General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20266 min read

HAHAHAHAHA (哈哈哈哈哈)

HAHAHAHAHA (哈哈哈哈哈; full title 哈哈哈哈哈—很高兴遇到你, "Glad to Meet You") is a Chinese road-trip outdoor reality show in which a group of celebrity friends travels across China, earning their travel money by working odd jobs along the way. It premiered on November 6, 2020, as the first variety show jointly invested in, co-produced, and co-exclusively streamed by iQIYI and Tencent Video, and it has run for six seasons through 2026.¹^•² The cast is known as the "Five Ha" travel group (五哈团), a name taken from the show's five-character title.³

Key fact	Detail
Original title	哈哈哈哈哈—很高兴遇到你; aliases 五哈 and 5哈¹
First aired	November 6, 2020, on iQIYI and Tencent Video, with next-day broadcast on Dragon TV (东方卫视)¹^•²
Format	Road-trip outdoor reality show; the cast must earn travel fees by working, the program's only fixed rule⁴
Season 1 journey	From Shanghai to Tibet, through more than 20 towns and over 6,000 km, in 12 episodes ending January 29, 2021²^•⁵
Core cast	Deng Chao, Chen He, and Lu Han from season 1; later Fan Zhiyi, Wang Mian, Peng Yuchang, Guo Jingfei, and Gem (宝石老舅)²^•³
Viewership	Season 4 passed 1 billion online views in 2024; season 5 gained over 1 billion full-episode views⁶^•⁷
Seasons	Six seasons, 2020 to 2026, airing weekly on Saturdays and Sundays at 12:00 in recent seasons¹^•⁸

Spoilers

Seasons and cast

Season 1 (2020–2021). Titled 很高兴遇到你, it ran for 12 episodes from November 6, 2020 to January 29, 2021, with Deng Chao, Chen He, and Lu Han as fixed members and Wang Mian boarding as the travel agency's guide.²^•³ During its run the show took 1,019 platform hot-search placements and topped the Guduo variety heat ranking for 27 days, making it the best-performing outdoor reality show of 2020 by that measure.¹⁴

Season 2 (2021–2022). The resident cast expanded from three to five, adding actors Peng Yuchang and Guo Jingfei to Lu Han, Deng Chao, and Chen He.¹⁵

Season 3 (2023) and season 4 (2024). Former soccer player and coach Fan Zhiyi and the rapper Gem (宝石老舅) joined the group in season 3.³ Season 4, which premiered in March 2024 on Tencent Video and iQiyi, took the show abroad for the first time, with Laos as its first stop; according to the data service Enlightent, the season surpassed one billion online views in 2024, ranking first among variety shows on Chinese streaming platforms.⁶^•¹⁶

Season 5 (2025). Lu Han was absent for personal reasons and Gem left, leaving Deng Chao, Chen He, Fan Zhiyi, and Wang Mian as the core group.³ The season premiered on April 12, 2025, airing Saturdays and Sundays at 12:00, and topped one weekly variety index with a score of 93.66, ahead of Ride the Wind 2025 and The Infinite Superb Class Season 3.⁸ It gained over 1 billion full-episode views, placing it among the most-watched variety shows on digital platforms.⁷ Critics noted both praise, for episodes such as a Xinjiang wedding segment and the guest appearance of actor Li Naiwen, and complaints about too many guests, dull games, and heavy advertising.¹⁷^•⁸

Season 6 (2026). The full cast reunited, with Lu Han returning alongside Deng Chao, Chen He, Fan Zhiyi, and Wang Mian.¹⁸ The season premiered on Tencent Video and iQiyi on April 4, 2026, with weekly updates, and filmed in locations including the tropical rainforest of the Xishuangbanna Dai autonomous prefecture in Yunnan, where cast members took part in Dai and Zhuang cultural activities such as the peacock dance and folk singing.⁷^•¹⁹

Format

The show is a "road-movie style" open reality show built around continuous travel rather than fixed sets. In the first season, Deng Chao, Chen He, and Lu Han were recruited onto a boat on the Huangpu River without knowing filming had begun, given a small amount of starting money, and told they had to pay 200 yuan per day in group fees; everything on board, from a 5-yuan toilet visit to a 20-yuan beer and a 50-yuan night's use of a bedroom, carried a price.⁴^•⁹ The single large rule of the program is that the group must earn its travel fees, and the production team deliberately avoided fixed games and scripts, an approach the team described as "de-gamification" (去游戏化).⁴

Director Li Rui said the first season's 12 episodes used 12 different modes, with each episode's setup often still being revised the day before shooting.⁴ Chief producer Wang Zhengyu described the premise as a variety-show version of the comedy film Lost on Journey, and said the show's founding motive was simply that Deng Chao, Chen He, and Lu Han wanted to travel and play together.⁴^•¹⁰ The first season's route ran from Shanghai westward through more than 20 towns and over 6,000 kilometers to Tibet, with the cast working jobs such as moving ice, tying crabs, and selling seafood to pay their way.⁵^•¹¹

Production and platform partnership

HAHAHAHAHA was the first Chinese web variety in which iQIYI and Tencent Video cooperated across the whole process, jointly investing, co-producing, co-exclusively streaming, and alternating sponsorship duties, a "rotating sponsorship" arrangement in which iQIYI ran season 1 advertising sales and Tencent Video took over for season 2.¹²^•¹¹ The two platforms maintained separate official Weibo accounts and duplicated promotional materials, and beyond the joint streaming the show was also broadcast the day after each online release in the 22:00 slot on Dragon TV.¹²

Production companies include Zhejiang Blue Sky Media (蓝天下传媒), Orange Image (橙子映像), and Hexin Media (合心传媒), with Li Lin serving as director.²^•¹³

Reception

The show has been consistently strong in streaming rankings while its critical standing has shifted over its run. In the first half of 2026 it ranked first in cumulative effective plays among all web variety shows in Yunhe Data's half-year report.²⁰ On Douban, season 6 scored 7.5, close to the two preceding seasons, but the number of raters fell from about 22,000 for each of seasons 3 and 4 to fewer than 14,000 for season 6, a decline industry commentary attributed to rising audience thresholds for game-based humor, competition from newer celebrity travel shows, and a content bottleneck in the show's sixth year.²⁰ Season 5 held a Douban score of 5.1 from about 22,900 raters in one aggregated listing.²¹

Commentary has also framed the show as a template: it anchors the "travel plus games" branch of Chinese celebrity travel variety, alongside shows such as Natural High (现在就出发), and its mix of comedy regulars, traffic-drawing idols, and variety newcomers has been copied by later programs.²⁰ Recurring praise centers on the unscripted ease among cast members who are longtime friends; recurring criticism targets advertising density, repetitive games, and, in season 5, an overcrowded guest lineup.⁸^•²²

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Series and fictional screen worlds › Unscripted, reality, and web-native series › Celebrity, family, lifestyle, and court reality series › Lifestyle, dating, and docusoaps › Celebrity and family docusoaps

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 21, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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