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The picture shows a still from the TV series "Happy Grass". Photo provided by the production crew

"A small blade of grass can bring thousands of miles of love." China's Juncao technology has played a positive role in China's poverty alleviation and international poverty reduction. 2021 marks the 20th anniversary of Juncao's foreign aid. The China International Communication Center has planned and launched the TV series "Happy Grass", which tells the story of the prototype character Lin Zhanxiang's life, his love for the grass and his life experience.

Crossing thousands of mountains and rivers, we must bring the "poverty alleviation champion" Lin Zhan to the front line of the poverty alleviation work, and build a "poverty alleviation champion" in the new era.

Lin Zhai's family was a group of people who had a lot of experience in the art of making things happen. She was a very experienced person who had a lot of experience in making things happen. She was a very experienced person who had a lot of experience in making things happen.

Being moved is far from enough. To obtain rich details of life and even to explore new ways of expression, we must go deep into the field of folk songs. On March 19, 2022, we interviewed Lin Zhanyun for the first time.

In a sense, "characters are structures", and the main characters determine the direction of the story. Almost every weekend, we held video conferences with the Juncao team, conducted remote interviews, and calibrated the direction of the script, and finally decided to start from the family and construct character relationships. The family is a concentrated display of Chinese culture, a space with great tension in character thoughts and dramatic contradictions, and the father-daughter relationship is an expression in the narrative system that easily arouses audience empathy. Focusing on Li Changhuan's large family, the plot revolves around Li Changhuan's Hakka cultural identity and the real dilemma constructed by the Juncao team. Referring to the basic layout and structure of the Chinese classical literature "Journey to the West", we use "a team of four masters and apprentices going through ninety-nine eighty-one difficulties" to construct the basic narrative context. Juncao brings out many characters from different countries and regions, such as local police ministers, tribal chiefs, ordinary farmers, etc. These characters all play a certain dramatic function in the play, presenting the daily life, customs and culture of people in different regions where Juncao arrives from one side. These characters with rich inner feelings constitute the emotional relationship, entrepreneurial journey, and destiny changes of "Happy Grass", connecting the emotional connection between the characters and the audience.

"Mountains and Seas" was filmed in detail and delicately, and "Happy Grass" also strives to make small cuts and present the truth with details. To a certain extent, creation is also a process of persuading the audience. If the audience cannot believe everything that is told, even if it is untrue in only one or two key points, it will make the audience out of the play. This requires the play to be solid and full, and to express the essence of life through rich details. From January to the end of March 2023, the main creative staff went to Yunnan, Fujian and even Fiji to collect folk songs and survey the scene, looking for the style route of the play positioning, and digging deep into the rich connotations of Hakka culture, southern Fujian culture, etc.

Field research and interviews in the soil test our insight into life. The hot life gives us a personal understanding of "writing papers on the land". The experience of cultural collision allows us to find a way to combine detail display with humorous style. Walking into the lights of thousands of homes, let us superimpose the romantic poetry of Juncao with the reality.

Over the past three years, the manuscript has been revised several times. With great respect, everyone has strived to preserve the work and life of agricultural science and technology workers and foreign aid personnel, and at the same time, to enrich the story, truly reproduce the historical life under the Belt and Road Initiative, and reflect the ups and downs of human destiny, making it a warm drama with the fragrance of the earth.

(The author is the screenwriter of the TV series "Happy Grass")

People's Daily (20th edition, August 22, 2024)