Film on student life hot online

Directed by a university teacher and featuring an all-student cast, a short film telling a campus love story has got netizens talking nationwide.

The movie, named "A Boy's Dairy", was played more than 600,000 times online in one day at the peak of its popularity.

So far, it has received nearly 3,400 comments on Youku.com, a popular Chinese video sharing website.

The film is a 10-minute gift to students and faculty to mark Peking University's 114th anniversary.

It was directed by Chen Yu, an associated professor from the university's school of the arts. The leading actor, Jin Han, originally from South Korea, is a junior at the school .

The movie depicts many vivid shots of a campus love story between a science student and an art student. The film starts with a senior boy's decision to make 15 photos to record his college life before leaving school, including a shot in front of the school's Weiming Lakes, one of him carrying his textbooks and the most important: memories with his ex-girlfriend.

Although he broke up with the girl before graduation, the boy gradually realized the beauty of the relationship as he was shooting pictures. In the end, he sighs and says: "To meet the right person at the right time, that's fairy tale", but "to meet the right person at the wrong time, that is called youth."

The movie has stirred a debate among those who have viewed it.

One viewer with the screen name Lucy Miss Amen left a message on the director's Sina Weibo, saying "the film made me burst into tears and laughter. I felt like this is the best graduation gift I've ever received. Thanks, Professor Chen. Youth is to be myself at anytime, no matter if I am right or wrong."

But not all students liked the movie.

"I like the narrative that told a campus story," said Yong Xin, a 27-year-old graduate of the school. "But honestly, my college life didn't look like the movie at all."

Earlier this year, a comparison between the introduction videos of Peking University and Yale University was widely debated online.

Peking University's video depicts campus views and history accompanied by a hymn-like melody without words, while the Yale teacher raps about student life in the video.

Netizens said that Peking University paid more attention to getting its view across, while Yale focused more on people, according to posts on iFeng News.

"The new movie came from real student lives," said Chen in an interview with the Beijing News.

Chen said he likes "A Boy's Dairy" more than Yale's introduction video because the latter one is more like a recruitment advertisement, but his movie tells the tale of a person growing up.