"Silence in 'Blossoms” — An Analysis of the Chinese Aesthetics of Blank-Leaving in the TV Adaptation Blossoms Shanghai
Abstract
The term"不响" (Buxiang, "not speaking"/"silence") appears over 1,300 times in the novel Blossoms, making it an indisputable keyword. Director Wong Kar-wai interprets"不响" as a form of blank-leaving (留白), describing it as both the creative cipher of author Jin Yucheng and the key to his own adaptation. It is precisely by embedding"不响" into every facet of the series that the TV adaptation Blossoms Shanghai has garnered widespread acclaim among audiences in Shanghai and across China. This paper examines the manifestations of"不响" in the TV series from the perspective of blank-leaving aesthetics.
References
Li, W. J. (2015). Fan Hua lun [On Blossoms] (Master’s thesis). East China Normal University.
Liu, M. (2024). From “Buxiang” to “thunderclap”: On the cultural tension and cinematic adaptation of Blossoms. Southern Literary Forum, (6), 171–175.
Ran, H. (2019). Extremization and formulaic tendencies: Issues in emotional representation in Chinese TV dramas. Audio-Visual, (9), 36–37.
Wen, X. (2023). Avant-garde and mainstream: On the nonlinear narrative shift in domestic films. Film Literature, (3), 56–59.
Xiao, B. (2024). Character plots, semiotic forms, and audiovisual composition: An analysis of aesthetic innovation in the TV series Blossoms. Movie Review, (15), 107–112.
Wu, L. (2024, January 21). Blossoms: A “bomb” shattering conventions. Workers’ Daily, p. 004.
Zhang, K. (2017). A brief analysis of the art of blank-leaving in Blossoms. Journal of Huaihai Institute of Technology (Humanities & Social Sciences Edition), 15(2), 41–44.


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Copyright for this article is retained by the author(s), with first publication rights granted to the journal.
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).