Tong Hua and Yu Zheng Get in a Very Public Spat Over Story Theft on Upcoming Military Academy C-drama

A very angry C-writer Tong Hua just ripped C-producer Yu Zheng a new one and the week is already ablazing with fury. This is totally a grab the popcorn and sit back and watch moment but for the fact that Yu Zheng really needs to be stopped before he continues his unabashed idea stealing rampage. Tong Hua has turned her attention in the last year to being a C-drama script director in addition to her day job as a writer. For the period rom-com Perfect Couple with Wallace Huo and Tang Yan, she was credited with oversight over the writing team and creative input. The same goes for the currently filming revenge-melo The Cage of Love with Hawick Lau and Zheng Shuang. She doesn’t pen the script herself but has narrative oversight on the story concept. This week she posted the picture above to tease fans about her third C-drama project which she describes as set in the turn of the 20th century China (the early Republic era), takes place in a military academy, has a fashion bent, and involves lots of hot blooded youth romance. It sounds more like a shoujo manga than anything but I’m totally salivating already it.

A day later Yu Zheng posted a similar picture (below) of a manga male lead wearing an military uniform and wrote that folks should be excited about his new scriptwriter plus lead actor Chen Xiao for an upcoming early Republic military academy youth drama. Da fuq? Dude, you are currently in a lawsuit with famed TW-writer Qiong Yao who got fed up with you blatantly stealing her Plum Blossom Brand as the story for Gong 3 and finally decided to take you to court, and still you’re continuing with pissing off every writer in a thousand mile radius with undeniable idea filching? Tong Hua is not taking this one laying down, especially after Yu Zheng did the exact same thing to her five years ago. She was working with Tangren to bring Bu Bu Jing Xin to the small screens and Yu Zheng cobbled together Gong (Jade Palace Lockheart) in half the time using the exactly same time-travel modern girl stuck in a love triangle between 4th Prince and 8th Prince concept and rushed his drama out before BBJX. Both dramas ended up being a hit but it was shadiness of such a magnitude though he probably doesn’t care since he keeps getting away with it. He just wants more money and these days bad attention = more money.

Fans of Tong Hua’s novel Yun Zhong Ge are freaking out about this very public and open spat between her and Yu Zheng because it was Yu Zheng’s production company that is bringing the YZG drama to the small screens. Its done filming already but even knowing that Tong Hua hates him makes for very awkward drama viewing and promotions. When Tong Hua was asked why she gave the drama adaptation rights to Yu Zheng in the first place, she explained that the drama rights to Bu Bu Jing Xin and Yun Zhong Ge were negotiated over 6 years ago and she decided then to give BBJX to Tangren and YZG to Yu Zheng’s company and it was her decision and she’ll have to live with the consequences today. This also explains why Da Mo Yao, the prequel to YZG, ended up with Tangren and thereby splitting the two novels to be adapted by different production companies. After what Yu Zheng did in stealing BBJX to create Gong, Tong Hua vowed never to work with him again so even if he wanted DMY as well, she gave it to Tangren for doing a lovely respectful job adapting BBJX.

Tong Hua is actually not as pissed about Yu Zheng stealing her early Republic military academy youth drama idea as much as she’s furious he’s going around saying she took the idea from him. Oh god, can someone stop that lunatic. That was what flipped Tong Hua’s lid and she went on a Weibo rant about how it’s not worth suing for idea or copyright infringement against Yu Zheng because he’s so calculating that he takes only about 30% or so of a story and that is enough to make it hard to legally prove that he stole enough of the whole story. She also let the stealing go in the past because she was younger and felt like it’s not worth making an enemy in the industry and wanted to just focus on doing her own thing well. In hearing through the grapevine that Yu Zheng liked the new drama she was working on and was planning to get the jump start on her (again), that is when Tong Hua released the concept art early because she’s fed up with his underhanded tactics.

I know whose side I’m on, the side of justice and talent. One has it and the other doesn’t. It’s sad that a hack like Yu Zheng can reign freely with his idea theft because his dramas may suck but still bring in the ratings. Sigh.