The Story of Pearl Girl (2024) [+]
Jun 04 2025
The Story of Pearl Girl is a Chinese romance drama set in ancient times. Duan Wu (Zhao Lu Si) is a slave pearl diver who manages to escape during a fire. Zhang Jinran (Tang Xiao Tian) is a scholar who is also a roving agent for the Empire who met Duan Wu at the pearl farm and helped her out a bit.
Although Zhang Jinran has affections for Duan Wu unfortunately he is the third wheel. Duan Wu instead ends up as part of Yan Zijing's (Liu Yu Ning) merchant caravan, working herself up from lower decks servant to the main deck and finally one of the merchants in the caravan (although for the first half of the series it's a ship and even later the traditional caravan part is suggested more than shown). In the meantime both leads start to become attracted to each other.
Meanwhile Yan Zijing is on a mission of vengeance as his family was wiped out when he was a kid by the combined treachery of two families (one of them owned the pearl farm and the fire that destroyed it was cause by Yan Zijing and his men).
The first family is the Cui. Yan Zijing is pitted against Cui Shi Jiu (Xie Ke Yin). She's the daughter of the head but not in line of succession because she's a woman, yet she's also the most capable scion since her brothers are lazy. That makes her a ruthless person in a man's world and I like her arc — she is defeated and broken down and finds love and builds herself back up to eventually almost at the end she's Duan Wu's ally. It feels like she was intended as a minor character that goes away after the first half (the first and second halves of the series are quite different) but was popular enough to keep around.
The second family I kind of forgot as they don't have a strong character to lead them. They're based in another city and head the jewelry guild — Zhang Jinran is a jewelry merchant from the West who specializes in colored stones (i.e. rubies and sapphires and such) rather than jade and pearl which are East jewelry. By this time Zhang Jinran and Duan Wu have split up for the usual "he wants to protect her from getting hurt in his machinations so he alienates and breaks up with her". Duan Wu sets up her own small jewelry shop (Clear Mind) and proceeds to make it a success even though the jewelry guild is arrayed against her.
This is a 40 episode series of 45-minute episodes. Lots of sets and excellent production — not meant to be realistic but the nice version of ancient times in terms of clean and bright cities. Zhao Lu Si is very good and as I called out Xie Ke Yin is also quite good. The ending is not ideal — sometimes I think Chinese dramas set in ancient times are prone to bad endings to show that life goes on and you have to accept your fate.
Still, a very good series and I quite enjoyed it.
Although Zhang Jinran has affections for Duan Wu unfortunately he is the third wheel. Duan Wu instead ends up as part of Yan Zijing's (Liu Yu Ning) merchant caravan, working herself up from lower decks servant to the main deck and finally one of the merchants in the caravan (although for the first half of the series it's a ship and even later the traditional caravan part is suggested more than shown). In the meantime both leads start to become attracted to each other.
Meanwhile Yan Zijing is on a mission of vengeance as his family was wiped out when he was a kid by the combined treachery of two families (one of them owned the pearl farm and the fire that destroyed it was cause by Yan Zijing and his men).
The first family is the Cui. Yan Zijing is pitted against Cui Shi Jiu (Xie Ke Yin). She's the daughter of the head but not in line of succession because she's a woman, yet she's also the most capable scion since her brothers are lazy. That makes her a ruthless person in a man's world and I like her arc — she is defeated and broken down and finds love and builds herself back up to eventually almost at the end she's Duan Wu's ally. It feels like she was intended as a minor character that goes away after the first half (the first and second halves of the series are quite different) but was popular enough to keep around.
The second family I kind of forgot as they don't have a strong character to lead them. They're based in another city and head the jewelry guild — Zhang Jinran is a jewelry merchant from the West who specializes in colored stones (i.e. rubies and sapphires and such) rather than jade and pearl which are East jewelry. By this time Zhang Jinran and Duan Wu have split up for the usual "he wants to protect her from getting hurt in his machinations so he alienates and breaks up with her". Duan Wu sets up her own small jewelry shop (Clear Mind) and proceeds to make it a success even though the jewelry guild is arrayed against her.
This is a 40 episode series of 45-minute episodes. Lots of sets and excellent production — not meant to be realistic but the nice version of ancient times in terms of clean and bright cities. Zhao Lu Si is very good and as I called out Xie Ke Yin is also quite good. The ending is not ideal — sometimes I think Chinese dramas set in ancient times are prone to bad endings to show that life goes on and you have to accept your fate.
Still, a very good series and I quite enjoyed it.