I loved this. It starts out at a fairly leisurely pace (despite a tragic death) but then takes off with a bang so that the last fifty-three (53!!!) episodes seem to pass by much faster than the first twenty. What sold it to me is the Ming Lan character, who is much smarter and savvier than she appears at first -- plus it’s funny that she seems to be eating constantly. I have to say that it was difficult for me to connect the characters as adults to their child counterparts, with the exception of Xiaotao. I really liked Gu Tingye as a child, who seemed confident but not cocksure, principled, and mature beyond his years. I understand that his abusive family helped turn him into what seemed to be a vain, out-of-control, and immature adult and that he wasn’t really that way but I sometimes sympathized with others, including members of his family, when they found him irritating as hell. But then he would save Ming Lan in the nick of time or prove how smart and wily he was and I would forgive everything.