Chongtao

Chongtao is the het ship between Chongyun and Hu Tao from the Genshin Impact fandom.

Canon
Chongyun and Hu Tao had yet to be seen interacting in canon, However for the 3.4 release of the Lantern Rite event "The Exquisite Night Chimes", Chongyun is featured in the cutscene "A Brilliant Banquet of Music", and is seen in the crowd with high spirits while excitedly cheering for Hu tao's rap parts during her stage performance with Xinyan, which shows a more supportive side of him towards Hu tao. In the event epilogue, Hu Tao invites Chongyun along with the rest of her friends to her dinner party to celebrate, Chongyun even thanks her for unexpectedly bringing Xiao, who turns out to be someone he idolizes. Afterwards Hu Tao and Chongyun are seen spending time together with their friends Xiangling and Xingqiu by the harbor. This event is now officially the first time Hu Tao and Chongyun have interacted and been seen together so far.

Hu Tao and Chongyun have been shown to have known eachother since they were both young children. In Chongyun's voiceover lines, he expresses his initial dislike for Hu Tao and claims that her cheeky smile makes his blood boil, but still tries to stay calm about it. Chongyun believes that her dismissive smile towards the duties of an exorcist is insulting his entire family lineage. On the other hand, Hu Tao doesn't seem to feel negatively towards Chongyun, rather she is confused as to how one person can have so many yang energy with an absence of yin. They have opposing character traits, but also have many similarities. Their occupations are closely related, Hu Tao is a funeral director and heavily involved with the afterlife and spirits, while Chongyun comes from a lineage of exorcists, he treats spirits and ghosts as a serious matter, but has yet to see a spirit himself due to his over-abundance of Yang energy. Because of this excess of pure-yang spirit, Chongyun is vulnerable to heat, fire, spice, ect. Which is why he was given a Cryo vision, while Hu Tao was given Pyro.

Many of their character design qualities are heavily inspired by Taoism. This includes the trigram symbols on Chongyun's cloth over his pants, Hu tao's harmony hexagram hat and Wangsheng hand gesture she does after performing her attack are all references to Taoism. One of the main ideas of Taoism is the belief in balancing forces, or yin and yang. These ideas represent matching pairs, such as light and dark, hot and cold, action and inaction, which work together toward a universal whole. This would explain why Hu tao has a voice line specifically about Chongyun's over-abundance of yang energy.

For the 2.1 Moonchase festival event, Hu Tao is asked by Xiangling, the Traveler and Paimon about her food preferences. Referring to her favorite dish, poached fish with a side of steamed dumplings, Hu Tao explains that poached fish is hot and spicy with a powerful aroma. It's a "dynamic" dish. And shrimp dumplings are more subdued - clear and smooth with a pure and subtle fragrance. This considers it "static". She also states that combining dynamic and static is how you create a perfectly balanced meal, a union between opposite but complementary features co-existing in perfect harmony. This shows that Hu Tao enjoys contrasting pairs, and her preference heavily resembles her correlation with Chongyun. Hu Tao being "dynamic" and Chongyun being "static".

Hu Tao's original voiceline on Chongyun, was describing him as having positive energies and unity between yin and yang, however the voiceline was replaced in the 1.5 version of the game.

In Hu Tao's character stories, it states that Chongyun was pulled in to empire the poetic spars she had with Xingqiu. It is implied that despite his initial dislike of Hu Tao, he finds her antics amusing. Hu Tao is not mentioned in any of Chongyun's character stories.

Hu Tao, Xiangling, Chongyun, and Xingqiu were seen playing together in a flashback as children, implying they may have been friends when they were younger. Xiangling and Xingqiu are still close friends of Chongyun, the three of them may have grown apart from Hu Tao. The four of them were featured on Hu Tao's first banner.

Quotes
"The Wangsheng Funeral Parlor is a reputable institution that acts with integrity. But whenever I see that cheeky smile that says, "It's nothing you exorcists need to worry about," it just makes my blood boil... Whoa, deep breaths, Chongyun. Stay calm."

- Chongyun’s voiceline, About Hu Tao

"All yang and no yin? Who knew such people existed in this world."

- Hu Tao's voiceline text About Chongyun

"Positive energies is unity between yin and yang... Who knew such people existed in this world."

- Hu Tao's actual voiceline, About Chongyun

Fanon
A lot of the fan content around Chongyun and Hu Tao revolve around an initial antagonism between them, with Chongyun being repelled by Hu Tao's pranking and irreverence and Hu Tao being perplexed by how strict with himself and seriously Chongyun is. There are shades of enemies to lovers to this pairing, as they gradually come to find out that they have more in common than they thought and warm up to each other romantically, especially from Chongyun's side.

Chongtao is considerably a rarepair ship. It's often overshadowed by popular rival ships such as Xingyun and YanTao. Chongtao has a growing selection of fan art on various social media platforms. The Chongtao Twitter hashtag contains over 8k likes in total. Chongtao has 190+ works on AO3.

Fandom
FAN FICTION

FAN ART

TUMBLR

TWITTER

Trivia

 * Chongyun has an excess of positive yang energy, causing him to react negatively to heat, fire and even the sun. Coincidentally, Hu Tao happens to wield the vision of Pyro.
 * Hu Tao's Description from the Official Website mentions "She does her utmost to flawlessly carry out a person's last rites and preserve the world's balance of yin and yang".
 * Hu Tao's elemental burst and name card are called "Spirit Soother" while Chongyun's burst and name card are called "Spirit Blade".
 * Both Hu Tao and Chongyun require Guide to Diligence talent level-up materials.
 * Chongyun's hangout quest and Hu Tao's story quest both take place in Wuwang Hill.
 * The two of their hangout quests both center around spirits and paranormal activity. In Hu Tao's hangout quest, She sends off spirits while In Chongyun's hangout quest he attempts to find a spirit and perform an exorcism.
 * Chongyun was featured on Hu Tao's banner in March of 2021.
 * Hu Tao's banner is titled "Fragrance in Thaw" which refers to the melting of Ice and snow, additionally Chongyun has the vision of Cryo. This could also refer to the Plum Blossoms on Hu Tao's hat, which bloom in February and are said to represent the thawing of winter.
 * Chongyun's character title is "Frozen Ardor". In the chinese and japanese translations of the game, this the literal meaning is "Traces of snow melting" additionally Hu Tao has the vision of Pyro.
 * Hu Tao and Chongyun are both fascinated with spiritual contact.
 * In Chongyun’s 2021 birthday message, he gifts the Traveler Silk Flowers, which are Hu Tao's ascension materials.
 * Both Chongyun and Hu Tao favor the same indoor furnishing set "Cloudy Haze Dream Court".
 * Chongyun and Hu Tao's Japanese Voice Actors also voice the two main leads and love interests in the anime "The Genius Prince's Guide to Raising a Nation Out of Debt".