Ten Miles of Peach Blossoms

Finished watching Eternal Love / Ten Miles of Peach Blossoms back in early March. I wasn't just able to write about it because it made me cry a river, which I haven't done since Tonbi in 2013.

I think Eternal Love was the start of my curiosity and preference for C-Drama. I don't think it's the first but I haven't watched non-Chinese drama since then until K-Drama What's Wrong With Secretary Kim?, which is currently on hold and is at risk of getting dropped, and The Crown Princess, my first Thai Drama.

It already skipped my memory what got me started to watch Eternal Love. Perhaps it's the visuals. I was even taken aback when I found out that it has 58 episodes because each originally ran for 45 minutes. But it wasn't too obvious when Netflix, thankfully, shortened it into 26 episodes. And for someone who used to shorter episodes, hey I started with J-Dramas, Eternal Love was fast paced.

Perhaps it was the fight scenes that got me glued and awaiting for the plot to unfold. The love story among those involved were also fun to watch. It was a breakaway from typical K-Drama romance, which I must admit makes me cringe. I can't really stand the awkwardness Korean dramas give me.

Besides the main characters Bai Qian/Si Yin/Su Su  (Yang Mi) and Mo Yuan/Ye Hua (Mark Chao), the others were fun to watch too especially Bai Feng Ju (Dilraba Dilmurat) and Dong Hua Emperor (Vengo Gao). Any interaction with A Li (Hummer Zhang) was also fun making you looking forward to his next screen time.

Also known as Three Lives, Three Worlds, this 2017 Chinese Drama tells the story of Bai Qian, the future monarch of Qing Qiu Fox Tribe, who got the help of high god Zhe Yan (Ken Chang) to disguise as a disciple under the god of war Mo Yuan (Mark Chao) at the Kun Lun Mountains. This "lifetime" got me confused with it's timeline. Talk about thousand years and how it affected the other "lives" and "worlds."

As Eternal Love was a romantic story, it of course had sweet lines. But I was able to tolerate them unlike how they do it in K-Dramas. I even enjoyed such moments. I dare say that I had the same reaction with the other romantic C-Dramas I've watched. And I still have the same "hypersensitivity" to Korean Dramas. It probably had something to do with the characters' personalities. Mostly one party would be serious while the other was carefree. The lines were also delivered in a way that cross the border with comedy. Well, it's just different for Chinese dramas.

And for these sweet moments and interactions, I actually wanted to watch Ten Miles of Peach Blossoms again, right after having completed it. But I just started with Chinese Dramas and this has 58 episodes. That was already too much for me.

I'm glad I got to watch Ten Miles of Peach Blossoms first, among the Chinese Dramas, because it opened doors to other productions and even got me curious about some actors in this drama. A lot of them played part for my selection of next Chinese Drama to watch. Turned out those that got me curious are from Jay Walk Studio, especially Dilraba Dilmurat, Vengo Gao, and Lai Yi who played as Kun Lun Mountain first disciple Die Feng. There's even one actor here whose character I didn't like but after seeing him in another project got me impressed. I'm talking about Vin Zhang, who played Li Jing.

Ten Miles of Peach Blossoms was a hit xianxia that this even had a movie, Once Upon A Time, starring Liu Yifei and Yang Yang. The drama and movie were both released in the first quarter and in August of 2017, respectively. Thankfully I got to watch the drama first because I don't think I would understand the movie had I watched it first.

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