EVEN after watching the final episode of the Chinese drama series “The Early Spring,” Vietnamese marketing analyst Pham Thi Thuy Linh kept listening to its soundtrack every day — not just for the story, but for the moments that felt deeply familiar, echoing experiences from her own life.

“Although I cannot understand all the lyrics, they still touch my heart,” said Linh, 35. Set against the backdrop of urban life, workplace challenges and the search for love and belonging, such Chinese drama series, often referred to as C-dramas, are striking a chord with audiences far beyond the country’s borders.

Surging global

audiences

“Many good Chinese dramas across various genres, including ancient-setting, modern and psychological dramas, have attracted young Vietnamese viewers,” said Linh.

“The Early Spring” had climbed to second place on Netflix’s weekly global chart for non-English-language series.

The social media accounts of Jing Boran, who plays the male lead, drew comments from viewers around the world. Some viewers said they had rewatched the drama multiple times and thanked him for delivering such a compelling performance.

“Irreplaceable,” despite not yet having become a major hit in China, drew 2 million views in its first week. It entered the platform’s top 10 in 24 countries and regions.

Set in a fictional ancient world, “Pursuit of Jade” has also shown strong momentum. It has topped Google searches among Chinese costume dramas worldwide since 2025, racking up more than 10 million views.

Among the recent C-dramas winning overseas audiences, “Against the Current” stands out as a case study in patience and word-of-mouth. The 47-episode costume drama, starring Tan Songyun and Liu Xueyi, premiered in September on CCTV-8, Tencent Video and WeTV, and later became available on Disney+ and other platforms. Domestically, it began modestly, with a first-day market share of just 4.9%, but climbed steadily to over 42%, according to the analytics platform Yunhe Data.

Overseas, the series topped WeTV charts in the United States, Japan, Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam and at least seven other markets outside China, and ranked No. 1 on Disney+ in North America, Spain, Portugal, Vietnam and Japan. It was also named Disney+’s most-watched series of 2026 by viewing hours. On Rakuten Viki, it earned a 9.6 out of 10 from overseas viewers.

Diversified genres to explore

As more Chinese series win over audiences abroad, viewers encounter a wider range of settings and stories, and come into contact with different aspects of Chinese life and culture.

While enjoying the fashion pieces styled in “The Early Spring,” Linh said the appeal also lies in its portrayal of relationships and working life. She sees something of herself in the female lead, who moves to a big city to study and work while navigating professional pressures.

For Zena Saidi, a university student in Tanzania, C-dramas hold great appeal for her thanks to their exquisite production, unique creativity and tightly woven plots. In one of her favorites, “The Tale of Rose,” “The heroine is beautiful and intelligent, and the way she experiences love makes you feel deeply for her,” she said.

Female characters and their personal journeys are proving a draw for viewers abroad. On iQIYI International, the overseas service of major Chinese streaming platform iQIYI, “Pursuit of Jade” topped the platform’s global charts for the first half of 2026. Some overseas viewers praised the series for showing women taking the initiative to solve problems on their own.

Other popular titles on the platform appeal in different ways. “The Best Thing” weaves traditional Chinese medicine into a love story, while “Speed and Love” adds racing and boxing to its romantic plot.

What distinguishes “Against the Current” from many costume dramas is its refusal to treat suffering as spectacle. The story follows Shen Jialan, a scholar’s granddaughter whose family is destroyed by a treason accusation. She survives by assuming the identity of Xu Lanxiang, the deceased daughter of a couple who once owed her family a gratitude, and then becomes a servant in the household of her former fiancé, Lin Jinqi.

Rather than relying on rescue, she navigates her new life with quiet intelligence, uncovering a poisoning scheme disguised as an epidemic, buying her adoptive parents’ freedom, and even detecting a prince’s plot against the emperor.

Tan described the role as “a pure, vivid flower blooming through adversity, full of courage and strength, bringing people a great sense of warmth.” For overseas viewers, this emphasis on a woman’s agency and resilience, rather than passive endurance, has been a key draw.

The series also illustrates how production values and cultural specificity can travel. The creative team spent eight months building a 25,000-square-meter garden compound at Hengdian World Studios, drawing on classical garden design from Suzhou and books on traditional architecture.

Co-director Huang Yingxiang said the drama’s visual language was rooted in liubai  — the Chinese aesthetic of leaving blank space — allowing emotion to reside in what is not shown.

These choices have resonated with international audiences: viewers on Reddit, Instagram and TikTok have described the series as a “high-quality, world-class production,” praising its restrained storytelling and the way early narrative clues are meaningfully resolved later. For C-dramas seeking lasting global traction, “Against the Current” suggests that cultural specificity, when executed with craft, is not a barrier but a bridge.

More than a screen

For some fans, the interest continues after the final episode. They look up soundtracks and filming locations, or share favorite scenes online. Some also become curious about the food and everyday details they see on screen.

An article in India’s Hindustan Times highlighted locations in Beijing and Harbin featured in “The Early Spring,” giving fans ideas for places to visit and making the television drama a starting point for travel inspiration.

Social media has also changed the way audiences engage with shows. They share their reactions, create their own content and keep the conversation going beyond the screen.

Vietnamese film critic and writer Le Hong Lam said Chinese television series and films had influenced Vietnamese popular culture at different times.

He pointed to “Meet Yourself,” a series about healing and finding beauty in everyday life. Its unhurried pace and focus on life’s small pleasures offer viewers a different vision of modern living, he said.

Chinese cultural products such as television shows, films, animations, and video games have gained widespread popularity worldwide, said Benjamin Mgana, chief editor of foreign news at the Tanzanian newspaper The Guardian.

Through these works, an increasing number of Tanzanian people have come to understand and appreciate Chinese culture, Mgana noted.

Industrial capacity

Chinese streaming platforms have expanded their global reach, opening up more distribution avenues for C-dramas beyond platforms like YouTube.

In 2019, Tencent launched its overseas version WeTV in Thailand to offer original Chinese content with Thai subtitles and dubbing. In the same year, iQIYI International was launched and gradually began localized operations in countries including Malaysia and Singapore.

These platforms have leveraged technology to break down language and cultural barriers. Over 90% of the translation and dubbing work for iQIYI International is done by AI, with humans only responsible for the final review. According to the company, the entire process, from receiving the source content to completing subtitles in more than 10 languages, takes just one to two days.

Some dramas like “The Early Spring” and “Pursuit of Jade” also landed on Netflix, indicating that C-dramas have gained a foothold on major global streaming platforms, competing on the same stage with traditional non-English content such as Korean dramas and Spanish-language dramas.

Industry insiders said that compared with the long-standing advantage of Korean dramas on global streaming platforms, C-dramas still require robust industrial capacity to maintain lasting global popularity. (Xinhua)