A really lovely woman but I have to laugh as various profiles on the web have her height varying from 5'2 to 5'5 inches or 158-167 cm. Xing Fei is at most 5ft tall and even that is likely a stretch. So for her to have built a career in an industry were taller is typically better is pretty remarkable. She is very pretty and a talented actress - I would like to see her lead a high caliber historical drama - I think she could kill it in such a role.
Married, has children, and formally announced retirement from acting in 2018. I saw an image of her in 2021 and she looked fantastic but she always was very beautiful - a knockout figure and very pretty face.
The 8.4 rating has to be from a ratings bomb. It is a cute fun movie. But it is not mid 8 quality even in a long stretch of the imagination.
The character development for the supporting actors was quite weak. But I think most of all my issue is the ending since there was no satisfactory explanation of Han Yun Seok reappearance.
It was nice to see some supporting actors: the fantastic Choi Gyu Ri who gave such a great performance in Marry My Husband supporting role, and Yoon Sang Hyeon who was a comedic master in Doctor Slump. But their characters here had little development and no explanation at all for their "status" at the end of the movie.
This is a superb drama. Loved everything about it. Watched it as part of a group of 4 women and 2 men. I can tell you we all believe Zhao Jin Mai is a amazing given how she can shed tears on demand, and several times the women in our group shed them with her! She has such a regal bearing - was a perfect fit for the role of Li Rong.
The confession scene (Ep 11 I recall) by Pei Wen Xuan to Li Rang was just superb writing and acting. Both of us who had our spouses with us looked them straight in the eye and told them that was how you express love.
Besides the great lead performances they were accompanied by many other fine performances. Actress He Qiu who played Qin Zhen Zhen was an absolute delight and we were surprised to read this was her first credited acting role (on MDL at least).
The MDL rating of 8.2 under scores this drama - it is easily in the 8.5-8.7 range.
I have already recommended this drama to several friends and it will be on my most recommended list for a long time I suspect.
Polished off this series a couple of weeks ago. The leads are both excellent. The story revolves around the female lead and Zhao Jin Mae was superb in that role. The male lead Song Wei Long was very believable in his role. The two leads presented a great story arc of their romance.
We loved the final episode that gave us a glimpse of their life post the culmination of their journey to loving each other.
The supporting cast were very good.
I rate about 8.6-8.7 (rounded to 9 for MDLs rating system). Highly recommend.
one of the worst SML goes to Zhuang Xu • Emotional Cowardice: He never openly admitted his feelings when she…
This does not make him "the worst" unless you mean in context of character. The character was generally detestable. Personally I do feel the actor was rather one dimensional in his ability to convey the emotions the script required.
The propaganda is so in your face with this one, but I’ll power through for swl let’s see if it’s worth…
There was quite a bit of state propaganda in this one. Interesting to me from my far off place is that the 3 Zhao Jin Mai dramas I have viewed all contained a fair amount of propaganda.
Some of us recently got together and viewed 3 of her dramas. She is fantastic. Both the men and women who watched agreed she is a great talent, and has commanding screen presence on top of her being very attractive.
We watched: - Shine On Me - The Princess Royal - Amidst A Snowstorm of Love
We rate Shine on Me and The Princess Royal equally about 8.6-8.7 and Amidst A Snowstorm of Love about 8.0 - all are good ratings in our opinion. We just felt the first 2 superior for the dramatic impact they had on us as well as the overall qualitative aspects of the drama.
We focused on the adult dramas she has performed in the genres we like. We probably will watch Our Generation but some of her earlier more youth oriented dramas are not really to our taste.
I think Zhao Jin Mai will have a long successful career. And we happily enjoy her future acting performances.
Enjoying so far. Its rolling along and keeping us guessing.
Nice to see Park Joo Hee back on the screen. I fee like we have not really seen much of her since her great role as the Lieutenant in Happiness. I only wish her role in Filing For Love was more significant.
Nice cameo by Lee Jung Eun in Ep 3.
Something looks different about Kim Jae Uck. I don't know what it is and perhaps it is because his actual last movie I viewed just recently was Her Private Life which in actuality was filmed 8 yrs ago and so his appearance then to now has of course changed.
They have done very little with Hong Hwa Yeon's character so far. I know she comes from a modeling background but she has demonstrated reasonable acting ability in past roles. I am only finished to Ep 3 and I don't want to spoil but I thought she might be the younger femme fatale and maybe that is still her role. She does play a very calm and collected person so far but her character does seem to be underdeveloped.
Shin Hae Sun has been hit and miss for me in the past but so far this role is "hit" and rather than miss. Likewise I feel this is going well for Gong Myung - he is really playing the straight role very well. I don't in my mind see them as a couple yet I can tell from what I have viewed the writing is foreshadowing they getting together.
what do you rate this drama movie on a scale from 0-10
I think approx in the 8 range. Its a romance melodrama with deliberate slow pacing and an emphasis on the leads interaction with each other to lay out the story. It is not going to be everyone's cup of tea especially due to the ending.
That is an incredible result for Honour given how small ENA marketshare is on pay for cable. If it continues with these ratings it will be in the top 5 all time for the network.
A reminder for anyone in North, Central or South America that Honour streams legally on Amasian.tv streaming service. They are a US based competitor to Viki in the Americas and purchased the streaming rights to ENA's entire library. You can watch online but they also have an app for every major platform - android, apple, roku, etc.
Honour is available throughout North, Central and South America on Amasian.tv which is a streaming platform that competes with Viki in those regions. It is how I am watching the series.
Sunday ratings were even higher: 11.8% national and 12.3% Seoul. Its audience share has risen approx 350% nationally from episode 1 to episode 14 as good word of mouth spread about this show. And 400% in Seoul.
That is a commendable performance. I feel the final 2 episodes are going to perform even better.
UMH is a pretty complex 16 episode show. I was always curious as to whether a drama this complex and with its unusual genres of comedy combined with crime/thriller would be a winner. Great to see some of us still have a brain!
I could easily understand fans shipping Yang Yang and Zhao Lu Si - they were magical together.
Zhao Lu Si impressed me in this drama. Its hard to believe it actually pre-dates Hidden Love. She seems to be a very versatile actress. And she is very beautiful in this drama - as an aside we noticed how straight her posture and carriage are when she stands.
As I am fairly new to cdrama I did not have a lot of familiarity with Yang Yang. I will definitely be looking to view more of his content.
Lulu Xuan aka Xuan Lu has a couple of my single friends lusting after her and with good reason. She has a great role here playing a strong, intelligent senior politician and family leader.
As others mentioned a refreshing aspect of this drama is that the writers resisted the temptation to make the 2 women enemies.
The other main and supporting cast are all deserving of acclaim. She has not gotten much mention in the comments that I reviewed but Carman Lee really nailed it as Madame Bai Li and really incited the hate in me for that character. Great job on her part.
I just finished Love Between A Fairy and Devil and I am a bit stunned. It was superb. I honestly did not expect it to be nearly as good as it was.
Yu Shu Xin (Esther Yu) was incomparable. Masterful performance delivered by her.
But the entire cast impressed me. I felt there were no missteps in the casting and acting.
We had love, unrequited love, a love triangle, revenge, body swapping and almost every other drama trope that I usually abhor, yet in this drama they did not feel tropey and instead of being annoyed I continued from one episode to the next in anticipation of where the stories were headed.
Something I appreciated was that for the genre of drama it was short at 36 episodes. Almost everyone of them felt concise with little wasted time spent on trying to drag out the series which we have so often witnessed in some of the much longer Xianxia type dramas.
The current overall rating of 8.7 here on mydramalist (Feb 2026) is a bit of a travesty IMHO. It is easily 8.9-9.0 quality. I suppose it got hit by some of the anti-Ester fans which is unfortunate. There is nothing to fault on her part in this show.
which is a legal streaming provider based in the United States and has a license agreement with ENA. First 2 episodes are online. I think it is available worldwide and they have an app which you can install on your smart TV and then you access it directly, or you just go to the url in your computer browser of course.
I thought the 2 initial episodes were outstanding.
The character development for the supporting actors was quite weak. But I think most of all my issue is the ending since there was no satisfactory explanation of Han Yun Seok reappearance.
It was nice to see some supporting actors: the fantastic Choi Gyu Ri who gave such a great performance in Marry My Husband supporting role, and Yoon Sang Hyeon who was a comedic master in Doctor Slump. But their characters here had little development and no explanation at all for their "status" at the end of the movie.
The confession scene (Ep 11 I recall) by Pei Wen Xuan to Li Rang was just superb writing and acting. Both of us who had our spouses with us looked them straight in the eye and told them that was how you express love.
Besides the great lead performances they were accompanied by many other fine performances. Actress He Qiu who played Qin Zhen Zhen was an absolute delight and we were surprised to read this was her first credited acting role (on MDL at least).
The MDL rating of 8.2 under scores this drama - it is easily in the 8.5-8.7 range.
I have already recommended this drama to several friends and it will be on my most recommended list for a long time I suspect.
We loved the final episode that gave us a glimpse of their life post the culmination of their journey to loving each other.
The supporting cast were very good.
I rate about 8.6-8.7 (rounded to 9 for MDLs rating system). Highly recommend.
We watched:
- Shine On Me
- The Princess Royal
- Amidst A Snowstorm of Love
We rate Shine on Me and The Princess Royal equally about 8.6-8.7 and Amidst A Snowstorm of Love about 8.0 - all are good ratings in our opinion. We just felt the first 2 superior for the dramatic impact they had on us as well as the overall qualitative aspects of the drama.
We focused on the adult dramas she has performed in the genres we like. We probably will watch Our Generation but some of her earlier more youth oriented dramas are not really to our taste.
I think Zhao Jin Mai will have a long successful career. And we happily enjoy her future acting performances.
Nice to see Park Joo Hee back on the screen. I fee like we have not really seen much of her since her great role as the Lieutenant in Happiness. I only wish her role in Filing For Love was more significant.
Nice cameo by Lee Jung Eun in Ep 3.
Something looks different about Kim Jae Uck. I don't know what it is and perhaps it is because his actual last movie I viewed just recently was Her Private Life which in actuality was filmed 8 yrs ago and so his appearance then to now has of course changed.
They have done very little with Hong Hwa Yeon's character so far. I know she comes from a modeling background but she has demonstrated reasonable acting ability in past roles. I am only finished to Ep 3 and I don't want to spoil but I thought she might be the younger femme fatale and maybe that is still her role. She does play a very calm and collected person so far but her character does seem to be underdeveloped.
Shin Hae Sun has been hit and miss for me in the past but so far this role is "hit" and rather than miss. Likewise I feel this is going well for Gong Myung - he is really playing the straight role very well. I don't in my mind see them as a couple yet I can tell from what I have viewed the writing is foreshadowing they getting together.
A reminder for anyone in North, Central or South America that Honour streams legally on Amasian.tv streaming service. They are a US based competitor to Viki in the Americas and purchased the streaming rights to ENA's entire library. You can watch online but they also have an app for every major platform - android, apple, roku, etc.
That is a commendable performance. I feel the final 2 episodes are going to perform even better.
UMH is a pretty complex 16 episode show. I was always curious as to whether a drama this complex and with its unusual genres of comedy combined with crime/thriller would be a winner. Great to see some of us still have a brain!
Zhao Lu Si impressed me in this drama. Its hard to believe it actually pre-dates Hidden Love. She seems to be a very versatile actress. And she is very beautiful in this drama - as an aside we noticed how straight her posture and carriage are when she stands.
As I am fairly new to cdrama I did not have a lot of familiarity with Yang Yang. I will definitely be looking to view more of his content.
Lulu Xuan aka Xuan Lu has a couple of my single friends lusting after her and with good reason. She has a great role here playing a strong, intelligent senior politician and family leader.
As others mentioned a refreshing aspect of this drama is that the writers resisted the temptation to make the 2 women enemies.
The other main and supporting cast are all deserving of acclaim. She has not gotten much mention in the comments that I reviewed but Carman Lee really nailed it as Madame Bai Li and really incited the hate in me for that character. Great job on her part.
I gave this a 9.5 out of 10.
Yu Shu Xin (Esther Yu) was incomparable. Masterful performance delivered by her.
But the entire cast impressed me. I felt there were no missteps in the casting and acting.
We had love, unrequited love, a love triangle, revenge, body swapping and almost every other drama trope that I usually abhor, yet in this drama they did not feel tropey and instead of being annoyed I continued from one episode to the next in anticipation of where the stories were headed.
Something I appreciated was that for the genre of drama it was short at 36 episodes. Almost everyone of them felt concise with little wasted time spent on trying to drag out the series which we have so often witnessed in some of the much longer Xianxia type dramas.
The current overall rating of 8.7 here on mydramalist (Feb 2026) is a bit of a travesty IMHO. It is easily 8.9-9.0 quality. I suppose it got hit by some of the anti-Ester fans which is unfortunate. There is nothing to fault on her part in this show.
https://amasian.tv
which is a legal streaming provider based in the United States and has a license agreement with ENA. First 2 episodes are online. I think it is available worldwide and they have an app which you can install on your smart TV and then you access it directly, or you just go to the url in your computer browser of course.
I thought the 2 initial episodes were outstanding.