AsianC

How AsianC looks

AsianC keeps the layout of the site whose name it carries, a layout familiar to anyone who has looked for Asian dramas online: a white page, the name at the top with a search box beside it, a teal bar for the menu, and beneath that a silver strip of letters from A to Z, each of which opens the alphabetical list at that letter.

The home page is headed by tabs. Recently Drama shows the twelve newest series as wide pictures, four to a row, each with a small teal label, a yellow label giving the number of episodes, the year, the average rating and the title. Popular Drama shows the twelve with the most votes from viewers, and rows for costume drama, fantasy and youth follow. The column at the side holds a numbered list of the ten best-rated series, the Drama List with the number of series in each list, and the help pages. On a telephone the pictures stand two abreast and the menu folds into a button.

What to expect of a Chinese drama

The first thing a newcomer notices is length. A Chinese drama commonly runs to thirty, forty or fifty episodes of about forty-five minutes, and the older costume dramas to seventy or more. Recent rules and changing tastes have shortened them, and many series since 2020 have twenty-four episodes; the Short series list gathers the 43 of that length or less, and the Short series help page suggests where to begin. The Long series list holds the 51 of forty-five episodes or more, described on the Long series help page, for those who like to settle into a story for a season.

The second is that nearly every actor is dubbed, often by a professional voice artist, so that the Mandarin is clear and standard whatever the performer's own accent; recent series increasingly keep the actors' own voices. Chinese subtitles appear on screen in the original broadcast, since the written language is shared across regions whose speech differs, and official services add English and other languages below.

The third is that dramas are usually made from novels first published in instalments on the internet, where readers follow a story chapter by chapter for months. These web novels supply the plots of most romances, fantasies and costume dramas, and a popular one may be filmed more than once. Names are given family name first, and characters call each other by terms of relationship, elder brother, little sister, teacher, senior, which the subtitles sometimes keep in Chinese.

The sweet drama

The Romance list is by far the largest, with 177 series, and the Romance help page chooses among them. Its heart is a kind of series that Chinese viewers call the sweet drama, a romance with very little conflict, in which two likeable young people fall in love by small, funny stages and the audience is invited simply to enjoy it. Put Your Head on My Shoulder, from 2019, is the best example and the most popular series on AsianC. Situ Mo is about to graduate in accounting and is quite unsure what to do next. Gu Weiyi is a brilliant student of physics, good at everything except conversation. By an arrangement between their mothers they find themselves sharing a flat.

That is nearly the whole plot. He tries to be helpful in ways that are logical and disastrous; she is exasperated, then charmed; there are instant noodles, a cat, an umbrella, a first job. The series has twenty-four short episodes, and it made stars of its two young leads. Its many relations on the list include Perfect and Casual, about a student and a professor of statistics who marry by contract; Intense Love; Once We Get Married; Please Feel At Ease Mr. Ling; Lucky's First Love; My Little Happiness; Crush; Hello Mr. Gu; Forever Love; Girlfriend; Mr. Bad, in which a novelist's fictional villain steps out of her book; and Exclusive Fairytale, about neighbours who have known each other since the cradle.

A second group adds a profession, so that the viewer learns something on the way. In Love Me, Love My Voice, the hero is a voice actor and the heroine a composer who meet in an online recording studio before they meet in person. I Hear You pairs a would-be voice actress with a maker of violins. Dating in the Kitchen is set in a restaurant, with a great deal of real cooking. Love Scenery joins a singer and a student of data science who know each other first through an online game, and The Love You Give Me, You Are My Destiny, My Boss, Hi Venus, set in a hospital, You Are My Secret, You Are My Lover Friend and Have a Crush On You follow the same pleasant recipe.

Romances for older viewers are more thoughtful. The Rational Life, from 2021, has a legal manager in her thirties, good at her work and tired of being asked why she is unmarried, who finds herself liked by a younger assistant and must decide what she herself wants. The Oath of Love brings together a cellist and a surgeon, Forever and Ever a voice artist and a scientist who restores old porcelain, and To Be a Better Man, Mr. Right, Modern Marriage, Be Your Own Light, Love in the Edge of Divorce and Our Glamorous Time look at love after thirty.

Youth and campus

The Youth and campus list holds 65 series, and the Youth and campus help page sorts them by age. Stories of school are a serious matter in China, where a single examination at eighteen, the gaokao, decides which university a pupil may enter, and the years before it are remembered for life. A River Runs Through It, from 2021, follows a girl who changes schools just before the entrance examination for high school and the friends she makes there, through university and into work; it is funny, exact about family life, and one of the best-rated youth dramas of recent years.

A Little Thing Called First Love, Our Secret, Accidentally in Love, in which a pop star enrols at university under his own name and causes chaos, My Calorie Boy, Summit of Our Youth, Rising with the Wind and Twenty Your Life On, about four girls who share a dormitory in their last year at university, are other stories of school and campus. Meteor Shower, from 2009, is the mainland's version of a famous tale of a poor girl and four rich boys at an exclusive school.

Sport and competition have a shelf of their own. The King's Avatar, from 2019, is set in the world of professional video gaming. Ye Xiu, the finest player of a game called Glory, is forced out of his own team and made to give up his famous account. He takes a job on the night shift at an internet café, picks up a home-made weapon in the game, and starts again from the bottom with a team of unknowns. There is hardly a romance in it; the series is about craft, loyalty and patience, the matches are shown as spectacular animated battles, and it has been admired well beyond the audience for games.

Cross Fire joins two players of a shooting game across a gap of eleven years. Go Go Squid 2: Dt.Appledog's Time moves to robot combat. The Whirlwind Girl, from 2015, follows a girl who sweeps the floor of a martial-arts hall and trains in secret, My Unicorn Girl puts a figure skater on a boys' ice-hockey team, Hello, The Sharpshooter is about pistol shooting, and Sweet Combat about boxing and rowing at a sports university.

Costume drama

The Costume drama list holds 112 series, and the Costume drama help page introduces them. Chinese history offers three thousand years of settings, and the studios have built whole towns of palaces, streets and gardens in which to film them. The dynasties most often seen are the Tang, from the seventh to the tenth century, rich and cosmopolitan, with women in high-waisted gowns; the Song, elegant and scholarly; the Ming, with its winged black hats; and the Qing, the last dynasty, whose men wear the long plait.

Scarlet Heart, from 2011, is one of the most celebrated of all costume dramas. A young woman of modern Beijing wakes, after an accident, in the body of a nobleman's daughter at the court of the Kangxi Emperor in the early eighteenth century. She knows from her history books which of the emperor's sons will win the throne and what will become of the others, and she grows fond of several of them. The series is long, at seventy-six episodes, handsome and sad, and it began a fashion for stories of travel in time that has lasted ever since. The Myth, from 2010, sends a young man of today back to the first empire, two thousand years ago.

The lighter costume dramas are a pleasure of recent years. In The Romance of Tiger and Rose, from 2020, a young screenwriter falls asleep and wakes inside her own script, as a minor character in a city ruled by women, and must keep the story going to get home. Oh! My Emperor, The Princess and the Werewolf, Love Better Than Immortality, My Little Princess and The Romance of Hua Rong are comedies in silk. Royal Feast, from 2022, follows a young cook in the kitchens of the Ming palace, with dishes researched from old records, and Delicacies Destiny is another story of a cook and a prince.

Others are stories of trade and craft. Brocade Odyssey is set among the silk weavers of the south-west, Legend of the Magnate among the merchants of the nineteenth century, and The Road to Splendor, The Princess's Gambit, Song of Youth, about five daughters of a Ming family, The Legend of Dragon Pearl, Sound of the Desert, set on the roads to the far west in the Han dynasty, and Song of Phoenix, about a great poet of antiquity, show the range of the form. Go East, from 2024, is a comedy about the officials who looked after foreign envoys in an ancient capital.

Fantasy

The Fantasy list holds 47 series, and the Fantasy help page explains its vocabulary. The Chinese fantasy drama draws on a mythology of its own: a heaven of immortals with ranks and offices like an earthly government, spirits of foxes, flowers and fish who take human form, and mortals who seek to rise by study and discipline. Love between the realms is usually against the rules, and lovers are often parted and born again, so that one story may run through three lifetimes.

Love You Seven Times, from 2023, makes a comedy of the idea: a young fairy who was once a cloud, and works in the office that ties the red threads of marriage, is sentenced with a quarrelsome young god to live through seven mortal love stories together. It has one of the highest ratings on the Popular Drama list. Ancient Love Poetry is a grander tale of four gods at the beginning of the world; The Last Immortal is its companion; and The Blossoming Love, Shadow Love, FEUD, Mirror: A Tale of Twin Cities, The Starry Night, The Starry Sea and Miss Crow with Mr. Lizard are other romances with a touch of the marvellous.

Chinese Paladin 3, from 2009, is the classic of the kind, and one of the best-loved Chinese series of its generation. It was made from a famous role-playing video game. Jing Tian is a cheerful pawnshop assistant in an ancient city who dreams of becoming a swordsman; a magic sword falls into his hands, a spoilt young lady falls into his company, and the two of them set out with a priest and a wandering heroine to gather five pearls and save the six realms. It is long, funny and by the end very moving, and its theme songs are still sung. Filter, from 2025, is a modern fantasy about a bracelet that lets its wearer change her appearance at will, and Affinity, Romance on the Farm and Once Upon a Time in Lingjian Mountain, a comedy set in a school for immortals, are lighter still.

Martial arts

The Martial arts list holds 35 series, and the Martial arts help page introduces a tradition that every Chinese reader knows. The stories of wandering swordsmen, called wuxia, are set in a world apart from the court and the law, the "rivers and lakes", where schools of fighters each guard a secret technique and a hero is judged by loyalty and justice. Their greatest author, the novelist Jin Yong, wrote fifteen novels between 1955 and 1972, and they have been filmed again and again for sixty years.

Five series from his books are here. The Legend of the Condor Heroes, from 2008, tells of the honest, slow-witted Guo Jing and the quick, mischievous Huang Rong, the most popular couple in Chinese fiction. Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils, from 2021, follows three sworn brothers, a beggar chief, a prince and a monk. The Heaven Sword and Dragon Saber, from 2009, and Heavenly Sword and Dragon Slaying Sabre, from 2019, are two versions of the same novel, ten years apart, and comparing them shows how television has changed. The Legend of Heroes, from 2024, and Duel on Mount Hua, from 2025, return to the story of the Condor Heroes with a new cast.

Newer series are drawn from web novels and comics. The Blood of Youth, from 2022, has three young men of very different temper escorting a golden coffin across the country; Heroes is a tale of two rival schools; Martial Universe and Battle Through the Heaven mix martial arts with magic; and Ip Man tells the life of the teacher of a famous film star. The fighting in these series is danced more than fought, with fighters skimming over water and treetops on wires, and it suits older children well.

Minning Town and the dramas of ordinary life

Minning Town, from 2021, is unlike anything else on AsianC, and it has one of the highest ratings. It is set in the 1990s in one of the poorest parts of the dry north-west, where villagers are asked to leave their mountain hamlets and build a new town on a bare plain, and it follows a young official, a schoolteacher, a girl who goes to work in a factory on the coast and a professor who teaches the settlers to grow mushrooms. The actors speak the local dialect, the landscape is filmed plainly, as it is, and the series is full of rough humour. In twenty-three episodes it tells a large story through a handful of stubborn, likeable people.

China has a strong tradition of such dramas of everyday life. Pathfinding to the Northeast, from 2008, is a saga of a family who walk north in search of land a century ago. Feather Flies to the Sky follows a pedlar who becomes a merchant in a town now famous for its markets. Romance in the Alley, from 2024, is set among the families of a cotton mill from the late 1970s, sharing a courtyard, a tap and one another's troubles, and it was praised for its warmth. Northward, from 2025, follows six children who grow up beside the Grand Canal. To the Wonder, from 2024, has only eight episodes: a young woman who has failed to make her way as a writer in the city returns to her mother's small shop among the herders of the far north-western grasslands, and learns to see where she is. It is among the most beautiful series ever made in China.

Medal of the Republic tells the lives of eight honoured scientists, farmers and doctors, among them the woman who discovered a cure for malaria and the father of hybrid rice. She and Her Girls is the true story of a teacher who founded a free high school for girls in the mountains. Love Story in the 1970s, The Road to Ordinary, Road to Success, A Better Life, Always Home, Six Sisters and The Story of Xing Fu are others in this plain and honest manner.

Family

The Family list holds 90 series, and the Family help page picks out those that parents and children can watch together. Education is the great subject. A Little Reunion, from 2019, follows three families through the last year before the gaokao: a mother who gives up her job to supervise her son, a father who rents a flat beside the school, a boy who would sooner design model aeroplanes. Parents in many countries will recognise every scene. Tiger Mom, from 2015, is a comedy about a mother who discovers how fierce the competition is at primary school and changes overnight from indulgent to terrifying, and Growing Pain and Growing Together follow several households in the same block.

Old Boy, from 2018, is about an airline pilot of forty who learns that he has a sixteen-year-old son. Take My Brother Away, made from a popular comic, is about a sister and the elder brother who torments her and would do anything for her. Our Days, Best Choice Ever, in which a daughter must manage her mother's ambitions for her marriage, I Will Find You a Better Home, about estate agents and the families they house, We Get Married and Master of My Own are other stories of home. Chinese family dramas are frank about money, about the price of a flat and the cost of a wedding, and that frankness is part of their interest for viewers elsewhere.

Workplace

The Workplace list holds 97 series, and the Workplace help page arranges them by profession. The law is well represented: The Best Partner is set in a law firm, Draw the Line among the judges of a district court, where each episode turns on a case from daily life, and All Rise is a newer drama of the same kind. Our Interpreter follows a conference interpreter, The Heart a team of heart surgeons, and Tears on Fire a company of firefighters.

Food is another favourite setting. Midnight Diner, from 2017, is the Chinese version of a celebrated Japanese story about a small restaurant that opens at midnight. Crossroad Bistro has five women open a restaurant together, and Dating in the Kitchen has been mentioned. A Romance of the Little Forest pairs a professor of botany with a maker of beauty videos, The Accidental Influencer looks at life online, and Pretty Li Hui Zhen, Diamond Lover, My Best Friend's Story, Sunshine by My Side, Smile Code and Fight for Beauty are set in magazines, jewellers and offices.

Comedy

The Comedy list holds 74 series, and the Comedy help page names the funniest. Longmen Express, from 2013, is a workplace comedy in costume: the staff of a small escort agency in old Beijing, who are supposed to guard valuable goods on the road and mostly quarrel in the yard. It belongs to a family of comedies in which the characters of an old-fashioned inn or shop talk like modern office workers, and it is fast, verbal and very popular.

K.O.3an Guo, from Taiwan, turns the heroes of a famous ancient war into pupils at a modern high school. Hello, The Sharpshooter, Count Your Lucky Stars, Mr. Honesty, The Hope, Waiting For You In The Future and Genius Girlfriend are romantic comedies, and Armor Hero XT is a costumed adventure series made for children.

From Taiwan

The From Taiwan list holds 13 series, and the From Taiwan help page introduces them. Taiwan was the home of the idol drama, the bright romantic comedy with young stars that swept Asia in the early 2000s, and its series have a relaxed, humorous style of their own. Office Girls, from 2011, is a good example: the heir to a department store is sent to work on the shop floor under a false name, on an ordinary salary, and falls for a colleague who is saving every coin. Murphy's Law of Love is about a heart-broken agony aunt and a specialist in break-ups whose offices face each other.

U Motherbaker, from 2020, follows a widowed mother who runs a bakery with her five children and a household of relations; it is spoken largely in the island's own language and has the flavour of real family life. Women in Taipei follows a young woman from the south through her first twenty years in the capital, and I Am Married...But!, from 2025, is a comedy about a wife who loves her husband and is less sure about living with his family.

Year by year

Four lists arrange the catalogue by date, and the Year by year help page describes them. Before 2016 holds 29 series, among them The Legend of the Condor Heroes, Pathfinding to the Northeast, Chinese Paladin 3, Meteor Shower, The Myth, Scarlet Heart, Office Girls, Longmen Express, Sound of the Desert, Tiger Mom and The Whirlwind Girl. These were made for television, in long runs, before streaming changed the business.

2016 to 2019 holds 46: To Be a Better Man, Feather Flies to the Sky, Martial Universe, Accidentally in Love, Old Boy, The King's Avatar, Put Your Head on My Shoulder, A Little Reunion and The Best Partner. 2020 to 2022 is the largest list, with 82, the years in which the sweet drama was at its height and the streaming services made series by the dozen: The Romance of Tiger and Rose, Cross Fire, Perfect and Casual, Minning Town, The Rational Life, A River Runs Through It, Ancient Love Poetry, The Blood of Youth, Royal Feast and Draw the Line.

2023 onwards holds 78, from Love You Seven Times, The Love You Give Me and Love Me, Love My Voice to To the Wonder, Romance in the Alley, Brocade Odyssey, Northward, Filter and the series of 2026, which the Recently Drama tab on the home page shows first. The Popular Drama list gathers the 54 series rated 8 or more out of ten by viewers.

Faces you will come to know

Chinese drama has a large company of stars, and several appear more than once on AsianC. Zhao Lusi, bright and quick, is the screenwriter of The Romance of Tiger and Rose, the cook of Dating in the Kitchen and a leading player of The Last Immortal and I Hear You. Yang Yang leads The King's Avatar and Martial Universe and is the senior pupil of The Whirlwind Girl. Hu Ge, one of the most respected actors of his generation, is the hero of Chinese Paladin 3, The Myth and The Legend of the Condor Heroes, all made before he was thirty.

Liu Shishi is the heroine of Scarlet Heart and Sound of the Desert. Yang Zi appears in The Oath of Love, Best Choice Ever and The Legend of Dragon Pearl. Tan Songyun, who can still play a schoolgirl in her thirties, leads Brocade Odyssey and Filter. Ding Yuxi is the hero of The Romance of Tiger and Rose and Love You Seven Times. Among older actors, Huang Lei is the father of A Little Reunion and the cook of Midnight Diner, Zhang Jiayi and Yan Ni appear together in Minning Town and Growing Pain, and Zhao Wei, once the most famous young actress in China, is the mother of Tiger Mom.

Customs and terms

A few customs explain a good deal. Respect for parents and elders governs every family story: grown children are expected to support their parents, and a parent's opinion of a marriage carries great weight. Red is the colour of weddings and good fortune, white of mourning. The new year, in January or February, brings the whole family to one table, and a character kept away from home at that season is to be pitied. Tea is poured for others before oneself, and a guest's cup is kept full.

In costume dramas, rank is shown by dress and address. Only the emperor wears bright yellow. Ministers kneel, women of the court walk with small steps, and a man's hair is bound up under a cap from the day he comes of age. In stories of immortals, white robes mean purity and long flowing sleeves are useful for dramatic exits. In modern dramas the equivalent signals are the first flat, the first car and the dreaded question from an aunt at the new-year dinner about when one intends to marry.

Some words recur in subtitles. Gege and jiejie are elder brother and elder sister, didi and meimei the younger ones, and friends use them as freely as relations. Shifu is a master who teaches a skill, and shixiong an elder fellow pupil. Laoshi is teacher, laoban is boss, and jiayou, literally "add oil", is the universal cry of encouragement.

Where and how the dramas are made

Most Chinese costume dramas are filmed in one place, a small town in the hills of the eastern province of Zhejiang, where the largest outdoor film studio in the world has grown up since the 1990s. It contains a full-size copy of the imperial palace in Beijing, a palace of the first emperor, streets of the Song, Ming and Qing periods, gardens, temples and a stretch of old Shanghai, and on any day twenty or thirty productions are at work there. Viewers who watch several series soon recognise a particular bridge or courtyard turning up under different dynasties, which is part of the fun.

The costumes are an industry in themselves. A leading lady in a palace drama may have sixty changes of dress, embroidered by hand, and headdresses that take two hours to put on; series such as Royal Feast and Brocade Odyssey were praised for copying surviving garments and paintings exactly. Modern dramas are filmed in the real streets of Shanghai, Beijing, Shenzhen, Chongqing and Xiamen, and the sweet dramas favour leafy university districts and seaside cities.

A production moves fast. Forty episodes may be filmed in four months, with two units working at once, and the series may be shown within the year. Episodes are released in batches on the streaming services, a few each week, and paying members are usually a few episodes ahead of everyone else, which is why admirers discuss the ending of a series for a week before the rest of the audience has seen it.

From novel to screen

Behind most of the series on AsianC stands a novel, and knowing a little about that helps in choosing. The classic novels of chivalry by Jin Yong have been mentioned. The romances come mostly from online fiction, where writers publish a chapter a day and readers vote with their subscriptions; a story that holds a million readers for a year has proved its plot before a camera turns. Put Your Head on My Shoulder, The King's Avatar, Scarlet Heart, Love Me, Love My Voice, Forever and Ever, The Oath of Love and The Blood of Youth all began in this way, and several of the novels have been translated into English.

Readers of the originals are a demanding audience, and the best adaptations are those that keep the characters as written. Others come from older literature and legend: Song of Phoenix from the life of a poet who lived more than two thousand years ago, The Myth from the story of the first emperor, and Northward and To the Wonder from prize-winning modern books. A few, such as Chinese Paladin 3, come from video games, and Take My Brother Away from a comic strip.

Songs and themes

Every Chinese drama has an opening song and a closing song, often sung by the leading actors themselves, and a costume drama may have six or eight more, written in a style that mixes pop with the sound of the bamboo flute, the two-stringed fiddle and the zither. They are released as an album while the series is showing, and a successful theme can outlive its drama by decades; the songs of Chinese Paladin 3 and Scarlet Heart are still requested at concerts.

The lyrics of costume-drama songs are written in a deliberately old-fashioned, poetic Chinese, full of moonlight, wine cups, long roads and partings at the city gate, and translations of them are a pleasant way into classical poetry. Modern sweet dramas prefer light guitar pop. The official music services carry these soundtracks under the English or Chinese name of the series, and many admirers find that a favourite theme song brings back a whole drama in three minutes.

A country on screen

China is the size of a continent, and its dramas show the variety. The sweet dramas live in the bright coastal cities, with their bicycle lanes, bubble-tea shops and glass towers. Minning Town shows the bare yellow hills of the north-west, To the Wonder the summer pastures and snow peaks near the borders of central Asia, Pathfinding to the Northeast the forests and frozen rivers of the far north-east, and Northward the old canal towns of the east with their arched bridges and white walls. Romance in the Alley is set in a city of gardens and waterways, and U Motherbaker and Women in Taipei show the markets, scooters and night streets of Taiwan.

Food changes with the map: noodles and mutton in the north-west, dumplings in the north, rice, river fish and bamboo shoots in the east, fiery hotpot in the south-west. A family that watches three or four of these series will come away with a real sense of how large and how varied the country is, and with a list of dishes to try.

Finding a drama

The Finding titles help page explains the several ways to find a series on AsianC. The search box beside the name accepts a title and shows matching series as you type. Chinese dramas are known by several names, an official English title, a literal translation and the Chinese title spelt out in the Latin alphabet, and admirers often use the last; the page of each series lists its other names, and the search recognises them, along with the title in Chinese characters.

The silver strip of letters opens the alphabetical list at any point, the Drama List column on the home page gives every list with the number of series in it, and the Drama List page shows all 235 by popularity. Titles are often alike, with love, youth, dream and destiny appearing again and again, so the year and the picture are the surest guide; two different series are both called Begin Again, one from 2020 and one from 2024.

What a series page shows

Each series has a page of the same shape. The poster, the title in English and in Chinese characters, the year, the number of episodes and the average rating are at the top. A short account of the story follows, with the genres, the leading actors and the makers, then the list of episodes, and a row of related series from the same lists. The Watch now button opens the list of official services that offer the series in the country you choose.

Chinese dramas are widely offered on official services, more so than many viewers realise. The large Chinese streaming companies run international versions of their own services, with subtitles in English, Spanish, Thai, Indonesian, Arabic and other languages, and place a great many complete series on their official video channels, free with advertisements. The international streaming services license the best known, and specialist services for Asian drama carry many more. What is available differs from country to country, so the list on each page is the place to look.

The Add to My List button on each page keeps a series for later. The list is stored by the browser on your own device, with neither a registration nor a password, and it opens from the My List link in the teal bar. With series of forty episodes, it is sensible to keep the list short. The My List help page explains how to remove a series and how to copy the list to another device.

How to enjoy a long series

Viewers used to eight or ten episodes sometimes hesitate before forty. A few habits help. Treat a long drama as a serial novel and watch one or two episodes an evening over a month; the stories are built for exactly that, with a small conclusion every few episodes. Use the first three episodes as a trial, since by then the leading characters and the tone are clear. Keep a note of names for the first week: a costume drama may introduce twenty people in an hour, and the family name comes first.

It is also quite proper to watch selectively. Chinese viewers themselves commonly skip the scenes of a secondary couple they dislike, and the players of official services offer a faster speed for that purpose. The reward for patience is real, though: a relationship that has grown over forty hours has a weight that a film can rarely match, and the ending of a series such as Scarlet Heart or Chinese Paladin 3 stays with people for years.

A first month

Here is a plan for a household new to Chinese drama. In the first week, watch Put Your Head on My Shoulder, which is short and sweet. In the second, Minning Town, for a complete contrast. In the third and fourth, choose one longer series according to taste: The King's Avatar for those who like competition, The Romance of Tiger and Rose for those who like comedy in costume, A River Runs Through It for those with teenagers, or The Rational Life for a grown-up love story.

After that, try the things that only China does. Watch Chinese Paladin 3 or Love You Seven Times for the world of immortals, The Legend of the Condor Heroes for the world of swordsmen, Scarlet Heart for the Qing court, and To the Wonder, which takes only eight evenings, for a part of the country that few dramas show. For a family with children of school age, A Little Reunion and Tiger Mom will start some lively conversations at home.

How the dramas were chosen

Every title on AsianC was considered by a person before it was admitted. The selection keeps to romances, costume dramas, fantasy and martial-arts adventures and stories of youth, work and family; series built on crime, horror, war, cruel intrigue or adult themes were set aside, however popular. Some dramas deal with serious matters, illness, money worries, pressure at school, as stories of family life do everywhere, and the page of each series describes its story plainly so that parents can judge.

AsianC is a guide. It holds neither episodes nor files to download; every Watch now button opens an official, licensed service, where the picture is clear, the subtitles are prepared by professional translators, and the writers, actors and crews are paid when you watch.

Questions and answers

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