The 1991 version of "Crush on Peach Blossom Garden" stills, Lin Qingxia played the heroine Yun Zhifan, and Jin Shijie played the male protagonist Jiang Binliu. (Courtesy of The Performance Workshop)
I have acted in the only stage play in my life, "Crush on Peach Blossom Garden", which made me take a very important lesson in my acting career, and since then my acting skills have taken a big step forward.
"Crush on Peach Blossom Garden" was performed in Taipei in 1986, and the heroine Yun Zhifan was played by Ding Naizhu, the wife of Director Lai Shengchuan, and the second generation of Yun Zhifan in 1991 was played by me. This is an evergreen drama, which has been performed for 35 years, and in the past 35 years, it has been launched from time to time, and every time it is staged, it must be full. The Internet said that this play has been performed more than a thousand times in the school, and more than 10,000 people have participated in it.
Often people praise me for remembering the lines of the movie, which is too easy for me, the movie is a shot a shot shot, when shooting, just remember the lines of a shot on the line, can not remember can be remade. On the contrary, the stage play should remember the dialogue of the whole play, the bite words should be clear, loud, and standard, and you can't eat the screws, and you don't have to start over.
Director Lai Shengchuan dared to give such a heavy role to a me who had not taken an acting course, had not acted in a stage play, and was afraid of the stage, which was a great encouragement and incredible challenge for me. Although I had acted in 83 films at that time, I was completely unsure of performing directly to the audience, and I had no confidence at all, but the confidence of the director was my confidence.
Director Lai is a compassionate, kind, and energetic person, and he requires all actors to treat each other as their own family. Indeed, this is a team, everyone has to spend a long time together day and night, if someone on the stage makes a mistake, they must also be able to respond to self-help and save people, and cheer each other up.
Every afternoon we would rehearse for four hours at the rehearsal hall, where the director sat behind a small table with a can of Coca-Cola, a pen, a notebook, a script with lines written on it, and the actors rehearsed in that large room with the director, who instructed the actors in an inspiring way and never demonstrated the performance.
In the early years, most of the films were the director's demonstration once, and the actors acted again, and director Bai Jingduan and director Li Hanxiang liked to direct the scenes the most, and the actors practiced several times in front of the camera to play.
Originally, I was already deeply impressed with Jin Shijie, who played Jiang Binliu, and he was the staff behind the scenes when I played "Blue Blood and Yellow Flowers". There is a scene where I and director Ding Shanxi's wife Xiao Rong are sitting on the edge of the bed, playing a long emotional scene, the director is called to play music, the music is sounding, the grief is moving, and we are in tears while acting. But many times, because every time the music stopped before the music was finished, I asked for the music to be played longer, only to see Jin Shijie sitting on the ground against the wall and saying with a bitter face: "Director, this is not a tape recorder, it is my whistle, I will only have so much." "Jin Shijie is an outstanding stage actor, very patient with me as a novice stage, rehearsing with me repeatedly and carefully giving me advice, for fear of hurting me.
I regarded myself as a newcomer, and every day I carefully rehearsed the play, only telling myself that I could not be sick, and that once I was sick, everything would be finished. After 45 consecutive days of rehearsals, until the day when I was about to perform, I suddenly lost all confidence and was very depressed. The director cheered me up and he said that all the actors would go through this stage.
The stage play really has a magical charm, when the rehearsal is still nervous, to the formal performance, do not know where the energy comes from, the role is on the body, forget who they are; when the curtain comes down, return to the real body, hear the applause from the stage, that sense of satisfaction, can not be described in words.
"Crush" tells the story of a pair of lovers in the chaos of war, who have never seen each other after saying goodbye to the beachhead in Huangpu, Shanghai, and neither of them knows that the other is in Taiwan. The arrangement of fate, the man married the Taiwanese wife, the woman married the Taiwanese doctor, but the thoughts and love between them have never faded. The male protagonist Jiang Binliu is critically ill, in the hospital still remember Yun Zhifan, so he boarded the search notice, the heroine Yun Zhifan saw the notice, after five days of inner entanglement and struggle, finally appeared in the hospital, the two people separated for decades, talked to each other about their respective experiences over the years, sighed, infinite sighs.
When I performed in Taipei, I could only imagine the scenery of the Huangpu River in Shanghai, but I did not expect that many years later I would be able to stand on the stage of Shanghai and play a scene of Jiang and Yun reuniting in Taipei, this misplaced scene, and the sadness and joy between Jiang and Yun, the helplessness and unpredictability of life!
Jiang Binliu and Yun Zhifan wrote many, many letters to each other, and these uncollected love letters left a lifetime of regret for the two lovers.
In 2021, director Lai Shengchuan decided to arrange a new stage play "Between Jiang Yun" and present this regret to the audience in the form of a letter, and he invited the actors who had participated in "Crush on Peach Blossom Garden" to join the grand event and write love letters.
The following are two letters I wrote to Jiang Binliu in my capacity as Yun Zhifan, sent from the mainland and Hong Kong respectively.
The first letter -
Hamanagi:
The changeable Year of Peng Zi is finally over, and it has been a hundred days since the two of us broke up from the swing by the Huangpu River. In the chaotic world of disturbances, it is really a mixed feeling to be able to eat a Chinese New Year's Eve meal as a family.
Every household in Kunming New Year is covered with pine needles, and the smell is really good... This moment is not easy to come by, everyone does not mention the past, do not talk about how to live in the future, but grasp the joy of having each other now. Through the steam on the hot pot, I couldn't see whether the other person's face was worried or happy, and only heard a loud laughter ripple in the warm room.
Tonight at the window I saw a crescent moon again, and a lone star in the lower right, and every time I thought of you at night, I saw such a scene, as if the missing chunk of the moon was the emptiness in my heart, waiting for you to fill it. Hamanagi, waiting for you.
Van
The night of January 28, 1938 Chinese New Year's Eve
The second letter -
In Hong Kong this year, as long as I have time, I will run to the seashore of Tsim Sha Tsui in Kowloon, look at Hong Kong across Victoria Harbour, imagine that the opposite bank is the Bund on the edge of the Huangpu River in Shanghai, I always look at it foolishly, as if you will appear in my sight if you look more. Hong Kong is a gorgeous city, how can I enjoy such a beautiful scenery alone, I should have you by my side, if so, how happy it should be, but now... Alas, this beautiful view, to me, but the feeling is extremely lonely. Hamayanagi, I really want to find a place where no one is there and cry loudly. Thinking of you day and night
October 1951
In "Between The Clouds and the Rivers", Yun Zhifan in 1998 plucked up the courage to read her last letter to Jiang in front of Jiang Binliu's tomb, and Jiang and Yun put it down from then on.
Yun Zhifan's ninety-year-old letter to his great-granddaughter was written by Director Lai, from which he can glimpse the message he wants to convey to the audience through "crush": "We stay in this world for a short time, who is writing our lives? How many rights do we have to speak? In general, although it is not complete, I still find a little happiness and happiness of my own in life, and it turns out that fate is objective and happiness is subjective. ”
This is what Yun Zhifan wants to give to his great-granddaughter, and this is what Director Lai wants to give us.
Lin Qingxia