As a non-professional martial-arts actor, Shaofeng Feng admits that, when he first time read the script, he thought his role should have belonged to Kung-Fu master like Jet Li or Donnie Yen for the intensive fight scenes that are required in the film. Feng shoots the clinic fight scene with Dong Hu from the first day he came in until the last day he left the studio.
By the 1700s, "gong'an" detective novels were a well known genre in China, with "Di Gong'an" being one of the most popular. In 1949 an English translation, 'The Celebrated Cases of Judge Dee', was published.