General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20266 min read

Something Just Like This (青春创世纪)

Something Just Like This (青春创世纪, also known as Youth Genesis or Qing Chun Chuang Shi Ji) is a 2020 Chinese urban romantic drama about two childhood friends who build a business in the e-commerce livestreaming industry. Directed by Chen Feihong and starring Huang Jingyu, Wu Jinyan, and Xuan Lu, it aired on iQIYI from November 8 to December 3, 2020.¹^•²

Key fact	Detail
Chinese title	青春创世纪 (Qing Chun Chuang Shi Ji); alternate English titles include Youth Genesis and We Are Young²
Run	47 episodes of about 45 minutes, iQIYI, November 8 to December 3, 2020¹^•²
Genre	Modern romance and business drama; tagged friends-to-lovers, rich man/poor woman, multiple couples¹
Source material	Adapted from the novel Du Jia Zhuan Chong (独家专宠)¹
Main cast	Huang Jingyu (Johnny Huang) as Duan Ran; Wu Jinyan as Qian Xixi; Xuan Lu as Zhang Jiayun; Cao Yuchen as Jiang Zheyang¹
Production	Director Chen Feihong; chief producer Chen Kaige; production companies T.H Entertainment and Wanda¹^•³
Distinction	Promoted as China's first drama themed on e-commerce livestream selling⁴

Spoilers

Premise and plot

The story follows Qian Xixi, whose parents are divorced and who grows up in the household of Duan Ran, the son of a wealthy retail family. The two are childhood companions whose personalities differ sharply because of their family backgrounds.¹ As an adult, Qian Xixi enters the e-commerce livestreaming industry by accident, while Duan Ran judges livestream selling to be the next economic hotspot and, after effort, acquires the streaming company where she works, becoming her new boss.¹^•⁵

Once inside the industry, Duan Ran finds its complexity far beyond his imagination, while Qian Xixi throws herself into internet entrepreneurship and unexpectedly encounters the superstar Jiang Zheyang, her high-school classmate. With her efforts, Jiang Zheyang's involvement saves Duan Ran's company. The pair face repeated career difficulties while their relationship deepens, and the story ends with both finding true love and realizing their own "Chinese dream" of entrepreneurship.¹^•⁵

A fuller plot summary adds that Duan Ran's father, the retail magnate Duan Shengyun, faces a business crisis that the two young leads help resolve, after which they take over the ailing livestreaming company Rui. They revive it by selling off-price goods, win supply chains in competition with rival firms, and help build the top streamer Yuanyuan.⁶ In the rival-platform storyline, Chen Lang, reduced to a minority shareholder after the acquisition, leaves to start a competing platform called Cloud Live.⁷

Production

The drama was officially announced in September 2018, with casting preparation beginning then. A ceremony marking the start of filming was held in Xiamen on April 28, 2019; shooting lasted 106 days and wrapped in Xiamen on August 10, 2019, with the wrap announced on August 12.⁸ Promotional materials followed in stages: lead cast and character stills on August 12, 2019, streamer group posters and a livestream-themed preview on November 3, 2020, and the finalized posters and premiere-date trailer on November 5, 2020, fixing the November 8 premiere on iQIYI.⁸

Producers and director. Chen Kaige, the film director, served as chief producer (总监制), and the drama was his second web drama as producer after Min Chu Qi Ren Zhuan.³^•⁴ The Phoenix Entertainment report notes that director Chen Feihong is Chen Kaige's nephew, and that Chen Feihong's name did not appear in the director field on Douban, possibly to avoid the appearance of favoritism.³ Screenwriters were credited as Lu Xiaojuan, Fu Yao, and Wang Zhichao.¹

The original soundtrack was released on November 9, 2020, with music composed by Daryl K (Wang Kaiyu) and Calvin C (Chang Yue), across 19 tracks.⁸ Cao Yuchen, who plays Jiang Zheyang, also performed the insert song "Zhui" (追) for the series.⁹

Cast

Huang Jingyu (Johnny Huang) plays Duan Ran, the heir of a retail empire, and Wu Jinyan plays Qian Xixi, the livestreamer at the story's center.¹ Supporting roles include Xuan Lu as Zhang Jiayun, Liang Dawei as Chen Lang, Cao Yuchen as Jiang Zheyang, Wang Maolei as Yu Shi, Zhao Luoran as Su Su, Cao Weiyu as Duan Shengyun, and Sha Baoliang as Qian Jin.¹ Other listings add Xu Li as Ouyang Meixuan and Wang Jiayu as Wu Gege.¹⁰

Reception

The drama premiered during the Double Eleven shopping festival period and was billed as China's first e-commerce livestreaming-themed drama, with Chen Kaige's involvement making it a topic-plus-traffic contender.⁴ Its critical reception was poor. A Jiemian News commentary quoted a viewer complaint that after 18 episodes the story was heavily padded and the leads' achievements fell from the sky without any process of effort, and quoted the drama critic "Ma Er" judging it neither sweet enough as romance, nor valuable as an inspirational drama, nor deep as a workplace drama.⁴ The same article placed the series in a broader cycle of low-rated urban entrepreneurship dramas, noting that viewers mocked the premise of a British-educated retail heir partnering with a livestream seller as implausible, and grouped it with predecessors such as Entrepreneurial Age and Perfect Relationship that also ended with weak reputations.⁴ A Phoenix Entertainment piece concluded that a good producer does not necessarily make a good drama.³

Aggregated viewer scores differ by platform: iQIYI lists 7.3,⁵ JustWatch shows 7.3 from about 60 ratings,¹¹ Plex lists 7.5,¹² and CPOP Home shows 7.8 from 8 ratings.¹

Availability and episode counts

The series streams on iQIYI, including free with ads in some regions.¹¹ Episode counts vary across databases: iQIYI, TVmaze, and TheTVDB list 47 episodes,⁵^•²^•¹³ while Ninenovel lists 49¹⁴ and JustWatch lists 45.¹¹ TVmaze records a Monday-to-Thursday schedule of 45-minute episodes, with the final episode airing December 3, 2020.²

Context: livestream commerce on screen

The drama appeared at the moment livestream shopping was becoming a mainstream retail format in China. In a typical livestream shopping session, a streamer introduces products one by one while viewers purchase through an on-screen shopping-window link, interacting by chat and virtual gifts; the format grew rapidly as pandemic-era consumers shifted from offline to online shopping.¹⁵ The Jiemian commentary observed that only a few years before the drama aired, streaming hosts were still viewed with a skeptical eye as a profession, and that works on e-commerce and livestream selling multiplied after the 2018 livestream-selling boom.⁴

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026