The hit TV series A Love for Separation, starring Huang Lei (right) and Hai Qing (third from right), is about Chinese parents sending their teenage children to study abroad. (Photo provided to China Daily)
In 2006, Lu Qiang toured the United States to visit some famous universities.
The veteran reporter saw a number of Chinese there, most of whom had begun their U.S. educations in middle school.
"They had left home as teenagers."
But this was a departure from the past.
"Earlier, most Chinese went abroad to study after graduation," says Lu, better known by his pseudonym, Lu Yingong.
Realizing what he was witnessing was unprecedented-in later years, it led to headlines about Chinese students abroad "getting younger"-Lu decided to document what he saw.
The then deputy editor-in-chief of the Hangzhou-based Qianjiang Evening News started by interviewing Chinese students in Russia in 2007 and Japan a few years later.
Recalling what he saw then, he tells China Daily in a telephone interview: "The parents struggled and hesitated, apart from enduring the long separations from the only child in the family."
The emotional trauma he witnessed is woven into his novel A Love for Separation.
The work struck a chord. Within weeks of the publication of the 120,000-character tale in early 2013, at least six film studios called Lu for the rights.
His work has come into the spotlight again with a namesake television series, starring Huang Lei and Hai Qing.
The series, which ran from mid-August to early September this year, is a hit.