Skibbies

but didn't Liu Bang started as a peasant? there's fair few peasant revolutions I think? idk what's up with the peasants defending him, it was just weird, i guess it's to show he's beloved or something? but he's not known as a beloved king???

it's actually a battle from 238 BC, and the first kingdom conquered will take another 8 years. god this pacing worries me. i'm sure times will fly when they start conquering......but i was hoping that'd be focus instead of.....lao ai.

my chinese history is super basic, i agree after this, it's all *side eyes*. he's the primary source for basically everything pre-Han though, since there's not much other comprehensive record that survived through the ages. You only gets bits and pieces here and there not that's not influenced by him.

omg no!! oh you reminded me, i saw some terracotta army themed room, and it had like....mini figurines lined on bottom of the bed, and you have big ones staring at you as well, it seemed really terrifying???

omg i didn't know about the thumb snapping news! ouch, 2000 year old priceless artifact, damn.

it's getting slammed and mocked on c!net/douban lol. ratings have been going up really slowly for some reason, either people belatedly realised this was a thing, or all the stuff netizens hate are drawing tv audience in.

omg there's even a comic, i'm dying. also sima qian, you are a professional, pls be serious. I get the skeptics, I'm skeptical too, but the fact that this made it to proper serious records of history makes it so much funnier, i thought it was 野史, lots of rumours and lies mixed in with bit of truth, but no, it's part of proper history.

they totally sell them, i think there's even chibi version of terracotta lol, you can even buy them online i'm sure. but the point of memorabilia is bringing back memories so XD

Your casual cnetizen that likes history tend to just bring out Sima Qian's Shi Ji LOL, sometimes they'll bring up other texts to supplement, but it's rarely anything modern. I saw bunch of people pull them out when they were arguing in Qin Empire 2 if Zhang Yi (Qin's chancellor) and Su Qin were the same age (the novels assume so, actual historical records are more debatable, Su Qin appears in 3 for this series)

i think i remember someone zhihu saying this drama is bizzarely western at its core, i guess it's all the manufactured drama for "underdog" going against all odds, when ying zheng and qin isn't quite an underdog, at least not the way the drama is going at it. I don't really agree, since china have those stories too, but bits of it seems to make sense.

LMAO first gigolo of china is SUCH a great title. for the other states, you have to watch the previous two installments, the first one had a powerful wei which is kind of neat, since wei is a so wimpy here. This Han is different from the later Han! Liu Bang is was born in in Xuzhou, so mhm Chu? Qi? idk. For Liu Bang to play a central role, it has to be one of those end of Qin/start of Chu dramas 楚汉争霸 or something. The climax is probably still unifying, but I'm doubting this drama a lot.

omg i didn't know that, that's horrifying!

The romance doesn't last long (the few ep you see are the only bits), but Lao Ai does, so buckle up.

yes i think? ying zheng apparently just had 3000 people hidden and ambushed them and it was all done. I think the drama is trying to play it as "using lao ai to kick lv buwei off" but it just came off dumb. I just thought the entire rebellion was really over the top, and once again making li si and ying zheng more stupid than they should be. they had 'plans", and so many people died to save fu su, are you for real? they had plans and regular people had to rush to save their kings? really? ying zheng, you literally hung a bloody sword above the guy, could have spared me 5 ep of torture! also wtf was with that plot anyways???? he just backed out??????? i have so many questions.

if you google lao ai in chinese, it has the wheel thing as suggested search, I tried using bing, and it's hilariously blatant questions.

he does think too highly of himself, maybe Li Si is meant to be arrogant? I think the issue is, if you can show me your abilities/talents, i'd take arrogance, but so far it's all talk and nothing, or all talk and lot of mess, which is g r e a t.

Rumour has it Lao Ai was gifted to Zhao Ji because he had a big *ahem*. Big enough that he could put it into wheels and spin them. so u know that awkward juggling scene at his introduction, lot of people took it as euphemism for this.

Lord Long Yang is a lover of the previous Wei King, who died in 238 BC, so a couple years before he appeared in this drama. People remember him because one of the phrases/euphemism for gay (especially in historicals) is lit "long yang hobby/kink" (long yang zhi hao/long yang zhi pi), there's like two other phrases like this (duan xiu/fen tao)

Story has it that one day, Wei King and him went fishing, Lord Long Yang started crying after catching 10+ fish, he was really happy at first, but as he fished bigger fish, he'd throw away the smaller ones. He's afraid that the king will do the same to him since there's lots of pretty people in the world. In order to comfort him, the King ordered no one should talk about pretty people or they shall be executed.

Stuff the drama doesn't tell you but cnetizens might pick up (not really spoilers, just interesting trivia of sort?) re; Lao Ai (ep 20+) & Lord Long Yang (Wei, super minor character, he's usually talking to the Wei King, ep 30+?)

he got 五马分尸 so i guess he did lol.

Heian period is like 1000 years later though. The Qin hairstyle and some of the costumes are reconstructions from the terracotta armies.

He's a real person but didn't do anything of note to leave much behind, so the character is basically fictional. I was interested in him too, but couldn't find anything. (instead I found bunch of minor characters that's just casually dropped in all have wiki pages lol)

Yeah that one. if Disguiser isn't grabbing you, that's fine IMO, I liked it for everyone else + production team. MCS is def iconic role for Hu Ge, i did watch him in two Chinese Paladin, which is also fairly iconic for him.