Yearnings, Dreamcore, and the Rise of AI Nostalgia in China
From China’s first soap opera Yearnings to the rise of AI-fueled nostalgia.
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 …
