In 2002, Taiwanese producer Angie Chai Chih-ping saw Meteor Garden, her hugely popular miniseries about the privileged lives and loves of four young Taiwanese adults, banned by censors in the mainland for its materialistic tone and perceived worship of money.
A decade later and Chai has returned to produce Tiny Times, the film adaptation of Guo Jingming's novel about the privileged lives and loves of four young mainland adults. Directed and scripted by Guo, this flashy tale of unearned affluence - which broke the mainland's opening-day box-office record for a 2-D film - has become one of the highest grossing Chinese films of all time, and is on course to be the first of a projected tetralogy based on Guo's series.
Tiny Times also happens to be one of the worst scripted films to come out of China's mainstream cinema in recent times.