Soldiers Sortie (simplified Chinese: 士兵突击; traditional Chinese: 士兵突擊) is a 2007 Chinese TV drama based on a novel of same name by Lan Xiaolong. It was co-produced by the 8-1 Film Studio, Chengdu Military Region Television Arts Center, Huayi Brothers Film Investment Co. Ltd. and Yunnan TV Station. The production cast includes Kong Honglei as director, Wu Yi as producer, Qian Zhang as chief producer, and Lan Xiaolong as script writer.
Plot
Xu San-duo is a shy and simple village boy who is bullied a lot. His father is disappointed in him for being weak and often curses him and beats him.
One day a recruiter from the Chinese Army appears in San-duo's village. His father urges him to try to join and is eventually successful. Chen Cai, son of the village head also joins, although he has been one of San-duo's tormentors.
In boot camp, San-duo's performance is terrible and causes his squad to became the worst in the boot camp. Wu Liu-yi, a dedicated soldier and the second in command of San-duo's squad, tries his best to train San-duo but is disappointed. When the initial training is complete, Cheng Cai and Xu San-duo are assigned to different units, the former to a respected and celebrated one and San-duo to a small outpost miles from the rest of the base.
Will Xu San-duo be able to overcome his shyness and let his natural dedication and stubbornness serve him as a soldier? Yeah, of course. But not quite in the manner you might expect. He's an unlikely hero and his story is surprisingly touching, even to a jaded old cynic like me.
Cast
Xu San-duo(许三多) - Wang Baoqiang (王宝强)
Cheng Cai(成才) - Chen Sicheng (陈思成)
Wu Liu-yi(伍六一) - Xing Jiadong (邢佳栋)
Shi Jin(史今) - Zhang Yi (张译)
Lao Ma(老马) - Fan Lei (范雷)
Gao Cheng(高城) - Zhang Guoqiang (张国强)
Yuan Lang(袁朗) - Duan Yihong (段奕宏)
Director: Kang Honglei(康红雷)
Genre: Military drama
Runtime: 30 episodes of 40-45 minutes each
Also Known As: 士兵突擊
Country: China(PRC)
Language: Mandarin Chinese
Subtitles: English
Thumbnails from episode 1
Technical details
The first 25 episodes are in AVI XviD format, but the last five are MKV. I'm afriad this is how I got them from the original ripper (Babalui) and there's nothing I can do about that.
Video
Source...............: Retail DVD9
File Format..........: AVI + MKV
Codec.................: XviD + AVC
Bit Rate...............: + 1096
Resolution............: 608x320 + 624x336
AR.......................: 1.9
Frame rate...........: 29.97 + 25fps
Audio
Codec.................: MP3 + AAC
Bitrate.................: 128 kbps
Notes
As with so many Chinese TV dramas, the subtitles are not fantastic. Personally, I prefer bad subtitles because I feel I learn more about Chinese culture and language that way. You'll find in many cases, the translation is too literal and loses meaning unless you know about bit about Chinese idioms. In other areas, the subtitles swap out what is actually said for an English phrasing because otherwise there'd be a dozen lines of text on the screen. I have tried to improve them, but I'd need to basically rewrite the lot from scratch in order to do a better job. If anyone feels like doing so, then please do.
Most of the Chinese drams I've watched have a bit of a habit of ending each episode rather suddenly and this is no exception. If you're watching this one episode at a time, you may want to be prepared for that; several times I had to play the next one immediately because the abrupt ending was so jarring.
The opening and closing credits are quite long and you'll probably be ready to skip those after a couple of episodes. The final five (the ones in MKV) format have these removed. Oh and just before the end credits, there's a sequence which shows all the main characters. This can be quite confusing initially, as most of them haven't appeared in the show yet.
I'll be seeding this for quite a while, although my internet connection isn't the greatest and is throttled between 5pm and 11pm GMT each night. I can only apologise for this. I will seed for at least a few months, so hang in there and you'll get it all.
This is my first upload to the site and I think I've done everything properly, but please let me know if there's anything missing that you'd like added, even if it's not strictly required by the rules.
Series website:
http://shibing.milblog.com.cn/