I started jotting down these thoughts on my phone when I was at the halfway point... now that I'm done and have had a week to digest this delightful drama, my favorite thing about it is still how much time and loving energy was spent on Changyu's characterization as a working class girl with working class values and habits, born and raised in Xigu Alley, in the small town of Lin'an, daughter of Fan Erniu and Meng Lihua, sister of Changning, neighbor of the Zhaos, Kangs, the Songs.
Cut for spoilers:
We see her within community, made vivid and specific over 17 delicious episodes before the impeccably done devastation of episode 18, the narrative fulcrum of the drama. It's a place where you can imagine adolescent Changyu tagging along with horse and mule vet Mr. Zhao on emergency barn calls, where her dad's buddy Uncle Wang fondly calls her yatou, where the local seamstress keeps the red silk her mother has stashed for her future wedding. Steaming bowls of pig tail soup and intestine noodles after her dad goes out on a butchery job. Red paper couplets in her mom's hand that slowly sun fade before being refreshed bright every New Year.
The glowing cottagecore idol drama aesthetic is very much present- and imo such an effective choice given the symbolic weight of the village within the story. So much detail that went into building the layered experience of living in Changyu's home and community, conveyed visually with both production design (the rough hewn pig-themed decor!) and cinematography, as well as a script that does a great job integrating the slice of life moments that round out characters and relationships within larger plot mechanics.
Snowballs are a little too round and clothing a little too neat in Xigu Alley because let's be real we're not watching early Chen Kaige or Zhang Yimou here, but the story isn't so blinkered as to present village life as utopian. Everyone is in everyone else's business at all times. Gossip is abundant while money and justice are scarce. The social, legal, and economic disadvantages that Changyu must contend with after the breakup of her engagement and the death of her parents count as more than just the inconveniences that are the cost of community.
There's also an undercurrent of melancholy and uncertainty shading the wholesome, because the flipside to a simple life far from political power struggle is political powerlessness. We see how the lives, relationships, and perspectives of Changyu and her fellow villagers were shaped by the trickle down consequences of decisions they had no say in deciding, made by people who saw them as collateral damage for their political games. The Zhaos pouring all the love they had nowhere to put, after being left childless from a previous war, into Changyu and Changning. The meanest and most sycophantic aspects of a woman like Granny Kang amplified by an unquenchable fear of more loss due to circumstances she can’t control.
The brilliance of episode 18 is seeing how the indiscriminate violence that often accompanies war forces us to reckon with the humanity of characters that we find ridiculous and unpleasant, that were initially set up as the villains of Changyu's story. It's not that they were redeemed of their previous villainy, but allowed the dignity and agency of their choices in how to face the end.
I'm aware of the predominant opinion that the village arc is too long, which is fair given how the last two episodes felt like the writer was forced to TL;DR the resolution to the whole political plot... but honestly I can't think of a single moment I'd want to cut from the village just to get more from a plotline that was third-string in my heart anyway. It's that idyll both main characters (and me as a viewer!) spent the entire second half of the drama trying to find their way back to, emotionally speaking. I also felt this way about the last few episodes of A Journey to Love. For idol dramas I'm vibes first, aesthetics second, and like, logic tenth. I personally didn't find the political plot confusing, just rushed. All I can say is- damn that 40 episode per season limit. They should have given us 50 episodes, split into two seasons, with season one ending on Changyu's departure to rescue Yu Qianqian.
I trust Director Zeng’s eye for detail and narrative consistency enough to know that the Chekhov’s gun of Changyu’s sexy red silk underwear is going to come back to delight us all at some point.
Actual Poem:
煮豆燃豆萁 (The beans are boiled by their own stalks' flame)
豆在釜中泣 (And weep while in the pot)
本是同根生 (But, since the twain from one root came)
相煎何太急 (Why should they grow so hot?)
From The Poems of Seven Steps
Fan Changyu:
煮豆烧豆秆
豆在锅里喊
同是一个爹
为啥先杀俺
First half of Pursuit of Jade culminating in episode 18 is a masterpiece. That is all. I need to alternate between breathing into a paper bag and screaming into a pillow now but I knew you wouldn’t fail me, Director Zeng!
