cheerychums89

Word of Honor is special to so many of us and I totally believe that a major reason for why Zhang Zhehan and Simon Gong were able to bring their best performances in this drama is because of their naturally magical chemistry both on and offscreen (if you've watched their table reading for WOH, you'd know that they already had chemistry since day one back when they were just strangers to each other, which is honestly impressive). Knowing all the stuff they've been through and rising to the top together, it's difficult to believe that what's happened to Zhang Zhehan isn't personally affecting Simon Gong in some way. It would also be a shame and rather unfair if Youku took the drama down permanently considering that it disregards all the love, hardwork, and effort the cast and crew poured into the show.

I'm not trying to excuse anything that Zhang Zhehan did and as a public figure, he should've known better and actually did say he wanted to make better choices to set a good example for his fans, but the part where he insinuated that netizens are being nosy. Well, prior to these photos, there was an incident where people's accounts were being bought to spread rumors about him and Simon and after posting a photo of him and Simon Gong during the first Shan He Ling fanmeet, one of his fans was noted to have told him to go see a psychiatrist for his homosexuality and a slew of other nasty comments that prompted him to deactivate his Weibo for a while. It's obviously stupid of him to dismiss the photos when they first surfaced, but I can understand why he sometimes doesn't listen to the netizens.

He survived after those photos because he wasn't as well known. After Word of Honor's success, his popularity soared with it. He became so popular that whatever he did was put under scrutiny. In one of his interviews, he mentioned that at the level of his fame, he was no longer free to post whatever he wanted on his social media and he aimed to be more conscious of what he says because he wanted to set a good example for his fans. If he offended someone in the entertainment circle, it's the antis he sued for slander. The antis are known to fabricate and photoshop rumors to make them seem legit (i.e. the rumor about him having a fiancee) and there was a time where it was proven that fans were being bribed by rival companies to make up lies about him and Gong Jun, which prompted both him and Gong Jun to take serious legal action together. One of those antis he pissed off was apparently discovered to be collecting evidence against him, but this time, they finally succeeded in destroying him when they exposed the photo of him standing in front of Yasukuni Shrine, a place that honors Japanese war criminals during WW2.

For anyone reducing his case as "oh he can come back next year", I really doubt that. What he did evoked painful memories of Japan's transgressions against China and the rest of Asia during WW2 and as someone of Chinese descent reading about these things when I was in high school, I felt the same anger, hurt, and contempt that people are feeling over his actions. However, the Chinese Association of Performing Arts has already issued an official declaration to boycott him without a time frame of how long the boycott is in place for. This could mean that he's permanently banned from performing in China or may not be allowed to return as a performer in the entertainment industry for an indefinite period of time, which again, feels like a punishment too great for a crime he didn't commit. He should've been educated on the issue rather than have his existence virtually deleted. How can he learn and mature as a person if he's not even given the opportunity to do so? At any rate, whatever he decides to do in the future outside of C-ent and wherever he decides to go if he chooses to leave the country to do something else, I know he'll be successful at it because he's resilient.

Agreed. Apparently, there's an official letter by the China Association of Performing Arts calling for a boycott of any production Zhehan is associated with. At this point, they've practically blacklisted him in China. I wonder if that means he'll eventually have to move to a new country especially since in the eyes of Chinese people, he's made an enemy of not just individual people, but his entire country has turned against him, which I personally think is excessive.

https://twitter.com/dramapotatoes/status/1426730364555251712

The way they treat Zhehan in China is honestly disgusting. They let Kris Wu, someone who actually committed a crime, go on for longer, but as soon as Zhehan's old photos of visiting those shrines surfaced, the entire C-ent industry started treating him like a monster who can never be forgiven.

Zhehan attended his friend's wedding in Japan 3 years ago and people noticed that he visited shrines honoring Japanese soldiers during WW2, which is a touchy subject for many Chinese people given that Japan committed war crimes against China at the time. Because of this, people now automatically think he's pro-Japan and a traitor to his people so some of his fans and basically all of his endorsement deals have chosen to cut ties with him. It's a horrible situation to be in, but I hope he'll come back stronger from it.

If you love the main couple (Wen Kexing and Zhou Zishu), then yes, they have a happy ending. If the secondary couple (Cao Weining and Gu Xiang) are more of your cup of tea, then it's a sad one, unfortunately.

Going to YT and having to read comments every now and then about how Zhou Zishu and Wen Kexing are bros only is exhausting. Imagine being so homophobic that the explicitly romantic overtones (i.e. hip grabbing, longing looks, and hairpin giving) went over your head. They just can't seem to accept the fact that two men can love each other so deeply that it literally becomes the central plot point of the entire story in the final episode.

I know a lot of people here are HOB donghua/novel fans so it's understandable to see a lot of criticism and disappointment, but since the show is likely to be renamed Eternal Faith (https://twitter.com/mdzswangji/status/1419469993683660804), you can pretty much treat the live action adaptation as its own thing rather than a faithful adaptation of the source material or ignore it altogether like some MDZS fans have done with The Untamed. However, if you're just going to keep comparing the drama to the novel and nitpick every aspect of it, you'll be in for a bigger world of disappointment. I'm personally optimistic about this production and hope that it will follow the success of Word of Honor, which ironically ended up becoming the dark horse drama of 2021 in China.

I'm still thankful to the BL gods that this show just completely ignored censorship and vice versa.

Yeah, I hope so too!

Even though they're wearing masks in this edit, I can already see Zhai Xiaowen and Zhang Linghe's potential as live action Hualian XD
https://m.weibo.cn/status/4656643293580508?

After watching the short movie, I have to strongly disagree with the assessment that this isn't a BL when it actually (sort of) is. The real love story revolves around Xiao Wei and Wang Sheng. Pei Rong is imo more of an unfortunate victim in the triangle since Xiao Wei's true love was her husband all along. This becomes apparent at the end of the movie when Xiao Wei gives Wang Sheng a lock of his hair hoping against hope that fate will allow them to be lovers in their next life. It's a clever way of navigating around censorship while still telling a love story between two men.

Agreed and I totally think it's because Zhang Zhehan and Simon Gong clicked together extremely well!

I may or may not already be in love with Zhang Linghe, the actor playing Hua Cheng. He has the devilishly handsome look just like Hua Cheng!! <3

Even though there's no official date yet, the shots of married Ranwan are more than enough to get me through the long wait ahead.

I'll be clowning until August if this show drops by then. All the new footage I've seen of the show just confirmed everything I already knew. That we're gonna be devastated by the soulcrushing angst that is Mo Ran and Chu Wanning's complicated love story.

I loved her so much in Word of Honor. When I read the first chapter of the novel, I couldn't really picture what Gu Xiang was supposed to look like, but when I saw Zhou Ye play the role, I can't imagine anyone else. She's the perfect balance of adorable and feisty just like Gu Xiang and I can't believe she's already 23 years old. She still looks like a cute little girl to me.

It's based on a BL novel, but IMO, calling the relationship between the two male leads a friendship and then saying the show doesn't count as BL is doing the cast and crew's hardwork a disservice. I mean, sure, it's not a traditional BL adaptation, but it should still be considered as such because they used overt romantic traditional Chinese tropes/poetry and romantic wuxia tropes with the main couple (the two male leads) even with censorship in place. The actors definitely didn't film this as a friendship considering that some of their lines had to be dubbed over differently because it was explicitly gay.