It wasn’t until June 2016, when Winter Storm officially began principal photography, that Kong Liyuan had a red flying bird tattooed on her waist and truly became Li Yi.
The production of Winter Storm encountered numerous problems along the way.
For instance, the original script relied too heavily on real events and might not pass censorship, so Fang Mo reworked it using highly absurd and eerie metaphorical techniques.
Midway through filming, budget troubles arose. Kong Liyuan watched Fang Mo every day on set, tearing at her hair in frustration. Fang Mo gritted her teeth and refused to compromise, unwilling to let the new investor shoehorn in his little daughter. Kong Liyuan ended up injecting some funds into Winter Storm herself, using a portion of the money Jiang Man had left her. It wasn’t a large sum, but it was enough to resolve the crew’s most pressing crisis.
Yet the final cut turned out even better than expected.
At the wrap party, Fang Mo got rip-roaring drunk. Beaming with joy, she slapped the screenwriter on the shoulder. Even her graying hair seemed to sprout fresh black strands.
After finishing Winter Storm, a project that had taken an entire year, Kong Liyuan returned to California in June 2017. She embarked on a journey that felt as dreamlike as a mirage.
When she came back, she took on Blue Book and arrived in Chongqing, transforming into the repressed and fractured Zhang Yu.
A film typically lasts only two hours, yet it carries the dazzling, multifaceted lives of one person—or several.
The characters within usually live vividly and intensely. As the bridge connecting those characters to the outside world, actors must fully experience their greed, hatred, delusion, love, malice, and desires.
What they feel in the process is far more vivid and colorful than the mere two hours audiences glimpse in the theater.
Sometimes Kong Liyuan thought that being one of those film characters—living life after life—was far better than being herself.
“I haven’t gone along with anyone’s wishes.”
That night, Kong Liyuan rose from in front of the hair salon. She shoved her hands into the pockets of her soft jacket and wandered aimlessly amid the rumbling vibrations of Chongqing’s train tracks. Gazing at Li Qiao’s face—distorted into a blurry, ferocious image frozen on her phone screen—she said,
“Aren’t you supposed to do things to the extreme?”
In the end, she ventured farther and farther down the path of cinema. Compared to living “perfectly” in real life, she preferred to have flaws and “stains” in film after film—but to live to the utmost there.
Why not simply let Kong Liyuan herself live to the extreme, instead of relying on roles and scripts?
Perhaps because, as Kong Liyuan, she simply didn’t know how to live with such grandeur and flair.
In Chongqing’s air, growing ever more humid and stifling, Zhang Yu—wearing her blue scarf—neared the end of her life.
Kong Liyuan often stood on a massive bridge at the filming location late at night, letting the wind whip through her hair as she watched the endless stream of cars below. More than once, she recalled how, in the summer of 2017, someone had shown her how to live like this, just once.
On June 21 of that same year, cruising in a vintage convertible under a languid breeze, she remembered how that longest day in the Northern Hemisphere had also given birth to a heart of such calm composure.
A heart utterly opposite to her own.
But everything about that person, that heart, was fading into greater and greater blur within time’s golden river.
Truth be told, Kong Liyuan hadn’t done it on purpose.
Li Qiao had asked if she ever thought about seeking out that young woman again. But the moment the idea surfaced in her mind, Kong Liyuan felt a dense, prickling fear.
Had that young woman truly existed?
Sometimes she even suspected the young woman was fake—a hallucination born from her mild manic episode. Perhaps that other heart, birthed beneath that daylight, had never existed at all.
Li Qiao had never met her, only heard Kong Liyuan describe her.
Among all the evidence Kong Liyuan could offer, her memory was the only substantial proof of the young woman’s existence.
The world already held so many events and people remembered solely by Kong Liyuan.
If that young woman joined their ranks, Kong Liyuan didn’t know what fate awaited her—perhaps the isolation of Zhang Yu, or the self-destruction of Li Yi.
While filming Blue Book, she often awoke from countless dreams that felt like incineration. Staring at Chongqing veiled in drifting white mist, such absurd notions plagued her.
But once dawn broke and sobriety returned, she knew full well that the young woman was no hallucination of hers.
Should she go looking for her, though? As Kong Liyuan, confessing her crimes and deceptions? Or as Li Yi?
As Zhang Yu?
Or continue stealing moments with her as an unnamed stranger bound by spiritual kinship? Or outright break the unspoken pact they’d shared at the journey’s outset?
If she found her, what would she say?
Rekindle their old flame with that young woman? Or exchange a “long time no see” before parting onto separate paths?
What if the young woman had forgotten her—forgotten everything about California?
What if she never found her at all?
These questions layered upon one another like fine thorns embedded in fish flesh, turning the repeatedly chewed morsel ragged and bitter.
Kong Liyuan would rather abandon that battered slab of meat and bury herself in role after role.
The moment she clearly recalled that youthful, magnificent face again was the night Winter Storm won best screenplay, she claimed best newcomer, and Blue Book’s box office shattered the billion mark.
At the awards ceremony, Fang Mo boldly proclaimed, “Kong Liyuan is the most inspired newcomer actress I’ve ever seen. If you don’t snap her up for a film, you’re fools!”
That same night, someone exposed the news of Jiang Man’s pre-death postpartum depression. As the “child” blamed for triggering it—and as the freshly minted best newcomer actress leading the film—the media saw endless fodder in Kong Liyuan.
She was mobbed at the cemetery gates, witnessing for the first time just how effortlessly the industry could devour a living soul.
Winter Storm, with its all-female crew, had overcome every obstacle to win fans’ hearts and achieve both critical acclaim and box-office success. But it must have gotten in the way of some big-shot director or producer.
The longer she survived in this circle, the clearer the reasons became. After all, Fang Mo’s public tirade against the industry’s dirty secrets could have been spun large or small—easily swept under the rug with minimal effort.
How had it come to the point where she couldn’t even land a newcomer actress?
The truth behind it was simple enough. Those she’d metaphorically skewered had never intended to let her thrive back then.
Why would they now willingly allow Winter Storm—and Fang Mo—to reverse her fortunes?
Thus, Kong Liyuan, who had burst onto the scene from nowhere, became the easiest target to exploit.
The funds she’d poured into Winter Storm’s production midway were hyped by major outlets as “bringing capital to join the crew.”
Fang Mo’s earlier words were pored over and dissected by countless voices, twisted into metaphors for Kong Liyuan leveraging connections to bring in investment.
Jiang Man’s postpartum depression was interpreted as powerful evidence that after Kong Liyuan entered the industry, she had chosen not to follow in her father’s footsteps—proof that Kong Yan hadn’t supported her decision to join the entertainment world.
Countless people wanted to know if she was even aware of her mother’s postpartum depression. Did she believe it was connected to her? Had she entered show business to make up for Jiang Man’s regrets from leaving the industry years ago?
Had this incident soured her relationship with Kong Yan, to the point that he never showed up during her shoots for Winter Storm and Blue Book? Or was he simply avoiding any appearance of favoritism?
And was her master’s degree in management from the University of California really legitimate, or had it been faked? Did her thesis hold any real value?
Why would someone with a management master’s dive into entertainment? How much of it was just hype?
Theories abounded, some even contradicting one another.
Yet they had scraped every obscure corner of Kong Liyuan’s past life clean—even the time she spent in Jiang Man’s womb came under scrutiny.
Reporters mobbed her at Jiang Man’s gravesite until she couldn’t take a step.
Exhausted, she dodged the ghostly white flashes of camera lights and pulled her baseball cap lower over her face.
She had no idea why, on the very night she won Best Newcomer, she had suddenly fallen into this trap of self-defense from all sides. Nor did she want to answer questions that would only lead to even nastier follow-ups.
She stared blankly at the tall walls of the cemetery, suddenly wishing she could lie inside one herself, with nothing left but an empty tombstone engraved with a single word: “Scram.”
Then everything could end. No more voices, no more noise.
Even if the media and public opinion came digging up her grave, there’d be nothing but a hollow skeleton, its flesh long devoured by worms and vermin, unable to answer a thing.
Her life could erase any mention of Jiang Man or Kong Yan. Kong Liyuan could have never existed at all.
She turned the thought over and over in her mind, convinced everything should have stopped at that summer solstice dawn when she was ten.
But amid the hazy flashes of light and the clamor of voices,
her trembling fingers clenched tight in her pocket, brushing against something cold and hard.
It was the necklace she always carried. The pendant was Ava.
Yet it was enough to summon that young face from the foggy river of memory, sharp and vivid before her eyes.
The shadows crowding behind her blurred into a California dawn stained with blood.
The cold winds whipping past turned into warm breath against her neck, laced with the metallic tang of blood.
The cameras blocking the road dissolved like phantoms into swirling dust.
All that remained was the young woman standing before her, full-lipped and soft-featured, her face streaked with blood. A deep gash yawned across the knuckle of her ring finger, blood gushing wildly from the wound and splattering to the ground.
With her last breaths, the woman smiled at her and said,
“Here—safe travels.”
Everything in her mind froze, leaving only that face, those words.
Kong Liyuan halted, then lifted her gaze to the heaving mass of indistinct faces, like so many gaping maws.
She couldn’t recall exactly what she said that day. Something forthright, perhaps: that people should ask Teacher Kong Yan about Ms. Jiang Man, since he would know far more than she did.
Or that she had already instructed her lawyers to handle it, and anyone who kept gossiping about her mother would face legal action.
All she remembered was meeting her current agent shortly afterward.
A professional team was far more effective at combating rumors and scandals than going it alone.
