Chinese Entertainment: Top-Tier Boyfriends of Young Actresses

"I'm jealous!"

As a seasoned internet surfer, Wang Churan naturally kept a close eye on the latest developments of her boyfriend's new drama.

When she saw the various intimate interactions between Su Yu and Tian Xiwei in the promotional videos for "A Love So Beautiful" on Weibo and Douyin, she naturally felt inexplicably uncomfortable.

Although Su Yu had told her many times that "this is a work requirement," she still couldn't help but call Su Yu to complain.

"Isn't this just the production team trying to create a romantic couple image for the sake of ratings? Don't overthink it."

"But I just don't feel well," Wang Churan said aggrievedly on the other end of the phone.

"I never expected you to be this jealous when you were filming the kissing scene with Sister Si Chun in 'Oh My General'."

Wang Churan was momentarily speechless at Su Yu's words, and then became furious.

"How can that be the same? I was with a girl!"

"Wouldn't the problem be even more serious if it involved a girl?"

Wang Churan: "..."

"Su Yu, I'm going to kill you!"

After a long string of jokes and banter, he finally managed to calm the girl down.

He silently made up his mind: for his next film, he absolutely could not cast either Wang Churan or Tian Xiwei as the female lead.

Playing a couple with your girlfriend is great, the chemistry is real, and the emotional investment is genuine, but the risk of it going wrong is just too high.

Filming a movie requires dealing with two girls at the same time, which is more tiring than filming itself.

With this series of promotional tactics, the low-budget youth campus web drama "A Love So Beautiful" has sparked heated discussions online.

Driven by money, Dai Lu has mobilized various marketing accounts, film and television bloggers, and marketing companies to promote the show with all their might.

Among them, the GIF marketing was particularly outstanding. The production team turned the sweet emotions of the characters and classic scenes in the drama into GIFs and put them into popular comment sections, Tieba, QQ groups and other traffic entrances on major social platforms, spreading wildly among Weibo, Tieba and various entertainment groups.

These GIFs perfectly hit the sweet spot for young female users: Jiang Chen pins Chen Xiaoxi against the wall in the corridor, Chen Xiaoxi looks up at Jiang Chen with a silly smile, and a slow-motion close-up of Jiang Chen sitting by the window in his school uniform with sunlight shining on his profile. Every frame exudes an overwhelming sweetness.

For a time, the internet was flooded with discussions about this drama.

Tencent Video responded enthusiastically to this situation, giving it prominent placement: featured prominently on the homepage's main screen, pinned to the top of the drama channel banner, and pre-installed on popular search terms, ensuring continuous exposure at the site's traffic entrances for several days.

With the help of Tencent Video's campus club marketing, the campaign precisely targeted students from major universities across the country, placing the sweetest moments of the drama into the traffic pool of campus channels, and further amplifying the word-of-mouth effect through the internal dissemination methods of student circles.

Countless young viewers began to look forward to this youth campus drama with great anticipation.

At 9 PM on September 2nd, the first and second episodes of "A Love So Beautiful" were officially launched on Tencent Video.

As soon as it aired, the screen was filled with comments like "It's here!" "Here for Su Yu!" "Reporting from the original novel!" "I heard this drama is so sweet it's sickening!"

The broadcast content did not disappoint viewers and fans of the original work.

The clean and refreshing visuals have a bright and soft tone. The light and shadow in the blinds of the classroom, the dappled sunlight under the sycamore trees on campus, and the empty corridor after school all exude a youthful vibe.

The director used slow motion in several segments to vividly and delicately portray the excitement of first love.

The perfectly timed close-ups of their eyes subtly and naturally portray the innocent yet reserved feelings between them; the overflowing sweetness on screen brings back the pink memories of first love for so many people.

The series garnered over 300 million views in less than three days after its release.

The realistic antics and daily lives of the high school students in the drama evoked countless memories of youth for many.

This show is especially relatable for students who have just graduated from high school and entered university.

Most importantly, the main audience of "A Love So Beautiful" is precisely this group of people, so it caused a sensation among them as soon as it aired.

The Douban rating was released shortly after the show premiered, with an initial score of 7.9 and the number of ratings quickly climbing to nearly 40,000.

Although this score may not seem particularly high, it is a very impressive achievement compared to those campus idol dramas that often score 4 or 5 points.

Viewers spontaneously formed a "force-recommendation team" in the comments section, with each short review revealing their determination to recommend it to casual viewers: "When the male lead was sitting by the window in his school uniform with the sunlight shining on his face, I almost stopped breathing, it's just so good!"

"I just randomly clicked on an episode, but ended up watching it until 3 a.m., you wouldn't believe it!"

"Perfect score! Perfect score! Perfect score! So good! So good!"

……

The review section was spontaneously organized by viewers into a "forced recommendation team," with each floor promoting the show to passersby in various ways. Some posted screenshots, some analyzed the acting frame by frame, some made comparisons from the perspective of the original work, and some directly tagged the bloggers who follow the show in the comments. A total of more than 20,000 comments were posted.

After that, the hashtag #A Love So Beautiful quickly became a trending topic on Weibo.

Countless fans of the drama began urging for more episodes on the official Weibo account of "A Love So Beautiful," with the top comments section unanimously shouting "More episodes!" "Can you release ten episodes a day?" "I'll pay for a membership, okay?"

As the plot progressed, the number of viewers for "A Love So Beautiful" steadily increased after a week of airing, with the highest single episode viewership exceeding 1.7 million and the cumulative viewership exceeding 12 billion.

The popularity of the lead actors, including Su Yu, also skyrocketed.

Especially Su Yu and Tian Xiwei.

Su Yu's portrayal of Jiang Chen perfectly captures the image of a cold, taciturn, and exceptionally intelligent school heartthrob.

When his face appeared on the screen, countless female fans rushed to the comments section: "This is exactly the aloof school heartthrob I imagined from novels!"

"Now that the male lead in campus novels has a more recognizable image, I suggest casting Su Yu as the male lead in future youth dramas (doge emoji)."

"What kind of bullshit school heartthrob is Li Yifeng? My Su Su is the real school heartthrob, okay?"

"Kill him if he tries again!"

……

Tian Xiwei also won the hearts of countless viewers with her adorable and endearing performance as Chen Xiaoxi in the drama.

Before the show aired, she had only a few hundred thousand followers on Weibo. After a week, her followers skyrocketed to nearly two million, a growth rate that far exceeded that of other new actresses at the same time, attracting the attention of many people in the industry.

Su Yu's personal Weibo account gained over three million followers in just one week, with his total number of followers jumping from five million to over eight million.

The topic's popularity soared to the top ten, surpassing top influencers like Li Jiaheng, Li Yifeng, and Yang Yang.

The number of people who checked in on the Super Topic reached 4.5, far exceeding the 3.5 of the top-tier gatekeeper, Teacher VV. The number of check-ins was second only to TFBOYS and Lu Han, making him a veritable new top star!