This drama is one of the luckiest drama.
I've seen this year （2021）
pretty much every case that comes up
you've seen it play out somewhere in your life.
Hello you're watching AvenueX
Where a junkie on good storytelling shares her thoughts, knowledge,
and occasional weird ideas on stories and
how they're told
Chen Shui Hua Yuan, Dream Garden
is a 16 episodes drama that's been aired on hunan television, mango tv
the drama is started by Zang Xichuan
led by Gong Jun and Qiao Xin
The drama started shooting back in last april
and then wrapped in june in the city Xia Men (厦门）
because it belongs to this category of dramas.
It only updates on monday and tuesday and 2 episodes per week.
So it's one of the slowest airing dramas that's
available in the entirety of chinese dramaland
I did argue with myself about
whether I should just talk about it when it fully finishes,
which is 3/4 weeks away.
But then I feel that's too long a wait.
When this drama first came out middle of last month,
it already had some really interesting thing happening to it.
So I don't want to wait anymore.
It has aired ten episodes at this point I'm making the video.
So this is based on that.
I will give it a high one gold mine,
something about like 1.5 to 1.7,
although it's definitely not perfect.
First, let me introduce you to the story.
If you haven't watched it yet very briefly,
this is another drama that's focused on psychology,
like the Psychologist that happened a bit earlier than this drama.
Our leading character.
Lin Shen played by Gong Jun
is a professional psychological counselor who has a practice with a partner.
right from the first shot of this drama.
It seems he's in a kind of trouble.
And the story is told in reverse.
So this is a psychology focused drama with a touch of mystery.
The female lead is played by Qiao Xin
Her character is Xiao Xiao
and she is a blogger
More specifically writing Gong Zhong Hao (公众号）
which is a wechat platform for blogging
it has kind of gone out of fashion these days,
but there was a time when it was the golden place to get internet traffic
and she writes mostly "qing gan" which is emotion,
love, romance she writes those topics and she has a rather big following.
Their encounter happened due to she has a girlfriend who went missing
and she found out this girl has been seeing a psychological counselor.
So she goes to this place and trying to find
out more information about her missing girlfriend
and that's how they met.
And later as all contemporary dramas
that have a female and male lead
you know they're gonna ~~~
while they have their main emotional love story plot line,
you have the going through the whole drama,
but not gonna show up until very late mystery crime line
of the main male character.
Then you also have many many different psychological problems,
patients' cases that we're gonna dive into as the story develops.
Let's talk about what is great about this drama
first thing is totally this drama is one of
the luckiest drama purely because it happened,
right on the perfect timing
just happened to coincides with what happened
in reality during the middle of december
in chinese entertainment business.
First you have a case of an idol and his secret girlfriend that
they had a good relationship to start with when he wasn't famous,
when he got more famous.
He ditched her,
brainwashed her to the point that she doubt
about whether she had a relationship with him.
She had a lot of psychological problems, breakdowns, and stuff,
and our main character comes to help and gradually reveals
What actually happened.
That was the first kind of major case.
And immediately after that,
was the case of a pair of lovers
The man has been gas lighting the woman and they just like hit right
at the same time when the Wang Lihong thing came out
on that day,
where our main characters are talking about,
probably this guy is gaslighting the girlfriend,
it's nothing huge.
and it didn't make this drama super successful in any way,
but it definitely attracted quite a bit traffic that it didn't expect.
It would have
simply because of first the idol and idol's fans love story has some
similarity to ~~~
and then immediately gas lighting.
So there's no way you can anticipate that.
But apart from this weird,
coincidental thing that happened with this drama
in terms of those cases cases' quality,
it's also very good.
I think the greatest thing about this drama up to episode ten is
it has featured so many interesting psychological
problems that people have these days and peculiar
cases that have a lot of resonance
with contemporary audiences
pretty much every case that comes up,
like you've seen it play out somewhere in your life,
maybe in your relationship with your colleagues,
with your partner,
with your parents.
oh my god that's so painful.
right now it's on a story of the parent's thing that just
finished wrapping and
control freak parents and their relationship
with their children , omg
these individual cases are rather well written,
very well integrated into the main plot line.
And then the actors for those units stories are all very good
do not get discouraged about this drama.
If you actually don't care about the leading actor Gong Jun or,
actress Qiao Xin, you don't like them.
You don't think they're particular attractive or anything.
You still should go and watch this drama just because
you can actually take them out.
of this story and then just watch the individual,
different patients who come for counseling.
And those stories are so interesting to watch
and the way each case is explained with visual storiestelling's
advantages of editing, of montage,
of using music,
and using when I reveal what and how I transit.
All those.
It does remind you of Psychologist where they did a lot of design
of how you visually represent people's psychological problems.
But it is not done with such a high flying style to the level
where you feel the entire production is
just trying to show off to the audience a
Look! We're so cool.
It's at a very comfortable place where it works,
but it doesn't patronize.
There's another good thing that I haven't personally discovered,
but I did happen to watch some other people reviewing
this drama and and they are in psychology major.
So they did mention something really cool about this,
which I am no expert.
But I think what they said makes a lot of sense,
which is there are actually different ways of psychological counseling.
Different practices have different focuses
in this room so far for all the major cases.
When you see Gong Jun's character,
intervene with people's problems or how they try
to solve their problems with Qiao Xin's help and stuff.
They pretty much only do hypnotizing
it's a very clever way for the writer to do it that way
because you can then just focus on one particular method of practice,
which does function in reality.
and you don't make the main character, like a superman,
who can do everything,
anything, all types of things.
And it's rather easy on camera visually to show that,
and then visually to represent how this process can work.
for the patient.
And if there are other practices,
it may just makes the thing much more complicated,
professionally speaking.
And then it may not be that easy to actually show on camera and make
the audience feel as effective
so far this drama is close to 2/3 of the way
and it really only just focused on hypnotizing
as one method of doing things.
It's actually a clever way,
I think to minimize problems.
Things that they do that maybe later being
accused of not being accurate to reality.
If that's intentionally done,
I would say it's very clever.
oh plus it doesn't have skin smoothing
hard to see these days for a contemporary drama.
I mean already the actors look very good,
much better than
normal people with heavy makeup on
but you can see the floors on their skin.
And I appreciate that
I much much prefer that than
everybody looks like plastic.
Then let's talk about what is not so good about this drama.
First thing.
I think the individual cases are much more interesting than the main line.
I mean it's okay to watch as a contemporary romantic story when
the male leader and female leader has all those little moments,
it's not bad,
but it definitely doesn't get to the place where
you feel like
oh they are meant for each other.
This drama has a very lukewarm sort of main love relationship that's watchable,
that's enjoyable at times,
but it probably wouldn't get to you.
Then.
The logic of these two particularly early stage when they first
meet and how they sort of ended up in the same practice.
And she becomes kind of his outside of the school student and then assistant.
There's definitely a level of force it to happen because they are leads.
They have to me, they have to get together somehow.
But a lot of those little links do not really make logical sense.
For example, she just got taken in as like the intern.
For no good reason really,
because I mean the partner character played by Zhang Duo
just said oh she's cool and let's her in
There's no way that it would happen in reality
when she comes in with a fake identity,
because she wants to investigate and then they found
out and they still keep her like realistically,
that's just not gonna happen.
So there's some kind of foundation of main leads' encounter
if you wanna look at it with logical , cold, scrutinizing eyes,
it would work
not a huge problem for chinese contemporary dramas
because it happens in pretty much every drama.
But if you're picky,
you've been warned
then a small thing not quite sure
whether it should be in the negative or the positive.
Gong jun got dubbed
Qiao Xin used her own voice and pretty much every other character,
I think used their own voice,
gong jun is dubbed
If he used his own voice which wouldn't be
hugely problematic for a contemporary drama,
it probably wouldn't have as good as a feel.
Overall for the drama itself,
he needs a lot of improvement on his line delivery.
He knows that and all his fans knows that.
So I think i'm safe to say that
on one hand,
I can deal with the version that it has now which I
think is better for the narrative's purpose overall.
But I still couldn't quite get to his character because I
still get bothered by the fact that when he speaks,
it doesn't sound like him
and then Qiao Xin sounds like her exactly.
So it's very weird.
you know your brain just come computes that constantly
and I haven't gotten very used to it.
Then one last thing is it hasn't happened yet.
So I can't be sure if that's gonna be a problem,
I hope it actually will turn out to be good thing,
which is apart from the individual cases
and then the main characters' romantic line.
The third mystery line of our male character,
why he's in police station at beginning of the story?
And then he definitely has psychological problems of his own.
And the drama will tell you that from the
beginning and what is the reason of that
How is that related to this bad guy,
which we already know at this point in this drama
Clearly
not gonna spoil it for you
but go and watch you'll see this guy is being set up to be the bad guy
why he seems to have problems with our male lead.
And it's gonna have a big resolution at the end of it.
Like we all know it's gonna happen.
So that line exactly how it's gonna play out.
We don't know yet.
And probably if this drama has a big failure possibility,
that might be this line,
it could be a really tropey bad writing line.
It could not make sense and get resolved at the end.
There could be things like maybe something doesn't pass censorship,
therefore it gets cut and then things don't link together.
That could also happen.
We've seen that happening last year too many times.
I hope this drama,
by the end of episode 16 would make me feel
it's not the greatest thing out there,
but it doesn't disappoint me and they are definitely out
shining elements of this drama that exceeded my expectation.
That would be my over halfway,
not really first impression,
not really final,
probably won't make another video on this drama,
only video on dream garden.
Thank you for watching AvenueX
hope this has been helpful
and i'll see you in my next video.
Meanwhile, live long and happy drama watching.