The Mercurial Relationship Between People and Places
by Varsha Murali Kaushik
“Not just a green flag, but a whole green forest” became a popular phrase throughout the Asian drama fandom space in 2023, alluding to the likeable personality of the characters in the Chinese drama Hidden Love (2023). Of course, my curiosity was piqued and I had to see why everyone was watching this show. During my first watch of Hidden Love, I had no idea that its sequel, The First Frost (2025), was in the making, or that I’d love that sequel so much that I’d rush straight back into a rewatch.
These two series are the 25-episode- and 32-episode-long adaptations of author Zhu Yi’s web novel duology that explore love and growth. Hidden Love follows the slow burn romance between Sang Zhi (Zhao Lusi) and her older brother’s best friend Duan Jiaxu (Chen Zheyuan), unfolding a decade’s worth of unrequited feelings that morph into a relationship based on understanding, growth, and empathy. The First Frost focuses on the slow burn between Sang Zhi’s brother Sang Yan (Bai Jing Ting) and Wen Yifan (Zhang Ruo Nan), his high school classmate. Both dramas were filmed on location in the city of Chongqing, China and in Hong Kong. While the three central cities (Nanwu, Yihe, and Beiyu) in Hidden Love and The First Frost might be fictional, there are mentions of a Nanwu in China. It’s likely the author took references and inspiration from real locations to create these fictional counterparts.
The storytelling arcs and the role of physical location in character development, along with the explorations of relationships and personal growth, gain greater meaning as complements to each other rather than competing in terms of narrative, commercial success, and production value. In terms of tone and atmosphere, Hidden Love is light, funny, and swoony, much like an early 2000s romcom, while The First Frost deals with heavier themes and seems more grown up. Viewing the two dramas as complements allows us to understand each character better, while analysing the characters’ perception of the three cities gives us a chance to appreciate their growth arcs in greater detail. We see different sides to each city, indicating that both positive and negative experiences can co-exist. Likewise, we see differing romantic dynamics, reminding us that there is no one-glove-fits-all approach when it comes to human experiences and growth—which is what makes them all the more impactful.
Hidden Love’s Nanwu & Yihe.
Our first impression of Nanwu mirrors our first meeting with Sang Zhi in Hidden Love. She grew up in Nanwu with her loving family and like any other young teen, zones out in class and tells on her brother Sang Yan whenever he upsets her. She’s outgoing, witty, and charming, and knows how to sneak her way out of a troublesome situation which sets off the sequence of events that lead her to seek help from Duan Jiaxu, Sang Yan’s friend from college and Sang Zhi’s love interest.
Most of the external shots of the city are set in summer or early spring, with lush greenery framed in a way that exudes a comfortable and welcoming vibe. When Jiaxu drops Sang Zhi off at school, pastel-toned bicycles are propped against steel bars that shine in the sun. Later, cherry blossom petals drift and dance in the wind on a picturesque path as Duan Jiaxu drives Sang Zhi back home. After Duan Jiaxu’s graduation from university, pink and blue blossoms shine in the dark of the night as he speaks with Sang Zhi, seated on a bench outside her house.
Nanwu is beautiful and comforting throughout Sang Zhi’s fluctuating feelings. From the start of her feelings for Duan Jiaxu as he drops her off to the tension and hurt from an altercation with bullies on the way home from school, to the impending heartbreak of being separated from Duan Jiaxu after he graduates and leaves the city. Growing up, it is a place defined by Sang Zhi’s happy childhood filled with days spent meeting friends, eating good food, and playing at game arcades. Naturally, then, the Nanwu we experience through her eyes is inviting, almost utopian in its appeal.
Yihe, on the other hand, is a source of tension and mystery as Duan Jiaxu’s home. It is also the place Sang Zhi aspires to be—enrolling at Yihe University would put her in the same place as the object of her affections once more. Despite Sang Zhi’s aspirations, Yihe’s beige and white color palette feels cold and alien when she visits Duan Jiaxu. Coupled with the anxiety and hope of seeing Duan Jiaxu, Yihe is a stark contrast to the vibrant warmth of Nanwu. And when Jiaxu brings a female coworker along to pick Sang Zhi up from the airport, which she misidentifies as his girlfriend, the atmosphere of Yihe suddenly fits Sang Zhi’s feeling: heartbreak.
The next time we see her in the city, she’s grown comfortable there, riding a bicycle on a sunny summer afternoon as she meets her friends at university. Thereon, we explore Yihe through a more grown up Sang Zhi’s eyes, complete with a slow, blossoming relationship between her and Duan Jiaxu. Compared to Nanwu, where most outdoor shots are set during daytime, we get to understand Yihe mainly through its nightlife. This indicates Sang Zhi’s freedom to access things she couldn’t as a child, like karaoke bars, hospitals, and living alone in a university dormitory.
Yihe, therefore, is the challenging realism to Nanwu’s comfort bubble of utopia, a sense of adult independence opposing the helpless naiveté of childhood. It is a home that stems from romance and finding oneself, complementing the home of unconditional filial support in Nanwu. Ultimately, our understanding of the two fictional cities of Nanwu and Yihe through Sang Zhi’s eyes comes together to form a well-rounded ecosystem of love, safety, growth, and encouragement.
The First Frost’s Nanwu, Yihe and Beiyu.
Sang Yan, who was a peripheral character in Hidden Love, is the male lead of The First Frost, which follows his love story with Wen Yifan. In this series, Nanwu is decidedly darker and more melancholic. This Nanwu doesn’t feel welcoming or safe. It whispers of past traumas that we don’t know about (yet). Divided on the basis of class and privilege, this version of Nanwu has tiny flats housed next to the metro line where residents share the same bathroom and common living space. On the other hand, the wealthy live in apartment complexes housing hundreds of families in moderately big layouts and opulent sprawling mansions that have tasteful interiors and certified security.
Wen Yifan, like Sang Zhi and Sang Yan, is native to Nanwu. Her high school years are happy. She forms a friendship with her bench mate Sang Yan during this time, who is one of the school’s heartthrobs and a closed-off “tsundere.” The Nanwu we see through Wen Yifan and Sang Yan’s eyes is usually overcast, if not rainy, with few days of sunshine. When Wen Yifan’s father passes away, she moves around for over a decade before finally returning and settling down in Nanwu.
It sets the tone of the drama very clearly: Expect to see some difficult things up ahead.
This Nanwu is different from Sang Zhi’s Nanwu. It is as close to reality as it can get, showing its underbelly of assault, crime, and violence. While Sang Zhi’s Nanwu is a place of comfort and familiarity, Wen Yifan’s Nanwu is a rigid cage where she is trapped in a constant cycle of misery and sadness. Unlike Hidden Love, where we discover Nanwu’s identity as a city in real time with Sang Zhi, The First Frost relies on a consistent pattern of temporal jumps spanning over ten years to connect the present, where Wen Yifan runs into Sang Yan in a bar after a long period of separation, to the past, where they grew up together and developed feelings for each other.
Within her decade of moving, Wen Yifan lived with her grandmother and then her uncle and his family in the rainy and dark Beiyu, a city that we are unfamiliar with, but quickly learn is even more grim than Nanwu. Her grandmother’s tiny home, uncle’s convenience store-cum-house nestled in a grimy looking residential building, and the gambling den that her aunt’s brother frequents mimic the general state of Wen Yifan’s life there. Despite the change in city and school, Wen Yifan finds solace in meeting Sang Yan at a noodle shop for study sessions. The two of them aspire to do well on their exams and enroll together at Nanwu University, but after an attempted assault by her aunt’s sibling, Wen Yifan moves away from Beiyu to escape the trauma and enrolls into Yihe University, cutting contact with everyone and breaking Sang Yan’s heart in the process. The recurring rain during each of these scenes (her grandmother’s passing, her assault, and breaking Sang Yan’s heart) mirrors the hurt and sadness that her life is filled with at this point in the show.
Yihe, which was a place of friendship, joy and romance in Hidden Love, is reflective of the loneliness and the consequences of trauma that Wen Yifan feels in The First Frost. We don’t learn much about the city through her eyes, but we see Yihe from Sang Yan’s perspective as a dull and lifeless place which may reflect the characters’ internal state of being.
Her final move before returning to settle in Nanwu for the last time is Hong Kong. Her living space is small but doesn’t feel threatening. Hong Kong doesn’t have much screen time, but it holds a lot of weight in the show’s narrative as the place where Wen Yifan rediscovers herself and grows into the person she was always meant to be. She lets herself indulge in her passion for ballet again, becomes a ballet instructor for children, and works part-time at a small roadside eatery. After a reaffirming visit from her friends and Sang Yan, she moves back to Nanwu and lays all the skeletons in her closet to rest, finally allowing herself to have the love that she has always deserved.
Hidden Love and The First Frost’s use of physical spaces as indicators of character growth and romantic progression reminds me of how communities take words of prejudice and reclaim them to assert identity and tackle unequal power dynamics. Thus, they are lessons in reclaiming spaces where the good and bad co-exist, and characters, both positive and negative, cohabit. They are lessons in resilience, reminding us that in spite of the memories we have of a place, we can choose to have better experiences there, or let go of those places altogether.
Owing to my own experiences of moving around regularly, I tend to get attached to new places easily, especially if my experiences there are positive. I also write places off indefinitely if I start on a wrong note. However, if all this moving around (and consequent soul searching) has taught me anything, it is that places are like human relationships—ever-evolving, powerful enough to make or break your heart, and they live in you long after you’ve moved on.
Sang Zhi and Wen Yifan prove to be excellent character studies in navigating life through the lenses of the spaces they occupy. Their past experiences don’t overshadow their present, nor do they affect where the future could take them. They are an inspirational reminder that no matter how terrible things get, there are silver linings even on the darkest clouds.
