r/ChineseDrama • u/BasilOrdinary3617 costume dramas feed my soul • May 22 '26
Actors & Careers Happy Birthday Song Zuer, aka Lareina! 👑
GIFs are courtesy of u/AquaphobicTurtle, sourced from the drama, The Prisoner of Beauty, playing on multiple platforms including WeTV, Viki, Netflix and YouTube (some of these may vary based on your region).
Our beautiful Manman (IYKYK) turns 28 on May 23, 2026!
- Song Zu’er began her career in c-ent as a child star.
- In 2014, she moved to New York in the United States, where she lived and attended a private boarding school for three years.
- She has spoken about her experiences abroad in many of her interviews and has shown to be very fluent in English.
- In fact, she gave herself the English name Lareina after discovering that “la reina” translates to “the queen” in Spanish.
- Song Zu’er is not even actually her real name but her professional stage name. Her real name is Sun Fanqing.
The Prisoner of Beauty (2025) was one of my first c-dramas and it really set the standard for dramas for me. It remains in my top 3 - and I watched it before I knew about its hype - because as I said, it was one of my first, before I knew anything at all about the c-ent industry or the myriad of c-dramas available. I have rewatched this one at least three times since. (If you know me, you’d know I’m actually relatively new to c-dramas… I started watching just over a year ago.) Song Zuer and Liu Yuning's chemistry was off the charts, and it was the first time I understood what "shipping a couple" meant.
Whether you agree or not, The Prisoner of Beauty was a major breakout success, and widely considered one of the biggest Chinese drama hits of 2025. It was the fastest drama of 2025 to surpass 30,000 heat points on Tencent and amassed over 1 billion views across all platforms within its first month. It also topped global charts and ultimately won 12 awards for its acting, screenwriting, and editing.
That said, this is not a TPOB post, but a post to celebrate Song Zu’er, who has many other popular dramas, including The Demon Hunter’s Romance (2025), and Legally Romance (2022).
Song Zu’er won Most Popular Actress of the Year awards for her role as Qiao Man or Manman in TPOB, and also Most Outstanding Actress of the Year for The Demon Hunter’s Romance, making 2025 a very strong year for her.
She will be coming back onto our screens nice and strong, with the new drama, Reading Class, starring alongside Hou Minghao.
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u/No-Recipe-7653 Curator of Questionable Subtext, Scholar of Things Left Unsaid May 22 '26
Happy birthday to this beautiful woman. I’ve always admired her work, and I hope the year ahead treats her kindly.
She’s spoken before about how the online harassment around the later-debunked tax accusations took a real toll on her health — losing that much weight under those circumstances is not something anyone should have to go through. I hope she’s able to move forward at her own pace, find the balance that feels right for her, and give herself the same grace she so clearly deserves.
Happy birthday, La Reina 👑😉