"Liu Shishi carries this fox-demon romance with the kind of quiet authority the show sometimes forgets it has."
A xianxia romance with a strong lead and too many side characters taking up space.
Love in Pavilion has the right ingredients. It has Liu Shishi — one of the more reliable leads in Chinese historical drama — and a mythology that is genuinely rich when the story focuses on it. The problem is that it does not always focus on what matters. For every episode where the central relationship earns its screen time, there are two more introducing side characters whose stories pull focus away from the people you actually came to watch.
The Synopsis
Dongfang Huai Zhu and Wangquan Hong Ye lead two powerful families on opposite sides of a fragile peace between humans and demons. On the seventh day of the seventh month, at the Bamboo Pavilion by the Huai River, their fates intertwine in a way neither of them anticipated — bound together by a promise that was made to outlast everything around them.
The Cast
Liu Shishi (Dongfang Huai Zhu): She is 37 years old, back in a lead role after a gap, and she makes it look effortless. The character is written with layers — there is authority, humor, and occasionally real vulnerability — and Liu Shishi moves between all of it without any visible seam. She is the reason to watch this drama even when the drama does not always give her enough to work with.
Zhang Yunlong (Wangquan Hong Ye): Solid, though the character is written as more reactive than active for much of the drama’s run. He and Liu Shishi have genuine chemistry, and the scenes where the show slows down and just lets them exist together are easily the best parts of the watch.
What Works
The ensemble has real warmth to it when the story remembers to lean on that. The friendship dynamics — particularly in the middle stretch of episodes — give the drama a texture it would otherwise lack. And the final six episodes pull everything back into focus: the emotional climax lands, and the ending earns a kind of quiet sadness that the whole drama had been building toward without always making it visible.
Where It Struggles
Thirty-six episodes is a lot of space, and Love in Pavilion fills too much of it with characters who have their own fully developed storylines that the main plot does not have room for. By episode 20 you have met so many people that the connective tissue between them starts to feel more like obligation than storytelling. Some of those side characters are genuinely charming. They still take up time that belongs to the leads.
Final Thoughts
Love in Pavilion is an uneven drama that is still worth watching for what it does right. Liu Shishi alone makes it worth starting. If you can stay patient through the crowded middle, there is a genuinely moving love story at the center of it — you just have to be willing to find it.
Looking for more Asian drama reviews? Visit the Asian TV Drama page.
Related