A Robot in the Orange Orchard (2022)
Considered a remake of the K-drama "I'm Not a Robot." As the president of a successful tech company, Lu Kun (Connor Leong) often finds himself in situations involving large groups of people. While he has no trouble addressing any number of people, he has incredible difficulty with any kind of direct physical contact. Because he suffers from a strange allergy triggered only by direct skin-to-skin contact, something as simple as a handshake could prove fatal. Unable to make direct contact with others, Lu Kun is intrigued when he discovers that a doctor named Fu Yang (Wang Fang) has created an incredibly lifelike companion robot nicknamed "Friday" (Sun Qian). Wanting to invest further in Dr. Fu Yang’s work, Lu Kun requests that Friday be delivered to his home so he can test all the capabilities of this incredible creation. Although he agrees to Lu Kun’s request, the doctor is mortified when a last-minute technical glitch renders his robot inoperable. Unable to bear the thought of losing both his credibility and his funding, he asks his former assistant, Yang Shan Shan (Sun Qian), to take the robot’s place—just long enough to get it working again. Since she served as the real-life model for the robot’s appearance, Shan Shan is identical to the robot in every way and agrees to the doctor’s request only when she realizes she truly has no other choice. Arriving at Lu Kun’s home as "Friday," Shan Shan does her best to emulate the robot’s behavior and quickly wins Lu Kun’s approval. Unaware that his new robot friend is actually human, none of Lu Kun’s allergies are triggered by her touch, but when Shan Shan discovers the truth about his condition, her heart breaks. In a desperate attempt to keep her identity a secret, Shan Shan does her best, but the more time she spends with him, the more she realizes she must tell him the truth. Will he be able to accept her as a human once her secret is revealed?
