And so, with filming almost over, Dragon Across the World Studio finally secured a partner for its first production. The partner filled the gap in their post-production financing, and a distribution agreement was signed.
If the box office passed six hundred million yuan, both sides would receive substantial dividends. Everyone would make money.
President Yan also contacted several other outdoor shooting locations for the crew. For a wealthy merchant’s mansion from the Republican era, they borrowed a small white building on Tianjin’s Five Great Avenues, using its courtyard, entrance, and living room for various shots.
The courtyard was square, with an exquisite little pond and an abundance of leafy plants.
The distinctive white building was octagonal. Bullet scars and fire marks were still visible on the windows and doors along one side, unmistakable signs of a house that had survived a long history. It had a genuine period character despite the money subsequently spent renovating and restoring it.
Yan Xiaodao said, “My father left me this house. Nobody lives here anymore, and I don’t use it either, so go ahead and film here! … If it’s torn down someday, flattened by a bulldozer, at least we’ll have footage of it. It’ll be preserved forever on the big screen. I think that’s pretty nice.”
Only one street away from the white building bearing the nameplate “Qi Residence” stood another mansion. Pei Yan pointed it out to Zhuang Xiao: “Pei Family Residence,” a villa left behind by an important Republican-era official.
“That building used to belong to my family,” Pei Yan said.
Zhuang Xiao looked at it for a long while before nodding. “Not anymore? … What’s it used for now?”
“How could it still be ours? You’d lose your head for that!” Pei Yan laughed. “They confiscated it back in the sixties. It hasn’t belonged to us since. Afterward? Once something gets taken away, it’s gone. They aren’t giving it back. I think it became some government office, then they leased it out so certain people could line their pockets. That’s how those things went.”
Mr. Pei laughed about it quite generously. He hadn’t been born in the sixties, and nobody had seized the property from him personally. All that belonged to another time. Let the storms of history pass with a smile; there was no need to keep revisiting the past. Every new ruler brought a new court.
They did go into the Pei Family Residence that day. The small building had been opened to paying visitors as a historic attraction.
Pei Yan bought a ticket to tour his family’s old home.
Many old photographs hung along the corridors. Pei Yan pointed out a small black-and-white portrait to Zhuang Xiao and explained that the young man pictured was a distant younger great-uncle, also surnamed Pei, named Pei Wen. He wore an air force uniform, with a star-shaped medal pinned to his left breast. Apparently the Nationalist government used to award one of those medals for each Japanese enemy plane a pilot shot down.
Pei Yan told Zhuang Xiao, “This great-uncle of mine was incredible. During the Chongqing bombings, he shot down an enemy bomber. That was around 1940, I think, and he earned this medal. People in peacetime won’t have to go through that again. Soldiers born when the country was in peril were heroes. Every time a pilot took off, it might be his last flight. A few days later, when my great-uncle flew another mission, I think he was hit by enemy fire. His plane crashed into a mountain. He never came home.”
Zhuang Xiao nodded. He stood at attention before that little photograph for a very long time, paying a solemn, silent tribute.
He had never asked Pei Yan about these things before. Now he understood that deeply personal patriotism Pei Yan had never spoken of, and he understood why this film existed.
Pei Yan rarely spoke of it to outsiders. Silence itself could be a form of respect.
* * *
After they left the residence and went down the steps, Zhuang Xiao suddenly asked, “Does President Yan know about all this?”
“Know about what?” Pei Yan raised his head.
“He’s a local. He probably knows more about your family’s history than anybody, doesn’t he?” Zhuang Xiao said.
“Probably. He’s mentioned it before. He knows the Pei Residence is only a street away from the white house his father left him,” Pei Yan said.
“So that’s what it was…” Zhuang Xiao chuckled softly.
“What’s what?” Pei Yan still hadn’t caught on.
“It wasn’t because he’s my ‘fan’!” Zhuang Xiao tossed this baffling remark at Old Pei and declined to explain.
Zhuang Xiao genuinely hadn’t known the background when he first met Mr. Pei. He hadn’t wanted to pry into the man’s family circumstances or find out how much of a “dowry” his family might have stashed away. Those weren’t pleasant surprises to him, just additional weight on his shoulders. He had simply wanted to get to know the man himself.
President Yan, on the other hand, understood the Pei family better than he did. There was certainly more behind this business deal than an explanation as simple as “fan.”
A businessman did not put that much money into a venture in order to lose it. Behind such lavish spending lay the shrewdness of someone wise enough to appear foolish, and the person he had truly set his sights on was young Mr. Pei. Worldly connections and calculations of advantage played their part. Even so, there was something precious about preserving a little loyalty and genuine affection amid all that.
* * *
The final major sequence, a chase involving a leap from a train onto the tracks, was eventually filmed at Tianjin North Station.
With white steam billowing from its engine, the train rolled toward the platform amid explosive gunfire. White Crane smashed through a carriage window and leapt out, his head falling toward a field of jagged white stones beside the rails. Blood spilled for a heart utterly devoted to the cause. Only a little more than ten meters from the platform, he failed to reach his destination.
Commander Zhuang’s adjutant secretly carried White Crane away so the beautiful man’s spirit could return home. The adjutant galloped across golden fields on a white horse, Xing Baihe’s body draped across the saddle. A narrow trail of blood stained the horse’s pure-white coat and streaked the fields…
Xing Rong and Sa Risheng finished shooting their parts.
* * *
At the execution ground, Commander Zhuang arrived on horseback and dragged the opponent he had loved and hated for so many years out from beneath the execution blade. His eyes were bloodshot as he pressed the barrel of his gun against the other man’s brow. “I can’t bear to let anyone else kill you.” “If you’re going to die, you’ll die by my hand.”
Commander Zhuang said quietly, “I know where you’ve hidden the intelligence. Tell me the contact code and I’ll deliver it for you.” The intelligence agent’s lips moved, his eyes rimmed in red. He appeared to whisper something. Suddenly great waves surged through Commander Zhuang’s eyes, white foam crashing beneath the surface. His throat worked frantically within the collar of his uniform, and his hands almost crushed the gun’s casing. At last, he pulled the trigger…
Pei Yan finished his scenes.
* * *
Two years later, full-scale war against Japan broke out. Japanese forces soon occupied Tianjin and formally renamed the station “Tianjin North Station.”
Near the end of that year, a regiment of a Nationalist division received orders to resist the Japanese along the Tianjin–Pukou Railway, only to find itself attacked from both sides. The soldiers held their trenches to the death, resisting enemy tanks with their own bodies. Commander Zhuang swore to his divisional commander, “When all my soldiers have filled that trench, I’ll throw myself into it.” After three nights of bloody fighting, the entire regiment was killed defending the country. Not one man survived.
Zhuang Xiao finished filming.
* * *
* * *
Something amusing happened while they were shooting the train-jump sequence at North Station.
Pei Yan was wearing a sleeveless undershirt and baggy shorts, dangling from an overhead footbridge while they tested camera angles and blocking. He had just been lowered when he turned and saw their generous financier. He teased, “President Yan, how about showing your face in the movie? We’ve got tons of extras in this scene, and we’re still short of people. There’s a whole battalion of Japanese soldiers. Want to put on a nice wool coat and play a Japanese battalion commander?”
Yan Xiaodao heard him and didn’t even answer. Fuck that. He wasn’t playing one.
Zhuang Xiao was being lowered from the footbridge too. His feet had barely touched the ground when he heard the offer and gave Pei Yan a disdainful look. “What kind of suggestion is that? … Put Knife Lord in revolutionary clothes and give him the most battered, broken-down gun the crew owns. Let him fire a few shots on camera and take out a couple of Japanese soldiers. See if he wants to do that!”
Yan Xiaodao was interested immediately. He went straight to find the director.
As expected, Young Master Pei simply didn’t understand what made people tick.
President Yan cheerfully volunteered for a substantial extra’s role. Dressed in particularly shabby clothes, he played a “comrade” lying in wait to receive the intelligence agent after his leap from the train. He crouched behind a wall and fired from cover. He didn’t even show his face, only his back, but he personally shot one Japanese soldier. He was delighted. Now that was an extra’s role worth playing.
Having killed only one Japanese soldier, he still wasn’t satisfied. Carrying his battered prop rifle, Yan Xiaodao kept following the director around asking whether he could kill a few more for the fun of it.
The director said he couldn’t kill any more. Mr. Big Boss, your cameo only gets one shot. Besides, those weren’t real Japanese soldiers. They were just shooting a movie!
So when they filmed the final battle along the Tianjin–Pukou Railway, the crew squeezed their generous financier into another shot. This time he played a rank-and-file soldier under Commander Zhuang, defending a trench and fighting desperately against enemy tanks.
Since this divine extra had brought an enormous investment with him, and money made a man everybody’s daddy, the director was happy to oblige. He arranged an enormous frontal close-up of Yan throwing a grenade. President Yan hurled it straight into an enemy tank’s driver’s compartment. With a magnificent crack, pop, boom, he blew up two more Japanese soldiers. Now he’d gotten his money’s worth.
* * *
After countless twists and turns, the entire film finally wrapped that autumn.
The crew assembled at the North Station film base, marveling at how difficult the journey had been. Pei Yan personally took hold of the long pole and lit several huge strings of firecrackers, scattering every scrap of bad luck and misfortune so they could put the past behind them and face a brighter road ahead. President Yan opened champagne to celebrate and especially sought out Mr. Pei for a toast. The occasion was as lively as New Year…
Pei Yan had come to realize that businessmen really were different from one another. Every one of them had some private passion or peculiar interest. Some people loved money. Some loved sex. Some collected antiques and paintings. Others enjoyed sponsoring things and appearing on camera to cultivate a name for themselves. Within the film industry, some bosses invested to launder money, some joined productions to fool around with actresses, and some genuinely wanted box-office revenue. But there were also people who made films because they enjoyed the romance of heroism itself.
Yan Xiaodao truly had both “loyalty” and “sentiment” in his heart when he invested in this film. And Deputy President Ling probably knew it perfectly well. At first he’d only put on a show of resistance. Naturally he would indulge his own man’s romantic ideals in the end.
There had once been another fabulously wealthy investor who financed a kung fu movie on the express condition that he play the mightiest martial-arts master in its struggle for supremacy. He entered the production carrying a mountain of gold; whatever he wanted, the director was ordered to film. And so he stood atop Mount Hua, fighting ten men single-handedly, using cash to knock down more than a dozen of the industry’s most formidable masters.
The keyboard warriors online put it plainly: don’t accuse the big boss of having no fucking idea how good he is. He knows perfectly well. Drop a mountain of gold on the set, and every martial-arts master will kneel down and offer up his own fucking dignity.
Yet the President Yan they’d encountered was another breed altogether. He really could fight ten men at once, but he hadn’t come to compete for the title of martial-arts champion. He had spent a fortune for the chance to shoot a few Japanese soldiers in a resistance film. He wore both Communist and Nationalist military uniforms, thoroughly satisfied his craving for a part, and considered his money well spent.
* * *
Zhuang Xiao no longer needed to sell his villa in Irvine. Nor did Ms. Xu have to sacrifice her private savings. Her little monkey had turned out quite capable. He hadn’t bankrupted the family chasing a vanity project; there was real ambition behind his business venture.
Zhuang Xiao rented a clean, quiet apartment for his father, moving him out of the miserable surroundings where he’d been living. He also began planning to buy a modest property in Beijing.
Ultimately, he wasn’t quite thick-skinned enough. He no longer lived alone, yet he was still shamelessly making use of Liang Youhui’s apartment, fucking his way through the place so enthusiastically that the bathroom bathtub kept overflowing. That didn’t seem entirely decent, did it? What if Young Master Liang brought his police-officer boyfriend home one day, opened the door, and busted both of them for indecency? Better move out already!
But should he buy somewhere nearby or farther away?
Pei Yan said, “Why don’t you buy farther from me? If we live near each other with only one major street between us, won’t that be too obvious?”
Zhuang Xiao said, “It’ll be even more obvious if I buy farther away.”
Buy somewhere in Haidian? Or Shijingshan? Sooner or later the paparazzi would notice that Mr. Pei kept heading to a district where his family didn’t live. Why was he always running off to Haidian or Shijingshan? How would he explain it? No, they’d buy in the same area, within the triangle formed by Chunxiu Road, Sanlitun, and the Liangma River. It was busy, crowded, full of celebrities.
Life couldn’t have been sweeter.
From then on, Pei Yan could set up a telescope on his own apartment balcony and catch sight of the balcony at Brother Xiao’s place.
Zhuang Xiao thought this arrangement was safer. Visiting your apartment would be no different from visiting mine; we’d practically be in the same neighborhood. As neighbors, they could even invite a few friends around for drinks and an evening of mahjong. That would be safest of all.
Rolling around on the enormous bed in Zhuang Xiao’s new home, Pei Yan laughed. “Mr. Zhuang, you’ve been away from Beijing so long you don’t know how formidable our Chaoyang aunties are! Aren’t you scared? And you still dare to live here, carrying on so brazenly!”
Zhuang Xiao snorted. “I’m not afraid. It’s drug users and people hiring prostitutes who have to fear the Chaoyang aunties. I’m in an honest-to-goodness relationship, dating a boyfriend. The aunties aren’t interested in our little personal affairs.”
The Chaoyang aunties indeed weren’t interested in the minor business of Mr. Pei and Mr. Zhuang dating. Their tip-offs went much higher. Recently, acting on information from the public, local police had raided a gathering involving drug use and sexual misconduct inside an upscale office building near the Liangma River. On paper it was a modeling agency. Inside was a group of heavily surgically altered young models taking drugs, some only seventeen or eighteen. Their lives were being ruined at such a young age.
A group of young male and female models, together with the agency’s madam, were detained and exposed. Their careers in entertainment were surely over. Scandal-tainted performers would be blacklisted; they could forget about appearing before an audience again. Yet the story went nowhere afterward. No further news came out.
The company had powerful connections behind it. Whose premises had hosted these gatherings? How many times had they happened? The police pursued none of it further. Of course everybody knew it was the modeling agency belonging to Du Mingjun, Mr. Du, who kept a stable of dubious go-betweens and favorites. Go down to the river often enough and eventually your shoes get wet. Mr. Du’s time would come.
Zhang Shaochi must have felt fortunate that over the past year he’d gradually pulled out his investments and dismantled his business partnerships with Du Mingjun, quietly drawing a line between them. Otherwise there would be plenty more trouble ahead…
During that period, Pei Yan and Zhuang Xiao often went to shopping malls nearby to buy things for the new home. They shopped on different floors, darting around as though conducting an espionage operation, using modern technology to stay in touch and cover for each other.
One was on the second floor in the skincare and cosmetics department; the other was five floors up, shopping for household goods.
Speaking into his earpiece beneath his cap, Pei Yan asked, “Did you find the pillows?”
“Nothing that’s the right firmness. Still looking,” Zhuang Xiao said.
Pei Yan asked again, “Want body cream? It’s a good brand, twenty percent off.”
“No. Don’t buy that for me,” Zhuang Xiao refused decisively. “Cream, lotion, jelly… all those gels and creams are things you use for sex. Buy them for yourself.”
Mr. Pei erupted into abuse over the phone. “You filthy old bastard! You’re taking advantage of me because I’m younger! I’m still an innocent, pure-hearted boy! Get lost!”
Zhuang Xiao laughed and hurried to soothe him. “I really don’t need that stuff. If I put body lotion on after a shower, you’ll end up eating it all anyway. I’m afraid you’ll poison yourself if you swallow too much, so I never use any.”
Zhuang Xiao was holding his headset in place between cheek and shoulder. He glanced around from the corner of his eye and said softly, “Paparazzi. Go. I’ll stay behind.”
The couple rarely had an entire day together, and even while shopping they couldn’t walk shoulder to shoulder or hold hands.
They didn’t even appear on the same floor, yet it could still start rumors… Fucking hell, what a mood killer.
Every time, Brother Xiao covered his retreat and stayed behind to shield him. Pei Yan slipped out through the second-floor emergency exit, ran down the stairwell to the parking garage, and departed unseen.
Zhuang Xiao wandered around the homewares department. When paparazzi asked whether the pair of pillows he’d bought were for his own use or somebody else’s, he ignored the intrusive questions. He didn’t scowl or curse, didn’t roll up his sleeves to smash a camera. He merely stepped onto the escalators around the mall’s central atrium and rode down, circling floor after floor in full view.
His car pulled out of the underground garage and stopped to pay the parking fee. Right beside it was the paparazzi’s vehicle, following his every move.
Zhuang Xiao leaned out the window and addressed the people tailing him. “Stop following me. There’s nothing here. It’s a beautiful autumn day. If you’ve got time, go climb Fragrant Hills. Or take a walk around Shichahai or the Lotus Market. Don’t waste your afternoon following me, all right, gentlemen?”
The men in that car knew better than to argue. They were exceedingly polite to Hero Zhuang, nodding and smiling apologetically. “Sorry to trouble you. We’re clocking off now. Have a safe drive, Mr. Zhuang. See you around.”
Zhuang Xiao smiled and waved at the paparazzi. With his elbow resting on the window frame, he turned, pressed the accelerator, and drove into the flickering city lights…