General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

Fragrance of the First Flower (第一次遇见花香的那刻)

Fragrance of the First Flower (第一次遇见花香的那刻) is a 2021 Taiwanese lesbian romance mini-series of six 15-minute episodes, produced by the LGBTQ streaming platform GagaOOLala and directed by Angel Teng I-han (邓依涵). It follows Yi-ming (林辰唏), a married mother living largely alone while her husband works out of town, who reconnects at a wedding with Ting-ting (程予希), a high-school volleyball junior with whom she once had an unspoken intimacy, and must decide whether to acknowledge her feelings now that Taiwan has legalized same-sex marriage.¹

Key fact	Detail
Format	Mini-series, 6 episodes × 15 minutes (about 103 minutes total); genre LGBTQ / romance¹^•²
Premiere	12 November 2021 on GagaOOLala, Taiwan³
Key creatives	Director and writer Angel Teng I-han; producers Jay Lin and Derjk Wu; production company Long Moment Films¹
Cast	Lin Chen-hsi (Zaizai Lin) as Yi-ming, Lyan Cheng as Ting-ting, Lee Yi as the husband¹
International recognition	Selected by Variety among its Best International TV Shows of 2021, the only Taiwanese series in its top 13; nominated in the Series Mania Short Forms Competition; screened at the Berlin TV Series Festival and Frameline 2022⁴^•¹
Golden Bell Awards	Five nominations at the 57th Golden Bell Awards; won mini-series/TV movie Screenplay, Lead Actress, and Supporting Actress⁵
Reception	Douban rating reached 9.1 during serialization, later settling around 8.6 to 8.8; became GagaOOLala's most-watched work since the platform launched in 2017⁴^•⁶
Second season	Aired on GagaOOLala with a 12-episode run ending in a finale of episodes 11 and 12; ranked #1 in ContentAsia's March 2026 rankings⁷

Spoilers

Premise and story

The series opens at a wedding where Yi-ming, attending with her young son, wanders into a lesbian wedding held at the same venue. One of the brides is asked to describe the couple's first meeting as a flower, and answers with a burning lily, a metaphor that runs through the drama as Yi-ming and Ting-ting's relationship rekindles.⁸ Yi-ming, who in high school had denied her feelings and let the relationship lapse, is now a de facto single mother whose husband works in another city; Ting-ting's return pulls her out of a stale marriage and forces her to confront feelings she never acknowledged.¹

The story alternates between the two women's adult lives and flashbacks to their high-school days on the volleyball team, where their closeness ended after an incident in a night alley. Director Teng identified this event, a flasher's harassment, as one of the everyday warnings women receive from childhood, and said the series treats the difficulties both women face as the ways society treats women generally, from expectations placed on mothers to the scrutiny directed at cheerleaders.⁹

Production and intent

Teng I-han, who was 31 at the time of the series' release and has a background in psychology, had previously written and directed work on same-sex parenting (Dear Tenant) and adolescent gender identity (The Rose-Colored Skirt). She drew Fragrance of the First Flower from the experiences of friends around her, aiming to capture the faint, almost imperceptible affection between women, and said she wanted to tell a purely female story rather than fix a definition of what being gay means.¹⁰ Lead actress Lin Chen-hsi described the series as less about seeking recognition of identity, the theme of much earlier Taiwanese gay drama, and more about self-discovery, family, and adolescent understanding of gender; her character Jiang Yi-ming, ordinary and conforming to every expectation while lonely inside, resonated strongly with viewers.¹¹

The series belongs to GagaOOLala's "Queer Music Love Story" original strand and is the only lesbian series in that lineup; its theme song of the same name was written and performed by singer Cheng Yi-nong (郑宜农).³^•¹²

Reception

After its November 2021 release the series spread quickly through social platforms, popular in Hong Kong and Taiwan lesbian communities and trending on mainland Chinese platforms Weibo and Douban, where its rating reached 9.1 during serialization before settling at 8.6 to 8.8 after the finale.⁴^•⁶^•¹³ It became the most-watched work of any category on GagaOOLala since the platform's 2017 launch.¹¹ Its open-ended finale prompted repeated calls for a second season, an unusual demand for a Taiwanese gay drama, and the production team confirmed a sequel was in production.⁶

Critics praised the show's restraint and emotional intimacy. A review for BFI Flare 2022, where the series screened, noted that the camera stays on the two women's emotions rather than their bodies, centering playful affection and emotional intimacy instead of the sexualized portrayals common in mainstream depictions of lesbianism, while also observing that the plot leans on familiar melodrama tropes such as the overburdened wife and the neglectful husband.⁸ Commentary in Initium Media credited the series' popularity to its projection of East Asian women's emotions and experiences, while noting that assessments of its script, characterization, and ending were divided.⁴

The wedding scene that frames the story also carried political weight for viewers: a same-sex wedding held openly at the same venue is a scene made possible by Taiwan's 2018 legalization of same-sex marriage, and commentators described it as the backdrop that gives the two women courage to leave a heterosexual marriage.⁶

Second season

A second season went into production after the first ended, with Wang Yi-ling (王逸铃), director of The Untold Story of Taipei, taking over as lead director; the returning leads were billed as Golden Bell-winning actresses reuniting for a more heart-wrenching and sweeter continuation.⁵ The season aired on GagaOOLala in a 12-episode run, with episodes 11 and 12 forming the finale, and reached #1 in ContentAsia's March 2026 ranking of Taiwanese dramas, which attributed its standing to the reputation the original built for sensitive, character-driven storytelling.⁷

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026