ender1979

Yeah like Chinese government bans time travel stories, right?

He was in the Trailers 😁

I feel the same and i am curious to where the change leads.

Great for you if you can Form your opinion after one ep, , and thanks for sharing your thoughts. That leaves you with time, to support half of the cast that you like, maybe in their other Dramas. Good luck in Finding there something you might like and farwell👋🏻

well she knew enough, to create the most powerful merchant dynastie of her time. that is , until the royal family, had to be afraid, and then they removed her. she gambled, and like all games of thrones, she lost.

in this game of power , i actually pity no one, you lose or you win, you die or you be able to marching on.
thats why i dont actually dont care, neither in the novel, nor in the drama, who ends up in the power seat.
they all knew, they played that game, so their own lives were always at stake.
who cares for love in such intrigue environment anyway, lol.

without having watched the eps properly yet, my best guess is, the sheer expectations, that the quality of season 1 has evoked in the national as well as international audience, it was more or less, a very high chance, that S2 would disappoint.
not in that sense, that S2 is "bad", but expectations were like, SKY ROCKETING. so yeah, who could live up that kind of hype?
nearly 20 years ago, there was a US Show , called "Heroes" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heroes_(American_TV_series)) i remember those early days, woah i am telling you, S1 was a worldwide sucess . illegal downloads and streams went through the roofs as well.
any season after that did then disappoint.

in terms of c-dramas, i imagine, the only drama i can think of, in terms of popularity, is The Untamed. If they were to make S2?
damn, hell would break loose. no matter what they do, they could not satisfy the audience.
(or nirvana in fire 1. too brilliant. Nirvana in fire 2? damn good drama, good actors as well. but no match for S1.)

recreating an initial success?
is something, that one show, or one movie out of 100 may have been successful with.
the rest.. well yeah,

i am trying to watch S2 as a more or less, standalone, and not placing the burden of the sucess of S1 on them. this might be a viable way, to not being disappointed, if it does not live up the expectations.

i havent watch any eps properly (this work week had for me like 60 hours, i am so deadly tired, this is saturday, and all i managed, is to sleep till lunch time, went out to actually buy some food, now home, i want to watch, but i am SOOO tired, and sleep deprived)..

anyway, what i wanted to say, i quite actually enjoyed the friendship between FX and YBY in the novel. i am very curious , how that will developed on the drama. and if they made any changes.

you know the coolest twist of the show is actually, that is has the same set up as , planet of the apes.
hahaha, everyone thinks, they went back to the past, or some parallel universe , meanwhile... yeah, nope.

well, he and cheng pingping probably were head to head , concerning the intelligence, but alas, he was prince and then king.
if i were ye qingmei, and would want to improve or make betterment to the world, well, the highest seat of power, would be the way to go , i guess.

your platform, are they for the chinese audience, or the rest of the world?
cool job, btw!
remembers me, when me and my youngest uncle, 25 years ago, when we were young, my uncle was working at cinema theaters. me and his friends, because that was like the era before everything went online or was being monitored online, we could watch movies prior to official release.

the "golden age" of TVB and hongkong televsion was the 80/90s.
after that , and once South korean pop culture, and chinese pop culture / c-dramas took over, i am pretty much sure, that is when TVB and HK dramas declined.
they also did not have the freedom of writing the scripts as they had under british rule.
(like stories dealing with homosexuality, or japanese occupation, in whatever era that might have been , or tons of other stuff like corruption within their police force and so on. sure, Hongkong series always were largely about wuxia, xianxia or whatever that is all called nowadays, but their modern contemporary dramas had always had lots of critical elements .

with china taking over in 1997 , that went all down, and facing economic problems and the competition from Mainland C-Dramas?
it was a sure sign that sooner or later tvb would be dead.
they still try to survive by playing on the nostalgia of overseas chinese communities (like the ones i am from, but honestly, if they had good looking youg actors and actresses? if i were them, i would learn mandarin, and go to china as well. thats the place where the money and music nowadays is, even if the competition is stiff as hell, and the sexism is in no way better than 30 or40 years ago in hongkong.

and the generation like mine, who still remembers those decades, in a couple of decades we will all be dead, and then there is simply no one else, who will mourn for Hongkong.

the divide between the generations is simply too clear.
i am gen X, my gen Z or millenials cousins ? they are all fans of either K-Pop and K-dramas, or they are fans of J-Pop and J-dramas , literally and figuratively.
i grew up with grandparents, who still talked cantonese with me, and watched those TVB shows with me, thats how i learned cantonese.
my cousins? they all went to study korean studies or japanese studies, and went for the interships or abroad university stays?
to japan or south korea.

i am the same as you and at the same time, not like you.
i am nearly 46, so yeah, 90% of the actors in this show, i watched growing up through the 80s and 90, and even part into the 00s ( stopped watching HK dramas, more or less, after i graduated university. Making money and making my career, was more important, and that didnt leave much time. plus, US television was easier and acessible, i guess , even though i had been a person /chinese descendant who grew up in a western country/ who did more or less spend 20 years watching both, HK and US.

I agree with all the sexism and the greed and so on, but it doesnt really bothers me. This is how south east asian societies are, back then, and still now. the classism, racism, sexism, colorism and the discrimination , its not just Hongkong, its either equal or worse, from what i can gather from afar. in japan, in south korea, in hongkong, in mainland china, in singapore, its all the same.
i am too jaded, i guess, to be bothered by that. oh, but thats of course, not the only reason, i also too, grew up in a family, thank god, we were not rich, the opposite, but yeah, one of my grandfathers, had two wives, so i always had three grandmothers. so big huge family structures is not strange to me. i have 20 uncles and aunts, and over 65 cousins, male and female.

i just watched this to feel nostalgia, and btw, wow i am really impressed actually, that the actors DO look more or less their age, and the viewer is allowed to see grey hair, wrinkles, and old and aging people, with only some filter, and not like, in mainland china dramas, where all the idol/actors/actresses are filtered and whitewashed and blurred to some unrecognizable amount.

here, i only wonder about sharmaine and raymond, the main couple. they do look too smoothed, either the make up artist is really great.

i will watch this to the end. and will come back to you, for spoilers, if its important to you.

i am surprised, not much screen time yet, but I like the guy who plays Yan Bing Yun , he is holding up good so far!
that other actor, xz, only had a few minutes at the end of S1, so really, the switch doesn't matter that much anyway.
most important things, hahah the emperor, the spy master, and the father of the ML.
and of course, the ML himself.

are the eng subs any good?

If you and your grand daughter get sued for crime, we will raise funds for you, to get you out of jail 😂😂😂😂🫣🙈🙈🙈🥳🥳🥳👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻

Well, where did i dispute, that the drama was the hit and the novel was not? I was just replying to your part, where you said, you are curious where it hieß, when FX Fonds out. And in the novel, he did find out, and let the emperor live, thats what i said.

i think, i would go insane, if i didnt have work, to distract me from the knowledge that its going to be aired , lol.
thanks to the time zone difference, once i am home in the evening, i can dl and watch all eps at once.
how i survive going to work on friday, is another story...

well, in the novel FX still didnt kill he emperial father , right?
despite knowing it was him, who killed his mother. (or rather, he didnt killed her himself , right? its been so long, since i read the novel, i thought, he just knew about all the plots to kill her, and didnt intervene.)

the FX in the novel is pretty much coldhearted, despite being able to have some genuine feelings for his many love interests.

its only spoiler of the novel.
i am fairly sure, they will change some stuff for the drama.

lol, maybe they created a so called "gated community" within those mega cities. like with their own security teams patroling the fences, and keep all those poor masses out.
i mean, i heard, gates communities are like not that uncommon in india, like the super rich, they live in one spot, which is like all space, glamour and glitz, and 1 meter across their fence, there are the indian slums.

maybe its partially the same in china.

either way, recently, i was rewatching forever and ever, the contempary drama with allen ren and bai lu, i think, and wow, i thought, wow, which cities are those two living again? SOOO empty , i mean i got it, he was super rich, and she was a not poor either. but their living bubble was really a world on their own.