There is a very pithy saying that the readers of Tong Hua novels have coined and it kills me each time to hear it repeated. “There was Xiang Liu in ancient times of gods and demons, he was reincarnated into Meng Jiu in historical times, only to end up as Lu Li Cheng in modern day.” I’ve read all three novels from whence these males leads came, and I can tell you the tears they be a-flowing from Lost You Forever to Da Mo Yao to Secrets Hidden in Time. I translated Da Mo Yao and the first time around I was majorly on the Huo Qu Bing ship but the second full read made me appreciate Meng Jiu more. The long-in-the-works drama adaptation languished because of the way SARFT viewed the story as tinkering with real life historical figure General Huo Qu Bing, an issue that many C-readers seemed to get their panties in a wad over but I could never figure out why.

DMY is a frothy romance novel, it was never meant to be historically accurate and of all the famous historical figures in China’s four thousand years of written history Huo Qu Bing doesn’t even crack the top-whatever. The drama title was changed from Da Mo Yao (Ballad of the Desert) to Xing Yue Chuan Qi (Legend of the Sun and the Moon), though thankfully the English title has been retained as Song of the Desert. There is now talk of the drama finally getting an air date for this June and this talk is bolstered by the production company releasing a gorgeous glossy official MV for the drama theme song. It’s called “White Hair Lament” by Della Ding, a mournful song that I like the opening verse way better than the draggy chorus. Overall it’s a decent tune but all signs in the MV point to Hu Ge’s Meng Jiu owning the drama heart and soul. All the character names have been changed so Liu Shi Shi‘s Jin Yu will be called Xing Yue, Eddie Peng‘s Huo Qu Bing is now Wei Wu Ji, and Hu Ge’s Meng Jiu (aka Meng Xi Mo) is called Mo Xun. Continue reading →