Lan Yu, a poor young countryman who came to Beijing to go on his study looking for every way to earn some pocket money met with a successful businessman who sought playmates all the time as his life interest, turning out something hard to be real to believe.

A Chinese movie produced by a Hong Kong director twenty years ago, ‘Lan Yu’, today has made a 4K restoration and is broadcast on the big screen again with audiences queueing up for tickets. As far as Chinese culture and its film restriction are concerned, ‘Lan Yu’ is absolutely a controversial film gaining ban; however, it had broadcast elsewhere and had received not a few weighty movie awards two decades ago.

With the director’s low-profile interpretation of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre and some kinds of shady dealings as a norm in Chinese business as a backdrop, ‘Lan Yu’ boldly and directly depicted how two protagonists in the story first sought each other with their respective aim, following how they have turned their love into something that was too true and real to believe as the movie’s main story plotline.

Chen Handong in the movie played a role of a playboy, having a rather unspoken sexual disposition despite later embracing the hope of being a husband, and having a wife bearing offspring. He behaved capriciously all his life, no one could have thought he would change until we have witnessed how Lan Yu influenced him with not only his true love but also his true temperament towards him. Handong was again and again moved by Lan Yu’s innocence in the area of love, so true and loyal that he could not resist but was again and again moved and finally came to grasp that love requires us to be committed or we would suffer from the pang of regret. Lan Yu has dramatically changed a man’s life, a man who is a lot older and more experienced than him. It is a rarity and such a rarity tells us what people eventually need is simplicity and innocence.

I was especially moved by some scenes of their confiding love with no disguise, explicitly telling each other how much they love each other with deep hugs and tears when what I saw on the big screen was two men, it is more than touching and impressive when in reality it seems not easy for a couple of lovers to do so with this frankness needed. Furthermore, I could not know when two men embrace, such a hug is so powerful that it would drive me emotionally to tears. There are several scenes of such kind of hug in the movie that tell us we can be that honest and bold to love, and it testifies to the essence of love and life. As to the story ending, it leaves memories to not only Handong but also us, that is we will never forget Lan Yu.