General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20266 min read

With You (最好的我们)

With You (最好的我们) is a 2016 Chinese youth campus web drama adapted from the novel of the same name by the writer Bayue Chang'an (八月长安), telling the story of ordinary student Geng Geng and top student Yu Huai, who become deskmates at Zhenhua High School and grow up together over three years of high school.¹ It was produced by iQIYI with the production company Xiaotangren Culture, premiered on iQIYI on April 8, 2016, and ran for 24 episodes of about 45 minutes each.²^•³ The series is widely credited with shifting Chinese youth drama away from melodramatic plots toward everyday school life, and it remains one of the highest-rated Chinese dramas of 2016.⁴

Key fact	Detail
Original title / English title	最好的我们 / With You²
Source	Novel by Bayue Chang'an, one of her "Zhenhua trilogy" (振华三部曲); serialized from 2010, published 2013⁵
Broadcast	iQIYI, April 8 to June 25, 2016; 24 episodes, 45 minutes each²
Main cast	Tan Songyun as Geng Geng, Liu Haoran as Yu Huai, Wang Yuexin as Lu Xing He²
Director / screenwriter	Liu Chang (director); Li Jia (screenwriter)¹
Reception	Douban score 8.9; total views of 3.34 billion across platforms per Entgroup data⁴
Film adaptation	2019 film directed by Zhang Disha, starring Chen Feiyu and He Landou; 110 minutes, Douban 5.1⁶

Spoilers

Story

Geng Geng, an ordinary girl from a second-tier city, enters Zhenhua High School, the best high school in her city, largely by luck in the entrance examination. She is seated next to Yu Huai, a confident top student, and the two become deskmates for three years. The drama follows her struggle to shed her "underachiever" status, her adjustment to a new stepmother and younger brother at home, and her quiet, unspoken feelings for Yu Huai, alongside friendships with classmates such as Jian Dan and Jiang Niannian (Beta).⁷^•⁸ After the college entrance examination Yu Huai disappears, and years later Geng Geng must choose between him and Lu Xing He, a classmate who has pursued her throughout.²

The two leads never confess their feelings to each other on screen, and about 80 percent of the scenes take place in the high school classroom. Director Liu Chang described the plot as deliberately ordinary: examinations, homework, scolding from teachers, and conversations with friends about crushes, told from Geng Geng's perspective.⁸

Production and adaptation choices

From novel to screen. Liu Chang, a Beijing Film Academy graduate whom the producers chose after seeing his eight-minute short film Li Wan, I Want to Be with You, joined the writing process himself. He considered the original novel too long and too sweet for television, so the adaptation added dramatic events and characters. The strict Dean Pan was invented for the series, the character Lin Yang was cut because he resembled Yu Huai, and the friend Zhou Mo was created as a counterweight.⁸

The character Lu Xing He does not exist in the novel. Liu Chang explained two reasons for adding him: the novel's most memorable lines are Geng Geng's inner monologues, which cannot be filmed at length, so Lu Xing He was given many of them to speak; and because Geng Geng and Yu Huai never become a couple in the end, the story needed a third presence to sustain the audience's anticipation across 24 episodes.⁸

Casting. Tan Songyun was not the first choice for Geng Geng; the investors had favored the more popular Ouyang Nana, who declined because she did not want to cut her hair short, and Tan failed an early audition before her agent's recommendation secured her the role shortly before shooting began.⁹ Liu Chang said that when Tan put on the school uniform and stood among real high school students, she was indistinguishable from them, and that her unspoiled girlish quality matched the character.⁸ Liu Haoran, then 18 and fresh from Detective Chinatown, was cast as Yu Huai; the director said he would choose him again "a hundred or a thousand times," noting the character's added habit of doing sudoku puzzles suited the actor.⁸ Tan was 25 at the time, seven years older than her co-star, but the age difference is not visible on screen.⁹ The production banned heavy makeup and colored contact lenses, filmed entirely on location in Qingdao, and used local high school students as extras.⁹

Reception and influence

The series premiered on April 8, 2016 with a weekly release of two episodes, and its click count had already passed 900 million by late May, with a Douban score of 8.4 at that point.⁸ By later counts it reached 3.34 billion total views across platforms (Entgroup data), a Douban score of 8.9, and a Weibo topic readership of 3.63 billion; it ranked in the top five web dramas of 2016 by views.⁴^•¹⁰

A turning point for the genre. Before 2016, Chinese youth dramas were dominated by what critics called the "three treasures" of abortion, going abroad, and fatal car accidents, plots far removed from ordinary school life.⁸ With You replaced these with period details that resonated with viewers born in the 1980s and 1990s: the placement test at enrollment, the Zhongxue Jiaocai Quanjie study guide that accompanied students for three years, the school choir competition, the physics competition, the corridor water room, and the blue-and-white school uniforms worn by everyone, including the school's most attractive students.⁸ The series established iQIYI's youth-drama brand, started a wave of youth-themed web dramas, and made its production company Xiaotangren Culture one of the prominent web drama companies; iQIYI and Xiaotangren next adapted Bayue Chang'an's My Huckleberry Friends (你好，旧时光).⁴

The drama also reached television: renamed Meet the Best of Us (遇见最好的我们), it aired on Zhejiang TV from April 10, 2018 in a late-night slot, where it outperformed new dramas in prime time.¹¹ On April 8, 2026, the tenth anniversary of its premiere, iQIYI held a danmu (bullet-comment) event on the series page, and cast members Wang Yuexin and Tan Songyun performed the series' theme song together at a concert in Nanjing.¹²

The 2019 film adaptation

A film version, the first of the "Zhenhua trilogy" to reach the big screen, was directed by Zhang Disha and starred Chen Feiyu as Yu Huai and He Landou as Geng Geng.⁵ It was released on June 6, 2019, ran 110 minutes, and compressed the story's ten-year span, covering the three high school years and the separation and reunion afterward.⁶^•¹³ It earned 172 million yuan in its first four days, though its release was accompanied by reports of suspected "ghost screenings" (sessions booked to 100 percent occupancy at odd hours), which the film's official account denied.⁴ The film's Douban score settled at 5.1 from about 120,000 ratings, far below the web drama, and many negative reviews cited viewers' attachment to Liu Haoran's and Tan Songyun's performances in the series.⁶^•¹³ Chen Feiyu won the Golden Lotus Award for new actor at the 11th Macau International Movie Festival for the role.⁶

Awards

The web drama received industry recognition including a Magnolia Award nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay for a Television Series (screenwriter Li Jia) at the 2019 Shanghai International TV Festival, a nomination for Liu Haoran as Best Actor in an Internet Drama at the 2016 China Television Drama Production Industry Association Awards, and iQIYI TV and Movie Awards "Promising Actor of the Year" jury awards for Wang Yuexin and Tan Songyun in 2016.¹⁴

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 Sp to Z

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

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