Qing Qing Ji Zin | Recap and Review

A mountain bandit kidnaps a girl who he slowly falls in love with. He asks her to be his bandit wife at least three times but they're only students/friends for now. 
Notable Actors/Actresses

Fan Shi Qi: Luo Qiu Chi

Lv Xiao Yu: Wen Ren Juan

Xie Bin Bin: Hang Ru Xue
Chinese Title
青青子衿

Genres: Period, Romcom, School, Period Romcom

Network: MangoTV

Year: 2020
Episodes: 10/40

Recap Grade: B/C
First Impression: 2.9/5

[Dropped]

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Mini Recaps

[Ep1] Luo Qiu Chi takes a bunch of maidens as hostages. He’s a notorious mountain bandit that not even the palace wants to mess with. Wen Ren Juan is one of maidens kept hostage. She volunteers herself to drink with the brute to protect the other girls but she can't do anything cute, dance nor sing. She can only recite poems. He listens to them and ends up reciting the poems back to her. He's not as mean as he looks.  

A class of schoolboys have arrived to save their sisters. Luo Qiu Chi challenges them to thirteen 'scholarly' events before he releases the maidens. The challenge is this: Luo Qiu Chi will take on thirteen of them at the same time to fight, shoot arrows, play chest, etc. Luo Qiu Chen is winning and Wen Ren Juan accidentally cheers for him. He's fighting two against one, shooting arrows, writing answers to poems and playing chest all at the same time. And! He wins everything. He can also play qin. The schoolboys note that he didn't complete two of the thirteen tasks. One of them was carving wood and the other was painting. It turns out he's already done both of them. During the fight, he made his opponents carve into the tree to create a dragon. The painting was also carved on the ground during the fight. Every move Luo Qiu Chi made was planned from the beginning. There's nothing this guy can't do. 

[Ep2] Luo Qiu Chi releases the girls as promised. However, the condition was for one schoolboy to pick up one maiden. There's only thirteen of them and there’s fifteen girls. Wen Ren Juan and her sister (Wen Ren Shu) has to stay until someone picks them up. 

Wen Ren Shu quickly betrays Wen Ren Juan to save herself when given the chance. Meanwhile Wen Ren Jian stays loyal to her. Fu Yuan Zhi is here to pick up the sisters. He actually beats Luo Qiu Chi in reciting poems. But he can only choose one of the girls to save. He chooses Wen Ren Shu. (The sisters share the same fathers)

Wen Ren Juan commits suicide by jumping off a cliff. She’s upset no one is here to save her; she might as well just die. Luo Qiu Chi saves her before it’s too late. He won’t let her die unless he says so. After he saves her, it’s a cry-fest. He wants to leave her but she whines to him that she wants to be loved too. Luo Qiu Chi walks back to Wen Ren Juan and tends to her injuries. She thinks he's actually pretty nice. From the way she's looking at him, he knows what she's thinking and tells her to stop. He reminds her he’s an evil bandit. But she tells him someone evil won’t have such beautiful eyes like his. 

Wen Ren Juan accidentally hits Luo Qiu Chi and he faints over. She had the perfect chance to leave but she piggybacks him back to the mountain village. He wakes up but he doesn’t want his followers to see him on a girl’s back. He tells her to take the back door instead. She's still holding a grudge on him for messing with her so she lifts him up with ease into her arms. She wants to walk in his manor like this. She’s got crazy strength. He accepts her dare and wraps his arms around her neck. He suggests for her to be his bandit bride while they’re at it. She quickly drops him and leaves him. But he’s not following her. When she turns around to look for him, he’s staring at a large hole in the ground. He’s reminded of his past and why he hates those scholarly schoolboys. When he was young, he wanted to take the entrance exam but the noble schoolboys killed his chimpanzee and denied him an opportunity to join their school. It’s not for the unprivileged. Thus he fails the exams. The news travel to his mother and she dies soon after. He didn’t get to see his mother one last time because someone had pushed him down the hole. He becomes an orphan and ends up stealing money to live. That’s how he met his current master who taught him the ways of a mountain bandit.  

[Ep3] Wen Ren Juan thinks Luo Qiu Chi wants to marry her which is why they're both in red. A very logical conclusion of hers but these are just clothes to celebrate for the festival. Wen Ren Juan almost committed suicide over this. Luo Qiu Chi laughs at her. 

Luo Qiu Chi takes her flying through the sky. She was complaining about her lack of freedom at home but now that she's with him she feels free. He asks her to stay in his bandit village and even suggests for her to be his bandit wife. She suddenly remembers what she did to him when she was drunk. She almost kissed him, and practically flirted with him. 

Their little romance is interrupted when Fu Yuan Zhi brings Han Ru Xue (a high ranking general) to save Wen Ren Juan. They're not a match for Luo Qiu Chi but he gets distracted by a medallion that fell on the ground. Luo Qiu Chi recognizes that medallion. The person who pushed him down the hole carried it. Fu Yuan Zhi takes this chance to push Luo Qiu Chi down the cliff. Han Ru Xue is upset at Fu Yuan Zhi because he's here to save someone not to kill someone. At the end of the episode Han Ru Xue asks the Emperor to forgive him over this. 

[Ep4] Luo Qiu Chi isn't dead. He's shaved off all the extra facial hair and straightened his locks. He applied for the same school as Wen Ren Juan and no one else recognized him except for her. He's looking for the owner of the medallion, the man who pushed him into the hole. He's the top student enrolled that year and gets the honour of being taken around by the school's number one student (Fu Yuan Zhi). Luo Qiu Chi doesn't want him, he wants Wen Ren Juan. However, all the girls hustle around him to take Wen Ren Juan's job. But Luo Qiu Chi wants only the girl he picked. Wen Ren Juan is happy to see him alive. He punishes her for one thing: she hasn't called him by his name at all. Smiling, she calls him Luo Qiu Chi. 

Luo Qiu Chi meets Han Ru Xue in school. Han Ru Xue is no longer a high ranking general. He's demoted to a woodcraft teacher at school. What, lol. Immediately upon seeing him, Luo Qiu Chi recognizes him and attacks him (thinking he has something to do with the medallion). He's also lighting fires everywhere else with other students, especially with Fu Yuan Zhi. 

[Ep5] Fu Yuan Zhi offers to be Wen Ren Juan's groom. Her step-mother is forcing Wen Ren Juan to marry off (so that she doesn't ruin her sister's chances of marrying up the social hierarchy). Luo Qiu Chi rejects Fu Yuan Zhi for Wen Ren Juan. He says she's his. 

Luo Qiu Chi helps Ye Yang with her love life. She accidentally left her pendant in Hang Ru Xue's knife box she secretly bought for him. If he finds it, he'll know she bought it for him. Thus the two girls secretly enter the male dormitory at night. 

[Ep6] Luo Qiu Chi catches Wen Ren Juan in his closet. She won't tell him why she sneaked into his room. She accidentally rips off his shirt and exposes his chest and abs. Those abs. So defined, woo. She also twists her ankle. Without a word, he lifts her up in his arms to his bed. He sits her down with her legs over him to massage her ankle. 

This episode Luo Qiu Chi wins over the other students. Except Fu Yuan Zhi. The more popularity Luo Qiu Chi gains, the more Fu Yuan Zhi hates him. He does win Luo Qiu Chi once: Wen Ren Juan chooses to leave with Fu Yuan Zhi over Wen Ren Juan because she saw Fu Yuan Zhi's injuries. 

[Ep7] Luo Qiu Chi is accused of being the arsonist. Wen Ren Juan risks ruining her reputation to protect Luo Qiu Chi (after she had almost risked her life to save him in the fire). They work together with Han Ru Xue to find the culprit. The person who's suspicious is Wen Ren Juan's uncle.

[Ep8] Luo Qiu Chi takes an arrow for Han Ru Xue. Han Ru Xue promises to return this favour. He also protects Wen Ren Juan with his life. 

[Ep9] Luo Jiu Chi, who had protected Wen Ren Juan her, is unconscious for over three days now. Wen Ren Juan meets a random master and she asks him to train her so that she can start protecting people she cares about. 

Wen Ren Shu almost killed Wen Ren Juan because she was jealous (Wen Ren Shu likes Fu Yuan Zhi). Wen Ren Shu feels guilty but mom encourages her that if it’s for love, it’s okay. Fu Yuan Zhi discovers Ren Shu's malicious intentions towards Ren Juan. Ren Shu begs him to forgive her because she did it out of love for him. Love my butt. He accepts her excuse and lets her go. 

[Ep10] Wen Ren Juan is still training with the weird master who only teaches her how to fly. 

Luo Qiu Chi tells Han Ru Xue the truth about enlisting in this school to find the jade's owner. Han Ru Xue is now on Luo Qiu Chi's side and doesn't expose him to the Emperor (who is this weird weird kid). It's so weird how Han Ru Xue takes this Emperor so seriously. 

Luo Qiu Chi reopened an injury making Wen Ren Juan very worried. He hugs her and says he’ll be fine after that. 
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Remarks

[First Impression (Ep1-6)] I decently like this. It's about a boy with a revenge story, gets into this school, and there's a girl he likes. He likes her probably because she's pure, loyal, and courageous. Someone pushing him down a hole is the reason he needs to get revenge. That is our premise that's driving our male lead's every action. Seems pretty far-fetched to me though that his revenge is for that. Having watched these episodes, I don't know why this needs to be forty episodes. But I might just pull through for Kris Fan Shi Qi. I've got a soft spot for him. 

The title '青青子衿' is part of a Chinese poem. I did not grow up learning Chinese literature so do correct me if I'm wrong. The line that follows is 悠悠我心. It translates to something along the lines of "The scholar in blue/green collar (青青子衿) is lingering in my heart (悠悠我心). There's more lines to this poem and it describes a girl's feelings for a scholarly man she loves and yearns to see. She's always waiting for him and not seeing him for a day is like three months for her. Sounds like a typical person in love. 

[Actors/Actresses] Like I said, I have soft spot for Fan Shi Qi (Chasing Ball, Where the Lost Ones Go). I also like Xie Bin Bin (from The Chang'an Youth). I particularly like his character here. He's good at being stiff (this is a compliment).  

[Behind the Scenes] 

[OST] Kris Fan Shi Qi sings the opening song. He has such a pretty voice. 

[Dropped] Forty episodes is too long. I don’t think the female lead has a female-lead-aura to her. I really like the OSTs though. 

Rating: /5