General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

Rule the World (独步天下)

Rule the World (独步天下) is a 45-episode Chinese historical romance television drama broadcast in 2017, adapted from Li Xin's (李歆) novel of the same name and telling a fictionalized love story between Dong Ge, called the first beauty of the Jurchen people, and Hong Taiji (皇太极), the future Qing emperor.¹ It premiered on October 30, 2017 in mainland China, in Mandarin, and should not be confused with the 2022 wuxia drama Who Rules the World (且试天下), an unrelated series with a similar English title.²^•³

Key fact	Detail
Chinese title / English title	独步天下 / Rule the World¹
Premiere	October 30, 2017, exclusively on Tencent Video⁴
Format	45 episodes, 45 minutes each; historical, romance, political genres¹
Director and screenwriter	Shao Jinghui (邵警辉); screenplay credited to Zhang Yan'ang (张鸢盎)¹
Source	Novel of the same name by Li Xin, one of the "three mountains" of Qing time-travel romance fiction alongside Bu Bu Jing Xin and Meng Hui Da Qing⁴
Main cast	Tang Yixin, Raymond Lam (林峰), Zhang Rui, Qu Chuxiao, Jing Gangshan, Chen Xinyu¹
Production	Tencent Penguin Pictures, YUEKAI Entertainment, and New Classics Media¹
Reception	2.4 billion views, placing it among the top 20 web dramas of 2017; a Douban score of 4.0 from about 11,000 users⁴^•²

Spoilers

Plot and characters

The story is set at the end of the Wanli era of the Ming dynasty and follows Buxiyamala (布喜娅玛拉), a princess of the Yehe clan of the Jurchens known by her childhood name Dong Ge (东哥). She is prophesied from birth to be "the one who could prosper the world and the one who could destroy it," and her beauty makes her an object of contention among the Jurchen tribes. Her elder brother gives her to Nurhaci (努尔哈赤) as a political tool, and she must survive the predatory affection of Chu Ying, the tenderness of Dai Shan, the unrestrained manner of Dorgon, and the love of Hong Taiji, Nurhaci's eighth son. Caring for Hong Taiji, she comes to know and trust him, and after a separation and reunion she remains at his side and witnesses the founding of the Qing dynasty.⁵

Tang Yixin plays three linked roles: Yehenala Dong Ge, Bortai Hai Lan Zhu (博尔济吉特·海兰珠), and the modern novelist Bu Youran (步悠然). Raymond Lam plays Hong Taiji, with Zhang Rui as Dai Shan, Qu Chuxiao as Dorgon, Jing Gangshan as Nurhaci, and Chen Xinyu as Abahai.¹^•⁶

The novel and the adaptation

Li Xin's novel was serialized from 2006 and, together with Bu Bu Jing Xin (步步惊心) and Meng Hui Da Qing (梦回大清), was counted among the "three mountains" of the qingchuan (清穿, Qing time-travel) genre of web romance.⁴ In the novel, a modern woman's soul travels back four hundred years into Dong Ge's body.⁴

The transmigration frame was removed. After China's broadcast regulator barred time-travel dramas following Bu Bu Jing Xin, adaptations of Li Xin's work, including Rule the World, had to drop the crossing device.⁷ The drama instead makes Bu Youran a present-day novelist who, fascinated by Dong Ge's story, pieces it together from old books and writes the historical narrative; the show repeatedly cuts back to her in the modern day.⁵^•⁷ Reviewers found the hybrid awkward: plot points that made sense in the novel because the heroine had modern knowledge, such as her literacy in Chinese and her refusal to be traded between men, were kept without explaining where her independence came from.⁷

Historical basis

Dong Ge existed. She was the daughter of Buzhai, a chief of the Yehe, and was promised in marriage repeatedly by her brother Buyanggu as a diplomatic instrument. At fifteen she refused to marry Nurhaci, the man who had killed her father, and the resulting standoff lasted eighteen years, leaving her unmarried at thirty-three and known in Ming sources as the "old woman of Yehe" (叶赫老女). In 1615 she was forcibly married to a Mongol Khorchin prince and died in Mongolia the next year at thirty-four.⁸ The prophecy that she could "prosper or destroy the world" is recorded in the Old Manchu Archives.⁸

The novel's high degree of engagement with this history gave it unusual influence for its genre, so much so that the author's invented name for Dong Ge, Buxiyamala, came to be widely mistaken for her real historical name.⁸

Reception

The drama streamed exclusively on Tencent Video from October 30, 2017 and reached 2.4 billion views, ranking among the top 20 web dramas of the year; it also received a 2017 industry award for influential web television series.⁴ Critical reception was poor. On Douban it holds a score of 4.0 out of 10 from about 11,000 users, with 41 percent of raters giving one star.²

Criticism centered on timing and tone. The novel appeared only a year after Bu Bu Jing Xin, but its screen version arrived six years after that drama's adaptation, by which point the time-travel romance formula had exhausted audience goodwill.⁸ Reviewers also described the story as a "Mary Sue" narrative in which every leading man of Liaodong loves one woman, and judged that Tang Yixin, though a capable actress, lacked the presence to play a beauty said to topple kingdoms.⁸ A ten-year gap between novel and screen adaptation meant readers' memories of the text had been idealized, making the filmed version hard to satisfy.⁸ Fan discussion praised Raymond Lam's mature portrayal of the later Hong Taiji while faulting the casting of the early episodes and the jarring modern-day interludes.⁷

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 › 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

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