Frost_edelweiss

You're right !! That does look like a TV newscast of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky addressing the US Congress on December 21, 2022!! And on the other screens there are what looks like the blue and yellow Ukraine flag, and maps of the Crimean peninsula in red with an explosion animation. For the life of me I can't fathom why this would appear in this fluff. Why would the company in the drama concern itself with these unrelated news and the company president's "uncle-brother" leave such news on when his "nephew" arrived? It is so weird.
I can't see how production has a stake in the conflict. Just random showing that China does show the conflicts in the world on prime time to inform the Chinese about the state of the world ?
Chinese students were living and studying in the Ukraine : for instance Zhou Shen who went there for dentistry but stayed on to study voice and opera before morphing into the world famous Chinese singer he has become.
But these ties have zero connection to the story in the drama.
The only takeaway is that this sequence in Episode 11 must have been filmed Dec 21-22 2022...

Starting on ep 1 - This is a good retro drama!
"How Pavel met Tonia" is a reference to a novel that everybody knew by heart then, which also sat on Song Qingling's shelf in the mansion she was housed in Shichahai on the banks of the BJ lake, at the time (it also sat on Doris Lessing's shelf back when she lived in Rhodesia. The book was known in many countries)
-- Pavel and Tonia are the couple in " How the Steel Was Tempered or The Making of a Hero", a socialist realist novel written by Nikolai Ostrovsky.
With 36.4 million copies sold, it is one of the best-selling books of all time and the best-selling book in the Russian language. That novel was adapted to movies that were screened extensively in many countries and the book of course was not banned during the Cultural Revolution.

Did I now?
But some time ago I did suggest putting up somewhere on MDL a glossary of these drama insiders' "codes", perhaps in the form of a game to challenge those who like to look cool with trending new ones or half forgotten old ones, and inform the newbies in a funny way. Would you like such a game?
Something in the way of : choose the right code and find the right title (i.e. OOL / TOOL ?) perhaps with link to drama description when choosing the adequate box and getting a score out of 100 items. It could even be linked to other trivia such as Webdrama vs TV drama, popularity rankings etc. Just some ideas. I am a lazy person, too busy watching half a dozen dramas and doing other stuff on the side, so I will likely not work on this project immediately. If others want to try doing it, I am not copyrighting my ideas... as long as the results stay free to play.

Watching on two screens Insomnia ep9 & HuaRong ep1 : my head is going to explode in schizophrenia !! 😂 or... which of the two is going to win in the competition?
Wishing you fun drama watching too.

Ah yes, the long awaited one. Tks! I'll add it to my decoding list 😂

So you mean a slander campaign from a competing company? Bc I can't see how it would benefit iQiyi if it was their own product and they 'd try to suppress it. -- Looks like there are very many wars going on in c-ent? Motivation for this one?

I feel like you, juggling fluff of Insomnia and cybercrime Reba + TCM generation inheritor and Janice Wu doing her usual stuff with Vin Zhang. Sped through a Maid's costume drama with a bizarre end (amputated?) and various other items. Curiosity CAN kill the cat. I know I should take better care of my Qi and eyes and let go of drama addiction. Just... not yet, lol

Ok, heading there to check out this drama, then 😂 !

Yes, I agree about SOTM. Had trouble keep attention for it till the end. Despite Vin Zhang's lovely deep voice in the theme song. 😂 l

please disclose the code : what is SOKP ?

Interesting. So that's why I did not notice this title despite having subscribed to iQiyi VIP? And it must have been lost in the avalanche of titles that landed on the recoms (this one was not included perhaps). So only JJY fans would take notice, and I am not in that category - have not watched enough of her work yet to make my opinion : only a couple dramas that were not awful to me, but not eliciting enough admiration either.
How and why would marketing accounts "make this drama dirty" ?
I am puzzled : marketing is usually there to do the contrary : the purpose of marketing is to help a product get noticed and sampled, if possible helping the sale. Can you elaborate for my information?

correction : Here We MEET Again.
Anyway there are no new episodes until Monday.
BFTB is slightly boring for me, I am still preferring TTEOTM.
My rave of the year still goes to The Forbidden Flower (and L&P).
and I still enjoy Houlang though I will not rate it n°1
I had clicked on an "old" drama with Ju Jingyi (the slightly silly In a Class of Her Own) for "random fluff", mostly because of the handsome male actors, including Wang Ruicheng lol, and it was funny to stumble upon an acupressure class there just as I was watching all the acupuncture and TCM stuff in Houlang. Now I clicked here for info about this Hua ROng one because of the recently posted song "Longevity by mistake" posted by Peachy with lyrics, pinyin and translation. Ju Jingyi again : must be fate, although she was not included in the list of actresses that I keep track about.
Perhaps I'll give it a try 😅

You are right : it used to be that Chinese people had no or almost no retirement funds or life insurance and elder SON with adequate prospects was burdened with these monetary and housing responsibilities and finding and paying personnel for them in their old age, as a form of compulsory filial duty "piety". It's less heavy nowadays with general health and living standards having risen, and daughters also shouldering a part if needed after the upheaval in family patterns caused by the over-long one-child policy.
But the new wave of youth raised as Gen Y (also called Millenials, born between 1981 and 1996) and Gen Z (born between 1997 and 2012) have a new mindset that can be quite egoistical and uncaring about their elders, in addition to wanting their own way without interference from the old outdated systems : be free to choose whoever they like as spouses or companions, have children or not (because "children are noisy, dirty, and costly" lol, worse than pets!!!)
So there is a definite clash of civilization between the old and the younger who resent being burdened with family problems just because they were raised, well or not, by these old "turtles". The young do not necessarily heed or admire or love as a matter-of-fact these old people whose mistakes can be glaring. Sometimes the old ones were even abandoned in their villages or towns, away from descendants who did not care about them. The problem became acute enough that a law was passed in the mid 2000s to compel children to visit their old parents at least once a year! Whether this helped with the care for old people or increased the problem of seasonal migration at Chinese festival periods, is another matter.
Retirement homes are still few, most elderly and handicapped people still rely on the family network, elder son being at the forefront, liking it or not.
It can be a cause of divorce in mixed marriages, if the foreign spouse does not accept the transfer of part of family revenue abroad, to take care of the Chinese spouse's old parents and, sometimes, help with siblings' or nephews', nieces' studies, and even lend the starting funds for small businesses. Or it can lead to Chinese spouse getting totally cut off from family clan if they fail to perform dutifully. Even within China, and with new generations' new ways of living, the clash may happen.
In this drama, the father of LQ is clearly callous in his feeling entitled to bleed his son for money, but he represents that fringe of backwards bumpkins who lorded it over their countryside families because they were too stupid and stubborn to get successful in the village hierarchy (which also could be toxic with jealousy and gossip). To put better perspective on his character, it may be interesting to re-watch the story of Qiu Ju in the old Zhang Yimou movie ; plus the adaptation to present-day in the Story of Xing Fu drama that starred Zhao Liying and... Zhang Xi Qian also there as a stubborn old peasant dad, but less unmovable. Zhang Xi Qian was also the watermelon carrying homeless dad whose son was ashamed to acknowledge, in Reset.

It's been fixed less than an hour after premiere on Youhug, " so if you tried to listen without before, you can now check your listening comprehension ! " and I also appreciate that the subtitles are not horrible unchecked machine translation.

Cute, tropey fluff available on Youtube till ep.3 later today, till ep 7 elsewhere for chef's Kiss :-)

Oh, but it did not cure my insomnia! Next, I'll get me some Prosecution elite special police
after latest installments of Here we meet again that left Xiang Yuan (Janice Wu) watching Gao Lei leave the police station, and standing beside Xu Yanshi (Vin Zhang Binbin who turned out to be good at kisses), and Toutou brutally turning off the light on the expected kiss in Houlang.
This one is dessert to add sugar to the copious long meal of C-dramas on screens that's eating away at my nights. Perhaps I ought to turn it all off too, to do something more serious? I do, on and off : I am so reasonable ! Ooof, not. lol

This has come to a dramatic turning point! Will the romance started in the remote village survive these new developments? waiting for last 8 episodes...
Yes the turning off lights to probably kiss in the cramped closet was unnecessary. I was jerked away from the moment, thinking in spite, from the frustrated fluff: why don't all the things stored there noisily crash down on them in the dark, with the whole family rushing at the ruckus to discover the guilty hiding pair , lol It could have been comedic, but it missed opportunities in every respect !
There were a lot of interesting take-away from this drama, as regards culture, psychology, mindsets, persuasion and prejudices, yin yang Daoism grounding the traditional healing methods, although the lecturing may not have been taken kindly by everyone : I am sad that it already triggered some rather harsh reviews here on MDL especially since the drama has not reached end yet. It was almost top ten in popularity in China last week, and rating here is around 8, polarized along lovers and haters perhaps.
Personally, I am still enjoying it, and I rather like the "new" Tianzhen who started so badly when he still did not know Toutou. The story was not always running smoothly though, despite the beautiful vignettes of the solar terms and other details.
Mengmeng was the rather annoying "buzzfly"addition to me, as I immediately thought she must be a nymphomaniac (old term now replaced by hypersexual) with OCD + phobic tendencies that ought to have been treated by psychiatry, instead of the "clingy child" taken under the Ren family protection, under baffling circumstances, that we sometimes were led to believe she was. Her age was not clear until recent episodes, where the confusion was made bigger when there was talk about her schooling.
Zhao Liquan turns out to be not the deserving young doctor on par with young Peng despite different family circumstances. But wasn't he a dubious one from the start, with his sly glances?
Roubecca is still a strange addition to the team.
The Ren family, grand parents, parents, and the mysterious outsider Xiaoyan are getting into a more conventional groove.
Toutou has delighted me with her spontaneity and way of listening when everyone thought she was bored, asleep, unconcerned : of course I'll wager that she will attain the inheritor status.

PS. As a curiosity, here's a patriotic song that our hero BinBin sang with Bai Jingting in 2021 (good voices both and they answer to interviewer too, although there are no English subtitles) : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCUhMjZSoYQ&t=9s

Yes I know hahaha, Ren Jialun is unique, and his wife is supposedly very careful with what she allows him to do, power to her and kudos to the faithful family man! I like what Allen Ren does, his humor in live shows and his music : he is a good singer/rapper and hiphop dancer. His song "Who/ 谁" and the autobiographical "He/ 他” on his concept album 立 are among those I often listened to, together with "Dreamers never sleep".
I am not a member of the 嘉人 crowd, though. I just like to look into what multi-talented Chinese actors and celebrities and their fans are up to. Like Vin Zhang, Liu Yuning, Yang Yang, Z.Tao, Luo Yunxi, Xu Weizhou, Zhang Zhehan (ik, but his recent songs are so good + the concert in Bangkok), Xiao Zhan, Wang Yibo (incl his dances with Cheng Xiao), Chen Feiyu (Ever Night, L&P), Jerry Yan Chengxu (MG 2001-2002, F4 and solo songs + now The Forbidden Flower!), Jackie Chan (the oldest, but with many good songs too)..... I keep loose tabs on a good many of these different and interesting celebs. including C-pop musicians and singers from back when to present day activities : JJ Lin (thrilling JJ20 World Tour!), Jay Chou, GEM, Tia Ray, Ma Siwei etc.

And thanks for the cute AROTLF slow kiss link + reminding me about "The King's Woman" and "I Will never let you go", which are on my to-watch-list for later ;-)

Hmmm 😁 ? én/嗯 ? ahā/哈!?
I did not check the deleted scenes of AROTLF. Perhaps someone posted them in pinned discussion of the drama on MDL ?
Where should I look if I get curious about those steamy scenes with Dilireba and the other actress ?

Actually, to me PP is just fun. I seldom am really attracted to try and never to fork out to buy anyway. Product placement just goes with the territory and the sillier and more obvious it is, the merrier. I even sometimes imagine how they could be enhanced with jingles and surprise out-of-character appearances, and then, lo and behold, my wish comes true in some dramas that were recorded with the true-blue commercial interruptions!
That's where I pause, and reflect that in-drama PP is still better than cutting up the story to make wildly unrelated actors demonstrate say, scented condoms or worse!!
I hasten to reassure you that this never happened on Chinese TV, at least not for my unsuspecting eyes. Although... do you remember the fun with the pack of ... I seem; to recall : was it fruit flavored condoms ?! in The Oath Of Love? And the numerous moments when MLs show their care to loved one by heading to pharmacy or supermarket to purchase tampons and sanitary napkins, in addition to the rock sugar brew to treat their pains? lol.