10 Best Chinese Dramas If You're Tired of Korean Ones

Chinese dramas immerse you in a world infinitely far from reality and fascinate you with their bright colors. After watching a few episodes, you will be at the mercy of these stories where everyone falls in love, hates, and even kills.

1. Love O2O, 2016

A show about love moving from online to offline became one of the most popular Chinese dramas in 2016. It was viewed more than 25 billion times, and the main actors Yang Yang and Zheng Shuang became instant celebrities.

Bei Weiwei is a second-year computer science student who likes to play computer games in her spare time. In the virtual world, she is in a conventional "husband-wife" relationship with another strong gamer to complete difficult tasks together. But the virtual husband tells Weiwei that he wants a divorce. The girl is upset because she has been exchanged for another, but on the same day, the mysterious Yixiao Naihe proposes to her.

2. Arsenal Military Academy, 2019

After the death of her beloved brother, Xie Xiang decides to fulfill her dream and unrolls into a military academy. To do so, she has to cut her hair and dress as a boy. At the gates of the academy, she meets a simple man, Huang Song, who has come to study, taking all his belongings with him. Gu Yanzheng, the son of a high-ranking official, is also brought here and becomes her roommate.

Arsenal Military Academy is different from most other dramas – it has a strong and charismatic main character, who is by no means a damsel in distress.

3. Word of Honor, 2021

Everyone is hunting for pieces of the legendary treasure, the key to a large secret warehouse of weapons. Only the tramp Zhou Xu does not care about the artifact, he only has three years to live and enjoys this world as much as he can. He has a difficult and bitter past, which the wanderer left for the sake of freedom and redemption.

Now, however, he has an important mission: to take the orphan boy to a safe place. On the way, he meets Wen Kexing, who sees that the wanderer is not who he claims to be.

4. Three Lives, Three Worlds, Ten Miles of Peach Blossoms, 2017

The bright fantasy show was released in 2017, and in a year and a half, it became the most-watched streaming show in China with 50 billion views.

A young princess from the Nine-Tailed Fox Clan, Bai Qian, who pretends to be a young man, becomes an apprentice to the god of war, Mo Yuan. One day, while on vacation, Bai Qian is captured by the Celestial Tribe. Here, Prince Li Jing falls in love with her after he manages to see the beautiful girl under the mask's spell.

5. The King's Avatar, 2019

Professional eSports player Ye Xiu has been playing Glory for 10 years, and his avatar is one of the strongest characters in the game. He is the commander of a team that has won the championship three times. However, now his team is playing worse, and Ye Xiu is being blamed. He is fired from the team and his famous account is given to a new player.

Ye Xiu gets a job as a night administrator in an Internet cafe, and when the tenth version of Glory comes out, he registers a new account and starts all over again. His pumped-up hero was taken away, but his skill was not.

6. Ashes of Love, 2018

The Flower Deity Zi Fen gives birth to a daughter – little Jin Mi. A powerful mother, who is suffering from unhappy love, gives her baby a magical remedy that will help her not to feel love and thus protect her from suffering. Immediately after, the goddess dies and Jin-Mi grows up in the Flower Realm.

The girl is rather lazy and frivolous and has learned little in her 800 years of life, but in the Flower Realm, protected from the whole world, she gets bored. One day, the Fire Deity Xu Feng falls into her garden in the form of a burnt bird, and Jin Mi rescues him and asks to take her to the Heavenly Realm as a reward.

7. Scarlet Heart, 2011

As a result of an accident, Zhang Xiao is transported back in time to the Qing Dynasty and finds herself in the body of 16-year-old Maertai Ruoxi, who lives in the palace with her older sister, the eighth prince's second wife. Zhang Xiao is a good student and knows history well, so she knows that the eighth prince faces an unenviable fate.

This is all the more sad because she admires her older sister and wishes her happiness. However, she has to think not of long gone times and dead heroes, but of herself and how to get back to the future.

8. Meteor Garden, 2018

Dong Shancai and her school friend Chen Qinghe manage to attend a prestigious university. Dong likes her classes at the Department of Food Science, and the fact that she has a friend nearby. Life is only complicated by four popular students, with one of whom, Daoming Si, the girl manages to fight on the very first day.

It doesn't take much to ruin a relationship with an arrogant and narcissistic guy: he gets angry easily. But strangely enough, Dong's independent character begins to attract him more and more, but the girl is already in love with someone else.

9. A Romance of the Little Forest, 2022

The lead roles are played by Esther Yu, a former member of the C-Pop group THE9, and Zhang Binbin, who fans of Chinese dramas will recognize from his supporting role in Love O2O.

Here they play a botany professor, and a Ph.D. ornithologist who changed a career and became a fashion blogger. She was once in love with him, but the guy is indifferent to everything except plants. And now they meet again.

10. Legally Romance, 2022

Qian Wei dreams of a successful career, but is stuck as an assistant to the obnoxious lawyer Lu Xun. He has held a grudge against her since college and the girl is now very concerned that her life will become a living hell.

But suddenly everything changes – Qian Wei falls into a coma. In a dream world, she is transported back to her teenage years and given the chance to change everything. At the same time she discovers a completely different Lu Xun. But then she wakes up and realizes that nothing has changed in the real world. Or has it?