Emperor of Han Dynasty
Vietnamese Title: Thien Tu Dai Han
The Cast:
Liu Che - Huang XiaoMing
Empress Dowager Dou - Chen ShaLi
DongFang Shuo - Chen DaoMing
Nian NuJiao - Alyssia Chia
Princess Ping Yang - Chen ShaSha
Wei ZiFu - Wang Ling
The Story:
The series tells the story about the rise of one of the most famous kings during the Han Dynasty in China, Han Wu Ti (Liu Che) during the time period of 141-87 B.C. In addition, the story also reflects some fundamental social and political issues during the early time of the Han Dynasty. The series is a semi-fictional story which consists of many true and fictional historical events and characters. The story begins with a young Liu Che, still a prince, and his group of friends sneaking out of Chang'an to a nearby sub-kingdom to celebrate a local festival. While they were out, he and his group of friends got into a series of troubles and encounter several individuals including Dong Fang Shuo and Nian NuJiao. Dong Fang Shou is a fortune teller who tells fortune based on a single letter written by seekers. Yet, in truth, Dong Fang Shou has a giant political mind with an ingenious strategic planning ability. Nian NuJiao, a daughter of a military general who was executed falsely by the gangs of the Dou family, is hiding as a dancer. Nian NuJiao is actively seeking a way to revenge for the deaths of her family and restore her father's good name.
At the same time, Liu Che's father has been very sick and will soon die. Liu Che's grandmother, Empress Dowager Dou, instead of letting Liu Che to be the next king according to his father's will, has another plan to dethrone him and for her youngest son to be the next king. Unaware of the situation, Liu Che becomes an innocent victim and underwent through many events set up by his own grandmonther to dethrone and kill him. Yet, with the help of Dong Fang Shou and his friends, he finally takes back his position and becomes the king after his father's death. Not giving up, Empress Dou continues to take control of the kingdom and makes all the important decisions. In addition, most of the important seats in the cabinet are held by Empress Dou's relatives. To help Liu Che regain the internal power, Dong Fang Shou uses his charisma to entrust Empress Dow and secretly helps Liu Che through his sister, pricess Ping Yang. As Empress Dow slowly loses her power, she becomes blind at one the martial competition events after learning that her nephew lost to Liu Che's friend. After that, Liu Che quickly regains all control when most of the Dou's family refuse to confront the decision to go to war with Hsiung nu. Replacing all of the Dou's family with his people, Liu Che isolates Empress Dow and takes control over the military.
As he sent his military to the northern border to fight Hsiung nu, one of Liu Che's uncles and his daughter in the South secretly plan to take over Chang'an while it is vulnerable. Using her beauty as bait, she controls both the general of her father's army and one of Liu Che's closest friends. Yet, her plan was quickly discovered by Dong Fang Shou. With the help of Dong Fang Shou, Liu Che was able to stop the coup and protect his throne from being taken over. At the same time, Hsiung nu stops invading the northern border. Liu Che finally resolves all his enemies and restores peace to his reign. He names himself Han Wu Ti.
Review:
This is my first time watching a China series, and I'm not very familiar with all the actors and actresses. However, I will give my best opinion about the cast.
Huang XiaoMing (Liu Che): I think Huang Xiao Ming does an okay job playing a young and energetic king. His acting reminds me of Tom Cruise's style in which emotional transition often occurs unexpectedly. Nevertheless, he is far behind Tom Cruise at bringing out everything when the emotion needs to be burst. The character's anger and happiness do not show true intensity when needed. In addition, the physical skills, particularly walking and gestures, do not capture the viewer as they should. Too many movements and turns often cause the character to lose his cool when he should be charismatic.
Chen ShaLi (Empress Dowager Dou): Her performance is average. Combined with her make-up, however, it is just enough to bring out her personality. She needs to have more facial expressions to show more poison in her character. I think that the series can be more traumatic if her airtime increased.
Chen DaoMing (DongFang Shuo): By far, the best actor in the series. I like to compare his style with Denzel Washington's, very controlled and smooth. Emotional expressions burst and twist smoothly to capture the viewer with his conversations and gestures. However, I do find it a little awkward while viewing the romantic scenes between him and Alyssia Chia. He needs to put a little more emotion into those scenes.
Alyssia Chia (Nian NuJiao): It is strange for me to see her playing a serious character in the series because of her baby face. Regardless of her limited role, her performance is average. There is really no need for any serious acting for her role. I'm not certain why her character is in the series in the first place, probably because of her eyes. That is really all that is needed for her role.
Chen ShaSha (Princess Ping Yang): In a supporting role, she performs well as pricess Ping Yang. She does help to bring out the sense of sister and brother between Princess Ping Yang and Liu Che. Also, her performance also instills a sense of trust and peace in the viewers during her airtime. She is probably the best supporting actress in the whole series.
Wang Ling (Wei ZiFu): She performs well as an innocient servant. Softspoken, lovely, trustful, intelligent, and a little bit of jealousy. Good performance, but I think that it could be a lillte bit better with more smiles.
Comments:
1. The storyline is a little illogical considering the grandmother who is actually seeking to kill her own grandson. The director does not do a good job bringing out the true intention of the grandmother, which is to overthrown the Liu family for the Dou family to take over the throne. It can be a little confusing for the viewer.
2. Some historical facts: Although both Han Wu Ti and Empress Dow are both historical figures, they existed in different time periods. According to the series, Liu Che was the first king to name his reign Han Wu Ti and Empress Dow was his grandmother. Historically, there was an Empress Dowager Dou during the the time of Han Wu Ti (Western Han), but she lived in the latter years during a different king (Eastern Han), not during the first Han Wu Ti reign. Wu Ti's reign lasts over two hundreds years with many kings. Eventually, Wu Ti's reign was overthrown, but it was not until 9 A.D. when a nephew of the king, Wang Mang, carried out a coup. However, Wu Ti was the time of warring and expansion. China's territory expanded to Korea in the east, Northern Vietnam in the south, and further into Central Asia. Wu Ti reigned over an area much larger than that of Shi Huangdi.
3. Besides the romantic story, the movie also reflects some of the fundamental social issues during the early Han Dynasty. This is the problem of legalism and the rise of Confucianism. When the Liu Bang ended the Qing dynasty, he essentially inherited the legalistic system from Qing and continued to use it with little modifications. He, however, did revoke unpopular laws created by Shi Huangdi, but there were no major changes for the most part. As a result, we can see the rigidity and inflexibility in the way that people have to live and accept. Things were just black or white, and there is nothing in between. As a result, many talented people were killed as the result of the blinding justice. The character of Dong Fang Shou is the best representation of a great invididual who wanted to dedicate his life to the nation. However, he believed in the king, but he did not believe in a legalistic system. The only way he can really help is to do that in secret so that he could flee when he sensed any danger. It is a fear that any wrongdoing could result in chopping your head off which prevents talents to come out to work for the government. The legalistic system did not work for the Qing dynasty, and it will not work for the Han Dynasty. Fortunately, during this time, Confucianism rises to help in reconstructing the social order. Legalistic laws combined with Confucian priciples were the setting for China social order for the next 2000 years.
4. It is also worth mentioning the character of Sima Quan in the series. Sima Quan is a historical character who wrote one of the most important Chinese history books. He angered Han Wu Ti and was castrated because of his comments about one of the generals. At the time, many people thought that he would commit suicide, but he did not. He made a famous comment that death can be heavy as a mountain, but can also be as light as a goose feather. Therefore, he would need to live to write the truth and complete his work because there would be no regret. Until this day, his work has been greatly praised as one the most important historical records in the world.
