The Early Spring Romance Review and Recap (2026)
**SPOILER ALERT**
Table of Contents
The Early Spring Romance Review: Summary
This is a romance that runs hot from almost the very first kiss, sensual, explicit by the genre’s usual standards, and never afraid to let real chemistry carry a scene. But underneath that heat sits six years of undefined lines, a relationship kept exclusive without ever being properly named, hidden from colleagues, family, and often even from each other in the ways that mattered most.
Luan Nian and Zhitao fall fast and fall hard, yet spend years unable or unwilling to say plainly what they actually mean, choosing sarcasm, secrecy, and self-protection over honesty at nearly every turn. What makes their devotion so compelling is exactly how messy it is. This isn’t a couple who declare their love and act accordingly from day one.
It’s two people who protect each other quietly, through physical danger, career sacrifice, and years of unspoken gestures, while consistently failing to actually communicate any of it out loud. Luan Nian’s inability to speak gently, even when his intentions are good, and Zhitao’s instinct to hide real danger rather than lean on him, create a cycle of avoidable heartbreak that tests the audience’s patience as much as the characters’ relationship.
And yet, when the show finally lets these two be honest with each other, in the museum finale, in the aurora confession, in the quiet, tender moments scattered throughout, it earns every bit of the payoff. This is a love story built less on grand romantic gestures and more on the slow, difficult work of two flawed people learning to actually deserve each other. Frustrating, sensual, occasionally maddening, and ultimately deeply satisfying once it finally gets there.
The Early Spring Romance Recap: Luan Nian & Shang Zhitao
Full spoilers ahead, tracing this romance from episode 1 through the finale. Unlike a slow burn built on scarcity, this show is romance from start to finish, every episode advancing the relationship in some way, so this recap follows the emotional arc across four distinct phases: the guarded beginning, the secret relationship, the unravelling over the years after a 6 year relationship, and the reconciliation that finally earns its happy ending. Kiss count included throughout for anyone keeping track.
Episode 1 — Pure hostility from the start. Luan Nian rejects Zhitao’s interview outright, dismissing her before she can even properly explain herself, only to discover days later that she’s been hired anyway and now reports directly to him. There’s no softness here yet, only friction and mutual irritation. He tells her outright she should quit after she breaks his prized typewriter. The only crack in the ice comes at the very end, when he unexpectedly rescues her from a scam cab driver and drives her home himself.
Episode 2 — A shared jacket by the river marks the first real shift between them, offered after Luan Nian steps in to defend her from a pushy client during a work dinner. It’s a small, quiet gesture, but it lands. Walking home together afterward, Zhitao cheekily wonders aloud whether she might actually have a shot with someone this difficult. He doesn’t confirm or deny it, but he doesn’t shut the idea down either, and something has clearly shifted.
Episode 3 — Trapped together after a mountain landslide, stripped of every ounce of professional polish, the two tend to each other’s wounds in the wreckage. It’s the first time we see either of them completely vulnerable in front of the other, muddy, scared, and honest. That night in the hospital, Luan Nian quietly repositions her in her sleep and tucks her in, watching over her rather than leaving once she’s stable. A real turning point, though neither of them says so out loud.
Episode 4 — Jealousy erupts hard when Luan Nian spots Zhitao drunk with another man at a bar, and rather than simply intervening, he calls her his girlfriend outright just to get her safely away from the situation. He then carries her home himself. It’s genuinely protective, but also unmistakably possessive, an early sign of exactly how territorial he becomes once he decides someone matters to him.
Episode 5 — Kiss #1. A drunken night at his apartment ends with Luan Nian asking if she’s sober now, then kissing her properly for the first time, born entirely out of alcohol-loosened honesty. The high doesn’t last, though. His careless, wounding question the next morning about whether she left her bag behind on purpose devastates her completely, undoing the tenderness of the night before almost instantly.
Episode 6 — Kiss #2. A distraught, heavily intoxicated Luan Nian pulls Zhitao in for another kiss on the couch after she helps him home following a difficult night out. It’s impulsive and alcohol-fueled rather than romantic, and neither of them seems to fully process it as anything more than a drunken slip in the moment.
Episode 7 — Pure jealousy dominates this episode. Luan Nian corners Zhitao in the office stairwell, needling her over her sudden avoidance of him, and later can’t hide his fury watching Sun Yuanzhu casually walk her home under an umbrella in the rain. His usual arrogant composure cracks for the first time, and it’s clear he’s genuinely rattled by feelings he doesn’t know how to name yet.
Episode 8 — Kiss #3. Sober this time, on a scenic mountain overlook while discussing his dream of opening a private stargazing bar, he kisses her forehead first, then her cheek, gentle and unhurried. When he leans in for her lips, though, she pulls back, clearly afraid of falling first and losing her guard entirely. The scandal storyline running alongside also shows him quietly protecting her professionally without ever asking for credit.
Episode 9 — A basketball fundraiser becomes the backdrop for real emotional progress. Luan Nian gifts Zhitao a medal and tells her, pointedly, to stop running from whatever’s happening between them. They quietly agree to a secret, fully exclusive relationship, no labels, no public acknowledgment. Later, a drunken birthday phone call ends with her admitting, unguarded, that she wants to hold onto him for as long as she possibly can.
Episode 10 — Kiss #4 and Kiss #5. A jealous, rain-soaked driving lesson tips into their first night together after Luan Nian kisses her deeply in the car, and later, a stolen kiss in an office stairwell reflects the secretive new rules governing their relationship. The romantic high is quickly undercut, though, by a professional punishment over a printing error that leaves real, unresolved hurt sitting between them.
Episode 11 — Jealousy takes center stage as flowers meant for Zhitao get misread entirely, assumed instead to be gifts for Luan Nian’s wealthy childhood friend, Zhao Yang. Real insecurity builds on both sides throughout the episode, Zhitao convinced she’s been forgotten, Luan Nian frustrated by her constant emotional distance. It’s only resolved at the very end, when the truth about who the flowers were actually for finally comes out.
Episode 12 — Kiss #6 (multiple). A feverish standoff between them slowly turns tender, forehead kisses, a lingering moment by the fish tank, real vulnerability surfacing after an uncomfortable, drunken visit from Zhao Yang. For the first time, Luan Nian genuinely opens up about his complicated past with her, and asks Zhitao to finally start calling him by his actual name instead of his title.
Episode 13 — Kiss #7 In Phuket, Luan Nian pulls Zhitao into his hotel room, admitting how possessive he feels about her. The confession turns into a genuinely sexy kiss that moves them toward the bed, interrupted only by Alex’s phone call.
Episode 14 — Reconciliation arrives in the aftermath of a violent housing crisis. Luan Nian takes a real beating protecting her from a corrupt real estate agency, and in the car afterward, furious that she never once thought to call him for help, he finally gets her to admit, plainly, that yes, she does think of him as her boyfriend. Real tenderness follows immediately after, him playfully tracing his phone number across her back so she’ll never forget it again ending in Kiss #8.
Episode 15 — Real domesticity settles in. Luan Nian bonds, reluctantly at first, with Zhitao’s rescued dog, and introduces her properly to his three closest childhood friends, something he’s apparently never done for any girlfriend before her. Kiss #9 caps the episode, a joyful, unplanned reunion after months of distance during a work trip to Suzhou.
Episode 16 — Zhang Yao finally lets go of Luan Nian for good, accepting quietly that he was never truly hers to begin with. Meanwhile, the Dony threat begins closing in on the periphery of their relationship, building real tension rather than romance this time around, setting up the danger still to come.
Episode 17 — Kiss #10. Following Zhitao’s harrowing, dangerous confrontation with Dony, and Luan Nian’s real fury at being kept in the dark about the danger she’d faced, the two finally reconcile at a mountainside bar. The kiss moves from her forehead to her cheek to her neck, ending in a playful, possessive bite, tender and territorial in equal measure.
Episode 18 — A jealousy-fueled misunderstanding over a fake dating app profile collides with the sudden reappearance of Zhitao’s college ex-boyfriend in Shenzhen. The episode builds toward a genuinely devastating rejection, Zhitao finally asking for a real, public future together, only for Luan Nian to admit honestly that he isn’t ready to give her one. No kiss here, only heartbreak.
Episode 19 — Kiss #11. A manufactured kidney stone forces the two of them back under one roof, and by the time they set off on their road trip to Tibet, we’re given the gentlest, most unguarded version of Luan Nian the show has offered yet, warm, playful, and quietly, genuinely sensual.
Episode 20 — Jealousy nearly derails everything all over again when Luan Nian wrongly assumes Zhitao’s grief over comforting a struggling Sun Yuanzhu is something romantic instead. There’s no kiss here, but real emotional honesty finally surfaces between them once the misunderstanding clears, though it’s immediately overshadowed by the devastating loss that follows before the episode ends.
Episode 21 — The breakup finally arrives. There’s no kiss anywhere in this episode, only raw, devastating dialogue as Zhitao ends things completely, entirely unaware that Luan Nian had quietly sacrificed his own career at Lime specifically to protect hers. This is the most emotionally intense episode of the entire series, and it’s stripped of romance almost deliberately, letting the pain speak for itself.
Episode 22 — Distance and regret take over completely. Luan Nian tearfully confesses his love to Zhitao’s disconnected phone line while standing beneath the Northern Lights in Norway, believing no one can hear him. There’s no physical romance in this episode at all, but it’s arguably the single most emotionally raw moment the show ever delivers.
Episode 23 — Slow, careful rebuilding begins. Luan Nian camps outside her family’s tavern in the snow, refusing to leave until she finally gives him the honest conversation they should have had years earlier. It ends in a real hug, and the first time we ever hear him call her “Tao Tao.” No kiss yet, but genuine emotional intimacy is clearly returning between them.
Episode 24 (Finale) — Kiss #12, #13, and #14. The kitchen reconciliation late at night, the tender morning-after confession kiss, and the emotional proposal kiss inside the Museum of Time and Eternity all land within this single finale. Six years of longing finally resolve completely, culminating in an engagement surrounded by every friend who watched them fall apart and find their way back to each other.
Kiss Count: 14 kisses total, spanning episodes 5, 6, 8, 10 (x2), 12, 13, 14, 16, 17, 19, and 24 (x3).
Unlike a romance measured in restraint, this is a love story told almost entirely through physical and emotional intimacy from the very beginning, which makes its central tragedy land even harder: two people who never doubted their chemistry, only their own capacity to be honest, patient, and brave enough to fight for something real instead of something convenient.
By the time the credits roll, the show has made its case plainly. Love was never really the problem here. Communication was. And it took years, one heartbreaking loss, and a museum full of memories for both of them to finally get it right.
The Early Spring Romance Review
The Meet-Cute (or Meet-Ugly)
Pure meet-ugly, no softening it. Luan Nian rejects Zhitao’s job interview outright, cutting her off before she can even make her case, only for her to discover days later that HR hired her anyway and she now reports directly to the man who dismissed her.
Their first real interactions are built on friction, not chemistry, he wants her gone, she’s simply trying to survive her first job in Beijing. There’s no spark here at the start, only an arrogant boss who thinks he’s already won and an employee determined to prove him wrong.
The Slow Burn (or Not-So-Slow Burn)
Not-so-slow, and refreshingly honest about it. This isn’t a show that stretches tension out for twenty episodes before delivering payoff. The first kiss lands by episode 5, and from there the romance moves fast and messy rather than patient and calculated.
What actually burns slow here isn’t the attraction, it’s the honesty. These two are physically and emotionally drawn to each other almost immediately; what takes six full years is either of them admitting it out loud, in public, without hedging.
Worth the Wait? — The First Kiss
Hell. Yes. Episode 5 doesn’t just deliver a kiss, it delivers a genuinely sensual, slow-building scene that’s explicit by Chinese drama standards, and it earns every second of tension leading up to it. By this point she’s sober, fully aware of what’s happening, no drunken excuse to hide behind.
He asks her plainly if she’s sober now. She nods. He asks if she knows what’s about to happen. And then comes the line the fandom still quotes constantly, do you understand now what I mean when I say you can’t control the feeling of love?
The buildup does real work too, her retreating to the bathroom in a panic and writing STOP into the fogged-up mirror, him catching sight of it through the steam and smiling to himself anyway. When he finally kisses her, it isn’t tentative or interrupted, it’s confident, deliberate, and it leads straight into their first night together. This is the rare first kiss that actually delivers on every ounce of tension the show spent four episodes building, sultry, unhurried, and unmistakably adult.
The Sizzle Factor
This show has real, undeniable heat, and it never pretends otherwise. The Phuket hotel room scene in episode 13 is the clearest example, Luan Nian’s raw, possessive confession about not wanting other men looking at her, followed by a kiss that moves them straight toward the bed.
The rain-soaked driving lesson in episode 10 works for the same reason, jealousy tipping instantly into physical need. Where the sizzle occasionally falters is in the secrecy stretch, episodes 9 through 17, where so much of their intimacy has to happen in stairwells, parked cars, and locked apartments, which builds real tension but also makes some of their most passionate moments feel more furtive than truly romantic.
Soft Moments — Beyond the Tension
This is where the show quietly does its best work. Luan Nian tucking Zhitao in in the hospital after the mountain landslide. Him teaching her rescued dog to sit and heel on a walk he never intended to join. The quiet domestic evening in episode 12 where they simply lie on the couch together, doing nothing, and she tells him she loves exactly that.
The museum walk in the finale, built entirely from years of memories he never told her he was keeping. None of these moments are loud, but they’re the scenes that actually make the devotion between them believable rather than just performative.
Devotion Watch
Exhibit A: Luan Nian taking a calculated beating from a corrupt real estate agency’s men, purely to protect Zhitao’s safety without her ever asking him to.
Exhibit B: quietly sabotaging his own career, accepting a transfer to the US specifically to shield her promotion prospects, and never once telling her he did it.
Exhibit C: building an entire museum exhibit cataloguing years of secret gestures, an anonymous diary entry once written to lift her spirits, a bouquet he’d lied about hating purely out of jealousy, and quiet confessions of flying to whatever city she happened to be in just to catch a glimpse of her from a distance.
The museum goes even further, filled with pieces of her actual childhood too, old handprints, footprints, baby clothes, her long-forgotten Walkman, all patiently gathered and preserved without her ever knowing.
Exhibit D: sobbing into a disconnected phone line beneath the Northern Lights, saying I love you three times to no one, because there was no one left to say it to.
The verdict: this is a man who consistently shows devotion through action rather than words, which makes his eventual verbal confessions in the finale land twice as hard.
Confession Scene Breakdown
The show wisely avoids one single, tidy “I love you” moment, and instead spreads real vulnerability across several scenes. Episode 19’s leap-of-faith confession lands well, genuine and unguarded. But it’s the finale’s museum confession that actually delivers the emotional gut-punch this story earned.
Walking her through years of hidden devotion, admitting his flaws by name, arrogance, poor communication, lack of empathy, before finally saying outright that he wants to be part of every remaining item on her bucket list. It doesn’t fumble. It’s easily the best-executed confession the show has to offer.
Rewind-Worthy Scenes
There are actually too many to count but here are some favourites:
The mountain landslide rescue in episode 3, still muddy, still terrified, tending each other’s wounds.
The umbrella scene in episode 7, Luan Nian’s jealousy finally cracking his composure for the first time.
The phone-number scene in episode 14, playful, tender, and the moment they finally admit what they are to each other.
The aurora confession in episode 22, arguably the single best acted scene in the entire series.
The museum proposal in the finale, a love story recontextualized in real time.
The Frustration Files
Exhibit A: the sheer amount of unnecessary secrecy. Six years of hiding a relationship creates almost every major conflict in this show, and by episode 18, it’s genuinely maddening watching them keep choosing silence over honesty.
Exhibit B: Luan Nian’s compulsive jealousy, repeatedly assuming the worst about entirely innocent situations, the umbrella walk, Sun Yuanzhu’s comfort hug, Xing Yi’s tea deliveries, when a five-minute conversation could have solved nearly all of it.
Exhibit C: Zhitao’s repeated instinct to hide real danger from Luan Nian entirely on her own. The physical assault and eviction from the real estate agency, the sexual harassment and assault from Dony, both handled quietly, without a word to the one person who’d clearly move mountains to protect her. It’s meant to read as independence, but by the second instance, it plays more like self-sabotage, and it costs her his trust every single time the truth eventually surfaces.
Exhibit D: the numerous instances of one of them assuming they know what the other wants without simply asking. This is a couple who consistently choose to protect each other through lies of omission rather than honesty, and it costs them dearly, repeatedly, avoidably.
Exhibit E: Luan Nian’s near-total inability to speak gently when it actually matters. Sarcasm and bluntness are his default settings even in tender moments, and more than once that reflex tips straight into cruelty, the “cheap and obedient” text being the worst offender, but hardly the only one. Even when his intentions are good, his delivery is so consistently sharp-edged that it takes years, and one devastating breakup, before he learns that being right isn’t the same as being kind.
Ending: Did They Earn It?
Yes, unreservedly. Few couples put in as much visible work to actually deserve their ending as these two do. The finale doesn’t rely on a single grand gesture to erase six years of dysfunction, it walks through nearly every mistake, addresses nearly every buried resentment, and lets both characters own their own failures honestly before allowing them to move forward. The museum proposal works precisely because it’s not trying to skip past the hard years, it’s built entirely out of them.
Final Verdict + The Scores
Worth the Wait: 3 — Solid. The first kiss arrives fast rather than slow-burned, which works against traditional buildup but suits this particular story’s messier, faster-moving romance style.
Sizzle Factor: 5 — Combustible. Had to pause and fan myself. This is a show that consistently delivers real, felt heat, the Phuket hotel room confession, the rain-soaked driving lesson, the explicit sensuality of that first kiss in episode 5, and it never shies away from letting the tension actually pay off on screen, and of course the reconciliation in the finale.
Soft Moments Score: 4 — Genuinely Tender. Not the show’s defining feature, but definitely plenty of scenes. Luan Nian shows tender moments through his actions and sometimes they are still assertive. She shows tenderness through lots of small kisses and nuzzling in his neck while be cute and playful.
Devotion Meter: 4 — Deeply Devoted, Just Messy About It. This isn’t clean, declared devotion, it’s six years of push and pull, undefined lines, and a relationship that stayed exclusive without ever being properly named for most of its run.
But when it counts, the devotion is real and consistent, physical protection during both assaults, quietly working every angle behind the scenes to help her career without ever taking credit, and ultimately sacrificing his own position to move to the US just to protect hers. It just takes far too long, and far too much heartbreak, for any of it to be spoken plainly out loud.
Frustration-o-Meter: 4 — High. Six years of avoidable miscommunication, repeated jealousy spirals, and one major unresolved reveal keep this from a perfect score. This couple makes you yell at the screen more than most and can be exhausting.
Final Verdict: This is a romance built on heat and real devotion, undercut consistently by two people who would rather suffer in silence than simply say what they mean. It’s messy, frustrating, occasionally maddening, and completely believable because of it.
When the ending finally arrives, it’s earned through years of visible growth rather than a single grand gesture, making it one of the more satisfying, if exhausting, romantic journeys the genre has delivered this year.
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