In 1910, one year before the collapse of China’s last imperial dynasty, Cambridge-educated Dr. Wu Lien-teh returns to his old country – then pre-modern China – to investigate a deadly, mysterious epidemic that has ravaged its Northeastern colonized region of Manchuria. Amidst chaos and despair, he must fight more than just the disease, but also ignorance, racism, and the population’s distrust in modern science. Defying the prejudices of both the Eastern and the Western societies, Dr. Wu embarks on a perilous, relentless quest to prove his radical hypothesis that the pathogen behind the epidemic – Yersinia pestis – has evolved into an airborne disease and advocates for the progressive measure of wearing face masks as the only way to save them. A tale filled with grief, hope, and sacrifice, Neither Donkey Nor Horse is at once a historical epic and a contemporary fable: The film honors the spirit of scientific inquiry amidst humanity’s worst crises while shedding light on what must be done to confront similar disasters today and in the future.