Fall of Ming

Northern China in 1642, after almost 300 years, the Ming dynasty is on the verge of collapse. Li Zicheng's rebel forces have surrounded Kaifeng, capital of Henan province, but their attack on the city is temporarily beaten back.

The persecuted Field Marshal Sun Chuanting (Leon Dai) is released from prison and summoned by the Chongzhen Emperor (Yu Shaoqun), and given 5,000 troops to put down the rebellion. Sun arrives in Tongguan with his wife (Feng Bo) and child, and is greeted by the corrupt garrison commander He Renlong, who does not know that Sun has come to execute him and his men for abandoning their posts.

Itinerant physician Wu Youke (Feng Yuanzheng) is tried at a county magistrate for allegedly poisoning a patient with his unconventional treatment; the case is dismissed but the judge bans him from practising in his jurisdiction. On his way to Tongguan to visit his teacher, Wu is forced by Ming troops to attend to the wounds of Li Tianyou (Sun Qiang), a disillusioned scholar who was actually en route to joining the rebels. He then stays with his teacher, Master Physician Zhao Chuan (Qian Xuege), who is told to treat the Ming soldiers when more and more of them mysteriously start falling ill, but Master Zhao is unable to stop the spread of the epidemic among the soldiers and later dies of the plague himself. When all the other physicians flee in fear, an understanding develops between Wu and the Field Marshal Sun, who allows Wu to test out his unconventional medical theories of airborne disease. Wu isolates the sick in dedicated camps and orders everyone in contact to cover their face, and manages to contain the plague for the moment. The rebels hear of the success and attempt to kidnap Wu to treat their troops, but Field Marshal Sun's troops rescue him.

Meanwhile, Field Marshal Sun finds that Tongguan's grain supplies are seriously low and the grain bags are filled with sand instead, so he angrily executes the registrar for covering up the fact. The local garrison is poorly trained, and the firearm equipments are malfunctional due to lack of maintenance. The besieged Ming troops in Kaifeng are now starving, and the Ming court is sending urgent orders telling Sun to attack the rebels. Sun however is having great trouble procuring rations and funds from the local gentries, who selfishly refuse to contribute anything for the army. When Sun attempts to confiscate public lands stolen from the local garrison by the gentries, they bribe his deputy Ren Qi (Hu Xiaoguang) to burn down the government archive storing the evidence. In fury and desperation, Sun summarily executes all the gentries in a surprise move and seized their assets by force.

Under pressure from the emperor, Field Marshall sets out to engage the rebels. The night before he leaves, he arranges for the isolation camp to be burned and kills all within, so that the sick will not hinder his campaign. Disillusioned with the government, Wu Youke leaves with Master Zhao's widowed daughter and grandson and goes back to his hometown in Suzhou. He then spends the rest of his life compiling his knowledge and experiences treating the plague into the book On Plague Diseases, the theory of which regarding infectious diseases is two centuries ahead of its time.

With an underprepared army, Field Marshall Sun is defeated and killed in the subsequent battle outside Tongguan. After his death, Li Zicheng's forces successfully invades Guanzhong and establishes the Shun dynasty at Xi'an, and the Ming dynasty collapses two years later.

• Yuanzheng Feng
• Leon Dai
• Bo Feng
• Yang Yang
• Xuege Qian

• Fall of Ming on IMDb