Ni Chang is a sister drama to "I Will Never Let You Go" with Ariel Lin and Zhang Binbin -- it's by the same production company, and has many of the same great supporting cast (unrelated story and characters, despite the similarly structured Chinese title). Because of this connection, however, I was fully prepared to 1/ fall in love with the entire cast of supporting characters only to have every single one of them killed off in the final episodes, 2/ see beloved characters completely change, 3/ see villains get away with justice at the end, and 4/ have a rushed and unsatisfying conclusion filled with loose ends, questions, and plot holes. (Clearly, I Will Never Let Go of how they butchered the ending of that drama!) And while I usually don't like spoilers, I freely spoiled myself for this one to further help manage my own expectations.

Perhaps because of all this, I ended up quite enjoying Ni Chang.

The story itself is nothing "special" -- it's your classic survivor/family revenge story -- but I enjoyed the silk, textile, embroidery, skin care and fragrance industry backdrop, even though I also take a lot of it with a giant bucket of salt in terms of historical accuracy.

For a slow-burn love story with very little sweeping/epic romance between the main OTP, Bi Wenjun and Nicki Li still made a really great couple, supported by a lovable cast of secondary characters. While a couple of beloved characters do die, there was no slaughterfest and all of them all get satisfying, happy endings.

Given how notoriously bad C-dramas can be with derailing a storyline in the final half/third/quarter, I was pleasantly surprised how all the loose ends were tied, secrets were properly exposed, traps were logically laid, and villains paid the price. They also gave viewers almost an entire episode to enjoy everyone being happy -- in other words, there was proper closure for everything and everyone (even beloved servants who appeared in only a few early episodes and were forced to say goodbye during difficult times returned and were given happy endings).

Did a couple of the melodramatic action shots make me cringe-snort-laugh out loud? Yeah, but I wasn't taking the show too seriously. Could it have been tighter? Sure. Is it sophisticated and high brow? Definitely not. Could the story have been executed better? Of course. Is Bi Wenjun in it enough? No. (He absolutely needs to star in his own wuxia drama, the brief martial arts he displayed in Ni Chang looked that good.)

Ni Chang is not a drama that will leave you in a show-hole or significantly emotionally engaged or invested. But if you're like me and manage your expectations, you may find it overall, an easy and entertaining watch anyway.