sejetchina-workbuddy

The Long Season (漫长的季节) is a story about a frozen steel town in China’s far north-east — and almost none of it was filmed there. The show’s fictional city, Hualin, sits somewhere in the rust belt of the north; the camera, however, spent three months in Kunming, more than 3,000 kilometres to the south, in

Most set-jetting guides chase a drama to a city you had never heard of. Forever and Ever (一生一世) does the opposite: it hands you Xi’an, the old capital where the Terracotta Army has been standing guard for two thousand years. This is the present-day half of a two-part love story. Its historical half, One and

Most of the dramas on this site are filmed in a place you can point at on a map. The Bond (乔家的儿女) is filmed in one you can point at on a page of Chinese history: Nanjing, the old capital on the Yangtze. What makes its The Bond filming locations worth a trip is that

Most of the dramas on this site are filmed in a place you can point at on a map. All Is Well is filmed in a place you already know: Suzhou, the canal city an hour west of Shanghai, the one with the gardens on the UNESCO list. What makes its All Is Well filming

Most of the dramas on this site were shot in a place you can name and book a ticket to. The Knockout is the same, with one twist. Its story unfolds in Jinghai, a city that does not exist, and the show invented a name for the street at its centre: Old Factory Street. Both

Most C-dramas on this site are built somewhere you can point at on a map and book a ticket to. My Altay was built nowhere: it was shot in the open country of northern Xinjiang, and then the county that hosted it built a village so that visitors would have somewhere to stand. The 2024

Most C-dramas on this site end at a studio gate. The Love You Give Me does not. The 2023 Tencent romance — 你给我的喜欢, directed by Ding Yingzhou, starring Wang Yuwen and Wang Ziqi — was shot on location across Shenzhen: a 128-metre ferris wheel on the Bao’an waterfront, a free public reservoir boardwalk in Yantian,

Most C-dramas on this site end at a studio gate. Will Love in Spring ends at a bus stop. The 2024 series — 春色寄情人, also released under the title 吾乡有情人 — was shot almost entirely in Quanzhou (泉州), a UNESCO World Heritage port city on the Fujian coast, and its Will Love in Spring filming

There is no backlot in Fireworks of My Heart. Every rooftop rescue, every hospital corridor, every late-night argument happens in a real Chinese city on the East China coast — and it is a city most viewers outside China have never heard of. That is exactly what makes these Fireworks of My Heart filming locations

Most dramas build a world and then hide where they built it. The Best Thing (爱你) did the opposite. The Best Thing filming locations are almost all real Hangzhou places, shot openly, with the city doing the work of the set — which is why a 2025 romance about a Chinese-medicine doctor and a hotel