Skibbies

this was filmed q1 of 2023, so not that long in post production (a year is normal for dramas, esp a tv drama which needs to wait for tv slot open). if it took 6 years, it's likely the script (which is original), and getting someone interested in the project (production team), and getting it pass the platform meetings (getting investment)

set in republican era but about beijing opera instead of finance, winter begonia!
if you are up for full on politics, age of awakening.
for finance/banking drama, but with romance, the justice (2021).

there's already stark drop in cdramas, i think it was 400 dramas in 2022, 300 last year. (according to enlightent data) there are a lot of platforms in china, now there's mainly 4 web ones and a lot of tv channels (at least one channel for each province + cctv) and they all air dramas. I think a decade ago, there were maybe 10 channels that broadcast new dramas, now it's about 7, and most of them do lot of reruns.

So I really wouldn't worry about oversaturation. there's 5 first tier provincial channels and they used to air new dramas all the time, i think one started doing mostly reruns in 2021 or 2022, then last year i think 3 was doing mostly reruns for their primetime slot.

As for the schedule, this is actually the most friendly schedule from hunan tv i've seen. Last year it was doing mon-thurs only to make room for weekly dramas that only aired on fri-sat.

I'm late but just want to add, in chinese myths, beings (plants, rocks, whatever) can absorb energy from the world over long period of time and they end up having a form, a lot of these end up being "yao" or in this drama's case "ling".

So similar idea here with ancient gods, the world essentially gave birth to them, but then over long period of time, they all die because the energy fades away eventually. They essentially all return back to earth and become part of the world, they no longer have a form. It's fairly tragic but very taoist I think?

i mean it's really popular (judging by the viewcounts and heat index for first two days), so it's okay. LGX doesn't fit the ml but i'll live.

No? it was just to make money. She mentioned two years when she first hired the manager for her restaurant.

Ah bao didn't cause A's crash, he sorta did that to himself. Qiang hates ah bao because a) ah bao took a distasteful name when grabbing small parts of remnants of A's stock b) he's salty ling zi left Japan for ah bao c) the opportunity came up.

Lili's imagination. A is dead as they say. I've seen people interpret it as Lili actually likes ah bao like she loves A, but because she can't betray A, she half threw ah bao under the bus. She did what she planned to do from the start, use all the money to pay off A's debt.

Or they are same type of people and it's better ah bao hits a slump that doesn't kill him, or something bigger will. (which is what ye shu/grandpa is like)

it's pu'dong, eastern side of shanghai, it was largely farmlands in 90s but is now the financial center of shanghai, and mentioned above, the disneyland and the airport. 90s is when land were super cheap and as development goes, the value just multiply tenfold or hundredfold. Nobody is really talking about it, cos most people sort of get what pu'dong means.

I think I did remember there were someone talking about it but it wasn't in the title, something along the lines of, ah bao got kicked out of the stock market game (since his rep tanked and he barely scraped by and as he said, individuals were chased out of the scene by corporations). but since he got pu'dong, he could continue to participate in the capitalism game in a different way.

ahhh in that case, maybe add delicious romance to the list too? parallel world/west out of yu men might work for you too.

someone else mentioned other recs, I'll add the day of becoming you and you are my hero if you haven't seen them?
for a more mature romance who communicates, fake it till you make it?
i have more recs but they wouldn't be romance heavy or necessarily peaceful/stress free.

hope you enjoy the drama :D

Oh yeah I agree the timing would have been different, but from her pov, it make sense and she didn't think that was the outcome. It is kinda odd that it's often him apologising when they fight, and she doesn't really do so.

I think she was right that he would have been a target anyways, I don't think it's realistic that he could be a prince and station at laolan pass at that point, cos he has too good of a reputation. The only way he could leave would be the army dissolve itself and he's cast aside, but even then, the court probably wants him around cos he's a better choice as crown prince (even if emperor doesn't think so).

I kinda twitch every time people call ML qin wang, because I feel like channelling Li Shimin and yell at the screen "STOP FOULING MY NAME".

It's just, even if they wanted to have a competent ruler that didn't want to be one, I feel like they could have had a nuance portrayal, rather then FL pushed him to. I think circumstances push him to do so, but it's not super clear in the drama, and I guess ML never felt like he stepped up for the game, he just....wanted to make FL happy and cos no one else could do the job? It was just kinda depressing, cos he was clearly super unhappy.

I actually really like the trope where the leads are toe to toe against each other, and I think this started out fairly strong. But as you said, the plot sort of devolved as it went. In the 30+ ep, esp them as newly weds, I feel like the author just wanted to write one trope (be at each other's throat despite being married) but didn't seem to have the competence to make it flow.

I was definitely tired of multiple times FL was damsled, but I sort of liked that she had her own goals and ideals and priorities, and they often weren't ML. I think the most infuriating thing for me was ML's dad, omg how can he be so incompetent and have so much power, I even like his brothers more, even though they are incompetent, but at least they were trying to scheme, dad kinda just "omg how dare you disobey me!! i'm so benelovent!" wow are you for real, you didn't do anything useful for the entire drama. I feel like he's an insult to sorta his source, Li Yuan, but ML is very idealistic and rather unrealistic tbh ver of Li Shimin anyways.

Ning Li was amazing in Burning Ice (the drama have lackluster ending) and Enemy (also lackluster ending, idk if this is subbed), and the movie Wandering Earth 2. He also played a really nice teacher in My Huckleberry Friends, but he's a teacher in a youth drama, so there's not that many scenes, I really liked that drama though for coming of age of bunch of kids..

hope you enjoy the rise of phoenixes :) i loved that drama despite it being severely flawed, it also doesn't have much romance scenes though haha, even though I liked their chemistry a lot.

oof i'm super late, there are some skinship and kiss but it's super rare I think. if you are watching just for the romance, you are probably going to be super disappointed.

If you like the push and pull, you could try fake it till you make it, that one balance the romance with business more I think. You can also kinda skip the office stuff if you find it too slow, since it doesn't affect the romance side, it's mostly use to make the characters relateable + show some personal growth.

anyways, this drama is based on a book, which I haven't read, but I got the impression it's based on real life events, so business was always going to be fairly central I think. especially since the business rivalry and their busy schedule play big part in their rocky relationship.

the movie is just a different adaptation, it'll likely be s1 of donghua (up to ep 11 excluding the tournament stuff) since wang ye and zhang lingyu was never announced.

the drama and movie were made at the same time actually, late 2021/early 2022. there have been multiple novels that got similar treatment.

Oh yeah I liked the team fight, I liked all the team operations here actually, wish there was more of them.