Rebirth of Chinese Entertainment: I Make Short Dramas in the Showbiz

In the early summer of 2005, the cicadas had just begun to sing at the Beijing Film Academy. Cao Li, a man who once scraped by through shady tricks in his previous life, unexpectedly finds himself reborn back into his freshman year—a screenwriting major, dumped by his cheating girlfriend on day one, with a future that looks bright on the surface but is utterly uncertain in reality. Yet Cao Li knows one thing clearly: this is the starting point of Chinese entertainment's explosive rise. While everyone else is grinding away at long-form series and feature films, he sets his sights on an untapped frontier—short-form dramas. "The Strongest Son-in-Law: Return of the Dragon King"? He'll shoot it. "The CEO Falls for Me, the Cleaner"? He'll shoot it. "Global Prices Drop Ten Thousand Times But My Savings Stay the Same"? He'll shoot that too. Others mock him for being lowbrow, but with tens of millions of views per episode, he turns short dramas into the most lucrative gold rush in the entertainment industry. Just when everyone thinks that's all he can do, Cao Li quietly pulls out scripts for several future blockbusters—"You Are the Apple of My Eye," "Crazy Stone," "So Young," "Love Is Not Blind," and "Lost on Journey." "You really wrote this yourself?" "Of course. Cao Li's brain is a gold mine." From the king of short dramas to a movie mogul, from a forgotten freshman to a capital heavyweight controlling half the industry, Cao Li has only one goal—in this best of eras, to film every future hit before anyone else gets the chance.