An Wei

The widow of a famed general teams up with an impostor posing as her late husband and schemes to steal the secrets of an elderly master swordsman. Their plans are complicated by the master's grandson, who is himself torn between his filial duty and the affections of his adopted sister.

Mysterious, sublime and elegiac, director Yang Chao’s odyssey blends breathtaking images with fantasy, poetry and history to create a complex magical universe. From the Shanghai metropolis to the snow-capped Tibet mountain, Gao Chun steers his cargo up the Yangtze, a river that has nurtured a centuries-old civilization. He comes across An Lu, a beautiful woman who appears in a different identity at every port recorded by a poetry book. Longing for her company, he realizes she gradually turns younger as he journeys upstream. He starts to wonder whether An Lu is supernatural or he is traveling not only in space but also in time. After passing a pagoda that reverberates Buddha’s voice, a flooded town reappeared elsewhere, the grandiose Three Gorges Dam and many other places where lives have been transformed, he finally arrives at the start of the Yangtze, where he unveils the secret of his past and An Lu.

Determined to pass down his art, the Final Master of Wing Chun is caught in a power struggle with malicious local officials and ultimately must choose between personal honor and his master’s dying wish.