kpt002

I usually never start watching dramas before all of the episodes are out because I hate this.. Having to have to wait for a week before the next episode. So I truly regret I did not wait with this.

All though this is somewhat off the topic I will share the immediate thoughts I had about their one year separation..

Young people (atleast in the west) do not have this experience anymore, but I was teenager and young adult in the 1990's. No internet, no mobile or smart phones, no instant connection to everyone and specially from abroad it was extremely expencive to call home.

After my second year in High School (I had just turned 18) I went to Denmark for a High School exchange for a year (I am Finnish). I did not speak or understand a word of Danish language and I did not know anyone there. I ended up living with an old Danish couple in the country side who did not speak any other language than Danish. (My mother tongue is Finnish, but I did speak some English already then.)

So suddenly at once I was separated from my family, my friends, my relatives, my culture, my language and everything I knew so far and at the same time I was like dropped in to middle of a totally new environment, surrounded by a culture, language and people I knew nothing of. (There was no google or youtube or other things like that to try to find out what kind of place I was going to. I had basicly seen some photos of the country in my school books and some magazines.)

I was able to make a quick phone call to my parents two times in a month and with my friends we sent letters to each other. If I wrote and sent a letter today, it took seven days for it to travel from Denmark to Finland and if it took my friend a week to write and send a letter back to me, it would then arrive around seven days later: So if I sent a letter to a friend today, I would get her response in about 21 days.

With my best friends our hand written letters to each other often were 10 pages long and we would also send voice messages recoreded on a C-Casette with a tape player. Imagine not being able to hear your friend's voice or your own language spoken in months and then recieving a 60 minutes tape your friend just talking about everything like her average life and recording some new songs in the middle. For the Christmas my friends borrowed a video camera from someone and made me a 30 minutes long VHS video everyone appearing and taking something about their life. It was the only time I got to see them during the whole year.

Anyway, being separated from everyone and everything at home for a year like that was crazy difficult and I did cry many tears because of missing them, but at the same time I learned to understand and speak Danish, got used to living with my Danish family, made Danish friends and after the year when I had to go home, I had to cry again. I remember myself thinking while packing my things then that "I must be crazy wanting to do something like this, always crying cause I am separating from the people I have grown to like and care about."

Now more than 30 years later I still have those closests friends left both from Finland and Denmark and since then I have even lived elsewhere in the world - gone alone and found my people - and made more true human connections like that. So in the end connecting all I have written above to this series and the one year separation of Qing Lang and Chang Yang.. My first thought was: When you find your person (be it a friend or a lover) no time or distance will brake your bond. Only death can truly separate you from someone like that in this life.

Yes, I would love to send some! :)

I understand. Following your own path can sometimes be lonely, but you will find people on the way who will accept you and appreciate you just the way you are. When you are true to yourself the right people will be able to see the real you too. I accepted for a long time ago that many people will think I am weird and my life choises even weirder, but those friends I then have are the real true friends who do not judge or critisize me or my life choises (just like I don't theirs.) We just cheer for each other - and then laugh and/or cry together when needed..

I wish you all the best! (Take baby steps. You will get there!)

Exactly! It feels like I am there with them.

While watching the drama I often think about the people who went location hunting for it. Since there are so many beautifull places and scenes here. They have worked hard!

P.s. I am in the country side at the moment at a cottage by a river. First I went for a walk in the forrest then warmed a traditional Finnish sauna (with fire) and from sauna I went to the river to swim. This is the best thing I know in life. So here with: Very Finnish greetings to you from me! :)

I have to add that in Finland we have lots of forrests, lakes and rivers and it is common for people to go to their simple forrest cottages by some wild water to relax from the city life.

My favourite season is autumn when there are lots of different berries and mushrooms in the woods and I can spend hours alone wandering in the forrest looking for mushrooms to pick. On the way you can meet some wild animals like foxes, deers and moose and spending time in the forrest always gets me grounded and makes me forget all my worries.

So maybe that is why I love this drama so much. Everytime ChangYang disappears alone to the woods I am so with him.. :)

Thanks for the explanation. I did not get the gene desing stuff enitrely so now I got it. (There is some culturally bound symbolism that sometimes just "does not reach me" cause I am North European.)

And this sentence also stayed with me.. "When really, courage only asks you to face yourself honestly. To admit you’re afraid. To accept the reality that scares you.."

I was again thinkig about it through my own life and now when you put it this way: "You don’t win by being acceptable. You win by refusing to let someone else hold the pen.."

This really has been my life story.

I think I commented to you already before, I am 50 years old now and all my life I have been walking my own paths (I really relate to the character of ChangYang - he is like the male version of me) even when people critisized me and called me irrational or what ever I quietly kept my head and followed my own "intuition". Now after being alive this long and been through a lot, the most proud I am in my life is that my life looks like mine. No-one else wrote it and it often took unwanted or surprising turns, but in the end everything just made me grow to the person I am today. I don't have much "economic prosperity" but I am rich in experiences and in the end I have no regrets.

When people grow old they do not usually regeret the things they did (we all make mistakes and fail sometimes), but they regeret the things they wanted to do, but left undone - because of lack of courage or because other people critisized them or what ever.

So as I see it, it again comes to this: "Courage only asks you to face yourself honestly. To admit you’re afraid. To accept the reality that scares you.." And still go towards what ever it is, if that is what you really want.

I also see it this way. Like how many times and different situations LQ protetcted and defended XF.. And how much he supported and encouraged him. It will be very interesting to see how this ends.

As I see it XF realized that his future would always be as the fake husband of LQ's sister and LQ then marrying a woman, they would be having this secret relationship behind everyone's backs forever. So he decided to blow it all up for better or worse. Anything else, but not continue eternally in the situation as it is now.

He can not be openly gay so he is trying to cover up everything in public for everyone and doing things for Xiaofan behind everyone's backs. For some reason he does not talk and explain things to Xiaofan so XF has to live in uncertainity.

Ofcourse, that is what I meant. He took the "all or nothing" stand.

Did you not see the last scene of the ep 10 before it ended?? He obviously plotted for something bigger.

The absolute last scene in ep 10.. What a plot twist. I guess Xiao Fan finally got tired of it all. Now I have to wait for a week to see where it leads.

Where did I write that??

I just commented that this is a more universal story than just some restrictive ideological definitions and categorizations, because you wrote in your previous comments fex.:

"It’s authentic, it’s true and there’s no nonsense like they’re just “gay for each other,” for the sake of a country that is unaccepting. They are gay. They admit they’re gay."

"This is a drama about two men as they navigate this love.."

If you can't see it in a wider perspective then sure treat it just like another BL drama.

There are many other forms of "forbidden loves" than just the ones between two men or two women. This same story could be used in any of them - like a story between an older celebrity woman and a younger man who lets her breathe and exist outside that celebrity world. The sexual orientation is not the main point in this drama. It is just one of the plots carrying the story line.

"So no, I don’t think he had to die because the plot demanded it. I think he’d been falling for four years, and the story finally let him touch the ground."

Even without understanding the lyrics I felt the same. But thank you for the translation and your beautifull interpretation of them.

I am a Finnish woman - 50 years old already - and I have lived through and experienced A LOT during my life so far (also always had cultural connections to East Asia) and this whole drama just tastes and smells life. The older you get the more winding your path of life has (most likely) been and you start to value and appreciate all of the experiences you have had, even the most hurtfull ones. Because everything is about contrast. After suffering the happiness is sweeter and after losing something important the value of what you still have becomes greater. Watching this drama makes me look and feel back at my own life and be gratefull for all of the experinces I have had. All of them combined made me the person who I am today.

Also this drama is beautifull in every level: Visually, music, sounds and the philosophy behind it. Pure art.

I just hope they do not kill all the main characters before the end!

In the real life people who commit suicide often hide it from their loved ones. Those who talk about doing it, often don't do it and those who remain silent and pretend that everything is ok end up doing it.

Why do you have to obsess about their "gayness"?? As I see it the whole series and its messagages go far wider in philosophy about nature, life, death, longing etc. It is not connected to anyone's sexual preferenses or even romantic life. It is about being a humanbeing, connected - or disconnected - to our trueselves and nature and our original environment which we were able to listen, read and understand before the modern times.

The visuals, the sound, the music and the storytelling style of the series take me back to the best Chinese film classics of the 1990s and 2000s. This can be considered real art rather than just entertainment.

P.s. In the first few episodes Qinglang asked Changyang: "Do you like men?" and C. answered: "Does it matter?". Later Q asked it another time and got the same response. The 3rd time Q. asked the same question C. answered: "Is your name/Are you 'Men'?" meaning that this was going to be something beyond earthly lables.

They burned the shoe and maybe some of his other belongings on an open fire so there will be ashes. As Changyang said "he left us a clean shoe".. So the body was not brought down. If Chanyang saw it he decided to leave it on the mountains. What I was left wondering is if it was accident or if Tian did it on purpouse.

Same here. I usually do not start to watch dramas before all the episodes have aired, but now I did that mistake. If the drama is good I just want to be sucked into the plot 100% and waiting for a week for the next episode is pure torture.

The soundtrack is so good! The visuals and the music of this drama reminds me of the good old Chinese and Hong Kongese movies from 1990's and early 2000. Like the intensity and the over all ambience of the story telling feels the same. I hope it carries like this all the way untill the end.

"We are all individuals and should not be forced into any kind of boxes." That is the message I got from this and I agree. I was not sure about if I liked this or not in the beginning, but I liked the way it ended.