Liuliang is a BIG DEAL in C-ent, and liuliang stands for 流量 which is flow volume and in Chinese slang it now means online volume in either search, posts, or data. The top young C-ent stars are frequently referred to a liuliang stars for their dedicated online fan army who play a big role in generating the online volume for their fave. The Chinese government tried to crack down on liuliang last year during the widespread cultural re-alignment after a series of scandals. But as long as their are keyboard army fans there will be liuliang and one way to track a star’s currently popularity is by how often their names or their current drama character names are searched.

Vlinkage released the 2022 to date (through August 2022) ranking of the most searched character names from C-dramas. Number 1 is Xiao Zhan for modern romance The Oath of Love, second is Wu Lei in Love Like the Galaxy, and third is Yang Zi for Immortal Samsara. Yang Zi is a total liuliang actress but I’m surprised her Oath of Love character did make the top 10 and she got on the board for Immortal Samara. Fourth spot is her Immortal Samara male lead Cheng Yi, then Zhao Lu Si takes the 5th position for LLTG. Another surprise is seeing Dilraba Dilmarut in 6th place for The Blue Whisper as she usually is queen of liuliang for her dramas. Oh, and Yang Yang made 7th and 9th spot so double win for Glory of the Special Forces followed by Who Rules the World. It’ll be interesting to see how the volume ranks out by end of year.