General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20266 min read

One and Only (周生如故)

One and Only (周生如故), originally titled Chang'an Rugu (长安如故), is a 2021 mainland Chinese costume romance drama directed by Guo Hu, written by novelist Mo Bao Fei Bao, and starring Ren Jialun as Zhou Shengchen and Bai Lu as Cui Shiyi. It adapts the ancient-story part of Mo Bao Fei Bao's novel Yi Sheng Yi Shi Mei Ren Gu (一生一世美人骨) and ends in tragedy; its modern-day companion series, Forever and Ever (一生一世), continues the couple's story through reincarnation.¹^•²

Key fact	Detail
Original title	长安如故 (Chang'an Rugu); English title One and Only¹
Format	24 episodes, 45 to 47 minutes each, Mandarin, costume romance¹
Premiere	18 August 2021 on iQiyi; two new episodes Wednesday to Friday at 20:00, with VIP members able to watch 6 episodes on the first day³
Source	Ancient part of Mo Bao Fei Bao's novel 一生一世美人骨; the author also served as screenwriter¹
Leads	Ren Jialun (Zhou Shengchen, the Jr. Nanchen King) and Bai Lu (Cui Shiyi), with Wang Xingyue, Li Yiru, Zhou Lula, and Yao Yichen¹
Douban score	7.3 from 266,063 raters as of 11 December 2023¹
Viewership	Over 3 billion cumulative views, iQiyi heat peak above 8500, Maoyan heat peak 9777.6, 19 consecutive days as Maoyan's top web drama⁴
Companion series	Forever and Ever (一生一世), the modern-part adaptation, 30 episodes²

Spoilers

Premise and plot

The drama is set in a fictional ancient dynasty. Zhou Shengchen (Ren Jialun) is the celebrated Jr. Nanchen King (小南辰王), a young general of great military renown who has long guarded the western frontier at Xizhou. Because his fame makes the court suspicious of any ambition, he swears an oath never to take a wife or leave heirs, so that no one can accuse him of plotting for the throne.²

Cui Shiyi (Bai Lu) is the only daughter of the powerful Cui clan, a family whose standing means her marriage can only be a political arrangement. Betrothed to the crown prince before her birth, she is sent as a child to the Southern Chen royal mansion to study, at the court's suggestion, to draw the imperial family, the Cui clan, and the mansion closer together. As a girl she lost her father to political persecution and, overcome by grief, lost the ability to speak; she recovers her voice in the mansion. She becomes Zhou Shengchen's eleventh disciple, and over years of daily life the two fall in love, though both keep the feeling restrained within the bounds of propriety between teacher and student.⁵^•²

The ending is fixed by the source material. With a new emperor on the throne who also desires Cui Shiyi, and with Zhou Shengchen commanding an army and renowned across the realm, his fate is sealed. He submits to the bone-carving punishment (剔骨之刑) and dies without a cry, leaving the dying words "In this life, Chen has failed no one under heaven, only Shiyi" (辰此一生，不负天下，唯负十一). On what should have been her enthronement ceremony as crown princess, Cui Shiyi, dressed in red, leaps from the palace gate in falling snow.²^•⁴

Production and the two-drama model

The production was initiated by the Xiamen Film and Television Industry Service Center and produced by iQiyi, Huace Keton's New World Studio, and the Xiamen center, with Yang Bei as chief producer.¹

One novel, two dramas. The producers split Mo Bao Fei Bao's novel into two separate series: the ancient part became One and Only, telling the tragic first life, and the contemporary part became Forever and Ever, in which the couple reunites in the present day. The two can be watched independently or as one continuous story, and the pairing was described by the critic Zeng Yuli in The Paper as an innovation in release strategy, "one book, two adaptations, two dramas linked."² The same review argued that the linkage shaped Forever and Ever's reception: without the ancient tragedy as background, the modern series would resemble an ordinary sweet romance, while viewers who had watched One and Only read its details, from the Qinglong Temple to the Shanglin Fu, as emotional compensation for the first couple's fate.²

The model drew regulatory attention. According to a notice from the National Radio and Television Administration reported in 2023, television and web dramas should in principle not exceed 40 episodes, and producers should be prevented from evading episode limits by splitting works into upper and lower parts or multiple seasons; where linked series are separately licensed, the gap between the premiere of one and the next in the same series should generally be no less than 12 months.⁶

Broadcast and reception

The drama premiered exclusively on iQiyi on 18 August 2021, updating two episodes each Wednesday through Friday at 20:00, with VIP members able to watch six episodes on the first day and non-members receiving one free episode per day Wednesday through Sunday.³ It later aired on Anhui Satellite TV on 18 December 2021.¹ Before broadcast, more than 2.78 million users had reserved it on iQiyi, and related hashtags drew about 850 million reads and over 1.74 million interactions on Weibo.³

Popularity. The series exceeded expectations. It was not highly anticipated before release, but it broke out through what Chinese audiences call "BE aesthetics" (BE美学), tragedy-centered romance in which beauty is heightened by loss; some fans called it the ceiling of the genre.² Its cumulative views surpassed 3 billion, with per-episode averages above 45 million during its hot run, an iQiyi internal heat peak above 8500, a Maoyan all-network heat peak of 9777.6, and 19 consecutive days as the top web drama on Maoyan's daily heat chart.⁴ On Douban it opened at 7.3 from about 74,109 raters, with 27.3 percent giving five stars and 31.5 percent four stars, and stood at 7.3 from 266,063 raters as of December 2023.⁷^•¹

Critical reception. The Phoenix Entertainment review "Feng Xiangbiao" judged the romance well written and the two leads' performances adequate, while criticizing the familiar teacher-student romance frame and a weak political-intrigue subplot: "good to watch, but not entirely good to watch."⁸ The Paper found the 24-episode length somewhat padded but judged the tragedy one of fate rather than suffering for its own sake, with the characters resisting destiny and failing, which is what gives the ending its force.² Bai Lu's performance drew particular attention for the contrast between Shiyi's early liveliness and her silent grief at the news of Zhou Shengchen's death.⁴

Awards. In the nomination list of the 32nd Huading Awards satisfaction survey of China's top 100 television dramas, Ren Jialun and Bai Lu were named among the national audience's ten favorite actors and nominated for best actor and best actress in costume drama; in 2022 the drama entered the Weibo Vision Conference drama TOP10.¹

Later adaptations

The property extended beyond television. A Chinese-style stage musical adapted from the novel and the drama was produced, with producer Su Liming selecting the IP; the musical expanded the character line of crown prince Liu Zixing across his childhood and adulthood, strengthening the dramatic tension of his later opposition to Zhou Shengchen.⁹

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 21, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026; Nov 11, 2026