Looking for a man in Chinese entertainment, 6’5”, trust fund, brown eyes? Then you may want to take a peek at the next generation of idols in China. On the guys’ side, Wang Xingyue of jade-pendant-dangling-from-bloody-lips fame is a big one on our radar of future stars, but there’s another name we would definitely not bet against: Zhang Linghe (who is definitely at least 6’4”).
Here’s the problem with predicting the rise and fall of actors and actresses, though: everyone’s really bad at it. Zhang Linghe certainly caught a lot of eyes when Love Between Fairy and Devil aired in 2022. But the building anticipation that he would truly break out the following year didn’t pan out: though he definitely wasn’t unsuccessful with his runs of dramas in 2023, he didn’t quite catch flame the way that many thought he would.
So will 2024 be Zhang Linghe’s year instead? Is he still on the right trajectory? Or is his momentum dying? We took a look at his existing filmography to see if we could tease an answer out—and we put his dramas through our internal drama meter to rank them, while we’re at it. For those unfamiliar with why we built a “drama meter,” it’s because we wanted to develop a somewhat more objective way to rank dramas specific to the actor or actress, because we think that Douban and MyDramaList ratings can often be skewed by recency, fan wars, and reach.
In this case, we tried to determine an objective view of Zhang Linghe’s best TV shows by using the underlying drama characteristics specific to him, including:
- The show’s general audience viewership,
- How important his role is in the drama,
- What type of role he played, and
- The show’s Douban rating.
Here are the results!
The top 5 Zhang Linghe TV shows and dramas: a breakdown
To prep for the making of this list, we first looked at all of the dramas where Zhang Linghe is credited as a main lead.
Out of those Chinese dramas, these are the top five dramas we gauge that audiences will likely enjoy if you’re a fan of Zhang Linghe:
1. Story of Kunning Palace (2023)
By virtue of its strong Douban rating (almost 150,000 viewers rated it an average of 6.8) and Zhang Linghe’s first male lead role in it, Story of Kunning Palace is first on this list of recommended Zhang Linghe dramas to watch.
Story of Kunning Palace is a big-budget historical period drama that was expected by many to be the breakout show for both Zhang Linghe and Bai Lu in 2023 (for anybody nosy out there like us, there were rumors of an on-site romance between the two of them that we unfortunately cannot confirm or deny). The latter plays the protagonist Jiang Xuening, an evil empress who has a no good, terrible, very bad day (she dies), but gets a second chance to travel back in time, redeem herself, and save the realm.
Zhang Linghe, on the other hand, is Xie Wei: the imperial teacher with the messy drama queen instincts of Rachel Berry and the Machiavellian intentions of Sue Sylvester from Glee. He is also kind of a hot, walking red flag, though far be it for Jiang Xuening to care. Indeed, the more evil eyes and murderous eye twitches he throws out, the more she seems to like him. This, however, might be something of a problem: he was none other than the catalyst for her bloody death in her first life, because he also harbors a few ambitions deep in his heart.
Though such court politics arguably take precedence at times over the course of its 30-some episodes, Story of Kunning Palace is still a romance at its heart (and it’s certainly representation for you-crazy-me-likey couples). The last third of the drama, however, definitely focuses on his story arc, so rest assured that you’ll get a satisfying conclusion if you’re watching it for Zhang Linghe.
- 👀 # of episodes: 38
- 🥝 Original network: iQIYI
- 📺 Watch Story of Kunning Palace on: iQIYI
2. Love Between Fairy and Devil (2022)
Love Between Fairy and Devil put up some truly Michael Jordan numbers relative to the dramas in the rest of Zhang Linghe’s filmography to come out on top and grab second place on this list, despite Zhang Linghe’s status as second male lead.
Its fantastic performance within our drama meter is likely due to a number of factors: a big budget that brought the visuals, a comedic but sweet premise, great word-of-mouth, etcetera etcetera. But we might argue that none of it would have worked without the right cast at its heart to pull it off. Dylan Wang and Esther Yu are the main leads in Love Between Fairy and Devil. The former is Dongfang Qingcang, the Lord Devil, basically the biggest baddest demon you’ll find in the three realms—and the latter is a tiny little orchid fairy, who also happens to cry a lot.
Love Between Fairy and Devil is about (surprise 😉) the love between them. Unfortunately, that means that Zhang Linghe is the third wheel. In this awe-inspiring romance of Hades and Persephone with RuPaul-level fits, he is instead Lord Changheng: the straight-laced God of War who’s stuck with second-male-lead-syndrome ice armor. (Though you might find yourself coming for the romance, and staying for the bromance.)
This drama was so popular when it was aired that it launched a thousand ships for Dylan Wang and Esther Yu. As for Zhang Linghe, don’t be too sad for his third wheel status, because he gets another golden opportunity to get the girl later. Speaking of which…
- 👀 # of episodes: 36
- 🥝 Original network: iQIYI
- 📺 Watch Love Between Fairy and Devil on: Netflix, Apple TV, Viki, iQIYI
3. My Journey To You (2023)
With a Douban rating of 6.2 but a bigger audience (even after adjusting for recency), My Journey to You very narrowly came out over The Princess Royal.
Fans of Love Between Fairy and Devil will also be pleased to know that Zhang Linghe is at last the first male lead in My Journey To You, opposite none other than Esther Yu (our theory is that the producers brought the two back together because they liked the height difference). However, the similarities end outside of being otherwise known as The One Where Zhang Linghe Finally Gets A Better Shot To Get The Girl, as it’s very different from Love Between Fairy and Devil. For starters, it’s not a xianxia, but a wuxia—and a murder mystery wuxia at that.
In this darkly atmospheric drama, the key to every question appears to lie with the Gong family: the mysterious sect led by a fractured set of brothers who zealously guard a secret in a great mansion. Of them, Gong Ziyu (played by Zhang Linghe) is the emo boy who likes to broodingly strike poses next to windows and argue with his bodyguard about who can pull the longer face. This might, however, be poised to change with the entrance of Yun Weishan (played by Esther Yu). . . an assassin spy who “just happens” to join the bride selection party that the Gong family throws once every two decades for their coming-of-age young masters.
You might think you can see where the show is going from here. But there are enough twists and turns within a span of 24 episodes that you might also be wrong. (Just be warned that one of the biggest criticisms of the show is that there’s one too many twists and turns, so much so that the ending outraged many). Amidst a backdrop of constantly changing familial dynamics and eye-catching cinematography, however, there’s only one way to find out.
- 👀 # of episodes: 24
- 🥝 Original network: iQIYI
- 📺 Watch My Journey to You on: Amazon Prime, iQIYI
4. The Princess Royal (2024)
The Princess Royal was Zhang Linghe’s first major offering in 2024, which he headlined with another up and coming star, Zhao Jinmai (you might have seen her with Bai Jingting in the critically acclaimed Reset). It debuted on Douban in July with a respectable 6.7 rating, but has since slid down to a kind-of-respectable 6.2 and landed at fourth on our list.
In The Princess Royal Zhang Linghe plays Pei Wenxuan: one half of the husband-and-wife pair who once married each other for only political gain. Though there was no love lost between them back then, both of them dying and then transmigrating into the past gives them a second go at it all over again — in spite of the usual political hijinks and court drama interrupting Pei Wenxuan’s increasingly shameless attempts to seduce Li Rong, which probably resulted in some of the criticism you’ll see aimed at the show’s pacing around the saggy middle. Fortunately, the director mostly understands the assignment, which is called “How Many Ways Can We Get Zhang Linghe Soaking Wet.”
If you’re also wondering, “Which tropes will I find in this drama?” The answer is, “Yes.” The list includes…
- Arranged marriage? Check ✅
- Forced proximity? Check ✅
- Enemies to lovers? Check ✅
- Second chance? Check ✅
- Love triangle? Check ✅
- Domesticity? Check ✅
And despite the mixed reactions to messy plot and uneven amounts of screentime, Zhang Linghe and Zhao Jinmai might get yet another chance of their own: they’ve since signed up to co-star in a modern drama next called Our Generation, so we’ll definitely see them on our screens again in the near future 👀
5. Maiden Holmes (2020)
Rounding us out is Maiden Holmes — the very first drama that Zhang Linghe filmed, which makes it all the more impressive that it made it onto this list, seeing as it beat out a lot of the dramas that he did since then. Even then, what really kept it down according to our drama meter was its small audience, since its Douban rating of 6.2 is completely reasonable.
As for the quality of the show, we think it’s safe to say that Maiden Holmes, which was made on a smaller budget, would probably not get a Golden Eagle Award for cinematography or original theme song. But this wuxia drama about a disguised prince who teams up with a smart, young investigator to crack some long-standing mysteries in the kingdom (several of which become very personal for each of them) is fun while retaining the air of a detective TV show set in the jianghu.
As we mentioned, this is also Zhang Linghe’s debut opposite of Sebrina Chen, so the bonus is that you’ll get to see him fresh-faced at a time when the public had yet to discover how good his cheekbones can look with higher-budget lighting. Just don’t go into Maiden Holmes expecting to see a mystery that’s actually worthy of Sherlock Holmes to crack (if so, you might leave disappointed).
The verdict
As a last step, we plotted Zhang Linghe’s best TV shows and dramas out onto a scatterplot to see where they fall against each other on purely a Douban rating vs. # of Douban users basis:
A few quick observations:
- Zhang Linghe has appeared most in modern dramas, but his most successful are everything but modern dramas! His most popular TV shows tend to be historical, with some wuxia or xianxia sprinkled here and there.
- Like Bai Lu, his co-star in Story of Kunning Palace, he seems to be building a strong relationship with iQIYI, which aired the top three dramas on our list.
- We don’t see a clear inflection point in this graph that points to a break out for him at this moment. What we can say is that it looks like he’s experiencing consistent growth with each drama, and steadily growing his career in a positive direction.
- His average Douban rating across all dramas is 6.1—which, interestingly, is close to that of Wang Xingyue (one of his current competitors).
Because he’s emerging in a similar crop of actors as Wang Xingyue (who we wrote about here), it’s hard not to directly compare their career paths. What we can say is that the battle to be the future It Boy in Chinese entertainment will be very interesting indeed. Next up for Zhang Linghe is the modern romance The Best Thing with Xu Ruohan and the BL drama Eternal Faith with Zhai Xiaowen — if it ever escapes the Chinese government’s blacklist, that is.
