Event Overview: How a Back Kiss Ignites Emotions Across the Internet

In April 2025, after the broadcast of episode 14 of the urban romance drama “Early Spring Sunny Days,” a 90-second clip—Shang Zhitao (played by Sun Qian) kissing Luan Nian (played by Jing Boran) on the back wound—quickly became a trending topic on Weibo.

The hashtag #ShangZhitaoKissingLuanNian’sBack# accumulated over 520 million views and over 430,000 discussions. The clip depicts Luan Nian being injured in a fight with a black market broker while protecting Shang Zhitao. Shang Zhitao, feeling heartache and grievance, lowers her head and kisses the wound on his back. The entire clip is without dialogue, yet it became the most discussed emotional outburst point since the drama’s broadcast.

According to public information, the drama is adapted from the novel “Early Spring Sunny Days” and is exclusively broadcast on Tencent Video. Since its premiere, the popularity has remained stable at around 25,000, but on the day episode 14 was broadcast, the peak popularity on the platform jumped to 28,000, a 12% increase compared to the previous period.

This back kiss was not only hailed as a “highlight of the entire series” by fans, but also sparked widespread discussion about whether adult love needs to be openly confessed. As of September 1, 2026, the scene had accumulated over 170 million views in fan-made videos on platforms such as Douyin and Bilibili.

Event Reconstruction: 5W Analysis from a Third-Person Perspective

Who? — Characters and Actors

The core characters are Shang Zhitao (actress Sun Qian, born in 1997) and Luan Nian (actor Jing Boran, born in 1989). They play a couple in a workplace relationship that has been secret for six years, their relationship constantly in a state of “male strength, female weakness.”

Luan Nian is sharp-tongued and assertive, while Shang Zhitao is reserved and stubborn. This scene is considered a crucial turning point in their relationship, where the balance begins to shift.

When and Where? — Episode 14, Phuket Scene

The event occurs in episode 14, during a vacation scene in Phuket, Thailand. Early plot setup: Shang Zhitao was harassed by a shady real estate agent while traveling in Phuket. Luan Nian intervened and got into a physical altercation with the agent, resulting in a back injury.

What happened? —The complete chain from the fight to the back kiss

According to scenes in the drama and descriptions from Weibo users: After Luan Nian fought with the shady agent, there were obvious bloodstains on his back. After Shang Zhitao returned to his room, Luan Nian said, “It’s okay, no broken bones,” “My mouth hurts, my face hurts, my feet hurt, my whole body hurts”, but in reality, he was using a coquettish way of saying he was in pain to cover up his concern.

After a few seconds of silence, Shang Zhitao lowered his head and kissed the wound on his back. Throughout the whole process, there was not a single “I love you” or “I’m sorry,” but the close-up shot captured Luan Nian’s pupils slightly trembling and Shang Zhitao’s eyes reddening.

Why did it go viral? –Emotional return rate and scarcity

On Weibo, many entertainment bloggers analyzed the reasons for the popularity of this clip: In the emotional logic of adults, language communication is costly, while the “heart-wrenching kiss” skips all the probing and games and directly gives the most efficient emotional return.

In today’s high-pressure society, love is full of weighing, and this kind of interaction that does not require lines and does not pursue formality provides a scarce sense of emotional relaxation. In addition, Jing Boran and Sun Qian’s micro-expression performance was praised as “perfectly portraying the restrained yet instinctive heartbeat of adults”.

Question-style h2 subheading 1: Why did Shang Zhitao’s kiss on Luan Nian’s back make the whole network “scream all night”?

The core reason is that it breaks the formulaic expression of intimate scenes in domestic dramas.

According to Weibo user @剧综大本营’s statistics, in the past two years, the average frequency of kissing scenes in urban love dramas is 1.2 times per episode, but more than 70% of them are “industrial sugar” kisses.

The back kiss in episode 14 of “Early Spring Sunny Days” has no dialogue or background music (only ambient sound) and lasts about 45 seconds, but it conveys multiple emotions through the actor’s micro-expressions and body language: heartache, grievance, reconciliation, and testing.

Entertainment blogger @FilmObserverApe pointed out: “This way of handling things is extremely restrained, but it is more penetrating than any intense confession. It reveals a truth that many people have overlooked: in a mature relationship, feeling sorry for someone is far more valuable in the long run than liking someone.

” Data supports this: within 24 hours after the clip was broadcast, the Weibo topic #HeartacheStyleLove# saw an increase of 80 million views, and a large number of users spontaneously discussed “When was the last time you felt sorry for someone?”

Question-style h2 subheading 2: Is this back kiss “sweet” or “torturous”? Why are netizens’ opinions polarized?

The public opinion field is not all positive; there is a clear “sweet vs. torturous debate.” According to the analysis of Weibo hot words, among the high-frequency words associated with #ShangZhiTaoKissesLuanNian’sBack#, “sweet” accounted for 42%, “torturous” accounted for 31%, and “heartache” accounted for 27%.

Netizens who held a “sweet” view believed that the scene was the ultimate embodiment of “an unbreakable bond”—Shang Zhitao instantly let down her guard after Luan Nian was injured, proving that “no matter how fierce the argument, love will instinctively flow between them.”

Blogger @EntertainmentBigEvents commented: “One second they were arguing fiercely, the next second they were so heartbroken that they kissed the wound. This is the most authentic love of adults.”

Netizens who held a “torturous” view pointed out that this relationship was essentially an unequal six-year underground romance. Shang Zhitao had been suppressed all along, and this kiss was more like a “Stockholm syndrome-style compromise.” In a related discussion thread on Zhihu, a highly-rated answer stated: “Luan Nian got injured because he brought it on himself.

He used violence to solve the problem, but Shang Zhitao had to use a kiss to comfort him. This kind of relationship is toxic.” However, such views accounted for a relatively low percentage in Weibo’s hot searches and lacked complete background support—Luan Nian fought to protect Shang Zhitao in the drama, not to actively provoke her.

From a dissemination perspective, the brilliance of the back kiss lies in its “negative space.” Compared to the iconic intimate scenes in recent popular dramas—such as the elevator kiss in You Are My Glory and the wardrobe kiss in The Oath of Love—these mostly rely on dialogue and background music to create atmosphere. The back kiss in Early Spring deliberately downplays dialogue, conveying emotion solely through breathing sounds, the rustling of clothing, and changes in the actor’s pupils.

This minimalist approach is more easily deconstructed on short video platforms: a “dialogue-free pure enjoyment version” of the clip on Bilibili has garnered 12 million views, with comments flooding the screen saying, “This is true acting.”

Furthermore, the clip cleverly utilizes “body narrative”—the wound becomes a vehicle for emotion. Media scholars point out that in visual culture, wounds symbolize “exposed vulnerability,” and kissing a wound signifies “accepting the other person’s vulnerability and offering healing.”

This aligns perfectly with the values ​​of today’s young people who reject “love-obsessed” relationships but crave “deep understanding.” According to the “2025 China Youth Emotional Report,” 76% of respondents said they “would rather be understood than pampered,” a figure that indirectly explains the resonance evoked by the back kiss.

H2 subheading 4: Behind the Controversy—Does this scene excessively glorify “violence and sacrifice”?

Some viewers questioned the plot’s logic, arguing that Luan Nian’s fighting behavior should not be glorified. Weibo user @RationalDramaChaser pointed out: “Luan Nian, as an adult, uses violence to solve problems, yet Shang Zhitao rewards him with a kiss; this is tantamount to encouraging violence.”

However, according to public reports, the drama foreshadowed this later—Luan Nian was reprimanded by the police for this incident, and Shang Zhitao explicitly stated, “Don’t do this again next time.” This approach effectively negatively characterized the violent behavior.

However, during the dissemination of this scene, numerous fan-made videos edited out the fighting portion, retaining only the kissing scene, leading to misunderstandings among some viewers who hadn’t watched the complete series. This is one of the root causes of the public disagreement.

The production team has not yet made an official response to this controversy, but according to sources close to the production team, the original intention of the scene was to “show how two people who are stubborn but soft-hearted can reconcile with actions instead of words”, rather than to encourage violence.

#早春晴朗 #TheEarlySpring #JingBoRan #SunQian

Translation by google and source by k.sina.com.cn