Zhao Lu Si and Liu Yu Ning’s Tang Dynasty Drama The Story of Pearl Girl Delivers Solid Production But Focus on the Trade Element Undermines the Audience Friendly Romantic Rizz
So I finally started watching The Story of Pearl Girl after much expectation and hype and my takeaway is fairly mixed. Solid production values (aside from some dubbing not matching lip movement well), a methodical story about merchants and trade and jewelry and female empowerment, and a nice cast that are all doing well so far. But it lacks excitement and oomph for me, like a missing special sauce that takes all the elements and sprinkles it with addictive must-watch powder. The TL:DR of it is that the core story about Zhao Lu Si‘s female lead Duan Wu’s climb from slave to top jeweler and all those machinations, business twists and turns, and out-hustling and out-smarting people in her way sounds great and all but frankly bores me. The only good element is her chemistry and the potential romance with Liu Yu Ning‘s male lead Yan Zi Jing but there isn’t enough of that to make the rest of the story interesting. And the second male lead Tang Xiao Tian (who I am watching for the first time as an actor) has an annoying character and ferret-y punchable face for me lol and is actively a turn off when he shows up onscreen. I plan to keep watching but am sad this isn’t another Love Like the Galaxy for me where all the stories and side characters were interesting on top of having a great OTP.
If anyone’s watched both dramas, I’d be curious to know how “The Story of Pearl Girl” compares with Zhang Jingyi’s “Blossoms in Adversity”. They seem to share the girl empowerment theme, and the FL’s journey as primary, romance as secondary approach, but many watchers praised BiA as an addictive watch. So was it a different kind of story after all, or just better put together than SoPG?
I prefer Blossoms in Adversity. I feel like they did a better job at the women empowerment approach but Pearl Girl isn’t over so my opinion may change.
Blossoms in Adversity is way better. One of the top selling points for me were her family, the women and how it all evolved from initial helplessness and desperation to fully empowered women.
There was something organic about the whole drama that is missing here idk
Another problem is the ML’s writing in Pearl. It really isn’t working for me. I suppose that something extra LLTG or BIA had just isn’t here.
I also think BiA is a better drama focused on woman empowerment. BiA’s plot has more logic and coherent heart-warming relationship among the key characters. The side stories of those supporting roles were also better written.
I wanted to start Pearl Girl when it’s close to the end but all these people saying BiA is better is discouraging… boo!
Now I’m wondering if I need to watch Blossoms of Adversity lol!
I wasn’t saying BiA a better drama, but a better drama to address woman-empowering subject. PG and BiA have very different narratives and plots where FLs’ backgrounds are very different in the two dramas. You should give PG a shot if you like darker dramas.
I like TSOPG but I can’t say that I love it. For me, it comes down to the pacing. The story is moving too fast for me. We only got a couple of episodes of her as a pearl slave (the part that really drew me in) then she became a pearl host, and now she’s swiftly moving up the ranks on the ML’s ship. I don’t know if it’s the restrictions of only being able to have 40 episodes or the writer really thought that this was the best way to go. I just feel a slower pace would have done wonders for this drama.
I also really am not a fan of the 2ML. In any other drama, I wouldn’t have been as annoyed by his character (the actor plays the same character in The Sword and Brocade)but when everyone else is a grey character and he’s there in all his self-righteousness and privilege it’s quite annoying to watch.
It’s true, it’s really fast-paced. You can tell a lot of scenes were cut and sometimes there’s no cohesiveness from one scene to the next. It must be because they have to fit it all in 40 episodes. So far though, you get the drift right away from the get go and that initial scene was really good and drew you in. I also think it is lacking some elements such as a good OST. This is what happens when you rush production. Otherwise solid performance from ZLS as usual.
Production value-wise I don’t consider it good either due to the subpar CGI, but yeah I agree the drama lacks excitement and oomph. The weak acting from both leads also added insult to the injury.
Both leads? Zhao Lusi has shown great acting and depth thus far, I know a hater when I see one
@Kris
And we know a mindless stan when we see one as soon as the word “hater” gets thrown around.
If you don’t agree with her opinion then offer your own and back it up with your reasoning but calling someone a hater because you don’t agree is just a sign of typical fan who is in the state of mindless adoration.
For example, I think Lusi isn’t as good here as she was in LLTG but overall, probably her second best role. LYN is way beyond her level for me and combined with weak writing really dragging it down. If she had a better partner, maybe she too would have acted better, it is not uncommon.
You can call me a hater too if you like lol but on the other hand, you might actually get a grip and realise different people view things differently.
Yes, both leads. ZLS’s acting is pretty superficial.
@Oi Vey — I stand by what I said. Call me mindless if you want, but Lilith has made many remarks demeaning of ZLS on various posts here in Koala. No need for elaboration
Saying she is weak in acting is considered demeaning? 🤷🏼♀️ Then I’m sure most commenters on this site have demeaned various actors and actresses too.
I’m soooo sick of seeing the “you’re just a hater’ type of comment when someone else’s opinion is not to your likening! Isn’t it childish? sounds like something a bitter immature child would say when not getting their way and want to throw tantrums. The internet needs to grow up.
Just because someone else’s opinion doesn’t matched yours or they expressed something you don’t agreed with, how does that make them a hater? What are you then? A lover? I supposed that’s what you would call yourself opposed to any party on the other side of the fence. What makes you think only your words matter and nobody else shall? If you are allowed to present your opinions freely without a supposed ‘hater’ coming at you then please allow the same for everybody else who indeed has as much right as you do expressing their own genuine thoughts and/or personal opinions. Perhaps, it’s always the ones that are quick to demeaned someone a hater is the most hater around!
Me too Kris. Envy births that angry feeling which is manifested by cruel words. Its eating them up and consequently makes them unwell.
Their acting is anything but weak, it good enough imo , I guess both actors are not to your preferences.
@Mercy ZLS’s acting is pretty superficial, whereas LYN I can see emotions in his eyes but he needs to improve his emoting for the lower half of his face.
ZLS’ acting will never be as childish and bubbly shallow as Esther Yu. I went ahead watch 3 eps of Love Game per some good words I read on other forums. But that’s the most I could put up with. The acting and the voice were so cringe worthy that I had to quit by the end of ep3.
We can all have our opinions though I think you forgot about Hidden Love. I maintain my opinion that Yu Shuxin is better than Zhao Lusi in terms of acting.
What about Hidden Love? It’s not something as frivolous as virtual travel stories relying heavily on cheesy CGI gimmicks and the acting there was convincing. LOL. Esther has never been a versatile actor. She can only take bubbly silly roles with mousy voice. If there is a procedure to modify ppl’s voice, I suggest Esther get one done. LOL.
Well, ZLS’s acting in HL is childish and shallow, anything but convincing. It’s okay to not like a particular genre, but to say that virtual travel dramas are frivolous goes to show your narrow-mindedness. Virtual travel is considered fantasy genre, so are all fantasy dramas including The Untamed and The Longest Promise frivolous too? I haven’t watch many of Yu Shuxin’s dramas, but I recall the first time I saw her was in The Advisors Alliance and her voice there was normal, so her current bubbly voice is actually intentional.
It’s ignorant to compare The Untamed and the Longest Promise which are Xianxia with VR travel dramas. Fantasy is a collective designation for anything beyond reality with extensive imagination. There are many different subcategories within Fantasy as a root category, not to mention how a story is delivered depends on a wild range of execution quality that would give viewers totally different satisfaction. Per my experience checking out numerous Cdramas in virtual travel genre, I’m almost sure to say it has all been a huge waste of time. So far, C writers have not been able to get rid of those silly repetitions of tiring concepts out of VR games LOL.
I love TU and appreciate some artistry with sincere acting from a few cast including Xiao Zhan and Alen Fan in TLP. These two dramas are very serious dramas exploring humanity from the beginning to the end of the stories even there are a lot of fantasy elements in the storylines. Silly Love Game is not comparable and to talk about these three dramas in parallel is so comical. LOL
Why would virtual travel dramas be more frivolous than any other fantasy dramas? I’m curious, what do you think of time travel dramas like Scarlet Heart? It also involves “traveling” except it is time instead of place. Or do you think VR travel dramas are frivolous just because they involves games and you equate games to being childish? Which other C-dramas did you watch that involves VR games?
Hmmm…you’re saying The Untamed and The Longest Promise are serious dramas because they explore humanity. Then all the more I don’t get why would you claim Love Game is frivolous when it also explores plenty of humanity?
How many episodes have you watched so far? Maybe the show will shift focus later on.
Objectively speaking, the acting is okay. But the story’s focus on the pearl trade at the expense of the character growth of its main leads is frankly, quite boring. I find myself forwarding the scenes that do not have any of the leads as it’s a waste of time watching them. I’m only interested in ZLS and the two main leads and their support staff. The machinations of the villains are boring.
The romance, if there is even one, is slow burn and requires plenty of patience. And as Koala has indicated, the story lacks cohesiveness, so it would probably be better as a drama with more than 40 episodes. I like the drama, but as this stage, I don’t love it.
I really like this so far , and I agree the business aspect of it is not fun. I try to find any chinese history or a figure personality who is a pearl diver and I didn’t get anything apart from the fact that they were pearl divers and at some point cultivated the pearls. I think that why there was no story enough on the pearl farm and diving for pearls for it to stretch more than two episodes.
I wish they had spent the money on CGI instead of promotion. The green screen of the sea is so obvious and jarring.
I like both Zhao Lusi and Liu Yuning and was really looking forward to this drama but so far I am just not feeling it. Also ZLS looks like a child next to mature looking LYN. They had great chemistry in TLB but I don’t see it in this drama so far. When she did the sensual dance to sell the pearl it made me a bit uncomfortable. It looked like a child was being trafficked. So far I prefer her with the second lead. Maybe ZLS should act with younger mls until her face matures a bit and she loses the childlike puppy fat of her face. Older mature male leads make her look even younger than her age which ruins the romance.
I don’t even think they spent a lot on promotion to be honest. They just really rushed this drama and the CGI suffered because of that as well as the story. They pushed to air it too soon. This drama just finished filming a few months ago.
I wonder if they rushed it because ZLS would not have a drama air this year if they didn’t
Agree with koala. I was so excited about this drama from when they were filming itvas LYN fan, but it’s boring. I did find Galaxy boring too though and never understood the hype about that one.
I liked two leads in their first drama together, their story was interesting there, but this reunion is sadly disappointing.
Luckily Fangs of fortune is really fun to watch and it looks like Ding Yuxi new drama is fun too, so November still rocks!
I’m so happy that some9ne finally agrees that love of galaxy is kinda boring, I tried to watch but I just couldn’t take it any longer and stopped it
Eh, I think the acting is decent at best from the leads. But it’s not the determining factor when the whole thing is so snooze inducing. I zoned out several times. The whole thing is just not interesting and I don’t care enough about the FL to root for her.
I thought the pace was quite good. cut to the chase and all. I usually find C-drama too draggy and I lose interest pretty fast. but this one so far has been good. the scene where they grab the jewelled bead was really well choreographed too. fight scenes are so realistic. the part where second male lead use an stone to hit the villains was too funny and real!!!
I didn’t think the pacing was slow either. It’s moving quite fast but too much like KMLM. And the funny bits in the middle now were amusing, laughter before the storm, romance before the breakup. It’s coming next!
The drama started promising and then went underwhelming for those reasons already mentioned by Koala, which I agree. It’s a shame the script turned a bit dry after the heroine got aboard the merchant ship. It took me by surprise how the plot went in that direction. I expected to see action-packed thriller of a revenge drama though. It doesn’t look like that way. Rather, it started to give me an impression of mixed Story of Minglan and Blossom in Adversity combined but with less logical plot. Besides, LYN as the ML doesn’t help with his subpar visuals to boot LOL. The hero’s character could be more appealing and not that dislikable with a pretty face or sexy stares LOL. LYN is pretty lacking in that.
I switched between Pearl Girl and Love Game. I had to confess the acting of either Esther or LYN isn’t good enough for me to cut slack on their looks. That being said, Pearl Girl still has an edge over Love Game to my taste in terms of storylines. I tried to watch LG 2nd time and had to quit by the end of ep3 bcos I ran out of patience for the recycled and abused trope of life-death game with numerous attempts of unsuccessful missions….that’s not funny. It’s juvenile and frivolous and that’s what I hate the most in this sorta VR/game-based genre. LG is not special, simply repeating similar tropes that I had watched in many other mini dramas. All the visual gimmicks don’t help retaining my attention that I dozed off in the middle LOL.
I’m getting lukewarm about PG too. I’ll see if there will be any plot twists and turns that continue to pique my interest. C-ent continues to be very weak in scripts and directing. C-ent writers and directors seem to take very conservative approaches just to get their products out. Most Cdrama nowadays look more like something out of mass production with forgettable contents and quality. PG looks like another typical Cdrama. The Double is just an outlier nowadays.
First time I totally agree with you. Esther Yu, despite what people say about her being good at line delivery is so limited this is no joke. Anytime she opens her mouth to talk my ears feel like they are bleeding. In Pearl drama LYN is unappealing not because he looks bad but because I think he is uncharismatic. I don’t understand why China try and push him so hard as ML ? Never got the hype about ZLS. This girl statut in the industry remains an enigma for me. And her voice is particularly nasally but I shall ask Chinese people around me if her lines delivery is good.
I find both dramas mid. LG is no better than those myriads of mini dramas that deal with the same theme. The only difference is Esther Yu usual antics and pouty-expressions to win the ML at the end. The Pearl one is slightly better than KMLM still both dramas suffer the trailers-spicier-than-the-actual-drama syndrom.
I tried watching the first 2 episodes but it was really boring. I just feel disconnected from the story and characters and have no motivation to continue. The drama suffers from bad script and bad direction and a lot of overacting.
For me, it’s the sets and obvious imaginary look of the drama. If it looked more realistic, I would feel like their character plights are actually real and be more invested in their journeys. For instance, when ZLS was being dragged and completely dehumanized by that dude at the start of the drama and she’s crying and so scared–the acting was TOP NOTCH–but because my eyes could see that her surroundings were just sets and props, I stopped short of actually feeling for her character. It’s not a xianxia so I don’t watch it as such! It sucks to be right on the edge of full immersion and unable to get there. Sad, because the acting all around is actually SO GOOD, but the look of the drama is just too jarring for me, I’m struggling to journey with them.
I think I know what you mean. I was trying to place why I couldn’t get into it, even though her acting was really good, you could tell indeed it was just a set or props.
💯
There is a lot of lazy directing in Cdrama. Poor editing and cheap post-filming production overall also downgrade a Cdrama. I gather a few major factors contribute to poor production quality including censorship and lack of incentives to the rest of filming crew and production team other than actors. Actors make tons of money but others may be underpaid.
I’m really enjoying it. The beginning two episodes were very well-done, introducing her background. I’m glad they didn’t prolong all the sexual and violent connotations of being a slave. I got it, tyvm.
I enjoyed each phase of her growth and how her expressions subtly changed the more confident she became. THERE IS COMEDIC MOMENTS NOW because they are finally ready for romance. Episode 10 was the turning point for me from just the two leads being at each other.
Episodes 14 and 15 were funny, with the romance starting and the latest one was dramatic, cementing their feelings for blossoming into a public romance. The trailers show two kisses coming, so no, I disagree with you that there isn’t enough romance.
We needed those episodes to show how helpless she was. We needed the revelation of her mother to show why she was smarter than the rest. We needed the next few episodes to depict her determination to succeed and get the kind of freedom she’d yearned for.
Of course the angst is coming. Romance don’t just start in the middle a Chinese drama without a big tragic moment happening. So Lu Si’s acting had not been lacking at all, imo. Everything is toned down because there wasn’t any slapstick ala Love Like A Galaxy. The sad moments start first, reversed from LLAG. Her anger was palpable when she went after her mother’s killer. Now the comic moments have come, I see the changes in her expression, where she acted at first confused, then teasing, then the small smiles. Her friendzoning comments to the 2ML (and I agree–he’s irritating in his stick-in-the-mud attitude) were the smartest I’ve seen in C-Dramas. There was no coy or shy replies; she responded to his verbal invitation to be with him with kind but firm rejection.
LuSi, as Duan Wu, was not acting as a little girl trying to fight her mother here. The story is the title–a double reference of how Duan Wu becomes a pearl through years of tears.
TL;DR Koala, you wrong. Hehe
It started promising, really, until the FL turns into ‘a girl who knows and win everything’. Duh. In a short time, she can have drink with her boss. And even walk side by side lol. What a mess. ZLS’s character development in LLTG was much better than this one.
I’ve never learnt to not have high expectation over a drama. Sigh.
I’m enjoying this drama quite well, as I’m not expecting anything more complicated than a grand adventure with a dash of romance.
But since we are gathered here to nitpick, I do feel that Zhao LuSi is let down by her petite size and young looks. No matter how good her acting is, I can’t really get leading lady feels from her. I especially dislike her hairdown, wispy bangs looks in this drama, I feel like watching a very good child star, not the leading actress.
This is only my 2nd drama of her after Hidden Love and the first time that I form an opinion on her.
I also think the hair looks way too modern especially the bangs! It’s literally like college girl hair…
While I love Liu Yuning and his visuals, I know some of you will disagree with me and that’s fine. This is my opinion and I find his visuals absolutely stunning and swoon worthy.
The drama itself while good, isn’t great as of now and the problem lies in the script, it’s just lacking some kind of oomph that keeps me on my toes and makes me anxious to watch the next episode.
Yea nothing like LLTG, my favorite drama or BIA. I want to love this drama but I do agree that there is something missing here. I’m getting a little bored but I love Zhao Lusi so I’m hanging on. Hopefully it picks up
I’m really enjoying this drama with Zhao Lusi. I love the way they build all the relationship with the characters too. I definitely will continue to watch it.
While I appreciate Zhao Lusi’s comedic talent, I believe she’s often overhyped. Her acting in other genres, such as in “The Story of a Pearl Girl” and “who rules the world,” “untouchable lovers,” sometimes falls short compared to more experienced actresses.
On the other hand, I’ve been particularly impressed by Yu Shuxin’s performances, especially in “My Journey to You”. Her portrayal of the character, including her voice, was well-suited to the role, and I don’t understand the negative criticism. Even in her recent drama, “Love Game in Eastern Fantasy,” Yu Shuxin has managed to pull off a baby voice without sounding too cringey. Her voice in “Love Game in Eastern Fantasy” was particularly impressive.
Personally, I’d love to see Yu Shuxin take on a badass role. I think she has the potential to shine in such a character.
It’s important to remember that everyone has different opinions and preferences when it comes to acting. Both actresses are talented and have their own unique strengths. Ultimately, the best way to enjoy dramas is to watch them for personal enjoyment and not worry too much about others opinion
Esther is a versatile actor, that’s probably because you have seen her in my journey to you, though I would still love to see more of her doing a bad ass role
You’re completely right. It all comes down to preference. ZLS isn’t a better actress for me than Esther Yu but she definitely has a more toned down acting style that I find easier to watch. She’s more convincing when she’s being serious. I really liked the trade/business topics and the organic chemistry in TSOPG so it was a banger for me. But that’s also not everyone’s cup of tea if you don’t find that stuff already interesting. If you like lighter stuff, which I do too, Esther is definitely better suited. I wouldn’t not watch a drama because she’s in it but I do cringe at her a lot. Sometimes she acts too cute that when it comes time to be serious I don’t believe it entirely. But she can still be really funny and the bubbly characters she plays always have their own charm I guess. In Love Game she started out great but I hoped her character would mature like she did in LBFAD and that never happened so her silliness annoyed me till the end for this one. The sobbing during emotional moments was also not believable for me. Honestly there’s really nothing I’ve seen her in that had me saying “no one else could do this role but her”. Whereas in TSOPG, I don’t think anyone else could play these roles but ZLS and Liu Yu Ning.
I think this is an excellent drama–I like the different story lines, learning about the jewelry trade, the acting is excellent, the sets are not bad considering the different sites that the action takes place.