General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

That Year the Sun Shone Bright

That Year the Sun Shone Bright (那年阳光正好; pinyin Nà Nián Yáng Guāng Zhèng Hǎo) is a 2025 Chinese vertical short drama directed by Wen Chao (文超), starring Chen Guanyi (陈冠峄) as Pei Jingshen and Li Xueying (李雪莹) as Shen Lu, released in 81 short episodes on the Hippo Short Drama (河马短剧) platform and later carried on iQIYI.¹^•² It became one of the highest-performing micro-dramas of 2025, ranking fourth in the DataEye industry heat list for the first half of the year and sixth for the full year.³^•⁴

Key fact	Detail
Format	Vertical-screen short drama, 81 episodes of roughly 2 minutes each, in Mandarin⁵
Cast and director	Directed by Wen Chao; Chen Guanyi as Pei Jingshen, Li Xueying as Shen Lu¹
Release	Distributed on Hippo Short Drama from May 4, 2025; also streamed on iQIYI²^•¹
2025 H1 ranking	4th on the DataEye micro-drama heat list, heat value 53.19 million³
2025 full-year ranking	6th on the DataEye annual heat list, heat value 58.014 million; producer credited as Chongqing Siyue Lianmeng (重庆四月联盟)⁴^•⁶
Peak performance	Topped the DataEye daily heat list on May 8, 2025; May heat value above 42 million, with 25 appearances on the May monthly list including two stints at number one²

Spoilers

Story

The drama is a reunion-and-redemption romance built on a seven-year separation. Seven years before the main action, the pregnant Shen Lu learns by accident that her boyfriend Pei Jingshen, who has cancer, is in fact the heir to the wealthy Pei family of the capital. The family offers to pay for his treatment only if the two break up; Pei refuses, but Shen Lu, overhearing the arrangement, leaves him quietly so as not to hold him back. She is then injured in a car accident, loses her memory, and gives birth to their daughter An'an (安安), while Pei believes she has died.¹

Seven years later, Shen Lu's condition worsens, and the young An'an begs on the streets to raise money for her mother's treatment. In the course of this she runs into Pei Jingshen, who does not know the girl is his daughter and repeatedly hurts her, until he finally realizes that the mother An'an speaks of is the woman he has mourned for seven years, opening a long process of atonement.¹ A promotional account on DramaBox summarized the hook in the same terms: a reunion after seven years in which the hero learns that the child is his daughter.⁷

Some secondary coverage describes a different story, a youth romance between Xia Qingning (夏青柠) and Gu Jing (顾璟) set among teenagers in a small town.⁸ The iQIYI episode synopsis, which matches the platform's own listing, gives the Shen Lu and Pei Jingshen plot, so the two descriptions cannot both describe the same cut of the show.¹

Commercial performance

The series was one of 2025's breakout micro-dramas. It began paid distribution on May 4, 2025, and within days reached the top of the DataEye daily heat list, taking first place on May 8 with four titles that day each adding more than 40 million in heat value.² Over May it appeared on the monthly heat list 25 times and held the number-one position twice, with a May heat value above 42 million.² In mid-June it was still leading the weekly heat list at 10.122 million, the only title that week above the 10-million mark.⁹

For the first half of 2025 it ranked fourth among all micro-dramas with a cumulative heat value of 53.19 million, behind only Xiao Xiao Qiu Shen Bu Hao Re, Hao Yun Tian Qi Bei Zuan Shi Lao Gong Chong Shang Tian, and Ren Mian Tao Hua Chang Xiang Yi.³ The full-year DataEye list placed it sixth at 58.014 million, one of twelve titles of the year to exceed 50 million; the same report notes that female-audience dramas dominated the top fifteen and that comeback and face-slapping revenge plots filled ten of those fifteen slots.⁴ A city-level industry report credits production to Chongqing Siyue Lianmeng.⁶

The show also traveled abroad in localized form. A translation-industry case study used That Year the Sun Shone Bright as an example of short-drama localization, arguing that its high emotional tension, clear conflicts, and idiomatic dialogue made it suitable for overseas audiences, with character names adapted to local cultures rather than transliterated.¹⁰

Context of the title

The phrase 那年阳光正好 is a common sentimental formula in Chinese titles, and several unrelated works use close variants. On the Qidian novel platform, A Wen Qiqi (阿文柒柒) serializes the campus romance Na Nian, Yang Guang Zheng Hao, Wei Feng Bu Zao (那年，阳光正好，微风不燥), set in a county high school, and Di 712 Hao Da Lin (第712号大霖) writes the university-campus romance Na Nian Hua Kai, Yang Guang Zheng Hao (那年花开，阳光正好).¹¹^•¹² A separate long-form television case involves the 2017 remake of TVB's 1982 classic Wan Shui Qian Shan Zong Shi Qing, which was renamed Yang Guang Zheng Hao Yi Ran Shi Ni (阳光正好依然是你) around 2020 and, after nine years unaired, had its episode count cut from 48 to 31 in a September 2026 filing change.¹³ A 40-episode contemporary urban drama titled Chen Yang Guang Zheng Hao (趁阳光正好) was separately filed with the National Radio and Television Administration in January 2022 by a Tianjin production company.¹⁴ None of these is the 2025 short drama profiled here.

References

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