The Tale of Rose
玫瑰的故事
A 38-episode urban drama on CCTV and Tencent Video, adapted from Yi Shu's novel, following Huang Yimei across more than twenty years of career, love and family in Beijing.
Save- Premiere
- Jun 8, 2024
- Episodes
- 38
- Where to watch
- CCTV, Tencent Video
- Also known as
- 玫瑰故事 · MeiGuiDeGuShi · 매괴적고사: 장미의 이야기 · Full Bloom · Lost Romance · Câu Chuyện Của Hoa Hồng
About the drama
The Tale of Rose (玫瑰的故事, Meigui de Gushi) is a long look at one woman's life rather than a single love story. Huang Yimei (黄亦玫, played by Liu Yifei, 刘亦菲) is introduced as a clever, self-assured daughter of a scholarly family, and the series follows her through work, several relationships and the years in between, over more than two decades.
That shape is the draw. It is closer to a portrait than a plot, and what keeps it interesting is how openly the heroine lives by her own rules, which is also what viewers argued about most. Beijing Daily's website reported that some saw her as true to herself, while others found her way of living hard for ordinary people to identify with.
It aired on CCTV-8 and Tencent Video from June 8, 2024, in 38 episodes.
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The series opens in 2001, the year Beijing won its bid for the 2008 Olympics. Huang Yimei is a young woman from an academic family who starts her working life and falls in love with a colleague, Zhuang Guodong (庄国栋, Peng Guanying, 彭冠英). Over the years that follow, other men enter her life, among them the artist Fu Jiaming (傅家明, Huo Jianhua, 霍建华) and Fang Xiewen (方协文, Lin Gengxin, 林更新). The story keeps its focus on her career and her family, including her elder brother Huang Zhenhua (黄振华, Tong Dawei, 佟大为).
Because it covers so many years, Liu Yifei plays the heroine from her student years onward. Beijing Daily noted that the question of a 36-year-old actress playing a 22-year-old student trended on Weibo when the series began.
The source is the novel of the same name by the Hong Kong writer Yi Shu (亦舒), first published in 1981, according to Hangzhou's Urban Express. In the book the heroine is nicknamed Huang Meigui (黄玫瑰, "yellow rose"), and the story is told through the eyes of four men and moves between Hong Kong and the United States. The series, directed by Wang Jun (汪俊), is set in Beijing, and Beijing Daily described the adaptation as sweeping.
Early reception was strong in platform terms and divided in critical ones. The producers' official Weibo account said the series' heat value on Tencent Video passed 31,000, a record for an urban drama on the platform. When Douban opened scoring on June 21, 2024, it started at 7.1 from close to 100,000 ratings, according to National Business Daily. The same report says comments were mixed: some viewers praised Liu Yifei's looks and performance, while others found the story dated and empty.
Director Wang Jun said in an interview that there will be no sequel, National Business Daily reported.
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