Yang Enyou Archives – CULTURE MIX

Review: ‘Malice’ (2025), starring Zhang Xiaofei, Huang Xuan, Teresa Li, Mei Ting, Chen Yusi, Zhang Zixian and Yang Enyou

July 5, 2025

by Carla Hay

Zhang Xiaofei in “Malice” (Photo courtesy of Niu Vision Media)

“Malice” (2025)

Directed by Yao Wenyi

Mandarin with subtitles

Culture Representation: Taking place in 2025 (with flashbacks to 2019), in Hangzhou, China, the dramatic film “Malice” features an-all Asian cast of characters representing the working-class and middle-class.

Culture Clash: When a young hospital nurse and her 10-year-old cancer patient fall from a hospital rooftop, an ambitious TV news anchor rushes to be first with exclusive reports about the investigation, which leads to dire consequences for several people involved.

Culture Audience: “Malice” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in suspenseful dramas about crime cases and how these cases are covered in the media.

Chen Yusi in “Malice” (Photo courtesy of Niu Vision Media)

“Malice” can get a little preachy in its messaging about social media gossip and news media exploitation. However, it’s still an engrossing, twist-filled drama about the mysterious case of a nurse and her 10-year-old cancer patient, who both fell from a hospital rooftop. It’s an impactful story and cautionary tale about how it’s important not to jump to conclusions without getting as many facts as possible.

Directed by Yao Wenyi and written by Zhang Zhen, “Malice” takes place in Hangzhou, China. The movie is set in 2025, but most of the story is a flashback to 2019. “Malice” has thought-provoking commentary about the fickleness of how people are portrayed as “heroes” and “villains” in the media, as well as the extreme and reckless things that some people in the media will do in order to increase their audiences.

“Malice” begins by showing part of what happened at Binjiang Third Hospital in Hangzhou, on the night on September 7, 2019. It’s a rainy night, and a 10-year-old female cancer patient named Jing (played by Yang Enyou) has escaped from her room. A 22-year-old nurse named Li Yue (played by Chen Yusi) chases after Jing, who was diagnosed with neuroblastoma.

Jing and Yue both end up on the building’s high-rise rooftop and fall down onto the ground at the same time after tussling with each other. As a result of this tragic fall, Jing dies instantly, while Yue is a coma. Was Jing’s death an accident or not?

Someone who insists that it’s murder is Jing’s distraught mother You Qian (played by Mei Ting), who says she saw Yue force Jing off of the roof during the tussle between Yue and Jing. Qian was several feet away when she saw the fall and couldn’t save Jing in time. Because Qian saw this incident while it was dark and raining, and she was several feet away, Qian’s eyewitness account could be doubted, but most people in the general public immediately believe her.

Before “Malice” reveals the layers of the story about how this tragedy changed certain people’s lives, the movie cuts to a scene in 2025, where a well-known TV journalist named Ye Pan (played by Zhang Xiaofei) is making a speaking appearance to college-age students in an auditorium. The subject is media manipulation. During the lecture, she shows a video of a college professor named Professor Parker who tied himself to a chair and immersed himself in a tank of water.

As the water tank filled up, Professor Parker did a livestream on social media to say he would let himself drown in the tank if he got 1 million “likes” on the livestream within 31 hours. As the deadline approached, Pan asks the students what they think the outcome would be if they knew the professor had been accused of sexual harassment. Most of the students predicted that the public would want the professor to drown in the tank.

Pan continues to play the video recording until it shows that 1 million views were reached. Professor Parker burst out of the tank and revealed that it was all a social experiment to gauge how far the public was willing to go to “punish” him because of this scandal. Pan goes on to explain that eventually there was video evidence to prove the professor really did commit sexual harassment, but his stunt was an extreme example of “cancel culture” on the Internet. “In this Internet age,” Pan says, “malice is at the fingertips.”

During this speaking appearance in the auditorium, one of the students asks Pan about her involvement in covering the case of Jing and Li Yue falling from Binjiang Third Hospital’s rooftop. And that’s when “Malice” flashes back to 2019 for most of the movie. It should come as no surprise that different versions of what happened on that rooftop caused controversy and condemnations, fueled largely by social media influencers and traditional news reporters.

In 2019, Pan was the chief anchor/executive producer of a public TV news outlet called Evening Channel. And her husband Liang Guan (played by Huang Xuan) was the police captain in charge of investigating this case. At most legitimate news outlets, Pan would not be allowed to investigate the case, due to her spousal conflict of interest. But viewers soon see that Evening Channel isn’t exactly an ethical news outlet.

Pan’s boss Xiao Baoqian (played by Zhang Zixian) is obsessed with making the Evening Channel the media outlet with the largest audience (especially on social media) for this news story and for all news stories. Baoqian gives explicit orders to Evening Channel employees—including a producer named Haozi (played by Lei Songran) and Pan’s intern Chen Chen (played by Teresa Li)—to let them know that Baoqian’s top priority is increasing Evening Channel’s viewership, not ethical journalism. Therefore, Baoqian has no qualms about Pan pursuing this news story, which she is eager to do because she also cares about getting as large an audience as possible.

Pan also has an interest in the case because not long before Jing died, Pan had done an Evening Channel feature story on Jing, Qian, and Jing’s stepfather Wei Qiang (played by Li Xiaochuan), because the family was soliciting donations for surgery that Jing needed. Pan doesn’t ask her husband to compromise his police investigation by telling her what he knows. She wants to do her own independent investigation. She decides to go undercover by pretending to be sick so that she can check into Binjiang Third Hospital as a patient.

While in the hospital, Pan interviews several hospital employees about Yue, who has been already portrayed in the media as a murderous villain. It doesn’t help that Yue’s social media videos and photos revealed that she was struggling with depression and self-esteem issues. Pan finds out from hospital employees that Yue wasn’t very well-liked by her co-workers because people thought she was bossy and rude.

Yue was also the subject of gossip because she was having an affair with Dr. Meng Hao (played by Pei Kuishan), an older married man who was also Jing’s doctor at the hospital. And then, Qian tells Pan an exclusive bombshell: Not long before Jing died, Jing took a photo of Dr. Hao and Yue in a secretive lovers’ embrace at the hospital and had showed the photo to Qian and other people at the hospital.

Yue found out about that Jing took this photo, which caused a scandal where Dr. Hao and Yue were disciplined and their professional reputations were tarnished. Dr. Hao’s wife also caused a scene when she showed up at the hospital and physically attacked Yue. After the scandal, Qian says that Yue told Qian that Yue was suicidal, and Yue made a comment that Yue was going to hell and taking Jing with her. Qian believes this is why she thinks Yue murdered Jing.

Pan puts all this information in a story as exclusive breaking news on Evening Channel. A responsible journalist would’ve done more investigating. However, Pan is feeling pressure to be first with a major story about the case, so she doesn’t do enough fact checking or more investigation. This carelenessness will come back to haunt her.

Pan’s story increases the audience for Evening Channel, which has hired social media influencers to boost the channel’s online coverage of the story. However, some things happen that put Qian’s version of events into doubt. And even more secrets are uncovered that aren’t immediately apparent and won’t be revealed in this review.

Here are some details that can be mentioned without revealing the movie’s biggest plot twists: A young man named Dao Ye (played by Li Jiuxiao), using the alias Lord Dao, comes forward to defend Yue. In an exclusive interview with Pan on live TV, Dao saying that Yue was actually a wonderful person who helped him through a difficult time when he was suicidal and dealing with his biploar disorder.

Dao also says that when Yue got romantically involved with Dr. Hao, it was because Dr. Hao lied to her by saying he was divorced. Dao is outraged that Yue is being called a murderer by many people in the general public. The camera does a close-up of his face durng his interview as he says: “So I ask the 9 million people watching this: ‘Are you really that righteous?'”

Yue’s single mother (played by Ai Liya), who has been keeping a loyal vigil by Yue’s bedside, also says that Yue is not guilty of this murder accusation. Yue’s mother claims that Jing’s mother Qian is lying because Qian has a personal grudge against Yue. And then, a hospital surveillance video is found that puts Qian under suspicion. A medical examiner report also places doubt on Qian’s story.

At first, Pan gets some public criticism for being quick to make Yue look guilty. But in the media feeding frenzy for this case, her journalistic blunders are temporarily forgotten, as Pan admits she could’ve been wrong because of the limited information that she had at the time. Pan and other people following the case move on to other theories and possible “villains,” with the court of public opinion ready to convict someone before it’s determined whether or not a crime took place.

“Malice” has some realistic satire with montages portraying social media influencers trying to jump on the bandwagon with videos of conspiracy theories, condemnations of possible suspects, and performances of original songs about the suspects. This type of media circus is very true of what happens in real life with high-profile crime investigations. “Malice” also has scathing depictions of how people jump to conclusions based on their own personal biases, such as some people on social media saying that Yue is probably guilty, just because Yue came from a broken home where her father abandoned the family.

The movie stumbles when it tries to incorporate Pan and her husband’s relationship in the story. Although it’s easy to see why “Malice” wanted to add this layer of complication to Pan’s investigation, her husband isn’t in the movie enough to make a huge impact on the story. In real life, it would be a much bigger deal for a well-known TV reporter to be married to the chief police investigator of a case that the reporter is covering.

“Malice” has a flashback to another controversial news story that Pan covered in her past. In this news story, Pan did an exposé of people who were paid to give their “clean” urine that could be used by people who wanted to cheat in drug testing that uses urine samples. A tragedy happened as a result of that news story. This tragedy leads to the most soap-opera-like parts of the movie.

“Malice” is by no means perfect. The editing can be choppy, and the pacing of the story is often rushed. The movie also crams in a plot twist near the end related to Pan’s past drug-testing story that comes across as gimmicky. However, the acting performances are well-done, even for some of the two-dimensional characters, such as corrupt boss Baoqian. “Malice” is a fictional film, but it’s also a cautionary tale about real life: People who consume exploitative news stories about scandals are just as complicit in the exploitation as the people who report these types of news stories.

Niu Vision Media released “Malice” in U.S. cinemas on July 4, 2025. The movie was released in China on July 5, 2025.

Review: ‘Always Have Always Will’ (2025), starring Peng Yuchang and Yang Enyou

March 27, 2025

by Carla Hay

Yang Enyou and Peng Yuchang in “Always Have Always Will” (Photo courtesy of Niu Vision Media)

“Always Have Always Will” (2025)

Directed by Liu Jie

Mandarin with subtitles

Culture Representation: Taking place in Nanjing, China, the dramatic film “Always Have Always Will” features an all-Asian group of people representing the working-class and middle-class.

Culture Clash: A suicidal man gets a new lease on life when a 9-year-old girl with brain cancer befriends him.

Culture Audience: “Always Have Always Will” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners and bittersweet stories about friendships between people with medical issues.

Peng Yuchang and Yang Enyou in “Always Have Always Will” (Photo courtesy of Niu Vision Media)

“Always Have Always Will” is a lovely film about an unlikely friendship between a suicidal man and a precocious 9-year-old girl who has brain cancer. This drama has excellent depictions of joy and heartbreak, with a standout performance from Yang Enyou.

Directed by Liu Jie, “Always Have Always Will” (not to be confused with the Chinese 2021 TV series of the same name) was written by Yang Fuzhi, Zhang Jiajia and Guo Tao. The movie takes place primarily in Nanjing, China. It’s where Song Yili (played by Peng Yuchang) lives and where he has decided he wants to die. The beginning of the movie shows that Yili has become so depressed, he wants to commit suicide.

Yili, who is in his late 20s or early 30s, is a divorced bachelor who has no friends and is unemployed. He has talented cooking skills, but the restaurant that he inherited from his deceased mother has been out of business for the past six months. Within the first five minutes of the movie, Yili is shown sitting in his parked car on a street as he is about to take an overdose of pills.

But as fate would have it, another car accidentally rams into Yili’s car. Yili wakes up in a hospital room, where has find out that was he only got some minor injuries as a result of this accident. Yili is also told that the driver of the other car takes full responsibility for the collision.

Yili isn’t exactly thrilled that his suicide attempt failed. He shows all the indications of being clinically depressed. Yili also secretly plans to try to kill himself again. Hs ex-wife Tian Meihua (played by Zou Yuanqing) briefly visits him at the hospital because she is the person who’s listed as his emergency contact. Before she leaves, she tells Yili that he should probably change his emergency contact information.

Someone comes into Yili’s life and will change his perspective. Yu Xiaoju (played by Yang Enyou) is a 9-year-old girl with brain cancer. She is staying at the same hospital and first meets Yili when she mischievously runs away from her unnamed mother (played by Lyu Xingchen) and hides in Yili’s hospital room. Xiaoju is friendly and has a zest for life.

Yili doesn’t want this kid to hang around him, but Xiaoju persists and ends up hiding in Yili’s van after he is discharged from the hospital. Xiaoju begs him to help him find her father, whom she has not seen in years. And so, Yili and Xiaoju end up going on a life-changing road trip. Xiaoju tricks Yili into thinking that her mother has approved of this trip.

On this road trip, Yili and Xiaoju have meaningful encounters with Yili’s former college roommate and a lovelorn businesswoman. Yili and Xiaoju meet up with Yili’s former college roommate Fang Kuaiqi (played by Wei Daxun), whose nickname is Diamond Seven, because Yili wants to borrow money from him. The businesswoman, whose name is Xu Jingjing (played by Li Xueqin) randomly meets Yili and Xiaoju when she needs a ride to an important business meeting.

Diamond Seven owns a small gift shop and hasn’t seen or spoken to Yili in a year because Yili cut off contact with him. Through conversations, it’s revealed that Yili, Diamond Seven and Yili’s ex-wife used to be roommates when they were college students. Yili’s divorce, the death of Yili’s mother and the failure of Yili’s restaurant business put Yili on a downward spiral of depression.

The reunion with Diamond Seven (who says Yili gave him that nickname) reveals that Yili wasn’t always pessimistic and grumpy. Diamond Seven and Yili have known each other since childhood. Diamond Seven says that Yili was the only student in their childhood who didn’t bully or taunt Diamond Seven for being disabled. Seeing his longtime friend again reminds Yili of the person he used to be when he was happy.

Xu Jingjing appears to be a confident and independent woman, but she’s distracted by problems in her love life. When she finds out something that is emotionally devastating to her, Yili sees how she copes with it. It inspires him to think about coping with his own problems in a different way from the self-pitying and self-destructive path that he had been taking.

Xiaoju ends up being Yili’s biggest inspiration, despite some rough patches in their friendship. All of the performances in “Always Have Always Will” are heartfelt and believable. But this movie would not work as well without the impressive talent of Yang, who gives one of the best child actor performances of the year. “Always Have Always Will” overflows with emotions and has a story that will stay with viewers long after the movie is over.

Niu Vision Media released “Always Have Always Will” in select U.S. cinemas and in China on March 21, 2025. The movie was released in China on March 8, 2025.

Review: ‘Lighting Up the Stars,’ starring Zhu Yilong, Yang Enyou, Wang Ge and Luo Jingmin

August 14, 2022

by Carla Hay

“Lighting Up the Stars”

Directed by Liu Jiangjiang

Mandarin with subtitles

Culture Representation: Taking place in 2019, in Wuhan, China, the comedy/drama film “Lighting Up the Stars” features an all-Chinese cast of characters representing the working-class and middle-class.

Culture Clash: A bachelor ex-convict, who has taken over his family’s mortuary/funeral business, has his life turned upside down when he ends up taking care of an orphaned girl.

Culture Audience: “Lighting Up the Stars” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in well-acted movies that skillfully blend drama and comedy in telling stories about families and unexpected changes in life.

Zhu Yilong and Luo Jingmin in “Lighting Up the Stars” (Photo courtesy of China Lion Film Distribution)

“Lighting Up the Stars” is a charming comedy/drama about the complications of love, getting second chances in life, and coping with loss. This gem of a movie presents a memorable story about an ex-con who becomes a father figure to an orphaned girl. It’s the type of subject matter that could have easily been mishandled by being too melodramatic or by being a silly slapstick comedy. However, “Lighting Up the Stars” depicts life’s ups and downs with a realistic balance, while the movie’s talented cast members bring emotional authenticity that’s highly commendable.

Written and directed by Liu Jiangjiang, “Lighting Up the Stars” takes place in Wuhan, China, in late 2019, at the beginning of the COVID-19 virus infections, when the city had not yet been placed under the lockdown that occurred in January 2020. Two very different strangers will soon find themselves in each other’s lives and will never be the same again. These two people are the movie’s central characters.

The movie’s first central character is an ex-convict named Mo Sanmei (played by Zhu Yilong), nicknamed San, a never-married bachelor in his 30s. San has recently gotten out of prison for assaulting the lover of his ex-girlfriend, who cheated on San with this lover. San’s widowed father (played by Luo Jingmin), who goes by the name Old Mo in the movie, thinks San is a disappointment to the family, which also includes San’s younger sister Mo Dajie (played by Zheng Weili). However, Old Mo is about to retire from owning and operating a mortuary/funeral business, and he wants San to take over this small business, which is literally a funeral home, since it’s where San lives after he gets out of prison.

The movie’s second central character is a precocious 4-year-old girl named Wu Xiaowen (played by Yang Enyou), who has been raised by her grandmother. Xiaowen doesn’t know if her biological parents are dead or alive. All she knows is that her parents are not in her life, and her grandmother is the only parental figure whom Xiaowen has had so far. In the beginning of the movie, Xiaowen tragically finds her grandmother deceased in the grandmother’s bed.

San and Xiaowen cross paths at the funeral for Xiaowen’s grandmother because the Mo family morturary/funeral business has been hired for the grandmother’s cremation and funeral. Xiaowen’s uncle (played by Chen Chuang) and his wife have taken temporary custody of Xiaowen. However, these spouses don’t really want permanent custody because they’ve been having marital problems, and they’re not prepared to take care of any children.

Shortly after the funeral, Xiaowen’s uncle and aunt stop by the Mo family’s funeral home and quickly tell San that they need him to look after Xiaowen for a few days. San says he’s not operating an orphanage (something he will say multiple times in the movie), but Xiaowen’s aunt and uncle don’t give him any time to turn down their request. The spouses leave Xiawoen, hand over some cash to San, and then exit in a hurry.

During the first day and night that San has to take care of Xiaowen, she meets his two employees, who are also San’s closest friends: cheerful and kind Wang Jianren (played by Wang Ge) and his practical-minded girlfriend Yin Baixue (played by Liu Lu), whose romantic relationship becomes more serious as the story continues. Jianren also lives at the funeral home. While the four of them are spending time together, San finds out that Xiaowen loves to play Mahjong, has a talent for drawing art, and that Xiaowen had a very close and loving relationship with her protective grandmother.

But the first night for Xiaowen at this funeral home gets awkward. In the cramped bedroom, there’s a bunk bed where San is sleeping on the bottom, while Xiaowen is sleeping on the top. He’s woken up by something dripping on his face. It’s Xiaowen urinating in her bed. San is immediately irritated because he thinks that this kid isn’t potty-trained. It turns out that Xiaowen is potty-trained, but she explains that she was afraid to use the toilet in the nearby bathroom because she thinks a statue placed in front of the bathroom is scary-looking.

Xiaowen’s bodily functions are used in another comedic scene, but these bodily function scenes are not exploitative. The scenes are a little crude, but the purpose is to poke fun at the adult characters who are not very prepared to care of a very young child. The only viewers who might be offended by these bodily function scenes are people who don’t want movies to ever acknowledge that human bodily functions exist for urination and defecation.

Xiaowen has not been given a proper explanation about her grandmother’s death. She thinks San is holding her grandmother captive in a funeral casket. And so, for a good deal of the movie, Xiaowen demands that San give her grandmother back to her. San has no patience or experience in taking care of children, so he gets annoyed and frustrated with Xiaowen, whom he sometimes calls a “little devil” who was sent to torture him.

Eventually, San abruptly tells Xiaowen the truth about her grandmother’s death after he gets tired of her accusing him of kidnapping the grandmother. (This conversation is already shown in one of the trailers for “Lighting Up the Stars.”) San and Xiaowen are outside, and he shows her the chimney of the Mo family crematorium. He then angrily tells Xiaowen that her grandmother was burned up, her body turned into “ash and smoke, drifted up into the sky, and disappeared.”

Xiaowen is understandably devastated by the news, especially since San told her in such a harsh way. But it’s a turning point in the relationship, because Xiaowen doesn’t want to live with her quarelling aunt and uncle. Xiaowen is given the choice to live with her aunt and uncle, or to live with San. She chooses to stay with San, whom she eventually begins to think of as a father figure. None of this is spoiler information, because these plot developments are already revealed in the trailers for “Lighting Up the Stars.”

The movie gets a tad predictable in showing how San eventually grows emotionally attached to Xiaowen. However, what’s less predictable and more realistic about “Lighting Up the Stars” is that the presence of an innocent child like Xiaowen doesn’t automatically erase San’s personal demons. He’s a very troubled person with a violent temper and a lot of emotional baggage.

For example, near the beginning of the movie, one of the first things that San does when he gets out of prison is make an unannounced and uninvited visit to his ex-girlfriend Hai Fei (played by Li Chun’ai), who was in the love triangle that resulted in San assaulting her lover, whose name is Laoliu. San is still very angry and bitter over the breakup with Fei, and he gets aggressive with her (he yells at her and pushes her) when he goes to her home.

Fei is still in a relationship with the Laoliu, who is in the home and sees San assaulting Fei. Laoliu and San then get into a physical fight, which results in Laoliu beating up San, who then leaves the home in humiliated defeat. Fei and Laoliu decide not to have San arrested. They just want him out of their lives. San still struggles with his heartbreak over losing Fei, and this grief comes out when he verbally lashes out at the people who are closest to him.

San also has a love/hate relationship with his father Old Mo. When San was a child, he had an older brother who died tragically. (The details of this death are revealed in the movie.) San feels as if Old Mo still loves the deceased brother more than Old Mo loves San. The movie hints that San’s inferiority complex partially explains why San became a troublemaker later in life, because he felt that he was going to be a disappointment to his family anyway.

San also has mixed feelings about taking over the family’s mortuary/funeral business. In the beginning of the movie, San plans to immediately sell the business. But because San is kind of a screw-up, something happens to the deed paperwork, so San reluctantly stays on to operate the business. Xiaowen ends up affecting San and the business in ways that he does not expect.

One of the best things about “Lighting Up the Stars” is that there isn’t a single scene that looks like a useless “throwaway” scene that was put in the movie just to fill up time. San and Xiaowen go on an emotional journey that is realistically fraught with discomfort, grief and irritation. But there’s also a tenderness to how their family relationship develops, as they both begin to understand that they are emotionally wounded people going through different kinds of emotional pain.

Zhu (as San) and Yang (as Xiaowen) absolutely shine in these roles, which are the heart and soul of “Lighting Up the Stars.” Zhu gives an admirable performance of a hardened ex-con who evolves into someone who finds out that he’s capable of having the type of parental love that he didn’t think he was capable of having. There’s also a subplot with San and his father that is very well-written and acted in a poignant way.

Yang, who is very talented at facial expressions, is an utter delight to watch, since she is the very definition of a “scene stealer.” Only people with the hardest of hearts won’t be charmed by her performance. Xiaowen can sometimes be bratty, but she’s also very smart, loving, and emotionally intelligent. And it’s not in an “only in a movie” way, but in a way where the Xiaowen character is convincing as someone with a fully formed personality.

“Lighting Up the Stars” has several twists and turns (some more unexpected than others) that will hold viewers’ interest for the entire story. The movie also has character details that are noticeable, but the movie doesn’t hit viewers over the head to notice these details. For example, when San and his father sit down, they both have a habit of bending one of their legs to prop up on the seat where they’re sitting. It’s a quirk that Xiaowen notices too, and it’s shown in a touching way at the end of the movie.

Overall, “Lighting Up the Stars” is a rare movie that is a well-made, live-action family film that can appeal to people from a wide variety of age groups and cultures—without being corny, preachy or unrealistic. The tearjerking scenes and the comedic scenes look natural, not manipulative. And the stellar performances by the cast members (especially Zhu and Yang) give “Lighting Up the Stars” an impressive resonance that will stay with viewers long after the movie ends.

China Lion Film Distribution released “Lighting Up the Stars” in select U.S. cinemas on August 5, 2022. The movie was released in China on June 24, 2022.