Belinda Lee is ready for love — the actress, host and traveller said she looks forward to leaving five years of singlehood behind and hopes to meet the right person this year. And if she does, she won’t rule out a flash marriage.
“I’ll shock the world with the wedding announcement!” she said.
But Belinda won’t consider going for matchmaking to find her happy ending. “I’ve never tried it and I don’t want to,” she said. “After all, as an artiste, I don’t wish to invite gossip.”
The actress will appear in the new longform 170-part drama series Peace and Prosperity as the eldest granddaughter of the founder of a traditional Chinese medicine business, whose eagerness to settle down leads her on a string of matchmaking dates.
To Belinda, you can’t hurry love, and the next person she meets may not be the right one, she said. But the actress believes she’s an eligible bachelorette, and she hopes she’ll be married within two years.
As for children, Belinda isn’t at all concerned about becoming an over-35 mother. “Some of my friends had their first children after they were 40 and it went well, so they told me not to worry,” the 38-year-old said.
“I go for tui na (Chinese manipulative therapy) and massages every other month to maintain my fitness, so if I were to have a kid now it’d be no problem.”
Herbal remedies
Belinda underwent training at a traditional Chinese medicine store in Toa Payoh last Friday, together with her Peace and Prosperity co-stars Desmond Tan and Dawn Yeoh. All three got a crash course in preparing and packing herbal remedies, and Desmond got to learn about cupping therapy and acupuncture.
Besides Belinda, Dawn is another actress who took herbal tonics as a child, but she admitted she knew little about preparing them.
“My mother would select the herbs for brewing soups or teas, but drinking them is all I know,” she said.
Dawn said she’s still living with her mother, who takes care of her daily meals. The actress said she’s thought about how she might live independently, but she knows she’s reliant on her mother.
Like her Peace and Prosperity co-star, the 31-year-old hopes to find a new partner soon. “I like the feeling of being in love,” Dawn said. “And if I have a boyfriend, I’ll be open about it and show him off.”
Her mother isn’t rushing her to settle down, Dawn said. “She’ll say, ‘Don’t be silly, it’s not the right time!’ But I don’t quite know how to take care of myself, and I don’t know much about motherhood,” she said.
Neither is Dawn itching to become a mother just yet — the actress said she has a low pain threshold and doesn’t have the courage to give birth. But to her, women should have their own children, so if she does get the chance to have children, she hopes she’ll have a twin boy and girl — two kids in one go.
Peace and Prosperity debuts April 4, 7.30 pm on Channel 8.