PeachBlossomGoddess

It’s slow paced but I enjoyed it quite a bit.

Ah ok. I will write it in the next day or two., Have been super busy with Chinese New Year. 😅

Yes I think it has to be Jing Boran‘s best.

This dude would never have survived one day in Jin Yong universe!😅

He is just from one of the noble families; most of them have some distant links to the imperial family. As the flower envoy, he doesn't have an official court rank or role but he is the emperor's jack-of-all-trades fixer that gets authority through the special projects the emperor tasks him with. Its a job that is usually held by eunuchs. Among other things, he collects special treasures including beautiful women for the emperor. That part is hinted at many times and why he has a playboy reputation. We know that that is just his facade, he is really spying and doing all kinds of other stuff behind the scenes for the emperor.

I think besides Jin Yong , you can’t go wrong with the Gu Long and Liang Yuesheng classics. Other good writers are Huang Yi and Woon Swee Oan. The newer popular ones include Sword Snow Stride, A Record of a Mortal’s Journey to Immortality , TBOY novelist - they all really write high fantasy wuxias to the point of being more xuanhuan. I don’t really like them and don’t consider them to be real wuxias so I have only skimmed through parts of a few of them. Besides SSS I think Immortals Journey and the Qianmen Secret Manual is pretty good.

They were allegedly really dating some time back.

Tbh I kind of understand why Liu Chang got completely turned off by her. She is so entitled and awful she has zero self awareness how she looks to the world. It is karma that her gene pool (and now his also) doesn't get perpetuated to torture the world.

1. I think you can stop at 24.
2. I am not the best person to ask on this bc I read the Chinese versions. Besides Jin Yong's classics, I don't really know what else has been translated into English. I suspect more of the more recent webnovels have been translated bc Tencent owns a lot of IP and has been translating it (though it may be machine).

He is incognito - JCY simply introduced him as Sanlang which just means third son of a family with wealth or status. So she either doesn’t know who he is or she may have guessed but pretends to not know.

Indeed.😍

She also did a gorgeous good sword dance in Love of Nirvana. They styled her down in this drama to look less beautiful except in the dance scene.

Wow Zhang Yaqin can really dance!!!

I wouldn't hold my breath. If it were that easy to circumvent regulations about two seasons, lots of dramas would have done it long ago. I wouldn't expect it until a year from now.

San lang is the emperor. He is written based on Li Longji, or Xuanzong emperor of Tang, who was the third son of his father Ruizong emperor. King Ning should be Li Chengqi, his eldest brother and by rank the rightful heir to the throne. Their names are changed to avoid distorting history. In history Li Chengqi never fought with Li Longji for the throne. He in fact asked his father to make Li Longji his heir bc he was more capable. The drama completely fictionalizes this aspect of his character.

History was never kind to women anywhere in the world. Men in high places need heirs. Henry Tudor chopped off the heads of all his wives bc he needed a son and the Catholic church wouldn't let him divorce and there was no polygamy. I am quite sure all his dead queens would have preferred to let him have as many concubines as it takes rather than lose their heads.

If you are a real fan of Minglan/ZLY you would immediately know that that was set in Northern Song dynasty, which was a later dynasty. The wedding style is completely different. Clearly you no longer remember your favorite drama and what ZLY wore for Minglan's wedding scene. To just remind you, ZLY wore a headdress that was actually larger in size than her already very large head. It made her look like a super scary LOL doll that freaked out my kiddie nieces when they saw it. I believe YZ's Tang dynasty style headdress is sized much more appropriately smaller than YZ's head and it is not nearly as gaudy or distasteful as Northern Song style. The costumes in Minglan were really not the best.

Honestly that was kind of beyond stupid. Anyone who knows how to ride horses knows not to do what she did for crying out loud!!!

Peter Frankopan’s The Silk Roads is all about world history not from the POV of the victors. Your friend may enjoy it!
Chinese history is actually quite well recorded by scholars and court officials through many thousands of years. But still many controversies remain.

Couldn’t agree more!