Opinion: C-Drama 那年花开月正圆 Nothing Gold Can Stay

Original movie poster that I koped from theevilwitch.com

Nothing Gold Can Stay tells the story of a business woman during the late Qing dynasty, Zhou Ying（周莹, played by Sun Li). She grew up as a peasant but due to unforeseen circumstances, she married the young master of the Wu family, Wu Pin (吴聘，played by Peter Ho). Under the mentorship of her father-in-law Wu Weiwen（吴蔚文) and the support of her husband, she learned the ropes of running a business and earned a seat in the Wu family business meetings.

During this time, the Wu family business was manipulated by a shady personality, Du Mingli (杜明礼), who was backed by the power-hungry and merciless Prince Zaiyi. Zhou Ying's husband later dies in the hands of malicious powers, abruptly ending her blissful married life.

Left alone to face bankruptcy and a broken home, Zhou Ying takes over the family business. Faced with the plotting and scheming from Du Mingli and her rival-in-love,  Hu Yong Mei (胡咏梅, played by Myolie Wu), Zhou Ying had one mission- to ensure the survival of the Wu family. She undergoes multiple trials and tribulations with her magistrate friend, Zhao Baishi (赵白石), as well as her business rival and later the love of her life, Shen Xing Yi (沈星移, played by Chen Xiao). During this period, she sees the cold-bloodedness of the business world and how her survival is closely tied to imperialism, and realises the transience of human relationships.

This series was interesting because while it was a biography of a real businesswoman in the late Qing dynasty of the same name, the story isn't quite about her heroism. The title, literally translated to English, means "The days the moon was full and the flowers were blooming". It spoke of a certain longing to go back to the good old beautiful days.

Zhou Ying with her husband Wu Pin

A lovelorn Zhou Ying visits Shen Xing Yi in Shanghai

Throughout the series, you will realise the significance of the mandarin title- the full moon represented the days Zhou Ying's husband Wu Pin was still alive, and the blooming flowers represented the times she had with Shen Xing Yi. These are days of happiness that got more and more distant for our heroine as the series progressed.

As for the English title, "Nothing Gold Can Stay" directly desribes the temporal nature of earthly possessions. The prosperous Wu family business lost its fortune overnight, and Zhou Ying herself worked so hard to build its wealth back up only to nearly have it all taken away, multiple times.  The series also foreshadowed the impending fall of the once-prosperous Qing empire.

The idea of "change" was a recurring theme in this series. Whether it were Zhou Ying's relationships or her wealth, even the society she lived in, all of it was meant to be temporary.

I also enjoyed how Zhou Ying's story was painted against an interesting backdrop. She lived in the rot of the collapsing Qing dynasty, amid a revolution simmering underground, and with Empress Dowager Cixi clutching at its reins with straws. It was also the last dynasty of China; the rebels in question were pushing for the end of imperialism altogether.

The series showed how success and chasing dreams isn't simply a factor of hard work and street-smarts; the political environment heavily influences your outcome. Zhou Ying's primary objective was survival, but her business decisions put her at loggerheads with the severely xenophobic Qing court at that time, and she ended up risking life and limb to rescue her family. You will also see how the oppressive nature of a one-ruler system, where power was concentrated in the hands of one family, also predetermined the fate of Shen Xing Yi and the Wu and Shen households.

Unlike dramas like Zhen Huan Zhuan, Nothing Gold Can Stay painted a very stark picture of today's reality right from the start. Poverty creates criminals (like Zhou Ying and her father), wealth creates spoiled brats (like Shen Xing Yi), nepotism creates greed (Prince Zaiyi), wealth disparity creates slavery (Du Mingli).

Storyline aside, I felt the characters were wonderfully written. I wouldn't say Zhou Ying was a great woman despite her success in the business arena; in fact, she was more like an anti-heroine. Zhou Ying was a tough woman with sharp business acumen, but she also harboured all the weaknesses of any average person. Zhou Ying WAS a deeply flawed character. 

She started out as a conwoman, tricking others along with her dad to earn a living. At that time, she was uncouth, unethical as well as super funny. She really reminded me of Xiao Yan Zi in My Fair Princess. Then she unintentionally married Wu Pin. While prior to marriage she was a wanderer who never let her heart settle anywhere, she slowly learned a thing or two about commitment after falling for Wu Pin.

Zhou Ying joking that she was raised by a wolf

After the death of Wu Pin and the execution of her father-in-law Wu Wei Wen, Zhou Ying was overwhelmed by both a thirst for revenge and a strong desire to revive the Wu household. It was at this point you start seeing the complications within her character. While she was level-headed and logical in her business dealings, she was irrational and jumped to the worst conclusions when it came to investigating her husband's death. While she had good relations with her mother-in-law, subordinates and servants, she swung from extreme to extreme with the man she later loved, Shen Xing Yi.

Zhou Ying rejected Xing Yi brutally at first because she still had feelings for her late husband. Then she half-dead and lovesick when he left for Shanghai. Then she couldn't resist anymore and went to Shanghai to meet him and was crazy in love with him for like 1 day. Then she decided to steal his business and break things off because she suspected the Shen family had a hand in Wu Wei Wen's execution. Then she went home to celebrate her successful business (after ruining Xing Yi's) and then ran to Wu Pin's altar to bawl her eyeballs out again because she knew she hurt the man she loved. Uhhh okay wtf? When she eventually proposed to him, married him and went all out to protect him, it was sadly too little too late.

It wasn't that Zhou Ying's character was badly-written. Sometimes one person can seem like the sweetest person you will ever meet but can never hold down a long-term relationship because they are somehow a different person in a different context. Sometimes the most rational person can lose their shit when it comes to things they are passionate about. Zhou Ying wasn't inconsistent, she was just multi-dimensional, and like I said, extremely flawed.

One scene that struck me was when Wu Wei Wen gave her a bad scolding in the earlier episodes for suggesting he should cheat his customers, and reminded her that businesses should always be run with 诚(integrity) and 信(trustworthiness). It was especially jarring later on because this lesson was supposedly etched in Zhou Ying's mind (she bleated it wherever she went), yet she clearly used unethical tactics to bring down Hu Yong Mei's rivalling textile business and snatched Shen Xing Yi's client while he was at his most helpless. It was either Zhou Ying was a hypocrite (as with many human beings), or, to some extent she could not be an upright businessman like Wu Wei Wen given the treacherous circumstances she was in. I suspect it could be a mix of both.

After leaving me with mixed feelings about this supposed wise heroine who made me want to strangle her all at the same time, I started feeling for her at the end. You could see the old non-chalent, brave and loud Zhou Ying slowly dying inside as dull bruisey garbs replaced her once bright-coloured clothing.

There was a particularly heartbreaking scene just after Xing Yi left. Zhou Ying adopted her nephew who really hated her and was intending to escape from her via a tree, only to run into her sitting at the top:

Zhou Ying told her nephew that it was alright if he hated her; she would be leaving the Wu household very soon. Crying, she told her nephew that everyone she loved had left her, and she didn't know where to go anymore once she left the Wu household. That said, she advised her nephew to stay as her mother-in-law, one of the only people she had left, was growing old and would be lonely if the house was empty.

That scene was very painful. Zhou Ying used to be so adamant in staying in the Wu family after Wu Pin's death as it was the home of the man she used to love and she wanted to guard it fiercely. Now her heart was clearly no longer with the Wu family as she loved Xing Yi who was gone by then. For the first time she had nothing more to live for, for the first time, she wanted to leave... even if it meant wandering aimlessly from then on. At that point, you see all the emptiness, grief and regret she had, you will just stop resenting her character for all the bad decisions she made and feel nothing but sorry for her all the way till the end.

I feared and respected Sun Li's Zhen Huan, yet I loved and hated her Zhou Ying, precisely because both characters were so well-written. Zhou Ying was courageous and shrewd when it mattered, and was detestable and unwise when it was necessary to bring out the theme of the story.

Most of the lead characters were wonderfully written as well. Zhao Baishi, Zhou Ying's magistrate friend, was your epitome of the one-track minded scholar. Followed all the rules in school, overly-idealistic, became a magistrate because he genuinely wanted to serve the court and not for the prestige, etc etc. Over the course of the series, as he watched his friends and family get hurt by political corruption, he slowly changed...

The way Zhao Baishi finished off his teacher at the end genuinely shocked me. It wasn't that I was surprised by the underhandedness; I understood every step he took and why he changed, but the sly Zhao Baishi at the end was still a far cry from the uptight Zhao Baishi in the first few episodes, I couldn't help reeling at the revelation that he had changed a lot.

Later on in the series, Zhao Baishi had a conversation with Xing Yi that I felt was a significant telling point about Zhao Baishi as a person. While politics had shaken Xing Yi's core, Zhao Bai Shi was still the honest magistrate who had a genuine love for his country, even if his methods were now more cruel. I admired Zhao Baishi's strong character, it is tough finding someone even in today's relative peace that can stay fundamentally the same even in the face of such disillusionment.

I also liked Myolie Wu's Hu Yong Mei (Wu Pin's childhood sweetheart and Zhou Ying's rival-in-love) even if she was meant to be a villain here. Technically, she was a good woman, just inevitably dragged into the plotting and scheming between the Shens and the Wus.

Hu Yong Mei's father was involved in the cheating case that brought the downfall of Wu Wei Wen. After her father's suicide from guilt, Hu Yong Mei was convinced Zhou Ying drove him to suicide, and went all out to destroy Zhou Ying.

I actually felt bad for this otherwise graceful lady who could have lived a happy life. None of the bad things that happened to her was her fault- her failure to marry Wu Pin, her father's suicide, etc. She was as much a victim of circumstances as she was villian, yet with one act she crossed her moral event horizon and it eventually led to years of bitter battle with Zhou Ying, and later her own downfall.

Finally, the villain Du Mingli was detestable, frightening, yet pitiful at the same time. He fell in love with Hu Yong Mei as a child because she gave him half a bun while he lay at her doorstep starving to death. Already, this was a hint that this guy had a difficult life.

Throughout the series he was directed by Prince Zaiyi to ruin the Wu family, and increase Prince Zaiyi's power by helping him control the Shen family business. Concurrently, you have emotional scenes where he was torn between his servitude to the abusive Prince Zaiyi and his desire to be free, between the woman he loved and his true identity, etc etc.

The nature of Du Mingli's occupation quintessentially made him the face of imperialism's cruelty. He is a complicated villain, ultimately left with no choice but to carry on in blind loyalty to the Prince to survive. 

My favourite character was the male lead Shen Xing Yi, whose story overshadowed Sun Li's Zhou Ying in my opinion. He started off as a spoiled rotten man-child without a worry in the world as he had his older brother and father to take care of the family business. He had a brief encounter with Zhou Ying when she was sold to the Shen household as his personal slave, but got unnaturally possessive of her and swore to track her down when she ran away.

The focus of his life was temporarily diverted from Zhou Ying when his older brother was suddenly murdered. He had to deal with the loss of his older brother, his father's resentment, his family's sudden expectations of him to hold up the Shen family business like his brother did. This was a turning point for the character and for the first time he expressed the pain hidden under that spoiled child facade.

Coupled with the motivation to prove himself to Zhou Ying, whom he had fallen for, he started working from bottom up at his family business, eventually growing up.

Being a part of his family's business was not an easy task when he realised how dependent his father was on Du Ming Li and Prince Zaiyi for the business' survival. This issue was the biggest strain on his relationship with his father, and the biggest catalyst in changing his personality when he watched the Wu family, his family and Zhou Ying experience death/near-death as a result of the power the court had over their lives.

As the series progressed and Xing Yi experienced life-and-death ordeals with Zhou Ying, always stood by her and protected her, you could almost feel like you were living the series in his shoes. You will see him transform from ignorant, to heartbroken, from hopeful to disillusioned, until the old, idealistic and vivacious Xing Yi dies and a new one takes his place; one full of fire and fierce determination to release his family and country from imperialism's toxic grip.

This character really tugged at my heartstrings. Sun Li is a legend but Chen Xiao is on par, if not better. It was quite hard to believe the actor is 30 and a dad while he's there whining and stamping his feet like a 12 year old, but it was very convincing thanks to his cutesy voice (and he actually was quite endearing as a brat). His transformation from a brat to a street-smart businessman, and then to something else even later on was very smooth and convincing too. It was easy to see why Zhou Ying was head-over-heels over him after going through all that with him.

Looking at the comments on the last episode, I think many viewers had gripes with the illogical aspects of the story, as well as loose ends that were never tied, i.e. where Zhou Ying was eventually laid to rest etc. 

Regarding illogical aspects, this series never claimed to be a Zhen Huan Zhuan, where schemes are nicely explained. Sometimes people do things out of rashness, sometimes out of stupidity, sometimes just because. What mattered to me was that every action taken in this series was consistent with their characters. Zhou Ying was always rash and easily triggered (especially regarding Wu Pin and Wu Wei Wen's deaths), which was why she made certain decisions. Zhou Ying always valued the people who had touched her life, which was why she decided to accept her foster father as her real father and gave up trying to find her true parentage. Shen Xing Yi had always followed his heart, and placed Zhou Ying above all else, which is why he did things that seemed foolish.

As for the ending, I actually thought it was perfect, understated but effective. The second last scene was when the Wu family sent Empress Dowager Cixi back to the Forbidden City, and the Empress Dowager asked Zhou Ying how long she had been a widow for. Zhou Ying said 14 years, and the Empress Dowager replied, "I have been a widow for 39 years."

Nothing else was said between them during this exchange, but those few words told the entire story of these two women. Zhou Ying and the Empress Dowager were both widows, left alone without their husbands' support. One had to shoulder the weight of the Wu family, the other shouldered the weight of the Qing Dynasty. However, those words also implied, 14 years verses 39 years, it all gets numb after a while, no matter how tough things are at the beginning. Shit, so much was said with so few words it was truly such a powerful moment. 

In the last scene, Zhou Ying, drained and weary by then, sent her foster son overseas for studies, and just before he departed on a ship, he said "I will be a different person when I'm back! By then, we will see a different China too!" As the ship sailed, the camera zoomed out on her standing at the harbour, watching her son go. Even as the tumultuous days had mellowed her, she still harboured hope that one day she and her family would see a better life.

The frivolous bits

The good-looking cast was obviously a bonus. 

Even the villian is good-looking wtf

Compare this to what I was watching hundreds of times over and over when I was watching Zhen Huan Zhuan:

Then again, I wasn't attracted to Zhen Huan Zhuan because of the visuals; Zhen Huan Zhuan was intriguing because of the storyline and good acting. I felt the series with the best-looking cast was Fan Bing Bing's Empress of China, yet it was dragged down by a dull storyline. Nothing Gold Can Stay manages to strike a balance here.

Also, the men in this series are colour-coded for easy identification. Peter Ho's Wu Pin is always in off-white, Chen Xiao's Shen Xing Yi is The Dude in Green, Du Ming Li the villian is always in dark menacing colours like blue/brown, and Zhao Baishi is mostly in his magistrate uniform.

The background music was beautiful. I loved how they used cellos and violins for the soundtrack instead of the usual Chinese Orchestra instruments; it really brought out the grandiosity of a blockbuster series. 

Some of my favourites:

This track is sweet and light-hearted, reminds you of the happy times Zhou Ying had with Wu Pin/Shen Xing Yi before things went to shit.

And this is sombre, played during Zhou Ying's wedding night while she waited for Wu Pin to awaken from his coma, and also during her proposal to Xing Yi.

I also had some minor things to pick on. The 甑糕 that Zhou Ying loved so much looks really disgusting sorry :/ I also found Nikki Chow's Qian Hong and the Wang Shi Jun very extra and annoying. Qian Hong was supposed to be comic-relief but she really gave me more irritation than joy. And the part where she taught the second miss Wu Yi how to trick Zhao Baishi into thinking he raped her so she could con him into marriage? Disgusting. Her goofy existence, especially towards the end when things got more serious, just threw the whole show off tempo. The show would have gone on perfectly fine without her. 

Wang Shi Jun-what purpose did he even serve in this series? In fact he just made Zhou Ying seem very unrealistic considering she already had a surplus of suitors. Get real, someone of Zhou Ying's calibre in that day and age will never have THAT many suitors, okay? 

In short, Nothing Gold Can Stay is a beautiful story. I love how instead of finishing off the series with a lot of answers about human nature (like Zhen Huan Zhuan), I found myself thinking about how things could have ended differently had Zhou Ying made different decisions at crucial points. For example, if she had handled the industrial textile factory business differently, if she had paid more heed to government sentiments, if she had been more like Wu Wei Wen as a businessman, if she had treated Xing Yi differently. I wondered how much we were really by-products of our circumstances, versus how much our choices determined the end of our stories. Most of all, I wondered if it was within our power to prolong the beautiful times we have, or if, like the series suggests, they are always destined to pass.

11/10 would watch another 500 times.

You can catch it on Dailymotion because apparently, they have blocked it on Youtube in Singapore (I know this because I could watch all the episodes on YT just fine when I was in France). I'm sorry I haven't found a version with English subtitles, if I do I'll update this space!
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"其实我们所有人呐，都是过客。夫妻，父女，君臣，早晚都得散，只不过是，早几天，晚几天罢了，就是因为，早晚都要散。所以啊，聚的时候，就要铆足了劲的开心，等到散了呢，谁也别惦记谁，各自往各自的下一站奔，再找，新的开心。"

"All of us are passersby in each other's lives, it is only a matter of time we part. Therefore, when you are together, cherish the times and live them to the fullest. And when you part, don't hold on to what is lost, let's each move on to our next chapter in life, and search for new happiness."