General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20266 min read

Lost in Hong Kong (港囧)

Lost in Hong Kong (港囧) is a 2015 Chinese comedy film directed by, written by, and starring Xu Zheng, in which a middle-aged mainland Chinese man on a family trip to Hong Kong secretly tries to meet his university first love while becoming entangled in a murder investigation.¹^•² It is the third entry in Xu Zheng's "Lost" (囧) series, following Lost on Journey and Lost in Thailand (2012).³ Released in mainland China on 25 September 2015, it set opening-day records and became one of the highest-grossing Chinese-language films of the year, even as many critics panned it.²

Key fact	Detail
Director / star	Xu Zheng, who also produced and co-wrote; his company Zhenledao was one of the production and distribution companies¹^•⁴
Main cast	Xu Zheng as Xu Lai, Zhao Wei (Vicki Zhao) as his wife Cai Bo, Bao Bei'er as brother-in-law Cai Lala, Du Juan as first love Yang Yi²^•⁵
Mainland release	25 September 2015; 1.2 billion yuan (about HK$1.46 billion) by 4 October 2015²
Opening records	First Chinese-language film to take more than 200 million yuan on its first day and on each of its first three days²
Runtime / language	114 minutes, in Mandarin⁵
Critical reception	60% Tomatometer (5 reviews) and 50% Popcornmeter on Rotten Tomatoes; 5.4/10 on IMDb from about 2,100 votes¹^•⁶
North America	Distributed by Well Go USA; limited theatrical release 25 September 2015, streaming 1 March 2016; US gross $1.3 million¹

Spoilers

Plot

Xu Lai (Xu Zheng) once wanted to be a painter; twenty years on he designs brassieres for his wife's family lingerie business, supports an extended family, and faces a wife, Cai Bo (Zhao Wei), who wants a child.³^•⁷ When an invitation arrives to an art exhibition in Hong Kong held by Yang Yi (Du Juan), the university sweetheart who left him for a scholarship there, Xu plans a family sightseeing trip as cover for a secret rendezvous.⁷^•² His plan is frustrated by his brother-in-law Cai Lala (Bao Bei'er), an aspiring documentarian with a DV camera who suspects a secret and shadows Xu through the city.⁷ The trip turns sour when Xu becomes wrapped up in a murder investigation, with a pair of Hong Kong policemen (Sam Lee and Eric Kot) in pursuit.⁸^•⁷ The emotional throughline is the kiss from his first love that Xu never completed twenty years earlier; by the end he realizes the person he has wanted is the wife he has been married to for two decades.¹

Production

The screenplay took eighteen months from first planning to final draft, with writers' meeting recordings of roughly a hundred hours and meeting notes of well over a hundred thousand characters.⁴ Shu Huan, the lead writer on Lost in Thailand, wrote the first and third drafts (the first independently alongside Xing Aina, the second with Su Liang), and Xu Zheng wrote three further drafts himself.⁴ The story grew from a single sentence: a man goes to Hong Kong wanting to see his first love.⁴ Xu Zheng said he wanted to upgrade the series' comedy with strong plot elements such as action and gunfights, and that the theme of an unfinished psychological debt came from Haruki Murakami's story "The Second Bakery Attack".⁹ During shooting the crew worked through older Hong Kong districts such as Kwun Tong and Kowloon City, and Xu described choosing Hong Kong as a tribute to the Cantonese pop songs, Hong Kong films, and other cultural symbols that shaped the generation of mainlanders born in the 1960s and 1970s.¹⁰

Hong Kong pop culture homage

The film is built on dense references to Hong Kong cinema and music of the 1980s and 1990s. Reviewers noted Wong Kar-wai references, the influence of Peter Chan's Comrades, Almost a Love Story in the opening romance, Leslie Cheung ballads, a theme song by Faye Wong, and appearances by Hong Kong character actors including Wong Jing, Bobby Yip, Lam Suet, and Tin Kai-Man.⁷^•¹^•³ The Los Angeles Times critic Martin Tsai called the film "an all-encompassing love letter to Hong Kong filmmaking", in contrast to Lost in Thailand's homage to Stephen Chow slapstick.¹¹ Xu Zheng said the production team built databases of Hong Kong filming locations, classic lines, action scenes, and 147 veteran Hong Kong supporting actors to source the material.¹²

Box office and reception

The film debuted on 25 September 2015 and by 1 October had passed 1 billion yuan, at that point the fastest a domestic Chinese film had reached that mark.¹² By 4 October it had taken 1.2 billion yuan and was projected to overtake the 2.43 billion yuan of Monster Hunt to become the year's biggest film on the mainland.² The South China Morning Post reported that critics and some industry insiders attributed the commercial triumph more to marketing than to filmmaking quality.² Pirated copies circulated online soon after release, prompting Xu Zheng to appeal to friends on WeChat for help.¹²

Critical response was mixed. The Los Angeles Times gave the film 90 on Metacritic, calling it a rollicking crowd-pleaser that might be one of the year's best; Variety gave 70, praising its action acrobatics and family drama as an ode to Hong Kong cinema; The New York Times gave 50, writing that it "tries too hard to be too many things".¹¹ Dennis Schwartz rated it C+ and found it did not transfer well for American audiences.³ Chinese commentary made a similar structural point: the emotional line about middle-age crisis was underdeveloped relative to the action, leaving the film's ambitions only partly realized.¹³ On Rotten Tomatoes the film scored 60 percent among five critics and 50 percent among audiences; on IMDb it holds 5.4/10.¹^•⁶

Place in the series

Lost in Thailand (2012) had earned 1.267 billion yuan and set the annual record for a Chinese-language film at the domestic box office, and Xu Zheng held the "domestic box office champion" label for 943 days before Monster Hunt took it in July 2015.⁴ Lost in Hong Kong continued the series' road-movie structure and its theme of searching, but Xu Zheng said he wanted it to carry more emotional weight than the two earlier pure comedies, treating middle-age crisis as its subject.¹⁰ The series continued with Lost in Russia (囧妈), announced in 2019 with Xu Zheng again as director, writer, producer, and star.¹⁴

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026