The Fabulous Four don't really act or sign well, but they have looks and style.

SO FAR, "Meteor" mania is still going strong. The show averages in the high 40s on a nonprimetime slot (or about 10 million viewers a day in Metro Manila). "Meteor Garden" — actually now "Meteor Rain," which is the series' sequel — also accounts for hundreds of thousands of mobile-phone ring tone and logo downloads every day. Music channels and radio stations are deluged with requests for songs from the original soundtrack and from albums of F4 (whom the show's producers formed into a boy band after the television show's success). "Meteor Garden" and F4 shrines and chat rooms are proliferating on the Web and so have bootleg VCDs and MP3s in schools and offices everywhere.

The demand for the chinovela and its Chinese stars is so overwhelming that rival network GMA-7 has acquired for itself three teen dramas from Taiwan — "Lavender," "Poor Prince," and "My MVP Valentine" — in order to satisfy the hunger.

If other networks are scrambling for similar products, that's because they never saw this trend coming. (Actually, even ABS-CBN was surprised by the show's phenomenal success.) That the Philippines was just about the last country in Southeast Asia to hear about "Meteor Garden" can be attributed to that. In the past, the only shows imported from other Asian countries were Japanese cartoons; programmers didn't even consider these as distinctly Asian, but as universal cartoons, given that Japanese features are not as pronounced when animated. Because of their parochial and "West is Best mindsets, Filipino programmers never seriously considered importing Chinese/Asian dramas — until Viva Television last year began touting what it called the "chinovela," its answer to the Mexican telenovelas that Pinoy viewers were beginning to get tired of. Viva's Chinese imports did not quite click with the public, but the term it coined did. It also apparently got programmers thinking East for a change.

These days, programmers and merchandisers are slowly discovering what exactly makes "Meteor Garden" so endearing to the faithful.

The first thing one notices about "Meteor Garden" is that it looks better than it sounds. In fact, even with the volume on mute or when watching it in the original Mandarin, one can still understand and enjoy the story. That's partly because the series was adapted, literally and practically frame by frame, from the manga Hana Yori Dango.

What also attracts the viewers is the unadulterated eye candy it offers, and if the faithful female fans are any indicator, the four cute actors that make F4. The boys don't actually act or sing very well, but in a teen drama, looks and style more than make up for deficiencies in talent. One could even say the four are more than handsome — they are also pretty. And their androgynous good looks are the very reason both Filipino boys and girls love them, plus the fact that they can all pass for chinky-eyed Filipino men.

There's also the production design. The attention to details like trendy street wear, mobile phones, and hairstyles is deliberate. It's the lifestyle every teenager aspires for and every afternoon for 30 minutes they get to live it vicariously. For the Pinoy teen, they also get to live it in a setting that is much like their own.

"Meteor Garden" is set in urban Taipei, but kids and parents in a city like Manila can identify with the familiar characters and stories. There's a character and storyline for everyone — the nerd, the cool kid, the kind servant, and the evil mother — a universal tale with universal appeal, that with the help of new dubbing technology, can be easily adapted to local viewers. In fact, unlike the jarring experience of watching Mexican telenovelas, the Filipino voice dubbed over the original language of "Meteor Garden" is less jolting to watch since Chinese faces are so much more common in the Philippines than Castillian faces are. The effect is more natural and convincingly real.

Yet despite all these, "Meteor Garden" wouldn't have caused much of the stir it continues to generate if it were just another shallow teen drama. And while F4 is the main attraction of the series, it is the character of the heroine Shan Chai that intrigues viewers most. In the opening episode she punches Dao Ming Shi. In other episodes, she defies the men and challenges her boyfriend's mother. In the series, the girls court the boys and show deeper strength. This nonconformist sensibility and liberated gender role-playing is what conservative parents and the their children continue to debate about. A movement in Manila has even petitioned the board of censors to delete such scenes. Naturally, the move faces fierce resistance from Shan Chai's fans. The moral guardians of the country don't realize that the program is popular precisely because it is modern. Real kids like real characters with values they can identify with.

For now, parents may just as well sit back and try to relax before the deluge of Asian dramas that is bound to inundate local TV after "Meteor Garden." Already, rival networks are in the process of negotiating with their counterparts from Korea for more teen dramas to satisfy the demand.

Then again, even observers of pop culture in the West admit that Asia is cool — not only in terms of fashion trends, but also of digital technology. Mobile-phone ownership is highest among Asian youth and driving a technology culture characterized by speed, experimentation, and improvisation.

Japan, Korea, China, Taiwan, and Singapore no longer just export manufactured products to the rest of the world, but culture, too. That has both exciting and scary implications for poorer neighbors like the Philippines. Will the Asian renaissance provide space for Filipinos to assert their cultural identity, or will it only introduce a different kind of colonialism and consumer culture dominated by Japan, China, and Korea? There are no answers yet. The revolution is only beginning.