General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

Remembering Lichuan (遇见王沥川)

Remembering Lichuan (遇见王沥川) is a 38-episode Chinese urban romance television series adapted from Shi Dingrou's (施定柔) novel Lichuan Wangshi (沥川往事), directed by Chen Mingzhang (陈铭章) and starring Godfrey Gao (高以翔) as the Swiss-born Chinese architect Wang Lichuan and Jiao Junyan (焦俊艳) as the Yunnan college student Xie Xiaoqiu¹. Filmed in 2012, it was held back for nearly four years before streaming on LeTV from July 22, 2016 and broadcasting on Anhui TV from July 31, 2016, and it became one of the best-rated Chinese dramas of that summer²^•³.

Key fact	Detail
Native title / English title	遇见王沥川 (Yu Jian Wang Lichuan) / Remembering Lichuan⁴
Source	Shi Dingrou's novel Lichuan Wangshi (沥川往事), serialized on Jinjiang in 2008⁵
Episodes / genre	38 episodes, urban romance (治愈系言情)¹
Director / writer / producer	Chen Mingzhang; Shi Dingrou (novelist as screenwriter); Zhou Tian (周恬)⁶
Leads	Godfrey Gao as Wang Lichuan; Jiao Junyan as Xie Xiaoqiu⁶
Broadcast	LeTV exclusive streaming from July 22, 2016; Anhui TV from July 31, 2016²^•⁷
Reception	Douban score reached 9.0 during its run⁸

Spoilers

Story

The series follows Xie Xiaoqiu, an optimistic English-major student from a small town in Yunnan who works part-time jobs to support her family, and Wang Lichuan, a young architect born in Switzerland who speaks several languages but whose Chinese is imperfect¹^•⁹. The two fall in love, but Wang discovers he is seriously ill and, so as not to burden her, leaves coldly and without explanation⁹. Four years later Xiaoqiu, now a professional translator, meets him again by accident; her feelings persist while his apparent indifference wounds her, and her supervisor Xiao Guan (played by Lin Yo-Wei) pursues her ardently in parallel⁹^•¹⁰.

The source novel is a tragedy: in Lichuan Wangshi, the poor student and the disabled young professional fall in love, he suddenly departs, and only years later does she understand that his ruthlessness was a farewell to life⁵. Because readers reacted so strongly to the tragic ending, Shi Dingrou changed it to a happy one when the print edition was published the following year; for the television script she wrote, the ending was set as open-ended⁵.

Origin and production

A debut project. The drama was the first production of Tuole Culture (拓乐文化), a company founded in 2012 by producer Zhou Tian, who studied communications through graduate school and had worked on the series Dongfang¹¹. In 2011, while preparing to start her company, she read Lichuan Wangshi on a friend's recommendation and decided to adapt it; she traveled to Niagara Falls, on the United States–Canada border, to meet the author, who was then a doctoral student in East Asian studies at the University of Toronto¹¹^•⁵.

The author as screenwriter. Shi Dingrou had begun as a writer of wuxia fiction and wrote Lichuan Wangshi anonymously, unsure that her modern romance would be accepted by readers¹¹. She wrote the screenplay herself rather than adapting her own text scene by scene, explaining that a novel of about 200,000 characters becomes a script of more than 450,000 characters for a series of over thirty episodes, and that scenery and psychology cannot transfer directly into scenes, action, and dialogue¹¹. She also proposed changing the title from Lichuan Wangshi to Yujian Wang Lichuan (Meeting Wang Lichuan) to emphasize the encounter and the romance, and added close-ups highlighting Xiaoqiu's freshness and Lichuan's looks¹².

Director and schedule. Chen Mingzhang, the Taiwanese director of hit idol dramas such as Prince Turns to Frog and Fated to Love You, agreed to direct after the script reached him through acquaintances¹¹. Filming began on November 6, 2012 in Hangzhou, with locations including Qiandao Lake, Shanghai, Kunming, and Zurich¹³^•¹². Because the novel was written in 2008 about events a few years earlier, the costumes and props were made to match roughly 2004, down to the Nokia phones the characters use¹¹.

Casting and performances

Shi Dingrou did not take part in casting but endorsed the choices: she said Jiao Junyan matched the novel's description of a "fresh, girl-next-door" Xiaoqiu, and that Godfrey Gao's looks, temperament, overseas education, and foreign-language ability fit the novel's Wang Lichuan closely¹⁴. To play a character described as a top English translator, Jiao Junyan practiced English with a foreign teacher and watched American series to learn colloquial speech, and appeared without makeup¹⁵. Shi Dingrou later called Wang Lichuan the role best matched to Gao of any he played, noting that audiences initially resisted the character's beard until his performance won them over¹⁶.

Broadcast and reception

The series wrapped in 2012 and its trailer was released in 2013, but it did not reach viewers until the summer of 2016, nearly four years after completion¹⁵^•³. On LeTV it streamed exclusively, with five episodes a week for members from July 22 and two a day for non-members from July 31¹. In a summer dominated by fantasy adaptations such as Ice Fantasy, it drew steady word of mouth for its plain storytelling, sincere performances, and unglamorous production design; its Douban score rose to 9.0, and media grouped it with Xiao Bie Li and Hello, Joann as the season's "clear stream" of well-reviewed dramas³^•⁸. A 2020 retrospective put its Douban rating at 8.8¹⁶.

Related works

Shi Dingrou wrote a sequel script, Zaijian Wang Lichuan (再见王沥川, Goodbye Wang Lichuan), based on the extra chapters of the novel, and a related web series, Reunited With Lichuan, aired in 2018 with Li Meng taking the role of Xie Xiaoqiu⁵^•⁴^•¹⁵. After the 2012 script was finalized, Zhou Tian also acquired the rights to Shi Dingrou's novel Caihong de Zhongli (彩虹的重力), another adaptation written by the author¹¹.

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 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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