WingedBean

I love when a show I'm watching teaches me something, and The Road to Splendor has a powerful story to tell. Across its 36 episodes, women are the absolute stars of the plot, navigating the heavy constraints placed on them by a patriarchal society.

⚠️Be warned, this review is lowkey an essay. Lots of words ahead⚠️

Part 1: The Women
👵🏻Tingyun's Grandmother: She prides herself on her riches and her four government-sanctioned arches. Then you learn that these arches are sustained by the suffering of women. As the layers peel back, we see how this enviable and "respectable" matriarch mercilessly exploits her daughters and daughters-in-law just to uphold the weight of family reputation.

🪙Fan Ya Ke: Blinded by the desire for wishes for recognition and riches more than anything, she signs her so-called best friend's death sentence and gaslights herself that she's innocent. She trades everything for a man who never loved or respected her, and a promise of wealth she never actually receives.

🧠Tingyun: After an unfairly ruined reputation and a failed murder attempt, she has to crawl and eat filth to get herself away from the clutches of death. Unprepared but resilient, she slowly and painfully climbs her way up from a fall from grace to become one of the most powerful women in the kingdom.

📿Madam Yu: She does everything to maintain her pride and uplift her family name, yet she is bound to two men who couldn't care less about her—a petulant, self-pitying son and a husband who uses her for her brains. She is treated neither as a mother nor a wife. Instead, she is an unappreciated strategist and a burdensome family member when no longer useful.

💢Madam Zuo: Her anger at life's unfairness ultimately leads to her death. However, despite her atrocious actions, the audience has to sit with the realization that society pushed her into becoming who she was.
She chose to stay in that filth (think of how she constantly targeted 18-year-old Tingyun and put the Ganlin girls in danger), but had the unfair rules of chastity and the arches never been a thing, could she have become who we saw? We shall never know

👩🏻👩🏻‍🦳Concubine Wu & Her 'aunty':
One is basically a starved, prettied-up slave for the highest bidder; and the other is her slave driver. Instead of supporting each other, their dynamic shows how women exploit those even more impoverished as stepping stones. Fortunately, Wu gets smart, uses her likeness to Tingyun to survive, and leaves before the house collapses.

👑The Empress Dowager: Revered by all, she is still just a woman and bound by the system. Her final wish to be buried beside her husband is denied not by him, but by her own son. The man she brought into this world holds total dominion over her resting place. Despite her immense power, she cannot choose her grave because a man decided it, and her past status as a concubine deems her "less than." Even her loving grandson cannot break this cycle due to the legal bounds of filial piety.

🪽Tingyun's Mother: Her worst mistake was marrying a greedy man who saw her as less than. Her life and, more so, her death were truly so unfair. The rules of marriage kept her with that man. No matter how much money she gave him or how silently she stood by his side, she was "just a woman" to him. One whom he eventually and happily sacrificed for his greed. I think her story is something any woman wishing for the tradwife era should take a minute to look at and carefully examine.

Part 2: Wealth, Power, and Class
Societally, hierarchy was a huge part of this story. What can wealth buy, and what will people do to keep it? With wealth comes power. What are you willing to do to keep this power, and how do you wield it?

In societies ruled by classism, climbing the ladder becomes the ultimate goal, and characters go to horrific lengths to achieve it.

👵🏻The Grandmother’s Greed: This cycle starts with Tingyun's grandmother trapping Madam Zhou to keep her arches, and eventually orchestrating the murder and fake burial of her own granddaughter. (I highly suggest googling the history of these arches to understand the massive perks that made her value them over human life).

⚔️Zhao Ling:
He starts simply trying to keep his ragtag band of smugglers from starving and hopefully bring them to riches. His friend Jin Yuan Bao almost poisons him in the name of wealth. Prompted by Tingyun, he meets the emperor - then the crown prince- takes on the salt case, and later moves to Ganlin to join the army. All this to elevate his class.

He then meets the disgusting waste of air that is Yu Jing Xiu. A man far above his station who tells him that he could try as much as he wants and even 10 years couldn't reach him. Thus fueling his desire for status.

Then he spends 5 years at war, gaining recognition but losing a part of himself. It works, and he becomes the emperor's favourite. He has power, wealth, status. A self-made man. But becomes enemy number 1. Everything he's fought for, even Tingyun herself, is in danger because of who he's become. He is embedded in a world far above his head that he slowly starts to lose himself and Tingyun.

In trying to keep what he's gained, he starts to use tactics and become the very people he's fighting - further losing himself. I love how his final act was to leave the court, going back to Ganlin.

All that wealth, power, and status that he fought for brought nothing but pain. He and Tingyun went back to the place where they were both the happiest. Far away from the court, and this time, without the weight of the emperor and his expectations floating above them

📚Yu Jing Xiu:
Ah, the waste of space himself. I had to go to Google and look up 'words worse than pathetic' because pathetic quite does him justice. Google gave me Contemptible, despicable, vile, and abominable. I think they all suit him perfectly.

I'd roll my eyes every time his stupid face showed up on my screen. He was hypocritical as fuck.

He looks down on Fan Ya Ke for craving wealth and disdains Zhao Ling for his low status. He judges his mother for using her class to manipulate situations, and his father for using connections to get him a better position. Yet uses that same class leverage to look down on others, kidnap Tingyun, and pull strings. He claims to be a detached scholar but hides behind his privilege whenever it suits him.

I think his ending was the best+worst thing that could've happened to him

🪙Fan Ya Ke:
Threw her bestie under the bus, insulted her daddy and his day-old rice for the promise of wealth, a powerful man, and status. Only to go to the capital and
a. have no one care for her intellect, only the man she was married to and the fake story she gave of how they met

b. her MIL controlled her allowance. She was put on a budget, and her coffers remained as empty as they were when she went into that house coz MIL took everything. She looked rich, acted rich and classy but had nothing

c. be replaced by a knockoff version of Tingyun. Not only did her man start fixating on the woman he had discarded for her, but her MIL brought in a concubine who looked like Tingyun to appease her son and his wandering eye (it was also for business but, you know)

📿Madam Yu:
Did all that for money. To maintain the wealth and status that she had and for what? As mentioned, her husband and son never appreciated her. Ultimately, she lost her mind coz she couldn't handle being a poor commoner.

Part 3: Partnership
🧠⚔️The romance isn't the main catalyst that elevates Tingyun and Zhao Ling to the new heights. Their partnership does. The story does a fantastic thing in having them be partners before being lovers. Bound by societal limits, Tingyun acts as the brains while Zhao Ling is the brawn. He is crafty, but let's be real: without Tingyun, he would have remained in Juweijiao or, at most, become a regular salt merchant with a fake license.

PS: The breakdown of this partnership about two-thirds (maybe three-quarters) of the way through the show felt frustrating. A lack of communication creates cracks in what was once a strong foundation. This then leads to a lot of the heartache, angst, and attacks that the two experienced in the latter episodes. Mr and Madam Yu might not have had the love that the Zhao's had, but they were able to land so many hits because they communicated and always planned their horrible little plans together.

⚖️Part 4 Politics⚖️:
I won't dive too deep here—it’s the standard mix of corruption, court hijinks, and salt. If you’ve watched historical dramas, you know the drill. I honestly need to go do a deep dive into why salt was so hecking vital back then.

📎Parts I didn't quite like/Would've changed📎

📌The Villain's Endings: While I am satisfied with Yu Jing Xiu's ending, his parents got off too easily. His father died at the hands of the son he always discarded, which felt a bit underwhelming—he deserved to be publicly humiliated and dragged through the courts. Meanwhile, Madam Yu losing her mind felt like an escape. She should have remained sane to consciously experience how far she fell, rather than living in a mental utopia.

📌Fan Ya Ke's Redemption: She gets a second chance, but she absolutely didn't deserve it. Tingyun could have died because of her actions. Like Madam Zhou, Ya Ke is an interesting character whose motivations make sense, but her actions are unjustifiable. Tingyun’s privilege meant she didn't see all of Ya Ke’s struggles, but that doesn't justify weaponizing Tingyun's chastity—the one thing a woman had to preserve to survive. Later, in the capital, she is constantly trying to demean Tingyun even after she pulled herself up by her bootstraps; just to feel superior is wild. I cannot accept her redemption arc.

📌The Communication Breakdown: As mentioned above, the late-game communication failure between our main duo was highly frustrating.

✔️Final Thoughts
This is easily one of my favorite C-dramas of the year and a show I will quickly recommend to anyone. I deeply appreciate how it centers women, showcasing them in all their shades—both good and bad. It takes the time to explore how the patriarchy, greed, and self-esteem shape who women become. The salt-business politics are well-paced and engaging, making it an incredible watch for anyone looking for a story with real substance beyond just romance