Spicy Love Soup is a Chinese movie, directed by new generation director Yang Zhang(张杨). The movie was released in 1998 in China. The five stories of the movie were threaded together by a couple who have been prepared for their wedding. The first story-sound, talked about puppy love between two high students; the second story-photos, described a young man had a crush on a beautiful girl and took pictures of her; the third story-toys, talked about a married couple who were tired of their daily life routine and found new excitement through toys, and after they had their own child they developed a new sense of how life should be; the 4th story-seasoning, talked about a middle-aged couple who decided to get divorce despite their son’s efforts to fix his parents’ relationship; the last story-Mahjong, talked about a widow who wanted to remarry and eventually found her true love again.
I really like the movie myself, and used to play part of the movie to my college students. Now I teach middle school, I think I will use this movie in my classroom again, because the movie was made up of 5 independent stories, and each story can stand alone by itself, and I can play one story at a time depending on how the content fits in to my lesson plan. For instance, there is a unit in our textbook about friends/boyfriends/girlfriends, I will show my students the first story in the movie, and ask their opinion about the similar and different reactions of the parents when they know their children have a girlfriend or boyfriend, and analyze the reasons why the parents in two countries will have different opinions.