#maybe it's because a majority of historical chinese dramas are from the Qing dynasty

[yello-nailpolish]

I’m not usually one for rewatching dramas I’ve already seen but there are these three that I’ve noticed I could rewatch and rewatch. 

1. Delightful Girl Chunhyang 

2. Startling By Each Step

3. Yanxi Palace

I almost rewatched Ruyi’s Royal Love in the Palace. I think I have a thing for Qing dynasty dramas. which is weird because I’m not really into their clothing. I like the flowy stuff more but I have only ever rewatched Qing dynasty dramas LMAOO 

[lianabrooks]

THE SONG OF GLORY - Early Review

Title: THE SONG OF GLORY Country: China Genre: Historical Political Drama With High Romance 

Basic Premise: Li Ge is an orphan raised by a one-eyed man as a dancer and assassin during the era of the Liu Song Dynasty (420-479). She has been trained to hate the ailing Prince Peng Cheng (Liu Yi Kang... there’s some confusion over the translation of this in the subtitles). Li Ge has been told the prince is responsible for her parents’ death and he is cruel, abusing the people in power. Her group uses the powerful Minister Lu to arrange a dance to honor the Dowager Mother as a chance to assassinate the prince. This fails when the prince’s younger brother takes the fatal arrow for him and Li Ge sees her sworn sister murdered by Minister Lu. Now isolated and hunted Li Ge needs to find out the truth of what happened and why with the help of mysterious man who is hunting Minister Lu for his own reasons.  

How Much Have I Watched? The first 5 episodes.

Rating: 5/5 - good writing, excellent cinematography, good plot so far... 

This is a beautifully shot Chinese historical drama with dramatic sets and the typical historical plot of someone trying to take the throne.

The twist is that the romance is getting decent time (unlike some dramas) and the main couple is on screen in every episode so far.

... trying to stab someone through a silk banner counts as flirting.... right?

Representation: The mother (General’s Wife) has severe mental health issues brought on by her daughter being kidnapped eighteen years ago. Her health is a crucial piece of conflict in episodes 3-6 and influences Li Ge’s decisions. 

SPOILERY REVIEW  FOR THE FIRST FIVE EPISODES  & PREDICTIONS  BELOW THE BREAK

MAJOR CHARACTERS:

Li Ge: The OG assassin dancer trained by a creepy old dude with an elaborate eye patch her entire life was about killing the prince. She’s not only gorgeous, she’s lethal and clever, and predictably every guy in the world has fallen in love with her by the end of E2. Including Minister Lu, the 6th prince, and the prince she’s planning to kill (fourth son). She manages to lead a double life because of clever masks and the fact that no man alive can keep his eyes on her face long enough to remember what she looks like. 

Prince Yi Kang/Cheng Peng: Fourth Prince (maybe?) not actually the Emperor because his father is somewhere very ill. The prince also presents himself as very ill, but it’s a ruse. He’s faking severe illness to buy time to figure out what to do about the powerful Lu family who are backed by his grandmother. When he’s not surviving assassination attempts at home he’s wearing a fake mustache and alternating between flirting with, being saved by, or saving Li Ge who he doesn’t recognize from the original assassination attempt (they don’t get a moment together). All he wants is a stable kingdom. Everyone else wants him dead, except Le Qing, Li Ge’s adopted sister.

Senior Brother: Li Ge’s assassin brother. One of four of the group who survive E1.

Junior Brother: The youngest assassin. One of four who survive E1.

Ah Nu: Li Ge’s sworn sister. Trained as an assassin after being abandoned she has a bracelet left by her parents and she plans to go find them after the prince is dead. She is fatally injured during the assassination attempt and, knowing this (and also because she promised the creepy master) she disguises herself as Li Ge and fights Minister Lu who is forced to stop his own assassination plot so he isn’t executed on the spot. He was supposed to let the assassins go, when he doesn’t, Li Ge swears revenge. She takes Ah Nu’s bracelet as a reminder but this leads to her being identified as the missing daughter of the Shen family. 

General Shen & Wife: The Shen’s are a happy, loving couple whose service to the Emperor put them in the uncomfortable position of having to marry off their newly found daughter to the prince. Li Ge accepts this as a way to kill the prince and Minister Lu, but Mother Shen is not happy about it at all.

Shen Le Qing: Not the blood daughter of General Shen and his wife, she is their niece, legally adopted and added to the family list when her parents died. Without the true Shen daughter at home she has been raised as Mother Shen’s favorite, pampered and blessed, and expecting to marry the prince some day.When Li Ge looks like she might threaten this happiness she tries to get rid of her. When Li Ge fails to die in the mountains when bandits attack (because the prince was there to rescue her/be rescued by her) Li Ge is forced to return to the city the same day Sixth Prince comes to order Le Qing’s marriage to the prince. Minister Lu arrives and insists Le Qing not marry (although Li Ge was going to let it happen and use a visit to murder the prince), but threatens the Shen family. Li Ge accepts the marriage order and faces off against Minister Lu who knows she is an assassin. 

Minister Lu: Powerful and power-hungry Lu is eager to take everything, including the throne from the sick Emperor and his ailing son. He doesn’t realize how smart the prince is until it’s too late and he’s in a very dangerous game of trying to secretly raise an army. If he’d honored his agreement with the assassins he could have had it all. Li Ge would have left. The prince would be unprotected when he needed help the most, and Lu would have had the throne. Angering Li Ge is going to get him killed. I hope his smirking assistant goes first because he has a very punchable face.

WHY AM I WATCHING? - ladies in lovely costumes murdering people - ample fight scenes - battle couple - found family - political intrigue - respect for the writer’s commitment to over the top romantic scenes where the hero and heroine circle each other in the air midfight 

First Date Ideas According To Li Ge and Prince:  - spying on traitors - fighting bandits in the mountains - infiltrating enemy strongholds - getting taken captive (accidentally) by people on your side

Screen Shots by me. Poster images and other PR stills from AsianWiki.

[lapeaudelamemoire]

So while I'm on the subject of Chinese dramas, I just want to put this potentially and possibly not so popular opinion out there: It makes me uncomfortable/I don't really know how to feel but I don't quite like it that/when Manchurian (Qing dynasty, for instance) historical periods are portrayed by an all Han Chinese cast/actors. Eh, that's messy. How to say this? Manchurian historical figures being portrayed by Han Chinese actors makes me feel a bit uncomfortable. I don't know if this is a hangover from the current discourse in Western media about representation, and I don't know how it is in China and how they feel about other ethnicities, and though some people would say 'We all consider them Chinese anyway', I'm a little sceptical of that just because, well. I think it would be nice, is all, if the ethnicity of the actors match their characters. Maybe saying it has to be that way is too much - and it is a bit silly if you consider how much crossover there is within the East Asian and especially the Chinese diasporic entertainment industry, there's Chinese people in Korean groups and singing Japanese songs and Taiwanese Hong Kong whatever wherever people in mainland dramas all the time etc - but I really question whether there's such a thing as 'overrepresentation' of minorities in the entertainment industry. It will never be hard to put or have more of the majority ethnicity added to media, and anyway the majority of the population is already that so they're seen everywhere. Take for example Dilireba Dilimulati - she's Uyghur but when she acts in dramas she obviously is speaking Mandarin. Minorities already speak the majority language and to an extent assimilate or go about without really even addressed in their own language or see their customs readily everywhere. Idk. I'm not very well-versed in Chinese politicking but I really don't think, for instance, that the recent news about Uyghurs being persecuted is fake. Nor does the whole 'being forced to learn or speak Mandarin' thing ring anywhere near false for me, which is probably why I don't doubt the veracity of this happening at all - even in Singapore Indians and Malays have trouble finding jobs because they don't speak Mandarin( - little wonder why people mistake Singapore as part of China. I've always said Singapore is a lot like a mini-America, but it's no less like a mini-China, either. In fact, it's a bit of a cross between the two, which, frankly, is somewhat terrifying.) Maybe it's just me. But it matters that we pay attention to our minorities.