An okay break for the usual.

This is my first review, I'm not sure why. We watched this for the cuisine, because we're foodies. We usually watch xanxia, wuxia dramas and take short breaks from them. We went back to this as when it had originally dropped on Disney+, it was dubbed over, with no way to fix that. Well, they eventually fixed it and we gave it a go.

The food scenes were amazing, however as we watched more and more. You start to pick up on why the show was placed on Disney... Which I can't stand anything Disney usually, the new live action Mulan was hardly a pass, just as this is/was.

When you present Chinese culture and history to Americans, or those watching from Disney, of all places. You begin to wonder why, they don't depict it like a real Chinese Drama is presented, in China. From the social norms, to the personalities, to the general lifestyle.

They show the entire duck presented at a table, normal in Chinese culture. But off-putting to Western culture with their soft-mind and heavily judgmental minds.

They present the duty of the Crown Prince to marry someone and how men are not equal to women. But then the ML prods the FL in public, for a kiss.

People just nonchalantly walk in and out of spaces as they please. The Crown Prince easily giving up his position. The Empress allowing him to do so. His brothers being in on it. Leading the emperor more than likely, also in on it. Seeing the Crown Prince's Eunuch hold back the other Princes. The obvious eavesdropping on the Prince. I could just could go on and on and on.

It was literally a westernized romance, with ideas taken from the Korean drama, with the premise of food and wrapped up to be an acceptable fairytale for Westerners to watch. I just couldn't by the end of it.

Which is another issue. That ending. Her starting up her own hostel, no. But just when all that is occurring, you're cut off midway with an alternate ending of her choosing the Crown Prince. So you're left not knowing the outcome of her final competition, or if she even comes back 6 months later.

Finally, you watch the "alternate" ending and you're re-capped with everything that just occurred in the last 2 or 3 episodes and you've wasted half an hour of your life rewatching more inaccurate fictions to Ancient Chinese culture. Yikes.

The saving grace was the casting, which had a lot of familiar faces. But the rest was a let down.

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