The song "Home" is nostalgic : "Goodbye, my friend, to the laughter and pain we had/Saying goodbye to the endless nights in the rain/../Saying goodbye to the place where I call home." But not really ominous. More like wistful comparing options and letting go of the pains of past to find a more appeased home. The parents had learned to be less intrusive, but the (love)birds needed to fly from the nest. Build their own. Find My Way Back To Life was a song for the struggling times in the rat's maze of psychological pains. "In this darkness, search for a light... Ocean sadness, I'm under attack..." A Zan would not have even dreamed about using it to appease the other ptsd sufferer in Dongguo: only the title seems uplifting.
I sorta finished it. I got to ep 10 but the dynamic between ML and FL was just not enough for me to push through…
Not truly a military drama in my mind... I liked it enough, but admit it is not everybody's cup of tea. Watch what you like is certainly best, and if you did not connect with this story and characters, that can happen... :)
If you want to know if SR changed her mind about something or someone in the drama without referring to book, then you should reformulate your question to make that clear.
If you want an answer about whether the character Song Ran was changed from Novel to Drama version, then of course no.
If you want a further detailed analysis, then I am not the authority there.
I usually don't read the book first to compare with what is made of it. My angle at watching dramas is not to judge accuracy from source material to what is made of it; I am more interested in the way the drama world building goes, and what I wrote about in my Companion piece. I am not that invested in reading the source material! (I might read a book AFTER airing, but I dislike reading flawed translation or struggling to find original novel which is time consuming; I am, in a nutshell: lazy, impatient, whimsical, and only like to share without having to do too much research over what I already did.) So, I only read a few snippets from beginning, random chapter, and end.
There is a slightly different feel, and the background is also slightly different. The Rina (mom of SaXin) character was not in the opening chapter of the book. It looks like Song Ran was slightly different, although the landmine saving seems similar.
There was perhaps a better translation (you may notice the translation did not benefit from proofreading so there are a lot of "huh?" things in the above version) Unfortunately, I did not read it through when it was available so can't validly comment first hand.
Fans on fan sites seem to complain the characters were "done dirty" by the screenwriter's rewrite, so I assume there are some discrepancies in events and perhaps even about intents. Would have to take time to analyze book against drama, and don't feel up to it right now. Sad events for real in my family (won't go into it here), so my mind is less focused on drama and book...
Anyway, wish you luck with your drama digging. Happy you liked TWOT. Meet you perhaps later on Filter which just started. (I like Tan Jianci ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️ almost as much as Chen Zheyuan, and am watching Bai Jingting and Zhang Ruonan in The First Frost now mostly to tide me over to something I'd feel more invested in than "dragging fluff" and scarecrow doubles of my favorite Sang Zhi/Zhao Lusi ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️ and Duan Jiaxu/Chen Zheyuan ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️ characters from adorable Hidden Love).
"All men must die" : Valar morghulis in High Valyrian, salutation like "hello" lol(Disclaimer, I am not really…
Don't worry. I was musing about that salutation that reminds everyone that people are not immortal...
If you are not into other pop sub-cultures fandom or exploration, or into linguistics, you don't need to go down that rat's maze. Disregard what's in parenthesis. If you want to know nonetheless, just google GRRM, GOT, ASOIAF High Valyrian, and the rest. But it is in no way necessary to do so in connection with watching TWOT.
It's been a week and I still can't stop thinking about this drama. Most of the time I prefer cute, romantic dramas…
Also strayed to TFF after, also feeling not totally engaged there (perhaps because I, unlike the way I usually consume romances, did read the book first... so no surprise). I think the actress plays better than I expected, she is a great Wen Yifan, frail and conflicted. BJT as Sang Yan is physically impressive, has great charisma, no doubt. Still some sizzle and fluff lacking. For now. It may change. Although it is a very simple story. Onward I go, then, although I will perhaps refrain from commenting again: people keep repeating same questions over and over to puzzle out the links to HL. I already gave answers, and some comments on other stuff, so the gaggle of young ladies there should have some things to think of beyond swooning over WIF sleepwalking scenes. Ah, I should not deny that I don't hate that drama. Despite I do regret the way they portray Duan Jiaxu and Sang Zhi!!
Long story bro😭😭Okay so in novel they get married and even have kids but lizan never recovered from ptsd…
There totally may be another twist on that interpretation, since it is disregarding that the pair are heroes who valued life enough to save other people at all times, so why would they cowardly give up on their own one?
In dreams we see what we hope for and are forever young: this reconciles with the source story too, and it may be the way they see their rejoining in the "great beyond". But there is no indication of when, how, and where (and I also feel, that this nutshell end spares us from dwelling on further sufferings and focuses instead on happiness forever!). The olive tree is grown, so it's a clue that it's somewhere in a future beyond our own and anyway, the shimmering colors makes it more phantasmagorical than real! But at the end of credits, as fellow MDL commenter pointed out, you can see the pair standing without any shimmering under a silver green leafed real olive tree : they might have found a place where olive trees grow, even if that one was not white, to live their remaining life together away from too well meaning busybodies, grow their vegetable patch, use the money from the book and their savings....
wow, although I'm really sad with the ending, I have to admit it is really the most reality-like one. So many…
"All men must die" : Valar morghulis in High Valyrian, salutation like "hello" lol
(Disclaimer, I am not really a GOT fan, but a long time follower of GRRM, so he got my vote for his first twin Hugos, and I was an avid reader of ASOIAF, still awaiting, albeit with diminishing hope, that he'll give us more. But the High Valyrian language concocted for the first series adaptation amused me enough to learn some, as I also toyed with other artificial languages like Esperanto, Quenya, Klingon, Dothraki.... Recently amusing myself with other, real world this time, languages such as Mooré - tougher than it seems: it is a tonal language with some pronunciations akin to mandarin, in my mind!!)
Although I am not SenpaiSuki, here is one : Drifting Away. But it's about criminals, and in real China, not about ptsd from civil war. Zhao Jinmai plays a ptsd (temporarily) afflicted adolescent after being caught by a group of mass murderers who get thrills from cutting their victims into pieces after milking them for ransom money. It was a real case. Some episodes are tough to watch, too. Trigger warnings in order.
Although only in some episodes, there's also Escape From The Trilateral Slopes which is about a young man inducted into a gang in the Golden Triangle. The ruthlessness of the gangs plural is well portrayed, and the rap music OST is very special. But it is difficult to find in complete subtitled version if you are tempted. Look at my Companion piece for it.
Somewhat less angsty but still, there are the two recent dramas starring Johnny Huang : The First Shot (remarkable acting from Zhang Yu who looks young but is actually almost twice the age of ML, and a few stars like Wang Ziqi, Qin Junjie... and a fun discovery of Xie Keyin) and Love Song in Winter , also a thriller but instead of drugs gang busting, this one is about a hidden murderer (who is played by the actor who portrayed "Benjamin" in TWOT).
How harsh you are from only watching one drama where Liang Jie portrays a rash girl afflicted by depression!
But you admit it yourself : you did not watch other dramas in which she stars, such as The Day of Becoming You, Hi Venus, The Eternal Love 1, 2 (and 3), You Are My Destiny ..., where she has a full range of expressions from playful, joyful, etc ; she was lots of fun to watch in several of those, with sweet smiles, laughs, and hot kisses. And actually, there are lots of moments like that too in The White Olive Tree. You must have been looking away? Busy? Sleeping?
Don't go face-shaming her features or slandering her for having a "perpetually sad" face. She would not be a close friend of Chen Zheyuan since playing together in Handsome Siblings, if that was the case. She is very calm, poised, and humble, although she can go far to "be" her character. She can joke about herself and her own "limitations" (dance) as I saw on a random clip from a past variety show, but many productions were happy to have her, valuing her acting skills, including for a version of the Jin Yong wuxia epic Side Story of Fox Volant. She has a good reputation and relations with almost everybody in c-ent.
No reason for anyone to start hating on her.
I have not explored her fandom, but I watch a lot, all sorts of dramas, so it happens that I did watch quite a few where she starred, and have an opinion. Despite being leaning more to other fandom, I don't mind seeing her, and if I happen to stray on her Weibo, I may take her suggestion to watch things she felt could be interesting, discovering this way a couple of young actors in one minor but sweet costume drama where Liang Jie does not feature. Grateful to her and for them that she hyped that drama which I probably would not have tried and liked, otherwise... She is not an outstanding singer nor a concert hall piano player, but she can stand her ground in some songs, and Chen Xueran the composer legend did not mind her nostalgic piano version and singing of Moonlight Dance https://x.com/whiteolivetree_/status/1890296715993051313 which I included with a GIF link in the music section of the Companion piece I gifted to MDL members (up in Discussions part of this page).
I can accept that you did not like the Song Ran character. I was not totally onboard with Li Zan falling for a near empty-head and rash rookie journalist over freeing her from a landmine and next over her persistence to meet him again, the way it was pictured in the drama. But that 's not the actress' fault, but that of the scriptwriter and director, who changed a few things from the novel, if I am not mistaken, and were perhaps a bit too full of themselves, disregarding the opinions of the actors on their portrayals. But that does not reflect on the fact that Chen Zheyuan was outstanding and that his partner Liang Jie is a good actress. It results only from the suspicion that part of production was not totally up to what was expected, given that it was an expensive S+ project to translate to screen a beloved albeit tragic novel. I still think the raucous denigration by some of the drama or actors is rather dishonest, and perhaps, as it often is the case, comes with an agenda to push some people away to make way for new things in the hope of accruing more revenue.
It is an imaginary country. Models can be a lot of civil war torn countries. It is never clear where all the hostiles…
Yes, the "holy site" in the drama is also imaginary, but there are lots of places with "holy sites" for locals in various parts of the world which could have served as models ( I first thought the Acropolis for the Greek. The Pantheon for the Romans. etc. ) But the description and visuals in the drama make Matuman Hill serve less as as a religious place than as fortress and military heroes mausoleum or cemetery, guarded by Greek corinthian helmeted medieval looking knights, so I thought models could be fortresses from Syria to Cyprus and Turkey (and Cyprus and Turkey are also divided on the island). Ideas for the made up country were probably sampled from diverse pictures and descriptions.
About the models for countries, I had added some possibilities in an illustrated sub-chapter in my "Companion piece" in Discussions, here : "4. Questions and answers part 1 : models for the fictitious countries" https://kisskh.at/discussions/bai-se-gan-lan-shu/123595-shooting-location-cast-and-crew-and-more?pid=3244734&page=1#p3244734 The making-of (also with many pictures) links to the building of Uglai "ancient" city as a set which became a tourist attraction and is illustrated in section 3 just before (that was my first stub about that drama, while it was being filmed), and section 2. is a Characters and cast directory by order of appearance.
Jiang li , ben , the doctor ben admired can't remember her name 😅, ML and FL but in the novel not the drama…
In the novel, I am sure FL did not take her life but was killed by a random shooter. Long after the death of Li Zan. No promotion for suicide. From reading last chapter and epilogue.
wait which country is in the war? like which country r they in?
It is an imaginary country. Models can be a lot of civil war torn countries. It is never clear where all the hostiles come from. Except the last of them are clearly from Dongguo ("East country" not eastern country), though. So don't rush to believe it is a Middle-eastern country such as Gaza etc. From date of writing and other clues, my bet is models come from several conflicts and more probably the Yugoslavia split, since Li Zan is from Xiguo ("West country") which looks as a close by "new" country. Like Serbia and Bosnia. But it is just a possible model. The drama version can make us lean to that interpretation because of the type of armors found in the "holy shrine" which look Greek. Greece and neighboring areas are full of olive trees anyway.
what are you talking about?! they took their lives at the end…! It’s certainly not the actor’s fault, and…
buckeyewifey1 : Your interpretation is wrong because the pair are heroes. Here is my view of the shimmering images epilogue.
EPILOGUE : For those who prefer to imagine that Lǐ Zàn and Sòng Rǎn did not simply choose the "easy way out" to suicide (which would be inconsistent with their heroic status), but lived away in their own home, for many years and with offspring, like in the novel, the very last pictures of the series show them without the shimmering light, standing under an olive tree similar to the dream-like images when they had "vanished". So the last images can be interpreted as a phantasmagorical happy dream where everything is going to be fine, they will be forever young (as most old people still are in their minds) and the world will be at peace so they can enjoy a free and easy life and let go of the worries of the past. After all their struggles to save lives, why would they have given up on their own ones?
But I give you that production ought to have been more clear that they did not intend to change the ending in the book to make the sad end even worse, through making pretty pictures that could be misinterpreted. The production did not state "here they suicide, and that was the best choice". The pretty pictures were perhaps an unnecessary artistic choice to convey "being together forever". Stopping at the wedding was enough for an open ending not revealing the sadness of not being able to live into a painless old age. People would complain they "did not get closure" anyway and that stopping at the wedding would be worthless and unrealistic rosy dreams. They were afraid of the sad end in the book anyway. People always want the impossible.
No need to get worked up and look for people to blame. Just move on to another show if the end did not satisfy you: no way should a show be blamed for imagined untoward intentions and such blame be spread. It would be just as irresponsible as claiming the show promotes terrorism because some terrorists were shown blowing up orphans gratuitously. Or that the movie Titanic promoted suicide in the end and caused untold numbers of people to seek death by drowning. We don't see any method here for Li Zan and Song Ran to do away with their own lives, do we ? No corpse. No poisons. No rope to hang... I suppose they could make explosives, let loose deadly carbon monoxide in a non ventilated place, or douse themselves with gasoline and crack a match, or jump from a height, or under a train... But.... Imagining the many painful ways they could have died there and then is inconsistent with the rest of the story. The heroes are not cowards, they are still able bodied even if still suffering, so why insist on that "easy" interpretation and blame production for a sin such as promoting cowardice that is only in suspicious minds.
2 
4 
1 
But not really ominous. More like wistful comparing options and letting go of the pains of past to find a more appeased home. The parents had learned to be less intrusive, but the (love)birds needed to fly from the nest. Build their own.
Find My Way Back To Life was a song for the struggling times in the rat's maze of psychological pains. "In this darkness, search for a light...
Ocean sadness, I'm under attack..." A Zan would not have even dreamed about using it to appease the other ptsd sufferer in Dongguo: only the title seems uplifting.
Keep your trash advice where it belongs: in the bin !
If you want an answer about whether the character Song Ran was changed from Novel to Drama version, then of course no.
If you want a further detailed analysis, then I am not the authority there.
I usually don't read the book first to compare with what is made of it. My angle at watching dramas is not to judge accuracy from source material to what is made of it; I am more interested in the way the drama world building goes, and what I wrote about in my Companion piece. I am not that invested in reading the source material! (I might read a book AFTER airing, but I dislike reading flawed translation or struggling to find original novel which is time consuming; I am, in a nutshell: lazy, impatient, whimsical, and only like to share without having to do too much research over what I already did.)
So, I only read a few snippets from beginning, random chapter, and end.
There is a slightly different feel, and the background is also slightly different. The Rina (mom of SaXin) character was not in the opening chapter of the book. It looks like Song Ran was slightly different, although the landmine saving seems similar.
Best would be to make your own opinion instead of asking for second hand one. Here is the link to the book version : https://www.wattpad.com/story/337712723-white-olive-tree
There was perhaps a better translation (you may notice the translation did not benefit from proofreading so there are a lot of "huh?" things in the above version) Unfortunately, I did not read it through when it was available so can't validly comment first hand.
Fans on fan sites seem to complain the characters were "done dirty" by the screenwriter's rewrite, so I assume there are some discrepancies in events and perhaps even about intents. Would have to take time to analyze book against drama, and don't feel up to it right now. Sad events for real in my family (won't go into it here), so my mind is less focused on drama and book...
Anyway, wish you luck with your drama digging. Happy you liked TWOT. Meet you perhaps later on Filter which just started. (I like Tan Jianci ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️ almost as much as Chen Zheyuan, and am watching Bai Jingting and Zhang Ruonan in The First Frost now mostly to tide me over to something I'd feel more invested in than "dragging fluff" and scarecrow doubles of my favorite Sang Zhi/Zhao Lusi ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️ and Duan Jiaxu/Chen Zheyuan ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️ characters from adorable Hidden Love).
If you are not into other pop sub-cultures fandom or exploration, or into linguistics, you don't need to go down that rat's maze. Disregard what's in parenthesis. If you want to know nonetheless, just google GRRM, GOT, ASOIAF High Valyrian, and the rest. But it is in no way necessary to do so in connection with watching TWOT.
BJT as Sang Yan is physically impressive, has great charisma, no doubt. Still some sizzle and fluff lacking. For now. It may change. Although it is a very simple story.
Onward I go, then, although I will perhaps refrain from commenting again: people keep repeating same questions over and over to puzzle out the links to HL. I already gave answers, and some comments on other stuff, so the gaggle of young ladies there should have some things to think of beyond swooning over WIF sleepwalking scenes. Ah, I should not deny that I don't hate that drama. Despite I do regret the way they portray Duan Jiaxu and Sang Zhi!!
In dreams we see what we hope for and are forever young: this reconciles with the source story too, and it may be the way they see their rejoining in the "great beyond". But there is no indication of when, how, and where (and I also feel, that this nutshell end spares us from dwelling on further sufferings and focuses instead on happiness forever!). The olive tree is grown, so it's a clue that it's somewhere in a future beyond our own and anyway, the shimmering colors makes it more phantasmagorical than real! But at the end of credits, as fellow MDL commenter pointed out, you can see the pair standing without any shimmering under a silver green leafed real olive tree : they might have found a place where olive trees grow, even if that one was not white, to live their remaining life together away from too well meaning busybodies, grow their vegetable patch, use the money from the book and their savings....
(Disclaimer, I am not really a GOT fan, but a long time follower of GRRM, so he got my vote for his first twin Hugos, and I was an avid reader of ASOIAF, still awaiting, albeit with diminishing hope, that he'll give us more. But the High Valyrian language concocted for the first series adaptation amused me enough to learn some, as I also toyed with other artificial languages like Esperanto, Quenya, Klingon, Dothraki.... Recently amusing myself with other, real world this time, languages such as Mooré - tougher than it seems: it is a tonal language with some pronunciations akin to mandarin, in my mind!!)
Although only in some episodes, there's also Escape From The Trilateral Slopes which is about a young man inducted into a gang in the Golden Triangle. The ruthlessness of the gangs plural is well portrayed, and the rap music OST is very special. But it is difficult to find in complete subtitled version if you are tempted. Look at my Companion piece for it.
Somewhat less angsty but still, there are the two recent dramas starring Johnny Huang : The First Shot (remarkable acting from Zhang Yu who looks young but is actually almost twice the age of ML, and a few stars like Wang Ziqi, Qin Junjie... and a fun discovery of Xie Keyin) and Love Song in Winter , also a thriller but instead of drugs gang busting, this one is about a hidden murderer (who is played by the actor who portrayed "Benjamin" in TWOT).
But you admit it yourself : you did not watch other dramas in which she stars, such as The Day of Becoming You, Hi Venus, The Eternal Love 1, 2 (and 3), You Are My Destiny ..., where she has a full range of expressions from playful, joyful, etc ; she was lots of fun to watch in several of those, with sweet smiles, laughs, and hot kisses. And actually, there are lots of moments like that too in The White Olive Tree. You must have been looking away? Busy? Sleeping?
Don't go face-shaming her features or slandering her for having a "perpetually sad" face. She would not be a close friend of Chen Zheyuan since playing together in Handsome Siblings, if that was the case. She is very calm, poised, and humble, although she can go far to "be" her character. She can joke about herself and her own "limitations" (dance) as I saw on a random clip from a past variety show, but many productions were happy to have her, valuing her acting skills, including for a version of the Jin Yong wuxia epic Side Story of Fox Volant. She has a good reputation and relations with almost everybody in c-ent.
No reason for anyone to start hating on her.
I have not explored her fandom, but I watch a lot, all sorts of dramas, so it happens that I did watch quite a few where she starred, and have an opinion. Despite being leaning more to other fandom, I don't mind seeing her, and if I happen to stray on her Weibo, I may take her suggestion to watch things she felt could be interesting, discovering this way a couple of young actors in one minor but sweet costume drama where Liang Jie does not feature. Grateful to her and for them that she hyped that drama which I probably would not have tried and liked, otherwise... She is not an outstanding singer nor a concert hall piano player, but she can stand her ground in some songs, and Chen Xueran the composer legend did not mind her nostalgic piano version and singing of Moonlight Dance https://x.com/whiteolivetree_/status/1890296715993051313 which I included with a GIF link in the music section of the Companion piece I gifted to MDL members (up in Discussions part of this page).
I can accept that you did not like the Song Ran character. I was not totally onboard with Li Zan falling for a near empty-head and rash rookie journalist over freeing her from a landmine and next over her persistence to meet him again, the way it was pictured in the drama. But that 's not the actress' fault, but that of the scriptwriter and director, who changed a few things from the novel, if I am not mistaken, and were perhaps a bit too full of themselves, disregarding the opinions of the actors on their portrayals. But that does not reflect on the fact that Chen Zheyuan was outstanding and that his partner Liang Jie is a good actress. It results only from the suspicion that part of production was not totally up to what was expected, given that it was an expensive S+ project to translate to screen a beloved albeit tragic novel. I still think the raucous denigration by some of the drama or actors is rather dishonest, and perhaps, as it often is the case, comes with an agenda to push some people away to make way for new things in the hope of accruing more revenue.
But the description and visuals in the drama make Matuman Hill serve less as as a religious place than as fortress and military heroes mausoleum or cemetery, guarded by Greek corinthian helmeted medieval looking knights, so I thought models could be fortresses from Syria to Cyprus and Turkey (and Cyprus and Turkey are also divided on the island). Ideas for the made up country were probably sampled from diverse pictures and descriptions.
About the models for countries, I had added some possibilities in an illustrated sub-chapter in my "Companion piece" in Discussions, here : "4. Questions and answers part 1 : models for the fictitious countries" https://kisskh.at/discussions/bai-se-gan-lan-shu/123595-shooting-location-cast-and-crew-and-more?pid=3244734&page=1#p3244734 The making-of (also with many pictures) links to the building of Uglai "ancient" city as a set which became a tourist attraction and is illustrated in section 3 just before (that was my first stub about that drama, while it was being filmed), and section 2. is a Characters and cast directory by order of appearance.
Here is my view of the shimmering images epilogue.
EPILOGUE : For those who prefer to imagine that Lǐ Zàn and Sòng Rǎn did not simply choose the "easy way out" to suicide (which would be inconsistent with their heroic status), but lived away in their own home, for many years and with offspring, like in the novel, the very last pictures of the series show them without the shimmering light, standing under an olive tree similar to the dream-like images when they had "vanished". So the last images can be interpreted as a phantasmagorical happy dream where everything is going to be fine, they will be forever young (as most old people still are in their minds) and the world will be at peace so they can enjoy a free and easy life and let go of the worries of the past. After all their struggles to save lives, why would they have given up on their own ones?
But I give you that production ought to have been more clear that they did not intend to change the ending in the book to make the sad end even worse, through making pretty pictures that could be misinterpreted.
The production did not state "here they suicide, and that was the best choice". The pretty pictures were perhaps an unnecessary artistic choice to convey "being together forever". Stopping at the wedding was enough for an open ending not revealing the sadness of not being able to live into a painless old age. People would complain they "did not get closure" anyway and that stopping at the wedding would be worthless and unrealistic rosy dreams. They were afraid of the sad end in the book anyway. People always want the impossible.
No need to get worked up and look for people to blame.
Just move on to another show if the end did not satisfy you: no way should a show be blamed for imagined untoward intentions and such blame be spread. It would be just as irresponsible as claiming the show promotes terrorism because some terrorists were shown blowing up orphans gratuitously.
Or that the movie Titanic promoted suicide in the end and caused untold numbers of people to seek death by drowning.
We don't see any method here for Li Zan and Song Ran to do away with their own lives, do we ? No corpse. No poisons. No rope to hang... I suppose they could make explosives, let loose deadly carbon monoxide in a non ventilated place, or douse themselves with gasoline and crack a match, or jump from a height, or under a train... But.... Imagining the many painful ways they could have died there and then is inconsistent with the rest of the story. The heroes are not cowards, they are still able bodied even if still suffering, so why insist on that "easy" interpretation and blame production for a sin such as promoting cowardice that is only in suspicious minds.