Sunrise on the River (2024)

A Good Expose on Environmental Governance

Show was a good expose on environmental governance. It showed the challenges that present themselves when trying to implement environmental protection including incompetence, one-upmanship, corruption, facing unfamiliar situations and what it takes to be effective, make good decisions and in fact, being competent.

I’m familiar with the environmental issues portrayed in the show because of what I do in life. The issues are spot on. How they are investigated, treated and treated seemed a bit up and down to me. Almost idealistic.

At the same time it was showing the difficulties that a family can face when there are two professionals married to each other, juggling their responsibilities - but guess what - no mention of divorce etc. here we have a mature couple who have a great relationship and just work things out. What a breath of fresh air!

I did feel the show let some characters fade away. That could be the result of show only being 24 episodes long.

Show also highlighted how, even if you did something well or right, you would become the scapegoat. So, there is that insight into not rocking the boat, how the party retrains those who are judged to have let the system down, are interrogated and the importance of joint decision making. However, I suspect we saw a very “smoothed” out version of what really happens.

The other big message: there is more to life! Work life balance is continually undermined.

Overall, I thought this was a good show. The acting was good and I liked the characters.

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A very interesting take on environmental protection. But...

I had to concede that towards the end the drama got really, really boring for me 😅.
it started out really well and then it just got suuuuuper slow. I think I understand why. Initially the show was filmed in a dynamic way. Our characters would go on expeditions to villages, into mountains and caves and discover pockets of terrible pollution. There would be interesting environmental cases to tackle. The first case was a prime example - how do you move a street full of vendors without harming their livelihoods? I thought the solution was ingenious.

Then the case of an apartment complex abandoned by developers, stranding the buyers with no homes but with high mortgages. And to add insult to injury, the apartment grounds was turned into a toxic garbage dump.
These cases held my attention until the big case involving the suicide of our main lead's friend which started it all ..and the drama literally slowed down and grounded to a halt. In terms of action and dynamism. Suddenly all our characters are stuck in meeting rooms, boardrooms and press conferences. They talk, they lecture. Essentially the show became super talky and my brain, tired out from a day of meetings at work, could not bear to watch TV people hold meetings. Pure torture 🤪

But I persevered.
I just felt that the last 10 episodes could've been told in the same dynamic way the show started out. What happened? God knows, but my brain begged for mercy and I ended up fast forwarding most of the last ten episodes. 😆
So should you watch this? Well, if an environmental, curious about how China goes green kinda person like me finds it boring...well, probably not a good idea unless you are an even bigger nerd than I am. 😉

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