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The currently airing Chinesmne historical drama Pursuit of Jade has surpassed a popularity index of 30,000 on Tencent Video and 10,000 on iQIYI (as of March 11), reaching a new milestone.
Pursuit of Jade tells the story of butcher's daughter Fan Chang Yu (Tian Xi Wei) and Xie Zheng (Zhang Ling He), a fallen noble, who meet by destiny on a snowy day.
Chang Yu lost both her parents and strives to support her family, while Zheng hides his identity to avenge a blood feud from seventeen years ago. With each harboring their own motives, the two concoct a marriage of convenience. Though they initially joined hands to use one another for their own purposes, their alliance gradually blossoms into genuine emotions.
Judging by the numbers alone, Pursuit of Jade has had what could be called a blockbuster start.
On its very first day of release, the C-drama set off a wave of record-breaking buzz across the internet. On Tencent Video, its peak popularity score exceeded 26,000, while on iQIYI, it exceeded 7,000. Just 15 minutes after its premiere, the drama's popularity score on Tencent Video had already surged past 23,000, making it the platform's fastest drama of 2026 to surpass the 10,000 mark.
However, the impressive numbers have not yet earned the acclaim in terms of public reception. As hashtags such as #pursuitofjadefabricatedbuzz and #netizensreportpursuitofjadeforviewershipdatafraud have climbed the trending charts on Chinese media, the drama has become mired in both data controversy and a reputation crisis. In particular, the video streaming platform Tencent Video (also known as WeTV outside China) has been accused of "fabricating/manufacturing the buzz."
On the day after it premiered, its Yunhe market share reportedly jumped to 31.4%, with about 70 million views in a single day. Some promotional claims went so far as to say that Pursuit of Jade's one-day view count had already exceeded the fourth-day figure of the domestic hit The Knockout, sparking controversy over what many saw as an attempt to inflate its buzz.
However, in stark contrast to its dazzling numbers, Chinese netizens speculate there is little real sense that the drama has actually "blown up." Looking back at The Knockout, its success in China was reflected in tangible impact — "The Art of War" sold out, and the filming locations even enjoyed a sustained tourism boom. By comparison, since Pursuit of Jade premiered, discussion of the drama has largely remained confined to the usual three points of "costume idol" dramas: the leads' visuals, their chemistry as a couple, and the styling and makeup.
Then, on March 9, #netizensreportpursuitofjadeforviewershipdatafraud climbed to the top of the trending charts. According to reports, Tencent Video appeared to have a bug: when a non-VIP user opened the playback page of any episode for Pursuit of Jade and exited after just one or two seconds, the viewing history would show that the entire episode had been finished. Some users even said that although they had never actively followed the drama, their viewing history still displayed complete watch records for it.
This technical glitch led netizens to mock the drama as having "fabricated buzz" — suggesting that its popularity wasn't built episode by episode by viewers, but rather "concocted" in the platform's backend.
Recently, About Love, starring Liu Yu Ning, has also been trending on Tencent Video China. On the night of March 8, after Liu Yu Ning's fans discovered the bug, they reportedly rallied overnight to "manufacture buzz" for the drama. But the next morning, it was found that About Love's popularity index on Tencent had dropped from 22,966 to 0.
In response to the widespread criticism online, Tencent Video issued an apology on the evening of March 9, attributing the issue to "a display error" on the viewing history section, stating that it did not affect any internal or external data.
Viewers, however, are not convinced. Beyond the data controversy, Chinese viewers criticize Pursuit of Jade for the imbalanced logic of its storytelling. The series is structured around two parallel threads — a hero-heroine line and a political intrigue line. Its promotions highlighted both the emotional redemption of a relationship evolving from a marriage of convenience to a life-and-death bond and the power struggle driven by a blood feud from seventeen years ago. However, once the drama aired, the imbalance and disconnect between these two narrative threads made the supposed dual-track structure little more than empty rhetoric. Combined with draggy pacing and gaps in logic, the show's narrative tension is ultimately completely undermined.
Watchers also complain of the slow-motion shots and the padding of the story with irrelevant scenes. A great deal of screen time is spent on neighborhood gossip and trivial street-life episodes, while the real core — the political undercurrent and plot logic — is only touched on superficially, with none of the tension that genuine power struggles are supposed to bring, stripping the drama of any real depth. The "Jinzhou case from seventeen years ago" and the struggle over imperial power, both heavily emphasized in the promotions, should have been the very soul of the drama. Instead, they are reduced to little more than a backdrop for the male and female leads' storyline.
The drama also remains overly fixated on an "MV-style" mode of expression built out of slow-motion shots. The visuals of the characters bathed in aesthetic lighting are certainly pleasing to the eye, but C-watchers criticize that the long-form drama does not stand on the strength of its story and characters.
Although Pursuit of Jade's male lead, Xie Zheng, is labeled a fallen marquis — reserved and self-controlled in the early stages, before later returning to the battlefield — the drama ultimately zooms in on his looks, making it difficult to feel the character's inner struggle or growth.
Fan Chang Yu, the heroine of Pursuit of Jade, is depicted as a rough woman who butchers pigs to support her family. In the drama, however, she appears with refined makeup, lacking any down-to-earth texture. As a result, the vitality the character ought to have is erased, leaving her as nothing more than a sweet heroine with a "pig butcher girl" label pasted onto her — Chinese netizens criticize.
Nevertheless, despite the criticism back home, the Chinese drama is enjoying immense popularity abroad, climbing to Netflix's Top 10 charts in Japan, the Philippines, Qatar, Singapore, and Vietnam, among others.
With the drama almost halfway through its run, the question remains whether Pursuit of Jade can translate attention into a stronger domestic public reception.
Stream Pursuit of Jade on Netflix, WeTV, iQIYI, and iflix.
Source: China Youth Network, Qianjiang Evening Post, Weibo, Baidu
