# New Life Begins (卿卿日常)
**New Life Begins** (卿卿日常) is a 2022 Chinese costume light-comedy romance television series directed by Zhao Qichen (赵启辰) and starring [Bai Jingting](https://www.edgepedia.org/bai-jingting) (白敬亭) and [Tian Xiwei](https://www.edgepedia.org/tian-xiwei) (田曦薇), adapted from the web novel *Qing Chuan Ri Chang* (清穿日常) by Duo Mu Mu Duo (多木木多). It ran for 40 episodes on iQiyi from November 10 to December 9, 2022, and became the fastest series in the platform's history to reach a popularity index of 10,000, doing so within 144 hours of release.[1](https://wiki.d-addicts.com/New_Life_Begins) • [2](https://www.iq.com/play/%E5%8D%BF%E5%8D%BF%E6%97%A5%E5%B8%B8-13t715owa6o?lang=zh_cn) • [3](https://www.yicai.com/news/101603362.html) • [4](https://www.weibo.com/u/7720732011)
| Key fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Native and English titles | 卿卿日常 / New Life Begins[1](https://wiki.d-addicts.com/New_Life_Begins) |
| Source material | Web novel *Qing Chuan Ri Chang* (清穿日常) by Duo Mu Mu Duo[3](https://www.yicai.com/news/101603362.html) |
| Broadcast | 40 episodes, iQiyi, November 10 to December 9, 2022[1](https://wiki.d-addicts.com/New_Life_Begins) |
| Leads | Bai Jingting as Yin Zheng, Sixth Young Master of Xinchuan; Tian Xiwei as Li Wei[2](https://www.iq.com/play/%E5%8D%BF%E5%8D%BF%E6%97%A5%E5%B8%B8-13t715owa6o?lang=zh_cn) |
| Heat record | iQiyi popularity index broke 10,000 within 144 hours, the fastest in platform history, breaking the 2021 record of *My Heroic Husband*; peak value 10,477[4](https://www.weibo.com/u/7720732011) • [5](https://ir-1253177085.cos.ap-hongkong.myqcloud.com/investment/20230324/641d1efb48d70.pdf) |
| Douban rating | 7.2 out of 10, from more than 470,000 users[6](https://ent.sina.cn/2026-10-19/detail-inivumai6120637.d.html?oid=CXOBE+Review+global+interest.gyu&vt=4) |
| Setting | Fictional world of Nine Rivers (九川), where each region sends women annually to marry the young masters of the ruling Xinchuan[3](https://www.yicai.com/news/101603362.html) |
| International release | Streamed in North America, Europe, Australia, India, Singapore, and Malaysia from November 2022, later in Vietnam, Thailand, South Korea, Cambodia, and Japan[7](https://www.recordchina.co.jp/b904790-s6-c70-d0189.html) |
## Spoilers
### Premise and setting
The story takes place in a fictional world divided into Nine Rivers (九川). After years of war, Xinchuan (新川) prevailed and established a hundred-year peace alliance, under which the other regions must each year select women of marriageable age to wed Xinchuan's young masters.[3](https://www.yicai.com/news/101603362.html) The regions differ in customs and in the status of women: Li Wei's home region of Jichuan (霁川) practices monogamy, Xinchuan practices polygamy with strict distinctions between legitimate and concubine-born children and male precedence over female, while in Danchuan (丹川) women head the household and husbands marry in.[3](https://www.yicai.com/news/101603362.html)
Li Wei, who hopes to fail the selection and return home to a comfortable life, is instead matched with Yin Zheng (尹峥), the low-profile Sixth Young Master of Xinchuan, and the two begin a "marriage before love" relationship.[3](https://www.yicai.com/news/101603362.html) • [2](https://www.iq.com/play/%E5%8D%BF%E5%8D%BF%E6%97%A5%E5%B8%B8-13t715owa6o?lang=zh_cn) Yin Zheng, a son of a concubine who keeps a low profile to avoid his brothers' bullying, proposes the marriage himself, both to spare his father a difficult decision and to avoid drawing attention.[8](https://www.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_20881769) Early on, Li Wei believes her husband is dying and plans how to live as a well-provided widow back home; the leads declare their feelings within about ten episodes, and the series follows their daily life, meals, and the extended family of young masters and their wives.[8](https://www.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_20881769) • [2](https://www.iq.com/play/%E5%8D%BF%E5%8D%BF%E6%97%A5%E5%B8%B8-13t715owa6o?lang=zh_cn)
## From novel to screen
The source novel is a "Qing time-travel" (清穿) story, a popular web-fiction genre in which a modern person returns to the [Qing dynasty](https://www.edgepedia.org/qing-dynasty): its heroine crosses over to the Qing court, falls in love with a prince, and rises from favored consort to empress.[3](https://www.yicai.com/news/101603362.html) The novel's own description is "Li Wei's happy life in the Qing dynasty," and its author stated the intent as "living well at any time."[9](https://www.jiemian.com/article/8537428.html) In the novel, Li Wei knows her husband is the future [Yongzheng Emperor](https://www.edgepedia.org/yongzheng-emperor), accommodates him from the start, wins the household struggles against a power-hungry principal wife, and bears five sons and a daughter.[9](https://www.jiemian.com/article/8537428.html) Some readers read the novel as a chilling portrait of a modern woman whose contemporary consciousness is worn away as she adapts to palace life.[3](https://www.yicai.com/news/101603362.html)
The adaptation made large changes to these foundations. It removed the time-travel premise, the Qing court setting, and the succession and harem-conflict plots, blurred the historical period, and replaced them with the invented Nine Rivers world, keeping the character framework and the focus on everyday life.[3](https://www.yicai.com/news/101603362.html) • [10](https://www.ctdsb.net/c1742_202212/1600183.html) • [11](https://dzb.whb.cn/imgPath/2022-11-20/51120.pdf) The rights to the novel had been purchased years before the drama was made.[10](https://www.ctdsb.net/c1742_202212/1600183.html) The production centered the series on the "daily" (日常) of its title, building the plot around food, household management, and family banter rather than palace scheming.[12](https://ep.ycwb.com/epaper/ycwb/html/2023-01/08/content_8_547759.htm)
## Cast and production
Bai Jingting plays Yin Zheng and Tian Xiwei plays Li Wei; the supporting cast includes Chen Xiaoyun (陳小紜) as Hao Jia, Liu Guanlin (劉冠麟) as Yin An, Liu Lingzi (劉令姿) as [Yuan Ying](https://www.edgepedia.org/yuan-ying), Zhang Xiaochen (張曉晨) as Yin Song, Chang Long (昌隆) as Yin Qi, Liu Meihan (劉美含) as Song Wu, and Fan Shuaiqi (范帥琦) as Shangguan Jing.[13](https://www.bs-tvtokyo.co.jp/kyoukyou/cast/) The screenwriting team included Ji Sangrou (紀桑柔) and Ding Lu (丁璐), both credited on *[My Heroic Husband](https://www.edgepedia.org/my-heroic-husband)*, and the series was made by iQiyi with New Classics Media.[13](https://www.bs-tvtokyo.co.jp/kyoukyou/cast/) • [1](https://wiki.d-addicts.com/New_Life_Begins) It came from the same production team as the 2021 costume comedy *My Heroic Husband*, with Liu Wenyang (刘闻洋) as chief producer.[3](https://www.yicai.com/news/101603362.html) • [14](https://ep.ycwb.com/epaper/ycwb/resfile/2022-12-19/A07/ycwb20221219A07.pdf)
The art direction took [Song dynasty](https://www.edgepedia.org/song-dynasty) aesthetics as its design basis, and the dishes shown on screen were initially modeled mainly on Song-style cuisine; the theme song "Qinghui" (清晖) was sung by Liu Yuning.[15](https://www.maigoo.com/citiao/957203.html) The cast was announced in September 2022, and the premiere date was set on November 8, two days before launch.[15](https://www.maigoo.com/citiao/957203.html)
## Viewership and reception
The series was iQiyi's fastest drama to break the 10,000 popularity-index mark, doing so within 144 hours of launch and peaking at 10,477, with 16 days above 10,000 and more than 3,755 trending topics across Chinese social platforms.[4](https://www.weibo.com/u/7720732011) On November 20, 2022, it held first place on the Cloud Data (云合) continuous-drama heat ranking with a 36.1% share of effective plays, more than 20 percentage points ahead of the second-place series.[3](https://www.yicai.com/news/101603362.html) According to the data platforms Enlightent, Kuyun, Maoyan, and Dengta, it ranked first in popularity index and video views for the year, and it was Maoyan's 2022 comedy champion.[5](https://ir-1253177085.cos.ap-hongkong.myqcloud.com/investment/20230324/641d1efb48d70.pdf) • [4](https://www.weibo.com/u/7720732011) It was also named one of Weibo's ten most popular dramas of 2022.[16](https://www.bs-tvtokyo.co.jp/kyoukyou/)
Viewers widely adopted the label "electronic pickled vegetable" (电子榨菜), meaning a show pleasant to watch alongside a meal, and critics noted its brisk pacing, playful score, and polished costumes and cinematography.[3](https://www.yicai.com/news/101603362.html) On Douban it holds 7.2 out of 10 from over 470,000 raters; some viewers found it light and easy to watch, while others judged the plot simple and the later episodes slower, which kept the score below 8.[6](https://ent.sina.cn/2026-10-19/detail-inivumai6120637.d.html?oid=CXOBE+Review+global+interest.gyu&vt=4) A newspaper commentary concluded that for all its popularity it remained, in the end, "electronic pickled vegetable."[12](https://ep.ycwb.com/epaper/ycwb/html/2023-01/08/content_8_547759.htm)
## Themes and critical debate
The series is frequently discussed as part of a 2022 wave, alongside *A Dream of Splendor* (梦华录), that replaced harem-style "female competition" (雌竞) plots with women helping one another: wives and concubines in the same household become friends and allies rather than rivals, and the women of the Nine Rivers pool money for a flood-stricken friend and help each other establish independent lives.[17](https://www.jiemian.com/article/8638043.html) • [12](https://ep.ycwb.com/epaper/ycwb/html/2023-01/08/content_8_547759.htm) Lines in which Li Wei rejects rescue-by-hero plots and calls arranged marriage a forced transaction that ignores the other person's will were read as commentary on contemporary gender debates.[17](https://www.jiemian.com/article/8638043.html) • [3](https://www.yicai.com/news/101603362.html)
The same combination drew criticism. Commentators asked whether the independence preached by characters inside a polygamous, patriarchal setting is genuine, and argued that the show's feminism stays at the level of slogans while crises are still resolved by male power; at its finale, some critics called the overly dreamlike ending "electronic anesthesia."[3](https://www.yicai.com/news/101603362.html) • [17](https://www.jiemian.com/article/8638043.html) A commentary carried on the People's Weekly website described its treatment of feminist topics as surface-level, designed to flatter the audience rather than examine women's circumstances.[18](https://www.peopleweekly.cn/html/2022/yishu_1216/151798.html) Readers of the original novel objected that the adaptation had softened the source's tragic core, in which a woman's only route to survival in the old society was self-anaesthetizing acceptance of her situation.[8](https://www.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_20881769) Another commentary argued that the drama is thoroughly "anti-female-competition" in its household relationships, while questioning whether depicting mutual aid alone addresses the roots of female rivalry.[19](https://www.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_20892632?commTag=true) In this debate, Xu Man (许曼), an associate professor of history at [Tufts University](https://www.edgepedia.org/tufts-university), cautioned against judging centuries-old gender norms solely from a 21st-century standpoint, since such readings omit their historical context.[9](https://www.jiemian.com/article/8537428.html) Academic commentary has made similar points: a 2023 thesis notes scholars who credit the series' "anti-female-competition" narrative with breaking the palace-intrigue mold while criticizing its idealized relationships for glossing over structural oppression.[20](https://repository.unhas.ac.id/51121/2/F091211001-1-2%28FILEminimizer%29.pdf)
## International release
From November 2022 the series streamed on platforms in North America, Europe, Australia, India, Singapore, and Malaysia, with releases planned for Vietnam, Thailand, South Korea, Cambodia, and Japan.[7](https://www.recordchina.co.jp/b904790-s6-c70-d0189.html) It reached Thailand's TrueID from November 24, 2022, and South Korea's CHANNEL CHINA platform from January 16, 2023.[21](https://baike.sogou.com/v208691803.htm) It is listed on Netflix in multiple territories[22](https://www.netflix.com/tw/title/81678166) and was distributed in Singapore by Viu in 2022.[23](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt23473086/companycredits/) It began Japanese television broadcast on BS TV Tokyo on January 20, 2025, under the title 卿卿日常～宮廷を彩る幸せレシピ～.[16](https://www.bs-tvtokyo.co.jp/kyoukyou/) iQiyi's 2022 annual results announcement cited the series as a headline drama of the second half of the year.[5](https://ir-1253177085.cos.ap-hongkong.myqcloud.com/investment/20230324/641d1efb48d70.pdf)
## References
1. [New Life Begins, DramaWiki](https://wiki.d-addicts.com/New_Life_Begins)
2. [卿卿日常, iQIYI International](https://www.iq.com/play/%E5%8D%BF%E5%8D%BF%E6%97%A5%E5%B8%B8-13t715owa6o?lang=zh_cn)
3. [当女性觉醒遭遇古装甜宠，《卿卿日常》的古今价值观穿越, 第一财经 (Yicai), 2022-11-23](https://www.yicai.com/news/101603362.html)
4. [卿卿日常官微 (official Weibo), finale results post](https://www.weibo.com/u/7720732011)
5. [iQIYI investment release, 2023-03-24](https://ir-1253177085.cos.ap-hongkong.myqcloud.com/investment/20230324/641d1efb48d70.pdf)
6. [田曦薇主演的电视剧《卿卿日常》的豆瓣评分是多少？, 新浪娱乐 (Sina Entertainment)](https://ent.sina.cn/2026-10-19/detail-inivumai6120637.d.html?oid=CXOBE+Review+global+interest.gyu&vt=4)
7. [中国ドラマ「卿卿日常～若様と恋する日々～」が世界各国で配信, Record China / 人民網日本語版, 2022-11-21](https://www.recordchina.co.jp/b904790-s6-c70-d0189.html)
8. [俗透了，甜哭了，她为何如此让人上头？, 澎湃新闻·湃客, 2022-11-25](https://www.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_20881769)
9. [用甜宠包裹压迫，以虚幻强拗友谊：《卿卿日常》为何令人尴尬？, 界面新闻 (Jiemian), 2022-12-13](https://www.jiemian.com/article/8537428.html)
10. [从《赘婿》到《卿卿日常》，制片人揭秘"冒险之旅", 极目新闻](https://www.ctdsb.net/c1742_202212/1600183.html)
11. [古装剧《卿卿日常》报道, 文汇报, 2022-11-20](https://dzb.whb.cn/imgPath/2022-11-20/51120.pdf)
12. [终究只是"电子榨菜", 羊城晚报, 2023-01-08](https://ep.ycwb.com/epaper/ycwb/html/2023-01/08/content_8_547759.htm)
13. [キャスト｜中国ドラマ☆卿卿日常, BSテレ東](https://www.bs-tvtokyo.co.jp/kyoukyou/cast/)
14. [总制片人刘闻洋：它是有治愈力的"电子榨菜", 羊城晚报, 2022-12-19](https://ep.ycwb.com/epaper/ycwb/resfile/2022-12-19/A07/ycwb20221219A07.pdf)
15. [《卿卿日常》电视剧简介, 买购网](https://www.maigoo.com/citiao/957203.html)
16. [中国ドラマ☆卿卿日常～宮廷を彩る幸せレシピ～, BSテレ東](https://www.bs-tvtokyo.co.jp/kyoukyou/)
17. [从《梦华录》到《卿卿日常》，古偶反雌竞成功了吗？, 界面新闻 JMedia](https://www.jiemian.com/article/8638043.html)
18. [女性题材剧：观众需要被尊重而不是被讨好, 人民周刊网, 2022-12-16](https://www.peopleweekly.cn/html/2022/yishu_1216/151798.html)
19. [《卿卿日常》出圈："反雌竞"取代"雌竞"就是女性的胜利吗, 澎湃新闻·思想市场](https://www.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_20892632?commTag=true)
20. [Thesis on female characters and marriage culture in 《卿卿日常》, Universitas Hasanuddin repository](https://repository.unhas.ac.id/51121/2/F091211001-1-2%28FILEminimizer%29.pdf)
21. [卿卿日常, 搜狗百科](https://baike.sogou.com/v208691803.htm)
22. [卿卿日常, Netflix](https://www.netflix.com/tw/title/81678166)
23. [New Life Begins, company credits, IMDb](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt23473086/companycredits/)
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*Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Series and fictional screen worlds › International serial drama and telenovelas › East Asian drama series › East Asian web and streaming serials › Titles My to So*
*Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 21, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026*
*Copyright 2026 EdgeChat AI, a subsidiary of Biostate AI.*
License: Edgepedia Community License 1.0, https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license