These are sentimental favorites of mine, any 10 or so dramas that come to mind off the top of my head.
C dramas:
Qiao’s Mansion
Chinese Style Divorce
大宅门
The Qin Empire
Yong Zheng Kingdom
大明宮詞 Palace of Desires
Black Hole
3 Kingdoms
Loquacious Jang DaMin’s Happy Life
April Rhapsody
The Great Ming Dynasty 1566
Han Wu Da Di 漢武大帝
甄嬛傳 Legend of Zhen Huan
舞乐传奇 Legend of Southern Dance and Music
戰長沙 Battle of ChangSha
俠僧探案傳奇 Of Monks and Masters
J dramas:
Long Vacation
The Man Who Can’t Get Married
Tokyo Love Story
Trick
With Love
Shinya Shokudo
GTO
Hero
I L of Tears
Hotaru no Hikari
K dramas:
I Live in CheongDam Dong
My Name is Kim Sam Soon
Rebirth
Que Sera Sera
GoodBye Solo
White Tower
Alone in Love
Friends Our Legend
Joseon X Files
Moonlight Drawn By Clouds
Reply 1988
My Wife Is Having An Affair This Week
WeightLifting Fairy Kim BokJoo
HK dramas:
War and Beauty
Don’t Look Now
Duke of Mount Deer 1985
Legend of Condor Heroes 1982
Looking Back in Anger
It Runs in the Family
To Catch the Uncatchables
Detective Investigation Files 1, 2
Ghetto Justice
Old Time Buddy
The King of Yesterday and Tomorrow
War of the Genders
The Greed of Man
Margaret and David: Green Beans
TW dramas:
It Started with A Kiss
Sunny Happiness
Crystal Boys
18歲的約定 True Love
安室爱美惠 I Love My Wife
Wayward Kenting
The Happy Time In That Year
光阴的故事 The Story of Time
愛的生存之道 The Pursuit of Happiness
mookie 
You know I hadn’t seen that many J-doramas,..
But theseeee
GTO
Hero
I L of Tears
<3333
Oh you should watch more doramas Chingu!!!! They offer a lot more varieties of genres. The 3 you mentioned aren’t even my fav of my favs!! ^^ Of my list, I’m pretty sure you’ll love The Man who can’t Get Married (esp if u’ve seen the K-ripoff, and it doesnt matter if u hate/love it)
“Qiao’s Mansion, Chinese Style Divorce, The Qin Empire” haha not used to seeing this stuff in english it’s kind of funny :S I loved these!
What are the “Black Hole” and “April Rhapsody” dramas you speak of?
It’s hard to come by anyone who’ve seen and love Chinese Style Divorce!!! *shakehands*
Black Hole is 黑洞 http://movie.douban.com/subject/2216379/ , my first Chen Dao Ming drama….and sworn fangirl since. It is an organized crime/cop thriller, well written, well produced, well acted…ie impossible to find these days.
April Rhapsody is 人間四月天. This is more a sentimental fav. on the romances of the Manguo literati 黃磊is 徐志摩, Zhou Xun is 林徽音. I love well done turn of the century dramas, again nay impossible to find nowadays.
haha! I cant take all the credit, alot of the mainland chinese dramas are stuff my parents buy pirated dvds of, and I just tag along when they watch 😛 Come to think of it, my mum prob loves him too (>< It's just so cool to find someone who knows so much about cdramas haha! thanks anyway!
oh ME TOO! haha my folks will randomly send me those D9s, where a whole drama is conveniently in 1 dvd. It’s very awesome actually, too hard I think the quality is not up there as it was 5+ years back
lolz it will really crack me up if ur Mom loves to watch her Chen Dao Ming dramas and Dad won’t miss anything Jiang WenLi is in. Mine were watching 娘要嫁人 last month…I couldn’t keep up with them and only caught glimpses after work here and there, but they were beyond addicted. It seems super melo, I doubt it’s my thing
omg yeah the quality sucks so bad on some of them! but it’s really fun to buy them, cos you just browse through hundreds and like go home with 20 dramas at a go it’s such a rush! 😛
they were watching Jiang’s 幸福来敲门 recently, I quite liked it, though the main guy was rather not attractive…
where are you living now?
My folks sent me the D9 of 幸福来敲门 …I tried out an ep and nth too interesting. My drama list is too obscenely longgg so this has to be dropped.
I’m in US.
wait it seems like half of my comment above in the middle is cut off?!
Oh sorry about your comment… *hug*
Hi.. I have become a fan of ancient Chinese drama since watching BBJX. I have watched some but none of them are on your list..
Which one do you recommend the most?
Thank you..
What have you seen and liked?
If BBJX is your favorite, I think you would like 甄嬛傳/zhen huan zhuan. imo it is of a much better production value, much better writing (though nowhere near perfect). It is an imperial intrigue where we follow the lives of several palace concubines set in Qing dynasty of emperor YongZheng’s (ie prince 4) rule, but the novel it’s based on is a period ‘fantasy’ not set in a specific time.
The ones on my list are most probably not available with subs, but if there is, 3 Kingdoms 2010 is very well done and epic http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTax6-DUsM8&feature=share&list=PL33A390995E9A7F00
The new Water Margin/ All Men are Brothers 2011 is also one of the better Cdramas produced in recent years.
Other than these, I truly can’t recommend anything worth you time. 😉
Wow!! Thank you for your fruitful reply…. I will watch all that you have recommended.
Zhen Huan is definetly on my watch list…
For 3 kingdoms, I already have the DVD but haven’t got to watch it for some times..
Is it the one starred by Peter Ho?
Thank you again for your valuable input.. 🙂
Yes, Peter Ho plays a side character, he has his own arc /romance. It is a war epic, so much more a testosterone fest, not sure if it is sth to your liking.
I have heard Zhen Huan is making big noise in Japan right now as it is airing, deservingly so.
If period romance is your genre, I’ve just finished 陆贞传奇 / Lu Zhen Chuan Qi/Female Prime Minister. A ratings hit. It is historically atrocious, writing by a monkey, but if you can look past it and treat it as what it is: a romance chickflick pretending to be a period piece, the OTP is quite cute.
writing by a monkey?? wow.. You are a harsh reviewer…
Thank you.. I already have the DVD… Maybe I am going to watch it tomorrow 🙂
Hi! So umm I got lucky and managed to lay my hand on The Qin Empire, subtitled in my language. The thing is I’m illiterate about Chinese’ history and the synopsis I found about this drama didn’t help. I would like to ask you since The Qin Empire listed as ur favorite drama: what should I expect of this show? Thank you very much, have a good day 🙂
Hi!
Qin is the first dynasty unifying middle kingdom as we know it, it was an age of warring states before and everyone is vying for conquering the land…and we start out the drama with the Qin state suffering a great defeat, and being a weaker contender in the western savage corner of the map, no one but a wise strategist had the foresight of great things to come. His name is Shang Yang.
What I liked about the drama is its world building, while not properly period authentic in every aspect, does lead me into that world, tagging along the ascension of the Qin State unifying the land.
Of course as with most dramatization, this has an agenda, a point of view, a bias, and its fictionalized take on Mr ShangYang is painting him in a much more saintly light when his philosophy is much more brutal authoritarian dictatorship aligning with the Qin emperors which was much criticized in hindsight…but this is CCTV approved drama, it is propagandizing its mores glorifying a totalitarian socialist society.
I appreciate the writing of the politicking. If you are a fan of the hit Cdrama of late Nirvana in Fire, there is a whiff of similarity of what it is trying to intrigue me with the mindgames and schemings but fail imo, which Qin Empire competently did worm me in. This is not a perfect drama though, pace might be slower, preachier, there is no strictly pretty young guns. Can’t get best of all worlds.
I know very little of Qin dynasty myself, there is quite little record of it being centuries before us, so the topic alone is immensely interesting to me to see how a seemingly underdog underestimated by all, get the world under his palm..
Thank you, that sounds pretty interesting, totally gonna watch it next. Yeah I’m a fan of NiF but I think I can do fine without pretty faces as long as the characters are intriguing. Also, there’s second and third season of Qin Empire, are they legit continuation?
Qin2 is slightly less, but still qualified to be lumped into a historical with characters convincing enough. There r more flaws than the first, someacting jobs could be abit bugging. A ～7/10 for me. I have not seen Qin3. I am not a fan of NiF, especially the scriptwriting. I thought the characters are mostly very flat caricatures under the glossy wrappings never much developed properly and too many plots are hastily wontoned through to count imo.
Thank you for ur replies~ about NiF, I also think the characters aren’t that complex or deep but somehow they’re… earnest? It surely pulled me in. Lol I don’t know maybe I’m just in the right mood after all it’s rainy season here.
Anyway while I’m at it, I also wanted to ask about YongZheng Kingdom, what is it about and what do u like about it? Since this drama is easily available in eng sub at youtube, I want to try it but again no review anywhere and I’m hesitate to blindly jump into it. Lastly, what do u think of For the Sake of Republic?
NiF is well acted…but the characters are incredulously not legit for me, even hero MCS, too saintly just coz of the all powerful too convenient TPTB.
Back to greener pastures! YZ Kingdom has almost perfect writing as far as the tight ropes of fictionalizing Qing history goes. Think BuBuJingXin with a hefty dose of authenticity in place of the fluffy romance. If you are in the mood of a much thorough essaying of prince4, 13 …instead of reducing them to a vocation of being shoujo manga protagonists, this is the one drama i can truly rec always.
For the Sake of Republic is producer/pd/writer extraordinaire 張黎，劉和平 at their best, back when the days the highest priority in drama making is the writing the writing the writing! And when casting is truly befitting each and every part none of the idolization maneuvering common grounds nowadays. It is as close to a flawless C historical, a treasure trove of the part of the tumultuous C history of late Qing to the ‘rise’ of modern CN. There r tons of sharp feisty dialogues i doubt could past the censors now. While you are eying what i could feverishly nod to as proudly representing the category of C historical earnestly for once, Da Ming Dynasty 1566 is mindblowing bee’s knee if you can find subs.
Definitely putting For the Sake of Republic and YZ Kingdom to my PTW list, in fact I’m downloading them right now from youtube (I prefer to have great dramas in my harddisk so I can watch them anytime). Actually your reply reminds me, didn’t you post the sub of first episode of Da Ming Dynasty 1566 a while back? It’s a dropped project?
DMD1566 was the marvelous subbing project of MrX, I was just forwarding and screaming to the world to GO WATCH. As with all fansubbing, we respect the whim and pace. We are not worthy almost for such quality sub of one of the best very less watched C period.