Ode to Joy: The Shanghai Drama That Put Five Women on One Floor and Made Class the Plot

Why this one

Ode to Joy (欢乐颂, Huan Le Song) starts from an address. Five women live on the 22nd floor of a Shanghai apartment complex that shares the show's name, and the drama's engine is that nothing else would have put them in the same room. Andy (安迪) is a Wall Street-trained executive. Qu Xiaoxiao (曲筱绡) is the daughter of a wealthy businessman. Fan Shengmei (樊胜美), Qiu Yingying (邱莹莹) and Guan Juer (关雎尔) come from humbler backgrounds, as Sixth Tone's 2016 coverage puts it.

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The series premiered on April 18, 2016, and the first season ran 42 episodes on Dragon TV (东方卫视) and Zhejiang TV (浙江卫视), ending on May 10. Four sequel seasons followed; they appear below only as context.

Sixth Tone, a Shanghai-based outlet, headlined its 2016 report on the show as China's answer to Sex and the City. The screenwriter, Yuan Zidan, said in a phone interview with the outlet that she wanted to explore women's lives in a new way, and answered critics of the romance plots by saying "separating women from love and marriage is impossible."

The setup

The five women meet as neighbours, and according to Sixth Tone an elevator accident is what turns them into friends. Fan Shengmei, Qiu Yingying and Guan Juer share an apartment; Andy and Qu Xiaoxiao live nearby on the same floor. Work and romance run through all of it: an office romance, a blind date arranged by a parent, and the idea of the shengnu (剩女, "leftover woman", a label for unmarried urban women past their mid-twenties) are the plot threads Sixth Tone names.

The show is a slice-of-life ensemble rather than a single-lead drama. Entertainment commentator Wu Zhili, quoted by Sixth Tone, said he had not seen a modern-women drama this enjoyable "in ages" and liked that it had no male lead. Men appear as colleagues and love interests, but the central relationships are among the women.

Cast and crew

• Liu Tao (刘涛) as Andy (安迪), a financial executive

• Jiang Xin (蒋欣) as Fan Shengmei (樊胜美), a senior human-resources manager at a foreign company

• Wang Ziwen (王子文) as Qu Xiaoxiao (曲筱绡), the daughter of a wealthy businessman

• Yang Zi (杨紫) as Qiu Yingying (邱莹莹), a young office worker from a small city

• Qiao Xin (乔欣) as Guan Juer (关雎尔), an intern from an academic family

The first season was directed by Kong Sheng (孔笙) and Jian Chuanhe (简川訸). Yuan Zidan (袁子弹) wrote the screenplay, adapting the novel of the same title by A Nai (阿耐). The producer is Daylight Entertainment (正午阳光, Zhengwu Yangguang), with Shandong Film & TV Production (山东影视制作) credited on the first season, and Hou Hongliang (侯鸿亮) of Daylight is credited in a producing role. The English title is the one used by TMDB and by Wikipedia.

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Class is the real subject

The premise only works because the five women sit at different points on the same ladder. Qu Xiaoxiao is a fu er dai (富二代, "rich second generation", the child of a wealthy family), a term one English-language reviewer uses to introduce her. Andy is a Wall Street-trained executive who has come back to China to look for her long-lost brother. The other three work for salaries and negotiate rent, family obligations and what a good marriage should look like.

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The drama treats those positions as the source of conflict, not as scenery. A 2017 commentary in Daily Economic News (每日经济新闻) sorts the five by how family origin shapes them: Qu Xiaoxiao's wealthy, supportive family gives her room to take risks, while Qiu Yingying's less-educated rural family and Guan Juer's controlling one limit what each of them imagines for herself.

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The depiction also drew criticism. Sixth Tone reported that some Weibo users objected to characters who seemed desperate to marry wealthy men, that a columnist wrote that the women lose sound judgement when love is involved, and that another commentary found the portrayal of successful working women superficial. A later piece in Guangming Daily (光明日报), republished by People's Political Consultative News (人民政协报), places the series as the start of a run of dramas about women of different classes who face marriage, family and career crises together, and warns that the formula has since grown repetitive.

Fan Shengmei and the family-of-origin argument

The character most often discussed is Fan Shengmei. She has risen to a senior role at a multinational company from a poor family, and she sends money home to relatives who favour her brother. Chinese Wikipedia's account of the series describes her family burden as a thread that continues beyond the first season.

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That storyline fed a wider conversation about yuan sheng jia ting (原生家庭, "family of origin"), the idea that the household you grew up in shapes your adult choices. A 2020 article on 36Kr (36氪) says the phrase "Fan Shengmei's mother" (樊胜美妈妈) became shorthand for parents who take from a working daughter to support a sibling, and that the character changed the usual image of the self-sacrificing mother. The same article argues that reaching for this figure too often has turned the discussion into a drama shortcut.

From novel to Daylight production

Ode to Joy is adapted from a novel by A Nai, first published in book form around 2011 and 2012 according to Chinese Wikipedia, which describes it as running about 1.5 million characters across three parts. The novel is set in a fictional city; the series moved it to Shanghai. Chinese Wikipedia also reports that the screenwriter drew on her own years as an office worker in a Shanghai advertising agency, and that the series is gentler in tone than the book.

Daylight Entertainment produced both seasons with the original cast.

Later seasons and the change of cast

Season 2 followed on Dragon TV and Zhejiang TV, from May 11 to June 10, 2017, with 55 episodes and the same five leads. Season 3 aired on Dragon TV from August 11 to August 31, 2022, with 33 episodes and a new story. Season 4 (37 episodes) and Season 5 (34 episodes) followed on CCTV-8 in 2023 and 2024.

From Season 3 the five lead roles were recast with Jiang Shuying (江疏影), Yang Caiyu (杨采钰), Zhang Jianing (张佳宁), Zhang Huiwen (张慧雯) and Li Haofei (李浩菲). The first two seasons' leads did not appear in them. Some Chinese commentators wrote that replacing both actors and characters weakened the bond with viewers; we found no official statement of the reason for the change.

The template it set

The format that Ode to Joy popularised is a city, a building, and women from different classes whose lives overlap. The Guangming Daily piece names Nothing But Thirty (三十而已, San Shi Er Yi, 2020) as the next big example and suggests it could serve as a model for later ensemble dramas about women. One of its three leads, Jiang Shuying, is also among the recast leads of Ode to Joy Season 3. The same article cautions that such stories can slide into formula and audience fatigue.

What overseas viewers are saying

English-language reception here comes from published reviews. A Silver Petticoat Review write-up describes the five women, from Andy's guardedness to Fan Shengmei's hidden vulnerability, and notes how the show contrasts Qu Xiaoxiao's sheltered upbringing with the working lives of the others. A review aimed at Chinese learners recommends the show for its everyday speech and uses fu er dai and its counterpart, qiong er dai (穷二代, "poor second generation"), as vocabulary. A 2017 conference paper by Hong Kong scholars Leung and Chow treats the first season as part of the public discussion about single urban women in China. These are individual reviewers and researchers, not a poll.

Where to watch

In China the first season aired on Dragon TV and Zhejiang TV and streamed online; iQIYI was one of five platforms, according to Sixth Tone. Overseas, TMDB lists Rakuten Viki as a streaming provider for the series, and one learner's review notes that it has been on YouTube with optional English subtitles. Availability varies by region and by season, so check Viki and YouTube in your country first.