Strange Tales of Tang Dynasty

The Phantoms of Chang’an

In an era where the detective genre often suffocates under the weight of self-serious police procedurals or formulaic "content" designed for second-screen viewing, *Strange Tales of Tang Dynasty* (2022) arrives as a refreshing hallucination. Directed by Guo Shimin, this series does not merely ask "whodunit?" but rather "what is it?" It operates in the twilight zone between rigorous historical drama and the fever dreams of folklore. It is a work that understands that in the Tang Dynasty—a cosmopolitan peak of Chinese civilization—the rational and the supernatural were not opposing forces, but roommates living in an uneasy truce.



The visual language of the series is its most immediate triumph. Guo eschews the sterile, high-key lighting that plagues many modern costume dramas in favor of a textured, almost tactile darkness. The camera lingers on the grotesque and the beautiful with equal fascination: a tea that induces madness, a shapeshifting tiger, or the intricate mechanics of a hidden palace. This is not the sanitized, digitally-polished history of textbooks; it is a sweaty, breathing world where shadows have weight. The "Chang’an Red Tea" arc, for instance, uses the visual motif of the tea—blood-red and seductive—to critique the decadence of an empire rotting from the inside out. The horror here is not just in the monsters, but in the human excesses that birth them.

At the heart of this phantasmagoria lies the friction between its two leads, a dynamic that transcends the tired "buddy cop" trope through genuine philosophical conflict. Su Wuming (Yang Zhigang), a disciple of the legendary Di Renjie, represents the cerebral, observational path to truth. He is a man who reads the world like a text. In contrast, General Lu Lingfeng (Yang Xuwen) is a creature of martial pride and aristocratic rigidity.



What makes their journey compelling is not just the cases they solve, but the disintegration of Lu’s ego. The series treats his humbling not as a punishment, but as a necessary evolution. As they traverse the empire—from the bustling capital to the ghost markets and southern wetlands—the rigid general learns that his sword cannot cut through the complexities of the human heart, while the cunning detective learns that intellect alone cannot protect the innocent.

Ultimately, *Strange Tales of Tang Dynasty* succeeds because it respects the intelligence of its audience and the depth of its source material. It refuses to explain away every mystery with aScooby-Doo unmasking; it allows the uncanny to linger. In a media landscape obsessed with "universe building" and endless exposition, this series dares to be episodic, atmospheric, and deeply strange. It suggests that while the Tang Dynasty may have fallen centuries ago, the human propensity for greed, ambition, and belief in the impossible remains the ultimate ghost story.