English title: A Change of Destiny
Number of episodes: 20
Some info:
1) D-Addicts Wiki
2) Official Site (Traditional Chinese)
3) Episode synopsis + screencaps (by K for TVB)
4) Series analysis (Traditional Chinese)
This drama isn’t very long in terms of number of episodes, but at least every episode is rather well spent. It caught me off guard a few times though I started to get used to the style of the show and wasn’t thrown off any longer, or at least not much.
The 2 main male leads have the same 生成八字 and yet at the beginning the way they live their lives are vastly different. 叶杨 is the son of a rich family who produces the most and best joss sticks in his homeland, 曹州. 袁喜 on the other hand, was first introduced as a 小混混, swindling people to make ends meet. The cause of their meeting was none other than a fake 推背图 made by the latter, while the former is interested in these things. In fact, this 推背图 thing will be the central object moving the scenario, changing the people personalities etc.
推背图 contains a picture and some cryptic description that goes along with the picture, and is supposedly able to predict major events in history, hence people have always wanted to get hold of it, especially the emperors who are so scared of losing their kingdom. Needless to say, this object of “fortune-telling” is highly sought after not only by the king, but also other “nobles” in the show.
I won’t be going into gross details of the story, but what I feel is that some parts are quite nicely done in terms of all the strategy and mind games some of the characters put into play apart from using their knowledge of 风水 and 算命 to analyse the situation. In the earlier parts of the show, I did get thrown off track at times since I hadn’t expect the story to progress as the way it eventually did.
However, I’m not exactly very satisfied with the ending as it really looked bad and doesn’t tie up loose ends properly. What’s more, the final ending is indeed quite lame. Lol, but I can’t think of a nice way to end it once it hit episode 20 and the series was trying to clear things up and end the show.
According to some user who analysed the show (link 4), he says that many of the things are not true when in fact they do have historical presence in the actual history happenings. Well of course, I wouldn’t know who is more right (or incorrect), but I guess for most part of the show, it seemed rather well done anyway so I guess it doesn’t really matter how closely it is to actual historical events. Other than the facts part, some of the other elements of the show is really quite nicely analysed by him, so it’s not too bad though I found reading through all that 繁体 at a somewhat fast speed a bit hard to digest. Haha.
Onto other comments: some phrases are used quite frequently but I got too lazy to note down the phrases. And I mean those 成语 type lor. Haha, bleah why do I always notice such things? Oh, there are also some continuity errors like dressing, hairstyle, injuries, dirt etc. Also, many places were re-used as different places at least for 2-3 different locations. Haha. Bleah.
Overall, it’s not too bad for a short chinese drama series that is 古装. The ending is kind of a disappointment, but I guess the producers have already made everyone watch through till the end liao, so it doesn’t matter THAT much? Lol.
p.s. I did thought of writing this entry in Chinese, but it’ll take too long to formulate nicely and type out everything properly. So I resorted to just using some of the names and terms in Chinese to have an easier writing this entry. Sigh, my Chinese is really becoming cmi. At least still can read/listen and understand quite well. 听说读写 indeed.
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