Hidden Love

Sang Zhi grows up with a crush on Duan Jiaxu, who is the friend and roommate of her older brother Sang Yan (桑延), played by Victor Ma (马伯骞). Because he is her brother's friend, and older, she keeps her feelings to herself. The series picks them up again as the years pass and their lives cross at university and beyond, with the family and a circle of college friends close around them.

Duan Jiaxu is not simply the dependable older boy. His family went through financial hardship after his father's death, and he worked while studying. The tension in the drama is less about outside obstacles than about two people who are each holding back, for different reasons.

The 25-episode series was produced by Wajijiwa (哇唧唧哇) with Youku, directed by Li Qingrong (李青蓉), and filmed in Xiamen, including at the Xiamen Institute of Technology. It began on Youku on June 20, 2023, and Netflix carried it overseas from June 29, released in batches.

It is adapted from the 2019 novel of the same name by Zhu Yi (竹已), serialized on Jinjiang Literature City (晋江文学城). According to Jiemian, the novel had over one million collections on the site, and its audio drama had been played more than 100 million times. A follow-up series, Nan Hong (难哄, "hard to coax"), based on a companion novel, followed in 2025.

Jiemian reported that the show reached a Youku heat index of over 10,000 within 30 hours of airing, the fastest for a modern romance drama on the platform. After the finale on July 11, the Beijing News reported that searches for the phrase cang bu zhu (藏不住, "can't be hidden") rose 46-fold month on month on Baidu, that the two leads gained nearly 3 million fans between them across platforms, and that subscriptions to the novel on Shuqi Fiction rose 1,876%. The show also helped lift tourism interest in Xiamen, the city where it was shot.