Nepeta 22

I don't understand. Are you saying looks needs to be evenly matched? I don't view dramas like that. Personally, I don't regard Liu Xueyi as bad looking at all. In fact, he has had a surge in popularity in recent years and have a line up of dramas coming out. He just doesn't suit playing innocent boyish charm as in Unshakable Faith.

PXR is a classic beauty. She is in an unfortunate situation of being so outwardly beautiful, in the current style of mainstream dramas, they find it hard to place someone like her. She almost belongs to a decade earlier. Today's market tends to favour more girl-next-door or ex girl band members with an already fanbase. Fans want slightly attainable figures and being more relatable. Basically, fandoms buy outside personalities more than the drama performance.

I hope so too. She's still so young with plenty of opportunities to grow and expand her range. I feel she should hone her natural aura of being a bit klutzy, idealistic and innocent. The youthful innocence transcends well in historic or fantasy dramas. If they push too hard on the angry or overly evil angle, I think it doesn't work right now.

She has such an angelic face. The only grey character style is how Guo Jing Ming styled her as cool, calm and still in 'A Journey to you'. Playing cutesy or being sulky/spoilt also doesn't suit her calm and soothing face. These are my views of course...

She was in Unshakable Faith. I unfortunately dropped that, but not because of her but the drama's main ML was so unconvincing in his role. It put me off. But PXR was bossing it in that role. I immediately thought, this actress would make a great police detective like Detective L. In fact, I thought of her playing Bai Yu's character, she would be totally convincing.

I heard from someone, he was the person that was supposed to play Gong Jun's role originally. He apparently turned it down because he saw the long lines and chickened out. I wonder if anyone has heard about this.

I think she is better playing submissive, quiet even dainty vulnerable roles. Her being dominant is not in her range at the moment. Her voice is light and fluffy and she doesn't have that commanding strong voice or demeanor yet.

She did not stand out in Parallel world. Admit she was sharing it with very strong characters, but she just faded and was quite forgettable. She also had a similar situation in Romance in the Alley where she had a bit more lines, but even there, she only needed to play a meek and seemingly scheming person but she did not convey that in a convincing way.

Love in the Clouds will hopefully show whether she has range. Her visuals with lead actor is good, they match each other well. Which is why so many eyes will be on the drama. If directors don't pay attention, they may expose her to crying badly like seen in her first lead role. She doesn't seem to cry convincingly.

Her stand out role is playing a stunted and nervous character in Blossom in Adversity. That's because that is her comfort type of role which is weak, nervous, and speaking very little. a bit like her break out role with A Journey to you. Doors have opened for her, and I hope she picks her roles carefully for now as I don't think she's a natural yet.

Yes, I agree on that. It does seem like they have sort of left that on viewers to work out. I hope she remained very close with her sister-in-law. I felt she had a tremendous role of dealing with the loss of her brother and also wanting her sister-in-law to live a happy life after that.

OK, yes I thought the same. Maybe they didn't want to expand on his life as there had been many like him that did get away with their jobsworth attitude that may even contribute to some people's demise/deaths in the past.

I guess it's quite easy to make his character more comical and short-sighted and then try to paint over people like that in the past as harmless when in actual fact, some of these groups made other people's lives unbearable at the time. Maybe that may be the reason to not dwell on too much with his life after that.

Yes, it's all a bit confusing. It's like some scenes had been cut or over-edited. A bit weird that scene when Yun Qing turned up at his place. I took that as ending their relationship and he had been forced to be off work. But surely we should at least know what happened to both of them, even if they split.

Then it just jumps to 40 years later. That's a massive gap. The change was so sudden it felt like a completely different drama.

Unless I missed something. What happened with Yang Xue An & Yun Qing. I hope they expand on them. The third arc just slipped in abruptly.

Avenue X has just given this drama a 2.5 goldmine. Those that watch her know how she whinges about everything, but she only has 2 gripes with this drama. She's used nearly half an hour to discuss the drama. Hopefully more people will start to watch this drama.

I think part of the problem is this adaptation does not delve too much on how or why she ends up in the army. Based on what you have written, I can see her motivation and character set up is already different to how I interpret it. Anyhow, it is what it is, and I have moved on from this and will not get weighed down with all these small details. Thanks for taking the time to explain your version when you viewed it. I'll keep an open mind for this drama for now...

Yes, me too. Sometimes, it's a class thing. There are insecurities and old hang ups with others. And of course those that can't wait to settle old scores when they think they've been given a platform, they abuse their positions. Sadly this is the same the world over...

That didn't bother me as ML lived a harsh life (prison and then heavy labour work), but my only gripe was when he was out of prison, those scenes of him travelling up to that northern town to meet his inmate's family, he should have been aged more as it will have been about 13 years on...

Yes, I agree, Three Body was a very good example of that. Even the most recent drama This Thriving Land showed how some characters flitted between parties at the time of upheaval, and the narrative was still quite rose-tinted towards past land owners. It was the ironic thing of the most educated land owner's son that was painted as odd and almost fixated in a negative way that joined the communist party. They made the organisation seem like a cult that tore these people from their families.

I think you may have misunderstood my long winded post. I'll tried not to read into these types of dramas too much, but for some reason, this drama seems to rile me up more....

I am like you, don't feel women need to be like men or try to excel or dominate it. Yes, it's cringe how many female writers try so hard to turn the tables to write men into unrealistic cardboard characters that do not really exist. It's almost like they want to get men back for past unfairness, but this is not addressing equality, it's pure revenge and pushing god awful fantasies that don't always resonate with all female audiences, certainly not me.

But in this drama, I felt the subtle message is FL is a star general because she was dominating in men's dominant spaces. Then she gave a big speech to the women about defending borders, and how it's so rewarding. All this against the backdrop of subtle shading traditional female pursuits. Her cooking or doing traditional roles as a choice was also jarring because like usual, female empowerment are only exclusively are for upper-class women. No tackling of normal peasants that make up 99% of the population at the time. Do these women even have choice? Will their families care for them and their rights? Women are marked with a figure to make money out of in poverty at the time. This drama like many before it goes for the easy escapism route.

Women are not men, and women don't need to be doing "men" things to be successful. All this drama does is reinforce the message as being a man, do men things, hang around men, you achieve. That is not empowerment, that is coping in a men dominated world and lose your core identity to get there

When she's playing the female role, it's almost mocking the role of being a woman. If you didn't feel that, fair enough, but I did and felt sad. A large chunk was given to this storyline because of the love story with ML, not really to do with empowerment, or getting to know women more. When given the chance, she was given a big sermonic preach about how great she is. That's jarring but for me, putting extra silly pressure on women. That's why I made my earlier comment about pressure on women. As for author's other works, I have not seen them so cannot comment.

I agree. This type of drama has a place and it was done beautifully because there was undeniable energy and chemistry. The only other drama I have seen that conveyed love in that way was Romance In the Alley. Both beautiful yet haunting dramas for me.

Yes, this is seen quite often now. It has been a while too. Just one example In the drama A Love Never Lost, a drama released this year, it showed some of the earliest pioneers of communism were using women when they needed (ideology about breaking down feudalism with getting women out to work in the name of freedom), and then showed how one (central character)treated his wife. Let's say, it's horrible and gaslighting behaviour. In another, killing innocent people using bombs. It also showed the bickering and back stabbing behaviour within their group.

No problem, we are here to discuss dramas and sometimes, it inevitably falls into politics of that country or other countries. Whenever I watch these types of dramas, I tend to stand back and take some of it as a pinch of salt.

As I said, I view some of these storylines as driven by pride, whether that is collectively or individually. As they say, history is often written by the victors! This may not always transfer well outside of China. I regard this style or type of drama as mainly for their domestic consumption.

I try to keep an open mind on subjects like this as I know the saying 'history is often written by the victors', and this is the same the world over! As for AI, that's another subject altogether....save that for another day 😉

I don't know whether they acknowledge famine or not, but it's a time that is less spoken about and maybe it's still too raw to talk about it. What I do know is China today has put more emphasis on food security as priority. It would seem they do learn from mistakes and take note of any areas that needs improvements.

Even in drama adaptations like 3 Body, they have shown more graphic details of what happened during the 1970s.