Qikung
One of the best of 2023
A lot of personnality and charm with the main leads, and others as well. Even some of the vilains are pleasant and funny to watch in this very good sentimental comedy. Those actors were a real discovery. It feels good to see such talented 'new faces'. The idea of the plot is very nice as well, mutual understanding between husband and wife.Superb costumes and globally visually very pleasant. A bit of 'slow motion' by the start of the second half, but then it proceeds really well. In my opinion, easyly one of the best of 2023. A succes on every level! Not to be missed !
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This review may contain spoilers
The end of the Journey ... and of Wufeng
I write this review because I found nowhere someone telling about the end of the story the way I understood it. So I share it with you, dear watchers of this beautifull series ... but read that only when you have finished to see it.Many heard with the last images the sound of the door of the citadel opening. I don't deny it but what I heard as well and more loudly is the sound of an explosion. We have been given all along this story meticulously written and very precisely translated in images several clues from the begining to the end, which led me to my understanding of the conclusion of the story.
- Yun Weishan is the only one who saw the plan of the 'infinite fire' on the back of Ziyu, and says 'I saw it all'
- Yun Weishan having been discovered as an agent of Wufeng is asked by master Yue, who is the moral values keeper of the Gong Family, not to remain among them and leave someday, which she agrees with.
- Then Yun Weishan after the last battle knows that the purpose to erradicate totaly Wufeng to give peace once and for all to the Gong Community has not yet been reached, and that everything could start again as ten years before.
So having the plan of the 'infinite fire', the duty to leave the Gong community, and no plan in life now she has already found her true love, her leaving the Gong mansion is to meet Wufeng an ultimate time and blow them off after they themselves came to track her again at her sister. The last sound of explosion is a kind of maybe allegoric way to put it, but I definitely believe the story is that she sacrificed herself to blow Wufeng leader&Co away with the dreadful infinite fire and she did it.
Thank you Yun Weishan !
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exhausting after episode 24
No doubt the main couple is very well chosen, and are very good and nice actors. And the series was quite enjoyable until the beginning of episode 24. After that it becomes really heavy, as if the writter had pulled all the string of its imagination downwards to prolong the show to some 40 episodes. The series then plunges into the madness of some of the most wicked characters, masochist or serial killer, so vicious it becomes simply sordid to depict as well as to watch them, a kind of unhealthy voyeurism into the disturbed physche of some dangerous psychopath, definitely not my cup of Chinese tea/series. I am quite sad that because of the leading pretty faces, most viewers did not discern some things were going too far, but it is their problem after all.Having jumped prematurely to the end of the series to check it would not be an irreparable disapointment, I found out the torture did not stop there, and I decided to resume the flow only up to the last happy images of the last episode for the main couple. For after that we are left on this kind of very 'refined' double interpretation enigma, typicall of those 'lofty' series which refuses to give a frank happy ending because it is so called artistically cheap, even if the viewer/client loves it but will anyway be left frustrated.
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a Masterpiece
This series is definitely rather for women, for it describes all the typical possible situations for women in the society of China at this time, 17e century. It is hard to believe that a man wrote the story, so much it concerns in depth and precision women condition. I would not be surprised the author lent his name to a female writer, who in the past used to remain anonymous. This series is the ancestor of many of those produced today, by the care of its frames, the refinement of the costumes and hairsets. Images are highly esthetic, each frame like a master's painting, when before chinese series ressembled very much to the indian 'Bollywood' style. Many new actresses, today famous, were discovered with 'Red Mansion' as well as the actor Yang Yang who, appearing only in episode 31 over 50, gives a great and very moving performance, especially for a beginner. His predecessor in the younger same character is very good too.Everything is original and beautiful in this series, including the fascinating music, so genuinely chinese.
Something important to understand the series from the start, for those who did not read the book, and which is not mentioned here with the story summary, is that the two main characters are originally dwellers of an edenic plane where he is a precious jade stone - from there his name 'Yu' meaning 'Jade'; and where she is a beautiful flower by his side, and they are in love. For some reason, the jade stone wants to experience earthly life as an incarnated human, and his flower follows him. So when they first meet as human persons, they have this feeling of 'deja vu' and fall in love instantaneously. But life on earth is not as simple as their edenic realm, and the rest is their story, ending up very philosophically and happily ... ever after.
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