On the recommendation of friend I’ve started watching this show called 琅琊榜 or langyabang.
In my mind it’s like the Chinese equivalent to game of thrones. So many great characters but also with awesome gongfu. Has anyone else seen or heard of this? I’ve been watching a version with English subtitles and it’s fantastic so I thought we could discuss it here if there are other fans of the show.
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Thanks for the tip! These are the tidbits of info I’m hoping to fined when browsing the site.
Hope you had an opportunity to check out this show and found it enjoyable. I’m glad I was able to share this with you,
I just finished the series over this past weekend and it was amazing. I’m sad that it’s over but feel very happy with how it ended. Unlike western TV shows that are trying to run as long as possible, I found that Chinese TV is written with a set number of episodes in mind, so this allows for the story to reach a nice conclusion the way it was written to end.
For this interested in another great show that stars many of the cast members from Nirvana in Fire please check out “The Disguiser” - 伪装者. It’s based in !930’s Shanghai and Hong Kong and cover
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I’ve been watching each episode twice, first on viki.com with English subtitles, then the mandarin version I recorded on the local station broadcasting it. Normally I’d just watch the mandarin version, but this one was so good I didn’t want to miss anything.
I just finished this show last weekend. I haven’t seen such great Chinese TV show for long long long time! It’s nice to hear that it’s already ‘exported’!
The best part of this show is that I even felt pity for the villains, for example, the emperor. 
@Constance_Fang The show can be am emotional rollercoaster. I did feel bad for some of the villains, except for Xia Jiang, the head of the investigation bureau. That guy is just pure evil.
I was really happy to see that CPod did a lesson on this show, I think it would be great if you did this in the future for other popular TV shows. It’s nice to learn some new vocabulary that would allow us to discuss awesome Chinese TV shows with our mandarin speaking friends. 
Hi Matt! I also watched Langyabang a few weeks ago and LOVED it! Best Chinese dianshiju I’ve seen in years! And just like you, I also watched Weizhuangzhe (though I didn’t like it as much as Langyabang, I still liked many of the cast that appeared in both series).
Great tip!
Do you know if there are episode transcripts available online?
I haven’t really looked for them, but that is a great idea. They might be out there somewhere, but there are so many episodes that I doubt there would be any available right now. If I am interested in a word I hear in the dialogue of an episode I just pause the show and look for the character that is written in the chinese subtitles and then look it up on Pleco or another dictionary. Pleco is great because you can use your phone’s camera to do live translation of a still image and it will search the image for characters and translate them for you.
With my improved Chinese, now a lowly intermediate but thank you CPod :), I just got around to watching this series based on your recommendation. I was at first put off by the extremely bloody first scenes (for any other people who might be interested, other than a few seconds of replays of the start during the rest of the series, there’s no more gore). Terrific storytelling that hooks you from one episode to the next. Beware, huge risk of binge watching!
Excellent for listening practice. Also, as the English subtitles come on first, you can practice how you would say it in Chinese. So very satisfying to be able to pick out vocab!
Thanks for the suggestion!
Thanks for recommendation. Always trying to find good shoes to watch
Just found this post. Thanks for the recommendation, I will definitely look this up. I have been waiting for the English sub for 红楼梦 but it doesn’t look like it will be available soon. I tried to watch the older version but the sub was so bad that it’s really hard to follow the story :’(
还有琅琊榜第二,身边朋友们都说不太好看. 哈哈我需要二十字…
When I try to watch the show using Viki it says that it is unavailable in my current region. Right now I am living in Mainland China using a VPN connecting to a US server. Is Viki available in the US?
Yes it is. Maybe they happen to know that is a VPN and block it. Does the message from Viki say what IP address you are using? maybe VPN is not working properly.