Yang Yang 杨洋
In A Smile is Beautiful, Yang Yang played Xiao Nai, a student who excels at everything from academics to online gaming. The role made him one of the most popular actors on Chinese television. That same year he could be seen in thick-rimmed glasses and with tousled hair. In the melodrama I Belonged to You, he played an inventor far more at ease with gadgets than with people. And on the set of the action film Vanguard, his dance training came in handy — Yang performed the complex stunts himself.
Yang Yang was born on September 9, 1991, in Shanghai, into a family of natives of Anhui Province. In one of his first interviews he asked that this be mentioned specifically: it mattered to his parents that their son remember where they came from. The family lived in Songjiang, and Yang attended primary school in Putuo District. In 2003 he left for Beijing and enrolled in the dance department of the Academy of Arts of the People's Liberation Army. By his own early recollections, he joined while still in the fifth grade, at about age 11, though some later publications give his age as 12. There they rose at half past five, trained before and after classes, and lights were out by eight in the evening. As Yang recalled, he managed to call home about once a month. In his third year he was selected for the ensemble of the Nanjing Military Region, where he was to dance after graduation.
In 2007 the academy was casting actors for a new adaptation of the novel The Dream of Red Mansions. Yang passed the first auditions but missed sessions with the other candidates — he was due to perform abroad. On his return he called the production team himself, and in the spring of 2008 he was invited to a second meeting. Director Li Shao-Hong chose him for the role of the grown-up Jia Baoyu, and the academy gave him leave so that he could film. Yang had no experience, and he took it hard when the same episode had to be repeated twenty or thirty times in front of the whole crew. On set he said he still considered dance his profession and intended to return to it. But by then, by his own account, he had fallen so far behind his classmates that working in the ensemble was out of the question.
The series aired in 2010. After this notable role came a lull that, by Yang's recollection, lasted several years. In film he appeared in small roles, and on television he played, for example, the poet Cao Zhi in Xin Luo Shen (2013). The dialogue there was interspersed with numbers in the spirit of Chinese opera. On screen it was Yang's character who sang, while the vocal parts were recorded for him by another performer.
Yang had signed a contract with Li Shao-Hong's company Rongxinda back during work on his first series. In December 2014, when filming of The Lost Tomb wrapped, the company sued the producers. It claimed they had invited the actor without its consent, even though his fifteen-year contract was still in force. Yang's lawyer responded that on April 28 the actor had sent the company notice of termination, and that he had signed the filming contract in his own name. At the end of December the lawyer announced that Beijing arbitration had confirmed the contract was terminated as of April 29. In 2015 Yang and his agent Jia Shi-Kai left Huanyi on the same day, and Yang continued to work with the agent at his new company Yuekai.
That same year Yang appeared in The Left Ear, the directorial debut of Alec Su. His Xu Yi, a model schoolboy, cannot cope with his first romantic disappointment and goes off the rails. In The Lost Tomb Yang played the taciturn Zhang Qiling, who joins a group of tomb raiders, and in Whirlwind Girl — the strict coach of a young athlete. It was right after The Lost Tomb that Yang noticed his life had changed. Fans came to the shoots, met him at airports, and once even recognized him at a bank as the actor who played Zhang Qiling.
In 2016 came A Smile is Beautiful, in which Yang and Zheng Shuang played students who meet in an online game. In the novel Xiao Nai was so handsome and so effortlessly successful at everything he undertook that Yang decided to give the character a pronounced aloofness. Later he said that now he might play the role differently. In September the melodrama I Belonged to You was released. His Mao Shiba is an inventor who gives a policewoman in love with him (Bai Baihe) a navigation device that speaks in his voice. Preparing for the role, Yang said, he did not leave the house for several days and did not even wash his hair.
On screen, Yang played the heavenly prince Ye Hua and the general Mo Yuan in the fantasy drama Once Upon a Time (2017) opposite Liu Yi-Fei. Filming on the series Martial Universe (2018) had begun back in 2016. That November, an entertainment blog published a shooting schedule and claimed that a double had stood in for Yang three days in a row. The production team denied this, explaining that the double had helped prepare shots for filming. Yang himself said he did his own fighting in almost every action scene. Director Zhang Li went through his character Lin Dong's relationships with the other characters in detail with him, often invited Yang to dinner and sent him film materials. Yang recalled that he used to think mainly about his own role, but with Zhang Li he began to pay attention to how an entire scene was constructed and what his partner was doing in it.
In The King's Avatar (2019), Yang was once again behind a computer, but this time he played the professional esports player Ye Xiu. He had himself played Counter-Strike for more than ten years and understood how someone could stay loyal to a single game for years. For this role he grew his hair out, chose loose clothing and tried to shed the upright posture left over from his academy days.
Yang then appeared in the action film Vanguard (2020) by Stanley Tong Gwai-Lai. Yang had grown up on Jackie Chan's films, and in Tong's movie he played the commander of a unit in the security service led by Chan's character. Even before the premiere, HKCinema showed how Yang's fight in a London restaurant was filmed. The actor himself was especially struck by a wire jump from the height of four storeys into the thick of a festive procession with dragon and lion dances. Presenting the film in Beijing, Chan praised Yang for taking on difficult stunts himself and repeating them before the camera several times, even when it was dangerous.
In 2021, Yang again starred in an adaptation of a novel by Gu Man, whose book had been adapted into A Smile is Beautiful. In the series You Are My Glory, an online game brings his character back together with a school acquaintance, but Yu Tu has quite a different worry. He works in the space industry and is thinking of changing jobs to earn more. In China Special Forces (2022), Yang played the soldier Yan Poyue — a role he had dreamed of since boyhood. Filming began in 2019 and took more than six months. Yang spent long stretches living in the mountains, went running between takes and tried not to be distracted by other projects. Once a heavy cable fell on his foot. He decided it was broken and asked the colleagues who ran up not to touch him.
2022 also saw the release of the series Who Rules the World with Yang and Zhao Lu-Si. In September, paparazzi claimed the actress was dating a well-known colleague. The internet speculated about who it was, and Yang was among the names mentioned. Zhao Lu-Si's representatives publicly denied rumors about her relationship. In May 2023, Taiwan's TVBS, citing footage shot by paparazzi outside a hotel, reported rumors that Yang was dating Wang Chu-Ran. Neither actor confirmed this.
Yang appeared with Wang Chu-Ran in Fireworks of My Heart (2023), where he played Song Yan, the head of a fire brigade. Some viewers criticized Yang for posing too obviously for the camera, while others disliked the way Song Yan treated his beloved. The scene in which the couple fool around with a car fire extinguisher was also criticized by firefighters. Producer Jia Shi-Kai apologized and explained that in the story Song Yan had bought the fire extinguisher himself. In 2025, Yang said in an interview with CCTV that he had begun appearing in public less often when he felt that audiences had not accepted some of his roles. He kept acting; it was simply that new series took a long time to come out.
In July 2025, A Record of a Mortal's Journey to Immortality (凡人修仙传) was released. Yang played Han Li, a village youth who begins to learn a secret doctrine and achieves success through patience and caution. For the role, he lost about ten kilograms and began rehearsing fight choreography several months before filming. In May 2026, Zhan Zhao Adventures came out. Yang played the famous hero of Chinese prose, a court guard who takes on the investigation of a conspiracy. In an interview with the foreign publication People's Daily, Yang talked about how he calibrated the force of his sword swings and practiced his reaction to blows. According to him, Zhan Zhao's fatigue sometimes showed even in battle.
In 2017, Yang, together with the China Development Research Foundation, established a charity fund for children from remote villages and contributed half a million yuan to it. As China Philanthropist magazine reported, by 2019 the fund had helped open eighteen rural kindergartens and preschool groups in Bijie Prefecture in Guizhou Province. On June 1, 2018, Children's Day, Yang visited one of these kindergartens. He told the children stories, played with them and congratulated the birthday celebrants.
