The Real History Behind Guardians of the Dafeng (大奉打更人): Night Watchmen, Ming Dynasty Spies & the Daoist Emperor
2026-03-31
Guardians of the Dafeng (大奉打更人) dropped on CCTV-8 and Tencent Video in December 2024 and immediately became one of the highest-rated C-dramas of the season. Dylan Wang plays Xu Qi'an, a modern man reborn into the fictional Da Feng dynasty as a low-ranking constable who claws his way up through the Nightwatchmen — a secretive organization that polices corruption, investigates supernatural crimes, and answers directly to the Emperor.
The drama is set in a fictional world with cultivation systems and magic, but its foundations are built on very specific pieces of real Chinese history. The night watch system, the secret police, the Daoist emperor who refuses to govern — all of these have direct historical counterparts. Here's where the fiction ends and the history begins.
The Night Watchman System (打更 dǎ gēng): China's Ancient Clock
Before mechanical clocks, Chinese cities needed a way to mark time after dark. The answer was the 打更 (dǎ gēng) system — a network of night watchmen who patrolled the streets, striking instruments at regular intervals to announce the time.
The Five Watches (五更 wǔ gēng)
The night was divided into five watches, each lasting approximately two hours:
- 一更 (yī gēng) — roughly 19:00 to 21:00, also called 戌时 (xū shí). The watchman's call: "天干物燥，小心火烛" ("The air is dry, beware of fire and candles"). This first round was a reminder to extinguish unnecessary flames before sleep.
- 二更 (èr gēng) — roughly 21:00 to 23:00. City gates closed. Streets were expected to be empty. Anyone found outside without reason could be arrested under curfew laws (宵禁 xiāo jìn).
- 三更 (sān gēng) — roughly 23:00 to 01:00. Deep midnight. This is the watch that gave Chinese its most common word for "the dead of night" — the idiom 三更半夜 (sān gēng bàn yè, "the third watch, the middle of the night").
- 四更 (sì gēng) — roughly 01:00 to 03:00. The coldest, quietest part of the night. Watchmen were most vulnerable to falling asleep during this shift.
- 五更 (wǔ gēng) — roughly 03:00 to 05:00. The last round before dawn. In the imperial capital, this was when court officials began preparing for the morning audience with the Emperor — a ritual called 上朝 (shàng cháo).
The Tools of the Trade
Night watchmen carried two instruments: a 锣 (luó, a small bronze gong) and a 梆 (bāng, a hollow wooden clapper). The rhythm of strikes told residents what watch it was — one strike for 一更, two for 二更, and so on. Some regional traditions used different patterns: a single gong strike followed by clapper beats, or alternating between the two.
To pace their rounds accurately, watchmen used 更香 (gēng xiāng, "watch incense") — specially calibrated incense sticks that burned at a predictable rate. When a stick burned down to a marked point, the watchman knew it was time for the next round. It was, in effect, a combustible timer.
More Than Timekeeping
The watchman's role extended far beyond announcing the hour. They served as the city's first line of defense against fire — a catastrophic threat in cities built largely of wood and paper. They reported suspicious activity, deterred theft, and in some periods were expected to alert authorities to signs of plague or unusual deaths.
The job was low-status, poorly paid, and physically grueling. Watchmen walked for hours through dark streets in all weather, carrying their instruments and a lantern. In many cities, the position was filled by elderly men or those who couldn't find other work.
China's Last Night Watchman
In Wuyuan County (婺源县), Jiangxi Province — a region famous for its preserved Ming and Qing Dynasty architecture — a man named Yu Jiajiu (余家酒) continued the tradition of 打更 into his seventies. Born into a family that had served as night watchmen for generations, Yu was widely reported as possibly the last person in China still performing the traditional rounds. At 74, he still walked the stone lanes of his village at night, striking his wooden clapper and calling out fire warnings in a practice that had remained essentially unchanged for centuries.
From Street Patrol to Secret Police
In the drama, the title 打更人 (dǎ gēng rén, "night watchmen") refers not to humble street patrollers but to an elite intelligence organization. This is the show's central creative transformation — taking the lowest-status nighttime job in imperial China and reimagining it as the most powerful.
The logic has a historical parallel. The real night watchmen had unique access: they were the only people legally permitted on the streets after curfew. They saw everything that happened in a city after dark. In a surveillance state, that access would be invaluable. Guardians of the Dafeng simply follows that logic to its extreme conclusion.
Ming Dynasty Inspirations: Secret Police and Shadow Government
The Da Feng (大奉) dynasty in the drama is fictional, but its DNA is Ming Dynasty (1368–1644) through and through.
The Name Itself
The character 奉 (fèng) in 大奉 is not random. It echoes 奉天府 (Fèngtiān Fǔ), the name of the administrative prefecture that governed the Ming Dynasty's secondary capital at Shenyang. The phrase 奉天承运 (fèng tiān chéng yùn, "receiving Heaven's mandate and carrying its fortune") appeared at the beginning of every imperial edict during the Ming Dynasty. By choosing 奉 for its fictional dynasty, the novel signals its Ming-era roots without being bound by real Ming history.
The Nightwatchmen as 锦衣卫 (Jǐn Yī Wèi) and 东厂 (Dōng Chǎng)
The drama's Nightwatchmen organization is a composite of two of the most feared institutions in Chinese history.
The 锦衣卫 (Jǐn Yī Wèi, Embroidered Uniform Guard) was established by Ming Dynasty founder Zhu Yuanzhang in 1382. Despite the elegant name, they were an imperial secret police force with the authority to arrest, interrogate, and torture suspects without going through the regular judicial system. They answered directly to the Emperor, operated their own prisons (the notorious 诏狱 zhào yù), and had agents embedded throughout the government and military.
The 东厂 (Dōng Chǎng, Eastern Depot) was created in 1420 by the Yongle Emperor as a second secret police force — one that could spy on the 锦衣卫 themselves. Staffed primarily by eunuchs, the 东厂 eventually became even more powerful than the organization it was designed to monitor. At various points, the head of the 东厂 was effectively the second most powerful person in China.
In Guardians of the Dafeng, the Nightwatchmen combine elements of both: they have the 锦衣卫's mandate to investigate and arrest, and the 东厂's direct line to the Emperor that bypasses all normal bureaucratic channels.
The Hierarchy: Ranks in Bronze, Silver, and Gold
The drama's Nightwatchmen are organized into a strict hierarchy:
- 白役 (bái yì) — unranked operatives, essentially foot soldiers
- 铜锣 (tóng luó) — Bronze Gong rank, junior investigators
- 银锣 (yín luó) — Silver Gong rank, senior investigators with significant authority
- 金锣 (jīn luó) — Gold Gong rank, the highest field operatives
This mirrors the real 锦衣卫's ranked structure, which ran from ordinary guards through various tiers of command up to the 指挥使 (zhǐ huī shǐ, Commander). The use of gong-based rank names ties the hierarchy back to the night watchman theme — each rank is named after a progressively more valuable version of the 锣 that real watchmen carried.
The Daoist Emperor (道君皇帝): When the Ruler Stops Ruling
One of the drama's most compelling political dynamics is the Emperor of Da Feng, who has spent twenty years practicing Daoism and cultivating immortality instead of governing. He rules from behind the scenes, manipulating court factions against each other while appearing detached from worldly affairs.
The Historical Model: Emperor Jiajing (嘉靖帝)
This is a barely disguised version of the Jiajing Emperor (嘉靖帝, r. 1521–1567) of the Ming Dynasty. Jiajing became obsessed with Daoist alchemy and the pursuit of immortality in the middle decades of his reign. He retreated from regular court audiences, stopped meeting with ministers, and spent his time performing Daoist rituals, consuming alchemical elixirs, and consulting Daoist priests.
But Jiajing was not stupid. Despite his apparent withdrawal, he maintained iron control over the government through a system of written communications called 密疏 (mì shū, secret memorials). He played his Grand Secretaries against each other — most notably the bitter rivalry between Yan Song (严嵩) and Xu Jie (徐阶) — and intervened decisively whenever his power was threatened.
The result was a government that appeared leaderless but was actually controlled by an invisible hand. Ministers never knew when the Emperor was watching and when he wasn't, which kept everyone in a state of productive paranoia. The Chinese idiom 欲擒故纵 (yù qín gù zòng, "release in order to capture") — a strategy of deliberately letting someone act freely so you can observe their true intentions — describes this approach perfectly.
The Assassination Attempt
In 1542, a group of palace maids attempted to strangle Jiajing in his sleep in what became known as the 壬寅宫变 (Rén Yín Gōng Biàn, the Palace Incident of Renyin). They nearly succeeded — the Emperor survived only because one of the maids tied the silk cord in a knot that wouldn't tighten. After this event, Jiajing retreated even further from normal court life, becoming even more paranoid and reclusive.
Guardians of the Dafeng draws on this historical psychology: an emperor who governs through absence, whose power is amplified by his invisibility.
The Web Novel Behind the Drama
The drama is adapted from a web novel of the same name by the author 卖报小郎君 (Mài Bào Xiǎo Láng Jūn, roughly "The Little Newspaper Boy"). Serialized on Qidian (起点中文网), China's dominant web fiction platform, from 2020 to 2021, the novel runs to approximately 3.8 million Chinese characters — roughly equivalent to ten or eleven standard novels in English.
It set records on Qidian, becoming the fastest novel on the platform to reach 100,000 paid subscriptions. The achievement was significant enough that the novel was inducted into the Shanghai Library's permanent collection — a rare honor for web fiction, a genre that Chinese literary institutions have historically treated with skepticism.
The 40-episode drama adaptation aired from December 2024 through January 2025. A second season has been greenlit, which will cover the more complex political arcs of the novel's middle sections.
Chinese Idioms Connected to This History
The historical systems behind Guardians of the Dafeng have left deep marks on the Chinese language. Here are idioms that connect directly to the drama's themes:
三更半夜 (sān gēng bàn yè) — "the third watch, the middle of the night." This is the most common Chinese expression for "late at night" or "the dead of night," and it comes directly from the five-watch system. When Chinese speakers say 三更半夜, they are referencing a timekeeping system that structured urban life for over a thousand years.
明察暗访 (míng chá àn fǎng) — "investigate openly and secretly." This four-character idiom describes the dual approach of gathering information through both official inquiries and covert surveillance. It captures the exact methodology of both the historical 锦衣卫 and the fictional Nightwatchmen — using visible authority and invisible intelligence networks simultaneously.
阳奉阴违 (yáng fèng yīn wéi) — "comply in public, oppose in private." This idiom describes the court politics that the Nightwatchmen exist to expose: officials who appear loyal to the Emperor's face but pursue their own agendas in secret. The character 奉 here — meaning "to obey" or "to serve" — is the same character in the dynasty name 大奉, creating a linguistic echo that the novel's author almost certainly intended.
欲擒故纵 (yù qín gù zòng) — "release in order to capture." One of the Thirty-Six Stratagems (三十六计), this describes the Emperor's governing philosophy: allowing corruption and conspiracy to develop so that the perpetrators reveal themselves and their networks before the crackdown comes. It is the strategic logic behind twenty years of apparent neglect.
What Makes the History Matter
Guardians of the Dafeng works as entertainment on its own terms — it has martial arts, mystery, humor, and a protagonist who talks back to authority. But the historical foundations give the story weight. The night watch system, the secret police, the Daoist emperor — these aren't decorative references. They're the structural logic of the world.
Understanding the real 打更 system explains why the Nightwatchmen have access to every corner of the city. Understanding the 锦衣卫 explains why they operate outside the law. Understanding Jiajing explains why the Emperor's absence is itself a form of control. The fiction is built on the history, and the history makes the fiction coherent.
More in This Series
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- Xu Qi'an Character Study & Idioms
- The Cultivation Systems Explained: Confucians, Daoists & Buddhists
- Learn Chinese Watching Guardians of the Dafeng: 30 Essential Words
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