EPISODE 1 RECAP (and a bit of 2)
Hongdou (Liu Yifei) is a manager of a five-star hotel in Beijing. She is super busy and career-focused. No homemade meals. No time for boys. When a guy hints at asking her out, she says she has to walk her dog that evening. Ouch.
She is so busy that she doesn’t even have time to tie her hair up before applying skincare.
She also has the bad habit of not checking the expiration dates of her food.
But everything changes when Hongdou’s best friend gets diagnosed with cancer and dies shortly afterward. To be honest, I thought Hongdou would be the one getting sick, with her habit of eating expired food and everything.
Hongdou world is suddenly upside down. She and her friends used to have all kinds of dreams about family, career, travelling, etc. They were each other’s support because they both lived far away from home.
Now it’s suddenly just Hongdou sitting in the dark with a sad burrito in her hands and lots of soda cans.
Deep in depression and no longer certain about her future, Hongdou resigns from her job and from the hectic city life for a long vacation. Her destination is a small town in the country.
It’s a peaceful place with people playing music on the street, meditating in gardens, and children running around with each other instead of having their noses stuck in tablets. That kind of stuff. Hence, begins Hongdou’s new adventure of healing and reflection. The sceneries in this drama are all well-shot. Sign me up for this town, please.
When Hongdou first arrives and is trying to find her place, some kid chases a horse down the street and knocks into her. Yes, a horse was running down the street. She drops her phone and it breaks.
I appreciate the drama for not taking this moment to introduce the male lead and have him solve the problem like usual. Instead, a group of children point Hongdou to the right place. Once settled down, Hongdou goes look for that horse kid and sees if there’s anything to be done about her phone. Here is when the male lead (Li Xian) makes his appearance.
I’m not sure in what sense is he the male lead. But there are hints of him playing an important role in this story and Hongdou’s life. The horse kid is his brother and he has a job that keeps him quite busy too.
Anyway, their conversation happens like you would see in real life – if you run into nice people, that is. Hongdou says she will have the phone fixed and send him the receipt. Perfectly normal.
Why does this make me wanna keep watching?
COMMENTS
If you like Stardew Valley, this might just be the drama for you. A city woman who leaves behind her busy life to submerge in the country. I can’t say if there will be any farming involved, but the setup promises cool country activities and a theme of self-discovery.
Going into episode 2, the drama’s approach is clear: slow, therapeutic, and reflective.
It is about people going about their lives, doing normal things, dealing with their daily problems and connecting with nature. It’s like a quiet Ghibli movie or a slice-of-life manga you can enjoy without worrying about the plot. Maybe it’s also a really long, successful tourism commercial because I’m sure a lot of viewers are wanting to pack their bags and visit this town.
Liu Yifei fits into this role effortlessly, considering she has always given a good interpretation of “quiet and reflective”; and this drama requires a lot of that.
Needless to say, there is still the ending to be nervous about, given C-dramas’ track record with endings recently. But if the drama manages to keep up what they’ve done so far, I’d say any kind of ending would suffice. As long as no character does anything crazy.
My only complaint about episode one is the part where Hongdou listens to her friend’s last messages. The messages themselves are not the problem, but there are too many of them. Coupled with flashbacks of the friend’s recording and painful expressions, they lessen the impact the scene should have had. You know, overkill.