

Po Yan (Joyce Tang)

Po Yan is Foon’s younger sister (and second oldest sibling in the Po family). Like Foon, she grew up resenting their father but for a much different reason. After their mother passed away, it was Po Yan who raised her two younger siblings, Yue and Yi. Her ambition was to attend a university in the United Kingdom, but her father shot that idea down and forced her to play mother to her younger brothers. When Po Foon left the family (she was oblivious to the abuse he suffered at the hands of their father) she, naturally, resented him for leaving her to hold the bag. She views Foon with apprehension – she, understandably, can’t believe that he is a changed man. The best way to describe the two – Foon is the heart of the family; Yan is the brains. There is a constant butting of heads between the two, but once the two of them get in sync with each other, the family begins to thrive.

She never stopped acting like a mother to her younger siblings; she constantly scolds Po Yue and Po Yi (often her anger is justified). She loves her husband, Mui Chiu, but wishes he was more of a go getter (he is a manager at a factory). She is not a greedy person – it’s just the thought of living in poverty scares her. She wants their daughter, Fei fei, to have the opportunities that she didn’t when she was younger; as a result, she is raises her daughter in a strict manner. Her marriage with Mui Chiu becomes strained – when Fei fei and her moved into her father’s flat, Mui Chiu stay behind because of his work. He tries to make it up to his wife and daughter by visiting every weekend, but his not being around often leaves him out of the loop. The other thorn in their marriage is Mui Chiu’s overbearing mother, Sik Giu, who makes all sorts of passive aggressive remarks to her daughter-in-law and often undermines Po Yan in front of Fei fei. When she suspects that Po Yan is having an affair, she visits the flat to keep an eye on her daughter-in-law. Sik Giu puts on angelic act when the rest of the family is around – to the point that Yan’s siblings can’t believe she doesn’t like her mother-in-law. To make matters worse, Mui Chiu usually sides with his mother. However, eventually Sik Giu’s true character is exposed, and this is also the moment that endears Po Foon to Po Yan, because when Sik Giu is hurling criticisms at her, it is Po Foon who defends his sister. He is especially offended when Sik Giu calls Po Yan a loser. The other surprising moments is when Po Yan’s sister-in-law, Fiona, also comes to her defense – this is surprising as the two of them have been at each other’s throats the entire series.

She also has a chip on her shoulder – she wants to prove to her husband, and to herself, that she a excel at business.  When she learns that Chan-chan wants to open up her own repair/design business, Po Yan invests money in it to help out her high school friend. They divide their duties – Po Yan is responsible for the business/financial end which allows Chan-chan to focus on the labor aspect. This first order of business is to find clients. Po Yan meets with various companies (hotels, schools, etc) about allowing Chan-chan to renovate their buildings, but they turn her down because Chan-chan’s business is new and they are skeptical about a woman’s ability to do a “man’s job.” When the Space Shuttle education center is need of repairs, Po Foon persuades Si-fuk (whose nickname is “Seafood”) to give Chan-chan and his sister a chance. He also tells Si-fuk to keep this a secret; his sister is a proud woman, and he worries that Po Yan will not take the job if she finds that he is behind it. Si-fuk is not good at keeping secrets and he immediately tells Chan-chan, who in turn tells Po Yan. She is slightly annoyed that Po Foon is responsible for their first gig, but she also realizes that a job is a job, and it would be foolish to pass on this opportunity. Miu Chiu initially objects to Po Yan (he is actually more annoyed that she kept it a secret from him that actually starting one up) but Foon is able to convince him how important this is to Yan.

Anthony Po Yue (Jonathan Cheung)

Po Yue is the second youngest of the siblings. He has held a grudge against Po Foon for most of his life; when he was in elementary school he bragged to his classmates that his older brother was Captain Po and they didn’t believe them. He was hoping to put all doubts to rest by asking his brother to take part in a leg race at the school. Foon agreed and Po Yue then bragged to his classmates that his older brother would be making an appearance. They were excited over the prospect of meeting their idol, Captain Po. However, on the day of the race, Po Foon, due to his hectic schedule at the television studio, missed the race and this resulted in Yue’s classmates labelling him a “liar” and bullying him. Despite Foon’s best efforts to make it up to his younger brother, Yue never forgave Foon for letting him down.

As an adult, Yue seems to have it made – he was a well-paying job at an investment firm; she is married to a popular runway model, Fiona, and the two of them just put a down payment on a posh apartment. They agree to move into his father’s flat because the apartment is still being renovated and they need a place to live (the three million dollars they will inherit after selling his father’s flat doesn’t hurt either).  By all metrics, Po Yue is living the dream, yet he suffers from a huge inferiority complex – he loves Fiona, but he also believes that only way to keep her by his side is by showering her with nice things. In fact, that main reason he put a down payment on the posh apartment was to appease her. In the past, Fiona dated an investor by the name of Dickson, and he worries that she still has feelings for him. Fiona’s mother keeps pressuring her to divorce Po Yue and get back together with Dickson.

When the investment firm he works at is caught up in a scandal, Po Yue is made the scapegoat and is fired from his job. Po Yue becomes so desperate for money that he contemplates selling the flat to one of his former clients, below the market value. Po Foon finds out about this but agrees not to tell the rest of the family about it. The only thing that prevents him from signing it is the contract is the timely intervention of a stray cat, Fei Jai, that hangs around the flat and is used by Po Luk as a conduit into the world of the living. 

David Po Yi (Bob Cheung)

David Po Yi (a play on David Bowie) is the youngest of the Po siblings. He is unemployed and spends most of his time listening to music and playing video games in his bedroom. He was still living at home when his father passed away. He never had a real relationship with Po Foon – he was still a toddler when his oldest brother left home. It is largely because of this that Po Foon decides to take Po Yi under his wing; much to his little brother’s annoyance.  When Po Foon starts working at the eatery, he makes Po Yi work the late shift with him.  He develops a close relationship with Foon and Fei-fei; he is often given the job of picking Fei-fei up from school and then looking after her until Po Yan comes home. He also is the only sibling who is willing to give Foon the benefit of the doubt – he doesn’t have a preconceived idea about Foon, like Yan and Yue, so he has no reason to doubt his older brother’s sincerity. 

Po Yi’s real aspiration in life is to be a musician, but he also suffers from stage fright. When he was younger, he froze up at his piano recital and, after this embarrassing incident, his father forbade him from playing any instruments. He still composes music, but he keeps it to himself.
He develops on a crush on Fei-fei’s piano teacher, Liu Sing-san, who is also an aspiring musician.  It also turns out that she is the ex-girlfriend of a famous singer that Po Yi admires, Jay Fung.  When Sing-san and Yi accidentally mix up each other’s iPods, Liu Sing-san hears one of the Po Yi’s musical compositions and is impressed. She suggests that the two of them should enter a talent show together. This puts Po Yi in quite the pickle – he still suffers from stage fright, but he also doesn’t want to let down his crush. When he tries to perform at a live mic event, that Sing-san invited him to, he freezes up onstage and runs away. This is witnessed by Po Foon, Fei-fei, and Chan-chan. He is convinced that he won’t be able to perform at the talent show and initially turns down Sing-san. 

Chu Chan-chan (Nancy Wu)

Chan-chan is Po Yan’s high school friend/ business partner and Foon’s eventual love interest. She initially dislikes Foon – the only thing she knows about him is what Yan told her in high school. The first meet by chance; when the fuse box in the building overheats and burns out, she offers to fix it.  Foon is initially skeptical of her ability, even though she is willing to fix it for a reasonable price and looks for other electricians.  However, their prices are way too high, so he inevitably chooses Chan-chan. This is when she is reunited with Po Yan and the two of them decide to go into business together (after Yan loses her job at the company she works at).

Her shop happens to be located right next to the eatery that Foon works at and the two of them eventually become close to one another.  Po Yan suffers from insomnia, which is why she is on call 24/7, because she needs something to kill the time. After Foon perfects his father’s ride noodle recipe, he gives her a plate on the house, and she falls asleep. Convinced she has found the cure for her insomnia; she keeps demanding Foon make more for her. She eventually realizes it isn’t the rice noodles that is responsible for her night’s sleep but Foon himself. At first, she is in denial about her feelings and then when she finally admits them, she can never bring herself to tell Foon how she feels, because it doesn’t appear to return her feelings. In fact, he seems determined to set her up with Si-fuk. In truth, Foon does love her, but he doesn’t believe he stands a chance with her – he is not what you would call handsome, and he is significantly older than her. Plus, Chan-chan initially shows interest in Si-fuk, so Foon believes is doing both of them a solid by setting them up. Chan-chan is a fan of Si-fuk – when she was a child, she religiously watched the TV show that Foon and Si-fuk starred, but he completely emphasized with the Monster.  In her childhood, she lived in an orphanage and one day the Monster showed up and performed all sorts of tricks for the children. Afterwards, he saw Chan-chan sitting by herself and cheered up with a pep talk. She assumed it was Si-fuk in the costume, but it was actually Foon who was covering for Si-fuk on that day. She credited this pep talk with help turning around her life. She goes on a few dates with Si-fuk but often finds herself talking about Foon: much to Si-fuk’s annoyance. What is impressive is that the relationship between Foon and Chan-chan is totally believable, despite the twenty-year gap between the actors; Bobby Au-yeung was 56 when this drama was made and Nancy Wu was 35. There is also the fact that Nancy Wu is gorgeous while Bobby Au-yeung is an ordinary looking dude; but none of that matters because the two of them have terrific screen chemistry. Also, because Foon is well-written character, it is easy to understand why Chan-chan would fall in love with him.

Chan-chan is a tomboy – she often dresses in flannels and blue jeans. Most of her colleagues often refer to her as “Brother Chan” because of her more masculine tendencies. She shares an apartment with her two male co-workers, Cheung Tsan and Ling Bo.  Cheung Tsan has a crush on Chan-chan and becomes insanely jealous when he sees her with Foon. Ling Bo has a crush on Cheng Tsan, but he is an unrequited love.  There is the inevitable scene where Chan-chan wears a dress and naturally turns everyone’s head. Again, Nancy Wu is gorgeous no matter what outfit she is wearing, so it is silly that it’s only after she puts on a dress that people would notice this; I refer to this as the “She’s All That” logic.  I should also point this is second drama I have seen Nancy Wu in; she was in the series, “Ghost of Relativity,” where she played the role of a ghost that lives in a cellphone. Here, she gets to play the romantic interest. 

Bak Wah and Yi Lan (Bowie Wu, Helena Law)

Bak Wah and Yi Lan are the two spirits that reside in the flat. In the 1950s, they were famous movie stars that starred in a series of Canto dramas.  Even though, Yi Lan loves Bak Wah, their marriage was less than ideal – Bak Wah was addicted to gambling and lost most of their fortune due to his addiction. The reason they still haunt the apartment, and haven’t moved on, is that they want to find out what happened to their long-lost daughter, Bak Wai, who ran away from home when she was seventeen years old. Bak Wah was a stern daughter and when he disapproved of that outfit she was wearing, she mouthed off to him, he slapped her, and she ran away from home, never to return.

The only two that can see them are Foon and Fe-fei; they both opened the umbrella that two spirits attached themselves to and breathed in the dust that allows them to see the ghosts. When Foon first realizes that the elderly couple, he was talking to are ghosts, he freaks out and tries to exorcise them from the premises. All attempts at exorcism are a failure and he eventually gets used to living with ghosts. Fei-fei, on the other hand, immediately takes a liking to Bak Wahn and Yi Lan (especially the latter) and often refers to them as her grandparents. 

There are often a few times throughout the series where the possess other family members (Yi Lan possesses Po Yan and Bak Wah possesses Po Yi and Miu Chiu) to either diffuse a situation or push a character in the right direction.  When Liu Sing-san walks in on Po Yi playing the piano, she asks him to play her another song. He freezes up and comes up with different excuses why he can’t play for; Bak Wah loses his patience, possesses Po Yi, and then serenades Sing-san with a love song. Sing-san is touched by this and asks Po Yi to play at an event that she is organizing. The problem is that Po Yi has no memory of serenading Sing-san and when he goes to the event, he has no idea that she wants him to play.  When Po Yan and Miu Chiu are having a heated argument over the business she started with Chan-chan, Bak Wah possesses Miu Chiu to ease the tensions. This does backfire later on; Po Yan wants to get intimate with Miu Chiu and Bak Wah (still inside Miu Chiu’s body) freaks out and pushes Po Yan off the bed and then leaves Miu Chiu’s body. When Miu Chiu comes back to his senses, he finds that Po Yan is angry with him but doesn’t understand why.

The interesting thing about House of Spirits is that drama would still work without the spirits. The characterizations are strong that the show could have easily made for a compelling family drama.  If you cut out the ghost subplot, you would have a solid family drama about loving, healing, forgiveness, and redemption. However, the writers to an excellent job of tying in the Bak Wah/ Yi Lan with the rest of the drama. At first, it feels disconnected with the main drama at hand, but it does have both a thematic and narrative link (if I were to say how, I would be given away spoilers).

Fiona Yue Fa (Koni Lui)

Fiona is Po Yue’s ditzy newlywed wife. She is an aging, part-time show model, who finds that she is now in competition with younger models. When she breaches her contract by gaining weight, she is fired. In attempt to upstage her younger counterparts, Fiona’s dons a revealing outfit that exposes her midriff, which gets the attention of the paparazzi but for all the wrong reasons – as it the outfit reveals that she has a beer belly. She becomes the subject of ridicule online; the only company that is willing to hire her is one that specializes in liposuction. When her former modeling agency threatens to sue her for breach of contract, she lies and tells the CEO that she is pregnant, then she, along with CEO’s sympathetic wife, lays the guilt trip on thick and he agrees to sign her to a new contract. She also uses her “pregnancy” to make her in laws wait on her hand and foot. 

Fiona could have easily been written as a one-dimensional character – in a lesser hand, Po Yue’s character arc would be dumping his bitchy, overbearing wife – but there is something endearing about Koni Lui’s performance. Fiona puts on a confident front, but she, just like her husband, is very insecure person.  Before she met Po Yue, she dated different types of men and, by her admission, lived a very loose life. She is worried that if Po Yue finds out about her past, he will dump on her on the spot. Her initially motive for approaching Po Yue was to make her ex-boyfriend, Dickson, jealous; Po Yue tried to break the ice with earlier and she flat out rejected him, but when she saw Dickson sitting a table with other women, she walked up to Po Yue and kissed him passionately on the lips, to show Dickson that she still had it. Despite her bitchy demeanor, she does legitimately Po Yue. It also turns out that Po Yue knew about her past and it didn't bother him in the slightest - he just wants to focus on the present. 

Foon and Yi don't have any issues with her; Foon often gives her the benefit of the doubt while Yi keeps to himself. It is Po Yan who acts antagonistically towards Fiona; she suspects that Fiona is a gold digger and always view her with suspicion.  The turning point in this relationship occurs when Fiona tells off Yan's overbearing mother-in-law; she may take issue with how Yan runs things, but she has a far bigger issue with overbearing mothers-in-law. She also later proves to be a good aunt to Fei-fei. 

Bianca Mui Siu-fei/Fei-fei (Bianca Chan)

The eight-year-old daughter of Po Yan and Miu Chiu, Fei-fei is the often the glue that holds things together. After moving into her grandfather's flat, she becomes extremely close to Po Foon, Po Yi, Bak Wah, and Yi Lan. When her mother says negative things about her uncle Foon, she is the first to defend him. She often worries about her parents' marriage - they are separated for most of the week and when Mui Chiu comes to visit, they often get into heated arguments with one another. She is often her uncle Foon's co-conspirator in various schemes to bring the family together; they devise a plot to cure Po Yi of his stage fright. Po Foon has arranged a huge get together for all the tenant on the rooftop and has Fei-fei play a few songs on a keyboard. Fei-fei then pretends to have a stage fright and starts to cry; Po Yi can't stand seeing his niece struggle and helps her with her song. Po Yi sees through the ruse but is genuinely touched that Po Foon and Po Yi staged this scene for his benefit.  Fei-fei later uses this stagecraft to manipulate her parents into stop bickering - she draws "disturbing" pictures at school (of her parents fighting and her crying) and this catches the attention of her teacher, who calls in both of her parents and tells them that they need to work out their differences for their daughter's benefit.  It turns out Fei-fei faked all of this to force her parents to stop their endless bickering. 

Miu Chiu (Tsui Wing)

Po Yan's husband and Fei-fei's father. Despite his turbulent relationship with his wife, Miu Chiu genuinely loves Po Yan and Fei-fei. When Po Yan starts up a business with Chan-chan, his initial objection isn't that she started a business but rather that she did it behind his back. His biggest flaw is that he always sides with his mother. He is unaware of his mother's passive aggressive behavior towards Po Yan, so when he sees that the two of them are not getting along, he asks Po Yan to try harder. However, even in their lowest moments, there is no doubt that he still loves his wife. It's just a matter of getting on the same page with her.

Kwai Si-fuk (Max Cheung)

Si-fuk (who is given the nickname "Seafood" by Foon) is the CEO of the Space Shuttle learning center and has been Po Foon's best friend since they were teenagers. He was also Foon's co-star on a children's role - he played the role of The Monster, where he was forced to wear a chintzy dinosaur costume.  He was overweight in his youth but grew into a handsome man.  While Foon is more focused on education, Si-fuk worries more about the financial aspect of Space Shuttle learning center, which means he often takes in the children of wealthy parents, even though many of them fall short of Space Shuttle's standards. Foon is worried that bringing in so many unqualified students will force him to water down the curriculum, but Si-fuk tells him that they desperately need the money to keep afloat.  The neat thing about this scene is that doesn't strawman Si-fuk - he is genuinely concerned about Space Shuttle's future and realizes that he has to shake hands with the devil to keep it going.  

After Chan-chan is hired to renovate Space Shuttle, Si-fuk is instantly smitten with her. He wants to pursue a relationship with her and asks her to go out on multiple dates. Foon, believing he doesn't stand a chance with Chan-chan, gives Si-fuk his blessing to ask her out. Chan-chan is flattered and even star struck- she was a huge fan of Si-fuk growing up and has posters of The Monster hanging on her walls. However, whenever Chan-chan and Si-fuk are on a date, she spends most of the time talking about Po Foon. When Si-fuk makes his move on her, she rejects his advances. It is at this point in the series that she realizes she has feelings for Foon.  

Even though Po Foon is his best friend, Si-fuk begins resenting being in Foon's shadow. He was Foon's co-star on television, but it was Foon who got all the fan mail. When they opened Space Shuttle, it was Foon who was the face of the school. Now, the woman he has the hots for can't ever shut up about Foon. Foon feels awful about it, but there is very little he can do to appease his friend.  

The biggest character arc in the series is Po Foon's emergence of the family patriarch - he begins the series as being an estranged member of the family to being the guy that everyone can rely on. However, his role of patriarch isn't just limited to his family but eventually extends to the other tenants living in the apartment building: it is Foon who helps Po Yan find a nice, affordable school for his niece; it is Foon who helps cure Po Yi of his stage fright; it is Po Foon who places his entire trust in Po Yue after the latter contemplates selling that flat behind his family back; and it is Po Foon who looks in on his neighbors, most notably the senile, Ho Gwai. He desperately wants to atone for his mistakes of the past and win the trust of his siblings in the process.  Hell, he is also the guy spirits turn to when they need to help.  

One of the ghosts is Chiu Fong-fong, who was a girl who grew up in the same orphanage as Chan-chan. When Foon sees her lingering around Chan-chan, he fears the worst. It initially looks like his worst fears our confirmed, when it seems that the ghost pushes Chan-chan into oncoming traffic, but Foon is able to pull her out of the way in the nick of time. However, it turns out this was an accident and Fong-fong's ghost has no malicious intent; instead, the reason she hangs out Chan-chan is that she has unfinished business she needs to attend. When the two of them were living at the same orphanage, Chan-chan's mother visited and dropped off a present; Chan-chan was busy at the time and didn't get to see her mother. Fong-fong was already jealous of Chan-chan because was popular with the other children and seeing Chan-chan's mother drop off a present drove Fong-fong over the edge. She grabbed the present and buried it under a tree.  She later regretted her decision but before she could make amends, she passed away. As a spirit, she now asks Foon to lead Chan-chan to the tree and dig up the present. After Foon digs up the present and gives it to Chan-chan, Fong-fong can pass on to the afterlife. This is the common thread among all the ghosts in House of Spirits; the reason they hang around the living is that they have unfinished business they must resolve before moving on. 

This also applies to the Po Family, before they can become a functional family, they must first exorcise all the ghosts in their closet. Once they have resolved all their petty differences and forgiven each other for their past transgressions, they become an unstoppable unit. This is also a stark contrast to the content made in the United States - if House of Spirits was made by Netflix, Amazon, or any other streaming service, Po Foon would be a bumbling, irredeemable idiot while the female characters would always be in the right. Therefore, it was refreshing to see a series where each character (including the ditzy Fiona) is given a satisfying character arc.  

Cast: Bobby Au-yeung (Po Foon), Joyce Tang (Po Yan), Jonathan Cheung (Anthony Po Yue), Bob Cheung (David Po Yi), Nancy Wu (Chu Chan-chan), Bowie Wu (Bak Wah), Helena Law (Mrs. Bak – Yi Lan), Koni Lui (Fiona Yue Fa, Po Yue’s wife), Tsui Wing (Mui Chiu, Po Yan’s husband), Bianca Chan (Bianca Mui Siu-fei, Po Yan’s daughter), Lau Kong (Po Luk), Max Cheung (Kwai Si-fuk), Moon Lau (Liu Sing-san), Willie Wai (Wong Bak-chun), Jay Fung (himself), Joe Tay (Kam Cha-lei), Angelina Lo (Sik Giu, Mui Chiu’s mother), Calvin Chan (Cheung Tsan), Kelvin Yuen (Ling Bo), Chow Chung (himself), Suet Nei (Kam Siu Mo-ching, Cha-lei’s mother), Fanny Lee (Au Yuk-han, Bak-chun’s wife), Yu Chi-ming (Ho Gwai), Alex Yung (Yin, Ho Gwai’s grandson), Carat Cheung (Joanne Chin Cho-kwan), Aliya Fan (Mrs. Tou), Willie Lau (Mr. Tau), Joey Mak (Chiu Fong-fong), Raymond Chiu (Dickson), Andy Lau Tin-ling (Jason).

Director: Not Available
Writers: Ma Chun-wing, Au Yuk-han, Ho Ching-yi, Yeung Seut-Yee, Wong Sau-ching, Ma Ching-man.
31 episodes ~ 45 minutes.