Many of the surrounding guests were trying to calm the situation. “That’s enough, President Shang. Why get angry with someone so much younger?”
Shang Xuelin had been thoroughly humiliated today. He’d been drenched with dirty foot-washing water before and had intended to repay the insult by throwing wine over Xing Rong. But he hadn’t expected the young actor to resist so fiercely. As a powerful company president, losing face in public was unbearable. If he’d known this would happen, he would never have thrown that glass of wine. Now he felt close to bursting a blood vessel himself.
Shang Xuelin was still seething. While others flattered him and urged him to calm down, he paced in a circle, muttering foul curses in his hometown dialect. “A little whore, pretending to be some pure white lotus in front of me! Acting all high and mighty when you’re nothing but a cheap slut… You crawled into Zhuang Xiao’s bed ages ago. Think I don’t know? Everything people wrote online is true! … He’s just alleyway trash, brought up by a ruined old cripple. How much money can he put in your pocket? Come to me and I can give you mountains of gold and silver!”
The backstage area of the Golden Phoenix Awards erupted in uproar. This was unprecedented, and the language was appalling.
Fortunately, the backstage area wasn’t being livestreamed. But a great many people had witnessed it.
Here was a nouveau-riche mining tycoon who’d made an enormous fortune and cared nothing for grace, reputation, or the occasion. In the industry, he was accustomed to throwing money around to get his way, without fear of consequences.
He was altogether different from men of Zhang Shaochi’s sort. “Stupid,” “cruel,” and “vicious” might as well have been written directly across his face.
Zhuang Xiao suddenly turned and stared at President Shang, incandescent with anger.
Shang immediately fell silent. With bloodshot eyes he stared back, furious and unable to let the matter drop, but he knew the gulf between their fighting abilities. He didn’t dare step forward and slap Zhuang Xiao too.
Zhuang Xiao’s nature was such that in public he would ultimately restrain himself. He wasn’t someone who threw wine or water at people.
It wasn’t the first time his family background had been mocked or he’d been slandered viciously. He pressed his lips together, refused to answer, and tried to get away from the place.
But Xing Rong suddenly pulled free of his grasp and snatched something out of a nearby person’s hands.
He wrenched himself so hard that buttons tore from his suit. Zhuang Xiao was still gripping the navy-blue jacket, but Xing Rong’s shoulders were narrow and he slipped right out of it. His eyes were bloodshot too, his expression declaring that since everything had already gone wrong, none of them needed to pretend anymore. He pushed through the crowd and flung the object in his hand straight at Shang Xuelin’s face with all the force of his fury…
Go on, you old bastard. Insult me again.
My chance at love is gone. My career is ruined. Why should I keep wearing a mask and smiling for people like you?
The hard object flew straight toward President Shang’s forehead. Clang!
There was precious little hair left on that head to begin with. Now his scalp took a heavy blow. He screamed as blood ran from the wound, conspicuous against his balding head.
Even Zhang Shaochi hadn’t anticipated that turn. For the first time in his life he actually smiled at Brother Rong’s antics, clicking his tongue appreciatively against his teeth. He’d been holding a feather duster, ready to hit somebody himself. Now he leisurely threw it aside.
The weapon that fell to the floor was a Golden Phoenix trophy. Xing Rong had snatched it straight out of Princess Ran’s hands, and with perfect irony he’d thrown the award Shang had secured for Xu Ran back at the man himself.
Xu Ran shrieked and hurried to pick up his trophy, looking heartsick.
He’d paid such a price to win it. How could he not cherish it? Now even the exquisitely carved phoenix feathers were stained with blood…
The backstage farce had nearly become impossible to contain.
Before anyone could rush over and attack Xing Rong, Zhuang Xiao grabbed him, pushed through the crowd, and ran down the corridor, getting him out of the hotel first.
Zhuang Xiao had always imagined he was the only man in the world reckless enough to confront a film-company boss and fight him. He’d fought Du Mingjun and then Zhang Shaochi. Today he discovered a second such man: Xing Rong.
He admired Xing Rong’s courage. But he also knew that the price of that one throw would be enormous.
Everyone there had seen it and was shaking their heads, murmuring that Xing Rong had committed a disastrous mistake.
He could forget about working in entertainment ever again.
Xing Rong trembled like a drenched waterbird, forcing himself to remain silent.
“Old Bao, take him away first. Don’t stay in this mess.” Zhuang Xiao bundled Xing Rong into a car and entrusted him to his own manager. Fatty Bao drove him away from the scene. Zhuang Xiao would handle whatever came next.
It seemed the old bastard Shang Xuelin had called the police backstage. Police cars and ambulances converged on the theater entrance with their sirens howling. Reporters scented a story and materialized out of nowhere.
President Shang was furious and demanded that the police arrest Rongrong for assault. He threatened to have him imprisoned on charges of intentional injury.
Zhang Shaochi, face cold and practically smoking with anger himself, later spoke a few words to Shang Xuelin beside the ambulance stretcher. With enough persuasion he managed to prevent the formal complaint for the moment, and the police were sent away again.
Hands buried in the pockets of his coat, Zhang Shaochi walked down the corridor muttering, “Serves him right. Pathetic. Glad he got hit.”
* * *
Staff members promptly caught Zhuang Xiao and dragged him back to work.
The hosts out front were close to losing control of the proceedings. They had hastily moved a later musical number featuring singers cross-dressed for a duet to an earlier slot, simply because the award presenter had failed to appear.
Zhuang Xiao glanced at his phone. More than a dozen WeChat messages had arrived.
Yanyan had been chatting to him all this time without getting any response. He must be worried by now.
Pei Yan knew that Zhuang Xiao was attending the ceremony and didn’t want to interrupt him onstage, so he hadn’t dared call. He’d been texting instead: What happened? What was he doing? Why hadn’t he appeared onstage yet?
Zhuang Xiao was profoundly grateful that Mr. Pei wasn’t there today and hadn’t witnessed any of it.
The man with the most explosive temper was absent. Zhuang Xiao could tolerate almost anything, but Pei Yan couldn’t. Had Pei Yan been there, he would certainly have thrown punches. Today someone might genuinely have ended up in an emergency room, and someone else in a police station…
Zhuang Xiao straightened his suit. Backstage staff hurried over to fix his hair and touch up his makeup.
He stepped onstage beneath a dazzling array of lights. Moving from backstage to front was like stepping out of a noisome butcher’s market and straight back into a glittering exhibition hall, surrounded by applause.
He already had the image of a cold, tough man and didn’t need to work hard at charming the audience. A restrained smile and a few improvised remarks were enough. He didn’t waste words, then began reading the nominees.
The category he was presenting was Best Action Design, customarily given out by fight choreographers or action stars.
When Zhuang Xiao read out Dragon Battles Heaven’s Pass, he smiled first and bowed slightly to the audience.
Many fellow stars and filmmakers in the audience admired Hero Zhuang and applauded.
The livestream chat filled with messages: “A-Xiao’s expression when he said his own movie was so cute!” “Brother Xiao looks like he’s blushing!” “He even bowed a little! Adorable!”
The big screen moved through the nominated films one by one.
He opened the envelope. The result was completely unsurprising. He announced the winner: Dragon Battles Heaven’s Pass.
The action director and representatives of the fight-choreography team came to collect their award. They embraced Zhuang Xiao onstage and patted his shoulders, enjoying their moment of glory amid thunderous applause. Zhuang Xiao walked off at the side of the stage and took off his bow tie, knowing exactly how good his acting and his powers of self-restraint were.
As he followed the corridor toward the exit, an ambulance stretcher crossed his path. It was empty. Nobody was being carried away.
He casually asked the people nearby how President Shang was doing. Hadn’t he lost too much blood?
They told him he hadn’t! They’d been afraid he would, but the old fellow was extraordinarily sturdy. No hypertension, no heart disease, hadn’t even passed out. He’d just kept cursing nonstop. So tiresome.
Even out in the corridor, the commotion in the VIP lounge was audible: angry voices, people arguing, even the sound of wineglasses or teacups being smashed. Everyone uninvolved was slipping away, keeping a safe distance in case another slap flew.
Zhuang Xiao watched the door from which the noise came and slowly walked toward it.
Normally he had no interest in other people’s business. But he couldn’t shake the feeling that today’s incident had something to do with him. Why had Shang Xuelin gone out of his way to insult him too, in such ugly language? He wanted to hear who was arguing and what the argument was actually about.
Only a thin door stood between them. They were a few steps apart.
Inside, the men bickering and venting their grievances were Shang Xuelin and Zhang Shaochi.
* * *
“Enough already,” Zhang Shaochi said. “The doctor has checked you over and bandaged your head. That skull of yours is hard as a rock. You’re fine. I’ll pay your medical expenses. What else do you want?”
Shang Xuelin said, “I got hit in front of two hundred fucking people! What do you mean, what do I want?”
“Oh, oh, so you were hit, huh?” Zhang Shaochi stared at him. “How about I pay for your cremation, burial, and memorial service too? Would that be enough?”
Shang Xuelin began swearing at him. Zhang Shaochi told him to come right ahead, sneering that the man had a face like an arrangement of genitals.
Zhang Shaochi laughed coldly. “What do you take the artists signed to my company for? The little playthings Du Mingjun keeps? People you can put your hands on whenever you like, take advantage of however you please? Rongrong didn’t want it. When somebody says no, that’s the end of it. And you tried to force the issue?”
Even though he couldn’t catch every single word, Zhuang Xiao understood the gist of the exchange from outside the door.
“And another thing,” Zhang Shaochi continued. “It was bad enough insulting Rongrong. Then you started in on Zhuang Xiao. Why the hell would you provoke him? You all work in the same business. You see one another all the time. He’s a respected man. Is he somebody you should casually offend?”
“What’s so great about Zhuang Xiao?” Shang Xuelin muttered. “Raised by a family of old whores. Some great kung fu hero. Low-class trash… You think I’m afraid of him? Hmph…”
Zhang Shaochi shook his head, genuinely contemptuous, though he didn’t say everything he was thinking aloud.
If anyone was low-class here, it was Shang. A country bumpkin who’d made his fortune digging coal in the mountains and had grown arrogant because his former father-in-law wielded a bit of local power. No dignity, no vision, no education. The barriers to entry in the entertainment industry had fallen so low that any beast could dress up as a person and join in. The sight of it was an insult to his eyes…
President Zhang stood in the room with all his aristocratic arrogance, refusing even to sit down, probably unwilling to dirty his backside.
Shang Xuelin didn’t really dare cross Zhang Shaochi, but he resented him bitterly. Within the same industry there were still differences of background and influence. Those cultured heirs of Beijing’s elite compounds behaved as though drinking water at the foot of the imperial city had turned them into immortals. They strutted around before outsiders who’d made fortunes elsewhere. What the hell made Zhang so special?
President Zhang was in a foul mood himself. Dragon Battles Heaven’s Pass had been a hit, his company had made money, and the Zhuang–Pei pairing was hugely popular. But when he looked over the accounts, he regretted not continuing to finance Pei Yan’s studio’s next picture. He might have passed up a tremendous opportunity to keep those two men tied to his ship.
The opportunity had passed, and there was no getting it back.
His little monkey had found another financier. The new partner provided post-production money and distribution, and the studio had parted ways with Jiahuang entirely… Zhang regretted it.
The pair traded remarks faster and faster, squabbling furiously.
Shang Xuelin had no filter. “You stole President Xu’s company for yourself, you second-rate monkey, and now you think you’re somebody?”
“I’m not anybody special.” Zhang Shaochi turned toward the door. “But all the things you people have done over the years? Digging the country’s wealth out of the ground, hollowing out the earth, then carrying mountains of money onto my turf to cause trouble, laundering dirty money until it looks clean. Think you can hide it all? … Think nobody will ever talk?”
Shang Xuelin fell silent and glared at him.
Zhang Shaochi turned back and pointed. “The filthy things you did on that film set, I’ve had to carry the blame for you all this fucking time! And let me tell you, Zhuang Xiao’s right outside the door, yet you still dare provoke him. Go tell him to his face who it was that crippled that ‘old alleyway nobody’ you were talking about!”
Shang Xuelin lost his swagger again. His facial muscles twitched. “You’re asking me? My memory’s bad. Too many years ago. I fucking forgot… How do you turn dirty money clean? Ask your President Xu. I just listened to Xu Qiyue.”
“Stop fucking using Xu Qiyue to intimidate me.” A deep red suddenly spread through Zhang Shaochi’s eyes. “You think I’m afraid of him?”
* * *
This was the nature of a wolf pack: old wolves and young, wild wolves and seasoned ones. Some led, others followed and ate the spoils. Some were vicious, others opportunists. At last, resentment over how the spoils were divided and contempt for their own packmates had driven them to turn on one another.
Lift the heavy, luxurious carpet and you’d find only blackened corners, filth and corruption no one wanted to see…
Zhang Shaochi strode angrily toward the door and yanked it open.
He opened the door and almost stepped on someone’s shoes before he could leave. He found himself face to face with Zhuang Xiao.
Zhang Shaochi froze.
Zhuang Xiao didn’t need to bother with knocking or forcing the door. He walked straight inside and pulled it shut behind him. “President Shang, since I’m already here, why don’t you gentlemen tell me directly?”
Zhuang Xiao’s voice was a little hoarse. He walked to the middle of the room. “What you said earlier, about that ‘old alleyway nobody’… What happened to him? Who did it?”
The events lay far in the past. Ultimately they were old grievances.
So Zhuang Xiao didn’t fly into a rage or shout. He merely asked.
President Shang went pale, wriggling uncomfortably on the sofa and constantly changing position. Zhang Shaochi also turned ashen, caught between speaking and keeping silent. When he’d threatened that Zhuang Xiao was outside the door, he’d been bluffing. How could he have known Zhuang Xiao really was listening?
Shang Xuelin had been enjoying his careless remarks only moments earlier. Now, still wearing a bandage around his head, he curled into a defensive posture. “Zhuang Xiao, don’t you come any closer! You… you… I’m warning you, I really did call the police! I’ve got a heart condition…”
Even a brave man knew not to court immediate danger. Between President Shang and anything resembling a brave man stretched an unfathomable chasm. He was all bluster and no courage and very much afraid of being hit.
Zhuang Xiao looked toward Zhang Shaochi again. President Zhang remained as silent and immovable as a boulder, looking as though he’d rather submit to torture than utter a word. He’d always been cautious, and tonight his words had been a terrible slip. He was regretting it.
Zhuang Xiao lowered his head and searched on his phone. A little research was enough to make certain things clear.
When Zhuang Wenlong had filmed Phoenix Dance, Dragon Soars, the investors had included Jiahuang and Baiguixing, as well as a cultural company called something like Jinwengshan. Its name was terribly vulgar, and its existence short-lived. Perhaps someone had advised its owners or consulted the feng shui, because the company later changed its name and fortunes and prospered.
“And later it changed its face and name and became your Zhiyuan Media, didn’t it, President Shang?” Zhuang Xiao asked softly.
Shang Xuelin didn’t answer. He drooped on the sofa with his sagging eyelids, pretending to be weak and short of breath, as though he could suffer a stroke or heart attack at any moment and Zhuang Xiao had better leave him alone…
Some things didn’t need to be said outright. Everybody understood.
One great tree sheltered a whole troop of monkeys. Not one of them was innocent, and none could escape the reckoning.
Those grand, illustrious names mocked the lowly people struggling beneath them.
The film business had always had its own so-called jianghu. There was so much money to be made that capital flowed in from all directions, each investor pursuing his own ambitions and ingenious methods of enrichment. How many of those people had truly come to make films over the years? In an era of aggressive expansion when the law of the jungle prevailed, wolves and tigers roared and tore at one another, thirsty for blood and flesh, desperate to make money.
As they expanded, they occasionally encountered an inconvenient, stubborn person. Giving that person a small lesson, removing an obstacle, scarcely registered as an event. Those with poor memories forgot long ago what they’d done. Only for Zhuang Wenlong and that stubborn group of men who had actually taken kung fu and wuxia films seriously was it a catastrophe that destroyed their livelihoods for the rest of their lives.
Those men had withdrawn from the big stage, and many were nearly dead now.
If you couldn’t read the times and act accordingly, you could only blame yourself when disaster came. Other people were certainly good at adapting. It was terribly difficult to stand upright and live with dignity.
Zhuang Xiao’s phone kept chiming.
Pei Yan was still sending messages, chatting to himself like a one-man performance and entertaining himself while waiting for an answer.
[Just saw you on the livestream. Presenting that award to your own movie! Weren’t you embarrassed? … I was blushing for you. I miss you. You looked so handsome.]
[This giant movie we’re shooting is going to be in IMAX. Old Fat Charles is really splashing out this time. He’s using seventy-millimeter film cameras. There’s a company that builds these cameras especially. Incredible cutting-edge stuff.]
[I envy that. Really. I just don’t have the money. We can’t afford to shoot on film. Post-production’s a nightmare, and we couldn’t cover the cost. Hardly any directors in China still insist on film… When we have money someday, I want to try making a proper wuxia epic on film. A true masterpiece.]
[You’re not replying? What do you think of my grand future epic? … We’ll just keep earning, saving, and raising funds. Whether we can pull in the money depends on you. Fuck… You’ll have to make the sacrifice and sleep with President Yan for me!]
[The other day I saw President Yan and his man here. They spend every winter in Utah, over Christmas. Sounds like they’ve bought a house in the mountains near Salt Lake City. I saw photos. It’s beautiful… Would you ever want to live in the mountains? We could buy a little log cabin too.]
Zhuang Xiao finally replied: [Sure. Whatever you want.]
Pei Yan answered instantly: [Which part’s whatever I want? Shooting on film, buying a house, or having you sleep with President Yan?]
Zhuang Xiao had no words. His thumb stroked the phone screen. He wished he could reach through it, pull Pei Yan out, and hold him tightly. His heart ached.
* * *
After a song-and-dance filler performance had stretched out the program, the big screen returned to the announcement of another award. The people in the room instinctively raised their heads to look at the live broadcast.
They’d reached Best Supporting Actor.
Highlights from five nominees flashed across the screen, followed by close-ups of the tense expressions of the nominees seated in the auditorium.
One of the five nominees hadn’t come, delayed by filming in Los Angeles.
“The little monkey should have flown back, or you should have agreed to collect the award for him,” Zhang Shaochi said, shaking his head at the screen. “A-Xiao, if you’d agreed to accept it on his behalf, that would have been a guaranteed publicity moment. Then Yanyan could have won.”
“If it’s his award, it’s his. I’m not stealing his moment,” Zhuang Xiao replied.
“If you won’t go onstage for him and he can’t come himself, why on earth would the organizers give him the award?” Zhang Shaochi snorted, almost accusing Zhuang Xiao of costing Yanyan the prize by being too lofty to play along.
Before he’d even finished speaking, the winner of Best Supporting Actor was announced. Sure enough, the award went elsewhere.
Another handsome young actor rose from his seat. It was none other than “Peach Dragon.” He bowed gracefully to the applause, smiling with modest, irresistible charm, giving no hint of whatever fistulas or abscesses he might have suffered in certain private places. Pei Yan had indeed lost the award. This jianghu unfolded just as President Zhang had predicted.
* * *