Just a few days after 2023, the entertainment industry, which has been silent for a long time, ushered in a happy event.
It is a pity that neither traditional media nor gossip weekly has reported on it.
The reason is simple, this pair has a "stain" on the newcomer.
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As one of the representative figures of Chinese independent documentaries, director Xu Tong has shot a series of far-reaching works such as "Fortune Telling", "Wheat Harvest" and "Gouging Eyes". These documentaries, which reflect the lives of the people at the bottom, have won numerous awards at major film festivals at home and abroad, and have also received a high score of 9.2 on Douban.
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Some people say that Xu Tong's talent should be on a par with the sixth generation of great directors such as Jia Zhangke and Wang Xiaoshuai.
It is also said that Xu Tong is the most valuable independent director in the field of contemporary Chinese documentaries.
The director, who has touched countless people with his story, recently married the heroine of his work, a sex worker, a woman who has had 30 relationships and is nearly 50 years old.
After the evidence, Tang Xiaoyan, who could not hide his joy, shared his good news on the Internet. But because of the sentence "I got the blessing of the second elder" on Weibo, countless netizens exploded.
Source: Sina Weibo
Misfit identities, mismatched experiences.
Why did the old bustard marry the director, and she is also worthy?
Bitches are merciless, and later there will be thunder.
There are too many such comments. A marriage that Ming Media is marrying, even if it is blessed by both parents, it is still not understood by netizens.
Their reason, like this message, is very sufficient: not optimistic, use each other, sooner or later have to leave.
Source: Sina Weibo
But is the relationship between Xu Tong and Tang Xiaoyan really as simple as they say?
The virginity is in vain
In 2008, Xu Tong filmed a documentary "Fortune Teller" at his own expense featuring fortune tellers, unknown nomads.
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The protagonist in the film is a well-known master with some practice.
When recording the process of fortune-telling after hundreds of journeys, Tang Xiaoyan, who came to inquire about his marriage, just accidentally bumped into Xu Tong's camera.
As the saying goes, "bad luck on the stall".
Most people who have a smooth journey and a happy and harmonious family will not think of going to fortune telling.
On the contrary, because people are born with the instinct to seek benefits and avoid harm, only people with bumpy fate and things are not going well, they like to spend a few dollars to tell fortunes and pin their hopes on fortune tellers.
Tang Xiaoyan is such a bitter person.
Tang Xiaoyan, formerly known as Tang Caifeng, is a spicy woman who specializes in partial business in a suburban massage room.
Looking at Tang Xiaoyan's continuous dirty words, and his tone was decisive, he pinched his fingers and calculated that she was born lonely.
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Li Baicheng is right, Tang Xiaoyan is a person who lacks love.
In 1975, Tang Xiaoyan was born in a small village in the northeast.
The Tang family, who only had a few acres of thin fields in the family, plus Tang Xiaoyan, had a total of three men and two women. Poverty and hunger are realities that everyone in the Tang family needs to face.
His father's violent fist was a nightmare that Tang Xiaoyan had been lingering for decades.
When he was 8 years old, because he had no money to pay tuition, Tang Xiaoyan dropped out of school to work in the farm, and all the money he earned was used to support his family.
But even so, if she didn't say a word, her father would pick up a stool and punch and kick her, and her cowardly mother could only sit next to her with tears.
At the age of 17, Tang Xiaoyan followed the villagers to the forest to pick mushrooms and fungus, and went for ten days and a half month. This job can make a few more bucks, but also avoid the father's fist.
One evening, Tang Xiaoyan, who was returning to her dormitory from the woods, was thrown down and raped by a dark shadow while passing an unattended field.
After returning, she did not dare to tell anyone she knew, so she quietly quit her job and went to Beijing to work.
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During this period of drifting north, Tang Xiaoyan was kicked through the door in the middle of the night by the boss with bad intentions, and was cheated out of money by fellow villagers who came to Beijing with him.
But compared with the above experiences, what really turned Tang Xiaoyan's fate was the second stranger's rape.
By chance, Tang Xiaoyan met a man with Sven appearance and politeness.
On the grounds of inviting her out for a drink, the man tied her to the rental house, put a kitchen knife on Tang Xiaoyan's neck, and told her word by word that he was a wanted criminal who had killed three girls, and he obediently obeyed if he didn't want to die.
Looking at this fierce face, Tang Xiaoyan took off his clothes desperately and obediently.
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In the massage room, when recalling this thrilling scene, Tang Xiaoyan was just glad that he was not too "stupid".
"Chastity is nothing compared to life. If life is gone, there is nothing. ”
Tang Xiaoyan, who escaped from death, was so frightened that he trembled all night after returning to his rental house. She longed for someone to hug her and give her a little comfort, but this wish did not come true for many years.
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After that, Tang Xiaoyan experienced her ex-husband's cheating, was tricked into doing pyramid schemes abroad, and was almost sold to Southeast Asia.
After being trapped in the mud for a long time, Tang Xiaoyan, who broke the jar and broke, finally turned his heart and pulled a few sisters in the suburbs of Beijing, set up his own door, and opened a massage room.
According to her words, "People without culture, only when you make money, people will look up to you and give you dignity." ”
Crawling on the rivers and lakes, Tang Xiaoyan stood up his minions like a small beast, fighting alone in the world of the jungle.
Some ruffians wanted to steal her money, and Tang Xiaoyan made a phone call, so he used dirty words to scold the other party and retreat; Some drunkard scoundrels wanted to come to the store to make trouble, and Tang Xiaoyan carried a stick in her hand and beat the man who was half a head taller to her head with stitches.
Tang Xiaoyan swore to the death to guard his massage parlor. The shop is her home to live on, and money is the guarantee that she will live and live with dignity.
Money can support the family, children and the mother of the hometown.
The money was earned, but the loneliness in my heart was nowhere to be resolved.
So after hearing about Li Baicheng and calculating his lonely life, Tang Xiaoyan admired the master's skill very much. Immediately photographed six hundred pieces and changed his name from Tang Caifeng, to Tang Xiaoyan with fourteen strokes. He tied a knot on his navel with a red thread and broke his lonely life.
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But back to the real world, Tang Xiaoyan, who changed his name, is still unloved and loved.
Because she was lonely and wanted to keep warm, Tang Xiaoyan recognized a little girl in the massage room as a goddaughter. He also gave the 4,000 yuan he had saved hard to his goddaughter to pay for changing his mouth, preparing to let her "go ashore" to do some serious business.
On the shoulders of this unrelated relative, Tang Xiaoyan cried sadly.
While telling her goddaughter not to be deceived by men, she told her to marry when she met a good man.
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Because she has not enjoyed love, more precisely, she has not enjoyed love since birth.
That night, Tang Xiaoyan was particularly drunk, and in her dream, she still looked forward to the arrival of good days, hoping that someone in her heart could solve her lonely life as soon as possible.
It is a pity that it is not the people who are in love but the police.
After Tang Xiaoyan's massage shop was reported by the enemy family, her goddaughter took the initiative to confess Tang Xiaoyan in order to save herself.
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In the documentary "Fortune Telling", Tang Xiaoyan's plot line was interrupted.
But off-camera, Xu Tong did not break contact with Tang Xiaoyan.
In the detention center, Tang Xiaoyan called all the brothers on the road for help, and all the good brothers in the past collectively chose to shut down. In the end, only Xu Tong, who had known her for only two months, answered her phone.
In order to scrape together money to bail Tang Xiaoyan, Xu Tong sold a car - an old guy who had followed him for many years and traveled south and north.
It took 70,000 pieces to fish out Tang Xiaoyan.
After coming out, Tang Xiaoyan and Xu Tong said, "You can let me do anything, I will give you my life if you want." ”
The story between them has also opened a new chapter.
The dust woman changed her life against the sky
It was Xu Tong's righteous act that accidentally led to his second cooperation with Tang Xiaoyan.
Because of independent documentaries, there are no sponsors to fund the filming. Throughout the shooting, post-production and publicity process, all expenses need to be raised by the director himself.
In order to save money, Xu Tong's shooting team tried to reduce the number of personnel, and he himself wore many hats.
When Tang Xiaoyan heard that Xu Tong's team was short of people, he immediately joined and saddled Xu Tong to be his free assistant. Tang Xiaoyan's purpose is very simple, that is, to repay the favor.
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Tang Xiaoyan's addition just quenched Xu Tong's burning thirst.
Xu Tong, born in Beijing Shuxiangmendi and a family of directors, his father is the first generation of science and education film choreographers in New China. He has lived in a strong literary and artistic atmosphere since he was a child, and when he grew up, he was admitted to the Beijing Broadcasting Institute, and the friends he contacted since childhood were also children in the literary and art circle.
Unlike other peers who chase awards and are obsessed with box office, Xu Tong, who is naturally anti-bone, does not like commercial films and does not want to be an advertising director who collects money to do things.
During the period of renting a village in the city and experiencing life, Xu Tong met prostitutes, beggars, ruffians, fortune tellers, marginal characters who lived in the folds of the city and were not noticed by the outside world.
In them, Xu Tong saw a very pure side of human nature. He longs to record these true stories with the camera and tell them to more people.
But the most difficult thing in shooting this kind of documentary is to find the protagonist.
Although Xu Tong is a director who lowers his posture and uses his identity as a friend to set up with them, there is no shelf.
But his life experience is still with the urban nomads, and there are still many invisible gaps.
When communicating with the protagonists of the documentary, they often do not want to believe Xu Tong, thinking that he is a cultural person who eats in the city, and making films is to make fun of them and see them look foreign.
Either they are unwilling to cooperate with the starring, or in front of the camera, they have reservations.
This makes Xu Tong very troublesome, because the documentary is not good if it is not true.
Whenever this happens, Tang Xiaoyan, who comes from the bottom and is full of quacks, comes in handy.
Tang Xiaoyan, who can get acquainted with anyone and chat with anyone, has become an intermediary between Xu Tong and the protagonists.
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When filming the documentary "Gouging Eyes", the protagonist Er Housheng was a blind artist who walked the streets and sang the duo's stage.
He didn't understand why the director from the city filmed himself, and always asked questions that had no end or end.
Out of the instinct to protect himself, Er Housheng also answered to Xu Tong's camera without a match. This attitude of passive cooperation dragged down the entire shooting schedule.
In order to quickly let the protagonist put down his guard, Xu Tong called Tang Xiaoyan.
Tang Xiaoyan sat on the kang of the Erhou Sheng's house, chatted with them, and pulled them to rush to buy clothes, and soon became a piece with them.
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Unconsciously, Tang Xiaoyan "mixed" more and more things in the team, and the work she was responsible for also increased.
By the time "Gouging Eyes" was released, in the end credits, Tang Xiaoyan had become a producer.
It is precisely because of participating in the filming of "Gouging Eyes" from beginning to end that Tang Xiaoyan re-recognizes the documentary industry, which is different from what she originally thought of "holding a camera, following around, chatting and chatting nonsense".
With Xu Tong's encouragement and teaching, Tang Xiaoyan began to try to learn how to shoot independently and learn to be a professional producer.
In the 2015 documentary "Two Shovels", one-third of the footage was shot by Tang Xiaoyan.
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In addition to the recognized spirituality and talent of his peers, Tang Xiaoyan's resilience to endure hardships, and his temper of being fierce and decisive are also particularly suitable for this line of work.
When shooting in Inner Mongolia, in the outdoor temperature of minus ten degrees, she could squat for more than an hour with the camera.
After more than ten hours of cutting, I was a little dissatisfied, and I would rather remake it than never get along.
Go back in time to 2011. At the 8th China Independent Film Annual Exhibition, Tang Xiaoyan, who was nominated for the documentary "Old Tang Tou", won the first award since the film "Real People Award".
This is also the first time that the jury has awarded the prize to an amateur.
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At the award ceremony, Tang Xiaoyan, who received the unexpected joy, was very excited. It's just that I don't know if at the moment of winning the award, she will remember that an old fortune teller once said that Tang Xiaoyan after changing her name would also change her lonely life.
My life is up to me
It seems impossible for Tang Xiaoyan to enter marriage again.
In an interview with "Three's Company", Tang Xiaoyan said that she did not believe in love, "more than 30 boyfriends have been talked to, and the more we talk, the cooler our hearts."
When I opened a massage parlor, there were always men who came to consume on the way from work. In the middle of his wife's call, he will sweetly coax each other, and kiss and hug him when he goes back.
She looked down on such a man and could not look down on such a marriage.
She feels that for many men, women are just playthings, a possession that can be thrown away at any time.
She does not believe in love, nor in feelings between people.
When she came out of the detention center, she borrowed money to rescue her goddaughter who was dragging her into the water. After returning home, the other party called her to extort money.
Being injured more often, Tang Xiaoyan decided that only he could protect himself, and relying on others would only make him fall worse.
After the relationship with Xu Tong began, Tang Xiaoyan experienced a lot of things that changed her concept.
At work, they are intimate fighters.
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With the participation of Tang Xiaoyan, who has experience in the life of the bottom, Xu Tong's documentary has become more humane and the story more moving.
In the process of learning to shoot documentaries, Xu Tong did not relax her requirements because she left home halfway, and she never had a father's teaching. Instead, it gave Tang Xiaoyan more space to play, allowing her to play her talent and find the right focus.
Following Xu Tong, Tang Xiaoyan went to France, the United States, Japan, the Netherlands, Sweden and other countries.
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At the award ceremony and premiere, Xu Tong introduced her to reporters and audiences in public, without evading or concealing her identity, nor deliberately emphasizing the hardships she had suffered.
It was as if all the stories on her were just a period marking the past. Turning that page was another life for her.
The public's opinion of her also gave Tang Xiaoyan more understanding.
At a premiere held in Japan, an audience member who stumbled in Chinese cried and said to Tang Xiaoyan: "Every time I feel that I can't hold on, I think of you, you live bravely in such a difficult environment, and I am suddenly full of energy." ”
After seeing the larger world, Tang Xiaoyan has seen that dignity is not just given by money.
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And Xu Tong's biggest gift to her is to look at her and respect.
The marriage between Xu Tong and Tang Xiaoyan is not defined by salvation by her sister.
The love between them is precious precisely because they are willing to accept each other's allness as equals, and then return with sincere love.
Just like Xu Tong said: I always shuffle her cards, and then she just happened to be nonsense. This is mutual fulfillment.
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