Yang Mi Archives – CULTURE MIX

Review: ‘The Lychee Road,’ starring Da Peng, Bai Ke, Sabrina Zhuang and Terrance Lau

July 27, 2025

by Carla Hay

Da Peng in “The Lychee Road” (Photo courtesy of CMC Pictures)

Directed by Da Peng

Mandarin with subtitles

Culture Representation: Taking place during the Tang Dynasty (sometime during the 750s decade) in China, the dramatic film “The Lychee Road” (based on the 2022 novel “Lychees of Chang’an”) features an-all Asian cast of characters representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.

Culture Clash: A mid-level Bureau of Imperial Gardens inspector experiences various dangerous and frustrating obstacles after being tasked with delivering numerous fresh lychees from Lingnan to Chang’an (about 1,553 miles between the two cities) to the emperor for the emperor’s birthday, before the lychees become spoiled in about three days.

Culture Audience: “The Lychee Road” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in suspenseful dramas that are set in ancient times but have themes that are still relevant to today.

Sabrina Zhuang and Bai Ke in “The Lychee Road” (Photo courtesy of CMC Pictures)

“The Lychee Road” is a bittersweet drama that’s partly a race-against-time adventure and partly a piercing observation of corrupt bureaucracy. Da Peng gives a tour-de-force performance as a government inspector tasked with a difficult lychee delivery. Although some of the action scenes are far-fetched, “The Lychee Road” has many other scenarios that are entirely believable and well-acted. The movie also makes good use of comedic moments.

Written and directed by Da Peng, “The Lychee Road” is based on Ma Boyong’s 2022 novel “Lychees of Chang’an.” Shen Yuyue and Dai Siao are also credit as scriptwriters for “The Lychee Road.” (There’s also a 2025 Chinese limited drama TV series called “Litchi Road” that is based on the same book.) The movie takes place during the Tang Dynasty (sometime during the 750s decade) in China, with the story centered on travel to and from the capital city of Chang’an and the city of Lingnan, which are about 1,553 miles (or 2,500 kilometers) apart from each other.

“The Lychee Road” begins by showing a conspiracy plan being set in motion. A eunuch named Yu Chao’en (played by Chang Yuan), who is based on the real politician of the same name and is called Eunuch Yu in the movie, has been given orders to find a government employee who can be a scapegoat for an “impossible mission.” The employee has to deliver several fresh lychees (fruit that resembles red berries on the outside) to the emperor in time for the emperor’s birthday celebration on June 1. Failure to do so could be punishable by being exiled or worse.

The problem is that fresh lychees spoil after about three days, and the emperor specifically wants the lychees to come from Lingnan, which is 1,553 miles away from the emperor’s home base of Chang’an. Eunuch Yu knows that travel by horse and by ship would not be enough time to complete this mission, which is why he’s looking for a lower-level person who will get the blame when the mission is expected to fail. Eunuch Yu is seen meeting with a government director named Biao Biao (played by Yi Yunhe), who gleefully tells him that he knows the perfect person who can be set up for this doomed mission.

The targeted person is Li Shande (played by Da Peng), a middle-aged inspector who works in the Bureau of Imperial Gardens. In a voiceover narration, Shande is shown giving a brief summary of hs adult life: After graduating from college with a degree in mathematics, Shande joined the Bureau of Imperial Gardens at age 24.

Shande has been stuck in the ninth rank (the equivalent of middle management) for several years. He’s underpaid, overworked, and frequently bullied by his supervisors. Shande’s personal life is much happier: He has a very good marriage to his loyal wife Zheng Yuting (played by Yang Mi), and they are devoted parents to their adorable daughter Li Xiu’er, who is about 6 or 7 years old.

Shande is assigned the task and is told that he will get a job promotion to be the official lychee envoy if he completes this mission of delivering lychees to the emperor by June 1. (in real life, Emperor Xuanzong was the emperor of the Tang Dynasty during the period of time that this story takes place.) In addition to a higher salary, the job of lychee envoy would also give perks and prestige to Shande and his family. Shande signs a contract to make this delivery by the deadline.

However, Shande finds out later that he’s been conned: The contract that he signed said that the lychees would be preserved, not fresh. When he gets the contract after he’s signed it, he finds out that a tiny, hard-to-detect sticker with the word “fresh” was placed over the word “preserved” after he signed the contract. This altered contract makes it look Shande has agreed to deliver fresh lychees to the emperor by June 1.

Shande angrily confronts Biao Biao about this contract fraud. Biao Biao says that it’s too late for Shande to back out of the contract. Shande is despondent and in a panic because he knows this mission could ruin his life and the lives of his family members. On the day that Shande leaves for Lingnan, the June 1 deadline is 117 days away. He has this period of time to figure out how to deliver fresh lychees from Lingnan to Chang’an.

Before he leaves for the trip to Lingnan, Shande gets an unexpected visit from Du Shaoling (played by Zhang Ruoyun), the assistant military officer of the Right Guard Command. Shande confides in Shaoling about this big problem. Shaoling advises Shande to find a scapegoat if things go wrong. Shaoling also says that Shande could still possibly leverage the experience into being promoted to lychee envoy. Shande is given a Five Prefectures Pass to make his travels easier.

A skeptical and wary Shande travels by himself to Lingnan, in search of the perfect lychees. He encounters many challenges, including bad weather, wild animals, getting lost, and not knowing where to find lychees that would be suitable for the emperor. When he reaches Lingnan, he gets a hostile reaction from Lingnan’s governor He Qiguang (played by Lam Suet), who has some of his thugs rough up Shande because Qiguang doesn’t believe that Shande in on this mission for the emperor. However, Lingnan’s chief secretary Zhao Xinmin (played by Sunny Sun) intercedes and confirms that Shande’s mission is legitimate.

During Shande’s short visit with the governor, he sees an enslaved young man named Lin Yinu (played by Terrance Lau) being viciously whipped because Yinu has been accused of trying to make a partridge look like a peacock. After witnessing this cruelty, Shande has a private conversation with Yinu and tells Yinu that slavery is illegal in Chang’an. Shande promises that when Shande completes this mission, he will come back to get Yinu and take him to Chang’an, where Yinu can live as a free man.

Yinu, who has some speaking disabilities, ends up running away from his enslavers and following Shande around at an outdoor marketplace and other places where Shande goes. At first Shande is annoyed and thinks Yinu is being a pest. However, Yinu ends up becoming a very helpful assistant and later a trusted ally to Shande.

Just by chance, Shande meets a wealthy heir named Su Liang (played by Bai Ke, also known as White-K), who hears about this mission. Liang is up front in telling Shande that Liang’s father gives preference to Liang’s older brother Su Yan (played Wei Xiang) because their father doesn’t think Liang is a good-enough business. Liang wants to prove to their father that that he can do something successful in business. And so, Liang offers Shande the use of his merchant ship and crew to transport the lychees, with Liang covering all the expenses because Liang says he wants Shande to put in a good word for Liang with the emperor.

In exchange for this generous use of the ship and crew, Shande gives his Five Prefectures Pass to Liang, even though it’s illegal to give this pass to anyone else. Liang also tells Shande that the best lychees in Lingnan are at an orchard owned by a woman named Tong (played by Sabrina Zhuang), who inherited the property from her deceased parents. Tong is very outspoken and mistrustful of “city people.” However, Shande gains her trust, and she agrees to help him.

The rest of “The Lychee Road” shows how mathematician Shande uses some of his probability skills in testing various ways to get the lychees from Lingnan to Chang’an. Along the way, Shande encounters principal chancellor Yang Guozhong (played by Andy Lau), based on the real Yang Guozhong, who want Shande to fail in this mission. Shande also runs into a lot of bureaucractic complications when he has to get several approvals from various government ministry departments.

“The Lychee Road” has certain ideas for Shande’s problem that have more logic than other ideas. Several bureaucrats and other people in power don’t want Shande to succeed because they know that if he succeeds, he will look smarter than they are, and they will be exposed as mediocre or incompetent hacks. Shande’s physical abilities and psychological stamina are put to the ultimate tests.

Shaoling appears from time to time, mostly to give advice to Shande. He tells Shande that the three most important things that he learned as an official are (1) Going with the flow; (2) Sharing the benefits; and (3) Lifting each other up. However, Shande finds out that no amount of diplomacy or sycophancy can get a corrupt enemy to change if that enemy is rotten to the core.

With mostly solid direction and a well-paced screenplay, “The Lychee Road” has some memorable adrenaline-charged action sequences and moments of levity. Shande learns the value of teamwork with people of different backgrounds. The friendship that develops between Shande and Liang is thoroughly enjoyable to watch. Shande becomes like a father figure to Yinu. Shande also earns the respect of Tong.

Although all the cast members in “The Lychee Road” show talent in their roles, Da’s performance as Shande is the heart and soul of the movie. Shande goes through every possible emotion in “The Lychee Road,” which takes viewers on this wild and engrossing journey with Shande. The most underdeveloped character is Shande’s spouse Yuting, who is a stereotypical “worried wife of the hero” for most of her screen time.

The movie’s gorgeous cinematography is stunning, while the visual effects and production design are also above-average. And although there’s plenty of high-octane action and life-threatening things that happen in the story, “The Lychee Road” has some of its greatest impact in the quieter scenes, where guilt and emotional devastation are harder to recover from than physical wounds and injuries.

CMC Pictures released “The Lychee Road” in select U.S. cinemas on July 25, 2025. The movie was released in China on July 18, 2025.

Review: ‘Nothing Can’t Be Undone by a HotPot,’ starring Yu Qian, Ailei Yu, Yang Mi, Li Jiu Xiao and Tian Yu

May 11, 2023

by Carla Hay

“Nothing Can’t Be Undone by a HotPot”

Directed by Ding Sheng

Mandarin with subtitles

Culture Representation: Taking place in an unnamed city in China, the comedy film “Nothing Can’t Be Undone by a HotPot” features an all-Asian cast of characters representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.

Culture Clash: Four mahjong players decide to rob a corrupt government official and find more trouble than they anticipated.

Culture Audience: “Nothing Can’t Be Undone by a HotPot” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners and wacky crime capers full of plot holes and irritating characters.

Tian Yu in “Nothing Can’t Be Undone by a HotPot” (Photo courtesy of China Lion Film Distribution)

“Nothing Can’t Be Undone by a HotPot” actually becomes “undone” fairly early on in the movie when it becomes obvious that this is a story that is jumping from one messy plot hole to the next. This crime comedy about four mahjong players who get caught up in theft and kidnapping has too many gimmicky distractions. Manic editing, bizarre sound effects, and constant shouting from the movie’s characters add up to very little substance.

Directed by Ding Sheng, “Nothing Can’t Be Undone by a HotPot” was co-written by Ding, Hang Wang and Xiaonan Xiu. The movie takes place in an unnamed city in China at a small venue called the Nine Cakes Theater, which offers unusual entertainment: Customers can play mahjong while watching a stage play.

Jiu Bing (played by Yu Qian) is the elderly owner of the Nine Cakes Theater, where he lives with his wife, who does the cooking for the theater. Bing is a mahjong enthusiast. It’s one of the few bright spots in his life because his livelihood is in jeopardy: The neighborhood where the Nine Cakes Theater is located is about to be demolished for a new property development.

The government director in charge of this deal is Fu Yu (played by Tian Yu), who took bribes from business owners with the promise to stop this demolishment. However, It was all a lie from Director Fu. He kept all of the bribes, which were paid in cash. Bing lost about ¥200,000 (which is a little more than $28,000 in U.S. dollars in 2024) in this bribery scam.

Bing has connected with three other mahjong enthusiasts online. In one of the last nights that he expects the Nine Cakes Theater to be open, he has invited these three other mahjong enthusiasts to play mahjong with him in the theater’s back storage room. It will be the first time that all four of them will be meeting each other in person.

The four mahjong players don’t know each other’s real names. When they meet in person, they think up code names for each other. Bing gives himself the code name Nine Cakes. Fa Cai (played by Ailei Yu) is a gruff ex-convict in his 30s who gives himself the code name Fortune. Yao Ji (played by Yang Mi) is a seemingly mild-mannered and shy woman in her 20s who gives herself the code name Chicken. Qi Wan (played by Li Jiu Xiao) is a restless delivery guy in his 20s who gives himself the code name Seventy Thousand.

The four mahjong players start talking about their lives. Bing reveals how Director Fu stole his money and says he wants to get his money back. Bing has assumed that Director Fu hasn’t spent the money, in order to avoid suspicion, and probably has the money stashed somewhere near Director Fu.

It just so happens that Bing recently found out through a plumber friend who did some work in Director Fu’s home that Director Fu has a hidden compartment in his bathroom. Ex-convict Cai says he’s good at picking locks, so he says they should break into Director Fu’s home, find the cash, and steal it. Bing insists he only wants to get the ¥200,000 that was stolen from him, and if they find more cash, the other three players can do what they want with it.

Faster than you can say “ridiculous and sloppy segue,” somehow Cai, Ji and Wan are able to sneak into Drector Fu’s home, find the cash in the bathroom, and leave without getting caught. The movie never explains how they knew no one would be home. As already revealed in the movie’s trailer, this motley crew ends up finding a lot more than money in Director Fu’s hidden stash of cash in a suitcase.

They bring the suitcase full of cash back to the theater storage room. But there’s another suitcase from Director Fu’s home that ends up in the storage room and yields an even bigger surprise: the body of Director Fu. But (as already revealed in the trailer), he’s not dead but unconscious. The four mahjong players decide to hold him captive until they figure out what to do next, which involves a lot of yelling and arguing with manipulative Director Fu and each other.

As they are panicking and getting to fights in the storage room, a play is taking place on stage. A running joke in the movie is an actor from the play (who’s in elaborate costumes and masks) keeps interrupting the shenanigans that happen in this storage room. As the four mahjong players get deeper into some crime problems, they try to hide their misdeeds from the actor who keeps wanting to see what’s going on in the storage room.

“Nothing Can’t Be Undone by a HotPot” seems like a “make things up as you go along” movie. It actually doesn’t come as much of a surprise that all four of these strangers have a unique connection to Director Fu besides this robbery and kidnapping. The “reveals” are all very contrived and never convincing. The acting performances in this movie can best be described as “shrill” and “obnoxious”—as is the movie’s musical score that is more likely to cause annoyance than build suspense. The cadence of the movie is deliberately off-kilter in unappealing ways.

“Nothing Can’t Be Undone by a HotPot” gets its title because it’s something that Wan/Seventy Thousand says a few times in the movie. During this long-winded ordeal in the storage room, a hotpot of food (with lingering closeups of the food) is always cooking nearby. Even if you haven’t seen the trailer, you can easily predict what happens when a pot of hot food is in a room with quarreling people. “Nothing Can’t Be Undone by a HotPot” might have been better as a short film, but it still wouldn’t erase the movie’s problems of having a flimsy plot with hollow characters.

China Lion Film Distribution released “Nothing Can’t Be Undone by a HotPot” in select U.S. cinemas on May 10, 2024. The movie was released in China on May 1, 2024.

Review: ‘A Writer’s Odyssey,’ starring Lei Jiayin, Yang Mi and Dong Zijiang

February 18, 2021

by Carla Hay

“A Writer’s Odyssey”

Directed by Lu Yang

Mandarin with subtitles

Culture Representation: Taking place in China, the fantasy/action film “A Writer’s Odyssey” features an all-Asian cast representing the middle-class, wealthy and criminal underground.

Culture Clash: A desperate man, who’s been searching for his missing daughter for the past six years, gets caught up in a murder plot and an alternate world that are connected to what a young novelist is writing for his latest book.

Culture Audience: “A Writer’s Odyssey” will appeal primarily to people who like immersive, eye-catching action films that have twist-filled plot developments.

Yang Mi in “A Writer’s Odyssey” (Photo courtesy of CMC Pictures)

It’s not just the graphic violence that makes the fantasy/action film “A Writer’s Odyssey” geared to adults. At the core of a movie is a time-traveling mystery that is wrapped up and eventually unraveled in layers, making it a somewhat convoluted story that very young children will have a hard time understanding. But the movie is worth a watch for anyone who’s up for a story that examines issues of grief and revenge, while taking viewers on a frenetic ride in this otherworldly enigma.

To fully understand “A Writer’s Odyssey” (directed by Yang Lu), it helps to know in advance that the movie switches back and forth between two different worlds. In the “real world,” a disillusioned and bitter man named Guan Ning has been on an unrelenting quest to find his daughter Tangerine, who disappeared six years earlier when she was 6 years old. Meanwhile, a young author named Kongwen Lu (played by Dong Zijian) has been writing the latest book in his fantasy novel series, which follows a heroic teenager who is also named Kongwen.

Kongwen Lu’s writing come to life in the movie, and it’s all presented as an “alternate world,” where monsters exist, there are armies of robot-looking mutants, and humans look and act like warriors—or at least potential warriors. In this “alternate world,” whatever Kongwen Lu writes happens on screen. But there comes a point in the movie where what happens in the “alternate world” has an effect on people in the “real world” and vice versa.

“A Writer’s Odyssey” opens up with a thrilling action scene that introduces Guan Ning as the protagonist who finds himself unexpectedly caught between these two worlds. He’s lying in wait in a mountainous area and throws a rock at the windowshield of a freight truck driving below on a winding road. The rock breaks the window, which causes the truck to crash. There are two men sitting in the front of the truck, and they suffer minor injuries.

While the driver is briefly unconscious, Guan Ning shouts to the other man about his missing daughter Tangerine: “Six years ago in Liaoyuan, you kidnapped her. Where is she?” Guan Ning and the thug end up fighting. The driver then regains his consciousness and hits Guan Ning with a pipe.

Guan Ning runs to the back of the truck, opens the door, and sees several children locked in cages, but Tangerine is not one of them. The kids in the cages all look to be about 6 to 8 years old, while Tangerine would be about 12. And the next thing you know, police arrive, the two thugs run off, and Guan Ning is arrested for suspected kidnapping and child trafficking. He protests and says he’s an innocent father who’s looking for his daughter.

In another big fight scene, Guan Ning manages to escape from the back of the police squad car. He runs to the nearest car on the street. It’s a black car that has a mysterious woman dressed in black leather in the driver’s seat. Even though Guan Ning has never met her before, she knows who he is. Her name is Tu Ling (played by Yang Mi), and she tells Guan Ning: “You’re our valued business partner.”

Tu Ling also tells Guan Ning that she knows that his life revolves around finding his missing daughter. She comments that she also knows that he used to be a banker, but after Tangerine disappeared, he quit his job, sold his house, and divorced his wife. Guan Ning is suspicious of Tu Ling, who offers to hide Guan Ning from the police if he will do some favors for her.

Guan Ning is reluctant, but then Guan Ning says that she has information that could lead to him finding his daughter. And so, Guan Ning goes with Tu Ling, who takes him further down a rabbit hole of secrets and lies. It’s enough to say that whenever a mysterious stranger makes an offer that’s too good to be true, it usually is.

Tu Ling has a ruthless boss named Li Mu who has a murderous agenda that’s eventually revealed. Meanwhile, the alternate world created by Kongwen Lu begins to collide more with the real world until it becomes obvious that there’s a power struggle going on that involves the supernatural. Meanwhile, Guan Ning is forced to make a decision that could mean the difference between sparing someone’s life and Guan Ning getting killed, or killing someone else and saving his own life.

All of the actors do moderately good jobs in their performances, but Lei Jiayin has to show the widest range of emotions. There are some predictable flashback scenes of Guan Ningin in happier times with Tangerine, with these scenes blatantly tugging at viewers’ heartstrings. The mystery behind her disappearance isn’t handled in a completely predictable way, which makes “A Writer’s Odyssey” more than a typical fantasy/action flick.

“A Writer’s Odyssey” is based on Xuetao Shuang’s book “Assassinate a Novelist.” There are seven people credited with writing the movie’s screenplay: Xuetao Shuang, director Yang Lu, Shu Chen, Xiaocao Liu, Haiyan Qin, Lu Yang and Yang Yu. With all these screenwriters for the movie, the plot sometimes seems overstuffed with ideas and bloated by “too many cooks in the kitchen” syndrome. And the total running time for the movie (130 minutes) is a little too long.

It’s obvious that a great deal of this movie’s budget was spent on visual effects, which are intricate and sometimes stunning but won’t be winning any awards. The violence is often bloody and cruel, while the choreography works very well in most of the action scenes. At times, “A Writer’s Odyssey” looks like a big-budget video game, but the movie has more humanity than a video game in handling the mystery at the center of the story. Underneath the brutal fight scenes and dazzling visual effects is a story of how a parent’s love for a child can lead someone to go to extreme and desperate actions.

CMC Pictures released “A Writer’s Odyssey” in select U.S. cinemas on February 12, 2021, the same day that it was also released in mainland China, Australia, New Zealand, Fiji and Singapore.