介绍:
【特别感谢热心听友黄善鋆帮忙听写本篇文稿】
Heyang: The imperial princess, Oh No, it’s not the imperial princess, it’s actually the imperial doctress or 女医明妃传. The TV drama has been lambasted by viewers because of the validity of prescription medicines used in the drama. Are people making a fuss out of nothing or are these TV shows too far off from real practice?
I know this is probably not the usual show that you guys would check out but because we are professionals, and I’m sure that you’ve looked at some of it. Do you think that the prescribed Traditional Chinese Medicine doesn’t really make sense in this show?
Brian: I would say yes, because Traditional Chinese Medicine doesn’t make sense in lot of ways, but within Traditional Chinese Medicine, contrary to what some people online seem to think, it does seem that it’s largely correct actually.
Liu Yan: Well, I think there so much controversy, mainly because some of the prescriptions sound pretty out there. Let’s just say, for example, there is this liquid mixture of fingernails, bird poop and earthworms used as some sort of medicine to treat a fever, just a fever. So of course, if you are one of those lazy people, who just like to watch TV shows but not actually do research, you would certainly think, Oh, this is nonsense.
Brian: That’s what Weibo and Twitter, and all of these were invented for, for just spouting off your mouth without doing any thinking or research.
Heyang: Yes, that’s just a wonderful example that Liu Yan just gave us. It turned out that Traditional Chinese Medicine doctors, specialists have been employed to consult and confirm with this prescription used on the show. And apparently a lot of these are kind of real, but it’s not like one hundred percent accurate to how you would, you know, perform the procedure on a patient for example. But is it really, something that we should worry about that these procedures used in TV shows are just not professional enough?
Brian: Well, it bothers some people obviously. But it’s not just this sort of thing. It’s is this TV show or movie accurately portraying this relatively narrow or specialized or professional field in the right way? And a lot of the time, I know Hollywood doesn’t do things accurately. And much of it is to make things more dramatic. Sometimes this is just in the air, coz they haven’t done the research or they don’t care to do it well. But a lot of time it’s for drama, and if it’s for drama, that makes a certain amount of sense but I guess it depends on what you are looking for as a viewer. And for most people, they probably wouldn’t care too much. I would say if it is in an egregious era such that they wouldn’t just happen in reality, or that is just it would actually affect things in the plot or whatever, then yea, that’s a problem, but minor things. Nay.
Liu Yan: I can definitely understand why some people are so being such sticklers. Because to them, maybe staying true to the facts is a very important factor to decide whether this is quality entertainment. But in general, I think after all this is just entertainment and you needn’t be too serious about details. However you can never underestimate the power of popular TV shows and things like that. What if people actually watch this and take it as truth and then imitate this practice?
Heyang: Yes, I think that’s a legitimate question. But can I please bring to your attention that on any TV show, especially this procedural kind of or TV shows that portray a particular profession, they have, in the beginning of every episode, there is this disclaimer that all fictional characters, or you know, coincidence if something does happen if you just copy us, you know those kind of things. I mean, would people, honestly, do this like replicate what happens on the shows?
Brian: Yes, absolutely!
Heyang: What are these people thinking?
Brian: Well that’s the question. But that doesn’t mean that’s not gonna happen. If you can think of something happening however ridiculous it might be, someone will do it somewhere online.
Liu Yan: And also you have to remember that a lot of people are actually watching this type of TV shows on the Internet. So if you watch those shows on Tencent for example, you can actually set the setting so you start from the actual dialogue instead of the opening disclaimer and theme song and things like that. So I doubt that a lot of people don’t see what you have just mentioned.
Brian: I think even if they see this disclaimer, it’s not gonna make a huge difference.
Heyang: That’s so interesting especially with today’s topic 女医明妃传. Coz I actually went through a lot of those criticism posts, it’s just got ignorance written all over. As average viewers like myself who know very little about traditional TCM and then when I see a show like this, I have a question mark in my head and because of my lack of knowledge, when I saw a bird poop and all kinds of poop and stuff, and then you are like how could that be true? And you automatically think this doesn’t seem right, but then you know these traditional Chinese medicine doctors have come out and said, well sometimes we use these things and it’s the combination of which that can sometimes have very good effects on people.
Brian: Supposedly.
Heyang: Well, yeah, you are the person who can arrive at your own decision and judgment on such things. It just turned out that so many netizens like myself, I suppose, we don’t know if we think we’ve been smart and we make all these comments when you just don’t know, isn’t this a lesson for people that although the Internet is a free space for all kinds of comments, but shouldn’t you at least think twice what you were saying, at least do a little bit of research before making these statements?
Brian: Yeah, I mean like a certain presidential candidate in the US, you have the right to be wrong, utterly and horribly wrong, but you should really think before you speak or tweet or microblog or whatever.
Liu Yan: I have a feeling that certain candidate is a running joke on this show and people are enjoying it including Heyang especially.
Heyang: Yes, the squirrel on his head?
Liu Yan: Oh, it reminds me of that Chinese saying 这样真的好吗?
Heyang: 很好啊. I won’t say anything wrong with it until I get a lawyer’s letter from him.
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