Disclaimer: I watched this on the Youtube channel and the subtitles were just okay. If I knew that there were better subtitles on other websites, I would've watched it there to get the full, emotional story.

Love of thousand years (2020) is an 30-episode drama adaptation of the killing of three thousand crows by author shi si lang, featuring zheng yecheng and zhao lusi as main characters Fu Jiuyun and Qin Chuan, respectively. It is a xianxia romance about a princess who takes up revenge after the betrayal of an important official leads to an invasion from a neighboring kingdom–who is equipped with a demon army–and leads to the downfall of her kingdom. She hides her identity, taking on the face of her beloved maid, and goes to find the Spiritual Lamp that can rid of all demons in the world. This journey takes her to Qiangqu Mountain where immortals cultivate and where she meets Fu Jiuyun in person for the first time. Fu Jiuyun is a carefree and playful immortal who teases her plentiful and has his own reasons for bothering her…as their fates are tied together.

I started this drama without any prior knowledge of the book nor really reading the drama’s summary (since cdrama summaries are notoriously known for being inaccurate or too spoilery). I saw the bad reviews for it and kept my expectations low, which is why, I think, I was not too disappointed by this drama.

I watched this drama because of zheng yecheng and zhao lusi but was surprised at the high production quality which can be seen from the physical locations, amount of extras and supporting characters, and the camerawork. Besides the revenge plot and my two favorite actors, I was drawn from the very first episode to the pretty cinematography and camerawork. The supporting cast, too, was good, especially Mao Fang Yuan as Er Meng (my absolute favorite supporting character) and Dai Yun Fan as Pang Yuan/crown prince. The OST was fine though the only memorable song for me was the opening theme. (The instrumental OST though is pretty great! Especially the peach blossom melody--the song that the princess dances to in the first episode.)

I am biased toward zheng yecheng but I truly think he can make any role work and he plays a seemingly carefree immortal just fine. He’s very versatile and able to switch from smiling to serious and heartbreaking. He is one of the highlights of this show. zhao lusi took me a moment to get used to because I had only seen her in the romance of tiger and rose, a historical romcom, and her character at first seemed almost carefree too–like she was falling back on that romcom type–but of course, how could she be? when zhao lusi conveyed the heavy emotions of a undercover princess, I was able to take her more seriously (this, though happened around I think ep5-6 for me). seeing her in this drama convinced me that she’ll be able to play a serious role in her upcoming main role in the drama the long ballad. I never had a problem with these two as the main characters nor their chemistry. I think their chemistry with their other co-stars from other productions is stronger, but them together in this drama works too. I think it’s because for me they are both kind of baby faces–both with cute type of faces–so it was a little hard for me to get into their dynamic at first, but they eventually got it to work.

I think you’ll be able to still enjoy this drama if you are interested in these things:

-zheng yecheng
-zhao lusi
-star-crossed lovers (in this case: mortal and immortal)
-teasing and playful ML who is actually a dedicated and devoted lover
-FL who dislikes & misunderstands the ML at first but grows to trust him
-FL who carries a heavy burden of being a princess of a destroyed nation
-revenge plots involving going undercover (the princess changes her face into someone else, so try not to get attached to the princess you see at the beginning!)
-focus and development of secondary characters, mostly the second couple

I was hooked for the first 20 episodes or so. Where it got rocky for me was toward the last third of the drama (from around ep. 20-30), especially toward the last like 4 episodes where it felt like the drama was trying too hard to heighten the tragic notion that it didn’t feel organic and instead felt a bit frustrating. At one point, I literally fast-forward a sad/tragic/serious scene because I was like “okay, I get it, let’s move along please.” It was being too extra on the tragedy.

Also, there were some plot moves toward the second half of the drama that I felt were either resolved too conveniently or were not logical. Some of the characterization too seemed to stop developing as we got near the end to the point where some conclusions of problems didn’t feel earned. Thus, the mediocre storytelling. It started great and then stopped short of the finish line, and so, the story itself and the characters suffered toward the end. But, it does end happy. Well, ambiguously happy. Is it a good ending? Debatable. Is it happy for our characters? Yes.

The confusion stemmed, I believe, from diverging from the original novel, where some key information was missing (or changed–maybe due to c*nsorsh*p?) for the drama. For example, in the drama’s description on MyDramaList says “A story about a forbidden romance that has weathered ten lifetimes and endured a thousand years of waiting.” I would disagree with this because that pertains more to the novel and not the drama. The drama did not make the weight of Fu Jiuyun’s interest in the princess heavy enough for the audience to truly understand. Thus, it comes across as pure curiosity, which isn’t as strong as a reason to suddenly change everything for one person.

Final thoughts: suspend your disbelief when the story starts to get a bit illogical. if you like the actors zheng yecheng and zhao lusi, I think you’ll still enjoy the story and witness some heartbreaking scenes and beautiful cinematography. but if you’re someone who needs an ending to be completely clear-cut about how it ends, then you’ll have a bit of trouble with this ending. Small note: the production had to us AI to generate a face for a minor character’s face–apparently the actress had done something really bad and so they didn’t want to use her face anymore, but couldn’t re-shoot, so they used AI. It will look really bad, fyi.

if you want to understand more about the ending and/or seek out the deeper reasons for Fu Jiuyun’s love for her, you can check it out at this soompi forum thread where translations have been provided for the epilogue, containing Fu Jiuyun’s POV, as well as the happy ending in the book.
https://forums.soompi.com/topic/433583-mainland-chinese-webdrama-2020-the-killing-of-three-thousands-crows-%E4%B8%89%E5%8D%83%E9%B8%A6%E6%9D%80/page/9/