Stressed-out Chinese love melodrama about courtly life

A BIT surprisingly, one of the best things about the “Story of Yanxi Palace”, a television drama about an 18th-century emperor that has broken Chinese viewing records this year, is watching concubines being rude to eunuchs. Even less predictably, the particular rudeness—combining scorn, resentment and a dash of fear—offers insights into how Chinese people cope with life in today’s ruthless and unequal society. An early scene shows the Qianlong emperor’s chief eunuch, a tubby, squeaky dimwit, bustling into a silk-draped waiting-room with an order for the harem. Return to your quarters, he announces, the emperor is working late. “What? His majesty is sleeping alone again?” grumbles Noble Consort Gao, a boo-hiss villain. “Let’s go,” she tells her fellow concubines, stalking past the eunuch without a glance. “What else is there to wait for?”

“Yanxi Palace” is a gorgeously costumed fantasy, filled with poisonings, betrayals and young women competing for the Forbidden City’s great prize: being bedded by the emperor. “Join the army, you might as well become a general,” as one ambitious recruit to the harem chirps. The show is driven by female characters, including a kind but sickly empress, murderous concubines and—at the heart of the 70-episode epic—Wei Yingluo, a quick-witted, justice-seeking maid, who rises to become Qianlong’s beloved consort. The formula is wildly popular, drawing 700m live-streaming views on the drama’s best single day, in August.