Blossoms Shanghai

Miss Wang heads south to find a factory that will make jeans cheaply enough to win the order. Against his own interests, Mr. Bao secretly helps her.

Things get deadlier. After stock-market losses, Mei Lin’s debt-ridden husband dies in a fall. Li Li mortgages the Grand Lisbon to fund Mr. Bao. Miss Wang begins looking for garment factories for the Walmart deal, while Uncle Ye works to block her. As Li Li strikes deals to keep Mr. Bao afloat, a powerful businesswoman from Taiwan gets involved.

Across town, Miss Wang begins competing with Mr. Bao to win a huge order for jeans with Walmart. While Uncle Ye and Miss Wang jockey to get the Walmart order, Mr. Bao and Qiang begin a stock-market battle that leads to a crash.

Qiang and Bao have dinner at the Grand Lisbon and wind up bigger enemies than before. Each backs a rival company that’s fighting for the only government-approved slot to launch an IPO.

Ling Zi reopens Tokyo Nights as a Shanghainese omakase and wins immediate success. Over on Huanghe Road, the Grand Lisbon falls into chaos when Li Li is held for questioning by the police. Again, Mr. Bao helps save the day.

When Qiang attempts a hostile takeover of a Shanghainese company, Mr. Bao forms a pact with Li Li—money for information. Mr. Bao and Li Li’s employees profit off of Qiang’s bid, but collateral damage forces the police to descend on Qiang and the Grand Lisbon.

Amid a flurry of corporate intrigue, Mr. Bao starts ramping up his plans to stop the unethical Qiang from becoming the big dog in town. Qiang has a personal score to settle: he was once in love with Ling Zi before she left Tokyo to work with Mr. Bao.

As Ling Zi renovates Tokyo Nights, she remembers how she and Mr. Bao built the restaurant together. Miss Wang and Mr. Wei prepare for their company’s opening banquet. Mr. Bao makes mistakes, personal and financial.

The distancing continues. Planning to overhaul Tokyo Nights, Ling Zi goes to the Grand Lisbon for research. Miss Wang decides to open her own business—with no help from Mr. Bao. She throws a disastrous launch party that lands her an unexpected partner, the goofy Mr. Wei. Like a gunslinging outlaw, Mr. Qiang arrives in Shanghai from Shenzhen, with sights set on the local stock market—and Mr. Bao.

The two reliable women in Mr. Bao’s life begin distancing themselves from him. Ling Zi returns to Shanghai full of resolve and dissolves her business partnership with him. Mr. Bao oversteps by providing Miss Wang with unwanted help upon her return to Huanghe Road.

Ling Zi remains absent, prompting Mr. Bao to reminisce about when he first met her in Tokyo four years earlier. In Ling Zi’s absence, her friends haplessly try to keep Tokyo Nights going. The past still heavy upon him, Mr. Bao goes to do business in Hong Kong. There he meets Xuezhi, the woman who broke his heart, and is surprised by what he discovers.

When the leadership changes at the department store he’s been supplying with product, Mr. Bao must seek out new allies—and sources of profit.

Mr. Bao’s romantic past and present collide. While Miss Wang gets bullied at the factory where she’s been reassigned and Ling Zi remains missing, Mr. Bao flashes back to his passion for Xuezhi, a beautiful ticket-taker on a local bus, whose rejection of him turned him into the man he is today.

Miss Wang’s fall has repercussions at Tokyo Nights, where Ling Zi’s role in what happened breeds discord in the place that Mr. Bao thinks of as his refuge. The funny, friendly world of Tokyo Nights explodes in anger and recriminations that Mr. Bao can’t fix.

Over at the Foreign Trade Office, Miss Wang’s success has spawned envy and led a shifty colleague to smear her, twisting a well-intentioned gift from Mr. Bao into evidence of accused bribery.

As Mr. Bao’s relationship with Li Li deepens, his friend Tao Tao finds himself knee-deep in romantic calamity.

With the help of Uncle Ye, Mr. Bao thwarts the attack on the Grand Lisbon so successfully that the restaurant sets Huanghe Road abuzz with talk of its famous new dishes. Mr. Bao is now at his triumphant peak. What could possibly go wrong?

Li Li remains under attack by a group of restaurant madames led by the hotheaded Mei Lin, who sponsors a coup in the Grand Lisbon’s kitchen. Li Li goes to Tokyo Nights for help from Mr. Bao, a move that earns her Ling Zi’s jealousy.

In a bold move, Mr. Bao drives into the industrial boondocks to cut a deal with the knockoff-selling gangsters. Fearing for his safety, Miss Wang follows him there, risking her life to make sure he’s not in danger. Her bravery gets Mr. Bao remembering how they first met at the Foreign Trade Office.

Li Li’s rivals on Huanghe Road’s restaurant row begin sabotaging her business. Mr. Bao has his own problems: thuggish counterfeiters have begun cranking out knockoffs of San Yang shirts, threatening to destroy sales just as they’re beginning.

Li Li gives an enigmatic gift to Mr. Bao, who warns her that the Grand Lisbon won’t last more than three months. Thanks to a brilliant marketing move by Mr. Bao, San Yang shirts become a smash hit at the hottest department store on Shanghai’s biggest shopping street. Over at Tokyo Nights, the opportunistic Ling Zi tries to find a way to profit from those shirts, causing problems for Mr. Bao.

Mr. Bao and Mr. Fan sign a contract to distribute made-in-China San Yang shirts. This groundbreaking deal leads to Mr. Bao giving Miss Wang a thank-you gift that will come back to haunt them both.

A goofy, mink-clad interloper named Mr. Wei tries to steal Mr. Fan’s business, but Mr. Bao is helped by Miss Wang, his adoring contact at the Foreign Trade Office whom many people think is his girlfriend.

A provincial factory manager, Mr. Fan, wants to do business with Mr. Bao, but—dazzled by Li Li and the riches he sees at the Grand Lisbon—he tries to sweeten the deal. Mr. Bao plays hardball.

Mr. Bao finds himself entangled in a stock-market fiasco that cripples many small-time traders and damages his reputation. His friends rally round him at Tokyo Nights, a small, unglamorous restaurant that Mr. Bao co-owns with the feisty Ling Zi, with whom he has an intimate history.

Mentored by the aging financial maestro Uncle Ye, the ambitious Ah Bao transforms himself into Mr. Bao, a rich, influential stock trader. Even after he’s the victim of a hit-and-run attack that nearly kills him, life goes on: on the glamorous Huanghe Road, a new luxury restaurant called the Grand Lisbon opens, run by a beautiful and mysterious owner named Li Li.