Skibbies

I think they wanted to show the kinda problems and char growth the students might have, it's why there's second gen too, they had slightly different set of problems besides the more commonly thought ones. I think it'd work well as movie, too bad that one got heavily criticised.

can't remember what happened around then, I guess when gu yu went to do her own thing and then bits about second gen? I thought it was pretty consistent, but I think I thought 23 was pretty short for the drama to begin with lol.

oh shame!! i really liked the drama, it was more interesting and funnier than I thought it'd be.

i can't remember anything in my recent memory,. maybe not something i watched. there are people that refer to zhang guimei as xian sheng, but it's not in she and her girls. I sorta dislike it for modern/republican times, since every men is "respected" but only renowed women can use it.

idk why i have this impression but i always took xian sheng being for men be a relatively recent thing, like republican thing. I guess in my head, gu dai = fedual = up till qing? LOL

it's definitely severely underperforming. Judging by the cast + director + ma boyong, it's probably expecting heat indext 30000, and if we go for minimum, probably 28000. It still hasn't broke 27000. The compensation thing is cos they've been consistently giving out 20k vips every day, usually this doesn't happen for non-liuliang dramas. For liuliang, it's usually fans organising it, here it's drama production team. for tv ratings, it's not doing well, I never really expected it to do that well for cctv 8, but it's worse than I thought it'd be.

I think even for modest or low budget drama standards, it bombed, I think it'd be easier if this was a modern.

zi chuan was one of the highly regarded web novels that predates all the series you listed and most of the currently popular series, it's from the same time period as the novoland and zhu xian (chusan), except novoland was serialised in magazines and zi chuan was apparently serialised on qidian.

for the drama, it bombed, tencent has a donghua that it might continue but i don't think the donghua did too well either. but tencent have lot more money to throwaround. this series only has a season 2 cos they filmed 50 episodes at once before the 40 ep hard limit came in.

he played shen teng and ma li's son in the successor (movie), does that count? (I still haven't watched it but it's not AS depressing as these suspense :P there's a depressing tinge I guess). oh yeah he was in wang baoqiang's boxing movie too, I just keep skipping these movies lol.

They've been working on the waterways (even the small ones) for at least a decade I think. The ones near me have gotten cleaner, but once like 3 months they still smell absolutely foul LOL. They are the tiny ones that only fits like two cars side by side (I know cos the ones in front of my grandparents got paved over in late 90s), I think my uncle only swam in them in maybe 80s.

tangently related, cos i was watching watch your back/stealing time straight afterwards. That was set in 2004 with some flashback to 90s, I found that more time accurate. I think the lack of yellow nostalgia filter helped. but mostly I was super impressed with the amount of different phones they found, there was even cool sliding ones with a full keyboard (like it slides horizontally)!!

I mean the high road thing kinda make sense, but I think in reality, I think it was doing well in 90s, not so well in 00s, and better in 10s? I read some complaints about it, but since it's not as easy to spot, it wasn't big issue for me. I expected more things about the canal too lol.

oh yeah chen rui was kinda uhh too, it's so sad watching kids blow up their own future as a way to fight back against their parents, they hurt themselves way more than their parents tbh. Oh I wasn't fan of that twist, I feel like the story was trying to redeem dad for me, but it didn't work and I just felt like there was random dogblood thrown in my face (like siyi's brother).

I don't have much issue with Haikuo's mum in the sense, that couple's conflict made sense to me, although she *was* a super shitty mum even though she think otherwise, there's just far better ways to handle the situation. but I guess it's nice that it's the mum screwing up and not dad LOL. I feel like if siyi was around, the story would focus on her more? I think her disappearance was meant to make everyone grow up, but the story didn't really show *how* that happened. I would have been ok if she disappeared for like 2 or 3 years, but more than 4 without a beep is outrageous, at least have the courage to say happy new years and say you are safe = =

oh i forgot to mention, i was so stuck how very early 90s the drama's 2007 jiangsu was, i was super bothered for several episodes. I compared it with youth dramas, she and her girls and some actual 90s drama, and it feels far closer to the bond than mid-00s lol.

I got really frustrated watching this. I only felt the community bits with the mums and grandparents, I found the dad's really annoying and frustrating, the kids were impulsive and reckless. I was oddly forgiving of huazi, but not so much of wanghe and xingchi. With the timeskip, I felt like they skipped the pretty interesting bits of huazi's development, they sorta delved into xingchi's change, but it felt forced at times. I did like the business bits LOL, but I definitely expected more/better reason to return home? (like meet yourself or will love in spring) I'm def disappointed there wasn't more of siyi in second half, since she's my fav character of the younger gen.

I think they originally wanted to make him older? casting a boy that's taller than everyone else, and him being natural leader of the pact. but then they might have changed their mind while filming, thus the inconsistency.

fenghua graduating in 2008 is normal for her age. if wanghe was 89, it'd also be normal (kids have to be 7 when they start year 1, so if you are september baby like wanghe, you are generally oldest of your class. this is not strictly enforced till fairly recently so it varies) c-netizens assumed that he might have stayed behind a year due to him breaking his leg and such LOL.

oh yeah more tan jianci is good! his dramas aren't comedy though so I didn't rec those. thanks for giving tdoby a good try!!

ahh i think the humour is fairly clear by ep 4, maybe it's just not for you? it's mostly ep 1 that people don't really like I think. I find the romance pretty heartwarming, shame. Hope Les Belle will work for you if you get around to it!

hi i'm super late, but basically she's just using the boy as a negotiation tool. the ancestral plot of land are being bought by government or companies for development projects, they get lump sum of money out of it (and sometimes a house too, depends on the regional rules/time period). dad basically said he'd give up the money, and grandma and aunt can have all of it.

generally speaking, traditionally, only sons own parts of the land. some parts will compensate based on how many people are on your hukou (household registration) so daughters might count too, but it's relatively rare i think?

she does want a boy on the family record, but clearly money was priority since she left happily after dad negotiated.

go further back for romcom? one of my fav romcom is the day of becoming you, not sure if that's your thing. Recent fav, I think Les Belle? Decent character devlopment, but dont' hope for much for romance, Later I laughed.

I'm on ep 21 so i haven't finished the drama but I think I like both? they have different focus for the main theme, I wrote about some of the differences in comment below, the leads' dynamic is pretty much the same though, just more push and pull I think. If they didn't cut out stuff, it might be more annoying for general audience, and the leads vanity are played up for laughs, which downplay the cringe I think.

I really loved Imperfect Victim, but it's very tough and kinda enraging to watch, and it shows lot of more angles than just survivor's, so you might feel there's whitewashing too (as it's clearly how some people think and try to shirk off responsibilities).

I liked her alright in Dream of Splendour, but the character was more typical and have some annoying moments, I was ambivalent towards the story as a whole. For Back for you, the story is almost episodic, so she's just a supporting character in one of the arcs (i'm half way through and haven't seen her yet I think?)

I've watched her in Symphony Romance, the remake of jdrama/anime/manga Nodame Cantabile. I think she was asked to do very over the top acting, and it's somewhat out of place in cdrama (as is her character in general, even though they toned it down already). The story is alright if classical music romcom sound ok to you, her character development comes fairly late in the drama though, due to following timeline of the original story + they added more scenes/char dev for other characters as it's kinda ensemble.