Cast:
马苏饰姚开心 Ma Su as Yao Kai Xin
王洋饰浦少杰 Wang Yang as Pu Shao Jie
赵阳饰张乐心 Zhao Yang as Zhang Yue Xin
李诚洁饰晶晶 Li Cheng Jie as Jing Jing
张谦饰郭顶天 Zhang Qian as Guo Ding Tian
爱娃饰亚娇 Ai Wa as Ya Jiao
林栋甫饰浦西 Lin Dong Fu as Pu Xi
李俸旭饰楚玉 Li Feng Xu as Chu Yu
于晓光饰杜润南 Yu Xiao Guang as Du Run Nan
Genre:
Martial Arts, Comedy, Drama
Plot:
Yao Kai Xin is a female kung fu disciple. While snowboarding down a snowy mountain, she stumbles but a yellow dressed skier rescues her. All she has is a single ski glove to tell her who he is. With that one glove, she decides to leave her hometown to search for the man who saved her life. In the city, the naive Yao Kai Xin discovers for the first time the ups and downs of love as well as the harsh realities of life.
When she first reaches the city, she meets Shao Jie, Yue Xin, and many others at Guo dojo. Due to a misunderstanding, she believes that the missing glove belongs to Yue Xin, but later finds out that it is Shao Jie. Shao Jie is the son of a large company and spends his days throwing money around and cheating on many different girlfriends on the same time. This of course clashes with Kai Xin’s innocent personality as well as her fearlessness in demanding justice with her fists.
When disaster befalls Shao Jie’s family, will he be able to stand back on his two feet? Shao Jie meets a kind and independent woman named Jing Jing and for the first time he becomes serious about a woman, will he fall for the graceful dancer Jing Jing or the unrefined yet fearless Kai Xin?
Review:
I would first like to say I am a big fan of Ma Su, as I have seen her newer works Sword Stained with Royal Blood and also Morality Baseline. It is a nice change to see her in a different light and I must say that she does well in comedy as well. All her different projects I have seen her in really show her extensive abilities to take on such different roles. In this day and age, many dramas have been recreated in different countries. When searching Ma Su’s other works to watch, I noticed the title of this one and became interested, so I decided to search it on joy.cn and found the first episode to be quite refreshing compared to all the serious dramas I have been following recently.
Just like Meteor Garden has been done in Taiwan, Japan, Korea, and even China, you will notice that each one puts a different aspect on the drama to make it unique while still keeping the main storyline. When I really got more into this drama, I noticed the close similarities with the Korean drama 명랑소녀 성공기 Success Story of a Bright Girl (2002), lead by Jang Nara and Jang Hyuk. The twist however, in this mainland version, is that the main actress Kai Xin, is a kung fu girl. This definitely helps contribute to the comedy factor of this drama, which I really enjoyed. It is not a serious martial arts movie, but rather uses exaggerated kung fu for a light hearted feel. I am not usually a fan of comedy dramas but this one touched my heart and I really loved the overused and sometimes cliche jokes or lines. Although I categorize this as a comedy, this is not to say it has its other emotional moments. I found myself many times on the verge of tears, silently rooting for Kai Xin. The drama does an awesome job on reaching all the different emotions of the viewer. Anger, surprise, sympathy, courage, humor, and even sadness are all conveyed throughout each episode.
In the other works that I have seen Ma Su in, she has done Wu Xia fighting and also a wife in a modern drama. I feel that her role in this drama showed us another face to her acting. She manages to capture our love and sympathy and at the same time makes us laugh at her naive yet straightforward character. Unlike Taiwanese dramas and Japanese dramas, she makes no exaggeration of trying to be cute and yet she achieves a bubbly character that slowly grows into a more mature Kai Xin. This is seen in a good number of all the other characters in the drama as well. The only static character whom I find unchanging is Jing Jing. For some reason she doesn’t really click for me. She is not a bad character even though she is Kai Xin’s rival for Shao Jie’s love, we do not hate her. She has no ill will toward Kai Xin and both are good friends, but other than that, we never get much more out of her character. The actor for Shao Jie does not have too much to mention. Though his character is the most dynamic throughout this drama, we don’t connect with him too much. I often find myself berating him for not realizing so many things and being so uncertain all the time. The only time he seems to do something manly of worthy notice, it is not even he that does the work but Kai Xin. Afterwards he reverts right back to his wishy washy self.
The rest of the cast was fantastic. The Guo household for example, at first finds Kai Xin useful for their own purposes, however, they later begin to treat her as family. The music was enjoyable. I really loved all the music they played during the drama. The humor parts and emotional scenes were all paired with music nicely.
Overall, the script was quite average, but the amount of dynamic emotions and characters really balanced the drama out. There were a few good surprises, but for the most part the drama was very predictable. This is not necessarily a bad thing because trying to see everything play out in the end kept me watching the drama. I won’t deny that I did skip many scenes, but that is only because I don’t have too much time and I loved Kai Xin’s character a lot.
Rating:
4.0/5.0
Everything Drama 
