Seth Barrett Tillman, Banned by the Communist Party of China: A Review of Liu Lianzi’s “Ruyi’s Royal Love in the Palace,” New Reform Club (July 9, 2021, 11:17 AM), <https://reformclub.blogspot.com/2021/07/a-review-of-liu-lianzis-ruyis-royal.html>;
Seth Barrett Tillman, ‘A Review of Liu Lianzi’s “Ruyi’s Royal Love in the Palace”,’ New English Review (Nov. 30, 2025) (online), <https://tinyurl.com/ycxmbyeu>, <https://tinyurl.com/56j4nrjs>;
7 comments:
I've paused my watching of "Ruyi's Royal Love in the Palace" because it seemed to be moving too slowly. Perhaps it's because I watched "The Story of Yanxi Palace" first. Both use the same historical background and the same main characters and it has been interesting to see how the characters are developed and portrayed in the two series. The plot of Yanxi moves much quicker and I'm more attracted to Yanxi's Consort Ling (a minor character in Ruyi, but the main one in Yanxi) where she's portrayed as bold, brash, and blunt talking . So when I watch Consort Ling in Ruyi in my head I'm screaming, "Hey, that's not how she is at all!"
Both series were being made around the same time with Ruyi hiring famous actors, giving them large salaries. Yanxi used lesser known actors with lower salaries. Yanxi won the race and was shown first and it became tremendously popular.
I would have sent this privately, but couldn't figure out how.
it's "Qianlong," not "Quinlong". There's no "qu" combination in Pinyin romanization -- the fact that it's almost always "qu" in English is very confusing to native English speakers.
ok
There's a lot going on with Chinese historical dramas, as well as with fictional kingdom historical webnovels, in China. A lot of anger bubbling under the surface, a lot of hitting out at corrupt officials. A lot of anger by young men who will probably ever be able to marry, and a lot of anger by young women stuck in a less than kindly system.
So yeah, Ruyi probably is being banned because of that.
all true
There's an 9internet curse that falls on people who make corrections, and it fell on me. There actually is "qu" in Pinyin romanization -- "Taiji quan" (English readers are more used to "Taichi chuan") for example. At any rate, the "q" represents what in English is usually written "ch" -- like Chien Lung, for example.
All of this is utterly trivial compared to your useful review, and I apologize for cluttering up your comments section.
1) The series was VERY popular in China and it was shown on Chinese state TV. Given that the CCP can prevent anything from being filmed much less broadcast, it is not correct to say it was “banned” by the CCP. After the series became very popular, the CCP said “stop making shows like this” - which is not exactly the same thing.
2) The first series (about the Qianlong Emperor’s mother and father) was not historically accurate in a number of important ways, which I found annoying. The writer is a not a well known Chinese historian and the material she is describing is - to the best of my knowledge - not documented by any reliable sources. So, her stories about the infighting among the palace wives appears to be partially or largely invention.
3) Dozens of women were brought into the palace each year. If an Emperor did not sleep with a woman after three years, the woman could return to her family and then marry. We know that many women choose to remain in the palace anyways as they apparently found the place reasonably nice to live in. Such women had work to do, they seem to have been responsible for making royal costumes.
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