Zixuan loving selflessly
Written by lovelikethis
Zixuan finally learns to love selflessly in the end. It’s very interesting how Zixuan learns and grows as the three lifetimes go along.
It was in Zixuan and Changqing/Liufang’s first lifetime that Zixuan learned what love was and how to love for the very first time. In the beginning she loved selfishly, but I think that’s natural when you finally find someone you love and want to be with for the rest of your life. Doesn’t everyone start out loving selfishly anyway? It was the first stage of love for her, and in their first lifetime Zixuan was the sweet, innocent and naive girl who only wanted to be a matchmaker and be Liufang’s bride. She hadn’t gone through the kind of pain and heartbreak that love can cause until she meets Liufang. After spending time together, Liufang tells Zixuan that if she still loved him after three years, he’ll marry her, and being the cute and naive girl who still retained her innocence, Zixuan smiles happily and agrees, thinking that nothing could ever go wrong. Three years later they both meet each other at the lake again, Zixuan sees him, gets mad so she runs off, Liufang runs after her and she slaps him. But then a moment later they reconcile and he leans in to kiss her; and it’s so bitter-sweet because I think that what Liufang did here was actually the very thing that made Zixuan fall even harder for him. I mean, if you think about yourself in her shoes, the guy who told you to wait three years didn’t keep his promise but then you learn that it was actually a misunderstanding on his part, and then he leans in to kiss you (just seconds after you were mad at him): I would think that this made Zixuan hold on even tighter to her love for him, because now she gets it that he really truly does love her the way she loves him. I think it was their first kiss (who Liufang initiated) that actually made her believe and grip tighter onto their love, hence one of the reasons why she appears to him in the second lifetime after they both willingly jumped off the cliff with each other.
In the second lifetime Zixuan has lost her innocence, which is what usually happens when you’ve gone through pain and hardship. You can see that she’s got a rough edge to her now; she’s got a harder exterior (which is also thanks to the actress’s outstanding portrayal of the more mature Zixuan) because after what happened, she has learned that love is not all flowers and cotton candy: there’s a dark and painful side to love that’s very real too. She’s no longer that naive and cute girl of the previous lifetime. What happened obviously left a huge scar inside her. But she still believes in holding onto their love and going after Yeping. In a way, it was almost like she was battling fate as well, in order to have a second chance to be with Yeping/Liufang.
And now here’s the thing that wasn’t supposed to happen: in their third lifetime together, Zixuan wasn’t supposed to show up in front of Changqing anymore, but because Chong Lou would have killed him, she had to save him. And now here’s the other thing that wasn’t supposed to happen: Changqing remembered Zixuan even though his memories were sealed. See, some things aren’t supposed to happen but they happen anyway. The way I look at it is that it was fate for them to come together for one last time before parting forever. Because with the current state that Zixuan was in, she really wasn’t ready to truly let go of Changqing, and both needed to resolve the debts and suffering that they endured in their previous lifetimes. Zixuan was hurting from being traumatized and not being able to let go of a love that was supposed to be but couldn’t be (I also think she did want to let go of Changqing, but it’s like there was still something missing in her that made her unable to let go still). And you know? If it is true love that Changqing has for Zixuan, he’d love her no matter how many lifetimes she comes back to love him. So in another way, it was actually Zixuan who had to make the final decision and stop the cycle. And she did. All this has just made me realize that Zixuan actually has a very strong personality indeed.
Zixuan
My point to all of this is that we don’t all start out perfect. We learn as we go on living, and that’s what happened to Zixuan. In the beginning, she thought that love was enough to be together with the one she loved. Changqing/Liufang was like her life. Her whole world revolved around him, it was obvious. But in the end she started to see that it was her who was wrong, and this is why she was finally able to accept reality for what it really was. Third lifetime around she learned to how to love right, and that was to love selflessly by letting Changqing go once and for all. So she really is a good woman, and that’s why she’s my favorite alongside Changqing.
