My Own Entertainment

Did I get caught in the craze of staying up until 3 am to be able to watch the newest episode when they were being aired daily? Yes. Now that all the episodes have been released, here is a review of the series.

The story follows Fan Changyu, or for the westernization of the name Changyu Fan, who has recently lost both her parents in what was thought to be an attack by bandits. That now means that Changyu is responsible for herself as well as her little sister Changning (who is freaking adorable). Her father was a butcher in the town, which main livestock was pigs. Much to her late mother’s dismay, Changyu did learn the trade of butchery from her father as well as some other skills. With the parents passing she makes some money to keep going by butchering pigs for holidays. After one such event on the way home she trips over the male lead Xie Zheng, literally, played by Zhange Linghe. She then ends up carrying him home. Fun fact, the actress who plays Changyu, Tian Xiwei, actually carries him with no assistance of wires or props. In order to pay for the medicine to help in the recovery of Zheng, she reopens her families butcher stall. This is something that not all the townsfolk are happy about, but also through a series of events she ends up with her own little troop of people that she is supported by throughout the show. While Zhang is still recovering Changyu has the situation that arises that requires her to take a husband, but it would have to be a husband who would marry into her family as opposed to her marrying into his. Obviously not a lot of men would be open to this idea, but Zheng agrees to the marriage for his own reasons as well. From there both of their futures become intertwined as the setting goes beyond the village. Along the way Changyu also manages to gather male admirers like they are her Pokémon collection. There are also the side characters that they meet along the way that are connected to a big event that had happened 17 years prior that affected everyone’s lives that does get into throughout the episodes of the show. This is a 40-episode show only due to the fact that at the time of the show being filmed China had the restriction that 40 is the limit for drama shows. They could have easily had more episodes and still feel like they are giving a lot of information.

I loved this series, and honestly, I hope that this will have an effect how the industry decides to film drama series from now on. The amount of care and detail that was put into the series can be seen in every episode. The cinematography for it all was fantastic that I could spend hours on that alone, from having the POV shots to using reflective surfaces to give different perspectives as well as using colors and shadows to give information to the audience as well. From the acting to the costumes and makeup (so many period dramas I have seen that have the obviously fake wig on due to the incredibly severe hairline) this gave the impression that you are not watching a tv show, but a movie. I found other fans of the series on Tik Tok as we became each other’s place to come and rave about the show and morn about the lack of sleep we were all having. This series has managed to break records held previously by other shows for streaming as well as I feel like this is one of the few shows that has actually managed to bring people who had never even thought of watching a Chinese drama tune in to watch each new episode each day. Also, I did find it crazy that there was an episode released each day and I was still hearing complaints about how they had to wait till the next day to watch the next episode. Don’t get me wrong, I was in that camp at first and then I did think about how in the states the way shows are released are an episode a week with even the possibility of a week being a rerun, so can’t really complain too hard about having to wait 23 hours for the next episode. All in all, the series is a fantastic show to watch and will always recommend it to anyone who is wanting to try something different.