Oriental Casablanca

This film (drama)Also known as东方卡萨布兰卡，is aMainland ChinaProducerbeauty live，At2009Released in year 。The dialogue language isMandarin Chinese，Current Douban rating7.0(For reference only)。

During World War II, the Japanese army did not dare to touch Macau. The secret agreement between Japan and Portugal made Macau a rare “enclave” on the Pacific battlefield, while also becoming a hub for intelligence gathering and a battleground for spies. The Macau portrayed in this drama is the intriguing “Oriental Casablanca” of espionage, with the establishment of a secret transport route by the Communist Party of China (CPC) as the main storyline, layer by layer showcasing the intertwined espionage networks involving the Kuomintang (KMT), Japan, Portugal, and the United States, stepping into a non-combat battlefield, revealing a long-buried “archive.” After the outbreak of the war of resistance, the famous Chinese general Fang Tianting, who had previously led the Guangzhou uprising, returned from abroad and passed through Hong Kong on his way back to participate in the anti-Japanese efforts. Jiang Hao, the son of the president of the Macau Chamber of Commerce, who had studied abroad and was eager to serve his country, also headed there. In the eyes of the Japanese, there was only one military leader in China, and that was Fang Tianting. Fearing that General Fang would safely return to the mainland to command the Chinese army against them, they dispatched an assassin from Japan’s “Tokubetsu Kōtō Keisatsu” to attempt to kill General Fang in Hong Kong. In this crisis, Jiang Hao escorted General Fang to Macau, where the Japanese army could not station troops, and from there they proceeded to the anti-Japanese front. Consequently, Japan sent female spy Shen Wei to Macau, attempting to kill General Fang there, while the KMT agents received instructions: “If you cannot persuade General Fang to go to Chongqing, then kill him in Macau; he must not fall into the hands of the Communist Party!” Thus, an intense battle of wits and courage unfolded in this “enclave.” After many twists and turns, Jiang Hao and the secret intelligence personnel from Macau finally managed to escort General Fang back to the country safely. At this time, both the CPC intelligence agency and the KMT intelligence agency almost simultaneously obtained an important piece of information: the Japanese government had signed a secret agreement with the neutral Portuguese government that decided Macau's fate, codenamed the “Chrysanthemum Archive.” To utilize Macau, a region of special significance, in their struggle against the enemy, both the CPC “Special Section” and the KMT intelligence agency wanted to obtain a copy of the “Chrysanthemum Archive.” Therefore, the CPC joined forces with Jiang Hao, along with Jiang Hao's lover, Lin Na, a CPC spy infiltrated into the KMT, to penetrate Macau's high society, while the KMT dispatched its best espionage agent, Shi Lei, to Macau, with their competitor still being the Japanese spy Shen Wei. After many life-and-death encounters, Jiang Hao and others managed to infiltrate the governor's office before Shi Lei and captured the film of the “Chrysanthemum Archive,” discovering a shocking secret— due to the 100,000 Japanese expatriates living in Brazil (then Portuguese), the Japanese government feared that its citizens would be persecuted by the Portuguese government and thus signed a secret agreement with Portugal— that even if Japan occupied all of Asia after the outbreak of war, it would never send a single soldier to occupy (Portuguese) Macau; otherwise, the Portuguese government would put all 100,000 Japanese expatriates in Brazil into concentration camps. This meant that Macau would become the only piece of land in Asia that could not be occupied by Japanese imperialism during the war. After learning the secret of the “Chrysanthemum Archive,” the CPC “Special Section” utilized Macau's special significance to launch a series of patriotic anti-Japanese activities: after Hong Kong fell, the Japanese army began to hunt down hundreds of cultural and artistic figures and social elites who had previously moved from Shanghai to Hong Kong. Facing a great enemy, Jiang Hao, disregarding personal safety, went alone to Hong Kong to undertake the task of rescuing “800 elite figures of Hong Kong.” At this time, the Japanese spies who had left Macau began a killing spree in Hong Kong to take revenge for being restrained by the Jiang family’s influence in Macau, aiming to kill Jiang Hao in Hong Kong. With strong support from the CPC party organization, Jiang Hao managed to safely deliver some of the cultural figures to Macau, thus saving many prominent figures from the massacre by the Japanese army. After that, Jiang Hao leveraged his special identity as the son of the president of the Macau Chamber of Commerce and a good friend of the governor, while simultaneously dealing with Japanese agents and uniting “King of Macau” Yuan Shen and patriotic figures like Su Ziyu from the Macau Chinese Chamber of Commerce to help Macau weather various crises, including the “Border Gate Incident” and the “Macau Currency Crisis,” laying the foundation for Macau’s return to the motherland 60 years later. It can be confidently stated that without the efforts of Jiang Hao, Lin Na, Su Ziyu, Yuan Shen, and others, the modern history of Macau would look very different.