Chaguan
Stressed-out Chinese love melodrama about courtly life
If you can handle a bossy eunuch, you can survive in today’s China
A BIT surprisingly, one of the best things about the “Story of Yanxi Palace”, a television drama about an 18th-century emperor that has broken Chinese viewing records this year, is watching concubines being rude to eunuchs. Even less predictably, the particular rudeness—combining scorn, resentment and a dash of fear—offers insights into how Chinese people cope with life in today’s ruthless and unequal society. An early scene shows the Qianlong emperor’s chief eunuch, a tubby, squeaky dimwit, bustling into a silk-draped waiting-room with an order for the harem. Return to your quarters, he announces, the emperor is working late. “What? His majesty is sleeping alone again?” grumbles Noble Consort Gao, a boo-hiss villain. “Let’s go,” she tells her fellow concubines, stalking past the eunuch without a glance. “What else is there to wait for?”
“Yanxi Palace” is a gorgeously costumed fantasy, filled with poisonings, betrayals and young women competing for the Forbidden City’s great prize: being bedded by the emperor. “Join the army, you might as well become a general,” as one ambitious recruit to the harem chirps. The show is driven by female characters, including a kind but sickly empress, murderous concubines and—at the heart of the 70-episode epic—Wei Yingluo, a quick-witted, justice-seeking maid, who rises to become Qianlong’s beloved consort. The formula is wildly popular, drawing 700m live-streaming views on the drama’s best single day, in August.
Yet that night-time scene in the harem reflects some bleak realities of court life. The eunuch is ridiculous, and obsequious to high-ranking concubines. But he is also terrifying. For the concubines live only to please his master, the emperor, an absolute ruler in whose name the guilty and innocent alike are shown being jailed, executed or exiled without hope of appeal. The Forbidden City is a crimson-walled tyranny, filled with spies. Noble Consort Gao’s drawling insolence in the face of rejection is, in the end, bravado. She is privileged, cosseted and ready to hurt those below her in the pecking order. But in this system she has no individual rights. And she does not challenge its rules.
Many Chinese might mock attempts to extract political lessons from “Yanxi Palace” or other recent Qing dramas drawing huge audiences, such as “Ruyi’s Royal Love in the Palace”. Yet Chaguan quizzed visitors to a museum in the city of Changchun, housed in a palace built by Japanese occupiers when they installed the last Qing emperor as the puppet ruler of north-east China from 1932-45. Such dramas just use history as a backdrop, scoffed two students, Taylor Wu and Linda Zhang. They are really stories about “modern life”, they added, whether that means love stories or concubines seeking promotions.
The students are on to something. Watching bored, paranoid concubines waiting for the emperor’s summons, the penny drops: this is a workplace drama, and these employees are failing a performance review. Young maids in a palace dormitory, torn between small acts of kindness and infighting, could be teenage workers at an electronics plant. Even bejewelled dowagers sound like scolding parents from 2018, with one calling a daughter “gutless” for failing to ask Qianlong for a promotion.
牢记，没那么引申意义，但是还是好难
Imperial dramas have reflected the politics of their time since they first hit Chinese TV screens in the 1980s. Film-makers study what Communist Party ideologues call the “main melody”, a musical term they have borrowed to describe the core political ideas upon which creative sorts are encouraged to riff. “TV Drama in China”, a study published by the Hong Kong University Press, elegantly catalogues permitted themes. Historical dramas from the 1980s stressed the weakness of the last Qing rulers. In the authoritarian aftermath of the Tiananmen democracy protests, such shows praised 18th-century emperors as stern patriots whose ruthlessness supposedly preserved national unity. “Yongzheng Dynasty”, a drama from 1999, recast the unpopular Yongzheng emperor as a flinty corruption-fighter. That reminded contemporary viewers of Zhu Rongji, a crusty reformer who was prime minister at the time, Ying Zhu of the City University of New York has noted. By 2007 viewers were glued to “The Great Ming Dynasty 1566”, a cynical drama about rampant corruption.
另一个天安门事件，我听大人说的，被社会主义洗脑的大学生反对带有资本主义性质的改革，在天安门游行，邓小平下令开坦克驱散，听说死了人的。国内查不到，可能翻墙能查到一些。
As years passed market forces joined Communist propaganda chiefs as a second boss. Early shows were dominated by male characters and mostly watched by men. Today’s TV drama audience is 70-80% female and mainly from smaller cities, says Lei Ming of ABD Entertainment, an audience-analysis firm. Viewers typically watch on smartphones, he adds. Their favourite part about the show is talking it over afterwards with friends.
The leading man in “Yanxi Palace”, Qianlong, is something of a cipher: a stern autocrat who finds his harem a chore. Chinese pundits have debated whether the show is a feminist tale about strong women, or a retrograde saga about women who survive by obeying and pleasing bossy men. It is both. It is a reflection of the country today, a chauvinist place full of strong women.
都不是，仍然是于妈的套路，剥了视觉设计上的这层皮，它仍然是个主角光环爆棚的偶像剧而已，不过前面几集还是挺精彩的，哈哈~~
Just trying to make a living
In a fast-rising China, life is hard and filled with obstacles and anxiety, says Wang Xiaohui, chief content officer at iQiyi, the Netflix-like entertainment company behind “Yanxi Palace”. Mr Wang describes today’s main melody. The masses (and the party) like stories in which subordinates are loyal, kindness is rewarded and wickedness punished, and in which young people who work hard can succeed. Mr Wang hails the women in his drama for an “independent spirit” that resonates with viewers. Outsiders may note that such spirits do not always seek to reform or change a society. Getting ahead can be enough.
A recurring theme of “Yanxi Palace” is that the Forbidden City is a place of harsh rules, but that rules keep chaos at bay. Such obedient resignation suits China’s modern rulers well. With 15bn cumulative downloads, this will not be the last of its kind.
哎，还停留在，速度一遍（9分钟），云里雾里。
怎么解。
以后每篇文章都必须进行意群训练才行啊
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