Promotional material of Love Like the Galaxy Photo: Douban

A new period romance series Love Like the Galaxy, adapted from a popular web novel, debuted on Chinese streaming platform Tencent Video on Tuesday. The show focuses on traditional Chinese family relationships and the culture of prose poetry.

The series starring actor Wu Lei and actress Zhao Lusi focuses on the daughter of a military general, her growth and the romantic love between her and the adopted son of the emperor.

Cheng Shaoshang (Zhao) has been left in the care of her grandmother by her parents due to a war and her evil aunt wants to raise her as a good-for-nothing. Faced with many traps, Cheng is not into study, but skilled in handwork and has her own ambitions as she waiting for her parents' return. However, as the day finally arrives, she discovers it is difficult to reestablish old emotional connections after years of estrangement.

Cheng then meets the new emperor's adopted son Ling Buyi (Wu) and goes through ups and downs. These experiences help both Ling and Cheng grow and they slowly reconcile with each other and their families, all the while holding onto a sense of justice as they work together to resolve a national crisis.

The series depicts family and romantic relations from a broad perspective, but presents multiple emotional elements such as family affection and love in fine detail. In the end, it presents diverse views on family and love to audiences.

The opening of the series uses cultural elements of Chinese shadow puppetry, getting hailed by many netizens.

The first four episodes were updated on Tuesday night and some reviewers commented that two main characters are like roles walking out from the original novel and meet their imaginations of the young couple.

The series was adapted from the web novel Xing Han Can Lan, Xing Shen Zhi Zai (lit: the galaxy is brilliant and we are lucky to be here) by Guanxinzeluan.

As more and more Chinese people are entering the online literature industry and devoting themselves to creating brilliant works, online literature has become one of the most important sources of stories for TV series to draw up, Zhang Yiwu, professor of the Peking University, told the Global Times. 

This is not the first time one of Guanxinzeluan's novels has been adapted for TV. The adaptation of The Story of Ming Lan became an enormously successful web series in 2018.