No, normally for this type of production and budget you would around 45min-1 hour episodes. It's because the 3rd lead Cheng Li Su, was originally played by a different actor. However, the actor got arrested and got jail time for being violent while drunk and vandalizing a car. So he was replaced by face swap and green screen technology, but also a lot of his scenes were cut. Thus the reduced episode time. 

 arpar:

No, normally for this type of production and budget you would around 45min-1 hour episodes. It's because the 3rd lead Cheng Li Su, was originally played by a different actor. However, the actor got arrested and got jail time for being violent while drunk and vandalizing a car. So he was replaced by face swap and green screen technology, but also a lot of his scenes were cut. Thus the reduced episode time. 

Dang. Good thing they edited him out then. 

 arpar:

His name is Li Ming De

Thanks ❤

 katsumi_liqueur:

This justification for the episodes being 35 minutes long doesn't make sense. The character doesn't have enough scenes in the story to account for a 20-minute reduction across 36 episodes. 

Its this, along with the fact to pass regulation episode count had to be reduced from 40-36 episodes, so other things got cut as well to reduce the episode count, a combination of both 

 Droopy_Asleep:

So once she plays Cheng Lisu episode 10-ish onwards, I am thinking the episodes will be longer, because he may not feature in those episodes. Jiang arc and Rundu arc + later..at least that is the hope!

LSH does feature in the Jiang arc..  remains to be seen whether CLS is swapped in for that. 

 KalineM:

Thank you all for replying... it make sense now. Im a bit new to Cdrama and was not sure. I appreciate it. 

No problem, you'll notice ep 8 and 9 are bit longer around 40 mins not including credits.