Reel Tastes & Travels – a light dose of entertainment to wake you up

‘Once you understand the meaning behind it, it’s nothing special.’ – Yinghua

‘The world is full of things we may never understand.’ – Maomao

Two statements that encapsulate two opposing viewpoints that run through this episode. For surely part of the allure of a ghost story, a myth, a legend, is the inexplicability of it. It speaks to a part of us that wants to believe in the impossible. Yet it is true that often what appears to be otherworldly, in fact, has a perfectly rational explanation behind it. And once that explanation is uncovered, the mystical nature of the story is lost, and it becomes mundane. However, it is also true that there are things which cannot be explained – but is that merely due to a gap in our ability and knowledge, or is it truly due to supernatural forces?

All this is precipitated by Yinghua cajoling Maomao into accompanying her to a night-time gathering of the palace ladies. As we have seen before, stuck inside the palace walls, there is little by way of entertainment for the palace ladies. And so this has the air of an (almost) clandestine midnight party scaring each other with ghost stories. The setting is perfect – an old room in a disused part of the palace, barely lit by a fire in the middle and the candle each attendee holds. Each woman taking it in turn to tell her story, blowing out her candle when done, with the growing darkness and increasing shadows adding to the spookiness of the endeavour as the night progresses.

Maomao appears to be unimpressed however, struggling to hide her yawns as the stories go on. It is here that the show quite cleverly pulls the wool over our eyes. We have had 33 episodes of Maomao and her practical worldview. She always looks for a logical explanation over a supernatural one and usually finds it. And so, it is not surprising to see her unphased, even bored by ghost stories. As her mind wanders, she is struck by the host’s emphasis on 13 stories being shared despite only 12 participants. And she suddenly realizes that her sleepiness is not due to boredom or the late hour but due to the fire releasing toxins that are slowly poisoning everyone in the room. She springs into action and averts tragedy, and in the ensuing confusion, the host disappears.

Hmmm… a genuine mistake? A prank gone wrong? Or something more sinister? Yinghua is curiously unphased by it… until Lady Hongniang reveals that these gatherings were previously conducted by an old member of the late Emperor’s harem, echoing the story told by the host that night, and had stopped after her death the previous year before mysteriously restarting that night. Was the entire night’s happenings the act of a vengeful spirit? Or someone knowledgeable using the past to disguise their own actions? We are left as in the dark as Maomao and Yinghua.

Bringing us full circle back to the two statements above. Interestingly, these statements are uttered by the people we’d least expect. The credulous Yinghua appears to be  a little less ready to believe any story after hearing Maomao’s explanation of the seemingly supernatural deaths in one of the ghost stories. And Maomao appears to be at least a bit more open to considering that not everything may have a ready explanation.

Stray Musings

• Shishui pops up again at the ladies’ gathering and the mystery of who she is deepens. We learn that she is adept at telling stories (a sign that we may need to reexamine anything she has said in the past?) and that her profile looks familiar to Maoamao