Before I begin, here are the titles of the four episodes.
Ep 1 Red Sky
Ep 2 The Divine Painter
Ep 3 Ma Wang
Ep 4 Red String of Fate
If you’ve been here on this blog long enough, you’d know all about the superstition regarding the red string of fate.
In kdramas, lovers are believed to be bound by a red string of fate. Regardless of distance, timespan, amnesia, blindness, and other improbable conditions, the couple are fated to meet and be together because of that inseverable red string. This red string trope figured in “Hotel del Luna,” “The King: Eternal Monarch,” and just recently in “My Girlfriend is a Gumiho.”
Oddly enough, we didn’t see an actual red string in this episode although the title mentioned it. This tells me that the screenwriter intended the viewers to see the red string in a different form…like ChungGi’s name, for instance.
1. Her name
Remember when I told you in my First Impressions that the writer made sure Ha Ram learned her name in a roundabout way? I like it when the writer isn’t so apparent with his/her intention.
Ram: If it’s not discourteous, I would like to know your name.
ChungKi: My name. (coughing) My name is Hong CheongKi.
Ram: What is your father like?
ChungKi: My father? He’s a painter who paints on the market streets every day.
Ram: (thinking) Is it truly her? (aloud) I see. I will repay your kindness. I shall remember your name.
ChungKi: There’s no need. You saved me first.
He was downplaying it when he said that he would remember her name to repay her kindness. He’d already committed it to memory.
Her name was like a red string connecting them, and despite his blindness, he found her again.
Ram: Who’s there?
ChungKi: (silent)
Ram: I asked who you are.
ChungKi: (thinking to herself) He wouldn’t remember even if I told him. (aloud) I’m here to deliver the attendee list from Baegyu Painting Institute.
Ram: (thinking to himself) It’s that woman from that dye house. (aloud) Grand Prince Yangmyeong is away at the moment.
ChungKi: Then, I shall leave the list here and go. Well then…
Ram: Wait. (approaching her) Could it be…
ChungKi: What are you doing?
Ram: Your voice is familiar. Are you not Hong CheongGi from the dye house?
ChungKi: What?
Ram: Have I offended you so much that you will not greet me?
ChungKi: No. No. That’s not it.
I like that he teased her about ignoring him. He was back to his old way. It’s too bad that since she gained eyesight, she relied on her eyes to discern people. His visuals undoubtedly overwhelmed her senses. If she were to listen to him, instead of gaze at him, I’m sure she’d recognize him faster.
Later, with his bodyguard, he confirmed her identity.
Ram: Now that His Majesty has revealed his thoughts, it’s the right opportunity to get my revenge.
BG: Yes, Sir. And I had investigated the woman from the Paint House as you asked.
Ram: And?
BG: Hong CheongGi is her real name.
BG: (continuing) She lost her mother at a young age. She’s an ordinary painter who paints to support her father. Her father was once a painter at the Painting Bureau, but now he’s mentally ill and works on the market streets.
Ram: (thinking) It is her. It has to be her.
BG: What is it?
Ram: What happened to her eyes?
BG: What do you mean?
Ram: How is she able to see now?
BG: Was she blind before?
Ram: Just as I’m about to get my prolonged revenged…Why now?
BG: Sir?
Ram: It’s nothing. Let’s go.
Her name had the power to stop him from committing vengeance because it evoked his memory of their idyllic meeting as children and appealed to his sense of nobleness. For a moment, he wavered from his ultimate objective and had second thoughts about carrying out his plan to disrupt the monarchy.
I wonder however if he would still be this intent on revenge should he discover that the deities had planned for him to take on all the suffering for “the good of countless people,” and, in particular, for Hong CheongKi. Ha Ram wanted to know how she was able to see now. Would he resent it if he learned that Samshin had played a zero-sum game with them? Cheongki gained her eyesight only at the cost of Ha Ram losing his.
2. The red handkerchief
Although this isn’t a red string, this is a connection between the two that hardly needs explaining.
3. The brushstroke
This one is interesting because, from my point of view, there are three levels of interpreting it.
Her brushstroke is simply the way she paints. And at the very basic level, it connects her to Ha Ram because they have a shared mission. She has a divine gift to paint like no other. And her task, as ordained by Samshin, is to paint a receptacle that will contain and seal Mawang inside forever. Meanwhile, Ha Ram serves as a temporary receptacle for Mawang and must hold Mawang inside of him until she’s done with her creation.
In this sense, her brushstroke, like a red string of fate, connects the two of them.
I like that scene when they were both wondering if the other had arrived safely. That’s all they could do at the moment because she had yet to start her great commission.
It’s taking her long to begin because:
one, it hasn’t dawned on her that her painting could serve a higher purpose than to provide a livelihood for her and her ailing father. As it was, she employed her talent in shady business to pay for a cure for her father. She’s still unaware of the existence of Mawang and her place in the grand scheme of Samshin.
and two, she’s still developing her skills.
But on another level, her brushstroke also connects her to Ha Ram through her forgeries. Her paintings are good enough to be passed off as the real thing and to be sold at his gallery.
In Episode 1, her father gave her a lesson. He said, “What’s the most important part of a portrait? It’s not my eyes that look upon it. It is the eyes that look upon me.”
True. Eyes are said to be the window to the soul so it’s paramount for the painter to have at least a modicum of insight into the emotions and thoughts of his subject in order to faithfully depict them in his portrait.
Later, in Episode 2, we’re shown that ChungKi had become adept at zeroing in on the other important elements of a painting.
Take for instance the sehwa. She noted that it must have bold colors to convey a celebratory mood. She said, “we must paint the fortune, joy, happiness, and beauty that people want to feel….we must paint people’s wishes.”
As for a landscape like Park Yi’s masterpiece, she easily duplicated the “technique of painting the mountain tops like swirling clouds,” and the “technique of painting the sharpness of the tips of pine tree.” But she said that emulating the technique was just part of the process. There were three principles to making imitations.
ChungKi: First, copy the technique. Second, portray the energy in the original work. Third, it needs to be exactly the same.
And she laughed at her remark… because she was being cheeky. Sure, she copied that painting exactly the same, but she’d also left an undetectable mark on the painting, a butterfly which the 2nd Prince would later notice.
I thought it was interesting that she chose a butterfly as her mark when Ha Ram was also marked with a butterfly, thanks to the Samshin.
So, because of her refined brushstroke, her path and Ha Ram’s crossed again by way of his unscrupulous shopkeeper selling forgeries.
But on a third level, another sort of brushstroke connects ChungKi and Ha Ram. Ram remembers her hand brushing against his sleeve and her hand stroking his face.
It is literally a brush and a stroke.
Do you see what I mean?
Here’s the significance of the brushstroke according to the narrator.
A single stroke.
It means a single stroke is all it takes. It also means you cannot undo what you have drawn. When you can put your energy, will, and virtue into one stroke, that is when your painting will show life.
The subber kindly annotated it.
Thus, a single stroke of her hand against his arm and his face was all it took to leave her indelible mark on him. She didn’t have to put a butterfly stamp on him. It also meant that neither of them could undo their connection — just like with the red thread of fate. When they combine all their resources, struggles, will, and hope into a common endeavor, then they’re bound to do great things.
🙂 That’s why I said that “brushstroke” would have different levels of interpretation.
4. Her hair ribbon
I think this is the closest we can get to a red cord of fate in this drama. It’s long and red, plus she was wearing it when Ha Ram saved her from falling,
and when he rescued her from her disconcerting conversation with the Prince.
Prince: Oho! Are you talking back at me now?
Ram: (mediating between the two) All right, it is clear now. Madam Hong was trying to protect me, and made a mistake not knowing who you are. Forgive her for not recognizing Your Highness with your generosity as vast as the ocean.
Prince: (grudgingly) I have already forgiven her.
Ram: (now turning to Chungki) You may not have recognized him, but he is still this nation’s Grand Prince. You, too, must beg for proper forgiveness for your rude actions.
Chungki: Grand Prince Yangmyeong, I deserve to die.
Prince: I cannot hear you.
Chungki: I must’ve gone blind on that day. I failed to recognize you and committed this grave crime.
Prince: Louder!
Chungki: I deserve to die.
Prince: Of course, you deserve to die for trifling with the royal family. However, that’s enough. I also didn’t know that you were a painter. And I’ll also take back calling the list petty. On top of that, if I kill you, I’ll become a widow.
I’m sorry. But if ChungKi hadn’t been “fated” for Ha Ram, I would’ve found the Prince’s impromptu proposal hilarious. He was paying ChungKi back in her own coin.
Chungki: Pardon?
Prince: You called yourself my wife.
Ram and Chungki side-eyed each other.
Chungki: Oh, that’s…
Prince: I only forgave you for punching me because you called yourself my wife. (swinging his arm to demonstrate her action)
This was funny, too, because she DID swing an arm at him. She missed him because, thanks to his quick reflexes, he ducked.
Ram deliberately spilled his tea to halt the Prince’s joking. Ram’s sense of humor was missing because he could sense ChungKi’s discomfort and he didn’t like the Prince’s flippancy.
Ram: I’m sorry, Your Highness. My blindness has made me so clumsy.
Notice how both ChungKi and Ha Ram used blindness as an excuse. lol.
Prince: It’s alright. This is a mistake as well. (turning to ChungKi) You may get back up.
Ram: (sternly addressing ChungKi) If you’re down talking, you should go back, Miss.
Note: It really wasn’t Ha Ram’s place to dismiss her since they were both the guests of the Prince. The Prince should have been the one to tell her to leave. But obviously, Ha Ram stepped in to stop the Prince from growing more interested in her. Most likely, he was asserting his prior claim to her affections.
ChungKi: Ah yes. Then please excuse me.
Prince: Oh sure. You may go now.
ChungKi bowed to the Prince, and wordlessly glanced at Ram. Ram also threw her a side-eye but didn’t say anything. They were pretending indifference.
And as she left the teahouse, her red hair ribbon was very conspicuous.
Coincidentally, she was also wearing a red hair ribbon, albeit a faded one, when they first met as children.
That’s it for now. I’ve to work on “Hometown Cha Cha Cha” next.
I like that when she touched his arm which lead her to kiss him, that was her using a brush. ☺️
Their connection is sealed and I can’t wait till she realises that it’s him. 🥰
I’m watching at dramanice and the sub there said that CG will make an eternal bowl to seal Ma Wang. I presume the bowl is a painting?
This is a fantasy with deities intervening in people’s lives, so I can’t be a stickler for reality, but I do want to call attention to ChungKi’s fantastical transformation from blind to sighted. In real life, in the rare cases where unsighted people have had sight restored to them, they have difficulty interpreting what they’re seeing. Some who adapted to living without sight find sight overly distracting and prefer doing work or activities with their eyes closed. Visual perspective is something they wrestle with, their brains lacking the training to interpret distance based on size. A person who has been blind for a length of time will have degradation of their brain’s visual cortex. Functioning eyes are only a part of vision: the brain must be trained to interpret the visual cues.
@Welmaris, I agree. I thought the same. There wouldn’t be the neural connections that are formed from an early age and the way she uses her eyes is extremely sophisticated if she can copy masterpieces and even produce her own. Still, it’s a fantasy.
@Welmaris, your comment on regained sight reminds me of all of the books by the late lamented Dr. Oliver Sacks about the glories and mysteries of the brain. I started with The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat. His books are wonderful and never lose sight of his patients’ humanity.
And @packmule3, the red string is omnipresent in lots of world traditions. In Judaism it serves as a good luck ami l eat along with the Hamsa(found in the three Abraham’s religions) thar ward off the evil eye. It doesn’t have the romantic connotation but I wonder whether it is somehow connected to our travels on the Silk Road. I’m getting a real kick out of your references. Thank you
Thanks @PM3 for this. Love it.
Thanks also for that gif showing that HongC still has the red handkerchief that HRam gave her. The fact that she has it with her at all times must mean that she has not forgotten either. awwwwww. 💕 why did she look disappointed again when she read HRam’s note?
Samshin and the goblin are always around them… seeing that Hongc was hidden from MaWang and freed out of the shed.
Every time HRam and HongC meet has been intruiging. the night inside the palanquin. when they ended up sleeping together. having tea with the prince3. and now, at the competition entrance. all moments showing intimacy (brush and strokes?). ahhh red string of fate (in different forms).
Am I the only one who taught that HaRam spilled the tea because he’s jealous and want to stop him from bringing up the topic?🤣
@sy_faa, no, you are not alone. I thought so; he wanted the subject to change. 😊 He blamed it on his blindness, but we have seen that he’s anything but clumsy. He is very shrewd.
@HK_Lady .. remember in episode 2..when ChunGi’s friend told her about Ilwolseong that he knows everything and then she looked at the handkerchief.. I think she also want to meet HaRam but it seems like she doesn’t have any clue that HaRam is scholar Ha
@sy_faa,
It’s a matter of perspective.
If a viewer is thrilled by romance, then yes, spilling the tea could be adduced as evidence of his jealousy.
But I’m not into romance for thrills.
I’m looking for logical rationale, a more meaningful reason. At this point, I find it’s too early for him to have fallen in love with her. He didn’t exhibit signs of jealousy when she ran away from the Prince and tussled with the scroll. He followed her and saved her from falling because he was concerned for her person, for her safety. Not because he was jealous that the Prince was in her company.
He even invited her to join him and the Prince for tea because he wanted to help “fix” their misunderstanding at the dye hut. She had told him about her effrontery to call herself the Prince’s consort.
In that light, when the Prince began teasing her about being his wife, Ha Ram could sense her uneasiness and discomfort, and he rescued her again by diverting the Prince’s attention with the tea accident.
Sure, he could be jealous. But I prefer to think there’s more to this act than jealousy.
Why?
Because I personally think that jealousy is overrated and dumb. I’d rather that screenwriters show me a mature relationship based on CARING for each other’s wellbeing and BEING SENSITIVE to each other’s needs. I would abhor it if this writer intended the spilling of the tea to be viewed MERELY as a sign of jealousy, because then he/she would be normalizing jealousy as an appropriate sign of loooooove.
@packmule3, I see what you mean about jealousy. I think it is more of a protective act. His protection started when he allowed her into the palanquin rather than booting her out immediately and then had her leave when he started to feel that something bad was about to happen. That was even before he had confirmed her identity. Now that he knows who she is, I think he feels she is important to him somehow, although he isn’t aware of their fate. I think he is still impressed by how she was as a child. I thought he was trying his best, given his handicap, to support her. I can’t remember if he knows the contest has the additional goal of finding someone who can make a painting to contain Ma Wang. That will be dangerous to the artist as well.
🙂 Yes, @Fern.
protecting her > being jealous
Any jealousy trope should have a higher motivation, especially for the protagonist.
Otherwise, he’s acting like overbearing and controlling jerk.
As for the painting contest, HaRam is clueless about the “divine artist” search. He’s only “seeing” the events in terms of his vengeance endgame. He doesn’t know that there are bigger things in play. He doesn’t know Mawang is inside of him. He doesn’t know that there’s a zero-sum game being played by Samshin. Whatever he wins, Chungki loses.
Jealousy is an emotion I usually hate seeing played out in dramas because it’s almost always used in an unhealthy way.
I feel like I keep mentioning YAMG, but it showed an instance where it was tolerable and almost enjoyable.
When she was picking her projects and he wanted to read if there was a kissing scene.
Obviously no one would enjoy watching their significant other kissing someone else, but he didn’t become overbearing and his jealousy was shown in a “cute” way. You could still get the feeling that he respected her work and her choices and understood the art of it. I’m glad it was added in because it felt so realistic and healthy.
I too though HR was being protective and I found it especially nice that he wanted to have the tea together in order to ease her anxiety.
@packmule3 woahh i can see that you like writing sm.. i hope i didn’t pissed off or annoyed anyone.. it’s just my own perspective..yeah but you’re right..i also thought that it’s too early for him to get jealous at this point.. anyway can’t wait for tomorrow..so far this drama is great
@birdie007,
I’m still on Ep 21 in YAMG. I’m assuming that the jealousy scenes you’re talking about happened in later episodes when Yu Tu and JingJing were in a relationship. If that’s the case, they have expectations of fidelity, loyalty, monogamy, commitment, etc.
In normal circumstances, kissing other people would be considered a breach or violation of these expectations. Yu Tu’s inquiry about kissing scenes could be interpreted as:
a. a preemptive or preventative measure. He wanted to be prepared emotionally so he didn’t react with jealousy when kissing scene did occur.
b. a respect for their relationship. Their relationship comes first. (But of course, YAMG is a Chinese drama so societal values/norms may be different. Homeland could come before personal relationships, for all I know. Lol.)
c. an insecurity they haven’t resolved.
Jealousy is an emotion. The underpinnings or the reasons for it greatly determine whether it’s healthy or toxic. What I don’t like in dramas, as I said, is when jealousy is presented to titillate fangirls. Too often, it goes over their head that jealousy is NOT be conflated with love. 🙂
👍 @sy_faa. No worries.
What I’m saying here is to be wary of cheap thrills. Part of watching a kdrama critically is to discern what message/value is being communicated and to judge whether it’s true, good, worthy and moral in real life. Don’t just go with the “feels.” Kdramas tend to make us emotional so we have to push back and try harder to think through the narrative. 🙂