General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20266 min read

Ordinary Greatness (警察荣誉)

Ordinary Greatness (警察荣誉) is a 38-episode Chinese television drama broadcast in 2022 about four rookie police officers assigned to a busy grassroots police station in the fictional city of Pingling, where they grow into qualified officers under the mentorship of veteran police. It was directed by Ding Hei (丁黑), written by Zhao Dongling (赵冬苓) and Tan Jiayan, and led by Zhang Ruoyun (张若昀), Bai Lu (白鹿), and Wang Jingchun (王景春).¹ The series premiered on 28 May 2022 on CCTV-8 and streamed on iQIYI, and its English title, "Ordinary Greatness," reflects its focus on everyday community policing rather than heroic crime-solving.²^•³

Key fact	Detail
Original title / English title	警察荣誉 / Ordinary Greatness³
First broadcast	28 May 2022, CCTV-8 and iQIYI; 38 episodes²^•⁴
Director and writers	Ding Hei (chief director), with Bao Chengzhi and Fu Cexin as co-directors; screenplay by Zhao Dongling and Tan Jiayan¹
Main cast	Zhang Ruoyun as Li Dawei, Bai Lu as Xia Jie, Xu Kaicheng as Yang Shu, Cao Lu as Zhao Jiwei, Wang Jingchun as station chief Wang Shouyi, Ning Li as Chen Xincheng⁴^•⁵
Setting	The fictional Balihe (八里河) police station in an urban-rural fringe district of Pingling, modeled on the Shiliulihe station in Jinan⁶
Reception	Douban score rose from an opening 7.7 to 8.5, later cited at 8.6; iQIYI heat peaked at 9068 with over 10 million danmu comments⁷^•²

Spoilers

Premise and characters

The story centers on the Balihe police station, whose jurisdiction has a complicated population and constant minor disturbances but too few officers, leaving it ranked near the bottom in resident satisfaction among the city's more than 100 stations. Station chief Wang Shouyi finally secures four young recruits, and the drama builds its ensemble around them.⁸

The four trainees have contrasting backgrounds: Li Dawei, a rebellious young man sent to police school by his family; Yang Shu, a rigidly upright Peking University law master's graduate; Xia Jie, a sensitive young woman who joined the force to carry on her father's legacy; and Zhao Jiwei, who comes from a rural family and is eager to make something of himself. Wang Shouyi assigns each a veteran mentor, and over a year of internship the four discover that grassroots work differs from what they imagined, then grow through the cases they handle and the guidance of their seniors.⁴

Unlike most Chinese police dramas built on criminal investigators and major cases, the series focuses on civil disputes and the daily work of station-level officers, which reviewers credited with giving it a strong sense of everyday life, described in Chinese as "烟火气" (the warmth of ordinary living).⁷ Cases range from neighbor quarrels to small thefts; one episode turns on an intern officer, Xia Jie, asking a doctor to give a blood sample early in a missing-child case, drawn from a real incident at the Shiliulihe station.⁹

Development and research

Grounded writing. Screenwriter Zhao Dongling, who had previously written the film Red Sorghum and earlier police-themed works including Emergency Rescue (1996) and Inspector Captain (2006), conceived the series after watching the American show Southland several years earlier and wanting to depict ordinary station police.⁷^•⁸ Before writing, she led a team of young writers on field visits to five police stations and one criminal police squad in Jinan, interviewing dozens of frontline officers; several young actors also accompanied officers on overnight shifts handling real calls. Zhao said the dozens of cases written into the series were almost all "picked up" from real life, some nearly transcribed as they happened.¹⁰

The choice of an urban-rural fringe setting served the writing in two ways: it accommodates more case types, and it records a kind of place that China's urbanization inevitably produces but that is easily overlooked.⁷ The Balihe station's name was adapted from the real Shiliulihe (十六里河) station in Jinan's Shizhong district, which the writing team visited for field research.⁶

Production. The main set of the Balihe station was built inside a soundstage at the Qingdao Oriental Movie Metropolis industrial park to allow complex camera movement; the production wrapped in Qingdao in September 2021 and entered post-production.⁶ Director Ding Hei, whose earlier credits include Jade Goddess of Mercy, described the project as a return to police题材 after 18 years and acknowledged the risk in a "life drama" with no major shifts in character relationships, no grand historical backdrop, and no big IP or web-novel source.⁴^•⁹ The opening long take establishes the setting with market stalls, breakfast vendors, and tricycle carts, presenting the station as an unremarkable two-story brick building among them.⁶

Themes and style

The series deliberately avoids strong dramatic conflict and suspense. Zhao Dongling said it should instead win viewers through a strong sense of lived texture, so that audiences believe every event could have happened around them.⁸ Its English title, "Ordinary Greatness," points to two choices: the subject is grassroots police work close to daily life, and the drama emphasizes collective effort rather than individual heroism.³

The characters are written with human flaws rather than as idealized heroes: an older officer who shifts blame and courts credit, a political instructor tempted to quit because the job leaves no room for family, a bookish recruit whose theory outruns his practice, and a deputy station chief who retreats from an armed thief to protect himself and the younger officers. A Beijing Daily review argued that these ordinary shortcomings are what establish the characters' authenticity.¹¹ The drama also depicts police-civilian friction and the effect of the self-media era on police work, rather than only harmonious relations.¹¹ One storyline, the officer Cao Jianjun, whose mother-in-law judges him solely by money, raises the question of how to value routine community work against solving major criminal cases.³

Reception

The series ran from 28 May to late June 2022. Its iQIYI in-site heat index peaked at 9068, danmu (bullet comments) exceeded 10 million, it topped the national post-prime-time ratings, generated more than 1,590 hot-search topics across platforms, and reached a Douban score of 8.6, with People's Daily and Xinhua among the official media that praised it.² The Douban score climbed from an opening 7.7 to 8.5 during the run.⁷ The Central Commission for Discipline Inspection website, China Police Net, and the "Ping'an Beijing" microblog were among the official outlets that gave it favorable reviews.¹²

Practicing officers were a notable part of the audience: grassroots police across the country left comments affirming the depiction, and the Jiangsu provincial radio and television bureau's review cited remarks such as "I am an officer, and I finally see a police show with officers in duty uniforms."¹⁰ After the CCTV-8 run, the series was rebroadcast on Dragon TV and Beijing TV.¹^•¹³ Hong Kong's RTHK began airing it on 21 October 2022 on RTHK TV 31.¹⁴

The 2015 series of the same name

A different Chinese television drama also titled 警察荣誉 was produced a decade earlier. This 30-episode series about border-defense troops began shooting in Dehong, Yunnan, in November 2015, was co-produced by the Border Control Bureau of the Ministry of Public Security with Zhejiang-based companies, and was directed and written by Cheng Donghai of the PLA Academy of Art, starring Xu Jia, Sun Yaoqi, Liu Peiqi, Hou Yong, and Fu Yiwei. Its storyline followed Yunnan border troops in counter-terrorism and anti-drug work, and it was filmed in Mangshi, Xishuangbanna, Ruili, and Tengchong with a planned broadcast in the first half of 2016.¹⁵^•¹⁶

References

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 › Chinese modern and contemporary drama › Premiered 1998 to 2023

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

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