Chinese Entertainment

Ashile Sun being smitten with Li Changge on The Long Ballad

There's already a fan here in this comm who has posted fic for this drama, so maybe I'm a bit late with this rec now. ;) But this drama is one of my favorites, so I really wanted to make this rec post. Here goes:

Dilraba Dilmurat plays the titular Li Changge (literally "long song"), daughter of the Da Tang emperor, whose life gets tragically interrupted by her uncle usurping the throne and killing her whole family. She goes on the run disguised as a man. Two young men from the palace follow her, one of them to help her, the other to kill her (played by Alen Fang/Fang Yilun and Liu Yuning). Wu Lei plays a grasslands prince called Ashile Sun. Their lives intertwine and he falls in love with her, saving her life multiple times, while she is consumed with the thought of revenge against her uncle and to restore peace in Da Tang. But she's not constantly a damsel in distress: she's smart and well-educated, and makes relatable decisions. In fact, it's a very character-driven drama, the main relationship is healthy and happy, and the political shenanigans are all mostly believable and didn't bore me.

It's very much a growing-up story, with Changge at first thinking she knows everything, to her slowly learning that she knows nothing at all. Oh, and there's her friend and cousin Leyan (played by Zhao Lusi), a pampered princess who somehow gets lost in the wilderness and has her own growing-up story.

The drama is based on a manga, and some of the most intense scenes are represented by animated scenes, which takes a bit of getting used to. I'm not sure if they just wanted to call back to the manga origins of the drama, or if they really had no money to film the large battle scenes. (Or whether it was covid-related. The drama was filmed in 2020.) This is my only real complaint about the drama, everything else worked fine for me.

How long is it? 49 episodes of about 45 minutes each. (Not too long. I did not want it to end.)

Is it a rec? Yessssss! You can watch it for the plot that holds together pretty well, but there are also a lot of shallow reasons: Wu Lei's beautiful braids, for example, or Dilraba crossdressing, or Zhao Lusi and Liu Yuning as the second pairing.

Does it have a happy ending?

ending spoilers

Yes! Changge and Ashile Sun live happily ever after on the grasslands. (They never get married on screen, but I don't care about that.) The secondary couple, Li Leyan and Hao Du, get married and she becomes a wise ruler. The third couple does not get a happy ending (which is why they're the only ones who get a kiss. natch).

Where to watch? You can watch it on Viki or Youtube (or everywhere else omg). There's also a really fun BTS playlist.

More detailed thoughts and a picspam at my journal.