Cheng Yi Responds to Heightened Criticism Over His Own Voice Dialogue in The Journey of Legend
So all the criticism I mentioned in the prior post on The Journey of Legend haven’t been addressed by the production, but there is one additional criticism that has been addressed directly and it’s one that has plagued male lead Cheng Yi for multiple dramas so not just here. It’s over his own voice dialogue – the criticism is that he speaks under his breath so it’s hard to understand him and he doesn’t enunciate clearly. Even if his hit drama Mysterious Lotus Casebook there was this criticism but the drama was so good it was overlooked, and it also arose in the xianxia dramas Immortal Samsara and Love and Redemption. Cheng Yi actually responded to this criticism and said that his character was a modern dude time traveled to ancient times so speaks softly as to not draw attention to himself and sometimes doesn’t know to to respond to situations so that has lead to the dialogue being mumbled issue. To which…..hahaha OMG dude it would have been so much better if he just stayed silent on this one because the explanation is so bad I can’t even.
Oh dear…not the right answer… he need more speech training.
This guy deserves all the scrutiny, and the ridiculous role he’s getting, he’s a greasy, ugly, bald old man, with no talent, no presence, fake to the core, nothing about him is real and he still wants to portray himself as silly and cute, a clueless 40-year-old guy acting like a 3-year-old baby, the height of pathetic.
35 is not 40 lmao. You sound like you have personal beef with this dude.
@foulthings
He is not 35, he has faked his age to appear younger. And yes, this is well known because his first manager is on video saying it lol
You must admit that his fake persona and fake cute behavior should brush the wrong way a ton of people. In the same time how to take someone seriously when everything is obviously forced and fake.In the western cultures the cute behavior is not loved and often mocked it just portrays not enough professionalism.
He’s not ugly to me, but definitely not male lead material either. For the longest time I actually thought he and Bai Jing Ting were the same person 😅. Sometimes I’d think, okay, he looks decent, and then other times his face looked kind of round and the posture just wasn’t it. Then after watching Bai Jing Ting’s latest drama First Frost and trying to see if it was him in Love and Redemption, I was like, Oh wow, turns out they’re two totally different people.
Add to that the fact that he doesn’t really accept criticism. He gets angry when that happens.
Honestly, did he beat up your grandmother?
Lmao right? This one user has been commenting super nasty things on multiple accounts on every CY article, it’s crazy.
It’s just been excuses one after another. His agency’s latest excuse for not remembering his lines and still needing his script during actual filming (resulting in his script being exposed in the actual drama in several scenes) is that it’s common for actors to do so. Ridiculous really, when many veteran actors had talked about this in the past saying that actors need to be professional and remember their lines before the actual filming.
Why The Journey of Legend Exposed Cheng Yi’s Weaknesses and Shattered His Marketed Reputation?
Because for years, Cheng Yi has been positioned, mostly by his agency Hanrui (his agency), as if he were on the same tier as Xiao Zhan. The carefully constructed myth of his status was a house of cards, and The Journey of Legend knocked it down in one fall. The illusions built over years of marketing came crashing down. While Xiao Zhan shines on screen like a beacon, commanding attention effortlessly, Cheng Yi scuttles in his shadow, like an insect straining to appear grand, yet every gesture exposes his flaws and pretentiousness, collapsing under its own weight.
Cheng Yi debuted in 2011, but his first recognizable drama, Love & Redemption, only came in 2020. Nine years of obscurity followed by a late breakthrough left him with a career built on hype rather than consistent achievement. In 2021, Hanrui forced Yang Zi into Immortal Samsara to boost Cheng Yi’s profile, using her star power as a prop. While the drama was well-received, it highlighted the glaring gap between him and stronger co-stars, especially in line delivery and depth. Marketing drafts from 2020 already positioned him as “the next Xiao Zhan,” revealing cracks in the narrative from the start.
After IS, Hanrui positioned Cheng Yi alongside the 90s generation stars such as Xiao Zhan, Bai Jingting, Yang Yang, and Huang Jingyu, actors with the most high-profile projects and resources. Cheng Yi, however, is clearly lower-tier, a B-level actor trying to sit with A-listers. This forced alignment was purely marketing; it did not reflect his actual skills or experience.
Hanrui heavily promoted his MLC drama, inflating its reception. MLC and The Journey of Legend share production teams and flaws, including weak dialogue, uneven pacing, and underwhelming quality. While MLC’s issues were masked by marketing hype, Journey of Legend could not escape scrutiny.
Journey of Legend was billed as an S+ production with a USD 45 million budget, positioned alongside Xiao Zhan’s Legend of Zanghai. Expectations were massive, but the reality fell short. Cheng Yi displayed rookie-level professionalism by bringing scripts on set and using them as cue cards instead of memorizing lines. His line delivery is consistently unclear, as if he has phlegm in his throat; without subtitles, much of his dialogue is unintelligible. Years of criticism brought no improvement, only weak excuses.
The contrast with Xiao Zhan was stark. Xiao Zhan is precise, controlled, and emotionally resonant, while Cheng Yi appeared flat and unpolished.
On top of acting flaws, Cheng Yi’s marketed image of meekness and sweetness unravels under scrutiny. Older clips reveal a cocky, performative figure, often acting like the most handsome man in the room while coming off arrogant and cringe. Behind-the-scenes footage shows him playing on his phone during filming, and more recently, shouting at and belittling directors, behaving as if he were the head of the set. These incidents cement the perception of Cheng Yi as a B-tier actor with a diva attitude, a stark contrast to the real hardworking actors. CY persona feels forced and inauthentic.
Cheng Yi’s career has been built on hype, borrowed shine, and artificial rivalries. The Journey of Legend, with its massive budget and high expectations, stripped all that away. His lack of preparation, poor line delivery, inconsistent persona and the subpar quality of his Hanrui-made dramas were exposed. Instead of solidifying a top-tier status, the drama dismantled the myth of Cheng Yi’s standing in the industry.
Excellent summary. The unvarnished truth.
Since Fox Spirit Matchmaker: Sword and Beloved will most likely air this year I wonder how successful it will be. The first 2 fsm were very weak and I think that even if fsm 3 is just as weak, this impact will leave a big stain on Cheng Yi’s career.
Cheng Yi is never good actor to begin with. He is an okay actor and doesnt have power to pull a drama alone
MLC was good not because his acting but from combination of good story and great ensemble casts. Just like Blood of youth. For me, he was miscast as Xiao Se but it was story about group of people not only his chara, so his weakness wasnt glaring
Xiao Se was played by actor Li Hongyi!
Li Hongyi and Cheng Yi do look a bit alike but it’s 2 different people, hahah.
I noticed it right from the first episode of MLC, how he barely opens his mouth but the voice is strong and resonant and with his constant sneering look, I tried hard for MLC but no, dropped at ep14.
Lol he is funny
Embarrassing but this whole thing is embarrassing.
He has been in the industry for ten years. This has always been a major issue with him. He didn’t care because his agency covered for him instead of putting in the effort as many other actors from the south to fix his Mandarin.
He is overhyped, ugly but worst of all, unprofessional lasy jerk.
Honestly, I’ve never understood the “hype” surrounding this guy. I mean Wang Yibo and Xiao Zhan’s fans may come at each other’s throats if we’re ignoring their “CP” fandom but I’ve seen their fame and fandom rise as organic. Him being somehow lumped into their group of fame always felt forced. He doesn’t have the movie offers and he relies on voice actors.
I’ve never heard Cheng Yi in the same way and I would be on xiaohongshu looking at my faves but somehow his fans/team will buy ads tied to the people I specifically search and will always have to filter it out because of how blatant it is.
That is exactly how he builds his data which he then used to fake his popularity. He gets tied to other actors and his dramas to other dramas and then he leeches from them.
This is why he tried so hard to couple with Zanghai. This made up fight his team pushed would have leeched from Zanghai to carry this garbage drama. In general, he leeches from Xiao Zhan the most and attacks him the most but he has done it o pretty much everyone at some point.
It is all manufactured popularity thanks to leeching, marketing and bot armies.
I have a tendency to get him confused with Bai Jing Ting.
In C-netz,people can see how HR marketing and Cheng yi fans made many bundling post with Xiao Zhan to bait his fans to fight, like for everything CY fandom will compare his stuffs with XZ stuffs and then posted that they “beat” XZ.
If I am XZ fans, I will be angry too. Like who are you? Why suddenly you want to be tied to their idol name so bad?
And this year finally backfired because even the passerby can see the different quality between XZ and CY, whether in their acting and profesionalism. And the heavy bundling after MLC and in May this year when their dramas rumored to be aired the same period, and on first 2 days airing of FSH when CY marketing and CY fandom posted mocking post that FSH will beat LOZH data, only to be down in the next 2 days, it just give more bad taste to people who follow cent because the “expecatations” vs “reality” just complete different.
Oh dear, this is the worst one I ever saw. I understood every work can have flaws , c drama, k drama , Hollywood all but this one is beyond ignorance and complete insult to audiences. Fans might think or watch blindly like crazies. Others won’t. The mistakes happened in this drama is too silly. Not tiny, too basic. There are bunch of post production editors yet they don’t even do proper editing between bts and real scenes, the actor holding script? And 3 incenses, this is too stupid or they all took audiences worthless and stupid just to squeeze money out? and lastly Cheng yi, he’s already 30. It’s fine he used dubbing or not but at least can’t he act that words and his mouth to sync. What are they taking audience for. Just brainless money bags to scam whatever trash they sell. As a lead actor, this is too lazy. Or dumb to even recognize these lines. Well perhaps his fans might continue but as passerby, I pass. No more CY drama in future I’ll give a look. There’s nothing he can improve then lotus. I guess that’s his full range. I don’t see any improvement.
Yup, he should’ve just stayed quiet. If he really wanted to respond, he should’ve apologized, because this isn’t just a production issue. It’s on him too. I mean, how can you show up without even memorizing your script? That excuse just makes him look worse.
I have no personal problems with this guy. He’s a zero, a born loser, a poser. His fake, false, and dangling personality is stereotyped as a mentally retarded person with the attitude of someone who’s the king in his belly. An arrogant and rude nobody. He destroys himself.
Nothing about this ugly guy. He’s a real loser. Everything is marketing and a robot bought to create water armies to inflate data to fake a nonexistent popularity. How does a low-level actor who debuted in 2011 and no one heard about him until 2020 want to compare himself to someone who is truly recognized for his strength, talent, and good character? An envious and petty loser deserves what he’s getting now: scorn, contempt, and ridicule.
I really wasn’t expecting such a thoughtless excuse from Cheng Yi. An actor who sell a serious hardworking branding. His agency and fans have marketed him as this serious, hardworking actor, so I figured he would at least acknowledge the criticism and promise to improve like most actors would, but that didn’t happen. The criticism about his poor enunciation and weak line delivery isn’t new; it has been a constant in basically every project he has done. He debuted in 2011, and now it is 2025, yet the same issues keep coming up, which makes you wonder if he is actually taking any of it seriously. On top of that, he has been caught on camera holding his scripts during filming, and this is not just a behind-the-scenes thing. During rehearsals before the actual shot, it is normal for actors to hold their scripts as a guide, but when filming the actual scenes, actors usually give the script to an assistant or keep it out of the camera frame. In Cheng Yi’s case, the scripts are actually visible in the final drama multiple times. Fans argue that it is the editor’s fault or that all actors keep their scripts nearby, but if the lines were properly memorized, the script would not need to be so prominently in frame during the actual scenes. This strongly points to Cheng Yi himself, not the editing, as the problem and ties directly to his ongoing issues with poor line delivery and enunciation. Poor enunciation and weak line delivery can definitely be improved with practice and memorization, but the fact that these problems have persisted for over a decade clashes with the “hardworking, serious actor” image his team has carefully built. Overall, his excuse feels not just thoughtless but also telling, as if he is not putting in the professional effort as his image branding suggests. Cheng Yi is nothing but a pretentious B-level actor trying hard to be an A-lister, peddling a ‘serious and hardworking’ image yet crumbles under scrutiny.
It’s about time everyone realized how fake Cheng Yi and his fans are.
For years, they’ve been boasting about a false professionalism that has led them to believe they are above the best in C-net, when the reality is that this “actor” doesn’t even come close to many other actors, let alone Xiao Zhan.
They have waged war on many actors who stand out above Cheng Yi’s mediocrity, such as his own teammate Ren Jialun, who is superior in acting to that mediocrity. Her fans were also disgusting on Yang Zi’s birthday, posting all kinds of defamatory photos and making life impossible for Yuan Bingyan when a Huanrui spy reported her to a regulatory agency for an error in her tax settlement. This actress had already paid the fine and corrected her mistake, but Cheng Yi’s fans boycotted her until her career was buried.
They are the most vicious fandom on C-net, devising schemes to boycott artists they don’t like. For example, in 2023, when the real martial arts actor Zeng Ye Cheng worked with that mediocre actor, Cheng Yi’s fans slandered him, saying that it was his fault that their mediocre favorite was injured. But it turns out that Cheng Yi is so old that his bones can no longer withstand the acrobatics required by martial arts.
So Cheng Yi is fake in every way.
Don’t forget Wang Hedi and what they did to that man. So beyond disgusting.
Dont forget how nasty his fandom was when he was acting alongside Jin Dong! ugh I really dont get where do they get this much energy without any shame…
That Jin Dong drama was such a disaster. But he paid for it. You don’t mess with serious professionals and expect to come out unscathed. After that one, the doors to big, serious dramas closed for him.
Cheng Yi’s fake persona and manufactured popularity are finally being exposed along with the bad behavior of his fans. After the modest success of Love & Redemption, Cheng Yi treated his co-star Yuan Bingyan with open rudeness and no gentlemanly respect, while his fans kept slut-shaming her to make it seem like the drama’s success was only because of Cheng Yi. These fans even reported her to the tax bureau over a small mistake in her tax filings, something that would have been hard to know without inside help. Later, Huang Junjie, a tall and good-looking junior actor, was harassed and boycotted by Cheng Yi and his fans until he was removed from Journey of Legend. The real reason was that his good looks would highlight Cheng Yi’s ugliness and make the contrast impossible to ignore. During the airing of LYF, which happened at the same time as Cheng Yi’s MLC, his fans again used dirty tricks by hiding behind another fandom to slut-shame Yang Zi and spread edited photos of her, which even her international fans noticed. Now that Cheng Yi’s unprofessional behavior and fake serious-actor image are falling apart, both the industry and viewers are starting to see the truth.
Holding a script in your hand knowing that the camera is filming an actual scene is a huge disrespect to his director and co-actors. It’s borderline arrogance and laziness.
I see the Xiao Zhan fans came out with their knives. O_O
Lmao at the Cheng Yi fan above trying to pin everyone as Xiao Zhan fans again 😂
Assumptions and delusions on your part. I never said “everyone.” Nor am I a Cheng Yi fan. Not everyone posting is being cruel and ugly, and I’ve been around here long enough to recognize the Xiao Zahn fans.
😂 I’ve been here long enough too, didn’t recognise any Xiao Zhan fans posting.