absurd

It was a date that douban put as a release date couple of days ago, it got viral and soon after douban deleted the date.
There are a lot of bts pictures and videos coming out lately, though the majority are not from official sources (there were like couple posted by the director).
I don't really know why everyone suddenly got so impatient about this drama, but there is a possibility that this is Tencent's way of hyping up before the release (not sure why they would need to though).
I don't think it will air on the 4th, but I do think it will be in the 1Q of 21.

Everyone is like: "it's airing next week!" Tencent: no news, no promotion. "Are we going to be ready next week? No. Ok, let them wait. Free hype, why not?"
Sorry, it's just my imagination :))

Yes, inexplicably, without any official announcement everyone is convinced that it's airing as soon as LOF ends. Hope Tencent doesn't disappoint.
DC is trending on weibo, btw.

Someone really needs to fix this. It's not airing. And there's no official announcement of when it will be.

This is a really weird discussion, because neither of us actually know anything :))) but at the end of the trailer it says "Tencent exclusive broadcast", so I think CCTV is a rumor unless Tencent sold it to them after they released the trailer (which is possible), but there was no official announcement about it.
As for Oath of love, I've seen a lot of stuff being said about Hunan being reluctant to air it, but those are also rumors aimed to stir stuff up. XZ's situation just got back on track and TV schedules are probably made in advance, especially if you want the prime time spot. I mean, this is business and OOL is sure to bring audience (which is money). Unless there's someone really childish at the head of the channel, they have to understand what they will loose by not broadcasting it.

I see what you mean. But (IMO) it looks good in pictures, but in the actual drama... still weird. He does have something purplish(?) swirling in his eyes in the trailer (that sounded somehow wrong, didn't it? LOL). So maybe. I still hope not all the time, though.

I don't really know anything about it. But I just saw a couple of more official sources say it's Tencent's 1Q drama and, since they will be the only ones airing it in China and with all of their activity around Xiao Zhan (meaning his personal channel on WeTv), I felt it might air pretty soon.

No, it didn't. For VIP's yes, but for free watchers there are still 8 episodes to go. What did they replace it with?
Besides it's not like they have a TV schedule. I just think they will wait for LOF to end because those two might clash.

Have to say that seems very likely. I'm actually starting to believe that this will air right after LOF ends in February and the Oath of Love will probably wait for DC to end

With the speed of Chinese dramas, who knows what will happen when (and if) they actually get to season 2 :)) Maybe you are right

This is reeeealy bad. But if you can bear the sheer absurdity of what's going on in front of you, there's one good use for this drama: Chinese listening practice. The dialogs are simple and it has both Chinese and roman characters, aside from English subtitles, on youtube. There are even some tongue twisters there. Maybe it was actually intended for children learning the language.

I just started watching this, but there one thing that bugs me. The ML name is Handsome, like literally his name translates from Chinese as Handsome. WTF?! I don't know if I want to laugh of facepalm, because every time I look at him now, all I can think about is Prince Charming from Shrek

I really doubt he will be recast, if there is actually a season 2, as he is one of the biggest attractions of this drama (meaning even if fans of original novel/anime don't like it, his fans will still bring an enormous audience). Also, when I said it looks weird, I meant literally on every Chinese actor, considering they all have naturally dark hair and dark eyes. But that's a matter of preference, if it looks ok to you, all the better. Maybe they will make it work with CGI.
But as far as I'm concerned, if they make a good interesting storyline, I don't care if the characters look like anime or not.

It's also available on iQIY, though for some reason the link doesn't show up on this page

Honestly, I really hope not. Things like blue hair and unnatural eye colors look good in the anime, but in live action they usually look extremely ridiculous. I just can't take it seriously when they do that.

The trailer has XZ own voice (while FL is dubbed) and he seems to have a pretty good mandarin pronunciation, judging by some interviews I saw, so there is a good possibility that he dubbed himself

You're really patient :) I actually dropped it after 10 episodes and then came back maybe two weeks later, because I had nothing to do. foreveryoung is right, it does pick up around 20 something episode. Probably 22, for me, because there are finally some explanations and something happening that moves the plot forward. Unfortunately, I was already disappointed in this drama, so I didn't really "watch", just skipped any time I got bored. Maybe, I'll try again later, just start from episode 22 :)
Totally agree about the number of episodes: everything that happened from the moment they came down the mountain, until they came back could have been condensed into maybe 3-5 episodes, without loosing anything.

Wow, I didn't know that DC writer is the same as JOL. That just gave me so much hope for it :)))

Maybe it's a plot gap? I don't remember the 10 years part, but I have selective memory, so maybe my brain deleted it as unnecessary information :))
You're probably right about marrying in late teens, but everyone was like "you should have been married already!", so I felt like she's probably in her early twenties.

I guess, I didn't really feel like I was missing anything until maybe last 3-4 episodes. And the first half was kind of dragged out, IMO. But, well, it depends. Probably depends on how many of the XZ scenes they removed :)

I haven't seen the original broadcast of course, but the things you listed were not the things I had a problem with. Every drama has to go through censoring and most of the dramas are dubbed. While watching the Guardian, I didn't feel like I was missing scenes, I felt like character actions made absolutely no sense sometimes, they added a lot of unnecessary stuff in the beginning, but made an absolute mess of the main storyline.
Honestly this is not the place to discuss this, in a comment section for another drama. But let me just say: I don't believe even for a moment that the censoring is at fault for it being a mess. And I didn't have any problem with the dubbing.