Around 2019 or 2020, Liu Qing landed a role in My Cat Girlfriend (我的喵星女友).
The project became his first short drama.
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The opportunity came when Ma Qiuyuan’s company was looking for someone to play a CEO. Liu Qing was considered a good fit because he was already accustomed to wearing suits and had the look associated with a powerful male executive.
“Because I wore suits every day and looked very much like a domineering CEO, they asked me to do the drama,” Liu Qing explained.
But he was also candid about how inexperienced he was at the time.
“That was also my first short drama. I didn’t know how to act at all,” he said.
With no formal acting experience, Liu Qing simply tried to get through the shoot by relying on his imagination and what he had learned from watching television dramas.
“I just had to grit my teeth and finish it. I acted based on my own imagination. I had watched a lot of dramas before, so I basically imitated what I had seen and acted according to my instincts,” he said.
Looking back, Liu Qing admits he was far from satisfied with his performance.
“Now that I think about it, I wasn’t very satisfied with my performance at the time. I felt like I hadn’t really figured out how acting worked yet,” he said.
But My Cat Girlfriend nevertheless opened a new door for him.
After the drama, more people in the industry began approaching Liu Qing about short-drama roles. As his modeling work gradually declined, his acting opportunities started increasing.
A new career was beginning to take shape.
From Wild Dog Moonlight to Demon Imperial Concubine
After My Cat Girlfriend, Liu Qing began taking on more short-drama roles.
He became better known through Wild Dog Moonlight (野狗月亮), also known as Youyou Luming (呦呦鹿鸣).
The drama became one of the early projects that helped establish Liu Qing as a male lead in the short-drama market.
He subsequently appeared in a string of productions aimed largely at female audiences, covering romance, intense love stories, revenge plots, time-travel stories and various versions of the familiar CEO archetype.
Among them was Demon Imperial Concubine (妖妃在上).
According to WETRUE data cited in the interview, several of Liu Qing’s short dramas went on to attract substantial viewership. The Elder Brother Died, Then the Sister-in-Law Went Crazy (大哥死后大嫂杀疯了), for example, accumulated 990 million views on original Duanyuan accounts.
She Died, Then Lord Bo Knelt Before Her Tombstone Crying Like a Dog (她死后，薄爷跪在墓碑前哭成狗) recorded 240 million views, while Feng Luo Man Huang (风落蛮荒) reached 1.11 billion views.
Demon Imperial Concubine recorded 530 million views on original Duanyuan accounts.
Those figures illustrate how Liu Qing gradually established himself as the short-drama industry continued to expand at a rapid pace in China.
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