I have been seriously addicted to short dramas.
Recently, the whole nation has entered an era of no heartburn, and Mo Yan has long been at the forefront.
Back in 2024, when talking about overbearing CEO short dramas, Mo Yan said he knew the stories were mostly similar, but he was still completely hooked: "Every time I tried my best to restrain my desire, telling myself I couldn't watch any more"[1].
At the Shanghai Book Fair this August, Mo Yan shared his experience of watching short dramas again. Two years later, instead of restraining his urge, he now spends several hours every day indulging in short videos and short dramas, and can blurt out a classic line: "How dare you! Kneel down for me! Lick my shoes clean"[2].
Image source: Internet
Jia Zhangke also quickly stepped into the no-heartburn era. The six big characters he wrote on Weibo this August, "I've been watching Hongguo Short Dramas lately", added another heavy blow to the darkest hour of literary youth. However, as early as last year's Pingyao International Film Festival, he revealed that he had watched nearly 200 short dramas[3].
Image source: Sina Weibo
The general public are all immersed in the world of Hongguo Short Dramas, and no longer use *Siddhartha* to create a sober and aloof persona, but quietly reveal their true feelings in the comment section of AI short dramas: I'm a vulgar fan and I love watching these shows.
Statistics show that more than 35% of surveyed users criticize the content for being formulaic and divorced from reality. At the same time, more than 75% of people recognize its fast pace and dense satisfying plots[4].
Everyone says these are old clichés, but no one can resist finishing the ad and clicking to the next episode immediately.
The Era of Nationwide No Heartburn
The highest praise these days is no more than the phrase "no heartburn".
The origin of this meme comes from a large number of AI-generated street stall-themed short dramas on Hongguo.
The plots are almost copy-pasted: the conscientious stall owner uses clean ingredients and offers fair prices, building up a group of regular customers. When raw material prices rise, the stall owner raises his prices accordingly, which makes the customers unhappy. The stall owner does not explain much, but just says: "Only by setting the rules first can the road go wider and wider."
At this time, a black-hearted boss will definitely appear next door, using cheap ingredients at low prices and taking away all the customers. As a result, everyone who ate the food from the black-hearted boss gets heartburn, only one sober regular customer stays at the protagonist's stall, wipes his mouth and says the classic line:
"It's a bit more expensive, but it doesn't give you heartburn after eating."
This type of drama is produced one after another, from steamed stuffed bun shops to pork knuckle rice, the lines are almost exactly the same, only the food being cooked in the pot changes.
Image source: Hongguo Short Drama
The street stall theme is a relatively simple type of AI short drama. Various imaginative popular dramas also deeply implement the core concept of "no heartburn":
The wronged wife is exiled to the border area, reclaims wasteland to farm, and accidentally raises a war god, with monthly views exceeding 2 billion; a tile worker travels through the journey to the West, mistakes the Jade Emperor for his biological father, and swears brotherhood with Sun Wukong, gaining over 100 million views on Douyin only 35 hours after release; an emergency doctor can "see disease tags" as soon as the story starts, and gets promoted step by step[5][6].
In reality, people who pursue happiness are often required to compromise, but in short dramas, all grievances must be vented on the spot:
A laid-off office worker turns around and becomes the new boss of the company; the real rich daughter is just driven out of the house, and her father's private plane has already landed; the elder who favored inner sect disciples in the last episode makes the whole sect regret it in the next episode.
The formula of AI short dramas is just like this, a bit tacky, but it brings no heartburn to the audience.
Image source: DataEye
AI short dramas are getting more and more creative, most of them are extremely tacky from their titles to plots, but this does not stop the audience from loving them.
According to statistics from the National Radio and Television Administration, 430,000 micro short dramas were launched nationwide in the first 8 months of this year, 13 times that of last year, of which more than 90% are AI dramas. Among the top 20 hits on Hongguo's hot list, there is only 1 live-action drama left[7][8].
Another set of data can also prove this: as of February this year, 718 million people watch short dramas every month, which means one in every two Chinese people watches short dramas. Last year, the average viewing duration was as high as 129 minutes, roughly equivalent to the length of a theater movie[9][10].
The popularity of AI short dramas is not hard to understand. Every era has popular popular literature loved by the masses, and their core elements are mostly similar.
The story of overbearing CEOs was already popular in *The Golden Family*. Even Lu Xun, who despised this type of romance novels, could not resist his mother's obsession with chasing updates and obediently paid to buy them for her; the young man with a rough life experience who learns peerless martial arts is represented by Zhang Wuji in *The Heaven Sword and Dragon Saber*; the setting of mistaken real and fake daughters has been seen by several generations of Chinese audiences in *My Fair Princess*; and when it comes to the level of dramatic and absurd plots, the pocket magazine *Story Club* is no less impressive[11].
Carriers have changed again and again, but the greatest common divisor of aesthetic tastes of all kinds of people has always been love, counterattack, identity reveal, plus a little bit of unfulfilled regret.
The AI comic drama *Qin Shi Huang: I Have the All-Star Lineup of Huaxia* that became a hit in September this year is a hodgepodge of all satisfying plot elements.
A modern medical student travels back to the Qin Dynasty, and brings later celebrities such as Zhuge Liang, Huo Qubing, and Hua Tuo to Qin Shi Huang one by one. Ying Zheng says "Shu Han is too small, I have wronged you, Prime Minister", and Zhuge Liang says "I have never fought such a wealthy battle in my life". The first emperor of all ages paired with the prime minister of all ages, and the regrets left in history books are fulfilled for you in the short drama.
Image source: *Qin Shi Huang: I Have the All-Star Lineup of Huaxia*
*My Year-end Bonus Dropped from 800,000 to 19,000, But My Leader Panicked* is specially made to cure the mindset of leaders who think "the company can still operate well without you".
The male protagonist who has worked for eight years sees his year-end bonus cut to 19,000 yuan and resigns directly. As a result, the company has problems with its loans, and the leader tries to shift the blame, but he produces evidence and slaps the leader in public. All the grievances that office workers have swallowed are vented for you in the short drama.
Image source: *My Year-end Bonus Dropped from 800,000 to 19,000, But My Leader Panicked*
Of course, pure satisfaction alone is not enough to lead the whole nation into the no-heartburn era. AI short dramas also win by their wide coverage. People who say all plots are the same formula mostly just haven't found the one that suits them. Some people are immune to overbearing CEO plots but fall in love with cute pet stories; some people don't care about war god themes but are completely hooked by doomsday stockpiling plots.
Data from DataEye Short Drama Check shows that more than 1,300 AI short dramas are launched every day, and there is always one that brings you no heartburn[12].
Jointly Contributing to the Prosperity
The whole nation entering the no-heartburn era is never a temporary whim.
Audiences want satisfying content, creative teams want low cost and high efficiency, platforms want traffic, and AI short dramas just make all three parties feel no heartburn, thus creating this era.
Specifically, first of all, the audience loves them, and the needs of most people are very simple: to enjoy a satisfying watch without paying anything.
Short dramas have already met this demand once.
The most criticized point of long video platforms is their nested paid membership system. Take iQiyi as an example, there are basic, gold, platinum and even star diamond membership tiers, and you still have to pay extra for advanced on-demand access to the final episodes. The main business model of short dramas is free viewing and monetization through ads, and you can even get small red envelopes after watching a lot, which quickly captures a large number of users who are unwilling to pay for entertainment.
As for "good-looking", it varies from person to person, but it is certain that when long dramas widely enter the era of watered-down content, filled with slow motion and flashbacks, short dramas stand on the side of fast pace, so fast that you don't even notice it, and look up to find it's already 2 a.m.
One side is thinking about how to extend the episodes to make more money, the other side is thinking about how to make people addicted and unable to stop.
The effect is very obvious. In July this year, the number of daily active users of short drama platforms surged to 168 million, more than doubling in a year, even more than the total 155 million daily active users of Tencent Video, iQiyi, Youku and Mango TV combined[13].
Where the audience is, the money follows. In 2025, the market size of Chinese micro short dramas exceeded 100 billion yuan, while the total annual box office of all cinemas nationwide was only 51.8 billion yuan. The real money data is the best proof of the public's enthusiasm[7][14].
Everyone says short dramas have no nutritional value, but the audience votes with their feet. Most people are already overloaded with information after a full day of work, and have no patience to absorb more "nutritional content". The fast dopamine-stimulating pleasure brought by short dramas, like fried chicken and cola, is more in line with human nature.
Audiences who have been cultivated by short dramas have long developed the ability to value plots more than actors. As long as the plot is exciting, they can smoothly accept that the face on the screen is generated by AI.
Therefore, on the basis of the market enlightenment completed by short dramas, the biggest contribution of AI is to bring an exponential explosion of supply, penetrating into the audience's field of vision everywhere.
AI short dramas have existed for the past two years, but the qualitative change happened this year.
In March 2024, China Media Group's video platform launched *Chinese Mythology*, known as the first domestic AI full-process micro short drama. By 2025, the audience of AI short dramas was just over 100 million[15].
The turning point of the outbreak came in February this year. ByteDance released Seedance 2.0, whose generated images were so realistic that they could pass for real. Soon after, Disney sent a letter accusing it of using Marvel and Star Wars characters as materials.
With the improvement of quality, AI short dramas gradually broke through the circle. By March, the number of new AI short dramas was almost equal to the total number of last year. In the first half of 2026, the total number of people who watched AI short dramas exceeded 600 million, 5 times that of last year[15].
As a result, the office workers' day is completely surrounded by AI: AI helps you work during the day, and AI brings you immersive fun at night.
