Tetsuya Takeda, who plays the Japanese friend who is the husband of Ye Xun's former cello teacher, plays a character named Hoshino Tatsuro. He famously played a character of the same name in the 1991 Japanese drama "101-kai me no puropozu". The story and title is very similar to this movie. He also had a well-known scene in that drama where he stood in the street and was nearly struck by a truck just as Huang Da was in this movie.