RSMasterfade

Episodes 33-35 are still going strong. The show has such a visual flair that even Zhang Yimou would be be proud of.

I'm still stunned that they let such a subversive series to be released just a couple months before the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic.

Let's all pray that they don't ban the show before it finishes.

Thank you.

Thank you for the explanation!

Since it's illegal for private individuals to force free Chinese subjects to become chattel slaves ('lower class') and it's also illegal (but not necessarily enforced) for free Chinese subjects to voluntarily become chattel slaves ('lower class'), the only way a Chinese could legally be a privately owned chattel slave was if she was a former government owned slave given to the private owner as a reward or was a descendant of a former government owned slave. Is this correct?

You mentioned in the novel Tan Qi was a free Chinese subject before being sold to Li Bi by her family, she would be a bond servant rather than a chattel slave, right? I imagine Li Bi wouldn't bring an illegally acquired slave to the office and his friends' places, or else Lin Jiu Lang would have already got him. Earlier Li Bi only gave his own written permission to set Tan Qi free and not the government's, this also showed Tan Qi was a bond servant, right? So it was incorrect that in the latest episode a character whose name I shall not reveal called Tan Qi a chattel slave ('Jian Ji')? Or was the show simply inconsistent in its descriptions of slavery/bonded servitude?

Thank you for the clarification. 'keep' was a misleading choice of word. What I meant was it's illegal for private individuals to enslave 'proper' Chinese, at least that's what my source (Charles Benn, China's Golden Age: Everyday Life in the Tang Dynasty) claims.

According to Benn:
"It had been taboo since ancient times to sell Chinese, and the Tang law code imposed a stiff penalty for doing so. Kidnapping a person to sell as a slave was a capital offense requiring execution by strangulation. This applied, however, only to those who were enslaved against their will. Chinese debtors and tenant farmers who could not meet their obligations sold themselves or their sons for fixed periods, even for life, to relieve themselves of their burdens."

So I was under the impression destitute Chinese only sold themselves or their children into bonded servitude, but now I guess chattel slavery was also an option? Can you help clarifying the difference between bond servants and slaves in Tang?

Thanks for the info!

Yes I can read Chinese. Unfortunately written Chinese is indeed something easier learnt young.

For Wuxia, I think Gu Long's Border Town Wanderer would suit the team's approach well. Dark, gritty with a lot of suspense. I consider it Gu Long's greatest work. But there's a recent adaptation so not likely.

Yes investors interfere too much in China. What China needs now is China's Netflix, a company who's willing to keep its hands off the creative process. Also it needs a way to make money from a smaller but more mature audience with higher income, I would like to give Youku and the production company say 100 dollars for bringing me the Longest Day in Chang'an. There are very few C-drama I enjoy, and I would like to support them without polluting the environment with useless plastic objects.

No I haven't seen Eagle Flag. I've grown a bit weary of Chinese fantasy dramas. I tried to watch last year's Ever Night but dropped it halfway.

The only upcoming cdramas on my radar are

Season 4 of the Qin Empire:
trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kug3LsrXJbc

Daylight Entertainment's Gu Cheng Bi
trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AV9iiIkVUW4

Jiang Shan Ji/The Imperial Age
No trailer yet.

As you can see I prefer the real historical stuff. I love read and watch fantasy about individual heroism, but I just can't stand another Chinese GoT wannabes that reduces imperial politics to a bunch of people backstabbing each other. Politics is never just about power, it's always also about ideas. The Longest Day in Chang'an represented the struggle between Confucianism and Legalism - a central theme in imperial politics in China. I laughed so hard watching the Rise of Phoenixes when the imperial college was shown as teaching how to powerplay.

No I was talking about a 24 episodes live action show. According to public information from the censors, the show will begin filming later this year.

It became clear from the latest episodes that Tan Qi was a chattel slave. Although it's interesting in ep 32 Zhao Xiao Jing chose to use the word 'nvshi' (maidservant without implication of slavery) to describe Tan Qi instead of the usual 'bi' (female slave) that everyone else were using.

Xu Bin LIVES!

Also, for people who doesn't read Chinese
Right Chancellor's mole in Jing An Si was codenamed San Nv (三女). The 'Ru' in Yao Ru Neng is written as 汝. If you know Chinese characters you probably have figured out right in the beginning that he's the mole, but people who don't read Chinese are at a disadvantage here.

To be honest, I was slightly disappointed by episodes 27-29, but 30-32 went back to being incredible. This is how you do a political thriller.

Can anyone identify the church wall painting in ep 20? Was it a replica of a real painting? I'm not an art person, but the painting stood out to me and not in a good way. I imagined paintings in a Chang'an church at that time would be in either Chinese or Persian style (since the artisans would have been Chinese or Persian), but the painting in ep20 looked Byzantine to me.

In short:
Chattel slavery was only for non-Chinese.
Chinese could only be kept in bonded servitude, limited time or lifelong, and only if they entered it voluntarily.

Long version:
There were two kinds of slavery: government-owned and privately-owned. Chinese could never become privately-owned slaves, but they could be government-owned slaves [EDIT: not accurate, Chinese cannot be made directly into privately owned slave, but government-owned slaves can be transferred to private ownership. See the discussion below]. If an official committed treason, chances were his female family members would be made government-owned slaves.

Private chattel slavery was practiced on foreigners and Tang subjects who were considered barbarians - namely natives of the southernmost parts of the empire. I'm not sure if enslavement of southern natives was legal or illegal but tolerated, but it's definitely illegal for to keep a 'proper' Chinese as a slave.

Since Li Bi could have set Tan Qi free, she was likely not a government slave (or did the Tang court reward people with government slaves?).It's not stated in the show whether Tan Qi was a foreigner, but I guess not. So she was a bond servant. As for her line that no one's born a slave, it was true if by 'no one' she only meant 'no Chinese'.

However, Li Bi did mention to her that after she's set free she could marry and none of her descendants would be slaves. That seemed to imply she was a chattel slave?

You Cha wasn't Chinese. So the discussion on Tang slavery doesn't apply. Cao Poyan and his father/grandfather were You Cha's chattel slaves. And yes Cao Poyan tried to protect his daughter from suffering the same fate.

Ge Lao had been a chattel slave. Whatever he did to Tong'er and her lover was probably illegal.

But it has already been announced. Someone is going to do it, and I can't think of a better Chinese team than Chang'an's. Or maybe it's better if the mysterious party elder who supposedly killed the movie adaptation could step in one more time.

Perhaps the team should stay with Tang and do an adaptation of Guy Gavriel Kay's Under Heaven? I really enjoyed the novel (the first two-thirds of it at least), similar to the Longest Day in the Chang'an it draws a lot of inspirations from poetry of the time.

We are already in season 2. Episode 25/26 was the cut-off point between the two seasons. The entire show has 48 episodes, which means we will see the finale in about 3 weeks time.

Although very unlikely, I would love for the team to do the newly announced Three-Body Problem adaptation. It's scifi, but scifi are just period shows with a future setting, right? In fact, I was talking to a friend about Chang'an the other day and was asked to name a similar American show. My answer was the Expanse.

Thanks. Didn't know Yi Si was also based of a real historical figure. Was he really a grandson of Peroz III in history?

In the last few episodes the character of Lin Jiu Lang (the Right Chancellor) began to grow on me. He's a Legalist who stayed true to his philosophy (remember how Tan Qi told Zhang Xiao Jing in the first episode how very few men do what they preach?).

In this show we have a hero who has no qualms about breaking the law to further his investigation, and an adversary who refused to break the law and insisted on doing things by the book even though it would be harder for him.

However, Lin as a high official also never passed any chance to use his legally conferred powers and privileges to subjugate others. This lead naturally to the natural law vs positive law debate.

I'm still amazed by how subversive this show is. I've already seen Hong Kong-based commentators draw connections between this show and the recent mass civil disobedience there, and tweets from a Japanese scholar about the relevance of this show to the current Japanese society and politics.

This show just has everything. Big budget, big sets, big ideas and a big heart.

Tan Qi is just so well-written and well-acted. The most realistic and complex 'strong' woman character I've came across in recent period C-dramas.

Compare Tan Qi to Xia Dong in NiF, they're both investigators but Xia Dong lived in a gender neutral fantasyland where a woman can openly work as a senior officer in the central government (Princess Ni Hong was more plausible given she's on the frontier and inherited her power from her family), whereas it was only possible for Tan Qi to participate in the investigation because she was the deputy director's maidservant/slave (I think this was the reason Tan Qi refused Li Bi's offer of freedom, once she's free she will no longer have a place in Jing An Si).

It's also realistic and painful to watch how a lot of men she came across loved to humiliate her and to put her back in her place. One can see how much she resented her treatment but still chose to endure them in order to do what's must be done.

Reyizha's acting was on spot on too, and she just looked so good in both men and women's dresses. I hope this can be a turning point in her career. After the racist cyberbullying she received on Weibo a while ago, she could use some successes.

Maybe it's right that the people who could've have helped but didn't were hateful, still I think it's a bit strange that they would attack Chang'an instead of Damascus, and at the same time wanted Tang to fight the Umayyads on their behalf.

More like manipulated. People in the Court will never work with a lowborn ex-solider like Long Bo unless they believe Long Bo to be a lowly instrument for their own plan. Just witness how Director He's adopted son treated Long Bo like dirt even when he was completely surrounded by Long's men.

No, "Persian Monastery" refers to the Church of the East or the Persian Church, better known by the misnomer 'the Nestorian Church'. The cross on the back of You Cha's robe was of a distinctive 'Nestorian' design.