azdak | The Story of Minglan

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the story of minglan

The Story of Minglan

I’ve just finished episode 64 of The Story of Minglan and it was a corker. The series hits a narrative kink of mine I was only vaguely aware I had – probably because it’s a trope more common in the breach than the observance – in which a man falls in love with a particular woman, decides he’s going to marry her, bends all his resources and willpower to this end - and then discovers, on succeeding, that you can take a horse to water but you can’t make it drink. It isn’t a forced marriage. Minglan does, after initial reluctance, consent, but it’s not what you’d call enthusiastic consent. To her, marriage is an unavoidable social obligation, not a matter of love. She’s got to marry someone, bear his children and run his harem, and since he’s gone to all this effort, it might as well be Gu Tingye. She’s an affectionate, considerate, clever wife, who grows increasingly fond of her husband, but there’s a part of her she’s had to keep locked away for most of her life, and she doesn’t trust her husband enough to reveal it to him. Gu Tingye, though, once caught a glimpse of the real Minglan, (at a polo match, since you ask) and his inability to coax his wife into being that person, passionate, loyal and utterly fearless, causes increasing friction in their marriage. Minglan, meanwhile, believes that her husband’s devotion to her is temporary infatuation and that eventually he’ll start installing concubines, so she guards her heart very carefully indeed. The concubine thing is a not unreasonable expectation, as Gu Tingye’s scheming relatives are constantly attempt to stuff concubines – some willing, others less so - into his household. Eventually, his aunt gifts them with one MInglan feels it would be dangerously impolite to refuse, so much to her husband’s horror, she accepts her (Gu Tingye is the only man in Ancient China who actually wants to be monogamous). In a scene that is both funny and rather awful, Minglan shuts him up with the new concubine, saying “Consider this your wedding night!” leaving him to sit sullenly in the dark, fully clothed, waiting for his wife to send a message to rescue him, until the poor concubine eventually falls asleep. Minglan never does send the message. Gu Tingye never sleeps with the concubine. He keeps going to sleep in his study instead, but it doesn’t help. Minglan won’t take off her docile mask, won’t be jealous of him (expressions, of jealousy are, as she knows only too well, a concubine’s trick for manipulating men), she won’t call him pet names (ditto), and she doesn’t understand what he means when he asks her despairingly if she loves him as Gu Tingye or only as the Marquis. All he can do is try to derive scraps of comfort from the few occasions when he pisses her off enough to garner an angry glance. Spontaneous emotion! Yay! I didn’t like Gu Tingye much for an awfully long time, but I have enormous sympathy for him here, as I, too, have had quite enough of Minglan’s performative docility and want to see her true hardcore self emerge for once.

And then, finally, in episodes 63-64 it happens! A crisis occurs and a very pregnant General Sheng Milan comes charging in, sword quite literally in hand, to save the day. And her husband misses it all! He’s away on a salt taxation mission! He only arrives in time for the mopping up operation because Minglan’s sister-in-law has written to her husband (who is also on the salt tax mission) asking him to come asap (and sending - sensible lass – 6 fast horses to speed things up). In the emotional aftermath, Gu Tingye asks Minglan why she didn’t ask for his help, doesn’t she trust him? And Minglan, irritated by his persistent obtuseness, says no, she doesn’t, as a Marquis he’s got too much to lose for her to involve him in such risky defiance of social convention. It’s all rather wonderful, although I also look forward to the inevitable scene where Minglan finally feels she can let down her guard with him and be her true self. Right now, though, there are still another 8 episodes to go, she’s got a baby to give birth to, and those salt farms won’t tax themselves!

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Hi there!

I've watched most of it (what I mean is, I skipped over some episodes or raced through them when the pacing started getting weird, as these dramas sometimes do)and thoroughly enjoyed it, after I got over not liking Gu Tingye as much as Yuan Ro (Zu Yi Long), he of the amazing cheekbones and equally amazing inability to get off the fence as per his liking for MingLan. This was quite a fandom controversy when it first aired - if you go through the youtube comments, there's so many of the 'how the hell is Gu Tingye the male lead?' type.

Also, have you read the book? I found a site where chapters were being translated - and boy was this adaptation different! I wouldn't mind discussing the changes brought about by the Chinese censorship authority once you're ready.

Haha, I really like Yanruo too, not least because he screws up in exactly the way I would screw up. I think part of what put me off Gu Tingye at first is that he's not convincing as a young man - he and Changbai were such beautiful teenagers, and he's, what ten years older than Minglan? Maybe only 8? But when he comes back in his mid-twenties, he looks like a much older man, and I can't help judging his behaviour accordingly. As time goes on, and his status changes, he starts to seem a lot more age appropriate, and that was when I started liking him. Also, it has to be said that as a young man Darling Second is not exactly stoic. I realise that since everyone around him is gaslighting like crazy, it's a narrative necessity that he be the one to put the record straight, but he certainly does whinge a lot about how he's being mistreated. You don't see Prince Jing doing that.

I haven't read the book, although I read somewhere that one of the differences is that adult!Minglan travels back in time and inhabits the body of her younger self? That sounds like a very intriguing take. I don't think I'll ever get round to reading it, though, so would you be willing to talk about the impact of censorship even if I'm ignorant of the source material? Because it would interest me greatly.

Oh yes, Gu Tingye is such a moaner - he's always complaining about something! I did like him eventually, but as you said, it took a while. I especially didn't like the fact that he has a concubine and two kids while Ming Lan seems so much younger - it bugged me. But then I gradually started to see how he was better for Ming Lan than Yanruou could ever have been - I can't imagine Yanruou ever accomplishing such a clean break from his family as Gu Tingye did, for example.

Re. the book - don't worry, I haven't finished the entire book either - I had to stop at a certain point (for my sanity), but I think I got enough to be able to compare.

As you said, the main framing device of the book is that Ming Lan was actually a Communist Party official in modern-ish China, who dies in an accident and is reborn in a baby from ?-era China. See, even though the book/show setting isn't given a real historical setting, the mix of clothes from one era and hair from the other suggests the eras we're talking about; vaguely medieval.

The thing is, in the book it has a lot of importance - Ming Lan (I've forgotten what her name is in modern times) keeps thinking about what a terrible, terrible deal women have in the era she found herself in - and a lot of aspects of her character make sense when you see it through the lens of 'modern woman reborn into medieval society'. Even though the whole episode with Ming Lan being in the palace during the revolt and taking the message out to the next emperor (who happens to be Gu Tingye's good buddy) is pure show, not in the book, it once again emphasises that Ming Lan is different from the other women there - but without the book's framing device, it just looks like she's 'cooler than the others, not like other girls'!

So that bit of censorship I didn't really like - even though it would have made the series much more complicated than it already was (I've just finished another series which could have been subtitled: "But wait, there's more!"), it would have gone towards character development in Ming Lan. But of course, there's no way the censorship authority would have allowed (a)time travel, which (b) doesn't end in tragedy or (c) with the time traveller returning to the present or dying.

But then there's something else in the book, and, for the first time since I've embarked on this journey through all sorts of Chinese web-series, I am grateful for the censors.

Please treat this as a CONTENT WARNING for SEXUAL VIOLENCE

Because there's so much rape in the novel. So much. It's not that it's explicit, it's just there, in so many ways which IDK, I saw as unnecessary? I mean, I read somewhere that non-con is a trope in this kind of book, and I've certainly seen it in more than one c-drama (for which I can furnish warnings if needed - I wish someone would have warned me!).

So I was grateful for the censors who cut all that nonsense down to one mention during the palace revolt.

I don't usually say this - I'm usually frustrated that we often have couples who are ostensibly in love but don't even kiss once over 50 episodes, and in that respect The Story of MingLan was pretty racy with the wedding night and all (and can I say how much I loved that Gu Tingye was all: these are my financials, and now they're yours too! that wasn't even in the book!), but here I was so thankful.

Oh my goodness, I hadn't realised it was actually a completely different person who travelled back in time to be reborn as Minglan - I'd assumed it was Minglan reliving her life and hence doing things differently this time. That makes a huge difference! (What have the censors got against time travel? Is it anti-Communist or anti-Confucian or what?). I'm so glad they cut out all the violent rape because honestly there's so much structural rape in the book, so many women being bought and sold and stuffed into people's houses as concubines and having to marry men they don't love and who don't love them . you don't need the time travel framing to device to see that this is a completely shit society as far as women are concerned (and very damaging when it comes to men, too).

I've watched it to the end now and was disappointed by the finale. I thought the Emperor's plan was exceptionally crappy - SO MUCH could have gone wrong, and so many people died as it was - I thought GYT not telling Minglan was EPICALLY crappy (I'd have accepted it from Yanruo, who is extremely bad at putting himself in other people's shoes, but for GYT to do it is completely out of character and undermines all the things I'd gradually come to like about him), and I was SO disappointed that Minglan didn't finally get to rescue her husband instead of the other way around. We do get a grudging sort of half-admission that he can't keep his promise to always protect her (and therefore, by implication, she'll have to protect herself), but it's really not enough.

One thing I did like, though, was that we get to see other women rising to the occasion, especially General Shen's wife (whose name I forget), but also GYT's nanny, and even the evil m-i-law stops simpering for once and gives extremely clear and sensible instructions for the defence of her manor. There's definitely an implication there that Minglan isn't the only women capable of doing far more than her society normally allows.

Re. the censors and time travel - I honestly don't know, only that it's on the list of proscribed material. I think I read somewhere that they don't want people to get the impression that the past is better somehow, so if someone does travel in time or to different dimensions, they have to come back to the present (after dying tragically in the past, I might add).

I would say it's seen as 'anti-communist' except there are times when I'm watching one of these and I find myself yelling at the screen "what kind of Communists are you?"

I'm so glad they cut out all the violent rape because honestly there's so much structural rape in the book, so many women being bought and sold and stuffed into people's houses as concubines and having to marry men they don't love and who don't love them .

This so much - in a series I've watched and love most of all, The Untamed, the author of the book it was based on (Mó Dào Zǔ Shī) managed to create a fantasy set in ancient China without the system of concubinage, and it's so refreshing. Though there's still the brothel slavery; I guess you can't win them all.

But the concubines: All those women thrown together in the same household and acting like sharks in a feeding frenzy to survive, it really gets depressing. I think I've only seen one example of a c-drama in which a female character has an epiphany about how dire her situation /all women's situation is, and she manages it without being a time-traveller. She tries to explain it to a man, but unfortunately that man is the Emperor, who is kind of incapable of empathy, never having been in a situation where he can't have whatever he wants. The series is called The Story of Yanxi Palace, and I do love it, in spite of the Qing dynasty aesthetics and the last act degenerating into a 'bitches be crazy' denouement - but again, why does this happen? Yup, it's the concubine system again.

Yeah, the Emperor's plan was not good, and I didn't like keeping Ming Lan in the dark either - no idea if this happened in the book, though I might go back to the website I found it on and see if the last chapter has been translated and just read that.

ETA I went back to where I read the first 70 or so chapters, and the whole book is about 200, so it's not finished, lol. I also found out who she used to be - a kind of paralegal for the People's Court called Yao Yiyi.

Ah, people thinking the past might have been better than the present - that's a fear that tells you a lot about the Party's own beliefs about the present. But I certainly wouldn't be tempted by Minglan's era, and even men would presumably think twice about it, given what a shit time most of them have, even if it's not on the same level as the women's suffering.

I'm put off The Untamed because it seems to have solved the problem of not wanting to depict the shittiness of women's lives by just not having women as main characters. Shows that only care about men irritate me. I think ultimately the NiF approach is probably the best that can be achieved - pretend, by omission, that only the Emperor and the Crown Prince have concubines and depict everyone else in monogamous relationships, historical realism be damned. It's not as if the martial arts stuff is remotely realistic either.

Re. the censorship - yup, they're not much for escapism and especially don't want people questioning that there might have been something good about the past, or better than the present.

Re. The Untamed - I get where you're coming from about the scarcity of female characters, and a possible reason for this is that the source material is danmei, the Chinese version of yaoi. You're not going to have a female lead along with the male lead, because the lead character has a male love interest. so yes, you end up with a lot less women, and many of them don't survive till the end of the series (though one does! She is our queen!). But yes, so very few female characters in the story, which is weird as the writer's a woman.

Of course, the censorship authority have an even bigger problem with LGBT than with time travel, so all of a sudden the two are soulmates (no-one tell the censors that's even closer than before) and you find a lot of youtube reactors who've only watched the show and maybe the animated version asking if the boys have a bromance. It's pretty amazing how many hints at their love the director and show runners managed to smuggle past the censors, and one pretty massive anvil of a hint is that a song which one character writes for the other, which he names after a portmanteau of their names, becomes the central love theme of the entire series. But sure, they're just good friends.

I'd love to watch Nirvana in Fire again, to be honest - I've watched a few shows recently which have irritated/infuriated me so much, I need to cleanse my palate. I'm curious, what did you think about the reveal to Jingyan? I expected a bit more discussion between them; and then the reveal that Lin Shu died with the pearl suddenly appearing in the shrine - that was harsh.

which he names after a portmanteau of their names

Oh dear, I'm going to die laughing!! Chinese fandom, you are so wonderfully fannish!

I totally expected a massively emotional scene between Jingyan and Mei Changsu and was initially very disappointed not to get it (I also felt robbed that I didn't get the scene where Prince Jing convinces Xia Dong to let them into the Xuanjing Bureau). But after much thinking about it I had to admit that it's entirely consistent with his characterisation that MCS basically runs away and hides the moment Jinyang finds out - he really, really didn't want to him to know what Lin Shu had turned into, and he was never able to cope, and everything that happens in the show is consistent with that (I mean, maybe deep, deep down he did want Jingyan to recognise him , but only in a fantasy way in which he could magically go back to being Lin Shu at that moment, but what actually happens when his identity is revealed is that Jingyan says "This person is nothing like Lin Shu, how could you possibly think there was a connection?" And after that MCS never gives Jingyan the opportunity to say "Actually, I did realise it was you, it's just that you and my mother both gaslit me about it so I thought I must be going mad, and then I had to persuade my father that Xia Jiang was lying!"). See, so much to think about! How can I not love it, even if it wasn't what thought I wanted?

Speaking of the Emperor's plan being crappy, it has just struck me that it was also his idea that GYT's new manor should back onto the Gu manor "so that the two families can reunite." And look how well that turned out!

I am not really reading this in case I find myself watching it later, but 70+ EPISODES??? Wow, these dramas really do go for long runs!

It would be a lot better if it was half as long, but it was never so tedious that I gave up halfway through an episode. And I can cope better with a long run of shortish episodes than with the Korean pattern of 16 episodes of monstrous length.

*adds this to my list of TV series to take a look at*

Having seen it all now, I can say that episodes 63-64 are the high point and it sadly goes downhill thereafter. You Have Been Warned.

That is a narrative kink that I could definitely get on board with, though I don't know that I'm up for waiting 64+ episodes for a payoff on it. (I suspect I thoroughly lack the patience for c-dramas in general, which is a pity as they're so pretty.)

A LOT of patience is required for this one, not least because the opening episodes are even more confusing than Nirvana in Fire, and just when you think you've got everyone sorted out, there's a big time jump and half the cast are suddenly played by different actors.

If you're going to make the investment of time and patience, I have to say that while Nirvana in Fire pays off in spades, whereas The Story of Minglan doesn't, or at least notfor me. It was good enough to keep me watching, but the finale is a great disappointment.

and half the cast are suddenly played by different actors.

Oh, hell, no. ;-) Huge casts with sprawling complex plot-lines are something I tend to bounce off of anyway, even without having to try to track who's who when everybody has pretty much the same hairstyle.

In that case I think I can safely say The Story of Minglan isn't for you! (Does it help if people have different decorative ways of securing their hairstyles?)

Provided they're consistent about it, it would, actually! (I'm mildly face-blind, enough so to appreciate things like the American tendency to cast one male lead as blond and the other as brunet, etc. I often have to use narrative cues rather than recognition to track a character through an episode, especially if they change hairstyles, dress up/dress down, etc. Trying to do that for a big cast from a culture with, ah, more consistency of phenotype, and where I don't know the narrative cues.... yeah. Probably best I don't, unless there's a pop-up video version. ;-) )

Which is a shame, since Minglan herself sounds pretty awesome.

Minglan is pretty awesome and her grandmother is truly awesome but c-dramas do seem to take a narrative approach that involves chucking you in at the deep end and letting you struggle for about ten episodes until you finally figure out how to swim. And the Story of Minglan has so many families with umpteen offspring that it's hard enough keeping track without mild face blindness (it really doesn't help that most of the time they're known by their position in the family, so Minglan, as the sixth child, is referred to as "Sixth Miss" or "Little Sixth", while "Second", depending on context, can be either her older brother or her future husband ("Darling Second" is the pet name he proposes)).

*headdesk*

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