Lin Yuan suddenly felt foolish. Why had he worried that Liu Yifei would go back on her word?
He wanted to see Liu Yifei in white stockings, but did she really not want to wear them for him?
Had he forgotten that the best hunters always appeared in the guise of prey?
Women really were born knowing how to play hard to get. Lin Yuan sighed again. No wonder so many men always came out worse in interactions between the sexes.
Men started out at a lower rank, and if they went on to become simps, then all anyone could do was respect their fate.
Sure enough, relationships were only interesting when both sides moved toward each other.
"I'll keep it safe. With it, I'll feel like you're always by my side." Lin Yuan slipped the wallet into the inner pocket of his coat.
Liu Yifei raised her left wrist and shook the bracelet, indicating that she felt the same way.
"What have you been reading lately?" Lin Yuan changed the subject.
Ever since that night they had camped at Big Bear Mountain Park, Lin Yuan had discovered that he really enjoyed chatting casually with Liu Yifei.
The resonance between their souls during conversation was their true emotional bond.
"Maugham's The Painted Veil. Do you know it?" Liu Yifei replied.
"I do. I've read it too." Lin Yuan nodded.
It was a romance novel written in 1920 by the British author William Somerset Maugham.
Compared to this book, Maugham's other two representative works were clearly better known: The Summing Up and The Moon and Sixpence.
Lin Yuan knew about this book because, nearly a century later, The Painted Veil had suddenly become popular in China around 2020.
It resonated broadly with artsy young women across the country and was hailed as an essential bible of love for women.
The romance film adapted from the novel, bearing the same name, had even scored a high 8.3 on Douban.
The most famous passage in The Painted Veil, the one that instantly moved those artsy young women, was spoken by the male lead to the female lead:
I have no illusions about you.
I know you are foolish, frivolous, and empty-headed, yet I love you.
I know your ambitions and your desires.
You are snobbish and vulgar, yet I love you.
I know you are second-rate, yet I love you.
I did not fall in love with the beautiful image you tried so hard to present, but with your muddied heart.
Wasn't that flavor pure enough?
Wasn't it strong enough?
It practically reeked of Celestial Fairy vibes.
No wonder women liked it. What woman did not hope that even if she was good for nothing, she could still receive a man's unconditional love?
Lin Yuan's attitude toward the book was simple: utter disdain.
Although he knew that Maugham had been critical of the vain female protagonist before her transformation, it still did not stop him from seeing it as a petty bourgeois work of self-indulgent moaning.
"Do you like this book?" Lin Yuan asked. Based on what he knew of Liu Yifei, it should not have been to her taste.
"I don't. I only flipped through it because all the students around me were reading it."
Sure enough, Celestial Fairy did not like this sort of thing.
"It's a contrived view of love—self-pitying and self-congratulatory. I really dislike it," Liu Yifei added.
"But I know a lot of girls like this book." Lin Yuan wanted to hear her views on love.
"Many people think love should be unconditional. They hope that no matter how awful they are, someone will still love them unconditionally.
"That fits humanity's selfishness and self-interest, but I can't agree with it." Liu Yifei's views had always been sharp.
Lin Yuan nodded, signaling for her to continue.
"If I were foolish, frivolous, empty-headed, snobbish, vulgar, and a second-rate person with a muddied heart,
"then no matter how beautiful I was, I wouldn't deserve anyone's love.
"Love shouldn't be some cure-all miracle drug, as though once something was wrapped in the name of love, people should throw everything aside and accept it as natural."
Her heart was nothing like her delicate appearance. On the contrary, she was an extremely confident and opinionated person.
Lin Yuan smiled and nodded. My Celestial Fairy has such upright values—a girl overflowing with positive energy!
"There's another part of the book that makes me very uncomfortable, though it has nothing to do with love," Liu Yifei said.
"What is it?" Lin Yuan asked.
"The more Maugham depicts China's 'primitive lifestyle' as pastoral and idyllic in this book, the more I feel the arrogance of the white world. It makes me deeply uncomfortable.
"I don't know whether you understand what I mean," Liu Yifei said worriedly.
Of course Lin Yuan understood.
The story of The Painted Veil took place in old China. Both the original novel and the later film adaptation contained extensive descriptions of folk customs and scenery from that era.
Between the lines, the author expressed a powerful fondness for these Eastern elements, portraying China as a utopia.
Many Chinese people knew of a phenomenon: foreigners were very interested in ancient Chinese things, such as our traditional architecture, traditional clothing, and folk customs...
The older and more primitive something was, the more they liked it.
Logically, that should have been a good thing. Shouldn't people be happy that Westerners liked our traditional culture?
But why did so many Chinese people feel faintly uncomfortable about it?
In truth, it involved a fundamental question:
What exactly did Western countries like about the classical East?
As someone of Chinese descent, Lin Yuan did not have any disconnect between Eastern and Western cultural perceptions.
So he could answer that question very precisely:
What Western countries liked was the paradise-like East they had imagined in their own minds.
They wanted you to travel by sedan chair forever, not by car.
They wanted you to go down to the river and beat your laundry with wooden paddles instead of using washing machines.
They wanted you to fan yourself with traditional handmade fans in the summer rather than use air conditioners or electric fans.
They hoped we would live ancient lives forever, carrying their fantasies of a paradise beyond the world.
As for whether we wanted better lives too, whether we also wanted to live modern lives, they did not care. They even opposed it.
At its core, it was all driven by a desire for novelty.
It was the same feeling we had when seeing the primitive, natural way of life in African tribes: it was merely novel and interesting.
Could you say that this kind of liking was really a liking for your culture?
It was not that they did not sincerely like it, but their fondness came with the condescending gaze of arrogance, which made people deeply uncomfortable.
Lin Yuan had felt this keenly while filming Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.
The more ancient the China you filmed, the more backward its people's lives appeared, the more interested foreigners became.
If you filmed a modern, prosperous, and powerful China, not only would foreigners not want to watch it, they would also accuse us of destroying the tranquility of traditional life and losing our own cultural heritage.
And then they would add one more line: "It's too environmentally unfriendly!"
This condescending arrogance from white civilization had always existed widely.
The discrimination and exclusion Lin Yuan had suffered in Hollywood were merely one manifestation of it.
In fact, Lin Yuan was very surprised that Liu Yifei had noticed this so sharply.
After all, she was still young. She truly had a perceptive heart and saw things more clearly than people her age.
"Of course I understand what you mean. One day, we'll look at them the same way."
"Really?"
"Mhm! Trust me. That's why the foundation of our careers must be in China in the future."
As someone who had been reborn, Lin Yuan naturally knew that when looking at America again in 2024, it felt utterly surreal—full of cyberpunk vibes.
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