I have added the songs and bgm recordings in the Discussions section, with direct links to them + to the famous Tianmi Mi mentioned, and to the Zhang Jie cover of the original Anson"Tiger" Hu's "My future is not a dream". Notice : two songs are sung by Seven/ Tan Songyun herself ! one together with Dong Qing and Xi Wang (who play Li Juan and Hao Qianqian in the drama) I also added the links to an MV with lyrics of the lovely Cantonese duet song "Love In the wind and rain" Enjoy !
Some background info, although My Mountain and Sea (我的山与海), is not a documentary drama. It is a realistic drama that draws inspiration from real-life experiences during China’s Reform and Opening-up era, but is still an adaptation of a novel with fictional characters, including that of Fang Wanzhi. Nevertheless, the story reflects the journeys of many real women who left rural areas in Southwest China to build new lives in booming cities like Shenzhen. The drama portrays the struggles, resilience, and personal growth of such women, making it a powerful reflection of historical social change rather than a direct biographical account. Therefore, the drama does not center on a single real person, but it is rooted in authentic experiences of a generation.
The melodramatic start of the baby abandoned on a remote mountain peak in Guizhou because she was one mouth too many to feed reminds that females were not valued much in the countryside except as laborers or wives, besides which despite the one-child policy did not apply as strictly in the dirt-poor remote and not well regulated remote and difficult to access parts like mountains, there still was officially only a 2 kids tolerance in the countryside in the 1980s. Of course, the family might have been ethnically from one of the groups (in theory, all 55 ethnic groups apart from Han were exempted from the policy "one child policy in towns, two children if first one was a daughter in the countryside"), since Guizhou is home to many ethnic groups. Although the exemption was sometimes looked away from and local authorities sometimes applied the restrictive policy. This inconsistency reflects broader challenges in implementing national policies uniformly across diverse local contexts. This made in effect, for example, for some groups of Miao girls to live without a birth certificate and a hukou document, the lack of which prevented them from normal schooling and health care benefits.
Perhaps it was what happened to Qianqian in the drama, who said she did not get any schooling, although primary school was compulsory in China, as per the 1982 Constitution. Even if the was a little older than FWZ she should have benefited from the Nine-year compulsory education, which includes primary and junior secondary education, that was formally implemented in China after the promulgation of the Compulsory Education Law of the People's Republic of China in 1986. Although in remote areas of destitute countryside, they would have to rely on voluntary teachers (often sent as a voluntary service from teachers colleges, to alleviate the misery) to implement it, and some only completed primary, as Li Juan in the drama.
The story reflects the journeys of many real women who left rural areas in Southwest China to build new lives in booming cities like Shenzhen, which is the main city here, and a special one as the hub of a Special Economic Zone (SEZ) These were designated areas with market-oriented policies designed to attract foreign investment, boost exports, and test economic reforms. Established in the early 1980s under Deng Xiaoping’s reforms, the first four SEZs—Shenzhen, Zhuhai, Shantou, and Xiamen—were created along China’s southeastern coast to serve as experimental hubs for capitalism within a socialist framework. Shenzhen in particular, close to Guangzhou and Hong Kong, evolved from a fishing village into emerging as a global tech and financial hub, home to companies like Huawei and Tencent. The drama portrays the struggles, resilience, and personal growth of the driven individuals who wanted to seek opportunity in the booming town still being built in the beginning of the story.
The end 1990s ((depicted by some observers in the booming 1990s as "the Wild East") ) were still a harsh period to get jobs in and "strike it rich" like FWZ wanted. But they were also still the period of those sentimental songs we heard sung by Qianqian, such as Deng Lijun's "Sweet as honey smile/ Tianmi Mi" harking back to 1979, although Anson Hu's "My future is not a dream" was first released in 2004. So yes, the young at the time viewed the future as something to conquer. Diplomas helped of course, but some people achieved their goals without them.
Such as Zhou Qunfei, known as the "touchscreen queen," who is a Chinese billionaire who built her empire from rags to riches. Born in 1970 in rural Hunan Province, she lost her mother at age five and had to support her family after her father became partially blind. At 16, she dropped out of school and moved to Shenzhen, where she worked in a watch lens factory for just $1 per day, enduring grueling 16-hour shifts. Other inspirational stories of people who used drive and own genius before academic training to make their mark in the cut-throat Chinese business environment : https://www.scmp.com/news/people-culture/china-personalities/article/3284838/china-rags-riches-narratives-spotlight-first-woman-billionaire-and-peasant-turned-tycoon (news from Nov.2024)
It bothers me that the FL is nice and caring toward almost everyone but barely contacts her adoptive dad who raised…
aah Gao Xiang with his students playing thugs like the saying "kill the chicken to scare the monkey"! 🤣 🤣 🤣 I am amazed at his persistence to help FWZ despite she repeatedly slights and even stands him up cold one festival night when he'd set time to join her first at the "sashimi dumpling" restaurant and next at her request to enjoy the view from a height. He is so good to look out for her and warn her about problems later, which she does not heed, her ego being so towering.... Well, by episode 20, she starts to have "learned some lessons" but one redeeming trait is that she is indomitable and resilient even faced with the prospect of going to jail in her "trial year" (zodiac year, which occurs every 12 years after birth, and is traditionally viewed with joy and fear by natives of that zodiac year, who are advised to at least wear "something red" or all-red throughout the festival, as a superstitious charm against calamities.)
Watched 11 to 14 today. Was so good. I have to say that the dialogue is very well written and quite humorous at…
One small quibble. The subtitles are perhaps imperfect. Such as the Xiao guy telling FWZ he can't drink tea because he has "neurasthenia" (wtf!) Ep.12 Anyway, that's what C-drama audiences have to put up with : guessing what was really said, if they can't switch off subtitles and understand the original. (There are worse translations in other dramas, and other platforms such as Mango TV, btw:, some that are even hair raising off. Here, it is "mostly acceptable".)
something is really off; How did we go to 8.5 or 8.6 a couple of hours ago to suddenly 8.0?
Those who drop a 1 before the show is over and with only bile and spite to explain it since they obviously did not watch it ought to be banned from MDL. It is possible to signal the obnoxious behavior to the platform.
+1 -- but as things proceed by episode 13, I am happy to be on board and will likely give it a very good rating here. BUT I never add ratings before I watched the WHOLE show.... So whatever ratings are here as of now hold scant validity for me.
The chef's son, w/e his name is, is such a daddy's boy. I didn't like how he didn't even know what he did was…
You are too judgmental. Old Liu and everyone approved of Li Juan's choice to wed a soldier, he even gave her a wedding gift before the match was sealed.
This canteen is basically a disguise for the old Liu to find a wife for his son. Sick
Bah no. Old Liu was in that business for the money first. He only hoped the still unmarried son would at last find someone to his liking among his "hardworking employees" who anyway needed to be approved by his bosses first. He did not force any of the girls, provided a relatively safe housing for them, and scolded his son who did a wrong move once. I have misgivings about young Liu's eventual choice since he first declared he was NOT interested in other girls than FWZ. But because like attracts like, the match was understandable since both the son and his eventual bride were money driven and wanted a kid, although I don't think the girl will stay stuck in the village forever...
At this point , Seven is traffic actor level on MDL even though she is not a traffic actor because the way that…
Happy for her! Always supporting Tan Songyun since she caught my attention in Go Ahead! She has done good work in so many dramas, including underrated Brocade Odyssey where she acted with Zheng Yecheng! She also sings sweetly, has her own albums. I like that she manages to protect her privacy, btw.
I agree....the father isn't even forcing her to work for him or anything controlling. Just finish your degree…
Perhaps this was sweat shops, but as Wanzhi pointed out, she earned three times or more than what she would have earned outside the SEZ. She was educated enough to know how to defend her rights, and she knew that even if jobs were not what she had envisioned as a university undergraduate, she could still find relatively well paid one. She absolutely refused to be a financial burden to her foster dad.
Contrary to what you stated, education and a degree are even more important today than they were in the 1980s-2000s in China. Getting an online degree is still a thing to land some jobs!
Even becoming an artist requires diplomas, or at least have undergone "training" such as in the Kpop "factories", like the members of EXO, with no good health safeguards, as Huang Zitao experienced before he broke contract and founded his own agency with backing from his billionaire dad (Tao had wanted independence, but realized that his dad meant well in fishing him out when he got injured, and that he would be more useful as an artist CEO himself than just as a dancer-singer: now Z.Tao manages others' careers together with own and several other ventures that feed many employees.). Or musicians need to have gone through "survival shows" where any talent is accepted as competitor - but many still hold diplomas (like Mao Buyi who was trained as a medical nurse).
The only avenue to circumvent diplomas in the 2000s (the period at hand, when the girls seek to make it, is in the second half of the 1990s, marked by HK return to China in1997 ep.17, and later) was for those girls with a pretty face and sweet voice to go online and sell stuff or sing or act as "influencer". Although that was often a short time career. Everyone can't be like Li Ziqi or HITA, the famous Baidu singer of gufeng (who does not seem to claim a diploma, although the songs she sang or covered show enough culture that she has been long recognized as “Ancient Style Imperial Sister” by Tencent Music). Other online influencers all hold some kind of diploma. Liu Yuning had one as a cook before he built his famous career, and Dianxi Xiaoge who specializes in online Yunnan recipes holds a a diploma from Sichuan Police College! Xiuxiuman, not very famous internationally despite her beautiful covers of songs with an ethereal voice, was educated as a music teacher. Feng Timo graduated from Beijing Normal University Zhuhai Campus and began her career as a college teacher at a Chongqing Vocational School, before becoming a singer and anchor online.... In October 2025, regulations have been made more strict and media platforms have to verify that influencers hold professional credentials before commenting on sensitive topics such as finance, medicine, law, or education. Check here : https://greekreporter.com/2025/10/28/china-influencers-diplomas/
Of course, Fang Wanzhi could just have .... "married into a wealthier family," to have an easier life (if she could handle family diplomacy) as is also shown in the drama, but she had her pride and wanted independence.
Your opinion is very common and similar to many. This is what some have explained why she couldn't call her adopted…
Li Juan and Qianqian had already discussed it with Wanzhi in episode 6 (timestamp 17:18...) after Mr Meng's first visit: she said Mr Meng was not her dad, not her godfather, but her foster dad. Since he had been so reluctant to come out with the truth and hand over her foster mom's letter, and next had not been clear about why he was so opposed to Han Bin, and let her in a pinch like he did in the university canteen "serious incident", she just felt she could not trust him as a dad any longer, but still defended him hesitantly as her "father" when her co workers thought he had come to harass her (earlier in ep.6).
We TV (but final episodes 22-26 on express plan: they will soon be on regular VIP subscription for those who can't or do not want to splurge. I made an exceptional effort to support the drama and Liu Yuning 😊. Also modifying the review above to point out to the indeed beautiful cinematography, and lilili's post in Discussions. ♥️💛💛♥️)
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I also added the links to an MV with lyrics of the lovely Cantonese duet song "Love In the wind and rain" Enjoy !
The melodramatic start of the baby abandoned on a remote mountain peak in Guizhou because she was one mouth too many to feed reminds that females were not valued much in the countryside except as laborers or wives, besides which despite the one-child policy did not apply as strictly in the dirt-poor remote and not well regulated remote and difficult to access parts like mountains, there still was officially only a 2 kids tolerance in the countryside in the 1980s. Of course, the family might have been ethnically from one of the groups (in theory, all 55 ethnic groups apart from Han were exempted from the policy "one child policy in towns, two children if first one was a daughter in the countryside"), since Guizhou is home to many ethnic groups. Although the exemption was sometimes looked away from and local authorities sometimes applied the restrictive policy. This inconsistency reflects broader challenges in implementing national policies uniformly across diverse local contexts. This made in effect, for example, for some groups of Miao girls to live without a birth certificate and a hukou document, the lack of which prevented them from normal schooling and health care benefits.
Perhaps it was what happened to Qianqian in the drama, who said she did not get any schooling, although primary school was compulsory in China, as per the 1982 Constitution. Even if the was a little older than FWZ she should have benefited from the Nine-year compulsory education, which includes primary and junior secondary education, that was formally implemented in China after the promulgation of the Compulsory Education Law of the People's Republic of China in 1986. Although in remote areas of destitute countryside, they would have to rely on voluntary teachers (often sent as a voluntary service from teachers colleges, to alleviate the misery) to implement it, and some only completed primary, as Li Juan in the drama.
The story reflects the journeys of many real women who left rural areas in Southwest China to build new lives in booming cities like Shenzhen, which is the main city here, and a special one as the hub of a Special Economic Zone (SEZ) These were designated areas with market-oriented policies designed to attract foreign investment, boost exports, and test economic reforms. Established in the early 1980s under Deng Xiaoping’s reforms, the first four SEZs—Shenzhen, Zhuhai, Shantou, and Xiamen—were created along China’s southeastern coast to serve as experimental hubs for capitalism within a socialist framework. Shenzhen in particular, close to Guangzhou and Hong Kong, evolved from a fishing village into emerging as a global tech and financial hub, home to companies like Huawei and Tencent. The drama portrays the struggles, resilience, and personal growth of the driven individuals who wanted to seek opportunity in the booming town still being built in the beginning of the story.
The end 1990s ((depicted by some observers in the booming 1990s as "the Wild East") ) were still a harsh period to get jobs in and "strike it rich" like FWZ wanted. But they were also still the period of those sentimental songs we heard sung by Qianqian, such as Deng Lijun's "Sweet as honey smile/ Tianmi Mi" harking back to 1979, although Anson Hu's "My future is not a dream" was first released in 2004. So yes, the young at the time viewed the future as something to conquer. Diplomas helped of course, but some people achieved their goals without them.
Such as Zhou Qunfei, known as the "touchscreen queen," who is a Chinese billionaire who built her empire from rags to riches. Born in 1970 in rural Hunan Province, she lost her mother at age five and had to support her family after her father became partially blind. At 16, she dropped out of school and moved to Shenzhen, where she worked in a watch lens factory for just $1 per day, enduring grueling 16-hour shifts. Other inspirational stories of people who used drive and own genius before academic training to make their mark in the cut-throat Chinese business environment : https://www.scmp.com/news/people-culture/china-personalities/article/3284838/china-rags-riches-narratives-spotlight-first-woman-billionaire-and-peasant-turned-tycoon (news from Nov.2024)
I have misgivings about young Liu's eventual choice since he first declared he was NOT interested in other girls than FWZ. But because like attracts like, the match was understandable since both the son and his eventual bride were money driven and wanted a kid, although I don't think the girl will stay stuck in the village forever...
I like that she manages to protect her privacy, btw.
Contrary to what you stated, education and a degree are even more important today than they were in the 1980s-2000s in China. Getting an online degree is still a thing to land some jobs!
Even becoming an artist requires diplomas, or at least have undergone "training" such as in the Kpop "factories", like the members of EXO, with no good health safeguards, as Huang Zitao experienced before he broke contract and founded his own agency with backing from his billionaire dad (Tao had wanted independence, but realized that his dad meant well in fishing him out when he got injured, and that he would be more useful as an artist CEO himself than just as a dancer-singer: now Z.Tao manages others' careers together with own and several other ventures that feed many employees.). Or musicians need to have gone through "survival shows" where any talent is accepted as competitor - but many still hold diplomas (like Mao Buyi who was trained as a medical nurse).
The only avenue to circumvent diplomas in the 2000s (the period at hand, when the girls seek to make it, is in the second half of the 1990s, marked by HK return to China in1997 ep.17, and later) was for those girls with a pretty face and sweet voice to go online and sell stuff or sing or act as "influencer". Although that was often a short time career.
Everyone can't be like Li Ziqi or HITA, the famous Baidu singer of gufeng (who does not seem to claim a diploma, although the songs she sang or covered show enough culture that she has been long recognized as “Ancient Style Imperial Sister” by Tencent Music).
Other online influencers all hold some kind of diploma. Liu Yuning had one as a cook before he built his famous career, and Dianxi Xiaoge who specializes in online Yunnan recipes holds a a diploma from Sichuan Police College! Xiuxiuman, not very famous internationally despite her beautiful covers of songs with an ethereal voice, was educated as a music teacher. Feng Timo graduated from Beijing Normal University Zhuhai Campus and began her career as a college teacher at a Chongqing Vocational School, before becoming a singer and anchor online....
In October 2025, regulations have been made more strict and media platforms have to verify that influencers hold professional credentials before commenting on sensitive topics such as finance, medicine, law, or education. Check here : https://greekreporter.com/2025/10/28/china-influencers-diplomas/
Of course, Fang Wanzhi could just have .... "married into a wealthier family," to have an easier life (if she could handle family diplomacy) as is also shown in the drama, but she had her pride and wanted independence.
Since he had been so reluctant to come out with the truth and hand over her foster mom's letter, and next had not been clear about why he was so opposed to Han Bin, and let her in a pinch like he did in the university canteen "serious incident", she just felt she could not trust him as a dad any longer, but still defended him hesitantly as her "father" when her co workers thought he had come to harass her (earlier in ep.6).