Chapter 5: Filming Begins

Kong Can was from out of town. The county listed on her household registration was in the same province as Chongxiang—one in the west, the other in the south—both hemmed in by mountains and plagued by frequent rain.

Her parents had divorced when she was very young. Her mother had no income, so the court awarded custody to her father, a man who favored sons over daughters. His new wife in their reconstituted family gave birth to a boy, and the man threw a lavish banquet in sheer joy, convinced that his dreams had finally come true. But the child turned out to have autism.

On one side stood a capable daughter who could walk and fend for herself; on the other was a five-year-old son who still drooled, stricken with a low-functioning form of autism. From the moment of diagnosis, his life’s path was sealed: a flat, unremarkable existence where even averting disaster would prompt a quiet sigh of relief to Amitabha, much less any hope for pleasant surprises.

After weighing his options, the man—barely qualifying as an intellectual—decided that his son’s garbled cries of “dada” rang sweeter in his ears.

As family expenses mounted, Kong Can drew dirty looks from her own father just for eating an extra egg at breakfast, accused of being spendthrift. She had long grown weary of her stepmother’s barbed words. Conveniently, her cousin—whom she got along with decently—had married into Chongxiang, giving her the perfect excuse to follow suit.

Kong Can had no particular talents and only a junior high education. At the awkward age of sixteen, decent jobs were scarce, so she ended up as a shampoo girl in a hair salon.

The shop was cramped, its glass door’s metal fittings rusted through. For a time, Kong Can suspected it was that sort of establishment, approaching and leaving each day with her heart in her throat, dreading the instant-noodle-haired boss might say, “Little Kong, why don’t you take care of this gentleman?”

In the end, “take care” meant exactly that—just shampooing—with no hidden implications. The boss poured all his boldness into hairstyles and shrank from vice the rest of the time.

This one, though, turned Kong Can’s stomach. How long had it been since he’d last washed his hair? Her hands came away slick with grease that could have stir-fried vegetables.

His head was enormous; even a long towel barely wrapped around it. As Kong Can bowed her head to rinse her hands, the customer hauled himself up from the reclining chair and shuffled outside for his haircut.

In her second year in Chongxiang, Kong Can was nearing eighteen.

The Nokia in her pocket blared its five-yuan monthly ringtone. She had never left the province, yet she yearned for the wider world. These gaudy trends felt like a bridge, a foothold letting her inch toward escape.

“Hello?” Kong Can’s voice was soft. Rain pattered densely along the eaves outside, keeping customers at bay for the moment.

“Kong Can, you won’t believe what I saw today—real eye-opener! A woman just moved into our building, drop-dead gorgeous. All the guys were gawking. When do you get off? Let’s grab skewers and dish. Sigh, she seems from out of province—dressed like nobody around here…”

And so the story began.

Zhong Jia played Kong Can, the story’s main perspective. Ruan Ting was the interloper in every sense, arriving from a coastal tier-one city to Chongxiang. With the maturity of a woman in her thirties and a mysterious past, she ignited all of Kong Can’s curiosity—before drawing her inexorably inside.

Ruan Ting never imagined that her temporary stopover would become the haunting obsession of her life, the quagmire that snared her footsteps forever.

In that perpetually rainy southern small town, the two women spun a web from which neither could break free.

The screenwriter was a good friend of Nong Siqing’s; they had collaborated many times before. This script was custom-made, a farewell piece through which Nong Siqing aimed to tell a story from a distant era.

“To be precise, it’s not the early 2000s—it predates that—but the backdrop won’t change much. Society’s stance on homosexuality was just as repressive as around the millennium,” Nong Siqing said at the press conference. “Unlike today, when same-sex marriage is on the verge of legalization. Young people might struggle to grasp what it was like back then.”

The film was titled The Third Party. In Ruan Ting’s marriage—riddled with violence and constant bickering—Kong Can was the other woman.

That was how most people interpreted it. Nong Siqing offered no opinion, merely smiling it away.

Zhong Jia had binged Nong Siqing’s films ever since signing on. Truth be told, they weren’t her usual taste.

They unfolded slowly, at a leisurely pace—a soporific for young viewers unmoved by arthouse fare, the kind that lulled you to sleep in the theater. Strangely, though, something always pierced Zhong Jia to the core: a line of dialogue here, a play of light there, a flicker of emotion elsewhere…

It was as if some long-dormant force suddenly erupted, short-circuiting her thoughts with its raw impact, pounding at the door to her heart with frantic urgency.

By the time Zhong Jia came back to herself, tears were streaming down her face.

She even dreamed of the movie’s scenes, the characters’ unresolved anguish mirroring her own. It took days to shake off. No wonder Nong Siqing’s masterpieces still inspired screenshots as phone wallpapers years later—no filters needed; their natural grain lent them an authentic texture.

Zhong Jia suspected The Third Party held deeper meanings. Nong Siqing rarely laid a film’s heart so plainly bare.

Chongxiang County had no film studio. A film-directing student had once returned home for a thesis project that went mildly viral online, but there were no standing sets.

Nong Siqing went all out with on-location shooting, transforming an entire street block. It encompassed not just the rundown apartment building but the vegetable market too, along with every other scene from the script. She had always been generous where her films were concerned.

Today marked the first day of shooting for The Third Party.

Zhong Jia arrived early. Seated in the crew’s van, she gazed out the window. Chongxiang County wasn’t as backward as she’d imagined. People got around in white-and-green taxis rather than trikes, and the phones in their hands weren’t just Nokias or PHS units—now and then, she’d spot young people in hanfu or JK uniforms.

The location was nearby. When the driver pulled up, Zhong Jia stepped out and froze in astonishment.

It was like stepping into an old photograph. The street lay in dilapidated ruin: a manhole cover pried loose, a garbage bin caved in. Shops so tiny they seemed squeezed from cracks in the walls lined both sides—businesses downstairs, families crammed above. Second-floor curtains ranged from the pretty to bedsheets jury-rigged in their place, some windows even pasted over with old newspapers.

A props crew member crouched beneath the shabby sign for Xingfa Supermarket. Yellow duct tape bound the glass cigarette case, as if it had been smashed once before. He deftly stocked it with fake packs, while a cardboard box jammed in the shutter door bore a crooked, handwritten price list on white cardstock, scrawled in black ink.

All around stood extras who fit the era from head to toe, each with their group leaders and assigned positions. They would populate 2001 Chongxiang County, specifically Chunhe Alley, in various roles.

Zhong Jia’s gaze finally settled on Thousand Threads Hair Salon by the utility pole. Unlike the supermarket, it was fully prepped: a poster with curled edges plastered to the glass door, its three-color sign spinning lazily.

At a glance, only the dense canopy of the camphor tree at the road fork evoked modern Chongxiang. Everywhere else, it felt as if time itself had glitched.

Silently, Zhong Jia conversed with the Kong Can who lived only on the page. Drawn irresistibly, she headed toward the salon—Kong Can’s workplace, and the site of her fateful encounter with Ruan Ting.

“Little Zhong.” Someone called her name.

The voice seemed to drift down from overhead. Zhong Jia paused mid-step, tilting her chin up to scan around. Nong Siqing leaned against the railing of a second-floor apartment balcony, watching her. The stern-faced director broke into a smile. “No scenes for you yet, and you’re here this early?”

Zhong Jia replied, “I wanted to get acclimated first. There’s a lot I need to learn.”

Her hair had hung nearly to her waist before; yesterday, after landing, the stylist had hacked it to a ragged, shoulder-length mess. In a few days, it would be dyed a dowdy yellow.

The acting coach had been a recommendation from Nong Siqing, who occasionally checked in on Zhong Jia’s progress. The feedback was that she was diligent and earnest but only averagely talented. Nong Siqing knew fragments of the past: Qiao Yingqiu’s indecisiveness in love, her tendency to fall deeply. She had urged caution about the marriage to Zhong Kefei, but to no avail.

She had even sent a gift when Qiao Yingqiu gave birth, learning it was fraternal twins—the girl arriving just minutes after her brother. Nong Siqing could scarcely have foreseen such a twist of fate. Now, looking at Zhong Jia, she felt an added impulse to nurture her.

“Mm. Little Xie is around here somewhere—go chat with her. You two playing these roles means plenty of back-and-forth.” Nong Siqing wore her usual black cotton jacket, often glimpsed onscreen, with floral arm guards slipped over the cuffs for practicality. She lived simply, reportedly pouring every cent of her earnings back into her films.

Nong Siqing’s smile carried layers of meaning. For a few seconds, Zhong Jia itched to ask exactly what sort of “back-and-forth,” but she held back, wary of overthinking it.

She nodded in agreement and told A Cha to head to the lounge and wait.

Truth be told, “back-and-forth” was a hurdle Zhong Jia still struggled to clear.

Her life had always been monotonous. Her physical limitations and absent parents acted like a social filter—or a vacuum dome. At first, solitude was forced upon her; at school, she had classmates but no friends.

Later, she came to relish it, deciding loneliness held no real sting.

Zhong Jia had spent a stretch obsessively catching up on Xie Yingnian’s films and interviews. Even Chen Kuang thought she’d been possessed. The schoolgirl who handed out “nice guy” rejections to every pursuer, male or female, declaring her heart belonged to music—how could she suddenly take an interest in people?

“Ah? It’s not…” Zhong Jia trailed off, at a loss for words.

Onscreen, Reed Shoal Moon was playing, reaching its most intimate scene: her own mother entangled in the reed marshes with an eighteen-year-old Xie Yingnian.

This movie was a lingering tragedy, the kind of yuri film that many wouldn’t dare touch even on recommendation lists. Xie Yingnian’s character was irresistibly drawn in and fell hard, only to lose everything because of the other’s cowardice. In the end, the villagers stuffed her into a burlap sack and drowned her in the river, branded with that era’s trumped-up charge of hooliganism. Put in modern terms, it was the stuff of ultimate top hell.

On screen, she was blazing with mad obsession, throwing herself in without a care. Off screen, Xie Yingnian was her complete opposite—cool and detached. Critics had called her an ephemeral flower blooming on a lonely cliff ever since her debut.

Back when she was young, Qiao Yingqiu had turned their on-screen romance into the real thing, and the double award-winning actress ended up chasing after her like a desperate simp. Now a mature woman, she carried a natural big-sister vibe. She didn’t limit herself to younger partners; she just had this aura that made people want to take care of her. Even older ones ended up feeling like the junior in spirit. But things never lasted—there was just no passion to sustain them.

That was why Xie Yingnian’s kick at Zhong Kefei during the funeral kept getting dug up and replayed, a rarity on par with an iron tree blooming. Those fox-like eyes of hers had finally shown wild emotional swings.

Zhong Jia wasn’t a fan, nor a friend. What she felt for Xie Yingnian was pure, intense curiosity—curiosity about the kind of woman who could make her trip and fall so hard, the one she ultimately didn’t want. Curiosity about whether Xie Yingnian had ever truly opened her heart to Qiao Yingqiu.

Knowing a little only made her crave more. Xie Yingnian seemed like an addictive poppy, but even after binge-watching her catalog through the screen, Zhong Jia still couldn’t figure her out.

She wanted to get closer, and she wanted to express her thanks. Her grandmother hadn’t been saved in the end, but Xie Yingnian had at least tried to help.

She never imagined drawing near like this. The day she signed the contract, she hadn’t overthought it or asked questions. Everyone knew Xie Yingnian hadn’t acted in over two years.

Even now, Zhong Jia felt a little dazed. How was she supposed to film bed scenes with the woman her mom had a crush on? The taboo side of it was secondary—her morals in that department were pretty flexible. Maybe it was because her brother He Lifu was such a total turn-off that she could even get into step-sibling vibes. Bed scenes with an ex-stepmom hardly seemed like a mental block.

She just lacked experience in acting and romance alike. She really didn’t want to let Nong Siqing down.

Lost in her tangled thoughts, she forgot to watch her step and suddenly tripped over half a red brick. A passerby caught her steadily.

“Thanks…” Zhong Jia looked up and froze.

Xie Yingnian sported big, bouncy waves in her hair, clutching the script in her other hand. Her red lips puffed out a cloud of white breath in the winter chill, like mist veiling a stunning beauty. Behind her loomed the poker parlor’s vertical sign—green background, white letters. Her high heels obscured half of the “room” character, leaving just the roof radical dangling. She gave Zhong Jia a calm smile. “Gonna thank Auntie again?”

~~~