ABSTRACT
Characteristics such as concealment, hiddenness, and covertness have long been prized in many aspects of Chinese literature and the arts. This chapter proposes that the notion of suggestive concealment—in relation to the aesthetic principle of fu-bi [伏笔]—can enrich our understandings of foreshadowing and narrative progression, expanding existing critical methodologies for discussing television aesthetics. Using a comparative analysis of the Chinese web novel and its televisual adaptation Love like the Galaxy [《星汉灿烂·月升沧海》] as a case study, the chapter examines how qualities such as hiddenness, gap-filling, and patterning shape what has been termed “an aesthetics of indirection” in the Chinese narrative arts.
