Becky

YouTube has realized I have been searching for NiNi's interviews and suddenly my feeds are filled with them :) I particularly like this interview https://youtu.be/JTivUMcs24I. It seems to be her first interview on a TV show (she was on promo for Love Will Tear Us Apart). If you cannot understand Chinese, you can watch at a slower speed and use the Google Translate mobile app - camera function to screenshot the Chinese subs and translate it to English (or other lang)...

Hi! If there's any China Chinese here... I'm confused with the doctor term for Vengo Gao's character. Literal translation would be Director. But a director at hospital would have his own office? Or is he a Chief Resident?

Not sure where some of you are watching this at, the version that I saw, the animal abuse scene, is really nothing.... it only implied that the cat died.

Thank goodness this drama is releasing new episodes everyday.... Without realizing it, I've binged all the way to ep 12 =_=

Another way is the Google Translate mobile app. Can use the camera option to screen capture the Chinese subtitles.

LOL.... as this is not a romantic comedy, they are probably going for a more realistic portrayal here. Can't have the doctor looking too handsome, so give him a lousy haircut ;)

There is an error in the cast names. Vengo Gao's character should be Doctor Lin, not Liang....

ohh...... this pop up at my feeds and read some good reviews. But it has animal abuse?? -_- Can anyone tell me at which minute of ep 1, so I can skip it. It does look good.

Hi, I am quite late to discovering Ni Ni.... Watched LAD recently and fell in love with her natural, instinctive style of acting! Saw The Flowers of War too, and have been searching for Ni Ni's interviews on the matter. But all I can find is very political correct answers on Zhang Yimou and Christian Bale. Does anyone here know if she had an interview later and gave more sincere replies on the experience? I mean, it is stressful to have Zhang Yimou as the director at her very first movie, and Christian Bale, an actor who is revered by fellow American actors (who is also notorious for that outburst at a film set)..... The happiness, fear and stress that she would have been under... how did she coped with it? What was her greatest takeaway (learning) from working with Zhang Yimou and Christian Bale?

Oh yes, and that 999 flu medicine... Was really surprise the first time I saw them in a Republican era drama. The marketers should challenge themselves, and do product placement in ancient dramas too.... lol

Awww, it is tough to be Vengo fan this year... His currently airing drama Living Toward the Sun is a Mango TV production. The last Mango TV drama I saw, the subtitles were really bad

Oh yes! Especially in Love Will Tear Us Apart. From certain angles, she was a doppelganger for Shuqi

Hi PBG, I rewatched ep 6 to 8, and realised I missed the part that LX had hide out in the spirit pet garden when she was hiding from her father. Most likely she had some disagreement with the pet bird at that time. True, LX was bullied by Tianlei Zhenjun's men too.

https://www.hbogoasia.sg/#series/sr411 (I get this url as I'm in Singapore....)
Or, do you have VPN Express? Try Malaysia or other VPN server in Asia and login to your HBO account?

Hi All, you need a HBO Go subscription to watch this with Eng subs.....
https://www.hbogoasia.sg/#series/sr411

Glad if I could provide more information. But just reread some Guardian articles and realize I was off-point.... It was pulled off Youku platform after the initial release, and had to be re-edited mainly because censorship felt some scenes and dialogues contain elements of religious fanaticism.

China censorship board is like that overly strict parent trying to dictate what his teenage child (audience) should be watching, reading, etc. Hope they would give this up, because in this age of internet nothing can remain hidden. Lol.

Guardian was originally a Le Shi production (or LeTV). They made huge investments in the drama (the opening theme song is a very good example). But around midway in production, Le Shi was investigated for financial irregularities and subsequently suspended at the stock exchange. Guardian was in limbo as it couldn't continue shooting. Thankfully Youku came to the rescue but it did not value Guardian as much as Le Shi did. I think part of the production crew was changed too, to save costs. Hence the uneven-ness of the drama. And when it was finally released in China, there was hardly any promotion or marketing. It was only after the success of the drama that they did the PR... if you look at the interviews and events on Guardian, they were almost all post-release. That's why Guardian holds a special place in my heart: in spite of all the challenges it faced during production, it still managed to complete, achieved some degree of success and started the BL wave :D

Nope, I didn't read its original novel. My Chinese isn't that great... and its English translated copy, is quite incoherent at some parts :))

Hi! Love your well-written and well-research article on Guardian **thumbs up**

I haven't really research on the list of taboos in cdrama censorship, but what I know:- time traveling was allowed in cdramas (eg: Go Princess Go, The Eternal Love series) until recently. Hence Guardian was not affected by the time travelling restriction. It was more of the other limitations, particularly LGBT and overtly sexual scenes. One of the scenes that was edited out, was Shen Wei's twin's arrival in the human world. He had looked at a female student with lust and tried to make moves on her... Please also note that in the course of shooting, the original production house was bankrupt and another media company took over Guardian. Hence you would notice poorer quality in the settings and cinematography in the 2nd half of the series.

Other tv limitations in China are:- cannot portray children sexual abuse, and children 'doing bad things'. These limitations really spoil The Bad Kids and The Long Night for me. There are huge differences in The Bad Kids novel vs the drama. Even the ending scene of The Bad Kids had to be edited as it didn't pass censorship. And that all mysterious photo in The Long Night, when finally revealed didn't look too bad actually. I was puzzling over why the bad men were doing their best to destroy the photo? Until I realized that in the novel, the sexually abused girls were <14 years old....

Aww..... above was my thoughts at 2/3 of the movie. Didn't realize scriptwriter is going with the psycho woman development. This ain't your regular love gone wrong.

Watching this movie now and reading the comments here. Just my 2 cents on the Miao Miao character. Pretty girls know that men like them because of how they look. And Liang Liang revealed his colorful love life prior to meeting Miao Miao. So there is this fear the boyfriend would hook up with other pretty women. We never really see Liang having heart-to-heart talk with Miao, so Miao did not know if Liang loved her more for who she is or only for her looks. But I understand Liang's pov too, being a man he thought showing love and care is enough. That it is not necessary to put in words what he actually loved about her. But the silly guy, from that conversation they had when she asked him about his past loves, it is clear Miao wanted to know why he loved her. But his answer was simply she was the best and the other women meant nothing to him.

Still I do not understand why she would sacrifice her career for Liang.... Why Miao loved Liang, what was it about him that attracted Miao, was never really shown either. I guess the movie just want to show that love is complicated and honest, clear communication is needed to sustain a relationship. Else all the ugly jealousy and insecurities would make an otherwise sane person do really stupid things, eventually destroying the love.

Some would say Miao should have trusted Liang. But from his answers when she asked him about his past relationships, and other conversations, it is quite normal that Miao would panic and felt insecure, and couldn't trust him. Although the normal decision to make at this stage would have been asking for some time apart, to reassess the relationship. But Miao had loved Liang too much.

Hi, Miss S was uploaded at DramaCool, Kissasian earlier but even that had been removed. I guess HBO is taking the copyright that they bought very seriously! if you still have the courage to watch it without subs, you can get the full series at pangzitv, kanba free sites.
https://m.pangzitv.com/vod-play-id-75756-src-1-num-1.html this is the 1st episode, has an episode menu below. I guess no subbers would dare sub it, HBO would have it taken down as quickly as it is uploaded... pangzitv and kanba still have a copy of it, but not sure for how long?