![]() The character of Zhang Bihan is interesting to consider from this angle too. ![]() You’re supposed to think, “WOW, even his daughter is not as important as justice for the people!” Actually if you follow this logic, the story’s emphasis on Renzong’s love for Huirou makes his sacrifice of her happiness even more an act of selflessness for “the people”. So Renzong putting her in her place is presented to us as an act of benevolence to “the people” even if it destroys Huirou. She wasn’t meant to understand that lesson from his mouth because the writer needed Huirou to be taught this lesson by her father, emperor Xi Jinping… I mean, Renzong. The failure of Huirou to understand Huaiji’s attempts to explain poverty makes sense if this was the show’s message. In June, according to Beijing Youth Daily, 70 heirs to major Chinese companies attended lectures on filial piety and the role of traditional values in business.” President Xi Jinping himself spoke out this year, advising the second generation to “think about the source of their wealth and how to behave after becoming affluent.” An article published by the United Front Work Department, the bureau that manages relations between the party and nonparty elite, warned: “They know only how to show off their wealth but don’t know how to create wealth.” Some local governments have taken steps to reeducate their wealthy elite. The Communist Party seems to consider them an economic or even political threat. This Bloomberg article is worth reading to understand the whole phenomenon and I’ll just quote a little bit here: “The fuerdai (pronounced foo-arr-dye) aren’t just an embarrassment. They are a much-reviled group in China, because they’re often the very public, scandalous face of the type of corruption that enormous economic inequality has wrought in the past few decades and because they are often shielded from the consequences of their scandals by powerful parents.īadly behaving fuerdai are also considered dangerous to the stability of the CCP, because their existence has been used to levy criticism at the CCP’s failure to manage party officials. He tells Huirou that her actions need to be considered above reproach because she owes it to “the people”, because “the people” didn’t pay taxes to support her posh princess lifestyle for twenty-some years so that she can hit her working class mother-in-law, canoodle with Huaiji, burn her house down, and interfere with government policy- you, if you are a Chinese viewer, are supposed to think, “EXACTLY, I DIDN’T PAY MY TAXES SO THAT SOME FUERDAI CAN GO CRASH THEIR FERRARI STREET RACING, HAVE ORGIES IN SANYA, AND USE THEIR PARENTS’ POLITICAL INFLUENCE TO GET AWAY WITH IT.”įuerdai (富二代) is the term for the rich children of China’s current political and economic elite. In the last episode, he takes Huirou to visit a lantern-making family and shows her how everyone, from the oldest to the youngest, is working hard to make a living. So… the emperor is constantly going on about how “the people” want peace and economic prosperity and most importantly, they need the imperial family’s conduct to be a moral example. All of the utterly illogical writing suddenly makes way more sense if that was the goal. If the drama is intending for the Chinese viewer to put themselves in the shoes of “the people” and not in the shoes of Danshu or Huirou or the other female characters, then I can see how the writer might think that the characterization of the emperor is sympathetic and that Huirou should ultimately accept her fate. I was just thinking about Serenade of Peaceful Joy as propaganda tool and political morality play and realized… Thoughts on Serenade of Peaceful Joy as propaganda….
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