Chinese media, advertising, and urban life.

I can't stand it any longer!

Breasts that bounce a lot must be fake

The series Narrow Dwellings was first reported in the foreign press by Sue Feng at the Wall Street China blog. She wrote:

Over the past month, the TV drama has drawn a great deal of attention from young Chinese who discuss the program online. Many argue that Shanghai’s rising property prices are at the root of the tragic events in the storyline, and the term “house slaves” (房奴) has become a popular slang term to describe people like Haiping.

The series has drawn a lot of criticism as well as recommendation (for an elaboration of the plot, skip to the Time Weekly article translated below). The former for its poor script and one dimensional characters, and the latter for its social commentary, which focuses on people of different social statuses, nailhouses, corrupt officials and mistresses, all wrapped up in the setting of a consumerist metropolis. There are edited versions of Narrow Dwellings on Youku and broadcast on TV. For lines that have been deleted for its "bone-baring" (露骨) directness about sex see the video from this Qianlong report, which doesn't appear on the online Youku series. First aired on Jilin TV, it stopped airing on BTV Youth Channel (北京青少年电视台) after 10 episodes. SARFT denied having stopped its run.

Narrow Dwellings comes from the Chinese phrase 蜗居, which has a variation of usages, mostly to mean "humble abode." Usages of the term can be found in the Yuan and Qing dynasties. Narrow Dwellings has been used in this post instead of Dwelling Narrowness, which is being used elsewhere and on the official poster for the drama.

Not only is the drama a description of life in a metropolis, but its script has come under attack by SARFT, who approved the script to begin with.

Netease (via Qianlong.com) reposted SARFT's announcement to limit TV dramas next year to under 30 episodes. The department director of TV dramas at SARFT (广电总局电视剧司管理司司长), Li Jingsheng (李京盛), criticized on 9 December that Narrow Dwellings is popular because, "It uses the topics of sex and officials to raise its profile."

In addition the TV dramas department has declared that from next year onwards, TV dramas cannot be take more than 40% of the entire list of programs, especially on provincial TV stations. Furthermore, the department director criticizes the competition between different provincial channels to broadcast My Chief, My Regiment (我的团长我的团). However, whether these actions will have an affect is yet to be seen.

There has been a proliferation of content about Narrow Dwellings in the Chinese media, forums and blogs. Aunt Bear (熊阿姨) at my1510 wrote down some of her thoughts about watching about six episodes: