All The Way To The Sun
一路朝阳
A 36-episode urban drama on CCTV and Youku following two Beijing roommates from 2007 to 2019 through careers in law and real estate, romance, marriage and a decade-long friendship.
Save- Premiere
- Aug 14, 2023
- Episodes
- 36
- Where to watch
- CCTV, Youku
- Also known as
- Yi Lu Chao Yang · All the Way to the Sun · Road to the Sunrise · All The Way To Sun
About the drama
All the Way to the Sun (一路朝阳, Yi Lu Chao Yang, "all the way toward the morning sun") is a Beijing drama about getting started in a big city, and then keeping going. It follows two university friends who stay in the capital after graduating and build their lives over twelve years, from 2007 to 2019. The central relationship is not the romance but the friendship between the two women, and that is the thread critics singled out as the part of the show that holds up best.
It ran on CCTV and Youku at the same time, from August 2023 to its finale on September 1. The screenwriter interviewed more than 100 women between 20 and 30 for the script, China Daily reported. A Guangming Daily review praised the realistic texture: cramped rentals, crowded commutes, the question of whether to buy or keep renting.
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Li Mujia (李慕嘉, played by Li Landi 李兰迪) graduates and joins one of Beijing's best-known law firms as an administrative assistant. Through her own hard work she becomes a lawyer who can handle cases alone. She meets Li Guang (黎光, played by Wang Yang 王阳), a leading figure in the property market whose relationship with her goes through several turns.
Her closest friend, Tian Rong (田蓉, played by Wang Ju 王菊), fails to find a job after graduating and stumbles into work as a real estate agent. She marries a Beijing local, Li Wanbing (李万兵, played by Xu Shaoying 徐绍瑛), in haste, and after the wedding both her career and her marriage come under serious strain.
The two women meet setback after setback, and each looks for her own direction. Over twelve years, what they hope for from life changes shape.
The series is adapted from the novel Da Cheng Xiao Shi (大城小室, "big city, small room"). According to chief producer Yan Jin (言瑾), the adaptation took more than four years, and screenwriter Lan Xiaoxi (蓝小汐) rebuilt the story around a ten-year friendship between two women. It was directed by Cao Kai (曹凯) and produced by Huace Media's Beijing company with the studio Youxi.
China Daily reported at the finale that the show peaked at 2.0503% in CSM real-time ratings, first nationally in its slot, and reached a peak Youku heat value of 9,256. The Douban score was 7.7 then. Dumou (毒眸), reprinted on Jiemian on September 8, 2023, reported that it had fallen from 7.7 at launch to 6.3, and argued that the romance weakened the stronger workplace and friendship material.
At a Beijing seminar on September 7, 2023, China Daily reported, the show's related topics had drawn more than 2.7 billion reads across 860 trending topics, and critics called it realist yet idealistic.
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