Episode 1
Chapter 1 - A Train Lost in Autumn
Hualin, 2016. Gong Biao who up until now has shared a taxi with Wang Xiang, a distant relative to whom he is related by marriage, buys a cab which turns out to be in bad state of repair despite how it looks. It turns out that recently someone driving the cab hit a pedestrian but everything doesn't make sense. The video footage of the accident shows that the cab had a sticker on the back but the car that Biao bought does not.
Xiang and Biao go to the hospital to see the victim but there is no one there. The name on the patient's records seems to be an alias. They start looking for the cab in the video. They ask all the other taxi drivers to let them know if they see it. Eventually someone sees it lets them know where.
Biao is all fired up over confronting the driver of the cab from the video but Xiang gets him to calm down. Xiang goes in to the yard where the cab was seen. He finds the car but not the driver. He is talking to a mechanic when the car takes off. He takes off after it in his own car. He runs it off the road. The driver takes off on foot, into a cornfield and gets away from Xiang.
Xiang returns home. Biao gets a lead from the woman at a drug store. He thinks that it might be the guy from the hospital who came in looking for medicine but all he has is a picture of the guy from behind. Biao sends it to Xiang along with a message explaining what he has learned.
Chapter 2 - Xiang
Hualun, 1998. Sun Guilun, an elderly retired woman, who regularly digs through dumpsters, finds parts of the dead body of a woman or girl. Xiang, not knowing exactly what is going on, volunteers to help police detective Ma Desheng investigate the case. Xiang was a train driver for Hualin General Steel Works with 30 years on the job in 1998.
Xiang meets Gong Biao for the first time while he is an ambulance on the way to the hospital. He got sick after he saw body parts. Liru, the nurse in the ambulance, is the cousin of Xiang's wife and Biao's future wife.
Yang, Xiang's son, has dropped out of university. Luo Meisu, Xiang's wife, complains of symptoms that she thinks are indications of more serious illnesses. She wants to go to the hospital to get tests done but Xiang denies her request.
Chapter 3: Till Death Do Us Part
Hualin, 1997. Yang hangs out and watches freshmen arrive at Hualin Health Vocational Collage. He tries hitting on one of the female students without success. His friend has better luck. Yang is lost in thought when Shen Mo approaches him and asks him for directions. He is very taken with her but doesn't get much of a chance to talk to her.
The episode ends with 2016 Xiang sitting down to eat with 1997 or 1998 Yang. His tells his son that someone is back but that he's going to take care of it.
Thoughts
I had to watch this episode at least twice. There were a few scenes that I watched at least three times. It took me the repeated viewings plus the Wikipedia article on this show to help me piece some bits of information together. The fact that it is subtitled and that the subtitles sometimes flash by very quickly also made me pause and rewind many times. I had to watch it on my computer because it is a lot easier to pause and rewind on the computer than it is on the television.
Luo Meisu was played by Diana Lin. She was also in Interior Chinatown. She's the only actor that I recognized.
I'm pretty sure that the part of the final scene where Xiang and Yang sit down must have been a dream sequence.
I get the impression that it is Shen Mo's body parts that were found. I don't know that for certain but that's what the next to last scene seems to imply. The final scene seems to indicate that Yang, Xiang's son, is also dead. Luo Meisu showed up only in scenes set in 1998. My guess is that she is also dead by 2016. The end of chapter 3, the final moments of the episode, seem to be a continuation of the opening of Chapter 2.
I am intrigued. I want to watch more. Hopefully I won't feel the need to watch quite so much of the second episode a second time.
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