Well, the production of period C-drama The Noble (Jin Zhi 金枝 or The Golden Branch) is either super duper go-getters or the savviest brown nosers ever. Because this week the production released the first batch of official stills for the drama and went ahead and followed the orders for the upcoming changes to drama promotion despite the regulation not going in effect until next month sometime in mid-July. The requirement is for billing order by strokes in their name, but also the totally out of left field requirement that stage names are not allowed so actors and actresses are to be identified by their real names. There are soooooo many stars with stage names in C-ent this is going to be hilarious. Thankfully next to the real name the production companies are still allowed to tag their Weibo accounts which has their stage name handles. So for The Noble, male lead Chen Xing Xu comes first despite the production being greenlit for female lead Li Yi Tong to have the top billing, and she’s referred to by her real name Li Xue. Supporting actor Deng Kai with the breakout in Prisoner of Beauty gets named by his real name Shang Kai. I think the billing order rule is fine and helps avoid fandom fights but the real name requirement is silly as stage names are bread and butter common practice not just in C-ent but in every entertainment industry. But maybe this requirement is to avoid people adopting stage names with fewer and fewer strokes to keep top billing haha.