“I cannot, for my soul, remember how, when, or even precisely where, I first became acquainted with the lady Ligeia.”

But 白晓宇 Bái Xiǎo Yǔ, the Edgar Allan Poe fan and graphic designer, certainly could remember the day and date (2010, June 8) he knocked over 王斤斤 Wáng Jīn Jīn ’s desk. Her face and name stuck in his memory, not only because of the strange meaning of her name (a “catty”, 斤, is a traditional Chinese unit of mass used across East and Southeast Asia, notably for weighing food and other groceries) but also because of her unusual Gothic hairpin.

Bai Xiao Yu (his own name meaning “white”, “dawn” and “universe”), having failed to follow her all the way home on his bicycle when she took a taxi, immediately drew a portrait of her.

He came across her again after college and following her, overheard her mentioning Poe in a Beijing bar on Liangmahe bar street (an area which existed, north of Sanlitun, but which has undergone lots of changes and demolitions in the early 2020s ; the Seven bar looks fictional - I know none of that name thereabouts). When Xiao Yu ordered two newly invented cocktails (I liked the recipes!) with titles from Poe’s stories, JinJin turned to face him, and they went home together after a long night's intellectual communing reintroducing themselves at dawn, and next, traveling on a dare, all the way to their hometown, hooking up and living as a married couple for a year.

But Jin Jin feared routine and the “mundane” life. She was insecure about her talent as a writer, despite Xiao Yu’s comforting words. She drifted from tourism to script assistant, with her job taking her away for months on film sets.
Xiao Yu had also experienced setbacks at work, and changed his job to set up a business of escape rooms and refurbishing the hometown horror theme park. His eyesight worsened and he was wistful when he described to a fellow sufferer the beauty of the sunset seen from the hospital window.

It was thrilling to hear the budding couple, at the dawn of their relationship, excitedly recite the excerpt “I mean to say that, subsequently to the period when Ligeia's beauty passed into my spirit, there dwelling as in a shrine, I derived, from many existences in the material world, a sentiment such as I felt always aroused within me by her large and luminous orbs.” Although Wang Jin Jin was not like the fictional heroine, from a “decaying city on the Rhine in Germany”, sporting dark curly tresses, she was in a way like Ligeia, fascinated by literature and yearning for more learning. But unlike Ligeia, she did not die and come back taking possession of a corpse. The last images of the movie, where the horror theme park was revamped with a secret room designed specially for Xiao Yu, provided an esthetic and welcome surprise.
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The movie is adapted from the novel 《被我弄丢的你》 ("You Whom I Lost") by Zheng Zhi (郑执) also screenwriter for it ; the director was Han Yan (韩琰). Filmed between February and May 2023, it was announced to be airing for the anniversary of filming wrap, on Women’s Day March 8, 2024.

On February 20, the film released a trailer with the theme song “You Whom I Lost” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQG-t0nmFiU ; MV with pinyin & English translation here : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4u4Zm9S5MkM), composed by Jia Wang & Chen Wenhua, lyrics by Guo Dongnan, sung by Chinese diva Karen Mok (Mok Wenwei).

The movie was widely anticipated with over 20 million pre-sale tickets and breaking 100 million at the box office on March 11.

Zhang Jingyi played the free spirited but finally regretful JinJin, who missed her love repeatedly, figuratively, and physically when the train and the truck went in opposing directions. Some will be shocked by the fringe and hair style JinJin kept (although attenuated in the end): whatever, nothing can really make her ugly.

Tan Jianci played the young man cursed by upcoming blindness, with delicate movements of his eyes and posture as the lights dimmed for him. Xiao Yu wanted to treasure his happy past and the moments with JinJin whom he could never totally read the mind of, but whom he never totally lost the memory of, despite she had broken up with him.
The mention on screen in the end of the movie is 你就是我的想要生活 (you are my life’s yearning).

For those who would like to read “Ligeia” or more of Poe’s work, here is a link : https://poestories.com/read/ligeia