A Better Life

Hu Manli believes she is about to reach the peak of her career. Instead a competitor undermines her, her company lets her go and her marriage collapses. The man behind it is Xue Xiaozhou, a down-on-his-luck rich kid just entering insurance. After several rounds of confrontation they work out what lay behind it, clear up their misunderstandings and decide to work together.

Around them are colleagues, clients and family members whose problems come through the policies they sell: elderly people living alone, single-parent households, couples worried about money.

The setting is contemporary Shanghai. According to a Jiefang Daily report carried by Xinhua, the crew spent more than 100 days filming across 16 districts, and the series features 86 local landmarks, from the Oriental Pearl Tower to lane-house neighborhoods. Shanghai dialect lines appear throughout, and a Taiwanese report noted Sun Li switching between Mandarin and Shanghainese.

The director is Wang Jun (汪俊), and the script is by Fei Huijun (费慧君) and Li Xiaoliang. The series aired on CCTV and Youku, and the official synopsis, carried by The Paper, describes the two leads as both teacher and friend (亦师亦友) to each other.

Jiefang Daily reported a first-broadcast rating of 1.34% on CCTV-8, first nationwide that evening, and noted that the story takes in elderly people living alone, single-parent families and couples' quarrels over money. According to The Paper, it is Sun Li's first series since Ideal City in 2021.