This is a literary romance soap opera for adults. Not for young adults, like most mainstream Chinese romances are, but for adults. With a Male Lead who is realistically flawed and not some dreamy perfect blank slate female fantasy. (Although the second Male Lead gives us that, for the inner teenage girls in us who want it – and it doesn't hurt that he resembles a young Tony Leung and is very easy on the eyes!)

I also appreciate that Ming Lan isn't a complete unabashed Mary Sue who excels at everything, with every male character admiring and falling for her. Ming Lan is frequently berated and punished for her perceived wrongdoings, some people think she's incapable, and she doesn't win every single conflict she's in (unlike Liu Yifei's Zhao Pan'er in A Dream of Splendor, whom everyone thought was formidable and always got the last word against her detractors – though I loved Zhao Pan'er too, it did seem a little annoying / unrealistic).

The other supporting characters too are believably flawed, like Ming Lan's sisters and their legal mother, and contribute to a rich story world.

I'm 20 episodes in and I haven't spotted any flaws (other than maybe a few too many hysterical-threatening-suicide scenes from the excellently manipulative villains and I completely feel the other reviewer who wrote that she fast-forwards through those scenes; and the unrealistic fight scene on boat early on). I already know this is going to be the best Chinese serial I've ever watched – yes, above Nirvana in Fire, A Dream of Splendor, and Extraordinary Attorney Woo, which all didn't even break 9.0 for me even though I enjoyed them tremendously for the most part. What elevates The Story of Ming Lan above is that for our main leads, their battles consistently feel hard-won and nobody just gives them a free pass, which is what bothers me in many of the shows above – after a certain point it feels like the writers gave up and started solving their problems a bit more lazily.

To elaborate a bit on my comparison to Downton Abbey – another reason I think is the deliberate distortion of the peerage system used in The Story of Ming Lan. In the Song Dynasty, aristocratic titles (like the earls 伯爵, marquises 侯爵 and dukes 公爵 used here) were not hereditary. The system in this drama, where the male heir will automatically inherit the title, is actually more similar to the aristocratic system in Britain, hence my nod towards Downton Abbey and other historical British romances like Bridgerton, et al. I don't mind that the creators made that choice because it certainly makes the stakes higher for a good elitist romance story, but just be aware that it's historically inaccurate.

Note: I haven't finished watching the series yet but already had several thoughts about it so I wanted to write them down. Will update when I finish all episodes.

Update: I finished the series and found lots more to love since my original review. I loved the slowly developing intimacy between the leads, which feels hard-earned after their initial struggles and miscommunication early in their marriage, which feels like relationships in real life where you have to learn to adapt to another person's communication style and emotional needs. Other than a few quibbles about repetitive tropes of how villains plotted against our main characters, it was pretty much a perfect series for me and I'd rewatch most episodes in a heartbeat, which is not something I could say about any other Asian drama I've watched.

Themes explored in this drama:
1. Evil concubines
You could argue that main wives can be equally evil in this show. But I feel like every time a concubine has an devious scheme to undermine a main wife, we see it onscreen – whereas every time a main wife (outside of Sheng family) oppresses a concubine, it happens offscreen... shows where the true perspective of this show lies.

2. TBC