Laogong zhi aiqing is very much a product of the urban culture and of a confluence of discourses and practices of shadowplay in Shanghai. Before they established Mingxing Company in 1921,

the creators of the film, Zhang Shichuan and Zheng Zhengqiu, had collaborated eight years earlier to make some Chinese films for the Asia Company. The early 1920s saw an unprecedented cinema craze in China. After a stock market crash, many speculators turned to investing into the nascent film industry … It was in this sizzling ambiance that Zhang and Zheng began their second collaborative venture. From the very start, they also established the Mingxing Shadowplay School to train professional actors and actresses.

The narrative trajectory of Laogong zhi aiqing is clear, but the film is less concerned with the internal psychology of the characters than with their actions, which often amounts to a show that disrupts any incipient diegetic absorption

… The story is in fact a frivolous commentary on the question of social mobility, implicitly mocking the feudal and patriarchal codes regulating marriage and family.

Zhang Zhen, An Amorous History of the Silver Screen, Shanghai Cinema 1896-1937, University of Chicago Press, Chicago 2005