Screen Presence

"I burst into tears many times while watching the show, which reminded me of my own grandparents and made me think how I should face aging," a Sina Weibo user named Pisces comments.

As China is home to 284 million netizens, aged 50 or older, as of June, accounting for 28 percent of the country's total netizen population, according to the China Internet Network Information Center, it is no wonder that streaming platforms are highlighting senior citizens in entertainment shows.

This month, Forget Me Not Farm will be aired on Tencent's streaming platform focusing on seniors. It is the third season of Tencent's Forget Me reality show series since 2019. In the first two seasons, Forget Me Not Cafe invited three celebrities and five people with cognitive disorders to work together as servers at a restaurant in Shenzhen, Guangdong province, in a bid to raise awareness of intellectual disabilities in a lighthearted way.

Different from the previous seasons, the new 10-episode show has broadened its focus from people with cognitive disorders to elderly people. It puts three celebrities-actor Huang Bo, actress Tong Liya and Lamu Yangzi-and five people, aged 69 to 80, together to manage a farm in Chengdu, Sichuan province. Huang says the five seniors were selected from more than 7,000"candidates" across the country.