Pursuit of Jade (2026) [+]
Jul 22 2026
Pursuit of Jade is a Chinese historical romance-drama running forty 45-minute episodes. In a small village in winter local oig butcher girl Fan Changyu (Tian Xiwei) finds an almost dead man and brings him home and saves his life. Yan Zheng (Zhang Linghe) claims to be a caravan guard who was ambushed by bandits but in reality is Xie Zheng, Marquis of Wu'an, who barely escaped assassination. While keeping a low profile as he heals both Fan and Yan start to fall for each other, culminating in some sort of local marriage wherein Fan Changyu is head of household because she has all the assets and he is poor.
But Yan Zheng is "drafted" into the army to fight a war and Fan Changyu goes looking for him eventually also joining the army and doing well because she is preternaturally strong and has excellent combat skills because her father was a disgraced top general (which Changyu did not know about). Changyu will eventually discover Yan Zheng's real identity (good comedic bits as the Marquis orders everyone to pretend he's Yan Zheng when she's around) which leads to a break up but quick reconciliation (one of the great things about this series is that both characters are fairly soberly logical; they break up for an episode or two but then she thinks it over and forgives him seeing what he did as fairly logical at the time; there are other plot elements which other series might milk for multiple episodes but this one resolves it in an episode or two).
Anyway, eventually both end up generals in the capital where court intrigue threatens their lives because they have the means to depose the current emperor, who came to power 17 years ago through betrayal...
Great sets, great fight scenes, a plot that moves along with subplots that don't get stuck for multiple episodes. Attractive leads (and really all the women are very attractive in this series). The series manages to stay focused on our two leads most of the time -- maybe an episode or two here and there where other character stories are primary. But seems more than many Chinese historical series where I get the idea that the leads were hired to do 30 of the 40 episodes so the rest have to be filler, maybe good filler but still filler.
This did turn out to be an excellent series from beginning to end.
But Yan Zheng is "drafted" into the army to fight a war and Fan Changyu goes looking for him eventually also joining the army and doing well because she is preternaturally strong and has excellent combat skills because her father was a disgraced top general (which Changyu did not know about). Changyu will eventually discover Yan Zheng's real identity (good comedic bits as the Marquis orders everyone to pretend he's Yan Zheng when she's around) which leads to a break up but quick reconciliation (one of the great things about this series is that both characters are fairly soberly logical; they break up for an episode or two but then she thinks it over and forgives him seeing what he did as fairly logical at the time; there are other plot elements which other series might milk for multiple episodes but this one resolves it in an episode or two).
Anyway, eventually both end up generals in the capital where court intrigue threatens their lives because they have the means to depose the current emperor, who came to power 17 years ago through betrayal...
Great sets, great fight scenes, a plot that moves along with subplots that don't get stuck for multiple episodes. Attractive leads (and really all the women are very attractive in this series). The series manages to stay focused on our two leads most of the time -- maybe an episode or two here and there where other character stories are primary. But seems more than many Chinese historical series where I get the idea that the leads were hired to do 30 of the 40 episodes so the rest have to be filler, maybe good filler but still filler.
This did turn out to be an excellent series from beginning to end.