Micro-drama honors French doctor's quiet wartime courage

The heroic endeavors of Jean Augustin Bussiere, a French doctor who once cycled 40 kilometers to deliver medicine to the Eighth Route Army, are retold in the micro-drama Bussiere Garden.

Comprising 36 episodes of just one to three minutes each, the drama recounts how Bussiere risked his life to secretly support the forces led by the Communist Party of China during the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression (1931-45).

Released on Hongguo, a popular micro-drama platform, the production has already generated nearly 14 million views.

Wang Yutong, operations manager at Hongguo, said the story fills a gap in a rapidly growing micro-drama sector largely dominated by romances and costume tales.

According to Chen Yanxu, chief producer of Bussiere Garden, the drama was prepared and filmed swiftly — a distinctive advantage of the micro-drama format, which is shot vertically and runs for just a few minutes. The assessment process took only one week to secure approval, and the entire procedure, from scriptwriting to shooting and post-production, was completed in a little over three months.

Born in 1872, Bussiere arrived in China in 1913 and practiced medicine there for 41 years. His villa, the Bussiere Garden, on the western outskirts of Beijing — initially purchased for his sick daughter to recuperate — became a clinic offering free medical treatment to villagers during the war, and a transfer station to help CPC members secretly send medicine to the Eighth Route Army's base areas.