Pursuit of Jade

Kinda lives up to the hype, kinda

My Gosh was I bombarded with this series everywhere on the net that one night I gave in.

1. The good:
- Likeable and lively FL, especially in her natural habitat a.k.a. her village. Interesting back story of her being a butcher lady too.
- The child actors are adorbs! Sometimes they act way beyond their ages though, which is stereotypical in dramas. So I think of these instances as: writers letting their imagination running freaking wild.
- The veteran actors, including the uncle and aunty, the busybody granny, the foster father/shifu, the emperor.
- Lin Mu Ran's crazy, sadistic prince character was entertaining. He has potentials.
- Yan Yi Kuan (cry). I think of his character not as an antagonist but an antihero. [SPOILERS] Did his actions lead to a lot of suffering and deaths? Yes. Was he push into it by shitty power? Yes. Could he have done it differently? Yes. But then it wouldn't be an Asian thing of non-communicative but caring parent (figure) any further. Also, it makes it poignant, his character and his storyline. The only sympathetic and sympathiseable bad guy in the series. (I also shuddered at the thought many dramas have characters like him. Those who sacrificed everything and gave their lives to serve their countries and people, only to get death sentences - extendable to their extended families - by a single choice/decision or even at the whim of the higher-ups.)
- The music highlights the heart-warming, romantic and lively scenes well.
- The COMEDY always hits the right notes with this one.

2. The bad:
- Quality drops gradually. The first arc was enjoyable. The middle arc was muddy and dragging, with Lin Mu Ran being the highlight. The last couple episodes were saved by Yan Yi Kuan.
- Lacks focuses.

3. The delusional:
- The overly emphasis on the ML's looks/handsomeness. They not only say it but use every chance to highlight it in the makeup and costumes. I'm sick of it. (But not to the point of hating him. I think his online hate is just as toxic as his fans glazing his supposed "beauty".)
- The superhuman abilities of Gary Sue and Mary Sue:
[SPOILERS]
ML: Clearly doesn't shoot a bow. But every time he shoots, even with three freaking arrows, he never misses. He is the most feared general but hardly does any planning or strategising. Even his combat is mostly non-proven.
FL: She freaking kills two of the most veteran and strongest generals/warriors of the enemy in hand-to-hand combat. She has never worn amour before, but as soon as she dons one, she moves like the wind (okay, fine, like usual). She breaks rules, acts recklessly but, by the power vested in plot amours, everything ALWAYS turns out well and swell.
Both 20-something to early 30s main characters become super important political figures, for whatever the plot reasons, in the court of a 9-year-old emperor with a 20-something restauranteur/entertainment venue owner mother being behind him. These three don't have any backgrounds, knowledge, track records or even show the slightest of learning about the serious business that is the court life. They are not qualified. The freaking country is doomed from the start.
- Simp-and-limp male characters.
- Kids not being kids.

4. The horrible:
- The last bait I took was Qi Min. He was paraded everywhere online. I got intrigued of people painting him as a sad, pitiable secondary character with a tragic love story...
[SPOILERS]
Oh, hell no, it's not a love story at all! Why and how did they decide to fantasise this abusive, mentally disturbed and clearly needed help, obsessive rapist/kidnapper/murderer and his Stockholm's syndrome victim? It's disgusting and I need therapy.

Conclusion: Funny (again, the comedy of this series is on-point) with a good start but can be uneven, delusional and absolutely questionable.

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i enjoyed this high as f rated cdrama cos why not?

I tried to understand why the rating is so high and given that i also enjoyed this drama this is what i think:

some shows, like this one, dont get rated so highly because they are THAT good, instead it is because they are easy, easy to love.

Nothing polarizing, nothing particularly challenging or complex, they are simple, simplistic. Most people watching them will end up liking it because there’s nothing much that could challenge the viewer otherwise.

This is very enjoyable, very high chemistry, romance. Any other storytelling aspect present is in its infancy here. Thematically its quite shallow.

The saving grace is the romantic dynamic between two stunning actors who give it their all despite everything and are shot beautifully to enhance it all.

There’s nothing wrong with simplicity, it can be quite powerful, but dont let the rating fool you there are many many better cdrama out there with better thematic points and payoff, with better more interesting characters and character dynamics and so on.

I urge you all to find them. Chinese dramas are amazing when you find those nuggets.

This show, its at its best in the first half, then it banks on that to hold it till the end.

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Another ruined drama with great potential.

Pursuit of Jade had the potential to be a masterpiece, boasting amazing pacing, gripping storytelling, and a strong cast. Unfortunately, this is derailed by the female lead, Changyu, whose exaggerated, overpowered persona ruins the show.

The breaking point is the absurdity of Changyu knocking out the Marquis mid-battle. After mere weeks of training with an Old Taoist and some generals, she expects to be a de facto commander. Why would an army blindly follow a newcomer who just assaulted their leader? Despite the Marquis’s built-up reputation as a formidable, city-capturing general, he’s constantly reduced to a stumbling, heavily wounded mess. Meanwhile, Changyu, a former butcher, walks away with barely a scratch.

This highlights a glaring lack of creativity in Eastern fantasy. Writers seem trapped between helpless damsels and flawless badasses who need no saving. Where are the nuanced characters with actual flaws? The recent "butcher girl" trope feels like a lazy shortcut to assert female independence. Worse, the casting and choreography clash terribly. Giving a delicate, doe-eyed actress a brute-force fighting style is visually jarring; modifying her combat to fit her physique would have been far more believable.

This unnatural empowerment also exposes the stale male lead. Like many current Asian dramas, the ML is a stoic plank of wood. While the supporting cast has actual personality, you could swap this ML into a dozen other shows and no one would notice.

Dropped at episode 30! Creators must learn to weave in female empowerment with subtlety and prioritize believable characters over logic-defying tropes.

(Written with the help of GenAI)

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What a waste of time!

Man i really Thought it would turn out something like The Demon Hunters Romance. At least they'd keep the wukong's legacy of arrogance but what dickhead this character is! This drama should've been named rise of a pig butcher or something. Cause It is. It's her fairy tale and he is just a dumbfuck standing behind and Everytime he fights he gets hurt so bad that it takes months to recover while she takes so many hits as amateur in battle still rises on the next move 🥴 how the fuck do they even like such a thing whare It's mostly showing her knife skills and that slut concubine of Sui Yuanhuai's suffering. Not single character is likeable. I've seen Zheng linghe's drama series before, I've seen her as well but with all that high hope and expectations It's just so irritating man i just couldn’t throw my phone and break it into pieces (It's worth something but they do not) well the sole reason for me to stop watching c-drama is this too powerful womens and dickhead males. Recently there are so many drama series coming out with the same fucking story. I'll just go back and Watch that whisper of fate Again. Even though It's CGI work Isn't good at first but i Don't get bored like this one. Every episode kept thrilling me. Man what a disappointment! In one scene sui yuanhuai got hurt on his right hand and next scene he is hurt on his left hand how the fuck did he Change the wound from one hand to another? And this so called always fuckedup marquis is just charging ahed with all the brute force he got meanwhile his heroin wife is fighting with style such a joke only exist in this fuckedup drama. So many people liked it so i thought Let's try it but this one decision almost ruind my mode.


Most importantly I've never seen such amount of sexual explicit scene in one chinese drama! All the villains got lust for women dude this ain't a way yo make them evil It's not what makes audience think he is evil. He is killing people for nothing Isn't something makes him evil. We have some common terms for good and evil and this Doesn't belong to any of them. She felt like slut while he was characterless animal that's it. But i liked there killing people scenes. I mean that's the only side of this drama whare i felt goosebumps.


I Don't see huge distractions and gore stuff in chinese drama but at least i expected some cool actions since It's been praised for having the best action scene but i all i see is her fighting in style and he is just 🙄 with all the disappointment and respect for there hard work BYE 🤬

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Solid buildup, weak payoff

So off the bat I'm gonna spoil and summarize the whole drama in one sentence: After rescuing an injured Marquis, a humble pig butcher realizes her true potential and becomes a war general, all the while discovering her true past and the political intrigue that led to the deaths of her parents, as well as changed the fate of an entire kingdom.

From the first episode to maybe around episode 26, I would say this drama was almost movie quality. Tight script, well acted, thoughtful camera angles and editing, chef's kiss. I gave it a 10/10. FL is a strong, sweet, honest girl whose background as a butcher's daughter clearly endowed her with courage and fortitude. She fearlessly confronts adversity while maintaining a compassionate attitude towards those around her, and it is this combination of strength and softness that draws both ML and the viewer to her. Tian Xi Wei is an expressive actress who is natural in her portrayal in a way that does not seem overdone. She is also superb in the fight scenes, and it's so satisfying to watch her battle the villains in the story. Admittedly, the bad parts of this drama are all independent from her and Zhang Ling He's ML, whose acting is the best I've personally seen to date. He has a strong masculine presence that gives his character a certain weight and mystery that I hadn't seen even in Story of Kunning, where he played another character who was potentially dark and more than he seemed. ML isn't afraid to humble himself and let FL shine, and their relationship, aside from a few hiccups, is one based on mutual generosity and support.

The side characters, such as SML and SFL, are also very interesting and offer a unique foil to the main romance. The characters weave together organically and their interactions with each other are some of the best scenes. Even the children are adorable, and the director clearly knows how to work with children because he's able to capture that spontaneity of childhood so that most if not all lines feel like they're actually coming from the child, and not something the child had been forced to repeat.

Episode 26 and onwards, it starts getting a little confusing. I'm not sure if it was because it was rushed, it seemed like the script itself had vital parts removed and Scene A doesn't quite connect with Scene B. The show also starts telling you things instead of showing you. It's still definitely watchable, but the journey feels a little forced, there are plotholes and gaps in logic that weren't present early in the series. There was also an overuse of dying scenes, but in a weird way, like a villain would receive what looked like a death blow 10 minutes prior and multiple scenes later, you as a viewer already dismissed their story as being closed, but all of the sudden the show cuts back to them and they're still alive somehow and ready to give a final monologue. It's very out of touch with what the audience actually wants to see at that moment; we're all happy to be done with that particular storyline but the show dragged us back to go through a redundant scene all over again. Still a relatively minor infraction, in my opinion, but kind of disappointing given how good the first half of the show had been. Still, 8/10 in this section, so overall above a 9/10.

Then Episode 39 just becomes a hot mess. ML and another character start fighting in the middle of defending the palace during a coup, intending to settle their differences while their troops are still fending off a mutual enemy by staging a 1-on-1 sword battle in the middle of nowhere. It's so out of the blue that I can't even watch the cinematography because the idea itself is so ridiculous. In a rush of about 30 minutes, you're fed, through cringy dialogue, a rushed and sloppy explanation in order to clarify what instigated the drama's entire plotline, and it's so full of asinine logic I got annoyed that anything happened in this story. It wasn't just stupid characters acting stupidly in character, because that wasn't the problem. The writing just didn't make sense. The motivations didn't make any sense. When good characters died, I couldn't care, because their decisions leading up to this were so stupid that I felt neither satisfied nor disappointed with the outcome. Similarly, the main leads did get a happy ending, but it was so cringe after everything leading up to it that I couldn't feel happy about them either.

Episode 40 actually ends with some kind of what-if scenario where key events in the backstory didn't happen, and the characters are supposed to be happier versions of themselves, but with some remnant of the main storyline lurking in their intuition or something. The final scene was so awkwardly done it almost turned the whole thing into a sitcom, capping one of the more compelling arcs in the story with this bizarre gag moment that left the characters confused and the audience pretty ambivalent.

Overall, an absolutely disappointing way to end what should have had so much potential, what was clearly carried out so well in the first half of the series. I think ultimately the show bit off more than it could chew. It sought to create a heroic saga, but the script's best attribute was actually in the slice-of-life moments in the village. There were too many villain factions, up to 4 separate forces plus a red herring for a 5th, and it was impossible to expand on all of their motivations in a way that allowed the intrigues to make any sense. I know people were even confused as to which villain they're seeing, which is a sign that you have too many villains. If the audience can't sympathize with why the drama is choosing to show us these things, they should be eliminated altogether. If I were the scriptwriter, the four factions should all be combined into 1 villain faction, and the red herring can be dangled so that we get an interesting plot twist at the end. Instead, all of the villains seemed shallow, the fight scenes lost their impact, in fact one apparently got shoved in there just because, and FL's "growth" toward becoming a general didn't feel earned and seemed entirely pointless. Even the expositions to try to clarify the hot mess of an ending only served to confuse even more. This ending is bad enough that for me, it completely undoes my desire to ever watch this series again, and even the nice beginning does not really make up for how everything falls apart.

I sincerely hope Tian Xi Wei and Zhang Ling He do work together on another series, costume or modern, and I will be looking at all the other actors to see what other shows they're in, because I do not blame the actors at all for the lousy way this all resolved. I will also be monitoring the director, who I think did a superb job with what he's given and even the choppy editing is likely due to how impossible it was to connect a sloppy script. I think there is still a way to enjoy this series and if you already know the ending, which you can find in spoilers and comments, you can stick to the good parts and avoid the rest, but if endings matter to you, the way they do to me, this is not really a drama to invest in.

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As long as I live… in this lifetime… you are mine.” – Xie Zheng ??»

***** SPOILER ALERT (PERSONAL FEEDBACK) *****
Personal Rating: ⭐️ 10/10
💕 How would you rate this drama?
Title: Pursuit of Jade / Chasing Jade / Zhu Yu (2026)
Status: Complete – 40 Episodes

ML: Yan Zheng / Xie Zheng (Marquis of Wu’an) – Zhang Ling He
FL: Fan Chang Yu – Tian Xi Wei

«“As long as I live… in this lifetime… you are mine.” – Xie Zheng 🥹😍»

My baby Xi Wei is finally getting the recognition she truly deserves! 🥹

From the moment I saw the trailer, I was already hooked. I waited months for this drama and even held off watching until it was completed—because I cannot deal with waiting for episodes 😅

The story begins when Fan Chang Yu, a butcher’s daughter, saves a severely wounded Xie Zheng (Marquis of Wu’an), who is secretly investigating the Jinzhou massacre—a tragic event that killed the Crown Prince and his father. To protect both himself and Chang Yu, he hides his identity and lives under the name Yan Zheng.

When Chang Yu needs a matrilocal husband to secure her inheritance, Yan Zheng agrees to a fake marriage… and of course, what starts as fake slowly turns real 🥹❤️

The plot dives deep into political power struggles—who deserves the throne, exposing corrupt ministers manipulating the emperor, and uncovering the truth behind the Jinzhou massacre 17 years ago.

✨ What made this drama stand out?
⭐️ The chemistry between Zhang Ling He and Tian Xi Wei is INSANE—like, next level. You can feel everything without them even saying it: the eye contact, the subtle glances, the small touches, the bickering, the jealousy… even the silence speaks LOVE 😭

They didn’t just act—they became Yan Zheng and Fan Chang Yu 😍😍😍

⭐️ Characters & Performance:
Xie Zheng is especially unforgettable—a cold-blooded general who is ruthless toward his enemies, a strict and law-abiding leader to his subordinates, yet a devoted and loving husband to Fan Chang Yu.

Fan Chang Yu is strong, fearless, lovable, and perfectly portrayed by Tian Xi Wei.

Everything just fits perfectly.

The story is great, and the twists are even better. The fight scenes are superb, and there are no dull moments. I just wish we got more of Xie Zheng and Fan Chang Yu’s story rather than the focus on Qi Min’s obsession with Yu Qian Qian. I also wanted more scenes of the Royal Princess and Gongsun—they were so cute! Still, I’m rating this 10/10 without hesitation. It’s a romantic comedy with superb fight scenes and a happy ending.

This drama is officially added to my rewatch list and sits on the same top-tier level as Love Like the Galaxy and Prisoner of Beauty 💯

🎥 If you want to see Zhang Ling He & Tian Xi Wei together off-screen, watch them on Hello Saturday while promoting the drama 😍

🎶 Favorite OST: “A Single Thought” – Zhang Zining & Li Xinyi

Genre: Historical • Costume • Romance • Comedy • War • Fake to Real Lovers

💬 If you love slow-burn romance, powerful chemistry, and strong characters with a happy ending, THIS IS A MUST-WATCH!

⚠️ Warning! Brace yourself! Zhang Ling He is freaking handsome here.
In my opinion, he looks the most handsome in this drama compared to his other dramas 😍🔥

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Beautifully and colorfully packaged, this candy is definitely sour

I was really looking forward to this series. I have read the novel several times, and although it is beautifully and colorfully packaged, this candy is definitely sour. The eyes are often empty. ML's aggressive thirst for revenge has turned into a sleepy, lukewarm excess. FL's desire to survive has turned into a funny. The story is drawn out, the romantic music sounds sooner than the actors' romantic skills. The prolonged romance makes the play boring rather than passionate or beautiful. The supporting characters sometimes perform better than the main characters. However, I could not imagine a better cast than this, both main characters have the potential for success. The director creates beautiful images, everything is like a painting, beautiful but soulless. The serious complication is still to come, but 26 episodes of the series have already passed. I will watch it, but for me, appearances are not enough for a high rating.

addendum: episodes 26-40

The end of the series did not bring any major changes.
The chemistry improved, but it became artificial due to the director's wonderful settings. (I feel the director's self-adoration instead of the actors' acting)
I understand some of the cuts (so that we don't stay without our main character's partner for an entire episode), but I don't like it, it causes confusion.
The series itself is good, there are iconic moments.
I will watch these moments again, but I definitely won't watch the whole movie.
Episode 40 is a self-serving distribution of happiness, at the expense of the novel.

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When "Pursuit of Jade" becomes a real jade.

Okay, I'm done. I finished watching the drama at night. Now, after a few hours of thinking about it, I can already write a review.

The series is great. It has an interesting plot with many plot twists. It's not obvious and you can really be surprised by what happens in the next episode.

The director, Zeng Qing Jie, painted a light-and-frame masterpiece while shooting. Whenever you pause the drama, you see a beautiful frame. Some of them are really stunning. What I thought while watching The Pursuit of Jade is that film academy students should learn from it how to make a drama full of outstanding frames and paint with light.

About the FL and ML:

张凌赫
Besides his appearance and "pretty face," Linghe showed again that it's not his looks that make him a good actor, but his abilities. I'm really impressed by how fast Zhang Linghe's acting has developed. With every following drama, he acts better and better. And he's quite brave ;) Every romantic scene he played wonderfully. In this role, he's very calm, even-tempered, and prudent. He's impartial, protective, and has a big heart. His love for Changyu is timeless.

田曦薇
And Tian Xi Wei… here I have a little problem. She played Fan Chang Yu very well, but unfortunately, she killed all the romantic scenes. In one of the BTS clips, ZHL tells her that she's allergic to romantic scenes. And no more, no less — it's true. Shame, because every one of them was planned by the director down to the smallest detail — how to turn the head, how to hug, how to kiss, etc. But I was really impressed by how much strength she has! Carrying a guy who's 22 cm taller and, of course, weighs more — that was a huge challenge, and she did it! And playing a heroine with a past full of unknowns, a strong temper, and raising a little one (and a very cute one at that — applause for that tiny little actress!) must have been mentally hard to bear.

How is the ending? For me, it's good. The last episode luckily didn't kill the drama, which I was really afraid of. It's very nostalgic and the final scenes… here was probably the biggest surprise :D but I like it. If it had been the "great royal wedding of FL and ML," it would have been a catastrophe. But it's not. I don't want to write anymore ;)

Oh, and I almost forgot about the opening credits! Usually I don't pay attention to them, but here… God, even this was remarkable. The animation is cool and the music — top it off!

Just watch it. It's really worth it! 10/10 is an accurate rate :)

PS Now I have a problem, because I have 2 beloved costume dramas... and this will be the 3rd one ;) How to order them on the podium? I have no idea at all.... ;)

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