Li Mei Su, known as the godmother of idol dramas, swiftly rose up the ranks at Sanli TV network, abandoning a brief career as an actress for one behind the camera, eventually becoming the company’s vice president. At Sanli, she developed several of the massively popular “idol” soap operas—Taiwanese dramas with pop stars in the cast—which were exported to over 15 countries. With each drama conceptualised, she reworked the formula, no matter how successful, in order to try something new.

In 2011, she founded Dreamland, a content creation company focusing on enhancing Taiwanese cultural symbols to promote the country’s cultural and creative industries to the world. Poetry Inside a Bookstore, Dreamland’s 2016 mini-documentary series about Taiwan’s independent booksellers, attracted international interest in purchasing rights to the films.