An Actor's Journey, Starting in 1998

All novels about the Chinese entertainment industry are the same: in the early stages, the protagonist sings and acts; in the middle stages, they make their own movies; and in the later stages, they start their own companies and become investors. If they don't become investors, they're always just pawns.

Fan Xiaopang has too much screen time. Regardless of her past, she is now a disgraced artist banned by the state. Giving her so much screen time will only make readers resentful. The more she tries to whitewash herself, the more annoying she becomes.

The values ​​presented in this book are truly disgusting. The protagonist's father in China raised him with great difficulty but never remarried, dragging the relationship into middle age. In the end, after taking the US dollars from his mother, a heartless woman who had abandoned her family and remarried in the US, he immediately turned around and told his father to be more generous.

Many current female protagonists in Chinese entertainment novels are based on Liu Yifei, a result of both reader and author choices. Some readers are from the 70s and 80s generation, but the majority are from the 90s, and of course, there are many from the 00s as well.

In the modern entertainment industry, acting skills are the least important thing. The acting skills rooted in Broadway are amazing, but can they compare to those of domestic stage actors? They're about the same. If their acting were truly good, these domestic stage actors would have dominated the entertainment industry long ago.

Many entertainment novel authors often give up halfway through their writing due to poor results, never looking for the reasons within themselves. How many entertainment novels these days are successful because they feature harems? How many lack a story outline? How many have illogical plots? How many are overly sycophantic towards celebrities?

Acting skills don't need to be exceptional; just being passable is enough. A TV series depends on the script. A good script and good characters can make a character stand out, and a longer series can bring a character to life. Movies are all about the director. Because movies are short, telling a complete story relies entirely on the director's skill.

This premise—an American collaborator traveling through time to Xiaokaram, Shanghai—just feels jarring.

Author, over 200 chapters already! Isn't the protagonist being written way too laid-back?! A reborn person in their late twenties, after all these years, and what's the result? Penniless! No investments whatsoever, let alone his own company! He hasn't even managed to build his own studio! It's truly speechless!

This book is really contradictory. The protagonist is someone who has lived in the US for decades and works in the entertainment industry, but besides acting, he knows nothing else. He's wasted decades of his life; doesn't he know that capital comes first? He's just lived a wasted life.