Synopsis:
Lu Ru Hua is a well-known “salesman” in Haicheng University, where she will do anything to make money, from sneaking into the boy’s dorm to deliver takeaways to queuing in the scorching sun to get other people’s military training equipment and a stock of anything that you could possibly need at a university all whilst she is studying. However the reason why she does this is to pay the crippling debts her parents left behind after their death and the exorbitant medical fees for her twin brother, Lu Si Yu, the student who achieved the highest marks in the entrance exam in that year.
Plot
To me, one of the good/bad things about dramas about students and school is that they may bring back memories of your time at school, that they are relatable to some of the experiences you may have had. Which is why I usually avoid watching them. But I heard that this was a comedy rather than a melodrama so I decided to give it a go anyway.
True, there are some very light hearted, hilarious moments, Wen Chu’s poor grasp of chinese, the male dorm friend who cares a lot about his beauty, the weird director of the University etc. But actually it touches some quite topics too which are hidden underneath the comedic packaging and the good looking, adorable cast.
First the bullying. Ru Hua is very different from everyone else, she’s poor, has many different jobs, and even basically exchanges her services in exchange for money so naturally the target/suspect whenever something goes wrong. If it was not for her friends, she would have probably been bullied more.
Prejudice: First impressions are extremely important. To me Wen Chen is the embodiment of prejudice. Yes he falls in love with her, but she is the one he automatically suspects whenever something involving money happens instead of trusting her. Because deep down to him she has no morals, no base line. And he also doesn’t give her enough respect to understand her. Although during the series he does grow up and learns to think in her shoes and becomes more accepting of her situation instead of throwing a tantrum.
Overall, in terms of the plot I find that it is very similar to most school/slice of life dramas as it’s about going up, dreams, ambitions and being young that’s fairly light hearted and doesn’t have an extremely complex storyline.
Production
Perhaps it’s just me, but I feel as if everyone is covered in too much powder that it looks a little ghastly? But apart from that, the university looked like a university, the clothes were quite pretty and the production didn’t look as if they were on a tight budget.
Characters
I think the character I loved the most were Ru Hua because of her optimism, her bubbly and friendly nature, Siyu because despite his health issues he was also someone who was kind, caring and open minded and his brotherly love for Ru Hua was to try and help her out as much as possible whilst keeping her mind at ease. I was surprised that I would come to like Zisu in the end because she was such a b**** at the beginning but then her character really developed when she let go of her jealousy and prejudice and fell in love with Siyu. Pupu was also very cute and Jin Liu and Su Mei made a hilarious couple. With this drama I did get 2nd-3rd male lead syndrome.
Spoiler: I felt that if Ru Hua chose Fang Luo or even Bei Che perhaps she would have less of a heartache than if she chose Wen Chu.
Subbing
Overall, I felt that this was a pretty straightforward drama to sub except in some areas there may be a few technical art terms especially the traditional chinese art terms that you might struggle to find the right words to translate it. To me, I think the timing is the bit that you would probably spend the most time doing as most of the lines are spoken very quickly and there isn’t much time to actually the subtitles even you don’t do any tweaking.
Productive Procrastination 