When the Northern Song’s greatest foodie and literary genius tumbles into a modern city, a hilarious survival guide spanning a thousand years begins:
Su Shi, laid-off and looking for work in Huangzhou, wakes up inside a delivery box at a comic convention. Part-time cosplayer Chen Xiaoman mistakes him for an “immersive performance artist.” Air conditioning is a jade toad that breathes out cold air, elevators are immortal magic that shrinks distances, and the boba in bubble tea is the result of a failed attempt at alchemy. A poem he casually writes on a delivery order sends the whole internet searching for him. He explains eyeshadow palettes in a livestream using “Ode to the Red Cliffs,” then trades three hundred rounds of poetry with “Li Bai” over cumin at a barbecue stall.
Chen Xiaoman’s phone records this absurd adventure: Su Shi uses the Book of Changes to solve calculus problems, treats shared bicycles like the legendary wooden oxen and gliding horses, and eats self-heating hotpot with the air of a royal banquet. When a mysterious restaurant group tries to cash in on the “Dongpo IP,” carbon-14 testing points to the truth about his journey through time, and Du Fu suddenly starts teaching people to sort their trash at a dump, the most unreliable time-traveling partnership in history turns out to hold the key to healing the modern world through traditional culture.
Here, bubble tea cups are inscribed with “Prelude to Water Melody,” barbecue skewers are written on in slender gold script, and the beats for square dancing are remixed with the rhymes of “Charm of a Maiden Singer.” Watch as the Esteemed Scholar Dongpo stirs up the influencer economy with a wolf-hair brush, bringing a thousand years of cultural heritage back to life amid steaming hotpot and electric delivery bikes.
