MAYBE SPOILERS? I DONT THINK SO? DUNNO. . .

After spending 28 days in Chinese quarantine, I needed something to pass the time with :P So I ended up watching all three seasons of this series on Iqiyi 's website (https://www.iq.com/play/1qjg1dgygck). I really, really enjoyed this show and watched all of the episodes in about a week.

Basic Gist: Dong Q. has the kind of childhood that makes for a great sob story. Orphan. Sees ghosts. Alone. But he's also that character that makes for a great Chinese 'damsel in distress' kind of person . . . - 'forever hopeful, incessantly optimistic, has all the faith in the world in spite of its flaws, GOOD in all caps' kind of hero. Much to his surprise (and to his great exasperation), he finds himself employed at Convenience Store 444* under the charge of owner Zhao Li.

The same Zhao Li who also happens to be a ferryman for the underworld, bringing lost souls across to the care of the Queen of the Dead. Zhao Li who is a whole lot of arrogance hiding a kindness that got subsumed in centuries of loneliness. Zhao Li who is determined to make use of Dong Q.'s ghost-seeing abilities but keeps finding himself drug off track with Dong Q. being all heroic and stuff. Resolving last wishes, finding lost loves, passing along final messages. It's a problem for him 😂

Accompanying them on ghostly adventures is Xiao Ya. . . a girl as lonely as the other two and looking for someone who is open to loving her as much as she want to love them. In the end, it's not a romantic story really. It's about friends. Lonely people living lonely lives who somehow find each other and form a family. Being there for the holidays, celebrating promotions, watching KDramas together, having BBQ. Cherishing memories and building a life together.

*4 is the Chinese number of death.

Observances:

- It's spooky but not scary. Sometimes funny, sometimes serious but not like a horror film. The cover is a bit misleading. Smoke, night escapades, creepy music, evil laughter. . . that kind of creepy.
- The first season is episodic (each episode or two is a new plotline / ghost). I get the feeling it was meant to run for one season as a kind of fun holiday sort of show that became popular and got deeper as it went. The first season was fun, but you only got hints that there was some bigger plot behind everything. It could be watched alone I think, but you'd miss a lot if you did.
- The second season starts off weird. . . it took me like two or three episodes to really figure out what was going on. It seemed like a whole different storyline or parallel world, and to some extent it was? Again, I think season one was a stand alone, and the next season they had to shift or back-track on some things so it could re-start the plot again. Just don't look two deep and roll with it. The storyline moves on pretty quick.
- Third season made me cry. A lot. You see so much character growth through all the seasons and by the time it gets to the third season they really are a family and it's precious.
- Second season is a lot of anti-Japanese rhetoric. Pretty heavy on the nationalist propaganda too🤷‍♀️
- If you watch it on Iqiyi, the last episode of each season doesn't belong to the series; it's like a 'Christmas special'. Same cast, but a self-contained plotline.