The time before lunar new year may not have been the best time to release Born to be Alive, the Tibetan plains era drama with a strong homeland security and environmental conservation themes. CCTV released the drama at the end of January and in its two week run that just finished this weekend, the viewership was pretty mid for a big budget drama with big names Yang Zi in the lead and Hu Ge in a special starring role along with plenty of famous veterans. This was supposed to be one of those rah-rah serious and solemn C-dramas that espouse themes of patriotism and doing the right thing which usually does well with terrestrial viewers in China. The opening Douban ratings are high at 8.1 but there isn’t a lot of voters showing that the prestige is there but the mass appeal isn’t. Word on the street is that the drama is good but it’s too dark and serious for viewers to want to watch it all, so the drama is actually doing well in short clips on social media and video platforms.