WuxiaWanderings

This show is doing Yunxiu dirty, having her being so surprised and delighted by being called a master artisan. Umm, did everyone forget that she's the Jade Guanyin? She's already one of the most famous artisans around. People sat around watching her carve ffs!

But now she's just doing grunt work, taking orders from Su Muzhe like some lowly assistant.

Also, I have to say it, don't hit me: Su Muzhe has no business being so smug to Zheng Wu. If he didn't give her money she wouldn't have been able to even participate in the contest, much less win it. And she literally got on her knees in the middle of the street to get him to even hear her out. It would have been much more satisfying if she had found some way on her own to work it out rather than running to him.

That daydream about Shrimp, Loud, and Cao Da was really sad. *Sigh*, I feel their deaths were a waste of story though. It's just not been very good since they left it. And the rancor between Su Muzhe and Yan Zijing is still silly. I mean she thinks Yan Zijing either killed Shrimp and the others or was responsible for it, yet she only went to kill him once and didn't even attempt it. How could she just let that go? At the beginning she sneaked onto a ship to kill what's his name. That's who she is. Writing has not been consistent with some of these characters at all. And Yan Zijing is just back to playing the cold schemer from the first part of the show. Where's his feelings for Duanwu?

This story is shaping up to be what in Chinese is called a tiger's head with a snake's tail 虎頭蛇尾: starts out strong, but ends poorly. Hopefully it will get better once it gets back to the main story and stops wasting time with trifles like beauty contests.

A Dream of Splendor is similar to this one in terms of MC from the lower rungs of society trying to establish her own independent life, in this case opening a restaurant.

I just meant like in real life, that's such a long way. I didn't mean to suggest it took that long in the show.

I don't know, maybe. It didn't tell us where they were in that scene, presumably at an inn in a city. I guess it was Bianzhou. But the next scene does show it's Bianzhou., right after Zhang Jinran passes her by without seeing her.

Look at this map of the Hexi Corridor: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hexi_Corridor#/media/File:Hexi_Corridor.png

I don't remember where it said they were in the show, but it was beyong Tang borders. Yumen Pass (Jade Gate) on the map was the border between the Tang and the outside. Beyond that was beyond the Tang empire. So they were somewhere just outside there.

At the inn, Zhang Jinran says they will go to Bianzhou to look for her, and later we see Duanwu and Yunxiu in Bianzhou. Bianzhou was the name of Kaifeng at the time. Chang'an, the capital at the time, is now called Xi'an, in the bottom right of the map I linked. Bianzhou/Kaifeng is pretty much due east of Xi'an, but pretty far, past Luoyang.

So it skipped a lot of her travel, which on foot would have taken over a year. But it's a show, so.. Anyway, she walked a looooong way.

Doesn't really make sense cause they would have to pass through Chang'an to get there. They would surely have stopped there. Unless there's some other Bianzhou...

I agree with what others have said here about Duanwu so quickly accepting that she was betrayed. Like, girl, if he wanted to kill you he could have done it when he drugged you. Or countless other times. What would even be the motive? You already gave him the blood pearl. And everyone else in the convoy? It just doesn't make sense for Yan Zijing to be the culprit. Even disregarding the feelings involved, it would be bad for business.

Also Duanwu never stops to consider whether she was mistaken about him shooting her with an arrow. In all that chaos, maybe, just maybe there's an explanation. All along she's been able to play along with Yan Zijing's business schemes and think on her feet to anticipate the next move without him telling her, but she can't think to maybe question what all happened that night? Dumb.

And Yan Zijing. Ugh, I hate hate hate this trope where someone tries to spare someone's feelings by doing something even worse. Making Duanwu think the one she loves the most betrayed her and murdered everyone is going to hurt her way more than just telling her you're about to die from an incurable poisoning. I can't let her feel sad about me dying so I'm going to make her hate me instead. Huh? It's the most selfish kind of "selflessness" there is. It's the opposite of protecting someone or caring about them. It's just stupid, lazy writing.

Maybe not. The stars appeared, but neither of them saw it. She was knocked out and he was looking down at her. The story he told her in ep.17 was the lovers had to see the stars. That's how he worded it anyway, if the lovers see the stars...

But they didn't see them.

I love Kang Ju.

Yan Zijing is badass. I like Zhang Jinran. He admitted he was wrong like a scene later. He has his own character arc, that's all. That's a good thing.

And wow did the eng subs go terrible in ep.10.

A minor point for anyone relying on the Eng subs. In ep.8 there's mention of someone needing a horse to Beijing and sending the ledger to Beijing. That's an error. The word is 京城 (jingcheng) which means capital, which in this case is Chang'an, not Beijing. Just mentioning this in case anyone was confused why they're suddenly talking about Beijing.

Liking this so far. Zhao Lusi is always fun to watch, and I loved Tang Xiaotian in The Ingenious One and Liu Yuning in Heroes (2022). I like seeing all the scenes on the ship, don't see ship settings a whole lot.

There's the standard cdrama/webnovel cliches that are kind eye-rolling, like the over-the-top ridiculousness of the cruely of the pearl fishery in episode one. Hepu really was famous during the Tang for its pearls, but obviously its depiction here is obiously fictional. it's just too silly though. Don't even give them a whole steamed bun to eat? Really. Then there's the peanut gallery slagging on the poems in ep.4. I hate peanut galleries. Duanwu being able to perfectly execute a dance just from having seen someone do it years ago.

But at least it's not loaded down with corny humor like so many cdramas are. I like the more serious tone. The shark people crying pearls is a real legend (see the book The Vermilion Bird by Edward H. Schafer for more about the shark people, translated as merman in the eng subs, and also about the south of China and parts of Vietnam during the Tang dynasty. Great book.)

Cdrama cliches aside, this is a 10 for me so far. I think cause I like all the leads.

I hope Ju Jingyi actually gets to use her own voice in this one. Though by the trailer just released, it's seems no because the voice doesn't really fit her at all.