Sunrise on the River review

When Wang Wu, the vice mayor in charge of environmental protection of Qijiang city, commits suicide, Lin Han Jiang finds himself pulled into city administration.

A university professor and an environmental protection expert, he ends up being appointed director of the Environmental Protection Bureau of Qijiang City, taking over Wang Wu’s place.

It turns out that being a city official is very different from being an environmental activist. As an official, Han Jiang is caught between the needs of the environment and the demands of a city hungry to develop and prosper.

He discovers, sometimes painfully, that the environment always ends up being the last priority and that people are more keen to act when there is profit. He is also blocked at every turn by his colleagues who feel that their KPIs are being threatened by his reforms. Business establishments, furious at their projects being affected, puts pressure on his superiors who in turn “advise” Han Jiang to reverse his decisions.

Han Jiang finally understood the stress his predecessor Wang Wu, must’ve gone through. But did Wang Wu commit suicide because he couldn’t manage the balancing act of safeguarding the environment and ensuring the city’s growth and development? Or was it something more sinister?

My thoughts

I had to concede that towards the end the drama got really, really boring for me 😅.

It started out really well and then it just got suuuuuper slow.

I think I understand why. Initially, the show was filmed dynamically. Our characters would go on expeditions to villages, into mountains and caves, and discover pockets of terrible pollution. There would be interesting environmental cases to tackle.

The first case was a prime example – how do you move a street full of vendors without harming their livelihoods? I thought the solution was ingenious.

Then the case of an apartment complex abandoned by developers, stranding the buyers with no homes but with high mortgages. And to add insult to injury, the apartment grounds were turned into a toxic garbage dump.
These cases held my attention until the big case involving the suicide of our main lead’s friend which started it all ..and the drama literally slowed down and grounded to a halt. In terms of action and dynamism.

Suddenly, all our characters are stuck in meeting rooms, boardrooms, and press conferences. They talk, they lecture. Essentially the show became super, super talky and my brain, tired out from a day of meetings at work, could not bear to watch TV people hold meetings. Pure torture 🤪

But I persevered.

I just felt that the last 10 episodes could’ve been told in the same dynamic way the show started out. What happened? God knows, but my brain begged for mercy and I ended up fastforwarding most of the last ten episodes. 😆

So should you watch this? Well, if an environmental, curious about how China goes green kinda person like me finds it boring…well, probably not a good idea unless you are an even bigger nerd than I am. 😉

Rating: 7.5