LayarHijau — Actor Liu Xiaobei, 28, plays two male characters who both fall for the female lead, yet meet very different fates. He plays Sun Yuanzhu in the contemporary drama The Early Spring and Qi Zhongkai in the period drama Where the Mask Ends. This article contains spoilers for the endings of both dramas and for the novel version of Where the Mask Ends.
In The Early Spring, Sun Yuanzhu is the roommate of Shang Zhitao (Sun Qian), a quiet autonomous-driving technology researcher who always considers other people’s feelings. He sincerely looks out for Shang Zhitao, but his story ends in tragedy because of family pressure and psychological struggles. The ending left a deep impression on viewers, who call it yi nan ping (意難平), a lingering regret that a beloved character’s fate did not turn out as hoped.
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In Where the Mask Ends, Liu Xiaobei plays Qi Zhongkai, the second son of the Marquis of Pingxi, a young general, and the close friend of Lu Zhuo (Yan An). He sees through Wei Rao’s (Tian Xiwei) true identity from the start and quietly becomes her pillar of support. Unlike Sun Yuanzhu, Qi Zhongkai does not meet a tragic end, but his love for Wei Rao goes unreturned.
Qi Zhongkai’s ending in the drama
In the drama, Qi Zhongkai had already tried to win Wei Rao’s love after her divorce from Lu Zhuo. He is therefore furious when Wei Rao decides to get back together with Lu Zhuo. He briefly shows anger and jealousy toward his own friend.
At that point, the antagonist Han Liao approaches him. Han Liao offers him a chance to win Wei Rao if he betrays Lu Zhuo. Qi Zhongkai instead uses the offer to devise a plan with Lu Zhuo, on the pretext of testing Wei Rao’s love.
By the end of the drama, Qi Zhongkai is not shown with a life partner. However, he lets go of his hope of having Wei Rao and stays close to the main couple.
Qi Zhongkai’s ending in the novel
In the novel, Qi Zhongkai is the first person to fall for Wei Rao. His gaze is pure and free of lust, and his personality is straightforward and free-spirited. When Wei Rao’s grandmother requires her to look for a husband from a powerful noble family to protect her from the empress dowager’s assassination attempts, she briefly considers Qi Zhongkai.
But Wei Rao realizes that Qi Zhongkai’s grandmother and mother look down on her. When Qi Zhongkai hears a rumor that Wei Rao used scheming tricks to win over the Qi family, he goes to her and confesses his love. Wei Rao turns him down because she knows well how hard it is for a woman to be happy in a marriage without her future mother-in-law’s approval.
In the novel, Lu Zhuo is engaged to Xie Hua Lou, and he holds a prejudice against Wei Rao because of the gossip circulating in the capital about the women of the Zhou family. But the Xie family refuses to go through with the marriage while Lu Zhuo is in a coma. Lu Zhuo’s grandmother, Madam Yi, then proposes Wei Rao as a bride for her grandson. Learning that his friend has married the girl he loves, Qi Zhongkai decides to forget her. His family introduces him to several girls from respectable families, but they dislike his tall, broad build and dark skin, along with his blunt manner and loud voice. To him, none of them is as beautiful as Wei Rao.
As in the drama, after Wei Rao divorces, he starts pursuing her again, competing with his own friend, and is rejected once more.
After Wei Rao and Lu Zhuo remarry, Lu Zhuo’s mother, He Wang Niang, laments the fate of her niece, He Weiyu, Lu Zhuo’s cousin, who lives with her and whom she treats like her own daughter. He Weiyu is still unmarried. She has liked Lu Zhuo from the beginning and, in the novel, hoped to become his concubine, but that hope came to nothing. He Wang Niang then overhears a conversation between her son and Qi Zhongkai: the reason Qi Zhongkai is still unmarried is that he has not met a beautiful woman.
He Wang Niang, who is described as beautiful in the novel, is convinced that He Weiyu, who closely resembles her, is beautiful enough to win Qi Zhongkai over. Wei Rao and Lu Zhuo help arrange a match between the two. From their first meeting, Qi Zhongkai takes an immediate liking to He Weiyu. In his view, her beauty is not on par with Wei Rao’s, but it is a different kind. His mother initially objects, but eventually gives her blessing after resigning herself to her son being repeatedly turned down by other women, and after meeting He Weiyu in person at the Lu residence. In the novel, the two marry and live happily.
Differences between the drama and the novel
That matchmaking storyline does not exist in the drama. In the drama, He Weiyu appears only a few times and plays a different role: she is hostile toward Wei Rao and incites other cousins of Lu Zhuo to turn against her. This enrages Lu Zhuo, who asks his mother to send He Weiyu back to her parents’ home.
Liu Xiaobei thus plays two different fates. Sun Yuanzhu meets a tragic end, while Qi Zhongkai ends up without a partner in the drama but happily married in the novel.
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