Adding two catties of powder won’t help – ten catties won’t either. The final scene was dragged out an extra two days, and all the costs went onto Shang Shao’s tab. A few hundred thousand a day – not bad, for a low-budget film. Li Shan is a shrewd one; with someone else footing the bill, he took the money without a second thought, then dragged Jiang Te and Bai Lan back out to polish a few more scenes.
The day of the wrap was a clear night. The snow had thinned, so the crew laid down another five centimeters of artificial snow, and under the lights, it shimmered with a faint blue ripple. The set had been cleared down to the bone – only two camera operators remained at their posts, and under the director’s tent sat just Li Shan and Junyi.
Everyone else waited outside, clutching flowers, lenses aimed, with a banner behind them reading, “Congratulations on Wrapping, Ying Yin.” Farther out, the villagers craned their necks, hands tucked into their sleeves, watching. Having heard the crew would soon be leaving, they had come early to say goodbye.
Fifteen minutes later, a solitary trail of footprints appeared across the snow, silent and unhurried. Everyone looked up and saw Ying Yin walking toward them alone.
She wore that familiar down jacket, her hair loosely pinned up in a low, slightly messy bun. A breeze stirred through the treetops, catching the strands that had come loose. Behind her, Old Fu’s lighting was carefully arranged – bright yet soft, the glow filtering through the lampshades as if veiled in tracing paper.
For a moment, no one made a sound. Was it really a wrap, or just another NG? All they could see was her face, so beautiful it seemed about to dissolve into the moonlight.
Then Ying Yin stopped. Her nose, red from the cold, twitched with a soft sniff. She lifted the corners of her mouth into a smile – and only then did everyone snap out of their daze.
“It’s a wrap,” Ying Yin announced, her voice light, her face beaming.
The snow erupted in a sudden burst of cheers. Crowds surged toward her, applauding wildly. But they stopped a few steps short, holding back, too awed to overstep. Luo Siliang, clutching the flowers, was shoved to the front. He looked around frantically, spotted his savior, and his eyes lit up. “Director Li! Director Li, come here! This bouquet is yours to give!”
Li Shan had deliberately hung back a few steps, wanting to leave such a special moment to the leading lady – but he still couldn’t dodge it. He had no choice but to take the flowers with a smile, hand them to Ying Yin, and give her a gentlemanly hug.
“I know everything that happened on New Year’s Eve. Thank you for seeing it through -for me, for this film, and for everyone here. Take good care of yourself. We’ll meet again with this story in our memoirs.”
“Mr. Li…” Ying Yin’s nose stung with emotion. Afraid that tears would ruin the mood, she held her eyes wide and held back for a long while, then gave a slight nod. “I never blamed you.”
Li Shan patted her shoulder, released the embrace, and then announced in a voice loud enough for everyone to hear. “Come on, let’s all wish Xiao Yin a happy wrap in Xinjiang!”
The Kazakhs of Aqiap were warm-hearted folk. Fearing the crew might leave that very night, they crowded around, vying to invite them to their homes for drinks and dancing. The lighting crew couldn’t pack up their gear for a long time, because so many people wanted photos with Ying Yin – and she was so patient, turning no one away.
They seemed to have a premonition that these two months, spent in a frozen wasteland where even birds were loath to pass, would go down as a bold stroke in the history of Chinese cinema.
The wrap dinner had long been prepared, but it was mainly for Jiang Te and Bai Lan. Ying Yin still had two more days of pick-up shots to film back in Ning City, but for Jiang Te and Bai Lan, this was a true goodbye to the production. After tonight, one would return to Altay, the other to Beijing – their next reunion wouldn’t come until the film’s premiere.
With their work behind them and a weight lifted, the entire crew went wild with drinking, toasting anyone and everyone, and a few got so drunk they ran outside to strip down and raise hell. By the late stretch, only a handful were still sober, embracing each other in farewell, slurring the same goodbyes over and over.
When Ying Yin found Jiang Te, he was in the stable, stroking the black horse that belonged to Haying.
“Not coming to Ning City for a visit? I heard Mr. Li invited you.”
Li Shan had offered to pay his own way to bring Jiang Te down from the mountains and into the city – hoping that if the bright lights caught his eye, he could naturally steer him toward formal training at a performing arts school.
But Jiang Te had turned him down.
Jiang Te wrapped his arms around the black horse’s neck, speaking a few words to it in Kazakh before turning to Ying Yin.
“No, thanks. I hear it’s quite lively there – I wouldn’t fit in.”
“What are your plans, then?”
“Go back to Altay, back to the life I had before.” Jiang Te closed the stable door and walked with Ying Yin into the moonlight. “And you?”
“Back to Ning City, back to the life I had before.”
At that, Jiang Te let out a small laugh. “There’s something I’m not sure I should say.”
The mountain wind that had always blown straight and true had learned to bend, after too long down from the slopes.
“Go ahead.”
He held her gaze, those eyes brimming with light.
When he’d first accepted Li Shan’s invitation, it was because the pay was attractive – and this work was worlds apart from his past life as a herder. Later, in that modest screening room furnished with nothing but a sofa and a TV, he’d watched her face over and over again: from the impatience of her legs crossed, to the intensity of her hands pressed together against her lips. The smell of that room still lingered at the tip of his nose; whenever it came to mind, the screen in his memory would light up. He had never met a woman with so many faces, and he’d tried in vain to tell where her truth ended and her performance began.
The night before he met her in person, he’d tossed and turned, unable to sleep. Only when he saw her for real did he realize how thin and laughable all his previous imaginings had been – like following a map to find a shadow. She was far more than beautiful; she was dazzling.
On New Year’s Eve, too, he had been lost and shaken.
Through so many intimate scenes, he had never been at ease, never been able to say he had a clear conscience.
Every time she blurred the line between role and reality, dazed and instinctively turning to him for support, he had always answered without hesitation – even as a sharp pain pierced his heart. Of course, it was an overstep on his part; he knew that.
After Bai Lan joined the cast, out of a sense of duty as a senior and a pity for gifted talent, she had taken it upon herself to teach him a great deal – about how to compose himself, how to sink into a role, and how to emerge from it.
“Why must one always come out of the role?”
“Because you’re not Ha Ying, and she’s not Yin Xueqing.”
“Does it matter?”
“Does it not? You have your own life, your own mind – you need to be Jiang Te, not someone inside a story.”
“Jiang Te didn’t get much either. He was barged in on, then he lost everything – neither the meeting nor the farewell was ever up to him.”
Bai Lan realized she couldn’t teach him. She had theories, but theories always failed in the face of life’s raw instinct.
“You remind me of a line from a poem,” she murmured. “In a dream, one does not know that he is but a guest.”
“Li Shan taught me that one. But I know another line too.”
“What?”
“Better to be forever drunk and never wake.”
I will remember you all my life.
Jiang Te held Ying Yin’s gaze, those eyes brimming with light, and curved his lips into a faint smile. “Until we meet again. A horse is a Kazakh’s wings – I’ll fly to the grasslands, and you’ll fly to whatever higher place your heart desires.”
Ying Yin paused for a beat, then smiled back. “That hardly counts as ‘something I’m not sure I should say.'”
“Then I guess I’m just not well-educated enough yet to grasp all your polite formalities.” He tucked his hands into his pockets, still dressed in that thin layer of clothing, his back ramrod straight, and walked with her away from the stable.
Behind them, the parallel set of footprints was short – only a brief stretch.
“If I asked Li Shan for this horse, do you think he’d let me have it? Though, it’d be a hard journey for it too – from Aqiap all the way to Altay.”
Small talk never lasts long. A few exchanges, and it trailed off, cut short by the man’s eyes before her.
Jiang Te gave a small nod to the person in front of him, stopped in his tracks, and said his farewell to Ying Yin. “Goodbye. If you have time, you should come next June – that’s when you’ll see so many flowers: fritillaries, lantern flowers, buttercups, clover, and alfalfa, blooming all over the mountains and fields, far more beautiful than now. The snow-capped spruce are best seen at dawn and dusk, when a blue mist hangs from their tips… And also…”
He lowered his face. The beauty of the northern frontier was endless, so he stopped there, with a faint smile. “Though miles apart, we share the same moon.” Aqiap and Altay have the same moon. I wish you all the best.”
That farewell could be called dignified and composed. He watched as Ying Yin walked over to Shang Shao, was pulled into his arms, and gradually receded into the distance across the thin, melting snow.
Mornings in Aqiap usually began with the women milking the cows, but this day was destined to be different – it was awakened by the whir of helicopter rotors.
The crew still had equipment and props to inventory and load up, so they wouldn’t be leaving as quickly. Ying Yin was therefore the first to depart. She had invited Bai Lan to come along, but Bai Lan had her pride – even though her eyes had welled up with tears more than once at Ying Yin’s performances, she remained reserved and polite in person, saying they’d meet again at the premiere.
The ones in the biggest scramble were the on-site production team – the production manager, the logistics producer, and a whole slew of others with “producer” in their titles. Their work was a messy jumble, like the crew’s live-in housekeepers. Other departments had trickled out one by one, but they had to stay behind to wrap things up: settling payments, closing accounts, restoring the site to its original state. And if anyone forgot or left something behind, they’d come looking for Luo Siliang.
Just as they were truly about to leave, the village’s forest ranger and part-time mail carrier made his way to the bus.
The bus engine had been running for a while now – they were only waiting for Luo Siliang. He stood on the steps, turned around, and asked, “What’s up?”
“There’s a letter here.”
“A letter?”
The mail carrier had just come down from his patrol in the mountains. He flipped open the flap of his green mailbag, rummaged around inside for a bit, and actually pulled out an envelope.
The letter was no longer crisp and flat – it looked like it had been passed around and neglected for quite some time. But next to the mail carrier’s red, rough fingers, it still seemed clean and almost delicate.
Luo Siliang was caught between laughter and exasperation. “You’re kidding me, right?”
“The house number was written wrong. The person staying there couldn’t read – I thought it was for one of the actor folks lodging with him. Here.” He held out his face and handed the letter over.
Luo Siliang had no choice but to step off the bus and take it. The addressee read: “Miss Ying.”
“Whoa, this is for Miss Ying? And the postmark date… This is nearly two months late!”
The mail carrier scratched his head, not knowing how to explain, and could only offer an embarrassed, sheepish grin. It really wasn’t his fault – he could count off every household in the village with his eyes closed, but with over a hundred strangers flooding in, everything had gone topsy-turvy. How was he supposed to keep track of who was staying where? That the mistake had been discovered at this very moment was already a miracle.
“As long as it hasn’t been read, it’s not too late.”
“That’s some twisted logic you’ve got there – the postal service is gonna dock your pay!” Luo Siliang teased him with a laugh, then stuffed the envelope into his backpack. “Alright, I’ll deliver it for you. Spring’s on its way – wish your family’s livestock a good year. Catch you later!”
The blue bus finally closed its doors. Under the watchful gaze of the weather-beaten mail carrier, it pulled out of the village, wound up the slope, and headed off into the distance – back the way it had come.
When Ying Yin received Luo Siliang’s call, she was standing face-to-face with both the China brand PR director of Greta and Zhuang Tiwen.
“What?”
“I said,” Luo Siliang repeated, “you’ve got a letter from Hong Kong – it got left behind in the village! The sender is… Lin…”
Ying Yin hung up, stood dazed for a moment, then turned her attention back to the present.
“What were you saying just now?”
“The spring/summer fashion week is already over for March, but we have a major client who couldn’t make it to Milan due to health reasons. So the brand has decided to put on a private show just for her. We have to keep her identity confidential – she doesn’t want too many people around – so we’ve discreetly invited only you and a few other top models to watch the show with her.”
“Can they really do that?”
The brand PR clasped her hands in front of her and gave an apologetic smile. “It’s certainly unusual, but yes – for her, they can. This show will be exactly the same as the one we held in Milan, plus twelve additional haute couture pieces that have never been publicly shown before. I know you’ve just wrapped a shoot and must be very busy, so I hate to impose.”
“You’re too kind.” Ying Yin glanced at Zhuang Tiwen. “Does the timing work?”
After all, she was Greta’s China ambassador, and Greta had also pushed her for the March opening cover issue – it was only right and proper to help out with something like this.
Zhuang Tiwen nodded. “Absolutely no problem.”
