I’m a bit confused about the timeline and connection, but I’m sure these will be all revealed in greater detail in due time, just like in the other Gu Man’s drama.
The story begins in Shanghai, 2011. The hero, Lin Yusen, finishes an eight-hour brain tumor surgery. There’s a general sense that this is a milestone for him. One, he’s congratulated by his colleague for a “flawless” operation. Two, while he speaks with the family members of his patient, his supervisors observe his interaction with unmistakable pride. They remark on his enormous talent coupled with a compassionate heart.
Three, when he receives a call from a buddy, he invites him out to dinner to celebrate the “most important surgery” of his life.
Note: Vincent is his Christian/non-Chinese name?
He thinks his friend is visiting Shanghai but his friend is actually calling from Wuxi. The friend wants to set Lin Yusen (LY) up on a blind date. LY begs off because he isn’t into dating, but he changes his mind as soon as he discovers who the girl is.
Friend: Last week, you came to my mom’s party. Girls fell for you at first sight. I ran into her today. She brought you up and invited you to Wuxi to enjoy the plum blossoms. She’s stunning. Trust me. Nie Chengyuan’s daughter.
LY: (recalls the girl dressed in blue, she’s our heroine) What time tomorrow?
But fates have a different plan for him. On his way to Wuxi, he gets into a terrible traffic accident. A truck carrying a load of plastic balls collided with his car and his car flipped over.
I’m sure the director is attempting something visually symbolic when the camera zooms in on the brightly colored balls rolling on fragments of broken glass. As LY’s promising life is shattered on his way to her, the heroine’s romantic life is about to commence.
Meanwhile in Nanjing, 2011, our heroine, Nie Xiguang (NX), lounges in the living room with her cousin, Jiang Rui (JR). At first glance, it appears as if JR is only casually reading a press release about NX’s father’s company buying real estate in Nanjing to construct a “most advanced smart community.” But this scene is actually an exposition.
Three key things are revealed here about the character NX:
One, NX’s father is a big name in the business world, but she seems unaffected by it.
Two, NX’s parents are divorced, but her father isn’t hiding her from his business associates. On the contrary, he seems proud to have her as his daughter.
Three, NX’s father is somehow connected to the mother of LY’s buddy from Wuxi. Do you see what I mean when I say that I’m confused about connections? (Lol. I wonder if she really meant that invitation to LY to enjoy the Wuxi plum blossoms or it was just polite chatter.)
Then, NX’s cousin asks her if she knew that her father was visiting Nanjing, and she replies that he texted her.
Cousin: When you went back to Wuxi last week, you embarrassed him so badly at that banquet. I thought he was going to cut ties with you. Did you reply?
NX: Of course not.
The doorbell rings and NX opens the gate for JR’s new tutor, Zhuang Xu (ZX). She falls in love at first sight.
Fast forward a year later. It’s springtime again, and NX returns to her university campus after spending an internship in Wuxi. She and her dorm-mates are excited to see each other again, but the vibes visibly change when ZX and their other roommate Ye Rong appear. Ye Rong proudly announces to the group that ZX is offered a job at a prestigious bank in Shanghai with starting salary of 10,000 Chinese yuan.
Note: It isn’t ZX who shares the news but Ye Rong. There’s something proprietary about her announcement. She acts like his success is also hers as she’s his girlfriend (which she isn’t. They’re only childhood friends.)
Thus, NX’s small reunion with friends becomes a big celebratory dinner for ZX. But three incidents indicate that NX’s love-at-first-sight for ZX went awry.
One, when NX awkwardly congratulates ZX, he asks her what she’s doing back home early.
NX: Congratulations, Zhuang Xu. Well, when we go to Shanghai for some fun, we’ll be relying on you.
ZX: Aren’t you supposed to be back tomorrow?
Wellll, to my ears, it sounds as if he isn’t expecting her at the dinner party and doesn’t want her presence there. But I’m guessing that it’s ZX’s own idea to treat them all out precisely because she came back home. He must have been concerned that she came back early probably because something bad had happened to her in Wuxi. Unfortunately, the tone of his question didn’t come out the way he wanted it to.
Two, when ZX is ordering more food for the table, he’s reminded that NX already brought two dishes. NX speaks up then that what’s hers is hers, and what’s his is his.
Friend: That’s enough. XiGuang brought two big dishes.
NX: No. What I brought is on me, and what he’s treating is on him. Nothing gets left out.
Well, it sounds as if she doesn’t want his and hers to be mixed together. She wants him to go ahead and order what he wants, without any consideration for her party food. What I’m sensing is that she wants to maintain a strict boundary between them.
ZX: Boiled fish with pickled mustard greens. Sweet and sour ribs. Fresh juice.
Waitress: What kind would you like? We have orange juice and watermelon juice.
ZX: Two pitchers of watermelon juice.
Here, I’m guessing that he went ahead to order food that he knew SHE liked. Especially the watermelon juice. There’s something about the way he looked (at her???) when he said that ordered the watermelon juice. It’s as if he’s remembering a time when she said that she liked watermelon juice. (Lol. Let’s see if my instincts are correct.)
Three, when they find themselves alone together, he lectures her on being a “nepo baby.”
ZX: You don’t seem happy with the job in Wuxi. If you’re not satisfied, you could always look for one yourself. What’s the point of grumbling about a job that just fell right into your lap?
NX: No. I just said what the senior staff told me.
Meaning, earlier at the dinner table, she was just parroting what she heard at the office from her senior coworkers. She didn’t really mean her complaints.
ZX: Really? Then, why didn’t you get a job yourself instead of staying in Wuxi, leeching off your parents? Don’t you think that’s pathetic?
NX: Not at all. Besides, it’s none of your business.
Ouch. He’s judgmental, isn’t he? And he certainly doesn’t sugar-coat his words. But what right does he have to criticize her?
Although he makes perfect sense, he comes off as shady because he’s supposedly dating — or in some kind of romantic relationship with – her roommate, Ye Rong. Given that her parents divorced because her father left them for his old flame, it’s understandable that NX will always suspect ZX’s motives for showing concern/kindness/attention to her when Ye Rong is still very much a part of his life.
In a way, I feel for ZX. That he cares for NX is obvious during the job fair. She fails to hand out all her resumes, so he steps in to deliver a resume to his personal contact, a recruiter in Sheng Yuan, a top investment firm in Shanghai. Ye Rong is naturally displeased to learn that he could have pulled strings for her earlier but didn’t.
As fate will have it, our hero LY overhears ZX talking about Nie Xiguang to the recruiter and he walks over to look at the resume. He’s obviously checking to see if this is the same girl he was on his way to meet a year ago. The photo confirms it.
LY: But why isn’t she here?
ZX: (lying) It was too crowded earlier. She twisted her ankle and couldn’t make it.
LY: Why submit her resume to Shengyuan? Because it’s close to Huaya?
ZX: (fast thinking) Of course not. Shengyuan is an excellent company in every way. Everyone dreams of working there.
I find it funny that Episode 1 ends without the typical meet-cute of the couple, but there’s an encounter with the would-be rivals, LY and ZX. I like that ZX had a ready excuse for NX’s absence and a prompt answer as to why Shengyuan, and not Huaya. To me, he held his own.
My expectations of this cdrama:
1. This is rather a slow start to the romance between LY and NX, but I don’t mind. It starts in the year 2012 and I expect the story to go all the way to the present time ~ 2025ish.
2. I think, until NX matures, the story will revolve around the “poor, little rich girl” tropes. NX is rich but she’s coasting through life. I see how her attitude in life can be an issue for someone “judgy” like ZX who wants her to driven and focused on a career. But I think (and I hope) it’s a non-issue for the hero LY as he knows what it means to have a life-altering experience just when the primary objectives or end-goals are within grasp.
3. It’ll be interesting that the storyline deviates from Gu Man’s usual first love, love at first sight, and love between childhood friends scenarios. But I’m sure there’s a hidden love here somewhere.
4. I hope ZX won’t become too much of a bother later on when it’s time to drop him for LY. Obsessive admirers aren’t cool.
Great to read you @pkml3!! It’s been too long.
The connection between Xi Guang’s father and the friend of Lin Yu Sen is merely business. The friend‘s (Shao Ji Qi’s), mother’s birthday party was an opportunity to network so the business people were there.
Nie Xi Guang was at the party representing her Aunt and Uncle Jiang, parents of Jiang Rui (founders or Chengrui in the construction business) who could not attend, I think. She was supposed to just ‘show her face’ to be polite, sit around for a while and to leave.
To avoid spoilers I’ll just say that her father was also at the party/banquet. They had come separately and at first he did not know that his daughter was there.
There was a little altercation in which she was involved (or was provoked into initiating). Lin Yu Sen who was also present (he had been accompanying his businessman Grandfather Sheng) noticed her, and was immediately attracted to her.
He took note of her (and made plans) … but a week or so later, on the way to Wuxi he was in the accident. (We will only get fullest clarity on the situation in Ep 22)
= = =
Over to Zhuang Xu and his food order with watermelon juice …
Xi Guang has a nickname, a pun on her name… her friends call her Xi Gua which means ‘watermelon’. She uses a picture of watermelon slices as her profile/screensaver. ‘Nie Xi Gua’ means to ‘crush watermelon’ or something like that.
Ordering the juice was a message to her that she was in some way significant to him, but it did nothing for her. She did intentionally draw a line between them to keep his treat and her dishes separate.
= = =
Zhuang Xu (I noted elsewhere) is the disapproving type. Yes he is judgmental and undiplomatic. What girl would think that he liked her when he lectured her like that. All his ‘gestures’ of liking Xi Guang were much too subtle to be taken as proof that he was serious about her, but they were enough to make Ye Rong jealous, continually.
It is likely because ZX never made a clear stand about where he was in relationship towards Ye Rong and Xi Guang, that matters took a turn that was worse than it should have later.
ZX did not want to look bad in public. I’m guessing that his townspeople who all knew him and Ye Rong were childhood friends (ans supposedly sweethearts) exerted a social pressure on him to meet their expectations that he’d be YR’s bf. On campus, YR also exerted the pressure of those expectations and her friends knew it. ZX was caught and he did not/could not disabuse anyone of this, possibly because it would make him look bad.
There still is the love at first sight trope and some hidden love, but not on Xi Guang’s side so it has not deviated from Gu Man’s fave romance premise.
Watch out for the Not-Cute Meet-Cute!!! I think the turning point for the OTP is Ep 8-ish and the cute or the sweet really begins at Ep 8 onwards, and more so from Ep 10.
Love at first sight?
Love According to an Annual Plan.
For these two businesspeople from business families, fun.
Both of them have missed out on dating and love due to damage.
Getting back on track takes time, so LYS makes a plan.
Damage.
YuSen, the ultimate romantic, fell hard (first!) for the right person for him, but,
spoiler,
his career is derailed because the wrong person invited him to see the Wuxi plum blossoms.
Driving exhausted after a long surgery, a truck smashes into his car.
Damage.
XiGUang, a happy pragmatist, falls hard for the wrong person for her, but instead of the more usual unhappy college love affair she ends up being both publically humiliated and privately tormented.
The hidden love of a manipulative member of her dorm for ZhuangXu is the ’cause’ but I have been thinking about something Kate said about reputational sabotage. Xiguang was trapped, unable to defend herself because no one would believe her.
Precisely because of who she is, that did her more harm than anything because it deeply damaged her self-confidence. We finally can see only after many episodes how energetic, inspiring and absolutely “present” she can be; like many natural leaders she needs to feel that others have faith in her and trust her.
@IB, as I look back on XG’s experiences, and also from what you’ve written, it’s more evident how badly the poor girl was traumatised. @Kate wrote of social betrayal, you mention reputational damage and I’m thinking of the social pressure imposed on individuals. We also have this crop up again when the dating began in earnest about what social repercussions the girl might suffer (its always more loaded against the girl than the guy!)
XG herself regrets (in 2013) how she’d been so open and straightforward before, and had become afraid to enter into a romance in the present. We understand why since her open and direct confession had blown up in her face when false whispers went about, on how she’d boasted of stealing a bf. All untrue, but not something she could refute and be believed.
So true about being publicly humiliated and privately tormented. She thought she’d made a mistake and done something wrong, just by being open and direct with ZX. She had been misled, and betrayed by YR.
The one who could have checked, clarified, and exonerated her remained unmoving. So we see her one year later in 2012, being cautious, somewhat diffident, and no longer the vivacious person she’d been the year before.
@pkm3
Forgot to mention that yes, ‘Vincent’ is what his friend Shao Ji Qi calls him. Names are sometimes chosen to be similar in sound to their Chinese names – ‘Yu Sen’ and ‘Vincent’ are not too far off in sound.
BTW, there was one post of mine that never got out from moderation, I think. It was a response to @Kate in the Ep 1-24 thread
@Packmule3 — good to read you on this show. It is so interesting to unpick and unpack the early episodes.
What you write, together with @Ibisfeather’s comments, about love at first sight as a Gu Man trope, makes me want to reflect a bit on how this plays out across GM’s other shows.
In Boss and Me, for instance, it’s arguably love at second sight. The chaebol ML first meets the FL at the hospital where she gives blood, but it’s later — when he watches her through a one-way window at work — that he really ‘sees’ her, catching a glimpse of her innocence and optimism when she’s unguarded. He grows to love her despite her evident social “unworthiness”, because of his perception of her directness and sweetness in that moment. He later says that he actually falls in love during their meeting on the office balcony on New Year’s Eve, so this is more a drifting-into-love that begins with an unusual vision of who she really is. At the point of recognition — she is the one — the love-at-first-sight trope kicks in, and from then on he’s a heat-seeking missile.
In Love O2O, the ML doesn’t initially see the FL clearly at all. He glimpses her from behind, notices her speed and precision on the keyboard, and becomes fascinated by the possibility that she might be his equal. He then watches her — again from a distance, in the library, online — and falls in love through observation. Obviously, her beauty plays a role too, but it’s her capability that seems to act as the gateway to fascination and pursuit.
In this show, our ML occupies a more traditional love-at-first-sight space: he sees the FL briefly at a social event, doesn’t interact, and falls in love with the impression and vision of her that captivates him, holding both that love — and later his anger towards it — from one step removed for a full year.
I find myself wondering whether Gu Man is playing with a contemporary notion of courtly love.
To be more specific, I’m thinking of the knightly gaze at a distance — the moment of recognition before the suitor goes off to prove himself worthy of his lady’s love. I may be pushing the comparison, but it felt worth putting out there.
@Kate,
I’m reposting your post in a Gu Man thread I just made.
-pm3
I’m on to this drama now. Thank you ladies for the insights.
I was irked by that question from ZX about how XG was leeching off her family. Like it could have been raised differently and yes, that tone with him and the can’t say anything else but trying to help her out with her thesis anyway.
It annoyed the hell out of me. 😂
Anyway, it’s interesting that the ML haven’t been on since episode 2 and I’m on to 4 now. Let’s move along. Hahaha
Ok let’s keep going. ☺️ I’ll see if maybe the drama can be shortened to 30 episodes like LoveO2O. 😃
I know, right? It was a slow start for the OTP (One True Pair). But I get it. The writer had to build up the 2ML. It reminds me of that kdrama where the fans of the 2ML made such a big ruckus because he didn’t end up with the female lead. What’s that drama called again? Ah! “Start Up!” The screenwriter of that drama also built up the childhood “connection” between the female lead and the 2ML in the first episode, giving the 2ML a backstory so the viewers empathized with his situation.
Same in this drama. Ms Gu Man (and co-writer Shen Fei Xian) showed us the Nie Xi Guang’s love at first sight, then her troubled non-dating months in college (or “some” relationship as they say in Korean), and finally her decision to part ways.
As for shortening the cdrama, I find the episodes devoted to the ski trip entertaining, but the episodes when they actually started dating kinda boring. Sigh. It’s the thrill of the chase that gets me. 🙂
Let me be the judge of their dating life ok. I’ll let you know if it’s boring. 😄
I felt there’s too many girls in her group too. Maybe I’m just whinging now. 😂 They should have shown a scene where YR apologised to her. She outright called her out but no scene of apology.
I’d like to see the chase too and when they finally meet. I’m excited. ☺️