Arduinna

Round-up of a bunch of recent baihe mini-dramas (with the usual dose of plausible deniability), all in vertical format.

1. My Bestie is Three Thousand Years Old (我的姐妹三千岁, pinyin: wo de jiemei san qian sui). A kind-hearted but penniless girl stumbles into a suspiciously long-lived ice queen CEO's life, and eventually they learn that their fates have been connected for thousands of years. Lightweight and very tropey, but fairly fun (especially if you don't think too hard about it). It aired originally on the Hongguo (红果) app, and can also be viewed on the Fanqie (番茄) app. It is available here with English subtitles. 89 episodes of two to three minutes each.

2. Met Her Majesty the Emperor While On the Run (逃婚路上遇女帝, pinyin: taohun lushang yu nüdi). A voice actress time-travels to the past, and finds herself in the body of a young woman who has sort-of accidentally murdered her new husband on their wedding night. She goes on the run, in the process of which she encounters and helps (and is helped by) the titular female emperor. The writing is pretty weak, and the production looks very low-budget, and I think you'd have the best chance of enjoying this if you turned your brain mostly off. It aired originally on Douyin (playlist here) and can be viewed here on YouTube with truly woeful MTL English subtitles and muted-out BGM. 59 episodes of two to three minutes each. Content notes: sexual assault and threats thereof, some ableism.

3. Two Empresses Dowager Reborn (两宫太后重生了，更改诏书换皇帝, pinyin: liang gong taihou chongsheng le, genggai zhaoshu huan huangdi). On the day her son takes the throne, Noble Consort Yu Lianruo has her rival Empress Chu Jiuyin put to death — only to be betrayed in her turn. When she wakes up, having been reborn just before that fateful day, she swears vengeance and gains an unlikely ally. For the optimum viewing experience, turn off your brain slightly (though not as much as for the previous show), ignore the whiplash pacing, plot holes and continuity errors, and focus on having a good time shipping the empress and the consort (plus the secret secondary f/f couple). Jiang Wuhan, who plays the empress, also plays the CEO in My Bestie is Three Thousand Years Old. It aired originally on the Hongguo app, and can also be viewed on the Fanqie app. It is available here with bad MTL English subtitles and muted BGM. 80 episodes of two to three minutes each. Content notes: sexual assault (of big bad) played for laughs, implied rape.

4. Be Her Persistence (犟骨, pinyin: jiang gu). Zheng Xingxing time-travels back to the late Qing Dynasty/early Republican Era, where she meets Jiang Jinghua, a young woman from a rich, abusive family. Together the two of them strike a blow against the patriarchy by setting up a school for girls and women. The costumes and props are surprisingly high quality, though I had questions about historical accuracy and especially plot accuracy — surely these girls shouldn't be so nicely dressed when they've barely got two coppers to rub together and are huddling in an abandoned temple for shelter? The same cannot be said for the writing, which goes from marginally serviceable (though rather didactic) at the beginning to an INCREDIBLE number of plot holes and dropped plotlines towards the end, which is a pity given the ambition and importance of the theme. Jiang Jinghua is played by Peng Yaqi, who also plays Song Jiayu in Be Her Resilience (以她之韧, pinyin: yi ta zhi ren), hence my title translation for this show. This aired originally on Xiaohongshu (playlist here). It is available here with bad MTL English subtitles and muted-out BGM. 44 episodes of two to three minutes each. Note: Peng Yaqi also plays Zheng Xingxing's grandmother (I don't know why, perhaps an anti-censorship measure?) but the show makes it very clear that the grandmother and Jiang Jinghua are not the same person.