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Frost_edelweiss

From the complete Chen Zheyuan Profile that you can look at, whenever you are curious.


  THE WHITE OLIVE TREE    

Possibly airing on "Singles day"  11/11  after Chen Zheyuan's birthday on October 29, or in December.

白色橄榄树 [Báisè Gǎnlǎn Shù].  40 episodes, iQiyi 2024  - high quality S+ drama -  producer is Han Hao 韩颢  who already produced Wolf Warriors 2 (2017) and Winner is King (see below).  Screenwriter Yan Qianzi  杨千紫 is an author and also wrote script for The Legends (2019) and Only For Love (2023 drama with Bai Lu and Dylan Wang). The other screenwriter, credited on Baidu : Han Hao  韩颢 is also a producer ; he wrote for Winner is King (the shelved drama of CZY).

Complete cast and crew was still not disclosed on Baidu, as of 2024.02.23 but a Twitter post (picture to left) disclosed some already, listed on Baidu now :

Story: Demolition expert and explosives engineer  Lǐ Zàn  李瓒  meets Liangcheng TV reporter Sòng Rǎn 宋冉. They lose contact after a deadly bombing and after a time for recovery, find each other again to "plant white olive tree seeds together". 

The novel《白色橄榄树》by  Jiǔ YuèXī (玖月晞)  was described as a dark tragedy about a soldier and a journalist [-> translation into English] so the drama adaptation should, after much discussion, tweak the adaptation towards a happy end. "Li Zan is not just a fictional character, he means a lot to novel fans. They regard him as one of the heroes of the country!"  Two actresses had been too afraid of the FL role; Wang Yuwen almost left the production in a pinch, before Liang Jie quickly stepped in.

<-- My Gifs of booting and the search for FL. (from Twitter repost of Weibo and TikTok videos, adding text and merged-.

First trailer (1'42) on Weibo released 2023.09.21 with posters- GIF above from screenshots ; also on Twitter.  

Drama booting ceremony took place on  2023.09.16 and filming started immediately in Sichuan, Liangshan Yi autonomous prefecture.  Liang Jie arrived on Sept26 at Xichang airport nearby. Filming was scheduled for 150 days. It wrapped on 2024.01.13, and passed review successfully on 2024.07.11, to air 38 episodes.

News and videos accelerated as of 2024.02.23 - iQiyi released a new video of Behind the scenes and making of footage  (4 Gif snippets in left column and below) and cast was announced while pictures of the set   were posted for the "city" on a hilltop, that was built for the drama,  to look like the real war zone  Dongguo (Eastern country ) from the original novel . 
The site, rented for the construction, and revealed to be in the south of  Leshan (bordering to Liangshan) on Douyin, has become a tourist attraction in 2024!
One support actress, Florence Tan, gave an interesting interview to asiaone in Nov.2023.
The TV series has its own Weibo pages.

Reservations were already over  619,000 o n iQiyi in April 2024 - link for reservation and some previews from the drama here for Chinese version, and here for international subtitled version.  On  August 30, it went over 1 million reservations.
btw, for those who don't know it, here's a link to the beloved song Ganlan Shu (The Olive Tree), lyrics penned by Sanmao, and sung by Chyi Yu. It was composed for an old movie about refugees, but can be remembered here. It has been covered by countless singers, and the symbolism is also in tune with the new drama.

Last updated October 21, 2024

edited Quote
Frost_edelweiss

On October 2, 2024, Chen Zheyuan replied to questions about the shooting of The White  Olive Tree and the feelings he had for his role, there. As an aside, there was a question about the little girl he helped on set.  The 7 minutes interview, posted to YouTube, is subtitled in English (click on pictures to follow the link) 

edited Quote
Frost_edelweiss

The White Olive Tree OST MUSIC:   

First MV 3'17 from Weibo (click on picture for full link)

Singer Zhuo Yuan:

the first OST released is a simple song "If the wind had color" 《假如风有颜色》click on picture to follow the link to the 3'17" recording on YouTube, with Hanzi, pinyin and translation into English :
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