Hello, you're watching AvenueX and today let's talk about a recently started airing chinese contemporary drama
Bai Se Cheng Bao, The White Castle,
This is a 40 episode contemporary medical drama that's been airing on Hunan satellite television,
also on web Mango TV, directed by Yang Wenjun, Shi Luan, Xie Lv,
written by zhang lei mu xin, based on an existing novel written by the author Wang Chenggang
This writer is a real doctor who is specialized in cardiac surgery.
He's a doctor from Beijing university. He also gets his post doctoral from US Los Angeles. (Cedars-Sinai Medical Center)
So this is a qualified professional proper doctor working today
who also happens to be a writer and wrote a novel about doctor's life in china.
It is led by Peng Guanying, Tu Songyan, Gao Xin, Xiong Ziqi
also featuring Gai Yuexi, Shi Shi, and guest starring Chen Shu
It was shot from the end of June last year to the middle of December.
I have all already watched 21 episode of this 40 episodes drama
to me this is so far a between one and two gold mine drama.
As usual let me quickly introduce you to the story then we're gonna talk about
what is worth watching and what may be a problem of this drama in my opinion,
Our perspective lead role is played by Peng Guanying named Wang Yangming
and he just graduated from his doctor's degree in medicine,
which means he is already in his 30s as in medical school.
You have to go through that many years to get a doctor's degree,
but he almost has no working experience.
He comes from the inner Mongolia province of china,
and he now is studying in the big city and if he couldn't get a job in a big hospital,
he would have to go back to his hometown.
Finally he landed a position in the emergency room as an intern
with another person played by Xiong Ziqi and they are competing for that one position.
Hospital tells them that we're only gonna pick one
at the end of the whole trial period we'll decide who gets kept.
So we have this, let's say,over studied in school guy who has very little experience
struggling to stay and not making mistakes.
and he becomes a student of the much more experienced emergency room doctor played by Tu Songyan
then the role played by Xiong Ziqi who is in competition with him
studies under Gao Xin's role, who is also a very experienced emergency doctor.
So we have these two guys who are in competition,
but also they build up a friendship in this big hospitals emergency room.
Now let's get into the good and bad part of this drama
on the positive end point number one, very quick point
contemporary drama,roiginal voice no dubbing, thank heavens.
Number two, this is a point that definitely
deserves this,which is it qualifies as a medical drama.
It's not perfect in terms of showing you what doctors do on camera
sometimes just due to the practicality of you can't actually do cpr on a living breathing normal person
extras, but you can't just press them with the real force.
You're gonna break their ribs, so a lot of those things when it happens,
it definitely doesn't look as real as say.
If they have a lot of money and make a really convincing dummy,
apart from these little things, most of the practices are all done
pretty authentically to how it happens in reality.
And this comes from my mother, so I believe her 100%
she is a cardiologist all her life, although she's not in the surgical department,
she does do sometimes surgeries, simple ones, such as installing pacemaker.
I actually got recommended to watch this drama by my mom.
I was chatting with her online, and she told me she was watching the mango television medical drama.
And she was up to episode 12 at that point and she told me it's a pretty watchable drama.
It passes my mother's censorship. That's definitely a positive point point.
The next point related to that is upon being professional enough.
It also puts quite a lot of emphasis at the systematic problems
that the medical practices in china right now has.
If you're not from China and you're not working in this field,
you probably are completely unaware of.
But for all the professional doctors working today, they all know this.
And my mom, although she's retired, she still is very closely involved with things that happens at her hospital.
So she knows what's going on.
And she's like there are some things in this drama that are just so accurate
and so reflecting the troubles that the system has,
such as doctors get trained for a long time until they get doctors degree which makes them close to 30,
at least, when they graduate, they have very little on hand practices during that time.
And often when they go to big hospitals, they have to start from the very bottom.
And basically you have a very expensively trained person who has been in medical school for 10 years
and ended up working at such jobs that is just a waste,
almost of all the time and amount of money you've put in previously to make them get into that position,
and then they get very little pay at the beginning of their careers,
so little and so much workload that it makes a lot of people who are actually really talented,
give up their career before their career can even start.
I've seen it happening around people I know
my high schoolmates who are geniuses of study who got into the best medical schools in china,
but they have to go through so many years of spending money and not really working.
And by the time they start to work, they have to start from the ridiculous level of bottom jobs
that doesn't pay them well at all, and they're already in their 30s.
And I know somebody like this who is such a good student who gave up medicine
and became a medical equipment company salesperson,
just because he wants the money he needs the money
being a doctor is not gonna give him that life.
And in this drama, Peng Guanying's role is somebody similar in that situation.
He chose to go down the proper route of being a doctor,
but it's so hard. You'll see in all details of his life,
how much workload and how not experience he is due to the training structure.
Basically, the system that's currently in place is not most ideal way let's say,
of best utilizing this type of people's talent.
And my mom complains about that a lot when she was young.
Given that at that time there's hardly any university graduates in china,
let alone masters or doctors, end of cultural revolution.
And she was the first round of people who got into university.
She went to study medicine, she graduated as just an undergrad and went right into hospitals
and get hands on trainings, so she has, let's say,
a much "less" degree than most of the later comers, like say a decade, two decades later,
the newer doctors who came in their hospitals and working under them
by the time she is already obviously like the department head and something like that.
But she's like if you only look at diplomas, right
She has a much lower diploma than a lot of future doctors that came in.
But when it comes to you know on hand things,
the 20 years experience she has is worth so much more than getting just paper degrees.
And she says the current situation in China is worse than when she was young,
a lot worse, and she sees a lot of people purely because they can't survive
on the wage and the workload and the delayed cashing in on their studying into the career
and it causes a big shortage of good doctors in China.
And my mom also talks a lot about because even when you get to a certain position in the hospital after decades,
you still are not really paid that well at all in china,
public hospitals, not private ones
and a lot of doctors just to survive, they have to do things that are
sometimes against the rules, such as taking flights, taking trains to other hospitals,
to do surgeries for smaller hospitals who don't have good doctors.
And sometimes it's against the rules, but they need the money.
They can't survive on their wage, they have kids,they have mortgage.
And then there are also other situations that are more extreme than this
and causing a lot of really good doctors in their 40s and close to 50s
when they are at the prime of theirs of skills and everything.
But because they've done so many wrong things in their history,
because they need the money and they couldn't get it,
they did it ~~ certain things that are illegal and it got found out
and then they get put into prison,recently there are a couple of really high profile good doctors
who got ~~~~ because of all kinds of conduct and they got incarcerated and then getting put into prison.
And by law, yes what they've done is wrong, there's bribery,
there's all kinds of things is going on in the hospital,
but my mom calls that system Bi Liang Wei Chang
which is because the system is not set up fairly to those hardworking,
overworked and producing so much value for the society doctors
forcing the good woman to become a prostitute.
That's the what that idiom means.
It's the same situation happening in the medical practice in china
very rampant and widespread. I kind of always know that's going on,
but my mother definitely knows much better about that.
And because of this drama actually reflects some of that going on,
you'll see that happening mostly to Tu Songyan and Gao Xin's role,
how they deal with the whole money and work and what is the right thing to do
But then what is the thing that you have to do to survive
And this drama got my mom talking.
So she said so much to me about what she observes.
And things that she feels is so not right with the system
that is very specific to china, so it wouldn't apply to every other country in the world.
But for the professional doctors in china, when they watch his drama,
they probably will feel very strong resonance.
so that's a really great thing about the drama being able to bring that to the screen.
And probably you should thank the original author of the novel that the drama is based on
for doing that because he wrote it from his real experience
and then two more quick not so important points.
But things I appreciate, one is that this roman does have love line, romantic line,
but they're not over emphasizing, they're not cringy and they don't take too much screen time.
The other thing is this to me is the only drama so far that i've watched
with Peng Guanying as the male lead actor that I really enjoying his performance
and I can feel a connection to this character.
You believe he's a real person, he's not pretentious,
he's not trying to act, he's a really real person,
whereas his previous dramas, whether it's those Confidence drama where he plays basically a psychopath
or that doctor drama that happened not so long ago that I ranted about cause
oh It's just such a flat two dimensional role
gives you the feeling that they cast him just because he looks cool and aloof and tall
compared to those rolee he's done, in this drama, he's so much more lovelier,
both as the character and also as the actor.
I'm really happy that i've watched this drama.
It definitely has changed my impression of PGY for quite a bit on the positive end.
And now when I look at his face, I wouldn't always just think of him as those
not lovable and likable characters at all.
I will finally have a picture of him as somebody that actually is quite adorable.
These are quite a few number of very positive points about this drama.
But then I didn't give it a perfect rating, point number one.
This is not a super high quality contemporary drama.
If we don't think about it as a medical drama, just as a general contemporary drama,
its production quality, its refiness, in its picture, in its design of things.
It is what I call, put the camera on the scene so that you see what's happening
and it makes sense, but apart from that, not adding anything on top, drama
in an ideal world, I'd like every drama to have a little bit of its clear style
that makes it stand out a little bit from other things.
This drama wouldn't be one of those.
The second point is that there are many really good medical dramas in the world.
If you've watched any of them,
this one probably is not in any way can be compared.
I mean if you just use like Good Docto, House and even ER, all those dramas that exists in this world,
this wouldn't really compare in its narrative quality, story writing quality.
It also sometimes has a little bit too much forced tension
trying to make that moment super exciting and unusual and unseen
for dramatic storytelling purposes, but it doesn't quite work logically in reality,
such as late teen number episodes,
there's gonna be a situation where you have a very unusual thing
about a whole family there are three people in the family,
and they simultaneously had some heart problems that needs immediate surgery.
So they have to put three people in surgeries at the same time with four doctors
monitoring different rooms and they have to help each other while it's all going on.
It's like dramatically really exciting to watch.
But my mom was telling me when she watched the whole thing, she's like,
first is what are the chances of the same family, three people having problem at the same time?
which is in her decades of work and never met and she works at a really big general hospital.
And the next thing is, she says,even if you have to do surgeries on three of them,
that person's condition and that person's condition and that person's condition
are at different priority.
You can totally do one first, do the next one, do that one last.
And there's one person who can definitely get just medicine and get monitored for a while
before they go into surgery.
It's not urgent to the point you have to do three at the same time.
That's just too much.
I mean that's my you know doctor mother start talking for more professional angle.
So basically this drama is, on one hand,
not the best narrative writing quality medical drama.
On the other hand, they will try to make it more dramatic and sometimes try too hard
that makes it look like a little bit funny to professional people,
but it's still not mistake level. It's just unnecessary level.
Also, It's not really a negative point,
but I just want to remind people this drama is focused on the four male doctors,
Peng Guanying, Xiong Ziqi, Gao Xin, Tu Songyan
they play the 2 pairs of teacher and students,
and they take 95% of screen time. If for some reason, you don't like any of them,
and you are not interested in their acting or their face or anything.
This drama may just not be that interesting to you
unless you're just like really curious about what is
rather realistic working environment for Chinese doctors these days in China.
Otherwise. It probably wouldn't be something that I highly recommend to everybody to check out.
It's definitely not the type of drama that if you miss it, you're making a mistake.
So that should conclude my halfway review on the drama Bai Se Cheng Bao, White Castle,
hope that's useful for you to decide whether you should check it out.
Thank you for watching AvenueX, i'll see you in my next video.
Meanwhile, live long and happy drama watching.