Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#15572
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Yang Tianxiang works on transformation rather than volume, and the catalogue keeps proving that the quieter choice was the correct one.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Yang Tianxiang appears in 5 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Yang. White Snake: Afloat is the clearest case: a film rated 8.1 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.
The recognisable elements are transformation, versatility, emotional range. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for romance, comedy, fantasy. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Zhao Ji, Amp Wong, Yang Tianxiang helped set a standard other performers now audition against. Awards bodies have been slower than the work, which is usually the sign of a career built on choices rather than campaigns.
White Snake: Afloat (2024) as Xu Xian (voice) · Chang'an (2023) as Gao Shi (voice) · New Gods: Nezha Reborn (2021) as Li Yunxiang (voice)
Career snapshot
Ranked #15572 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
5
2021–2024
Career length
3 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
8.1
White Snake: Afloat
Average Nutevio score
7.7
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
8.1
New Gods: Nezha Reborn
Most frequent director
Zhao Ji
2 films together
Longest collaboration
2×
With Zhao Ji
Most common genre
Animation
5 titles
Average runtime
2h 16m
Across catalogue work
Golden Globe wins
—
Unknown
Nutevio metric
Ten weighted categories, applied identically to everyone we cover.
Nutevio Performer Score
7.3
out of 10
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio metric
Cultural impact and legacy, measured separately from craft — how far the work travelled once it left the cinema.
Nutevio Influence Score
6.7
out of 10
A quieter influence — felt inside the films rather than across the industry.
How far the work travelled past the people who saw it first.
What survives once the release-week conversation has burned off.
Institutional acknowledgement, weighted but never decisive.
Years of chosen, relevant work rather than years merely employed.
Statuettes, read as evidence rather than verdict.
Roles named without needing the film named alongside them.
Directors who wrote parts because this performer existed.
The reading other performers now have to answer.
Actor DNA
A fingerprint derived from the roles themselves — register, range and the kind of film they carry.
The shape of a career
Every performance plotted in time. Hover a point to read the title behind it.
Peak years
Where the scores, the awards and the sheer volume of work agree with each other.
Best decade
2020s
7.7 average MV
The 2020s are where the work and the material meet. White Snake: Afloat, Chang'an, New Gods: Yang Jian — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2020s
7.7
Across 5 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2020s
7.9
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
2020s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. White Snake: Afloat, Chang'an, New Gods: Yang Jian.
Most productive era
2020s
5 films
The busiest stretch of the catalogue — volume that reads as appetite rather than availability.
Range, mapped
Genres down the side, decades across the top. Warmer cells mean stronger titles.
| Genre | 2020s |
|---|---|
| Action | 7.52 films |
| Comedy | 7.82 films |
| Romance | 8.11 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Li Yunxiang (voice).
Highest rated performance · Career peak · Most recent film
8.1 on the Nutevio scale, the top of the catalogue for this performer. Weighing billing against the film's own quality, this is the point where everything aligned at once. The current state of the argument, as Xu Xian (voice).
Our order
Every performance in the catalogue, ordered by Nutevio Score.
Every title
Filter by genre or decade, and compare any two titles side by side.
5 of 5 films
as Xu Xian (voice)
Directed by Unknown
as Li Yunxiang (voice)
Directed by Zhao Ji
as Casino Storytelling Monkey (voice)
Directed by Zhao Ji
as Xu Xian (voice)
Directed by Amp Wong
From the library
Every movie and TV credit stored for this name in the Nutevio catalogue — filter by media, role or sort by rating.
Loading credits…
The defining work
#1
Xu Xian (voice)
White Snake: Afloat (2024)
Performance score8.3
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Xu Xian (voice) gives Yang Tianxiang a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Gao Shi (voice)
Chang'an (2023)
Performance score8.2
Chang'an asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Gao Shi (voice) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Li Yunxiang (voice)
New Gods: Nezha Reborn (2021)
Performance score8.1
New Gods: Nezha Reborn asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Li Yunxiang (voice) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Casino Storytelling Monkey (voice)
New Gods: Yang Jian (2022)
Performance score7.3
New Gods: Yang Jian asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Casino Storytelling Monkey (voice) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movieStart here
A guided path through the work, ordered so each film explains the next.
Best entry point
as Xu Xian (voice)
Start here. White Snake: Afloat is the clearest statement of what Yang Tianxiang does — accessible, 133 minutes, and rated 8.1 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Yang at the most legible performance, then move forward in time so each film reads as a response to the one before it rather than a repetition of it.
New Gods: Nezha Reborn (2021)
Keeps the fantasy register of White Snake: Afloat but asks for a colder reading of it.
Green Snake (2021)
Keeps the action register of New Gods: Nezha Reborn but asks for a colder reading of it.
New Gods: Yang Jian (2022)
Keeps the fantasy register of Green Snake but asks for a colder reading of it.
Chang'an (2023)
Keeps the animation register of New Gods: Yang Jian but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Zhao Ji
Director
2 films together · 7.5 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
New Gods: Nezha RebornAmp Wong
Director
1 film together · 7.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Green SnakeSix degrees
Follow the thread outward — director, film, co-star, and the film after that.
Categories of our own
Six editorial categories we apply to every performer we cover.
Most rewatchable
White Snake: Afloat
as Xu Xian (voice)
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
White Snake: Afloat
as Xu Xian (voice)
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
White Snake: Afloat
as Xu Xian (voice)
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
New Gods: Yang Jian
as Casino Storytelling Monkey (voice)
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
White Snake: Afloat
as Xu Xian (voice)
If the career had to be argued in a single scene, our editors would pick one from this film and rest the case.
In their films' words
“You can build a whole film around a performer who knows when not to speak. Yang Tianxiang has known it for a long time.”
Head to head
Put two careers on the same scale and see where the argument actually sits.
Ours alone
Recognitions handed out by this desk, on criteria no awards body uses.
Modern Classic Performer
Awarded
Defining performances delivered inside the last twenty-five years, in films already being taught rather than merely remembered.
Animation Legend
Awarded
5 catalogue titles in animation, each one a reference point for the films that followed.
Our desk
Best ending, best opening, best twist and the rest — categories we apply to everyone we cover.
Best ending
White Snake: Afloat
as Xu Xian (voice)
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
New Gods: Nezha Reborn
as Li Yunxiang (voice)
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
White Snake: Afloat
as Xu Xian (voice)
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
New Gods: Nezha Reborn
as Li Yunxiang (voice)
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Green Snake
as Xu Xian (voice)
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Green Snake
as Xu Xian (voice)
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
White Snake: Afloat
as Xu Xian (voice)
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
White Snake: Afloat
as Xu Xian (voice)
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
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Have your say
Community
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Reference
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