Word of Honor

Greetings again after a long period of silence! Real life got in the way and there was much upheaval both in my corner of things and the big wide world out there. Hope everyone is staying safe and getting vaccinated!

Zhou Zishu (Zhang Zhehan), the leader of a royal secret service organisation known as Tianchuang, takes drastic measures to escape his former life. He wanders the pugilistic world and hopes to simply enjoy what is left of his life. When he steps in to save a young boy, he gets embroiled in a conspiracy and also encounters the mysterious Wen Kexing (Gong Jun), who has an agenda of his own…

With things being unstable, I was not particularly in a drama-watching mood, but ended up trying Word of Honor (山河令), a Chinese drama recommended by some friends. Halfway through the drama I also decided to read Tianyake (天涯客), the source novel by Priest, in the original Chinese, when I felt something wasn’t right with how things were developing in the drama. It is telling that I finished the novel before the drama, even though I started the latter first. This being my first BL web novel, I have no attachment to Priest’s works, much less the genre, nor do I think the novel is a masterpiece in any way, but it was a fairly engaging read.

I had a longer post about the various ills and sins the drama adaptation committed, but figured I’d try to keep it more concise. Spoilers below.

Many things can be said about the drama, but respect for the source material is not one of them, as a result of taking one too many liberties. There is taking creative liberties, and then there is misrespresentation. Characterisation was terrible, with the two leads undergoing such a massive personality change that one might be better off considering Word of Honor as “very loosely inspired by” Tianyake, for its pathetic attempts to pay lip service to the original (and then insisting book and adaptation are separate when fans accused the drama of going back on its promise to respect and adhere to the source material – for a sample in Chinese of any number of logic fails and lapses in sanity in the drama, see here, here and here).

Zhou Zishu, so intelligent, perceptive and fun in the novel, is my favourite character of the lot. Unfortunately in the drama he became dull as beans and frustratingly saviour-like. Novel Zhou was never ashamed of his past actions and could hold his head high, but in the drama he wept about being a coward who ran away in times of need – the emotional breakdown in episode 24 was particularly embarrassing. Gone was Zhou’s gruffness and cynicism, his sometimes biting sarcasm and wry humour, the sangfroid and carefreeness he possessed despite knowing his life was near its end. Gone too was Zhou’s preference for minding his own business, very much in keeping with how he operated in the shadows. In their place, his desperate need to reform Wen Kexing, which is nothing short of a head scratcher and pretty pathetic on the whole.

Wen Kexing, from being the feared Ghost Valley chief who had lasted for years in a constant survival of the fittest battle, was transformed into an emotional wreck whose biggest fear was that his lover didn’t accept his Ghost Valley chief status – an issue that was literally a non-issue in the novel because Zhou Zishu guessed it early on and simply did not care. Gone was Wen’s inner steel, coldness and ruthlessness that had helped him retain singular focus on his big revenge plans. Even his outrageous lecherous nature, which provided some of the humour in the novel, was much toned down (though this change was probably to keep it somewhat PG friendly). As one can imagine, the motherly nature of drama Zhou fitted well with the big baby nature of drama Wen, which was something both novel protagonists would have laughed their socks off at.

Neither of the novel’s leads cared much about big patriotic ideals, but in the drama both ended up spouting righteous lines about serving the country and being heroic in times of crisis. Not to mention the very odd propaganda about how agriculture is the bedrock of a country’s prosperity when they finally opened the martial arts armoury, only to realise it was a warehouse for storing grains and other agricultural tools. This is so ludicrous and hilariously bad.

Their relationship, far from being that of two strangers who could come together and share a certain deep-seated understanding, without asking for more than what the other could give, became a tortuous circle of “will you accept me for who I am?” and “why did you keep things from me and not let me help you?” In the drama, Zhou Zishu almost died thanks to Wen Kexing’s stupid plan that Zhou wasn’t privy to (kept from him for a dumb reason) – I suppose this is how one treats his “soulmate”. Part of why their relationship in the novel was so rewarding, other than the humour and their hilarious push-pull back and forth thanks to Wen’s lecherous nature, was because of the well-earned moments of mutual understanding. A key scene that I particularly liked was in chapter 48, when Wen attempts what he thinks might help Zhou extend his life (which method Zhou had already refused when first mentioned). There is no anger when Zhou simply asks, “others do not understand, but do you not as well?” and Wen understands what he means all too well. Trust too is a key component of being confidants – Zhou never assumes he is in a position to tell Wen what to do, and never seeks to “reform” him or tell him to give up his revenge, openly acknowledging that “It is not for me to interfere in his affairs, he must settle them himself.”

In the drama, Zhou spent the bulk trying to convince Wen to accept his “past” of being Zhou’s junior brother of the Four Seasons Manor. This change was probably to avoid censorship wrath, by turning the romance into bromance, but it was just too much to take with Zhou’s constant harping on that supposed past, especially when Wen was reluctant to do so for a good part of the drama. All that harping led to the ridiculous scene in episode 31 of the supposedly fearsome Ghost Valley chief kneeling in front of the ex-Four Seasons Manor leader, calling himself the second disciple of the manor and receiving something akin to benediction. There’s much you can pin on censorship, but bad writing is not the fault of the censors.

Some of the other characters got equally short shrift. Scorpion, who headed an organisation of mercenaries and assassins and indulged in perverse activities on the side, was reduced to a caricature of a man child who wanted nothing more than approval from his godfather (with healthy doses of BL tendencies thrown in). His fun encounter with Zhou Zishu in the novel – where the latter drew him a series of porn sketches to get out of a gamble he lost – will, fortunately, remain tucked within the novel’s pages. The emperor, for whom Zhou spent years building up the empire, was turned into a traitorous prince who wanted to usurp the throne – this change pretty much negated all of Zhou’s work in service of the country, and reduced him to someone who knowingly served a usurper for years. Ye Baiyi, who never bothered about “mortal” matters, having achieved near immortality and was actually hoping to die (in a way, similar to the protagonists’ own “death wishes”), ended up suddenly being interested in ridding the martial arts world of the “big evil” that was Wen Kexing (this change happening in the space of an episode and offscreen was nothing short of puzzling). Tragicomic Ghost was a man turned into a woman for the drama and got a snooze-fest of a melodramatic love story with the ultimate big bad.

The drama touted itself as creating a new kind of wuxia, or at least presenting “more modern” ideals that would be more in line with the 21st century. Most of the supposedly “modern” elements, such as the protagonists being highly skilled right from the start, the focus on morally grey and complex characterisation, the world building and the more philosophical bent have all been done, most notably by Gu Long (who died in 1985). In an interview, the scriptwriter then claims Gu Long to be a leading influence of such “new wuxia”, just a paragraph after dismissing him and the other three (Jin Yong, Liang Yusheng and Wen Rui’an) for having written all there was to write about wuxia. Still, that didn’t stop her from amping up the romance between Gu Xiang (Wen Kexing’s sister-like sidekick) and her devoted lover Cao Weining, in a relationship allegedly bearing shades of “evil girl, righteous boy” romances well known among Jin Yong’s works (see Huang Rong and Guo Jing, Zhao Min and Zhang Wuji, Ren Yingying and Linghu Chong, to name but a few pairs). Hilariously she also thought very positively of Gu Long’s female characters as women who could “hold up half the sky”. It is true that Gu Long’s female characters can be strong and assertive, delightfully charming or wicked, and can more than hold their own against men. But his portrayals of women are very problematic – they are written as being very much subjected to the male gaze and are often not depicted in a flattering light. From the way she described Gu Long’s writing and the themes he explored, it is clear that she does not understand his work. As someone who grew up with wuxia and who has read a number of Gu Long’s works in the original Chinese, I found her views hilarious and embarrassing. Frankly, the scriptwriter’s interview was unreadable for how much she misunderstood the characters, their personalities, the source material’s themes and wuxia in general.

Fight choreography was pretty awful, with lots of close-ups, slow-motion takes and not much fighting to speak of. I guess this is the mainland’s style of “martial arts”, which again is pretty funny in a supposedly “wuxia” drama.

Acting was passable if you’re not looking for much. Zhang Zhehan had little emotional range and his acting was not nuanced, although oddly enough he was better for much of the first six episodes when his character was in “disguise”. He also had no gravitas as the former leader of a powerful secret organisation whose actions helped secure the empire, which put paid to any semblance of credibility about the kind of influence and intelligence he supposedly possessed (none in the drama). Fortunately for him, his role merely required him to look pretty and blank and somewhat tortured, with suitable amounts of eye-popping thrown in. Gong Jun lacked menace and steel, and looked more like a smiley rich playboy than someone who was feared by the martial arts world. He was obviously uncomfortable with the character’s flirty nature, and it showed in his acting, for he came across as awkward and unnatural. In the scenes which required him to wring some emotion, he was fairly stunted or lacked nuance, and had a similar eye-popping issue that afflicted Zhang. That said, the leads had some decent chemistry and managed to play off well against each other. Zhou Ye needed a lot of work as Gu Xiang, for her acting was exaggerated and cringey, and made it difficult to watch her. Ma Wenyuan, who played the honest to a fault Cao Weining, was a little better. Li Daikun, who played Scorpion, was wasted in a creepy pseudo-incestuous role. Ke Naiyu was decent as Liu Qianqiao (Beauty Ghost), though her character arc was not the best.

While it has to be said that Priest’s original work, which could probably be considered as “wuxia lite”, lacked a strong plot and more developed secondary characters, the leads’ characterisation and the development of their relationship was fairly well done. I also appreciated neither Zhou Zishu nor Wen Kexing was trying to save the other, and the concepts of good and evil, the righteous and underworld, are blurred and up for debate, especially set against the leads’ very flawed personalities and their backgrounds and life experiences. The humour was also an aspect I appreciated, and several times I laughed out loud while reading, which was a good sign.

The drama is not the worst I’ve seen of mainland dramas, and was actually decent for the first maybe 10 to 12 episodes before cracks started showing, but it was just downhill from there, with events later on even managing to contradict what happened in the earlier third. That kind of logic fail takes some doing. I did like the brief scenes of an injured Zhou Zishu, but those were poor compensation for his character assassination. The drama ran out of time to tie up the loose ends properly, probably due to its low budget and that the episode count was cut from 45 to 36. It says much that in the end, the leads are stuck on a mountain for eternity, which is completely at odds with their unrestrained, carefree personalities, and even goes against Zhou’s wish earlier in the drama to just roam the country and live out his life.

The scriptwriter must really, really hate them.

junny@4.06pm

• Gong Jun
• Word of Honor
• Zhang Zhehan