highly recommend reading the novel after watching this drama. it contains extra insight on xiexiang’s thoughts and feelings, especially how she develops feelings towards guyanzhen. here is where all the tenderness and happy feelings are.

I feel that this is lacking in the drama, where I couldn’t grasp whether she actually liked guyanzhen or why she was always annoyed / refusing to accept him.

fortunately the novel answers all these questions and more! \o/ if you can’t read Chinese, the machine translated English version isn’t too bad, still quite understandable.