In this episode, some of the mystery behind the body-switching is revealed, and my grandma theory is confirmed!
Recap
Angry about not finding his grandmother, Qi Long lashes out at Fei Fei’s orphan friends in 1936 Shanghai. Meanwhile, in 2016 Shanghai, Zhi Gang is busy making his special tofu soup. Qi Long’s grandma wakes up on smelling the food and smiles as she tastes the soup. She compliments “Uncle Zhang” on his soup, saying it’s still the best in the world, leaving him shocked. In 1936, Qi Long accidentally gives Fei Fei a cut across her temple, and in 2016, a scar appears across Qi Long’s grandma’s temple. Zhi Gang makes the same deduction we’re led to: Fei Fei is the grandma. (I was right!)
Grandma explains that she didn’t realize until later that her Uncle Zhang’s weird behavior for a short few days was because her grandson Qi Long had taken his place. She says that two people who look the same and have the same birthday are fated, and if they wear the same jade necklace, they can travel through time and switch places. She doesn’t have an explanation for why Qi Long and Zhi Gang and their respective time periods are important: she just explains it away as fate. She also has good news for Zhi Gang: he won’t be in this time period for long, and will soon return to 2016.
Excited by this news, Zhi Gang goes back to Wang Lin’s place and greets her with a hug. She’s shocked but mistakes this for a reciprocation of her feelings for him, but then is hurt when he says, “I can finally go back!” and lashes out at him. He attempts to say something to her but disappears and Qi Long takes his place. We flashback and see that Qi Long was in the middle of drinking the special wedding wine when he was suddenly overcome by a coughing fit (and magic) and switched with Zhi Gang.
Neither really understand why they switched places, but both are happy to be back where they are from. Qi Long attempts to find out more details about the time traveling from Wang Lin, but she’s unhelpful and just sits there and sobs about Zhi Gang. Then she promptly kicks him out and doesn’t respond when he bangs on her door and demands to get the wedding wine. Empty-handed, Qi Long decides to try to find out more about this Zhang Zhi Gang that everyone seems to love and want more than him, but on his way to doing so, he suddenly sees the dumpling man from 1936.
Thoughts
Wow, so we learn a lot more in this episode, and now I have a ton of question. Also I’m so happy that I was right about the Fei Fei/grandma plot “twist.” It was pretty obvious!
One of the key things we discover is that drinking the special wedding wine seems to be a catalyst for time traveling. This is pretty interesting because there is a limited amount of this wine and it seems to always be getting spilled. Once the wine is gone, are they trapped?
The whole doppelganger, necklace, body-switching thing also brings me back to the mystery of Mr. Wang and Grandpa Wang (as I will call Wang Lin’s grandfather.) They also are doppelgangers (if not the same person) and were after Zi Yi’s father, presumably for the notebook, but possibly also for the mystery wine. Is it possible that one of the Wangs is trapped in a time period?
Grandma’s awareness of this body-switching is interesting because then we have the question of cause and effect. Did everything happen because Grandma decided to tell Qi Long to go find this wine? Did she cause this switch to happen, or is she unaware of the role of the wine and this is just “fate”? Is Qi Long actively changing the present by things that he’s doing in the past? In the previous connections that we’ve seen (such as the spicy dumpling) we’re led to believe that it’s a kind of coincidence. But the scene in which the scar appears on Grandma’s temple confused me because it looks like that scar formed in parallel to Qi Long’s actions in the past. But it’s also possible that they just did that to make the scar more obvious, and it isn’t supposed to show that Qi Long is actively changing the present timeline (Grandma didn’t used to have a scar, but now does.)
I think it’s very interesting in that this show, our two characters are actively able to switch with each other. A lot of shows featuring time travel or body-switching make it a show-long, one-time thing and our character just has to find the answer to switch back. Here, we’re basically given the answer and the switching will happen several times, which will create an interesting set of scenarios. This will also switch the plot to focus (hopefully) more on the mysteries of why this switching is happening, rather than the how.
The one thing that really turns me off from these characters is how Wang Lin seems super weepy, and I really hate how both Wang Lin and Qi Long react to being hurt by lashing out at people. It makes it difficult for me to like their characters.
Overall, this show is still moving in a positive direction for me. This episode is better than the previous one, IMO.
The Drama Llama 
Wang lin is so annoying and selfish
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