# Night Wanderer (夜旅人)
**Night Wanderer** (夜旅人, literally "Night Traveler") is a Chinese time-travel romance novel by Zhao Xizhi (赵熙之) and the 24-episode fantasy romance drama adapted from it, in which a Republican-era lawyer living in 1937 Shanghai and a modern forensic doctor meet at night in the same apartment, which connects their two eras.[1](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35959175) • [2](https://wiki.d-addicts.com/Night_Wanderer)
| Key fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Original novel | *Ye Lv Ren* (夜旅人) by Zhao Xizhi; a Republican-era time-travel romance-mystery[2](https://wiki.d-addicts.com/Night_Wanderer) |
| Premise | Lawyer Sheng Qingrang travels nightly from 1937 to the present, 10 p.m. to 6 a.m., through the apartment he shares across time with forensic doctor Zong Ying[1](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35959175) • [3](https://k.sina.cn/article_7879995946_1d5af322a06801rct2.html?from=ent) |
| Novel reception | Douban rating of 8.5 with nearly 5,000 reviews (another report gives 8.4); WeChat Reading recommendation value of 91.9% from over 6,000 reviewers[4](https://k.sina.cn/article_7879848925_1d5acf3dd06801rclo.html?from=ent) • [3](https://k.sina.cn/article_7879995946_1d5af322a06801rct2.html?from=ent) |
| Drama production | 24 episodes of 45 minutes; directed by Wan Liyang; filmed July 20 to November 13, 2021, in Hengdian; platform iQiyi[2](https://wiki.d-addicts.com/Night_Wanderer) • [5](https://bkso.baidu.com/item/%E5%A4%9C%E6%97%85%E4%BA%BA/22657226?fromModule=lemma_inlink) |
| Cast change | Original male lead Deng Lun was replaced by Fu Xinbo through AI face-swapping after Deng Lun's 2022 tax evasion issue; Ni Ni remained as Zong Ying[6](https://www.recordchina.co.jp/en/b992023-s36-c70-d0190.html) • [7](https://weibo.com/2/detail/5343826533419406) |
| Clearance | Distribution license (京)网剧审字（2026）第016号 issued September 16, 2026, after roughly five years of shelving[7](https://weibo.com/2/detail/5343826533419406) |
| Episode count change | The reworked version compressed the original 36 episodes to 24[8](https://m.sohu.com/a/1080109477_114941) |
## Spoilers
### Plot
#### The crossing
Shanghai, two eras at once. In 2021 (the novel places Zong Ying's side in 2015), Zong Ying ([Ni Ni](https://www.edgepedia.org/ni-ni)) works as a forensic medical examiner: cool, precise, recently burdened by her mother's death and an unresolved accident involving her uncle. She lives in apartment No. 699, an old building with creaking floors and a corridor lamp that flickers on at 10 p.m. and off at 6 a.m. One night the lamp burns, and standing in her hallway is Sheng Qingrang (Fu Xinbo), a courteous, impeccably dressed lawyer from 1937, insisting that No. 699 belongs to his family and that he has every right to be there.
Zong Ying assumes he is a con artist, or worse, a squatter with a period costume hobby. He offers proof, a Republic of China lawyer's certificate, and she dismisses it as an antique forgery. The dispute stays polite but stubborn, two professionals arguing over paperwork neither can fully produce. Then comes the moment that ends the argument for good.
**He vanishes in front of her.** Not out the door, not down the stairs: he simply ceases to be there as the clock runs out, leaving Zong Ying alone in her corridor with a certificate from 1937 in her hand and no explanation she can put in a report. For a woman whose entire career is built on evidence, the evidence is undeniable and impossible at once. From then on, the arrangement is tacit: he appears at night, they share the apartment across the hours, and in the morning he returns to his own Shanghai, where his family's factory is struggling and his relatives treat him with cold indifference even as he carries their affairs on his back.
The nightly cohabitation becomes the heart of the series. He brings the manners and formality of another century; she brings the blunt pragmatism of this one. They trade knowledge across the gap: he is startled by phones and modern medicine, and she learns what it means to live on a countdown, because his 1937 is marching toward the [Battle of Shanghai](https://www.edgepedia.org/battle-of-shanghai), the bombing and siege that will consume the city he knows. Each crossing is a small negotiation of trust. Each return is a small grief, since neither knows whether the lamp will light again the next night.
#### The war closes in
As the episodes go on, the wary roommates become lovers, though neither will name it for a long time. Zong Ying starts researching his era, tracing the fate of his family and factory in records from her side of time, which gives her a terrible advantage: she can look up how things end. Sheng Qingrang keeps trying to hold his world together, managing the factory, absorbing his family's contempt, and preparing for a war he can see coming while others around him refuse to. With the outbreak of the Battle of Songhu, his future is overshadowed by death, and staying together becomes an unattainable luxury: the lamp's schedule and history's schedule are no longer compatible.
The novel's most quoted line gives the series its thesis: "war, however long and cruel, cannot ultimately destroy all conviction and effort." The final episodes answer whether the two of them get an ending the lamp allows, or only the memory of one, with Zong Ying left to decide whether a man who exists eighty-four years away is someone you can love in the hours you are given.
### Characters
**Zong Ying** (Ni Ni) is a forensic examiner with a cold exterior and a warm interior, a woman of autopsies and hard evidence who is handed the one case no autopsy can resolve. Her grief over her mother and the mystery around her uncle make her guarded, and Sheng Qingrang's arrival forces her to argue for the impossible with the same rigor she applies to everything else.
**Sheng Qingrang** (Fu Xinbo) is a Republican-era lawyer, elegant, amiable, and quietly lonely, carrying a family business and a family's disdain through the last calm months of 1937 Shanghai. He is the gentleman out of time in both directions: too formal for 2021, too decent for 1937.
Supporting roles include Zong Ying's family and colleagues on the modern side, and Sheng Qingrang's relatives and factory circle on the historical side, with Wang Yuwen and Gao Ye among the credited cast.
### Interpretations and controversies
The series' most famous controversy happened off screen. It was filmed in 2021 with [Deng Lun](https://www.edgepedia.org/deng-lun) as Sheng Qingrang, but after Deng Lun's tax problems the drama was never scheduled. In July 2025 it briefly opened reservations on iQIYI and passed 880,000 reservations before the entry vanished a day later, amid reports that Deng Lun's scenes would be AI face-swapped and reshot with Fu Xinbo against a green screen. The reservation page had already dropped Deng Lun's name, keeping only Ni Ni, Wang Yuwen, and Gao Ye. Commentators noted that under China's Copyright Law producers hold the work's copyright while actors keep rights to credit and remuneration, so an unapproved face swap could invite contract or infringement litigation.[13](https://news.qq.com/rain/a/20250801A09AGL00) • [14](https://www.tonboriday.com/2025/12/night-wanderer-chinese-drama-release.html) The approved version that finally emerged in September 2026 credits Fu Xinbo and Ni Ni as leads.[15](https://en.layarhijau.com/2026/09/26/ni-nis-night-wanderer-finally-set-to-air-co-star-fu-xinbo-is-jing-borans-former-bandmate/) A separate, older debate concerned Ni Ni herself: one Tencent News review argued her film acting style lacked groundedness on television while praising Deng Lun's refined Republican-era look.[16](https://twwiki.net/wiki/rg3l504k8xjvzlw.html)
### Sequels, spin-offs, and adaptations
The series adapts Zhao Xizhi's novel *Ye Lu Ren* (夜旅人), a well-regarded web novel whose Republican-era lawyer and modern forensic examiner crossing over by a corridor lamp made it a favorite of the genre before the drama existed.[17](https://www.nser.net/dianshiju/630317291179.html)
## The novel
The story is built on a single device: an old Shanghai apartment whose corridor lamp links two eras. On the night of July 11, 1937, the lawyer Sheng Qingrang returns from an academic seminar and the corridor lamp goes out; on the same date in 2015, the forensic doctor Zong Ying comes home from a crime scene and the same lamp flickers. From then on, Sheng Qingrang crosses into the present each night between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. and returns to 1937 by day.[1](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35959175) • [3](https://k.sina.cn/article_7879995946_1d5af322a06801rct2.html?from=ent)
The two leads are drawn as complementary professionals. Sheng Qingrang is described as a famous, gentle, reserved and honest lawyer of the Republic of China period; Zong Ying is a calm, decisive modern forensic doctor. At their first meeting he lends her a black folding umbrella and walks her to the hospital, and at their second he appears as the tenant of her apartment holding a rental certificate dated to the 26th year of the Republic (1937).[1](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35959175)
The plot runs on two lines. In 1937, on the eve of the Battle of Shanghai, Sheng Qingrang works to protect national industrial assets; in 2015, Zong Ying faces casework and the truth behind her mother's suicide. The narrative is set against the war's approach, and readers have singled out its depiction of ordinary people caught in upheaval, moving between buying chocolate in a supermarket and struggling to survive.[3](https://k.sina.cn/article_7879995946_1d5af322a06801rct2.html?from=ent) • [1](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35959175)
**Setting and reception.** The author, reportedly trained in history, anchors each plot point in historical reference, and the apartment itself is based on a real building. Number 699 apartment was completed in the 1930s; because it stood in the French Concession it escaped war damage, and a corridor lamp installed for its first residents survived into the present, lit at night and dark by day.[9](https://vocus.cc/article/695b5ef9fd8978000195f3c5) The novel holds a Douban rating of 8.5 with nearly 5,000 reviews, though a separate report gives 8.4, and a 91.9% recommendation value on WeChat Reading. Zhao Xizhi received a nomination for the Annual Internet Writer award at the 13th Chinese Literature Media Awards, while a bookseller listing describes her as the award's winner in that category.[4](https://k.sina.cn/article_7879848925_1d5acf3dd06801rclo.html?from=ent) • [3](https://k.sina.cn/article_7879995946_1d5af322a06801rct2.html?from=ent) • [10](https://www.megbook.com.tw/mall/detail.jsp?proID=2871665) The book has been translated into Thai under the title เหนือกาลเวลา, published in two volumes.[11](https://www.goodreads.com/series/350163)
## The drama adaptation
The television version is a 24-episode fantasy romance produced for iQiyi, directed by Wan Liyang, with screenplays credited to Hu Rong, Chen Maoxian, Lu Wenying, Cai Yuling, Li Qing, and Jia Honghao. Ni Ni stars as Zong Ying and Fu Xinbo as Sheng Qingrang, with Wang Yuwen, Gao Ye, Wang Duo, Yang Shize, Liu Runnan, and Chen Xijun in featured roles. Filming ran from July 20 to November 13, 2021, at Hengdian.[2](https://wiki.d-addicts.com/Night_Wanderer) • [5](https://bkso.baidu.com/item/%E5%A4%9C%E6%97%85%E4%BA%BA/22657226?fromModule=lemma_inlink) Production companies include iQiyi and Yongle Film and [Television](https://www.edgepedia.org/television).[12](https://hk-official.cmbi.info/upload/7a9586f8-14fe-4cb0-be86-25935c8d4073.pdf)
The adaptation keeps the dual-timeframe structure and adds contrast between modern forensic procedures and the Republican-era legal system, with strengthened attention to historical detail around the Battle of Shanghai.[4](https://k.sina.cn/article_7879848925_1d5acf3dd06801rclo.html?from=ent)
## Shelving and the AI face-swap
The drama wrapped in 2021 with Deng Lun as the original male lead, but his tax evasion issue, which came to light in 2022, put the release on hold indefinitely. The production eventually chose a repair path combining green-screen reshoots with AI face replacement: Fu Xinbo re-recorded the male lead's scenes, and post-production merged his performance into footage shot five years earlier. Ni Ni's scenes and those of supporting actors including Wang Yuwen and Gao Ye were kept. A takeover of the role by Liu Xueyi was proposed at one point, but Fu Xinbo's casting was confirmed by March 2025.[6](https://www.recordchina.co.jp/en/b992023-s36-c70-d0190.html) • [8](https://m.sohu.com/a/1080109477_114941)
On September 16, 2026, the drama obtained its distribution license, numbered (京)网剧审字（2026）第016号, clearing it for online release on iQiyi as an exclusive.[7](https://weibo.com/2/detail/5343826533419406) On September 23, 2026, it was included in iQiyi's 2027 slate with a new cross-time trailer.[5](https://bkso.baidu.com/item/%E5%A4%9C%E6%97%85%E4%BA%BA/22657226?fromModule=lemma_inlink) Observers have raised concerns about the visual result, noting that AI face-swapping combined with reshoots rarely leaves every shot seamless, and early comments on the trailer pointed out flaws in the face replacement.[6](https://www.recordchina.co.jp/en/b992023-s36-c70-d0190.html) • [8](https://m.sohu.com/a/1080109477_114941)
## Industry context
The drama's five-year delay places it in a larger backlog problem in Chinese long-form drama. According to Datawin (德塔文) statistics cited by Sohu, as of December 2025 there were 452 dramas shelved for more than two years after wrapping, of which 407 had been shelved for more than three years, more than half of all dramas awaiting broadcast; the industry's sunk investment in shelved dramas was estimated at over 20 billion yuan. Actor risk is one of the main causes, alongside content-standard changes, contract disputes, and quality shortfalls, and the typical remedies are reshoots, AI face replacement, and heavy editing, all of which add cost and carry quality risk. Commentators describe *Night Wanderer*'s goal as recovering a sunk asset rather than chasing a hit, and view its clearance as evidence that regulators will approve dramas repaired through compliant technical replacement, while cautioning that its path is hard to replicate at scale.[8](https://m.sohu.com/a/1080109477_114941)
## References
1. [夜旅人 by Zhao Xizhi, Goodreads](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35959175)
2. [Night Wanderer, DramaWiki](https://wiki.d-addicts.com/Night_Wanderer)
3. [《夜旅人》原著小说讲了什么故事？, Sina Entertainment](https://k.sina.cn/article_7879995946_1d5af322a06801rct2.html?from=ent)
4. [《夜旅人》原著小说豆瓣评分有多高？, Sina Entertainment](https://k.sina.cn/article_7879848925_1d5acf3dd06801rclo.html?from=ent)
5. [夜旅人（2026年万里扬执导的奇幻爱情剧）, Baidu Baike](https://bkso.baidu.com/item/%E5%A4%9C%E6%97%85%E4%BA%BA/22657226?fromModule=lemma_inlink)
6. [Will "The Night Wanderer," shelved for 5 years, finally be streamed with AI face swapping?, Record China](https://www.recordchina.co.jp/en/b992023-s36-c70-d0190.html)
7. [微博正文：夜旅人取得发行许可证](https://weibo.com/2/detail/5343826533419406)
8. [《夜旅人》五年归来背后：400余剧积压，200亿沉没成本待破局, Sohu](https://m.sohu.com/a/1080109477_114941)
9. [《夜旅人》租界时代的上海，那些无名之人曾活过的岁月, 一会手帖 (vocus)](https://vocus.cc/article/695b5ef9fd8978000195f3c5)
10. [《夜旅人》商品详情, megBook](https://www.megbook.com.tw/mall/detail.jsp?proID=2871665)
11. [夜旅人 Series by Zhao Xizhi, Goodreads](https://www.goodreads.com/series/350163)
12. [CMBIS Research drama slate listing Traveller of the Night (夜旅人), Yongle Film and Television](https://hk-official.cmbi.info/upload/7a9586f8-14fe-4cb0-be86-25935c8d4073.pdf)
13. [https://news.qq.com/rain/a/20250801A09AGL00](https://news.qq.com/rain/a/20250801A09AGL00)
14. [https://www.tonboriday.com/2025/12/night-wanderer-chinese-drama-release.html](https://www.tonboriday.com/2025/12/night-wanderer-chinese-drama-release.html)
15. [https://en.layarhijau.com/2026/09/26/ni-nis-night-wanderer-finally-set-to-air-co-star-fu-xinbo-is-jing-borans-former-bandmate/](https://en.layarhijau.com/2026/09/26/ni-nis-night-wanderer-finally-set-to-air-co-star-fu-xinbo-is-jing-borans-former-bandmate/)
16. [https://twwiki.net/wiki/rg3l504k8xjvzlw.html](https://twwiki.net/wiki/rg3l504k8xjvzlw.html)
17. [https://www.nser.net/dianshiju/630317291179.html](https://www.nser.net/dianshiju/630317291179.html)
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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 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026*
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