RSMasterfade

The only big problem I had with the show is the very last scene with the Duan Xiao lookalike transferring to Li Jinbu's class. I like Duan Xiao to stay completely in the dream as he really is just the perfect boy friend. I don't feel his personality beyond his love for Li Jinbu. He belongs to a girl's dream rather than to the real world.

However they did put 'The End' on the second last scene, so I guess I can just treat the last scene as non-canon fan service.

Took a simple promise and execute it to almost perfection. We need more shows like this. Hope Viki picks this up. It deserves some proper subs.

Yes Dilraba is 7 years older than Wu Lei but Wu has been acting for 7 years longer than Dilraba.
However I don't know if Wu Lei being such a well-known child actor would make the pairing awkward. Wu Lei and Dilraba did a photo shoot together in 2017 and when asked about her impression of Wu Lei during the photo shoot, Dilraba told the reporter that Wu Lei had grown up since the last time they met when Wu was still just a kid.

No, she is not of Turkish descent. To have Turkish descent she has to be able to trace at least part of her ancestry to Turkey, and she cannot.

No she is not. She is not Turkish in any sense of the word as she has nothing to do with the state of Turkey. She is Turkic in the sense that her native language is a Turkic language. For an analogy, Swedes are Germanic but they are not German.

Yes. It's hard for people who don't speak a language with trill sounds. It's probably not hard if you speak Spanish or Italian.

But in the book Wang Yuyan was a teenager (she's 10 years younger than her cousin Murong Fu, who's in his late 20s). I understand the common practice of casting older actors for younger roles, but staying true to the actual character should never be a negative IMO.

I don't think anyone is going to beat the young Liu Yifei as Wang Yuyan anytime soon. He Hongshan is perfect as Ah Zi though. Chen Hao is a great actress but her punk Ah Zi in the 2003 adaption was a missed opportunity.

In the novel Sima Guang's wife was very much in love with him. As it was the case in history, his wife never bore him a child and felt guilty, but Sima Guang refused to take concubines even when his wife insisted and also refused advances from a maid his wife bought for him. Also in the novel Sima Guang was one of the people Huaiji respected most despite his later efforts to have him punished.

In actual history Sima Guang played a pivotal role in the (fragile) reconciliation between Empress Dowager Cao and Emperor Yingzong (Zongshi) after the death of Renzong.

I actually found the political part of the show to be the best in recent years. Politics was (and still is) as much about power as it was about ideas. Even the barest power play still had to be framed in the proper language. I just couldn't continue watching The Rise of Phoenixes after the scene in the imperial academy showing an instructor teaching students how to scheme. Seriously?

What's considered 'minor' from the modern perspective was often not taken as minor back then. The whole debate about the Empress Dowager's desire to dress in an emperor formal dress was a great example. I'm of the opinion that period dramas should be approached from a contemporary mindset instead of a modern one, and I generally find all those Chinese aGoT wannabes unwatchable for this reason.

To be fair, the same holds true for the novel. It's basically the daily lives of Huaiji and Huirou with their occasional celebrity encounters.

In the show he's a minor character that appeared once or twice, the actor isn't particularly good-looking.

Also the originally planned length of the show was less than 50 episodes. I imagine most the of inner palace drama was 'injected water' required by the investors.

IMO, the best parts of the show are the debates on policy and literary theory, but most people are only interested in court intrigues. Also for every good bit there is a equal amount of inner palace drivel. It's obvious the writer didn't want to write them. They are incredibly cliched and often downright soulless. However, the investors for some strange reasons wanted their investment recouped and even to make a profit (what an outrageous idea), so everyone had to sit through a lot of nonsense. To save the show someone should make a fan edit that removes most of the inner palace drama. Cut the length by 1/3 or so. The result could be something great.

It's about Feng Jing and his youthful encounter and infatuation with the Empress and later his relations with his three (successive) wives. In the novel, Feng Jing is Huirou's first crush and (as in the history) one of the most beautiful men of the era.

I've fallen a bit behind the show. Just finished ep 37. The harem conflicts arc had been boring as ever. Why are we even watching this Jia woman? In the original novel, Consort Zhang was almost a comical relief and now even her sidekick is getting the spotlight.

Meanwhile they completely cut the part where Liang Huaiji spent his time at the imperial art studio with Cui Bai. Seriously? That's the most carefree time Huaiji had in the entire novel. A moment of tranquility before the suffocating gloominess that's the remaining 80 percent of the book. And Cui Bai was Huaiji's best friend and his contact outside the palace. Huaji's friendship with Qiuhe is gone too. It's crucial for Huaiji's characterization that he actually knows and cares about someone who are not his masters, i.e. not part of the imperial family.

The love story between Qiuhe and Cui Bai was changed and deprived of everything that made it memorable in the first place. In the original novel, their first encounter was when Qiuhe was sent to explain the painters at the Imperial art studio the contemporary costume, hairstyle and make-ups of the ladies of the inner palace. She caught Cui Bai's eyes because of her beautiful skin with a slight blush. So Cui Bai asked her what blush was she using and asked her to wear the same make-up for the reminder of the lessons so he can put her in the painting he's working on. Qiuhe didn't answer but did wear the same 'make-up' for the next few days. Only later did Cui Bai learn that Qiuhe's blush didn't come from make-up but because of her pomegranate allergy and that Qiuhe ate pomegranates for days just so he could finish his painting. This just introduces Qiuhe's character so well. Never assertive, always put others before herself. Compare this to the bridge scene in the show. Beside being such a cliche (love at the first sight from a bridge), why was Cui Bai allowed to wander about in the Inner Palace?

In the original version, the whole setup was a rare permitted close encounter between a woman of the inner palace with a man outside. Huaiji, who are close to both, then played the messenger between the woman inside and the man outside. This shows the role of the inner palace attendants, as people half-way between the in-house world inhabited by women and outside world inhabited by men. The ambiguity of Huaiji's gender role, one of the recurring themes of the novel, was what enabled this accidental but intimate relationship to continue by allowing him to be a close friend to both the man and the woman. The intimateness of the relationship is striking. It begun with a face-to-face encounter between an unmarried man and an unmarried woman (rare) in the context of a man learning about clothing and make-up of the women (rarer). This intimacy contrasts with the coldness and gloominess of the palace. It's therefore understandable why Qiuhe wanted to leave the palace and marry Cui Bai.

The TV version, on the other hand, ruined the intimacy by having Cui Bai merely watching Qiuhe afar from a bridge and made the empress the match-maker who kept telling Qiuhe about Cui Bai's talent and growing fame. Seriously? Way to ruin both the relationship and the theme.

Wang Churan as Consort Zhang is such a miscast. Consort Zhang is supposed to be almost 10 years younger than the empress and about 15 years younger than the emperor. Wang Churan is young but looks just too mature for her age. Maybe it's the make-up. I honest couldn't tell that she's actually 13 years younger than Jiang Shuying. Had they cast a younger looking actress like He Hongshan in Ruyi, then Consort Zhang would look like the infatuated teenager she was supposed to be, and the relationship between the Emperor and Consort Zhang would be much more natural.

Just noticed the show was written by a trained epidemiologist (Zhuzhu), featuring a Wuhan born lead actor (Wang Kai) and originally titled Gu Cheng Bi/孤城闭 ('Held in My Lonely Castle'/ literally 'A Lone City Closed'). The TV god was trying to tell us!

Finished ep 15. Some thoughts on ep 9-15 (contains some minor spoilers):

1. Around ep 9-10, editing became less choppy. I think what happened was the editor wanted to rush through the earlier stage-setting episodes.

2. The plot was still kind of everywhere. This is to be expected, but still unfortunate.

The original novel was told from the perspective of the palace attendant Liang Huaiji, who's 1) young and 2) a palace attendant with limited movements, so a lot of important events are told retrospectively as the protagonist learns it from someone else. So there were a lot of information dumps in the novel.

There is a irreconcilable conflict between the author's justified preference for the first person viewpoint, the limited movements of the protagonist and the rich interconnections between the inner palace and the outer court. The first person viewpoint is justified because palace attendants ('eunuchs') are poorly understood, so a first person viewpoint is called for to create empathy in the reader. However, the inner palace and the outer court are very much connected, and one stated aim of the author was to present a broader picture of the politics and culture of the era. The author was never able to completely resolve this tension.

The TV adaptation changed the protagonist to the Emperor, and in any case there's no first person viewpoint in a TV show, so the original tension between viewpoint and content is resolved. But this creates a new problem: either using a lot of flashbacks, or telling the story from the beginning but risks including a lot of plotlines that will be pulled together later in the story but appears not relevant at first.

For example, in the last two episodes, the penal conscription of a character to the army on Western Xia border sets the stage for the Qingli Reforms, a seismic event which in the novel led to profound consequences for the relationship between the Emperor and the Empress. But you will not know this unless you read the novel.

3. Dialogues are still problematic. The writer displays no understanding of the difference between formal and informal contexts. Take the use of 'xiansheng'先生, it was used by the Emperor to refer to his teacher Yan Shu in informal contexts. But in the show palace maids also uses xiansheng to refer to senior palace attendants. I'm not sure if the second usage was historical, but surely when a palace maid announces the rival of a senior palace attendant to the Empress she won't use 'xiansheng', but the palace attendant's job title. It's not a private conversation between her and the senior attendant but a formal notice to the Empress. And for sure the Empress won't refer to a palace attendant around her own age as 'xiansheng'. Remember how Yan Shu once asked the Emperor to stop addressing him as 'xiansheng' even in private? And Yan Shu was actually the Emperor's teacher! The correct phrase would probably be 'Zhang gou dang' '张勾当' ('Director Zhang'), rather than 'Zhang maoze xiansheng'张茂则先生.

Also when Zhang Maoze went to the Empress to ask for leniency on behalf of Liang Huaiji, Zhang actually used the word castration. Now we have an inner palace attendant using the word 'castration' in front of the Empress whom he obviously loves, when there are alternatives to get the point across. No, just no.

4. The casting problems. There should be a teenage actor for every major female character that appears as a teenager. Jiang Shuying has always had a mature look, looking her playing a teenager was painful. Same for Wang Churan. Consort Zhang's jump from a little girl to an adult woman in the space of a few episodes (around 5 years on the show's timeline) is too glaring. Should have casted a younger actress for the grown-up Consort Zhang, or use a older actress for the young Consort Zhang.

As for male actors, they need better looking actors for Su Shunqing and Ouyang Xiu. One of the selling points of a show like this is that the Chinese can see famous writers and poets whose works they were forced to memorize in high school brought to the screen as handsome young men. The actor playing Su Shunqing looked almost malnourished and the actor for Ouyang Xiu looks creepy. You DON'T want Ouyang Xiu to look creepy. Ouyang Xiu's alleged affair with his young 'niece' (the daughter of his brother-in-law from an earlier marriage) is featured in the original novel. It will probably appear in the show as well.

5. How Liang Huaiji became a palace attendant is changed from the original novel. In the original novel, once Huaiji's mother remarried, his relatives from his father's side used family connection to send him to the palace. In the TV show, he was sold by his mother's sister-in-law) into slavery. There are a lot of misunderstandings around palace attendants ('eunuchs'). Historically being a palace attendant was a desirable 'career' path for boys from poor families. Inner palace attendants were slaves but they were salaried. In later times boys or young men would even have to pay for their own castration, and there was a oversupply because more people were castrating themselves in the hope of becoming palace attendants than there were openings in the palace. The original novel was remarkably free of villains and there's really no need to turn Huaiji's aunt into one. I understand this subplot is a setup for Qingli reforms, but still.

She's partially a descendant of the ancient Iranic people of Tarim Basin, and Iranic people have the most magnificent eyebrows.