Romance in the Alley
小巷人家
A 40-episode family drama on Hunan TV and Mango TV, adapted from Da Mi's novel, following two neighboring households in a Suzhou cotton-mill alley from the late 1970s onward.
Save- Premiere
- Oct 28, 2024
- Episodes
- 40
- Where to watch
- Hunan TV, Mango TV
About the drama
Romance in the Alley (小巷人家, Xiao Xiang Ren Jia, "families of the small alley") is a warm, detailed drama about neighbors. Two families share a lane, and over the decades the show follows how they argue, help each other and grow up beside each other. It is produced by Zhengwu Yangguang (正午阳光).
Its appeal is its ordinary scale: school exams, a husband who defers too much to his family, and children who grow up.
more
The year is the late 1970s, and the place is a lane in the housing compound of a cotton mill in Suzhou. Two families live there: the Zhuangs and the Lins, with the Wu family close by.
The college entrance exam has just resumed. Zhuang Chaoying (庄超英, played by Guo Xiaodong, 郭晓东), a teacher, and his wife Huang Ling (黄玲, Yan Ni, 闫妮) make their children's results the family's first priority. Their neighbors Lin Wufeng (林武峰, Li Guangjie, 李光洁) and Song Ying (宋莹, Jiang Xin, 蒋欣) are drawn into the same worry about their son.
On the surface the Zhuangs look harmonious and respectable, with a studious son, Zhuang Tunan (庄图南, Fan Chengcheng, 范丞丞), and a well-behaved daughter, Zhuang Xiaoting (庄筱婷, Guan Xiaotong, 关晓彤). But Zhuang Chaoying's timidity and unquestioning filial duty keep hurting those closest to him. Next door the Lins do things their own way, and their son Lin Dongzhe (林栋哲, Wang Anyu, 王安宇) is a handful, but the couple support each other and respect their child. Xiaoting and Dongzhe have known each other since childhood.
The story starts in the reform-era years after the Cultural Revolution and follows the households through the decades of change that followed. Suzhou, in the Jiangnan region south of the Yangtze, supplies the alley setting; the main filming took place in Ningbo, with additional scenes shot in an old town in Fencheng, Shanxi.
The drama is adapted from the novel of the same name by Da Mi (大米) and was directed by Zhang Kaizhou (张开宙), whose earlier work includes the family drama Qiao Jia de Er Nü (乔家的儿女, "the Qiao family's children"). It began broadcasting on October 28, 2024, on Hunan TV and Mango TV.
According to Tmtpost, citing China Audiovisual Big Data, it ranked first among satellite-channel prime-time dramas for four consecutive weeks. Yunhe Data placed it second on the national serial chart for November, and the article reports 3.6 billion cumulative views on Mango TV, the highest of any Mango drama that year.
A sequel, Romance in the Alley 2 (小巷人家2), was announced by Hunan TV and Mango TV in 2026, with the novel's author writing new material for it.
Cast and crew
Our coverage
No articles yet.
Where to watch
Want to talk about this? Join the conversation on our Discord →