Yang Yang (simplified Chinese: 杨洋; traditional Chinese: 楊洋, born September 9, 1991) is a Chinese actor. He is known as one of the "Big Four" or "Four Major Traffic Stars" alongside Li Yifeng, Lu Han and Kris Wu, due to their immense popularity and influence in mainland China. He made his acting debut in the Chinese television drama The Dream of Red Mansions (2010). Since then, he has received recognition for his roles in television dramas The Lost Tomb (2015), The Whirlwind Girl (2015), Love O2O (2016), Martial Universe (2018), The King's Avatar (2019), You Are My Glory (2021), Glory of Special Forces (2022), Who Rules The World (2022), Fireworks of My Heart (2023), The Immortal Ascension (2025) and films The Left Ear (2015), I Belonged to You (2016), Once Upon a Time (2017), Vanguard (2020).
He was ranked 5th on the 2017 Forbes China Celebrity 100 list, 27th in 2019 and 44th in 2020. He was China's first Olympic flame torch bearer for the Rio Olympic Games in Greece, on April 22, 2016. He also became the first artist to be featured on the China Post postage stamp in January 2016.
Contents
Early life
Yang Yang was born in Shanghai and studied dance since he was a child. In 2003, Yang Yang applied for the People's Liberation Army Academy of Art and Shanghai Dance Academy at the same time. At the young age of 12, he decided to enrollee in the Department of Dance in People's Liberation Army Academy of Art in Beijing China. He also studied at the Central Academy of Drama for a period of time. Yang was a soldier with excellent character and study during his school years. In the second year of admission, he won the first place in his major and participated in international and domestic dance competitions on behalf of the school many times. At that time, his dream was to be a professional dancer. In 2007, Yang performed the solo dance "Dandelion" at the graduation ceremony of Nanjing Military Region.
Career
2007–2014: Beginning
Before the Spring Festival in 2007, the crew of Li Shaohong's version of Dream of Red Mansions selected 15 candidate actors from the People's Liberation Army Academy of Art, and initially confirmed that 6 actors, including Yang Yang, participated in the collective training. At this time, he was preparing for the graduation report ceremony of the Nanjing Military Region and participating in the international dance competition, so he could not participate in the group training. Subsequently, under the coordination of many parties, he received separate training from the crew. After two months of professional training, at 16, he was selected by director Li Shaohong to become the actor of the adult Jia Baoyu in Dream of Red Mansions, thus entering the film and television industry. This series was one of the most expensive Chinese TV series produced at RMB118 million (US$17.55 million), the 50-episode drama premiered on July 6, 2010.
In 2011, Yang featured in The Founding of a Party, a patriotic tribute detailing the process of establishing the Chinese Communist Party. He continued to build up his filmography, featuring in war dramas The War Doesn't Believe in Tears (2012) and Ultimate Conquest (2013), and romance series Flowers Pinellia (2013). On April 29, 2014, Yang ended his contract of 7 years with his company Rosat Entertainment.
2015–2016: Rising popularity, breakthrough and continued success
In 2015, Yang started to gain recognition for his performance in The Left Ear, a coming-of-age film which is also the directorial debut of Alec Su. The film was a box-office hit, and Yang received positive for his performance as Xu Yi. The box office crossed over 484.42 million yuan.
He then participated in travel-reality show Divas Hit the Road Season 2 which was a huge topic online when it aired and helped Yang top the "2015 Chinese Reality Show Star Ranking".
He next starred in action-adventure web-drama The Lost Tomb based on the novel of the same name. The Lost Tomb was the most watched web drama of the year with 2.8 billion views, and Yang gained acclaim from novel fans and audience for his portrayal of Zhang Qiling.
Yang then played the male lead in youth sports drama The Whirlwind Girl, which gained one of the highest viewership ratings of the year, with over 5 billion views. He also released his first single, "Tender Love".
At the end of the year, Yang won several awards including the Most Popular Actor of the Year at iQiyi All-Star Carnival; and the Most Talked About Actor and Most Influential Actor awards at the China TV Drama Awards.
In 2016, Yang appeared in CCTV New Year's Gala for the first time, where his song item "Father and Son" alongside Tong Tiexin was voted the most popular program. He starred in youth romance drama Love O2O, based on Gu Man's novel of the same name. The drama was an international hit, and is the most viewed modern drama in China, the series gained over 28.64 billion views. Following the airing of Love O2O, Yang experienced a huge surge in popularity and successfully broke into the mainstream. To thank his fans, Yang released the song "Love is Crazy", a jazz/rock single. He next starred in romance film I Belonged to You, which was a huge success and broke the box-office sales record of 813 million yuan for mainland-produced romance films. He was named as one of the Top 10 Chinese celebrities with most commercial value by CBN Weekly.
Other activities
On February 19, 2017, Yang had his wax figure displayed at Madam Tussauds Shanghai. His second wax figure was displayed at Madame Tussauds Beijing on July 19, 2017.
