I've been forcing myself to watch this for one reason only - it's on Disney+ and I want to encourage them to feature more Chinese content. However, I think I'm going to drop it and just turn it on, either on mute or while I'm in another room, to make it seem as if I'm watching it.

I honestly don't know what they were thinking when they made this show. First of all, they give into the Chinese stereotype that overweight people are stupid or evil. It's a very common stereotype in Chinese dramas - many shows that feature an overweight character show that person as being less intelligent than others, or super low-class/evil. But this one was more egregious about it than most shows. Two of the main characters in the first few episodes are overweight - one is mean (though she is eventually redeemed) and the other is a complete idiot. And they make a HUGE deal about what a complete idiot she is - the emperor even says he likes her because she's too stupid to be crafty so he doesn't need to be on his guard around her. I get that from a Chinese production - it's not right, but it's part of their culture so it's at least understandable - but Disney should know better.

Second, I think they must have been going for an asmr experience. They cranked up the sound on all the eating sounds - chewing, slobbering, slurping, etc. Plus they zoom all the way in to just show the person's mouth as they're making all these gross noises. I literally never knew eating could be so disgusting. I will admit, I'm not into asmr; I'm also not into cooking or food in general, but this show just completely grossed me out with all the noises and close-ups. That's the main reason I think I'm not going to watch the rest of it - I just can't take it any more. It honestly makes me queasy thinking about how gross and disgusting all the noises were.

Lastly, everything felt far too rushed. This is a short show and that's fine - I've seen short shows that do a great job exploring the few plot lines they have time for. In this one though, it's like they were trying to have as many story lines as a normal-length show, so they just cut corners to squish it all in the time they were allotted. It constantly felt like we were jumping forward and resolutions happened that just made no sense based on what we've seen. Like they were trying to show us that the train (metaphorically) went from country A to country B, but didn't show us any of the train ride in between, so it just made no sense. And it didn't help that they spent SO much time just showing food being prepared or eaten - no story line being advanced during that time whatsoever, just food.

In all, it felt like they were trying to do too many things and wound up doing nothing well. I hope that Disney will continue to make/partner with Chinese shows, I just hope they do a better job picking them out. If they were trying to test the water out on East Asian shows and see how it went, this was a terrible choice to do that with.

Edit: I finally watched the rest of this show (started skipping through all the eating and cooking scenes) and I'm dropping two stars off the already low 5 stars I originally gave it. By around episode 14, I HATED the female lead. Like I hated her just about as much as I've ever hated any antagonist, bad guy, villain in any show. I wanted her to die - and not just die, but suffer, for a long time, both physically and mentally/emotionally, before she died. And she's the main female lead, the person you're supposed to be rooting for? I still have no idea what the crud Disney was thinking when they approved this show for their first foray into Chinese drama. Not only did I hate her because of how she treated someone (trying not to get into spoilers), but she was just plain a badly written character. She was completely one-dimensional, with no character depth whatsoever. ALL she knew, all she could talk about, all she thought about, was cooking. On the one hand, her obsessive one-dimensionality reminded me of someone with autism that's got a special interest and just can't talk about anything else. But on the other hand, I'm autistic, and I'm not nearly that one-dimensional. I can talk about and think about more than my special interest. She's just a horrible character all the way around. (And I don't blame the actress - I blame the writers.)

Also, the ending(s) just made no sense at all. I get that the last episode was a special alternate ending, but what about the second-to-last episode? The very last 5 minutes or so they jumped from one thing to another with no explanation of how something that was done - and could never be undone - was suddenly, randomly, undone. It just made no sense at all.