Pursuit of Jade pairs Fan Changyu, a butcher’s daughter, with Xie Zheng, a disgraced noble building a war chest under everyone’s nose. Their marriage starts as convenience and turns into the real thing, until his hidden past and an actual war threaten to undo it. The following Chinese dramas and TV shows below don’t all share that setup — they’re grouped by which part of the formula each one actually leans into.
Marriage of convenience & concealed identity
These pair two people who marry for practical reasons while one of them is hiding who they really are. It’s the mechanic Pursuit of Jade runs on, so this is the closest cluster to it.
1. The Legend of Shen Li (2024)
Zhao Liying plays a phoenix general who fakes mortal life to dodge an arranged marriage, and the man she falls for turns out to be hiding an identity of his own.
The last true god in the realm escapes a political marriage to the Heavenly Emperor’s grandson, gets injured mid-battle, and crash-lands into the mortal world as Shen Li. There she meets Xingyun, who isn’t remotely as ordinary as he first appears. 39 episodes, aired March 2024 on Tencent Video and Mango TV. The closest match here to Fan Changyu and Xie Zheng’s dynamic — two people concealing who they are, falling for each other anyway.
2. Love Like the Galaxy (2022)
Zhao Lusi spends her childhood being quietly mistreated by her own family, then grows into someone who can go toe-to-toe with a general carrying his own war wounds.
Cheng Shaoshang and General Ling Buyi (Wu Lei) circle each other while he investigates an old case tied to his parents’ deaths. Both are running from something. 56 episodes across two parts, released July 2022. Less a fake marriage than a political one, arranged first and felt later — the throughline it shares with Pursuit of Jade.
3. Are You the One (2024)
An amnesiac sect leader wakes up convinced a prince is her husband, and he decides not to correct her.
Liu Miantang loses her memory after an attack and mistakes Cui Xingzhou for the man she married. He plays along to draw out the people hunting her, and the fake marriage does what fake marriages in this genre always do. 40 episodes, aired August 2024 on Tencent Video, led by Zhang Wanyi and Wang Churan.
4. Revenge of the False Bride (2026)
Worth knowing upfront — this one runs in 14-minute episodes, not a full 40-episode arc, but the plot lands closer to Pursuit of Jade than anything else here.
Li Muhe survives a family tragedy, takes on a dead woman’s identity, and marries young marshal Lu Yueting as part of a calculated plan. Old battlefield secrets resurface and threaten to expose them both. 24 episodes, aired April 2026 on Youku. If Fan Changyu’s arranged marriage to a general hiding something is the part you came for, this is it in miniature.
5. Blossom (2024)
A woman gets a second life, marries a nobleman travelling under disguise, and uses the arrangement to take down her stepmother.
Meng Ziyi and Li Yunrui play two people who marry for leverage against the family scandals closing in on them, then have to decide if the alliance means anything beyond strategy. Adapted from the novel Jiu Chong Zi, released in 2024.
Political intrigue & romance along for the ride
Here the conspiracy or the revenge plot is doing the work. The central couple matters, but the palace politics would carry the show without them.
6. Story of Kunning Palace (2023)
A woman who dies as Empress gets sent back to before it all went wrong, and rebuilds her life around revenge instead of the throne.
Jiang Xuening wakes up in her younger body after a bloody death and spends 38 episodes protecting the people she lost the first time, joining forces with Xie Wei against an invading enemy. Aired November 2023, starring Bai Lu and Zhang Linghe. The romance is real, but the conspiracy is the engine.
7. The Long Ballad (2021)
A princess loses her entire family to a palace coup and ends up allied with the general from the enemy camp.
Li Changge (Dilraba Dilmurat) survives her uncle’s betrayal and sets out to reclaim the crown, crossing paths with Ashile Sun (Wu Lei) of the Eastern Turkic Khaganate along the way. 49 episodes, released March 2021. War and revenge come first; the romance builds out of the fallout, the same order of operations as Pursuit of Jade.
8. The Prisoner of Beauty (2025)
Two feuding clans force their kids into a marriage alliance, and neither one is in on the joke.
Xiao Qiao (Song Zuer) marries Wei Shao (Liu Yuning) to patch over bad blood between their families, set against a fictionalised account of building the early Grand Canal. Premiered May 2025 on Tencent Video. Family and country politics do the heavy lifting; the marriage is the mechanism, not the point.
Wuxia adventure, romance on the side
An ensemble jianghu story instead of a couple-centred one. Romance shows up, but it’s not why anyone’s watching.
9. The Blood of Youth (2022)
If you came to Pursuit of Jade for the sword fights more than the marriage plot, this is the one to switch to.
A young knight, Lei Wujie, stumbles into Xueluo Villa and gets pulled into a decades-old royal secret alongside a rotating cast of jianghu disciples. 40 episodes, aired December 2022 to January 2023 on Youku, led by Ao Ruipeng, Liu Xueyi and Lin Boyang. Romance exists on the margins; the plot runs on martial-arts politics instead.
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