Chinese Dramas Like Hidden Love

The First Frost is the closest thing to more Hidden Love: a 2025 drama adapted from Zhu Yi's companion novel about Sang Yan, Sang Zhi's sharp-tongued older brother. Bai Jingting plays him, and Zhang Ruonan plays Wen Yifan, the girl who turned him down in high school. Six or seven years later they meet again in the bar he co-owns and end up sharing a flat. The first half has Hidden Love's sweetness and banter, and the second turns to Wen Yifan's hard family past, so it is heavier. Sang Zhi and Duan Jiaxu appear in cameos, played by different actors. It runs 32 episodes.

Dazzling is the closest recent match, a 2026 youth romance that our Love for You page names in the same breath as Hidden Love. Qing Ye, a sharp-tongued Beijing heiress played by Guan Xiaotong, is sent to a seaside town after her family falls into trouble and clashes with Xing Wu, Li Yunrui's blond local rebel, who is loyal but held back by money worries. Like Hidden Love, it is a warm, slow-building romance that follows the couple from high school into the years after. It is more about class and small-town life than a secret crush. It runs 30 episodes.

If the school chapters of Hidden Love were your favorite part, start here. A Love So Beautiful follows Chen Xiaoxi, a cheerful girl who is bad at exams and has loved the aloof top student next door, Jiang Chen, since childhood. Like Hidden Love, it is a low-angst story built on small moments: walks home, exam stress and friends teasing the pair, followed by a reunion as adults. The difference is who hides their feelings. Here the heroine is loud about her crush, and the boy is the one who keeps quiet. It helped set the template Hidden Love follows, and it is short, at 23 episodes.

Never-Ending Summer shares Hidden Love's long time span, with a teenage bond that two adults pick up again. Zhou Wan, a determined top student played by Bao Shangen, approaches Lu Xixiao, the rebellious heir of a rich family, to pay for her grandmother's care, and they meet again at work ten years later over a factory accident. Daniel Zhou co-leads. It is moodier than Hidden Love, with a step-sibling setup and a wary rather than sweet courtship, and it leans on atmosphere more than tight plotting. Pick it if the years-long arc was what kept you watching. It runs 29 episodes.

Go Go Squid! swaps the campus for cybersecurity contests, but the emotional shape will feel familiar. Tong Nian, a cheerful computer science student, sets her sights on Han Shangyan, the strict, short-tempered founder of a competition team who has no time for romance. Much of the drama is about her patiently winning him over, and the team adds plenty of comedy. Yang Zi and Li Xian have easy chemistry. It shares Hidden Love's sweetness and its protective older male lead, although Han Shangyan starts out far grumpier than Duan Jiaxu. It runs 41 episodes.

Love for You is the grittier pick, and our own page recommends it to Hidden Love fans who want more edge. Chen Yi and Miao Jing grow up in the same home in a small town in the 1990s, after her mother moves in with his father, and a fire pulls them apart. In 2011 she comes back, a grown woman with a career, and they meet again inside a smuggling case. What links it to Hidden Love is the long history between the leads. The crime plot takes up as much room as the romance. Song Weilong and Zhang Jingyi lead its 32 episodes.

Go Ahead is a near-fit, and a family drama first. Two single fathers raise a girl, Li Jianjian, and two boys as one family, and the boys leave after high school and come back years later as a dentist and a pastry chef. What links it to Hidden Love is the long view. Both let feelings build across years, and both give real tenderness to the bond between a girl and an older-brother figure. Go Ahead is heavier, with more family conflict and more tears, and longer at 46 episodes. Tan Songyun, Song Weilong and Zhang Xincheng lead it.

The Early Spring is what a Hidden Love fan might watch once they want something more adult. Shang Zhitao, a young woman from Harbin with no connections, joins a Beijing ad agency and starts a secret relationship with Luan Nian, its brilliant, cold creative director, that lasts for years. Like Hidden Love, it follows the heroine growing up over a long stretch of her life. Unlike it, the male lead is distant for long periods, the power gap at work is real, and the drama is frank about desire and heavier subjects. Expect an office drama as much as a romance.

If Zhao Lusi was the reason you loved Hidden Love, this is her other big lead role from 2023. In Love Like the Galaxy she plays Cheng Shaoshang, a general's daughter left behind with relatives as a child who grows up sharp and self-taught, opposite Wu Lei as Ling Buyi, the reserved commander of the palace guard. The romance builds slowly, like Hidden Love's, but it shares screen time with family feuds, court politics and war, and the drama runs 56 episodes, more than twice as long. Come for her performance and the leads' banter, and expect a different pace.

If you want Hidden Love's sweetness in a fantasy world, this is one of the friendliest xianxia dramas to try. Orchid, a weak but cheerful orchid spirit, ends up bound by a curse to Dongfang Qingcang, a proud demon lord who shares her pain and feelings and can't get rid of her. The first half is mostly comedy and a slow-thawing romance, and at 36 episodes it moves briskly. The match with Hidden Love is in tone, not setting: warm, funny leads and a relationship that grows through small moments. Expect bigger battles and higher stakes later on.

Story of Kunning Palace is a near-fit with a darker tone. It shares Hidden Love's older-man, younger-heroine dynamic and its slow build, but little else. Jiang Xuening, played by Bai Lu, remembers a first life that went badly and tries to stay away from Xie Wei, Zhang Linghe's soft-spoken imperial tutor, whom she knows to be dangerous. She keeps ending up in his classroom anyway. The romance is wary and full of secrets rather than sweet. Pick it if what held you in Hidden Love was a relationship that can't move forward yet. It runs 38 episodes.