Wuxia is fiction about martial artists who live by a code of honour. Wu means martial and xia a knight-errant, so the literal reading is 'martial heroes'. It is set in a historical world with no gods and no magic, in the jianghu, a society of sects and wanderers that sits outside the official order. The genre was shaped by Hong Kong and Taiwan novelists such as Jin Yong and Gu Long and then moved into film and television. Word of Honor and the 2017 Legend of the Condor Heroes are drama examples.
Dramas
A Prophet
我不是大师
2026 · 24 episodes · iQIYI, Tencent Video
6 articles
Blood River
暗河传
2025 · 38 episodes · Youku
1 article
Snowy Night Timeless Love
七夜雪
2024 · 32 episodes · iQIYI
1 article
Mysterious Lotus Casebook
莲花楼
2023 · 40 episodes · CCTV, iQIYI
1 article
The Legend of Anle
安乐传
2023 · 39 episodes · Youku
1 article
Word of Honor
山河令
2021 · 36 episodes · Youku
2 articles
The Untamed
陈情令
2019 · 50 episodes · Tencent Video
7 articles
The Legend of the Condor Heroes
射雕英雄传
2017 · 52 episodes
2 articles
Chinese Paladin
仙剑奇侠传
2005 · 34 episodes
1 article
Sword Dynasty
剑王朝
2 articles
Where it comes up
A Prophet: The Republican-Era Con Drama Where Every Trick Has a Trick Behind It
A guide to the 24-episode Republican-era swindler drama A Prophet, which ended its run in October: a hero who poses as a master to take revenge on a fraud ring, the folk-superstition cons at its core, Li Xian and Li Yitong's second pairing, its rename, and the overseas viewers who found it by word of mouth.
Word of Honor: A Wuxia Road Story About a Man Who Left His Organization With Three Years to Live
A guide to the 2021 Youku wuxia series Word of Honor: a secret-organization chief who leaves at a deadly price, the Ghost Valley lord he meets on the road, and how a Priest novel's jianghu became the first two-male-lead drama of 2021.
Sword Dynasty: The Sword-Realm Revenge Drama That First Paired Li Xian and Li Yitong
A guide to the 2019 iQIYI wuxia series Sword Dynasty: a chronically ill wine-shop youth who sets himself against a royal house, a world organised around the sword and levels of cultivation, Li Xian and Li Yitong's first pairing, and a divided reception.
Tientsin Mystic: Li Xian's 2017 River-Salvage Mystery in Republican-Era Tianjin
A guide to the 2017 iQIYI mystery Tientsin Mystic: a river-police captain in 1920s Tianjin, Tianxia Bachang's novel, the series that lifted Li Xian, how it compares with A Prophet, and what happened to the second season.
The Legend of the Condor Heroes (2017): An Easy First Door into Jin Yong's Wuxia
The 2017 series of Jin Yong's much-adapted novel: a slow, honest boy and a quick-witted girl in a country at war, how this version compares with the classics, and why it reads differently at home and abroad.
