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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. It then takes further steps. In episode 28 (of 46), Fan Xian finally comes into possession of a box left by his mysterious mother, whom he's been assuming was a fellow transmigrator. In addition to Chekhov's machine gun (which singularly fails to go off in season one), the box contains a letter in which his mother explains that there is no such thing as transmigration and no such thing as alternate universes! In fact, feudal-Imperial society has formed again in the post-apocalyptic future; she herself escaped from a cryogenic pod; and Fan Xian is the result of an experiment in digitization of memory! If Fan Xian would like to know more about the apocalypse, the end of the previous human civilization, the cryogenic pods, etc., the letter contains detailed directions as to where to find the sci-fi plot, but assures him that he's also perfectly free to continue on having adventures in feudal-Imperial politics instead if he would prefer.
....as, indeed, for the rest of the show, he does! At one point a secondary character does briefly go to find the sci-fi plot, comes back, and politely informs Fan Xian that it was very confusing and Fan Xian would probably understand it better if he ever chose to go. Maybe in season two.
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 when a two-dad coalition explains to a third dad that they have spent the past thirty years gaslighting a fourth dad into believing himself a biological grandfather, but they can't tell let the fifth dad in on the secret or he'll flip his lid --
Anyway, aside from the wild plot twists mentioned above, some things I like about this show:
- good balance of jokes, schemes, and drama
- leans into the transmigration premise without needing to hang its entire plot on it; many of the subplots would change very little if the show was just a straight historical drama, but Fan Xian consistently feels like someone who is bringing a different cultural viewpoint to events, in a way that is often played for humor but also for depth; I really liked the moments where the show pauses to show the loneliness of moving through a world where no one has the same referents
- relatedly, Fan Xian As Modern Character places a high value on human life and a low value on expansionist warfare in a way that's fairly refreshing coming from other wuxia in which our heroes are likely to slaughter redshirts by the dozens
- and the show as a whole is very good about showing every character as a complex human being who exists within a web of connections; Fan Xian prefers to turn his enemies into allies if he can (I'm really charmed by his cute family dynamic with the stepmother and half-brother who initially loathe his very existence) and when people do die, whether heroes or villains, it resonates and has impacts on people that we care about
- finally, something that I'm not really qualified to talk about but thought was interesting: the show depicts a surprising variety of disability -- Chicken Drumstick Girl is chronically ill, one of her brothers is developmentally disabled, and the head of the secret police uses a wheelchair -- and to my inexpert eye handles this much better than I would have expected; occasionally subplots will revolve around medical treatments, but we're just as likely to see things like the head of the secret police casually doing his physical therapy during a scheming session, and although it's not explicit, it's easy to read Fan Xian's own past-life history of chronic illness in the way he interacts with his love interest and her family
And some things I dislike:
- the harem novel origins is especially easy to see in the fact that although there are lots of women they very rarely have plots with each other or indeed that do not center on Fan Xian (Chicken Drumstick Girl does have a best friend but she disappears after the midpoint of the show)
- sometimes tricky to keep track of some of the more arcane bits of plotting
- cliffhanger ending! >:(
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. It then takes further steps. In episode 28 (of 46), Fan Xian finally comes into possession of a box left by his mysterious mother, whom he's been assuming was a fellow transmigrator. In addition to Chekhov's machine gun (which singularly fails to go off in season one), the box contains a letter in which his mother explains that there is no such thing as transmigration and no such thing as alternate universes! In fact, feudal-Imperial society has formed again in the post-apocalyptic future; she herself escaped from a cryogenic pod; and Fan Xian is the result of an experiment in digitization of memory! If Fan Xian would like to know more about the apocalypse, the end of the previous human civilization, the cryogenic pods, etc., the letter contains detailed directions as to where to find the sci-fi plot, but assures him that he's also perfectly free to continue on having adventures in feudal-Imperial politics instead if he would prefer.
....as, indeed, for the rest of the show, he does! At one point a secondary character does briefly go to find the sci-fi plot, comes back, and politely informs Fan Xian that it was very confusing and Fan Xian would probably understand it better if he ever chose to go. Maybe in season two.
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 when a two-dad coalition explains to a third dad that they have spent the past thirty years gaslighting a fourth dad into believing himself a biological grandfather, but they can't tell let the fifth dad in on the secret or he'll flip his lid --
Anyway, aside from the wild plot twists mentioned above, some things I like about this show:
- good balance of jokes, schemes, and drama
- leans into the transmigration premise without needing to hang its entire plot on it; many of the subplots would change very little if the show was just a straight historical drama, but Fan Xian consistently feels like someone who is bringing a different cultural viewpoint to events, in a way that is often played for humor but also for depth; I really liked the moments where the show pauses to show the loneliness of moving through a world where no one has the same referents
- relatedly, Fan Xian As Modern Character places a high value on human life and a low value on expansionist warfare in a way that's fairly refreshing coming from other wuxia in which our heroes are likely to slaughter redshirts by the dozens
- and the show as a whole is very good about showing every character as a complex human being who exists within a web of connections; Fan Xian prefers to turn his enemies into allies if he can (I'm really charmed by his cute family dynamic with the stepmother and half-brother who initially loathe his very existence) and when people do die, whether heroes or villains, it resonates and has impacts on people that we care about
- finally, something that I'm not really qualified to talk about but thought was interesting: the show depicts a surprising variety of disability -- Chicken Drumstick Girl is chronically ill, one of her brothers is developmentally disabled, and the head of the secret police uses a wheelchair -- and to my inexpert eye handles this much better than I would have expected; occasionally subplots will revolve around medical treatments, but we're just as likely to see things like the head of the secret police casually doing his physical therapy during a scheming session, and although it's not explicit, it's easy to read Fan Xian's own past-life history of chronic illness in the way he interacts with his love interest and her family
And some things I dislike:
- the harem novel origins is especially easy to see in the fact that although there are lots of women they very rarely have plots with each other or indeed that do not center on Fan Xian (Chicken Drumstick Girl does have a best friend but she disappears after the midpoint of the show)
- sometimes tricky to keep track of some of the more arcane bits of plotting
- cliffhanger ending! >:(
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The flimsiness of the censorship-dodging is NEVER NOT HILARIOUS. Every time I think of it I laugh.
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Did laugh at the 'whoops other transmigrators have done those things already!!' because at this point in the genre evolution that's been done for several years now (the anti-transmigrators plots) but it /is/ the first time I've seen it in a tv show, catching up many years later.....
Finally, I had it from my mom that one (possibly canon????) theory about expressionless uncle is that he's a robot, to explain the agelessness and ability to do wire-fu.
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Yeah, we are definitely putting uncle down as 'almost certainly a robot' at this juncture. Very sweet murderbot and more power to him, I hope he's able to achieve whatever level of self-fulfillment he wishes.
I'm curious about the other hallmarks of anti-transmigrator plots!
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The anti-transmigrator plots -- not that I have a super good idea of the genre as a whole, but there's probably a fair comparison to the anti-mary sue fics from when I was the tiniest of tweens of ages ago, given how "sue" continues to be a descriptor lots of fics use. It's probably best to start with the beats of the transmigration genre, where....you have your Spunky/Free modern day girl/guy come to bring the Unshackled Blitheness in contrast to all the dullards and timorous maidens of the past, sparking the interest of your average princeling/emperor/wuxia master and so on!
They address the sheer thoughtlessness of importing in modern day innovations by the truckload (there was a time when I thought the 1632 series was cringey for doing what it did but then I sat through a bunch of fics where they ALL import glassmaking, soap, chili peppers/tomatoes/potatoes, modern day advertising schemes and other business models, gunpowder, the accumulated cultural capital of the last few millennia etc etc etc)....And the arrogance that a lot of modern day transmigrators held over the unenlightened people of the past. What I tend to see in the narrow selection of fic I've read is more than one person transmigrating, as here (modulo censorship) and having one person do the old style transmigration while the other person acts in more suitable ways. If you're familiar with the concept of 'face-slapping' or people getting their comeuppance in various ways, those are fairly common!
I remember one fic where the person who transmigrated earlier has arrived at her happily ever after of her novel -- but in reality the emperor has used her as any sensible ruler would, her modern virtues like "respect for human rights" has eroded away under the exigencies of life as empress, and you kind of wonder what separates MC of the novel we're reading from that character if not for sheer luck of which person he became. (this one: http://www.jjwxc.net/onebook.php?novelid=4177552 Transmigrating into the male secondary character's eldest son] which is a bit of a mouthful and only six words originally T__T)
More broadly, I feel like the churn of the genre has allowed for a lot of deconstruction plot trope setups to become popular - it's hard to turn around these last few years without hitting a title with a "as the villain/generic passerby/secondary character/cannon fodder etc", and in that context, as a lot of the original transmigrator fics (now probably at least...one decade along? they started much earlier than that, I know) had your typical protagonist whose aura causes the plot to bend around them (like lymond).....
...I haven't really read that many anti-transmigration plots recently but yeah, there was a time when most transmigrators would plagiarise the literary fruits of all the poets they memorized at school by passing that off as their own. The fashion has changed decisively so that either people source it as "oh, I heard it from a traveling master surnamed Li" or they're exposed with ease, since they don't tend to believe the...ability of people to come up with writing that doesn't correspond to the author's own lived experiences. (a tiny sheltered teen coming up with the verses of an embittered official replete with knowledge about the brutality of the court, etc)
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The framing device was so funny! I lol'd when I realized that this was their paper-thin fig leaf to get around the censors, and lol'd again when it actually reappeared at the very end after the giant cliffhanger.
I'm really charmed by his cute family dynamic with the stepmother and half-brother who initially loathe his very existence
They're so cute! Another thing I loved about the show was how it plays with a lot of common cdrama tropes like the evil scheming stepmother, as well as all the transmigration twists. I do wonder what someone new to cdramas would make of this show though.
Wait who are dads number 6 & 7 again? I lost track after dad 5 aka poison master mentor.
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1. (grpuavpnyyl nqbcgvir) qnq
2. cbvfba tenaqznfgre
3. gur Rzcrebe
4. Pura Cvatcvat
5. sngure-va-ynj-gb-or
6. Kvnb Ra (tnfyvg abg-uvf-tenaqsngure)
7. V guvax gur ynfg bar vf gur byq cbrg, jub vfa'g errrnnyyl n qnq svther ohg V jbhyq nofbyhgryl pnyy uvz n tenaqsngure svther, PYBFR RABHTU
(Becca, tell me if #7 is wrong and I'm forgetting a dad! There are just so many.)
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(It is technically only my .... fourth? .... cdrama, though I've osmosed quite a bit. >.> I keep framing statements in my head like "this seems unusual for a transmigration story" and then realizing, how the hell would I know?)
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(I have been reading the novel out of sheer curiousity and to comment on Changes while my friend who's seen the show before has me watch it with them. I periodically get annoyed with the novel and stop reading for weeks and then something interesting happens in the show and I want to know how differently it happened in the novel...)
I've currently watched up to "We've arrived at Norther Qi!" but not yet met Yan Bingyun. :)
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It is indeed. I like it quite a bit, but that's because the author is really good (his Way of Changes is my favorite Chinese webnovel, period) more than for the increasingly silly harem antics.
Still haven't gotten to this drama, and the framing device sounds absolutely delish.
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(And also, can YOU answer the question about to what extent the original novel of Joy of Life is also science fiction as-well-as-or-instead-of transmigration?)
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but also, hi yes this was exactly the question that made me start reading the novel, I got to that reveal in the show and was mad about how it was just casually dropped in and then ignored because WOW that's a gamechanger but the show doesn't seem to care? or frame it as that?
uh anyway The Box! is in the novel, and it's locked with a computer and a password derived from a specific modern-day way of writing mandarin characters (that Fan Xian recognises and is kind of ??? about how his mom knew), and there is explicitly a modern-day rifle inside (and a letter to Wu Zhu, of course). there is also a note to Fan Xian that basically says "I know you're my kid reading this because Wu Zhu would've destroyed this box by now like I told him he should in the letter for him. Did you want to know more? You can't take it back if you do want to know more. It's going to change your life." and then Fan Xian closes the box and walks away and we don't get to learn what his mom's secret/hidden message to him is at that time!
so uh PROBABLY it's in there but I haven't gotten to it yet!
but also the novel is explicitly transmigration and all, so it might not be quite as much ridiculous sci-fi. who knows. I can't figure out how here would be Exactly One Mysterious Rifle if there isn't some kind of sci-fi/post-apoc shenanigan going on, though!
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I think you've successfully convinced me not to read the book, but I enjoy hearing about the differences. I think I like the perspective of the initial framing device. It's meatier.
Dad conference while fishing is fun.
That cliff hanger, though - not fun. I very much hope they manage to contract enough people to make the 2nd season have good continuity.
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I also have my fingers crossed that S2 is able to keep its cast and hold onto the quality!
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And yes I love Fan Xian and Duoduo as drinking buddies. Her sideeye when he sprung the fake dating plot on her in the middle of court was so funny!
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This sounds excellent. I am all for dad collection! I never made it beyond the first ten-ish minutes of this show and I'm not sure it is for me, but this part sounds like great fun :D
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Okay that sounds DELIGHTFUL
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
LOLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL
The disabiliity stuff and modern-character viewpoint sounds really cool!