I found this mini-series on imdb via "People who liked this also liked...". I looked it up on Wikipedia and it says "web series", so I guess the only way to watch this is on You-tube or related sites. I was a bit sceptical and did not expect much of it. However, I was very nicely surprised. First I have to say that neither Mandarin nor English is my native language and I had to make do with spoken Mandarin and rather poorly translated subtitles which disappeared very fast, so I may have missed many of the details of the dialogues.
This series is almost exclusively about the rather special relationship between the handsome main characters Luo Yin and Gu Hai. They are related through Luo's mother and Gu's Father who, after both divorces, began a new relationship, but the lads do not know that. Luo is rather poor and Gu is wealthy. The two meet in school and in the beginning Gu is bullying Luo, but as the series proceed this stops and Gu gets more and more obsessed to Luo. It's an extraordinary combination of love and power. The constant attempts of Gu to conquer Luo and the sometimes faint resistances of Luo are very touching. The secondary characters are mostly decent as well, but Luo (Timmy Xu) en Gu (Johnny Huang) really make this series.
It certainly has its downsides as well. Especially the music was a little inconvenient from time to time. Sometimes, for some reason I had to think of the computer game the Sims. Also, the frequent score of Brokeback Mountain was not in its place. Only the song of Twinbed in one of the final episodes was completely in its place.
From time to time there were some scenes where I had a little doubts. Things like in class where Luo is sleeping constantly and the teacher doesn't say anything about it. But that did not bother me much at all.
According to the info I have read on the internet this series has been cancelled and banned in China and the actors have been banned to do any future acting. This really is a sad fact and proves that there is still a lot of discrimination in the world. A few scenes were also censored (Can't understand why at all), but you can watch them separately on You-Tube.
There are 15 episodes and I have enjoyed all of them. It has its flaws, but the main characters (and many other actors) are playing so well that I can easily forgive all of this. 8/10 for this unique series.
