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Definitely. If he actually wanted to treat her well and wanted to do this the honorable way, he could have spoken to the elders and try to court her officially even if his status was below her.

He can also first try to climb up within the military ranks, ask her to wait and give him a time frame of 1-2 years to see if he can be granted a higher title, if not she would then go marry someone else. Lin family at the end of the day love Xiuwan so if she throws a tantrum or get on her knees to beg and ask for 1-2 more years to delay her marriage and give Du Zheng some time (to see if he can move up in military ranking), the Lin family would probably have been okay with it.

But it is too late now, the Du siblings have gone too far and the Lin family are starting to clock them and won't want them as part of the family as it will bring them to ruins.

For the drama, I saw some preview clips and she was not happy during their wedding day and even slapped him. It seems it is still going for the route that he probably got approval/edict to be able to marry her while she herself won't want to be involved with the Lin family again (especially given their past).

She will probably eventually be okay with it and develop feelings for him but we will have to see how the drama handle this. But there will definitely be some friction between them for a bit in the early parts of their marriage.

Yes, it is a cultural thing. They count everyone within the same generation and use sisters and brothers even with some of them being half-siblings and/or cousins.

Maybe for a bit before Jinqi forced her into marriage and she has to deal with the stress of the Lin family VS others drama. 😔

No, she is suspicious of her. Xiuru noticed she was a social climber from the very beginning when she purposely didn't take the seat next to Xiuru but instead picked to get closer to Xiuwan (second sister, ML's cousin) and Xiushu (fourth sister, ML's full-blood related sister).

Lanxiang: doing her job
Jinqi: 👁️👁️

He is about to stare a hole into her. 🤭

Xiuwan (second sister) is young so it is understandable but her thoughts about marriage does show how naive and privilege (as a legitimate daughter) she is. Cuique and Xiuru (third sister) both giving her the side eye for that as they should. 😂

DILF and a real one because he has a daughter. 😂

Yes, and Lin family got out of it by the skin of their teeth by giving in to the emperor's demands and being able to form a marriage alliance with the Zhao family.

Yes. 💀 Zhu Di really went out of his way to find every single person associated with FXR with to slightest degree and made an example out of him.

The risk of working for the royal family. 😔

To give some historical context, the Shen family tragedy was loosely based on what Emperor Zhu Di (Ming Dynasty) did during his reign. Emperors have put to death families before from Extermination of Three clans (parents, spouse, and kids of the offender) to Extermination of the Nine Relations (includes in-laws, paternal clans, maternal clans, etc. though the younger ones would be "spared" to become slaves or exiled and though it is an expanded list of people they can execute, it doesn't mean it was always enforced).

However, Emperor Zhu Di went even further and committed Ten Familial Exterminations of the scholar Fang Xiaoru. This was only done once in the entire history of China's dynasties.

Zhu Di at the time took the throne from his nephew and demanded that Fang Xiaoru write the ascension edict to declare him the emperor but FXR refused and cursed Zhu Di as an usurper. Zhu Di became really angry and ordered the Ten Familial Exterminations (which also included FXR's students and peers) and said to have executed 873 people.

This gives context to why Shen grandfather didn't just give in to the emperor's demands because he expected his own death and his son's (the male members of the family) but he didn't expect the emperor to go as far as touching the female members (even the female children) of the Shen family too to put them into prostitution (even including the in-laws). The previous emperors in the drama-verse probably have never gone that far so Shen grandfather didn't expect that to happen as it was NOT typical.

I made a Lin family relationship chart as I know the relationships with the whole sister aspect can be confusing: https://mydramalist.com/754367-the-story-of-xiang-lan/discussions/155294-lin-family-relationship-chart

Hope this makes it easier for everyone to understand. 😊

She is a pretty well-known writer in China!

Her novels (that later got drama adaptations) included "Scarlet Heart" (which blew up in China back then and had a SK drama version too) and "Lost Your Forever". LYF drama season 1 was good but season 2 was considered terrible so many at the time thought Tong Hua lost it, but it was likely due to what happened behind the scenes and not her. But her two recent works/adaptation such as Filter and ATC have been well-received, and she is also working with some other pretty good scriptwriters so hopefully the trend continues.

Of course! Hope more people can enjoy great C-dramas that they might not have heard of before.

Yay! It is a great drama for people who really like to analyze. 😊

I have seen some discussions on this and it seems like the common consensus is that they were originally servants under the Lin family already back when the Lin family was in the capital. It was mentioned "the master" kicked them out due to their daughter's illness but it was likely the higher ranked servants who kicked them out to go live somewhere else to not "infect" the other servants (they probably didn't have direct contact at all with the Lin family as they were lower ranking servants). The masters won't be personally involved in something like this though they might be notified that the servants were removed for some time as they were sick.

When the Lin family left the capital, they basically went with them (in the boat) and probably showed up again going hey, our daughter is okay now in order to be able to live in that servant mini yard of theirs with the Ji-er family (who also worked under the Lin family).

One can argue why didn't they just ditch (as it doesn't seem like the Lin family is the kind to track down missing servants and demand the taels) but it is probably because they have no money at all and continuing to work for the Lin meant some money and shelter (and somewhere to keep Lanxiang safe).

He wasn't dressing up as Qian Shaoze, he was just dressing up as a woman. He needed to dress up as a woman to go to the woman's side of the banquet and track ZXT. These banquets are usually separated by gender so women are together in one area and men are together in another area. He dressed up as a woman to get to the library (where ZXT and QSZ were having their affair) to block the window so they couldn't escape from it. Remember when ZXT tried to open the window and then cursed LJQ as it was locked? She realized it was him/his men who did it. Him dressing up as a woman also made it easier for him to move around as they would assume he was from another family at the banquet that day or some servant from another family.

Shamelessly plugging in "Filter" (modern sci-fi romcom) if anyone wants a drama to watch that is as detailed and slow burn (also extremely hilarious and ridiculous but makes logical sense).

Tong Hua (scriptwriter for this drama) also wrote the script/novel for that drama (aired last year but did not get much promo from Tencent unfortunately and the production used up their money on the CGI for certain scenes so they did not hire a promo company). It got great reviews though and spread by word of mouth. It is currently sitting on Douban at a 7.3 with over 210K raters and if anyone knows anything about Douban, getting over a 7 for idol modern romance dramas is pretty tough. It was considered one of the top C-dramas last year in terms of positive reception.

It is again a drama focused on women's experience and explores self-esteem, beauty standard, gender roles, etc. and tons of symbolisms with the names, colors, etc. It is also another drama that some viewers jumped the gun to judge the ML but as with this drama, Tong Hua laid down enough hints to make the ML very well-rounded. And of course, the FL was one of the best C-drama characters last year IMO.

P.S. Some of the cast in this is also in that drama because Tong Hua likes to use the same people LOL.

C-dramas that used to be 40-60+ episodes really were the best. Part of the reason they reduced the episodes was also to get rid of filler storytelling but it is obvious that good scriptwriters will use those high episode length to build up characters.

I really hope C-ent industry is looking at this drama and recognize why it is doing so well right now with actual POSITIVE reception. There are other dramas that have good numbers this year (regardless the debates over numbers being inflated to hit KPI/traffics being involved) but a lot of those were very controversial dramas over plot, acting, characters, etc. (and promoted as such because negative/controversial topics get people talking) that a lot of C-viewers won't classify as "good" dramas.

This is one of the very few ones this year that is doing well number wise and getting mostly positive reviews.