Living as a Phenomenon Before the Camera and Under the Spotlight

Winter Harbor was a small town on the edge of Acadia National Park in Maine.

The entire town had just one main street. Along it stood a white, steepled church, a grocery store with a faded sign, a lobster restaurant that had been open for sixty years, and an old house painted dark blue-the bookstore that belonged to Lin in the script. It had taken Anderson three months to find the place.

The bookstore's windows faced the Atlantic Ocean. In good weather, you could see whales spouting in the distant sea. In bad weather, sea and sky churned together in a haze of gray, making it impossible to tell where the water ended and the clouds began.

Su Jin arrived on set in the early hours of a Monday morning.

It was still dark when the private jet landed at Bangor International Airport. November in Maine was even more unreasonably cold than in Boston. The wind swept across the tarmac, carrying the salty tang peculiar to the Atlantic Ocean, sharp enough to cut invisible gashes in a person's skin.

She descended the aircraft stairs wrapped in a Brunello Cucinelli camel-hair shawl. It was so large it almost swallowed her whole, leaving only her face and a short length of windblown hair visible.

In the four a.m. light, her face shone white as a pearl freshly fished from the sea, already taking the breath away from everyone who saw it before it had even been polished.

A young production assistant surnamed Liu had come to pick her up. He was from Beijing and had worked on Anderson's team for three years.

He stood in the arrivals hall holding a sign that read "Su Jin." The moment he saw her emerge from the exit, he nearly dropped it-not because he recognized her, but because there she was in the airport arrivals hall at four in the morning, wearing a coat with no discernible brand, her hair tousled by the wind, her face bare of makeup and perhaps only just awake, yet as beautiful as the most beautiful face he had ever seen in his life.

He later told the lighting technician on set, "You know, when I saw her, my brain went buzz. It really did. I used to think novels were exaggerating when they said someone could make your eyes light up. That day I learned it wasn't an exaggeration. It was realism."

It was another two-hour drive from Bangor to Winter Harbor.

Su Jin sat in the passenger seat, leaning against the window, watching the outlines of the Maine wilderness slowly emerge in the morning light-vast stretches of conifer forest, white frost clinging to black trunks, the occasional deer poking its head out of the woods to glance at the headlights before turning and vanishing into the dark.

The sky changed from deep blue to pale violet, then from pale violet to orange-pink. By the time the sun finally rose above the horizon, the entire conifer forest had been dyed gold, and the distant sea had shattered into countless glittering shards of mirror in the morning light.

When the car stopped on Winter Harbor's main street, Anderson Lau was standing outside the bookstore with a cup of coffee in his hand. His hair was a mess, his eyes were bloodshot, and he looked as though he had been up all night.

When he saw the car stop, he immediately tossed away his coffee cup, hurried over in great strides, and pulled open the passenger door.

The moment Su Jin stepped out, Anderson took a step back.

He wasn't frightened. Something had struck him.

She wore an oatmeal-colored cashmere wide-leg pantsuit from The Row, the hems reaching the tops of her feet, with a pair of light camel Loro Piana Open Walk ankle boots. Her hair hung loose, stirring slightly in the early morning breeze. She wore no makeup, and her skin had an almost transparent quality in Maine's pale November sunlight. Her lips were a natural pale pink, reddened a little by the cold wind, as though she had bitten into a strawberry that wasn't quite ripe.

As she stepped out of the car, the Atlantic Ocean lay behind her. A shaft of light was breaking through the clouds over the water, falling directly on her and tracing her outline in a golden glow.

Anderson stared at her for five seconds, then turned to the cinematographer beside him. "Roll the camera. Now. Right now."

The cinematographer froze. "Weren't we starting tomorrow-"

"Right now." Anderson's voice was a little hoarse. "The way she looks now is better than any makeup."

Su Jin glanced at Anderson, the corners of her mouth curving slightly, but said nothing.

In her light camel ankle boots, she climbed the three stone steps to the bookstore and pushed open the door painted dark blue.

The hinges gave an aged creak, as though welcoming someone they had waited a long time for.

II

Anderson was right. She didn't need makeup.

In Maine's pale November sunlight, that face was already enough to drive the camera wild.

The first scene was of Lin arranging the bookshelves in the bookstore.

There was only one sentence in the script: Lin rearranged the books on the shelves by the color of their covers, from dark blue to light blue, from deep green to grass green, from ocher to lemon yellow.

No dialogue, no change of expression, no dramatic action of any kind.

Just a woman standing in front of a bookshelf, taking a book down, looking at its cover, and putting it somewhere else.

Su Jin stood before the bookshelf and reached out to take down a book with a dark blue cover.

The book was very old. The cloth on its cover had worn fuzzy, and the gold lettering on its spine had blurred. You could just make out that it was a nineteenth-century seafaring story.

She glanced at the cover and put it on the shelf to her left, then took down the second book-a deep green poetry collection, with a subtle pattern embossed on the cover that gave it a raised texture.

Her fingers lingered on the cover for a second, as though feeling the raised pattern, before she put it beside the dark blue book.

The third was light blue, a story about a girl growing up by the sea. A seagull was printed on the cover, wings spread, about to take flight.

She placed it to the right of the deep green book and stepped back to look at the transition of colors-from dark blue to deep green to light blue. The gradation in the middle wasn't natural enough; it needed a gray-blue book somewhere between the deep green and the light blue.

She searched the bookshelf but couldn't find one, so she pulled out the light blue book, put it back where it had been, and started again.

The whole process lasted four minutes.

No dialogue, no expression, no dramatic action of any kind.

Just taking down books, looking at their covers, putting them down, and adjusting their positions. Anderson sat motionless behind the monitor, even breathing more softly.

The cinematographer carried the camera on his shoulder, following the movements of Su Jin's fingers. The frame held only her hands and the book covers, occasionally catching her profile-just a small part of it: the curve of her brow bone, the shadow of her eyelashes, the barely perceptible curve of her lips.

At the end of the four minutes, Su Jin turned to look at Anderson.

Anderson said nothing.

He stared at the monitor for a long time, then pressed the replay button and watched it again. When the second viewing was over, he leaned back in his chair, let out a long breath, and said one sentence.

His voice was quiet, but everyone on the silent set heard him.

"I've been making films for twenty years. I've never seen anything like this."

The people beside him didn't know what he meant by "like this"-beauty like this, talent like this, or something impossible to put into words that made the act of taking down and putting away books look like a poem. Maybe it was all of them, maybe none.

Maybe by "like this," he meant Su Jin herself.

The first take passed.

III

Filming had originally been scheduled for three months, but the pace was so fast that no one could quite adjust.

Su Jin wasn't the kind of actor who needed the director to explain a scene over and over.

Anderson only needed to tell her the emotional tone of a scene-"Lin should be a little tired here, but not physically tired. The kind of tired you feel after reading too many books"-and she could find that exact state, no more and no less, precisely "a little tired but not physically tired."

Anderson later told the screenwriter, "It's not that she's good at understanding. She's good at empathizing. She can feel what Lin is thinking. She doesn't need to analyze it or reason it out. She just feels it."

In the second week, they filmed Lin meeting a little girl who was lost outside the bookstore.

The little girl really didn't know who she was or what acting was. Her mother had simply brought her to the set and told her to talk to the pretty lady.

Su Jin crouched down to meet the girl's eyes and asked her name. The girl said it was Lily. Su Jin asked, "Lily, are you lost?" The girl said no, she was looking for her cat. Su Jin asked what the cat looked like. The girl said it was orange with a very short tail. Su Jin said, "Then let's look for it together."

That part wasn't in the script. Su Jin had improvised it.

Anderson didn't call cut. The cinematographer instinctively followed, the camera trailing Su Jin as she and the little girl searched along Winter Harbor's main street, past the grocery store, the lobster restaurant, and the white, steepled church, until they finally found the orange cat under an old fishing boat at the dock.

Su Jin crouched down and watched the little girl pick up the cat. Smiling, she said, "See? It was waiting for you too." Holding the cat, the girl looked at her face and suddenly said something that wasn't in the script: "You're the prettiest person I've ever seen."

Su Jin paused, then smiled a soft smile, her eyes curving into crescents. Sunlight filtered through gaps in the dockside roof and fell across her face, casting the shadows of her eyelashes on her cheekbones like two tiny fans.

She reached out to stroke the little girl's hair. "You too."

Anderson's eyes reddened behind the monitor. No one noticed.

IV

By the third week of filming, Su Jin's Instagram followers had passed three million.

It started with a profile photo Anderson's team took of her on set. She was sitting on the steps outside the bookstore, an open book spread across her knees, looking down at it. The wind had blown her hair across her face, and she hadn't brushed it aside, letting it cover half her face and reveal one eye and a small patch of cheekbone.

That eye was fixed on the page, her lowered lashes casting a shadow on her lower eyelid. Her lips were pressed lightly together, as though she were considering a line in the book.

The Atlantic Ocean was in the background. A shaft of light broke through the clouds over the water and fell directly on her, making her look like a portrait from the Dutch Golden Age-light striking from the left, the right side immersed in shadow, the transition between light and dark as gentle as breathing.

Anderson's assistant casually posted the photo to the production's official Instagram account with the caption "Day three of filming." Within twenty-four hours, it had over two million likes, and the account's followers had shot up from five hundred thousand to three million.

In the comments, some recognized her as Su Jin from MIT, some as Su Jin from Vogue, some as a shareholder in Poly, and some as the owner of that internet-famous guesthouse in Dali.

Someone listed all those identities together and posted a comment: What does she do? The answer is: everything, and she does all of it better than you.

On the third day, Vogue China reposted the photo with a short article titled "She doesn't need a cover; she is the cover."

Zhao Yu had written it herself. The wording was restrained and precise, just like her, but an unmistakable admiration showed between the lines.

The article's final sentence read: "I've seen many beautiful women, but Su Jin is the kind of beauty you want to keep looking at. Not because she's so perfect, but because there's substance to her beauty-intelligence, experience, stories. You won't tire of beauty like that."

The article was translated into English, French, Japanese, and Korean, and made the rounds of the global fashion world.

People began digging into her education, her assets, her social connections, and her love life.

Some discovered she had attended a reception with Lu Shen. Others found that she and Chen Shen had driven together on a racetrack in Chengdu, that she had walked side by side with Ji Yunshen on the MIT campus, and that she and Ethan had spent twenty minutes alone together on the terrace at the championship.

Someone wrote in the comments: She sure is popular with men. Someone immediately replied: It's not that she's popular with men. She's on such a high level that there were never many men who could stand beside her in the first place.

Another person replied: Have you ever considered that maybe she doesn't need a man standing beside her at all? She's enough on her own.

Su Jin didn't respond to any of it. She didn't even log on to Instagram to read the comments.

By the sea in Winter Harbor, she wore Lin's clothes and lived Lin's life-opening the bookstore every morning, rearranging the books on the shelves, recommending a book perfectly suited to the current mood of an occasional passing customer, sitting on the steps outside in the evening to watch the sea, waiting for the sun to sink into the Atlantic Ocean, then closing the bookstore door and walking back to the little house she had rented, brewing a pot of tea, reading for an hour, and going to sleep.

She liked this life. More than she had imagined.

V

In the fifth week, Anderson shot a scene that left the entire crew silent.

In the script, Lin found a box of old letters in the bookstore's attic, written to her by her students before she left academia.

The contents of the letters didn't appear in the film. The camera focused solely on Su Jin's face-she sat on the floor with a letter on her knees, Maine's winter outside the window, bare branches swaying in the wind, gray daylight pouring through the attic skylight onto her face.

She looked down at the letter for a long time. Her expression barely changed-she didn't cry, smile, frown, or grit her teeth.

She simply looked at the page, her gaze moving from the first line to the last, then resting there, at the end of the letter where it was signed.

Then she did something that wasn't written in the script.

She turned the letter over and looked at the back-there was nothing there, just a blank surface with the texture of the paper and slightly yellowed edges.

She stared at the blank space for a few seconds, then folded the letter, put it back in the envelope, and laid the envelope on her knees. With her palm, she pressed down its corners, which had curled with age.

Her fingers paused at the envelope's seal-there was a small trace of dried glue left from when it had been sealed, still there after more than ten years.

She gently rubbed the trace of glue with the pad of her finger, then put the envelope back in the box, closed the lid, stood up, and walked to the window.

She stood before the window, looking out at the winter.

Bare branches, a gray sky, and the distant sea in a haze, impossible to tell where the water ended and the clouds began.

She stood there, motionless, like a tree planted before the window.

The shot lasted six minutes.

For six minutes, she didn't say a word, her expression didn't visibly change, and she barely even moved.

She simply sat reading the letter, stood up, walked to the window, and stood there.

But Anderson didn't call cut, the cinematographer didn't turn off the camera, the sound recordist didn't remove the headphones, and not a single person on set made a sound.

Everyone was nailed to their place, staring at the face on the monitor.

In the gray daylight, that face took on an extremely pale, almost transparent whiteness. The light carved her features into sharper relief: the curve of her brow bone, the line of her nose, the slight downward turn at the corners of her pressed lips.

Her eyes were fixed on the sea outside the window. In the gray light, her pupils had grown dark, as deep as a bottomless well.

You didn't know what she was looking at, what she was thinking, whether she was crying or holding it in, whether she had found release or felt even worse.

You knew nothing, but you couldn't look away.

Anderson's voice was hoarse when he called "cut." He cleared his throat, said "cut" again, then turned to the screenwriter beside him and said one sentence.

"The Oscars will like her."

The screenwriter said nothing, only nodded.

VI

In the seventh week of filming, Su Jin took two days off and flew back to Beijing.

Huace Starlight's annual selection of new talent had entered its final round.

Three of the five candidates were to be offered formal contracts. Zhao Mingyuan had arranged the final interviews at the Beijing office for ten o'clock Thursday morning.

Su Jin's private jet landed at Capital Airport late Wednesday night. Zhou Ye and Fang Ying came to pick her up.

She descended the aircraft stairs in a dark gray Max Mara cashmere coat. Her face was a little thinner than before she left for America, the curves of her cheekbones more pronounced and her jawline sharper, but her skin was still unbelievably good, glowing softly under the late-night lights of the tarmac. It seemed to have grown finer, firmer, and more luminous after being polished by Maine's sea breeze and winter sunlight.

She didn't return to the courtyard house, going straight to the apartment at the China World Trade Center instead.

She showered, changed, and sat on the sofa for a while, glancing out at Beijing's night view. Traffic still streamed endlessly across Guomao Bridge late into the night, China Zun's lights were still on, and the streetlights along the distant East Third Ring Road formed a ribbon of orange light stretching beyond sight.

She had lived in Boston for more than two months. After returning, she found that Beijing hadn't changed; she was the only one who had.

At nine fifty the next morning, Su Jin appeared at Huace Starlight's office on East Third Ring Road.

That day she wore a Gabriela Hearst wool-blend dress in deep green, with a high neck, long sleeves, and a hem that fell two finger-widths below her knees. A small slit at the side offered glimpses of the curve of her knee as she walked.

Over it was a black wool blazer from The Row, with a sharp shoulder line and a fitted waist that outlined her figure just right.

On her feet were black suede Manolo Blahnik heels, eighty-five millimeters high, their signature square buckles giving off a subdued gleam under the office building's fluorescent lights.

Her hair was tied in a low ponytail with a black velvet ribbon, revealing her entire face and her pair of Buccellati Opera earrings.

She wore only the lightest makeup-a thin layer of sunscreen, a little concealer, and CT's Pillow Talk on her lips, a milk-tea nude pink that was almost imperceptible, merely making her lips look a little fuller.

But that face needed no help from cosmetics. During her two months in Maine, the sea breeze and winter sunlight had polished her skin until it was firmer and clearer. The glow on her cheekbones came from within her skin, something no highlighter could imitate.

Zhao Mingyuan was waiting for her by the elevator. He paused when he saw her-not because he didn't recognize her, but because she was more beautiful than before she had gone to America.

Not a polished, carefully enhanced beauty, but one shaped by nature and time, a beauty with stories in it.

"President Su," he said, going to meet her. "Lin Xiaozhou is already waiting in the conference room."

Su Jin nodded and followed him into the conference room.

Lin Xiaozhou sat at the other end of the conference table, wearing a white cotton shirt with the sleeves rolled up to her forearms, revealing slender wrists and a thin silver bangle.

She wore dark blue jeans and white canvas shoes. Her hair was cut very short, revealing her ears and the nape of her neck. When she heard the door, she looked up, her gaze falling on Su Jin.

The two women met each other's eyes across the conference room.

Lin Xiaozhou's eyes were large, her pupils dark as two pieces of obsidian soaked in water.

When she looked at Su Jin, there was no nervousness in her eyes, no desire to please, no deliberate composure-only a very quiet, very earnest gaze.

There was something in that gaze unrelated to beauty, age, or status-a recognition between kindred spirits.

Su Jin sat down opposite her, laid the script on the table, and looked into her eyes.

"Why do you want to act?" Su Jin asked.

Lin Xiaozhou was silent for three seconds, then said, "Because when I'm not acting, I don't know what I'm doing."

Su Jin looked at her. She continued, "I've tried lots of things-painting, writing, making music. I was all right at them, but none of them was something I had to do. Then I realized that only when I'm standing in front of a camera do I feel alive."

Su Jin said nothing.

She pulled a sheet of paper from the folder on the table and pushed it in front of Lin Xiaozhou. A passage was printed on it-not from a movie or a television drama, but the monologue from Anderson Lau's film in which Lin read the letter in the attic. Anderson had later cut it because he felt there was no need for dialogue; Su Jin's face was enough.

"Read it," Su Jin said.

Lin Xiaozhou looked down at the passage for about thirty seconds, then raised her head, looked at Su Jin, and began to read.

"The day I left, it rained hard. The lights in the lab were still on. I knew you were inside, but I didn't knock. I stood in the hallway for a long time, so long that rainwater dripped from my hair and gathered in a little puddle on the floor. I watched the puddle and saw your shadow come through the gap beneath the door and fall on the water, shattered by raindrops, coming together again, then shattering again.

I thought, let it be like this. Like this was good too."

Her voice wasn't loud, but everyone in the conference room heard her clearly.

Her tone hardly rose or fell. She didn't deliberately stir emotion or strain to perform; she simply spoke the words plainly and quietly, as though telling of something that had happened long ago, so long ago that it no longer hurt, though she still remembered.

But when she finished, Zhao Mingyuan's assistant's eyes reddened.

Su Jin looked at her and remained silent for a long time.

The conference room was so quiet that the hum of the air conditioning could be heard. Outside the window, the sound of traffic on the East Third Ring Road drifted in from afar, like a river flowing somewhere far away.

"Do you know why I chose you?" Su Jin asked.

Lin Xiaozhou shook her head.

Su Jin stood and walked to the window, turning her back to her as she looked out over Beijing.

Sunlight poured through the floor-to-ceiling window, bathing her dark green dress in a soft sheen. Her hair gleamed dark brown in the light, and the Buccellati earrings on her earlobes flashed now and then.

"Because there's something in your eyes," Su Jin said without turning around. "The same thing that's in mine."

She turned and looked at Lin Xiaozhou.

The two women met each other's eyes in the afternoon sunlight, one standing by the window, the other sitting at the table, a walnut conference table and several feet of space between them.

But everyone felt that something invisible was flowing between them. It was neither hostility nor probing, but an unspoken understanding, a recognition that said, "I know what kind of person you are."

"Sign her," Su Jin said to Zhao Mingyuan. "The terms are as I said before. And-"

She paused, looking at Lin Xiaozhou.

"I've found you an acting teacher. Not to teach you how to act, but to teach you how to understand people. You don't need to learn how to perform. You only need to learn how to see."

Lin Xiaozhou looked at her, said nothing for three seconds, then nodded.

The movement was slight, but firm.

"Thank you, President Su," she said.

Su Jin looked at her, the corners of her mouth curving slightly. "Call me Su Jin," she said.

Seven

That night, Su Jin returned to her apartment in the China World Trade Center, took a shower, and stood in front of the floor-to-ceiling window in her bathrobe.

Beijing's nightscape spread out beneath her feet. Traffic still flowed endlessly across Guomao Bridge, China Zun's lights still shone, and in the distance, the streetlights along the East Third Ring Road formed a ribbon of orange light that stretched beyond sight.

She stood there with a glass of red wine in her hand, gazing at the lights, and suddenly remembered the nights in Winter Harbor-there were no city lights there, only moonlight on the sea and a small patch of warm yellow light spilling from the bookstore window.

Her phone lay on the windowsill, its screen lighting up again and again. Anderson had sent a message saying the editing room had produced the first version of the trailer, and asked if she wanted to see it;

Ethan had sent a message saying he had solved the semifinal problem five minutes faster than she had, his tone a little smug;

Chen Shen had sent a message saying he would come to Boston to see her next month;

Lu Shen had sent a message saying Beijing's winters were very cold, and telling her to dress warmly when she came back;

Lin Xiaozhou had sent a message with only three words: Thank you.

She looked at that message but did not reply.

She finished her wine, set the glass on the windowsill, and turned to walk into the bedroom.

Her phone buzzed again. It was Anderson: The trailer goes live tomorrow. Are you ready?

She replied: I'm ready.

She didn't know what she was preparing for.

Perhaps she was preparing to face more eyes, more attention, more expectations. Perhaps she was preparing to face the doubts and speculation that were sure to come.

Perhaps she was preparing to face a whole new world, one she had never set foot in before-films, red carpets, premieres, awards season.

But she wasn't afraid.

There were too many things she had feared-hunger, cold, being abandoned, not being good enough, being seen through. She had feared all those things, and now it was her turn to make others afraid.

Outside the window, Beijing's night shone as brilliantly as ever. The woman in the white silk bathrobe stood by the window, her hair loose and her face bare of makeup, yet she was so beautiful that the entire nightscape of Beijing became her backdrop.

Her lips curved slightly, and there was light in her eyes.

Tomorrow, the trailer would go live. The day after, she would return to Boston. The day after that, the semifinal.

There were still many days ahead, and the road was long. She was in no hurry.