In 2015, Jia Zhangke's movie "Mountains and Rivers Departed", the story of what happened in Fenyang County, Shanxi.
Change and separation, concern is the most painful part of love, which can be glimpsed in the theme song of the same name "Mountains and Rivers Departed" sung by Li Yuchun.
"To go and to come, to come and to come, to look forward to the return of the old; It seems, aimless, and when you see through, the past will always pass. ”
Everyone can only accompany you for a while, fate is predestined, and someone will always be absent in the future.
Jia Zhangke said: "Chunchun's voice is so calm and light, this song is like the laughter of old people. ”
Li Yuchun's singing has the spirit of the river and the melancholy of dusk, which is the long-lost mountains and rivers and the deceased, and it is the hometown that cannot be returned.
Along the way, the stories that happened to her seem to demonstrate her calmness.
Li Yuchun herself has an ordinary and unusual soul, and yesterday she was a guest on Jia Zhangke's interview show "Jia Yibing Ding", which shone more than that summer night in 2005.
In 2005, a talent show "Super Girl" made 21-year-old Li Yuchun popular in the north and south.
On the night of the final, she won the championship with 3528308 text messages, and this Sichuan girl with short hair and a somewhat introverted appearance instantly became the focus of attention of the whole country.
When Jia Zhangke talked about the championship night on the show, Li Yuchun no longer remembered how he spent it.
People realized that this was what happened 17 years ago.
That year, Li Yuchun became a "representative of Chinese pop culture", and she became a champion, and she also appeared on the cover of "Time", which proudly wrote in English: ASIA'S HEROES.
Everyone asked, "Why Li Yuchun?" ”
Li Yuchun also asked himself why himself.
At that time, her biggest confusion came from the sudden huge attention, the outside world's sky-wide voice, "Some people like you extremely much, there are many people who question you very unfriendly, and even have many insulting words."
In the face of the outside world, she is always silent and uses music to express herself.
After becoming popular, major record companies threw olive branches one after another, allowing Li Yuchun to choose.
Li Yuchun chose Taihe Maitian because she shares most of Zhang Yadong's musical philosophy, and she prefers to mingle with her colleagues at the record company most of the time.
This makes her feel that she is very close to music and relatively far from business, and Li Yuchun has become a special existence in the Chinese idol industry chain.
In the spring of 2006, Li Yuchun released his debut album "Yuyou Together", which included the first single "Happy Winter" written by Gao Xiaosong and produced by Zhang Yadong.
Gao Xiaosong played back the process of meeting and chatting with Li Yuchun for the first time in his mind, and then there were those very graphic texts later, "Snow makes me a little happy, that piece of white..."
"Happy Winter" was only a few minutes after it was launched, and it gained millions of sales and broke various records.
At that time, Li Yuchun was already a popular idol, and when she was busiest, she had to run three cities a day, and girls often opened their eyes on the plane, not knowing where they were.
Let yourself be between fake sleep and reality, gradually sober up and welcome the next carnival.
Li Yuchun's parents are also adjusting to the fact that their daughter has become a celebrity, and in Chengdu they often go to bed at two o'clock in the middle of the night, because only at that time can they call their daughter.
She is a child who grew up in love, and the original family gave Li Yuchun the longest strength, and the father felt sorry for his daughter, but he was also powerless: "Sometimes, I think it's good to be an ordinary person." ”
Li Yuchun does not want to become an idol, but inevitably becomes a public idol, she seems to be pushed to the wind by the torrent of the times, and there is nowhere to escape.
In her opinion, idols endure humiliation and burden, and often feel anxious, let the outside world be noisy, she is just silent.
Li Yuchun said that behind the insistence on holding the "Why me" concert for ten years is a kind of youthful vigor, there is a kind of rebellion that wants to prove, and for her, "Why me" is a question mark and an exclamation point.
Since the beginning of the "Why me" series of concerts, Li Yuchun has continued to innovate stage design, from background, interactive links, to MV playback and audio system, she does not like repetition.
She once said: "If you ask me what I have done all these years to get to where I am today, it is better to ask me how much I have refused." ”
Leaving the title of Supergirl Champion, Li Yuchun has always been loyal to the purity of music creation, and has also maintained a distance from the outside world and is at peace with each other.
She has been immersed in her own world, gradually forming a hard shell, which she describes as an "ostrich", always running alone.
Li Yuchun still doesn't like the name "artist", she just wants to be a "singer". The difference between the two in her heart, "Artists are packaged for people to see, but singers must stick to their own nature."
Since 2009, Li Yuchun has been writing music alone, writing lyrics and songs, and she feels that writing each song is like a way to record her life story.
From "Next, Crossing, See" to "Savage Growth", from focusing on herself to caring for the outside world, she has been breaking through herself.
The era of Supergirl is over.
Ten years have passed suddenly, Li Yuchun no longer needs to prove anything to the outside world, she just wants to be true to herself, and she is becoming more and more calm.
Xu Zhiyuan once watched a concert by Li Yuchun and commented on her: "I rarely see someone who can be as calm as her under such a scene." ”
In September 2012, 28-year-old Li Yuchun released her solo album "No More Crazy, We Will Be Old", the lyrics of which were written by herself, in which "old" is not "old" in the real sense, but refers to her regret.
"The leaves are still green, the hair is still green
Time never goes backwards
This fresh you makes me sad"
After "Supergirl" became famous in one fell swoop, looking back on these years, Li Yuchun's life was completely filled with work, without her own life, her understanding of madness is to be free and follow her inner voice.
She told Jia that since then, she has deliberately slowed down her work and started to develop some hobbies, including film, drama, painting, and photography.
After teaching herself photography online, she wanted to take a set of portrait photos of the "Cool" series, which included her friends Zhang Yadong, Pu Shu and Zhou Xun.
Pu Shu and Li Yuchun, who signed a wheat field together, are both people who are not good at words, and when they photographed him, Li Yuchun went to Pu Shu's home in the suburbs of Beijing, and the two did not talk for a long time, just sat in the house and listened to music.
Every time he unlocks a new experience, Li Yuchun is a little farther away from his closed self in the past.
As she walked forward, she began to move towards the wider world.
In 2013, Li Yuchun participated in the epic drama "Dream Like a Dream" directed by Lai Shengchuan, for which she pushed off all her work and participated in drama rehearsals and tours for one year.
Initially, when the producer recommended Li Yuchun, director Lai Shengchuan was hesitant, he didn't want his eight-hour drama to have a traffic idol.
On the first day that Li Yuchun entered the crew, Lai Shengchuan's concerns disappeared, and when the actors introduced themselves, Li Yuchun said timidly: "I am Li Yuchun from Sichuan Conservatory of Music, and I am here to study." ”
In the crew, Li Yuchun rarely spoke, and once an actor in the crew bought a bowl of spicy hot and called her to eat it together, and this bowl of spicy hot made her very moved, and even wanted to cry.
That year, she felt like she was back in her student days, riding a bus to and from the theater with the cast of the crew, eating boxed lunches and rehearsing together.
In the drama "Dream Like a Dream", she played Dr. Xiaomei, who played a lot of scenes and acted very successfully.
Every time Li Yuchun takes a plane, there will be fans rushing to pick up and drop-off, and this time the drama is no exception, she never approaches the crowd, and never takes the VIP passage of the airport.
"I'm just working in an acting business, my roots are not there, I know who I am, I'm an ordinary child."
In Li Yuchun's view, he was originally selected by everyone, and he was not a special identity.
At the end of that cooperation, director Lai Shengchuan told her: "You are not just a simple idol, you can really lead fans into a different life, you can become a person who changes the values of this world." ”
After ten years of "Why Me", Li Yuchun found that he had changed a lot.
She no longer pays attention to only the technical aspects of music, as if suddenly opening up a larger world, Li Yuchun began to care about many other people and social issues that she had not cared about before, and there will be some pain.
She wrote "To the Girl", "Please believe that you are a beautiful existence, do not doubt that this is the unique color of the universe", and the words are full of gentle affirmation and love.
In many violent incidents and crime news, Li Yuchun saw that many girls were hurt, which made her feel very sad.
Many girls have spent their whole lives in the struggle for self-independence, and she hopes that girls will not be swallowed by the world's malice, and can stand in the bright places of the world and be caressed by love.
This song has given many girls courage and strength.
In the collective context of the epidemic, everyone is facing different difficulties, and they are also feeling the warmth brought by art works and people around them, and Li Yuchun is no exception.
Before the epidemic, Li Yuchun wrote a song called "Ximen Youth", which is a self-narrated work she created, the title of which is taken from the Ximen area of Chengdu where she grew up, which is the breath of childhood and the inexhaustible growth of wildfire.
"Then start at the west gate of the city
There was a street along which teenagers had run, fell and bled profusely
Seeds of weeds outside the red gate
It's the most primitive and tenacious nature that I've heard."
She firmly believes that she will not be held back, and she will run without fear of bloodshed and rumors.
The epidemic has changed Li Yuchun's view for three years, she feels very small, and she also has a sense of powerlessness, and she will begin to notice some things that are not easy to notice.
In May this year, Li Yuchun would go downstairs every day to do nucleic acid, and she found that the time of early summer was very short, the shape of the clouds was constantly changing, the color of the flowers was changing every day, and many things flowed away quietly.
It was also during that time that she developed ankylosing spondylitis, a disease known as "undead cancer" that could not be cured and lasted for the rest of her life.
It sounds extremely cruel, but Li Yuchun is experiencing it personally, and when it is serious, she needs to be in a wheelchair, and she can't even lie down smoothly, and there is no way to sleep.
This spring has been difficult, and it will take her a lot of effort to be able to walk a little bit. One night, she was recording a new song at home herself, and she broke down and cried as she sang it.
It was the pain of fate.
Li Yuchun frankly said that this is the impermanence in her life, and it is also a script she never thought she would get.
On November 17, she released a new song "Five Organs and Six Organs", Li Yuchun said that if unlucky, one day her body is stiff, and there are still five internal organs, they will definitely rush out of the body and love themselves.
Li Yuchun liked Jia Zhangke's saying, "We need some tough people to dance with this era."
This sentence had a great impact on her, and gradually, Li Yuchun no longer closed herself, nor did she have to fight with the world by her neck, and she became more and more able to understand others.
Before that, it happened on the streets of Taipei, Taiwan Province, China a few years ago.
At the end of the day's work, the staff took Li Yuchun to the night market to relax, where there were no reporters and would not be surrounded by passers-by.
Walking in the crowd, Li Yuchun felt a huge sense of loss of control descend, she couldn't relax at all, kept walking forward, and finally she didn't eat anything, didn't watch, just returned to the hotel alone.
She couldn't enjoy the night of loud people, and she realized that she was afraid of the crowd, and the insults and doubts she had once brought her harm.
Everything will pass.
She began to take the initiative to go to the crowd, and after the album "Savage Growth" was finished, Li Yuchun invited all the partners who were busy with the album to eat shabu mutton hot pot.
At that dinner, she was still restrained, but she had taken a big step, and in this conversation between "Jia Yibing Ding" and Jia Zhangke, Li Yuchun still felt that that sentence was a great encouragement for herself.
Jia Zhangke, who has been in the film industry for more than 30 years, said: "Time has passed, and many things you expect to change have not changed, it is a long process, the so-called fierceness, in fact, is a kind of resilience, and your trust in the values you adhere to." ”
The language of music and the language of film are to some extent connected.
Jia Zhangke said frankly that he and Li Yuchun understood each other and were very close.
Mountains and rivers are old, spring is still the same.
In 2015, Li Yuchun sang the theme song of the same name for the movie "Mountains and Rivers Departed" directed by Jia Zhangke.
Jia Zhangke said that Li Yuchun is an "old man" who has a relationship with him, and the two have met backstage at the Cannes Film Festival Awards for two consecutive years, and finally in "Mountains and Rivers Departed", Li Yuchun used his own singing voice to sing about the love parting that spanned 26 years.
Jia Zhangke's movie "Mountains and Rivers Departed"
Jia Zhangke and Li Yuchun have been friends for many years, Li Yuchun likes movies very much, Jia Zhangke also likes her songs very much, he feels that the ability to control her songs, her clarity and depth, are particularly touching.
Director Jia Zhangke, who has been hidden behind the movie screen for many years and is accustomed to dialogue with the public with his own lens, this time, as an "interviewer", he appeared in the interview program "Jia Yibing Ding" produced by Toutiao and broadcast alone, and talked with Li Yuchun, Liu Zhenyun and other guests respectively.
Through Jia Zhangke's observation perspective and life experience, the program interprets the characters, with humanistic care, ideal feelings and social thinking, although it is still winter, we must still have enthusiasm.
Jia Zhangke, who is outside the camera, always wears black sunglasses, is no longer silent and begins to talk to different people. He still has a strong interest in exploring the texture of people themselves, and the story and video narrative are never absent, and the world never withers.
The era has been lightly beaten, which is a huge change in personal destiny, especially in the current post-epidemic era, the public needs a spiritual healing with humanistic care.
In Jia Zhangke's conversations with them, there may be moments that hit a corner of your heart.
For 52-year-old Jia Zhangke and 38-year-old Li Yuchun, this cold winter they have a conversation about the soul and reminisce about the past together, which is an old summer movie that belongs to Li Yuchun alone.
Although Li Yuchun has forgotten how she spent the night she won the championship, her memory is a little blurry, but the colors, smells and sounds of that summer have remained in her life.
"It was like a summer movie that could never be re-screened, but it will always be in my memory."
It was the summer that Li Yuchun could not come back to.
Everyone is vying to look back at youth, but Li Yuchun doesn't want to, because this moment is the best day.