General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20267 min read

This Thriving Land (生万物)

This Thriving Land (生万物) is a 2025 Chinese rural-era television series directed by Liu Jiacheng (刘家成), adapted from writer Zhao Defa's (赵德发) novel Qianquan yu Juejue (缱绻与决绝), and broadcast from 13 August 2025 in the CCTV-8 prime-time slot with simultaneous streaming on iQiyi (爱奇艺)¹. Set in a village in southern Shandong between 1926 and 1944, it follows two generations of three families, the Nings, the Fengs, and the Feis, and their bond with the land they farm¹. It became the year's leading audience draw, breaking CCTV-8's three-year ratings record and ranking first in market share on 2025's hit-series chart².

Key fact	Detail
Native title	生万物 (This Thriving Land), a 36-episode drama series¹^•³
Source novel	Adapted from Zhao Defa's Qianquan yu Juejue (缱绻与决绝), which won the People's Literature Prize⁴
Broadcast	13 August 2025, CCTV-8 prime time, iQiyi simultaneously; finale 23 August 2025¹^•⁵
Lead cast	Yang Mi (杨幂) as Ning Xiuxiu and Ou Hao (欧豪) as Feng Dajiao, with Ni Dahong, Qin Hailu, Xing Fei, Lin Yongjian, and Lan Yingying⁶
Ratings	Average 2.8863%, first among CCTV-8 series that year; peak 4.94%; roughly 1 billion cumulative platform views⁷^•⁸
Audience	Over 50% of large-screen viewers under 40; Douban 7.2/10 from 216,919 raters (as of 18 October 2025)²^•⁹
Recognition	8 nominations in 6 categories at the 31st Magnolia Awards, including Best Chinese TV Series and Best Director⁵

Spoilers

Story and characters

The plot opens on 8 December 1926, when the landlord's daughter Ning Xiuxiu is kidnapped by bandits on her wedding day; her father Ning Xuexiang (宁学祥), refusing to ransom her to protect his land, breaks the family, and she falls from the landlord's household to marry the farmer Feng Dajiao and learn the life of the soil¹^•³. Around this main line, the sister Ning Susu (宁苏苏) becomes a victim of arranged feudal marriage, the landlord's son Fei Wendian grows into a Communist Party member and dies fighting the Japanese invasion, and the narrative follows the peasant association movement, rent reduction, and the war years²^•⁶. An elderly Xiuxiu returns to the village in 1986, framing the story as recollection³.

<b>Land as the spine.</b> Critics read the drama as an anatomy of the Chinese farmer's attachment to land: for the landlord Ning Xuexiang and the poor peasant Feng Er, land is a near-sacred object held above family ties; for Feng Dajiao it is the basis of livelihood, and for Ning Xiuxiu an arc from estrangement to understanding¹². CCTV's review noted that while revolutionary activity, from the land revolution to resisting Japan, forms the background, everyday rural life occupies center stage, so that the landlord-peasant relation resists the simple slogan of earlier land-reform literature such as The Hurricane⁹.

Source and adaptation

The series is drawn from Qianquan yu Juejue, one volume of Zhao Defa's "farmer trilogy", a novel praised for its thought and artistry and recognized with the People's Literature Prize¹⁰. Director Liu Jiacheng later said the novel had circulated among production companies for more than ten years because adapters doubted whether a distant rural story could find a market; after accepting the project he spent nine months with the screenwriting team, concentrating on how to reach younger viewers¹¹. The screenplay is credited to Wang He (王贺)⁵.

The adaptation condenses the novel substantially. The novel covers nearly seventy years and four generations; the series selects the 1926 to 1944 chapters, centers on two generations, and shifts the focus from the novel's tension between farmers and the land to the land's warmth and generosity¹⁰. Some characters were softened: the farmer Feng Dajiao, lame in the novel, is presented on screen as able-bodied and upright apart from his large feet¹⁰.

Production

The series was a key project of Shandong Province's "Qilu Literary Peak Program", developed by Jinan iQiyi Film and Television Culture Co., produced by iQiyi, and shot in Changshan village, Mamuchi township, Yinan county, near Linyi, Shandong¹^•¹³. The production rented tens of acres of wheat fields for nearly one million yuan to film a full year of farming, staged southern-Shandong customs such as "whipping the spring ox", "sweeping the granary", and "testing the spring air", and had actors work the soil themselves¹¹. Xinhua reported the meticulous recreation of plowing, sowing, fertilizing, and harvest scenes⁴.

Broadcast and ratings

The drama opened strongly: its first two episodes both broke a 2% rating, iQiyi's heat value passed 9,400, the Douyin main topic passed 970 million plays, and reservations exceeded 2.5 million¹⁴^•¹. Its heat value later broke 10,000, iQiyi's highest honor tier, and Kuyun data showed the year's highest rating on CCTV-8, the first CCTV series of 2025 to pass a 4% rating, first-day on-demand views above 100 million, and the top single-day all-platform playback in three years¹⁵^•¹⁶. By the finale on 23 August the series had reached roughly 1 billion platform views with a 4.94% rating, and its 2.8863% average ranked first among CCTV-8 series for the year⁸^•⁷. More than half of its large-screen audience was under 40, an unusual demographic for a rural drama². Reruns followed on Dragon TV from 27 October 2025⁶.

The hit had cultural spillover: dialect phrases from the show such as "俺" and "扎觅汉" became internet slang, and the series' popularity boosted tourism in its filming region¹⁷.

Reception and recognition

Mainstream reviews were largely favorable. People's Daily Online published a long-form comment praising the direction, character design, and storytelling without mentioning the lead actors' performances¹⁸. Xinhua's commentary credited Yang Mi with shedding the restlessness of a traffic-star celebrity for a grounded performance as a lower-class woman, and People's Daily's culture section described her move from costume romance into realist material¹⁹. At the 31st Magnolia Awards the series received eight nominations across six categories, including Best Chinese TV Series, Best Director for Liu Jiacheng and Liu Yang, Best Actress for Yang Mi, and Best Supporting Actor for Ni Dahong and Lin Yongjian⁵. Liu Jiacheng later won Best Director for the series at the "Film and TV Role Models" 2025 year-end survey¹¹.

The series also entered official cultural accounting: the National Report on Civilized Rural Customs 2026, released at a conference in Linyi on 16 July 2026, listed it among exemplary "three rurals" (三农) screen works and called it a benchmark of rural-themed art¹³.

Controversy

<b>Ratings success met divided opinion.</b> Even as it topped charts, the finale pushed the word "ruined ending" (烂尾) onto trending searches, and some viewers argued the second half collapsed⁹. A recurring line of criticism held that characters and settings脱离 historical context, or detach from their historical context: the tenant farmer's daughter Susu is said to be illiterate in farming yet versed in letters, which critics contrasted with research putting rural female literacy in the Republican era below 5%; 1926 village sets were described as too tidy, with brick houses and stone paths standing in for the era's typical mud-brick and thatch; viewers flagged anachronistic props such as plastic sheeting, corrugated steel, and modern shirt collars; and a scene of a tenant woman berating the landlord was challenged against archival records that tenants bowed to landlords²⁰. Plot choices, including Ning Xiuxiu's "revenge in the snow" and the reworking of an assault into a matter of wounded pride, were called melodramatic, and detractors labeled the show a "rural Mary Sue"⁹^•²⁰.

The supporting character Yinzi (银子), played by Lan Yingying, drew a separate dispute. Her studio's finale report celebrated the character "handling the landlord", and Lan's earlier remarks that "marrying the landlord is happiness" drew accusations of sanitizing feudal oppression; on 31 August 2025 the studio apologized and corrected the report, removing unverifiable labels⁹.

Other commentary defended the show. Hu Xijin, former editor-in-chief of Global Times, wrote on Weibo that some accusations went beyond normal literary criticism into political labeling, and that a hit series vetted by CCTV was unlikely to carry serious political problems²⁰. Shandong's official propaganda account argued the series' spread reflected a collective look back at land civilization, noting that both young viewers moved by the "weeping at the coffin" scene and older viewers moved by the bridal procession found in it an emotional bridge across generations²⁰. A Beijing seminar convened by the China TV Arts Committee and Shandong propaganda and broadcast authorities heard the adaptation described as a successful transformation of literature to screen²¹.

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

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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