A Winter Sun Wakes the Wind in Spring Hills' Dream

There are series you watch, and then there are series you inhabit.

A Winter Sun Wakes the Wind in Spring Hills' Dream belongs firmly in the second category.

Maybe that's also why I watched it in portions, waiting until new episodes were out, and taking several days at the end to finally finish it.
Not because it hadn't completely pulled me in. Quite the opposite.
I think I was simply trying to postpone the moment when I would have to admit that it was really over. Because that would mean accepting that there may never be another series like A Winter Sun.

I can say with certainty that the story itself isn't even the main reason this series moved me so deeply. It's the way it's told.

The story begins with Feng Qinglang, a celebrated actor at the height of his career who wants to escape the pressure of the entertainment industry. He retreats to the mountains of Yunnan and ends up with Xu Changyang, a young tea farmer living a life that couldn't be further from Qinglang's world.

And the mountains of Yunnan aren't a backdrop here. They're almost a character in their own right. They create a world where two people can briefly exist outside of everything that otherwise defines them. Qinglang isn't a star there. Changyang isn't living in anyone's shadow. They're simply two people getting to know each other and the series is patient enough to let that feel real.

The tea plantations, the dense forests, the search for termite mushrooms together, roasting tea over an open fire, sharing food, sitting in a silence that nobody needs to fill — A Winter Sun understands that intimacy doesn't always need words. Sometimes it's simply the way someone notices what you need before you ask.

And that is exactly the kind of love language I find most beautiful.

Qinglang and Changyang speak to each other in a language that nobody else seems to understand. There is something almost dance-like about the way they move around one another.

The series constantly works with hidden layers of meaning, lines that carry meaning beyond their words, numbers that carry significance, colours, light, camera positioning. Everything plays a role. Everything means something.

There are so many moments. Too many to list. And I don't think a list would explain why they work anyway.

There are very few series that make me feel something without telling me what I'm supposed to feel. A Winter Sun does this constantly. It does this by focusing on images, gestures, silence, landscapes and the smallest changes in facial expression. Sometimes a line of dialogue lands — but just as often it's something nobody says at all.

For me, this series feels like a painting that draws you in before you understand why. Or like a song in a language you don't fully speak and yet you feel that ache in your chest, that rising of tears, without being able to name exactly what those tears are for.

I think the loudest reason for my tears came from Feng Qing Tian — Qinglang's younger brother.

His story unfolds in fragments, quietly devastating from the beginning. The weight of the guilt he carries. The smile he keeps putting back on his face. The series shows us a person who has become so good at surviving that he has almost forgotten he's allowed to want more than that. It shows us a person living with depression, without reducing him to it.

And then comes episode thirteen. That episode shook me in a way I still don't have the right words for.

Qing Tian's story makes the central love story even more painful in a strange way. Qinglang and Changyang find a place where they can be honest with each other. Qing Tian keeps searching for that same freedom, while carrying the expectations, the guilt and the consequences of everyone around him.
Their stories are different, but they're asking the same question: how much of yourself are you allowed to keep when the world keeps telling you who you're supposed to be?

But A Winter Sun is telling more than a love story in the mountains.

It's also a surprisingly sharp portrait of the Chinese entertainment industry — CPs manufactured for profit, fanservice sold as authenticity, relationships used as tools and discarded the moment they become inconvenient. Qinglang's history with another actor shows what happens when an industry turns intimacy into a product and what it costs to finally step outside of that. His decision to leave the industry and publicly stand by the person he loves isn't simply romantic.
It's a rejection of a system that spent years deciding which version of him was acceptable.

I know this series isn't for everyone. I understand if the dialogue is sometimes difficult to follow, if the time jumps are confusing, if you find plot holes or struggle to keep up with everything happening around the film industry. Some transitions are too abrupt, some storylines ask for more patience than they give back and toward the end I occasionally wished the series trusted itself enough to simply stop and breathe in certain moments.

And yet — I recommend this series. Especially in a time when we increasingly encounter AI-generated imagery and CGI in films and series, A Winter Sun reminded me of the beauty of simply capturing something real. Almost every frame could be printed and hung on a wall — that's how cinematic this series is.

And perhaps that's exactly why, despite being far from perfect, it feels so unmistakably alive. It is painful and beautiful and messy. People make wrong decisions, get lost and find their way back. Love sometimes isn't enough to stop something devastating from happening — and yet the series keeps returning to the same quiet insistence:

Life continues.

The mountains remain.

The tea grows.

Someone waits.

Someone comes home.

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Zelia I am in love with how your mind works

literally gobsmacked how she created this layered world out of ordinary things with such a small cast and few locations 😭

the whole flow of the story, the portrayal of love, of how time moves forward while everything returns in cycles, the way the narrative keeps blurring the line between what is gone and what remains, the ways we continue carrying the people we’ve lost, how nothing really disappears but changes its form becoming a voice, a place, a season, a flower, a memory….

all the subtext, imagery, symbolism, bits of poetry foreshadowing the ending, cinematography, together with the hauntingly beautiful OST makes this my peak 2026 drama ❤️

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beautifully made but only worthy of watching once.

content warning: mentions of several deaths and suicide.

this drama has me heavily conflicted. i have been anticipating this so strongly and for weeks. i was giddy and overwhelmed with excitement to watch this piece of work [even more than with payback, prosecutor's proposal, & deep in]. i watched the first twelve episodes as soon as i possibly could yesterday and stopped in the dead of the morning to sleep.

i loved almost all of the scenes with changyang & qinglang. their chemistry was solid. i loved when they would play around with each other. i loved the way they whispered to each other. their intimacy was fairly solid too. their early scenes felt so genuine, natural, and fluid. unfortunately for me, i had spoiled myself and watched all of their kisses before i watched the piece of work itself [unknowingly]. the former is a testament to how committed i was to this BL before i saw it. i will talk about some of the issues i observed in the following paragraphs. i wanted to end this one with saying my critiques mostly start with the story as soon as changyang departs for hunter school.

you can tell that the creator and staff that made this story come alive truly care about the delivery and execution of this work. however, the story started to fall apart when changyang left. changyang's ambition can make sense to most but it felt random. he was in the mountains for eight years then all of sudden he falls in love then needs to leave right then? we never even got to witness his time in school which felt like a bad decision. his absence was felt and it was void-feeling without him being on screen for a majority of the work. one could surmise that the homophobia and societal / familial expectations exacerbated his leave but it was wack and traumatizing to watch. if china is actually still this antiquated then i feel strongly for the victims of these prejudices alive today. it was actually sickening to see how much homophobia was made a pillar in this story.

i am bewildered by other things as well. sister lan dying was slightly questionable for me but could be more easily accepted comparatively. i was glad that she did not fully disappear from the viewer once she died. she deserved to live. she clearly was an incredible character / person. almost every speech she gave made me cry.
qingtian's death, i still cannot get over. i am beside myself about it because it was nonsensical. i think from a presumptive view one can conclude what the events surrounding and leading up to his death meant but i do not want to guess ! changyang alluded that qingtian intentionally died or commit suicide. i think suicidal ideation is a normal response to loved ones dying but the way it happened was ??? he decides to run off to find the ghost flower, heavy fog randomly appears out of nowhere, then he is lost immediately. the only thing left of him were his shoe and the tool. what??? the sequence of this event was poorly executed, in my opinion. he is then basically never mentioned again especially compared to lan. only his mother and grandmother seem to actually be grieving [i understand grief is different for everyone]. grief is probably why qingtian made the decision he made. however, who can say? did he commit suicide or did he die to the elements?
shi yuhao's death does not make any sense at all to me. not at the time he decided to commit suicide. he did it on the anniversary of lan's accident which is wild. why did he do it? why then? why at all? why did he all of sudden become decent after all the torment, blackmail, coercion, and criminal behavior prior? was it because he managed the comeback so all of a sudden he had a conscious? nonsense. his character pissed me off so his actor did well.

i nearly despise the second main leads. their presences always set me off, internally. i liked them a lot prior to hao yu flipping the script on han lu after they were caught kissing by their show's production team. after that, their relationship was nothing but sloppy, toxic, and dysfunctional garbage. they never spoke about their feelings nor addressed prior obstacles. they never even verbally committed but were somehow boyfriends? they pissed me off every time they came on screen.

wenshu and qingtian were a different story for me. i wanted more of them. i could not understand the pacing of their relationship development. it seemed clear that they were being setup to be together so why did that not happen and instead we got what we got instead? i understand qingtian was still emotionally invested in his formerly actively living partner so i do not get why we got introduced to these two instead, in that way. wenshu then is written to completely disappear from the audience after qingtian's character conclusion. i think there was huge missed opportunity with these two due to bad writing.

there were almost no small production errors like i have noticed in other chinese BL. the cinematography was basically flawless; truly an incredible watch just from this point of view. there were only extremely questionable decisions made like with the punching sound effects, changyang / wenshu deciding to assault that random leech [whom we never see again after wenshu's visit / attack], and others i will mention throughout this review.
i personally do not care for how chinese dramas or BL are filmed. this piece of work was captured a lot more fluidly until changyang left. then it was just timeskips and random events pasted together one after the other just like in bittersweet love. i actually hate this stylistic choice. it makes tracking the story very difficult. at the end, it was said that FIVE YEARS had passed. i presume since the beginning of the show. who would know that prior to it being stated? that is unbelievably amount of time that elapsed. qinglang waited something like two years for changyang? or did he actually wait five years? that is deeply deeply deeply upsetting especially considering leads in BL are always written to be the worst communicators. real relationships cannot survive these kinds of conditions but i get this is fiction.

i have questions. why did the feng brother's mother just decide to leave the family and become a monk? why was changyang's father suddenly and randomly in prison? what happened to that random predator investor? who was the random disabled person who came back into changyang's place? i mean why him? why did changyang take an extended time to return? why did they suddenly "get married" with no proposal shown to viewers? why was their last kiss off? what even is hunter school? what was the point of that endeavor anyway? any good story would not leaving viewers with multiple questions.

in all, because of the second main leads, the storyline without changyang, and the false setup of wenshu + qingtian, i would probably never rewatch this. i find that so unfortunate because this drama was stunning and not lacking intricacies. apart from the cinematography + changyang / qinglang, this BL dropped the ball. however, i still rate it highly despite these gaps and the AI promotion, which was disgusting. objectively, the rating is probably several points lower.

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What a masterpiece!!!!!

when i decided to watch this series i NEVER (not even for a moment) though this would became not only THE BEST bl series i have EVER watched but also THE BEST SERIES i watched in the past few years!!!!! what a MASTERPIECE!!!!!!! from the AMAZING acting to the AMAZING chemistry to the AMAZING filmography, cinematography and THE LIST NEVER ENDS WITH THIS INCRDBLE SERIES!!!!!!
i laughed, cried, had my heart broken non stope and healed yet again!!!!
im in love with this series and i honestly dont know if i could ever move on from it! i cant stop rewatching it.. im literally OBSESSED!!! it would be VERY hard for any upcoming series. let alone a bl to suppress this (if possible at all!!!)!
big big THANK you to the cast and creators of the series!!!!!!!

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Destined to Be Caught

My soul was spoken to in a tender whisper. And I was healed, hurt, and comforted in a repeating circle.

This drama, beautiful and profound as it is, steeped in mountains and almost endless time, speaking in poetry and sneaking in hidden meanings in the tiniest of details, unfortunately, won't be to everyone's taste. The plot is more abstract than linear, but I think to achieve this kind of experience, you couldn't have it any other way.

It's like taking a walk deep into the woods, stopping to sit on a fallen mossy log in a quiet place, and soaking in the sunlight that slips through the trees. Maybe you sprained your ankle along the way, but you'll make your way back, somehow; maybe you'll find a makeshift walking stick, or someone familiar will appear from the brush and lend you their support. Maybe the pain is a reminder of the journey, making it worthwhile. Maybe it's a sign you should not have ventured out alone, what you lack without company.

The focus is more on the emotional state of its characters, their ebbs and flows, affected and regulated by each other and life's events as they come.

The love the lead actors and those behind the scenes have for this project is so beautifully evident. I hope this work of art is rightfully cherished by many.

As for me, I'm sure when I seek a calming space, I'll revisit this time and again.

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A rare gem that hooks you in with first glimpse and makes you stay with its refreshing storyline

I was astonished by the premise when I first saw the videos on social media and decided to give it a try. This series felt like cool wind on a hot day with its soothing and fresh storyline and I am really glad that I watched it.

The main leads have electrifying chemistry since the moment they appeared onscreen. Xu Chanyang is a not just a green flag but a whole green forest and Feng Qinlang is one lucky guy. Their love story is filled with up and downs but they deal with them in a really mature way with no room for misunderstandings.
As for the second couple, they seemed to be a slightly healthier version of the star main lead and is his ex-partner. Nothing noteworthy or interesting in my opinion.
The intimate scenes are a great addition but the series is so good with or without them. Don't forget to check out small theatre scenes on youtube or gagaoolala for extras. I have never seen so many beautifully done kisses in any series before . Each kiss scene will make you feel dizzy in a good way.
The series also focuses on reality of being a lgbtq+ celebrity in a society filled with large number of bigots and fans who are obsessed with shipping culture. It shows how having loving, supportive family and friend circle or homophobic family impacts the life of lgbtq+ people.
I am in awe with how grief and its shades were portrayed in here. The series perfectly demonstrates the unpredictability factor of life and how fate can be really unfair sometimes. One can never fathom how hard it is to keep going on and hope is the only anchor. The profound use of philosophy and culture add multiple layers to the characters and makes you feel deeply.

The series has extremely high quality in all the possible aspects including setting, acting, dialogues, cinematography and music. The hard work of all the people involved is visible with each and every frame looking like a masterpiece. I feel words are not enough to explain how beautiful this series is.

This bl series is a must watch ,especially if you want something unique and unforgettable. I promise you won't be disappointed.

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A glimpse into the characters' lives

A Winter Sun Wakes the Wind in Spring Hills' Dream was an absolutely beautiful drama, filled with deep emotion and fully fleshed out characters. This drama is a character-driven narrative that allows the viewer to get snippets of these characters lives without feeling the need to tell a viewer every detail. It is INCREDIBLY well shot with amazing music and acting. While I do think there were times when the show would have greatly benefitted from staying on a given problem, overall this show was excellent.

When A-list celebrity Feng Qinglang needs a quiet place away from the drama of celebrity life, he finds himself in a small, remote village in the mountains. He stays with tea farmer Xu Changyang and begins to learn the ways of life in this village. The longer he remains in the care of Changyang, the more he develops feelings for him, and it seems those feels are mutual. The viewers watch the two lovers deal with the conflicts of relationships while famous, family tragedies, and the costs of pursuing personal dreams.

I thought that the characters were super interesting and very fun to watch. Because this is much more character-driven, I did find there to be some lulls in the show where I was somewhat disinterested with where it was going, but it quickly pick back up and have me interested again. For awhile, I wasn't sure why we were also following two other actors, until we go further along in the story and I started to understand how they paralleled our main characters. I thought that there were many moments where conflicts should have been a much bigger deal than they seemed to be. However, in some ways this made sense for the way the drama was being told: life is full of ups and downs, and time continues forward. This is a beautiful story about love, perseverance and growth, told with beautiful cinematography and directing. Don't go into this expecting to be on the edge of your seat; just sit back, and enjoy the stories of these characters' lives.

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The cinematography, music and depth of story!

The breathtaking cinematic artistry, the soft chemistry and scriptwriting is to die for!

This show treats the remote, misty tea mountains of Yunnan not merely as a background, but as a living character which is fascinating.

The green landscapes, soft natural lighting, the deep music, and the soothing narrative create an incredibly comforting atmosphere along with the captivating slow burn chemistry of the leads.

For anyone looking for a visually stunning, thoughtful and emotionally profound romance, this series sets a new gold standard.

PS: I did bawl my eyes out after Ep 12 but I’d still 100% stand by what I’ve written above. The director’s justification and thought process of it all made me so.

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Like watching poetry...

This series feels like a literal dream, like it was written in flowery pieces of poetry. It captures you, takes you into its depths and yet when it's over and you've awoken--the details feel hazy and almost untouchable. It's a dream that you want to stay in, to absorb fully, but in essence this is an impossible desire to have.

And yet, for all the beauty and magic that is this series, it isn't without flaws. But maybe that's what makes it even more poetic in the end.

There are things that I felt were overdone for the sake of drama, like the two characters we (sadly) lost along the way. Especially for Qing Tian who seemed to suffer endlessly with a smile on his face, but ended up facing his demise on the precipice of his new budding beginning. And to top it off, I didn't really enjoy how they made his passing a mystery initially. The viewers confusion of whether it was him unaliving himself or an accident has been an issue. For all the things that are left unsaid in this series, I really think that one specific thing needed to be spoken more clearly from the get go.

Overall, much like the long winded title, the entirety of this series is written and performed with so much heart . The initial dream wakes with much left to be said between the lines, but there's undeniable beauty within the whole of it.

TDLR:

Pros:
- It's written beautifully, like poetry
- Kuma & JIngyu are masters in acting, they work amazingly together
- Yichen needs to get his flowers also, because his portrayal of Qing Tian was incredible.
- The incredible imagery makes you want to visit every filming location

Cons:
- Sometimes the delivery is affected by it's need to be poetic and hurts the overall understanding of what is going on at times
- I don't really care for the fact we had two character deaths
- Han Lu & Hao Yu's storyline is completely unnecessary to me, it feels like it's disjointed from the series as a whole. That added drama is distractive at best.
- Also Qian Lang's previous acting partner has way too much weight for wayyy too long and it got boring at times. MEGA annoying.

Overall:
- 100% worth the watch for the beauty of it as a whole. I suspect a rewatch will bring some details into focus. But this is one for the Best of 2026 books and I hope we see more from this CP in the future.

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Emptyness. Beautifully shot.

I endured it until episode 10. Now I have learned that it is possible to have too many stunning locations, shot beautifully. I guess anything can get boring.

The story could easily be summarised on a napkin. And then they dragged it out into 16 episodes. I like slice-of-life and story-less drama, provided that I get to feel something in return. Nothing to feel here. In the beginning you are impressed by the stunning locations, set decorations, cinematography, perfect lighting. The location scout must have been busy with this one. You will be slapped with 15 new locations per episode. All beautiful. But irrelevant.

All the bad things I can remember:
- The characters aren't really fleshed-out. Very limited back-stories, many of them are just assholes. Makes it hard to get invested in their stories.
- We have a lot of time on our hands, but the second couple only gets a quick minute here and there, totally random. And the third (non-)couple? We get it in homeopathic doses.
- The music, at times, is totally in your face, incompatible with the scene and takes you out of it. And then the occasional goofy sound effects we are used to in Thai BLs.
- At times, it felt similar to porn: beautiful scenes, boys kissing, boys driving in cars, boys kissing, beautiful landscape, boys kissing. But contrary to porn, everything besides kissing is only implied, never shown. Come on, I'm so bored here!
- The constant mobile phone interface overlays on screen are annoying, unnecessary and take you out of the story.
- Most of the communication happens in code, via messages on social media or in metaphors. Totally unrealistic.

In conclusion, the producers somehow managed to get way too much money and then tried to be deep but only managed to produce theatrical nonsense.

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What a Beautiful Experience

It's at times like this that I realize, once again, how limited my vocabulary is. How little I know how to put my feelings into words. I truly lack the words to properly explain how beautiful this story is.

While I may not have connected with Zelia's (the director) previous drama, 'Secrets Happened on the Litchi Island ' (I think it might have been too metaphorical for me), I totally fell in love with this one. The cinematography is top-notch, no doubt. But stepping away from that, I think the parts that moved me the most were

1. Chang Yang & Qinglang love story - It's one of those fairy tale love stories. The once-in-a-lifetime kind. The sort that makes me go 'You know what, maybe being in love isn't so bad. Maybe I should look into this love thing,' and then I remember that these are fictional characters and go back to thinking about making money😭. The characters are written so well, but I think the actors help sell them beyond what the script could. The acting is so good and the chemistry absolutely palpable, even with their fade-to-black NC scenes.

PS.
a. I want to thank the director and the actors (who will never see this review) for giving me actual kissing. Proper make-out scenes. Despite CBLs flooding the market, most kissing scenes leave much to be desired. They do this thing where it's one character attacking the other's mouth, as the 2nd party sits/stands there being devoured. Isn't kissing supposed to be reciprocal? Thank you, Zelia and team, for giving me structural reciprocity in kissing!!!

b. As an 'acts of service' girlie, Lord, where is my Chang Yang? The amount of love, attention, dedication, and protection that he gave his Qing Lang is just.... *insert dreamy sigh here*

2. Social Commentary - I LOVE stories that delve into this. Perhaps this is why I enjoy thrillers so much. This drama doesn't shy away from it.
📸Most of the commentary in this is about being gay in the public eye. Where you can be gay on screen, and the people will love you for it, but you can not be gay IRL. Being gay for pay is cool, but gay for real? Nah. Too much. Not acceptable. They will flame you for it

📸It's about the toxicity of fan culture. The same people who praise you one minute will be quick to jump at the chance to pull you down. How the same people who claim to love you and wish you happiness will ignore your happiness for theirs. You can be happy, you can be in a relationship, but it has to be in the way they dictate. I appreciated how this drama took a chance to call out toxic shippers in the BL fandom. People be crazy out here, and I love that Zelia chose to show how absolutely insane, stupid, and selfish these people can be.

I enjoyed how the drama also shows how what we see is not what actually goes on behind the scenes. It's another reminder that the information that fans get is not only curated but highly filtered

📸 It's about society's view on being gay - Progressive as we claim to be, this drama highlights how most corners of society are all talk on the subject of homosexuality. Qing Lang had to retire, and ChangYang had to go make a name for himself so they could finally be together. The former had to give up what he loved, and the other had to put his life in danger for 5 whole years to give themselves a chance to be together. A part of me wonders if they suffered so much because they were in the upper echelon of society. How different would the journey of their love have been if Chang Yang's family did not have political connections and enemies? If Qing Lang was not the 'best actor' that he was?

📸The grey (sometimes really dark) areas - This is about the 2nd CP. Watching Qi Hao Yu have to sleep with that sponsor was... I did not like that feeling. It was especially hard to watch that, not only knowing that this is something that happens IRL, but I'd just finished watching Payback. Another show that touches on how these sponsor relationships work and the predatory nature of them. Lord, it was a lot.


Some things I did not like or understand - i.e., why the story rating is 9/10

🍃Episode 13, specifically the end
Just..., why? The ending of that episode left me feeling so hollow. I went online to look for discussions to try and better understand the why. The most common explanation I saw stated that Qing Tian's death was linked to the Buddhist belief (or maybe the belief of the people in the area where they were shooting the documentary? Someone correct me if I'm wrong) that death is the beginning of life. That because of Chen Zhu, Qing Tian had been 'dead' for those 4 years. That his death on that mountain meant that he got to be alive/start living.

Maybe it's because I am not a practitioner of this religion, but that explanation failed to 'console' me. IMO, Qing Tian had just decided to start living again. Remember his conversation that night with Wenshu? When he asked him to wait for him? What was that conversation if not a sign that he wanted to move on with his life? To live again?

Or perhaps his death was also a message about the fragility of life... Personally, I don't know, nor will I pretend to understand. When I watched that episode, I felt like his death was gratuitous. And that feeling remains to date.

🧑🏻‍❤️‍🧑🏻The 2nd couple - Connecting with them was really hard. I watched all their scenes and not once did I find myself thinking, 'I would love it if they ended up together.' Han Lu largely used Qi Hao Yu for money and fame, the same way that Shi Yu Hao had previously used Changyang. Han Lu wanted to make money off their CP and did what he could to do so.

Remember how he orchestrated that kiss in the rain and for the video to leak? Although sometimes his feelings for Qi Hao Yu seemed real, I constantly found it icky how he used their mutual feelings for money. I'm not sure why Qi Hao Yu stayed with him. Was it love? If it was, these are the times when I think that love alone isn't enough. It's not behaviour I would stand for, and thus I did not like them together.

Final Thoughts:
i. I think those behind the scenes in the BL industry need to take a page from this drama. It is a perfect example not only of a beautiful love story but also a romantic plot with a message. Yes, you can give us boys kissing and simultaneously provide a message through the story.
ii. My message to the ordinary viewer: yes, give the story a try. The love story between Chang Yang and Qing Lang deserves to be seen, and the social commentary is very important.

PS. If any parts of the plot seem confusing, I highly suggest you go to the ChineseBL subreddit. Each week would go on there after completing the episodes to find discussion posts. There were multiple posts where people provided so much context, largely from the novel as well as Chinese culture and Buddhist beliefs, which helped me better understand so much of what isn't quite well explained in the drama

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