Underground Lover
Chen Zhuo-wei · English information & rights
English information
- Title: Underground Lover
- Author: Chen Zhuo-wei
- Rights available: Translation・Film/TV・Audio
- Tagline: Count to the thirty-first tree, turn four degrees left, and the door will be there.
- Logline: A marketer who believes in nothing takes a job filming an ad for a ghost-marriage company hidden in the woods of New Taipei, and on his first day he finds, in a drawer of its archive, a file labeled with his own name.
- Synopsis: Chen Zhuo-wei has just opened a one-man marketing studio in Xindian when every old client backs out. His first new contract comes from a company that arranges marriages between the living and the dead. Before signing, he agrees to be hypnotized once by its founder, Dong Xinhui, then spend three days interviewing the staff on camera. Each employee has handled ghost weddings of their own, and as the interviews go on, strange things begin to happen at his studio.
- Characters: Chen Zhuo-wei, a marketer who does not believe in ghosts | Dong Xinhui, founder of the ghost-marriage company and a former hypnotist | Ziqi, the senior wedding host and a former mortuary cosmetician | Wang Yuxin, the twenty-two-year-old archive keeper and a former pickpocket | Hong Changde, a former customs officer | Fan Huokuan and Fan Shuikuan, twin brothers who handle the special cases | Luo Junying, the second host | Mrs. Jiang, owner of the marketing firm at the end of the lane
- Research Topics: Five topics: ghost marriage as a modern service; grief and continuing bonds; hypnosis, self-recording, and the reliability of memory; care and control; self-presentation before the camera.
- Six Dimensions: Readability high; Mystery medium; Literary medium; Social medium; Local setting high; Symbolism medium-high.
- About the Author: Chen Zhuo-wei, born in Huilaicuo, Yunlin, Taiwan, in his forties. He graduated from Providence University in 2009 and has worked as a housekeeper, salesman, and bank clerk; he spent working-holiday years in Australia, Ireland, Poland, and the UK, was a station attendant at Fenqihu on the Alishan line in 2022, and joined Chunghwa Post in 2024.