Episode Nineteen Transcript - The Butterflies On The Concrete Podcast: What Got Me Through The Week?
(Audio for this podcast can be found under the Episodes Tab on the navigation menu)
Hello and Welcome to this week’s episode of the Butterflies On The Concrete Podcast: What Got Me Through The Week? This week I want to discuss two Chinese dramas, The Legend of Shen Li and Master of My Own.
The Legend of Shen Li is a fantasy romance drama that has Zhao Li Ying, as the female lead, Shen Li, and Lin Geng Xin, as the male lead, Xingyun, who is also known as Xingzhi. I’ll admit that I was hesitant to watch the show at first because of the premise, but I’m so glad that I gave it a chance.
I just finished watching it using the Rakuten Viki app, and the Tencent App just so that I could see previews and watch the early release of the last few episodes, but I think it’s also on YouTube, and it is a 39-episode masterpiece that I loved from beginning to end.
The leads have such amazing chemistry, perhaps because they worked together in another drama prior to this called, Princess Agents. Zhao Li Ying is also the lead actress in one of my favorite dramas, Boss & Me. The most recent show I saw Lin Geng Xin in is the drama, Master of My Own, which has Tan Song Yun, as the lead actress, and I’ll also be discussing that show a little bit later because after finishing The Legend of Shen Li I really wanted to rewatch something else with him as the male lead.
Lin Geng Xin’s portrayal of Xingzhi in The Legend of Shen Li was subtle, yet hilarious. He has a captivating presence in the show that made me feel drawn to him as a viewer. Zhao Li Ying’s a phenomenal actress and she shines so bright in her role as Shen Li. She’s such a strong character and her fight scenes are so intense and impressive.
The Legend of Shen Li begins with Shen Li running away from the Immortal Realm to avoid an arranged marriage with someone in the Divine Realm. She ends up in the mortal realm and gets rescued by Xingzhi, who appears to be a sickly mortal with limited magical capabilities - such as the ability to foretell the future. When Shen Li enters the mortal realm, she’s injured, and so she loses her human form, and is in the form of a phoenix, but her feathers have been burnt off. Xingzhi buys her from a market where she’s sold after being mistaken for a chicken, recognizing that something is special about her. They don’t get along at first at all. She’s arrogant and argues with him while trapped in her phoenix form, but from the beginning she appreciates his cooking skills, and their bond seems to grow from there.
The time they spend together in the mortal realm is crucial to the entire show. The foundation and bond that they build while there is what carries the whole rest of the story. She falls in love with him after she regains her human form, and she ultimately wants to protect him. But what makes him stand out the most to her, and to the viewer, is that from the very beginning he protects her and keeps her safe. He is very considerate of her and treats her as if she’s someone who should be cared for and protected. I will say that it’s quite amusing because when she first gets there she keeps trying to run away, um, but that just puts her into danger because everyone views her as a chicken so they all want to like, you know, cook her, but he’s always there to rescue her, and she ultimately ends up staying with him because she realizes that he won’t harm her like other people will. Meanwhile, in the immortal realm she’s known for being a warrior who’s always in battles because she oversees the military. So he treats her as if she’s a woman first, and a military leader second. And he’s the only person in her life who cares for her in that way. When she ultimately has to leave him behind, because the authorities from the immortal realm are searching for her and threaten him when they find her, she’s reluctant to leave him behind, and saves him by giving up 500 years of her cultivation with a kiss before they part ways, because he’s injured. While he stays in the mortal realm, she goes back to the immortal realm and tries to move on, but he remains on her mind. And as a viewer, you’re left wondering what will happen next. Will they ever see each other again? And how will that reunion take place?
I won’t say any more because I don’t want to spoil this show at all. I truly believe it should be watched from start to finish, and that the gems that emerge along the way should be discovered as you’re watching because it’s more fun that way. For that reason, I won’t even speak on favorite episodes for this show because it’s bingeworthy in its entirety. Every episode offers something good.
But I will say this, the way that he looks at her throughout, the amazing fight scenes that she dominates, the way he’s always teasing her and the wholesome banter that’s shared between them, those are aspects of the story that I’ll always be fond of. I also feel that way about how he hesitates to admit that he cares for her, even after she’s confessed her love for him, but yet he’s always there to protect her and heal her. Xingzhi always finds a million excuses to be with her and spend time with her. He always wants to remain by Shen Li’s side. And when it gets to the point when he thinks that he’s lost her, he’s willing to do anything to find her again, even if it means going against nature itself. Okay, let me not say more. Those are just some of the elements of this story that I adored the most.
It's an epic love story, that I loved. Absolutely loved it. It’s a great work of fiction, about a love that conquers all, but along the way they must always take into consideration their responsibilities to society at large. They’re often constrained by those obligations, which impede their ability to love one another fully, and yet, they do the best that they can with the time they’ve been given. Please watch The Legend of Shen Li if you haven’t yet. I don’t want to give anything away so I didn’t say that much, but it’s so worth it.
After falling for Xingzhi as a character, I started to rewatch The Legend of Shen Li from the beginning, but then I decided to rewatch a different show with the same male lead first before diving back into it. That show is Master of My Own, which is a modern drama, that has romance elements, but is actually more of a female empowerment story in my opinion. I watched it on the Rakuten Viki app, but I think it might also be on YouTube as well. I’ll also say that anyone who watches Shark Tank will probably enjoy it.
Tan Song Yun plays the female lead character, Ning Meng, who works at Joint Capital, an investment firm, owned by the male lead, Lu Jiming, played by Lin Geng Xin. When I first watched this drama, I didn’t have much of an opinion regarding the male lead, good or bad either way. I simply watched the show because I believe Tan Song Yun is an incredible actress and so I’ll watch any drama that she’s in. However, now that I’ve rewatched Master of My Own - after seeing Lin Geng Xin in The Legend of Shen Li – my eyes have truly been opened because I can appreciate his acting in ways I didn’t before. Lu Jiming is more abrasive and arrogant than Xingzhi. I prefer Xingzhi if I have to choose between them. However, I can recognize the subtleties in expression and the warmth Lu Jiming exudes towards Ning Meng, better now that I’ve watched The Legend of Shen Li and I have a greater respect for Lin Geng Xin as an actor. So much so that towards the end of the show he seemed really, really charming in a way that I didn’t realize the first time I watched it. I might’ve felt his acting was a bit boring in the past, but upon this second viewing, I can see how extremely capable of an actor Lin Geng Xin actually is. Being able to express a variety of complex emotions in a subtle and restrained way, is actually quite effective and impressive. I may have underestimated him before, but won’t in the future.
The premise of Master of My Own is that Ning Meng has been Lu Jiming’s secretary for three years, but human resources promised that if she worked for three years as a secretary she’ll be able to transfer to another department to be an investment analyst and work on investment projects instead. On that day, three years later though, she is told by Lu Jiming that he wants her to remain a secretary and that he won’t support her efforts to transfer to a different department at all. He’s actually quite short tempered and not a very appealing character at first, because he dismisses her ambitions and seems to look down on her as only being capable of being a great secretary and nothing more. It’s only when she resigns that he allows her to have the opportunity to grow within the company so that he can keep her there, but that ultimately gets stifled by in-office politics, causing her to decide to leave the company so that she can try and make her dreams a reality somewhere else. It’s difficult for her in the beginning, but once she’s given an opportunity, she blossoms and soars to the top of the field very quickly, and he realizes soon afterwards that he was wrong, but it takes some time for him to let go of his pride to admit that. In his own way, he helps her the best that he can along her journey, and eventually he realizes that he loves her, but by then she’s already dating someone else.
When something happens to his family, and his company, and his empire falls, Ning Meng is willing to help him start over and from that moment it becomes clear to the viewer – if it hadn’t been before - that while he might’ve started off the show extremely rough around the edges, he isn’t actually a bad person. Lu Jiming initially has bad communication skills, and often says the opposite of what he means, but he’s good to the people who are around him, helping them when he can, and trying to protect them in the way that he thinks is best, and once life has humbled him, in the way that it often does to many of us, he changes for the better as a person, and appreciates those around him even more than he did before. There’s a small, and strong network of people around him who stay by his side at his worst moments, including Ning Meng, and they help him to rebuild, and it’s very heartwarming to watch as a viewer.
In some ways, Lu Jiming’s arc is one of redemption. He goes from being very arrogant and inconsiderate of others’ feelings, to losing what was most important to him, and then we see him start to regain some of it back. That theme is echoed in the character arc of Ning Meng’s senior from college, the second male lead. His college sweetheart dumps him for a rich guy after graduation, and so he works hard to get to the top of the investment field to prove to himself and to others that he can be just as amazing and wealthy as the guy who stole his girlfriend, but along the way he makes some major mistakes, and it’s Ning Meng who helps him to remember the person he used to be. The kind of man that he was before he experienced heartbreak and lost his way because of it. His character has a similar redemption arc to Lu Jiming’s and it’s quite emotional to watch. He has all of these riches but lost himself, and with Ning Meng’s guidance, he chooses to let go of what he thought he wanted, so that afterwards he can have a second chance at living his life in a more principled way, going back to the type of person he once was back when they first met. Someone with integrity, who wasn’t focused on revenge, and had goals that went far beyond making money. It reinforces the idea that no matter what happens in your life, you can always choose to change for the better. It’s never too late to make that decision for yourself.
There are no perfect characters in this drama. They all have flaws, as they’re all written fully. The male lead is wealthy and great at running his business, but he also has a terrible temper and says discouraging things to the female lead which make him quite unlikeable at first. Still, he grows a lot as a person and he treats her better later on. And the female lead is ambitious and diligent at her job, but she also makes unfounded assumptions and acts emotionally out of spite after leaving Joint Capital, blaming the male lead for things that he didn’t do, and she’s very stubborn, refusing to accept help from others once she starts working as an analyst, which forces her to often take the more difficult path as a result. Ning Meng’s best friend also is an example of this. She relies on her partner too much, blindly trusting him and believing in their relationship so she isn’t self-sufficient at all, which ends up hurting her once her partner betrays her, but then she gradually learns how to stand up on her own afterwards.
No human is perfect, and their imperfections – and being able to see them triumph in spite of them after setbacks and missteps - are what make this such an interesting drama to watch. It’s a story of success and failure, and a story about growth and redemption. And with regard to Ning Meng, in particular, this show encourages us to remember that in life we get to decide who we are and who we’re going to become. We shouldn’t let anyone else write our story based on their internal biases and misperceptions of who we can be. She follows her dreams and succeeds, and it’s extremely inspiring and motivating to watch it all unfold.
I don’t know if I’ve expressed my thoughts clearly during this episode or not, but I hope that some of what I’ve said encourages whoever might be listening to watch these shows if you haven’t seen them before, or perhaps rewatch them if you have.
The transcript and audio for this episode will be posted on our website, hyssopandebony.com. And I just want to say thank you so much for listening to this episode!
Until next time!