Final volume: If life were only as it was when we first met
Chapter 1: A choice without regret
2004. Beijing.
In a bar near the film academy, a crowd of young men and women raised their beer glasses and clinked them together, heedless of the beer spilling over the rims. They were celebrating the success of a play just performed at the grand theater.
Besides the juniors and seniors from various departments of the Beijing Film Academy who had performed in the play, many friends from all over the country who were in Beijing had come to celebrate.
The play was a small production put on for the public by the Beijing Film Academy's acting department. It had briefly generated a respectable response, leading to three official performances in all. The one at this grand theater had probably been the largest in relative terms. The next performance, on the Beijing Broadcasting Institute campus, would be the production's last.
Whatever the case, this would be one of the most unforgettable memories for these students, who might be leaving the Beijing Film Academy the following year. After all, although the school had no shortage of future stars who signed contracts with film and television companies and appeared in movies as soon as they enrolled, most students followed the usual steps all the way to graduation without ever encountering such an opportunity. Even more would lose their way in the corrupting vat of society.
For example, after clinking glasses, two flamboyantly dressed girls began talking quite openly. One pretty girl said the man she liked had told her not to act in films or television dramas after graduation, but to work at his company instead. Once she joined him, he would divorce the wife with whom he had no emotional bond. The