Hello, you're watching up AvenueX and today let's talk about
the chinese drama Qu You Feng de Di Fang, Meet Yourself
This is a 40 episode contemporary drama that has started airing on january the 3rd, 2023
on both mango television on web and Hunan satellite television.
It is directed by Ding Zi Guang, who was also the director of Xia Yi Zhan Shi Xing Fu, Find Yourself
and Yi Jia Ren Zhi Ming, Go ahead, and it is written by the pair of writers,
Shui Qianmo, Wang Xiongcheng who have in recent years,
written quite a few rather popular dramas for Mango television,
including the two productions I've just mentioned.
This is a very familiar team and their long time collaborating television stations
coming together making another project.
The drama is led by Liu Yifei adn Li Xian, then featuring
many very familiar faces of all generations of actors,
even including people who are very debatable and questionable
in terms of why do they enter the entertainment business,
but nonetheless fitting this drama pretty well.
So just Yao Anna who is the second daughter of the Huawei empire's boss Ren Zhengfei.
The drama is mostly shot in the province Yunan which
is known for its absolutely gorgeous scenery, landscape.
In recent years, it has been featured in many very popular chinese dramas
and it was shot from March to August last year
as I am sitting down making this video,
i've watched the first 22 episodes of the 40 episode drama.
Right now i'll give it a very positive kind of 2.5 gold mine rating,
leaving that bit of a space for obviously there's another half of the drama.
We don't quite know how it's gonna go.
And based on the track record of these two writers coming together writing something,
it may still have a little bit problem towards the end.
If it starts to decline and taper down, then maybe the rating will just land on 2 goldmine
Or you know miracle may happen that it may end up being really good.
I would not hesitate rating it to a three gold mine.
If at the end it's super satisfying.
As usual, let me first introduce the story to to you and then we can
talk about good and bad and why I have very good response to it.
And in a way, this is a unique drama.
You can't really think of a another one that can hundred percent falling to the same category.
This is actually not a plot heavy drama or it almost does not have a central plot
because of that don't worry about spoilers, you are not gonna get spoilers.
No matter how much I talk about this drama,
we pretty much only have one episode at the very beginning of this drama to set everything up.
Our female lead character, Xu Hongdou, played by liu yipei is in her 30s,
and she has been working for a decade in the hospitality business.
As one of the service department manager of a five star hotel in the capital Beijing.
She has a very endearing close to her heart friend, guest starring Wu Qian
who gets diagnosed with terminal cancer and dies very soon afterwards.
She starts to question about everything in her life.
What's the point of working so hard and sacrificing your health?
What's the meaning of life that big ultimate philosophical question
Also because while her friend was alive,
they've always planned to travel to Yunnan for years,
but never being able to do it, because either she is busy or her friend is busy
and they can never just schedule it together.
So she decided to to do it for both of them.
She quit her job packed up and traveled to Yunnan four in her schedule.
At least 3 monthsl renting a very bed and breakfast, local architecture, small place in the village.
And because of that friendship, she decided to see all the beautiful sceneries for her friend
eat all the good food and experience life for her friend.
Then for the next 39 episodes is her life in yunnan,
obviously,along the way she's gonna meet a lot of new people,
she's gonna make a lot of friends and there's definitely romantic stuff involved in it,
but also life in this contemporary 21st century time in a much smaller remote place,
but yet not so disconnected to big city life because of technology
is kind of presented to you on screen in every detail imaginable.
So that's what this drama is, which is why I tell you.
It's not a plot heavy drama, It almost does not have plot.
It is a diary drama of her life day by day.
Now as usual, divide and conquer.
I actually don't have much to complain about this drama at all.
I can't really think of a significant problem.
The only thing I have to say is if you are the type of audiences who wanna watch page turner,
plot heavy entertainment drama of that type.
This is not the drama, as long as you know what you're in for this drama is very enjoyable.
The other thing is obviously let's hope it's doesn't have the rotten tail thing
that a lot of dramas encounter. That's it. The bad things,
the so called "bad things".
Now let's talk about what is worth watching and why this drama maybe 2023's
although it's only the beginning of the year okay right now,
we may actually already have the most psychological massaging drama already of this year.
So positive point number one,
this is the type of drama that you relax to, you chill to, you put your feet up.
When you are not watching it, you probably would not really want to see what happens next,
because it's not plot heavy, but once you turn it on,
pretty much every scebe, every turn, every conversation, every moment on screen is pleasing.
It is filled with beautiful people, beautiful scenery, clever intelligent conversation,
well paced music and editing.
It's the diary drama of all the beautiful little details,
whether it's the main characters, from say the female lead's perspective,
or as she goes into this village and meeting all the people living there,
the story will start to expand into multiple lines of multiple people,
and all those things are edited together with this super relaxed rhythm and pacing.
So this is an ideal drama to chillto, to soothe your mood,
to lower your blood pressure, to adjust your hormones.
It's like the ideal thing that before you go to sleep,
you watch and you'll have a good dream.
I really doubt any future commers this year is gonna challenge this drama in that aspect.
And if I have to make metaphors of what this drama feels like to me,
it's like when you wake up in the morning already there's a pot of coffee brewing downstairs
and you can smell the scent in the room.
It's like the fresh bakery that you smell when you walk past.
It's like raindrops falling on grass.
It's like your kitten just sleeping and purring in your lap.
That's what is drama is like.
Number two, more specifically on the production quality side,
this is a pretty high standard contemporary drama.
Since it's very much like a travelog, it will feature a lot of beautiful things,
relaxed but refined style of cinematography.
And let's be honest okay for this drama,
the ladies are all very pretty and the guys are all pretty good looking too.
And for the natural scenery landscape part also beautiful bodies of water,
far away mountains, grassland, horse ranch
like everything you can imagine, neautiful bed and breakfast little things, architecture of small town.
And then the music is just so lovely.
There are so many, very slow, very beautifully written songs.
There's also this really, really well written and it's in this drama all the time.
The kids nursery song the lines are written so adorably and then the music is also very nice.
The third great thing about this drama is its uniqueness of not being
plot heavy or almost having no significant or clear directed plot,
but, not making you feel it's boring or any of the shots is there to water down and making the story,
dragging it out to be unnecessarily long.
They did a really good balance between having slow pacing,
having as if nothing really happens, but making every scene while you're watching it.
Super enjoyable,
a lot of very intelligent observation and conversation
happening between our leading characters or the supporting characters.
It's just a daily conversation about, for example,
educating their kids about that elderly couple in our town who's having difficulties
about a very specific things in life such as you know. these days everybody is glued to cell phones.
And while they're eating and having dinner,
they suddenly start to talk about certain things they see and then they make jokes on it.
And it's all so sharply observant and funny.
I would say the writers probably spend 80% of their energy in this drama,
not really trying to make a fascinating plot,
but trying to make every conversation interesting.
And there are many golden written lines.
Because in a way, you can say that the soul of this drama is the
female lead's journey of searching for herself.
That's why you call it in english, Meet Yourself
or searching for her definition of what's the point of having a life and living on this planet earth.
And it just gets trickle down to all the details of life and all
those people kind of become the female lead's sign post in her journey,
meeting them, encounter them,hearing their stories, and in that way,
kind of reflecting herself and help her figuring out
and also obviously heal from the trauma of losing her best friend.
So this is a really rare type of drama, not only in dramaland in china,
but pretty much everywhere else.
It's like a chewing gum that you keep chewing at and it keeps give you flavor.
It doesn't go bland quickly.
So this drama in a way is a very anit- goal, anti ending,
anti a definitive twist and turn and whatever target that you can see miles away of a story.
It's the opposite, it's the journey itself.
And what happens along the way is the drama
I can say up to this point episode 22,
i've enjoyed every character who showed up on screen and they
present you with so many little sprinkled moments of life.
But there are so many things that are worth looking at.
It's like after heavy rain, suddenly you see everywhere,
previously that are desert, flowers, the grasses,
the little things start to pop up, they are all fascinating,
and they're just all looking at life in its details, in this process,
although you can say it has definitive leads as Liu Yifei and Li Xian are the two leads,
but then it is also the story of everybody in this story,
you have the vague idea about they have their hopes
and desires for the ideal life they want to lead,
but then they're not so eager to arrive there.
They're having fun and enjoying every moment along the way
whether they get to it at the end or not seems to be not so important.
And I think that all over arching message of this drama is what makes
most of the people who watch this drama feel really happy and relaxed,
because these days we are all living under super big pressure and and ever since 2020,
The world has become really weird.
So that's why early on in this review,
I said this is the psychological massage drama,
it is the drama that will help you slow down,
kind of reflect on your own life and think about specifically to you
what life really means and what is the purpose of it and how
you should live your life regardless of what is going on outside
I almost feel when you watch this drama,
your brain wave is switched to a different type of brain wave,
then say if you're watching dramas like Three Body
just let it go and then see what happens in life type of drama.
So that should be the end of this video,
my review on the drama Qu You Feng de Di Fang, Meet Yourself
unless, the next half of the drama crashes epically and completely destroys what it has set up.
To this point, I don't think I need to make another video on it.
I do hope it can run till the end, maintaining its quality.
If so, I would very happily give it a three gold mine,
For its uniqueness and fot the relaxed calming happiness.
I've experienced while watching it.
Thank you for watching AvenueX, i'll see you in my next video.
Meanwhile, live long and happy drama watching.