"Be a good pig in this life; be a good man in the next."
Hello everyone!
Sorry for a bit of delay on Tuesday's reviews, I took last week off because there were other things happening (as said before, it was a special day!) and now I return with a MAMMOTH of a thing.
There's no way it's not going to be.
Not with the show being 40 episodes long, and each episode covering so much ground it sometimes feels like they're trying to shove a book into 40 minutes, each.
And in all honesty I fell into the hole completely by accident!
Netflix kept shoving the promo for it right on the front page. Eventually, I decided you know what? FINE, I'll watch.
I've since already breezed through twice. And the rest, as they say, is history.
So let's take a look at it together in Pursuit of Jade!
This is my first C-Drama, so I don't have anything else to compare it to, which means there are no links at the bottom of the page the way they normally would be.
We'll just assume that this is a first for plenty of others, too, and hop straight into the review.
Pursuit of Jade is the story of Fan Changyu, a butcher girl who just lost her parents to a bandit attack and must now figure out how to support herself and her little sister, Changning. She picks up her father's old profession - pig butchering - and turns out to be pretty good at it.
Then she stumbles over a body in the snow on her way home, and her life goes from charming to complicated real fast.
Because the body's not just a body. It's still alive, it's male, and he's covered in wounds and blood, and because Changyu is a good person (and also because her mother's hair stick somehow lands right in his palm), she carries him home out of the snow. It's only after she cleans him up that she's like, woah, this dude is actually ... kinda hot.
Said dude wakes up not knowing where he is, only that he's not where he ended up after whatever had befallen him, and he introduces himself as Yan Zheng, an escort guard. This is a profession Changyu knows well, as her father was one as well before becoming a butcher.
She sets out to take care of her sudden guest, and the first quarter or so of the show is actually pretty quaint, painting their lives together in Lin'an town and the trials and tribulations that come with it. These include, but are not limited to, the villagers calling Changyu a jinx, her former fiancé Song Yan being a complete spineless ass, and her relationship with her next door neighbours, the Zhaos, as well as her immediate still-living family, namely, her uncle, who wants her house for himself.
Well, he wants to pay off his gambling debts, of course. Changyu beats up the collectors who try to bully her and sends them on their way, and Zheng starts to realize there must be more to this girl than meets the eye.
The viewers are starting to put two and two together there seems to be more to HIM, too, as we get snapshots from the capital, where the Emperor and his ministers are mourning the Marquis Wu'an. His uncle, Wei Yan, in particular, is probably hit hardest by this, but you wouldn't be able to tell since stoic is the one setting he has in this show, however there's definite twitches.
You also learn very quickly that the Wei and Li factions are at each other's throats, and apparently, the Marquis was a balancing point between them.
This doesn't immediately touch Changyu and Zheng, however, who by this point agree to a matrilocal marriage: as in, he's going to marry into her family to help her against her uncle, and this will also ensure he has papers and registration and whatnot, solving multiple problems in one go.
Now, a matrilocal marriage is, by nature, the most humiliating thing to happen to a man. He has to submit to his wife, she's the head of the family, and basically what she says, goes. You can tell just how little the world thinks of these husbands a little later, but suffice to say Zheng has no such issues.
In fact, I'd argue he thrives, but that's probably because he and Changyu enter it with eyes wide open as well as mutual respect and support of one another, so.
Plus, he still plans on leaving once he recovers, which is kind of set back a little by assassins coming to the household TWICE, searching for something, at which point a few things become clear:
- the Fan family has a secret, but Changyu has no clue
- Zheng is the supposedly fallen Marquis Wu'an, which in retrospect, means you get to cackle a whole lot more when Changyu brings him to his own memorial tablet right before their wedding.
Anyway, marriage over, Zheng stands up for Changyu against her bullies and they start slowly building a community together in town, a life that they carve out for their very own. She runs her father's braised meat stall, until a restaurant owner, Yu Qianqian (from here on out, Pretty Lady), basically hijacks her for herself, and the two become fast friends. This means that her son Bao'er gets a playmate in Ning, and there's a lot of mischief that happens with the two kids constantly going missing.
But more of the outside world is now encroaching on this idyllic life, as Zheng's retainers-generals keep him informed of the military situation (and you learn a rebellion-invasion is in progress), and more people keep coming out of the woodwork who can potentially recognize him, like Li Huai'an, who's ostensibly here to investigate the bandit murders and whatnot.
Actually, though, he's here because his mentor, General He, asks him to keep an eye on the Fan daughters. Apparently, ye ole general knows more than he lets on, too, and the mystery deepens.
Things don't actually come to a head until Zheng and Changyu work together to stop rioters from storming the town, and said rioters are revealed to be led by the rebel prince's son and heir, Sui Yuanqing (Crazy from here on out). Zheng gives chase, pincushioning Crazy with arrows (not that it matters, dude survives anyway and mobilizes a bandit stronghold), but he and Changyu part ways badly.
At this point, viewers can see that both of them obviously caught feelings along the way, but neither knows how to have a proper conversation about said feelings, so it leads into a kiss, a smack, and a farewell.
Changyu then gets the second big shock when she learns the county has begun conscription: the rebel prince has finally launched a full-scale offensive, and even Mr. Zhao is taken to the front. Terrified after hearing Zheng was taken on the road, she gives a bag with things for him to Zhao, begging him to find her husband.
Don't worry, though. Said husband isn't lacking - well, except in the wife department, but it's his own fault.
Free of Yan Zheng (so he believes), he returns to the military camp as himself, the Marquis Wu'an, in one of my favourite scenes of the whole show. And, by the way, he's so revered because a) he's been a bastion for the northwest for ten-odd years; b) he reclaimed a formerly-lost province with its prefectures (where his father died) and slaughtered everyone living in the capital city, earning himself a reputation; c) he was ennobled before the age of 20; and d) he's likened to a hero from the age of myth, because he's got the IQ of about thirty other men put together and can usually outclass anyone he's faced with.
He's got his job cut out for him, after his cousin pretty much nearly ran the army to the ground while he was off playing house with Changyu, and with the rebellion now happening, he and Gongsun Yin (the Strategist) are now predicting moves like it's their next mealtime.
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But they don't reckon with Crazy who, after mobilizing that stronghold, returns to Lin'an because he's convinced Changyu just needs time to see he's a gift from the gods, and to ensure her affection he slaughters her hometown. Changyu kicks his ass, kills the bandit leader, and then hotfoots it out of there until she's cornered on top of a cliff.
Crazy thinks he's got her. Changyu smirks and throws herself off the edge.
Crazy: 0, Changyu: 10000
Even as Zheng is considering his next move, his falcon comes flying out of Lin'an (the scenes with this bird are hilarious, because it keeps getting confused and crash-landing, or falling into traps, and both Zheng and Yin are always exasperated by it). Inconveniently, it's covered in blood.
Zheng starts back for Lin'an so fast he leaves skidmarks, and poor Wu has to invent sonic speed to keep up. They massacre the bandit stronghold, but find no trace of the girls, so Zheng tells the falcon to pretend its a bloodhound so it can find Changyu, and the bird does, in fact, find her where she got stuck at the bottom of the cliffside.
Her husband nearly expires on the spot, but thank god for old biddies who help out when you need them, because one such walks him through what he has to do to make sure Changyu lives.
Of course, Changyu believes she's been taken by Crazy's people, so she runs away, back to Li Huai'an, who tells her what happened at home. She mourns the fallen, then leaves to go find Ning, which takes up a few months of her time, not that she manages to find her. She does, however, end up at a river camp, where she reconnects with the gang from her hometown which she initially beat up, then employed, and now they're sort of stuck together for life since they decide they're siblings.
They also pick up a grouchy old man along the way, Master Tao, who decides he'll teach Changyu while he's at it. He's also been chasing after his current student, but said student managed to always be a step ahead, then vanished into thin air, only to apparently surface again, but he's now stuck in this camp quarrying rock.
We happen to know another dude who was purportedly missing - or dead - for a while before returning to the land of the living. Trust me, it's the same person.
Anyway, Tao and Changyu deduce that they're quarrying rock for a dam upriver, and Tao figures out that Zheng wants to use the water accumulating behind the dam to eventually flood a choke point which is vital for the rebel's progress south. He practically kicks Changyu and her team out of camp to save them, but they end up returning just in time to find the rebels fighting with the royal soldiers. Tao informs them three scouts escaped, and they HAVE to stop them or else the plan fails.
And the Marquis needs it to work.
Since the Marquis is basically a god at this point, of course they run off to do just that, while Marquis himself got word that Crazy has his "daughter" and will negotiate her for the army Marquis commands.
Zheng is like: well I always knew he was an idiot, BUT we know where Ning is so, giddy up!
This whole plan is mostly to save Ning, but partly to get rid of Crazy's army, and it actually works. Ning is saved, the canyon floods, Zheng has Crazy as his captive now, and he decides to move his army to a well-defended, if old, military camp, where he's going to hopefully draw off a portion of the rebel's forces and prevent them from joining with the prince.
His plan is kinda great, except he's running out of food. Which is where Changyu comes in.
Hearing that the Marquis needs provisions, and that Li Huai'an has to deliver his supply chain to General He at Lucheng, she volunteers to climb the mountain, and that's where she finally reunites with her husband.
If you're thinking this is where she learns the truth: think again. Zheng, who managed to, of course, get himself injured yet again, keeps up the Yan Zheng persona, although he's deliriously happy to have her there just the same. There's plenty of fabrications running around, anyway, as the Grand Princess is ALSO on the mountain, serving as imperial physician, and she and the Strategist have this back and forth going on between them, too, which is both cute and sad.
Changyu is at least reunited with Ning, and Ning is kind of everybody's little sister at this point, because pretty much everyone in Zheng's entourage babysits her at some point in time. It's cute, honestly.
Of course the rebels are still trying to rescue Crazy, and Changyu pulls off a daring stunt with said Crazy that gets the loyalists food, but ends her in front of a court martial, so to speak, which is probably the most hilarious scene of the entire show in which one of Zheng's generals impersonates the Marquis, he walks in insisting Fake Marquis beats him as punishment, the Grand Princess comes in saying she should be punished too and should actually kneel first (the Imperial family DOES. NOT. KNEEL. people), and the Strategist arrives with his strategic brain to save the day.
By the time battle's imminent, Changyu drugs Zheng to knock him out and heads to the battlefield herself, and poor Wu is lamenting the fact he's attached to these two crazies and NEEDS a pay raise because, not only does he now have the Marchioness (not that she knows it) to watch out for (which he does, taking a hit meant for her like it's nothing), but he needs to wake the Marquis up because, OBVIOUSLY.
This is finally the point where Zheng's true identity is revealed, and he and Changyu have it out to the point where she smacks him again and leaves him with another bruise across his face everybody and their grandfather teases him for (the first one he got after that kiss before leaving earned poor Strategist an almost-broken finger when he teased his bestie about it). But he does eventually get a chance to explain himself, and she accepts the explanation - but says the marriage is null anyway since Yan Zheng never existed, and also no Marquis would marry a butcher girl.
Zheng is losing his mind because she's trying to shake him off, so he asks Tao - who has managed to climb the mountain somehow, probably alongside the old goats - to formally adopt her so she'd have a powerful backer in case anybody tried to get sassy with her (and also to, probably, stop Changyu from beating whoever was sassy over the head, if you ask me).
Changyu in fact accepts this, since she's come to love the old codger, but she still leaves to go and rescue Pretty Lady who, by the way, got herself abducted by Crazy's older brother, Sui Yuanhuai. We'll call him Silver from here on out. He's obsessed with her, has been since she saved his life, and inconveniently Bao'er is also his son, though he tries killing the kid every spare chance he gets.
Thankfully, the nanny who's served the imperial line smuggles Bao'er out of there, and he eventually reunites with Zheng and his Xie army (Zheng's actual name, by the by, is Xie Zheng, head of this particular clan), but Pretty isn't so lucky because Silver is ... insane is probably a mild thing to call him, I suppose. He has his reasons, but we'll get to them later.
Changyu's going to go rescue her, but Zheng at least gets the assurance that she loves him and WILL be back, before he hands her the swords he forged from her old butcher's knife especially for her (what CAN'T this guy do, you ask? IDK, somewhere along the way of becoming a child prodigy, soldier mastermind and slaughterhouse, he also learned blacksmithing).
She and Pretty meet on the road, and are actually rescued by General Hel, who was informed something was happening right under his nose by the squad Zheng covertly sent after Changyu because, of course he did.
But all roads lead to Lucheng now, where Changyu gets armour from the general and a promise to tell her everything after the siege that's about to fall on the city's head is lifted, because he and her dad were old buddies.
The fight has to happen first, however, and while Changyu initially leaves with Pretty to return to Lin'an, she hears the drums calling Lucheng's soldiers to defense, and Pretty tells her to go. She needs to be there. So she takes her squad and the soldiers who've learned that following her is a good idea, and heads straight into battle.
Zheng has sent the hammer right into the heart of the rebel forces, which is where he and Changyu meet upon the battlefield again, and take on the royals. Crazy manages to escape, but Changyu kills the rebel dad, although he mentions that the technique she fights with was developed by the Wei faction's tiger generals back in the day, and He is a bachelor, so who was Wei Qilin to her?
Wei Who? Changyu asks, right before slicing and dicing him like one of her pigs.
Turns out - as she finally learns - she's Wei Qilin's daughter.
And THAT throws a bigger spanner in the works than Zheng being Marquis Wu'an.
Because Wei Qilin is the realm's greatest traitor, responsible for the fall of the city that Zheng reclaimed - and also responsible for the death of Zheng's father. How could Zheng EVER stay with her, knowing this? (Not counting the fact the man has been jumping through hoops backwards for this girl, and going to her in the night because he knows she'll be having nightmares)
She tries to push him away. He's not having it.
By the time imperial decrees arrive, promoting Changyu to captain and Zheng to potential royal consort, it's all hands on deck. Zheng tells Changyu he's never marrying anyone else because he's ALREADY married, and married into HER family. The Grand Princess (who he was supposed to marry) equally already has her beau, because after plenty of hilarities of their own (including but not limited to fixing shoes and coughing up blood) she and Strategist are engaged.
But the situation in the capital is turning more dire by the minute, because the factions are REALLY going for it now, and Wei Yan is struggling to keep his hands on the reins. The emperor decides he'll try and use Changyu to balance everything out, and elevates her further, naming her Flower-Crowned General, a first for a woman in their empire.
She enters the capital in triumph, but she and Zheng still continue to investigate the massacre and botched grain delivery from 17 years ago to see if her father's name might be cleared.
And Silver's at it, too.
Because THAT plot finally picks up.
It doesn't initially seem like much, just rebellion, until he kills his own stepmother and announces himself to the world as Qi Min, rightful heir to the throne, who will in fact walk over corpses to get it back. He was badly disfigured by fire in his youth and smuggled to the rebel prince's household to grow up under an assumed name, all to keep him safe and alive after his father fell at that botched city massacre thing 17 years ago.
He now has Pretty with him yet again, because of course he got her back, and he's been plotting with none other than the Li faction to get back to the throne.
The Lis are weasels, all of them.
Changyu and Zheng, still unaware of this threat, are pursuing their own paths, forcing Wei Yan's hand. As Zheng's uncle, he tries to annul the marriage and have the younger man kowtow to him and obey, but Zheng takes 108 whip lashes for disobedience and declares Changyu his wife at the memorial for his parents. Knowing these two are married also frightens the emperor into stopping his own marriage bids for Changyu, while we're at it.
Doesn't stop him from trying to frame Zheng to get rid of him, of course, though Wei Yan, who can smell a rat from three hundred light years away because he's seen these tricks before, is at least on the alert if nothing else. But Zheng does get hit with an aphrodisiac drug, tries to climb Changyu like a tree while hopped up to his eyeballs, and she knocks him out so she can save them both from the imperial guards.
Meanwhile, Strategist saves the Grand Princess out of the burning Eastern Palace (that place has by this point burned at least three times in a row, how it's still standing is a mystery) and Li Huai'an proves he's probably the only Li with a spine when he manages to help the Marquis and General escape the trap set by the emperor and his grandfather.
Our couple FINALLY consummate their marriage (it takes them freaking long enough, trust me), but when Crazy's head and half of a tiger tally arrive to their doorstep, it's off to the races once more.
Wei Yan, sensing that his sins are starting to catch up with him, lets it be known Changyu is Wei Qilin's daughter. She bears the walk of shame and hits the drum calling for the emperor's audience, where she and Zheng confront Wei Yan.
Things might have gone badly if Qi Min didn't at that point decide to attack the palace, taking it by force, to which Wei Yan seeks patience, decides 'He really knows how to pick his days', tells his nephew 'I'll handle YOU later, but let me put down this rebellion first', and then goes into crisis management mode.
Fighting ensues, and the loyalists prevail. Changyu manages to save Pretty Lady while Qi Min drops from the wall to the concrete ground, and Zheng and Wei Yan duke it out.
Turns out, Zheng learned his sword forms well; also, as it turns out, Wei Yan is stupidly proud of him and he apparently didn't let him down? Chinese families are even weirder and more intense than Turkish ones, and that's saying something.
But with the final rebels caught, the emperor gone with insanity, and the land at peace, Bao'er is crowned, his mother takes on the responsibility of ruling, Zheng is elevated to Prince Regent to help, and Changyu earns the highest-ranking general title in the land, to complete the trifecta that will move Dayin forward.
Pretty Lady poisons Qi Min in his cell, revealing to Changyu that she's from very far away; in fact, sources online say she's a transmigrant, a soul from the future occupying a body from the past, something that's apparently VERY popular in Chinese dramas, but also very strictly controlled, somehow? IDK, it's not really discussed in this show, so it's not that important to note, I suppose.
As for Wei Yan ...
Tao gets the full story out of him, finally. And we, the audience, FINALLY have all the pieces.
18 years ago, the then-crown prince was going to the front because his father (the then-emperor) was favouring another prince and his faction, despite the fact the heir was already chosen. He wants to prove himself. Wei Yan, young and slightly drunk, proposes the emperor should abdicate, in front of Zheng's father, Master Tao, Li, and the prince.
Li runs to the emperor to tell him this, and the plot is formed.
Firstly, they hit Wei Yan with the aphrodisiac drug Zheng gets to experience later (hence how Wei Yan could see this plot twist from the sun), trying to catch him with an imperial concubine. This would mean immediate death. It should have been easy, considering said concubine was his childhood sweetheart and the woman he was supposed to marry before she got pulled into the harem, but alas, they only catch him with a maid.
Jury's still out whether or not the drug got him badly enough that he actually forced himself on said maid, but his only punishment is getting the maid foisted on him. So the emperor tries again.
He colludes with the prince that'll eventually turn rebel (and who raises Qi Min later), to make the northern front the end of everything.
When Zheng's father and the crown prince call for aid, Wei Yan sets out with relief forces and grain reserves. He's intercepted by a letter from his former sweetheart, begging for help, because at that point, the concubine was found pregnant - though not by the emperor because apparently, the dates didn't match, and she was being interrogated day after day (the doctor later commits suicide and admits she was never really pregnant in the first place ...).
Turning around, Wei Yan gives the tiger tally to his most trusted man, Wei Qilin, secure in the knowledge help will still arrive for his brother-in-law and the prince, while he hurries to the capital.
However, as per agreement, the prince whose help they seek declares the tally fake, no matter how much Wei Qilin begs, and refuses aid. Exhausted, with no other forces or food reaching them, the army at the front collapses, and both the crown prince and Zheng's father die horribly.
Wei Yan, at the capital, has no idea of this yet as he's trying to figure out who forged the letter from the concubine, but he's going to save her anyway, except she decides for him: to prevent his execution from defiling the harem, she stays in the fire raging at the Eastern Palace, dying rather than condemning the man she still loves.
The fire itself was set by the crown prince's wife, in an attempt to rescue her son and keep him alive. She disfigured him, too, by holding him down to the flames, but what she didn't count on was that the emperor would use this and surround the palace with tung oil, which prevents the fire from being put out easily. Thus, she dies in the fire as well, and the palace is closed up.
Enraged, Wei Yan still might have chosen a different path - but by that point, his sister, Zheng's mother, hangs herself. She does so after discovering a letter from the concubine to Wei Yan, and because Xie soldiers are pressuring the Wei faction to reveal what actually happened, rather than keep up the lie. The death of his beloved sister after losing his brother-in-law, the northwest, and his sweetheart, is the straw that breaks the camel's back: Wei Yan stages a coup, forces the emperor to abdicate, and puts a child on the throne before taking the reins himself.
Tao and Li, the only other two left from that fateful dinner, each have their own fates: Tao is pushed aside into solitude, forgotten and ignored, while Li continues vying for power with Wei Yan, eventually secretly plotting with Qi Min. In the end, this only gains him exile, and he's been the villain for nothing, really.
So that's it, really. Everything Zheng's been chasing for 40 episodes boils down to a careless remark made by his own uncle almost two decades ago, and a tyrannical emperor who, instead of working with the son who was popular and who would do good in succeeding him, grew fearful of him instead and eliminated him.
Zheng sends his uncle poison, a last kindness for the man who raised him, and he and Changyu return to Lin'an where they rebuild. Five years later, they're parents to two children, back at the front, and fighting together yet again, this time as a team.
In a post-credit scene, we get a "what if" scenario, in which the disaster and scheme from the emperor never happens. Zheng's parents are alive, and good friends with Wei Qilin and his wife. In fact, Changyu and Zheng are practically betrothed before her birth, and everyone comes together at Lin'an once they're adults: Changyu and Zheng, the Princess and the Strategist, Li Huai'an, and Qi Min, who is a virtuous and good prince this time around.
But even so, he can't be near Pretty Lady, as if destiny itself is intervening to prevent that obsession from happening, and the emperor is growing afraid of the Xie faction and its successes, proving that, no matter how things happened, not only would Zheng and Changyu always end up together, but the imperial family would always get shaken up, too.
That's a story for another time, however! Because that's a wrap on this review, which is getting WAY too long.
Suffice to say I love this series to bits and pieces. I'll be watching it again VERY soon. Not only does it have political intrigue worth its salt, but the humor it manages to insert in all the right places to alleviate the tension along the way is top notch. All the performances are superb, the casting for this was wonderful, and honestly it's been a while since I've enjoyed this so much.
This dissertation style review is proof you HAVE to watch Pursuit of Jade for yourself, too. I only managed to skim the surface of everything that happens; the nuance gets lost in translation, and it really does need to be seen, not read.
1000000000/10 recommend!
xx
*images and video not mine
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