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Tonight we finished watching the first season (second not yet filmed) of Joy of Life, a transmigration cdrama about a bright young man who dies of a long terminal illness and awakens as a bright young baby, with all his past-life memories, in a pseudohistorical Chinese empire.

Having spent much of his previous life in chronic pain, our hero Fan Xian determines very early on that he does not wish to endanger his second chance by chasing ambition or power, and would simply like to pursue enough wealth to enjoy an easy, comfortable, stress-free life. Strategies for achieving this include:

- plagiarizing literary classics such as Dream of the Red Chamber from memory, introducing them to a brand new alternate universe pseudohistorical public, and achieving fame and fortune thereby
- introducing future technology inventions such as 'glass,' 'bar soap,' and 'refined sugar' to a brand new alternate universe pseudohistorical public, and achieving fame and fortune thereby
- pursuing a happy future with his crush, a young lady he saw stealing chicken drumsticks at a temple on his first arrival in the Big City and fell head-over-heels in love with on sight

Unfortunately for Fan Xian, his absent mother -- mysteriously dead or disappeared in his infancy -- already introduced glass, bar soap, and refined sugar as luxury items and achieved fame and fortune thereby, so that's a nonstarter. Additionally, in her spare time before producing (illegitimate) Fan Xian, she also founded a merchant empire at the service of the Crown and a powerful secret police service! As a result of his mother's fame and brilliance, various powerful men -- including his father, the Minister of Revenue; the head of the aforementioned secret police service; and the Emperor -- now have Great Plans for Fan Xian and his future, and various other people disagree with those Great Plans and have schemes to arrange for Fan Xian's downfall or murder, and also there's an arranged marriage which Fan Xian would like to make very clear he is not interested in when there's a Mysterious Chicken Drumstick Girl to pursue (three guesses who Mysterious Chicken Drumstick Girl might be --)

The literary plagiarism part of the plan goes more or less consistently well, though! Dream of the Red Chamber is a big hit!

Technically, reincarnation and transmigration are (to my understanding) censored topics in live-action Chinese television. Joy of Life gets around this, originally, with a hilariously flimsy frame story in which a grad student explains that he's excited to submit his new script to Tencent. ( Major, hilarious, yet surprisingly irrelevant spoilers )

I am told that Joy of Life in its original incarnation is a harem novel. This has been altered for the show; there are a lot of interesting women in the cast who show faint lingering traces of their novel incarnations as alternate love interests, but live-action Fan Xian is firmly attached to his chicken drumstick girl only. (My favorite is the romance that thus transforms into a fake-dating-while-firmly-platonic-friends plot with a rival martial artist.)

Instead, all the harem energy has been displaced onto Fan Xian's thriving harem of paternal figures. By my count, by the end of the drama, he had seven dads plus an ageless amnesiac uncle, all of them allying, scheming, and competing against each other in various configurations. (Except for the ageless amnesiac uncle, who does nothing but lurk in the bushes and occasionally spring forth to murder one of Fan Xian's enemies.) The second-funniest convoluted plot point in the show is ( vague spoilers )

Anyway, aside from the wild plot twists mentioned above, ( some other things I like about this show )