A viewer showcases the short drama
The Double Life of My Billionaire Husband. PHOTO PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY
TikTok has disrupted social media since its arrival less than a decade ago. Now another media product from China that entered the US quietly a couple of years ago is gaining momentum, gathering storm and disrupting the US entertainment industry.
It's called duanju in Chinese, known as microdrama in the English world. Vertically filmed, one to two minutes per episode, 60 to 100 episodes per series, and engineered to end on a cliffhanger so precisely timed that it has firmly hooked millions of viewers who can't stop watching and paying, paying and watching.
"This is worse than a Hallmark movie by far, but I had to obsessively finish it anyway. Wish it was a little longer even!" one viewer commented on YouTube under a 27-minute teaser of the microdrama The Double Life of My Billionaire Husband from the ReelShort platform.
