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The Double 墨雨云间 (2024) Dir. Bai Yun Mo, Lu Hao Ji Ji, Ma Shi Ge – Ep. 5-40

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Rising With The Wind Douyin Update 2023/11/17.

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I want a chow yun fat - michelle yeoh reunion where gong jun and zhong chuxi play younger versions of them

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Is there a god in this world?

This is a question that Jiang Hu tries to answer in the drama. Her final explicit conclusion is that there is NONE. This fits well with the narrative of 1) Jiang Hu giving up TY as she cannot have everything she wants; and 2) Jiang Hu's acceptance that people make mistakes and she must learn to forgive (her father's crimes, Gao Yi's betrayal, bad cards dealt to her by her business partners). The weight of the second one is heavier for me that is why I was confused when a latter scene was with her ignoring Xu Si - this is the person who has the most forgivable sin to her given #2's logic. I even said out loud that the editing was probably off, and that scene with Xu Si should have been put in before her god conclusion.

But upon pondering the parallels of Jiang Hu and Zhao Yang's story, I now understand why; because as much as Zhao Yang's savior is real, Jiang Hu does have a god in her world.

Let us review Zhao Yang's arc. Unlike the main leads, the love story of Zhao Yang and Ji An extends 10 years before the drama, and for these many years, ZY's mistaken identification of Gao Yi as her swimming accident savior was an obstacle in ZY's acceptance of her feelings of Ji An. The savior problem was solved, and it was the path for ZY to finally fully embrace Ji An as her lover.

Now, the god question was first mentioned in the 2nd episode and had been revisited several times in various points in the drama.

For Jiang Hu, at the beginning, her father was god, both for his social power as a big time businessman, but also for being a personal god to jiang hu - her protector and first love. That's why at Jiang Qi Sheng's downfall, Xu Si's quip insulting his godhood was too painful for Jiang Hu. At the destruction of her god, her whole world and existence also crumbled.

Just as ZY mistakes Gao Yi, he is also, in Jiang Hu's mind, the most likely substitute. He is the only person after her dad that she trusted, so upon his betrayal, she decided to end her life.

We see the evolution of Jiang Hu's answer in the drama. She declares herself as god when prepping for a mental battle with Xu Si in her bid to rent the factory to restart TY's operations. This was her turning point of her empowerment, from the humiliation and pain of her downfall, she will now start taking charge and start winning.

It is then slightly revisited (although it felt like it just went over Jiang Hu's head) when Xu Si was discouraging her from putting too much pressure on herself. In this conversation, Xu Si declares twice, that he is not god: he makes mistakes and can accept failure.

Finally, after losing TY and just before watching the factory get torn down, she declares that there is no god in the world. She does not have the power to stop the destruction of TY. It was her realizing that her will alone is not enough to change the direction of the wind of the world. It was a good ending for a girl who started out arrogant - first from her father's power then through her own strength - and finally maturing into someone who recognizes her limitation, her humanity.

I was happy with this conclusion. At this point, I declared that I loved episode 40 already. That was why the scene with Xu Si after is thematically unacceptable. It does not make sense that she did not forgive him at that point.

This was because the storyteller wanted to direct us to a different answer. Jiang Hu's conclusion is not final. Just as Zhao Yang finds her real benefactor, Jiang Hu realizes that her world does have a god. Not someone who is omnipotent or infallible, but someone who loved her enough to make things right. After all, Xu Si's earlier declaration is actually a subversion.

Everything that Jiang Hu's father lost, the things that Jiang Hu failed to protect, even those she threw away (her shoes, her life - he saved her from suicide - and Xu Si), Xu Si returned to her.

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Episode 1

This show has awesome characterization.

Xu Si: The guy maximizes his time. There is an event, but he uses the lull to close his last deal for his current company, attends the stocklisting ceremony, says goodbye to his boss (who does not want to let him go), and not a minute later, starts working on a deal for his new job.

He is a luxurious guy, but he dresses down when he visits a factory, so much so that he was mistaken for a lowly junior assistant.

Drama gives us some false impressions about him in these early scenes. 1) he is manipulative (a. the "trap" statement - he tells the other party a trap is laid out for them outside of the negotiation, when it seems he is the one trapping them. of course, we know later on that the trap statement is actually true. b. his asking about the "daughter" to use her to get close to her father - later on we suspect this is only half true as he seems to already be interested in her). 2) he is vindictive (a. he is angry that mr. jiang has not talked to him, thus, he intended to bring down free unicorn/TY - not true, he did not do the company any harm. b. used the money to buy hamburger as revenge for jiang hu looking down on him - again, not true as we see him keep the bill and note).

*xu si using jiang hu to get close to her dad immediately tickled my fancy, I like tropes like that, laying down a trap and getting entrapped in it.

*xu si felt inconsiderate when he made an eating wu guanglei follow jiang hu

*xu si immediately understood what jiang hu was doing (from the fake fight, the internet trend manipulation, to getting zhao yang fired) and was not against those actions, instead admires them haha. honestly, he looked smitten by her because of these so that his instinct was to approach her in a flirtatious manner right away

*xu si has a stylish aunt who takes care of his clothing and disapproves if he dresses cheaply

*xu si does not hide his enthusiasm in waiting for jiang hu, I think that was cute. again, it was vague for me

*xu si lets guanglei think something happened between him and jiang hu the night before

Jiang Hu: people in the office are used to her strutting around as the boss' daughter. I initially thought she actually had a marketing position in the company, but drama says otherwise. She still does work for the company though, given that she organized the live streaming anniversary event. She has a very entitled aura, but it seems to be harmless. If anything, my first impression of her was a dumb spendthrift - which is further reinforced when she left her unscarred shoes on the streets.

*but the old apartment scene is a GREAT choice of exposition. not only does the audience become curious on what she's doing there, the audience also feels xu si's interest about her also go up. double win. I love that jiang hu is also unreadable in this scene, there is no clear reaction from her, which makes the audience wonder 1) is she getting the hamburger from this area? 2) is she buying textile supplies for the factory? 3) is she getting knock off shoes? 4) was she annoyed by that old lady who knocked off her shoes? 5) why did she throw those shoes? seriously, that sequence is genius in heightening up the curiosity about our female lead

*about the dumb part - the show immediately debunks this by showing that FL is smart and has commanding presence. this is further enhanced by xu si's admiring looks (since xu si has been established as competent, his approval gives weight to jiang hu's competence as well). People say the main leads have no chemistry but I completely disagree. The main leads are clearly shown to have a meeting of the minds (from stylish clothes, to manipulation) very early on. For me, they are one of the most compatible pairings I've come across.

*her confrontation with zhao yang reveals she's manipulative. I think most audiences started to dislike her because of this but I did not because between the two characters presented, jiang hu's authority had won me over zhao yang's submissiveness to her mom. it is irrational, and I dont know if it was the failure of the ZY actress or intentional on the storytelling, but jiang hu is just a more likeable person for me. jiang hu is smart and unpredictable while ZY is your normal boring usual female lead at this point. jiang hu is unapologetic, she has a plan and she will execute it - pretty much the same thing she accuses xu si later on in the series.

*her reaction to xu si: she knows him! did she find him cute at first sight? did she ask her dad about him? again we dont know. she acted annoyed but she definitely played along. a part of me thinks they actually slept together that night (although, they most likely did not).

*the box of shoes, did jiang hu just gave her maid the cheap shoes she got earlier? this makes her character shady because she literally threw away nice louboutins. in episode 2, we realize she's actually genuinely nice to her nanny.

*she matches clothes with xu si! they look so good together.

*she held out his tie out in the open, she is no chaste girl and plays the liberal type (later on, we learn she's been in love with one guy her whole life and is actually very shy when she truly likes someone)

Zhao Yang: the girl is an art nerd, she will find the opportunity to paint anywhere, anytime. she is a nurtured employee as her bosses pick her up. and she gets the annoying mother trope, so at this point, I was sure my main leads would be free from the family drama staples haha.

Ji An: Honestly, no feelings for him this episode. he was just a wallpaper for me because they have established that he's someone who takes care of zhao yang.

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just normal fangirling mode. 2 weeks after and I am still not over Rising with the wind.

I'll try to make this time productive by reviewing Xu Si - Jiang Hu scenes:

Trailer:

I was randomly browsing youtube for c-dramas when I saw this trailer (Nov 7), and I instantly fell in love. This is the right amount of intensity, color and feel for me. Something in my heart told me that whoever the editor of this clip is, is my type of person, and that I would be interested more of this:

I probably got attracted by the investor vs entrepreneur angle, and liked the desperation/determination of the underdog female lead. It was interesting that the antagonist is actually obviously the male lead.

From my browsing history, I watched another one:

The struggle of the female lead is strong in this one. The line "falling from the clouds" is a clear indication that she is someone who lost everything. Male lead's voice over on the purpose of finance is an echo of what I learned in school, it's the very romantic depiction of the capital allocation - which usually has a cold, detached image. Then there is a patriotic insert in the end, completely my taste. I loved this show already.

Then, I went to see another one:

Funeral, attempted suicide.... plus the determination of the female lead in the earlier trailers - yup, yup, I am loving everything. "Investment Elite vs Bankrupt Girl" - enemies to lovers is my #1 trope. Heartless bastard becomes soft because of love, not a favorite but it looks good on this drama. "There's no partner who doesn't break up" - oooohh, I love the climactic conflict already.

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jiang hu

i first encountered that word in crouching tiger, hidden dragon. i just thought it meant the jungle/forest/woods where wuxia characters often get ambushed by bandits. the word stayed in my consciousness though

in meeting jiang hu in rising with the wind, i fell in love. i feel like i am xu si, seeing how awesome jiang hu is. i think this is further emphasized by the 2nd love team. seriously, zhaoyang is an artist and artist making beautiful art is the easiest thing to fall in love with. but the drama did zhaoyang dirty in that no one would fall head over heels zhaoyang in this drama. yang jian came in fully smitten by her already. contrast that with jiang hu, you can definitely understand why xu si wants to pull her into a kiss after everytime she wins

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this is where i should stop

i started my 1+ years of "relaxation" with the autumn ballad

now jiang hu and xu si are together, i should end it with rising with the wind

i'm done.

let us see where the wind will blow when the sun rises

<3

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they have released promotional materials for the drama, and I'm avoiding it. because gj looks at cx (and probably all his other co-stars) like she's the moon, and I cannot have hope. I will not ship, I will not add to my heartbreaks. I will stick to the fictional characters.

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Xu Si

+ Xu Si is the less exciting character between our two leads. yup, he is cool but he has less adversities stacked against him.

+ I am wondering what his arc would be

+ So here is a guy who seemed to have nothing but success in his life. because of this, he is convinced that his mindset is the right one.

+ one pov is that he simply does not prefer the stress of running a business (his mom was probably really stressed and was not around much while he was growing up), or, he just disregards the opinion of the elders that managing/growing a business yourself is a nobler endeavor than just financing developing businesses (these are all shared by his mom, jiang hu's dad and aunt yue). will the growth be in the form of acknowledging/appreciating the efforts of his mother by experiencing the hardships real time through jiang hu?

+ he says he wants to put value in inefficient companies - now there is nothing wrong with that in my opinion, so i cannot see where the growth would come from that

+ a more dramatic conflict could be between love and career. do you choose the managing director position over the future mother of your children? this does not fit the confucianist temper of c-dramas though so i dont see it playing out. as one of his co-investors said, career and family life are EQUALLY important

+ so maybe xu si's character development matches his personality. the weight is more cerebral than emotional, which is ok, but not dramatic

+ is it is his cold hearted computations? is the drama saying that efficiency does not come without compassion? that founders are not kpi machines and thus dealing with them requires some leniency and understanding? yup, this could be an arc, and even if it a serious one in the financial sector that runs the world, it does not make for a compelling character development

regarding this, this is currently the most obvious arc for him. he is shown to be very calculated, when his actions do not make sense on the surface, it is because he is actually serving a deeper (more nefarious) goal beneath. he is a guy with plans a-z with z actually being the real plan all along.

as set up, we have ex gf, who consistently tells audiences that xu si was ruthless with her when they were together, no softening of the blows, no excuses; rationality is the name of the game and the only acceptable result is profit

he was like this even with jiang hu in the beginning. was he insulted when she mistakes him for a junior secretary? no. he takes her money, buys a burger and plot to run her father's obsolete shoe factory to the ground.

and then we see him start to soften up. that's ok, he has a hidden agenda for teng yue anyway. but then we see him start to make contradict himself and make excuses. he told his boss he just needs a majority stake on teng yue, so why does he help jiang hu with operations? okay, maybe to increase teng yue's evaluation for a latter sale. xu si continues to manufacture justifications, to maintain an image of himself as a rational investor. what cannot be denied, is that delila has come for xu si's samson.

but can you see xu si, humanity is not separate from profits. they only separate when stakeholders refuse to be kind. value could be created both from viciousness and consideration.

anyway, but baoxing boss could see differently, right. a dollar today is greater than a dollar+ tomorrow and xu si could be forced to choose between keeping teng yue for jiang hu or keeping his career

+ he does serve a lot in the romance department though, so I'll stop complaining haha

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rising with the wind 23 - 24

I'm barely interested in Zhao Yang and Gao Yi, but their scene left the most impact for me again

+ so Teng Yue has a distribution problem. not even Xu Si has a network for this. but who has direct access to customers? Yup, department store director Gao Yi

+ I see Jiang Hu as having several arcs here.

Pride was tackled early on, we saw her sell her stuff, we saw her go after creditors like a gangster loan shark. Now she takes pride in her shamelessness. At the same time we saw her recover her pride when she faced her former friends, now the pride she holds is on more stable ground as she earned it herself.

Her business know how is an ongoing learning experience.

Trusting other people again is another hurdle. I think that her hesitation with Xu Si is more than being focused on business, or having a line between personal and professional life. It is also about trust. She lumped Xu Si as one of those "who twisted the knife". It is something that will be tested again before the series ends I think.

I think another ongoing arc is forgiveness. Jiang Hu has worked with Wang Zhenghan already. But as we can see, even with Jiang Hu's forgiveness, that relationship will continue to be adversarial. The Cloud Footwear subplot also seems to indicate a wariness of the director due to the sins of Jiang Hu's dad. Now we have GAO YI. The biggest scar that Jiang Hu carries is from Gao Yi's betrayal. For her to work with him again for Teng Yue's distribution, she would have to melt that huge hardened scab on her heart. She may not be able to forgive him fully, but she has to accept that she would have to acknowledge his existence, and even accept help from him

+ another thing I love about that Gao Yi - Zhao Yang scene is that this is the 5th triangle on this implicit love pentagon we have. Zhao Yang is finally close to Gao Yi, closer than Jiang Hu. For someone who always looses to Jiang Hu, always inferior, this might be some relief. But here she is, needing to be the bridge for Gao Yi and Jiang Hu for Teng Yue. Like being in the middle of a lover's quarrel. Zhao Yang is unaware of the depth of the rift between the two, and from her point of view, she could easily lose Gao Yi again. I just love the implicit heartbreak in that scene.

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ep 14: gao yi

zhaoyang said that she and janghu have similar tastes (food, music... men)

zhaoyang and jiang hu could easily exchanged partners (in fact, i ship jiang hu with yang jian so much)

wondering if gao yi is a mixture of xu si and yang jian. gao yi seemed to be very caring like yang jian (took care of jiang hu when they were kids, saved zhaoyang, and resumed caring for jiang hu when he found out she's struggling) while also being able to separate matters rationally like xu si (separtes jiang hu from her father in his quest for revenge)

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if jiang hu did not like xu si's advances one bit, she would smack him

xu si, who loves her, understands this about her personality. he is also aware of the problems of power dynamics as we saw in the episode where he met zhaoyang. the thing is, he sees jiang hu as an equal (and I believe that is fundamental on why he fell for her. A VC boy -as aunt yue calls him - would go for a girl that would fit him, not someone lower than him). in the earlier episode in the gym, when jiang hu first begged him, he immediately asked her to stop because he was uncomfortable with her lowering herself to him. even if jiang hu had lost all her clothes, car and status, xu si still did not see her as inferior. because he had seen her in top form, he had seen her competence. it is true that he did not see her potential to turn a big dead business around, but he did not see that jiang hu fell lower than him, he just wanted her to channel her energies to less risky prospects. and even when they started to negotiate, he did not make the road easy for her. he gave her difficult tasks, watched her falter from afar and then saw her rise from those mistakes. that is why even if xu si lets her call him boss, he does not see himself as her boss. because he saw that she earned the important bits herself (towards the later episodes, we do see him stumbling and being lenient to her, but that is a problem with himself, she can probably fix things herself but he cannot see her suffer too much). in his eyes, they are partners.

he senses that he has a chance with jiang hu that is why he pursues her. others might see that his actions are too bold, but remember how they were set up at the beginning. jiang hu is no innocent lass herself, she can flirt and manipulate men too. for xu si, jiang hu's reactions are not out of fear but out of being overwhelmed by the sincerity of the situation. remember when xu si put a band aid on her wound while eating at the convenience store? did jiang hu ran away out of disgust at xu si's sudden display of concern? no, but she just did not know how to react to it.

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Happiness Will Come To You.

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strangers again ep 3-4

way better than ep 1-2, glad i stuck around

and i’m finally rooting for the main couple. the ex-husband is still an a**hole but female lead loves him, so what can I do, I cannot go against the longing of the female lead. but at the same time, I want to see a drama of people falling out of love and really becoming strangers with each other.

good things it did:

1) cleared up the cheating issue. it’s still bad that he lied so i dont know why it’s okay for me. maybe because female lead got to forgive him and reflect on her own shortcomings? it helps that it is 3 years later after their divorce. it does not make logical sense, but emotionally, I can understand the ex wife forgiving him

2) I love the custody topic where there is no clear right or wrong. both parents love the kid but they just could not be together anymore

3) the drama is so succesful at portraying that the female lead is still not over her ex-husband. i love the feeling this drama is giving me haha

4) I love how the drama seem to be tackling this process of being in love and then going on separate ways. As an audience, I feel like female lead who wants to get back with ex husband, but I hope that slowly, the drama will guide me into really falling out of love with him and into accepting the end of their relationship and being back to strangers :)