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This review may contain spoilers
He Was Too Proud. She Was Too Humble
Okay, I finally finished all 24 episodes of The Early Spring, and I have A LOT to say about this one. 😂
First of all, I genuinely really enjoyed this drama. Was it perfect? Absolutely not. Did the writing and some of the adaptation choices frustrate me? YES. Did I want to shake both Shang Zhitao and Luan Nian at different points? Also yes. 😂 But honestly, I think that's part of why I enjoyed it.
One of the very first quotes in this drama is:
“You don't have to be perfect to be deserving of love.”
And that quote literally appears at the beginning of every episode. Yet somehow people watched the entire drama and still reduced these two characters to “red flag” and “green flag.” 😭
I really hate the way fandom discussions have become so obsessed with these labels. A red flag should describe a particular concerning quality or behaviour, not become a box you put an entire human being into. Someone can have terrible qualities and still have good ones. Someone can love you and still hurt you. Someone can have boundaries, insecurities, make mistakes and behave badly sometimes without becoming an entirely bad person.
That's called being human.
And I think The Early Spring is much more interesting when you actually allow these characters to be complicated.
Let's start with Shang Zhitao.
She comes to Beijing as a fresh 22-year-old graduate from Harbin. She has dreams, ambition and that very common dream of leaving your hometown and going to a huge city to make something of yourself. She is young, inexperienced and trying to establish herself in an industry where she has everything to prove.
And from basically the beginning, her boss, Luan Nian, makes it very clear that he doesn't think she's good enough.
He questions her abilities. He tells her she doesn't belong. He tells her she should consider another job. He calls her stupid and repeatedly talks down to her.
And people keep calling him “blunt.”
No.
There is a difference between being blunt and being downright rude and insulting. You can be honest with someone without constantly putting them down.
And this matters because I think people completely overlook where Shang Zhitao's insecurity comes from.
She isn't insecure for no reason.
She is a 22-year-old newcomer in Beijing, working under a highly accomplished senior who constantly makes her feel like she isn't quite good enough. Unless you're an exceptionally confident person, that environment is going to affect you.
Then she sleeps with him.
They have a one-night stand, and obviously Shang Zhitao becomes apprehensive about what happens next. And honestly, of course she does.
She has barely established herself in Beijing. This man is her senior, her boss and eventually her boyfriend. Why would she immediately be comfortable turning that into a relationship?
She's attracted to him, obviously. 😂 And they do have genuine moments where they help each other and where her feelings begin to grow. But she still has every reason to be cautious.
Then Luan Nian pursues the situationship.
Which is honestly hilarious because the very next day he's already making insinuations about her leaving something at his place deliberately, while she has no reason to know that this man is going to be a complete bastard about relationships. 😂
The important thing is that their relationship doesn't stay purely casual. It develops very quickly into something much more serious.
And this is something I don't think enough viewers noticed:
The drama literally establishes that by Shang Zhitao's second year at Li Mei, she and Luan Nian started dating.
So yes, at that point, they're boyfriend and girlfriend.
But they still behave like they're stuck in a situationship half the time. They barely communicate, they mostly meet after work, and they continue carrying all the insecurity and uncertainty from the beginning of their relationship into the actual relationship.
And that's really the biggest problem with these two.
They don't have a lack-of-love problem. They have a communication and trust problem.
Shang Zhitao doesn't trust that her feelings and problems are important enough for Luan Nian to care about.
Luan Nian doesn't trust her enough to actually ask her what she's thinking.
She keeps things to herself.
He makes assumptions.
She becomes more insecure.
He becomes more defensive and angry.
And then they repeat the cycle.
Take the sexual harassment situation.
People kept asking, “Why didn't she tell Luan Nian?”
I actually agree that she should have told him eventually, especially because he was her boyfriend. But she had literally just been sexually harassed. She was shocked and panicking. He called her almost immediately afterward.
She didn't owe anyone a perfectly composed explanation in that moment.
And more importantly, this isn't an isolated thing. She also doesn't tell him about the housing-agency incident when she is physically harassed.
Why?
Because she has this deeply ingrained belief that her problems aren't important enough to trouble him with. She thinks she needs to handle things herself.
That is part of her insecurity.
So yes, I can say “She should have told him” and simultaneously say “I understand why she didn't.”
Those two things can both be true.
And Luan Nian doesn't exactly help with that insecurity.
He repeatedly uses incredibly harsh and insulting language toward her. And I don't care how sweet he is afterward—those things don't disappear.
People seem to forget that if a character is romantic for three episodes after saying something horrible, the horrible thing still happened.
That's not how memory works.
Those things stay with you.
They're little cuts.
One cut.
Then another.
Then another.
And after six years, you have a wound.
That's why I don't see their final breakup as being caused by one stupid misunderstanding. It was six years of accumulated resentment, insecurity, pride, jealousy, poor communication and things that were never properly discussed.
Then we have the ex situation.
I understand Luan Nian being upset when he sees Shang Zhitao hug her ex. Personally, I also wouldn't love seeing my partner hug an ex or someone who had confessed feelings for them.
But I also don't think the hug itself is some enormous betrayal.
Especially because Luan Nian has also hugged a woman who confessed to him, and later hugged her again when they met after years.
The difference is that Shang Zhitao wasn't there to witness those situations.
So yes, I understand his feelings.
What I don't understand is his way of handling them.
Again, he doesn't communicate.
He gets angry. He becomes aggressive. He tries to make her jealous.
And Shang Zhitao doesn't communicate either because she's too insecure to believe that talking to him will actually make a difference.
That's their relationship in a nutshell.
And then we get to the marriage discussion, which is another place where I think the adaptation changed the context so much that viewers are judging Shang Zhitao differently.
I've read the novel, and the drama changes their timeline considerably.
In the novel, they remain in that ambiguous situationship for much longer. Shang Zhitao eventually reaches the point where she tells Luan Nian that she likes him and wants to actually date him.
And he rejects her.
A lot of events that happen later in the drama actually happen in the novel while they are still in that situationship or when they aren't together at all.
The drama moved their official relationship much earlier, but then retained many of the same conflicts and reactions.
And that changes everything.
Something that happened in the novel when she wasn't even his girlfriend is now being watched by drama viewers as:
“How could she do that to her boyfriend?”
Well... she wasn't his girlfriend in the original context.
That's a pretty important difference.
And I honestly think the drama also softened Luan Nian in several places compared to the novel while keeping Shang Zhitao's emotional reactions. So things that had more context in the novel can sometimes make her look much more unreasonable in the drama.
I don't necessarily hate the changes, but I do think the adaptation needed to be more careful about what those changes did to the audience's perception of the characters.
Then we get to the car conversation.
And OH MY GOD.
I was furious.
Whatever mistake Shang Zhitao made, Luan Nian had absolutely no right to speak to her the way he did.
He basically humiliates her and implies that she's the kind of woman who would sleep with any man who comes along.
Excuse me???
Who the hell talks to their girlfriend like that?
Be angry.
Be jealous.
Confront her.
Tell her exactly what she did wrong.
Break up with her if you have to.
But you don't get to verbally humiliate someone and then have people excuse it because “he was hurt.”
No.
And honestly, Shang Zhitao forgives him WAY too easily sometimes.
Girl, please develop a spine. 😭
But again, that is part of her character. She is too humble. Too willing to put herself down. Too willing to accept less than she deserves.
And then everything finally falls apart.
Her best friend dies.
Their relationship becomes public.
And the exact thing Shang Zhitao was afraid of actually happens.
Her career is affected.
This is why I never understood people criticizing her for wanting to keep the relationship private.
Luan Nian was already established. He was the head of the China branch. He had a reputation and a position that could withstand gossip.
Shang Zhitao was still trying to prove herself.
If everyone thought she was getting opportunities because she was sleeping with the boss, whose career was going to suffer more?
Hers.
And she wasn't asking Luan Nian to give her special treatment.
She wasn't asking him to use their relationship to get her promoted.
She wasn't even asking him to hand her the specialist position.
She basically wanted to know beforehand that she wasn't getting it.
That's it.
She had worked incredibly hard and was sitting there with all these hopes, thinking she was finally going to get the position, while her boyfriend already knew that wasn't happening.
And he didn't tell her.
Maybe he had his reasons.
Maybe he thought he was protecting her.
Maybe he had a plan for her career later.
But you have to communicate that to your partner.
You cannot make decisions that affect them and then expect them to understand your intentions magically.
And this is where the six years of everything finally catch up with them.
The insults.
The insecurity.
The jealousy.
The misunderstandings.
The things they never said.
The things they assumed.
Her constantly putting herself below him.
His constant pride.
And then the grief of losing her best friend on top of everything else.
That annual-party fight felt like the explosion after years of pressure.
And honestly?
I think Shang Zhitao leaving was necessary.
It hurt. A LOT.
But she needed to leave.
Because when she goes home, starts her own company and builds a life without him, she finally becomes confident in herself.
She no longer sees herself as that 22-year-old girl who needs to prove she belongs.
She knows her worth.
And when they meet again, the dynamic is completely different.
Not exactly reversed, but different.
She can challenge him now.
She can question him.
She can tell him when he's wrong.
She doesn't immediately shrink herself.
And Luan Nian finally has to confront himself.
He finally realizes that his pride played a huge role in destroying the relationship.
And THAT is why I loved the ending.
Because he finally has to chase her.
He has to humble himself.
He has to let go of that ridiculous pride.
The Aurora scene broke me, honestly. 😭
Him calling her again and again, apologizing and telling her he loves her...
And I'm sitting there thinking:
Too late, sir.
You had six years.
SIX YEARS.
But that's what made it emotional.
He finally understood what he had lost.
And when they eventually reunite, it doesn't feel like Shang Zhitao is simply going back to the same relationship.
They're different people now.
That second quote from Shang Zhitao near the end describes their relationship so perfectly:
“I loved him. He also loved me. But he was too arrogant back then, and I was too humble.”
That's basically their entire six-year relationship in one sentence.
He loved her, but he was too proud to properly meet her emotionally.
She loved him, but she was too insecure to demand what she actually deserved.
And finally, they meet somewhere in the middle.
I also loved the proposal scene. The way Luan Nian goes through their memories and finally acknowledges what they went through together was so sweet. And I appreciated that he seemed genuinely self-aware about how much of a jerk he had been. 😂
And then Luke the dog basically comes in and seals the whole thing.
Adorable.
Now, I do have complaints about the adaptation.
I've read the novel, and I think the drama could have handled some things much better.
The timeline changes are significant. The drama makes them an official couple much earlier, while many of the same conflicts from the novel originally happen when they are still in a situationship or aren't together.
There are also HUGE time jumps where I'm sitting there thinking:
“Okay, but what happened during those six months?” 😂
Because these are human beings. Things don't just stop happening between scenes.
We don't know what conversations they had, what they discussed, what changed or what happened during those missing periods.
I think that sometimes makes their fights feel more sudden than they should.
But despite all my complaints...
I really enjoyed this drama.
Their chemistry is chemistry. 😂
Tibet was beautiful.
Their sweet moments were genuinely sweet.
And the ending made me happy.
There are plenty of dramas where the leads are beautiful, perfect, dreamy green flags and everything is wonderful. And I LOVE those dramas too.
Sometimes I absolutely want to watch two gorgeous people fall in love and have basically no problems. 😂
But The Early Spring wasn't that.
These characters were messy.
They were insecure.
They were stubborn.
They made mistakes.
They hurt each other.
They loved each other.
They grew.
And honestly, I think that's what made them interesting.
I don't want to call Shang Zhitao a red flag.
I don't want to call Luan Nian a green flag.
Because both labels are too small for them.
Luan Nian can genuinely love Shang Zhitao and still behave terribly sometimes.
Shang Zhitao can be insecure and make mistakes while still being strong and deserving of love.
Humans are complicated.
That's the whole point.
And maybe that's why the show had to remind us at the beginning of every episode:
You don't have to be perfect to be deserving of love.
Could this drama have been written better in places? Absolutely.
Could the adaptation have handled the novel's timeline and character dynamics better? Definitely.
Did both of these people make me want to scream at my screen? Absolutely. 😂
But did I enjoy watching them?
Yes. Very, very much.
It wasn't perfect.
And that's exactly why I liked it.
I'll take complicated, imperfect and human over perfect any day.
First of all, I genuinely really enjoyed this drama. Was it perfect? Absolutely not. Did the writing and some of the adaptation choices frustrate me? YES. Did I want to shake both Shang Zhitao and Luan Nian at different points? Also yes. 😂 But honestly, I think that's part of why I enjoyed it.
One of the very first quotes in this drama is:
“You don't have to be perfect to be deserving of love.”
And that quote literally appears at the beginning of every episode. Yet somehow people watched the entire drama and still reduced these two characters to “red flag” and “green flag.” 😭
I really hate the way fandom discussions have become so obsessed with these labels. A red flag should describe a particular concerning quality or behaviour, not become a box you put an entire human being into. Someone can have terrible qualities and still have good ones. Someone can love you and still hurt you. Someone can have boundaries, insecurities, make mistakes and behave badly sometimes without becoming an entirely bad person.
That's called being human.
And I think The Early Spring is much more interesting when you actually allow these characters to be complicated.
Let's start with Shang Zhitao.
She comes to Beijing as a fresh 22-year-old graduate from Harbin. She has dreams, ambition and that very common dream of leaving your hometown and going to a huge city to make something of yourself. She is young, inexperienced and trying to establish herself in an industry where she has everything to prove.
And from basically the beginning, her boss, Luan Nian, makes it very clear that he doesn't think she's good enough.
He questions her abilities. He tells her she doesn't belong. He tells her she should consider another job. He calls her stupid and repeatedly talks down to her.
And people keep calling him “blunt.”
No.
There is a difference between being blunt and being downright rude and insulting. You can be honest with someone without constantly putting them down.
And this matters because I think people completely overlook where Shang Zhitao's insecurity comes from.
She isn't insecure for no reason.
She is a 22-year-old newcomer in Beijing, working under a highly accomplished senior who constantly makes her feel like she isn't quite good enough. Unless you're an exceptionally confident person, that environment is going to affect you.
Then she sleeps with him.
They have a one-night stand, and obviously Shang Zhitao becomes apprehensive about what happens next. And honestly, of course she does.
She has barely established herself in Beijing. This man is her senior, her boss and eventually her boyfriend. Why would she immediately be comfortable turning that into a relationship?
She's attracted to him, obviously. 😂 And they do have genuine moments where they help each other and where her feelings begin to grow. But she still has every reason to be cautious.
Then Luan Nian pursues the situationship.
Which is honestly hilarious because the very next day he's already making insinuations about her leaving something at his place deliberately, while she has no reason to know that this man is going to be a complete bastard about relationships. 😂
The important thing is that their relationship doesn't stay purely casual. It develops very quickly into something much more serious.
And this is something I don't think enough viewers noticed:
The drama literally establishes that by Shang Zhitao's second year at Li Mei, she and Luan Nian started dating.
So yes, at that point, they're boyfriend and girlfriend.
But they still behave like they're stuck in a situationship half the time. They barely communicate, they mostly meet after work, and they continue carrying all the insecurity and uncertainty from the beginning of their relationship into the actual relationship.
And that's really the biggest problem with these two.
They don't have a lack-of-love problem. They have a communication and trust problem.
Shang Zhitao doesn't trust that her feelings and problems are important enough for Luan Nian to care about.
Luan Nian doesn't trust her enough to actually ask her what she's thinking.
She keeps things to herself.
He makes assumptions.
She becomes more insecure.
He becomes more defensive and angry.
And then they repeat the cycle.
Take the sexual harassment situation.
People kept asking, “Why didn't she tell Luan Nian?”
I actually agree that she should have told him eventually, especially because he was her boyfriend. But she had literally just been sexually harassed. She was shocked and panicking. He called her almost immediately afterward.
She didn't owe anyone a perfectly composed explanation in that moment.
And more importantly, this isn't an isolated thing. She also doesn't tell him about the housing-agency incident when she is physically harassed.
Why?
Because she has this deeply ingrained belief that her problems aren't important enough to trouble him with. She thinks she needs to handle things herself.
That is part of her insecurity.
So yes, I can say “She should have told him” and simultaneously say “I understand why she didn't.”
Those two things can both be true.
And Luan Nian doesn't exactly help with that insecurity.
He repeatedly uses incredibly harsh and insulting language toward her. And I don't care how sweet he is afterward—those things don't disappear.
People seem to forget that if a character is romantic for three episodes after saying something horrible, the horrible thing still happened.
That's not how memory works.
Those things stay with you.
They're little cuts.
One cut.
Then another.
Then another.
And after six years, you have a wound.
That's why I don't see their final breakup as being caused by one stupid misunderstanding. It was six years of accumulated resentment, insecurity, pride, jealousy, poor communication and things that were never properly discussed.
Then we have the ex situation.
I understand Luan Nian being upset when he sees Shang Zhitao hug her ex. Personally, I also wouldn't love seeing my partner hug an ex or someone who had confessed feelings for them.
But I also don't think the hug itself is some enormous betrayal.
Especially because Luan Nian has also hugged a woman who confessed to him, and later hugged her again when they met after years.
The difference is that Shang Zhitao wasn't there to witness those situations.
So yes, I understand his feelings.
What I don't understand is his way of handling them.
Again, he doesn't communicate.
He gets angry. He becomes aggressive. He tries to make her jealous.
And Shang Zhitao doesn't communicate either because she's too insecure to believe that talking to him will actually make a difference.
That's their relationship in a nutshell.
And then we get to the marriage discussion, which is another place where I think the adaptation changed the context so much that viewers are judging Shang Zhitao differently.
I've read the novel, and the drama changes their timeline considerably.
In the novel, they remain in that ambiguous situationship for much longer. Shang Zhitao eventually reaches the point where she tells Luan Nian that she likes him and wants to actually date him.
And he rejects her.
A lot of events that happen later in the drama actually happen in the novel while they are still in that situationship or when they aren't together at all.
The drama moved their official relationship much earlier, but then retained many of the same conflicts and reactions.
And that changes everything.
Something that happened in the novel when she wasn't even his girlfriend is now being watched by drama viewers as:
“How could she do that to her boyfriend?”
Well... she wasn't his girlfriend in the original context.
That's a pretty important difference.
And I honestly think the drama also softened Luan Nian in several places compared to the novel while keeping Shang Zhitao's emotional reactions. So things that had more context in the novel can sometimes make her look much more unreasonable in the drama.
I don't necessarily hate the changes, but I do think the adaptation needed to be more careful about what those changes did to the audience's perception of the characters.
Then we get to the car conversation.
And OH MY GOD.
I was furious.
Whatever mistake Shang Zhitao made, Luan Nian had absolutely no right to speak to her the way he did.
He basically humiliates her and implies that she's the kind of woman who would sleep with any man who comes along.
Excuse me???
Who the hell talks to their girlfriend like that?
Be angry.
Be jealous.
Confront her.
Tell her exactly what she did wrong.
Break up with her if you have to.
But you don't get to verbally humiliate someone and then have people excuse it because “he was hurt.”
No.
And honestly, Shang Zhitao forgives him WAY too easily sometimes.
Girl, please develop a spine. 😭
But again, that is part of her character. She is too humble. Too willing to put herself down. Too willing to accept less than she deserves.
And then everything finally falls apart.
Her best friend dies.
Their relationship becomes public.
And the exact thing Shang Zhitao was afraid of actually happens.
Her career is affected.
This is why I never understood people criticizing her for wanting to keep the relationship private.
Luan Nian was already established. He was the head of the China branch. He had a reputation and a position that could withstand gossip.
Shang Zhitao was still trying to prove herself.
If everyone thought she was getting opportunities because she was sleeping with the boss, whose career was going to suffer more?
Hers.
And she wasn't asking Luan Nian to give her special treatment.
She wasn't asking him to use their relationship to get her promoted.
She wasn't even asking him to hand her the specialist position.
She basically wanted to know beforehand that she wasn't getting it.
That's it.
She had worked incredibly hard and was sitting there with all these hopes, thinking she was finally going to get the position, while her boyfriend already knew that wasn't happening.
And he didn't tell her.
Maybe he had his reasons.
Maybe he thought he was protecting her.
Maybe he had a plan for her career later.
But you have to communicate that to your partner.
You cannot make decisions that affect them and then expect them to understand your intentions magically.
And this is where the six years of everything finally catch up with them.
The insults.
The insecurity.
The jealousy.
The misunderstandings.
The things they never said.
The things they assumed.
Her constantly putting herself below him.
His constant pride.
And then the grief of losing her best friend on top of everything else.
That annual-party fight felt like the explosion after years of pressure.
And honestly?
I think Shang Zhitao leaving was necessary.
It hurt. A LOT.
But she needed to leave.
Because when she goes home, starts her own company and builds a life without him, she finally becomes confident in herself.
She no longer sees herself as that 22-year-old girl who needs to prove she belongs.
She knows her worth.
And when they meet again, the dynamic is completely different.
Not exactly reversed, but different.
She can challenge him now.
She can question him.
She can tell him when he's wrong.
She doesn't immediately shrink herself.
And Luan Nian finally has to confront himself.
He finally realizes that his pride played a huge role in destroying the relationship.
And THAT is why I loved the ending.
Because he finally has to chase her.
He has to humble himself.
He has to let go of that ridiculous pride.
The Aurora scene broke me, honestly. 😭
Him calling her again and again, apologizing and telling her he loves her...
And I'm sitting there thinking:
Too late, sir.
You had six years.
SIX YEARS.
But that's what made it emotional.
He finally understood what he had lost.
And when they eventually reunite, it doesn't feel like Shang Zhitao is simply going back to the same relationship.
They're different people now.
That second quote from Shang Zhitao near the end describes their relationship so perfectly:
“I loved him. He also loved me. But he was too arrogant back then, and I was too humble.”
That's basically their entire six-year relationship in one sentence.
He loved her, but he was too proud to properly meet her emotionally.
She loved him, but she was too insecure to demand what she actually deserved.
And finally, they meet somewhere in the middle.
I also loved the proposal scene. The way Luan Nian goes through their memories and finally acknowledges what they went through together was so sweet. And I appreciated that he seemed genuinely self-aware about how much of a jerk he had been. 😂
And then Luke the dog basically comes in and seals the whole thing.
Adorable.
Now, I do have complaints about the adaptation.
I've read the novel, and I think the drama could have handled some things much better.
The timeline changes are significant. The drama makes them an official couple much earlier, while many of the same conflicts from the novel originally happen when they are still in a situationship or aren't together.
There are also HUGE time jumps where I'm sitting there thinking:
“Okay, but what happened during those six months?” 😂
Because these are human beings. Things don't just stop happening between scenes.
We don't know what conversations they had, what they discussed, what changed or what happened during those missing periods.
I think that sometimes makes their fights feel more sudden than they should.
But despite all my complaints...
I really enjoyed this drama.
Their chemistry is chemistry. 😂
Tibet was beautiful.
Their sweet moments were genuinely sweet.
And the ending made me happy.
There are plenty of dramas where the leads are beautiful, perfect, dreamy green flags and everything is wonderful. And I LOVE those dramas too.
Sometimes I absolutely want to watch two gorgeous people fall in love and have basically no problems. 😂
But The Early Spring wasn't that.
These characters were messy.
They were insecure.
They were stubborn.
They made mistakes.
They hurt each other.
They loved each other.
They grew.
And honestly, I think that's what made them interesting.
I don't want to call Shang Zhitao a red flag.
I don't want to call Luan Nian a green flag.
Because both labels are too small for them.
Luan Nian can genuinely love Shang Zhitao and still behave terribly sometimes.
Shang Zhitao can be insecure and make mistakes while still being strong and deserving of love.
Humans are complicated.
That's the whole point.
And maybe that's why the show had to remind us at the beginning of every episode:
You don't have to be perfect to be deserving of love.
Could this drama have been written better in places? Absolutely.
Could the adaptation have handled the novel's timeline and character dynamics better? Definitely.
Did both of these people make me want to scream at my screen? Absolutely. 😂
But did I enjoy watching them?
Yes. Very, very much.
It wasn't perfect.
And that's exactly why I liked it.
I'll take complicated, imperfect and human over perfect any day.
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