Mortuary makeup artist's work,
making everybody look like their semi-dead.
I don't think the people who make this drama ever
thought that much about what they're doing.
It really is like a fan fiction of Yan Xi palace.
And this time trying to make Wei Yingluo and Fu Heng get together.
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.
Shang Shi
Royal Feast is a 40 episode period drama
that's been airing on mango television.
The drama is directed by Wang Wei and Bai Yunmo
written by the script writer Zhou Mo
This is the same script writer who is credited to the
Story of Yan Xi Palace drama that was really popular
couple of years ago.
So although it doesn't have any Yu Zheng attached on the surface,
everybody in chinese dramaland knows
it is a Yu Zheng drama.
This drama is led by Xu Kai, Wu Jinyan
Wang Churan, He Ruixian, Wang Yizhe, Wang Yan
many other people
that are pretty much all very familiar to
Long time, chinese drama watchers, also,
if you've watched the Story of Yan Xi Palace drama,
this is like its second iteration.
At this point, i've watched the first 14 episodes,
i'll give it a one gold mine / one land mine rating on my seven level scale
in the middle.
and I think it could go up or go down based on the later episodes
quick introduction to what the story is about
and then as usual good and bad.
This is the Ming Dynasty setting court drama
focusing on the chefs
of the inner court
for the early parts of Ming Dynasty.
A lot of women were employed as female officials within the court
doing all kinds of jobs
later is started to phase out and then no longer was a thing.
By the time it was Qing dynasty,
we come across the main female lead character played by Wu Jinyan
who at the beginning of the drama enters the court,
trying to get a job to be employed as one of
the many female chefs in the imperial kitchen,
but she has more hidden motives later that will get revealed
Our male lead character is played by Xu Kai who is at the beginning of the story,
the crown grandson
at the time the emperor was Yongle
which is Zhu Di
which is one of the most colorful emperors,
and quite ambitious and very capable emperor
of Ming Dynasty played by Yu Rongguang
and then the crown prince.
Who is the father of Xu Kai's role
He was one of those super unlucky crown princes in history
who lived most of his life as the crown prince and then died.
Very soon after he got to the throne,
then the throne gets passed to Xu Kai's role
Zhu Zhanji
who is the Xuande emperor of Ming Dynasty
and one of the better ones in history.
But he then didn't live that long.
He got his throne in his 20s,
and he passed away when he was 36.
These are the male important roles in this drama.
And obviously,
as it's led by Wu Jinyan and Xu Kai
you're gonna see the main romantic story of
this chef and the crown grandson and then crown prince and then emperor.
I don't know how far they're gonna go,
whether they're gonna go to the end of the marriage
when the emperor dies
or even further down.
I haven't read the manga.
So I don't quite know.
That's like the setup of the story
in terms of what the story itself is about.
Well, it's talking about the two main leads.
Now let's talk about what is good and what is not so good about this drama.
On the positive end, first,
it is a relatively high budget.
Court drama, period drama
as long as you can deal with the color palette of this drama,
it looks pretty nice
and more refined than most of the period dramas
you're gonna come across
second positive point
since this drama is called Shang Shi, Royal Feast
Cooking, food, a lot of that
great close up shots,
bad for people who are on diet and then don't
watch it middle of the night when you're hungry,
bad idea, ok?
third positive point,
the Ming Dynasty costume and style of things.
Now I have to say,
i'm not sure whether I should put it in positive or negative or neutral,
because this drama did some of the costumes really nicely,
at least better than all the Ming Dynasty setting dramas
i've seen so far,
then it added a lot of things that's very questionable and weird.
For example,
the red hairband of the young sort of chefs of the kitchen
that's totally not a thing in chinese history.
I feel like that's very Da Chang Jin and south korean.
Don't know why they would do that.
For example, they have the under skirt of most of the female roles.
You see in this drama,
the thing with that is during a part of Ming Dynasty,
they did use a type of under skirt,
but it doesn't look like that.
When you wear under your proper big outside skirt,
it will give you a very distinctive shape where
if you look from the front of this person,
it's very wide.
But then if you look from the side of the person,
it's very flat.
And there isn't any reliable actual things that you got out of ancient
graves that can prove this type of structure and how it's made.
So it's one of the question marks of Ming dynasty costumes,
but no matter what it wouldn't look like,
how it looks like in this drama where every girl is wearing that
under skirt that is pushing the skirt up
and it looks very weird
and I can go on and on with like the guy's hat and
what kind of decoration on it is wrong for its time.
Too many details that are wrong.
So for very Han Fu enthusiasts in china
and then expert of ming dynasty costumes,
it looks weird.
It's like yeah that is right,
but that is not right.
And you see that happening in one person's.
attire
like this part is right, that part is wrong,
that part I don't know where it comes from.
So these details kind of tells me that the
people who are doing the costume for this drama,
they did research,
but they actually didn't quite know what they're doing.
They tried, but then didn't try hard enough.
I still put it on a positive end,
but it has a lot of problems.
4th thing
totally only working on very personal levels of people's preferences,
which is if you've loved Yan Xi Gong Lue's
cp of Wei Yingluo and Fu Heng
This is like their second time together,
same actors still in the same palace.
Although before that time,
so they time jumped an entire dynasty earlier
into the Ming Dynasty time,
there's not gonna be an emperor who cuts in and take the girl away.
It's just gonna be Xu Kai and Wu Jinyan
So these are the things I can see on the positive end that would
make this drama worth watching for different types of audiences.
Then let's talk about what's not so ideal about this drama
First, I don't like the filter
the color
the color grading,
the style that they decided to do with yanxi palace
and somehow got popular.
And therefore they just resolve to repeating it.
Lazy way of doing things.
It looks exactly in terms of the color palette like Yan Xi Palace,
dull color that just not my thing.
And it's too far from history
part of the really interesting look of Ming Dynasty,
particularly early ming dynasty color.
It's very daring.
They use extremely bright and contrasty color and they
wear like super red clothing with super green skirt.
and that was the thing of the time.
That's the aesthetics.
Unfortunately,
they resolved to the old color filter that makes everybody
looked 10 years older than who they really are.
Honestly, I think it looks like mortuary makeup.
Artists' work, making everybody look like their semi dead.
so the look of it, the color,
the makeup is just not my thing,
and I put it on the negative end,
but you know if it happens to be something you like, totally fine.
Second point,
a full dubbing onslaught
apart from a few older actors who used their own voice,
female lead male lead
most of the other people,
and it's all done by super familiar voices,
male lead, done by Wei Chao, female lead done by Qiu Qiu
that's Jingrui from Nirvana in Fire
And then Ni Huang from the drama too.
so yeah Imagine these two fall in love,
nobody has actually ever heard of xu kai's,
real voice in any dramas he has ever been in.
I don't think that works in any other countries apart from china.
well, what can you do?
Interesting time
Third point, i'm not happy with the two leads' acting.
That's it.
In my opinion, they never have convinced me
that there are proper actors in any way
I do have to say Xu Kaii does look very good in Ming Dynasty costumes
and he's definitely thinner in this drama compared to ancient love poetry.
And you start to see all the angles on his face.
And the Ming Dynasty costumes really suit him.
He looks great.
Great.
okay
So when i'm watching him acting,
I pretty much gave up any hope for great acting moments.
I was just looking at
yeah it's a good looking guy in Ming Dynasty costume
as for Wu Jinyan
I don't know these days, she just doesn't act with any of genuine emotions.
She has a set of expressions that she uses for
pretty much every scene
as the female leader of a,
big imperial court drama.
She doesn't convince me of any of the things she does,
but obviously part of that is also to do with the
Writing of the drama
if I get murdered by Wu Jinyan's fans for saying that,
but really why would anyone be fans of her acting?
She really is like
in this drama, she's not there,
she's not even in her character.
I don't know she's just physically present,
but then
not there.
Then you definitely have to complain about the writing of this story,
which is it's written by people who are not clever enough to string together,
a logical development line of any characters
it's like this moment, pops up
that moment, pops up
for each individual scene
They have their goal of writing
it's like we're gonna create this dramatic tension here,
but then when you try to link them up,
it's like it does not make sense.
When you string these episodes together,
you don't see a coherent character.
It really is like a fan fiction of yan xi palace.
And this time trying to make Wei Yingluo and Fu Heng get together.
The female leading role, every difficulty,
every obstacles ever danger she runs into.
She acts like
"I know i'm gonna be fine because the script says so,
I know i'm gonna be fine because i'm gonna be the empress
at the end of the whole thing.
and empress dowager if they run further down the historical line of things, "
I can speak the worst thing I can speak under my particular circumstances.
When in reality if I do that, my head gets chopped off,
but I can do it.
And I know somebody either is gonna come to my rescue
or somehow it's just gonna be swept under the carpet,
because i'm the female lead.
The writing is just so irresponsible.
It's an empty shell drama that has a relatively speaking,
nicely presented outward decorative shell.
But inside of it,
it's fully, completely, totally empty.
Honestly, there's no need for every drama to have a soul.
God knows so many humans in this world doesn't have a soul at all.
So let alone a drama
Shuang Wen (爽文）
the type of web literature that just makes you feel
it's so exhilarating that my main characters can deal with all
the challenges in their life and just rise to the top for no good reason.
It makes me feel good,
unanimous negative reviews on china's internet about this drama.
I think it's people basically hope too much for this type of drama.
Once you turn your perspective,
you know it's like it doesn't have to be a great work.
Then somehow you liberate yourself and you
can actually enjoy parts of the drama.
I can already see like what part of the
future plot is gonna make me feel enjoyable.
So that's pretty much my opinion on this drama.
At the end of this,
i'll add a little bit extra thought about creating this type of dramas,
one of the promotional slogan or the idea.
this drama is trying to put out is
because it has a lot to do with cooking, kitchen, food,
culinary art,
and the enjoyment of that.
It emphasizes a lot on the concept of Ren Jian Yan Huo (人间烟火）
which is the smoke and fire of the human realm.
Its extended meaning is really the secular things.
The human life elements, the not sacred,
the profane, the daily,
the mundane existence of human life,
but it has that energy of life.
It has a nature of even we only have little resources.
We're still gonna make our life as good as we can.
They would also add on,
we promote chinese culinary art as if it needs promoting.
iIt's not like humans on this planet do not know
chinese people are crazy about cooking,
but it's so wrong.
When they're talking about ren jian yan huo
the moment you think about that word,
it should be about normal people living very normal life,
the vegetables they grow their backyard,
they don't have resources and money to buy crazy things.
And then they still try to make everything presentable and enjoyable.
And they try to have all those clever things that
they put into to make an ordinary food delicious.
That's what Ren Jian Yan Huo is.
And you tell me like a court drama where ruler of a
nation who can take any resources they want
enslave thousands of people serving them in the court
just so that they can eat this and dress up like that.
You tell me that represents Ren Jian Yan Huo, i'm like,
????*&^((&^(*????
you knowit's like the script writers are not educated at
all and they probably haven't even managed to gone
deeper into the thinking part of the whole concept and
how weird the court setting story and Ren Jian Yan Huo
are acturally totally opposite
they are polar opposite concepts of things.
Let alone they put it in ming dynasty,
which in the earlier parts of the Ming Dynasty.
One of the worst thing that dynasty does, and even till today,
people would say it's one of the great sins that dynasty
has committed was killing all the concubines
When the emperor dies
it kept running for a couple of emperors
until it was after the son of this drama's,
Xu Kai's role.
So during his time, when he died, actually,
ten of his concubines got killed so that
they can accompany him to the underworld.
Fuck up things about Chinese history
after his son's generation.
It finally got officially stopped.
Think about how awful that is.
So you put this type of concept of Ren Jian Yan Huo
into that particular part of the history.
I don't think the people who make his drama ever
thought that much about what they're doing.
That's why.
this drama is ~~~~
for me
like it's wrong on many levels,
but then again,
I would understand why certain parts of it is still enjoyable.
I would watch this drama parts of it for the enjoyment
of some of the things I've mentioned before.
I hope it has been useful for you if you haven't watched this drama and
want to know whether it's something that you want to spend your time on.
Thank you for watching AvenueX
i'll see you in my next video,
meanwhile live long and happy drama watching
and happy cooking if you happen to like it.