Dear Gossips,

A couple of weeks ago, I posted in this space about The Early Spring, the Chinese drama available in international markets on Netflix that was blowing up around the world. After almost a month, The Early Spring remains at #2 on the Netflix non-English chart, where it debuted, which was a first for a C-drama on the platform, and has cracked the top 10 for TV shows overall.

The Early Spring is so popular that TIME just published an article about its success and what that portends, as Netflix has over the last two years been investing more in Chinese acquisitions.

The Early Spring is a workplace romance and, like all romance stories, hinges entirely on the chemistry between its two leads, Jing Boran and Sun Qian. The actors are beautiful, the show is beautifully shot, the love scenes are gorgeous – and steamy by C-drama standards. But this is what happens when the vibes are so good: the audience wants it to be real, they want to believe that what they saw onscreen wasn’t just good acting, that they really watched two people fall in love. Which… I can understand, to a point. Until it becomes unhinged.

Jing Boran’s popularity has skyrocketed again since the series premiered. He’s been famous for a long time in China with box office hits and on variety shows. And now he’s experiencing another surge, with a whole new fanbase from The Early Spring just discovering that he’s actually been in a long-term relationship, and rather open about it (again, by Chinese standards). Most of the time in East Asia, celebrities keep their love lives extremely private, refusing to admit that they are or have ever dated anyone so as to maintain the illusion either of availability to the fans or the illusion of possibility for shippers.

Jing Boran, however, doesn’t seem to have gone out of his way to hide whenever he has a girlfriend. It was like this when he was with Ni Ni, a famous actress, and it has been like this in the four or five years or so since he’s been with none other than Liu Wen, China’s top model, and China’s first supermodel, the first Chinese supermodel to make it to the Forbes highest-paid model list back… and this was back in 2014, so no hyperbole, Liu Wen has been a big f-cking deal in fashion for a long time. 

Since The Early Spring popped off, and people figured out that Jing Boran and his co-star are not dating because he and Liu Wen are together, there’s been the usual f-ckass mess from internet trolls who don’t know how to act right. They’ve been repeatedly corrected by those who know better, although I’m not sure they appreciate that Liu Wen is a f-cking legend.

She was in New York this week to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Chopard’s Happy Diamonds as one of its ambassadors, a major flex.

The campaign’s other ambassador is Bella Hadid – who made it clear what Liu Wen’s status is in the fashion industry and among models. 

Liu Wen is always busy but particularly this season, fronting campaigns not only for Chopard but also Balenciaga and Saint Laurent, also Tom Ford, appearing in the W Magazine fall issue, and walking in several shows during NYFW. It’s fashion month right now so it will probably also not be a surprise to see her soon in London and/or Milan and/or Paris. Much of this would have been planned months in advance but it’s interesting how the universe conveniently timed all of it, like a cosmic rebuttal to the ignorance.

Yours in gossip,

Lainey

Liu Wen, Caroline Scheufele, and Bella Hadid at the Chopard Happy Diamonds Event held at Casa Cipriani on September 15, 2026 in New York, New York

Photo credits: Kevin Czopek/BFA.com/Shutterstock

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