Xiao Ruofeng - Tumblr Posts

Dashing Youth Costume Details

“I remember many years ago when I was just an unpopular prince, I didn’t really get to drink good tea. But your grandfather only loved liquor. He threw a lot of tea away, so I got to taste some good tea. I loved drinking tea since then. Tea is great stuff. I don’t want to drink it alone. I want the world to know how wonderful it is. All the strife in this world is caused by the loss of oneself, which is caused by ignorance. I will set the world right by cleaning up evil.”

I love this scene so much. The way it gives meaning to the time Zhuo Qing brought him tea in season 1, the way it lays out his motivations, how it conveys some difficulty and underlying sadness in his past… The contrast between the potential tone-deafness of saying all this to Xiao Ruofeng, who nearly died as a child because his mother was an unpopular consort, and the possibility that Emperor Tai’an sees something of himself in him because Xiao Ruofeng and he were both once unpopular.

The donghua has set itself up to be a chess game between Emperor Tai’an and Xiao Ruofeng, and this scene is very effective in developing it (particularly in the way it contrasts tea with liquor, which holds significance to Baili Dongjun)