General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20266 min read

The Song of Glory (锦绣南歌)

The Song of Glory (锦绣南歌) is a 53-episode Chinese historical romance drama broadcast in 2020, set in the Liu Song dynasty of the Southern and Northern dynasties period. It stars Li Qin (李沁) as the assassin Shen Lige (沈骊歌) and Qin Hao (秦昊) as the regent Liu Yikang (刘义康), and was directed by Lee Wai Chu (李慧珠) and Deng Wei En.¹^•²

Key fact	Detail
Original title	锦绣南歌 (Jǐnxiù Nán Gē)³
Run	53 episodes, first aired July 1, 2020, concluded August 21, 2020, on WeTV¹
Setting	Liu Song dynasty, Yuanjia era; the male lead is based on the historical Prince of Pengcheng, Liu Yikang²^•⁴
Lead cast	Li Qin as Shen Lige; Qin Hao as Liu Yikang; Gu Jiacheng as Liu Yixuan; Qi Ji as Lu Yuan; Guan Xueying as Shen Leqing¹
Script	An original screenplay, not adapted from a web novel; a sister work to The Princess Weiyoung from the same company and director⁵
Reception	Douban opening score of 6.2 out of 10⁵; ranked first on the July 2020 network streaming chart for clicks and effective play share by Yunhe data⁶
Award	International Emmy Award nomination, Best Telenovela, 2021¹

Spoilers

Plot

The story opens in the Yuanjia era of the Liu Song dynasty, a period the series describes as weakened by accumulated abuses. The swordswoman Shen Lige, raised as an assassin, performs a dance at the Grand Consort's birthday banquet as cover for an attempt to kill the regent Liu Yikang, whom she believes tolerates the corrupt minister Lu Yuan. The assassination fails, and Lige becomes a pawn contested between Liu Yikang and Lu Yuan. Through a case of mistaken identity she is recognized as the legitimate daughter of the Shen military family, and an arranged marriage joins her to Liu Yikang. The two had already met incognito among the common people, where they outwitted the powerful Lu clan and grew fond of each other; after the marriage they resolve their misunderstanding and fight the corrupt faction together.²^•⁵

Liu Yikang's characterization follows a concealment pattern: lacking the strength to confront the dominant minister Lu Yuan openly, he feigns illness and weakness while working behind the scenes, a role critics noted Qin Hao played with control.⁷ As the couple push reform, political rivals strike back and the Shen family falls; Lige then rises in grief and vengeance against the forces that destroyed her world.⁸

Production

Principal photography began in March 2019. In an interview, the lead director Lee Wai Chu, who has worked in the industry for more than 30 years, said she spent about half a year before the March 2019 start of filming on script adjustments, costume and set discussions, and on-set preparation, participating in every stage rather than serving as a nominal director. Her directing team included Huang Bin, who had followed her for ten years and served as a director on the series.⁹

Lee explained her habit of grounding even invented stories in a real dynasty: an actual period gives the story roots and lets her dress sets and costumes in genuine period culture, which is why her productions are rarely criticized on those grounds. She noted that several of her works, from The Princess Weiyoung onward, have been set in the Southern and Northern dynasties, which she attributed to coincidence and accumulated experience.⁹

Historical framing

Although the drama takes the Liu Song dynasty as its backdrop, reviewers consistently described it as effectively an alternate-history (架空) work rather than a strict historical drama. It borrows selected features of the Southern and Northern dynasties era and alludes to historical figures: the Liu Yikang played by Qin Hao corresponds in part to the historical Prince of Pengcheng, though one review maps the regent role onto the third Liu Song emperor Liu Yilong.¹⁰ The Paper's review observed that the male lead's prototype is the historical Liu Yikang, once dominant at court but little known to most viewers, and read the production's intent as combining a grand historical backdrop with freedom from close scrutiny that a better-known period would invite.⁴

Reception and criticism

Commercial performance outpaced critical reception. The series debuted at first place on the aggregate online heat chart at the start of July 2020,¹¹ and Yunhe data later placed it first for the month in both click volume and effective play share.⁶ Its Douban score, however, opened at 6.2, and the China Youth Daily-syndicated Qilu Evening News review described opinion as sharply split between the actors' fans and drama viewers.⁵^•⁷

The dominant criticism was formula. Yang Wenshan, editor-in-chief of the industry media Yingyi Dushé, argued that despite the original script the story stayed within conventional costume-idol-drama logic, a familiar "emperor and empress" romance with recognition and assassination plot devices, so that viewers could predict each episode from the last.⁵ Reviewers cataloged reused devices: the heroine's accidental identity swap, also used in Legend of Fuyao and The Princess Weiyoung; the banquet assassination and bracelet-recognition tropes; and slow-motion, freeze-frame staging of the leads' meetings.⁷

Similarities to earlier works drew particular attention. Readers pointed out that plot elements closely resemble The Princess Weiyoung's source novel Shu Nü You Du, matching character by character: Lige combining the roles of Li Weiyang and Zhao Yue, Anu corresponding to Xiao Man, and the second sister, elder brother, and young master mapping onto the Gu siblings. The Paper's review added structural parallels: a heroine recognized as a family daughter by a token bracelet (versus a jade pendant in The Princess Weiyoung), entanglement with two princes and marriage to one, and a scheming adopted sister, Shen Leqing, whose motive for persecution mirrors that of Li Changle.⁵^•⁴ The same review compared Lige to Sun Ruowei in Ming Dynasty, both orphaned, adopted, trained as assassins, and initially opposed to the man they later marry.⁴

Criticism also targeted characterization and logic. The Paper's reviewer found Lige's shifts between cold assassin, dutiful daughter, and playful bride abrupt because the family warmth that would motivate them was underdeveloped, and found Liu Yikang ineffective at the decisive moments of court struggle despite his strategist persona.⁴ The Phoenix review judged the political scheming naive next to Nirvana in Fire and noted that the opening assassination, with dancers drawing crossbows at the viewing platform, exemplified the writing's implausibility.¹⁰ Reviewers nonetheless agreed that the leads' acting held up, that costumes, sets, and action sequences were expensively made, and that the series remained watchable next to idol dramas led by purely commercial casts; the common verdict was that a strong Qin Hao and Li Qin pairing was wasted on a mediocre script.⁷^•¹²

Distribution and recognition

The series ran on the WeTV platform and streams internationally on iQIYI and, free with ads, on Rakuten Viki, with episodes of about 46 minutes and subtitles in more than a dozen languages including English, Spanish, French, German, and Russian.¹^•³ TheTVDB lists the series as an International Emmy Award nominee for Best Telenovela in 2021.¹

References

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