A really dreadful thing has befallen me. It’s called The Pursuit of Jade, and it’s been pursued to its natural conclusion. It is over. Finished. Finito. Klaar. Full stop. The bus has reached the terminus. The ship has sailed. The game is over. All the loose ends are tied up and delivered with a bow. Forty episodes on Netflix and the jig is up. And now? Now I just really don’t know what to do with myself. If I’m not firmly located in the semi-fictional, partly historically accurate Chinese drama, where am I to be found exactly?
In the land of anomie and low-grade desolation — that’s where. These must be withdrawal symptoms. I want to start watching something Korean just to cure the itch, but I’m still in mourning for my Chinese situationship. It feels too soon.
I’m not ready to betray the Marquis of Wu’an just like that. He’s such a laconic, upstanding and terribly dashing hero in every guise. Whether wearing full armour, two trailing feathers, his honour and refined sensibility, or just as admirably in disguise as a remarkably beautiful, scholarly live-in husband writing glorious apophthegms and couplets in the most elegant of hands.
And then — the heroine — what a peach. Based on an actual (and the only) female general in China back in the 16th century, Qin Liangyu, who can knock out a pig in one blow and make chopped liver of any hapless battalion coming her way, all while maintaining perfectly luminous skin. I need those beauty routines ASAP.
I’ve had to dig deep to try and reconcile my escapist watching regimen with my pretensions to some kind of higher-order cultural consumption. And I’ve come up with the fact that I’ve always had a soft spot for Sun Tzu, that antique 6th-century master strategist and tactician, and his handy tome The Art of War. It reads like a Taoist manual for life, and it’s a joy to see it applied and quoted throughout the series like a lushly produced masterclass on conflict and how to win it.
This fantastical Chinese world may be brutal, insanely violent and curated for extreme dramatic effect, but it’s also a perfect antidote to the current state of affairs.
The abiding point of the series seems to be this Sun Tzu lesson: “The general who advances without coveting fame and retreats without fearing disgrace, whose only thought is to protect his country and do good service for his sovereign, is the jewel of the kingdom.”
Also, if the sovereign is a fool, it can make things really tricky. The news already feels a little like a semi-historical, partially fictional drama, just with really bad costumes. Can we not have everyone ditch the hideous shapeless suits, red ties and badly fitted Florsheims and put our current lot in some proper kit? Some nice shiny armour with swords or silk pyjamas would do (anything to raise the visual standards).
Although, having now seen the clown at the top of the pile in robes thanks to AI on Instagram, I’m not sure that this is a look to live by either. He really is showing his godhead ambitions, what with his Jesus complex and, as Sun Tzu says, “It is the unemotional, reserved, calm, detached warrior who wins, not the hothead seeking vengeance and not the ambitious seeker of fortune.”
This fantastical Chinese world may be brutal, insanely violent and curated for extreme dramatic effect, but it’s also a perfect antidote to the current state of affairs. Yes, there are dreadful people doing dreadful things in this fictional dynasty with all its attendant internecine troubles and machinations, but our hero and heroine have a set of higher-order values and principles that drive them to replace the corrupt, the weak-minded, the ridiculous, the self-serving and the venal with a new order grounded in the antiquated ideas like truth, justice and prosperity for all. It’s a fantasy, but portrayed by Sun Tzu it’s really rather appealing.
This article was first published in Times Live.
