I am once again screaming after finishing an episode of Blue Canvas of Youthful Days. This show is incredible.

Let me start with one of the more smartly constructed misunderstandings I've seen in a minute: after seeing Teacher Liu's lost love in a photo, Tan Lin avoids him for days, Liu eventually gets drunk and calls him, then ends up flipping him onto the bed and saying he missed him so much--which Tan Lin believes is Liu confusing him with his ex. So he removes his hearing aid to shut out Liu's words, right before Liu keeps talking and makes it clear he knows this is Tan Lin and Tan Lin is the one he missed. So Liu finally gives in and kisses him, but Tan Lin thinks it's only because he's mixing him up with his ex. Diabolical, show! Teacher Liu, you are a fucking mess and you need to get it together, stop running hot and cold, and communicate very clearly about your intentions.

On the other side of our story, this episode gave me everything I hoped re: filling in Qin Xiao's perspective to help us understand why he rejected Qi Lu. This show continues to be so solid on the class dynamics and how they inform this romance. Teacher Liu laid it out clearly: Qi Lu is privileged and he will be able to go to college with or without this special admissions boost, but Qin Xiao has many fewer opportunities and he can't blow it getting caught up in Qi Lu's problems. Qin Xiao knows this, and is also battling some feelings of unworthiness and unwillingness to make Qi Lu's life harder by saddling him with Qin Xiao's struggles. On top of that, and what I found most heartbreaking, Qin Xiao admits he has always longed for a "normal" family, with a wife and kids of his own. He wants that desperately, and so of course he is fighting himself on falling for a guy. And I get him. When you grow up that deprived of things other folks take for granted, there is a real drive to build it for yourself and strong resistance to anything that would get in the way of it, even including your own true desires and feelings.

I liked that this episode had Qi Lu crossing the line into being far too pushy and displaying a real lack of empathy for Qin Xiao and his different life circumstances, because it put them back on more equal footing in this conflict. Qi Lu clearly does not understand Qin Xiao's perspective and is not interested in understanding; he's too fixated on what he wants and how he wants to live in defiance of his abusive father to hear Qin Xiao's legitimate hesitations and give him space to work it out. It's a really beautifully constructed impasse where they're both in the wrong but we understand what's driving each of them.

Qi Lu just said I'm going to like you wether you fucking like it or not and you're going to admit to liking me too if it's the last thing I do.

He's just my type of deranged. I have to give him props for going hard at Qin Xiao. He is not letting Qin Xiao off an inch because of his unwavering confidence that his love is not unrequited. Boyfriends or bust. Fuck being friend zoned.

East Palace, West Palace in ep5 of Blue Canvas of Youthful Days

I have been punched in the solar plexus by Blue Canvas of Youthful Days episode 5. So much happens in that episode that is overwhelming, from Qi Lu setting up a Netflix-and-chill date with the clear intention of making a move, to his putting on the famous film East Palace, West Palace (1996), to Qi Lu hiding Qin Xiao in the closet, to Qi Lu's panic at his father realizing he's been lied to, to the devastatingly practiced way Teacher Liu steps to Qi Lu being abused and handles his father, to the way Qi Lu shuts down, to the way QIn Xiao keeps sending mixed signals and Qi Lu calls him on it directly. And nobody else in this episode let me rest either; Tan Fan trying to ask Teacher Liu to wait for him and Liu brushing him off AGAIN, and Turtle trying to call out

@lurkingshan was already more coherent than I can be right now about what happened in the episode in her post.

So instead I want to focus on some queer cinema history that this episode evoked by using East Palace, West Palace as the film that Qi Lu shows to QIn Xiao.

For those who don't know, EPWP is considered to be the first realistic depiction of a gay man in film by a mainland Chinese production. It is to my knowledge the first time a gay man says "I love you" to another man on screen. It was made before being gay was decriminalized in China (1997), and it was filmed by an independent production company and smuggled out of China to France in order to be finished and distributed. It ended up at the Cannes festival in 1997, but the director's passport was seized and he was placed under house arrest to prevent him from attending. Despite pressure to pull the film, it still aired that year. In 1998, the Film Law was passed to prevent anyone from making films outside of the studio system (and therefore censorship review), effectively preventing anything like EPWP from being made in the future.

The film is about a gay man who cruises in the notorious bathrooms in the parks on either side of Tiananmen Square getting harassed by police officers (a situation extremely familiar to the historical queer experience in Canada [where I'm from] as well) and playing what I'd describe as a psychological game with one of them; A Lan kisses the cop, runs, and then gets caught a second time, and uses the second police confession as an excuse to tell his life's story in the public record, all while pushing the police officer a little further into deviance. As far as I'm aware, this film has been banned in China since being made and never shown (please correct me if I'm wrong about that!).

This is hitting me hard because of the much more recent history of Blue Canvas of Youthful Days itself. As most of you know, but I'll capture here for posterity, episodes 1-4 of this show aired on iQIYI (a China-based app) on August 6, and within 24 hours they were pulled from the app with no information about the future episodes being shown. When I watched episode 5 today, after waiting for it for 3 months, I was immediately hit with a wave of anger that this gorgeous, emotionally moving and powerful episode had been held back from public consumption for months, for the same reasons that the film being shown within the episode had been withheld from viewing in its own country.

Censorship is such an ugly thing, it's hard to articulate but the emotions around it are so strong because we know, when they pull or refuse to show media that depicts our lives, it's because they don't want our lives to be real; they don't want us to exist. It's a very real threat. And to have this episode--which is all about an abused boy who is in very real danger but so bravely insisting that he shoot his shot and take his best chance at love and happiness anyway, using the iconic confession scene from one of the most famous banned films in Chinese queer cinema history to do it--to have this episode be the one that was prevented from airing......I am overwhelmed.

In the scenes they watch in episode 5, A Lan tries to prevent the officer from uncuffing him, and then the officer lets him go, but A Lan doesn't go far and comes back. He declares his love to the officer's face, and demands that his love be acknowledged and not dismissed. And the officer does not know what to do with it and reacts with violence, which is partially what A Lan has been angling at all along. The show really played with this by having all three of the couples in the show stymied by having their overtures dismissed this episode, but we almost didn't get to see it.

I'm so grateful this got distribution now, and on multiple platforms. Blue Canvas of Youthful Days is airing Saturdays and Sundays on GagaOOLala and Youtube (note, as per @thisonelikesaliens's excellent language posts, the subs on Gaga are much better), and on Mondays on Viki. I know there is an avalanche of content right now, but this show is so good and worked so hard to make it to us, please give it some love!

BLUE CANVAS OF YOUTHFUL DAYS | EP. 2