Chapter 56: “Kong Wanyan” Part 1

Kong Wanyan, born in 1989.

But even now, Kong Liyuan had no idea exactly which day in 1989 this girl—who had died at the age of fourteen—had entered the world.

Not even her tombstone, following all the usual conventions, bore a specific date or name. No one had thought it necessary.

Instead, it held only a cryptic phrase that passersby couldn’t comprehend, something abstract and ethereal:

【No Regrets, No Regrets.】

At the same time, Kong Wanyan had died on June 21, 2003.

She was Kong Yan and Jiang Man’s first daughter. It was said that among the creatures of nature, geese were the most devoted and affectionate of all. The image of the “late goose” had appeared in countless ancient poems, carrying connotations of the purest, most sincere, and most sweeping emotions.

The name naturally embodied all of Kong Yan and Jiang Man’s boundless hopes, symbolizing the long-awaited fruit of their love.

Had nothing gone wrong, Kong Wanyan would rightfully have enjoyed every ounce of attention that came with being the child of this celebrity couple—their undivided, wholehearted “love,” no different from what Kong Liyuan received today.

But she hadn’t even gotten that.

Born as Wanyan, she had entered the world as a deformed Down Syndrome child.

—Distinctive facial features, intellectual disability, malformed limbs.

Had she been born into an ordinary family, she might have found parents who were poor but resilient like weeds, relatives who disdained her yet still acknowledged their blood ties, and a life that stretched a little longer than fourteen years.

Just like Du Li, who had lived healthily well past thirty, with a sister to bicker and play with.

Of course, there was always the chance of an even worse fate.

Sometimes, when Kong Liyuan looked back, she couldn’t help thinking that Kong Wanyan’s fourteen years had been far too agonizing.

Her father, Kong Yan, was a vain man forever centered on himself. He was far too skilled at exploiting everything and everyone around him for his own gain—even reveling in the dramatic life he scripted for himself.

In the year her sister Kong Liyuan turned six, he had a crew film a forty-minute documentary.

The script recounted amusing incidents from his time with his daughter, captured his wide grin during interviews, showed him folding clothes in a shaky handheld shot while muttering, “I need to pack a few outfits to send my wife. She’s out filming in the desert where the sandstorms are brutal. Oh, and the other day she called asking me to find that red dress…” It followed him as he dashed upstairs in a frenzy, then comically gathered the freshly washed red dress in the sunlight under the wobbling lens. Off-camera, someone asked if he truly cherished his daughter, and he stretched his neck, clutching the dress as he shot back in mock offense, “Of course I do—who else would I dote on?”

And yet, right there on camera, he patted Kong Liyuan’s shoulder, fitted a brand-new birthday hat atop the head of his perfectly posed, beaming girl, and slipped two extra words into his scripted line with a squinting smile.

“Of course. She’s my only daughter.”

Even though Kong Wanyan was locked away upstairs at that very moment, perhaps still murmuring “No regrets, no regrets” from her mouth.

He never once glanced back. He simply smiled on with calm, genuine warmth, fielding questions from the documentary crew.

Afterward, Kong Liyuan made an appearance in the classic film Life, and people began saying that Kong Yan’s daughter had a natural spark for acting.

From then on, the industry buzzed with tales of Kong Yan’s devotion to his wife and daughter, effectively silencing whispers of an early premarital pregnancy and miscarriage between him and Jiang Man.

Her mother, Jiang Man, had always been strikingly beautiful and brimming with confidence—a highly ambitious woman for her era.

She threw herself into her roles with relentless drive, enduring barren, bone-dry deserts for half a year at a stretch. She would ride horses through blood-red dusks for half the night, get thrown without so much as a whimper, then climb right back on with grim resolve—like a wuxia heroine who endured all hardships, embodied unbreakable strength, and cast aside personal romances without a second thought.

The most regretful act of this heroine’s life was probably giving birth out of wedlock. Right at the height of her youth, she had committed the kind of impulsive mistake so many young people make.

And in the wake of that error…

This woman must have steeled her resolve: nothing would stand in the way of her ambitions. A marriage in name only, the man she had loved since her teens… neither counted as a true sacrifice in her eyes.

Let alone a daughter born at the wrong time—one who bore not the slightest resemblance to her.

Down Syndrome children had such distinctive features; there was no way she could inherit Jiang Man’s singular beauty.

Perhaps the young Jiang Man, confronted with this unexpected new life, had felt bewildered at first.

While preparing for Blue Book—a film that tenderly portrayed the bond between an ordinary mother and daughter—Kong Liyuan had immersed herself in documentaries about mothers to authentically capture the role of a young, struggling parent.

She learned the deeper truth about “motherhood”: even when bound by the umbilical cord, not every mother accepted the role immediately after birth.

Some began with confusion over their own identity, needing years to embrace it fully.

That was why postpartum depression afflicted so many women.

After binge-watching documentary after documentary, Kong Liyuan lay awake night after night in the humid, stifling heat of Chongqing. She stood on stone bridges watching the ceaseless flow of cars. Sometimes she spotted middle-aged women on the street corners, screeching hysterically at their crying children, “Keep it up and I’ll leave you right here—believe me!” Or, in the early morning hush after the night-market stalls closed, women pedaling tricycles while shielding their bleary-eyed kids from the wind. Kong Liyuan figured they were all mothers—mothers of every kind.

This made her think of Jiang Man more and more.

She tried to understand her, hoping to better shape her own portrayal of a young mother.

One sleepless night, she even had a whimsical impulse: she began writing a character biography for the young Jiang Man. Kong Liyuan wasn’t sure if her perspective—as a woman the same age Jiang Man had been—merely embellished the story with modern hindsight, romanticizing her image.

Still, she bought a notebook and, with blue ink that bled faintly into the white pages, meticulously inscribed Jiang Man’s thoughts and life experiences, word by painstaking word.

In the end, on the opening page, she offered a summary: Jiang Man had been a proud woman back then, bordering on arrogant. So after her impulsive mistake led to childbirth, she had felt confusion and doubt staring at Kong Wanyan’s face—followed by inner turmoil and conflict.

That was what had plunged her into a bout of postpartum depression.

Had it been this daughter who triggered it?

Or had the depression gone untreated for so long that, while filming a fleeting vision of ethereal beauty on a foreign set, Jiang Man lost control of her condition? The resulting footage—shots she could never accept—had survived.

She bought up every last piece of it and vanished from the entertainment world forever. Only then did she realize her second daughter had come into the world just as indifferent… and stubborn.

—After wrapping Blue Book, Kong Liyuan had sunk into a period of profound reflection.

She frequently grappled for answers to that question. But the dead could offer none.

Later, she returned to the old family home. And when the sanatorium relocated to Los Angeles, she visited the original one in far-off California to sort through some of Jiang Man’s overlooked belongings. That was when she discovered the videotapes.

By then, years of dust coated them thickly; most wouldn’t play at all.

These were the secrets Jiang Man had buried so deeply she’d quit the industry to hide them. Kong Liyuan couldn’t risk sending them to professionals for restoration.

She made do with the few flickering, pixelated scraps that still worked, piecing together an image of the young Jiang Man.

Truth be told, the time she had spent with Jiang Man had always been pitifully short.

Before retiring, Jiang Man had been filming all across the country. Afterward, she ended up in that California sanatorium, reduced to a patient battling depression.

For the most part, Jiang Man had been little more than a hazy concept to her—a shadow, a title.

Even the role of “mother” paled in comparison to the vivid impact of Jiang Man’s cinematic characters.

Kong Liyuan vaguely remembered the times when Jiang Man’s condition improved enough for her to return from the sanatorium. She would primp herself meticulously, slathering on garishly bright lipstick, looking every bit like the dazzling superstar from television.

This Superstar would then press that vivid red lipstick hard against Kong Liyuan’s face.

It left a wet, sticky smear—not pleasant at all.

The first time it happened, Kong Liyuan had instinctively reached to wipe it off. But before her hand could touch her cheek, Jiang Man widened her eyes and clamped down on her slender wrist with crushing force.

Even as Kong Liyuan cried out in pain and struggled to pull free, protesting that it hurt…

Jiang Man seemed blind to her reaction. Tears—clear yet murky—rolled down her face as she gripped the fragile wrist tighter. Then, in a hoarse, piercing voice, she said,

“Don’t wipe it off! I told you not to wipe it off. I’m your mom. I carried you for ten long months and gave birth to you. You drank my blood and ate my flesh. For you, I gave up so much. For you, I can never act again. How can you treat me like this? How can you despise me…?”

After that, Kong Liyuan never wiped off those lipstick marks again.

She simply let Jiang Man leave them on her face every time she came back.

It was as if, the moment that bright, expensive red lipstick transferred from Jiang Man’s chapped lips onto her fragile skin, all those things called “mother’s love” would seep through the marks, right into her flesh and blood, growing vast and impossible to refuse.

Even though the first time she saw those lipstick prints, they had looked to her like splattered blood.

But afterward, she learned that after these stiff, awkward kisses, Jiang Man would hold her tightly, just like the mothers she’d seen in movies—dramatically shedding row after row of tears while delivering a brainwashing line.

“Mommy loves you. She really loves you.”

Just as Jiang Man repeated these actions without fail, Kong Liyuan always believed it was a form of love.

But she could never understand why even this kind of love was something Kong Wanyan had never received from Jiang Man.

Even the few surviving VHS tapes left Kong Liyuan feeling disappointed.

In them, Jiang Man was hysterical, her hair disheveled, slumped gloomily against the cold wall. Whether angry or heartbroken, she exaggerated every emotion to the extreme.

There wasn’t a trace of her legendary beauty.

She even seemed like her depression had morphed into bipolar disorder.

But clearly, these tapes weren’t just for Kong Liyuan’s eyes—there were signs of wear and deliberate damage.

That meant someone had watched them before her, and in a fit of anger or rage, had destroyed these innocent recordings.

Many of the tapes were ruined beyond repair.

Only two people could have done it. One was Jiang Man herself. Perhaps she couldn’t accept this version of herself, so day after day, she replayed the footage, savoring a masochistic thrill while trying to prove to herself that she wasn’t ill—she was just too deep in character.

The other was Kong Wanyan, who was often locked upstairs.

Kong Yan was an unlikely suspect. That man was perfectly content living out the dramatic life he’d scripted for himself. Anything outside that script, he had no interest in revisiting. He only hoped no one remembered it, no one realized his grand drama was just a farce.

Perhaps both Jiang Man and Kong Wanyan were possible.

After spending a few days in the old house, Kong Liyuan went through every tape that still played.

And so, more than a decade later, she finally understood.

Where that phrase Kong Wanyan kept muttering—”no regrets, no regrets”—had come from.

Kong Wanyan had always behaved strangely, her mannerisms odder than most children’s. She often did things that hurt others.

Once, she tried to stab a little bird that had fallen in the family courtyard with a fork. She left the bird barely alive, covered in blood. Then she turned back, fork dripping gore, and grinned at Kong Liyuan in a bizarre way.

Kong Liyuan couldn’t remember if she’d cried then. It seemed like after the first time Jiang Man kissed her and told her not to wipe off the lipstick marks, she hardly cried anymore.