which city

somewhere in the south for sure... lots of palm trees, people wearing shorts

I thought at one point there was a sign in Chinese that said Beihai. I could be wrong. It looked like the south because it was green and lush. The city was lively, which leads me to feel it was a southern port city.

The 3 producers listed for the film are:

Guangxi Film Studio, Xin Huamian Film, and Zhuhai Zhenrong Co.

There is little information on Xin Huamian, I don't think they're very big. Zhuhai appears to be a large oil company. I don't know if the film producer is connected, but I think they must be.

Guangxi Film Studio has a lot of films to its credit. Maybe Zhuhai Zhenrong Co. financed it and Xin Huamian Film financed or gave artistic help. I think the main artistic producer here was Guangxi Film Studio. If so, than Beihai would be a reasonable guess for the location since it is in Guangxi, is a port town, and probably looks lush.

I found one place that said the location was Beijing:

http://www.towerrecords.com/product.aspx?pfid=2750241&title=Happy+Times+(WS)

Beijing is far from Shenzheng. But Shenzhen might feel far to someone from Beihai. I found no support for the Beijing theory, but it was just a snippet from a review. I don't remember if the film was actually in a seaport, but it had that feeling to me.

An Asian Week reviewer said that the location is DaLian, way up in Liaoning. It is on a bay and very far from Shenzhen.

I actually think Dalian is most likely since a reviewer said it. I doubt that it's Beijing. I like my guess of Beihai, but it's a viewer's guess.

Anybody else have an opion?

It should be some city in Liaoning province in northeast China since most of the actors using northeastern accent in the movie.

I guess it could be ShenYang because I dimly distinguished some bus' number plate.