Skibbies

she briefly cameo'ed in netflix's 3 body as well! LOL. I really like Chunmiao, it's not easy to play kinda annoying and abrasive characters and still stay likeable.

I was going to comment on this but then I totally forgot about it oops. I actually really liked this drama's starting bits, since I felt like it adapted the rather lofty/unrealistic premise from the manga/jdrama pretty well, and it set up some stuff later. I was also surprised that it touched on sexual harrassment/abuse, and those scenes were filmed very well. I came to love Ding Hei after this drama (I liked his Qin Empire 2 but his directing chops wasn't as apparent there).

The entire time, I was basically trying to track the time. The initial bits of getting them interested in subjects/fun and cool ways to have classes is fun, but also kinda drive me bonkers since it really wouldn't work for gao san/year 12. I sort of wish they went with 3 years or even minimal 2, so you get the class forming + fun stuff in first semester/term and the rest could be targetted tutoring or competitions. I honestly wish we spent more time on the competition! Those are where gifted students making leaps and bounds make sense!

I was fairly okay with their early test results, jumping from mid 300 (not getting into uni level) to mid 500 (can get into first tier university) in i think second mock exam? the last mock exam and final result tho, it's sort of WOW really? scriptwriter, did you actually attend gaokao? above 550 it's hard to make 50 points jump, and above 600, it's hard to even make 5 points jump, what even??? In comparison, I think the closest gaokao drama Ray of Light made more sense? Problematic teachers + students, it's very GTO-esque drama. It's more conventional (comparatively) than this drama in teaching style I guess. It has lot more students and it ranges from gifted student with home issues getting into dream school to kids who tried their hardest and went to vocational school, which is much more realistic.

The romance/crush episode was entirely unnecessary, I know they were making a "point" about fleeting crushes and youth but I just felt like I got randomly introduced a love polygon, no thank you? I actually like Sang Xia, but she's obviously very idealistic and it's nice to see her bounce of Lei Ming. Lei Ming's dad's arc was just NOPE. I know what they were doing, and even with all the stuff to humanise the guy, it really didn't work for me. If he was actually just strict dad who didn't know how to praise his son + absentee, I'd be fine with him, but he went beyond the line multiple times. Screw the drama for trying to make me think "oh but he's a good teacher", yeah I don't care.

We don't talk about the last episode. what even was the point of changing to all these new actors? it took me full 10mins to match them up? The young actors are all like 25 or something, they can totally play 28 year olds? What's the point of giving me new ship that had no hints before? Or giving me a ship that had hints but broke it up for no reason? This isn't even realistic??? It's just kinda dumb????

I don't think they had to be sickly to be fair, Liu Xueyi could work for example, or Gao Weiguang. I read the novel way before the drama was a thing so that was my thoughts when I saw the casting. I totally understand why they casted LGX though, extra buzz and easter egg for PA. LGX worked pretty well when he was trolling lol.

I think my favourite bit was cluck cluck and lady Jin, while I think as a novel, cluck cluck bit kinda bored me (and it was kinda cringey to watch since it's from FL's pov and she was embarrassed as hell). My favourite bit in novel might be fisherman arc? but I was somewhat underwhelmed in the drama. I found the CG pretty impressive and surprising but the pacing rather languid, I think the drama might be better at shorter length, as is, it feels too slice of life (when I didn't feel that way as novel mhm).

I wasn't really convinced with Lin Gengxin as sickly mortal tbh, and that was my worry when he was casted. I still actually get taken out of the scene even with him as ancient god. I feel like his hair without a guan (the headdress thing they normally wear as men) didn't help either, I feel like he didn't look as good as he could be, I think ZLY looks kinda blank when she does deadpan/emotionless, like her eyes look vacant so she looks like she's spacing out, but overall she works better as a character for me. I liked FL a lot to begin with though. Xin Yunlai was disappointing as Mofang IMO, I remember liking him in the novel, but he was kinda non-presence for me in the drama. I rather liked He Yu as Furong Jun though, partially cos they added more scenes for him I think (I barely remember him from novel), and partially cos they gave him a nice character development arc.

I loved parents' arc and qingye's side plot, and sorta wish we had more time with them, but I think more time with them might not give the same effect.

I'm here to give my double thumbs up for war of faith, COME WATCH :D

for the record, he's aware of who's behind the false coin case. he compromised by not chasing for the real culprit with promises that it won't happen again etc. (he was specifically told to not reveal details to the public). the kong family are kmt's wallet, i mean they put more in their own pockets than kmt, but without them, kmt would lose whole bunch of money. and kmt desperately needs money on all fronts.

you can call him overly naive or overly confident in believing he could build a proper finance system with all the things going on, but in a world without civil war and japanese invasion, he probably would have succeeded (and they have huge corruption issue still but it's still a system).

song ziwen is still head of treasury at this point, he resigns in 1933.

kong xiangzhi was named in the first ep by his courtsey name, yongzhi. his last name was also namedropped as the person behind "da jie" in one of the conversations between yu shiqing and zhang mingquan, so it's very likely to be song ailing.

because he's an actual historical person probably. he's song ziwen.

he mentioned it when he was eating with with shen jinzhen.

side note: the poem he recited is mao zedong's most famous poem. there's a drama about mao based on that first line he recited.

this was filmed q1 of 2023, so not that long in post production (a year is normal for dramas, esp a tv drama which needs to wait for tv slot open). if it took 6 years, it's likely the script (which is original), and getting someone interested in the project (production team), and getting it pass the platform meetings (getting investment)

set in republican era but about beijing opera instead of finance, winter begonia!
if you are up for full on politics, age of awakening.
for finance/banking drama, but with romance, the justice (2021).

there's already stark drop in cdramas, i think it was 400 dramas in 2022, 300 last year. (according to enlightent data) there are a lot of platforms in china, now there's mainly 4 web ones and a lot of tv channels (at least one channel for each province + cctv) and they all air dramas. I think a decade ago, there were maybe 10 channels that broadcast new dramas, now it's about 7, and most of them do lot of reruns.

So I really wouldn't worry about oversaturation. there's 5 first tier provincial channels and they used to air new dramas all the time, i think one started doing mostly reruns in 2021 or 2022, then last year i think 3 was doing mostly reruns for their primetime slot.

As for the schedule, this is actually the most friendly schedule from hunan tv i've seen. Last year it was doing mon-thurs only to make room for weekly dramas that only aired on fri-sat.

I'm late but just want to add, in chinese myths, beings (plants, rocks, whatever) can absorb energy from the world over long period of time and they end up having a form, a lot of these end up being "yao" or in this drama's case "ling".

So similar idea here with ancient gods, the world essentially gave birth to them, but then over long period of time, they all die because the energy fades away eventually. They essentially all return back to earth and become part of the world, they no longer have a form. It's fairly tragic but very taoist I think?

i mean it's really popular (judging by the viewcounts and heat index for first two days), so it's okay. LGX doesn't fit the ml but i'll live.

No? it was just to make money. She mentioned two years when she first hired the manager for her restaurant.

Ah bao didn't cause A's crash, he sorta did that to himself. Qiang hates ah bao because a) ah bao took a distasteful name when grabbing small parts of remnants of A's stock b) he's salty ling zi left Japan for ah bao c) the opportunity came up.

Lili's imagination. A is dead as they say. I've seen people interpret it as Lili actually likes ah bao like she loves A, but because she can't betray A, she half threw ah bao under the bus. She did what she planned to do from the start, use all the money to pay off A's debt.

Or they are same type of people and it's better ah bao hits a slump that doesn't kill him, or something bigger will. (which is what ye shu/grandpa is like)

it's pu'dong, eastern side of shanghai, it was largely farmlands in 90s but is now the financial center of shanghai, and mentioned above, the disneyland and the airport. 90s is when land were super cheap and as development goes, the value just multiply tenfold or hundredfold. Nobody is really talking about it, cos most people sort of get what pu'dong means.

I think I did remember there were someone talking about it but it wasn't in the title, something along the lines of, ah bao got kicked out of the stock market game (since his rep tanked and he barely scraped by and as he said, individuals were chased out of the scene by corporations). but since he got pu'dong, he could continue to participate in the capitalism game in a different way.

ahhh in that case, maybe add delicious romance to the list too? parallel world/west out of yu men might work for you too.

someone else mentioned other recs, I'll add the day of becoming you and you are my hero if you haven't seen them?
for a more mature romance who communicates, fake it till you make it?
i have more recs but they wouldn't be romance heavy or necessarily peaceful/stress free.

hope you enjoy the drama :D