There's a very good balance between the serious moments, and the funny moments
so sweet.
and I'm very lucky that I managed to catch it.
Sheng Huo Jia
My treasure is a 35 episodes drama that's been
airing on china's cctv eight plus the web
platform Iqiyi
as i'm making this video,
I am very close to the end of the entire drama.
And when this video goes out,
the drama should have just finished airing.
The drama is led by Liu Mintao
Wen Qi, Qiu Ze, Liu Xinyou, Pan Binlong
and it's a contemporary drama set in the city, shanghai,
focusing on a pair of mother and daughter,
a single mother who raised the daughter totally on herself,
and pretty much most of the time living on the
brink of bankruptcy
yet through the years of struggle,
they have learned how to become Sheng Huo Jia
the expert of living
after thinking about it quite hard,
I decided i'll give it a two gold mine.
Although I think it could have done a little bit more better,
so it's slightly a inflated 2 gold mine,
but still I don't think it's fair to put it at one gold mine
considering the group of dramas that I give one gold mine rating to.
I still think this drama is above that
it is not even close
to the addictive level of say Word of Honor to me,
but I really enjoyed watching this drama.
First.
I think it's necessary to explain the title.
I think it's a really well written title,
both english and chinese
Sheng Huo Jia, Sheng Huo means living or life
It could be a verb.
It could also be a noun,
Jia, the most basic meaning is home.
But when you use that character to describe a person as xx Jia,
it means this person is a publicly acknowledged level expert of something.
For example, if you are very good at painting
you are famous for your painting, you're called Hua Jia
painting jia
if you are a famous dancer,
you'll be called wu dao jia
but shegn huo, right, just live,
nobody really gives a jia to anybody who's really good at living.
So in itself it's a really interesting title,
it's suggesting our leading characters are expert in living and the story of
this drama really does evolve around this topic,
english title, my treasure.
Most likely it's coming from the mother's perspective
of looking at the daughter as her treasure,
but also it could be from the daughter looking the mother or it could be
from many different characters looking at the important people in
their life and they are all their treasures
very rarely does a chinese drama
have a really good title.
Now let's going to talk about the things that I appreciate about this drama.
And the reason why I give it a really positive rating
First, on all the very basics of drama production,
I would say this is a fairly high quality production, the visual,
the sound that editing the story structure,
looking like a very mature production done by a
group of people who know what they're doing.
And it used to be something that should be the standard of drama making.
But these days we all know,
chinese dramas often produce things that are beyond understanding in
terms of how poorly and unprofessionally things can get done.
The second good point is this drama captures the
contemporary metropolitan life of shanghai pretty well.
In all of its details.
It reads like a very convincing,
realistic story.
Obviously, there are definitely dramatized because it's a drama,
but at no point,
would you feel it's so fake and so pretentious
that it takes you out of the believability
there's a very good balance between the serious moments and the funny moments
between the very realistic portrayal of things
and sometimes suddenly getting really chicken soup
of the living philosophies of certain characters.
It's very fitting for people who wanna see a
good dramatic story and overall enjoyable,
but not veering on either side of being too
fluffy and sweet or too bitter and painful.
The third thing I appreciate about this drama is
it gave me so many lovely characters.
I wouldn't say that happens to every drama that I watch,
even the dramas I appreciate.
Sometimes i'm just neutral to a lot of it's characters,
but this drama really did give me many lovely people.
It's like if I meet them in real life,
I would love them too.
And they're all performed by actors and actresses who are
very well casted like perfectly picked for theri roles
cost pretty much zero for the audiences to get into the story of these characters.
You pretty much immediately believe they are,
who they said they are
once the story starts.
Then the 4th thing is,
this drama is Tai Hao Ke Le
the shipologist out there.
If you wanna ship people,
as couples, whatever gender they are.
This drama has quite a few really shipable people,
mostly surrounding the female lead character,
played by wen qi,
the young girl,
who is the narrative center of this story.
She's a fresh graduate from a university majoring in accounting,
and then she goes to this auditing firm,
and she kind of forms cp with pretty much every major people in this dra,a
that are just delicious to ship
first shipping it with her mother.
The mother and daughter relationship is the anchor of the entire narrative.
It's the most important central relationship.
And this drama shows you many facades of this
type of kinship when it's at its best,
and when it's at its worst and all the different levels,
50 shades of grey of that kinship and both actresses did a great job.
But romantically speaking,
her cp with the character Gu Fei played by actor Qiu Ze
SO SWEET
it's one of the best heterosexual cps I've seen
this year and it makes the butterfly.
... just go~~~~ in me
There are many little very tiny interaction
moments in the drama between these two.
That would definitely put a smile on you
like that
And considering the two actors in real life are actually over 20 years,
like the age gap between them,
it's pretty incredible that they've sold this much
older guy and younger girl relationship in the drama.
Also, she has this really interesting relationship with her female boss,
so played by Liu Xinyou who is a partner with the male lead character
who both kind of run this auditing firm.
It's also so shipable,
it's definitely not GL, not GL because both of them are straight women,
but the development between them in the beginning as
like really not getting together well and having a
lot of conflicts and stuff and eventually leading up to the point where
one of them bears so much secret to the other that she just doesn't tell anyone else
You go and watch it.
It's also very, very... just great
Plus there's even a little bit more
tiny on the side relationship between the competitors.
So our female lead character when she and her college classmate
who was kind of her enemy while they were in college,
but they ended up in the same firm
frenemy relationship.
Nue Lian (虐恋）torturing love relationship also super watchable
Plus this drama also has like middle age love relationship between the female lead's
mother and her newly developed love interest.
There are just so many great ships,
shipologists
You will not be disappointed.
So i've talked about the positive points.
Now let's talk about a couple of not really essential.
But if I have to pick at it just to balance the scale,
things I wish it could have done better.
First is something that while I was watching the drama.
I also realized in the live comment section of this drama,
a lot of people are not very happy with the performance
of the actress Liu Mintao playing the mother character,
mostly because she is written as a character who probably
is not super lovable at the beginning, particularly.
And she is the typical thrify person,
an extremely thrifty at times,
border lining certain behaviors as taking advantages,
pretty ruthlessly and shamelessly
So I can understand why people have a little bit not comfortable reaction
to this particular character plus LMT did perform her in a
very theatrical and dramatic way.
I would agree, particularly in the early part of the drama.
The mother character is kind of standing out from the group character of other people
feel like she's acting on a different energy level.
I think probably this is mostly due to the interpretation
of hers at her character plus the director should always
shoulder part of that responsibility.
How much do we push the character in terms of performance style?
And how dramatic do we try to get?
Liu Mintao is a very capable actress.
I think she's definitely able to play both the super
dramatized version and the muted version and the gauging of her
character does feel a little bit over the top at times.
I get annoyed by her at times,
but then I would stop and think that's what her character supposed to be.
Is that a problem for the actress?
Does that mean she didn't act well?
We can argue about that.
I can convince myself that this type of person
really do exist and probably reality has a,
even crazier versions of them.
The second on the negative side of the thing of this drama is,
although it has a very natural acting style and story telling pace,
it's still essentially has a lot of very tropy plot, a little bit spoiled.
a little bit spoiler, but it's not huge.
So i'm gonna talk about a few plot here,
such as the male lead
a kind of traumatic past,
that affect his dealing with people.
And then it kind of gets resolved because he
eventually builds a new relationship with the female lead
The typical setup of the father who ditched the mother and the daughter
very late in the drama comes back into her life in ways that is
very tropy and very dramatization and very
extreme occasion of life and very dog blood
Gou Xie
There's definitely office romance story which is in every way tropy.
And also the step mother don't get along well with the previous spouse's son
pretty much every plot of this drama you've seen it somewhere,
but they've done their version and they've done it really well.
And the final thing is not the drama's thing,
but it's a very sad thing which is the drama aired too fast,
they air 19 episode per week.
They can't even air full 2 weeks.
And the fact is when the drama is on air,
it is the time that it gathers most attention and it's heat.
Once it's done.
It always drops.
Statistically speaking, that's how it works.
I still managed to catch every day's episode,
but I have to say it was a little bit hard effort.
You have to spend that much time every day.
So the drama is hardly talked about on china's social media as I monitor
who is talking about what drama and it doesn't have a very high rating.
On Douban, it has recently opened the rating for the drama on Douban
and it's like merely 6.2 or three which I totally do not
understand because that's the rating of The Long Ballad
If it's valid for this drama to be 6.2,
Then, Long Ballad should be 5.2.
That's my opinion.
And if Long Ballad is reasonable,
then this drama should be at least 7.5.
So the drama is unlikely to get any more attention probably
will be forgotten by most of the drama reviewers.
And most of the drama viewers in china
and they would have missed something
and i'm very lucky that I managed to catch it.
I really enjoyed the central cp
finally to wrap this up
this up for those two lead actors
for Qiu Ze
I only noticed him really since last year detective chinatown,
the first eight episodes I was really impressed
and since then I haven't seen anything.
He has been in.
And this is the only one that i've seen and i'm
really happy the extensive time he's on screen.
the quite full character arc that he has in this drama
ever since he got darker,
like, I don't know if he gets tanned regularly and older,
he has become a much more charismatic actor than when he was much younger.
He is one of the persons in this industry who has
aged really well
as for Wen Qi, little genius,
one of the most talented actress of her age range
and probably will go super far.
In her career, she just has it.
She's not yet an adult when she filmed this drama last year.
She was 17,
she played a university graduate,
so who should be at 22
You really can't tell, like she convinces you,
and she makes everything looks effortless,
and she makes her character like a real person.
But it's not that simple.
It's definitely based on a great reservoir of talent and intelligence.
Plus she has a very interesting face on camera,
not the typical tiny
skinny sharp chinned look that we are kind of tired of these days.
My intuitive radar is saying she will become a force to be reckoned with.
Let's see, in a couple of years,
whether i'm right,
thank you for watching AvenueX
Next video, meanwhile,
live long and happy drama watching