Lu Yao's Ordinary World now on air as TV series

A scene from the TV series Ordinary World, which is based on a novel of the same name by the late Chinese author Lu Yao. [Photo/China Daily]

Ordinary World by the late Chinese author Lu Yao has been adapted into a TV series. The novel was first published nearly three decades ago, and a previous attempt to bring the story to the small screen in 1989 failed.

The 56-episode series has been aired on four channels since last month. It reportedly cost its makers 120 million yuan ($19.2 million) and took seven years to complete.

In 1991, Lu's most famous work earned him the Mao Dun Literature Prize, one of China's most prestigious literary awards. In the next 20 years, almost 5 million copies of the novel were sold.

Ordinary World took Lu six years to write, and he is said to have extensively researched Chinese newspapers printed from 1975 to 1985, in a bid to make his book reflect the realities of the time and also add as much historical context as possible.

From the perspective of two brothers' struggles, the novel mostly shows the lives of people in rural China from the mid-1970s to the 1980s.

The book also draws from the author's own experiences of rural life in his native northwestern Shaanxi province, where he once was a poor farmer's son. Lu's rise to national prominence as an author was fairly dramatic following the success of the novel, but he couldn't enjoy fame for long. He passed away at age 43, leaving his family to deal with an unpaid debt of more than 10,000 yuan.

That his marital life might have been in crisis too, was reportedly revealed later, when his brother told the media that the author had signed a draft agreement for divorce with his wife three months before his death, but the couple failed to make it legal owing to Lu's poor health.