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
if you've watched my Tuesday video,
well this is the first Blind Box Thursday video
and it happens to be very uneventfully
a normal drama review on a drama that is ongoing.
I simply cannot wait for another week to talk about this drama.
A dream of splendor, Meng Hua Lu
is a 40 episode drama that's being aired on Tencent right now.
It is directed by Yang Yang
written by Zhang Wei and led by Liu Yifei, Chen Xiao, Liu Yan, Lin Yun
although this drama has only aired 4 days consecutively in the first week,
it very quickly climbed to the top of chinese drama's popularity list.
I've watched the first 14 episodes of this drama.
and I'm very happy about it.
It is why no means a perfect drama,
but I think i'm looking at a very very nice June,
i'll give it a 2.5 gold mine rating.
It is a revengeful inflated rating,
but I think
who cares?
We just wanna look at pretty people.
And finally, we got pretty people on screen dressed up.
So let me first introduce you briefly to the story and talk about a
couple of things that's going on internet regarding this drama in China.
And then we're gonna talk about the drama.
Meng Hua Lu is based on, or I would rather say,
initiated by an ancient play that was written
hundreds of years ago by the most famous
ancient playwright of chinese history,
Guan Hanqing, and the original work is titled.
赵盼儿风月救风尘
but often shortened as just 救风尘
It is a story of one prostitute goes out save her sister,
not blood related,
but within this profession who got cheated into a marriage,
marrying a man who treated her badly.
If you've watched A Dream of Splendor already,
you see that's about the first 6 episodes of the drama.
And once you move beyond that point
everything else that happens in this drama is original creation.
Also in the original story,
there really is only two female lead characters
that will be the two characters you see in this drama play by
Liu Yifei - Zhao Paner, Lin Yun - Song Yinzhang
There is no Gu Qianfan, as you see in the drama played by Chen Xiao,
the two things I wanna talk about quickly
regarding this drama in china
first after it aired for a couple of days.
Douban opened rating for public
the moment you are able to see score over there.
It's already 8.3 out of 10,
a couple of minutes later,
8.5, a couple of minutes later 8.7,
and it eventually hit 8.8 and Douban locked its rating
so that you are no longer able to change the rating.
No matter how many people rate afterwards.
By that point, there's already over 200,000 votes submitted from Douban accounts.
Is that too high a rating?
I think it is
the more reasonable rating for this drama
probably should sit somewhere between seven and eight.
So 8.8 definitely is inflated,
but I understand why people do that.
I believe a lot of people rushed in to rate this drama
just to act out of revenge,
out of the exhilaration,
of finally see something that is really qualified as a period idol drama,
which is something chinese drama audiences have been denied for too long.
The second thing is there.
There's a lot of argument regarding certain ideas in this drama
that I do think people intentionally fueled up so that it gets
more traffic and more talked about and discussion.
If you are doing promoting,
you'd rather have a lot of people arguing about it
than not having anything going on at all.
If you happen to have heard some of those
arguments that's coming from chinese internet,
there's only one thing I wanna point out,
which is the script writer really did something very stupid.
and she's gonna have to deal with this aftermath
for a long time to come.
And it's totally on her.
Basically she reposted somebody's drama,criticism/review
that highly claims this is a great work
and says a lot of great things about her.
In her repost, she praised that person's review and said,
she agrees with the stuff that the article says, unfortunately,
the article does contain some things such as the original work.
Of Jiu Feng Chen, that was written hundreds of years ago,
was backward,
was left in the old time of feudal society.
And now we're in 21st century
in a way implying the current work is better.
which is absolutely ridiculous.
Here, just a little bit information on this origin author Guan Hanqing
who if you go to chinese proper schools and learn chinese from textbooks,
you would have come across his works.
And he's widely regarded by literature by chinese history
as the greatest playwright in chinese literature history.
So if you have to find an equivalent in english speaking world,
that will be shakespeare,
I don't understand what is going on with this script writer
She's gone mad basically
and her work is not better.
okay
Not the same thing.
There are already mistakes that's made in the lines
written in this drama that shows she is very,
not well educated in chinese classic literature.
And if you've watched Word of Honor,
you may be able to spot (a famous line)
it showed up in this drama again,
but used wrong
so much so for I'm better than Guan Hanqing
So these are the two things that's not exactly about the drama itself,
but it's promotion.
And if you work in the industry,
you know a huge part of the budget of a drama is allocated to promotion.
If it's a real production,
that's how it works in this world.
Now let's talk about the drama itself.
I thought it's gonna turn out to be this type of drama
with this type of vibe and this type of performance.
Everything I got was better.
Certain parts are far exceeding my expectation.
so I wanna just first talk about a couple of things,
not necessarily being the negative points of this drama,
but a more realistic look on it
don't expect it to be a masterpiece of storytelling.
It's not gonna have golden lines written in every
conversation between the characters in every scene
but certain scenes do have very well written lines.
Don't expect this to be more than a relatively well made pretty
production standard everything considered
period idol romantic drama.
It does include a little bit of wu xia fighting,
but it's not a Wu Xia drama
don't expect masterpiece of choreography.
It does include some court drama politics of ancient chinese society,
but it is not Da Ming Wang Chao 1566
it is not even Nirvana in Fire
so don't expect super makes sense logically tight.
Things with this drama's depiction of court
of emperor, of the chinese scholar and officials' system.
Think of this drama as a romantic love story led by very pretty people
dressed in the Song dynasty style
and that's about it.
Now let's talk about what's great about this drama.
Number one is finally we see some normal people in a
period drama from china who are not super soldiers,
gods among men walking or literally.
Gods
easily live 10,000 years long and the
only thing they care about is fall in love.
Finally, we got a drama where people still look very pretty dressed up,
but not having superpowers and their worries and their happiness.
And their dilemmas are all human ones,
not god ones.
Imaginef ones, lifetimes' ones.
It's just concerned with this moment.
Surviving in the physical world.
Think about Tencent S+ period dramas.
hey,It's all god
who cares about humans.
Now we've got humans and we've got very pretty humans.
Building upon that point,
we don't only just have normal people in this drama.
We also have normal people who act.
Normally.
So basically it doesn't care about all the tropes that
has been running rampant in chinese period dramaland
such as meeting for the first time
we're gonna get slow more turning in circles,
somebody falls down,
somebody catches them,
they fall onto the ground and they have to kiss and
*%&^%^& all that.
This drama doesn't have that.
You have this drama's male lead encountered the female lead
for the first time and they weren't impressed about each other.
You have the female lead running into the male lead happen to get hurt.
And in all kinds of period drama with tropes,
you're gonna have the female lead wanting
to save him without other motivations,
just because she's the lead and he's the lead and they're destined.
Whereas in this drama
She's like,
I wanna run way
I want to get out of this shit trouble.
And what did the guy do?
The guy literally hurt her with a flying weapon.
You have to save me.
If you don't save me, you're gonna die too.
Just two reasonable people who don't know each other who just don't
want to get themselves into trouble or wanna save themselves out of
very realistic concerns and reasonable human reactions to danger.
How long haven't we seen that in chinese period dramaland?
When I saw that plot happening,
i'm like
Meng Hua Lu got it.
Meng Hua Lu is clever and knows what the audiences want.
Then let's all be honest,
the greatest attraction before the drama even came out was
it's Chen Xiao and Liu yifei
what more do you need ?
that Xiao Long Nv and that Yang Guo
And the funny thing is it is exactly 16 years that
the Xiao Long Nv has waited to meet (her) Yang Guo
Anyone getting that?
it's like universe just put together
this magical symphony that is filled with coincidence.
And in case people don't realize this is Liu Yifei's
first drama after she became an adult.
Every drama that made her this famous was done before she was 18 and
then she left dramaland for 16 freaking years
only working in film.
and the first drama she comes back was acting opposite Chen Xiao,
who was the Yang Guo of another Shen Diao Xia Lv
Universe is the greatest scriptwriter
and pretty much every other chinese drama reviewer
on all platforms have been complaining
about the ugliness of chinese period dramas
with ugly looking people pretending to be.
I'm the most handsome or prettiest.
There are producers who literally criticize audiences
because you don't have taste,
you can't tell what it's good looking or not or you have
too narrow a band of like understanding of
good-lookingbess
therefore you don't understand why we pick that actor.
He's the most good looking guy out there.
yeah I believe you huh
well now you see what happens.
This drama shows up and people rush in
people who don't watch chinese dramas
just because it's Liu Yifei and Chen Xiao
Finally we see what pretty people looks like in a proper period production.
That's what the standard should be
just by looking at them on screen.
I am happy and sometimes because they're too pretty,
I forgot what I was looking at.
I forgot the plot.
I just stare at those faces and I zone out.
This is what we want and we haven't had it for years.
So I don't care like it's inflated rating or whatever, meng hua lu.
Thank you for saving our eyes.
Then obviously we have to talk about the
two leads and their acting and their roles
I've already said they're perfect casting and look very pretty on screen.
Something else was so unexpected.
The chemistry between the leads is so much better
than I expected
previously with Liu yifei
I would say she's super pretty,
but often in dramas you see she doesn't really have
a chemical reaction with the opponent person.
She's like those elements on the periodic table
that just doesn't react to
like nitrogen,
but in this drama,
it actually worked with Chen Xiao
I am gobsmacked
there are a couple of scenes in this drama that have already happened.
I hope there are more
that's gonna become a classic
of chinese period dramas for a long time to come.
Number one is the scene where she pretends to be a very ~~~
prostitute and trying to lure the guy away from Song Yinzhang
And and after the guy left, Chen Xiao's role, Gu Qianfan
came in while she's still dressed up and she's washing her face and stuff.
That scene, their conversation
that tease, that push and pull
all that tension.
And after the guy left,
he was in the boat, the camera language of her looking down
and him looking up
their distance become further and further away.
You feel like the tension though
they're more and more.
Coming together,
this scene is going to be so quoted in the future.
I guarantee you
the other scene is after he saved her
from the court case
she was signaled by this actor,
i'm gonna talk about him later and then she went to look for the male lead
and there's this short scene of them slightly in slow mo walking
on the two sides of that half translucent screen and talking,
but then you don't see them clearly they're all behind this.
There's this vague impression of the mouth moving
and walking and talk and finally getting revealed
This director knows exactly how to take advantage of camera,
of visual storytelling,
of something that you just can't see on the page.
But when you use that prop and how they move
in the scene
just brings out so much.
This is what dramas should be.
This is like the best way of using visual medium for storytelling
And then there's this one moment of Chen Xiao's role talking to
Liu Yifei's role and he was standing behind this wooden pole.
He got so shy and he turned away and that
facial expression while he was shy
I haven't seen that from a male actor's face in whether it's
like a period drama or contemporary drama or of any genre from
chinese dramaland ever since I started this channel
from a male actor face that is so accurate for the moment.
And if you're watching and there's no way that you
don't react to it
and you immediately get it
oh sugar,
genuine sugar
sugar that's created by the moment that makes
so much sense and so perfect and so fitting and so real.
And they have real desires, they're human.
They are adults also
they're not like those
teenager characters pretending to be in love,
romantic, sweet, and cute,
but there's no real chemistry.
There's no animal desire,
there's no traction
sex drives.
There's nothing
in those crappy dramas.
But in this drama, oh
this is how adults do things.
and they happen to be so pretty.
It makes everybody's little deer in their heart.
hop hop hop.
So just for that one thing, it has beaten,
the other period idol dramas i've seen in years,
it just feels so good.
Then to add on that point,
this drama also contain a couple of supporting roles.
I really really really really like, for example, Guan YunPeng,
the voluntary servant for our male lead character.
If you don't know about him,
he was the lead of a short video platform,
exclusive series of ridiculous dramas where he played the character
Long Wang, Dragon King
don't worry about what it is if you don't know,
but he was so popular and he had this,
I can't do it.
Expression that is so iconic,
didn't expect he would show up in this drama
and he actually acted really, really well.
And a lot of people didn't realize it's him
until they got reminded oh my god it's him.
we don't know he can be such a proper actor.
He's a really well trained actor
his lines are perfect delivery
and he really can do the comic timing of his role.
Also this drama has the actor Dai Xu who i've noticed ever since
Burning Ice and he's one of those actors who can play anything.
He can be in a serious crime drama as the bad guy who is so bad,
you hate him to his bones,
he can be the proper hero,
as you see in the drama Rebel
and then he can be comic relief.
He's such a funny comic relief in this drama.
And that classic thing he did with his wooden
sword where he did this
has become the new meme
and chatting gif on China's internet now
And I cannot wait for the further development of his role too,
because I think based on the trailers
you're gonna love his role more as the story progresses
Overall, A Dream of Splendor is really a dream of splendor.
Thank you for finally giving us that
after so many years of suffering crappy stuff
that doesn't deserve people's attention.
And as a reviewer you feel
at least I should try to see the positive in everything
be kind and generous and hopeful.
well now like a proper thing comes out and you're like,
I worried so much perviously, what's the point?
Crap is crap
Crap just deserves getting beaten and give ways to good stuff.
But before I leave I wanna emphasize
this is definitely not the greatest drama out there
and the two leads.
They're not the greatest actors out there.
Honestly, there could be actors who are much much better,
but somebody who can act better than them,
but also prettier than them
where to find them.
I don't think dramaland has this kind of people right now.
So like you have to make do with it.
This is the best thing you're gonna get.
I am already satisfied.
I am gonna stick with this drama.
I'm gonna watch it till the end.
And I made this yesterday,
because I was inspired by this drama and I
looked at how they designed the hair ornaments
which actually is very designed in this drama.
And I think they spend quite a lot of time designing it, making it.
This is not exactly any copy of any hair ornament that the characters wear.
I get the feal of it
I extract its spirit.
I don't know if I'm gonna make another video on this drama
depending on what happens later.
Thank you for watching AvenueX
i hope you've enjoyed this video with me
standing so that you can see more of my costumes and proving
that I have legs.
Please take care
and I'll see you in my next video,
meanwhile live long and happy drama watching.