Cui Guoming
Guo Jingfei
Cui Guoming
Overview
In 1990s China, Er Pang’s uncle, a brilliant Harbin Institute of Technology graduate, embarks on one ambitious venture after another, driven by his boundless curiosity and talent. Despite the many challenges he faces, he finds strength in the unwavering support of family and friends, using his resilience and optimism to realize his dreams.
Cast
Reviews
✦ AI-generated review
The Unquiet Optimism of the Eternal Amateur
If the Great Chinese Novel of the reform era is often written in the ink of industrial decline and melancholic grit, Kong Ergou’s *Uncle* (2025) chooses to write it in the vibrant, chaotic scrawl of a man who refuses to be defined by his failures. In a television landscape currently obsessed with high-gloss fantasy or procedural darkness, this series feels like a warm, rough-spun wool coat—itchy in places, heavy with history, but undeniably comforting against the cold winds of change.
Kong Ergou, best known for the blood-and-iron noir of his *Northeast* crime sagas, here trades the machete for the slide rule, yet the setting remains the same spiritual geography: the rust-belt north of the 1990s. But where his previous works found tragedy in the collapsing social order, *Uncle* finds a peculiar, resilient absurdity. The series is not merely a biography of Cui Guoming (played with frantic, heartbreaking brilliance by Guo Jingfei); it is an elegy for the "smartest guy in the room" who never quite found the right room.
Visually, the series departs from the desaturated gray usually reserved for "period" dramas about Northern China. Instead, the cinematography embraces a cluttered, almost claustrophobic warmth. The camera loves the detritus of the era—the whirring fans, the clunky bicycles, the piles of blueprints for failed inventions. One scene in the fourth episode stands out: Cui Guoming, backlit by the harsh fluorescent hum of a factory he is about to leave, explains a complex engineering theory to a room of disinterested workers. The framing isolates him, not as a victim, but as a man vibrating on a frequency the rest of the world hasn't tuned into yet. It is a visual metaphor for his entire existence: brilliant, loud, and utterly out of place.
The narrative spine of the show is the relationship between Cui and his nephew, Er Pang. This dynamic saves the series from becoming a mere catalog of errors. Through Er Pang’s eyes, the Uncle is not a loser but a wizard of infinite potential. Guo Jingfei’s performance is a high-wire act of manic energy and sudden, crushing stillness. He plays Cui not as a tragic figure, but as an "eternal amateur"—a man whose curiosity is so voracious it cannibalizes his own success. In a lesser drama, Cui’s cycle of boom-and-bust ventures would be a cautionary tale. Here, it is treated with a rare dignity. His failures are not moral failings; they are side effects of a soul too large for the rigid structures of 1990s state-enterprise China.
The emotional climax does not come with a great financial victory—which would be the cheap, commercial ending—but in a quiet moment of recognition. Near the finale, as yet another venture crumbles, the family gathers not to scold, but to endure. The support system, led by the stoic Li Xiaozhen (Wang Jiajia), represents the unseen labor that allows dreamers to exist. The script suggests that while Cui builds the "castles in the sky," it is the women around him who pour the concrete for the foundation.
*Uncle* ultimately asks a profound question about the definition of a life well-lived. In an era that fetishizes "outcomes" and "deliverables," Kong Ergou has crafted a tribute to the process—to the messy, inefficient, and beautiful act of trying. It is a portrait of a generation that ran full speed toward a future that didn't always catch them, suggesting that the running itself was the victory.
The Verdict: A soulful, deceptively complex character study that reimagines the "loser" archetype as a pioneer of the human spirit. Essential viewing for anyone who has ever started over.
If the Great Chinese Novel of the reform era is often written in the ink of industrial decline and melancholic grit, Kong Ergou’s *Uncle* (2025) chooses to write it in the vibrant, chaotic scrawl of a man who refuses to be defined by his failures. In a television landscape currently obsessed with high-gloss fantasy or procedural darkness, this series feels like a warm, rough-spun wool coat—itchy in places, heavy with history, but undeniably comforting against the cold winds of change.
Kong Ergou, best known for the blood-and-iron noir of his *Northeast* crime sagas, here trades the machete for the slide rule, yet the setting remains the same spiritual geography: the rust-belt north of the 1990s. But where his previous works found tragedy in the collapsing social order, *Uncle* finds a peculiar, resilient absurdity. The series is not merely a biography of Cui Guoming (played with frantic, heartbreaking brilliance by Guo Jingfei); it is an elegy for the "smartest guy in the room" who never quite found the right room.
Visually, the series departs from the desaturated gray usually reserved for "period" dramas about Northern China. Instead, the cinematography embraces a cluttered, almost claustrophobic warmth. The camera loves the detritus of the era—the whirring fans, the clunky bicycles, the piles of blueprints for failed inventions. One scene in the fourth episode stands out: Cui Guoming, backlit by the harsh fluorescent hum of a factory he is about to leave, explains a complex engineering theory to a room of disinterested workers. The framing isolates him, not as a victim, but as a man vibrating on a frequency the rest of the world hasn't tuned into yet. It is a visual metaphor for his entire existence: brilliant, loud, and utterly out of place.
The narrative spine of the show is the relationship between Cui and his nephew, Er Pang. This dynamic saves the series from becoming a mere catalog of errors. Through Er Pang’s eyes, the Uncle is not a loser but a wizard of infinite potential. Guo Jingfei’s performance is a high-wire act of manic energy and sudden, crushing stillness. He plays Cui not as a tragic figure, but as an "eternal amateur"—a man whose curiosity is so voracious it cannibalizes his own success. In a lesser drama, Cui’s cycle of boom-and-bust ventures would be a cautionary tale. Here, it is treated with a rare dignity. His failures are not moral failings; they are side effects of a soul too large for the rigid structures of 1990s state-enterprise China.
The emotional climax does not come with a great financial victory—which would be the cheap, commercial ending—but in a quiet moment of recognition. Near the finale, as yet another venture crumbles, the family gathers not to scold, but to endure. The support system, led by the stoic Li Xiaozhen (Wang Jiajia), represents the unseen labor that allows dreamers to exist. The script suggests that while Cui builds the "castles in the sky," it is the women around him who pour the concrete for the foundation.
*Uncle* ultimately asks a profound question about the definition of a life well-lived. In an era that fetishizes "outcomes" and "deliverables," Kong Ergou has crafted a tribute to the process—to the messy, inefficient, and beautiful act of trying. It is a portrait of a generation that ran full speed toward a future that didn't always catch them, suggesting that the running itself was the victory.
The Verdict: A soulful, deceptively complex character study that reimagines the "loser" archetype as a pioneer of the human spirit. Essential viewing for anyone who has ever started over.