Drama boosts tourism in picturesque archipelago

How could a homestay operator persuade a film director to cancel his hotel reservation and instead stay at her family's modest guesthouse?

For Lin Li, a project coordinator who has returned to her island hometown to help her grandmother run the family's homestay, the answer lies in describing the inn's surroundings with poetic flair. She likens a rock formation on the island to a scene from Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni's 1960 classic The Adventure and compares drifting clouds to those seen in the 1995 romance Beyond the Clouds, starring French actress Sophie Marceau.

Armed with a deep knowledge of cinema — built through self-taught study of film history and watching over 1,000 movies — the protagonist of the eight-episode drama Seascape of the Heart successfully persuades the director to become her first off-season guest.

Boosted by the drama's popularity — which has reached 130 million television subscribers — Zhoushan, a picturesque archipelago in Zhejiang province, welcomed 239,000 tourists during Spring Festival, a 40 percent increase from the same period last year, thanks to serving as the drama's filming location.

Filmed across various parts of the archipelago, including Shengsi and Daishan counties as well as the Zhujiajian Scenic Area, the drama also incorporates local elements such as seafood noodles and the daily lives of fishermen, according to Lin Liang, secretary of the Party committee and chairman of Zhejiang Cultural Industry Investment Group.