“The Journey of Chong Zi” is an ancient immortal drama directed by Liu Guohui and starring Yang Chaoyue and Jeremy Tsui. The drama is based on the novel of the same name by Shu Ke, which tells the love story over three lifetimes between the disciple Chong Zi (重紫), a young girl born with evil miasma and destined to become a demon, and master Luo Yin fan, who is supreme immortal and handsome. Since its launch, the cumulative broadcasting of “The Journey of Chong Zi” has reached 750 million.
The Journey of Chong Zi Plot Summary
Chong Zi (played by Yang Chaoyue) is pure and kind, but is the daughter of the demon king Ni Lun. She was saved by the Chu Bu Fu and was encouraged to seek further training to Nan Hua. But it doesn't go well, as Chong Zi is rejected because of her natural evil aura, and Min Yunzhong, the supervisor of Nan Hua, asserts that she will definitely become evil. At the critical moment, Luo Yinfan (played by Jeremy Tsui), the venerable master of Nan Hua, comes forward to accept her as his disciple, and from then on, Chongzhi becomes Luo Yinfan's only disciple.
Chong Zi relies on Luo Yinfan and wants to be by his side forever, Luo Yinfan also promises to protect Chong Zi's safety. But they could not resist the power of Jiu You's conspiracy, Luo Yinfan saw Chong Zi in prison but could not do anything about it, and also had to end her life for the sake of the common people.
After reincarnation, Chong Zi reappeared at Nan Hua, Luo Yinfan recognized her at once, and to protect her, he sealed her evil energy and kept her by his side, and they renewed their master-pupil relationship. However, as fate would have it, Chong Zi still could not escape from the manipulation of those who had the intention to become the target of all, and fell into the evil spirit in a fit of rage. It turns out that Chong Zi is actually the daughter of Ni Lun, the former Lord of the Jiu You, and she was born with a fierce aura and destined to enter the evil spirit.
One is to save the world's life as his mission, the venerable master Luo Yinfan; the other is the evil spirit of the Jiu You, who was born with an evil aura. They love each other helplessly and kill each other helplessly, and the master and the disciple are opposed to each other, but it is difficult to break their love ties. Fate is never merciful, and grudges never end.
From the viewer's perspective, the strengths of “The Journey of Chong Zi” are intuitive. First of all, as an adaptation of a novel written more than ten years ago, it inherits the creative strengths of the time, that is, the theme of saving lives over personal love.
The main female character, Chong Zi, was born with a destiny of evil aura, and finally fell into the path of the devil under the impetus of the fate gears and people around her, but she did not give up good thoughts. While the main male character, Luo Yinfan, has always taken it as his mission to protect the living beings, and even killed Chong Zi's first life to protect the living beings.
The second is that the appearance and temperament of Yang Chaoyue and Jeremy Tsui are very much in line with the sense of master and disciple, Yang's cute and bold personality is highly compatible with the role, and Jeremy Tsui's steady and accurate pinch of the role of calm and affectionate in his previous role is also convincing.
In addition, the costumes in the drama retain the sense of immortality while also beautiful, and the live-action shooting is surprising from time to time, all of which can constitute a plus point for the drama “The Journey of Chong Zi”.
“The Journey of Chong Zi” focuses more on the growth of the characters, which is perhaps different from traditional immortal dramas. Chong Zi is brave enough to fight against her fate even if it is not understood, and this courage is exactly the idea that this drama wants to convey to the audience.
The Charm of Chong Zi
Around 2016, producer Xu Wenjun started read the novel “Chong Zi” by Shu Ke during the lively discussion among his friends. He was very impressed by the core of the story, the character portrayal, and the author's literary style, and more crucially, the dramatic nature of the novel, which laid the groundwork for Xu Wenjun to purchase the rights.
From 2010 when the author Shu Ke began serializing the novel “Chong Zi”, to the time when Xu Wenjun's team purchased the rights to the novel is still a short time apart, while the drama “The Journey of Chong Zi” was launched in 2023, 13 years from the release of the novel.
In this period, no matter the script development, actor selection, and other related trends, can still cause the majority of the original fans, and netizens intense discussion. An IP was born more than ten years ago, but still has so many readers who love it, so it is clear that the original content is very classic and charming.
The most attractive highlight of the original novel is undoubtedly the portrayal of the character Chong Zi. From the ignorant and innocent little beggar in the first life, to the understanding and compliance in the second life, to the brave confrontation in the third life, “The Journey of Chong Zi” presents a very complete story of female growth. The story of Chong Zi's difficult growth under the shadow of her natural evil is also very moving.
With a highly anticipated work in mind, the creative team was particularly careful in its development, a project that took more than four years from pre-planning to shooting and filmmaking. In addition, in order to present a distinctive Chinese traditional immortal world, the worldview background of “The Journey of Chong Zi” was chosen to be constructed based on the aesthetics of Taoist philosophy.
The immortal world of the drama uses traditional light colors in the Chinese style to create an atmosphere that not only shows the atmosphere of the immortal world, but also renders the romance through deep and rich color changes. The concept of the devil world, on the other hand, is composed of gorgeous water and precipitated stone, and the sky is integrated with aurora elements to show the mystery of the devil race while requiring aesthetic beauty.”
Self-growth of the characters
The core of “The Journey of Chong Zi” lies in the growth of the characters, not only the heroine Chong Zi grows, but also all the other characters. Each character's personality changes and echoes with each event.
For example, Zhuo Hao from the initial cynicism to the late increasingly responsible; and the story of Yin Shui Xian is a secondary line, but she from the Tianshan disciple to the devil's protector, after the emotional entanglement with Xueling Xianzun, the growth of the whole character change is obvious easy to see.
In the process of adaptation, the drama “The Journey of Chong Zi” is also trying its best to retain the core of the original, and restore the characterization and journey of the characters to the greatest extent.
The story of Chong Zi's transformation into a demon through three lifetimes portrays the contradiction and transformation of good and evil thoughts, so that in the later stages, although Chong Zi has become a demon, he still has good thoughts in his heart. The creative team hopes to make the character of Chong Zi more fleshed out and her character more complete through this creation.
Restore the aesthetics of immortality
In 2020, the crew was in the official preparation period. Unlike most dramas that establish their creative team before the official production, “The Journey of Chong Zi” had basically decided on 70 to 80 percent of its creators two years before the production started.
The addition of actors Yang Chaoyue and Jeremy Tsui has added confidence to the cast. Both actors fit the basic characteristics of the role well. Yang has the essence of the character Chong Zi in the drama, strong inside, fearless, and hardworking, these shining points are the source of Yang's continuous progress, gradually recognized by the public, and this fearless spirit and her upward life journey are overlapping with the character Chong Zi. And Jeremy Tsui has the role of Luo Yinfan's calm and handsome, and can easily match with Yang to create a sense of master and disciple.
After the creation period, the creators devote a lot of effort to styling and selecting scenery. The main theme of the costume styling in the drama is low-key magnificence. The different sects have their own representative colors to reflect the different characteristics between the immortal sects, not just monotonous white. The magic world is added in the details of some mysterious symbolic design, highlighting the mysterious and unrestrained magic.
There are many scenes in the drama that are realistic and look very qualitative, and these scenes are the places selected by the production team after many visits. Although the scenes in the Anhui Huangshan Mountain were not planned due to force majeure, the production team was pleasantly surprised that scenic areas such as Sanqing Mountain and Yandang Mountain happened to be very suitable for the scenes set in the drama.
From IP development, story creation to filming and production, every step is filled with the efforts of the creative team during the creation of the drama, and we can actually see how much effort needs to be put into a work from development to broadcast. The performance of “The Journey of Chong Zi” is the best reward for the creators.
