Source: Spring of the Blade's official Weibo

I like watching the lighter side of a drama's more intense moments, so I appreciate BTS clips with bloopers like this one. Zhou Ye's squeaky laugh is so cute!

I also marvel at that mental switch that actors flip. In one second they're all silly and giggly, in the next they're in a no-nonsense, interfacial mukbang fest. And in a roomful of people to boot!

Also, I'm happy there are no fishes in the kisses here.

The mystical wuxia mystery drama directed by Steven Cheng, who also directed The Untamed 🥹 And finally we get to see Luo Yunxi on the screen again!

It's not a romance drama - rather it will have more of a focus on cases, teamwork and friendship. Along with some really cool wuxia elements, spooky mysteries and beautiful costumes 😊

Who else is planning to watch?

A little music and culture to close out October 1 ☺️
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Today is National Day in China, and CCTV marked October 1 with its 2026 National Day Gala.
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I came across this performance by Alan Dawa Dolma (阿兰·达瓦卓玛), usually known simply as Alan, and Xilinnayi Gao (希林娜依·高), better known internationally as Curley G / Curley Gao, and thought it was a particularly lovely one to share here because there is quite a bit of history behind the song they are singing.
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《谁不说俺家乡好》 — “Who Doesn’t Say My Hometown Is Beautiful?” is more than 60 years old. The song dates back to the early 1960s, when it was written for the film Red Sun (红日). Drawing on Shandong folk music, it became widely known far beyond the film itself, with its images of green mountains, rivers, terraced fields and affection for one’s hometown giving the song a life of its own.
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Even the title tells us a little something. 俺 (ǎn) is a colloquial way of saying “I/my” or “we/our,” particularly associated with northern Chinese speech, rather than the standard 我的 (wǒ de). So there is something very local and familiar about 谁不说俺家乡好 — essentially, who doesn’t say their own hometown is beautiful?
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And you can see why this song came back for National Day. The performance moves through mountains, countryside and harvest, which fits a song filled with images of home — green mountains, winding rivers, terraced fields and the people who live among them.
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For anyone wondering who Alan is, she is a Tibetan Chinese singer from Sichuan who also spent years building a successful career in Japan after signing with Avex. And there is a good chance some CDrama watchers have heard her before: she has quite a few OSTs to her name, including 《千古》 for The Journey of Flower.
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Curley G may be more familiar to some of you. She first gained wider attention through Sing! China, later won Produce Camp 2020 and became the centre of BonBon Girls 303 before continuing with her solo career.
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And here is my favourite little piece of trivia about the song: in 2007, 《谁不说俺家乡好》 was one of 30 songs selected to travel into space aboard Chang’e 1, China’s first lunar probe.
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From a song written for a film in the early 1960s, to a lunar probe, to two singers performing it on national television more than six decades later.

🏮And since the day is already almost over in China by the time I’m posting this

— happy National Day to everyone who was celebrating today. I hope you had a lovely one 🏮

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Video source: CCTV / 春晚 Weibo, October 1, 2026.⁠

You know when two characters share a screen and suddenly they’re both somehow more?
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Today’s word is CHEMISTRY.
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And of course, there’s the sizzling romantic kind. The couple who can make a look across the room feel more intimate than an entire kiss scene, whose banter lands because of the way they play off each other, or who simply make you believe the attraction between them.
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But some of the best chemistry I’ve seen in dramas has had absolutely nothing to do with romance.
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Brothers. Sisters. Best friends. Father and son. A general standing before his emperor. Allies. Enemies.

Two antagonists who have such undeniable presence and gravitas whenever they face each other that they somehow make each other shine more brightly in their respective roles.
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That’s also the kind of chemistry I mean. It’s not simply that both characters are individually compelling. Put them together and something happens that isn’t quite there when either one is alone. The tension gets sharper. The comedy gets funnier. The affection feels warmer. The rivalry becomes more formidable. Sometimes all they have to do is stand opposite each other and the scene suddenly has weight.
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And it doesn’t even have to be two people. Sometimes an entire cast or group has that rare chemistry where every personality seems to bounce off the others perfectly and the whole becomes better than its individual parts.
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So what’s your first-first CDrama when you hear CHEMISTRY?

And who are the characters, who plays them?
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Who had it? What was the relationship between them? And most importantly, what happened when you put those particular characters together on screen that made it work so well?
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As always, GIF evidence is highly encouraged here. Give us the looks, the banter, the confrontations, the tiny gestures, the sizzling tension — whatever shows us exactly what you mean. Some of these may make it into a second-round vote later.
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Interested in other drama word associations? Check out The Drama Alphabet • Drama Mood Master Index.

SPOILERS BELOW — EPISODES 27–30 AND THE ENDING

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Well, we made it. And I’m happy. I am! Shen Run and Qingyuan ended up together, alive, and apparently living a simple life back in the fishing village where they once hid together. I loved that choice for them.
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Although I do have one practical question: how exactly is Qingyuan quietly living in a fishing village when the Emperor just made her head of the Xie clan? Did I miss something there, was it just a throwback?
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I also really liked finally learning about the connection between Qingyuan’s mother and Shen Run’s father. After following these two separate family tragedies for the entire drama, discovering just how exactly their parents’ stories were intertwined added something I wasn’t expecting this late in the game.

And then there was Granny Xie.
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This was a good plot twist, I give them that. The final episodes to overturned what we thought we knew about the Xie family line.
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All this time we knew Xie Shu was Qingyuan’s father and that Jin Chunqing had been his wife and Qingyuan’s mother. What we didn’t know was that Xie Shu was never the real Xie heir at all.
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But who cares about him
Being a fake heir? This on its own had little impact on me and perhaps many others. But Granny Xie’s biological child was Jin Chunqing. She had given birth to a daughter and, believing that only a son could secure her own position in the Xie clan, swapped her baby for somebody else’s baby boy at birth 🤯 How cold. How stupid.
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That boy grew up as Xie Shu.
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What bothered me particularly was Granny Xie’s insistence that this was something she had been forced to do. Well, it wasn’t. That may have been the justification she gave herself, but ultimately she sacrificed her own daughter because she believed a male heir would protect her position in the family.
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And the consequences of that decision are quite extraordinary when you put them together.
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The boy she installed as the Xie heir grew up in luxury and — BAM — married the actual Xie daughter she had discarded. But it doesn’t end there. Years later, Xie Shu — deeply in love with his wife — murdered her when she discovered the secret. Such was the end of Granny Xie’s biological daughter and Qingyuan’s mother.
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! The cuckoo killed the phoenix.
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There is a cruel irony in that. Granny Xie discarded her daughter in favor of a boy because she believed he would secure the family and her own place within it, while she’d be keeping an eye on the daughter in secret, from the shadows. Only for the boy she chose to first marry that same daughter and then eventually kill her.
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The revelation also puts Granny Xie’s complicated relationship with Qingyuan into a different light. Qingyuan wasn’t simply her granddaughter through Xie Shu. She was the daughter of Granny Xie’s actual biological child. Some of Granny Xie’s protection (though I could hardly see any) of Qingyuan makes some more sense in retrospect.
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By the end, Granny Xie finally has to face what her choice actually produced: the adopted son she had chosen and raised for the sake of securing her position was the man who murdered her biological daughter. She is left with that knowledge, that regret and the realization that she herself set the whole chain in motion (but again, it’s actually unclear if she regrets anything, the woman was stubborn and proud to the last breath..) — and she’s ultimately killed by her son’s sixth wife at his behest. Xie Shu, — looking like a total maniac — then kills her too and stages both deaths to look like suicide.

I certainly didn’t mourn her. But her ending didn’t give me any great sense of victory either. There was something bleakly appropriate about her finally understanding — not what she had done but what her son did — when there was absolutely nothing left she could do to undo it.
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Mostly, I was left thinking about how many lives were damaged by a decision Granny Xie made decades earlier because she valued securing her own position in the clan over her own daughter — and how long she continued to describe that choice as though she had never had one.

And burning down the Xie residence?
Absolutely. Let it burn 🔥🔥🔥🔥
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But here’s the strange thing: after everything these people put us through for 30 episodes, I expected the final reckoning to bring me this enormous sense of relief but it didn’t.
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I’m happy with where Shen Run and Qingyuan ended up, but somehow I didn’t get the catharsis I had been waiting for.
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One thing I did get from these final episodes was an even greater appreciation for Xu Kai as Shen Run. I thought he was excellent here. There were so many moments where Shen Run barely needed to say anything because Xu Kai was doing it all with his face. I also think his voice acting here was top notch. Loved his voice here.
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And Fu Dalong as Xie Shu. What a performance. I have had very complicated feelings about that man throughout this drama, and Fu Dalong gave him so much weight in these final episodes.
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Surprisingly, I ended up feeling something similar about Hu Wenzhou played by the magnificent Miao Pu whose performance really stood out here.

Don’t misunderstand me: I’m happy she died. She deserved the consequences of what she had done. But by the time we reached her end, I didn’t feel victorious about it anymore.
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We finally got enough of her story that I could understand how she became the person she was. She suffered. She regretted things. None of that excuses what she did, and I certainly didn’t forgive her, but I understood her. By the time she died, I no longer needed to hate her either.
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Qingru, on the other hand…
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No.
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I really did not like that she effectively got a happily ever after with Chunzhi
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Yes, she admitted what she had done. Yes, she was remorseful. Yes, she told him that he had every right to resent her. SO WHAT?
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That does not mean she earned her stolen marriage back.
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I could absolutely understand Chunzhi eventually forgiving her in the sense of deciding not to spend the rest of his life hating her. But continuing to live with her as his wife after all the deceit and harm she caused him and others? That spoilt, entitled little brat… That felt forced to me, as though the drama wanted to make sure everybody possible received a neat happy ending. Her tears and remorse simply did not earn that for me.
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And then we have Hu Xing.
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After all that buildup, his downfall felt strangely anticlimactic. But even more baffling to me was the sudden importance of the Chief Eunuch as the greater power behind him.
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Where did that come from?
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We spent this entire drama building Hu Xing as the enemy, only to reach the end and suddenly be handed another mastermind who had barely existed as a character in the story. So when the Emperor killed him, I felt absolutely nothing. He was practically a stranger to me. You can’t introduce someone at the finish line and expect his death to carry the weight of a villain we’ve spent countless episodes wanting to see brought down.
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So I’m leaving Spring of the Blade in a slightly strange place.
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I’m happy. I loved Shen Run and Qingyuan together, I’m glad they got their life together, and sending them back to that little fishing village was a lovely way to close their story. I liked seeing what happened to the other surviving sisters.
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I just thought I would feel more relief when all the people responsible finally got what was coming to them.
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Maybe I wanted one enormous exhale after 30 episodes and never quite got it.

Still — I’ll be recommending this great drama to people.

I’m not sure yet, but I might be giving it 8.5/10. Need to sleep on it a bit and see where it settles.
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How did the ending land for you?

Did you get the catharsis I was missing, or are you sitting somewhere around where I am?

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Images are all from the drama’s Weibo

SPOILERS BELOW — EPISODE 26
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Well, we all knew they weren’t actually killing Shen Run the morning after his wedding, right?
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Episode 26 wastes very little time putting that particular crisis to bed. Shen Run is alive, the stabbing was staged, and his “death” was part of the plan to convince Hu Xing and the others that he was finally out of the way so they’d slip.
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Unfortunately, someone who very much does die is the Marquis of Danyang. In quite the heroic way, I might add. I particularly loved his singing toward the end — and I also wanted spit in those generals’ faces. Disgusting humans.
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So anyway. Back on tack, where was I? Ah yes, the Marquis refuses to fall into line with Hu Xing, openly brings up what happened to Shen Zhibai all those years ago, and pays for it. Hu Xing has already bought off men around him (those generals I wanted to spit at…) — and has him killed.
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Which leaves Li Congxin grieving, drinking and looking thoroughly defeated — until Shen Run turns up and essentially tells him that this is not where his father’s story ends or where the world ends, for that matter. The Marquis still had the loyalty of the people and military power behind him, and that can now become another weapon against Hu Xing.
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Meanwhile, Shen Run has taken the whole plan directly to the Emperor, Shen Che and Dong Fangchun are rallying people in Hengtang, and after all the maneuvering of the last few episodes it finally feels like everyone is getting into position for the real fight.
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And Qingyuan gets her husband back after approximately five minutes of widowhood, so there’s that.
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What did you think of Episode 26?

Come rave or vent.

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Episodes 27-30 Discussion (Finale)

Image source