After the middle-aged shepherd Tharlo came down the mountain, he met the young barber shop owner Yang Tso and fell into the first relationship of his life. After being cheated out of all the money by Yang Tso, Tharlo encountered a predicament that he had never encountered before. (Infographic/Figure)
(This article was first published in Southern Weekend on April 25, 2019)
<b>In "Tharlo", a simple stage is set up in a Tibetan bar, the people on the stage sing Tibetan Rap, the background cloth printed on the Potala Palace, a group of Tibetan youths drinking wine, and the plateau sky outside the window is full of stars. </b>
On September 28, 2017, Tibetan director Wan Ma Tse-dan's film "Crashed and Killed a Sheep" was launched at an altitude of 5,500 meters above sea level by the Coco Siri Chuma River. Wan Ma Tse-dan was short-chested and dizzy at the beginning of filming, and he was surprised that as a highlander, he could not quickly adapt to the environment of his hometown - because of his study and work, he left Tibetan areas in his youth.
Eleven years ago, Wan Ma Tse-dan read "The Killer" written by Tsering Rob in the Selected Novels and decided to adapt it into a movie. Because "The Killer" is too short, he incorporates his short story "Crashing into a Sheep": the truck driver Kimba kills a sheep on the way to delivery, determined to exceed it, and meets the Kham killer, also named Kimba, who tries to find his father's enemy and avenge the snow. The fates of the two celebrities thus overlapped. Kimpa means almsgiving in Tibetan, and Wan Ma Tse-dan believes that this film is about charity and redemption.
He has seen similar news more than once: in Tibetan areas, if a bug is dug up in the field, the whole village will go to pick up the bugs; in order to avoid stepping on ants, the locals will walk extra carefully...
At the end of the film, the driver Jimba incarnates as the killer In a dream, Jimba kills the other party's father-killer. It was also in this dream that he saw the sheep he had killed being pecked at by a vulture and completed the excess.
In The view of Wan Ma Tse-dan, the Kham people's tradition of revenge was originally endless, and the killer Kimba's obsession was to practice the tradition. But after seeing the child who killed his father's enemy, Jimba suddenly understood that if the revenge was successful, his descendants would also live in hatred.
Wan Ma Tse-dan chose to dissolve Kimba's hatred in his dreams, thus declaring the end of a certain proud, bloody tradition. "The power of tradition will definitely be there, and they will still find a way to punish him, but maybe we will find other ways." Because everyone's legal awareness is stronger. Traditional ways of behaving are definitely about to change, but they are always changing. ”
<h3>Tullow's life</h3>
At the beginning of the 12-minute-long film, the driver Kimba drives on a Tibetan road, playing a Tibetan version of "My Sun" on a tape, listening to the song while drinking, and the bel canto echoes through the truck stereo on the highway in Tibetan areas. "On the plateau, suddenly a person singing a bel canto song in Tibetan, it will be very strange to hear." Wan Ma Tse-dan said.
Song Taijia served as an artist for Wan Ma Tse-dan's three films, "Quiet Mana Stone", "In Search of Chi Mei Gengden" and "Old Dog", and in his impression, Wan Ma Tse-dan was obsessed with recording the absurdity of Tibetan areas.
Wan Ma Tse-dan was born in Guide County, Hainan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Qinghai Province, a three- or four-hour drive from Xining, the closest of the surrounding villages and towns to Xining. As a child, he studied at the temple and helped his family herd sheep. When herding sheep, he always carried a Tibetan book with the lyrics of Rai (Note: Tibetan love songs), memorized a few songs, and sang a few songs. He had seen older young men and women singing, and the clouds were all singing.
Half of the people in the village are Han Chinese, and Wan Ma Tse-dan was already exposed to Chinese when he was in elementary school. He still remembers the first lesson he learned, "I Love Beijing Tiananmen", and opened the textbook to illustrate Tiananmen. When he went home to listen to the news, he was also talking about Tiananmen, and he even thought that the whole of Beijing was a gate, and the red city tower was extremely tall. At the teacher's request, he memorized from the first lesson to the last.
Wan Ma Tse-dan once took a large knife made of wood and rehearsed a show in the lobby. When it came time to show the movie, the curtain was hung in the place where the Buddha statue was once placed, and the village cadres would also come to see it. The film tells "the story of the work of superiors and subordinates, no love". He often went to the scrap collection station to steal foreign masterpieces, and the books of Balzac, Tolstoy, Chekhov and others became his literary enlightenment.
At night, he listened to the radio drama "Harbin at Night" and imagined the entire TV series through sound. On his way home from school, he also accidentally picked up a copy of Snow White, which, along with texts, radio, mythology, and movies, brought him an imagination about the wider world.
In their spare time, Tibetan elders dictate traditional myths to Tibetan children, so that the Tibetan language can be passed on.
In the previous film, Tharlo, Wan Ma Tse-dan recreated his own upbringing. Tharlo was a shepherd who had never been down the mountain since childhood, and spent all day with his sheep, except for hoeing grass and feeding the sheep, which was to listen to the radio. In order to get an ID card, Tharlo came to the world for the first time outside of sheep, blue skies, and meadows. Tharlo was able to recite "Serving the People" in its entirety, and the tone of the recitation was as if he were chanting. He was so deeply influenced by the article that Wan Ma Tse-dan processed the picture into black and white, suggesting Tharlo's psychic world, either black or white.
Tharlo roughly means "fleeing" in Tibetan. Wan Ma Tse-tan and his contemporaries had a Tullow-like life: shepherding sheep, singing rai, memorizing quotes. Tharlo was nervous and flustered when he first took a color photo. In reality, Wan Ma Tse-dan did not take a photo until the middle school entrance examination in order to do the admission ticket, and he also needed to color it himself. The Potala Palace, Tiananmen Square, and the Statue of Liberty are the backgrounds commonly used in photographs, and these three places represent the outside world. Years later, Wan Ma Tse-dan set foot on beijing's soil and stood under Tiananmen Square.
<h3>After Yang Tso left</h3>
Tharlo represents traditional Tibetans, and Yang Tso, the young proprietor he met at the barbershop at the foot of the mountain, represents a new generation of Tibetan youth. Yang Tso has short permed hair, wears leopard earrings, and smokes slender women's cigarettes. She doesn't rye, but loves to sing K. She seduces Tharlo to cheat him out of 160,000 yuan and runs away.
At the time of filming, Yang Tso's actor Yang Xiucuo was only 25 years old. She had met many young people who were similar to Yang Tso, who were struggling in the small town and facing the outside world, and she was one of them. Yang Xiucuo entered art school at the age of 14 and began to perform nationwide. When she was 16 years old, she went shopping on the Bund, and the modern atmosphere came to her face, and the street was full of faces from all over the world, with neat makeup and generous temperament. She made up her mind: the outside world is so wonderful, I must come out.
Wan Ma Tse-dan deliberately let Yang Tso sing out of tune, and Yang Xiucuo understood the director's intention: if she sang well, she would become a singer. In Yang Xiucuo's impression, there are obvious stage changes in the way Tibetan people express their emotions: the earliest was poetry, represented by Cangyang Gyatso; it gradually became writing— the popularity of works by writers such as Tashi Dawa stimulated the desire of tibetan people to express their lives by writing, and Wan Ma Tse-dan also published many works. Yang Xiucuo recalled: "At that time, as long as I graduated from undergraduate, many people would have autobiographies or novels. ”
In the 1990s, a young Tibetan named Nyima Zeren Yadong went to Chengdu to work and began to sing Tibetan songs in the song hall, which was slowly accepted and loved by the people of Chengdu, becoming the first person to sing Tibetan songs in the song hall. It also became popular throughout the country because of the music TV program "Yearning for the Condor", and was jointly known as "Plateau Samsung" with Tengger and Rong Zhongerjia. When Yang Xiucuo was in elementary school, Yadong had become an idol of many tibetan people. Some Tibetans spontaneously shoot MVs, find companies to record songs, and after synthesis, find a disc company to produce a certain number of discs to sell in Tibetan areas. More and more Tibetan singers were excavated, and at the age of 19, Yang Xiucuo participated in the talent show "Flowers and Blossoms" and won the fourth place in the country and successfully fled.
"Yang Tso has the commonality that a certain type of young people in Tibetan areas are in the midst of change, not only refers to a certain district or a certain ethnic group, but also has a certain representativeness within the broader scope of China." Wan Ma Tse-dan said. This group of Tibetan youth and Han Youth are becoming more and more convergent, going to bars, watching performances, singing and dancing, and chasing popular culture.
In "Tharlo," a simple stage is set up in a Tibetan bar, people on the stage sing Rap in Tibetan, the potala palace is printed on the background cloth, a group of Tibetan youths are drinking a cup of wine, and the plateau sky outside the window is full of stars — a picture that Yang Xiucuo described as "a picture that often appears around him."
When he first started making the film, Wan Ma Tse-dan would say to the media, "I want to make a real Tibetan area." When filming Tharlo, he said, "I'm going to photograph the Tibetan area in my eyes." When "Tharlo" was broadcast in Tibetan areas, many viewers said that it was like watching a documentary in Tibetan areas, and Wan Ma Tse-dan was very pleased with this.
The end of "Tharlo" does not explain yang Tso's whereabouts. Wan Ma Tse-dan believes that Yang Tso may encounter greater difficulties. Some of the young people he knows who go out and find their culture in the outside world become more intense, and loneliness and anxiety become more intense.
Yang Xiucuo spent several years adjusting himself. Previously, in order to go further in the draft, she listened to the judges' suggestions, took off her national costumes, gave up Tibetan songs, put on high heels, changed into tight leather pants, and began to sing the dance music of Li Wei and Jolin Tsai. After her debut, she was lost until she re-sang Tibetan songs during a performance.
In the movie, Yang Tso has no survival skills except to open a barbershop, and Yang Xiucuo believes that the future of this role is not clear, "this money is too much for her, she can't even spend it."
Wan Ma Tse-dan understands Yang Tso's choice this way: "Everyone will have a dilemma, Tharlo has her own dilemma, and she has it too." His choice of Tharlo or betrayal of Tharlo is also a dilemma for her. Maybe at that moment she wanted to choose Tharlo, she wanted to go away with him, so she made such a suggestion( asking for money), but in the end, the other option prevailed. ”
In the upcoming new film "Crashed into a Sheep", Wan Ma Tse-dan chose two actors with large contrasts to play the driver Kimba (left) and the killer Kimba, who he believes represent the two traditions of redemption and revenge. (Infographic/Figure)
<h3>It's the same as the town of Macondo in One Hundred Years of Solitude</h3>
One day, an engineering team suddenly came to Wan Ma Tse-dan's hometown to survey and build a hydropower station, and workers from all over the country came one after another. The place where they temporarily lived soon had a small market, and the bathing room, hair washing room and other supporting facilities were readily available. There is even an auditorium where wedding ceremonies can be held, and foreign movies are usually played, and it is in that auditorium that Wan Ma Tse-dan watched films such as "Modern Times". In 2002, the construction of the La Siwa Hydropower Station officially began, and on May 26, 2005, with the approval of the provincial government, Guide County abolished Luohantang Township and relied on the construction of La Siwa Hydropower to establish la Siwa Town.
"It's the same as the town of Macondo in One Hundred Years of Solitude — an isolated place suddenly came with a lot of people, became a small town, and the original way of life and thinking changed." Wan Ma Tse-dan said.
During this period, Wan Ma Tse-dan graduated from the Northwest University for Nationalities majoring in Tibetan Language and Literature, successively engaged in primary school teachers, civil servants in government organs, and read a master's degree in Tibetan-Chinese literature and mutual translation from the same school, and went to beijing for internship at the end of the second academic year. Because he couldn't put down the film, he went to the Beijing Film Academy to do some research, and successfully got funding to become a student of the Beijing Film Academy and embarked on the road of directing. The focus of his life also shifted from Qinghai to Beijing.
A year later, Matsuta became his disciple. Several times back home, Matsutaga felt a drastic change, "The whole street is not known, how can you open such a tall building?" ”
Wan Ma Tse-dan believes that the lifestyle and interpersonal relationships in Tibetan areas have quietly changed. In the past, when the workers lived in their hometown, they found that they could earn more money by working part-time, so they sold all the sheep. In the past, villagers came to help whoever built a house, but now only a few relatives can come. Now villagers borrow things and give gifts between them, and they also need to make written documents. In the past, villagers got married, picked up brides in the middle of the night, and the whole village set up checkpoints, but now everyone just sits at a table and eats.
During the construction of the hydropower station, Wan Ma Tse-dan filmed three films, "Quiet Ma Ne Stone", "Looking for Zhi mei geng deng" and "Old Dog" - "Quiet Ma Ne Stone" reflects the symbiosis between the local and the outside world, "Looking for Zhi Mei Geng Deng" is related to traditional Tibetan drama, and "Old Dog" focuses on the fate of an elderly Tibetan mastiff , he calls it the "hometown trilogy", thereby exploring the relationship between Tibetans and nature and modern society.
In the past two years, Wan Ma Tse-dan returned to Xining to live. In 2008, the hydropower station was completed, workers left one after another, and the market was empty. When he heard stories from the villagers about local girls marrying in the hinterland or eloping with others, he was surprised at first, but gradually accepted them.
He also recalls carrying water to take a bath when he was a child, and he always had to rest for a long time every time he picked it. After the city people came, the bathhouse, toilet, and shower room appeared, and he no longer had to carry water. "We learned about the outside world through the people from the city and began to yearn for a comfortable life."
Chinese has also become popular. Recently, Yang Xiucuo went to his aunt's house and saw the children in the village talking to their grandmother, the grandmother said a word in Tibetan, the granddaughter answered in Mandarin, after a few back and forth, the grandmother sighed: What to do, now I will not answer you, you speak Mandarin I can not understand.
Song Taiga believes that insisting on telling the story of Tibetans in Tibetan is the greatest significance of Wan Ma Tse-dan's films. "Later people can see in his films what Tibetans are like in the 21st century."
Wan Ma Tse-dan resisted arguments such as "you have all changed, you are not primitive": "They enjoy the superiority of modern life, but they ask another group of people to live a primitive life in a closed place, which is too absurd." ”
In the last shot of "Crashing into a Sheep", the driver Kimba takes off the sunglasses he has been wearing, looks up at the sky, and the hundreds of vultures hovering in the sky suddenly disappear, and a plane slowly flies by. In Wan Ma Tse-dan's understanding, this may be a new beginning in Tibetan areas.
Southern Weekend Contributing Writer Liu Lang