#5 The Amazing Ming-ming

        At first, I was so confused on what the play was all about. I can’t hardly understand on what was going on between the four characters who were simultaneously speaking all throughout the play. All I knew at first was that Ming-Ming was dead and that she was able to know the truth about the life of her family-her mother, her grandmother and her uncle.

       It was until the middle part of the play that I slowly understand the real situation. Ming-Ming’s mother had two failed marriages. The first one was a marriage fixed by her family with a much older man and was a politician. When she went to Manila to study, she fell in love with an Economics professor. Their relationship was kept secret. Ming-Ming then was the fruit of their forbidden love. However, the professor left the country when he almost died after her soon to be husband knew that they had a relationship. Her pregnancy was kept secret. Next was her arranged marriage with a distant relative. The man believed that the child (Ming-Ming) was adopted.

    I only learned a little about the story of Ming-Mings’s uncle and grandmother. I only knew that they loved each other yet Ming-Ming’s grandmother was married to her lover’s elder bother at the age of 14. The marriage was arranged by her family to end a family feud between a clan with political powers. Ming-Ming’s uncle became a trained guerrilla and lived miserably in the mountains. He stood as a father of Ming-Ming and was so particular with discipline.

     Lastly and most importantly, I also learned the real life story of Ming-Ming. She grew up that she never felt the love of her mother and the man whom she thought as her father. Her grandmother was the only person whom she can run to. When she left to study, she was never a good student. She learned mean things that some teenagers nowadays also do. Sad to say, she was commanded to return home and then she was kept and locked in a cold dark room for a long period of time. With her stay in that room, the only person she considered as her “friend” was a shadow who sends her meal from time to time. Her “friend” was a guy with a gun in his waist that shimmers in her dark room. Being alone in the room might be the reason why there came a day that her so called “friend” was dead on top of her. She drank valium and alcohol that caused her death. 

   

       As a whole, the play was so amazing and well presented. Even though I was confused in the beginning part, when I started to understand it, I realized how wonderful it was. The play was presented artistically and uniquely. The only thing that marked in my mind was that Ming-Ming was able to know all the truths, her family’s unrevealed secrets and the reasons why she died, only when she already died. She was only given the chance to listen to her mother, grandmother and uncle only when she died. I imagined that what if Ming-Ming never died, could she still know the truth behind her family’s past? Generally, the characters portrayed on how they were able to deal with love and liberty.