Some stories stay with you long after the final episode. This is one of them. A woman stripped of her name, home, and everything she holds dear fights her way through betrayal and injustice, discovering that reclaiming her life may be as much about love as it is about revenge.An appreciation of Against the Current (兰香如故) (2026)
– Surabhi Chhikara
Most C-dramas start this way: The male lead’s (ML) father and brothers get betrayed by corrupt officials and die. Or the clan perishes due to the reigning ruler’s wrath which prompts the ML to take revenge. Follows fifty episodes of getting revenge, a wife and a happy ending. ‘Against the Current’ (兰香如故 / Lan Xiang Ru Gu) turns the lens onto the predicament of women in the family when the actions of the men who sit at high court positions invite trouble for the whole clan. The title lives up to its name, doesn’t it? Words cannot do justice to the visual masterpiece that is this show. Nonetheless I shall attempt to in hopes of you watching it, reader.
‘Against the Current’ starts with the premise of a life saved and a life borrowed. The female lead Shen Jia Lan watches the women in her family get sold to sexual servitude after the Shens fall from grace. A past kindness allows her to live, but as Xu Lanxiang – the girl whose parents lost her to a tragic twist of fate. Shen’s mother leaves her with one message – live. Her adoptive mother adds another – live well. As Lanxiang, Shen traverses the path of what it means to be a hereditary slave. She begins serving the powerful Lin family as a housemaid. Through her intelligence she wins back her and her family’s freedom.
Lanxiang never forgets to be kind. Her concern never emerges from a place of who she is helping, rather from understanding that everyone is doing their best to live too. She’s a girls’ girl. She employs her privileged upbringing and the knowledge it gave her to solve the problems of women around her. She also relies on them in times of need. Ahh gracefully feminist. The show captures how women don’t wish to live as appendages to the lives of men but crave to live as themselves. From female anti-heroes and scheming villains, who are sold by their families in political marriages, to women who live through domestic abuse, human trafficking and money issues, the show manages to cut across classes and zoom in on their reality without diminishing or being preachy about it.
I am in awe of how well connected each frame and event is to another. Neat cuts, thoughtful props and spatial organisation bring out the directorial brilliance of Huang Ying Xiang. The show opens with summer approaching. Lanxiang is buying veggies from a vendor with an infant. Many years later, another scene opens with the same season and that infant has grown up. Transitions like these to depict the flow of time are beautiful details one can’t help but marvel at. Also amazing is the succinct storytelling and solid acting of the cast.
Set in a fictional historical setting, the show explores what it meant to own property, to love, to ask for legal separation, to be forced to have a son, and to live without marrying as a woman. The multiple women featured are not two-dimensional beings but people with rich pasts and personalities. They are supplemented by a multitude of male characters who have their own stories, contexts and arcs. As fathers, husbands, brothers and friends, they are horrid, jealous, loving, supportive, and at times a complex mix of these.
Testament to this is Lin Jinqi, the male lead who was once betrothed to Shen. He pulled out of the engagement when the Shens fell. After he is forced into a political marriage he takes off to build an independent military career for himself. For a refreshing first, he is not a bigshot from the get go and is often shown to be powerless in face of circumstances. He falls first and goes to insane lengths to meet Lanxiang after she has become a free citizen. He is divorced, by the way. Now out of fear that the absolutely nice, status-compatible scholar living near Lanxiang might marry her (which he almost does), he acquires an imperial decree from the Emperor to marry Lanxiang. Lanxiang complied but refused to entertain Jinqi’s whims after they started living together. When he asks why he must be punished so, she simply says because he took away what she cherished most – her freedom to decide the course of her own life. That moment stayed with me throughout the drama. Lin Jinqi is a rebel and has been an independent thinker. His arc is particularly interesting to trace because he goes from “I want what all men want – status, sons and power” to “I want a life of peace away from the turmoil of power, status or sons” with ample help from Lanxiang. He refuses to tolerate abuse towards women in his family. When life shakes him with unsettling facts he has taken for granted, he becomes a reed and sways rather than break. This is what Lanxiang recognises with time and what makes her accept him.
My favourite element in the entire series is the travelling opera troupe that Lanxiang became closely associated with and even wrote plays for. Besides the troupe becoming somewhat of a saviour, a site of friendship, and source of income for Lanxiang, it becomes a vessel through which the relevance of theater and arts is explored. The show emphasises the role it plays in setting the political tone, becoming a public space where women can mingle, and helping Jinqi realise his path.
Lanxiang continues writing even amidst her progressing life and passes on to her daughter a play she wrote based on the Shen family characters – The Tale of the Lighted Lamp. It is deeply symbolic of how the Shen legacy lives on through her and how throughout the show she helped other women light up lamps of hope in their own lives. At one point, Lanxiang acknowledges that she has found a reason to live in her parents, her daughter and above all in herself. The message of a life lived, and lived well for oneself gets passed on through the play from woman to woman, from mother to daughter, so that those who come after may not fear to go against the current.
Edited by: Esha Ann Mariya | Design by: Vivechna Kain
