General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

The Sleuth of the Ming Dynasty (成化十四年)

The Sleuth of the Ming Dynasty (成化十四年) is a 2020 Chinese costume mystery series adapted from Meng Xishi's (梦溪石) novel of the same title, following the sixth-rank judge Tang Fan (唐泛) and the Embroidered Uniform Guard banner commander Sui Zhou (隋州) as they solve criminal cases in the Ming dynasty during the fourteenth year of the Chenghua era.¹ The 48-episode series streamed exclusively on iQIYI beginning April 1, 2020, with Jackie Chan as producer and Guan Hong (官鸿) and Fu Meng-po (傅孟柏) in the two leading roles.¹^•²

Key fact	Detail
Original title	成化十四年; released internationally as The Sleuth of the Ming Dynasty³
Source	Adapted from Meng Xishi's novel of the same name¹
Broadcast	iQIYI, April 1, 2020, 48 episodes, 20:00 slots Wednesday through Friday²
Directors / producer	Guo Shuang, Yang Huan, and Yang Tai; produced by Jackie Chan¹^•⁴
Main cast	Guan Hong (Tang Fan), Fu Meng-po (Sui Zhou), Liu Yaoyuan (Wang Zhi), Alyssa Chia (Royal Consort Wan)⁴
Reception	Douban score of 5.5, with criticism of a forced female lead and heavy script changes⁵
Runtime / rating	42-minute episodes, TV-PG, IMDb 7.5³

Spoilers

Premise and characters

The story is set in the Ming dynasty under the Chenghua Emperor, in the fourteenth year of his era. Tang Fan, a sixth-rank judge (推官) at Shuntian Prefecture, the capital's administrative organ, is known for his exceptional reasoning; Sui Zhou is a banner commander (总旗) in the Embroidered Uniform Guard (锦衣卫), the imperial secret police.¹^•⁶ The opening case has the two men investigating from different directions: Tang Fan looks into a death at a brothel that appears accidental, while Sui Zhou searches for a missing study companion of the crown prince, and the two cases turn out to be intertwined.⁶ The iQIYI synopsis adds that the sudden death of the Marquis of Wu'an's heir makes Tang Fan a suspect, and that the eunuch Wang Zhi (汪植), head of the Western Depot (西厂), joins the investigation because the cases involve families of court officials.⁷

The two leads are drawn as opposites. Tang Fan is a laid-back food lover whose motto is that eating comes first, but he has sharp deductive ability; Sui Zhou is the show's martial-arts anchor, stern and highly skilled, and also a superb cook.⁸^•⁹ Wang Zhi, played by Liu Yaoyuan, is morally ambiguous, and the character drew a substantial fan following of his own.¹⁰

Production

Filming ran for 130 days, from deep winter into early summer, and the production wrapped in May 2019.⁸ Jackie Chan, producing a web series for the first time, visited the set at Hengdian and personally coached the lead actors on making their fight movements clean and precise.² The action was designed under the guidance of Chan's stunt team, the JC Stunt Team, and reviewers noted that the guard Sui Zhou stays grounded, with rooftop chases kept plausible rather than airborne.⁹

Period detail and food. The production put visible effort into Ming-era material culture. Small early cases tie into real institutions: a stolen official-horses case connects to the Ming horse administration (马政) system.¹ Sets use brick-faced residential and government buildings to distinguish the period from Yuan-era earthen walls, and the furniture and restrained vermilion-and-wood color scheme follow Ming architectural taste.¹ The series is also unusually food-centered: the opening episode details how to roast pork shoulder (梅肉), and dishes such as meat-sauce noodles, snow-pear soup, soy milk and fried dough sticks, osmanthus cake, and champion candy recur throughout, leading many viewers to joke that a detective drama had turned into a food show.¹^•⁹ iQIYI built a paid course, The Great Ming Behind Chenghua Shisi Nian, on the series to explain the period culture.¹

Screenplay dispute and reception

The series premiered on April 1, 2020, the same day as the tomb-raiding drama Candle in the Tomb: The Worm Valley, and early reactions split sharply: viewers who had not read the novel praised the production quality and light tone, while novel fans attacked the adaptation.¹⁰^•¹¹ By late April the Douban score stood at 5.5, with recurring complaints about a forcibly added female lead, excessive changes to the plot, and a male lead rewritten as less intelligent than in the book.⁵

A credit dispute added to the controversy. On April 21, 2020, a Weibo user claiming to be the original screenwriter posted that the production had discarded her version: she said she had written 12 episodes plus episode and scene breakdowns across seven drafts, totaling at least 500,000 characters over a year, on a verbal promise of credit and 40,000 yuan in pay, and that after her seventh draft the director, dissatisfied with the script, brought in a new writing team for a wholesale rewrite without crediting her.⁵ The trade outlet 毒眸 (Dumeng) framed the case against a backdrop of similar screenwriter credit disputes over Beijing Without a War, The Legend of Mi Yue, and Forensic Doctor Qin 2.⁵

Roundtable discussion among critics and viewers found the case-solving itself weak: clues were often delivered through dialogue rather than discovered, and the opening cases were judged slow and scattered, though several participants praised the everyday warmth and the depiction of Chenghua-era court politics and local life.¹⁰

International release

The series circulated abroad under translated titles: in Japan it aired with Japanese subtitles as Seika Jūyonen: Miyako ni Saku Himitsu (成化十四年～都に咲く秘密～), and in Korean-speaking markets as 성화 14년.⁶^•¹² Streaming aggregators list 49 episodes at 42 minutes each, one more than the 48 counted on iQIYI's Chinese listing, and the show is available with subtitles in more than ten languages on Rakuten Viki in the United States.³^•¹²

References

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