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How did Evil Unbound (731), one of the most anticipated Chinese war movies of 2025, go from patriotic hype to online backlash? A deep dive into the official narrative, the audience reception, and everything that’s particular about this movie.
 

731 and 918, those were the numbers dominating Chinese social media over the past week. Both numbers carry heavy historical weight, but the recent discussions surrounding them reveal two parallel worlds of the official narrative vs the audience experience of a controversial new World War II film.

It was “9.18” on Thursday, when China commemorated the 94th anniversary of the September 18th Incident (九一八事变). On that day in 1931, a small explosion on a Japanese-owned railway near Shenyang (Mukden) was used as a pretext to invade Manchuria.

While many older Chinese were taught in school that the war began in 1937, recent state-led campaigns increasingly emphasize 1931 as the true beginning of China’s “14-year-long war” (1931–1945). Over the past decade, the 918 commemorations have become more prominent online, shaping public memory through nationalistic messaging.

This year, the commemoration had an extra dimension, as it wove the release of Evil Unbound (English title), also known as 731, into the patriotic media narratives around 918.

Patriotic film poster putting 918 and 731 together.

The much-anticipated war movie 731 depicts the atrocities of Japan’s Unit 731 (731部队), notorious for conducting horrific biological warfare experiments in Harbin during World War II under Major General Shiro Ishii (石井四郎), a former army surgeon and biologist with a particular interest in historical plagues. Under his command, Japan’s biological warfare and human experimentation in China were carried out on a larger scale than anywhere else between the 1930s and 1940s.

After the war, because the US felt his knowledge on bioweapons was of great value, Ishii was granted political immunity deal and was never brought to trial.

Together with the Nanjing Massacre, Unit 731 has come to symbolize the peak horrors of Japan’s wartime atrocities. Public attention for this history has grown in recent years, especially since the 2015 opening of the Harbin-based Museum of Evidence of War Crimes by Unit 731.

It was around that same time, about a decade ago, when Chinese director Zhao Linshan (赵林山) started working on the movie Evil Unbound (731), produced by Changchun Film Group in collaboration with the Propaganda Departments of Shandong, Jilin, Heilongjiang, and Harbin.

It finally premiered nationwide on Thursday, ‘9.18’ at exactly 9:18 and shattered 10 box office records on its opening day. Screened 258,000 times in a single day, it rapidly surpassed 200 million yuan (US$28 million) in ticket sales. After three days, the box office exceeded 1 billion yuan (US$140 million).

The film focuses on Unit 731 in the final days before Japan’s defeat in 1945, portraying how local salesman Wang Yongzhang (王永章, played by Jiang Wu 姜武) is imprisoned together with other civilians. They are promised freedom in exchange for “health checks and epidemic prevention cooperation,” and are subjected to frostbite experiments, poison gas, and vivisections.

Official film posters for Evil Unbound/731.

“What we made is not a movie — it is historical evidence,” director Zhao said about the film.

A state-orchestrated hashtag ecosystem is currently amplifying the film’s ‘success.’ Similar to previous viral war film hits such as The Battle at Lake Changjin (长津湖) and Nanjing Photo Studio (Dead to Rights 南京照相馆), the media campaigns highlight the film’s commercial performance, its educational and historical value, the ‘authenticity’ of its production process, and its emotional reception and overseas recognition.

Recent trending hashtags, from Kuaishou to Weibo and beyond, include:

• 电影731票房再创新高 – “Film 731 sets another box office record”
• 没有人能在看731时不流泪 – “No one can watch 731 without crying”
• 观众掩面哭泣 / 哭到没法接受采访 – “Audiences cover faces in tears” or “Audiences too moved to be interviewed”
• 观众自发起立唱国歌 – “Audience spontaneously stand up to sing national anthem”
• 海外观众看731不停抹泪 – “Overseas audiences weeping when seeing 731”
• 9岁小孩看完731后泪奔 – “9-year-old child burst into tears after watching 731”
• 日本观众看完电影731后情绪崩溃 – “Japanese audiences having emotional breakdown after watching 731”
• 让731这段历史不再沉默 – “The history of 731 can no longer be silenced”

There are hundreds of other hashtags contributing to this official narrative, that portrays Evil Unbound as an absolute patriotic and commercial triumph.

From Anticipation to Backlash: 731 Between Shawshank and Squid Game

Outside of this official narrative, however, audiences are telling a very different story. Despite months of anticipation, the film has been met with overwhelmingly negative reviews.

On Weibo, the hashtag “731 Film Review” (#731影评#) was pulled offline. On Douban, the movie’s ratings meter was switched off entirely (“暂无评分”). On IMDb, the film is currently rated 3.1.

Usually, criticism of patriotic films is a slippery slope. People have been censored, blocked, or even detained for criticizing war films. But criticism of this film is so widespread, and so ubiquitous across social media platforms, that it is barely containable.

Many viewers called the movie “trash,” while others said they felt “defrauded”.[1] One commenter suggested the director tried to make The Shawshank Redemption but ended up with Squid Game.[2] Others called it “bizarre”[3], or concluded: “The short review section doesn’t even allow enough characters to describe how unbearable this movie is.”[4]

Viewing the film, I must admit I also felt confused – the movie is nothing like you would expect after the state-led promotion of the film.

The opening minutes quickly set a messy historical context, leaping from the 1925 Geneva Protocol to China’s 1943 counteroffensives, to Iwo Jima, and to Japan’s “Operation PX” plan (Operation Cherry Blossoms at Night), a scheme to attack the United States with biological weapons—before landing in Harbin and Unit 731 in the year 1945.

About ten minutes in, the movie seems to switch tracks and take inspiration from Squid Game, the 2021 South Korean survival drama.

Some details appear almost one-to-one from the Netflix show: the cold speaker voice, characters labeled by numbers, stylized lighting (including the Japanese flag’s red dot turned into menacing red spotlight), and eerily sterile sets that create a cold, clinical atmosphere stripped of humanity.

Scenes from 731.

Narrative elements also echo Squid Game’s deadly competitions, including an actual life-or-death rope pulling game. In 731, “winners” are promised freedom (but actually sent for experiments) and “losers” surviving slightly longer, until even these rules seemingly disappear, leaving viewers just as lost as the characters.

Beyond these echoes of Squid Game and The Shawshank Redemption (with their themes of prison break, brotherhood, and hope), where horror meets drama and occasionally even comedy, I also thought I saw traces of The Green Mile (there’s even a befriended mouse), The Shining, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and even Kill Bill.

If this all sounds like a fever dream, that’s about right.

While the film undoubtedly has artistic value in its visual references and symbolism, at times it seems more intent on presenting itself as an arthouse production than on telling a coherent historical war story.

731 scene showing Japanese flags with red lasers/spotlights one the left. Some of the movie’s camera angle points, color use, narrative elements and settings show some similarities with Squid Game (image on right).

731 (left), Squid Game (right)

Scene from 731, which I thought sometimes had some echoes from The Shining.

Another reference to Stanley Kubrick? 731 on the left, Clockwork Orange on the right.

Prison mouse friend. 731 (left) and The Green Mile (right).

And that is also what most of the online critique is about – people feel that while the movie is supposed to be about creating awareness of a particularly horrific part of Chinese war history, the actual factual history seems to have ended up in the background.

One commenter from Harbin wrote:[5]

💬 “For Harbin, 731 is the most painful chapter of history. This movie uses a mass of absurd visuals and music to tell a story that has almost nothing to do with real history. All the information that truly should have been shown is brushed over in passing words, and in the end it just tells audiences ‘never forget history’? This tramples on the history of 731. Stupid and vulgar.”

Others are also upset over historical inaccuracies in the film — from the makeup to the sets, the props, and the biological experiments. Even the toilet paper used by the prisoners isn’t very realistic, with some commenters saying these kinds of details ‘drove them crazy’:

💬 “I’m born after 1990, and even I grew up with worse toilet paper than what the aggressors in those years apparently gave to their prisoners. Theirs was so high-quality you could fold it into bows and baby shoes. Must have been strong, durable, and waterproof.”[6]

One other reviewer on Douban wrote:

💬 “As a prison break film it’s not exciting, as a historical film it’s too careless, and as a drama it’s too fragmented.”[7]

Douban reviewer Qingyun (青云) noted that it jumps from relatively calm scenes to intense emotional outbursts or extreme cruelty without any buildup — instead of moving viewers to tears, it alienates them from the story and its characters.

He adds:

💬 “The film wants to exploit history’s seriousness to entertain the public, but also fears the theme is too depressing and will affect the box office, so it stuffs in commercial gimmicks (jokes, fantasy, spectacle). This opportunism sacrifices the solemnity that is rewired for the historical topic, while also failing to provide as qualified entertainment. The result: it offends history and disappoints audiences.”[8]

Most of these disappointed reviewers argued that the chance to tell the story of Unit 731 was wasted by a director and script that offered little context to the subject, with some even suggesting that another, 37-year-old film (Men Behind the Sun, 黑太阳731, 1988) did a better job of conveying the history of Japan’s biological warfare in China.

A ‘Masterful Cult Film,’ But a ‘Total Failure’ as a War Movie

Despite the wave of strongly negative feedback, there are also those who did find the film moving, giving it five-star reviews — some from those who stress the film’s value as a reminder to “never forget national humiliation,” while others genuinely appreciate its creative vision.

Douban commenter ‘Bat Lord’ (蝙蝠君) called it a “masterful cult film” with the film’s aesthetics being “built on a foundation of Western stereotypical Orientalism of Japan and layered with Christian martyrdom.”[9]

As an example, Bat Lord describes a recurring scene in which prisoners are taken from their cells toward “freedom,” only to be taken to lethal human experiments. They are escorted by Japanese guards in traditional kimonos with samurai swords, led by a geisha carrying a bright red umbrella and wearing impossibly high okobo clogs, followed by Edo-period guards with topknots and white kimono. Bat Lord calls it “Orientalist punk seen through a Western gaze” (“有一种西方视角的东方主义朋克的味道”).

The reviewer also interprets the main characters, the Chinese prisoners, as representations of Christian martyrdom. Cross symbols are indeed everywhere in the film, with prisoner No. 017 constantly drawing crosses on the wall, and an ingenious escape plan hidden in a dictionary as a series of crosses.

At the climax, after battling guards in kimonos with wooden swords, the prisoners flee toward a crematorium resembling a cathedral of light, where crosses formed from pure white beams symbolize freedom. But behind the cross loom the Japanese executioners. After a bloody massacre, the survivors are captured and executed — tied to crosses arranged around a pit, with fleas dropped on them from above as Japanese officers watch from a grandstand.

Cross symbols appear throughout the film.

💬 “It’s clearly a direct homage to Christian martyrs who were sacrificed in the Colosseum during the ancient Roman Empire. In the end, all the protagonists die martyrs’ deaths,” Bat Lord writes.[10]

He concludes that the film is “4/5 as an art house film, but zero points as a war movie”:

💬 “As a mainstream patriotic commercial blockbuster, it is a complete and utter failure (..) But as a niche cult prank film, it actually has some positive points (…) – built on exaggerated Orientalist visions of Japan, it feels strangely authentic. This kind of deconstruction of Japanese culture isn’t something the Japanese themselves could do — only the West or China, as seen in works like The Last Samurai, Ghost of Tsushima, and Shogun.” [11]

He adds:

💬 “The biggest problem is the subject matter. Using 731 — such a solemn, tragic history — only to hollow out its pain, exploit national emotions, and repackage it as a cult prank film disguised as a patriotic blockbuster, inevitably backfires. If it had been framed as a semi-fictional low-budget black comedy, the backlash wouldn’t be so severe.”[12]

“No Japanese in Heaven”: Over-‘Othering’ the Enemy

How could 731 have failed so miserably to live up to public expectations?

In recent years, Chinese museums, books, and popular culture have made many attempts to revitalize the history of war and make it more relevant to younger generations. In many cases, this has been successful, from popular war dramas to blockbuster films.

But Unit 731 is perhaps an especially difficult subject to adapt into a commercially successful film for a broad audience, especially since it chose to leave out the kind of contextualization that Oppenheimer provided in exploring the history, process, and character development that led to the atomic bomb.

Like the gas chambers of Auschwitz or Mengele’s brutal experiments, its history is so gruesome that there is little to focus on beyond the suffering of the victims and the cruelty of the perpetrators. (The film had already been postponed once, as it allegedly failed to pass official screenings due to its graphic scenes.)

War films in China are expected to reflect — or help shape — national identity. In 731, this means boosting national unity by focusing on Japan as the ultimate “Other,” the ‘constructed outsider’ against which the own national identity is defined.

The entire nation is cast as an enemy, depicted through exaggerated cultural symbols — geishas, kimonos, samurai, and cherry blossoms — regardless of whether they belonged in the actual prison setting. Japan’s national colors and imagery are fused with scenes of bloody and barbaric slaughter, turning Japanese cultural identity itself into a target.

References to Japanese cultural symbols in the film.

In doing so, the film not only holds Japan as a whole responsible for its wartime aggression, but also strengthens Chinese identity by defining it in opposition to Japan, visually contrasting “good” versus “evil” through opposing characters, colors, and symbols.

Clear visual symbols: dead Chinese bodies covered in white dust. With the red circle of blood, the scene resembles a Japanese flag.

This contrast is also made explicit in dialogue: at the beginning of the film, for instance, a young boy enters the stark white prison halls and asks, “Master, are we in heaven?” to which the older Chinese man replies, “Nonsense, how could there be Japanese in heaven?”

In promoting the film, director Zhao Linshan (赵林山) reinforced the image of Japan as the eternal “Other” by explaining that he had insisted none of the Japanese roles could have possibly played by Chinese actors, suggesting they would not be able to convey their evilness. Despite the difficulty of bringing over more than 80 Japanese actors during China’s ‘zero Covid’ era, when 731 was largely filmed, Zhao maintained that “only the Japanese can play this dual nature.”

While Chinese social media is often filled with anti-Japanese sentiment, many viewers criticized the depiction of “Japan” and the Unit 731 staff — not because of the anti-Japanese angle, but because they felt it trivialized history. They argued that Unit 731 was already so horrific that it needed no added gimmicks, tropes, or exaggerated villains to make it look bad.

As Douban reviewer Qingyun wrote:

💬 “Portraying devils as clowns diminishes their true guilt. The real criminals were rational, organized, and intelligent, embodying the will of Japanese militarism as a systematic project. Making them idiots (..) greatly underestimates the danger and organization of militarism, and is a severe simplification of history.”[13]

This critique goes further, suggesting the film both weakens its warning value (“the true terror is that advanced civilization and barbarism can coexist”) and cheapens the victims’ suffering (“if the enemy is so stupid, the tragedy seems less grave”).

On Weibo, one commenter criticized this one-sided approach:

💬 “I saw an auntie in Hangzhou who, after watching the movie 731, said she hated the Japanese devils so much — that she would hate them for her entire life. But this elderly woman, brainwashed by hatred education for a lifetime, doesn’t stop to think that (..) so many other brutal slaughters happened throughout Chinese history. If you only speak of hate, can your hate keep up with all of them? Shouldn’t we instead explore and reflect more deeply on the underlying causes of these events? Better to talk less of hate and more of love — because only the most genuine love from the depths of the human heart can ultimately prevent such tragedies from happening again.”[14]

Some viewers who appreciated the film, however, disagreed. One Weibo user wrote: “I watched the film with my husband and on our way home we scolded the Japanese, wishing we could throw two more atomic bombs on them. It was a good film.”

Between the history and the hate, the official narrative, the polarized audience reactions, and disagreements over the film’s message, 731 has brought more controversy than clarity.

But beyond the debate and confusion, one message remains clear. As one viewer wrote:

“The film wasn’t what I expected, but I’m not sure what I even expected? A good story? More like a documentary? There’s one thing I can say for sure: this movie is just a shell — the history itself is the soul.”[15]

By Manya Koetse

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It started with a negative restaurant review on social media, triggered a nationwide discussion about pre-made food in restaurants, and ended with far-reaching consequences. The Xibei controversy, explained.

A major discussion that first broke out on Chinese social media two years ago is being picked up again this month – and it’s completely blown up.

It is all about “yùzhìcài” (预制菜), ‘pre-fabricated meals’ or ‘pre-made food.’

Back in 2023, there was widespread discussion over prefab meals when the new school season started and parents discovered that their children’s school cafeterias had transitioned from freshly prepared meals to ready-made ones.

Although the shift to “yùzhìcài” is part of a broader trend in China that has gained more attention over recent years, there has also been significant resistance to this change due to concerns over the meals lacking nutrition, containing too many additives, and not being safe enough. These issues become especially relevant when it’s about the meals being served to kids, and many people called for more legislation on the issue.

Now, in 2025, the resurfaced prefab food discussion is more focused on the restaurant industry than campus cafeteria.

This ‘prefab storm’ started when well-known entrepreneur and influencer Luo Yonghao (罗永浩) went out for dinner on September 10 with some friends at Xibei (西贝), a major Chinese restaurant chain specializing in northwestern Chinese cuisine.

Example of Xibei dishes (not by Luo, but by a Xiaohongshu user).

On his Weibo account (@罗永浩的十字路口), he wrote about the disappointing experience:

His post immediately set off a nationwide storm of discussions.

A large party of the online discussion was about what exactly counts as yùzhìcài.

After all, the entire process of making tofu, for example, from soybean to final product, is a form of pre-processing that’s been part of Chinese cuisine for centuries.

According to China’s State Administration for Market Regulation, the term “yùzhìcài” applies to food that’s been prepped in advance using large-scale methods such as marinating, stir-frying, steaming, and then packaged for transport and sale to consumers or use in restaurant service. They’re not ready to eat as-is and must be heated or cooked before serving.

Examples of yuzhicai, pre-made food.

Still, many netizens wonder: does using a central kitchen qualify as yùzhìcài? Do frozen ingredients or factory-processed foods fall into the same category?

Many people aren’t necessarily opposed to pre-made dishes — some even associate them with better hygiene, especially when produced in regulated facilities, compared to meals prepared in smaller restaurant kitchens. At the same time, however, many object to pre-made food, assuming it is less healthy, or even unhealthy.

Luo’s criticism also wasn’t mainly about pre-made food in general, but about the high price and lack of disclosure about what’s being served.

Like one comment said: “I don’t mind pre-made food, but I do mind when the price doesn’t match.”

What made Luo’s comments particularly explosive was his choice of words — calling it “truly disgusting.”

When Chinese media contacted Xibei for comment, a spokesperson denied their food was pre-made and stressed that stir-fried dishes are cooked on-site, noodles are hand-kneaded, and beef marrow bones are freshly boiled each morning (#西贝回应被吐槽是预制菜#).

In response, Luo jokingly wrote: “…and their plastic bags are freshly cut, the microwave freshly opened, their prepared scripts freshly read…”

Xibei chairman Jia Guolong (贾国龙) clearly was not amused.

Xibei’s founder, Jia Guolong, was emotional about the controversy, which deeply affected the Xibei brand.

On September 11, he made a statement, saying:

Jia not only announced plans to sue Luo Yonghao, he even promised to launch a special “Luo Yonghao Menu” (罗永浩菜单) in Xibei restaurants.

Again, Luo responded:

But he didn’t leave it at that — the “pre-made war” was on. Luo even offered a RMB 100,000 ($14,000) reward for proof that Xibei uses pre-made food (an offer he later admitted was “impulsive”).

He also livestreamed, highlighting how Xibei’s children’s meals used frozen broccoli with a shelf life of up to two years, questioning whether such ingredients can be considered fresh, and criticizing the practice of selling “pre-made” vegetables at fresh food prices.

Luo’s livestream.

He further showed images of packaged sea bass used in Xibei kitchens, noting that the ingredients list included food additives sodium tripolyphosphate and sodium hexametaphosphate, and that the fish had a shelf life of up to 18 months.

Xibei, meanwhile, experienced what they called the largest external crisis since the founding of their company, with daily revenues dropping dramatically.

Trying to win back consumer trust, Xibei announced that all stores nationwide would open their kitchens to customer visits, actually launched their “Luo Yonghao Menu,” and made a promise: “If it doesn’t taste good, you don’t pay.”

But so far, Xibei hasn’t been able to fully win back the public’s favor. After all, it turns out that Xibei does use a central kitchen where food is prepared (meat is cut, vegetables washed), but because Chinese regulations do not count central kitchens making semi-finished or finished dishes for their own restaurants as yùzhìcài, many feel Jia Guolong is making use of a loophole.

Most people don’t care about the legal definition of yùzhìcài. What they care about is that the food is free of additives, fairly priced, tasty, and above all — fresh. Some argue that central kitchens and factories that make prefab food follow almost identical processes in essence.

In hopes of calming the PR crisis, Xibei also issued a public apology on September 15 in which they expressed regret for not meeting customer expectations and announced some changes to their company, including ensuring that more meals — including children’s meals — would be fully made in-store.

The heated confrontation between Luo and Xibei has far-reaching consequences.

▪️ Legal Consequences

One of those consequences is a legal one. Although already underway, the public attention on prefab food might have quickened the process of regulation.

On September 13, the National Health Commission announced a draft law of the National Food Safety Standard for Pre-Made Dishes (预制菜食品安全国家标准). Once finalized, China will have a unified definition of “prefab food,” and for the first time, restaurants will be required to disclose whether and how they use it.

Luo Yonghao applauded the move, and while cheering for the upcoming regulations, he also said that the Xibei matter could be put to rest for now — after all, he suggested that legal clarity was one of his main goals.

▪️ Industry-Wide Impact

Seeing the dramatic impact this controversy has had on Xibei, other Chinese restaurant brands have begun to anticipate the yùzhìcài issue.

The Green Tea Restaurant quietly removed its signs saying all of its food is freshly made.

The Chinese dining chain Green Tea Restaurant (绿茶餐厅), for example, apparently wanted to avoid a PR crisis of its own and quietly removed its storefront sign that read: “No pre-made food, all dishes freshly made.” On their delivery packaging, they also blacked out the “no pre-made food” sentence, according to some media.

Livestreaming from the kitchen as a way to build consumer trust.

The controversy is also being used to the advantage of some restaurants, which have now begun live broadcasting their kitchens to show dishes being prepared in real time (后厨现炒, 后厨直播) — something that many Chinese restaurants, like Haidilao (海底捞), already did previously, and which is now being promoted as another way to build consumer trust.

▪️ A Win for Consumers

For consumers, the controversy has brought much more awareness about food preparation processes, with more people demanding transparency about the food they are served.

“Prefab Food Transparency” (预制菜透明化) has become a buzzword of the week, along with “Freshly Cooked, Freshly Stir-Fried” (现制现炒) as a way to win over diners.

Notably, there is one Chinese restaurant chain that is not being scrutinized this week.

Saizeriya (萨莉亚), a popular Japanese chain selling “Italian” food, is known as the “king of pre-made food.”

The reason Saizeriya has avoided public backlash despite being known for its yùzhìcài is because it is very affordable, and it has never pretended to be a “freshly made” restaurant — what you see is what you get.

That transparency, in the end, is what consumers are looking for — preferring consistency, honesty, and affordability over a more high-end restaurant like Xibei that presents itself as fresh while secretly using frozen ingredients.

In the end, that’s perhaps the lesson that can be learned from this whole ordeal for other restaurant chains: don’t pretend to be freshly made if you’re not, don’t be vague about your use of yùzhìcài, don’t mess with children’s food, and remember that in China’s dining culture and online environment, consumer trust is hard-won, and easily lost.

By Manya Koetse

Thanks to Miranda Barnes

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