General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20266 min read

Here We Meet Again (三分野)

Here We Meet Again (三分野) is a 2023 Chinese urban romance web drama directed by Huang Tianren (黄天仁) and starring Zhang Binbin (张彬彬) as the navigation engineer Xu Yanshi (徐燕时) and Wu Qian (吴倩) as the heiress Xiang Yuan (向园), who reunite in the workplace years after a failed high school romance and pursue careers in China's BeiDou satellite navigation field.¹^•² Adapted from the novel of the same name by the web novelist Er Dong Tu Zi (耳东兔子), it streamed exclusively on Tencent Video in 32 episodes from May 22, 2023.²^•³

Key fact	Detail
Original / English title	三分野 / Here We Meet Again⁴
Broadcast	Premiered May 22, 2023 at 6 pm on Tencent Video, sole streaming platform; 32 episodes²
Source	Same-name novel by Er Dong Tu Zi, roughly 450,000 characters³
Leads	Zhang Binbin as Xu Yanshi; Wu Qian as Xiang Yuan¹
Director	Huang Tianren, whose earlier series Someday or One Day (想见你) scored 9.2 on Douban and won the Golden Bell Award for Best Television Series²
Platform heat	Tencent heat value passed 27000, breaking the platform's 2023 web-drama heat record; within nine days it was 2023's fastest Tencent drama to pass 28000, with over 10 million danmu interactions⁵^•⁶
Douban score	6.3⁷

Spoilers

Plot and characters

The story opens with Xiang Yuan, granddaughter of the founder of the Donghe Group, making a wager with her grandfather to escape an arranged marriage: she will go alone to the group's failing branch in Xi'an and raise its performance in exchange for her freedom.⁸ There she must rescue the struggling company Weilin, and she runs into Xu Yanshi, the campus idol she had pursued without success in high school.¹

The two leads are written as a "double strong" pairing with built-in reversals. Xu Yanshi is a talented graduate of a poor family who works in vehicle navigation while holding onto his ambition of doing satellite navigation research; he is professionally in demand but chronically short of money, a contradiction the script keeps hidden until episodes 15 and 16 of the 32-episode run.⁸^•⁹ Xiang Yuan looks like a carefree rich girl but is nearly too broke for coffee and must prove herself in a company she does not understand, growing from a navigation novice into someone who can carry the branch on her own.⁹^•¹

The romance unfolds across three stages: in high school, where Xu Yanshi quietly helped Xiang Yuan, buying her a cake that cost him all his savings, while never admitting his feelings; at university, where the two, unaware of each other's identity, bonded through online gaming; and in the workplace, where they finally become partners who solve each other's problems.⁹^•⁵ The title encodes the pairing: "Xiang Yuan is three parts wild, Xu Yanshi is seven parts sweet," a ratio viewers joked had become "ten parts sweet" as the story progressed.⁵

Production and source novel

The drama was the first production of the Mi Cheng (Honey Orange) studio under Huace Kerton and was directed by Huang Tianren, whose Someday or One Day had scored 9.2 on Douban and won the Golden Bell Award for Best Television Series at the 55th Golden Bell Awards.⁹^•² The supporting cast included Huang Zi'en, Xia Ruoyan, Li Yixiao, Zhang Xilin, Liu Weiting, and Zhao Heng.²

The source novel is one of seven published works by Er Dong Tu Zi, a member of the China Writers Association and a popular author on the Jinjiang Literature City platform; all seven novels had sold film and television adaptation rights, and her earlier novel Secrets in the Dark Grid was adapted in 2021 and sold overseas broadcast rights to South Korea.¹⁰ The original runs to roughly 450,000 characters and digs deeply into the two leads' family backgrounds and childhood shadows, material the series retained in its flashback structure.³^•⁹

Release and reception

The series was released without a promotional campaign, "parachuting" onto Tencent Video on May 22, 2023, a low-key debut that itself won goodwill at a time when several announced dramas were being pulled from schedules.⁵ Its heat value passed 27000, breaking Tencent's 2023 web-drama heat record, and within nine days of broadcast it became the fastest Tencent drama of 2023 to pass 28000, entering the platform's must-watch club with more than 10 million danmu (bullet-comment) interactions, a微博 (Weibo) drama influence chart first place, and repeated top finishes on the Maoyan, Lighthouse, Kuyun, Guduo, and Yunhe rankings.⁵^•⁶ Huace's 2023 annual report listed it among the company's dramas that repeatedly topped ratings and heat charts during the year.¹¹

Critical reception was mixed. A June 2023 roundup placed it seventh among May's mainland dramas with a Douban score of 6.3.⁷ Reviewers praised the restrained early romance, the comedic "social death" (embarrassment) scenes of the heroine, and the fidelity of the adaptation to the novel's famous moments.⁹ The workplace material drew the sharpest criticism: although the drama opens with Xu Yanshi taking part in a BeiDou launch test and frames navigation engineering as its professional backbone, the actual office scenes at Weilin show a company given over to gossip, infighting, and romance comparisons, leaving the work plot unable to carry the weight the premise assigns it.⁸ One review attributed the uneven plotting to a writing team it counted at nine screenwriters.¹²

The reunion formula

Here We Meet Again belongs to a cluster of 2023 urban romance dramas built on the "long-delayed reunion" (久别重逢) premise, alongside Homecoming (归路), My Fireworks on Earth (我的人间烟火), and Lighting You Up (照亮你). A Wenhui Daily analysis described the San Fen Ye reunion as the "toes-curling" type: the heroine's high school misreading, that the school top student liked her, made her the stuff of campus rumor, so their workplace meeting years later leaves one party dying of embarrassment and the other feeling jinxed.³ The same analysis noted that these dramas were adapted from Jinjiang "modern romance" web novels, and that the reunion structure lets one novel hold two love stories, a youthful one and an adult one, which is why producers kept it even though multi-year time spans raise production and acting costs.³

The drama also fits an industry trend noted in 2023 trade coverage of giving romance leads concrete vertical professions; San Fen Ye has both leads working in navigation research, so that their work supplies professional knowledge and a sense of mission rather than serving as a backdrop.¹³ Internationally, the series streams as Here We Meet Again on Rakuten Viki, where it holds a 9.4 user rating from more than 70,000 users with subtitles in English and at least a dozen other languages, and on Korean platforms including wavve, Watcha, and TVING.⁴^•¹⁴

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Series and fictional screen worlds › International serial drama and telenovelas › East Asian drama series › East Asian web and streaming serials › Titles Cr to In

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

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