Review: The Bad Kids (隱秘的角落) (2020)

[phanero]

This was a really good drama. It's one of those dramas that I would recommend to people who weren't into Chinese dramas.

This drama is important in a lot of ways. If you are into Cdramas, you may know that in recent years, dramas have been dragged out for the sake of more revenue (as dramas are sold per episode). Though this was hardly the first short drama in recent years, the attention it garnered probably encouraged a lot of other production companies to consider shorter dramas with high quality episodes.

After the release of the Bad Kids, we had a flurry of 12-episode thriller dramas that followed. Like I said, The Bad Kids was hardly the first. For one, Burning Ice had a very similar format, but it hadn't garnered the attention that the Bad Kids had. But I do appreciate what it's done, showing the world that Cdramas can be action packed and high quality.

This drama was excellent, but I don't think it's perfect. There are some things in the story that I think weren't as tight as they could've been. But I mean, it was still very good. I think my favourite part of this drama was probably the acting. The child actors exceeded my expectations and Qin Hao performed his role in a way that I think not many others could do.

Anyway, on with the write up! Before I started writing, I did watch the two videos by AvenueX that discussed hidden details and changes from the book. It did give me a lot of important background information, and a lot of commenters had really good theories too. I will definitely be bringing up some of the things I read and heard here.

These are just my initial thoughts fresh after finishing the drama. I'm sure that as I think more about it, I might have more ideas popping up.

Spoilers.



Before I begin, I wanted to mention that I had also written thought posts as I watched the show. I've linked them here. (Ep 1) (Ep 2) (Ep 3) (Ep 4-6) (Ep 7) (Ep 8) (Ep 9) (Ep 10) (Ep 11)

Story

On the surface, I would describe this as a thriller story about a group of three kids and an adult who become entwined in a series of crimes. I think the real story here is about Zhang Dongsheng and Zhu Chaoyang. Zhang Dongsheng is a bad adult, but what does a child go through to become him? Is it inevitable that Chaoyang will become like him, or can the bad behaviour be nurtured out?

The police investigation part of the story was a bit generic, as in Officer Ye didn't do a whole lot of sleuthing. This is what led me to believe that the police story and crime chasing weren't the most important aspects of the show.

Ending

The official ending was that Zhang Dongsheng died, and Yan Liang and Yue Pu survived. However, after watching AvenueX's video, I do want to believe the alternative ending.

She mentioned that there was a deleted scene where Zhang Dongsheng was eating at a McDonald's alone, and another one where he'd talked about having a daughter with his then-wife. I really felt that it would've made more sense that Yan Liang had killed Yue Pu. At that point in the drama, he was firmly in kill mode, regardless of who was posing a threat to him. Especially since he'd stopped talking to the emergency medical personnel part way through his phone call, I felt that that scene, along with the build up, would've flowed smoothly into the conclusion that he'd killed Yue Pu, even if he'd regret it later.

All along, I'd expected Yan Liang to survive as Yan Liang was the main detective in Burning Ice. However, AvenueX revealed that Yan Liang in the drama was originally called Ding Hao in the book, therefore showing that they were originally different characters. I feel kind of cheated now, because producers are trying to make a cinematic universe where there wasn't one. But anyway, AvenueX posited a theory that Yan Liang wasn't actually alive. He was dressed in all white as he walked into Zhu Chaoyang's assembly. The first thing I thought was that he was dressed like an angel. AvenueX also noted that nobody else had noticed him. Basically, her theory was that he was alive in a "sixth sense" way, in that his interactions with living humans was questionable. While I felt it would've been more fitting for Yue Pu to have died, I don't have as strong of an opinion for Yan Liang. He was always the kind of guy who was "survival first," so if he survived, it wouldn't be surprising, but it also wouldn't have not made sense if he had drowned after falling from the ship.

AvenueX also mentioned that the original last line that Zhang Dongsheng said to Zhu Chaoyang was that he still had a chance. The way it was interpreted was that Zhang Dongsheng often asked whether he still had a chance, before committing murder. By telling Zhu Chaoyang that he had a chance, Zhang Dongsheng seemed to be trying to stop Zhu Chaoyang from becoming home. I don't have an opinion on this. I don't think that Zhang Dongsheng is that morally good of a man, that he'd want to ward Zhu Chaoyang away from becoming a second version of himself.

Now that I've discussed the points brought up by AvenueX, I should talk about my own thoughts on the ending lol.

As I mentioned, I think this story was partially about Zhu Chaoyang's transformation. At the beginning, he appeared a well-behaving and studious kid. As the drama unfolded we saw him for the flaky, weak, and disloyal person that he was. Well, it wasn't like he was this person all along, but he'd never really been in a position where he'd had to act those ways to protect himself or to get what he wanted.

Even by the end of the drama, Zhu Chaoyang had remained mum about his involvement in Zhu Jingjing's death. It was only Yue Pu's letter that pushed him to tell the truth for the sake of a new beginning, but I think that he'd already changed. I already see Zhu Chaoyang as the lying and more conniving person. The thing is, is that completely bad? By the end of the drama, he's made one friend in Ye Chimin (maybe), but at what cost? He'd told his mom that he'd earned first place in another academic thing but we see his mom is totally deflated now. Part of it is probably because she realizes that she'd place too much worth in academics and not enough in teaching her son how to remain morally upright.

Like I said, I think it would've made more sense for Yue Pu to die, and her send off in this drama was kind of weird, in that she was only mentioned off screen. As for Yan Liang, this drama was supposed to be his origin story for the other Yan Liang characters to come.

For Zhang Dongsheng, he didn't really "change" over the course of this show, we just saw him for who he was. The difference between Zhu Chaoyang and Zhang Dongsheng was that Zhang Dongsheng was an adult, was supposed to be set in his ways, whereas Chaoyang was supposed to still have time to develop.

After setting fire to the fish facility, Zhang Dongsheng had considered committing suicide, but he backed off. Instead, at the end of the drama, he committed suicide via cop, very obviously looking like he was going to attack Zhu Chaoyang and getting shot then. This reaffirmed my stance that Zhang Dongsheng was a coward. He never had the courage to do what he thought was the right thing, only ever having the courage to do what he knew was the wrong thing.

Changes from the book

Here is where shit gets INSANE. According to AvenueX there were a shitton of changes from the book, to the point that I could hardly say the drama was an adaptation. I'd call the drama a reinterpretation. In this case, I wouldn't say that the drama was bad for not being faithful to the book. Instead, I'd say that the scriptwriters took inspiration from the book and wrote their own story.

The major change is that Zhu Chaoyang was the OG mastermind of everything. In the book, he was already evil to the core. He'd actually pushed Zhu Jingjing to her death, and he had gotten Zhang Dongsheng, Yue Pu, and Ding Hao to murder his father and father's current wife. He'd also foreseen Zhang Dongsheng's plan to kill all three kids and he instead turned it back on Zhang Dongsheng. He'd also been planning evidence to exonerate himself for months and months.

While I absolutely love messed up stuff in fiction (like psychopathic kids), that obviously would not pass censorship. On the other hand, the drama approached Zhu Chaoyang in a totally different way that wasn't without merit. In the drama, we watched Zhu Chaoyang transform before our eyes, which is a discussion itself.

Because of this, I think that the original book was probably more of a pure thriller, whereas the drama was turned into more of a character study.

AvenueX mentioned that the original book was darker in almost every aspect. Ding Hao and Yue Pu's parents were criminals (who'd done heinous crimes) and executed on death row, and they had escaped the orphanage because Yue Pu was being sexually abused by the head of their orphanage. All of that wouldn't have passed censorship, and to be honest, given the contents of the drama, I'm not sure how relevant those backgrounds would've been to the story. It would feel like shock for the sake of shock as opposed to a part of an explanation for who Yan Liang and Yue Pu were.

Production

Episodes

As I mentioned, each episode was very high quality, and I liked how much care was put into assembling each one. When I'd first taken a look at the series, I thought it was interesting that the episodes were of irregular length. That means the editors had cut off the episodes wherever they found a comfortable break in the story, as opposed to chopping off the story no matter what at the 45 minute mark.

Each episode was also given a title. Those titles had to do with events that happened in the episode, but they often had a more symbolic meaning too. I had fun trying to deduce how the title cards related to the events of the episode.

Acting

The kids really blew me away with how good they were. Their acting took a bit of getting used to because I don't hang out with kids and I don't really have a good idea of how they itneract with one another anymore lol. At first, I thought they were not so expressive with their faces, but over time, I started to really get a sense for the characters through their body language. Their body language was so good, both as an interpretation of their characters, and as an expression of how they were feeling at the time.

Qin Hao's acting was also very impressive. The thing about Zhang Dongsheng was that he had to look like the perfect gentleman, but only when the audience took a closer look, could we see that he traits that just weren't right. If given to a less skilled actor, I feel that Zhang Dongsheng could've come off like a comical villain. Instead, I like that Qin Hao gave us this complex blend of superficial good with fundamentally bad in one body.

All of the supporting characters were great too. I mentioned this in one of my episode posts, but there were a lot of familiar actors that I'd seen in other Cdramas. To be fair, for the ones I did recognize, I recognized them from higher budget shows with good scripts. So basically, I already knew these supporting actors were capable of being great. But having several of these great actors together just elevated the entire experience. It was very easy to be immersed in the story.

Language

This is just me being nitpicky, alright lol. It appears that this story took place in Southern China, probably Guangdong province. At times in the show, people would speak Cantonese.

However, it drove me up the wall how bad the Cantonese would sometimes be. Maybe I'm not qualified to speak on this because I don't actually live in China, but I do speak Cantonese (it's my second best language after English) and I would argue that my Cantonese was better than 90% of the Cantonese show.

Many of the background voices that spoke Cantonese were heavily accented. The other thing was that many speakers would say certain terms that were used in Mandarin, but not in Cantonese. Now, I know that Guangdong Cantonese is closer to Mandarin than Hong Kong Cantonese is (I speak Hong Kong Cantonese), but like, it can't be that different. There were some terms that were so uncomfortable to my ears lol.

Granted, there were always subtitles to transcribe what was being said, but if this high budget production made an effort to put Cantonese in its show, why couldn't it go all the way and hire actual people who spoke actual Cantonese?

The best, most accurate Cantonese I heard in this show was actually from the actor who played Zhu Yongping. I looked him up and he was from Guangdong province, which would explain his fluency and him using terms that were not awkward as hell. Some of his gambling buddies spoke Cantonese well too, but they did seem a little awkward at times too. I wonder how much of their conversations were directly from the script, and how much of it was just themselves speaking amongst one another (giving them the liberty to speak Cantonese in a way that was comfortable to them).

Characters

Zhang Dongsheng

Zhang Dongsheng was our bad adult. All of the events in the story started off by him murdering his mother and father-in-law, whom he believed were responsible for the rift between him and his wife. The murder didn't help his relationship and he eventually killed his wife as well. At the core of it, Zhang Dongsheng is a person who just does not get other people. I don't have the proper scientific knowledge about it, but he doesn't understand human relationships the way that normal people do. As a math teacher, his way of thinking is very logical. If X, then Y. If I act as the perfect husband, then my wife will love me forever. Zhang Dongsheng has trouble considering the human, irrational aspect of life. And because that part of him was not checked all his life, he's grown into this stilted adult.

Meanwhile, Zhang Dongsheng was being blackmailed by the kids over the video of him pushing his in-laws down the mountain. Though initially resistant, he eventually succumbed to the blackmail and procured the 300,000 RMB. I'd previously seen him as a prideful man. He'd said several times to the kids that he didn't have that much money. Perhaps it was a bluff, but if it wasn't a bluff, I still didn't expect him to actually try to get the money. I thought he had too much pride to let himself be blackmailed by kids.

The next part of the drama was when things started getting weird. He started helping the kids. What made him do that? Perhaps as the deleted scene had mentioned, maybe Zhang Dongsheng does have a weakness for kids. I'd theorized before that as a teacher, Zhang Dongsheng was trained to speak to kids in a soft and gentle manner, but just as he was trained to speak to kids, he was also trained to listen to kids, and it was instinct that pushed him to help Zhu Chaoyang when he was kidnapped by Wang Li. Though honestly, for any regular person, it would've been the normal thing to want to help a kid who'd gotten kidnapped. Zhang Dongsheng was kind of in the middle here. It was in his interest that Zhu Chaoyang be gotten rid of because he was a huge thorn in his side. But if he followed Zhu Chaoyang, Zhang Dongsheng would've been able to have gotten the money back.

In that night, Zhang Dongsheng bonded with Yue Pu. Perhaps that was what made him give shelter to Yue Pu and Yan Liang during the typhoon. Zhang Dongsheng let himself be guided by his emotions. Perhaps this was the first time that people were actually nice to him. As we know, Zhang Dongsheng lived a generally very introverted and isolated life. He had no friends that we knew of. Yue Pu was the first to show any genuine interest in him.

However, Yan Liang and Zhu Chaoyang did not have the same naivete to them, and that was what let Zhang Dongsheng to rue that he ever trusted the kids. The one time he opened his heart, he was tricked, and this was probably the start of Dongsheng's devolving. He went into panic mode, seeing all threats as something to be eliminated. He implied that he'd gotten rid of Yue Pu, though later it was revealed that he'd saved her (debatable). But she genuinely did not know about the extra memory card, so perhaps that was why Zhang Dongsheng let him off the hook. But he was still out to get Zhu Chaoyang and Yan Liang, and he was planning to kill them at the fish facility. Zhu Yongping and Wang Yao were collateral damage, but like I said, he was in panic mode and since they witnessed him somewhere he wasn't supposed to be, they had to go.

Zhang Dongsheng unsuccessfully killed Yan Liang and Zhu Chaoyang, and a second meetup was suggested. However, it seems that this time, he no longer held the conviction he'd had at the fish facility. Between the fish facility scene and the ship scene, we saw Zhang Dongsheng consider committing suicide by climbing out of his balcony. However, he didn't have the guts to do so, and so I believe that he'd arrived at the ship with the intention to die, so that he wouldn't have to kill himself. Like I said, I think that confirmed that Zhang Dongsheng was a bit of a coward. He didn't have the guts to face the real, rightful consequences of his actions, but he also didn't have the guts to commit suicide to avoid his rightful punishment.

At the end, Zhang Dongsheng said that he chose to believe in fairy tales, a reference to the story of Descartes dying as a star-crossed lover to the princess. But Zhang Dongsheng committing suicide was also his own version of a fairy tale. If he'd gone to jail and paid for his crimes, it would've proved that he was wrong. Being killed would've allowed him to believe that perhaps what he'd done wasn't entirely wrong, but now that he was dead, there was no use in dissecting them.

Let me try to make sense of Zhang Dongsheng. I think that he was a person who was very logical. Like I said, he thought that one thing would always lead to another every time, but that obviously wasn't true. It was the reason why his marriage was falling apart. He couldn't fathom the fact that his wife could fall out of love with him through no fault of his own. Instead, he thought that it had to be those pesky in-laws who were the sole source of his wife's coldness to him.

I believe Zhang Dongsheng is a disorganized person. He doesn't think very far in advance. He's a kind of person who acts on instinct. Before, bettering his relationship with his wife was always his long-term goal, but having eliminated his own wife, what did he aim for now? He wanted a new beginning, but that's still kind of a short-term goal. It just means that for the time being, he's going to try to put everything behind him and move on. But as Yue Pu said in her letter to Zhu Chaoyang, one cannot truly move on until they've confessed to all their crimes, which Zhang Dongsheng just did not want to confront. All of the reckless actions that Zhang Dongsheng did were also reflective of his disorganized nature. He's hardly a long-term mastermind.

I felt that Zhang Dongsheng was a bit of a prideful person, but I think that was just the image he wanted to project. In reality, the man has barely any confidence, nor does he have anything to back it up. I theorized that being a teacher would lead him to believe that he had power over the kids. That was why he was acting so confident when they'd first approached him for money. He felt he could assert his teacher voice and they would listen. But it didn't work, and we saw his ego shrinking over the course of the show. When he approached the loan shark, I think that was one of the few times he was interacting with another adult without being in the capacity of a teacher (e.g. he wasn't talking to another adult who was a student's parent, etc.). He looked so timid and insecure in front of the loan shark and it was a bit jarring.

It was during his murder of Wang Yao that I realized that Zhang Dongsheng really was no master manipulator. He earned Pupu's trust by being her main caretaker for a period of time, and he became acquainted with Chaoyang as his math teacher, as well as an accomplice who'd saved his life. But Zhang Dongsheng had zero leverage on Yan Liang, and when he confronted Yan Liang about the second memory card, he had to lash out with anger and guilt to get him to do what Zhang Dongsheng wanted. Zhang Dongsheng killed people because he couldn't manipulate them, and that was because he just didn't understand people, nor did he have the emotional capacity to handle events that didn't go his way.

With regards to the feelings that Zhang Dongsheng developed for Yue Pu, I really think it would've been nice if the drama had brought up his intention to have kids with Xu Jing. It would really give us another dimension to his character. Why would a person like this, so unable to love, want a child? Last year, I'd read the book "The Salvation of a Saint" by Keigo Higashino. In the book, there was a guy who would enter into relationships with the explicit purpose of having children. He would be straight up about this expectation before dating and marrying them. The detectives in that book mentioned that he was an orphan, and because of that, he was desperate to have someone who would always be his. I think there was a similar sentiment here. We don't know anything about Zhang Dongsheng's past, but we know that he's very isolated, even from his own life. A child, however, would always be his own. A biological child would always be connected to him, but even if a child was not biological, through the process of being that child's only father figure, that itself is a relationship that can never be replaced. So I think that may have been his motivation for wanting a child.

Yue Pu was his test run for having a child, and it ended poorly. Technically, Yue Pu responded very well to his care, and really looked up to him. But Yan Liang and Zhu Chaoyang were a bit older and were still skeptical of any traps Zhang Dongsheng might've set up. I really don't think Zhang Dongsheng had set up any traps. I think he was trying to be a good person by helping them (or his impression of a good person), because by doing so, they would finally be on their way and he could start his life over.

In the book, Zhang Dongsheng had been manipulated to a further extent by Zhu Chaoyang, but we didn't see that in the drama. Instead, Zhang Dongsheng was kind of a mentor figure to Chaoyang, a reflection of who Chaoyang could become. Zhang Dongsheng always tried to be kind to Chaoyang, probably because he saw himself in him. Chaoyang had the same interest in math, and Chaoyang similarly appeared polite and well-behaved on the outside. But over the course of the drama, we saw that Chaoyang was just as flimsy as Zhang Dongsheng was as a person.

As I mentioned, I didn't really think that Zhang Dongsheng had a vested interest in Chaoyang not becoming himself. I don't think that Zhang Dongsheng ever felt paternal to Chaoyang like he did to Yue Pu. He did fancy himself a bit of a mentor because of their shared love of math, but I never saw it as anything more than that.

It's hard to summarize Zhang Dongsheng because he is a mix of a lot of different traits. I just love how tight the script was, and how detailed Qin Hao's acting was, in order to give us this complex character. I'm just super surprised I had this much to write about Zhang Dongsheng lol.

Zhu Chaoyang

So as I mentioned, apparently Zhu Chaoyang was the totally evil mastermind in the book, but in the drama, he was nowhere near that. Instead, he was a child with the potential to become someone like Zhang Dongsheng.

AvenueX mentioned that Dongsheng and Chaoyang are both names referencing mornings or rising suns, implying that these two characters share a lot in common. I'm going to be doing a lot of jumping back and forth in time because unlike Zhang Dongsheng, Chaoyang goes through a transformation during this show, and I'm going to have to do a lot of compare and contrast.

At the beginning of the show, Zhu Chaoyang, was the stereotypical very disciplined kid. He was very studious with his homework, but he had no friends and no social life. Not only that, the kids at school actively hated him. When his teacher told his mom about his lack of social circle, his mom turned it back to the other kids, saying that Chaoyang had done nothing wrong by being smarter and upright. (Now that I revisit this, it's got me thinking about how being morally upright does not necessarily make you popular with society. By the end of the drama, I'd say that Chaoyang is not so squeaky clean anymore, and yet Ye Chimin doesn't seem to hate him as much anymore. Of course, Ye Chimin doesn't know what Zhu Chaoyang's been through, but I think it's supposed to symbolize the fact that Zhu Chaoyang is learning to live with society by the end of the show.)

Zhu Chaoyang's relationship with his mom is curious. Apparently she had a much smaller role in the book but I think it would've been a waste not to explore their relationship. Perhaps her role in the book was minimal to show that Zhu Chaoyang didn't have much of an upbringing. Anyway, Zhu Chaoyang and his mother seemed to have a good relationship at the beginning of the drama, but that relationship was purely based on Zhu Chaoyang's academic performance. He felt that his mother would love him if he did well at school, and his mom believed that Chaoyang being a good student would reflect well on her.

Their relationship grew apart after Chaoyang's mom revealed her relationship with her boss. Chaoyang didn't seem angry about his mom having the relationship, but rather, he didn't like that she was hiding things from him. That being said, Chunhong seemed to be reacting way worse to the event, and I will talk about that in her section. But this was basically the start at which Chunhong faded from the story a bit.

Obviously Chaoyang ending up in the hospital and then being involved in the fire were very traumatic for both Chaoyang and Chunhong, but he still refused to tell her much about it. Why was that? Was Chaoyang trying to protect her, or did he truly feel distant from her? I mentioned this in one of my episode posts, but despite them growing further apart, Chaoyang never had to question his relationship with his mother. Even though they weren't as close as they used to, he could always count on his mother to love him and care for him, unlike his dad.

By the end of the drama, Chaoyang tried to reach out to his mother again, but we saw that their relationship was already a bit broken. What had happened? I think Chunhong regretted the fact that she pushed her son away after the affair, but also that she'd only told him to focus on academics, and had never taught him anything about living in a society. She was probably also just super shaken from everything that happened, including her son being in so many wacky events, and her ex-husband straight up being murdered. Chaoyang thought that telling his mom that he got first place would make her happy, and was a bit deflated when he saw that she wasn't. This behaviour was reminiscient of Zhang Dongsheng. Just as Zhang Dongsheng couldn't read his wife, Zhu Chaoyang could not read his mother. They really are very similar people, but the difference was that Zhu Chaoyang was still a child, and he had time to change that.

Zhu Chaoyang's relationship with his father was apparently much better in the drama than in the book. Apparently, in the book, his dad would introduce him as a friend's son and his half-sister didn't even know that he was her brother. This was apparently based on the author's personal life, which is super terrible, but perhaps this book was a catharsis of the author's own negative feelings as a child. Anyway, after Zhu Jingjing's death, Zhu Yongping made an effort to bond with Zhu Chaoyang again. Unlike his relationship with his mother, even when he was close with his dad, Zhu Chaoyang realized that his dad didn't trust him, didn't love him unconditionally like his mother did.

Why did Zhu Chaoyang lie to the police about Wang Li kidnapping him? I had theorized that there were three reasons. One was for Zhu Chaoyang to protect himself. He was already under suspicion for having something to do with Jingjing's death, and by introducing Wang Li, it would shine the light back on him. By lying the police, he was helping his dad, who'd asked him to do so because his wife had asked, even though Chaoyang had felt let down by his dad's lack of action towards Wang Li. And perhaps doing so would keep his mother away from his personal affairs. Maybe it was to protect her, maybe it was because he was at that stage of teenage angst where he didn't want to associate that much with his mom.

His final encounter with his dad was at the fish facility. Zhu Chaoyang was supposed to meet with Zhang Dongsheng to exchange the memory card for Yue Pu, and Zhu Yongping and Wang Yao were investigating Wang Li's disappearance. Zhang Dongsheng captured Zhu Yongping, but not without trying to tell him what his son had done. Zhu Yongping died in a scuffle with Zhang Dongsheng, and with his dying breath, he told Zhu Chaoyang to start over. I'll cover this more in Zhu Yongping's section, but AvenueX brought up a really great point about how Zhu Yongping was probably more aware of Zhu Chaoyang have secrets than I had originally thought. If that was the case, it would make sense that he wouldn't say anything about what Zhang Dongsheng had said, and instead just told him to forget the past.

The acting for Zhu Chaoyang was really interesting in this scene because while he was freaking out, I felt emotion there. In that moment, Zhu Chaoyang felt so much regret that he finally told his dad the truth, that he had been involved with Zhu Jingjing's death. Of course, that mattered not to Zhu Yongping anymore (again, will explain in Zhu Yongping's section).

After the fire at the the fish facility, Zhu Chaoyang once again lied to the police about what really happened. He said that Wang Yao had kidnapped him there. That really shocked me because I thought that he was actually read to come clean. The fact that he didn't gave me two thoughts. One was that he still hadn't understood what it took to start over. It wasn't until Yue Pu encouraged him that he told Officer Ye the truth behind Jingjing's death. The second was that Chaoyang was already not the good boy from the beginning. He had already been irreversibly changed, and he would never be that seemingly upright person again. He also had too much blood on his hands, and he was approaching things the same way that Zhang Dongsheng was in his last moments. Zhang Dongsheng was just swatting away at the threats to his life as they came, and it seemed that Chaoyang was still doing that. Like I said, he did eventually tell the truth, but his instinct still says something about him.

When Yue Pu and Yan Liang first approached Chaoyang, he was suspicious of them. He set up a trap to see if they would steal from them, and when they didn't, he decided to trust them. In those first days, he did really enjoy their company. That was the first time he really had friends.

Over time, things took a turn. I can't say for sure when it happened, and I think it's because right from the beginning, Chaoyang had had a seed of doubt regarding the two. When things were going great, he thought they were his best friends. But when his deeds were coming back to him and his family, he started to feel annoyed with them. In his confrontation with Yan Liang on the ship, he told Yan Liang that he regretted ever opening the door for them. I think Chaoyang's the kind of person to remember the good things when times are good and the bad things when times are bad. Like Zhang Dongsheng, he is a flippant person. We just never saw it before when his values were not challenged.

The way I saw it, I think Zhu Chaoyang would've preferred to have been done with the whole blackmail situation as soon as possible. I'm not just saying that because his dad got killed. Even before that happened, it took a lot of effort for Zhu Chaoyang to agree to help Yan Liang and Yue Pu. When Zhu Chaoyang told Yan Liang and Yue Pu that he'd help them to the end, Yan Liang and Yue Pu were overjoyed, because they knew how big of a deal this was for him, to get his hands dirty with them.

The whole thing with Yan Liang asking Zhu Chaoyang to copy the video onto another memory card really said a lot about both characters. At the beginning of the drama, Zhu Chaoyang was insistent on calling the police to get Zhang Dongsheng locked up, but Yan Liang had only discouraged it because it was dangerous for him and Yue Pu. Later on, now that things were looking up, Yan Liang figured it was now safe for them to give the evidence up, and yet Zhu Chaoyang did not copy the video over. Why? Well, I felt that Zhu Chaoyang didn't want any more to do with Zhang Dongsheng after the money had been transferred. Zhang Dongsheng knew that only they had the video and so he'd know that the kids had betrayed him, and that would catch up with Zhu Chaoyang.

Even though he appeared to be all high and mighty at first, it came second to his personal survival. (On the other hand, I initially thought that Yan Liang was all about personal survival, seeing as how he'd steal to survive, but later on, we saw how he'd try to do the right thing when it was doable.)

In the Youtube comments of one of AvenueX's videos, a commenter brought up the phone call when Zhu Chaoyang and Yan Liang had asked Zhang Dongsheng to meet them at the ship. Zhu Chaoyang said he stil had the memory card and was going to give it to him. We mostly knew this to be true. However, a commenter theorized that what he really was trying to say was that he was going to turn over the last witness to Zhang Dongsheng, the last witness being Yan Liang. At this point, we believed Yue Pu to be dead, so Zhu Chaoyang and Yan Liang were the last witnesses. It definitely would've been eerie to think about what would've happened if Zhu Chaoyang really turned on Yan Liang once and for all to clean himself of the situation. Their friendship was already past mending, but this would firmly put them in enemies territory, and Chaoyang pretty much would have positioned himself as Zhang Dongsheng's protege.

So throughout the drama, Zhu Chaoyang was intent on scrubbing himself clean of anything that would come back to haunt him. At the end of the drama, before he'd turned himself in, he was scrubbing his white shoes. A clever commenter in one of AvenueX's videos mentioned that it seemed like Zhu Chaoyang was trying to wipe his slate clean, without actually having come clean about his involvement in Zhu Jingjing's death.

So how would I go about describing Zhu Chaoyang? (Oh my god my arms are so tired I've been typing for so long but I still have so much to saaaaay) Zhu Chaoyang is not a carbon copy of Zhang Dongsheng, but he has weaknesses that push him to fall into the same traps.

Zhu Chaoyang doesn't like to take risks, and a lot of weaknesses arise from that timidity. Part of that timidity is because he's a kid. Understandable. He's a child who's lost one parent in an unfair way, and the fact that Wang Yao and Jingjing rub it in his face doesn't help. He has built up anger in him, unlike Yan Liang and Yue Pu. They'd lost their parents, but they don't have a direct outlet for it. (Yan Liang technically does, but he's more understanding of the situation)

For now, Chaoyang's only purpose in life was to be a good student. While he didn't understand the things of the world, he believed that if he could excel at that one task, everything would be okay. That was what his mother told him. He even took pride in himself. At the beginning of the show, a student had asked him to pass a note, and he refused. It made him unpopular, but he was confident that he was right, and his mom backed him up on that. It was only at the end when he realized that maybe having good grades wasn't everything, but he had to learn that on his own, as his mom was still recovering from the events.

I guess Chaoyang bought his mom's point of view before, because she was the only consistent part of his life. And Chunhong took pride in this. She even kept her relationship a secret from Chaoyang because she didn't want his life to be disrupted. As he grew apart from his mother, he lost some of that consistency, and his impression of the world started to change.

Zhu Chaoyang was fickle because he was not a risk taker. He changed his allegiances based on what he thought would protect him or get what he wanted. And that was the major reason for his friendship with Yan Liang being over.

Now, I will cut him some slack because a lot of Zhu Chaoyang's weaknesses were because he was a child. He had a very limited view of the world, and didn't understand how thinks worked. When his mom tried to turn him against his dad, he retorted that it was his mom who forced his dad to sign the divorce papers, not understanding why staying together would be harmful to the family. He wasn't right for ignoring his mother's feelings, but he also wasn't wrong because like I said, he was a child with a limited view of the world.

He did behave in a way that was very reminiscent of Zhang Dongsheng in the future, but at this point, I think most of it could be attributed to his selfish need to protect himself above everything else.

As for whether Zhu Chaoyang would grow up into someone like Zhang Dongsheng, I think that was left vague at the end. There were a mix of events that led me to believe one or the other.

On an instinctual level, I think Zhu Chaoyang had become more like Zhang Dongsheng. At home, he was a bit puzzled at why his mother wasn't happy when he told her about his academic achievements. It was reminiscent of Zhang Dongsheng not understanding why his wife wouldn't stay with him despite him doing his best to be a good husband. He'd also lied to the police about what had happened after the fire at the fish facility, again because he put his own protection first. He wanted to wipe the slate clean for himself and he thought that the way to do that was to hide everything, not to come clean.

On the other hand, the environmental factors give us hints that maybe there was hope for Zhu Chaoyang. After all, he was a still developing child. After his mom regained his bearings, I think she'd probably start to diversify her parenting a bit, not just focusing on academics. Before, she kept saying that she'd take good care of Chaoyang. To Chaoyang, he didn't need taking care of because he was already doing so well in school. But the truth is, growing up isn't just about school. It's about learning what's good and what's bad, etc. On the first day of school, a student was talking shit about Chaoyang behind his back, but Chimin told the student that Chaoyang wasn't so bad. If Chaoyang had more friends and was less isolated, I think that would give him a better sense of the world and the people around him. In that assembly on the first day of school, Yan Liang had also walked in, all dressed in white. The logical conclusion was to believe that he was an angel, but he was apparently "alive" lmao. In any case, I think it was a sign that Yan Liang's words would always hang in the back of his mind. Of the two, Yan Liang was the more certain in his moral compass, and I felt like that scene at the assembly was almost a threat, that Yan Liang would be severely disappointed in him if he continued acting the way he did.

In the book, Zhu Chaoyang would've been the most interesting and important character. The fact that the drama was able to revamp his character completely and still make him such an interesting character was impressive. Like I said, if Zhu Chaoyang was evil from the get-go, that would not have passed censorship, but it also might not have led to as much speculation about his person, because he wasn't as amorphous and full of potential as he was in the drama.

Of course, the actor Rong Zishan did a great job. Like Qin Hao as Zhang Dongsheng, he had to act like a good boy on the outside, but do some questionable things.

Yan Liang

I honestly feel kind of cheated that Yan Liang of the Bad Kids was not supposed to be Yan Liang of Burning Ice, because now I was drawing so many connections that should not have been there. I don't really care much for multiverses and I thought it would've been really unnecessary to stuff in a Yan Liang in the Bad Kids, but what's done is done.

While Zhu Chaoyang a protagonist with questionable morals in the show, Yan Liang was more of what you'd expect from a typical hero. While Zhu Chaoyang was like foetal form of Zhang Dongsheng, he was almost an opposite of Yan Liang.

On the surface, Zhu Chaoyang looked like somebody who was very morally upright, wanting to call the police immediately after seeing video evidence of Zhang Dongsheng committing murder. But as time passed, we saw that he always worried about himself first and foremost. When we first saw Yan Liang, he was stealing and lying and getting into trouble, but as the story progressed, we saw that he did value the justice system.

Yan Liang had a backstory, but it didn't really have as much of an effect on his character. As a youngster, his dad was taken away for drug use, and he was moved to an institution. He was always convinced his dad was a good person, and Laochen never refuted him, but the issue was Laochen and Yan Wenbin weren't sure about the side effects of letting Yan Liang see his dad like that. We didn't get a whole lot of character development in this aspect, because I wouldn't say that him meeting his dad had a huge effect on his personality. Instead, it was more of a reaffirmation of the kind of person he was. After seeing his dad, Yan Liang decided that he was going to be the most morally upright person ever to live. Seeing his dad the way that he was convinced him that he shouldn't walk that path. (It's the anti-drug stuff that we see a lot in Cdramas) But despite that, Yan Liang, never felt negatively about his dad. He knew now that his dad wasn't a hero, but he still loved him. When Yan Liang left, his dad addressed him directly as "son," and offered him a pear, which was a confirmation that his dad would always love him.

I'll admit that I loved the relationship between Laochen and Yan Liang. It was so hilarious because there was this constant tension of exasperation and yet trust and care.

It's funny how little I have to say about Yan Liang compared to Zhang Dongsheng and Zhu Chaoyang because Yan Liang is literally so morally upright.

Yue Pu

I kept expecting Yue Pu to pull some really shady shit throughout the drama, but that definitely would've been too dark.

In both the book and the drama, Yan Liang left the orphanage because of Yue Pu. In the book it was because Yue Pu was being sexually abused, and in the drama, it was because she had to help her little brother who was very ill.

The reason why I kept one eye open for Yue Pu was that she would act in ways that were reckless. She was the one who'd suggested writing a threatening note to Zhang Dongsheng, and she had decided to confront Zhu Jingjing of her own volition. However, she didn't really act in such a dangerously reckless way again. So my guess would be that Yue Pu acted so recklessly simply because she was young. Though she was a runaway kid like Yan Liang, Yan Liang had been taking the brunt of the damage, and Yue Pu was even younger than the two of them. It would be reasonable to believe that she couldn't see the consequences of her actions.

After her involvement with Zhu Jingjing's death, she kind of took a back seat to the plot until she joined Zhang Dongsheng to save Zhu Chaoyang from being kidnapped by Wang Li. Their bonding was crucial to how things would progress for the next little while.

Zhang Dongsheng used his teacher voice to intimidate Yue Pu into telling him the truth about whey the needed money and why they were going to Ha City. Yue Pu spilled everything, and it seemed that Zhang Dongsheng even sympathized with her. I was very skeptical but in hindsight, I think it's safe to believe that Zhang Dongsheng did truly feel for her.

While I feel that Zhang Dongsheng made a conscious effort to open his heart up to Yue Pu for a test run to this parenting thing, it was totally instinctual on Yue Pu's side. She rarely had any adults looking out for her, and other than her parents, Zhang Dongsheng was the first one who saw her for her and not just some pesky orphan. She truly saw Zhang Dongsheng as a father figure, and that became increasingly obvious as Zhang Dongsheng moved them to his in-laws' apartment, and they went McDonald's. It was supremely jarring when Yue Pu asked Zhang Dongsheng what his dream was, and yet Yue Pu was the only one who couldn't seem to realize how freaky it was that she was treating this murderer like a kindly uncle. Though misplaced, Yue Pu was probably the first person in a long time who ever showed Zhang Dongsheng kindness.

After Zhang Dongsheng found out about the existence of a second copy of the video, he got angry and frightened Yue Pu, who then had an asthma attack. Zhang Dongsheng was half way through the emergency call when he suddenly stopped talking. Like I said, I thought it would've made a lot more sense that she died. It would've been in line with Zhang Dongsheng becoming more and more reckless and angry. The existence of the deleted scene at McDonald's where Zhang Dongsheng buys three kids' meals is a sign that this was the original plan. The fact that Yue Pu was given a half assed send off with Laochen just mentioning that she was alive and her brother would be healed only added to that.

Xu Jing

Xu Jing was Zhang Dongsheng's wife. She was more of a plot device, and honestly, even Zhang Dongsheng saw her in this way. He didn't love her for her, he loved her because she was his wife, a person he could project all of his husbandly duties and affection onto. With Xu Jing, he could prove to the world that he was a good husband and a good person.

Zhang Dongsheng was in for a rude awakening when he found out that his wife was having an affair. He let her go, but ensured that if she couldn't see his efforts, then she didn't deserve to continue living.

After Xu Jing died, Zhang Dongsheng really lost a sense of direction. He wanted a new start to his life, but what then? Would he woo another woman and project his husbandsona onto her again, and be rid of her when she fell out of love again?

Like I said, Xu Jing was more someone who filled a role, both in the contex of the story, and to Zhang Dongsheng.

Zhou Chunhong

Zhou Chunhong was a pretty interesting character. Per AvenueX, she didn't have much of a role in the book, so what was in the show was written in by the script writers, and I like what they did with her character.

Right off the bat, we realized that Zhou Chunhong was a very defensive person. When the teacher told her that Chaoyang wasn't fitting in with his classmates, Chunhong insisted it was the kids' problem that they were so jealous of Zhu Chaoyang.

Zhou Chunhong had a chip in her shoulder. She wanted to prove to the world that she was doing great as a single mother, and that she didn't need Zhu Yongping. She did so by encouraging Chaoyang to be studious.

At the same time, Zhou Chunhong wanted Zhu Chaoyang to think that she was a great mother, that she was the superior parent compared to Zhu Yongping because she stayed. She did this by trying to provide Zhu Chaoyang in an environment where he didn't have to do anything other than study. As a result, Chaoyang was very isolated from his peers.

Chunhong hid her relationship with Chief Ma because she didn't want to disturb Zhu Chaoyang's current circumstances. She was forced to reveal it when Wang Yao wouldn't stop terrorizing their family. But that caused a rift in her relationship with her son. Chaoyang withdrew a bit, but told his mother that she could share these things with him. Chunhong responded overly aggressively, thinking that her son was saying that he didn't need a mother like her anymore. From then on, their relationship cooled quite a bit.

Instead, Chaoyang spent a lot of time with his dad, and Chunhong only came into the picture after Chaoyang got kidnapped and assaulted by Wang Li. Chunhong was obviously furious and wanted police action taken, but as mentioned, Chaoyang refused to reveal the truth.

There was a short sequence in which Zhu Yongping visited Chaoyang and Chunhong at their home. It really felt like he was making an effort to reintegrate himself in their life, asking about Chaoyang's school, and helping Chunhong with the household affairs. I wouldn't be surprised if Chunhong still had lingering feelings for Yongping, but obviously she wasn't going to open up to him that easily.

By the end of the drama, Chunhong was obviously shook, not only because her son had been involved in two major incidents at the fish facility, but probably also because of the death of Yongping and Wang Yao.

As the situation with Wang Yao had escalated, Chunhong kept telling her son that she hadn't properly protected him, and now it's really sinking in that she's done nothing to protect him. Chaoyang had his academics and nothing else. His moral character was flimsy, and he was going around getting himself into trouble. She was no longer wowed by the pizzazz of his academic achievements because his shortcomings were so obvious now, and they reflected poorly on her. Remember, she had a huge complex about being a good mother.

It's hard to know what Chunhong's next steps will be, but now she's aware that she's failed as a mother. Her next decisions will undoubtedly affect Chaoyang's growth and what kind of adult he turns into.

Liu Lin's portrayal of Chunhong was really good. She was a very defensive woman, with clear weaknesses. Once you touched a nerve, she'd freak out. And her own morals were built upon misconceptions of the world. I just loved this complex portrayal of a woman who was a mother, but being a mother wasn't her whole personality, as much as she tried to make it.

Zhu Yongping

Zhu Yongping was Chaoyang's dad. He was now married to Wang Yao and had a daughter, Zhu Jingjing.

At the beginning, we saw how Zhu Yongping tried to juggle his two families. He would occasionally try to make time for Zhu Chaoyang, but Wang Yao and Zhu Jingjing would unapologetically monopolize Zhu Yongping's time, and Jingjing would even bully Zhu Chaoyang. In the book, apparently Zhu Chaoyang had a raging hatred against his dad and his new family because they were so rude to him, but obviously that was toned down.

Wang Yao was convinced that Zhu Chaoyang was hiding something, and that pushed Zhu Yongping to see if he could find out anything from Zhu Chaoyang. AvenueX's video highlighted an interview with the actor Zhang Songwen, about the scene in which he listened to the recording. I didn't even notice the small details about this scene, so I'm glad that AvenueX covered it because it gave me a whole different view of Zhu Yongping.

Zhu Yongping had taken his son out for a fun day, but had ended the evening asking Zhu Chaoyang if he knew anything about Jingjing's death. Obviously that ruined Zhu Chaoyang's mood. Zhu Yongping went to the washroom and Zhu Chaoyang had opened his dad's bag to return his gift, only to find a voice recorder. Zhu Chaoyang had continued the night saying very touching things to Zhu Yongping, hoping to butter him up.

Originally, I thought that Zhu Yongping had fallen for Chaoyang's words, and he'd deleted the recording because he felt ashamed for suspecting his son.

Now, what I didn't realize was that in the scene where Zhu Yongping was listening to th recording, he'd heard the sound of the zipper of his bag being opened. So he knew that Chaoyang knew about the recorder, and thus, all of the buttering up he did didn't feel the same anymore. The actor interpreted the scene as Yongping understanding that Chaoyang was hiding something. And as he looked at a photo of Jingjing, he slapped himself, because he was going to protect Chaoyang. He only had one living child left, and Zhu Yongping would have to betray his dead child to ensure that his one remaining child would live on.

That makes sense when considering Yongping's final scenes. Obviously Yongping was freaked out at being kidnapped and tied up. But as he lay dying, and Chaoyang admitted he had something to do with Jingjing's death, Yongping didn't seem to have as big of a reaction. Of course, that might've been because he was literally dying, but it would've made sense that he wouldn't be surprised that Chaoyang had something to do with Jingjing's death.

I really thought that Zhu Yongping's character was well-acted, because though he appeared to be a scumbag right when we met him, very soon, we could tell that he was a man torn between two families. He couldn't help that Wang Yao and Zhu Jingjing were they way they were, just as he couldn't help that Zhu Chaoyang was still his son. The book wouldn't have been able to deliver this version of Zhu Yongping, as in the book, he was quite mean and cruel and dismissive to his son. Kudos to Zhang Songwen for his performance.

Wang Yao

Oof, really wanted to hate Wang Yao, which proves that Li Meng did an excellent job haha.

On the surface, Wang Yao tried to act civil with Zhu Chaoyang, but it really was super shallow. When Zhu Jingjing bumped into Zhu Chaoyang and stepped on his new shoes, Wang Yao tried to get her daughter to apologize and after Jingjing rudely refused once, Wang Yao let it go. That summed up their relationship. Wang Yao didn't want to be polite, and she used her daughter to express how she really felt about Zhu Chaoyang.

When Zhu Jingjing died, Wang Yao was obviously very distraught, and she was the kind of mom who went to the police station every day asking for updates. Wang Yao's instinct was to blame Chaoyang and Chunhong. The thing was, Chaoyang and Chunhong both had secrets, which led Wang Yao to believe that she was onto something. She only backed off when Zhu Chaoyang and Zhou Chunhong both had alibis.

I mentioned this in one of my episode posts, but Wang Yao really can act like a decent person when she wants to. When she was trying to dig up information on Chunhong, she was very kind to the workers at the mountain tourism service. And as she gathered more and more information that she felt confirmed her suspicions, she became more and more pleasant to the workers. It was super eerie and scary because of how nice she was. She was in such a good mood to be vindicated.

When Chunhong confronted her in the broadcast room, Wang Yao mentioned that she didn't care about Chunhong dying because she knew it wouldn't bring back Jingjing. She just wanted Chunhong and Chaoyang to live life in as cruel of a way as possible. But after her theory was proved incorrect, she became subdued.

Wang Yao came back into the story when Wang Li appeared. Wang Yao was convinced that Zhu Chaoyang had something to do with Zhu Jingjing's death, and she communicated this to Wang Li. It's unclear whether she knew her brother would be so violent against Zhu Chaoyang. It would be unrealistic for her not to know her brother was this violent of a man, and it would be a lie for her not to want to hurt the kid. The only thing was stopping her was her relationship for her husband. I think it'd be safe to say that she still loved him, and if Chaoyang was hurt in any way, Yongping would have her head.

Wang Yao tried to do some detective work after Wang Li "disappeared," but Zhang Dongsheng was throwing her off by continuing to text from Wang Li's cell phone, saying that he was in hiding and such.

After Officer Ye came up to their apartment to ask about Wang Li, Wang Yao accompanied Zhu Yongping to the fish facility to look for clues. There, they bumped into Zhang Dongsheng and Wang Yao was killed as collateral damage.

Zhu Jingjing

Oh man, what a brat, undoubtedly influenced by her mother. Zhu Yongping wanted to foster a good relationship between half-brother and half-sister, but Wang Yao did nothing to help that. As mentioned, when she stepped on Zhu Chaoyang, she refused to apologize because she claimed it was an accident.

Yue Pu wanted to confront Jingjing about it. Jingjing agreed to stop being a bully but at the first sign of sensing somebody close by, she yelled out for help only to find out it was Zhu Chaoyang. Zhu Jingjing went into anger mode and started spewing all the hateful things she could think of, about how their dad only liked her.

In the drama, she fell down the window on her own, but in the book, Zhu Chaoyang had pushed her. The drama obviously tried to make Chaoyang more sympathetic but like...it's really easy to see how somebody, especially another child and a rival for their father's affection, could be riled up to the point of wanting to kill her.

Wang Li

Wang Li was apparently an original character for the drama. If that was the case, I wonder whether the entire kidnapping scene was drama-only as well.

Anyway, I had mentioned that Wang Li reminded me a bit of the Snowman murderer from Burning Ice. Wang Li was very cool, very determined, and not one to be reasoned with. He was convinced (by Wang Yao) that Zhu Chaoyang had something to do with Zhu Jingjing's death.

In my episode post, I mentioned that Wang Li had no reason not to kill Zhu Chaoyang. If Zhu Chaoyang was a killer, then Wang Li would've exacted revenge for Jingjing. If Zhu Chaoyang was not a killer, he was doing his wife a favour anyway by getting rid of this leech for her husband's affection.

Ye Jun

Ye Jun was a police officer investigating Jingjing's death, but he'd gotten involved in a few of the other crimes throughout the drama as well. As a detective, he wasn't a genius or anything, but he still did his job. It was just that this story wasn't supposed to be focused on the police work, so he didn't have as big or flashy of a role.

Ye Jun was the father of Ye Chimin, who was Zhu Chaoyang's classmate. Ye Chimin was really uptight about keeping her grades up, but Ye Jun was very chill about it. He thought that his daughter was already super awesome getting second in the entire grade.

I just really appreciated Ye Jun because he was probably the most well-adjusted and chill person in the entire show, but not to the point of not knowing his duties.

Ye Chimin

At the beginning of the drama, Ye Chimin absolutely hated Chaoyang. Chaoyang had no friends, and Chimin especially hated Chaoyang because she was consistently below him in the rankings.

Over the course of the drama, we saw her character soften up a bit, from interactions with her dad. While her dad encouraged her to relax and chill, he also respected Chimin's academic interests. He had made the effort to ask Zhang Dongsheng about his math classes and such. When Ye Jun and Ye Chimin had bumped into Zhu Chaoyang at Zhang Dongsheng's apartment, Ye Chimin asked Zhu Chaoyang about what he'd been learning at the classes, though that conversation was cut short because Zhang Dongsheng needed Zhu Chaoyang out of his apartment.

At the end of the drama, Ye Chimin was the first person to defend Chaoyang. Well, defend may be strong, but in the face of overwhelming hate, indifference says a lot. While a classmate was talking shit about Zhu Chaoyang, Chimin said to leave him alone.

I'm not really sure what prompted the change in Chimin's attitude. I doubt she knew anything about what Chaoyang had gone through that summer. Perhaps she'd understood that her getting second really didn't warrant hating Chaoyang, as she saw that he worked hard over the summer.

But her seeming indifference and maybe respect will do a lot for him in the future. As a kid, the approval of his peers is very important, and if he can learn to get along with others, then maybe Chaoyang can avoid a fate like Zhang Dongsheng's.

Chief Ma/Ma Zhuren

Chief Ma was Zhou Chunhong's boss at the mountain tourism services. They were hiding their affair as Zhou Chunhong didn't want to disrupt Chaoyang's life at the moment. Chief Ma was very pushy though, always asking to take Chaoyang out to have fun and such.

There was a huge change in their relationship after Chunhong announced their affair to the entire mountain. Chief Ma started avoiding her calls. He told Chunhong that his family was setting him up with some women who'd never been married before, basically implying that their relationship was over.

What prompted the change? Perhaps Chief Ma just didn't like that his relationship was being broadcast to the world like this, and he just didn't want to be involved in a life as messy as Chunhong's was, with Wang Yao terrorizing them. The fact that the women he was being set up with had never been married before was also kind of hurtful to Chunhong, because it implied that she was lesser for being a divorcee with a child.

Chen Guansheng

Chen Guansheng was a retired police officer, and basically the only adult that the kids could trust between the three of them. Zhang Dongsheng could not be trusted no matter what Yue Pu believed, Zhu Chaoyang could not trust either of his parents, and so that left Yan Liang's mentor figure, Chen Guansheng.

Chen Guansheng was caught up in their business because he felt a responsibility to take care of Yan Liang. He'd put Yan Wenbin in the rehab center and sent Yan Liang off to the institution. Now that Yan Liang had escaped, it was his business to put him back. For much of the drama, it was a cycle of getting in touch with Yan Liang only for him to run off because of his business.

Eventually, Chen Guansheng signed the guardianship papers for Yan Liang. Things were progressing to this point anyway.

He didn't have a big part in the actual happenings of the drama, but he was more of a supplement to Yan Liang's character. Still a great character though. I loved watching him when he was on screen.

Yan Wenbin

Yan Wenbin was Yan Liang's biological dad. One of Yan Liang's reasons for leaving the institution was because he wanted to see his dad. Apparently it had been kept a secret from him all these years how much Yan Wenbin had deteriorated from his drug addiction.

He was rather non-communicative, and his mind would wander, but Yan Liang understood that his father still cared for him.

I didn't think too much of Yan Wenbin, he just felt kind of like the typical anti-drug messaging we get in a lot of cop Cdramas.

Themes

Upbringing

This show is called the Bad Kids. While the Chinese name is different (隱秘的角落 is something like "the dark corner"), the name of the novel it was based on was 壞孩子 "Bad Kid." So the fact that some of the main characters were kids was very important.

At one point in the drama, Laochen and Zhang Dongsheng met at a beachside stall. Laochen was asking around to see if anybody had seen Yan Liang. He'd mentioned to Zhang Dongsheng that if a kid had a bad upbringing, they'd grow into a poor adult. It seemed an obvious statement, but it's a direct theme being referenced.

Zhu Chaoyang was the bad kid of the series, let's be real. Yan Liang and Yue Pu hardly had the moral dilemmas that Zhu Chaoyang did. But what governed whether he'd become a good or bad adult? That was one of the main questions of the drama, and I don't believe we are supposed to have a definite answer for that. After all, if it was so symbol as input A = output B, then life would be just as Zhang Dongsheng had thought it was, which it isn't.

Like many conversations about raising children, there will always be a question of nature vs. nurture. A caretaker could do everything under the sun to provide for a child, but if the child may not necessarily take in their surroundings the right way.

In a way, Yan Liang and Yue Pu had very black and white ways of viewing the world. Even though they'd done questionable things throughout the show, they never questioned whether what they were doing was good or bad. They were conscious of it when they were doing something bad. How did that come to be? Perhaps it was just something they were born with. Perhaps it was because they lost their parents at a young age. Children often see their parents as heros, and losing them at an early age meant that heroic image of their parents and their teachings would be crystallized and stay unmoving.

Zhu Chaoyang also went through some tough times as a child. His parents went through a divorce, which is hard for any child. However, it was painful for him to see Wang Yao and Zhu Jingjing steal his dad away from him all the time. They were purposely antagonizing him. How was it possible for a kid to internalize this well? Chunhong never addressed this, only ever encouraging Chaoyang to be a good student. He didn't have good guidance on how to handle his negative feelings for his dad's new family. I think this would've been a bigger point in the book than the drama, as in the book, he'd had an active part in orchestrating the death of his dad and current wife. In the context of the drama, I think that Chaoyang was just not taught the proper way to problem solve. It's something that I've come to notice myself. The biggest difference between me and me from 10 years ago is the ability to navigate a situation and come up with the right thing to in line with my own values. Zhu Chaoyang does not have that as a child, nor is he getting the education to.

That being said, it's hard to say too much about this topic because we don't have nearly as much to say about Yan Liang and Yue Pu in the area of upbringing. Yan Liang and Yue Pu arguably have had an even worse upbringing, but it's nowhere near as complicated as Zhu Chaoyang's.

And maybe that's it. Kids need structure and consistency for their formative years. They need it to understand what is right and what is wrong, what they like and what they don't. Zhu Chaoyang's only consistency is his academics. His family life is not consistent. He doesn't receive the same treatment when with his mom vs. with his dad vs. with his step-mom.

In Chaoyang's character section, I've already discussed a few of the things that may affect what kind of adult he'll become, and as of yet, I choose to see it as a vague ending.

Anyway everything in this section is speculation because, like, I've never parented lol.

Parent-child relationships

Zhu Chaoyang's relationship with his mother was rather traditional in the sense that they were very clear in their responsibilities to each other. Chunhong knew that her job was to be a good mother, and Chaoyang knew his job was to be a good student. But the emotional affection between the two of them wavered. They'd never give up on each other, but at their worst, it seems Chaoyang and Chunhong could probably go a while without talking to eacho ther. Zhu Chaoyang refused to tell his mother any of what he'd actually been through, and yet he trusted her in a way that he still couldn't trust his father.

Zhu Chaoyang and Zhu Yongping's relationship was a bit...superficial? Because Zhu Chaoyang didn't live with Zhu Yongping, Yongping had the opportunity to be the cool dad, who would never yell at Chaoyang. As such, Zhu Chaoyang held his father in high regard, and that obviously infuriated Zhou Chunhong when she'd given up so much to divorce Zhu Yongping. Zhu Chaoyang knew that his dad suspected him, but he also still craved a father, and I think that's why he went along with his requests.

I felt that Chaoyang's increasing interest in swimming was a sign of that. At one point, he told his mom he could teach her to swim, and Chunhong wasn't really sure how to take that. In the last episode, Chaoyang was cleaning his shoes as Chunhong looked on. Up until that point, they'd been drifting apart, and now that Yongping was dead, I felt that now more than ever, there was an irreplaceable and revered aspect to Chaoyang's relationship with his dad that his mom could never get between. I felt like there was a bit of resignation in her eyes, seeing Chaoyang scrub his shoes that his dad had bought for him. That was actually my initial interpretation of the scene, but the idea of Chaoyang trying to scrub himself clean of his sins honestly sounds more valid lmao.

Ye Jun and Ye Chimin had the most well adjusted parent-child relationship in the show. As I mentioned, Ye Jun encouraged is daughter to relax because he knew she didn't know how to look after he mental health. At the same time, he respected his daughter's interests in the academics. His father didn't really have expectations for her, he just wanted her to grow up to be a well-adjusted person.

Zhu Jingjing was probably spoiled by her parents. Wang Yao definitely spoiled her, as Zhu Jingjing was her only daughter. And Zhu Yongping probably gave in to her a lot over Zhu Chaoyang because Jingjing was the younger. Zhu Jingjing was selfish, but the issue as that nobody stopped her from being selfish. Nobody told her that it wrong to be so rude and to think so poorly of Zhu Chaoyang because he was hanging on to like half a father through no fault of his own.

Should I talk about Zhang Dongsheng and his in-laws? When the kids first saw the crime, they were shocked that he would do such a thing, but the relationship between a child and parent and a child and in-laws is very differrent, considering Zhang Dongsheng wasn't actually parented by his in-laws in his childhood. And yet, he was required to show them the same reverence. In theory, that is. In practice, he really just treated them like you would any old grandmother or grandfather. While Zhang Dongsheng appeared respectful, I think he saw them more as a challenge. Zhang Dongsheng felt that if he could get his in-laws' approval, he would by proxy get Xu Jing's approval. And since it seemed his in-laws weren't changing their minds anytime soon, they had to go.

Similarities between Zhang Dongsheng and Zhu Chaoyang

I already sort of hinted towards quite a few in both Zhang Dongsheng and Zhu Chaoyang's sections, but why not make it more organized lol (halp my arms are falling off from typing so much but I am determined to finish this in one sitting).

They both have a very logical way of thinking. Makes sense, considering both of their affinities for math. But it hinders their way of seeing the world, as the world is not always rational. In fact, people are fundamentally irrational. I mentioned that Zhang Dongsheng and Zhu Chaoyang acted in a very disorganized and short-sighted manner when feeling panicked or defensive, and I think that was because they were not very understanding of the world, and could not see how things were interconnected. That being said, Zhu Chaoyang's excuse was that he was a literal kid.

Both Zhang Dongsheng and Zhu Chaoyang were somewhat prideful. Zhang Dongsheng put on that face but we saw how easily he dropped the facade with even just the smallest challenge. He was nowhere near as confident as he appeared while teaching his calsses. As for Zhu Chaoyang, he took pride in being an upright straight A student. He took the bullying because he felt he was not in the wrong. At the end of the drama, he tried to show a bit of pride for his academics, but I think he was already starting to understand that life is not just academics. He can't have gone through all of that mess over the summer and proceed as normal. Like I said, it will be up to his mother's guidance, but he has already started to understand that pride is not a single sliding scale.

This may be a strong word, but I considered both Zhang Dongsheng and Zhu Chaoyang to be cowardly. Like I said, Zhang Dongsheng backed down from challenges very easily. In fact, he found it difficult to tackle challenges, and he would always try to find a way to not solve them the right way. He couldn't fix his marriage so he tried to kill people instead. He didn't want to be arrested for his crimes, so he tried to commit suicide instead. He couldn't commit suicide so he would get somebody to kill him instead. As for Chaoyang, his cowardly nature also came out when being confronted, but more by people. Yan Liang lost his trust in Chaoyang when he found out Chaoyang hadn't made the copy of the video. As I'd theorized, I think he didn't make the copy of the video because he was scared that Zhang Dongsheng would come after him. He also had no response for when Zhang Dongsheng got angry at him for lying over and over again. Granted, I think Zhu Chaoyang will learn from his cowardly mistakes. Now he sees that what he does or doesn't do in a fit of weakness will always have repercussions.

During the drama, both Zhang Dongsheng and Zhu Chaoyang opened their hearts in a rare moment of hope, and it came back to bite them. Zhang Dongsheng opened his heart to Yue Pu and he left feeling betrayed. As for Zhu Chaoyang, he'd opened the door for Yan Liang and Yue Pu, but he rued getting involved in their mess at all. Both people were introverts and thus it was very rare that they'd take this risk, and yet they got bitten for it. The truth is, extroverts get bit too when befriending the wrong people, it's just that they have a larger sample size to drown out all of the bad friendships. Introverts have a small sample size and yet they base their social interactions on that small sample size (I would know, I'm an introvert).

The main difference between Zhang Dongsheng and Zhu Chaoyang was that Zhu Chaoyang was a child, who still had room to grow and develop. There was still time for his views to be challenged and change. For Zhang Dongsheng, he probably didn't have the appropriate amount of external stimulation to challenge his intepretation of the world and he carried his flaws thoughts into adulthood. But bad adults are not forgiven as bad kids are, because bad adults are supposed to have gone through enough in life to know better.

New beginnings

As a sort of continuation to the above, both Zhang Dongsheng and Zhu Chaoyang were looking for a new beginning. They wanted to be wiped free of their sins, but they wanted to do so without facing the repercussions of their past. Is that possible? Probably not when it's something as big as MURDER or BLACKMAIL.

Zhang Dongsheng died precisely because he didn't want to repent for his sins. As for Zhu Chaoyang, he did repent for his sins by telling the truth about Jingjing's death to the police.

Now, this is where the comparison gets tricky because what Zhu Chaoyang's sins are extremely tame compared to Zhang Dongsheng in the drama. He didn't directly push Zhu Jingjing. I don't know whether he could be convicted in any way, but any punishment was probably not too much, especially since he was still a kid.

If we were considering Zhu Chaoyang from the book though, this would be a totally different story. If drama Zhu Chaoyang had done as much as drama Zhang Dongsheng, the situation would be quite different as well. Would Zhu Chaoyang be willing to face his past if he had actually killed Zhu Jingjing?

Some people in AvenueX's Youtube comments theorized that Zhu Chaoyang had actually pushed Zhu Jingjing and what had happened was just a fabrication. The fact that Yue Pu said she would keep that a secret sort of pointed to that. The way she phrased her letter made it seem like Zhu Chaoyang was solely involved in Zhu Jingjing's death, and that she barely had anything to do with it. So there is an argument to be made that perhaps Zhu Jingjing's death was Zhu Chaoyang's direct fault. If that was the case, then Zhu Chaoyang would've continued to lie to the police, thus blocking his own opportunity to start anew.

Now, I don't know anything about the justice system in China and what the punishment is for murder, and how difficult it is or isn't for released prisoners to re-enter society. If it is difficult, then the idea of a new beginning really seems like an idealistic way of seeing the world, which would make sense to Yue Pu, who does come off as idealistic due to her age. And as I mentioned in her section, she does seem to have a good sense of what is right and wrong and not necessarily what is realistic.

Fairy tales

Both Zhu Chaoyang and Zhang Dongsheng had brought up the story of Descartes, who'd fallen in love with a princess he'd been tutoring. The first version of the story was that they'd fallen in love, and Descartes was imprisoned for it. He ended up dying in prison. The second version of the story was that the princess never loved him, and that it was a one-sided love.

This story definitely seemed to reflect Zhang Dongsheng at first. He had murdered his in-laws to win his wife's love, but his wife already didn't love him anymore.

I think the story just also represented a sense of misplaced motivation. Zhu Chaoyang and Zhang Dongsheng didn't understand their surroundings much, and they didn't understand that just because you did something to protect yourself, didn't mean it was the right thing to do.

In the official cut, Zhang Dongsheng's last words to Zhu Chaoyang was that he wanted to believe in fairy tales. The way I interpreted this was that he wanted to protect himself by believing that his motivations were not misplaced. Zhu Chaoyang had asked him a while ago which version of the Descartes story he had believed, and this was Zhang Dongsheng's reply.

Morality and society

What is right and what makes you popular do not intersect. Doing the right thing will sometimes make you unpopular. That's what happened to Zhu Chaoyang at the beginning of the series. Not passing notes and helping the other kids cheat made him unpopular, but he technically wasn't wrong. Chunhong instilled in her son that being right was more important than being popular.

But obviously that isn't totally accurate. Zhu Chaoyang knew that seeing as how he did nothing to cause his parents' divorce and yet he was left with a fragmented family. He did nothing wrong and he was punished for it.

Divine punishment

When Zhang Dongsheng found out about the existence of a second memory card, he went apeshit, going over to his in-laws' apartment where Yan Liang and Yue Pu were staying. He ranted about how his entire life had been ruined by the kids. He'd given them 300,000 RMB and sheltered them, and the loan sharks were breathing down his neck.

The kids were doing quite a number on Zhang Dongsheng. Technically, all they wanted was the money, and everything flowed from that, but still, it unraveled into a huge mess.

For a moment, I did feel sorry for Zhang Dongsheng because at that point, he was so aimless and purposeless. And yet, I remembered that he was a murderer. For a second, I was like "...is this karma?" Should I feel bad? Should I feel that this was warranted? Is the punishment appropriate for the crime?

I definitely do not have the expertise to tackle this and also my brain is fried. But I guess the lesson here is that when problems are not dealt with appropriately, they grow bigger and bigger and bigger.

Colours

I felt like there was a blood & red theme going on to signify the characters' involvements in various deaths throughout the show.

The night after Jingjing's death, Zhu Chaoyang got a nosebleed and he was washing his hand of his blood. It felt like Zhu Chaoyang was trying to wash himself of Jingjing's blood, though he did indirectly cause it.

In addition, Wang Li kidnapped Zhu Chaoyang and brought him to the fish facility. Zhang Dongsheng set off the alarm and the entire warehouse was bathed in red light. It felt very ominious. The interpretation I got was that Zhang Dongsheng, Zhu Chaoyang, and Wang Li were all the sorts of people who would inevitably be tied with death.

I think I read this from one of AvenueX's video comments, but someone mentioned how Zhu Chaoyang almost always wore a white shirt, as if defending his own morality. I thought this was a very interesting observation.

If I rewatch this series, I'll have to remind myself to pay attention to the colours of props and light and such again.

Overall

Overall, this was a really good drama. As you can see, I wrote a lot about it. Actually, I probably wouldn't have had as much to write about it if I hadn't watched AvenueX's videos, but maybe not by thatmuch.

I loved that this drama was just the whole package. Compelling storytelling, great acting, and very high production value. I'm so glad that I finally have a drama to recommend people who are not into Cdramas that is not over 60 episodes long lol.