Back to reviews! I didn’t stop watching dramas. But most were so crappy I thought I’d spare you.
- Age: 15+ (but better for adults)
- Romance: sweet but 霸道 and mostly tame
- Genre: contemporary
- Episodes: 24x 45 (18 episodes)
- Actors: 林彥俊 （Evan Lin), 萬鵬 (Wan Peng)
- Wiki: Chinese, English
- Released: Aug 2021
- Where to Watch: iQiyi
TLDR for Friends
A romance drama that actually wasn’t crappy. Story was well directed and a bit unconventional in plot. Though still plenty of typical tropes. You have to give it 3-4 episodes to get into Evan Lin’s character. My only complaint was the two major plot developments/twists. I was yelling to Fleur, “Really? Really? They couldn’t have just talked to each other?!?!??”
You should watch it! Evan Lin was good and swoony enough I went and googled him.
The second half was your typical 霸道 CEO trope so I wouldn’t necessarily watch this drama with the teenager.
Plot and Quick Review
萬鵬 (Wan Peng) meets 林彥俊 (Evan Lin), a mostly blind secret song writer. He’s cranky and prickly due to his sad sad childhood. (Hey his mom was killed in front of him and he grew up in an orphanage!)
Of course she falls in love with him and basically makes him fall in love with her. That’s a bit different from normal plot lines. And there were quite a lot of sweetness early half of the drama.
What kind of sweetness? You know, piggy back rides, sweeping a girl off her feet when she’s sick, cooking charred eggs (he can’t see!) for her, etc.
Then through some misunderstanding they separate for 3 years. (Really?! Really?! A convenient death = guilt trip trope?! Do characters deserve to be together when they don’t know how to talk to each other?)
During this time he has surgery and can now see and is a CEO of his dad’s company. (Yeah he wasn’t orphaned. They just didn’t want him cuz he was blind at birth.). This time around he chases her in typical hand grabbing fashion and succeeds!
I got into this drama cuz so many people recommended it. I loved it a lot after coming out of 3 mostly crappy Riley Wang dramas. And one of Riley Wang’s drama was with Wan Peng also.
Wan Peng is a pretty good actress, though I thought her innate tom boy was comes through in both dramas so she wasn’t too different.
Evan Lin really benefited from his character’s blindness. He didn’t have to emote too much the first half, especially with his eyes. And the character profile asks for a pretty “cold” person which he does very well.
Wait, I got sidetracked. I spent a whole week thinking why the drama was so good when it had some gaping problems. One couldn’t say Evan Lin was a super fantastic actor, though he CAN act.
My conclusion was the drama succeeded overall because of amazing directing, attention to detail, plus it’s a drama about music.
When he was blind, his character always wears black or white. The sets are often brown or dark. As he falls in love, Wan Peng brings light into his life. And the set slowly brightens up.
The director focused on sound a lot in the drama. (Hey he IS blind.). There’s this lovely scene under a tree where they are just standing there listening to the rain. The OST is lovely. There’s tons of music, classical or modern, which I always love.
Overall the whole drama has a very literary feel to it. With the main characters reciting lines that seem to come out of a well written book at the end of the first few episodes. To kind of sum up how they feel.
Compared with the 2 crappy Riley Wang dramas, the plot mostly makes sense. There’s continuity. They make sure to use dialogue to make you understand a characters motive without using it as a time jump device. For some reason crappy dramas like you tell you how much the characters love each other when you’ve seen no character motivation for such love.
What Parents Need to Know
The whole second half is inappropriate male behavior you wouldn’t want your kid to encounter in real life. Nothing bad. Just typical romance stuff. So watch this under your blanket late night without your kids.
Chinese Aspect or Things to Talk to Kids About?
There’s a scene where the two leads discuss a poet and poetry. The set up of a poem. Later on this poem gets used in a song the male lead writes. You could totally go listen to the music and now understand some of the historical references in it. It’s a good way to make Chinese poetry relevant.
