Happy New Year! We've got our first magazine cover of the year for Haoran in Grazia China (the last time he was on this one was over a year ago!). 

I know we're all getting a little antsy waiting on Haoran to choose his next project, but I do want to state here that something that's going a little under the radar is that the Chinese film/drama industry is currently going through a "hard winter", meaning there are many projects that have been pushed back/on hold or even canceled. Hengdian and the other film studios have also seen a sharp decline in the number of projects starting this year compared to previous years. You may say, but so-and-so is filming right now, but there are far more actors who are not filming right now than those that are right now. So - let's be patient!

In Chapter 3 of Liu Hao Ran's first book The Eye of the Storm, he talks about the moment when the wind in his life became a powerful storm - becoming an actor and embarking on a journey that he had never even thought about before, including filming a variety show, a movie, etc. - basically, he describes, through his eyes, what 2015 was like.

To give some additional context, after Liu Hao Ran debuted in Beijing Love Story, which premiered on Valentine's Day 2014, he vanished. C-netizens who watched the film then said that they thought at the time that the child who played the memorable Song Ge was a one-hit wonder, as he would disappear from the entertainment world for about a year. (Haoran was nominated for Best New Actor at the Beijing College Student Film Festival for the performance.) 

You can find Chen Sicheng's casting call for Beijing Love Story from 2013 still on his Weibo - he was scouring the various performing arts schools in Bejing to find his two young leads (Ouyang Nana ended up being casted by recommendation from a friend). Important thing to note - in 2013, Chen Sicheng had already completed the script for Detective Chinatown, but film studios wanted him to prove himself first with a "safer" film. To put it another way, when Chen Sicheng was casting for the role of Song Ge, he also had Qin Feng in the back of his mind. Song Ge was essentially an extended audition for Liu Hao Ran, and it's believed that when Haoran went back to school in 2014, he had already verbally agreed to star in Detective Chinatown next to A-lister Wang Bao Qiang. 

Reading this chapter, you might think, "Did he really need to go through all that effort in preparing for the gaokao? Did he really need to go to drama college considering he had already debuted?" We recently touched on this subject in a response on our CC, but I also wanted to add the decision to attend drama school was also due to two additional reasons: 1) Haoran himself was determined to finish high school on a strong note - he talks a little about his personality here, but basically there wasn't a scenario where he wasn't going to college. 2) His bosses, Chen Si Cheng and Tong Li Ya, were huge advocates of him going to school - specifically CAD, as they are both alumni. Chen Si Cheng personally helped Haoran prepare for the yikao portion of his exams.