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The highly anticipated Chinese historical drama Pursuit of Jade premiered on Tencent Video (also known as WeTV outside China) and iQIYI on March 6, garnering buzzworthy ratings and rankings.
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.
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. With a clear gap over competitors, its performance across both platforms placed it firmly at the top of the list.
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. Within the first hour of airing, it successively crossed the 20,000, 21,000, and 22,000 milestones, eventually reaching a peak of 26,000. On March 7, its popularity index on Tencent Video reached 28,000.
Moreover, within just six hours of its premiere, the show received 218,000 ratings, setting a record for the highest first-day drama ratings on Tencent in the past two years. Among them, five-star reviews accounted for 92%.
At the start of its run, its popularity score on iQIYI was only 3,773. However, as the story progressed, its popularity on the platform continued to rise, peaking at 7,901. This made it the iQIYI drama with the highest first-day heat index among all dramas that premiered at 6 p.m.
Through its Cloud Theater Booking event, the drama attracted 472,000 participants, ranking among the Top 2 in participation numbers in the history of iQIYI's Cloud Theater Booking.
Pursuit of Jade also ranks top on the Guduo Popularity Index ranking list of the most trending dramas, as of March 7.
The series is also swiftly gaining popularity on the global OTT platform Netflix in countries including Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan, and Thailand.
The character Xie Zheng, portrayed by Zhang Ling He, surpassed 100 million in pre-broadcast popularity index on Tencent and also became the first character on iQIYI to exceed 100 million in popularity index on the day the drama's premiere date was announced.
Fan Chang Yu, played by Tian Xi Wei, achieved the milestone of surpassing 100 million in character popularity index on the first day across two platforms.
Stream Pursuit of Jade on Netflix, WeTV, iQIYI, and iflix.
Source: Sina.com
