The Lament of Autumn

Ye Pingjun (played by Xu Ruohan, 徐若晗) is a girls'-school student who takes a job at Xiangxi Huiguan (湘西会馆), a hotel and club, to pay her mother's medical bills. On her first day, an assassination attempt is made on Yu Changxuan (虞昶轩, played by Cheng Lei, 丞磊), the fifth son of the warlord Yu family and a man known as a gambler and a womanizer.

She is caught up in it and becomes a suspect. To clear herself, she strikes a bet with him: the real culprit must be found within ten days. He draws close to her for reasons of his own, and the bet turns the ten days into a countdown.

Yu Changxuan is introduced by his reputation, and the plot gives it a second reading: he is the target of the attack and chooses to stay close to the one person it implicates.

The story is set in the Republic of China era. The series adapts a novel of the same name by Ling Xi (灵希), a Changsha-based writer and screenwriter, published in book form in 2010. Chinese coverage says the book's Yu Changxuan was far harsher, a villain to many readers, and that the drama softens him.

Yudian (玉簟, "jade mat") names a fine bamboo sleeping mat, smooth as jade; qiu (秋, "autumn") says the season's chill has reached it. The phrase is best known as the opening line of a poem by Li Qingzhao (李清照), in which the mat turns cool and the person is gone. The author and production have not said the title comes from that poem.

Reception is still forming. Domestic criticism points to the density of the opening, a dated feel and the forced-romance premise. Douban (豆瓣), China's main user-review site, has not yet issued a score.