General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

Love in Time (我的秘密室友)

Love in Time (我的秘密室友) is a 2022 Chinese urban fantasy romance web series in which a 2022 lawyer and a 2021 journalist, living in the same apartment four months apart, meet each night during a 46-minute fusion of their two timelines. It premiered on October 13, 2022 as an iQiyi exclusive, the closing title of the platform's 2022 恋恋剧场 (Dramatic Romance) slate, and was co-produced by iQiyi and Beijing Huaxi Taihe Film & Television (北京华熙泰和影视有限公司).¹

Key fact	Detail
Native / English title	我的秘密室友 (Wo de mimi shiyou) / Love in Time¹^•²
Premiere	October 13, 2022, iQiyi exclusive; aired daily October 13–22, 2022¹^•³
Format	24 episodes of 46 minutes each, rated 13+⁴^•³
Leads	杨旭文 (Yang Xuwen) as He Zhengyu; 向涵之 (Julia Xiang) as Chen Jialan; 曹征 in a special starring role¹
Director / studio	赵锦焘 (Zhao Jintao); iQiyi and 北京华熙泰和影视有限公司¹^•⁵
Source	Remake of the Taiwanese drama 1006的房客 (Meet Me @1006 / "1006's Tenant")⁵
Ratings	Recorded ratings: iQiyi platform score 9.6; MyDramaList score 8.2 from 3,842 users⁴^•³

Spoilers

Premise and plot

The speculative mechanism is a nightly time-space fusion (跨时空同居). Beginning at 10:06 pm, the two dimensions fuse for exactly 46 minutes, during which the leads can meet and, over successive nights, begin a romantic relationship across time.¹^•⁶ He Zhengyu, an ace lawyer in 2022, first takes the woman who appears at 10:06 pm for a ghost, until he realizes she is Chen Jialan, a rookie reporter who was a tenant of the same apartment four months earlier, in 2021.³

The setup is anchored by the male lead's disgrace. According to the official synopsis, He Zhengyu is caught in a perjury scandal after a friend he represents reverses testimony in court; his reputation is destroyed, he is expelled from his firm, and he moves into the mysterious old apartment where the encounters begin.⁴ The plot then widens beyond the romance: the two discover that their friends fell in love and married, and that across the two timelines they can see the friends' tragic fate. To save them, He Zhengyu and Chen Jialan form an alliance and gradually fall in love in the process, which chief producer Yu Jinwei described as elevating romantic love into a broader warmth.⁷

Cast and characters

The series is led by 杨旭文 (Yang Xuwen) as He Zhengyu and 向涵之 (Julia Xiang) as Chen Jialan, with 曹征 (Cao Zheng) in a special starring role.¹ MyDramaList assigns the supporting roles as follows: 王萌黎 (Wang Mengli) as Wu Jirong, 徐凯鑫 (Xu Kaixin) as Mu Shiming, 于歆童 (Yu Xintong) as Chen Kexin, and 代高政 (Dai Gaozheng) as Jiang Shenghao.³ iQiyi's own cast listing names Yang Xuwen, Xiang Hanzhi, Wang Mengli, Xu Kaixin, and Cao Zheng.⁴

Identification and naming

The series is recorded by iQiyi as a 2022 self-produced (自制) mainland-China romance, fantasy, and urban drama in Mandarin.⁴ IMDb lists the original title as "Wo de mimi shiyou" (我的秘密室友) with a China internet release on October 13, 2022, and records the English title "Love in Time" as used in India, Singapore, South Africa, and the United States.² It should not be confused with other works using the English title "Love in Time" or the phrase 秘密室友; the 2022 iQiyi series is the one adapted from the Taiwanese drama Meet Me @1006.⁵

One naming discrepancy exists between Chinese- and English-language materials: official Chinese sources, MyDramaList, and Now TV render the male lead's name as He Zhengyu (何正钰), while iQiyi's international English trailer text renders it as "Ke Zhenyu" (and the female lead as "Cheng Jiale").¹^•³^•⁶

Production and release

Zhao Jintao (赵锦焘) directed the series.¹ Chief producer Yu Jinwei (于金伟) told China Youth Daily that script preparation began in 2019 and took about two years, with the "46-minute limited-time love" structure as the narrative anchor. The creative team researched law firms and case files, visited lawyers, and consulted senior journalism practitioners to ground the lawyer and investigative-reporter characters.⁷ The drama was an iQiyi commissioned (定制) series and Huaxi Taihe's first web drama.⁷

The release ran over ten consecutive days of daily updates: VIP members received 2 episodes daily at 20:00 and non-members 1 free episode daily, with a first day of 6 VIP episodes and 2 free.¹ TheTVDB confirms the first two episodes on iQIYI on October 13, 2022, with subsequent episodes daily.⁸ Internationally, Hong Kong's Now TV carries the series under the title "Love In Time" with all 24 episodes, confirming overseas licensing.⁵

Adaptation source

Now TV states that the series is adapted from the hit Taiwanese drama "1006's Tenant" (Meet Me @1006, 《1006的房客》), which shares the same-apartment-different-time premise.⁵ A specialist review likewise identifies it as a remake of Meet Me @1006.⁹ The producer interview says the parallel-time-space premise is not novel and that the team localized its structure and characterization; it does not name a Taiwanese source.⁷

By the numbers

The recorded iQiyi platform score was 9.6 for the 24-episode complete series.⁴ The cited MyDramaList listing recorded a score of 8.2 from 3,842 users, rank #1890, popularity rank #2039, and 13,178 watchers.³

How it compares with its contemporaries

2022 was a crowded year for Chinese time-travel romance: a specialist review groups Love in Time with Reset, The Heart of a Genius, Mr. Bad, and The Deepest Dream.⁹ Within that field its distinguishing device is cohabitation across time rather than correspondence: the review places it in the lineage of the films Il Mare and The Lake House, which use letters between past and future occupants of the same house, while Love in Time has its leads physically share the apartment for 46 minutes a night.⁹ The producer acknowledged that the parallel-time-space premise is not novel, and said the differentiation lay in localized structure and characterization.⁷

References

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