Mousie’s New and Improved Top 20 Cdramas List
Because why not. These are ordered in terms of being my favorite as opposed to pure quality - if I was trying to be objective, it would probably be rearranged, but I like being petty and subjective.
You will notice that literally every drama on this list is a period drama. Much as I adore period cdramas, contemporary ones rarely work for me.
20. Princess Agents (tie)
MV: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ll6x8zf2CnQ
Our heroine is a slave in a brutal society who becomes a feared general, fighting for freedom and love of a Yan prince. But her heart might actually lie with a seemingly cold adversary who is madly in love with her (I shipped them so hard!) I was one of five people who loved the infamous cliffhanger ending because it made a brutal kind of sense (You can read the novel if you want a different resolution.)
20. Tribes and Empires (tie)
MV: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WyRsPAGUz-Q
This one has a hell of an open ending, but it’s so gorgeous and epic, I don’t even care. Set in a fantasy empire, it follows three men - a half-human prince, a cursed son of a general, and an orphaned leader of a barbarian tribe. A feast for the eyes.
MV: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C05lhfrWgQg
A visually stunning high fantasy with elves, quests, a shockingly wonderful hero, brotherly love, toughest lady general ever as OTP and basically everything I like.
MV: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0XDR17kwXYM
The lengthy OTP separation brings its place in this list down, but otherwise a gorgeous romance between two enemies - a general and a female strategist, is a total swoon and so intense.
MV: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3RVpdYDpYA
This one is a magnum opus of 100 episodes, with a tour de force performance by Chen Jian Bin as Cao Cao. Battles, politics, and even though it’s very secondary, one of my favorite love stories in cdramas. This one is if you want to use your brain as well as your heart.
MV: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4O5yb3VBh4
It probably doesn’t deserve to be this high on the list but it hits all my narrative and shippy kinks with a common-sense heroine taking in an abused and mistreated death machine and teaching him to be human. Mmmm.
MV: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BO83qvKaoSM
What do you get when you have seven awesome heroic brothers, a star-studded cast, tragic stories about heroism and love and just amazingness? You get this drama.
14. Strange Hero Yi Zi Mei
MV: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFVDAuFOyWE
Band of misfits fight corruption and uncover mysteries. This one is the most underrated drama on my list. Also, Wallace Huo has never been hotter in his life and that is saying something.
13. The Battle of Changsha
MV: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbgFMaUfpnE
By the same people who wrote Minglan, this follows a family in 1930s China and is a quiet, devastating masterpiece.
MV (warning - spoilery): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-jUVGP0HETo
He’s the consummate battle god. She is a mystical shaman. He is fated to be with someone else per prophecy but he doesn’t care and chooses her. True love, politics, battles, jealousy, amazingness, tragedy. I love them so.
11. Gong/Jade Palace Lock Heart
MV: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVFPVkHaweo
This is Boys over Flowers goes Qing (where Domyoji’s behavior finally makes sense since he’s a literal prince and Rui likes to kill people.) This is such a amazing good fun, about a modern woman time traveling to the time of the fight for the throne between Kangxi’s sons. She thinks she likes the seemingly gentle Four but ends up with hot-blooded, awesome Eight. She herself is tough as all get out and this is pure deliciousness from beginning to end. Yang Mi and Feng Shao Feng had such amazing chemistry, people RPShipped them for years.
10. Return of the Condor Heroes 2006
MV: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzXsBqVYp0I
My first cdrama ever, and what a gorgeous one it was. That’s what got me into cdramas. The childhood eps are pretty awful but after that, it’s pure shippy perfection with an incredible OTP. If you want to be in a constant romantic swoon, in that story of female master and her male disciple and their forbidden love, this one is for you.
9. Eternal Love/Three Lives Three Worlds Ten Miles of Peach Blossoms
MV: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9-ry-W4Crg
Fated immortal lovers, reincarnations, the whole enchilada. Yang Mi and Mark Chao have insane chemistry that burns up the screen. The first few eps are slow, but it makes up for it afterwards.
MV: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkMX1d0v7t0
A twisty epic romance with a super-powered heroine who is plain awesome and may destroy the world, and a smart, ruthless prince who’s only soft for her. I love it so much!
7. Legend of Condor Heroes 2008
MV: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2fea109_qM
Plot twists, good guy hero with a mega smart OTP, tragic anti-hero who becomes a villain for a while with an amazing OTP, bromance, fights, everything. I just adore this one.
6. Bu Bu Jing Xin/Startling By Each Step
MV: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9B3Rddrqt0
The one that started the time-travel craze (well, that and Gong), about a modern woman who time travels to the time of Emperor Kangxi’s sons’ fight for the throne, this is a gorgeously filmed tragic love story, with one of the most perfectly brutal endings out there. I adore it.
MV: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4wps7SK9xo
This is a smart story about politics and revenge, where a survivor of a wrongly destroyed family comes to get justice. Seemingly laid back until it explodes. Not much romance but it doesn’t even need it.
MV: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0BUvMKSj4E
Like the dramas to destroy you? Come right in. A story about a disfavored prince and a lost daughter of a previous dynasty, this is smart, gorgeous, and is going to wreck you.
MV: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x99seU5qJuc
I have talked enough about it recently so I won’t say much more, but if you want epic, movie-like quality, characters you will love, amazing battles and cinematography, complicated world-building and an OTP to die for, come right in.
MV: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rfyfKM_Ww0
For the longest time, this was my favorite cdrama, to be replaced only by Minglan. It starts out funny and ends up tearing out your heart. This is the only time in my drama watching experience I cried so hard I threw up. The story is about two accidental time-travelers - a photographer and a cook - who end up in Qin Dynasty China. And from then on it’s about how that cruel, horrifying world takes two perfectly normal men and by wracking their very souls turns one into a hero and the other into a monster. To me, this is Hu Ge’s best performance and as you see his protagonist desperately try to hold on to his humanity and his love in a world that is doing its best to destroy it, I dare you not to cry like a baby. His character is my ultimate cdrama crush.
MV: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FA7m2QktiUk
Aaaaaand, my n1. cdrama is the amazing, too short at 73 eps, The Story of Minglan. It is very hard to describe the plot of this - a sort of Elizabeth Gaskell meets period China. It follows three interconnected upper-class families, but more specifically, it is about Shen Minglan, a concubine-born daughter of a minister and Gu Tingye, the oldest, legitimate, and hated by his family son of a Marquess. Their narratives run largely parallel for the first half of the story and such is the genius of this drama that I, the ultimate romance junkie, did not mind that. Minglan is a rarity in dramaworld - she is fiercely smart, very collected and emotionally detached. Life in the troubled Shen household taught her to survive and to hide her feelings and talents. Tingye is a big cdrama love. Abused and reviled by his household where he can do no right (the Marquess hated having to marry his merchant mother for money and has displaced that hate on her son), Tingye manages to keep his warm heart but acquires the ability to go his own way. Both of the protagonists are wonderful and smart and magnetic and rootable for separately, but when they get together, the sparks go off the charts and they become my n1 cdrama OTP of all time. A lot of the story is about family battles, women’s world dilemmas and relationship (of all sorts) interactions. There is also politics and battles, but the true charm of this drama are the mundane details of the world and the fully-fleshed out people who inhabit it. If you watch only one cdrama in your life, make it this one.
