Wang Anyi - The Song of Everlasting Sorrow

The two returned to the first set only to discover that everyone had gone. Even the bed had been taken away, leaving only a few workers behind to straighten up the remaining items on set. The girls wondered if they had gone to the wrong place and were about to go look elsewhere when Wu Peizhen’s cousin suddenly called out to them. As it happened, he was one of the workers breaking down the set. He told them to wait a little while, and then he would take them to watch a special effects shoot that was going on at one of the other sets! They had no choice but to stand off to one side and wait idly. Someone asked the cousin who his guests were and he told him. But when the man asked where they went to school, the cousin was stumped and Wu Peizhen had to answer for herself. The man flashed them a smile, revealing a set of white teeth that shimmered in the darkness of the studio. He was the director, the cousin later told them. He had studied abroad and was also a screenwriter; in fact he had written and directed the scene they had earlier seen being filmed. The cousin told them all this as he led them off to see the special effects shoot, where they saw smoke, fire, even ghosts. Once again the technical people were doing all the work while the actors did virtually nothing.

Asked by Wu Peizhen if they could see some movie stars, the cousin looked embarrassed. He told them that there was not a single big star on any of the sets that day, explaining that it was not every day that big movie stars had scenes. The studio simply could not schedule things the way they would like — they had to work around the stars’ schedules.

Wu Peizhen caught her cousin in a lie. “Didn’t you tell us that you are always running into all these big name stars at the studio every day?” she protested.

Wang Qiyao took pity on the cousin and tried to smooth things over. “It’s getting dark. We had better come back some other time. Our parents will be worried!”

As the cousin led them toward the exit they once again ran into the director. Not only did he remember them, he addressed them jocularly as “the girls from So-and-so middle school”—Wang Qiyao and Wu Peizhen turned a bright red.

On the ride home, neither was in the mood to talk and they sat silently, listening to the ringing bells of the trolley. The trolley was half empty; the after-work rush hour was over and Shanghai’s nightlife had yet to begin. The girls’ experience at the film studio was not exactly as expected; it was difficult to say whether it was disappointing or whether they had had the time of their lives — the one thing for sure was that they were both exhausted. Wu Peizhen had never had her sights set on the studio. Her reason for going rested entirely in making Wang Qiyao happy, so naturally she had hoped it would be a wonderful trip. Just what was so wonderful about the film studio, however, Wu Peizhen had not the slightest clue — she had to wait for Wang Qiyao’s reaction to find out. The impression the film studio left on Wang Qiyao, on the other hand, was much more complicated. It was not nearly as magical a place as she had imagined, yet because it appeared so ordinary it gave her the impression that it was within her grasp — but just what was it that she could grasp? She had yet to figure that out. Her initial hopes may have been dampened, but the anxiety that came with anticipation had been relieved.

In the days following their visit to the film studio, Wang Qiyao did not utter a single word about their trip, and this left Wu Peizhen quite depressed. She was afraid that Wang Qiyao had not liked the studio and the whole trip had been a complete waste. Then one day she told Wang Qiyao in a confessional tone that her cousin had invited them back to the film studio but she had already declined the offer.

Wang Qiyao rounded on her. “How could you do that? He is trying to be nice to us!”

Wu Peizhen’s eyes widened in disbelief. Wang Qiyao felt a bit uncomfortable under her stare. Turning her face away, she said, “What I mean is, you should show the guy some respect. After all, he’s your cousin!”

This was one occasion when even Wu Peizhen saw through Wang Qiyao. But far from belittling her friend for being phony, Wu Peizhen felt a tenderness well up in her heart. Although on the outside she looks like a grownup, deep down she is still a child! Wu Peizhen thought to herself. At that moment, her feeling for Wang Qiyao approached maternal love — a love that encompassed all.

From then on the film studio became a place for frequent visits. They learned quite a few inside secrets about filmmaking. They learned that movies are never shot in sequence, but are made one scene at a time and only edited together in the final stages. The set locations may have been dilapidated and in disrepair, but the images captured by the camera were always perfectly beautiful. On one or two occasions they actually saw some of those famous movie stars, who sat in front of the camera doing nothing, like a collection of idle props. Films scripts were revised at random, and in the blink of an eye even the dead could come back to life. The girls made their way backstage, and as they rubbed their hands against the mysterious machinery that made images come to life, their hearts seemed to undergo a kind of transformation. Time spent in a film studio is never humdrum; the experience always hints at life’s greater meaning. This is especially true for the young, who cannot yet completely distinguish truth from fiction and the real from the make-believe, and especially during that era — when movies had already become an important part of our everyday lives.

Wang Qiyao had learned that the most critical moment in making a film came the second that the director calls, “Camera.” Everything up to that point boils down to preparation and foreshadowing, but what happens afterward? It ends forever. She came to understand the significance of the word “Camera”: it announced a kind of climax. Sometimes the director let them look through the camera and what they saw through its lens was always gorgeous; the camera had the power to filter out all of the chaos and disarray. It had the power to make what was dark and dismal glimmer with light. Inside the camera was a different world. After editing and postproduction, only the pure essence would remain.

The director became quite close with the girls and they eventually stopped blushing in his presence. A few times, when Wu Peizhen’s cousin was not in the studio, they even went straight to look for the director. He had given them the nicknames “Zhen Zhen” and “Yao Yao,” as if they were characters in his latest movie. Behind their backs he described Zhen Zhen to his colleagues as a graceless servant girl right out of Dream of the Red Chamber , a little cleaning maid who thinks she is special just because she is employed in a large, wealthy household. Yao Yao he described as a proper miss who acted the part of a rich official’s daughter, like the tragic lover Zhu Yingtai. He treated Wu Peizhen as if she were a child; he loved to tease her and play little jokes on her. He promised to put Wang Qiyao in a scene in one of his movies as soon as the opportunity arose. Who knows? Because her coquettish eyes resembled Ruan Lingyu’s, they might even be able to capitalize on the audience’s nostalgia for the dead movie star and make Wang Qiyao into a new diva of the screen. Although he seemed to be kidding, this was the director’s reserved and humorous way of making a promise. Wang Qiyao naturally did not take him too seriously, but she did kind of like being compared to Ruan Lingyu.

Then one day the director telephoned Wang Qiyao at home to have her come down to the studio for a screen test. Wang Qiyao’s heart raced and her hands grew clammy. She was unsure if this was the opportunity she had been waiting for. She wondered: Could my big chance really come this easily? She could not believe it, neither did she dare not to believe it. Deep down her heart was in knots. At first she did not want to tell Wu Peizhen about it. She planned to sneak off alone and return before anyone noticed that she was gone. In case nothing came of the screen test, it would be her own little secret and she could pretend that nothing had ever happened. But then, just before the day of her screen test, she broke down and asked Wu Peizhen to go with her so that she would not be too nervous. Wang Qiyao did not sleep well the night before; her face appeared thinner than usual and she had dark rings around her eyes. Wu Peizhen naturally jumped for joy as all kinds of wild ideas went flying through her head. In no time she was talking about organizing press conferences for Wang Qiyao, who regretted telling her friend about the screen test.