Dashing Youth (2024): Rewatch [Episodes 1-2]

Welcome to the first discussion post for a Dashing Youth rewatch.

This was born out of my desire to rewatch The Blood of Youth and Dashing Youth after Blood River ended recently. I plan to do BoY after this one. Maybe some people are interested in joining for (part of) the journey.

At the moment I plan ~2 episode every few days to not overwhelm myself. No time to binge at the moment. First time doing this, so I might experiment a bit with different types of recaps to find something that fits me best. So this post may vary a bit. Also, please excuse me occasionally butchering the English language.

For me, this is a rewatch, but I will only talk about what happens in the episodes currently being discussed (and, of course, those before them).

!!! PLEASE USE SPOILER TAGS FOR ANYTHING BEYOND THE CURRENT EPISODES AND ANYTHING FROM BOTH BLOOD RIVER AND BLOOD OF YOUTH !!!

Infos about the drama can be found in the old masterpost.

You can also find a translated relationship chart here. If you download the picture it should be big enough to actually be readable.

Soooo lets go!

Ep. 1

We open with Zhang Yuan singing about the Spirit of Youth (and I have to quickly confess that I sort of missed some good lyrics from the DR opening. You know, it being an instrumental.)

Welcome back to the jianghu!

Or Beili (with an unfortunately not very readable map) and some war-faring backstory about them annexing the neighbouring countries of Beique and Xichu 15 years ago. Some people of Beique went further North to rebuild while the ones from Xichu assimilated.

We get thrown into the conflict and rivalry between the Gu (from Beili) and the Yan (originally from Xichu) family. They fight over power in the Cinan Circuit. That’s a kind of [administrational division](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circuit_(administrative_division\)) for anyone also not up to date on their ancient Chinese ways of organising a country. The head of the Gu family died recently and the head of the Yan family sized the opportunity to force a marriage arrangement between his sister and the second young master of the Gu family, Gu Jianmen (the younger brother of the guy who died).

Enough prologue, Chaisang City awaits and with it Gu Jianmen, one of Beili’s Eight Young Masters, who all get an additional name/title. In his case Lingyun. He really doesn’t want to get married.

Next we visit Donggui Tavern where we meet a bored Bai Dongjun, our main protagonist for this show. Nobody wants to visit his newly bought tavern, not even the merchants on the same street. His waiter, Sikong Changfeng doesn’t seem to be very motivated either.

That lasts until Yan Bietan, master of the Yan family, arrives, buys some liquor from Bai Dongjun and gets into a fight over said liquor with Changfeng. The latter is very sure that the former and his encourage only arrived to cause trouble. But Dongjun is able to calm the waves and the Yan faction leaves.

We learn that Yan Bietan controls the whole street and just couldn’t uncover the background of the new-ish tavern owner. No wonder there are so few guests. His sister Yan Liuli (the one to get married) likes the bought liquor.

Which is good, Dongjun plans to become a famous brewmaster. Kind of a refreshing goal, compared to all the sword obsessed guys in this world. Changfeng (he is a spear guy, btw) meanwhile is the type to get into the local gossip and he knows about the first young master of the Gu family suddenly dying and the second young master being part of Beili’s Eight Young Masters, who get their own poem to introduce them all, at least in name.

To Dongjun Gu Jianmen sounds like the right guy to introduce your liquor to! So of they go, just to get into a strange situation were the sky suddenly turns dark and Su Muyu enters the stage. He brought his own rain to match his umbrella. Anhe (Dashing Youth goes with Dark River, so I’ll go with the Chinese name) seems to have some kind of deal with Gu Jianmen. But he doesn’t want any of their help in his current predicament. They battle it out, as you do in situations like this.

Dongjun and Changfeng run into SMY (and some fellow Anhe members), but SMY is nice enough to let them go after he sees that those boys are just puppies. Especially Dongjun, who after returning to the tavern and stumbling into the next problem is eager to let Changfeng fight it out. The sword vs. spear fight gives us a short rundown of Changfeng’s backstory of growing up as an orphan wandering the world and being mostly self-taught in his techniques. The fight attracts the butcher, because the whole street is inhabited by people on the Yan family’s payroll.

While Dongjun doesn’t seem to be a big fighter his lightness skill is certainly trained. Finally, against two opponents Changfeng wants to use a skill that has a 1 to 10 chance of killing him. Very self sacrificing that one, but he is stopped by the sudden appearance of one of Yu Bietan’s guards we saw before who even quicker turns out to be a disguised Lei Mengsha, Young Master Zhuomo of the Eight Young Masters.

Ep. 2

The eloquent Zhuomo, Lei Mengsha turns out to be a chatterbox. But he can back up all the chatter with some resounding Lei clan lightning techniques. But soon it’s 4 vs. 1, just for another of the Young Masters to appear, Young Master Qingge, Luo Xuan. Changfeng is a lot more impressed by these guys than Dongjun.

Lei Mengsha whisks them away, because he mistook them for scouts, and leaves the fight to his friend. But of course they are not scouts and help send by Old Seven. Luo Xuan catches up with them.

Meanwhile SMY has an equally surprise meet-up with his fellow assassin Su Changhe, who is here for the show he anticipates to happen.

We learn that the whole marriage of Gu Jianmen was arranged by his uncle, who only goes by Fifth Master Gu for now. Changfeng deduces that this uncle and the Yan family have to be behind the death of Gu Jianmen’s elder brother. The whole set-up is a way to make the Yan family the most powerful in the Xinan circuit, while the uncle at least gets a bit of power in his own family.

Dongjun unknowingly stumbled right into a spider’s nest which makes him so suspicious to the Yan. Yan Liuli appears, a meeting that seems to be arranged by the same Old Seven (so the Seventh of the Eight Young Masters) already mentioned. She reveals that she is actually in love with Gu Luoli, Gu Jianmen’s killed older brother, still wants to marry only him and wants to be kidnapped during the wedding.

Dongjun agrees to do the kidnapping, because his true wish is to get famous all over the world. The reason for that lies in the past. One year ago, while hanging out with the Scholarly Deity Gu Chen, who turns out to be his teacher, another guest arrived. A veiled Yue Yao evokes a true love at first sight moment in him, including a romantic ballad and a lot of petals. She hails from Tianwaitian, which seems to be the place the people from Beique went, because she pleads help for them. Gu Chen declines due to his retirement from worldly affairs. Dongjun doesn’t get her name, but the promise that she will come to find him if he get famous all over the world. Kidnapping the bride in such an important wedding seems a good way to him to achieve that.

A mysterious faction, who seems to back the Yan family in all this, wants to get an even more mysterious thing as payment for that. The delivery of that thing is interrupted by yet another Young Master, Liu Yue, who is accompanied by his sassy attendant Ling Su. The other side gets reinforcement as well in the form of the White-Haired Deity, Mo Qixuan, who is eager to kill Liu Yue. That gets thwarted by Mo Xiaohei, Young Master Mochen. It’s a whole parade of new faces.

We find out that Changfeng is not into romance because the guy he inherited his spear from had a tragic backstory involving a woman he was never able to confess to. He finds it useless while Dongjun argues that romance absolutely belongs to the Jianghu. That leads to a confession from Changfeng that he doesn’t remember anything from his life before 15 years of age, but he has a damaged heart meridian and not much time to live. So he offers to do the whole bride kidnapping business but Dongjun promises that none of them will die and he will take his new friend to a physician for help.

Liu Yue and Mo Xiaohei, who don’t get along particular well, were able to acquire the mysterious thing, while Gu Jianmen prepares for the wedding. Or maybe a funeral. Remains to be seen.

Questions:

1. No a first impression thread, but what is your first impression?

2. How much romance do you need in your Jianghu roaming adventures?

[Bonus question: Is Hou Minghao contractually obligated to carry an umbrella in the first episode of every show?]