So what's the endgame the fl has in mind? She doesn't want to leave shanghai but knows the ml wants a proper relationship...…
Well, she explained her "endgame" pretty clearly in one of her conversations with CMD. She wants to have a passionate love affair and then go back to Shanghai. ZJ doesn't think she needs to be in a relationship with someone for the rest of her life; she thinks a life like Madam Lin's, who seems fulfilled by her personal pursuits and the memory of the man she loved in her youth, would be quite nice and romantic. For ZJ, love is too unreliable and difficult to build one's life around, but the memory of a past flame could be a nice souvenir in old age.
So she's planning to love CMD while she can and then let the memory of their brief happiness together warm her heart in the future as she pursues professional and personal self-actualization in the big city.
We've known this is a romance drama from the start, so to us ZJ's determination to live a life without entanglements seems delusional and ridiculous, but she doesn't view her life as a romance drama. Her goal in life is to be independent, carefree and successful: all things she was told she couldn't be because of her disability. Changing her life for a man was not part of the plan until she fell for CMD. So it will take her a while to realize her idea of lasting happiness is starting to include CMD.
So well put.Am with you.There is a show called Fake it Till You Make it - also VERY adult feel to that .. Liked…
Fake It Till You Make It is one of the best modern romance cdramas! But WLIS is on a totally different level. If they keep up this level of quality for the rest of the show, it might become my favourite cdrama ever.
She told him...what she wants in the beginning itself and despite that he still wants a try. So at least be open…
No one is playing games. The fact you've now watched these two people circle around each other and discover new things to like every time they talk for 12 episodes and all you got out of it was the mistaken idea that Zhuang Jie is a flightly slut who's playing with a good man's feelings tells me you're wasting your time and need to stop watching immediately. Your misogyny is so deeply rooted it's rendered you incapable of honest reflection on art.
Love when a drama actually shows real grown-up humans struggling to figure out complex existential/relationship issues without sugarcoating them and a bunch of misogynistic trolls crawl out of the woodwork to call the FL a slut and a blood-sucking temptress.
I love both leads and totally sympathize with their situations. They know they like each other, but they don't know yet how far they can take their relationship, or what they're willing to trade off for it. This is something people need to figure out before they can commit to another person for good, and there's no way to figure it out without risking your heart and making yourself vulnerable in the process. That's what this show is about and I think it's beautifully done.
The babies who don't get it and only watch cdramas to drool over their favorite geges should sit this one out.
I don't understand.. why all Chinese drama .. is like that .. whatever the female lead .. bad look.. poor ...…
Holy mother of God, that’s a lot of projection and misogyny in one place. It’s totally misplaced too, as the FL in this story has liked the ML since school and clearly rejected the other guy? While it’s the ML who’s been going on blind dates since the beginning of the drama? (Which I don’t blame him for, BTW; he doesn’t owe Zhuang Jie anything when they’re not in a relationship, the dates clearly range from completely meaningless to deliberate distractions from Zhuang Jie for him, and they’re both grownups and dating is normal—that's why they both have exes—but it’s just absurd that you’re going on this crazy rant about Zhuang Jie’s promiscuity when it’s Chen Maidong who’s been shown with other people more and Zhuang Jie has been the one doing the pursuing until now.)
It’s fine to like an ugly man! Ugly people of all genders deserve love too, and if you find someone attractive, other people’s opinions shouldn’t matter. It’s when you’re crushing on an asshole that you need to take a step back and reevaluate.
Gotta say, I'm super impressed by how tasteful and understated this drama is in every aspect, including of course the portrayal of Zhuang Jie and Chen Maidong's complex relationship, which has so far avoided even the subtle cliches that other melancholic romantic dramas get away with under the pretext of portraying characters with 'mature' problems. No, every scene here is meaningful, natural and infused with authentic feeling (instead of overdoing it).
Just as an example of what I mean, sometimes in dramas like this you'll see the main characters refuse to acknowledge their feelings, or not communicate properly, for no good reason other than to generate angst and extend the plot, and that's supposed to be because they're grown-ups who have too much to lose/have been hurt before and are afraid of starting a new relationship. I often roll my eyes at this scenario because the execution is usually half-assed and unconvincing, but here, I can really tell exactly what Chen Maidong is feeling and I understand perfectly why he keeps pushing Zhuang Jie away, even if he never explains it in words. His eyes speak for him. I don't agree with him, but I totally get it and the drama made me sympathise with him. As for Zhuang Jie, well, unlike other female leads (but like a lot of women in real life), she just went for it when she finally met a man worthy of her, even if she didn't think it could go anywhere. Again, that's what people do sometimes when they're attracted to someone. I love how human both our leads are, and how they don't lie to themselves about their feelings despite not knowing what to do with them.
But one theme it's even rarer to see explored with so much depth and understanding that the drama nails for me is disability. I just love how Zhuang Jie's disability has been incorporated into the story so far. Most of the time we don't notice it or think about it, but we always know it's there. It's not a surprise when it comes up, or something that needs tons of preachy exposition. We know Zhuang Jie is a strong person, we know losing her leg was and continues to be very tough, and we suspect it may be even tougher on her than she lets on because we can already sense she suppresses her true feelings a lot. All of these things are central to who she is as a person, so it's impossible to imagine her without her disability (unlike a lot of other dramas that treat this subject, which tend to portray disability as something sad that happens *to* the main character, who still has their "real" personality buried somewhere deep within and just needs to stop being sad and reconnect with their old self, rather than as something that's been with them for so long it's made them the person they are today). But it's also just one part of her and not something that needs to be milked for shock value or moral instruction by the narrative. At the end of the day, she's a person just like everybody else.
I’m kinda into the friend’s interactions with the embarrassing local gangster… He seems to have hidden depths beneath the “most eligible village bachelor” cringe… I’m not sure yet if he’s good enough for our godly bestie, but I’m willing to listen.
The main story continues to be amazing. It’s finally time for CMD to suffer sexily after he made ZJ feel insecure. The previews show we’re in for some fun angsty shenanigans before they get together.
Dropping this drama. I really tried. The opening funeral scene threw me off. Then fifteen minutes later, funeral…
Some of us like art that shows the true depth of human emotion and reassures us that other people have had thoughts and experiences that we’ve had but never shared with anyone. Appreciating something other than cheap escapism doesn’t mean we’ve never encountered death lmao, that’s a wild thing to say.
whose name was it at the back of the envelope? The brother's? Did it influence the reading? I didn't understand…
The medium only said a domineering woman would get in between the two, not that it would be a mistress. That was the grandma's interpretation. I think that card was referring to Zhuang Jie's mother.
OMG, finally some real food! I loved the first 3 episodes. So far this is exactly what I was hoping it would be—thoughtful, subtle, melancholic, grown up, a little funny, smart—and I can't wait to see our main leads' relationship develop and to find out more about their backstories.
Wei Daiqing is a delightful weasel. I like this character a lot.
But does anyone know what Deng Mingyuan was talking about when he revealed he knew WDQ's other identity? I didn't quite understand what he was implying, but he was basically trying to scare WDQ by revealing he knew his secret, and it involved a secret identity.
Mango TV uploads one episode per day to YouTube and the subtitles are so-so. They're up to episode 7 right now and I'll wait for episode 8 tomorrow instead of watching ahead on other platforms, because the subtitles available elsewhere are unreadable.
I think they still use machine translation for the subtitles on YouTube, but they have a human go over them and edit them so they make more sense.
(Illegal streaming platforms like Dramacool upload the first subtitles they can find so they can get them out as early as possible, so they only have the really bad, machine-translated ones.)
1 
So she's planning to love CMD while she can and then let the memory of their brief happiness together warm her heart in the future as she pursues professional and personal self-actualization in the big city.
We've known this is a romance drama from the start, so to us ZJ's determination to live a life without entanglements seems delusional and ridiculous, but she doesn't view her life as a romance drama. Her goal in life is to be independent, carefree and successful: all things she was told she couldn't be because of her disability. Changing her life for a man was not part of the plan until she fell for CMD. So it will take her a while to realize her idea of lasting happiness is starting to include CMD.
I love both leads and totally sympathize with their situations. They know they like each other, but they don't know yet how far they can take their relationship, or what they're willing to trade off for it. This is something people need to figure out before they can commit to another person for good, and there's no way to figure it out without risking your heart and making yourself vulnerable in the process. That's what this show is about and I think it's beautifully done.
The babies who don't get it and only watch cdramas to drool over their favorite geges should sit this one out.
Just as an example of what I mean, sometimes in dramas like this you'll see the main characters refuse to acknowledge their feelings, or not communicate properly, for no good reason other than to generate angst and extend the plot, and that's supposed to be because they're grown-ups who have too much to lose/have been hurt before and are afraid of starting a new relationship. I often roll my eyes at this scenario because the execution is usually half-assed and unconvincing, but here, I can really tell exactly what Chen Maidong is feeling and I understand perfectly why he keeps pushing Zhuang Jie away, even if he never explains it in words. His eyes speak for him. I don't agree with him, but I totally get it and the drama made me sympathise with him. As for Zhuang Jie, well, unlike other female leads (but like a lot of women in real life), she just went for it when she finally met a man worthy of her, even if she didn't think it could go anywhere. Again, that's what people do sometimes when they're attracted to someone. I love how human both our leads are, and how they don't lie to themselves about their feelings despite not knowing what to do with them.
But one theme it's even rarer to see explored with so much depth and understanding that the drama nails for me is disability. I just love how Zhuang Jie's disability has been incorporated into the story so far. Most of the time we don't notice it or think about it, but we always know it's there. It's not a surprise when it comes up, or something that needs tons of preachy exposition. We know Zhuang Jie is a strong person, we know losing her leg was and continues to be very tough, and we suspect it may be even tougher on her than she lets on because we can already sense she suppresses her true feelings a lot. All of these things are central to who she is as a person, so it's impossible to imagine her without her disability (unlike a lot of other dramas that treat this subject, which tend to portray disability as something sad that happens *to* the main character, who still has their "real" personality buried somewhere deep within and just needs to stop being sad and reconnect with their old self, rather than as something that's been with them for so long it's made them the person they are today). But it's also just one part of her and not something that needs to be milked for shock value or moral instruction by the narrative. At the end of the day, she's a person just like everybody else.
The main story continues to be amazing. It’s finally time for CMD to suffer sexily after he made ZJ feel insecure. The previews show we’re in for some fun angsty shenanigans before they get together.
But does anyone know what Deng Mingyuan was talking about when he revealed he knew WDQ's other identity? I didn't quite understand what he was implying, but he was basically trying to scare WDQ by revealing he knew his secret, and it involved a secret identity.
I think they still use machine translation for the subtitles on YouTube, but they have a human go over them and edit them so they make more sense.
(Illegal streaming platforms like Dramacool upload the first subtitles they can find so they can get them out as early as possible, so they only have the really bad, machine-translated ones.)