# Blossoms Shanghai (2023)

> A self-made Shanghai opportunist climbs from a troubled past to great wealth in the 1990s, entangled with four women who represent the pursuits of his life.

Canonical page: https://ember.film/tv/89246

## Facts

- Seasons: 1
- Episodes: 30
- Episode runtime: 46 min
- Status: Ended
- Genres: drama
- Network: CCTV-8
- Cast: Hu Ge, Ma Yili, Tang Yan, Xin Zhilei, You Benchang, Huang Jue, Fan Zhiyi, Kenny Bee
- TMDB rating: 7.9/10
- IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3881914/

## Ember's analysis

- Pacing: measured
- Intensity: mild
- Complexity: layered
- Violence: mild
- Tone: lyrical, melancholic, wistful, nostalgic, contemplative

## What critics say

Audiences rate the series positively, praising its lyrical, richly detailed portrait of 1990s Shanghai and its layered central performances.

## Synopsis

Blossoms Shanghai (2023-2024) is a Chinese national-television drama series created for CCTV-8, adapted from a novel. Hu Ge plays Ah Bao, a young opportunist with a troubled past who becomes a self-made millionaire in 1990s Shanghai, and Ma Yili, Tang Yan and Xin Zhilei play the women who embody the pursuits of his life, from adventure and honour to love and innocence. Tang Yan's Miss Wang and Ma Yili's Ling Zi tie him to the rhythms of a city racing through economic reform. The engine of the story is a man hungry for money and status, navigating stock speculation, trade tensions and shifting alliances while his loyalties and longings pull against one another. Each of its thirty roughly forty-six-minute episodes unfolds as a single continuing chronicle rather than a case-of-the-week format, so the one season reads as a single arc. The show is a lyrical period drama, its mood wistful and melancholic, with a strong sense of nostalgia for a Shanghai caught between old and new. Fans of Boardwalk Empire and The Great Gatsby will find resonance in its portrait of ambition, excess and the cost of wanting too much. Set in 1990s Shanghai during the boom of reform-era China, it is a patient, character-driven saga about money, desire and the people left behind by it.

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