1
Last May, I came to a small town near Shangqiu to make a living. My brother and I jointly contracted a gas station, which I was in charge of on weekdays.
Just after the National Day holiday, the gas station began to repair the road, business began to go bad. After the winter, it has almost reached the point of semi-suspension. In order to save money, I had to lay off all four car washers in the store (who were hired to cooperate with the service of “a car wash for 100 yuan for refueling”) and do it myself.
Unexpectedly, although few cars come to the gas station to fill up, many use the car wash card to wash the car. I have to wash twenty or thirty every day. I am so tired that my back aches. In the evening closed the work, I will go to a new open bath hall bubble, there clean, the price is also affordable, after doing a member, as long as 15 yuan.
One night, in the pool, I met Li Dongxiang again.
He was sitting shirtless on the edge of the pool with his back to me, and I was fascinated by the tattoos on his arms and back. Then I saw his face and I remembered I had seen him.
A few summers ago, while wandering the county seat, I met him in an abandoned basketball court. He was a tall man with long hair and at least 1.8 meters in height, holding an ice cream cone in his hand, standing next to an old motorcycle. A few minutes later, a beautiful girl appeared, should be his girlfriend, hee hee smile, took the ice cream ride on the motorcycle. Before the motorcycle left the basketball court, the two of them glanced at me and walked away with a smile. Maybe they were laughing at me as a lonely uncle, but I couldn’t help saying to myself, “This is a match made in heaven.”
In the pool, Li Dongxiang noticed my eyes, also looked at me a few times. His hair was cut short, his eyes dimmed, and his ribs cut. He is handsome, with a row of ear-studs on his ears, and his face, nose and mouth are quite handsome.
Eyes met again, I couldn’t help but open up, said I had seen him, asked him: “do you remember me?”
He looked at me and shook his head. What seems to remind of, ask me: “have you had a haircut?”
He turned out to be a barber, working in a barbershop opposite the bathhouse. I had never been to the store, but I pretended to be there, nodded, complimented him on his skill, and he smiled.
In addition to being the owner of the gas station that was going out of business, I considered myself an “independent film director” and wrote screenplays. Although the previous film is more failure experience, but always in the heart never forget. A few months ago, I saw a novel about a small-town youth, and thinking I had written a similar story, I started to make a feature film about a small-town youth.
I see li dongxiang image is good, think later besides seek him to cut hair, still can seek him to do actor, hence before he leaves, we added WeChat, his WeChat name is “craftsman Owen”.
After the Spring Festival, I let the gas station continue to close until the road opened in May. Fortunately, there was no rent during the closing period, so I decided to use the time to pay my own way to shoot the small-town youth feature film.
Given the lessons of previous films — the story was complete and detailed, but the actors couldn’t sustain the roles at all — This time I wanted to choose the lead actor first, and then design the details based on the actors.
Once I had the basic outline of the story, I thought of Li Dongxiang. He himself lived in a small town, occupation, appearance and so on are in line with my search for the male lead.
With this idea in mind, I talked with him on WeChat. He was just 19 years old, and he was born after 2000. He had the dream of becoming an actor and a star, and he was quite willing to participate in it.
So I decided to go to the barbershop once. When I entered, Li Dongxiang was cutting someone’s hair, and I sat down to have a chat with his cousin. His cousin shook his head and laughed when he learned that I wanted to make a film with Li Dongxiang. Maybe the movie he understood was one of those big screen movies, and I explained to him what I was going to make, that it would take so little time and effort to make, and he kind of got the message. In the evening, we went to a barbecue, and after a few bottles of wine, his cousin agreed to let him take a film with me.
I privately ask Li Dongxiang how much salary, his cousin said busy time more than 3000, not busy time more than 2000. I said I’d shoot it for two weeks at most and give him $3,000. He was so happy that he sent me send WeChat messages shortly afterwards and asked me when the shooting would start. I told him not to hurry and to contact him when everything was ready, probably in late march.
2
The next day after the barbecue, I went to Beijing to find the actress, contacted the filming staff, and then went to Wuhan to meet the producer friends to plan the development of the film. The producers, professional and discreet, advised me to write the script anyway, and pointed out that my story, which involved surrogacy, might not pass the review, so it was best not to take the risk.
I just stayed in Wuhan to write the play, but after 20 days or so, I still didn’t finish it. If a producer can’t give a script, there will be a problem with filing. In this way, The time and money are not too abundant, I had to cancel the actors and filming staff, and explain to people “wait until I finalize the script”.
I was so confused and lost that I couldn’t think of a better Angle for the story. A few days later, it happened that I had something to do at home again. It was early April when I came back to the county town after dealing with the family affairs. The road in front of the gas station has been repaired so that May Day can be opened to traffic, leaving me little time.
Thinking of Li Dongxiang, I received a message from him at the end of March asking me how the film was going and when it would be made. I told him that the film might be put on hold and I would talk to him when I came back to the county. Now, I felt the need to meet with him and explain.
Contacted, he said he had just quit his job at the barbershop and was resting in his hometown. His hometown is a village in the north of the county town, I would drive a small broken car to find him, with a small DV — this is my habit, do some records with hand. Of course, it was also because I was reluctant — the small-town youth feature film was basically aborted, but I still wanted to make another film with Li Dongxiang as the main character. I have no idea what story to shoot.
The village is hidden deep in a wheat field, with a concrete path leading to the nearest town. It was about 10 o ‘clock when I arrived, and Li Dongxiang, dressed in shorts and flip-flops as if he had just got up, came out of a dirt road alley to meet me, followed by a short boy in yellow.
The boy was called Sun Xiang, li Dongxiang’s good friend from the village. His skin was white and clean, like a student. He went to university in September. Ask what school, teenager vision dropped once, say to be from recruit of that kind.
Li Dongxiang added: “I am also a university, educated man!”
Sun Xiang beat him with a fist, two people hip-hop made up.
I put the two of them in the car and walked around the village while explaining to Li why the film had been put on hold. He showed understanding. I “lied” about wanting to make a documentary and asked him if he would be my subject. He said yes.
I decided to shoot right away, stopped the car and pulled out the DV. See me open DV, Li Dongxiang proposed to go back to change a suit. I said there was no need, just take notes, just be natural.
We got off the car.
“What do you both do at home and where do you go?” I asked.
“There is a dam nearby and the town government wants to develop it into a tourist area.”
Li Dongxiang ran home to get his motorcycle. I followed him into his yard and met his mother, brother and sister-in-law. He did not see his father, but later learned that he worked on construction sites and came back only once in a few months.
His mother was thin and dark, with a gentle smile and a rustic shyness. The elder brother and sister-in-law was playing with the child in the yard. The child was just running away and wanted to get married before long. Li Dongxiang’s room was a small one. There was a bed in the room, but there was no wardrobe. At the end of the bed was a big suitcase with clothes piled up in a disorderly way.
His mother was sifting through last year’s wheat crop, and I tried to film it, but the woman stopped when she saw me — not in denial, but stunned. I tried to laugh, but I held back.
Lee Dong-cheung on his motorbike (courtesy photo)
As he left the courtyard on his motorcycle, Li was transformed from a sleepy, scruffy king into a dashing young man in yushu. I realized that it would be difficult to document the teenager’s daily routine.
3
The dam was not far from the village and connected to a grove of trees. Several diggers were working nearby, and three men in security uniforms were playing cards when they saw the video camera in my hand. One of them stopped and asked me, “Why?”
“He’s my friend. He’s here to play.” Li Dongxiang told each other. The guard nodded and asked me to stop shooting and continue playing.
The dam was bare and unscenic, with a few women walking with their children and giggling at intervals.
Two teenagers took me for a walk, and I recorded a few. Sun Xiang asked me: “Pat this is what to do, can you make money?”
I shook my head and told them That I didn’t know what to do now. I just wanted to keep some records, not make any money.
“What’s the point?” The young man looked at me suspiciously.
“Not everything makes sense…” Thinking that I was one year older than them, and all these years doing things I didn’t like, and not fully engaged in filming and writing, and sometimes like a chicken with its head cut off, I added, “A lot of what I do doesn’t make sense.”
Like right now, to be honest, I really don’t know why I’m filming them or what I’m going to do when I’m done.
The two boys looked at each other and didn’t answer my question. I asked them to talk and talk as usual, as if DV didn’t exist. But when I turned the camera on them, they didn’t know what to say. So I said no, let them go.
They walked down the dam and sat down on the edge of a beach, not far from where I held up my camera and listened to their murmurs about the blind date. I leaned over and sat down too.
Li Dongxiang and his Friends (courtesy photo)
Half a month ago, Li Dongxiang had a kiss with a town girl, two years older than him, who worked as a cashier in a shopping mall in the county. The girl liked Li Dongxiang, Li Dongxiang also had a good opinion of the girl, however, the girl’s parents proposed that before the daughter married, the husband’s family must have the car room ready, of course, and the bride price — as Far as I know, this place rural bride price is relatively high, hundreds of thousands of ordinary.
After talking to her for a week and eating once, Li took the initiative to end the relationship. Asked the reason, he said that the current economic conditions do not meet the requirements of their parents.
I asked him if the girl shared her parents’ wishes. He nodded and said: “Now is very realistic, like to like, married to marry.”
‘Do you like her?
He was silent. After a while, he opened his moments and showed me one of his posts: “Married before, except for the bride, everything was old. Now when you marry, everything is new except the bride.”
He lifted up his mouth and smiled, saying, “When I posted it to my friends circle at dinner that day, an old guest liked it in the face. She saw it and insisted that I delete it. It turned out to be her ex and they slept together for years.”
“Do you much mind her past?”
“That’s not so, only it’s not worth it. He who wants a house and a car cannot afford it. My brother just built a house when he got married, and he had a lot of money to pay for it. My father said that he would build a house for me next year. I didn’t want to live in the village, and I didn’t want to use their money to buy a house in the county.”
“Not even on your own.”
“So I don’t want to get married.”
I thought about the girl I saw on the basketball court last year and asked him if there was anyone he really liked. He was silent for a moment, then picked up a stone and threw it into the water. “Yes, I went to college.”
He didn’t seem to want to talk about the past, so he got up and walked deeper into the beach. Sun Xiang told me, Li Dongxiang finished junior high school is not read, with cousin learn to cut hair, that girl is his classmate, often go to cut hair, later two people fell in love. Last year, the girl was admitted to a university in the south. She broke up with him shortly after the beginning of the semester. Li Dongxiang bought a pair of lovers’ watches and went all the way to celebrate the girl’s birthday, but he didn’t see each other. After coming back, Li Dongxiang gave the watch to Sun Xiang and asked him to give it to his girlfriend.
“Did you?”
“After work.” Sun Xiang raised his face and looked into the distance. “Without money, it’s just empty talk.”
I do not feel once more look at him – behind the face of the young, incredibly hiding a so sophisticated soul.
“Tomorrow my classmates and I will go to Kunshan to enter the factory. More than 3000 yuan will be spent on the factory in January.
“Good. Will Li Dongxiang go, too?”
“He can’t go. Those with tattoos don’t.”
In the distance, Mr. Li was rolling up his sleeves and repeatedly rinsing the tattoos on his left arm and back with water.
4
At noon, I invite two people to dine in town. There was only one street in the town, not many restaurants, only one noodle stand with food during the blackout. I had no appetite, drank a bottle of coke, they each ordered a bowl of beef noodles, purr purr eat very sweet.
Sun Xiang had business at home, so he had to leave after eating the noodles. After taking him back to the village, Li Lit a cigarette and stared blankly at the alley where his friend had disappeared.
I interrupted and asked what he was doing in the afternoon. He shook his head and said there was nothing to do. He received a phone call from a friend asking him to go fishing, but he refused. Asked why he wasn’t going, he said it wasn’t interesting.
He went to the store and bought two ice creams. He gave me one and ate it under the shade of a tree. His eyes were dull and preoccupied.
When I asked him why he didn’t cut his hair, he said he had a neck pain.
It’s easy to understand. He is tall and works with his head down every day.
“It’s the low season. There’s no money to be made. After four years, I’m tired of it.”
Asked what he was going to do and what his plans were, he shook his head and said he had no idea.
Tattoo of Lee Tung Cheung (courtesy photo)
He touched the back of his left hand, asked me if I had a tattoo, I said I have been thinking of text, and afraid of pain dare not text.
“Yes, it does. Most people can’t stand it.”
“You got a tattoo, didn’t your parents tell you?”
“When my dad’s at home, I wear long sleeves, and when he sees it, he scolds me — he wanted me to go to the army.”
“You should go to the army.”
“I can’t go. I don’t even want to enter the factory.” He sighed. “It’s all the old ways, judging people by their appearance.”
“Do you think you can keep it going?”
“I can’t stand it. It’s so boring. But there are so many girls in it, you can talk to someone. My mother said that if I couldn’t find one at home, I would go out and talk about bringing one back. I want to go out, too.”
“To find a partner?”
“No, it isn’t. It’s not fun to be around.”
“Where?”
“I have friends in Jinan and want to visit them.”
When he was asked when he would start, he thought, “Tomorrow, I’ll be back in a few days and we’ll shoot again.”
After eating the ice cream, he went home to pack his bags. When he had finished, he lay down, brushed a little trembling and a quick hand, and at last listened to a song called useless, and closed his eyes.
“Ideal/too far to see/I don’t want to talk/you don’t want to ask me…
I slipped out of the room. In the yard, his mother was still sifting wheat in the sun.
5
I went back to the county, played billiards with my friends, took a bath, and had nothing to do.
In the evening, I chatted with Li Dongxiang and asked him if he had booked the train ticket. He said he had not booked it yet. I said I wanted to go to Jinan with him and record his trip. He hesitated. I said I would pay for the journey, and after a while he agreed. Ask him to send in his ID number. I booked two sleeper tickets.
The next day, we met in the county, together by bus to Shangqiu by train. He had only a rucksack, a black suit and pointed European shoes. He was handsome indeed, and several of the girls cast unabashedly sideways glances at him along the way.
After taking a bite at a small restaurant near the train station and checking tickets into the lobby, two police officers noticed us, stopped Li and checked his ID card. See the DV in my hand again, also check me.
I hate this kind of sudden stop in public. It’s not good. Li, too, frowned.
To the train, he said, since there is a tattoo on the hand, it is very by the police “see”, last year he went to the south, the heat wear short sleeves, all the way was checked several times, “You see me like the underworld?”
I lightly smile, ask him tattoo can wash off, he said can wash, but wash not clean.
“Regret?”
“A little.” He felt the back of his hand, and after a moment’s silence added, “But I want to write.”
‘What?
“The more they dislike it, the more I think about it.”
“Aren’t you afraid you won’t find someone?”
“In fact, she likes tattoos.”
I tried to find out more, but he smiled mysteriously and closed his mouth.
There was a woman in a neighboring shop with a baby who had not been weaned. The baby was crying and making a disturbing noise. We went to another compartment with fewer people. I took DV to shoot a few video, Li Dongxiang sat on the seat by the window, a woman sat opposite the lower berth, the camera toward Li Dongxiang, the woman thought is to shoot her, got up and came to me, asked me in what. I asked her not to misunderstand me, explained, and she went back.
When I got back to my seat, I talked to the woman and asked her if she wanted to be in the camera. She immediately waved me off. After learning that Li Dongxiang was from Shangqiu, the woman became more enthusiastic and took the initiative to talk with us, saying that she was also from Shangqiu and worked in Qingdao, the terminal of this train.
Woman ordinary appearance, plump figure, collarbone has a plum tattoo, speaking simply. Her eyes swept over The face of Li Dongxiang, obviously more interested in him, I went to the toilet to smoke, out heard the woman’s heroic laughter, did not go back to the past, back to the bed to rest.
Before long, Li Dongxiang also returned to the shop, I joke that the woman took a fancy to him, do you want to pay a ticket to Qingdao?
He smiled and closed his eyes.
6
Five hours by car, the lights are on in Jinan. There was a lot of people coming and going at the station. Standing in the crowd, Li Dongxiang looked left and right, but did not notice the friend who had come to meet him.
After making a few calls, he told me that his friend was at work and could not take the day off. He had to go to his friend’s place and wait for him.
He had two good friends in Jinan, Ma Qiang and Zhou Jiayang. They dropped out of junior high school and came to Jinan to work as apprentices in the kitchen of the restaurant. Li Dongxiang killed a few days of fish, tired, and coincides with a cousin said that the barber shop is short of people, they went home. Two friends persevered, and now both have changed restaurants, earning far more than his barbershop in the county town.
Ma Qiang lives in the small hotel where he works, and Zhou Jiayang lives in another restaurant, in a rented room in the village in the city. Li Dongxiang will be staying with Zhou Jiayang tonight.
It was after 8 o ‘clock when we arrived at zhou Jiayang’s village after an hour’s bus ride. We were both hungry, and Li dongxiang’s two friends didn’t leave work until 10 o ‘clock. We had to find a place to eat first, and ordered beer kebabs at a busy barbecue. As we sat in the doorway, the eyes of the people coming in and out scanned us. Li put his left hand under the table, his eyes wary.
When I asked him what was wrong, he told me about an incident last summer when he went to a barbecue with his friends and some guys saw his tattoo and asked what he was wearing. He ignored it and they stormed out.
When I asked him if he had fought hard, he shook his head and said, “I’ve never been in a fight since I was a kid.” I took him at his word that he was not a domineering kid, and when I talked to him on the phone, I always had a little sheep in mind.
He said he had been so frightened that he was drunk and would have been beaten if he hadn’t run so fast.
“My cousin laughed at me and said I had grown a big man for nothing. Then I went to fight and I paid for six months — only one month.”
“Why not?”
“Not interesting.”
“When you get into a fight, you’ll know it works.”
“It’s hard to fight.”
I was about to take the opportunity to brag about my “jianghu years” when I was his age, but when I heard this, I swallowed it.
Fight is really silly, but meet bully always dare not fight back is not a good thing. Li Dongxiang and I know a lot of post-00s, the body lacks a boy should have blood.
Fill up, while away to more than 10 o ‘clock, the three children met. Seeing his friend Li Dongxiang, a flying smile appeared on his face. The three of them walked on the road shoulder to shoulder, extremely lively. They were eating their snack at a roadside stall. Instead of sitting down, I hid from them and patted them. Li Dongxiang seemed a different man, guessing punches, swearing and guzzling beer.
I suspected a little of his previous gentleness and melancholy, all pretended. But on second thought, people are multi-faceted, just like Hamlet, in a thousand eyes, there are a thousand of him.
7
At midnight, I said goodbye to the handsome men and went to bed at a village inn. Ma Qiang and Zhou Jiayang each took a day off and took us shopping the next day.
We took a walk around Daming Lake, where the wind was strong and there were few tourists, and then went to Furong Street and Kuanhou Lane. Both places are food courts. It’s the same thing. It’s not interesting.
Three handsome men, tired of shuttling through the crowd, bought milk tea and sat down at an intersection, biting a straw and sweeping their eyes over the woman passing by. Nearby there are two security guard uncle, from time to time with alert eyes looked at them 3 people, then saw me in DV shooting, and withdrew the eyes.
I joined them and asked them where they were going next and what they were going to do. None of them had a plan. Not far away, a girl was sitting alone drinking milk tea, and Ma Qiang and Zhou Jiayang tried to persuade each other to chat each other up. I encouraged them both by offering $100 to anyone who added to the girl’s WeChat. Two people get up eager to try, the result dawdle along for a long time, come out from the bathroom a handsome boy, took the girl.
Mr. Li, who did not participate in the frolic, had been chatting on his cellphone. I asked if it was the girl he was talking about who also liked tattoos. He nodded and smiled, locked off the screen and went to the bathroom.
Zhou Jiayang quietly told me that Li Dongxiang had a female netizen in Jinan, who actually came to Jinan to see each other. They had a voice call in the morning, and the girl was in other places and returned to Jinan in the evening.
I was a little excited to get this information, thinking that I could record Li Dongxiang’s meeting with netizens.
Back home, three people in the village basketball court to play some ball, and to cut hair, buy clothes, while away the night. Li Dongxiang changed his clothes and went to meet the girl. I wanted to go with him, but he didn’t look well. Considering that I was making a documentary, I should respect his privacy, so I let him go alone.
I’m going to dinner with the other two. At the table, we bet 100 yuan that Li Dongxiang would not come back tonight. Ma Qiang and I could not bet back, Zhou Jiayang was the opposite.
As a result, Zhou Jiayang lost.
8
The next day just woke up, saw the message of Li Dongxiang, said to wait for me at the hotel gate. I asked him to come up and ask him how he had been last night, but he hung his head and said nothing.
I feel something, but not easy to ask. After washing, I had breakfast with him and asked him where he was going next. His two friends had gone to work, so he thought about it for a long time and decided to return to Shangqiu.
Seeing that he was not firm, I booked the train ticket for the afternoon, thinking that if there was any change, I could refund the ticket.
While killing time in a McDonald’s near the train station, he suddenly asked me if I had met someone online. I say a long time ago had, at that time and he about the same age, alone by train to Guangxi, to the place, the results found that the other side is pyramid selling, but clever, feel wrong in time to withdraw.
I asked him if he had also met an accident. He hesitated and told me that he had waited for a long time at the cinema that he had arranged with the female net friend last night, but the other didn’t show up, and then the other asked him to go to the room to wait. When he opened the room, the other side said that it was urgent to borrow money from him, first called 300, then 800, but the person did not show up. He didn’t sleep all night. In the morning, he received another message from the other side, asking him to call 1000 again. He refused, and then the other side said that he was “not sincere” and blocked him.
He opened WeChat to show me the transfer record and asked me if I had met a fraud. I asked him how long they chatted with each other, whether there was any video, he said last year through a dating App to add WeChat, really hot chat no more than a month, opened a video, the other is very cute, not like a liar.
I told him he was a liar.
Li Dongxiang dropped eyes, touched the tattoo on the back of his left hand, silent.
We got on the train. The bunk was not in the same carriage, and by the time I went to find him, he was already snoring in his bunk.
It was midnight when We got back to Shangqiu. After we left the station, we stayed in a hotel. He asked me how long it would take. When I asked him what he was going to do next, he said there was a barber shop in town for sale for more than 30,000 dollars, and he was thinking of asking his parents for the money. I said it would take less than thirty thousand to open a new shop in town, and when he thought about it, there was no business, no money.
“The key is whether you can survive being in the store every day.”
“Difficult.”
After bathing and sitting by the window smoking, he suddenly asked if the tattoos of the actors in the movie were real. I said it was true, but most of it was for the story to put up.
“Then I can’t be an actor? Do you think it would be all right if I went north?”
“Anything is possible. You are young, and you have the capacity for trial and error. However, I do not recommend you to be an actor, although the image is good, but you have not learned to act, tattoo is also exposed, it is not easy to take the play. A haircut never goes out of fashion. If I were you, I would go to more shops and learn my trade well.”
He patted his neck, lost in thought. Later I went back to bed to brush my voice, listen to music, type and chat. I was tired and closed my eyes. Before falling asleep, I heard a woman’s voice: “Why wash away, very good to see…”
He plugged in his earphone and typed.
The next day, we returned to the county, passed a tattoo shop, Li Dongxiang stopped for a long time. Out of a flower arm man to greet him, the man asked us to sit in the room, I shook my head, Li Dongxiang himself went in.
That night, moments caught up with his message: “Only by enduring what others cannot endure can you enjoy what others cannot enjoy.” The picture is of my flower arm.
I think he washed the tattoo and liked it.
Two days later, he came to me with a suitcase and said goodbye. Look at the back of his hand. The tattoo is darker. Asked what was wrong with him, he said tinted the color.
“Where are you going?”
“Remember that woman on the train?”
“What, did you talk?”
He smiled shyly: “Sort of.”
“Be careful not to be fooled again.”
“No. Her friend opened a hair salon and introduced me to work at a decent salary. You see, the tickets she booked –“
I nodded and wished him a pleasant journey. With a big smile and a wave, he strode off with his suitcase.
I sat down and smoked a cigarette, feeling empty. Look at his circle of friends, all the historical trends are clear. There was a budding force breaking through the soil, looming, and I suddenly looked forward to his next move.
I haven’t figured out what kind of story to put li dongxiang’s material in, and I don’t know when I can make a “meaningful” movie.
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