Nirvana in Fire Director Amazed At Fans 'Shipping' the Mei Changsu and Jing Wang Bromance

It’s been four years since the hit series Nirvana in Fire 琅琊榜 bowled over Chinese and international audiences with its beautifully shot visuals and wonderfully written storyline, but its director Kong Sheng recently revealed in an interview that he didn’t know the Mei Changsu and Jing Wang bromance was even a thing amongst fans.

Originally, Mei Changsu’s romantic counterpart Princess Nihuang, played by Liu Tao, was written off in the first few drafts of the script by the Nirvana in Fire novelist Hai Yan (and the drama’s script writer) for the series. But because the director felt that Mei Changsu and Nihuang’s love story had to be told, he had the character of Nihuang written back. So he said he was very surprised that a lot of viewers didn’t care for it that much and instead continued to ship the Mei Changsu – Prince Jing couple. He said his first reaction when hearing about this was “there’s such a thing?”

Despite the production team’s effort to bring Mei Changsu and Nihuang’s romance to life, the relationship between the pair was simply eclipsed by the bromance! It’s worth mentioning that there were more than a few other “ships” in the story – Mei Changsu and Jin Dong’s Lin Chen, Mei Changsu and Wu Lei’s Fei Liu, Mei Changsu and Chen Long’s Meng Zhi among others.

Anyway, Kong Sheng said that he found it hard to accept this unpredictable result. It turns out “the director’s way of thinking – that love can only occur between men and women is already old fashioned; and he also forgot that love between two men can also exist beyond the bounds of just plain brotherhood”, he adds. Times have indeed changed that shipping a bromance is nothing out of the ordinary.