General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

See You Again (超时空罗曼史)

See You Again (超时空罗曼史) is a 2022 Chinese fantasy romance television series in which a 1930s Republican-era film star, shot on a film set, travels through time to the present day and falls in love with a struggling young screenwriter. It was produced by iQIYI with Chinese Miracle (中文奇迹), ran for 30 episodes, and starred Hu Yitian and Yukee Chen.¹^•²

Key fact	Detail
Original title / English title	超时空罗曼史; promoted abroad as "See You Again" (poster title "See You Again in Time")¹^•³
Run	Premiered September 5, 2022; 30 episodes; season finale September 17, 2022⁴
Lead cast	Hu Yitian as Xiang Qinyu (向秦羽); Yukee Chen as Jin Ayin (金阿银); with Wang Tianchen, Bai Bing, Liu Yitong, Dai Wenwen, Hei Ze, and Zhang Xuehan¹
Production	iQIYI and Chinese Miracle; chief producers Dai Ying and Zhu Kai; screenwriters Ling Qi, Wang Bing, Chen Zihao, and Duan Lanli²
Setting	1930s Republican-era Shanghai and 21st-century mainland China, linked by time travel¹
Platform slate	Announced in May 2022 for iQIYI's romance-focused "Love Theater" (恋恋剧场)³

Spoilers

Premise and characters

In the 1930s, Xiang Qinyu (向秦羽) is a celebrated Shanghai film star with wealth, fame, and looks. During a shoot he is unexpectedly shot and wakes up in the 21st century, where he meets Jin Ayin (金阿银), an unknown, low-tier screenwriter who happens to be his fan. The two, with sharply different personalities and backgrounds, end up living together, and a romance develops while Xiang Qinyu searches for the truth behind his shooting and the fate that brought him across time.¹^•⁵

The supporting cast plays characters around the couple: Wang Tianchen as Li Longda, a wealthy but unsuccessful young actor; Bai Bing as Chen Mumu, a producer at Jianghe Pictures; Liu Yitong as Ma Zehao, an awkward programmer; and Dai Wenwen as Taotao.⁵ A lookalike of Xiang Qinyu named Chi Yu becomes part of the mystery, since the question of whether the same killer took both men drives the suspense plot.⁶

Production and creative intent

The series was announced in May 2022 as part of iQIYI's "Love Theater" slate of romance dramas, alongside titles such as Love Is Full of Jiudaowan and Love Between Fairy and Devil.³ Credit for the direction is reported inconsistently: iQIYI's own page names Wang Feng as director,¹ while the Chinese listings site tvmao credits Huang Yingxiang.⁵

In interviews with the Beijing News, chief producer Zhu Kai and producer Liu Guimei explained the design. Zhu Kai described the show as a new form of love-and-dreams story combining light comedy with a suspense主线 of accidental time travel, joined to realistic human emotion. Liu Guimei said the suspense plot exists to test the couple's fate and to balance the sweetness of the romance, comparing the blend to balancing sweet and salty flavors in a dish, and said the production avoided forced "industrial sugar" in favor of sweetness arising from the leads' growing relationship.⁷

A reversed time-travel direction. Zhu Kai noted that audiences are familiar with modern people traveling to the past, but this drama sends a Republican-era man into the present, letting him view today's world through 1930s eyes. He called the setup anti-formulaic and argued that the Republican era's glamour and sense of legend give it appeal, and that unlike the usual power-fantasy route of such stories, the show emphasizes the progress of modern life and the collision of open and conservative ideas.⁷ The producers also framed the pairing of a star who wants lasting fame with an anonymous striver as a thematic question: the meaning of life lies not in immortal fame but in emotional connection with people and the world.⁷

Genre context

Time-travel romance is an established narrative pattern in Chinese fantasy drama, from the 2002 hit Love Through Different Times to the 2011 phenomenon Palace (Lock Heart Jade).⁸ Industry analysis places See You Again in the "time travel" branch of high-concept romance, where a large gap between the leads' eras, as with a Republican-era or ancient person arriving in the present, generates comedy from cognitive mismatch and cultural difference, in contrast to shows with gaps of only ten or twenty years that lean harder on suspense and joint crime-solving.⁹

Reception and performance data

The finale report from China Youth Network gave these figures as of its publication: a Maoyan heat value above 7,000; 130 appearances on the Weibo hot-search list; Weibo topic reads exceeding 3.5 billion, with the main topic above 980 million; the official Weibo account passing 30,000 followers; and Douyin topic plays above 1.7 billion.²

Critical response was mixed. A Sina Entertainment review of the premiere found the drama lacking realism and groundedness while calling it a typical sweet idol drama within the time-travel genre, and noted that similar mutual time-travel premises were common in Korean drama.¹⁰ A Douban reviewer praised the director's handling of pacing, noting that the first six episodes' comedy plants setups that pay off when the murder-mystery main plot accelerates from episode 7, and read the ending's "choice loop" Easter egg as hinting at timeline science-fiction elements beyond a simple fantasy romance.⁶ A pop-culture roundup described the show as a 2022 "dark horse" sweet drama, crediting the leads' chemistry while noting plot-logic and character-behavior weaknesses.¹¹

The finale leaves the couple separated across time, with an epilogue in which Jin Ayin hears Xiang Qinyu call her name again at the spot where he vanished.²

References

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