Sweet Dreams 一千零一夜 is a fantasy romance about Qi Qi who’s infatuated with flower guru, Bai Hai. She’s able to enter his dreams because of a malfunction in their sleep device.
The episode starts with Qi Qi (played by Dilraba Dilmurat) being dumped by her boyfriend for another girl. She is devastated but she feels better when she receives a bouquet of flowers from an unknown guy with an encouraging note.
She reveals in the next few scenes that she idolizes Bai Hai (played by Deng Lun), the flower guru and owner of FlowerPlus. In the hopes of making her dream a reality, she plans to apply as a part-time florist at his company but fails to make the cut. Our dear heroine tries a second time but still doesn’t make the cut. She’s not deterred by the setback and instead vows to prepare for the next round of applications.
In the store with her dad, Qi Qi is accused of wasting money shopping online when he sees her wearing a new bracelet but she explains that she joined a sleep study to earn money and what she has on is a device that was given as part of the study.
We see the sleep device beginning to malfunction when it suddenly jerks Qi Qi as she is watching an interview of Bai Hai on the big screen. Bai Hai is being interviewed since he is taking part in the big wedding of Hollywood actor, Nicolas. She sees him coming out of the big screen (which was weird) and they have a moment. They hold hands only to realize that she was holding a street cleaner’s hand.
Chen Mo (played by Zhang Hao Wei) noticed Bai Hai getting stressed with the wedding preparations and asked if Bai Hai wore the sleep device he bought for him to help him sleep. As they approach the couple, the bride (Madeline) reveals to the FlowerPlus team that she does not like 100,000 white roses at her wedding and wants it changed to pink. Zhou Xin Yi (played by Bambi Zhu Xu Dan) explains that the details of the weddings were long settled with Nicholas and with the wedding happening tomorrow, it is too late to change. The bride storms off with Nicholas and Bai Hai behind her.
Nicholas admits that the request is unreasonable but Bai Hai reassures him that nothing the client asks is unreasonable and that the wedding will be perfect.
Lu Bao Ni (played by Wang Ruizi) is on her way to meet Qi Qi when she is intercepted by her boyfriend who wants to surprise her on their anniversary. She is not happy with his surprise and breaks up with him instead.
She approaches Qi Qi sitting in a roadside eatery and shares with her what happened with her now ex-boyfriend. Qi Qi empathizes with the ex-bf and is disappointed at how easily Bao Ni dismissed the boyfriend. Bao Ni deflects by showing her a copy of last year’s answers to FlowerPlus’s examination. This gets Qi Qi excited over the prospect of seeing Bai Hai soon.
In the next scene, we see Bai Hai sleeping and dreaming that he is being chased by a dragon. He is running for quite awhile but gets injured and is on the verge of being killed when he wakes up. He puts on the sleep device and goes back to sleep.
A voiceover explains that the sleep device or the magnetic resonance device collects data and sends it over to the control center. He explains further that there are 1: 1 billion chance that the two brainwaves will run on the same frequency and if this happens, they are MFEO or made for each other.
We see Qi Qi walking around a castle ground and stumbles upon Bai Hai who is asleep in a bed of white roses tangled in vines. She stumbles and kisses him which wakes him up and the vines that binds him are gone.
Their conversation gets interrupted when a dragon suddenly shows itself. They run and stumble into a balcony with a 5-story drop. He jumps into the clearing first without any issues and tells her to jump. Of course, he catches her in his arms.
They continue to run to the clearing but they stumble when the dragon flies above them. Qi Qi grabs a vine and charges toward the dragon. She whips the vine and draws blood from the dragon which drops onto the rose below. The rose turns into the loveliest shade of pink and the other roses change in color too.
Bai Hai is grateful for his saviour and tells her that she can have anything she wants. She realizes it is a dream when Bai Hai introduces himself as a prince. Thinking that this is her chance to get close to her crush, she tries to lean in for a kiss but then he wakes up.
Bai Hai wakes up confuses and wondering who the girl in the dream was and why he can’t remember her face now that he’s awake. Qi Qi, on the other hand, wakes up giggling and extremely satisfied with her dream.
Nicholas and Madeline are still worried since the flowers have not been changed to pink yet and to make matters worst, Madeline’s meltdown is leaked to the press. It doesn’t make Nicholas happy but thankfully, Bai Hai is able to calm everybody down and the wedding goes on without a hitch.
Back home, Qi Qi is watching the wedding from her TV when she sees something familiar.
First Impressions:
1. I love the anime vibe. The drama is entertaining as it is but the added color makes it even more entertaining for me.
2. This is the first time I’ve watched Dilraba Dilmurat and I have thoroughly enjoyed her acting. She’s cute without coming off annoying or over the top.
3. Everybody’s acting was good except Nicholas and Madeline. Haha! Their acting felt so staged.
Episode Recap -> Next
Anonymous
Dilreba can only do the ditzy/happy-go-lucky types. She sucked in melodramatic characters (TKW and TFD).
She owes it to Yang Mi who’s pushing her nonstop in comparison to other C-actresses.
Ruby
Thank you for recapping this <3
Dilraba is great in all her dramas and she's such a QTπ in this. I am thoroughly enjoying all the episodes so far. I also love th colors of the drama.
And the opening OST has such a American rom com OST sound to it.
Their dreams interactions are hillarious and can't wait for their irl interactions. Happy that the drama broke 1% ratings on CSM2! Well deserved!
Sunny
@anon: Same. I'm sure she is OK in this drama because it's right in her ballpark. All she can play competently are these ditzy, cute characters. Give her any dramatic material and she just seems confused and lost onscreen.
She should be so grateful to Yang Mi for promoting her because I think at this point she's actually one of the weakest actresses at her studio. but she's beautiful with a MASSIVE push and media machine behind her so she's not going anywhere.
Anonymous
Because they resemble her in real life. Not hard to act like yourself, which is why she’s a weak actress. She’s just very lucky.
Anonymous
Enjoying this show really much so far! Really light hearted and the comedy was done exceptionally well.
Almost every show today fail miserably to create funny scenes, but Raba and Deng Lun was able to revive that, they really deserve some applause.
Anonymous
Wow wow wow, put your fave actress in TKW and TFD and everything will just be as terrible. The problem was already in the script and they style of directing.
And people are free to say their drama sucks when they do sucks, at least YM and Raba do not make their fans rate their shows very high when they stink like some other idols.
Who said actors have to be able to act like "everything" and if you act like yourself then you are weak??? Wow! Actors like Stephen Chow always act silly in all his movies but he is totally not weak! He has bad personality in real life, but yah in terms of professional acting and creativeness, he is the top.
I wouldn't say Raba is lucky if, in the very least she still have great superpower in acting as a happy-go-lucky type of girl, and she also have other skills such as dancing. There are much more popular actresses than Raba, but far worse than Raba by many times. Those with no skills in any type of acting, or actually, literally "nothing" at all; cannot even act like their own selves in the very least (which is so sad, but bc maybe in reality they almost couldn't speak correctly), not to mention having to act like a different person (bleh!). Those, are the ones that should be label "extremely lucky".
And yes Raba is a very very very grateful person! Have she ever deny YM helping her? Compare that to some people who came into the industry through other people's help but back stab them at the end, all for the sake of promoting themselves. Because they want to be known as very hard working and used their own self effort only. So they are very special while everyone else use connections and they all sucks.
Unknown
I love Dilraba. I actually think she is a good actress I think it is more that she is being typecast a bit with the cutsy roles. TKW was a complex role and I think it would have been hard for any actress, and I think she showed potential in that role. My main issue with this drama was is was almost creepy how ditsy and cutesy they made her role. It highlights a big pet peeve for me with cdramas which is this need to infantalise the young women characters. It is so annoying. Dilraba can usually pull it off like she did in Peach blossom but this was too much.
Heka
What kind of bracelet brand they use?