[Mainland Chinese Drama 2018] The Story of Ming Lan 庶女明兰传 / 知否？知否？应是绿肥红瘦

[Lunkera]

@hello210 I'm sorry. I actually tagged the wrong name. I noticed it a few mins after the post. So much quote so it's confusing xD

[leeza77]

5 minutes ago, hello210 said:

@Lunkera I’m not sure if that’s official either since I can’t read Chinese but that’s the site I go to. They normally upload every morning about an hour after live broadcast. They have two different versions that are segmented at different points of the drama for each episode. But today one version is 1 episode behind. The other version doesn’t update until the afternoon. 

  Regarding spoiler pictures, sorry I don’t have a link. I was referring to the picture the leeza77 put in her spoiler comment. @leeza77 Do you have a link for spoiler pictures?

https://m.weibo.cn/status/4327638161654884?

The weibo discussed on the props and in the segment there is that picture. 

[Lunkera]

@leeza77 Thanks, watched the clip quickly. I don't understand a thing but the segment was really nice to watch.

[daebak42]

For the people who have read the novel and can remember ... can you describe GTY and ML wedding according to the novel ? Was it grand ? 

[minglan1]

2 hours ago, lyaarisa said:

 

I hate ML father for this kind of attitude.. I wonder how he will react in this drama later when his fav daughter Molan hurt ML's face. I just hope he will go to ruin bcoz of his fav concubine Lin... sheesshhh.. Thinking bout him always wanna make me smash things..

 

I know there is so much discussion about GTY & QH in this forum... For me, I love both character anyway LOL.. Since ML already make a clean break with QH by returning the doll, I'm looking forward for the romance part between GTY & ML... hihihii.. 

I hope karma catches up with him , ML's stepmoms and Hong Sheng realizes his follies.

 

I love QH,GTY and ML.Their characters are nicely etched out.I feel GTY and ML are kindered spirts.Both have faced similar adversarial stepmoms,indifferent dads,love interests who failed to support them.Had to fight for survival since they were young.Therefore understand each other well.It reflects in their interactions.You see a side of theirs which otherwise doesn't appear with other characters they interact.

[zenya22]

7 hours ago, Golden Flower said:

I just want to clarify that there are three types of sons main wife born di, concubine born shu and illegitimate sons who were born of outside women and did not get recorded in family ancestry book. Shu sons are considered legitimate. In Song Dynasty, shu son, however, has right to equally divide family assests with di sons though they do not have right to inherit the nobility title (ref: Concubines in Song China, women and the family in history of China). The illegitimate sons will not have right to any family assests and their names won't be registered into ancestry book.  

@Golden FlowerThank you for the information. So, I have a question about the Gu house. There are 3 sons and all of them from main wives if I remember right. The oldest son is from the first wife who is from a noble family, is born a di,  and when she died Marquess Gu married Ting Ye's mother who is a merchant's daughter nevertheless the general was forced to make her the main wife by the contract he made with her father, so is GTY a di too? Then the marquess remarried the wicked stepmother who also had a son who is also a di? So according to the rules who among the 3 di sons can be made the heir? Here, GTY is made heir but he is not the oldest son and mother is a merchant's daughter. 

[daebak42]

27 minutes ago, zenya22 said:

Thank you for the information. So, I have a question about the Gu house. There are 3 sons and all of them from main wives if I remember right. The oldest son is from the first wife who is from a noble family, is born a di,  and when she died Marquess Gu married Ting Ye's mother who is a merchant's daughter nevertheless the general was forced to make her the main wife by the contract he made with her father, so is GTY a di too? Then the marquess remarried the wicked stepmother who also had a son who is also a di? So according to the rules who among the 3 di sons can be made the heir? Here, GTY is made heir but he is not the oldest son and mother is a merchant's daughter. 

I believe GTY became heir because the oldest is sickly since birth . *** I think ..lol 

[hello210]

36 minutes ago, zenya22 said:

Thank you for the information. So, I have a question about the Gu house. There are 3 sons and all of them from main wives if I remember right. The oldest son is from the first wife who is from a noble family, is born a di,  and when she died Marquess Gu married Ting Ye's mother who is a merchant's daughter nevertheless the general was forced to make her the main wife by the contract he made with her father, so is GTY a di too? Then the marquess remarried the wicked stepmother who also had a son who is also a di? So according to the rules who among the 3 di sons can be made the heir? Here, GTY is made heir but he is not the oldest son and mother is a merchant's daughter. 

 

          So to my understanding, it doesn’t matter about the lineage of the mother as long as she was made the main wife making her son di born. Since inheritance of the title is by order of birth of all di sons, the oldest brother inherited after the father died. But he’s sickly with no sons which makes GTY, the 2nd oldest the heir unless he adopts a son from the 3rd brother which then they can bypass GTY. Unless both oldest brother and GTY dies or GTY gets erased from family registry, 3rd brother has no chance to inherit. Hence all of stepmom’s scheming. 

Spoiler

I think in the novel, when GTY didn’t get erased from the family registry nor get killed, the stepmom tried to get the older brother to adopt a son from the 3rd brother. She tried her darnest to not let GTY inherit.

 

[ForgottenSoulx]

6 hours ago, dito said:

 

 

 

If they delay the first rebellion till after GTY and ML are married, then it might be possible. The thing is, even if they skip some events or change the sequence in which the events happened, they will still need to show the first rebellion coz thats how GTY earned his position as a general.

Then the other 3 main important events that happened before GTY's proposal, almost engagement with He Hongwen and his cousin coming to ruin everything, Rulan falling for the poor scholar and Molan getting married to Liang Liu.

If they completely skip the HHW cousin thing or the engagement with HHW never happens and If Molan getting married is in next 2-3 epis then its quite possible that GTY and ML marriage happens by the next weekend. It will take at least that many episodes to cover different story tracks happening right now. Not to forget ML is also investigating her mothers death.

Maybe we'll have a time jump.

I think that might be possible 

Spoiler

In a trailer i see ML hitting the bell outside of Palace i think maybe that is to save GTY whose locked up or something.

 

4 hours ago, hello210 said:

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From the novel spoilers I read, GTY and first wife did not get along. His first wife would not accept MN and the kids, but then not long after marriage, GTY had to leave and first wife cheated, got prego, was going to try and claim it was GTY’s kid, but stepmom found out and MN tricked her into miscarriage where she bled to death.

 

 

Can i just say how glad i am they cut this crap out . 

4 hours ago, leeza77 said:

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Both of them will get the taste of their medicine soon (tomorrow night). ML's  grand plan of revenge will be successful and both will receive their long awaited punishment. 

 

Spoiler

You say that but doesnt Molan marry out with the help of her mum? sure its miserable but still. 

 

[dito]

2 hours ago, daebak42 said:

For the people who have read the novel and can remember ... can you describe GTY and ML wedding according to the novel ? Was it grand ? 

 

GTY splurged a lot of money.....and I think some big political and military figures were in attendance ...so yeah it was big affair.

All I remember is that his bride price was huge. Tons of expensive fabrics, jewelry, accessories, etc

 

edit.....I went and checked...heres the list...Apparently GTY filled their whole yard with his gifts.

100... Horses, Pigs( it says Minglan pigs...I don't know if there really is a pig named like that),

abalone, clams, oysters, mushrooms, shrimp, squid, sea cucumber, shark's fin..... etc

1200 feet of fabric..which includes....80 feet of crepe, 88 feet of camlet, 180 feet of various colors of Shu embroidered brocade, etc

34 gold dragon phoenix bracelets....another 18 pieces of some dragon phoenix jewelry I can't make out.

Then there were different kinds of fish, wine, tea and candy for all 4 seasons. 

GTY didn't know instead of making people happy his gifts made some people unhappy. Da niang and Rulan to be exact. Both had no objections to GTY marrying ML before but when they saw the bride price both start to regret letting GTY go from their hands. And GTY was so petty sending the bride price for ML on day Rulan's lite-bride price came.

[Lunkera]

@dito Wow, i want to see something similiar in the drama. I want to see people in the sheng house getting green with envy  

[dito]

2 minutes ago, Lunkera said:

@dito Wow, i want to see something similiar in the drama. I want to see people in the sheng house getting green with envy  

 

Me too. I want to see this in the drama so bad.

Rulan is not bad..just a little envious of people having better things than her. Molan's face should be a sight to behold.

[hello210]

14 minutes ago, dito said:

 

Me too. I want to see this in the drama so bad.

Rulan is not bad..just a little envious of people having better things than her. Molan's face should be a sight to behold.

From the trailers and spoilers, it looked pretty grand and ML’s headdress is elaborate compared to Molan. It reminds me of what ML said to her maid when the men were getting dropped off for the imperial exam, if GTY really wanted to grab attention, he could outdo even the Ducal household. 

We know from how he was living and traveling that he’s not normally an extravagant guy.

[hello210]

1 hour ago, ForgottenSoulx said:

I think that might be possible

  Reveal hidden contents

In a trailer i see ML hitting the bell outside of Palace i think maybe that is to save GTY whose locked up or something.

 

Spoiler

For some reason I was thinking that it was the court bells and that she rang the bell because of grandma’s poisoning but I couldn’t understand what she was saying at the door. I guessed that because in the novel that was the one time she was so upset that she wanted formal punishment for WS’s sister (or cousin) who was responsible. With CB’s consent, the Aunt was formally punished while WS was punished within the family with banishment. If anyone has read the whole novel, did GTY get jailed to where ML had to ring the court bells?

 

[linhlinh111]

10 hours ago, Golden Flower said:

 

Thanks for taking time explaining. I just want to clarify that there are three types of sons main wife born di, concubine born shu and illegitimate sons who were born of outside women and did not get recorded in family ancestry book. Shu sons are considered legitimate. In Song Dynasty, shu son, however, has right to equally divide family assests with di sons though they do not have right to inherit the nobility title (ref: Concubines in Song China, women and the family in history of China). The illegitimate sons will not have right to any family assests and their names won't be registered into ancestry book.  

The main wife and parents have to approve the concubine to be married into the family. The outside women are those with very low status like prostitutes and entertainers from brothels (even if they do not sell their bodies) that main wife and parents do not agree to welcome her into the family. I think a guy can have concubines in addition to tong-fan maids before marrying legal wife. In the case of GTY’s family, their standard is high as they won’t accept MN because she is singer even though she is not from brothel. 

 

In GTY’s case, he is having issue to find a wife because he only wants to marry di daughter. He already said that it would be easy for him to marry ML who is a shu born when they were fighting in desert shop. Although it did not happen in drama, he was able to marry Yu Yan Hong, di daughter and younger half-sister of Yanran  in the book even though Yanran parents know that he has two kids with outside women. Unlike in drama, MN took both kids with her when she went to Yu house. He could not marry Yanran only because she was raised by her grandparents and they want her to have peaceful marriage life and they thought that he having two kids with a woman like MN will be miserable life for Yanran who is too soft. I do not remember what happened to accepting MN as concubine after he got married to YH. I think at that point he already found out MN’s nature and decided not to bring her in. He had to scheme to marry ML is because of her grandmom not because of SH and WS. SH and WS already agreed Rulan di daughter to marry him after he became general. 

 

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 In the book, Liang Liu's concubine, shu sister of the wife of one of his shu older brother, was already pregnant and that was one of the reasons Liang Mama was fine with her son marrying ML and another reason is she thinks that ML is prettier and have ability to manage scheming concubine of her son. 

 

Manniang was not a concubine but after the main wife was married into the family, she (the main wife) would become very dependent on her husband and if pressured she might have to agree to make her the official concubine or agree to let the children be registered under her name (which made them official). Also after the main wife was married off she might not get the attention from her husband since he already had a close, intimate relationship with another woman. It was a risk and whether to take it or not depended on the woman's family. Yanran's grandfather, who cared about her, refused the offer, while Yanhong's parents agreed to it to climb the social ladder (The Yu family is way below GTY's family). Obviously their calculations were dead wrong.

 

Mama Liang's father-in-law is a marquis so her family was also far above ML's family. Of course she likes ML but there was also the fact that her son already had a pregnant concubine who was his beloved cousin. So they had to resort to marrying below and choose ML who was a shu daughter. If they had asked for a di daughter (like Rulan) they would be rejected due to their son's situation although he is a di son from a noble family.

 

In that time period, women were dependent on their husbands but men also wanted to gain help from their in-laws. Also they wanted to marry some from the same or higher status to maintain their families' position. So a man with dignity (and ambition) would not allow illegitimate children before marriage since it would narrow their choices and might leave many bad consequences. I didn't say having children would make GTY a bad person (MN tricked him into it so it was not his fault) but it would make him look bad (really!) in the marriage market. Also the fact that he showed to much care for his children and concubine might sound responsible from his POV, but it will increase the risk from his potential wife's POV.

 

Later he returned to be an eligible bachelor bc he was the new Emperor's favourite. So families wanting to marry off their daughters to him were just after his power, not bc they thought he would be a good spouse. Even then the Sheng family were still below his status, but ML's father was still reluctant in marry off Rulan to him. ML's grandma didn't care about his status so she didn't accept.

[dito]

1 hour ago, hello210 said:

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For some reason I was thinking that it was the court bells and that she rang the bell because of grandma’s poisoning but I couldn’t understand what she was saying at the door. I guessed that because in the novel that was the one time she was so upset that she wanted formal punishment for WS’s sister (or cousin) who was responsible. With CB’s consent, the Aunt was formally punished while WS was punished within the family with banishment. If anyone has read the whole novel, did GTY get jailed to where ML had to ring the court bells?

 

 

I don't think so. Don't remember anything like that happening. He had a very good relationship with the new emperor. Emperor kept lavishing gifts on him for one reason or the other. Even his nasty relatives couldn't do much against him. GTY played very smart when he came back. Wasn't openly hostile to his nasty relations. So they targeted ML in GTY's absence. Nothing big at first...pesky concubines and maids causing trouble. Big stuff like threat to ML's life happen after ML gets pregnant.

I remember only one incident happening in the book that I think the drama writers may change it to give us more drama after their wedded bliss. GTY's family was about to be accused of being traitors. Maybe the writers change it to GTY being accused of being a traitor due to his family's scheming....or maybe they accuse him of killing his father or something.

ML beating the drum... I would prefer it if it was granny's poisoning. But even in the book everything was done to keep it quite coz it would be very bad for Sheng family if it became known that daughter in law tried to poison the mother in law. Sheng Hong's and Chang Bai's careers will be destroyed.

[m0us3y]

Spoiler

55 minutes ago, dito said:

 

I don't think so. Don't remember anything like that happening. He had a very good relationship with the new emperor. Emperor kept lavishing gifts on him for one reason or the other. Even his nasty relatives couldn't do much against him. GTY played very smart when he came back. Wasn't openly hostile to his nasty relations. So they targeted ML in GTY's absence. Nothing big at first...pesky concubines and maids causing trouble. Big stuff like threat to ML's life happen after ML gets pregnant.

I remember only one incident happening in the book that I think the drama writers may change it to give us more drama after their wedded bliss. GTY's family was about to be accused of being traitors. Maybe the writers change it to GTY being accused of being a traitor due to his family's scheming....or maybe they accuse him of killing his father or something.

ML beating the drum... I would prefer it if it was granny's poisoning. But even in the book everything was done to keep it quite coz it would be very bad for Sheng family if it became known that daughter in law tried to poison the mother in law. Sheng Hong's and Chang Bai's careers will be destroyed.

 

Actually, I second @ForgottenSoulx

I think the drum scene was ML trying to save GTY..

I remember watching that too.. There was a scene that ML knocking on the drum, with the background voiceover saying she's here for the husband (or something along the line), and another scene, with her dressed as GTY wife, was visiting GTY in jail? 

It didn't show his full face, but it looks like GTY alright. Found it. 

It's trailer no.4 in Viki. That's a darn good trailer, showing the other side of ML.

 

Also wasnt there a scene where GTY, as a foot soldier and ML sending him off? I was thinking could it be the "punishment" after he got released from prison. 

 

[ForgottenSoulx]

1 hour ago, dito said:

 

I don't think so. Don't remember anything like that happening. He had a very good relationship with the new emperor. Emperor kept lavishing gifts on him for one reason or the other. Even his nasty relatives couldn't do much against him. GTY played very smart when he came back. Wasn't openly hostile to his nasty relations. So they targeted ML in GTY's absence. Nothing big at first...pesky concubines and maids causing trouble. Big stuff like threat to ML's life happen after ML gets pregnant.

I remember only one incident happening in the book that I think the drama writers may change it to give us more drama after their wedded bliss. GTY's family was about to be accused of being traitors. Maybe the writers change it to GTY being accused of being a traitor due to his family's scheming....or maybe they accuse him of killing his father or something.

ML beating the drum... I would prefer it if it was granny's poisoning. But even in the book everything was done to keep it quite coz it would be very bad for Sheng family if it became known that daughter in law tried to poison the mother in law. Sheng Hong's and Chang Bai's careers will be destroyed.

Watch this trailer from this time it seems like GTY is improsoned and ML ring's the bell to me.

 

Spoiler

 

 

17 minutes ago, m0us3y said:

  Hide contents

 

Actually, I second @ForgottenSoulx

I think the drum scene was ML trying to save GTY..

I remember watching that too.. There was a scene that ML knocking on the drum, with the background voiceover saying she's here for the husband (or something along the line), and another scene, with her dressed as GTY wife, was visiting GTY in jail? 

It didn't show his full face, but it looks like GTY alright. Found it. 

It's trailer no.4 in Viki. That's a darn good trailer, showing the other side of ML.

 

Also wasnt there a scene where GTY, as a foot soldier and ML sending him off? I was thinking could it be the "punishment" after he got released from prison. 

 

 

Spoiler

Yeah look at the scene before the bell as well in the scene's above,. 

 

On another note im sad the MV with zhao li ying , feng shao feng was deleted from youtube found it on weibo im pretty sure that is the actors. 

 

https://krcom.cn/6109452047/episodes/2358773:4320219880214346

 

Spoiler

Also if you look at this weibo version which is better quality at 3:50 which is the bell scene , Looks like ML father but could be CB with hair , GTY male servant also there and someone is kneeling and kowtowing but no idea who that is. 

 

Also the scene following that where ML and GTY daughter following GTY whose in the army as a normal solider? 

 

[Don Yu]

On 1/10/2019 at 10:54 PM, Don Yu said:

Good acting.

 

But only on Episode 1.

 

Can I ask which episode has the BEST acting so far?

 

Again, Can I ask which episode has the BEST acting so far (Of Zhang LiYing)!

[minoku2209]

Trailer 31-32

Spoiler