Every major film and television center in the world supports the science fiction and fantasy genres. As an American viewer I grew up on “homegrown SF”, with occasional imports from the BBC like Doctor Who and Blake’s 7. Of course, British film and TV is quite productive but there’s so much more out there. Today’s streaming audiences have fallen in love with Kdramas (Korean) and Cdramas (Chinese) with historical, science fiction, or fantasy settings.
There’s more to love about Asian film and TV than just the C- and K-dramas. But I’ve been watching mostly Chinese dramas for the past few years when I’ve grown weary of old American reruns.
I like Cdramas from the historical, romance, fantasy genres with occasional influences from the Xanxia (immortals) and Wuxia (heroes) genres. What I mean is I don’t mind if the lead characters fly through the air a bit and defeat a dozen or so valiant foes, but I don’t want the whole show to be about that. Well, mostly. It comes down to the production values for a show or movie. If I feel like it was made more for children than adults, then I tend to pass. I need realistic sets, lots of people, minimal CGI, and good acting. An engaging and compelling story helps, too.
Among the historical Cdramas I’ve watched the one that caught my attention early on and kept me watching (and rewatching) was The Longest Day in Chang’An. I wrote a review for The Longest Day in Chang’An for the SF-Fandom forums in December 2019. I’ve published most of my reviews there ever since.
In fact, I created a list of the Cdramas I’ve reviewed in our Fan Sites forum. Of course, to call these shows “historical dramas” is to use the phrase loosely. Although there are some shows and films that are based on real historical incidents and people, the plots are largely fantastic.
Novoland – China’s Great Fantasy World
I haven’t watched every Novoland production. In fact, I find some of them almost unwatchable. Well, I haven’t been able to bring myself to watch them all the way through (yet).
The two shows I’ve watched all the way through so far are Novoland: Eagle Flag and Novoland: Pearl Eclipse. The official timeline or history of Novoland covers about 10,000 years. Eagle Flag takes place very early in that timeline and Pearl Eclipse takes place very late in the timeline. Other than the fact I just told you this, you probably don’t need to know about the timeline. It’s convenient for people who want to know “which story comes first” but they all kind of stand on their own.
There are aspects to Novoland’s worldscape that make the settings for the stories familiar and which lend themselves to a type of continuity. For example, everyone knows there is a Winged Tribe (people who sprout wings from their backs and fly through the sky). And there are the dwarf-like Heluo, who often show up as background characters in the stories. They’re more of an ugly underground-dwelling fairy race in my opinion than simply “Tolkienesque dwarves”.
I’ve placed translations of the nine province names on the map above. Those are my best guesses at what the Chinese characters mean. I’m still not sure of which homeland is assigned to the Heluo but they kind of wander all over the place anyway.
Novoland: Eagle Flag is a coming-of-age story, where a young barbarian prince (Lu Gui Chen) is sent to live as a hostage in the kingdom of Xiatang (which I think is on the eastern continent). Xiatang is a vassal state of a larger empire. The lead characters spend several years together before they’re torn apart by politics and obligations to their families/tribes.
I had to decipher the geography and politics of the story from awkward translations in the streaming videos and a handful of English-language blog posts that explain some of the very complicated details of this fictional world. I’m grateful to the bloggers for their efforts, but I wish they had been able to tell us more. I’m sure there are mistakes in my review of Novoland: Eagle Flag.
Novoland: Pearl Eclipse is also known to many of its fans as Mrs. Zhu, although I don’t know why or how it picked up that name. Maybe one of the translations was promoted under that name. It kind of gives away one of the sub-plots of the story.
That said, this is a more mature story. The 2 leads meet while they are quite young. He’s just barely 20ish and she’s about 12 (played by a younger actress), so the “growing up” sequence is quite short and covered in the first episode.
As Cdramas go you couldn’t pick a better one to be wowed by. Novoland: Pearl Eclipse and The Longest Day in Chang’An are, so far, the absolute two best, most polished of the series I’ve watched. But there are two others that are close runners up.
Who Rules The World
The “world” in Who Rules the World is a classic empire. Basically, the ancient Chinese emperors considered their domains to be “the [only] world [that matters]”, more-or-less. They expected all the tribes and states on their borders to acknowledge their supremacy.
If you like Wuxia-style fighting, you’ll get plenty of that in Who Rules the World. But it’s also part thriller, part romance, part political drama.
The various vassal states of the empire have become so powerful they are ready to topple the imperial dynasty from the throne (thus repeating a familiar pattern throughout history). Yang Yang and Zhao Lu Si play two martial artists who strive to stand aside from all the politics, but they are slowly drawn into all the inter-state intrigues. It doesn’t help that they are both secretly the heirs to their respective kingdoms.
Zhao Lu Si is one of the dominant young stars of Cdramas. Her fandom is huge (although she’s not yet a rival to Yang Mi, who is considered China’s top actress). In addition to Who Rules the World, I’ve watched Zhao Lu Si in a couple of other series. I’ve also reviewed Love of Thousand Years and A Female Student Arrives at the Imperial College. Also known as “Rosie Zhao”, she’s probably one of China’s best-known actresses. I’m more impressed with her talent each time I watch another of her productions.
But I think Who Rules the World is the best Zhao Lu Si Cdrama I’ve watched so far, and it’s one of my top favorites (for now).
10 Miles of Peach Blossoms
This show is also known as Eternal Love. The story (or parts of it) has been told several times in at least 1 movie and at least 2 other TV shows. The basic premise is that 2 immortals meet each other in 3 separate lives. They fall in love, break apart or are separated, and meanwhile must deal with all the politics within the Heavenly Realm and between the Heavenly Realm and other realms.
This is a complicated story and I think it was this performance which propelled Yang Mi to the top of the Cdrama stars list. I could be wrong. There could be something better out there that I haven’t seen yet, but this show blew me away.
It’s not one of my top two favorites because it contains some graphic brutality in it. There are some very unpleasant scenes in this story line, and they can be hard to take.
In this version of the story there is a happy ending, but getting to that happy ending is an emotionally gruelling experience. You’ll be yelling at the screen in some places because the various villains get away with so many bad things, or because the writers make the good characters do dumb things.
What’s most confusing about this story is that it’s a Xanxia tale about two gods (Mo Yuan and Ye Hua) who become involved with a Fox tribe queen (I think they’re fairies, but they may be an alternate set of gods – I haven’t quite figured out the intricacies of Xanxia “tribes”). So it’s nothing for a character to pass through hundreds or thousands of years in this story and maybe only 1 or 2 episodes have passed. The time-keeping is atrocious, at least in that you might have a character say he or she is only a few years old in one episode and then is said to be hundreds of thousands of years old in the next episode. Maybe that’s just a fault of the translation.
One notable difference between Yang Mi’s performance in Eternal Love / Ten Miles of Peach Blossoms and Novoland: Pearl Eclipse is that they dub her voice with another actress in Eternal Love but not in Pearl Eclipse. Of course, these shows are made by 2 different production companies. I think Mark Chao’s voice was also dubbed, but I’m not sure.
I rather enjoy Yang Mi’s real voice and I don’t understand why she was dubbed in earlier productions. Other fans have expressed disapproval of the dubbing, too, so I know I’m not alone.
If it weren’t for the dubbing, I’d probably put Ten Miles of Peach Blossoms above Novoland: Pearl Eclipse as one of my top favorites. But in either show Yang Mi proves why she is considered China’s top actress by many people. She has incredible talent and can emote a range of emotions that hold up even under iffy special effects and voice dubbing.
Conclusion
It’s been a long time since I’ve been able to write a decent post for this blog. I wanted to publish something about my love for Cdramas, and so I put that off until I thought I could do the topic justice.
Although I still love great American science fiction franchises like Star Trek, Star Wars, Stargate, etc., I’ve really enjoyed watching the Cdramas and I look forward to enjoying many more.
In fact, I just started watching Shining Just For You (aka known as Novoland: The Princess from Plateau) starring Peng Xiao Ran, who also starred in Romance of A Twin Flower. She’s another great actress and I hope I enjoy her performance in this short Novoland series (only 25 episodes) as I did in Romance of A Twin Flower.
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