BB75
THE BEST CHINESE SERIES ARE THE CENSORED ONES
Yes, Stay With Me is a beautiful story of friendship and coming of age.
Yes, the actors are cute and good even if the series is shamefully badly dubbed.
But sorry there was a precedent: first a book and then an adaptation of it savagely censored by the Chinese regime.
I loved so much the first adaptation, Addicted (2016), based on the first volume of the book that I read the volume two. At my big surprise the book was going much much further deep in the relationship between Bai Luo Yin and Gu Hai. It was openly gay and sexual with some torrid bed scenes when in the BL drama all the kiss scenes were censured and replaced by a screen saying Kiss Scene Censored.
Gu Hai was the son of a general of the Chinese Army, very close to the power and like all the apparatchiks extremely rich. Gu Hai’s family situation added a new political dimension that was making a lot of sense. The two actors were formidable, more mature even if also finishing high school and their relationship was therefore more adult, with a lot of physical desire. Their couple was funny, direct, conflictual at time, in one word, real.
All these characteristics have been erased in Stay With Me. Wu Bi’s money comes from his family business empire. The direct link with the Chinese regime does not exist anymore and it’s the first reason why the drama was tolerated.
The second one is that Wu Bi and Su Yu are nice kids even if Wu Bi is a bit rebellious and turbulent. Everything is safe in this Chinese environment. Their friendship is wonderful, unique. They are inseparable but they are so innocent that nobody sees what’s going on beyond the friendship. Like in adaptation # 1, they live together, sharing a bed with the benediction of Su Yu’s father. In adaptation #2, the very smart trick has been to create a new character, the little sister, Duo Duo, and to give her an excessive importance in the story of her big brothers. This fact has transformed a bromance/ love story into a family drama. She is in all the scenes at home, interfering into the boys’s affairs. This makes the boys characters even more boyish, young. They are kids, they cannot be lovers … They are 18, living together, sharing a bed but their teenage bodies do not exist. Who is believing that? Nobody!
So the story is indeed beautiful but so hypocritical, unreal, it’s a Chinese dream.
Let’s see what will be the promised season two …
Yes, the actors are cute and good even if the series is shamefully badly dubbed.
But sorry there was a precedent: first a book and then an adaptation of it savagely censored by the Chinese regime.
I loved so much the first adaptation, Addicted (2016), based on the first volume of the book that I read the volume two. At my big surprise the book was going much much further deep in the relationship between Bai Luo Yin and Gu Hai. It was openly gay and sexual with some torrid bed scenes when in the BL drama all the kiss scenes were censured and replaced by a screen saying Kiss Scene Censored.
Gu Hai was the son of a general of the Chinese Army, very close to the power and like all the apparatchiks extremely rich. Gu Hai’s family situation added a new political dimension that was making a lot of sense. The two actors were formidable, more mature even if also finishing high school and their relationship was therefore more adult, with a lot of physical desire. Their couple was funny, direct, conflictual at time, in one word, real.
All these characteristics have been erased in Stay With Me. Wu Bi’s money comes from his family business empire. The direct link with the Chinese regime does not exist anymore and it’s the first reason why the drama was tolerated.
The second one is that Wu Bi and Su Yu are nice kids even if Wu Bi is a bit rebellious and turbulent. Everything is safe in this Chinese environment. Their friendship is wonderful, unique. They are inseparable but they are so innocent that nobody sees what’s going on beyond the friendship. Like in adaptation # 1, they live together, sharing a bed with the benediction of Su Yu’s father. In adaptation #2, the very smart trick has been to create a new character, the little sister, Duo Duo, and to give her an excessive importance in the story of her big brothers. This fact has transformed a bromance/ love story into a family drama. She is in all the scenes at home, interfering into the boys’s affairs. This makes the boys characters even more boyish, young. They are kids, they cannot be lovers … They are 18, living together, sharing a bed but their teenage bodies do not exist. Who is believing that? Nobody!
So the story is indeed beautiful but so hypocritical, unreal, it’s a Chinese dream.
Let’s see what will be the promised season two …
Was this review helpful to you?
