About this Site

Welcome to Chinese Historical Drama Corner!

I am 🐼Pandafan and this site is an homage to all things Chinese Historical Drama - be it wuxia, xianxia, romcom, palace, fantasy...  Whatever the genre, so long as it is 古装/period costume drama, there's escapist magic in the making.      

Here's a guide to how my site works:

(Largely) spoiler free Synopsis 

We love a good drama synopsis. Why? Because life is too short to start a long drama with out some idea of what it's about and what we are getting into... and because it is often hard to find an accurate non-machine translated synopsis that actually bears some resemblance to the drama in question.  

That's why I like to provide accurate, non-machine translated, and largely spoiler free synopses for the Chinese historical dramas I've watched.  I usually watch at least a few episodes before putting pen to paper (or rather fingers to keyboard) to ensure that I can provide an accurate synopsis.  I will also provide a link to a good trailer and some initial thoughts.  See screenshot example on the right 👉   

You can find all of the largely spoiler free synopses of the dramas I have done under the Synopses - List tab, where all my synopses are set out in alphabetical order and under the year the drama came out. 

Just click the link to go straight to the synopsis you are after:

Final Reviews/Ratings

If you're anything like me, you will want to know whether a Drama is worth starting, and after finishing a Drama, you will want to check out what others think.   

Also, sometimes I'm just not quite ready to say goodbye to the characters after a Drama has finished and final reviews helps me do that.  I relive the good, the bad, the ugly, and if I'm lucky, the sublime...  A form of Drama exorcism if you will...

Please note, my final reviews have varying degrees of spoilers and are written for those who have finished the drama.  If you want to get a spoiler free rating, the first part of the review provides that by giving the drama a rating out of 10, and a spoiler free overall impression.  

I will then provide a SPOILERS AHEAD warning signpost - anything after that is fair game in terms of spoilers.  With a detailed final review,  I will delve into the intricacies of the plot and what I did and did not like as well as character analysis. 

   

Screenshot example to the left of the first part of a final review 👈

Please feel free to let me know if you share my thoughts in the comments section 😉

ps) I will always finish a Drama before posting a final review - I feel it is only fair to provide a considered review that has seen everything the Drama has to offer.

Final Reviews/Ratings can be found by clicking the corresponding tab, which will take you to a page with links to each of my final review/ratings.  

Episode Recaps

Occasionally, I will commit to recapping an entire drama.  But it takes time and dedication... and I have a day job.  So Episode Recaps are more rare. 

However, when I do commit to doing Episode Recaps, I will go all in (screen shots and acerbic asides etc) and I will always finish recapping the drama. Eventually.😅 

You can find a link to all the episode recaps I have done under the Episode recaps - List tab.  

This usefully provides links to each individual episode recap, eg👆

Random musings

This is really as the fancy takes me, but sometimes I will feel like writing an article on a specific part of a Chinese Historical Drama, for example, the soundtrack.  

You can find such articles under the Random musings tab:  

Support Pandafan

Blogging is thirsty work - if you'd like to support this site, please share your thoughts in the comments sections and/or buy me a Coffee:

 

Happy Chinese Historical Drama watching! 

Yours,

🐼 Pandafan