gwennie call

The first five minutes have an entire family being murdered in flashback and an entire village being massacred in 'present day' . Sooooo - maybe not?

Same, same. I actually managed to force myself past it and watch The Story of Yanxi Palace (which has the added bonus of that special Chinese singing which gives me a headache) and I pushed through the terrible male hair, the terrible female hair, the terrible female clothes (look, we have this awesome looking fabric - let's turn it into a sack with sleeves!) because Wu Jin Yan is just amazing as Wei Ying Luo - strangely unimpressive in the Legend of Hao Lan tho - and the story was interesting enough.
In this . . . deep sigh. It's just I'm halfway through the first episode and the subs are translating "shào ye" as Childe (it's a pet peeve of mine with 公子 'gong zi') - thanks I hate it. And both female leads have the baby-voice I hate. And we have an idiot plot - "sure, I'm gonna impersonate someone who's going to the palace for the annual concubine selection pageant - first prize: ending up stuck in the palace for life even if the Emperor forgets about you instantly. There's no way that can go wrong!" I can already predict the painful tragic ending, and nope. Don't wanna.

Love Better than Immortality - I HAVE AND MY BRAIN STILL HURTS. I tried to watch the first two episodes, and ended up dropping it before the second episode ended. Not only were the subs total word salad, Zhao Lusi was making some unfortunate acting choices - at least in Tiger and Rose she toned down her shtick by about 80% to make her "method" bearable. Fake Princess is another one, though. At the beginning, the subs are ok - then I skipped ahead a few episodes (When The Secret Identity Drags on for Too Long: the series), and wow - I have no idea what they're saying to each other. At one point, when there's the eunuch who announces the Emperor, the subs translated the words as "Emperor landing!" This is one of those series where you have graphic torture/tragic death and shenanigans, often in the same episode. So whenever someone was being horribly tortured, all I could think was EMPEROR LANDING. And I laughed. A lot.

Huh, and I looked so much for Liu YiKang - I'm seriously starting to suspect that duckduckgo is NOT a good search engine, even though it isn't as evil as google!
Yeah, re. Princess Weiyoung and fictionalising history, I was mainly referring to Touba Yu, who was not as villainous in real life, as it was the Eunuch Zong Ai who did most of the things Touba Yu does in the show, as well as killing Touba Yu when the latter finally decided to get rid of him.
I will definitely try to edit the show description though - once the show is over and I've been thoroughly spoiled for the ending - it's really misleading, more than these things usually are! I'm putting the show on hold until I know more about the ending - I'd be fine if it were bittersweet like Princess Weiyoung, but I'm not down with some horrendous ending like Goodbye My Princess, like seriously.

Yeah, I watched three episodes and I'm done. You want someone to act younger? How about Tang Min in Chef Hua? In the first few episodes she seems like a teenager and then she matures gradually.

The thing is, when I click on the link for the character name 'Liu Yikang', it sends me to this page: https://kisskh.at/character/liu-yi-long - and Liu Yi Long is listed as the personal name for Emperor Wen of Song.
However, on the dramalist page it also said "fictional character", so I think Liu Yikang is a heavily fictionalised version of Emperor Wen (before becoming Emperor), because everything matches the show description: he is the son of Emperor Wu and his brother was Emperor before him. In fact, at some point in the show PengCheng does mention 'my brother the Emperor', so I guess we're supposed to understand the Emperor's sickly and unfit in some way.
Just like Princess Weiyoung took historical people and facts and changed certain stuff, this is going to do the same, I think.
Also, the show description is weird (so many of them are) - reading it you'd think that Liu Yikang and Shen Li Ge are gonna get married in the first episode, second at the latest - which is, um, not what happens. I think our confusion stems from the fact that the show description calls Yikang the Emperor (he isn't) and even the subs keep calling him and his bother 'king' - they aren't. Also, when other people talk to them, they say "diànxià" (your highness) not "bì xià" , (your majesty) which is what most of these shows calls the Emperor.
I think I'll wait until the show is over and I'll do some editing on the show description.

I love her so much! And I'm really enjoying the actress and her work - which is weird because apparently I've seen her in other things (some of Song of Joy and Battle of the Heaven) - I guess she didn't stand out to me or I didn't like her, idk.

When is this coming out?? Chef Hua is finishing today (the subbed version) and I need to see my girl Tang Min in something else, I can't keep rewatching Chef Hua episodes! I hope her character in this has a temper, too - the best part of Chef Hua is watching characters find out that when Xiaomai gets mad, she gets MAD.

Truly, truly funny. I tried to make sense of it and did some research into the title: the character 拾 has a possible meaning of to collate or arrange? And then maybe from there they found a variant of arrange /collate which - yeah, idk.
The thing is , often the title makers/subbers aren't English speakers in any capacity, and so they don't get the implications of words. They don't need to be native speakers (I'm not), but they need to get what's implied. For example, in one really funny subtitle, I understand how they got 'fumigate' from 'burn incense to mourn someone', but that doesn't make it less wrong (or funny). It's what happens when you only read the first part of the definition (to subject to smoke) and not the second (usually to exterminate insects/pests).

I'm glad I wasn't the only one to think all of the above - also the production design was kinda lacking - the greenscreening was terrible, and when she was with that tribe all I could think of was "Ah yes, the well known Obviously Bad Wigs tribe! Pingting will do well here, as she has the best hair."
Also, I've just had a flashback to that bit in the cave where he's having a seizure or something and she takes all her clothes off for reasons, and she's backlit with her hair whipping around in the wind (inside a cave? where they came to shelter from the weather) and it made me get the giggles.

It's funny you should say that - started watching this because of Princess Weiyoung and boy was I disappointed. Man, Tiffany Tang is so adorable, while Angelababy . . . is not. Ok, so PingTing wasn't the main character as much as Weiyoung obviously was, but still. There's acting happening, while I didn't see much happening on PingTing's face. Also, the endless coming together and separations were really contrived, while in Princess WeiYoung it made sense, every time.

Really late reply, but I read on here that The Story of Yanxi Palace has been removed from official channels - it's not only Qing dynasty but features real characters, albeit adapted to the story. I mean, that's not the reason they gave, it was more like "something something corrupt rich people", but now reading this it's all coming together. (another reason might be that it's pretty racy for a c-drama, but who knows)

Have watched both Nirvana in Fires and loved them! Plan to watch Love in Between, will check out Rise of the Phoenixes, thanks!

I agree. I dropped most of the fluffy rom-coms I tried to watch , and thought I was over my c-drama addiction phase. Then I watched two episodes of The Princess Weiyoung and BAM! woke up 5 days later having mainlined all the episodes. So, it's the romcom which I'm done with - roll on more serious drama.

100% agree. I also usually like Zhao Lusi, but I can't get behind her performance in this . Also, why do most of the 'girl from future goes into past' have the girl acting like a moron? Didn't get past the first episode of this, not trying again.

IT GETS WORSE. There's a new drama coming out soon , and the Chinese title translates to: The Secret of Picking Up the Light. Which is a perfectly valid title, right? I love it so much I'm probably gonna steal it for a future fanfic. Guess what they chose as an English title. Wait, forget guessing, here it is: CONSUMMATION. Yes, that's right, Consummation. No, you didn't read wrong. No, it has nothing to do with the show, which isn't set in Ancient China. Why should it be, I hear people ask? Because it means having sex to legalise a marriage IN THE PAST. This is just the limit, what the actual f. I can't even tell anyone I'm watching this, if it turns out to be good. Hey, what are you watching? Consummation. EXCUUUUUUSE ME?

thank you!

And here I thought 'The Love by Hypnotic' was bad. Consummation??? WHY. Look, I'm too old to dance around the subject: IT MEANS FUCKING. Yes, sure, the fucking that legalises a marriage, whatever - IN THE PAST. Which is why I thought it was going to be a historical thing, until I clicked on it, and having read the summary, I understand less than before. I am on my knees begging whoever comes up with these titles: ask an English speaking person to give the title the once over. Please.

I've watched some episodes of this and I'm trying to plough through but the secondary characters and side stories are sapping my will to live. Can someone please spoil me and tell me which episode Li Che finds out that the princess is in fact a fake princess? Thanks!

I have been watching her in Chef Hua and she is amazing - I kinda love her now! Will supply spoilers if needed!