Juniper
Normally I don’t watch supernatural dramas but there have been some good ones like the Korean “Goblin” and “Hotel Del Luna”. I started on Chinese drama “Rattan” as it stars Vin Zhang as the lead and he’s a good actor. The female lead is Sally Jing who stars as Si Teng, an alien plant hybrid (not sure exactly what that means but apparently alien DNA combined with plants and created her).
The story opens on a night in Shanghai in the 1940s. Si Teng who is elegant and refined in a qipao takes a trishaw ride to a warehouse where she has a brief, no-nonsense conversation with an unknown person. After Si Teng delivers her ultimatum, she is killed by the unknown person, vines wrap around her body. The unknown person instructs the peeping trishaw driver to take Si Teng’s body to a place called Dana.
Years later, Qin Fang played by Vin Zhang arrives in Dana with his girlfriend to visit his family’s benefactor but there is no one at the benefactor’s home. As he and his gf sit in the hotel lobby before checking in, a mysterious stranger approaches them and invites them to have dinner with him that night, he is staying in another hotel. That evening, Qin Fang’s gf drugs his water and knocks him out while she sneaks out to meet the mysterious stranger.
They have an argument and a knife is stuck into the man but the gf never touched the knife. She makes a run back to the hotel room she shares with Qin Fang where he is still unsconcious. She takes him to the car where they are pursued by unknown men. They stop at a precipice and with the car dangling over the edge, the gf is forced out of the car. Qin Fang is still under the effects of the sleeping drug. One of the men push the car over the precipice and Qin Fang is ostensibly killed, there’s a branch right through his body.
With the car rolling down, Si teng is woken up from her decades long slumber like Rip Van Winkle only she looks too good to be anything like RVW. I have watched 3 episodes so far and this actress looks so poised and imperious. She orders Qin Fang to be her follower after she restores him to life. He has no choice but to obey her as when he tried to run away, his face turned into a ghastly mess, as if he was some zombie. The further he strays from her, the more corpse-like his face becomes and the closer he gets to her, the more normal his face becomes.
There are ancient societies out to eliminate Si Teng. She wants to meet the members of these societies. So far there is a lot to be revealed about Si Teng’s past. The special effects in this drama are superb especially when Si Teng uses her powers to pull someone to her by wrapping them in rattan vines. She is afraid of nothing except worms since she is a plant!
