Ashes of Love: the grape sprite, the loveless elixir, and 15 billion views

2018 · Jiangsu TV · Yang Zi (杨紫), Deng Lun (邓伦)

Why this one

Ashes of Love (香蜜沉沉烬如霜) is a good example of how quickly a 2018 xianxia (仙侠, "immortal-hero fantasy") hit could scale. It began airing on Jiangsu TV on August 2, 2018, and reportedly passed 100 million online views within 15 minutes of its premiere. By January 2019 the total was reported at 15 billion. It carries a 7.7 on Douban and won the Most Popular Foreign Drama award at the Seoul International Drama Awards, which is one of the earlier signs of the genre's reach beyond the mainland.

The setup

Jin Mi (锦觅) is a carefree grape sprite (葡萄精) who lives a happy, uncomplicated life. She is also, secretly, the daughter of the Flower Deity and the Water Deity. Because of her parentage, she has been given an elixir that prevents her from falling in love, a protective measure that the story treats as both a mercy and a trap.

She meets Xu Feng (旭凤), a Fire Immortal, when she saves him during his transformation, and their romance starts to develop. It runs into obstacles when the truth about her parentage comes out, and the show turns into a story about brothers and heaven: Xu Feng's brother Run Yu (润玉) is also in the picture, and the conflict grows into a tragedy involving court conspiracies.

Note — The loveless elixir: The premise that a character cannot fall in love until a mechanism is removed is a useful shortcut for a genre that needs a reason for its leads not to be together from the first episode. Different xianxia shows use different mechanisms: memory loss, hidden identity, master-disciple rules, and here a chemical one. Seeing them side by side is a quick way to understand what the genre is doing when it seems to be repeating itself. What it is doing is choosing an obstacle it can then spend sixty episodes removing.

Cast and crew worth knowing

• Yang Zi (杨紫) as Jin Mi.

• Deng Lun (邓伦) as Xu Feng.

• Luo Yunxi (罗云熙) as Run Yu, whose later lead role in Till the End of the Moon is covered on this site.

• Wang Yifei (王一菲) as Sui He (穗禾), Chen Yuqi (陈钰琪) as Liu Ying (鰎英), and Zou Tingwei (邹廷威) as Qi Yuan (奇鸢) / Mu Ci (暮辞).

• Directed by Zhu Ruibin (朱锐斌), from the 2009 novel by Dian Xian (电线).

• 63 episodes on television (60 on the DVD release), airing August 2 – September 4, 2018, after filming from June to October 2017.

Where to watch

• Viki, with English subtitles

• iQIYI, with English subtitles

Its echo outside China

Several of its leads went on to major roles elsewhere in the genre: Yang Zi leads Immortal Samsara and Luo Yunxi leads Till the End of the Moon, both covered on this site. That makes Ashes of Love useful as a reference point. If you want to see how the genre's leads got to where they are, this is one of the places where several of them appear in the same frame.