This review may contain spoilers
A Drama for the Serious Minded
This is my very first review. I am compelled to do it because the other reviews have done absolutely no justice to this gem of a drama. It is not a show for quick gratification and it eschews almost all of the tropes associated with the typical Chinese romance. What you will find here is an intricate tale of the Chinese porcelain industry and its attempts to weather the winds of change brought about by capitalist modernization. The fragility of the Chinese porcelain becomes a very apt metaphor for the fragility of trust that has to be the basis of any human relationship. The series begins in the middle with the female lead rightly lashing out at the male lead for betraying her trust and breaking up with him. The first two thirds of this drama then tell us how they arrived at this tragic point. We are taken back about six months and we see everything from the female lead’s perspective. She comes from a family of porcelain artists, with her father having been one of the most prominent porcelain painters of his time. Her family business is now run by her uncle and aunt. When circumstances force her to return to her home town which is the heart of the porcelain industry in China along with the male lead, who is trying to gain a foothold in this untapped market, his competitive zeal and his single-minded pursuit of profit leads to him suffocating the life out of his budding romance with her. The last one third of the show is about repairing his relationship with the female lead and allowing their romance to reach its blissful culmination.
The heavy research the show has made into the porcelain industry is at the level of a fine documentary. The patient viewer will be enthralled by this. We are shown that this industry, which was initially comprised of state-owned enterprises, is transformed, by the shutting down of these enterprises, into a rough conglomerate of family-owned companies founded by the workers of those very same state-run factories, of which the female lead’s father’s company is most prominent and a de-facto leader of all the others. This conglomerate preserves the ancient production techniques which cannot be mapped on to a capitalist time-line of investment and return and it bars the entry of capital into this industry altogether. Capital is attracted to this ancient industry because it sees it as a reservoir of untapped demand to be transformed into huge profits. However, unfettered capital will simply destroy the porcelain industry for it lacks the patience necessary to produce a fine piece of China. On the other hand, the porcelain industry left to itself will produce nothing but lifeless imitations of ancient artifacts, artifacts which even if they are perfect illustrations of peerless technique have stopped speaking to contemporary times in any meaningful way. This will only hasten its extinction. What is thus needed is a revitalized porcelain industry that is able to meld ancient technique with modern sensibility. This is where the title of the show “Reblooming Blue” comes from: the revitalization of the blue, which stands for porcelain. Capital is necessary for this process of revitalization but in a manner and the degree that does not destroy the very object being revitalized. The show can be seen as meditation on this topic.
This tense relationship between an ancient industry that confirms to an unhurried temporality and capital that confirms to a frantic temporality is the backbone of this show and it mirrors the relationship between the male lead, who is the embodiment of capital and the female lead, who is the embodiment of this ancient industry. In the first two thirds of the drama, the confidence and swagger of capital is embodied in the confidence and swagger of this male lead, who is absolutely certain that he knows better than the practitioners and stewards of the ancient craft what is good for craft, that he can somehow satisfy the insatiable demands of the capitalist and maintain the sanctity and the quality of the artifacts produced. He therefore plans to use the female lead to wrest control of her family’s enterprise and win her heart at the same time. But this confidence is shattered when the head of the family, her uncle finds out about his scheme and shuts the door on him. The female lead is also devasted to see that she was being used by one she loved. Thus ends the first attempt at a relationship between the male and the female lead and between capital and porcelain, which the two respectively symbolize. The last third of the drama then shows us the restoration of their romance, which also symbolizes the restoration of the relationship between capital and porcelain on the basis of a new sensibility that combines the organizational capacity of capital, the rigour and patience of ancient technique and the aesthetic ideas that speak to the contemporary masses.
This is slow-paced drama, which is very well-acted out. Each of lead characters well-drawn out and utterly convincing. If you are willing to enter into an interesting and intricate set of relationships, which develop and transform through tragedy and setbacks then this is the show for you. If you looking a simpler reason to watch this show, watch it for the mesmerizing beauty of porcelain artifacts.
The heavy research the show has made into the porcelain industry is at the level of a fine documentary. The patient viewer will be enthralled by this. We are shown that this industry, which was initially comprised of state-owned enterprises, is transformed, by the shutting down of these enterprises, into a rough conglomerate of family-owned companies founded by the workers of those very same state-run factories, of which the female lead’s father’s company is most prominent and a de-facto leader of all the others. This conglomerate preserves the ancient production techniques which cannot be mapped on to a capitalist time-line of investment and return and it bars the entry of capital into this industry altogether. Capital is attracted to this ancient industry because it sees it as a reservoir of untapped demand to be transformed into huge profits. However, unfettered capital will simply destroy the porcelain industry for it lacks the patience necessary to produce a fine piece of China. On the other hand, the porcelain industry left to itself will produce nothing but lifeless imitations of ancient artifacts, artifacts which even if they are perfect illustrations of peerless technique have stopped speaking to contemporary times in any meaningful way. This will only hasten its extinction. What is thus needed is a revitalized porcelain industry that is able to meld ancient technique with modern sensibility. This is where the title of the show “Reblooming Blue” comes from: the revitalization of the blue, which stands for porcelain. Capital is necessary for this process of revitalization but in a manner and the degree that does not destroy the very object being revitalized. The show can be seen as meditation on this topic.
This tense relationship between an ancient industry that confirms to an unhurried temporality and capital that confirms to a frantic temporality is the backbone of this show and it mirrors the relationship between the male lead, who is the embodiment of capital and the female lead, who is the embodiment of this ancient industry. In the first two thirds of the drama, the confidence and swagger of capital is embodied in the confidence and swagger of this male lead, who is absolutely certain that he knows better than the practitioners and stewards of the ancient craft what is good for craft, that he can somehow satisfy the insatiable demands of the capitalist and maintain the sanctity and the quality of the artifacts produced. He therefore plans to use the female lead to wrest control of her family’s enterprise and win her heart at the same time. But this confidence is shattered when the head of the family, her uncle finds out about his scheme and shuts the door on him. The female lead is also devasted to see that she was being used by one she loved. Thus ends the first attempt at a relationship between the male and the female lead and between capital and porcelain, which the two respectively symbolize. The last third of the drama then shows us the restoration of their romance, which also symbolizes the restoration of the relationship between capital and porcelain on the basis of a new sensibility that combines the organizational capacity of capital, the rigour and patience of ancient technique and the aesthetic ideas that speak to the contemporary masses.
This is slow-paced drama, which is very well-acted out. Each of lead characters well-drawn out and utterly convincing. If you are willing to enter into an interesting and intricate set of relationships, which develop and transform through tragedy and setbacks then this is the show for you. If you looking a simpler reason to watch this show, watch it for the mesmerizing beauty of porcelain artifacts.
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