PeachBlossomGoddess

Yes he is a very good and deeply under appreciated actor. Hope this drama changes that.

I was waiting for thunder and lighting at that comment. 😂

The iQiyi synopsis is perfectly fine. It is simply unfathomable to me why anyone would think it's a good idea to muck around with it this way before the drama even started airing and make such big changes to it. This is not the first time this has happened. I think in another drama, the character descriptions of two main leads were flipped!🤦🏻‍♀️ The problem is MDL won't change it back to the iQiyi one bc this (inaccurate) one was MDL user generated.

iQiyi:
Description: Destined is a period drama directed by Yin Tao and starring Bai Jingting and Song Yi. Based on Mo Shu Bai's novel of the same name, the story follows Liu Yuru, the daughter of a cloth merchant who suffered from a young age. She is married off to notorious playboy Gu Jiusi, who looks down on her. However, Liu Yuru decides to learn business from Gu's mother and becomes adept at it. She changes her view of Gu Jiusi and discovers his pure and sincere side. Meanwhile, the commander of Yangzhou causes chaos, forcing Gu's family to flee. Gu Jiusi matures and becomes the Minister of Revenue, working to lighten the tax burden on the people. Liu Yuru establishes a women's charity and builds business relationships to bring prosperity to the people. Together, they create a prosperous era.

Looks like someone had a serious Google translate mishap with some Chinese idioms. That's how I can always tell someone not literate in Chinese wrote it, with liberal use of literary license in addition to that. Just ignore it and use the iQiyi synopsis if you need one.

Don't know what you are talking about! 😜

Idk about you but I saw nothing. Not a thing. 👀

This one? Idk I didn't read it but you can DM @CloudA or check out her spoiler posts bc I think she should know.

If you are familiar with the characters of that story you will recognise Ashley Wilkes and Melly Hamilton as well and of course Rhett Butler.

Yes tyvm, I understand.

Actually see @CloudA's post below I got the time period wrong, I assumed this takes place after the militia governor jiedushi roles have been abolished. This should be end of Tang dynasty.

Ah ok, this makes much more sense. Because of the costumes I assumed this takes place later on after the An Shi Rebellion when the jiedushi system had already been abolished and the power of military governors had been reduced.

Totally... I would have just loved to be a fly on the wall on that set!!!

I just want to point out why I am here for Xiao Xunyao!!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvxq65-145k

That's only true in a very loose geographic sense. A zhōu during Song dynasty is a prefecture that reports to a circuit. There should be four commissioners in every zhou, whose functions (and thus authority) is split (fiscal, military, procurement and industrial). So Wang is not the only commissioner and not the political head there what he is doing wrt gathering a military, confiscating wealth etc should be exceeding his authority and highly illegal. From what I can gather, his responsibility is fiscal (tax collection) only. Since ancient times Chinese emperors were very careful to divide power at the administrative levels to prevent rebellions or coups by not concentrating power in one person. Their weak point is always their royal relatives who are granted fiefdoms and then have the power to stage coups in their fiefs, which is what King Liang is doing in the drama.

Lol yeah one of the reasons it did get panned was being a hodge hodge of all kinds of periods but I was fine with that, I mean fictional world is fictional so anything goes, right?

Yeah, they are kind of entitled/take if for granted that those who serve them will lay down their life for them. Like his mentor also died so he could escape. It happens all the time in these dramas though.

In WRTW they only borrowed some of the ancient names, which is quite common. The states were moved around so much to explain the alliances they didn't bear any resemblance to the ancient geographies, much less the history/politics.

Yeah most of the time the stories play out around these important geographic regions. But sometimes the world is entirely fictional - recently WRTW and New Life Begins - even though they may "borrow" some of the names.

Yes I guess in modern terms. In ancient times they are more likely to be prefectures but I think it's not a big difference. It is just how the government divided these areas administratively. I think provinces are just bigger bc with technology today it's easier to administer really big areas whereas prefectures were probably smaller. So a province can be comprised of a few prefectures. This also evolved over the dynasties so it also depends on which period you are talking about.

Who Rules The World took place in a feudal world and a time that looked almost entirely fictional and I couldn't make any real sense of the geography. Destined also takes place in a fictional dynasty Darong that seems loosely based on Song Dynasty and the geography looks like ancient China. The ancient capitals/cities moved around little bit over thousands of years but Yangzhou should be in Jiangsu area, kind of north of the Yangtze River and north of Shanghai. This was the most prosperous region through many Chinese dynasties and most of the earlier capitals were around this area. The Gu family moved to Youzhou which is pretty much Beijing area to the North - they had to cross the desert to get there by land so quite a distance. It is colder and less prosperous but in later dynasties (Ming), the capital migrated there, most likely because they had to keep Mongol invaders to the North at bay. The capital city during this drama should be either Kaifeng or Nanjing, which is near Youzhou. So they flee far from the capital which make sense since their family falls out of favour. These are just my guesses bc I didn't read the novel.