Who Writes the Chinese TV Dramas?

They are mysterious… why?

The Sonoma Sage, being a writer, is interested in the people who write the TV series which he watches. The Chinese historical TV writers are curiously mysterious people.

In the USA and other nations like the UK and Korea, the script writers for TV series are usually a team of people who work together on characters, plots, and general directions for the series. As a rule, one person will write a single hour-long episode and then the story is edited by the lead writer before it goes to the producer for budgeting and then filming.

By contrast, the Chinese TV series (often of 50 or more episodes) are credited to a single person.

Example 1: Story of the Yanxi Palace (70 episodes, created in 2018) is credited to Zhou Mo. Zhou Mo appears out of nowhere in 2018. She has no known background and suddenly she is the lead writer on a massive multi-million dollar TV series. Really? This was a hugely successful TV series but there are no interviews that I could find with Ms. Zhou Mo. She is a mystery woman despite her great success. {See the Sage’s review of Yanxi Palace here.}

Example 2: Qiao’s Grand Courtyard (45 episodes, created in 2006). Zhu Xiuhai is the credited writer of this very good historical TV series about a real Chinese merchant and banker who lived from 1819 to 1907. The writer, Xiuhai Zhu is - again - a mystery. No background, one other credited work in 2010 and then… nothing.

Example 3: The Longest Day in Chang’an (50 episodes, created in 2019). One episode is credited to the director, Cao Dun, one episode is credited to man named Marberionius who has worked on six other TV series, and all the other episodes are credited to a mysterious Zhua Zi who has never worked on anything before or since. This TV series was enormously expensive to create. Who throws millions of dollars at a writer who has no track record?

Example 4: The Three Kingdoms (95 episodes, created in 2010). The writer was Zhu Sujin. He had a minor role working on another drama, also filmed in 2010, and he had an idea turned into a film by the great Zhang Yimu in 2018. As of 2022 - that’s all. The Three Kingdoms was the single most expensive TV show ever made in China at the time of its filming in 2010. The project took some five years to bring off. Who entrusts such a project to an unknown writer and then - after massive success - that writer never works again?

None of this makes sense. The ability to write good dialog, create convincing characters, and make episodes flow from one to the next - these are rare skills. Writers who are good at creating TV scripts are valuable. If they don’t write for TV, they often switch to write for film, or they write novels. They don’t just… stop writing.

What is going on? How does a woman like Zhuo Mo suddenly appear, with enormously detailed knowledge about the Qianlong Emperor’s court? None of these TV series are strictly historical works, the writers of these series have invented a great deal, adding in plot elements to make the story more exciting. You can’t just do six years of historical research and then write one of these TV shows, you also have to learn how to write for TV.

Theory #1 - The Chinese Government’s Propaganda Department is Doing the Work

It is impossible to have TV shows broadcast on Chinese TV without the approval of the Chinese Communist Party. The assumption in the West has been that the CCP Media Division simply acts a censorship organization, with scripts going to the CCP Media board for approval which then accepts or rejects the script. However, what if most of these writers already work for the CCP Media organization? What if the TV producers go to the CCP Media board first and say “I want to film an historical drama, set in the Qing Dynasty, do you have anything for me?”

Let us suppose the CCP Media group employs a thousand writers (I’m guessing here). Further, let’s suppose it has an internal meeting and they say, “Time for another palace drama. What do we want to say? What story do we want to tell? How do we want the people of China to think about the Imperial Court?” At this point, Ms. Zhuo Mo submits a proposal saying, “I have an idea for a story about Lady Wei based on research I did on the Qianlong Emperor when I was at Tsinghua University.“ The idea gets approved, and they go back to the producer and say, “Here is what we have for you…” The producer agrees and now the CCP Media department creates a team of writers who work together to create the script. Many of these writers have decades of experience so they know all about plot structure, character arcs, dialog, etc.

Officially, the script is credited to one person: Zhou Mo. In reality, it is the product of the CCP’s Media & Propaganda department and the whole story is designed to convey exactly the message the CCP is trying to convey in the year of it’s release. This would explain why Ms. Zhuo Mo does not give interviews or explain how she knows so much about life inside the Qianlong Emperor’s inner palace.

One interesting counter-argument to this theory is that early in 2019, a Beijing group, closely associated with the CCP theory experts criticized the Yanxi Palace and another closely related series Ruyi’s Royal Love in the Palace (set just a few years before Yanxi Palace). The Theory Weekly essay published in January of 2019 attacked these two imperial dramas, saying:

[These dramas] encouraged viewers to pursue the glamorous lifestyles of China’s past monarchs and promoted pleasure and luxury above the virtues of frugality and hard work.

This does not disprove the Sage’s theory. In the 100 year history of the CCP, there have been many disputes between different factions of the party, some of which were fought in the newspapers. The BBC published a good follow-up essay about the attack on Yanxi Palace which you can read here.

Theory #2 - The Real Writers of these TV Series Like to Remain Unknown

Everyone in China remembers the Cultural Revolution. All smart writers know that a story which is praised one year, might be vilified the next year, and might even result in your imprisonment a few years later - depending on how the CCP views your story in relation to today’s official party line. Consequently, the smart writers work behind the scenes. Every production is credited to someone new, and while the real work is being done by old experts, they stay hidden. Well paid, but hidden from public view. Thus the successful writers of previous dramas are still busy working today, but not openly. The officially credited writer is a “fall guy” - someone young who can absorb the blame if, in a few years, the CCP suddenly decides that the work they approved before really was anti-Party material which should never have been allowed in the first place.

There are some real Chinese TV Writers

There is at least one real writer: Zhang Yingji. She is the unquestioned writer of the very successful TV series Nothing But Thirty (43 episodes, created in late 2019). As one can see from the interview published in ChinaDaily, Ms. Zhang is a real person who came up with her idea for a new new show about modern Chinese women, and she did all the research. She wrote several short TV series before Nothing But Thirty and she has a sequel in the works, scheduled for release in 2023.

Conclusion

I would guess that there are many real Chinese TV writers. What I now suspect is that the history of China is too dangerous to touch without direct hands-on work by the CCP’s Media Group.