Hilaire is not a real historical figure and has no prototype. However, the screenwriter said that the creative ideas of the characters originated from many realistic people, events and things of that era, and the author created through sublimation of thinking and profound connotation.

When Zhou and several collaborators were writing this drama, they wrote a strange trick of treating diseases by folk Chinese medicine. They wanted to use Chinese medicine and traditional Chinese medicine as carriers to write that under the heavy pressure of imperial power and power in the late Qing Dynasty and the early Republic of China, the people at the bottom of society were mixed with meanness and stubbornness, and they were also mixed with stupidity and cunning to seek a happy living state in suffering, which led readers to think about the cultural attributes and national character of modern China people.

Zhou grew up in Tianjin. Among his relatives, several are practicing medicine in Tianjin. They told many stories about how Chinese medicine wandered around the rivers and lakes during the Republic of China. At that time, I had been doing Chinese medicine for a long time, and some people came up with a way to get rich and treat the poor. Anyway, there is no money to earn, so I just do good deeds, take a few pills, and finally get better. When rich people come to see a doctor, they have to keep the suspense and prescribe the right medicine. It is impossible to cure the disease at once. He has to let the patient recover slowly. After seeing the disease for several months, or even a year or so, he almost had to pay for it and then uproot it.

In troubled times, it is also risky for Chinese medicine practitioners to see a doctor, and their lives may be hanging by a thread. Therefore, experienced Chinese medicine practitioners are particularly cautious and afraid when they meet powerful doctors, and they are treading on thin ice. They should not only consider the illness, but also the sick people, so as to avoid blindly taking the wrong medicine, getting into trouble in one sentence and even losing their heads. When the warlords were fighting in the Republic of China, a Chinese doctor took him to see the warlords, just as the Lord had just been defeated, and he felt uncomfortable. He listened to Chinese medicine to read prescriptions and read the word "Zanmi" blindly. When he heard the word "zami" with the same sound as "lost", the warlord's master was furious and the doctor lost his life. A warlord's concubine was ill and said that she would not live for a few days. She went to see several Chinese medicine practitioners. They all said that she just got angry, and she could recover after taking some medicine. Those Chinese medicine practitioners have all been kicked out. Finally, a Chinese doctor is very clever. Besides asking about the illness, I also asked about everything about my concubine. He learned that the warlord's master had gone to the front to fight with his newly-married wife, and the illness of the fallen concubine was a means of competing for favor. She hopes to make it "noisy" in order to bring the warlord's master home. Chinese medicine catered to my aunt's wishes, pretending to be surprised, saying that you had a big problem here, and you wouldn't survive without taking some good medicine, so you prescribed expensive medicines such as ginseng and velvet antler, and ordered all the medicines to be burned before eating. (In fact, those medicines have lost their properties when burned. Eating them in the stomach is just like eating charcoal ash, which is harmless to people. ) When the warlords at the front saw the prescription, they really thought that the concubine was seriously ill and hurried home. Menstruation was overjoyed and rewarded the shrewd Chinese medicine practitioner ... It was not until I collected the creative materials related to this work that I realized that practicing medicine is not just about seeing, smelling, asking, cutting and prescribing medicine to treat diseases, but also a medical skill. The word "medical skill" that we often say on weekdays actually contains two meanings. The word "medicine" is the knowledge of Chinese medicine itself, while "surgery" is sociology and interpersonal relationship. It is this word "skill" that best embodies China people's philosophy of life, survival wisdom and skills, and best embodies some essence of China's social structure and spiritual heritage. This work describes the secular desire, the hero in the countryside, China's happiness, and his unique skill in treating diseases from the people, but the focus is on his medical skills in adversity and adversity. In the introduction of the characters in the TV series "The Imperial Doctor Xilaile", Zhou introduced Xilaile in this way: "Xilaile is magical because he has a unique skill in practicing medicine, especially the incurable diseases that others are discouraged from. Blame it, blame it, blame it. He has enough courage to treat poor villagers, and he also has enough courage to feel the pulse of monarchs, emperors and presidents. With his clever strength and the concept of disease and soil he learned in the countryside, he really has never lost face. He is a god because seven disasters and eight difficulties have fallen on him. He lived happily, was cheated, raped and went to the execution ground of the prison, but he managed to survive. He is said to be a god because he has his own unique wisdom in dealing with overbearing corrupt officials and treacherous villains. He cured the disease and made people angry. "

While writing Hilaire, Zhou also wrote the character Wang Tianhe, a court doctor who fought with him all his life. As the old saying goes, being enemies with peers is nothing more than fighting for jobs among craftsmen, but what happens to well-fed intellectuals is not just a job problem. At this time, facing the brilliance of knowledge, you will feel the meanest and darkest performance of human nature particularly strongly. In the book, Wang Tianhe, who was deeply loved by Empress Dowager Cixi, was jealous of Helal, a rural doctor from the bottom of the people, and a series of vicious persecution plots were written. In particular, it is emphasized that this is not just a bully by a strong villain to the weak, but a knowledgeable senior intellectual who has always paid attention to medical ethics. Because of jealousy, he finally shaped himself into a demon character who tried every means to stifle his talent and was repeatedly committed crimes. We have not only seen the ugly and evil performances of such respectable figures in the Hollywood movie "Mozart", but also seen them in the political movements from 1950s to 1970s. There are great men who, in the "anti-rightist" and "Cultural Revolution", drove their peers into eighteen levels of hell. So far, they have not really repented, and still enjoy various titles and honors as the prototype of their lives. It is almost effortless to write about Wang Tianhe.

From the beginning, Zhou wanted to write a historical work with comedy style. He has always believed that works of art must be ornamental, but not at the expense of history, social thinking and aesthetic taste. In this world, there are endless choices of things to choose from. As long as the materials are in place and the ideas are in place, it is entirely possible to be in place at the same time. 1988 Zhou used the teaching plan of Wanghailou in Tianjin in the late Qing Dynasty as the material to create the film literary script "Young and old men go to court", which was an attempt to show the local cultural phenomenon in Tianjin by integrating historical thinking and national inferiority. In this work, he still tries to integrate serious thinking into interesting stories and put a group of comic characters in the dark age of the failure of the Reform Movement of 1898. It is up to the audience to feel whether they are happy or sad.