Star-studded locations

Chinese stars participate in the shooting of TV show Divas Hit the Road in Turkey in 2015. [Photo provided to China Daily]

"This is my first trip in Hungary, but I love it more than any other country I have been to before," Joe Chen, an award-winning actress from Taiwan, wrote on her Weibo micro blog. The TV series in which she stars, Love Actually, was filmed in Budapest, the country's capital.

This was the first time a Chinese TV series had been shot in Hungary, but not the first time a show had been filmed outside China.

Back to the 1990s, the TV series A Native Of Beijing In New York, starring by actor Jiang Wen and actress Heidi Wong, about a group Chinese people striving in New York, was China's first series to be shot overseas. The film Lost in Thailand, made in 2012, featured the beautiful scenery and local customs of Thailand, and the TV show Divas Hit the Road has visited seven countries so far in three seasons.

Previously, because of budget constraints, when a production demanded filming overseas, the production team would build a set or use a local street that could be made to look like a foreign one.

However, now that audiences expect higher standards and producers have more funds, an increasing number of productions are made on location.

In 2012, a quarter of the 16 Chinese movies whose box office returns were more than 20 million yuan ($3 million) went abroad to film. The number was 12 out of 32 in 2014.

In fact, it has become a trend for TV series or programs to go abroad, especially to countries involved in the Belt and Road Initiative.