Birthdays and festive seasons are perfect excuses to gorge on good food, even for those who normally try to watch what they eat. Unfortunately for Huang Xiaoming, who’s on a strict diet for his current movie, he couldn’t enjoy any cheat days when he turned 43 last week, but that didn’t stop the film crew from throwing him a party anyway — albeit with some, um, adjustments.

Instead of getting him a normal cake made with flour, butter, and sugar, the director personally whipped up a “limited edition, no sugar, no fat, vegan, low-calorie” alternative consisting entirely of tofu. He even made the effort to decorate it with blueberries and flowers, and wrote the words “Wishing Xiaoming a happy birthday” using wasabi and drew a heart with what looks like ketchup.

One thing’s for sure: the director really doesn’t want Xiaoming to put on any weight until filming is over.

That’s not all Xiaoming had to ‘endure’ for the sake of a trim figure. That night, the cast and crew gathered for dinner and prepared longevity noodles for the birthday boy. However, when Xiaoming shared a video of the dish, it showed a bowl of plain soup without any noodles inside.

“People who want to lose weight should only drink soup on their birthday,” he wrote in his caption. Netizens left comments expressing their sympathy for the actor and urged him not to be so hard on himself.

On a much sweeter note (certainly sweeter than that tofu cake, we reckon), Xiaoming, who usually refrains from sharing much about his private life on his socials, got everyone going “aww…” when he posted a short audio clip of his three-year-old son, nicknamed ‘Little Sponge’, saying “Daddy, I love you!” and singing the birthday song to him. It’s seriously very cute.

“My son sang the birthday song to me for the very first time in my life,” he gushed.

One glaring absence from the celebrations, however, was Little Sponge’s mum and Xiaoming’s wife, Chinese actress Angelababy, who did dedicate a post to her hubby last year. The couple has been plagued with seemingly endless divorce rumours for a long time, so this could easily have fuelled any speculations that they are no longer together.

However, some level-headed folks pointed out that their lack of social media updates may not mean anything as they could have celebrated in private. After all, not everything needs to go on the ‘gram — or, in this case, Weibo — right?

Photos: A Cover-Up/Weibo, Huang Xiaoming/Weibo, Angelababy/Weibo