I pretty much continuously looked like um
their aunty while I was watching drama.
There is rather limited amount of screen time dedicated to the sports itself
Hi, you're watching AvenueX
where a junkie on good storytelling shares her thoughts,
knowledge and occasionally weir ideas on stories and
how they are told
Pei Ni Zhu Feng Fei Xiang, To Fly with You.
Is it 33 episode drama has been aired on web Tencent
Then television station,
Hunan television right now
the drama is led by Wang Anyu and Song Zuer
the production started shooting last year
right after the wrapping up of The Bond's shooting.
In the drama you could tell it's already rather cold.
Most of the time the actors are freezing,
you can literally tell that from the red nose tops
they have when they have exterior scenes
and it's pretty self explanatory.
If you look at its posters,
it is a drama about ice sports
as 2022
would be china holding the winter olympics.
At this point, i've watched the first 10 episodes,
one gold mine,
but it would be a high one.
I really still need to look at the next 20 episodes to make
up my mind about whether this is one gold or two gold
plot-wise there really isn't that much
About the story itself
It is set in a university with two university students
our male lead and female lead.
They are both also athletes who are specialized in ice sports.
Wang Anyu plays the role Shao Beisheng who is the
prince of figure skating.
Supposedly a very talented figure skater
Song Zuer's character is called Shen Zhengyi
and she specializes in short track speed skating
as the title To Fly with You suggests, obviously
this is gonna be a story involving these two fall in love,
but at the same time helping and supporting each other,
making their athletes goal and dream coming true.
If you've watched Skate into Love last year,
Zhang Xincheng and Wu Qian's drama
very similar setup.
Now let's get into the details good and bad.
On the positive end, first thing,
this drama is a very happy watch drama.
It's overall tone is very joyous, very light.
The look of it is very acceptable.
It doesn't have weird color grading or crazy skin smoothing.
And for this type of youthful story,
often you worry about it's gonna be too forced
too many sweet moments,
tropt and cliche shots and expressions
with the camera and how everything is done with
the music and you know people turning in circles that type of thing that
you see so much in chinese dramaland
the biggest worry I had for
this drama before even clicked in is
Is it gonna have all
those really slow down turn in circles
Somebody fall down, somebody catches them and for no good reason,
male and female lead meet,
and they just immediately fall in love
all that type of thing.
Thankfully, this drama doesn't have that.
Although it has very dramatized and intentionally
designed shots and angles and actors acting for comedy.
There are a couple of moments that super, super dramatized.
It actually is very well tuned.
It doesn't give you feeling that they're resolving to very
cliche expressions on screen in chinese dramaland
So this is definitely a good drama for anybody who's looking
for very light and very happy and filled with kind of orange,
colored bubbly energy stuff
to watch this drama you will not be disappointed.
Second good thing about this rama is I have to say I really
really buy into these two leads playing these 2 roles
Both of them happen to be the kind of people I just like looking at.
They are my type of eye-candy people, girl, and boy,
and they come together really really nicely.
Both Song Zuer and Wang Anyu have this ability to make the rather,
let's say,
conventional.
And we've seen too many times characters set up and the
relationship set up to be extremely acceptable and natural,
tiny tiny things that happens between people that's not really linguistic.
It may be expression,
it may be body language.
It's just a moment of silence,
human interaction between them feels very realistic, natural, relaxed.
and you totally can see that would be what can
happen in reality between this type of two people.
Also I really appreciate
In terms of script writing,
they don't make these two rather good looking.
People immediately just fall in love for no good reason.
And the girl for the most of the earlier parts,
when she really doesn't care about this guy and actually don't like hime
and just wanna get him out of her way.
it's not just because he's a good looking guy.
Therefore she in immediately just falls for him for no good reason.
I am happy to see normal human logic,
rational thinking people
and reasonable reactions.
That is what actually happens in real life.
If you don't know this guy,
and somehow he shows up in your life.
First is just to create trouble and you run into
all kinds of misfortunes because of his presence.
You're not gonna like this guy
doesn't matter how good looking he is.
Until later you get to know him better.
And you like okay this is actually a,
really nice guy,
then you may start to change your opinion.
And that's like what happens in reality.
But in romantic dramas,
often,
the script writers are so lazy to build up that process
and to explain it and think about logically what happens.
They just try to smash the two leads.
Together immediately.
Those relationships are not convincing.
Therefore, it doesn't work on me.
And I never trust in those type of storytelling.
I am happy that they do it in the reasonable way
in this drama
plus Song Zuer and Wang Anyu
They seem to really get along very, very well.
If you look at all those special feature stuff,
they also release,
somehow I feel the offscreen chemistry is even stronger than on screen.
I pretty much continuously looked like
their aunty
while I was watching drama
ah come on.
When is your wedding?
I'm gonna buy some expensive gift for you
that makes me happy.
The third thing that I think is on the positive end
of this drama is so far within the first 10 episodes,
at least I think the plot is reasonable.
I don't think it's super well written and it
definitely has places that it can improve on,
but I also would say it doesn't have very significant,
obvious problems.
I can very smoothly and comfortably watch
through this drama and be entertained.
Now let's move on to talk about things that
I definitely think they can improve on.
First, very simple thing is if you happen to be an expert of ice sports,
then you really do need to
just keep your expectation at the
reasonable level in terms of how well it gets presented in this drama.
Neither of these two actors are experts in ice sports,
whether it's short track or figure skating.
It's not something you can learn in 10 days.
They probably got trained about half a month before they started shooting.
They can do some basic things and shots
that are not so complicated with them on ice
but every other shot with rather complicated maneuver
are all done by stun double.
Sometimes you can see certain shots are done by stun double
but with their face morphed onto it,
not badly done,
but you can tell or very far away shots when the people is just that tiny,
so you can't quite see the face.
And when it gets close to them,
if the maneuver is too complicated,
it's probably shot when they are not actually on ice.
They're probably on some kind of tracks and revolving things.
And the angle goes up.
So you don't see the surface of the ice.
You just see their face and their body ans slo-mo all that.
So it's a mixture of these things.
If you are very sensitive and and you can spot these things.
So you can tell yeah okay that's not done by the actors.
Also, there are a couple of things.
If you're really sensitive,
very beginning of the drama,
you see the male lead who has a couple of pet golden hamsters
in his a dorm room which I don't think it's possible to
do in universities
allowing you to have pet.
Also you can't keep multiple golden hamsters in one cage.
They're gonna kill each other.
I've witnessed it before.
So that definitely is like
props department
Do you know anything about that?
I hope you only used that for one shot for that one scene
and then you pick them out and put them back into their
whatever respective individual cages.
It's just bad idea.
to have multiple hamsters in one
Not pretty.
Then the other thing about the drama is up to episode ten,
although I enjoyed it immensely and I really enjoyed
pretty much all the acting part of the drama.
I would say I really hoped they did more on the ice sports itself.
Than everyone whether it's the lead couple or kind of secondary couple's,
how they get together and fall in love up type of thing
I like watching it,
but I prefer to have less of it and then
actually focusing more on the Ice sports.
For example,
what type of trainings these athletes get?
And how do they improve their technique
what is particularly difficult about a particular technique?
For example, showing it on camera, right?
You doing the this is wrong.
You have to do this change and it gets better
all that type of more detailed explanation
because on ice,
it's so specific.
It's so restricted to the particular place, that venue you can have.
If you don't have the professional ice rink
you can't do a lot of things.
there are very few people proportionally speaking to the
general public who understands all the intricacies of those sports
since you are you know leading up to the winter olympics,
it's one of those dramas that's clearly designed for the purpose,
it's a missed opportunity.
I feel that they don't focus so much on the technicality,
the details about athletes' life,
and how they trying and all those curious things that is very
related to their profession that outsiders would not know
by episode ten.
There is rather limited amount of screen time dedicated to the sports itself.
I know it probably hard to film probably will take more money
and more time and design and script writing and even
shot breakdown to get that particular area well illustrated.
But I just wish this drama did that better and more.
Last thing is not that relevant
because this drama goes on tencent on
web only and then satellite television it goes on hunan television.
The tencent web version would have to follow the
hunan televisions editing version which we all know
chinese people know this for decades,
that hunan television is what we call "orphan editing" (being very bad)
because when it was airing on their satellite television,
they have their plans for when the ad goes in,
what next program comes in.
And when this particular episodes gets aired on this particular day,
if it has to give way to other programs that coming up or whatever,
they're gonna weirdly cut this drama in places that clearly looks like.
It's not the intended ending of this particular episode.
They will just cut it in middle and then show it the next part.
Tomorrow.
They mess up the editing.
It's their (inherited skills)
It's their conventional inherited traditional skills and it has been ranted about,
by pretty much every drama watcher in china for decades,
but they never change that.
It's their style of just
we do not care, we bought it,
we're gonna just cut it however we like.
So while I was watching on tencent,
I can tell like usually on the weekend episodes,
it gets weird editing and cut in place that you just go
WTF Is this?
So I understand my experience of this drama
is gonna get impacted by hunan television's,
orphan editing,
not very comfortable for somebody who likes editing,
but in order to look at these two cute young
actors and their adorable relationship,
i'll just have to take it.
So that would wrap up my opinion first impression on the drama
To Fly With You
Pei Ni Zhu Feng Fei Xiang
a rather enjoyable drama overall very satisfied.
I definitely will ollow this drama to the end of it
and everybody use their own voice
in case you wonder
so that just is like 10 times better than dubbing.
Thank you for watching AvenueX
I'll see you in my next video.
Meanwhile live long and happy drama watching.