Will Love in Spring is a Chinese drama that has been on my radar for a very long time because, as I believe, filming wrapped up last year and everyone has been anticipating the release. 

It stars Li Xian (Gun from Go Go Squid!) and Zhou Yu Tong who played Liang You An in the 2023 drama Nothing But You.

At the helm is director Liang Cheng, who’s pretty much a novice, and since it’s adapted from a web novel – Qing Ren by Shen Mu Si – the screenwriter, Even Jian (who worked with Zhang Jia Lu on the original Netflix Chinese 2021 movie The Yin Yang Master), had her work cut out for her.

I knew from the information that was provided on MDL that this was going to be a very healing drama since it follows the leads and their journeys to grow both individually and together, so I was very pumped and now that I’ve watched the first episode, I’m happy to report that I was absolutely not disappointed.

Also, this goes without saying, but I have sometimes had my reviews be bashed rudely, and I didn’t really appreciate that. That’s not to say that I am averse to a person who has a different opinion because I feel like that always encourages healthy discussions, but please remember that this is my opinion.  

Will Love In Spring Chinese Drama Episode 1 Recap

The minute the opening credits finish, we are placed in something that looks to be a competition, and we find out that our main lead is a professional funeral makeup artist who clearly has a lot of respect for dead bodies. He looks detached, but you can tell that he is incredibly feeling, and the mood is a little eerie.

Then we move to our female lead, who is being transported on a hospital bed to what appears to be a surgery, but rather than being sad or depressed, she’s actually very bubbly and talkative.

Then it appears there’s a time jump because the next thing we see is our male lead, Chen Mai Dong, on a train and listening to music on his way to his hometown when our female lead, Zhuang Jie, sits beside him.

This is when we learn that she’s also from that hometown, and they were actually high school classmates, and it’s hinted that there was something more romantic that went down between the both of them.

He is very rude and has a very standoffish face and totally tells her that he doesn’t remember who she is, but based on her bubbly introduction, you can guess what she does next because she doesn’t let up, and she keeps on testing him, and he eventually just leaves her at the train station.

She gets to her home, and we learn that she has a stepfather, a brother, a younger sister, and her mother. Her mother runs a restaurant, and we aren’t really sure what her stepfather does, but we do know one thing for sure, and it’s that her mother is having issues with her younger sister because her younger sister isn’t taking her education very seriously.

So, Zhou Yu Tong goes into the street to sort of move around and greet the people she knew before she left the town, and that’s how she finds herself on a rooftop where a ping pong game is underway. We then meet a formidable grandma who we learn has approached the head of the women’s committee multiple times to ask her to set up her son.

The head of the women’s committee, who is a friend to our female lead, then expresses her annoyance at the whole situation, and our female lead promises to help solve the problem, so she approaches the grandmother and has a very nice conversation with. She then basically tells granny that she can try a form of online dating where you shake the app and then matches are automatically selected from the person’s axis.

At this point, we learn that Yu Tong took a vacation from work for some reason but we do know that it’s not something she does regularly, so that’s worth noting. She then decides to surprise her mother at the restaurant, and we see that they have a very good relationship because she appears very happy.

Later on, her mother tells her that the plan is to expand the chicken business, and since Yu Tong is back in town, she can take over delivery, and she agrees.

Her first delivery is to a burial ceremony, and when she gets there, the host convinces her to sit down and watch the Chinese opera performance. While she’s doing this, she sees our male lead in front, and then she goes to meet him. She then sits down beside him, and that is when the episode ends.

Will Love In Spring C-Drama Episode 1 Review

First off, I really love that Chinese script writers and screenwriters aren’t afraid to give their leads the most unique jobs ever. This drama opens up with a funeral technique competition, and our male lead is an embalmer.

That is not to say CEOs are out of fashion, but it definitely brings a new flavour to things when we have a lead that doesn’t do any kind of traditional, white-collar work.

Moving on, I really, really loved our female lead from the very beginning because even though she is a very bubbly person, she is far from dumb.

In fact, you can tell that she is incredibly brilliant, but one thing that strikes me is the fact that even when she’s smiling, you can tell that she’s hiding her pain. She feels and looks like a person who is both fragile and strong, and I just really like her at this point, so much so I would like to learn more about her at least.

As for our male lead, he is the typical cold character who doesn’t like talking to anyone and is hyper-focused on his work, but something tells me that this drama is going to subvert all those tropes. Not much happened in this episode, although we learn that he has a soft heart for his grandmother, but nothing extra spectacular. 

Nevertheless, I’m very much seated for whatever we are given. I also really like the way he’s very serious with his work because you can tell he’s very dedicated from the very first scene of this episode, and that is just marvellous.

And I know I have said that for Korean dramas I’m very exhausted with the fact that almost every drama uses the trope of childhood friends or childhood acquaintances, but somehow I can never get enough of it in Chinese dramas, so bonus points because we do learn that both of them have some history from when they were kids.

I also really enjoyed seeing Yu Tong’s relationship with her family because it definitely raises a lot of questions. There’s a point where the camera pans to a picture on the wall, and we see two grown-up men.

Since we already know that the person she calls father at the moment is her stepfather, I assume that the two men in the picture are her stepfather and her birth father, so that sounds a little messy on the surface, but she’s cool with it, so I would like to know more about that.

She and her sister have the most beautiful relationship, and we do know that this sister is the child of her stepfather and her mother, but you can tell that they are very close, and they all love each other, and perhaps I’m being a little cynical because I automatically felt like there would be some tension, but I am so happy to be proved wrong.

And just in case you’ve watched the episode, her younger sister is actually the younger girl of the female lead in Hidden Love — she’s a fantastic actress despite the fact that she’s very young.

This is going to be a small-town romance through and through, and I am happy because I love romance dramas that are set in rustic countryside areas, as this drama definitely delivered everything from the lovely neighbourhood to the nosy neighbours to the tight-knit community, and I feel like if this is something you enjoy, you’re going to have a lot of fun with it.

One character that totally stole the show in this episode, even though she doesn’t appear for more than two scenes, is our male lead’s grandmother, played by veteran actress Fang Fang, because I really loved her matchmaking efforts.

I think it’s something that we see a lot in dramas because there’s always one character who wants their relative to get married and have kids as soon as possible. I don’t know why, but it’s always sweet when it is a darling old lady and Granny Chen is just that. 

So, as I said earlier, we learned that she suddenly decided to come back to her hometown even though she hasn’t been there in a couple of years, so it was very much a surprise to everybody, but I feel like the time jump between the first two scenes and the scenes when they had gotten to the town was a little abrupt because I didn’t really know how we got there.

Something just tells me that this is an effort to sort of keep the mystery and keep the suspense to make her character and whatever she is going through feel more developed and more well-rounded eventually, but it still worries me a little because it just feels like there is a gaping hole in the plot.

Finally, the scene where they were watching the Chinese opera performance reminds me that I once promised that I would check out a Chinese opera performance on YouTube, so I best get to that as soon as possible.

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Also, I will be recapping and reviewing every single episode of this drama, so hang around and you’re definitely going to see something.

What do you think? Are you watching Will Love In Spring? Do you enjoy small-town romantic Chinese dramas? Let me know in the comment section what you think about this drama and if it’s something that you’re looking forward to watching, and we can talk.