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Chinese TV Dramas

Controversy over Scene in Anti-Japanese War Drama Featuring Black U.S. Soldier and Chinese Nurse

Some scenes from this anti-Japanese war drama have angered Chinese netizens over ‘historical nihilism.’

Manya Koetse

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A black soldier comes to China from afar during WWII and falls in love with a Chinese villager who sacrifices her life for him. This war drama is sensationalizing the Sino-Japanese War in the wrong way, many netizens say.

“Ilove you, I love China,” a black man tells a Chinese woman in a clip of an anti-Japanese war drama that has gone viral on Chinese social media over the past few days (watch clip…

Manya Koetse is a sinologist, writer, and public speaker specializing in China’s social trends, digital culture, and online media ecosystems. She founded What’s on Weibo in 2013 and now runs the Eye on Digital China newsletter. Learn more at manyakoetse.com or follow her on X, Instagram, or LinkedIn.

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2 Comments

2 Comments

  1. zack

    September 5, 2019 at 1:40 pm

    Lol wtf China I think you have a lot of works to do on your series

  2. Dave

    September 6, 2019 at 2:42 am

    I am almost certain that the original Flying Tigers pilots (the AVG) were all-white.
    The US Army Air Corps did not start to train black pilots until 1941. (The Flying
    Tigers were an elite unit, and all of them had several years experience flying.)

    The AVG was disbanded on 4 July 1942, but American Air Units operating in China
    continued to be called “Flying Tigers”, which leads to confusion. These
    later units did contain black people, especially in roles like aircraft mechanic
    and ammunition loader. I doubt that any of them were flight crew.

    It is probably just as well that this story is so unlikely. The real facts would
    not meet with the approval of today’s netizens.

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Chapter Dive

Yearnings, Dreamcore, and the Rise of AI Nostalgia in China

From China’s first soap opera Yearnings to the rise of AI-fueled nostalgia.

Manya Koetse

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The year is 1990, and the streets of Beijing’s Fangshan District are eerily quiet. You can almost hear a pin drop in the petrochemical town, as tens of thousands of workers and their families huddle around their televisions, all tuned to the same channel for something groundbreaking: China’s very first soap opera, Yearnings (渴望 Kěwàng).

Yearnings tells the story of Liu Huifang (刘慧芳), a female factory worker from a traditional working-class family in Beijing,…

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China History

A Love Never Lost: The Historical Drama That Took Five Years (and a Run-In with Censors) to Finally Air

Manya Koetse

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The Chinese historical drama A Love Never Lost (人生若如初见) has been getting a lot of attention on Chinese social media since it made its surprise premiere on iQiyi on May 13.

By now, one of the main hashtags about the drama on Weibo has already exceeded 2.2 billion views. Meanwhile, large billboards featuring posters from the show have appeared from Chongqing to Beijing.

To say that A Love Never Losthas been a much-anticipated…

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