1 серия

This drama did not disappoint. I got all caught up all 18 episodes on my day off and I am so in love with the whole drama already. Ok it’s a very girly, romantic, and unrealistic drama that’s based on a manga, but if you’ve accepted that and are prepared for something that’s very cheesy and lovey-dovey, then I welcome you to the club. I love taiwanese dramas that are based off of nothing and just created to make you fall in love with the male lead. I read from ‘The Power of Habit’ once by Charles Duhigg that we tend to like things that we’ve seen before or heard before right? The cheese factor of this drama is off the charts but I love every cheesy mozzarella bit of it. I’ll make fun of it in my recap but keep in mind, I still love it. Because it’s not a serious historical or political drama I’m more forgiving to plot holes because the main purpose is to play the ‘let’s fall in love with the male lead’ game. I am very much swooning over Hawick at this point. Your tactics worked, production team! I have fallen in love with the male lead.

As I’ve mentioned before, the production team (same writers, directors, etc) created Lan Ling Wang. The beginning of the drama really reminds me of Lan Ling Wang:

Like some layover graphics, and a still of the actor/actress. They even use the same font as the opening of Lan Ling Wang:

Yes please. I watched Lan Ling Wang like 2 or 3 times (that’s why I stopped reviewing it because I feel like it had gotten out of hand).

The series starts with a scene at a banquet where there’s an attempted assassination on Ban Zheng Qin/Bai Lang. Then it flashes to a few days before:

We start with introducing the beautiful Tiffany Tang as Jiang Xing. She is a street performer with her dad, and they’re very poor. You can tell Papa Jiang has a really good heart – even though he is really poor, he adopted Jiang Xin from the streets when she was abandoned/lost, and gave her all that he could. As a result, Jiang Xing is very filial. Jiang Xing is a bit of a Mary Sue that thinks the best out of everyone and doesn’t really protect herself. In the drama, she has to be saved a lot. I know it’s a ploy to get us to fall in love with the male lead since he’d have to be so ‘brave’ or ‘heroic’ to save a damsel in distress, but… I wish that she was stronger.

Then we meet the antagonist. She is the worst. Her name is Du Xiao Han and she betrays Jiang Xing and her father right off the bat to get herself off the hook of some gangsters. They demand money from Jiang Xing and Papa Jiang and attempts to assault Jiang Xing. Luckily, her brother saves Jiang Xing in time.

But he only saved Jiang Xing by telling the gangsters that he’s part of the Bai family – a notorious and powerful family in Shanghai that nobody wants to mess with. When the elder brother of Bai Lang finds out, he is pissed. The elder brother, Bai Yuan, captures the brother to kill him. Meanwhile the brother overhears a plan to kill Bai Lang at the banquet of a gangster called Lei Ba Tian. The brother suggests a way to smuggle guns into the venue to assassinate Bai Lang at a venue.

Meanwhile we meet Bai Lang, played by Hawick Lau. His real name is Bai Zheng Qin, but Bai Lang is his nickname which translates into his surname (Bai) + wolf. He’s compared to a wolf because of his ruthlessness and his coldhearted ways. He always makes this handsome squinty frown.

So he’s introduced in the scene where he’s fighting this Caucasian guy which I found to be hilarious since all Cdramas are dubbed over, and the voices of the Caucasian men in this part are no different. It was so funny when they spoke because they were speaking English in a Chinese accent LOL.

AHAHA ok the boxing scene was really like “Ok, how can we win over a million hearts for Bai Lang?”.

Abs: Check

Frowny smothering look: Check.

Looking like he’s very good at a certain physical activity: Check.

So Bai Lang is boxing this guy called Leo, and Bai Lang suddenly pulls this weird illegal move where he pulls Leo’s arm towards the cage wall of the boxing ring. I’m sure we’ve pulled a very large man by the arm in our lives one way or another – whether we’re pulling our dads to buy us ice-cream, or pulling boyfriends to a store, but it is absolutely not easy to pull an unwilling man towards a certain direction. Especially an unwilling 200 pound boxer. Especially at a momentum that would allegedly shatter his knuckles.

But, that’s what happened. Bai Lang pulled Leo towards the cage at such a high velocity that it shattered his knuckles. Turns out Leo hides silver plates in his boxing gloves to maximize the damage done to the opponent.

Meanwhile, Du Xiao Han’s brother invites Jiang Xing to perform at the banquet, and he hides the guns in her magical box (which every time you open it, different things come out).

Jiang Xing meets Bai Lang for the first time at the banquet in a cheesy heart-melting romantic moment.

She runs out of the changing room and says that she doesn’t wasn’t to wear something so exposing. It was so cute when she was kind of hiding behind Bai Lang. Bai Lang offers her his jacket to her. He commands everyone to turn around while she changes into it, except that he stares at her, waiting for her to put it on. Suddenly he realized that she was waiting for him, so he quickly turned around.

She turns around with the jacket on and they’re so uncomfortably close that there is a lot of tension.

It’s such a contrived moment to establish that they’re the OTP and create this ‘falling in love’ moment, but I’m still all melting over it.

He hands her this little knot that she dropped while changing. He asks what it’s for – and she tells him it’s a charm to wish for love. He then tells her, with smouldering eyes, “If you’re going to ask the Gods, why don’t you take power into your own hands?” and he leans in so close that it’s flirtatious.

During the banquet, Jiang Xing realizes about the assassination. During her show she invites Bai Lang to be her volunteer in the show. She does the disappearing trick – Bai Lang steps into the cage, and she throws a blanket over, and the assassins all pull out their guns and start shooting.

And obviously he lives, because it’s the first episode.