For those of us who have been fans of Jing Bo Ran for years, ever since he first appeared on our screens, you know the drought hasn’t been easy. So, I totally dropped everything I was doing to watch the first episode the minute I saw that it had dropped on YouTube.

And needless to say, it doesn’t disappoint. While our boy is very much the main character of this drama, he hasn’t made an actual appearance in the present timeline. But I love it either way.

The female lead is played by Zhou Yi Ran, who you might recognize from her role in the 2022 melodrama Song of Life, where she played Zhao San Yue, a new mortuary makeup artist who slowly grows into her own while on the job.

The synopsis states that six individuals (including our FL) are invited to attend a memorial service that doubles as a will hearing, and while there, they ruminate on the different versions of Fei Ke, the ML, they all knew.

And for the first time, this synopsis is actually very much on point with what has happened in the drama based on the first episode, which I just watched, and I promise it’s so thrilling.

Regeneration Chinese Drama Episode 1 Recap

Episode 1 starts with He Shan (Zhou Yi Ran) receiving a call from Fei Ke (Jing Bo Ran), and when she answers the call, he asks her to meet him at the airport because he needs to give her something. While on the call, she records their conversation.

She then quickly leaves work to meet him at the airport, but immediately he sees her and starts moving towards her, he starts convulsing. He’s soon gathered by the paramedics, and in the scuffle of it all, he discreetly hands her a flash drive before being carted away in an ambulance, but she isn’t allowed to follow him.

We soon learn that the paramedics who came with the ambulance are actually mercenaries – probably part of the team who caused his convulsion – and they gag him. The scene closes with one of the bad guys entering a boat and leaving.

The next day, He Shan gets to work and receives a letter informing her of Fei Ke’s passing and inviting her to the reading of his will since she is mentioned in it. It turns out that the place where the will reading will take place is a waterlogged island, so she gets into a boat to reach there, and she’s incredibly carsick on her way.

At the house, the tension is rife in the air, and one of the guests, a middle-aged man (Cheng Hao played by Huang Jue) even suggests that the lawyer reads them the will before the rest of the invitees get there, but He Shan tells him to be patient. They make their introductions shortly after this, and soon the remaining three invitees get there, but what is peculiar is that it doesn’t look as if any of them are actually mourning.

What is sure, though, is that neither of them knows each other, and neither of them is ready to talk about their relationship to the deceased.

The lawyer takes them to the lower level of the house where the coffin is laid, and he tells them that before he can start reading the will, they all have to talk about how they are related to the deceased. But they are all very reluctant to do this, and the lawyer suddenly gets a little aggressive and tells them that he won’t read the will any longer. But then He Shan goes around him and opens the coffin just to find it empty.

As expected, everyone is incredibly confused by this development, and they suddenly realise that the deceased might actually still be alive, and they have all been played by him once again. The lawyer then runs up the stairs and locks the door behind him, trapping them inside which only ups the tension.

The conversation turns again to how all of them know the deceased, but none of them are forthcoming, so it dies down. Until one of the last invitees to get to the house,  Zhang Xuan played by Zhang Yi Fan, realizes that the display picture of the deceased on his social media platform as shown on the middle-aged man’s phone is different from the display picture of the account she usually messages. This prompts all of them to bring up the accounts they have interacted with, and we discover that they are different accounts.

At first, the consensus is that none of them know the same man, but they finally land on the thought that they’re all being played by the same person who is no doubt enjoying the way he’s toying with them. But then He Shan concludes that Fei Ke is indeed alive and wants to play a game with them where they all have to talk about their history. She promises him – while looking at the CCTV camera lodged in the far end of the room – that they will exchange stories, and either he has to read the will or let them go.

The first person to speak is the only old man in their group, Chen Shu Fa played by Wang Yan Hui, who informs us that he was the deceased’s father-in-law. We then get a flashback to Fei Ke’s wedding a year before, and we see He Shan in the bathroom who almost goes to comfort a crying person in one of the stalls when she’s interrupted by a group of women who come in, so she leaves.

When we return to the present timeline, she tells them that there’s a very big possibility that they know each other, or at least they had crossed paths in the past. She feels that it might be the deceased’s intention for them to get everything they know about him because that’s the only way they will be able to get a clear picture.

While discussing this proposition, the middle-aged woman who was also invited, Su Qian played by Peng Yang, tells the group that the deceased was actually a liar, and then the supposed father-in-law says that not only was he a liar, but he was also a murderer because he killed his daughter.

This is when we see how his daughter, Chen Jia Jia and Fei Ke met, and we see that she was very charmed by how he was able to talk reasonably to a crying, autistic preteen, and they had a long, healthy relationship.

In the flashback, we see that Fei Ke is incredibly suave, and that’s how he wins his wife’s heart. When they discuss the impossibility of her father choosing him as a marriage partner for his daughter, he tells her that he totally understands and that her father would be in the right if he did so. And he has no idea how right he is because one day after he drops her at home after a late-night date, tensions between her and her father escalate because he openly confronts her about the relationship, and she finds out that he had people following her.

Her father threatens to cut her off, and she tells him that she’s one step ahead because right in front of him she divides her credit card. While she’s in bed, she calls Fei Ke to tell him about the fight, and he quickly runs back to her house with a bouquet, and they have a very sweet talk over the phone where he reassures her of his love and presence in her life.

The next day is her mother’s memorial, and they’re supposed to hold a little celebration at her gravesite, but she refuses to go, even though her father promises her a lot of things. Instead, she tells him that she will follow him on the condition that he agrees to meet her boyfriend, and he agrees because when she tells the deceased later on, he is very elated.

We briefly come back to the present timeline, and the other invitees are speculating as to the reason the old man was against the relationship between his daughter and the deceased. They all give opinions that basically align with the fact that he must have been worried about the deceased’s dependability, not his financial situation, which was why he spent a lot of time discouraging his daughter from pursuing the relationship.

Interestingly, the middle-aged man who was invited then says that the deceased’s invitation for all of them to have dinner at his house couldn’t have worked because when he knew Fei Ke, the other man occupied a very tiny apartment. But then the old man cuts in and tells them that they actually went to a different house because while on the way, the deceased sent a different address and told them to go there instead.

The old man then tells the middle-aged man the address of the new apartment the deceased sent them, and then immediately the latter informs all of the guests that that house is actually his. The episode ends with all of them looking incredibly tense.

Regeneration Chinese Drama Episode 1 Review 

One thing I’ll say for sure is that this thriller Chinese drama definitely set the scene right from the beginning. The colour grade of the scenes is on the darker side, and you can really feel the barely concealed tension at every point in time.

And I think what I’m enjoying so far is the way there are so many questions in my mind based on the less than an hour episode that I watched.

Right now, it definitely feels like there is an even bigger secret than what anybody would be expecting, and I genuinely cannot even forecast whatever is going to happen in the coming episodes.

With where this episode ended, it’s very clear that all the stories are interlinked, and I guess that it is only when we know every single person’s relationship with the supposed deceased that it’s going to make sense.

One thing I almost forgot to mention while giving the summary is that the lawyer who brought them there and then locked them in the basement does this cool trick with a can of drink where he spins it and the thing remains suspended on a tiny angle of the bottom rim. This is something the male lead, who is the deceased, also does in one of the flashbacks, so that’s worth noting. Something tells me the lawyer might be a younger brother, relative, or friend of the deceased, Fei Ke, but it remains to be seen.

I like that it seems there isn’t going to be much romance in this drama, although that’s still debatable since we don’t have an inkling of his relationship with the youngest of the guests, Zhang Xuan, who is very pretty and bubbly.

From what has been stated so far, it seems she doesn’t have a good opinion of him because she has readily called him the worst names in the book. But when she did get to the house at first, she made some comments that let us know she had a very peculiar relationship with Fei Ke, so that’s something I’m looking forward to seeing.

In my opinion, based on the way he died and the very mysterious individuals who took him away, and then the even more mysterious letter that He Shan received the next day announcing his death, it feels like there’s a lot at play here.

When the fake paramedics were taking his body to the hospital before they got in the ambulance, they asked her about his name, and she didn’t reply to this, which I found very peculiar because she clearly knew his name. The way I see it, it seems that he suspects one of them for the attempt on his life, and he is safely ensconced somewhere and wants to find out the truth.

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I am currently watching it on the Youku YouTube channel, but I believe it will also be available on the Youku app as well. There are subtitles in different languages, so you can follow them from wherever you are in the world.

If you are watching Regeneration, I would like to know what you think about the first episode, which just dropped a few hours ago on the YouTube channel. Let me know what you think in the comment section, and I’ll be on the lookout for your message.