Silentlistener

There have been several comments complaining that the constantly recurring suspicions of various Li family members towards and the constant scheming of the Fourth Aunt Tian Jiangyue against our heroine Li Zhen is but lazy, unimaginative writing and the overuse of a plot device. Although this criticism is not per se ill-founded, I would beg you to indulge me a little so I can explain why I think this criticism is not an entirely fair one. Communist drama, and I see C-drama as one of the rare exemplars of Communist drama in our contemporary times, fundamentally strives among many things to show that the family is an inherently flawed and unjust social structure, a remnant of a feudal and capitalist past which needs to be overcome. As a social structure, the family imbues in its members certain thoughts, certain habits, certain ways of acting which are constantly influencing them and in critical moments take control of them despite themselves. These habits are very difficult to break and require a revolutionary zeal to overcome them. What may come across as a repetitive plot device could actually in my view be the depiction of the recalcitrance of the family structure, which governs the actions of its members despite themselves. It is as if they cannot help but fall into this rut of suspicion and scheming and it may require many many attempts to finally overcome this institution and even then it may in many case not be possible to overcome. Notice how the uncle Jindong is able to overcome his suspicion and hostility towards our heroine only because his own son explained her motives to him when she decided to take action against Chunhua's husband and because of the traumatic event of his attempted suicide.

Also notice Luo Wensong is extremely egalitarian in his outlook when it comes to the craft of ink-making. He does not make any distinctions between man and woman when it comes to the skills and the resolve needed to make ink and is an unflinching defender of Li Zhen as she is starting off on her journey to becoming a great ink maker. However when it comes to family matters like his arranged second marriage to Ronghua, he does not exhibit any of that egalitarian outlook and falls into the rut of a patriarchy which the family structure has fostered in him. These contradictions are meant to reveal something to us about the family.

All of this is meant to convey indirectly, as almost all Chinese dramas do, the foundational communist hypothesis that the family as a social structure cannot be any condition sine qua non for human development but needs to be roundly critiqued and to which egalitarian alternatives need to be found.

I am amazed by how the question of environmental sensitivity is so seamlessly woven into the fabric of this drama, from the panoramic scenes of pinewood forests (what beautiful cinematography!) to the landscape artist’s comment about pine forests being cut down to produce ink which is then used to paint scenes lamenting the destruction of those very same pine forests (so thought provoking!), the pine wilt disease and the steps needed to regenerate pine forests and the serendipitous discovery of rosin, whose use could potentially protect these forests. How masterfully these ancient Chinese dramas are transformed into allegories for modern China and by extension the modern world! Truly Chinese drama as a cultural medium is just way ahead of all the superficial TV shows coming from the west and its vassals in the east.