India, Oct. 2 -- The Early Spring quickly became one of the Chinese dramas everyone was talking about this year. Jing Boran and Sun Qian's Luan Nian aka Luke and Shang Zitao aka Flora's complicated relationship kept viewers invested across 24 episodes, taking them from a boss-employee equation to a romance tested by years of separation. The drama, which premiered on August 26 on Netflix and Youku, also had plenty going for it outside the central love story, including its soundtrack and the title track sung by actor-singer Liu Yuning. But there was another detail that was easy to miss while following their story: the cities were almost characters in their own right.

The Early Spring was filmed across real locations. The production spent a...