The Real Xiamen Behind Hidden Love (偷偷藏不住): Filming Locations You Can Actually Visit

Hidden Love (偷偷藏不住) is set in a fictional city called Nanwu (南武). The city shares its name with the setting of First Frost — same author (Zhu Yi), same invented geography. But Hidden Love did not film in the same place First Frost did. First Frost shot in Chongqing. Hidden Love shot in Xiamen (厦门), the coastal port city in Fujian Province on China's southeastern coast.

The visual difference is deliberate. Chongqing is mountain-and-mist. Xiamen is ocean-and-campus. Both cities, in Zhu Yi's shared universe, stand in for different emotional registers of the same fictional Nanwu — warm and nostalgic in Hidden Love, harsh and melancholic in First Frost. The cities chosen to film each version were not interchangeable.

Here's what you're actually looking at when you watch Hidden Love.

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Why Xiamen?

Xiamen sits across a narrow strait from Taiwan. Its metropolitan population is around 5 million, making it a mid-tier Chinese city by scale — large enough to hold a major university and a modern business district, small enough that individual locations retain character. The city's history is marked by its late-Qing period as a treaty port, which left European-colonial architecture scattered through its neighborhoods, and its current role as one of China's five original Special Economic Zones, which layered glass-and-steel business districts on top of the older built fabric.

For drama production, this matters. Xiamen offers:

• Coastal geography — beaches, tidal paths, ocean views
• Colonial-era villas — the kind of character-filled buildings older generations of Chinese romantic cinema have used since the 1990s
• University campuses — specifically Xiamen University, one of China's most beautiful
• Walkable neighborhoods — not the sprawling car-dependent grid of newer Chinese megacities
• Strong light — subtropical climate means cinematographers work with longer-golden-hour days than in northern China
• Moderate scale — no overwhelming skyline to distract from intimate character shots

Hidden Love's visual signature — campus walkways, seaside boardwalks, warm light through window blinds, bike rides past low walls — is built on these geographic specifics.

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Xiamen University (厦门大学) — The Campus Heart

The drama's university scenes were filmed at or near Xiamen University (Xiàmén Dàxué, 厦门大学), usually shortened to Xiamen or XMU. Founded in 1921 by overseas Chinese philanthropist Tan Kah Kee, XMU consistently ranks among the top 20 universities in mainland China and among the most visually striking.

The campus stretches from the South Putuo Temple on one side to a beachfront on the other. Colonial-influenced architecture — red-tiled roofs, stone arcades, green courtyards — creates a postcard aesthetic that has made XMU one of China's most-filmed universities. Tourists routinely line up for the limited daily campus visits, which are ticketed during peak seasons.

Several of Hidden Love's university sequences were shot on or near campus. When Sang Zhi and Duan Jiaxu walk between classrooms, when she studies under a tree, when they meet at a campus gate — the backdrops are XMU or XMU-adjacent locations. The mood the campus conveys — orderly, scholarly, slightly old-world — is exactly the energy the drama wants for Sang Zhi's university years.

Fan tourism after Hidden Love's 2023 release has driven XMU to be even more crowded than before. If you want to visit, expect ticket competition and peak-season queues.

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Gulangyu Island (鼓浪屿) — The Postcard Moments

Just off Xiamen's coast, across a short ferry ride, sits Gulangyu (鼓浪屿) — a small island (about 2 square kilometers) that UNESCO designated a World Heritage Site in 2017. The island's streets are narrow and car-free. Its buildings are a mix of preserved colonial European villas from the 19th century and traditional southern Chinese architecture. It's known as "Piano Island" because of the unusual density of Western musical instruments historically imported there.

Hidden Love's most postcard-perfect exterior sequences — the ones that look almost impossibly picturesque — draw on Gulangyu. Cobblestone streets, bougainvillea cascading over white walls, old piano shops, red-tiled villas converted into cafes, ocean views from small hills — this is all Gulangyu.

The drama uses Gulangyu sparingly, but strategically. It's the visual language the production reaches for when it needs a scene to feel like it's happening outside ordinary time — a moment lifted out of Sang Zhi's regular life, preserved in amber.

For visitors, Gulangyu is accessible via a 20-minute ferry from Xiamen Island. Expect crowds year-round. Book ferry tickets in advance during holiday periods.

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Zengcuo'an (曾厝垵) — The Village-Within-A-City

On Xiamen Island itself, Zengcuo'an (曾厝垵) is a historic fishing village that has evolved into one of the city's most popular "cultural creative" neighborhoods. Narrow lanes, traditional southern Fujian architecture, small guesthouses, hand-lettered cafe signs, live-music venues — the aesthetic is intentionally half-preserved, half-curated.

Several of Hidden Love's quieter scenes — when the drama wants intimate, warm, non-institutional backdrops — were shot in Zengcuo'an. Street scenes where characters walk through narrow alleys. Small restaurants where they eat. The specific visual texture of "second-tier Chinese coastal-city neighborhood with personality" comes from here.

It's also worth knowing as a visitor: Zengcuo'an is the pedestrian-scale Xiamen. You can walk the entire neighborhood in a morning. Cafes, shaobing shops (烧饼, fire-baked flatbread), and handmade craft vendors fill the lanes.

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Xiamen's Beaches and Seaside Paths

Huandao Road (环岛路) — the ring road that circles Xiamen Island along its coast — provides many of the drama's ocean-backdrop scenes. Walking paths, cycling lanes, and small beaches line the road. The most-filmed segment is between the university and the White Egret (白鹭洲) area.

Hidden Love uses seaside sequences in a specific way. When the drama needs a scene to feel open, permission-granting, and outside the surveilled spaces of classroom and family home, it moves characters to the beach. The ocean in Chinese romance drama serves the same function as rural countryside in Western romance — a space where social rules relax because no institution is immediately enforcing them.

The Xiamen waterfront's specific character — calm, subtropical, not the cold dramatic surf of northern Chinese coasts — suits the drama's emotional register. Hidden Love is a warm drama. The ocean in Hidden Love is warm too.

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Zhongshan Road (中山路) — The Shopping District

Zhongshan Road (中山路) is Xiamen's main pedestrian shopping street — a roughly 1.2-kilometer stretch of late-Qing and Republican-era buildings that now house contemporary retail. The street's architecture — qilou (骑楼), or "riding buildings," where second-story rooms overhang the sidewalk on columns — is characteristic of southern Chinese cities that had significant Southeast Asian trade connections.

Hidden Love filmed several street-level scenes here. When characters move through urban spaces that feel dense and commercial but still human-scale, Zhongshan Road is often the backdrop. Night scenes in particular — when the qilou columns are lit from below — provide the drama with a distinct Xiamen aesthetic that wouldn't read the same shot anywhere else in China.

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The Sang Family Home — A Matter of Production Design

The Sang family home in the drama is a composite. Exterior shots reference a Xiamen residential compound; interior scenes were filmed on a constructed set. Fans who've searched for the specific exterior have identified locations in Xiamen's residential districts, but the production has not officially named any.

This is a common practice in C-drama: exterior establishing shots use real locations while interior sequences use built sets that match architecturally. The advantage is lighting and blocking control for emotional scenes. The cost is that fans can't always pilgrimage to the specific home they saw on screen.

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Why Xiamen Feels "Gentler" Than Chongqing

Comparing Hidden Love's Xiamen visuals to First Frost's Chongqing visuals shows two different versions of the same fictional Nanwu:

Xiamen (Hidden Love):

• Flat-to-gentle terrain
• Ocean views, coastal light
• Colonial and traditional low-rise architecture
• Subtropical vegetation, warm color palette
• Pedestrian neighborhoods, scalable spaces

Chongqing (First Frost):

• Vertical mountain city
• River views, fog, neon
• High-rise mixed with older industrial quarters
• Cooler color palette, more artificial light
• Stacked streets, vertigo-inducing geography

This is not an accident. Hidden Love is the warmer, softer drama — a decade-long crush that resolves happily, a protagonist whose emotional journey is essentially upward. Xiamen gives this story a visual home that reads warm, open, and safe.

First Frost is the harder, more ambivalent drama — a relationship rebuilt after trauma, a protagonist carrying unhealed wounds. Chongqing gives that story a visual home that reads cold, enclosed, and haunted.

Two cities. Two Nanwus. One fictional universe that needed both registers to tell its full story.

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Practical Visit Information

If you want to see Hidden Love locations on a single trip to Xiamen:

1. Xiamen University (厦门大学) — book campus visit tickets in advance; bring ID
2. Gulangyu Island (鼓浪屿) — ferry from downtown Xiamen; full half-day minimum
3. Zengcuo'an (曾厝垵) — walkable; mornings less crowded
4. Huandao Road (环岛路) — cyclable; rent a bike for 2-3 hours
5. Zhongshan Road (中山路) — evenings for the lit-qilou aesthetic

Xiamen is served by Xiamen Gaoqi International Airport (XMN) with direct flights from major Asian cities and limited international routes. Xiamen is also a major stop on China's high-speed rail network — four hours from Shanghai, three hours from Guangzhou.

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Watching Hidden Love is partly watching Xiamen perform Nanwu. The fictional city inherited its visual identity from a specific real city whose subtropical light, colonial architecture, and seaside geography all fed into Zhu Yi's invented home of the Sang family. Knowing that the place is real — that you could walk the same campus paths Sang Zhi walked, ride the same coastal road, eat in the same village-within-a-city neighborhood — changes how the drama reads on a second viewing. The warmth Sang Zhi feels isn't manufactured from nothing. It was borrowed, frame by frame, from a city that Chinese directors have been using to stand in for "the place you remember" for three generations.

Hidden Love (偷偷藏不住) is streaming on Netflix and Viki. Directed by Li Qingrong, starring Zhao Lusi and Chen Zheyuan. Adapted from Zhu Yi (竹已)'s novel.