Dream of Hong Kong

Dream of Hong Kong is a long urban entertainment-industry novel about stars, written by the web novelist Wu Qiandang and serialized to completion on Qidian Chinese. It runs to about 3.31 million Chinese characters. The story begins in 1983: the protagonist, Wang Zichuan, arrives after a time travel with no money, lands near a coastal fishing village in Hong Kong, is rescued by Weng Meiling by chance, and is introduced to work as a gofer on the set of The Legend of the Condor Heroes. There he meets Zhou Xingchi, Liang Chaowei, Liu Dehua, Miao Qiaowei, and others, then still unknown, and so step by step enters the Hong Kong film and television world of the 1980s. The main thread follows Wang Zichuan as he founds Tengfei Entertainment and throws himself into the film industry: relying on his "foreknowledge," he writes a great many classic series and screenplays, seizes the opportunities of theater-chain competition and industrial growth during the golden age of Hong Kong cinema, rises from screenwriter and assistant director to directing and starring in his own films, expands the company, and becomes entangled in theater wars, triad forces, and feuds among wealthy families. The narrative runs along two lines, personal growth and industry change, depicting industrial details such as film sets, box office, previews, and shooting starts, as well as the protagonist's repeated romantic and marital entanglements. Overall it is a fast-paced, high-volume male-oriented urban wish-fulfillment novel, best read as entertaining fare for looking back at the ecology of 1980s Hong Kong cinema.