Chinese Drama Glossary

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General Entertainment Terms

  • Liuliang star (流量明星): Traffic stars, or celebrities who have large fanbases able to generate online traffic or buzz. Often shortened to liuliang (流量). 
  • Dingliu (顶流): The top idol. 顶 translates to top, while 流 is short for liuliang.  
  • Melon (瓜; pronunciation: gua; shorthand emoji: 🍉): Refers to gossip or rumors. For example, rumors about a new drama’s cast before an official announcement would be referred to as a melon. To “eat melon” (吃瓜) indicates that you are consuming the gossip.
  • Water armies: Users paid to inundate websites and social media sites about a topic (could be positive or negative). 
  • Fan wars: Occurs when two fandoms disagree, often resulting in extensive debates to defend their respective idols.
  • Weibo: A major Chinese microblogging site, with over 500 million monthly active users. For Chinese celebrities, Weibo also functions as a space for fans to gather. Users can follow the celebrity or join their supertopic, akin to a forum space for fans to chat and support the celebrity.
  • Flower (小花; pronunciation: xiao hua): Refers to liuliang actresses. Actresses are commonly grouped in years of 5 (’85 flowers, ’90 flowers, and so on). Netizens will often discuss who the top four flowers are for each group. For example, Yang Zi (杨紫) is considered a top 90 flower.
  • Xiao Shen (小生): Refers to liuliang actors. Like flowers, actors are also often grouped in years of 5.

Chinese Drama Genres

There are several drama genres unique to C-dramas. Dramas will often combine elements from different genres.

  • Wuxia (武俠): The translation of wuxia is “martial heroes,” with this genre relating to Chinese martial arts, often in a jianghu (江湖 translation: rivers and lakes) setting. There are often different martial arts schools that teach their own unique style of martial arts. Central themes of wuxia dramas include chivalry and heroism—in fact, the “xia” (俠) in wuxia means hero. 
  • Xuanhuan (玄幻): Chinese fantasy, often based on Chinese mythology.  
  • Xianxia (仙侠): Xianxia translates to “immortal heroes” (it shares the same second character as wuxia). Like wuxia, it has similar themes around heroism, but incorporates a heavy emphasis on immortality. Characters are often either immortal or seeking immortality through cultivation. 
  • Historical Costume (古装剧; pronunciation: guzhuang ju): Dramas set in a historical setting, but not based on real figures. The set and costume design are often inspired by historical eras, but the plot itself does not refer to actual events.
  • Historical: As opposed to Historical Costume dramas, these dramas are based on actual historical events. 
  • Slice of life: Storytelling focusing on everyday life. These plots tend to be centered around the characters and their day-to-day happenings.
  • Republican: Dramas set during the Chinese Republican era, generally the early 1900s to 1940s. 
  • Modern: Dramas set in the most recent era, generally late 1900s to present.
  • Youth drama: Focused on teenage to early adult characters, often in a high school or college setting.  
  • Regression / rebirth: When a character returns to the past, but remains the same person
  • Transmigration: When a character’s soul is moved to a new person entirely.

Television Networks

The main Chinese television networks are those under the CCTV (short for China Central Television) umbrella. All CCTV channels are free to everyone in China. As a result, dramas airing on CCTV have broader reach than dramas only available on a streaming service. Each channel has its own specialty: 

  • CCTV-1: The flagship television network. Airs a variety of content, including both dramas and news. 
  • CCTV-3: The arts and entertainment channel, airs singing competitions and performances 
  • CCTV-6: The movie channel, colloquially referred to as “The Sixth Princess.”
  • CCTV-8: The drama channel, primarily focused on airing only dramas

CCTV 1 and CCTV 8 are most relevant for drama watchers who are curious how their dramas are performing in the ratings.

Besides the CCTV channels, there are some other key television networks, including:

  • Hunan TV: Also a state-owned television network, Hunan TV has considerable reach via its dramas and variety shows. Hunan TV is home to several popular variety shows. For example, Hello, Saturday (the successor to Happy Camp) is a common destination for actors to appear on during drama promotions. 
  • Jiangsu TV: Headquartered in Jiangsu. It airs many popular dramas, while also airing original content such as If You Are the One, a hugely popular dating show. 
  • Zhejiang TV: Based in Zhejiang, but serves most of China. Popular Zhejiang TV shows include the singing competition Sing! China and the variety show Keep Running.
  • Dragon TV: A Shanghai-based channel. In addition to airing dramas, broadcasts several news programs.

Streaming Platforms

Like the US, Chinese Entertainment is dominated by a few streaming services. Some actors and actresses will form relationships with a streaming service and appear more frequently in dramas produced by that streaming service. Each streaming service also has an emoji that people use for shorthand, which we’ve added in below.

  • Tencent 🐧: Tencent Video is a part of the Tencent conglomerate, a major multimedia company. The international version of Tencent is known as WeTV.  
  • iQIYI 🥝: Another popular streaming service in China. iQIYI is an online entertainment service, as opposed to the conglomerate-nature of Tencent. 
  • Youku 👖: Youku is a subsidiary of Alibaba Group Holding Limited, a major Chinese e-commerce site. The pants emoji for Youku refers to the “ku” part of its name, which is a homonym for pants in Mandarin.
  • Mango TV 🥭: A part of Hunan Broadcasting System, a major state-owned network. Mango TV releases several dramas but also has a large variety show presence. Many popular variety shows (Sisters Who Make Waves, Who’s the Murderer) can be found on Mango TV.
  • Bilibili: Bilibili is a little different than the other streaming services—besides dramas, Bilibili also hosts content creators and live streamers. Bilibili has a stronger anime presence than the others, while producing fewer dramas.

Drama Performance

Heat index is a popularity index used by streaming services as a proxy for performance. The heat index is an internal calculation based on viewership, shares, and interactions used to gauge popularity. Each streaming service has a unique calculation for heat index. While you can compare heat indexes within the same streaming service, they aren’t comparable across networks.

  • Tencent: On a scale of 0 to 30k, although dramas can break the 30k threshold. Dramas over 30k are huge hits with extreme popularity and word of mouth. 
  • iQIYI: On a scale of 0 to 10k, though dramas can and do exceed the 10k benchmark. Dramas breaking 10k are major successes. iQIYI’s annual report will even reference the number of dramas that broke 10k. 
  • Youku: On a scale of 0 to 10k. Starting mid-2024, Youku dramas can also exceed 10k, like iQIYI. Beforehand, a drama could not exceed 10k. Hitting 10k is a big accomplishment for the drama and denotes a big success.
  • Mango TV does not track heat indexes.

Heat index expectations also differ for each drama. A high budget iQIYI drama hitting 9k might be viewed as meeting expectations given the large investment, while a low budget iQIYI drama hitting 9k would likely be exceeding expectations.

We’d also caution that the methodology for heat indexes is completely unknown, with very minimal information on what goes into it. It’s an interesting metric to track, but also a cryptic one!

Douban is a Chinese film and drama database that provides production information, similar to IMDb in the United States. Douban also functions as the primary review and ratings site for Chinese entertainment. Douban ratings fall on a scale of 1 to 10. 

There is no agreed upon threshold for a “good” vs. a “bad” drama using Douban ratings. Idol dramas, the ones we’ll write about most often, generally struggle to reach the 8+ threshold more than a prestige drama (think HBO vs. CBS television). Keeping that in mind, we generally approach ratings through this lens:

  • Rating of 7.5+: Excellent drama, often a prestige drama (like ratings juggernaut The Knockout, rated 8.5 on Douban)
  • Rating of 7-7.5: Very good drama (e.g., One and Only, rated 7.3 on Douban)
  • Rating of 6-7: Generally good, possibly with some flaws. 
  • Rating of 5-6: Average—your enjoyment may vary depending on how much you enjoy the genre and the actors
  • Under 5: Larger flaws in the drama

The number of Douban ratings is also useful for understanding reach, as well as audience passion. A Douban drama rated 8.0 by 200k people is a stronger indication of quality than a similarly rated drama with only 10k votes. The bigger the sample size, the more people likely talked about the drama. 

The shape of the Douban ratings distribution is also helpful to look at. A distribution concentrated in both 5 star and 1 star ratings suggests that the drama ratings might have been impacted by fan wars or water armies.