A middle-aged widow's search for love proved an unlikely hit on Chinese TV this month, going against the widespread trend of youth-obsessed drama.

Taking special satisfaction is Yan Geling, the Shanghai-born screenwriter of light-hearted and heartwarming family drama "My Mother Wants to Get Married." The renowned Chinese-American novelist and scriptwriter has made it her career to portray under-represented groups - here the inner world of a widow.

A sensation when aired on Dragon TV, "My Mother Wants to Get Married," focuses on the love life of a widow with three children.

Main character Qi Zhifang, a fashionable, romantic woman, played by Jiang Wenli, lost her firefighter husband in a blaze. With admirable courage and tenacity, she embarks on a search for love once more.

Many fans of the 46-episode series - with two episodes shown each day - said they were moved by Qi's brave pursuit of love.

At a recent discussion of the drama in Shanghai, Yan said the script, which took her only a few months to complete, was an especially satisfying project.

"Currently, there are very few novels or screenplays about middle-aged women's love lives - particularly widows," Yan said. "This group of people faces conflicting pressures of free love and traditional Chinese thoughts of chastity."

Yan said offspring around the world have common traits in relation to their parents. "Children, no matter what country they are in, are more selfish than their parents."

"I hope this drama can make more people show respect for the love of their parents," added Yan.

Yan was also forthright in her opinions on Chinese scripts.

"Originality is always of big importance for a successful script," she said. "But a dreadful fact is that nowadays a lot of scripts in China have very stylized plots and characters."

A 46-episode saga seems a departure in format for Yan, as the 56-year-old made her name with novels and movie scripts, and is a member of the Hollywood Screenwriter Association.

Born into an artist's family in Shanghai - her father was Chinese writer Xiao Ma and her actress stepmother is Yu Ping - Yan joined the Army at the age of 13 as a dancer in an entertainment troupe.

Mirroring some of her own experience in army, her first novel "The Green Blood" was published in 1985. Since then, she has displayed her talents in a series of novels, short stories, novellas, essays and scripts.

Yan studied English at the age of 30 and in 1989 went to the United States to study at Columbia University, Chicago. She has a Master's degree in fiction writing.

Next, Yan began to write novels and scripts in English. Her best-known novels in English are "The Banquet Bug" and "The Lost Daughter of Happiness." Other acclaimed works include novella and short story collection "White Snake and Other Stories."

She has published more than 20 books, many of which have been translated into English, Japanese, French, Spanish and other languages. Her work has also been adapted for cinema, television and radio.

Many characters of Yan's books are people on the edge of society; people with disabilities, prostitutes, gay people, couples in sham marriages.

Yan also likes to portray the lives and destinies of ordinary women against a backdrop of big historical events. A character's personal fate seems closely linked to the development of the nation.

Her work, written in beautiful prose often compared to poetry, retains a flavor of both desolation and prosperity between a moment.

She said in a previous newspaper interview that she prefers writing about women, admitting that "every heroine I write about has a resemblance to me."

Yan says she likes to place her marginalized heroines in tough situations.

"When people are in an abnormal situation, forced into a corner, their nature will show, and that's what excites," she explained.

"My heroines are never winners, because each loser has his or her own way to lose. This individuality makes for a good story.

"The reason why Chinese women are seldom overwhelmed by hardships, still seeing a richness in life despite all they've been through, is that we learn to have an ordinary heart in those dark days," she added.

Hardships are a feature of acclaimed movie "Siao Yu" (1995), concerning Chinese immigrants trying to attain United States citizenship. Based on Yan's short novel of the same name, she co-wrote the movie script with Ang Lee.

Directed by Taiwanese director Sylvia Chang, the film, highlighting a huge culture clash between East and West, took six awards at the Asia-Pacific Film Festival in 1995.

And Yan's "Celestial Bath" was adapted into the movie "Xiu Xiu - The Sent Down Girl" (1998), the directorial debut of actress Joan Chen. The tale of the tragic life of a teenage girl, though banned at the time on Chinese mainland, won seven Golden Horse awards in 1998.

Yan has also collaborated with mainland superstar film makers.

With Zhang Yimou, she worked on the script of 2011 war epic "The Flowers of War," starring Christian Bale, based on Yan's novella "13 Flowers of Nanjing."

And with Chen Kaige, Yan worked on the script for "Forever Enthralled" (2008) - about Peking opera star Mei Lanfang.

The script rights for another of Yan's acclaimed novels "Inmate Lu Yanshi" (2011) have been bought by Zhang Yimou.

The novel, based on the experiences of Yan's grandfather, relates the ups and downs of Lu Yanshi's life over half a century.

Yan married Lawrence Walker, an American diplomat who speaks fluent Chinese, in 1992. They have a nine-year-old daughter who they adopted from Anhui Province in 2004.

Yan considers having a foot both in East and West benefits her writing. She says she likes to live on the fringe of the society, as this allows a detached perspective on what's going on.

At the same time, she takes pride in the vitality, longevity, poetry and implicit beauty of the Chinese language.

Some people have compared Yan to fellow Shanghai native and famous novelist Eileen Chang.

Chang, who lived much of her life in the US, is renowned for her portrayals of relationships in novels such as "Lust, Caution" and "Half Life Fate." But Yan dismisses such comparisons, saying there could only be one Eileen Chang.

Instead of looking to literary comparisons, Yan prefers to focus on the rhythms of her own life; the everyday chores of cooking for her family, helping her daughter with her school work.

"I live a simple life," she said. "In my leisure time, I read, watch movies and have casual chats with my friends. I lend a sympathetic ear, which helps me know a lot of good stories."

And as fans of "My Mother Wants to Get Married" will testify, Yan's sympathetic ear is still finely attuned to people's everyday hopes and desires.