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Review: Missing Persons (失蹤人口) (2020)
This drama was interesting but unfortunately it was an unfinished story ☹ I only knew this when I reached the end, as questions are mostly unanswered. Nonetheless, I thought the slow sense of mystery was interesting and I wouldn’t even say that I wasted my time because the build up had me intrigued. Even without a conclusion, I felt like it was a decent place to finish. We don’t have all the answers but we have some hints. Not sure if it’s a good or bad thing that I could do with or without a second season. I wouldn’t recommend this unless you’re okay with an unfinished product, and can enjoy the vibes.
Spoilers.
Story
So honestly I am still trying to figure out what happened but here’s my theory.
There was some research being done on people with special abilities in Unit 826. Lu Min wanted to go but was held back, falsely accused by her colleagues. Her colleagues did go but died within a year, except Xu Weihong, though that was unknown until the end. Officially, Xu Weihong was dead. Xu Weihong seemed to be working on something to gather other people with those abilities to the valley.
The valley was a mysterious one, where time seems fluid. People like Lu Min and Xu Weihong grew younger. Chen Jian entered the valley in 2014 and somehow bumped into the rest of the crew in 2015.
Li Qiao and Tao Ziyou were involved in a car crash together. Lu Min’s ex-husband crashed into a colleague that Zou Zhiming was working with undercover, who went on to threaten and become entangled with Chen Jian and his dad. Ma Hongxin was planning to bribe/extort Chen Jian of money. Zhang Guangbei was picked up by Xu Weihong posing as a truck driver who crashed, leading Zhang Guangbei to go to the valley. I want to say that Xu Weihong orchestrated some of these to gather the people to the valley. He definitely did for Zhang Guangbei, and in a scene of Tao Ziyou near the end showing him before the car crash, he was followed by a suspicious hooded man. A lot of what was shown was abstract which I don’t mind, because it gives us more material to think about.
Lu Min and Chen Jian also knew more than the others. Lu Min at least knew about the mysterious time properties of the valley. She showed up to help the victims after the bus crash, but I think she wasn’t actually on the bus, and was just nearby in the valley, as she was going there to look for clues about Unit 826. As for Chen Jian, we knew that he was supposed to have arrived in 2014. It’s uncertain how he would have known more about the valley, but he was shown meeting Xu Weihong, so presumably he was recruited by Xu Weihong first and was told about some of the valley properties. That would also be why Chen Jian had the medicine to keep the characters awake.
Meanwhile the characters themselves did have their own personal journeys, which I did find interesting. I was browsing the MDL website and found that some people actually didn’t like them, but I personally enjoyed them. I also liked the nonlinear story telling between the characters’ pasts and the happenings in the valley. The happenings in the valley weren’t even told in a linear way.
In the present timeline after the bus crash, the characters started to grow more suspicious of one another. Ma Hongxin was soon found dead, and we found he was eventually killed by Chen Jian, who said that he shouldn’t have been there, and I think it was because he wasn’t one of the individuals identified by Xu Weihong. Then the characters found the prairie area through a tunnel from the valley. On the other side, they grew suspicious of Chen Jian. They assumed Chen Jian killed Tao Ziyou, who had been falling ill. Very suspicious of Chen Jian, Li Qiao killed Chen Jian. As Lu Min started falling ill, she told Li Qiao and Zou Zhiming that they needed the medicine. Eventually it was Xu Weihong who left her with medicine. When the group were feeling better, they dug up the graves of Lu Min’s colleagues and found some reports about the research that was being done in Unit 826. It seemed that the people identified could withstand higher and lower temperatures than the average person.
The season ended without a next step, which is maybe why I don’t feel super unsatisfied. Liu Changqing was watching a news report about a satellite I think. The voice overlay was someone who seemed to be a brother telling him that he had to achieve something to become their father’s son. It’s assumed that the brother was a test subject. Liu Changqing was one of the people identified (or maybe it’s his twin/clone brother) so it tracks that a visage of him was drawn by Xu Weihong. But what the goal is, that’s still to be determined. Maybe it’s to finally finish the research.
So what does this all mean? I think that there was government testing done on Unit 826. It does appear that Lu Min was held back and that her colleagues got to go, though it’s unsure of why she was framed. Xu Weihong was the only one to have lived. Now I did mention the superpowers before, but I recall that it was also referred to as a kind of bacteria. So maybe Lu Min’s colleagues were infected, and only Xu Weihong survived. Xu Weihong continued the research and gathered possibly candidates to the valley. They might have had a preexisting gene or they were more susceptible to the bacteria. But why they were gathered, that’s unknown. I think Liu Changqing will have to play a bigger role if the story does continue. He was the man who was questioning if people had gotten into car accidents, so he probably had some knowledge of Xu Weihong’s activities.
It's not very clear, but it’s almost a little more fun that way. Even without a definite conclusion, I had fun watching this show. And as I mentioned, I also enjoyed the stories of the characters as they fleshed them out and made me more sympathetic to them even if they weren’t the best people.
Production
This drama was well directed in my opinion. Like I said I enjoyed the nonlinear story telling but I think the director had to be very careful about linking them up so that we wouldn’t be confused. The acting was alright, most of the main cast of younger folks are not top billing actors and it kind of showed sometimes, but the script did a lot of the work for them too.
Characters
Li Qiao
Li Qiao was a singer. I think she was the character for which we had the most character development from an emotional standpoint. Every episode we found out a little more about her backstory that gave her an extra dimension. First, she was a famous singer. Then, she was a famous singer who was dating her manager. Then, she was a famous singer who rejected her boyfriend’s proposal. Then, she was a famous singer who rejected her boyfriend’s proposal because she was still hung up over her ex who had died. Then, she was a famous singer who rejected her boyfriend’s proposal because she was planning to rekindle her relationship with her ex. Then, she was a famous singer who rejected her boyfriend’s proposal but realized she was better off with him because her ex was more of a scumbag than she thought. And then, she was a woman who let that ex die. Nonetheless, she still decided to break up with her boyfriend/manager, and she was going to take the trip to Chongqing on that bus to have some time for herself. That was when she got into the bus accident.
Qiao Lin was Li Qiao’s ex-boyfriend and clearly a big part of her life. They were childhood friends and they became boyfriend and girlfriend. Li Qiao even got a tattoo of her boyfriend’s logo as a sign of her devotion to him. As Qiao Lin started moving up in the music world, he was in talks with a music company headed by Zhou Jun. However, Qiao Lin seemed to not really be into it. My memory’s a bit fuzzy but he was kind of in and out of it, and he later told Li Qiao that he wanted to run a bar instead. He eventually ran away. I think he’d borrowed money or resources from Zhou Jun, so that was why Li Qiao was in contact with Zhou Jun, to kind of wrap up his loose ends. Instead, Zhou Jun liked Li Qiao’s singing and wanted to sign her. He even held an entire music competition as a way for Li Qiao to gain exposure. And after she did, she became a famous singer after she sang a version of Red River Valley with lyrics she had penned with Qiao Lin. And she started dating Zhou Jun. Zhou Jun later proposed to Li Qiao but she had walked out, not wanting to reject him in front of an audience.
Years later, Qiao Lin showed up. Li Qiao was still in love with him, and she was willing to give it all up to run away with him. Qiao Lin admitted that while they were apart, he had gotten married to a rich woman, but that he was in the process of divorce so to wait for him. Li Qiao was enraged. She had dated Zhou Jun because she thought Qiao Lin and her were over. But to Qiao Lin, she was nothing special. It’s hard to explain, but it definitely felt like a betrayal to Li Qiao who loved him so much that she had his tattoo permanently on her body. While they were still in their fighting phase, Qiao Lin asked Li Qiao to get married, but she wasn’t considering it. She realized that Qiao Lin was a flippant guy. And she also said before that she realized that her feelings for Zhou Jun were probably more sincere than she had initially believed, now knowing what a scumbag Qiao Lin was. Qiao Lin got into a car crash during that ride. He begged Li Qiao to save him, but she just left the car.
When Li Qiao got to the valley, she was in survival mode, but she was also in trust no-one mode. She was suspicious of everyone, and became very paranoid of Chen Jian especially since she saw him acting suspiciously with Tao Ziyou, who eventually died. After Li Qiao shot Chen Jian, she realized she’d become a murderer, and she told Zou Zhiming to turn her in if they made it out of the valley alive. My interpretation was that Li Qiao felt that she’d killed Qiao Lin, only that she was never arrested for it. She wanted to be arrested for Chen Jian’s murder, because she felt so much guilt over Qiao Lin.
The first time I saw Li Qiao’s tattoo, I thought it was a tattoo of her own name. LQ instead of QL. Only after did we find out that it was a tattoo of Qiao Lin’s logo. I felt a bit like Li Qiao and Qiao Lin were maybe two sides of a coin. More figuratively than literally. Maybe two parts of Li Qiao’s identity. When Qiao Lin skipped town, Li Qiao took his spot and became the company’s artist in his place. But she never forgot him. And maybe she felt immense guilt over leaving him to die because she saw him as such a big part of who she’d become.
I did find Li Qiao the most interesting character of the group because we’d seen so much of her, and her feelings were explored the most. That being said I wonder if there is any more room for her character to grow for the time being if they get into more of the mystery as she seems to be stuck in survival mode when in a scary situation. But she seemed to have started trusting Zou Zhiming. Maybe there will be space for her to understand her guilt as well as whether she ever loved Zhou Jun.
Tao Ziyou
Tao Ziyou, known as Dayou, was a thief. He posed as a delivery man with a colleague. In the evenings, he liked watching a livestreamer. One day, they broke into an apartment that Tao Ziyou recognized as that of his favourite livestreamer. She had come home when they were still in her apartment and they threatened her so that she wouldn’t rat them out. However, his colleague decided he didn’t like the risk, so he wanted to mow her down with his car, but Dayou tried to take control of the wheel, causing his colleague to crash (into Qiao Lin and Li Qiao’s car). His colleague died, but at least he could save the streamer he liked.
Tao Ziyou had a stutter, and he was visibly a bit nervous when first in the valley. He was really creeped out when Liu Changqing asked him if he’d ever been in a car accident. Later on, he split off with Li Qiao to investigate upstream, only to come across Ma Hongxin’s dead body.
Later when they went to the prairie area, Dayou started to fall ill. But when he woke up one time, his stutter had disappeared. Maybe it was because of the medicine that Chen Jian had given him. Nonetheless, Dayou ultimately died. Of what, we’re not quite sure. At one point, I think Dayou had seen Chen Jian’s camera (which was Ma Hongxin’s camera), showing that he’d had a confrontation with the reporter which made Dayou suspicious and afraid of Chen Jian. I don’t remember how Dayou died, if it was a lack of medicine. But it was his death that put Li Qiao on Chen Jian’s tail.
Zou Zhiming
Zou Zhiming was a cop. He was in a relationship with a piano teacher. They seemed to be having some relationship issues. I think he didn’t like that she brought her clients to their home to teach, and he later found a flyer so that she could teach at a local music school instead. I want to say it was because it hindered his ability to do his undercover work but I might have been misinterpreting.
Anyway, Zou Zhiming was a cop going undercover. All I remember was that he was in talks with a drug dealer who later bumped into Chen Jian. There was also conversations between Zou Zhiming and a superior at his work that he admired. He wanted to be the subordinate of that superior, but was rejected. Instead, he was told to go for some training and when he returned, he’d be moved to another position. I believe him taking the bus trip was to go to his training. (I might be wrong on this one)
When in the valley, Zou Zhiming was more interested in finding out the truth. He was more willing to take some risks, which made sense given his role as an undercover cop. Zou Zhiming was more willing to trust Lu Min. But due to him and Li Qiao both being in the dark, he grew suspicious of Chen Jian. Chen Jian was banking on Zou Zhiming not shooting him because Zou Zhiming was a cop and would be more careful about these things, especially if he wanted to know the truth, but Li Qiao eventually shot him.
Like Li Qiao, Zou Zhiming was also saved by the medicine from Lu Min (which came from Xu Weihong) and they were all brought to the underground bunker to watch the video on the dark matter and the experiments.
Lu Min
We learned of Lu Min’s story later in the episode and I thought the reveal of her older and younger selves had me pretty excited.
As a youth, Lu Min worked at a lab. Her other colleagues were four women and a man who was her sweetheart, Xu Weihong. The lab worked on a top secret investigation and after the completion, they thought they were going to the famed Unit 826. However, Lu Min was held back as there were accusations that she had not handled the evidence correctly. An officer revealed to her that all of her colleagues had attested to not having seen her handle results correctly. Lu Min was shocked at the thought of Xu Weihong ratting her out. But she could do nothing but accept her fate.
For the next decades, she worked at a hospital which was kind of a downgrade and everyone knew that. She had married a man and divorced him. We found out that her ex-husband not only came to her when he needed money, but would also sometimes get drunk and beat her, presumably the reason why Lu Min left him in the first place. It appeared that the ex-husband was hung up over Lu Min’s lingering feelings for Xu Weihong (perhaps that was why Lu Min could never fully love him).
Lu Min regularly looked at a picture of her younger self, though we didn’t know it until her name was revealed. I had assumed that Lu Min was her daughter but no, it was her younger self and it seemed she often drugged herself so she would dream of Xu Weihong.
In the present, Lu Min was in the valley and we realize that she’s actually her younger self, which would have demonstrated the time warping qualities of the valley. She first showed up after the bus crash where she was helping the victims. It was odd at the time that she was so active, but it made sense as I realized that she was not a passenger on the bus, and had just been in the valley.
At various points, Lu Min and Chen Jian had secret conversations. They were both investigating the valley so they would help each other. Lu Min was helping Chen Jian keep the others in the valley.
In the end, Lu Min was falling ill and told the others that they needed Chen Jian’s medicine. Li Qiao and Zou Zhiming couldn’t find it. Xu Weihong showed up to Lu Min in a drowsy state with the medicine, the password being her birthday. When Lu Min awoke and found the medicine she realized it wasn’t quite a dream and then went on to save herself and the others. She then took them to the bunker to show them what she did know, of Unit 826 investigating dark matter that might have led to some mutations to humans.
Lu Min was an interesting character as she had both an emotional story line (relationship with Xu Weihong and her ex-husband, betrayal, regret), as well as a part in the mystery (having a connection with Unit 826). Her relationship with Xu Weihong will probably play a bigger role if the story does continue. I can see Lu Min and Xu Weihong having differing opinions on what they should do with research and them having to part ways because of it though.
Chen Jian
Chen Jian was a mysterious man who showed up in the valley. He thought he’d arrived in 2014 when the others were in 2015. As well, Li Qiao had seen a news report earlier of Chen Jian’s dad grieving over his son’s disappearance and so she thought he was very suspicious.
In the past, Chen Jian’s father had gotten into some bad debt and would leave Chen Jian to live with his debtors as collateral. Though Chen Jian was a filial son who longed to be with his father, he was sometimes a liar and a cheat. He had a talent for changing his voice and would sometimes imitate his father’s debtor to sneak out, and would also imitate adults for his friends who wanted to get out of things. One time, Chen Jian snuck out as a child to be with his father but his father brought him back and punished him for lying to leave. It seemed that due to the beating, he suffered a lot of blood loss, and it was Lu Min who injected him with blood. That is likely how Chen Jian became one of the people with abilities.
As an adult, Chen Jian and his dad were involved in some shady business. It seemed that his dad continued to be in money trouble. They were going to meet with reporter Ma though I’m not quite sure what the deal was going to be. On the way back, they ran into a man who had been crashed by a car (driven by Lu Min’s ex-husband). The man threatened Chen Jian’s father with a gun, making him take him to a safe location instead of to the police station or hospital. That man was a drug dealer that Zou Zhiming was working with. Chen Jian overpowered the drug dealer. When he saw that his father struggled to kill him, Chen Jian instead killed him. They then drove to the valley to dump the body, but Chen Jian fell over a cliff and his dad couldn’t pull him back up. That scene was very curious. Chen Jian’s father was trying to pull him up, but when it got too hard, he apologized and let go. Did he want to kill his son, or was he truly too weak to save him? It’s hard to say. He went on TV later to grieve for his missing son. Was that because he truly missed him and hoped he was alive, or was it so that people would find his body? And why would he want to kill his son? Was it so that the murder wouldn’t be tracked back to him? Chen Jian’s relationship with his father was very complex because he longed to be with his father, despite the fact that he knew his father was constantly using him because of his own mistakes (debts). Despite his father seeming kindly, if I try to look at it objectively, he wasn’t a great dad. But who can blame Chen Jian for wanting a relationship with his father?
Chen Jian arrived in the valley and it seemed he was the first to speak to Xu Weihong. He was in the room with all of Xu Weihong’s pictures so that was how he knew who needed to be in the valley and who needed to go.
Li Qiao thought Chen Jian suspicious because of his supposed disappearance, but his phone did show 2014, and pushing him into the well wouldn’t solve things, so they pulled him out. However we later found out that he killed Ma Hongxin, only saying that he shouldn’t have been there. Later when we got to the prairies, he was injecting Dayou with the medicine. As well, Dayou had seen the camera which showed that Chen Jian had seem Ma Hongxin prior to his death which made Dayou afraid. Li Qiao caught on to that and became suspicious of Chen Jian and that was why she worked herself up to kill him.
Until the end, Chen Jian insisted that he was there to help them, but he did a really bad job of explaining himself. He was shot in the leg by Li Qiao and he floated down the river. That being said, I wouldn’t be surprised if he came back as a character because he just had so much backstory. Plus, he was just shot in the leg and not a vital organ. So there’s a chance lol.
Ma Hongxin
Ma Hongxin was a reporter. We knew that he would pretend to be drunk and then show people that he had really important people backing him up and use that to get favours or money from people. One time he was caught by someone who seemed dangerous. He was drugged and then put on the bus to be taken to Chongqing. While he was drugged, he bumped into Zhang Guangbei at the bus station and tried to get help but his captor prevented that. Ma Hongxin had arrived in the valley in the bus crash.
Ma Hongxin had run off on his own, and Dayou and Li Qiao later found him dead which frightened them. We later found out that Chen Jian killed him because he was not one of the individuals identified by Xu Weihong. Maybe he had to be killed because he already knew too much. But his death would set in motion some of the tension between the group and lead to the deaths of a few characters (Dayou and Chen Jian).
Liu Changqing
Liu Changqing was a curious character who I still haven’t grasped. At first, he was the creepy guy asking people if they’d gotten into car crashes before. Both Li Qiao and Dayou had been in the same car crash. Chen Jian had seen a car crash caused by Lu Min’s ex-husband. And Zhang Guangbei was in a car crash too. But in terms of actual people being in a car crash, that was only Li Qiao and Dayou. Liu Changqing had questioned them about it, and then confirmed with them that the other person had deserved to die (Qiao Lin and Dayou’s colleague). Li Qiao was freaked out because she hadn’t come to terms with the death of her ex-boyfriend. She didn’t agree when Liu Changqing said that the other person had deserved to die, despite Li Qiao having made that decision to leave him to die.
To be honest I lost track of Liu Changqing. Early on I would get him mixed up with Ma Hongxin. But he didn’t really play a big role in the valley. Only distinctly remember him at the end watching the broadcast of the satellite. As well, it seemed that he was the son of the man that Ma Hongxin had spoken with, who had jumped from a building right after their talk. It appears that Liu Changqing and his brother were trying to achieve something for their father. Their father had asked Ma Hongxin to take the bus, perhaps to interrupt whatever Xu Weihong was working on. But Liu Changqing will probably be explained in further detail if this show has a continuation.
Zhang Guangbei
We saw Zhang Guangbei as an old man in a senior home. He was trying to get to Chongqing though I don’t think we quite know why.
His story started all the way back in the Republican era. His parents were spies. His father was trying to rise in the ranks at a bank to get an in with the Japanese. However, before he and his pregnant wife were to return to the northeast of China, which they had hoped to take back for China, Guangbei’s father was killed in an altercation, and his mom had to return alone. Due to his parents’ background, Zhang Guangbei knew morse code and was able to understand some of the morse signals that could be heard in the valley.
Though Zhang Guangbei arrived at the valley through another car accident (one that was caused by Xu Weihong), he was supposed to be there as one of the individuals identified by Xu Weihong.
Themes
I felt that regret was a common theme among many of the characters. Li Qiao regretted letting Qiao Lin die. Dayou regretted not having done something to protect the streamer he admired. Zou Zhiming regretted how his relationship with his partner suffered. Maybe regret isn’t quite the word but maybe a sense of helplessness about the past. I think all of these characters wished they could go back in time to fix things. And that’s kind of the opportunity that Lu Min and Xu Weihong have. They’ve literally grown younger, and have more time to figure out what’s happening. Perhaps the odd one out is Chen Jian, who never seemed to regret his actions. He was a very action-oriented man, who saw what was in front of him and would figure out how to deal with it. He accepted that he had to do dirty things for what he wanted. Maybe that was why he didn’t remain in the valley. Or maybe he will, who knows.
There’s also the whole mystery of Unit 826 and the valley. What does research about supernatural beings have to do with a valley being time warped? Are these both a cause of dark matter or some other space phenomena? Inquiring minds want to know.
Overall
Normally I’d be quite annoyed that this season ended on a cliffhanger but I think it was because the ending was fuzzy enough that I didn’t feel like I was given just enough to keep me wanting. I was given not enough so I’m not wanting lol. But I again I want to emphasize that the build up of the mystery with the non-linear story telling and the jumps between present and flashbacks were very compelling and I enjoyed those quite a bit.
Spoilers.
Story
So honestly I am still trying to figure out what happened but here’s my theory.
There was some research being done on people with special abilities in Unit 826. Lu Min wanted to go but was held back, falsely accused by her colleagues. Her colleagues did go but died within a year, except Xu Weihong, though that was unknown until the end. Officially, Xu Weihong was dead. Xu Weihong seemed to be working on something to gather other people with those abilities to the valley.
The valley was a mysterious one, where time seems fluid. People like Lu Min and Xu Weihong grew younger. Chen Jian entered the valley in 2014 and somehow bumped into the rest of the crew in 2015.
Li Qiao and Tao Ziyou were involved in a car crash together. Lu Min’s ex-husband crashed into a colleague that Zou Zhiming was working with undercover, who went on to threaten and become entangled with Chen Jian and his dad. Ma Hongxin was planning to bribe/extort Chen Jian of money. Zhang Guangbei was picked up by Xu Weihong posing as a truck driver who crashed, leading Zhang Guangbei to go to the valley. I want to say that Xu Weihong orchestrated some of these to gather the people to the valley. He definitely did for Zhang Guangbei, and in a scene of Tao Ziyou near the end showing him before the car crash, he was followed by a suspicious hooded man. A lot of what was shown was abstract which I don’t mind, because it gives us more material to think about.
Lu Min and Chen Jian also knew more than the others. Lu Min at least knew about the mysterious time properties of the valley. She showed up to help the victims after the bus crash, but I think she wasn’t actually on the bus, and was just nearby in the valley, as she was going there to look for clues about Unit 826. As for Chen Jian, we knew that he was supposed to have arrived in 2014. It’s uncertain how he would have known more about the valley, but he was shown meeting Xu Weihong, so presumably he was recruited by Xu Weihong first and was told about some of the valley properties. That would also be why Chen Jian had the medicine to keep the characters awake.
Meanwhile the characters themselves did have their own personal journeys, which I did find interesting. I was browsing the MDL website and found that some people actually didn’t like them, but I personally enjoyed them. I also liked the nonlinear story telling between the characters’ pasts and the happenings in the valley. The happenings in the valley weren’t even told in a linear way.
In the present timeline after the bus crash, the characters started to grow more suspicious of one another. Ma Hongxin was soon found dead, and we found he was eventually killed by Chen Jian, who said that he shouldn’t have been there, and I think it was because he wasn’t one of the individuals identified by Xu Weihong. Then the characters found the prairie area through a tunnel from the valley. On the other side, they grew suspicious of Chen Jian. They assumed Chen Jian killed Tao Ziyou, who had been falling ill. Very suspicious of Chen Jian, Li Qiao killed Chen Jian. As Lu Min started falling ill, she told Li Qiao and Zou Zhiming that they needed the medicine. Eventually it was Xu Weihong who left her with medicine. When the group were feeling better, they dug up the graves of Lu Min’s colleagues and found some reports about the research that was being done in Unit 826. It seemed that the people identified could withstand higher and lower temperatures than the average person.
The season ended without a next step, which is maybe why I don’t feel super unsatisfied. Liu Changqing was watching a news report about a satellite I think. The voice overlay was someone who seemed to be a brother telling him that he had to achieve something to become their father’s son. It’s assumed that the brother was a test subject. Liu Changqing was one of the people identified (or maybe it’s his twin/clone brother) so it tracks that a visage of him was drawn by Xu Weihong. But what the goal is, that’s still to be determined. Maybe it’s to finally finish the research.
So what does this all mean? I think that there was government testing done on Unit 826. It does appear that Lu Min was held back and that her colleagues got to go, though it’s unsure of why she was framed. Xu Weihong was the only one to have lived. Now I did mention the superpowers before, but I recall that it was also referred to as a kind of bacteria. So maybe Lu Min’s colleagues were infected, and only Xu Weihong survived. Xu Weihong continued the research and gathered possibly candidates to the valley. They might have had a preexisting gene or they were more susceptible to the bacteria. But why they were gathered, that’s unknown. I think Liu Changqing will have to play a bigger role if the story does continue. He was the man who was questioning if people had gotten into car accidents, so he probably had some knowledge of Xu Weihong’s activities.
It's not very clear, but it’s almost a little more fun that way. Even without a definite conclusion, I had fun watching this show. And as I mentioned, I also enjoyed the stories of the characters as they fleshed them out and made me more sympathetic to them even if they weren’t the best people.
Production
This drama was well directed in my opinion. Like I said I enjoyed the nonlinear story telling but I think the director had to be very careful about linking them up so that we wouldn’t be confused. The acting was alright, most of the main cast of younger folks are not top billing actors and it kind of showed sometimes, but the script did a lot of the work for them too.
Characters
Li Qiao
Li Qiao was a singer. I think she was the character for which we had the most character development from an emotional standpoint. Every episode we found out a little more about her backstory that gave her an extra dimension. First, she was a famous singer. Then, she was a famous singer who was dating her manager. Then, she was a famous singer who rejected her boyfriend’s proposal. Then, she was a famous singer who rejected her boyfriend’s proposal because she was still hung up over her ex who had died. Then, she was a famous singer who rejected her boyfriend’s proposal because she was planning to rekindle her relationship with her ex. Then, she was a famous singer who rejected her boyfriend’s proposal but realized she was better off with him because her ex was more of a scumbag than she thought. And then, she was a woman who let that ex die. Nonetheless, she still decided to break up with her boyfriend/manager, and she was going to take the trip to Chongqing on that bus to have some time for herself. That was when she got into the bus accident.
Qiao Lin was Li Qiao’s ex-boyfriend and clearly a big part of her life. They were childhood friends and they became boyfriend and girlfriend. Li Qiao even got a tattoo of her boyfriend’s logo as a sign of her devotion to him. As Qiao Lin started moving up in the music world, he was in talks with a music company headed by Zhou Jun. However, Qiao Lin seemed to not really be into it. My memory’s a bit fuzzy but he was kind of in and out of it, and he later told Li Qiao that he wanted to run a bar instead. He eventually ran away. I think he’d borrowed money or resources from Zhou Jun, so that was why Li Qiao was in contact with Zhou Jun, to kind of wrap up his loose ends. Instead, Zhou Jun liked Li Qiao’s singing and wanted to sign her. He even held an entire music competition as a way for Li Qiao to gain exposure. And after she did, she became a famous singer after she sang a version of Red River Valley with lyrics she had penned with Qiao Lin. And she started dating Zhou Jun. Zhou Jun later proposed to Li Qiao but she had walked out, not wanting to reject him in front of an audience.
Years later, Qiao Lin showed up. Li Qiao was still in love with him, and she was willing to give it all up to run away with him. Qiao Lin admitted that while they were apart, he had gotten married to a rich woman, but that he was in the process of divorce so to wait for him. Li Qiao was enraged. She had dated Zhou Jun because she thought Qiao Lin and her were over. But to Qiao Lin, she was nothing special. It’s hard to explain, but it definitely felt like a betrayal to Li Qiao who loved him so much that she had his tattoo permanently on her body. While they were still in their fighting phase, Qiao Lin asked Li Qiao to get married, but she wasn’t considering it. She realized that Qiao Lin was a flippant guy. And she also said before that she realized that her feelings for Zhou Jun were probably more sincere than she had initially believed, now knowing what a scumbag Qiao Lin was. Qiao Lin got into a car crash during that ride. He begged Li Qiao to save him, but she just left the car.
When Li Qiao got to the valley, she was in survival mode, but she was also in trust no-one mode. She was suspicious of everyone, and became very paranoid of Chen Jian especially since she saw him acting suspiciously with Tao Ziyou, who eventually died. After Li Qiao shot Chen Jian, she realized she’d become a murderer, and she told Zou Zhiming to turn her in if they made it out of the valley alive. My interpretation was that Li Qiao felt that she’d killed Qiao Lin, only that she was never arrested for it. She wanted to be arrested for Chen Jian’s murder, because she felt so much guilt over Qiao Lin.
The first time I saw Li Qiao’s tattoo, I thought it was a tattoo of her own name. LQ instead of QL. Only after did we find out that it was a tattoo of Qiao Lin’s logo. I felt a bit like Li Qiao and Qiao Lin were maybe two sides of a coin. More figuratively than literally. Maybe two parts of Li Qiao’s identity. When Qiao Lin skipped town, Li Qiao took his spot and became the company’s artist in his place. But she never forgot him. And maybe she felt immense guilt over leaving him to die because she saw him as such a big part of who she’d become.
I did find Li Qiao the most interesting character of the group because we’d seen so much of her, and her feelings were explored the most. That being said I wonder if there is any more room for her character to grow for the time being if they get into more of the mystery as she seems to be stuck in survival mode when in a scary situation. But she seemed to have started trusting Zou Zhiming. Maybe there will be space for her to understand her guilt as well as whether she ever loved Zhou Jun.
Tao Ziyou
Tao Ziyou, known as Dayou, was a thief. He posed as a delivery man with a colleague. In the evenings, he liked watching a livestreamer. One day, they broke into an apartment that Tao Ziyou recognized as that of his favourite livestreamer. She had come home when they were still in her apartment and they threatened her so that she wouldn’t rat them out. However, his colleague decided he didn’t like the risk, so he wanted to mow her down with his car, but Dayou tried to take control of the wheel, causing his colleague to crash (into Qiao Lin and Li Qiao’s car). His colleague died, but at least he could save the streamer he liked.
Tao Ziyou had a stutter, and he was visibly a bit nervous when first in the valley. He was really creeped out when Liu Changqing asked him if he’d ever been in a car accident. Later on, he split off with Li Qiao to investigate upstream, only to come across Ma Hongxin’s dead body.
Later when they went to the prairie area, Dayou started to fall ill. But when he woke up one time, his stutter had disappeared. Maybe it was because of the medicine that Chen Jian had given him. Nonetheless, Dayou ultimately died. Of what, we’re not quite sure. At one point, I think Dayou had seen Chen Jian’s camera (which was Ma Hongxin’s camera), showing that he’d had a confrontation with the reporter which made Dayou suspicious and afraid of Chen Jian. I don’t remember how Dayou died, if it was a lack of medicine. But it was his death that put Li Qiao on Chen Jian’s tail.
Zou Zhiming
Zou Zhiming was a cop. He was in a relationship with a piano teacher. They seemed to be having some relationship issues. I think he didn’t like that she brought her clients to their home to teach, and he later found a flyer so that she could teach at a local music school instead. I want to say it was because it hindered his ability to do his undercover work but I might have been misinterpreting.
Anyway, Zou Zhiming was a cop going undercover. All I remember was that he was in talks with a drug dealer who later bumped into Chen Jian. There was also conversations between Zou Zhiming and a superior at his work that he admired. He wanted to be the subordinate of that superior, but was rejected. Instead, he was told to go for some training and when he returned, he’d be moved to another position. I believe him taking the bus trip was to go to his training. (I might be wrong on this one)
When in the valley, Zou Zhiming was more interested in finding out the truth. He was more willing to take some risks, which made sense given his role as an undercover cop. Zou Zhiming was more willing to trust Lu Min. But due to him and Li Qiao both being in the dark, he grew suspicious of Chen Jian. Chen Jian was banking on Zou Zhiming not shooting him because Zou Zhiming was a cop and would be more careful about these things, especially if he wanted to know the truth, but Li Qiao eventually shot him.
Like Li Qiao, Zou Zhiming was also saved by the medicine from Lu Min (which came from Xu Weihong) and they were all brought to the underground bunker to watch the video on the dark matter and the experiments.
Lu Min
We learned of Lu Min’s story later in the episode and I thought the reveal of her older and younger selves had me pretty excited.
As a youth, Lu Min worked at a lab. Her other colleagues were four women and a man who was her sweetheart, Xu Weihong. The lab worked on a top secret investigation and after the completion, they thought they were going to the famed Unit 826. However, Lu Min was held back as there were accusations that she had not handled the evidence correctly. An officer revealed to her that all of her colleagues had attested to not having seen her handle results correctly. Lu Min was shocked at the thought of Xu Weihong ratting her out. But she could do nothing but accept her fate.
For the next decades, she worked at a hospital which was kind of a downgrade and everyone knew that. She had married a man and divorced him. We found out that her ex-husband not only came to her when he needed money, but would also sometimes get drunk and beat her, presumably the reason why Lu Min left him in the first place. It appeared that the ex-husband was hung up over Lu Min’s lingering feelings for Xu Weihong (perhaps that was why Lu Min could never fully love him).
Lu Min regularly looked at a picture of her younger self, though we didn’t know it until her name was revealed. I had assumed that Lu Min was her daughter but no, it was her younger self and it seemed she often drugged herself so she would dream of Xu Weihong.
In the present, Lu Min was in the valley and we realize that she’s actually her younger self, which would have demonstrated the time warping qualities of the valley. She first showed up after the bus crash where she was helping the victims. It was odd at the time that she was so active, but it made sense as I realized that she was not a passenger on the bus, and had just been in the valley.
At various points, Lu Min and Chen Jian had secret conversations. They were both investigating the valley so they would help each other. Lu Min was helping Chen Jian keep the others in the valley.
In the end, Lu Min was falling ill and told the others that they needed Chen Jian’s medicine. Li Qiao and Zou Zhiming couldn’t find it. Xu Weihong showed up to Lu Min in a drowsy state with the medicine, the password being her birthday. When Lu Min awoke and found the medicine she realized it wasn’t quite a dream and then went on to save herself and the others. She then took them to the bunker to show them what she did know, of Unit 826 investigating dark matter that might have led to some mutations to humans.
Lu Min was an interesting character as she had both an emotional story line (relationship with Xu Weihong and her ex-husband, betrayal, regret), as well as a part in the mystery (having a connection with Unit 826). Her relationship with Xu Weihong will probably play a bigger role if the story does continue. I can see Lu Min and Xu Weihong having differing opinions on what they should do with research and them having to part ways because of it though.
Chen Jian
Chen Jian was a mysterious man who showed up in the valley. He thought he’d arrived in 2014 when the others were in 2015. As well, Li Qiao had seen a news report earlier of Chen Jian’s dad grieving over his son’s disappearance and so she thought he was very suspicious.
In the past, Chen Jian’s father had gotten into some bad debt and would leave Chen Jian to live with his debtors as collateral. Though Chen Jian was a filial son who longed to be with his father, he was sometimes a liar and a cheat. He had a talent for changing his voice and would sometimes imitate his father’s debtor to sneak out, and would also imitate adults for his friends who wanted to get out of things. One time, Chen Jian snuck out as a child to be with his father but his father brought him back and punished him for lying to leave. It seemed that due to the beating, he suffered a lot of blood loss, and it was Lu Min who injected him with blood. That is likely how Chen Jian became one of the people with abilities.
As an adult, Chen Jian and his dad were involved in some shady business. It seemed that his dad continued to be in money trouble. They were going to meet with reporter Ma though I’m not quite sure what the deal was going to be. On the way back, they ran into a man who had been crashed by a car (driven by Lu Min’s ex-husband). The man threatened Chen Jian’s father with a gun, making him take him to a safe location instead of to the police station or hospital. That man was a drug dealer that Zou Zhiming was working with. Chen Jian overpowered the drug dealer. When he saw that his father struggled to kill him, Chen Jian instead killed him. They then drove to the valley to dump the body, but Chen Jian fell over a cliff and his dad couldn’t pull him back up. That scene was very curious. Chen Jian’s father was trying to pull him up, but when it got too hard, he apologized and let go. Did he want to kill his son, or was he truly too weak to save him? It’s hard to say. He went on TV later to grieve for his missing son. Was that because he truly missed him and hoped he was alive, or was it so that people would find his body? And why would he want to kill his son? Was it so that the murder wouldn’t be tracked back to him? Chen Jian’s relationship with his father was very complex because he longed to be with his father, despite the fact that he knew his father was constantly using him because of his own mistakes (debts). Despite his father seeming kindly, if I try to look at it objectively, he wasn’t a great dad. But who can blame Chen Jian for wanting a relationship with his father?
Chen Jian arrived in the valley and it seemed he was the first to speak to Xu Weihong. He was in the room with all of Xu Weihong’s pictures so that was how he knew who needed to be in the valley and who needed to go.
Li Qiao thought Chen Jian suspicious because of his supposed disappearance, but his phone did show 2014, and pushing him into the well wouldn’t solve things, so they pulled him out. However we later found out that he killed Ma Hongxin, only saying that he shouldn’t have been there. Later when we got to the prairies, he was injecting Dayou with the medicine. As well, Dayou had seen the camera which showed that Chen Jian had seem Ma Hongxin prior to his death which made Dayou afraid. Li Qiao caught on to that and became suspicious of Chen Jian and that was why she worked herself up to kill him.
Until the end, Chen Jian insisted that he was there to help them, but he did a really bad job of explaining himself. He was shot in the leg by Li Qiao and he floated down the river. That being said, I wouldn’t be surprised if he came back as a character because he just had so much backstory. Plus, he was just shot in the leg and not a vital organ. So there’s a chance lol.
Ma Hongxin
Ma Hongxin was a reporter. We knew that he would pretend to be drunk and then show people that he had really important people backing him up and use that to get favours or money from people. One time he was caught by someone who seemed dangerous. He was drugged and then put on the bus to be taken to Chongqing. While he was drugged, he bumped into Zhang Guangbei at the bus station and tried to get help but his captor prevented that. Ma Hongxin had arrived in the valley in the bus crash.
Ma Hongxin had run off on his own, and Dayou and Li Qiao later found him dead which frightened them. We later found out that Chen Jian killed him because he was not one of the individuals identified by Xu Weihong. Maybe he had to be killed because he already knew too much. But his death would set in motion some of the tension between the group and lead to the deaths of a few characters (Dayou and Chen Jian).
Liu Changqing
Liu Changqing was a curious character who I still haven’t grasped. At first, he was the creepy guy asking people if they’d gotten into car crashes before. Both Li Qiao and Dayou had been in the same car crash. Chen Jian had seen a car crash caused by Lu Min’s ex-husband. And Zhang Guangbei was in a car crash too. But in terms of actual people being in a car crash, that was only Li Qiao and Dayou. Liu Changqing had questioned them about it, and then confirmed with them that the other person had deserved to die (Qiao Lin and Dayou’s colleague). Li Qiao was freaked out because she hadn’t come to terms with the death of her ex-boyfriend. She didn’t agree when Liu Changqing said that the other person had deserved to die, despite Li Qiao having made that decision to leave him to die.
To be honest I lost track of Liu Changqing. Early on I would get him mixed up with Ma Hongxin. But he didn’t really play a big role in the valley. Only distinctly remember him at the end watching the broadcast of the satellite. As well, it seemed that he was the son of the man that Ma Hongxin had spoken with, who had jumped from a building right after their talk. It appears that Liu Changqing and his brother were trying to achieve something for their father. Their father had asked Ma Hongxin to take the bus, perhaps to interrupt whatever Xu Weihong was working on. But Liu Changqing will probably be explained in further detail if this show has a continuation.
Zhang Guangbei
We saw Zhang Guangbei as an old man in a senior home. He was trying to get to Chongqing though I don’t think we quite know why.
His story started all the way back in the Republican era. His parents were spies. His father was trying to rise in the ranks at a bank to get an in with the Japanese. However, before he and his pregnant wife were to return to the northeast of China, which they had hoped to take back for China, Guangbei’s father was killed in an altercation, and his mom had to return alone. Due to his parents’ background, Zhang Guangbei knew morse code and was able to understand some of the morse signals that could be heard in the valley.
Though Zhang Guangbei arrived at the valley through another car accident (one that was caused by Xu Weihong), he was supposed to be there as one of the individuals identified by Xu Weihong.
Themes
I felt that regret was a common theme among many of the characters. Li Qiao regretted letting Qiao Lin die. Dayou regretted not having done something to protect the streamer he admired. Zou Zhiming regretted how his relationship with his partner suffered. Maybe regret isn’t quite the word but maybe a sense of helplessness about the past. I think all of these characters wished they could go back in time to fix things. And that’s kind of the opportunity that Lu Min and Xu Weihong have. They’ve literally grown younger, and have more time to figure out what’s happening. Perhaps the odd one out is Chen Jian, who never seemed to regret his actions. He was a very action-oriented man, who saw what was in front of him and would figure out how to deal with it. He accepted that he had to do dirty things for what he wanted. Maybe that was why he didn’t remain in the valley. Or maybe he will, who knows.
There’s also the whole mystery of Unit 826 and the valley. What does research about supernatural beings have to do with a valley being time warped? Are these both a cause of dark matter or some other space phenomena? Inquiring minds want to know.
Overall
Normally I’d be quite annoyed that this season ended on a cliffhanger but I think it was because the ending was fuzzy enough that I didn’t feel like I was given just enough to keep me wanting. I was given not enough so I’m not wanting lol. But I again I want to emphasize that the build up of the mystery with the non-linear story telling and the jumps between present and flashbacks were very compelling and I enjoyed those quite a bit.