The C-drama canon: 12 essential Chinese dramas you need to watch

Nirvana in Fire begins with a man who has died once. Lin Shu (Hu Ge), the surviving son of military commander Lin Xie, returns to the Liang capital 12 years later under the name Mei Changsu, a seemingly frail strategist with an extraordinary mind.

Rather than seeking revenge through brute force, Mei Changsu carefully positions Prince Jing (Wang Kai) to compete for the throne, while concealing his own identity from almost everyone around him. His plan involves manipulating rival princes, exposing old conspiracies and slowly clearing the name of the Chiyan Army. Always on a list of essential Chinese dramas, the plot is as much about political chess as personal revenge.

See more: 12 most devastating revenge C-dramas ever put on screen

For the wuxia tradition, few stories are more fundamental than Jin Yong’s The Legend of the Condor Heroes. The 2017 adaptation revolves around Guo Jing (Yang Xuwen), a straightforward and loyal young martial artist, and Huang Rong (Li Yitong), the brilliant and mischievous daughter of the martial arts master Huang Yaoshi.

Their relationship begins when Huang Rong disguises herself as a beggar boy and encounters Guo Jing, whom she initially finds rather foolish but soon recognises as kind-hearted and trustworthy. As the pair travel through the jianghu, they encounter rival martial artists, political conflicts and competing loyalties, while Guo Jing gradually grows from an inexperienced fighter into the legendary hero at the heart of the story.

If wuxia is about martial artists, xianxia takes the story into the realm of gods, demons and multiple lifetimes. Eternal Love, also known as Three Lives, Three Worlds, Ten Miles of Peach Blossoms, centres on Bai Qian (Yang Mi), a powerful fox immortal, and Ye Hua (Mark Chao), a celestial prince whose relationship unfolds across three lives.

The story becomes considerably more complicated when Bai Qian assumes the mortal identity of Su Su and encounters Ye Hua without knowing the full extent of their connection. Their romance moves between the mortal and immortal realms, with lost memories, political obligations and old rivalries repeatedly pulling them apart before fate brings them back together.

See more: 12 most influential xianxia C-dramas ever made

For a more contemporary entry point into fantasy C-dramas, Love Between Fairy and Devil pairs Orchid (Yu Shuxin), a low-ranking fairy, with Dongfang Qingcang (Dylan Wang), the feared leader of the Moon Tribe. Their first meeting is anything but romantic: after a magical accident causes them to exchange bodies and share a physical and emotional connection, the supposedly powerless fairy finds herself tied to one of the most dangerous beings in the realm.

The unlikely pair are forced to rely on each other as they become entangled in a much larger conflict between the fairy and Moon realms. What begins as a magical inconvenience develops into a relationship complicated by old wars, hidden identities and Dongfang Qingcang’s own transformation as his feelings for Orchid begin to challenge the ruthless persona he has built around himself.

See more: 12 romantasy C-dramas that make reality look rather dull

The Story of Minglan takes the grand historical drama down to the level of the household. Sheng Minglan (Zhao Liying) is the overlooked daughter of a Song dynasty official, born to a concubine and raised in a family where displaying too much intelligence can be as dangerous as having none.

After losing her mother, Minglan learns to conceal her abilities while navigating her stepmother, half-sisters and the expectations placed on women of her status. Her marriage to Gu Tingye (Feng Shaofeng), a complicated nobleman with his own enemies, gives her a new household to manage—and the pair become allies as they confront family disputes, political schemes and the people responsible for her mother’s death.

A modern woman waking up in Qing-dynasty China is already a recipe for trouble. In Scarlet Heart, Zhang Xiao (Liu Shishi) is transported into the body of Maertai Ruoxi (Liu Shishi), a young woman living during the reign of the Kangxi Emperor (Liu Songren), where she becomes caught between several of the emperor’s sons during the struggle over succession.

Ruoxi knows enough about Qing history to understand that the princes around her are heading toward a brutal contest for the throne, but knowing the future does not make her immune to it. Her relationships with the princes, particularly the Fourth Prince Yinzhen (Wu Qilong) and Eighth Prince Yinsi (Kevin Cheng), pull her deeper into the political conflict until the historical events she hoped to avoid become impossible to escape.

Hidden Love begins with Sang Zhi (Zhao Lusi) developing a crush on her older brother’s university friend, Duan Jiaxu (Chen Zheyuan). What starts as a teenage infatuation follows her into adulthood, when she moves to the same city for university and encounters Duan Jiaxu again.

By then, Sang Zhi has grown into her own person, and Duan Jiaxu is dealing with the consequences of a difficult family history. Their relationship shifts from one-sided admiration to something mutual, but the story takes its time getting there, allowing the pair to become friends before their romance properly begins.

See more: 9 slow-burn C-dramas where the romance takes its time

Qiao Jingjing (Dilraba Dilmurat) is a celebrity whose perfectly polished public image takes a hit when a video exposes how terrible she is at the mobile game she has been hired to endorse. Her solution is to be good enough to compete, which brings her back into contact with Yu Tu (Yang Yang), her former high school classmate and now an aerospace engineer.

Yu Tu becomes Qiao Jingjing’s unlikely gaming coach, and their old attraction slowly resurfaces as they spend more time together. But the drama does not stop once they become a couple: Yu Tu has to confront his doubts about his career while Jingjing balances fame, work and a relationship that increasingly has to function around two demanding professional lives.

Before the university years, the careers and the adult complications come the C-drama school romance. A Love So Beautiful is about Chen Xiaoxi (Shen Yue), an enthusiastic but academically struggling student, and her neighbour and classmate Jiang Chen (Hu Yitian), the handsome, intelligent boy she has openly liked since childhood.

The two prepare for the gaokao alongside their close group of friends, growing up together as their relationship moves from Xiaoxi’s very obvious crush toward something more complicated. The drama tracks them beyond school, showing how first love changes when childhood friends have to figure out who they are as adults.

See more: 15 slice-of-life C-dramas when life feels a little heavy

Another must-watch on a list of essential Chinese dramas, Reset throws two strangers into the same nightmare over and over again. Game designer Xiao Heyun (Bai Jingting) and university student Li Shiqing (Zhao Jinmai) become trapped in a time loop after a bus explodes, waking up again and again just before the disaster occurs.

At first, the pair are simply trying to save themselves. But every attempt to stop the explosion reveals another passenger’s story, turning the mystery into a race to understand who is responsible and why the bus has become the site of the tragedy. With each reset, Xiao Heyun and Li Shiqing gather new information and try to change the outcome without knowing how many chances they have left.

See more: 13 most insane C-drama plot twists we never saw coming

Three children who are not related by blood become siblings in everything but name in Go Ahead. Li Jianjian (Tan Songyun), Ling Xiao (Song Weilong) and He Ziqiu (Zhang Xincheng) grow up together under the care of their two fathers, forming a makeshift family shaped by the troubles they have experienced in their biological homes.

Their idyllic childhood does not last. After Ling Xiao and He Ziqiu leave home, the three are separated for years before meeting again as adults, carrying the unresolved pain of their respective families with them. The story is less about recreating the childhood they lost than figuring out whether the bond they built as children can survive adulthood.

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