There is no doubt that The Early Spring has made quite an entrance.
The Chinese workplace romance, starring Jing Boran as Luan Nian (Luke) and Sun Qian as Shang Zhitao (Flora), premiered on 26 August and immediately attracted a huge international audience. In its first week on Netflix, it reached No. 2 on the Global Non-English TV list, with 2.4 million views and 21.5 million hours watched and it entered the Top 10 in 22 markets.
The premise sounds simple enough. Flora arrives in Beijing and begins working for a prestigious advertising company, where she meets Luan Nian, a brilliant but demanding creative director. He is her boss. They clash, they are attracted to each other and eventually they begin a secret relationship which becomes much more complicated than either of them expected.
And this is where my problem begins. Because I have spent a good part of this drama thinking:
I HATE HIM. WHY? WHY?
And then, five minutes later:
Oh my God, look at him.
This is not exactly the reaction I expected to have.
THE SPELL
The series itself gives us the explanation very early. After glimpses of their first night together, Flora tells us that Luan Nian has put a spell on her, that he has unlocked the secret of her desire. She says that he made her long for more, drove her crazy and lived in her mind. And then comes the really important confession: she has spent six years in this hidden relationship, with its grievances, pain and joy, and yet she has never been able to take the first step to leave him.
Six years.
That changes the way I watched the whole story. Because this isn't simply a case of beautiful man behaves badly but woman somehow doesn't notice. Flora notices. She suffers. She knows when something is wrong. She tries to leave. She tells herself that their relationship is bad. And yet she keeps going back. And, rather uncomfortably, I understood why. Because the chemistry between these two is extraordinary.
Luan Nian is frighteningly sexy, elegant, magnetic and completely self-possessed. He can be charming, sweet and caring, and when he wants Flora back, he knows exactly what to do. That look. That voice. Those puppy eyes when he gets close to her and almost begs her not to leave him.
“You don't actually mean that, do you?” Electricity! Hormones are traitors!
And this is precisely why I don't think it is enough to say: Well, he's toxic, so why doesn't she just leave?
The drama is deliberately showing us the attraction too. It wants us to feel the pull. And I did.
Unfortunately.
CHEMISTRY IS NOT INTIMACY
There is one scene that sums up my entire experience of watching The Early Spring.
Flora has agreed to help her flatmate with a dating app and is supposed to attend a blind-date event. Luke finds out. Suddenly, he needs her to work overtime. Can she refuse? Nope, he is her boss. She gets into his car and the sexual tension is immediate. Then he starts asking questions about the mysterious blind date. Who is she meeting? Why is she going? He parks the car and asks again.
“Are you jealous?”
“You wish!”
I HATE HIM. WHY DOES HE ALWAYS RUIN EVERY MOMENT THEY HAVE TOGETHER?
But the electricity I had felt in the previous moments was real. That is the problem. The chemistry is real. The attraction is real. The relationship is also deeply uncomfortable.
And I think this is where The Early Spring becomes much more interesting — and much more troubling — than a simple romance.
Because intensity is not intimacy.
A couple can have extraordinary chemistry and still have an absolutely terrible relationship.
LUAN NIAN'S RED FLAGS ARE NOT SMALL ONES
My problem with Luke is not that he is cold or emotionally complicated. Fiction is full of difficult men, and I am perfectly capable of enjoying them. It is what he actually does.
He is Flora's superior at work, which makes everything more uncomfortable from the beginning. There is already a power imbalance between them, and the drama sometimes turns that imbalance into part of the romantic tension rather than asking us to question it.
Even their first night together makes me uneasy. Flora is completely drunk, cannot even show him the way to her own home and he takes her to his. Later, he asks if she is single and suggests they give the relationship a try. I remember watching that scene and thinking:
No, no, no, no. Girl, WAIT.
This is not the sort of situation in which I want a woman to forget that she needs to protect herself. And then there are the things he says to her.
When Flora and her flatmates are mistreated by a shady rental agency, Luke helps them — and then proceeds to tear into her because she didn't tell him what had happened.
“Is my phone just for show or is your brain just for show?”
“You're stupid.”
Then, when she tries to answer:
“Did I say you can speak?”
And a few seconds later:
“Are you this obedient? SPEAK. Speak now.”
I am sorry, but this turned my stomach.
And yet, somehow, the drama can put this man in a beautiful room, give him a gorgeous suit, have him look at Flora in that particular way, and suddenly I am watching again.
This is what I mean by the spell.
AND WHAT HAPPENS TO FLORA?
This is probably what frustrated me most. Flora is capable. She is intelligent. She has her own career and her own ambitions. But around Luan Nian, she repeatedly becomes the woman waiting for a text, an explanation, a little affection, a little validation, a reason to believe that he really wants her. He never really treats her as his equal.
GIRL, WHY ARE YOU STILL THERE?!
And I think the answer is partly in the way she has learned to measure herself through his reactions to her.
At one point, after he has been particularly harsh with her, she cries to her flatmate because she cannot work out whether she is upset because he treated her strictly as her boss or because he did not give her any special treatment as her boyfriend. She knows she would not want favouritism at work, but what she really wanted was sympathy, encouragement and some sign that he was on her side. Instead, she decides that perhaps she needs to become stronger — like him — so that they can communicate on equal footing.
That scene stayed with me.
Because why is she the one who has to become stronger so that she can cope with the way he treats her?
And later, when she finally reaches her limit, leaves him and chooses herself, I thought:
YES. Finally.
She quits her job. She walks away. We finally see her putting herself first. This was the Flora I wanted to see. I wanted her to reach the point where she could say:
I don't need to be chosen by someone who made me beg to feel worthy.
TEARS ARE NOT ACCOUNTABILITY
And then comes Luke's regret. He cries. He suffers. He chases her. He becomes terrified of losing her. And I have no problem with a redemption arc. What I have a problem with is an unearned redemption arc. Tears are not accountability. Missing someone is not accountability. Grand gestures are not accountability. And regretting your behaviour because someone has finally walked away does not automatically erase years of emotional damage.
This is why I was disappointed when Flora went back to him. Actually, disappointed is probably the right word. I wanted more time. I wanted Luke's return to Flora's life to be slower. I wanted him to prove, through his behaviour, that something had genuinely changed. Instead, he pushes his way back into her life, stays outside her home in the cold, uses their dog as an excuse to get close to her, and eventually we get the grand proposal, the kneeling, the huge diamond.
And I kept thinking: I don't believe you will completely change.
I wanted to believe it. I just didn't. Flora's return therefore did not give me the satisfying ending I was expecting. I was left hoping that she had become stronger and would defend herself better this time.
YOU DON'T NEED TO BE PERFECT TO BE WORTHY OF LOVE
There is another thing I kept thinking about. At the beginning of every episode, the series gives us this motto: “You don't need to be perfect to be worthy of love.” I completely agree. Of course we don't need to be perfect to be loved. But what does the series mean by it?
Because being imperfect is not the same as being cruel. Having difficulties expressing your feelings is not the same as humiliating someone. Being jealous is not automatically love. Possessiveness is not intimacy. Emotional manipulation is not passion. And being cold and cruel is not mysterious. This is where I found myself resisting the drama. I don't want The Early Spring to tell me that Luan Nian is a wonderful man because he eventually cries when he realises he might lose the woman he has spent years hurting.
I want him to understand what he did. I want Flora to understand what happened to her. And above all, I want the drama to understand the difference between being loved and being made to feel that you have to earn someone's love.
AND YET...
Here comes the awkward part. I enjoyed it. A lot. I was fascinated by them. I wanted to know what would happen. I waited for their scenes together. I noticed every look. I enjoyed the tension, the production, the music, the performances. And I don't think there is anything wrong with that.
We can be fascinated by a fictional relationship without wanting that relationship for ourselves. In fact, perhaps that is exactly why The Early Spring has generated so much discussion. It knows how to make us feel the attraction, even when our brains are shouting RED FLAG! RED FLAG!
And perhaps that is why I don't want to dismiss the drama simply by calling Luan Nian toxic. That would be too easy. The more interesting question is: why are we so easily seduced by behaviour that we would recognise as unacceptable in real life when it is presented through a beautiful actor, beautiful cinematography and extraordinary chemistry?
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| My Bias, My Boss (2026) |
I've seen another drama recently, a Korean one, My Bias, My Boss, where the CEO/young employee relationship managed to be romantic without making controlling behaviour the main source of the excitement. The male lead was a model of emotional intelligence every woman deserves to meet. That was lovely to watch. It reminded me that the problem is not necessarily the workplace romance itself. It is what the characters do with the power they have.
And that is why I keep coming back to Flora. She deserved better. Not because she needed a “better man”. Because she needed to become completely convinced that she was already enough. Perhaps that is the part of the motto I can believe in.
And perhaps that is also the part of The Early Spring that I found most frustrating: the drama came very close to giving Flora that lesson — and then made her go back to the man who had made her doubt it.
Still, I cannot deny it. The chemistry is extraordinary. Luan Nian is ridiculously attractive. Those looks should probably come with a health warning. And yes, I nearly surrendered to the romance more than once.
Hormones are traitors.
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