The Lychee Road

April 19, 2026

On the plane to Taiwan, the entertainment selection was limited but this caught my eye: it’s a 2025 movie, labelled as historical comedy, in which a Tang Dynasty minor official is framed by his colleagues into performing an impossible task: delivering fresh lychees from a faraway province for the Emperor to gift them to his favourite consort, Yang Guifei, on her birthday.

The main character, Li Shande, is a low-ranking official because he has a skill no one understands: he can do math. The whole movie revolves around him putting this skill to good use and calculating the shortest route from Lingnan to Chang’an, around 2.500 km, while coming up with ingenious ways to keep lychees fresh for as long as possible.

The movie is nice and brilliant and also so not a comedy. Highly recommended.

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