★★★★★
The 2019 Chinese drama starring Ariel Lin
as Hua Bu-Qi, Zhang Bin-Bin (Vin) as Chen Yu/Zhang-Qing, Austin Lin as
Dong-Fang Shi, and Tiara Huang as Liu Qing-Wu/Liu Qing-Yan. Directed by Cha
Chuan-Yi and written by Jin Yuan-Yuan, Ma Wei, Wang Hui-Min, Yang Wei-Kai, and
Zhao Ping. 51 episodes running 45 minutes each.
Brief summary: As an infant, Hua Bu-Qi was
taken away by her uncle Zhu Jiu-Hua and has been raised wandering from town to
town as beggar to hide her real identity. One day, the arrogant Heir Apparent
of the Seventh Prince comes to town searching for his father’s illegitimate
daughter. On the same day he arrives, Hua Bu-Qi meets and falls for the
mysterious Lotus Robe Knight. Treachery soon destroys Hua Bu-Qi’s home and
Uncle Jiu, so she is forced to leave the life of a beggar and follow these
strangers who insist she must be the Seventh Prince’s daughter. Even if she and
Chen Yu don’t get along at all, Bu-Qi is determined to thrive in this new role.
But as she does so, she draws the attention of people who want to kill her or
use her, yet also the Lotus Robe Knight.
This drama’s highlights are definitely the
story, cast, and feels. The story is easy to follow, although it certainly has
many parts. The plot helps the cast shine in their roles, especially the main
characters. This was the next type of project we hoped to see from Zhang
Bin-Bin and he doesn’t disappoint! Finally, the moods induced by the tasteful
OST and cast talent create a successful flow of emotions that keep the drama
entertaining for all 51 episodes.
The characters are easy to love. Hua Bu-Qi
could write a book on financial saving with her “increase income and limit
expenses” mantra (ep. 23). She’s loyal only to people she thinks deserve her
loyalty, so she sometimes comes off as flaky. She’s also not well-educated but
this expands into her role in the drama as she’s able to focus on different
things or think outside the box for solutions. Chen Yu is hardly perfect,
either. He’s our main protagonist as the Lotus Robe Knight, but sometimes he’s
all-brawn-no-brain. Call it a character weakness. He’s part of what makes the
last third of the drama difficult to decipher; his character seems to undergo sporadic
fluctuations along with the Emperor that it’s hard to tell if he’s the same
Lotus Robe Knight we fell for. Although it may confuse us, he’s still well
qualified to go up against Dong-Fang Shi, who is antagonistic, but fascinating.
Is it wrong to like him? His methods may have been villainous, but his
affections were sincere.
And we can take a moment to applaud Tiara
Huang for playing a double role with talent!
The OST sets the mood well, but it may be a
little difficult to find files available for download. Although I love it all,
the top songs are “Peach Blossoms Laugh” by Xi Men-Zhen, “Like the Wind” by
Joker Xue, “Juvenile in White” by Xu Shi-Yin, and “Half Pot of Yarn” by Liu
Ke-Yi. And did anyone else hear a variation of Tchaikovsky’s “Dance of the
Sugar Plum Fairy” or was that just me?
As always with just about every Chinese historical
drama, the costuming is fantastic and eye-catching. Chen Yu’s disguise in
episode 42 was clever, using another actor of similar build and Zhang Bin-Bin’s
voice-over, but it wasn’t completely necessary. I’m sure the costume crew could
have made him look however they wanted him to.
But the drama has its difficulties.
They seem to be challenges frequent in the last five Chinese dramas I’ve
reviewed, so I’m not sure if we can consider them real flaws or just
tropes and media patterns that we just find annoying. The drama is fantastic
and entertaining from the beginning, but the last third of the drama cuts
corners around the plot development to usher us to the ending. This is particularly
true of the war segments to the point that we’re not sure what to believe as
the real plot.
It drives us more rapidly to the finale
which leaves us wishing for more anyways. We can all agree that the finale
deserved some cleaning up and another episode. It was too rushed. Too many
corners were cut to push us to a “happy ending” by the end of 51 episodes, but
I wouldn’t mind if the drama was longer to take the long way and fix it up!
Typical of many dramas of this genre, we saw a kill-off character solution wipe
away 80% of the cast in the last two episodes (although the last episode seemed
to take care of a lot of them in the first 25 minutes alone). But it didn’t really work because they couldn’t
obliterate the entire story universe. The writers just got rid of the big names
and then left us wondering about everyone else, such as the teddy bear of a
chief steward Zhu Shou.
And they don’t tell us what really happened
to Chen Yu, either!
In conclusion, the drama is good for an
entertaining love story, but there’s not much of a deeper aspect to it. It’s
fun and we can recognize it for that, even if the ending does leave more to be
desired. Yet that said, it's still one of the best Chinese dramas I've seen. 5/5 stars!
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