The Chinese Answer to Reply 1988!
"Romance in the Alley" is a slice of life Chinese drama covering two families sharing a courtyard in Suzhou over a 20 year period, roughly 1975 to 1995. It is a time of tremendous change, the economic opening of China, and the environmental strains and opportunities are palpable. This background consistently adds extra twists and turns to the standard family slice of life fare.
At the center of the story are Huang Ling and Song Ying, two women at the town's cotton mill, whose families are neighbors in a company apartment complex. Their relationship with each other, their relationships with their husbands, and the relationships among their children form the backbone of the story. The story is at points nostalgic, but it also doesn't back away from the difficulties these people would have faced in this time. Just to be clear, there is some romance here, but romance does not dominate the story.
This being a family drama, filiality and brotherhood/sisterhood are repeated themes. I have compared this show to "Reply 1988" but one significant difference is that there are some obvious recurring villains in this show, which was largely not the case in "Reply 1988." The result is that this show isn't quite as feel-good as "Reply 1988" was, but given the stress of Chinese life in this era, the presence of those kinds of schemers feels more realistic. One other repeated theme is the desire for security, and the fact that the Chinese government's hukou policy makes any plans for the future enormously more complicated. (For those unaware, in China if you live in, say, Suzhou, then you cannot just move to Shanghai or Guangzhou without government permission... and the government is pretty stingy about giving that permission).
On the technical side the acting is generally solid. Ling's marriage is repeatedly tested by her husband's thoroughly filial behavior, and the husband and wife are presented so well that it really is easy to feel the wife's annoyance with this guy. The Song Ying character is a roller coaster ride, starting from the first episode. The child acting is all well-done, and in particular the Dongzhe child actors deliver a hilarious performance. That said, the teenage Dongzhe actor is OK on his own, but feels a bit inconsistent with the others, especially with an accent that doesn't fit the rest of the series. The adult actor for Tunan, Fan Cheng Cheng, has taken some beatings on Chinese social media, but I think that's more a problem in the writing. For whatever reason, the Zhuang Tunan character goes from being a smart, sensible kid to a dork as an adult. More on this in a minute.
Generally the writing was solid, taking an interesting premise of watching two families deal with great social and economic change, and letting it evolve. The conflicts seem to naturally flow, and the resolutions feel true to the characters. There is one problem though, as alluded to in the prior paragraph, the relationship between Zhuang Tunan and Li Jia. The two of them have a potential romance with significant -- and interesting! -- roadblocks, but those roadblocks are addressed awkwardly by the show. The worst happened when Jia locked Tunan into a room together for the night, a strange opportunity to talk out their problems; then the dork (who is in his late 20's at this point) escalated the strangeness by literally jumping out a second floor window as fast as he could, nearly breaking his butt in the process. Basically, a sensible central character was turned into a loon to serve some purpose, I'm not sure what.
Again, there's some interesting stuff here, and aside from the bizarre twists between Tunan and Jia, the series was well-executed. My only other complaint was logistical, that the English translation on YouTube was obviously machine-generated, which could cause confusion without a Chinese speaker around. Some names were frequently translated into English equivalents, which took some time to get used to (for example "Chao Ying" was called "Super English" and "Wu Feng" was translated as "Forest Worker"). Most of the time I could follow what was going on, but the Tunan-Jia scenes got so weird that I assumed I was misunderstanding something.
To summarize, a good story and mostly good characters built off an interesting premise, but prepare for something weird with the Tunan character.
At the center of the story are Huang Ling and Song Ying, two women at the town's cotton mill, whose families are neighbors in a company apartment complex. Their relationship with each other, their relationships with their husbands, and the relationships among their children form the backbone of the story. The story is at points nostalgic, but it also doesn't back away from the difficulties these people would have faced in this time. Just to be clear, there is some romance here, but romance does not dominate the story.
This being a family drama, filiality and brotherhood/sisterhood are repeated themes. I have compared this show to "Reply 1988" but one significant difference is that there are some obvious recurring villains in this show, which was largely not the case in "Reply 1988." The result is that this show isn't quite as feel-good as "Reply 1988" was, but given the stress of Chinese life in this era, the presence of those kinds of schemers feels more realistic. One other repeated theme is the desire for security, and the fact that the Chinese government's hukou policy makes any plans for the future enormously more complicated. (For those unaware, in China if you live in, say, Suzhou, then you cannot just move to Shanghai or Guangzhou without government permission... and the government is pretty stingy about giving that permission).
On the technical side the acting is generally solid. Ling's marriage is repeatedly tested by her husband's thoroughly filial behavior, and the husband and wife are presented so well that it really is easy to feel the wife's annoyance with this guy. The Song Ying character is a roller coaster ride, starting from the first episode. The child acting is all well-done, and in particular the Dongzhe child actors deliver a hilarious performance. That said, the teenage Dongzhe actor is OK on his own, but feels a bit inconsistent with the others, especially with an accent that doesn't fit the rest of the series. The adult actor for Tunan, Fan Cheng Cheng, has taken some beatings on Chinese social media, but I think that's more a problem in the writing. For whatever reason, the Zhuang Tunan character goes from being a smart, sensible kid to a dork as an adult. More on this in a minute.
Generally the writing was solid, taking an interesting premise of watching two families deal with great social and economic change, and letting it evolve. The conflicts seem to naturally flow, and the resolutions feel true to the characters. There is one problem though, as alluded to in the prior paragraph, the relationship between Zhuang Tunan and Li Jia. The two of them have a potential romance with significant -- and interesting! -- roadblocks, but those roadblocks are addressed awkwardly by the show. The worst happened when Jia locked Tunan into a room together for the night, a strange opportunity to talk out their problems; then the dork (who is in his late 20's at this point) escalated the strangeness by literally jumping out a second floor window as fast as he could, nearly breaking his butt in the process. Basically, a sensible central character was turned into a loon to serve some purpose, I'm not sure what.
Again, there's some interesting stuff here, and aside from the bizarre twists between Tunan and Jia, the series was well-executed. My only other complaint was logistical, that the English translation on YouTube was obviously machine-generated, which could cause confusion without a Chinese speaker around. Some names were frequently translated into English equivalents, which took some time to get used to (for example "Chao Ying" was called "Super English" and "Wu Feng" was translated as "Forest Worker"). Most of the time I could follow what was going on, but the Tunan-Jia scenes got so weird that I assumed I was misunderstanding something.
To summarize, a good story and mostly good characters built off an interesting premise, but prepare for something weird with the Tunan character.
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