PeachBlossomGoddess

You may be better off contacting their respective investor relations teams. I speak to them every quarter and have already said my piece many times but their response is pretty much along the lines I described below. Nonetheless hearing from more people helps. For Youku you can reach out to both Alibaba IR and Alibaba Pictures IR. The contacts are all online. IR communicates directly with senior management. Their Weibo pages are just for managing fan mail, unless there is huge aggregated feedback, I doubt it will ever reach the ears of decision makers. FYI their IR teams are fluent in English so more people should feel free to email them and tell them they are willing to pay for English subbed content.

Youku is owned by Alibaba which is a behemoth that is mostly focused on online retail businesses. Even though Youku loses a few bn CNY every year, its a drop in the bucket for them and the entire industry is loss making so for them, it is not a priority area to invest further resources. iQiyi which is owned by Baidu and Tencent Video are much more social media and gaming focused than Alibaba is so there are more synergies between the long form video business with their other businesses, esp the games. Between the 3 platforms, they have 300mm paying subscribers in China - they are much more focused on getting that number to 600mm or even 1bn than getting more international subscribers at this point. For all its effort, iQiyi only has 2mm international subscribers and only a small fraction of that 2mm actually pays. It doesn't move the needle for them at all. Tencent doesn't disclose this information but I can't imagine its that different. The economic incentive for any of these platforms to go after international subscribers is unfortunately very low. I am actually quite surprised they even bothered. I think iQiyi and Tencent only started going after international users because Netflix started gaining many international users on the back of content they were licensing from them. Notice recently they haven't licensed any content to Netflix - that is because they would rather go after the subscribers directly. Because Youku doesn't have an international platform, they are more likely to be willing to license content to Viki, Netflix or Amazon Prime, especially in certain regions where it doesn't make sense for them to distribute content.

I knew I could put the words in your mouth.

The latest 18.

I am devastated by Guard Geng. Like I don't want to keep watching.

He hasn't revealed his Ghost Valley identity yet but he has finally told ZZS who he really is.

That is easy - ZZH.

He already did - the fake Hanging Ghost he killed with ZZS. I just haven't figured out who was disguised as the Hanging Ghost. Some of them obviously know he is traveling incognito in the martial world- Gu Xiang, Xi Sang Gui (the white haired one) and Liu Qianqiao although I am sure he has shared his plans with nobody.

The master of Ghost Valley rules by terror and ruthlessness. His top lieutenants (the ten devils) are constantly trying to topple him and seize power. He offered to make whomever retrieves his piece of the glazed shell that was allegedly stolen by the Hanging Ghost the head of the Ten Devils. But it looks like someone in red (aka WKX) already killed the Hanging Ghost so it looks like he just used that as an excuse to unleash Ghost Valley onto the martial world to wreak havoc. Of course the subordinates of the Ten Devils are all fighting each other to recover the glazed shell and it is obvious they are not loyal to anyone and have alliances with other players...

I want to say episode 5 - when Zhou Jing invited them to his sect. He was shamelessly ogling all the young men and spouting Chinese idioms and lyrics praising them. Lemme just tell you if a man who obviously does not have a daughter of marriageable age eyeballs and praises your son/disciple that way, you need to bash him hard on his head and tell him to keep his eyes and his hands to himself.

I find there to be a lot of hidden innuendo in this show. WKX is a total lecher during the festivities at the San Bai in the earlier episodes, he remarks upon how attractive both Song Huairen and Yu Tianjie are. I think he was trying to make ZZS jealous but he was eyeballing and making so many flowery compliments to all these young men I was seriously rolling my eyes hard. But I think the bigger point is the Zhao Jing is surrounding himself with all these young and visibly attractive foster sons it does make me go hmmm....

LOL that is a level of attention to detail and imagination that is way beyond me!!!

LOL - since I am an international subscriber, it doesn't make a difference I am stuck on the same viewing schedule unless I want to go to the trouble of streaming from a local site.

China is one of the most capitalist countries in the world and the economy is very free market outside of capital controls and a managed exchange rate. They don't have universal suffrage and are unlikely to ever embrace American style democracy and they have accountable government. When you only have one party, there is no one else to blame when the sh*t hits the fan.

C-drama does historical dramas like no one else. I am not a fan of the modern shows though, I think Western dramas and plotlines are way better. Fan Bingbing is a troll - she is one of the reasons we endured a really long ban on historical dramas a couple years ago. She evaded something like RMB300mm in taxes.

Yes tyvm Viki is great but I don’t need subs I just moved to the international subscribers for iQyi and WeTV bc they have appleTV apps.

I wouldn't be surprised if international viewers get the VVIP episodes for free. Both WeTV and iQiyi VIP members pay almost double what Chinese VIP pays per month . That is why I think for Ruyi Pavillion international VIP got all the VVIP episodes at pretty much the same time for no extra charge. The platforms lose a hideous amount of money on these dramas - I totally understand why they are making Chinese subscribers pay for advance viewing. But international subscriptions cost a lot more, we shouldn't have to pay for advance viewing. The only issue may be that subbing could make it slower for us.

Yes, and the demise of these soulmates really shattered ZZS but WKX was just defiantly remorseful - he bade them in their next life not to be so honorable/naive and evaded his own responsibility for what happened. Even though ZZS has revealed himself, WKX is still hiding his secrets. This dude needs to grow up - he is not growing on me at all and my poor ZZS has obviously fallen for WKX even though disapproval of him is oozing from every pore.

Truly it is more like hazing... If I were the kid, I would ask them for more siblings to spread the pain.

I thought ZZS, WKX, Gu Xiang and Cao Weining would be the next 4 sages. I think that would have been ZZS happy ever after dream. I was real mad at WKX for what happened to them.

I didn't read the novel but it is quite obvious it is ZZS shifu. I wonder if they were just ahem... friends...