You know that story trope where the protagonist reflects, “when I was little, my grandma always told me stories–stories about love and war, stories about the glorious and the ordinary, stories about three little pigs and people who live on the moon and a random girl’s next-door-neighbor–and those stories changed my life, established my identity, and occupied my heart for the rest of time?”
For me, those stories are C-dramas. For me, those hours I spent with my parents watching episode after episode of Qing dynasty palace dramas and wuxia fantasy dramas and modern mystery dramas are some of the most precious and revolutionary memories of my life. C-dramas sparked my passion to learn Mandarin, established my ideals and morals, and have taken root in my heart for a lifetime to come.
I’d love for you to come on this journey of entertainment, endearment, and enlightenment with me. After a childhood defined by C-dramas, here are my top 10 C-drama recommendations of all time:
- 陈情令 (The Untamed)
- Genre: wuxia*, coming-of-age
- Where to watch: YouTube, Netflix
- Season Length**: 50 episodes, ~45 min/episode
A man slowly opens his eyes in a musty, abandoned parlor. He gently rises, lifting his head above his shoulders, carefully setting his body upright. He examines his new body. There’s three massive gashes wallowing open on his left arm. He closes his eyes, reflecting briefly. Memories flash by–a bloody war, a year-long exile, a plummet down a cliff. It’s been 16 years. 16 years since anyone has seen him alive, 16 years since his attempt to answer humanity’s most confounding question–what is right, and what is wrong?–went horribly astray.
- 士兵突击 (Soldiers Sortie)
- Genre: military, coming-of-age
- Where to watch: YouTube
- Season Length: 30 episodes, ~40 min/episode
Xu Sanduo grew up in a dilapidated house in the rural countryside, enduring his father’s ceaseless insults, taunting, and spanking. When an officer from the military comes to tour his village, he stumbles, ducks, and stutters his way into an opportunity to change his life: to travel far, far away; to find confidence, camaraderie, and all that he’s capable of in the military.
- 步步惊心 (Scarlet Heart)
- Genre: historical fiction, time travel
- Where to watch: Rakuten Viki
- Season Length: 35 episodes, ~45 min/episode
After getting into an argument with her boyfriend, a woman stumbles down a sidewalk–and suddenly wakes up in the Qing dynasty, a maid by her side and a traditional headpiece tangled in her hair. She later finds herself in not a love triangle, but a love pentagon with four of the emperor’s sons–while constantly asking herself, will I ever go back? But wait–do I even want to go back?
- 狂飙 (The Knockout)
- Genre: crime, police/detective, corruption
- Where to watch: iQiyi, Amazon Prime Video
- Season Length: 39 episodes, ~45 min/episode
An Xin, a kind, respected police officer, tries to persuade Gao Qiqiang, a fish merchant, to confess to a crime. He refuses. Decades later, the two men look back at each other through metal iron bars, Gao Qiqiang’s empire of prosperity, fraud, and murder laying shattered at his friend’s feet. Both of them wonder–what if he had just confessed to him all those years ago?
- 父母爱情 (The Romance of Our Parents)
- Genre: love, family
- Where to watch: YouTube
- Season Length: 44 episodes, ~45 min/episode
For him, it’s love at first sight. For her, it’s an arranged date with a military officer a decade older than her. For them, it’s a journey through love and conflict, a political revolution, a bare and desolate island, five hungry children, and old age and poor health. For their youngest daughter, it’s the enduring romance of her parents.
- 开端 (Reset)
- Genre: mystery, time-travel, thriller
- Where to watch: YouTube, Rakuten Viki
- Season Length: 15 episodes, ~40 min/episode
BOOM. Just as they’re crossing a bridge, her bus explodes into a cloud of ferocious orange, and she dies instantly. The problem is, she keeps reviving. Not once, not twice, but nearly a dozen times, opening her eyes just to blow up over and over again, completely trapped on the murderous bus. She panics, until her attempt to save the man next to her from the chaos accidentally drags him into the revival loop too–and together, they reset over and over again, solving the mystery to their intermittent lives and deaths.
- 唐朝鬼事录 (Strange Tales of Tang Dynasty)
- Genre: historical fiction, wuxia, mystery
- Where to watch: iQiyi
- Season Length: ~36 episodes/season, ~45 min/episode
- This drama has not one, not two, but three seasons!
Lu Lingfeng, an agile, ambitious war general, is exiled from Chang’an–the capital city of the Tang Dynasty–and falls into a stupor of depression, thinking his life may as well be over. However, Su Wuming, a clever, shrewd detective, follows him out of the beloved city, and together, they embark across the country, solving the mysteries of everything from bloody murders to man’s supposed inability to walk–and ultimately, the mystery of Lu Lingfeng’s exile.
- 暗河传 (Blood River)
- Genre: wuxia, xianxia***
- Where to watch: YouTube, Rakuten Viki, Netflix
- Season Length: 38 episodes, ~35 min/episode
After he narrowly escapes the massacre of his hometown as a child, Su Muyu is kidnapped and raised by Blood River, an infamous assassin organization that trains him into a machine of mass murder. When the patriarch of Blood River is poisoned in battle, a window of opportunity opens up for Su Muyu–he could just murder the patriarch, take control of Blood River, and finally fulfill his dream of laying down his swords and washing the blood off his hands. But does the innocence and righteousness of his childhood even exist anymore?
- 山河令 (Word of Honor)
- Genre: wuxia
- Where to watch: YouTube, Netflix
- Season Length: 36 episodes, ~45 min/episode
Zhou Zishu has a death wish: he’s injected himself with lethal needles and aspires to spend the rest of his days wandering the streets as a homeless beggar. Wen Kexing desires to live: he’s spent his life trapped in a valley of death and monsters and has only just found his way into the sun’s rays. When they meet, life and death suddenly lose all meaning–unless they can be in the presence of the other.
- 苍兰诀 (Love Between Fairy and Devil)
- Genre: romance, wuxia
- Where to watch: Netflix, iQiyi
- Season Length: 36 episodes, ~40 min/episode
A ferocious demon attempts to kill a giggling fairy–but as he’s choking her, he finds himself choking as well. Turns out, the fairy put a spell on him that irrevocably links their lives together. He begrudgingly becomes her protector and servant, unable to refuse a single one of her silly whims. With every passing day, however, he finds his reluctance fading, his love growing, his smile widening–but also finds his once undefeatable strength dissipating to a powerless void.
* wuxia is a genre of Chinese stories that blends in Taoist, Buddhist, and mythological ideals and themes with traditional martial arts principles.
**Season Length: unlike many American TV shows, C-dramas typically only have one season.
***xianxia is another distinctly Chinese genre of stories. It’s very similar to wuxia–the only main difference is that while wuxia’s protagonists are humans, xianxia takes it a step further and focuses on immortals’ stories. Their powers are even more profound and fantastical than wuxia heroes’.
****I have to admit: C-dramas honestly do a pretty poor job of making their shows accessible to a non-Chinese diaspora audience. Platforms that stream C-dramas, especially older C-dramas, with English subtitles are difficult to find. I’ve tried to list platforms that do provide English subtitles, but admittedly, not all of them do. I’ll try and add platforms that do provide English subtitles here if I come across them in the future, though…
⋆˙eighteen rants⋆˙
✦⋆˙ eighteen rants ⋆˙✦ 
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