The Lychee Road

Dong Chengpeng's 2025 Chinese film is set in the Tang dynasty and follows a low-ranking official charged with delivering fresh lychees to the imperial court. The fruit spoils within days, the road runs for thousands of kilometres and the task is effectively impossible; Li Shande takes it as the last chance of his career. The subject is not the journey but the calculation of a small official forced to carry out an impossible order: how many horses, how many men, whose back it will fall on. How bureaucracy reduces a person to a problem of accounting sits at the centre, and the comedy comes from there. The period design is rich. The tone turns serious in the final section and the transition does not hold everywhere. Who it's for: viewers who like Chinese period films and satire of bureaucracy. Who it's not for: anyone wanting an action-driven historical film, or who will find the shifts of tone inconsistent.