The high fever issue really makes me wonder what the general population health is like. Also, a fever often makes them go to the hospital, so I’m unclear what is socially acceptable hospital symptoms for each society. I’m driven crazy by the way they use the towel to wipe the forehead. They pat OVER the bangs, and put their hand OVER the bangs to check for temperature. Reality would be shoving the bangs aside before those actions.
I hadn’t noticed that the vehicles were white that kept hitting people. Did notice all the accidents.
Cooking! Food, glorious food! Everywhere. Husband has taken up ramen. It’s like when I became addicted to Skippys during the You Asked For It TV show. Best show for food - Sleuth of the Ming Dynasty.
K-Dramas crack me up. I love watching them.
First everyone knows the Frozen Kiss. When they finally kiss which is often after quite a bit of time, they can only touch lips and stand there (other stuff is subject to censorship although I have seen some that push the envelope). I always whisper to my wife, “ooh, now they HAVE to get married, they’ve done the Frozen Kiss.” I actually like that a lot of K-Dramas are very G-rated.
Then I like how you can always tell the Bad Guy. If you’re a real criminal you have to wear all black and wear a certain kind of black Korean baseball cap and dark sunglasses. You’re wearing black because you are trying to be inconspicuous, but of course in a K-Drama you stand out like a sore thumb.
Other strange rules. You can show guns, but you can’t show knives (those always get blurred out). And then you have the obligatory one of throwing water at someone or pouring it over their head (saw that one only a couple of nights ago). And they may be using all sorts of obscenities against each other, but it always gets translated as “you witch,” or “you little brat.”
And then they’re always getting some strange disease, often genetic, that nobody has ever heard of and end up in the hospital all the time. But nobody can actually say what the disease is to another. So it’s always, “oh, I just have a little cold,” or “I drank too much soju last night.” And half the time the doctors won’t tell the patients what is actually wrong with them, it’s just “oh you’ll probably feel better in a couple of days.”
And then there are the “you know a disaster is about to happen” scenes. Like when they give a little girl a ball and tell her to go out and play by the busy street. And cars and trucks never slow down or stop when they are about to run someone over. Instead, they just lean on the horn and accelerate.
And boy do they love to drink. Beer isn’t even really like real alcohol, it’s more like water, it has to be shots of soju or whiskey to even be considered alcohol. And I’m always amazed at the surgeons and operating teams that are always doing the most sensitive and demanding brain or heart surgery the morning after they have all been getting blind drunk and passing out.
Chinese dramas are even more entertaining by the way. One is they are even more blatant in product promotion. They are always trying to sell something or convince you to buy and eat some sort of food. Sometimes they will even stop the dialogue and then have the actors do an actual commercial right in the middle of filming. It’s part of the fun in watching the drama.
This is not to say K-Dramas and C-Dramas are not well made. A lot of them are just fantastic. Very enjoyable and then you get hooked.
Have you noticed that no matter what the head injury is, no one’s hair ever gets shaved around the wound? They just wind a white cloth around the head which disappears soon after they leave the hospital. And that a cut on the arm, leg or finger can be an inch or more long but they all use the same small size bandaid to fix it?
You mentioned the food; you can tell how the national psyche is still affected by all the famines China, Korea and Japan have had. Food (and alcohol) is a major component of nearly every drama I’ve seen so far. I now know why chopsticks aren’t a problem, they just shovel the food in by holding the bowl up to their mouths. That makes a lot more sense than trying to maneuver a few grains of rice from the table on up.
Found Sleuth of Ming Dynasty trailer on YT. Thank you for mentioning it; the humor in the trailer reminds me of Qin Qin Zi Jin which finished airing on YT several weeks ago.