grapejuice

If I look at the Chinese dramas that I think of as being real quality ... as in truly excellent ... she's in two of the best of them. Which is no small feat. So people who have anything derogatory to say should look at the dramas and their facts before they express a mere personal opinion.

mature is good. it won't be straight away but i will let you know. TY

K ! :-)

This whole thread between the five of you is exactly ... it. You've nailed it. She was consistent. She deferred to her parents. Both sets of parents. She would have married Scholar Han because her second mum and dad arranged it for her. She LIVED because her birth mother gave her life and told her to keep living despite what had happened to her family.

So she strives to live her own life and then adapts and accepts as her fate makes itself clear. I think her survival depended on that adaptation and acceptance. It depended on her going with that natural Taoist current or 'right way' but she also knew to resist the cruelty and wrongness of the Ming Dynastic Way that made life so hard for women and the poor and humanity in general. Her family's annihilation happened through the wrong power of Kings. Her marriage was also brought about by the wrong power of Kings but, ultimately, she learns that LJQ was the fate that her family had chosen for her before they were killed.

I think that there were little signs that she was falling for LJQ before the grave scene where they were already holding hands but at that gravesite she recognized that they could resist the wrong power of Kings and make a life for themselves as was their fate. He had not betrayed her family or their fate in any way.

So, the red thread of destiny connected our two leads from the day they were betrothed ... for life as her parents and his grandfather had decided... and so they are slowly able to create love and family out of it. It's not the love of first sight, or the love of hormonal attraction that ultimately dissipates. It's a much deeper, truer, more profound love than that.

It was atypical !!! It had totally unique aspects to it while dropping the most predictable tropes. So it's kind of unfortunate that it got grief for it when it was so refreshing.

People complain ad infinitum about tropes and then they complain when they don't get them. Lol

I've never even heard of it ... so TY!!! I will have a look at it ... :-)

Seriously? KK.

Although, I know the production values weren't great but The Untamed was pretty great. It beats The Untamed?

Ahhh. kinda sorta not really but some of my friends are dharma teachers who have given me much to read over the years :-)

How is Love and Destiny? I haven't seen it,

By then, she had been using the same pen name for over 40 years. And people seemed to be convinced that she was a very prolific male writer who understood women. Haha. Anyway she seems to be well hidden.

New Life Begins? Joy of Life? I officially give up offering suggestions at this point since I have a feeling that you're about to shoot them all down. And I love them all too much. LoL

Yes. You might not be stating that strongly enough. Lol

There was an English language tv drama called Six Feet Under. It's a family saga with the eldest son being the protagonist but just barely. Everyone is important. It's my only favorite English drama. All the rest have faded to nothing.

But there's a genius montage with amazing music to end the whole show. It takes you from the last part of the drama ...further and further into the future as all the characters 'leave this mortal coil' and it's just brilliant. Sad and funny and this ending reminded me of it so much.

Not the same but a similar feeling. Like ... this is life and life is tragic but it's also extremely beautiful. Very memorable, very moving stuff.

It's not obvious because they're not demonstrative enough or rather ... she,LX, is not demonstrative enough for people to appreciate that it's love or ... their idea about what is love is veeeery narrow.

Well that's a definitive answer for anyone who has doubts !!! Yay !!!

She gets to go traveling ..... !!!

My god the director is really young. Or she just looks it.

Lost You Forever. Written by the same author/screenwriter. Also a brilliant cast that really excels. It's less realistic though by a lot. It's fantasy/wuxia with more romance than AtC. But it's also a great drama. I highly recommend it for you to watch now or, at least, eventually.

Or The Red Sleeve.

It also kind of echoes what has happened with the leads insofar as they don't connect and end up with each other when they are betrothed. But eventually, after much traveling on a detour ... fate takes over again and ... they meet later in life. For these two it's betrothal to marriage detour. For the leads it's a betrothal through to their real marriage after a few years of marriage. You know what I mean. But all four undergo a lot of changes and development along the way.

Buddhists accept that there will be suffering in life. In fact, there will be a great deal of loss right up until the moment when you lose your own life. So, to deal with the losses, one must not become too attached to what you have. If you have too much attachment. If you grasp too hard and try not to let go, you will only cause yourself much more unnecessary pain. Don't fight the inevitable. It's not the loss but how you prepare for and meet it that determines how unhappy you will be in life.

So, yes I think she has those two moments of depression and maybe more. But her way of dealing with it is distinctly Buddhist. The calm. The acceptance. The surviving through it all in stillness. She's becomes more and more monk or Buddha like. She may even have reached something like Enlightenment or Nirvana by the time that her life ends. In which case, she may not meet LJQ in a subsequent life because she wouldn't have one.

Anyway, the Buddhist themes are everywhere in this drama, so we may be seeing LX coming close to Buddhist ideals and objectives and even Buddha-hood as the story winds down.