Zhang Ling He and Jelly Lin‘s new drama The Road to Glory has just wrapped its filming, dropped a few wrap ceremony photos of the main cast and crew, and released a sheeeeeeyut ton of character visuals for the historical romance drama.
Tencent also officially announced the cast, along with this poetic comment:
A chance encounter, love hidden in frost and snow, a promise of reunion; a journey home, hatred sharpened by blades, grudges written on paper!
So then, let’s look at the wrap ceremony photos first.
The Road to Glory cast is intriguing
The cast of the now-filmed C-drama, which kicked off its filming in early January and just had its character visuals released, is more interesting to me than its plot, which is very much a much of a muchness, if the truth be told. (I’ll give you that plot further down this post).
Especially as it features Zhang Ling He, who just got off massive success with Pursuit of Jade and is one of the hottest male properties in China right now.
The other half of an interesting pairing is Jelly Lin (aka Lin Yun). An actress who, in my opinion, has appeared in one too many mediocre dramas considering her talent, and deserves a break to achieve something bigger.
Huang Yi also plays a main supporting character and, as she is brilliant in both the recent Fate Chooses You as poisonous-but-maybe-not(?) Zuo Ying Ying and, in her diametrically opposed character, Gu Lan in the utterly wonderful (and my favorite C-drama of this year so far) A Splendid Match, and I cannot wait to see what she achieves in this.
Edward Zhang has nicely played characters like Ouyang Ping Fan in Why Is He Still Single?, Zuo Xiao Qing had a guest appearance in The Seven Relics of Ill Omen that was a standout, and veteran actor and guest star Jiang Kai (A Moment But Forever), of course, can do no wrong in my eyes.
So yep, I am on board with this cast and looking forward to what they deliver.
With The Road to Glory, we are also getting a script written by Zou Yue, who wrote the phenomenal Love Like the Galaxy, as well as Pursuit of Jade and The Rise of Phoenixes so, even if the plot is nothing new, the screenwriter giving it to us offers great promise.
The drama is being directed by Chu De Jian, whose Once We Get Married I also enjoyed.
So, no, the Chinese historical romance drama is not likely to be anything new but, if it is more of the same but done extremely well, I am fine with that too.
As for The Road to Glory plot, I did tell you it is nothing too different, as you will see:
In the winter of the fourth year of Shaojing, Xiao Li (played by Zhang Ling He), the head of the East Market in Yongzhou, unexpectedly saves Wen Yu (played by Lin Yun), the deposed princess of the Southern Chen Dynasty, who was on her way to borrow troops to help save her fallen kingdom.
The two secretly fall in love during their daily interactions, and Xiao Li decides to protect her as she travels through mountains and rivers to embark on the road to restoring the country.
While working with Wen Yu to kill the traitor Pei Song, Xiao Li also grows from a street ruffian to the all powerful King of Wei, who now controls half of the country. The relationship between the two also becomes complicated as they reach the pinnacle of power.
See, there is nothing in that to cause you to sit up and pay attention, now is there? But, as it is always in how a story is told and how it is acted, I will wait to reserve judgement until the first episodes drop.
Likely some time in 2027.
The Road to Glory, at 40 episodes (and it may increase from that, as several others just have) is also one of the longer ones, so its first episodes will have to be good for it to hold my attention for that many episodes. And probably yours too.
Enjoy the wrap ceremony photos and the character visuals. More information will likely be coming down the pike soon, and I will update you when it does.
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