It’s been a great summer year so far for C-actress Zhao Li Ying, her big budget xianxia C-drama The Legend of Shen Li was a big hit and her movie Article 20 netted her the Best Supporting Actress award at the Hundred Flower Awards last month. Now she’s gotten another big award winning Best Actress at the Feitian Awards last week for her 2022 drama Wild Bloom. Her transition to more serious fare is paying off and it helps she still did one idol project with Shen Li to keep her liuliang buzz high. She’s probably having the best year among her gen of C-actresses other than Tang Yan’s resurrection back to top level with her after Blossoms Shanghai.
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Congrats, Zhao Liying! I’m thrilled for her — a well deserved recognition. I also teared up watching her teary acceptance speech. She’s come a long way, starting from a humble background, sometimes getting mocked because of that. But she perseveres, and has become an A-lister herself. I remember stories about her being ignored by other actors at gala dinners :(( IIRC she only has a few friends from the industry who remain her closest until now (Xie Na & Ouyang Nana). I really couldn’t care less about all water army allegations — her journey (no pun intended) is a testament to her work ethos and ceaseless efforts to improve herself.
There were quite a few better actresses but in China, as always, if you have the capital behind you, it doesn’t matter. Though of course not like it’s much different in the west.
In any kind of awards there will be actors/actresses considered by some people to be better than the nominees. It’s always up for debate, though. I think it’s quite refreshing to have Liying this year, or Rayzha last year (who IMO very much deserved her award too) as the winners. Most of Feitian’s (also Golden Rooster/Hundred Flowers) winners are veterans or the people of the same circle over and over again.
Every ppl said “no much different in the west,” I can’t help LOLing. It’s as if adding this unfounded statement would make China look better. LOL again.
As far as I know, prestigious awards like Golden Globe and Oscar have history awarding indie films with low capitals to produce.
I hope the 95 flowers are smarter and start doing serious dramas earlier. When i think about the 85 flowers doing other type of roles only in their middle 30s i’m like what were these ladies doing all these years? Just chasing money and popularity? Couldnt they do one role in these dramas once in a while? She still needs to prove herself with her movies to completely elevate her status but it’s a nice achievement. Congratulations to her on the win.
Its not easy to give up fame and popularity to do these serious dramas. Zhao Liying succeeded but there are many others who tried but failed. 95 flowers aside, even the older 90 flowers like Jing Tian, Li Yitong etc are still starring in idol dramas. 95 flowers prob have to wait for another 5 more years to transition into these kind of dramas.
Jing Tian really seems like her career stagnated. LI Yitong does have a couple dramas lately like The Knockout to diversify her filmography. I saw that Bai Lu and Liu Yifei ( ik she is 85) , got an Excellence award. Its a good thing for them. I have hopes for Bai Lu she has another drama that seems more grounded. Its a good thing she is exploring more, it doenst matter if she is not main lead.
You are forgetting Liu Yifei. Since she came back to the small screen all her dramas are successful but its a pity she won’t be winning any awards since she’s American. Tang Yan has to prove herself with Lady Liberty since she’s just a 2nd female lead in Blossoms Shanghai, but Cnetz are saying she has a high chance of winning the Golden Eagle Awards.
It’s ridiculous that Liu Yifei is so constrained because of a technicality. She is by far the best actress there around that age range. At least her dramas are high quality and quite popular. Awards are a joke in China anyway.
I think she is a good actress but by far the best actress is a bit debatable. Her drama shortlisted is Meet Yourself which is nice but nothing special in terms of acting. Meet Yourself got an Excellence drama award and got praised a lot for promoting culture and tourism in the area filmed.All of the 85 flowers had moments were they got critized for their acting. Can someone tell me when the foreigner award ban started? I remenber she is the original Golden Eagle Goddess and her dramas didnt get pulled out from Feitian which is weird since its the “governement” award.
Golden Eagle Goddess is like a mascot, not part of the awards, plus I think she wasn’t American back then, correct me if I’m wrong though. Her dramas didn’t get pulled out because it’s considered an award for the production company and the drama’s production company is Chinese.
@ lizzy8 My comment is missing ” excellence award for dramas. I think 16 usually get selected.
She looks good with short hair. It fits her face.
Congratulations to Zhao Liying for winning the most prestigious drama award in China.
Firstly, she doesn’t have to look like adjumma to accept awards. LOL
Secondly, once C actors mope into so-called “serious” (but boring to the heck) dramas, they would most likely lose appeal to the majority of drama fans. Sooner or later they’d come back to do one or two idol dramas again to test their buzz even not young anymore. LYF for example.
One of the major issues with C-ent is this clear cut between idol and “serious” categories. (Note the “” for irony that I don’t take it that seriously LOL.) While idol dramas may be too flashy to be lacking depth sometimes, “serious” dramas are a warehouse of nagging, preaching, and draggy contents lacking creativity and imagination, and therefore snoozefests. It’s dumb to format drama in such a monotonous way that most likely stymies creativity and actors also lack interesting scripts to work with.
I actually agree with your comment and I made a similar comment wanting them to explore other genres like horror for example, but Chinese bizz rules and practices seem to be set in stone. CCP is like a huge wall to get through. I do notice a difference in serious dramas acting though, a lot of them are boring and quite filled with propaganda but the actors in them feel a lot more natural than ”idol actors”. Of course given the chance the idol actors may give a similar performance but they seem so used to the more theatrical way and when they switch you can really feel they are out of place. I like Korean ent better because an actor like Ji Sung may do a super silly role and then do Connection , it’s not that divided and gives actors a chance to grow. It doesn’t help that these idol actors rely on voice dubbing for their roles, something that so called serious actors don’t do, and even with acting degrees you see them unable to do their lines. I honestly think acting schools in China are such a joke, compare it to British schools who understand that Great Britain, like China, have many accents and they are rigorous with line delivery and accents its a huge contrast. It also helps that British actors also take lessons outside for american accents, you see Scottish doing English accent etc, they are so good at multiple accents it’s incredible. Since Cbizz its like this I just hope that these actors do idol dramas and also do serious dramas, a few of them are really good and it would help them.
Good points. I can’t disagree with you. Nonetheless, I meant to stress that good dramas never isolate unrealistic or fantasy elements from real-life story telling. CCP’s ways of telling real-life stories in so-called “serious” dramas completely dismiss the possibility for imagination. That’s why dubbed “mainstream” C dramas spell the sign of monotony everywhere from scripts to directing to acting. C “serious” dramas are in a huge and muddy quagmire to get out of lifeless boredom and fail to deliver artistry values, seriously. LOL