Filming a New Variety Show

Filming for "Poetry Across China" was set in Dunhuang. In October, the sky over the Gobi Desert was as blue as a piece of cloth washed too many times, its color almost gone. But a little remained, hanging overhead, refusing to leave.

Su Jin transferred in Lanzhou and took a black Buick minivan west along the Hexi Corridor. The Gobi stretched endlessly on both sides of the road, grayish yellow as far as the eye could see. Now and then a camelthorn appeared, short and huddled into a ball, like a hedgehog that had been blown about by the wind for so long it dared not stretch out its legs.

Fang Ying sat in the front passenger seat, Zhou Ye drove, and the three of them said nothing all the way.

Su Jin leaned back in her seat and gazed out the window. There was nothing on the Gobi, but she watched it for so long that Fang Ying thought she had fallen asleep and turned to look at her.

She was not asleep. Her eyes were open, watching that endless stretch of grayish-yellow land, like a piece of velvet worn old through use.

By the time they reached Dunhuang, it was already dark.

The production crew was staying at a small hotel at the foot of Mingsha Mountain. A few desert poplars grew in the courtyard, their leaves yellow, like handfuls of lit flames that would never go out beneath the streetlights.

Su Jin went to her room, took a shower, changed into a bathrobe, and sat by the window, looking at Mingsha Mountain in the distance.

The mountain was black, and so was the sky. She could not tell where the mountain ended and the sky began. All she could see was the moonlit curve along the ridge, like the curve of a person's waist when they lay on their side.

She watched for a long time, then drew the curtains and went to sleep.

Early the next morning, the stylist knocked on her door.

She had been hired by the production crew, a woman in her thirties with short hair and round-framed glasses, carrying an enormous black makeup case.

When Su Jin opened the door, she paused for a moment, then said, "You're prettier than you are in your photos." Su Jin, still groggy, thanked her.

The stylist opened her makeup case. Brushes, powder puffs, lipsticks, and eyeshadows were neatly arranged inside, like an army waiting for inspection.

She had Su Jin sit by the window. Sunlight streamed in and fell on her face. The stylist stood before her and studied her face for a long time, then said, "I'm not doing your makeup."

Su Jin tilted her head and looked at her.

The stylist said, "Makeup would be wasted on your face. I'll change your hairstyle and clothes. I won't touch your face."

The corners of Su Jin's lips curved slightly, and she agreed.

The hairstylist was a young man with pink-dyed hair, slender fingers, and nails filed into neat rounds. Standing behind Su Jin, he parted her hair down the middle and wove it into two tight braids, from the crown of her head all the way to the ends.

He did not use hair ties when he finished, but secured them with two dark red silk ribbons. The ribbons were long, hanging down over her chest and fluttering whenever the wind blew.

The braids did not hang down her back. They were coiled into a low bun, shaped like an unopened lotus, its petals held tight, in no hurry to bloom.

Several silk flowers were pinned around the bun. They were small and pale pink, their petals as thin as paper, almost transparent when the light fell on them, like flowers frozen in ice that would never melt.

A pair of silver earrings hung from her earlobes. They were crescent-shaped, curved like little slivers of moonlight cut away from the moon, never to fall.

She changed into the clothes the production crew had prepared.

It was a cross-collared silk robe, the cinnabar red of the Dunhuang murals. Not a bright red, but a dark, deep one, as though covered by a layer of time's dust while the color beneath still strained to shine through.

The fabric was plain silk gauze, exceptionally thin and light. Once she put it on, it was like a layer of mist. Inside the mist was skin, and the skin was white, and the cinnabar red was white too-no, cinnabar red was not white, it was red, but where the red met the white, there was mist.

A band of gold embroidery circled the collar. It was neither dragons nor phoenixes, but tiny lotuses, one after another, with gold petals and silver stamens. Silver and gold threads intertwined, shimmering together when the light struck them.

A wide sash was tied around her waist, the same cinnabar red as the robe. A string of jade pendants hung from it, the jade pale bluish-white. Each piece was different: some round, some square, some shaped like water droplets, others like leaves. They were strung together with red silk thread and, when she walked, bumped against one another with a delicate sound like wind chimes.

The skirt was long, trailing along the ground. A row of desert poplar leaves was embroidered around its hem, each leaf gold, like leaves blown from a tree and sewn onto the cloth before they could reach the ground, never to land.

On her feet was a pair of embroidered shoes, black across the uppers, with a red peony stitched on each toe. The peonies' petals stood out one by one, as though real flowers had been shrunk to a tiny size and planted on the toes of the shoes.

Su Jin stood before the mirror, looking at the person in it.

The cinnabar-red robe, the golden lotuses, the pale bluish-white jade pendants, the black embroidered shoes, the pink silk flowers in her bun, the silver crescent rings at her ears.

She wore no makeup, but against the cinnabar red, her face was as white as a porcelain body fresh from the kiln, still unglazed.

She was not smiling. There was the faintest curve at the corners of her lips, not a smile, but something quieter than one.

It was the kind of expression a person wore standing in the desert, watching a lone plume of smoke rise straight and the setting sun hang round.

The production crew's bus was parked at the foot of Mingsha Mountain.

When Su Jin came out of the hotel, five people were already seated on the bus. Two were regular guests: a veteran actor and a middle-aged host;

the other three were guest stars: a female singer, a male actor, and someone she had never met.

She stepped onto the bus, and everyone fell silent at once.

She wore the cinnabar-red robe, its hem trailing on the ground, the jade pendants gently tapping at her waist. Ding, ding, ding.

She walked aboard without looking to either side, found her window seat, and sat down.

The veteran actor was the first to speak. Looking at her with a smile, he said,

"You look like you stepped out of a mural today."

Su Jin brushed back her hair and thanked him sweetly.

The middle-aged host then asked if this was her first time in Dunhuang. She said it was.

The short-haired singer sat in the row behind her and leaned forward. "Your earrings are so pretty. Where did you buy them?" Su Jin said she did not know; someone had given them to her.

The singer wanted to ask more, but the person beside her tugged at her, and she stopped.

The person Su Jin had never met sat in the front row by the aisle. He had not moved since the moment she boarded, but he had been watching her the whole time.

Su Jin felt his gaze but did not turn around. The bus set off toward the Mogao Caves.

Outside the window, the Gobi was golden in the morning light. The curving dunes rose in lines, like still water wrinkled by the wind.

She looked out the window, and that gaze remained on her.

At last she turned and saw him.

He sat in the front row, turned sideways, his head resting against the back of his seat as he watched her.

The man wore a white T-shirt beneath a light blue denim jacket, dark gray sweatpants, and white sneakers. His shoelaces were tied loosely, and the tongues of his shoes sat crooked.

His hair was dark brown and slightly wavy, his bangs falling over his forehead and covering half his brows and eyes.

His eyes were large and round, with dark black pupils that shone like two pieces of obsidian, washed with water and not yet dry.

His nose was high and straight, and his lips were a little full, the corners turning up slightly when he pressed them together. When he saw Su Jin turn around, he paused, then smiled. It was not a polite, social smile put on for someone else. He grinned broadly, revealing a row of even white teeth. His eyes narrowed to slits, and the lines at their corners gathered like two tiny folded fans.

His voice was crisp.

"Hello, my name is Lu Shihan." His voice was not loud, but it was clear, like someone calling out in a quiet valley and the echo bouncing back from the cliffs, not loud, but easy to hear.

"Su Jin."

He repeated the two characters of her name silently, nodded, then turned around, sat straight, and looked ahead.

But Su Jin noticed that his ears had turned red.

It was not the kind of red that spread slowly from the lobes to the rims. They had flushed all at once, as though someone had lit a lamp inside his ears and turned them red through and through.

The bus stopped at the entrance to the Mogao Caves.

The production crew had already set up the equipment. A cameraman waited at the entrance with a camera on his shoulder, while the director stood beside him with a walkie-talkie. When he saw Su Jin get off the bus, he said into it, "Get ready."

Su Jin rose and walked at the front, her cinnabar-red robe fluttering in the morning breeze, her jade pendants chiming, her embroidered shoes soundless on the stone path.

She walked slowly beneath the archway of the Mogao Caves and looked up at the four characters: "Treasures Hidden in the Stone Chambers." The characters had been written by Guo Moruo, gold shining against the gray-white stone. She did not stop, but kept walking.

Lu Shihan walked at the very back.

He walked so fast that the people in front of him had to quicken their pace, but he did not mean to. He only wanted to walk a little faster and reach Su Jin's side.

He reached her.

He stood to her left, half a step behind, neither too far nor too close.

Su Jin did not look at him, but she could smell the fresh scent of laundry detergent coming from beside her. The man looked straight ahead, but his ears were still red, and he kept glancing her way out of the corner of his eye.

The first stop was the Nine-Story Building.

It was the largest cave in the Mogao Caves. Inside stood the Great Maitreya Buddha, over thirty meters tall, built against the mountain. From top to bottom, from bottom to top, you looked up at it, and it looked down at you.

Su Jin stood before the great Buddha, her head tilted back. Sunlight streamed through the cave entrance, falling on her face, her cinnabar-red robe, and the pink silk flowers in her bun. She looked up at the great Buddha, and the great Buddha looked down at her.

The director had not called for them to begin, but the cameraman had already started filming. No one spoke.

Su Jin stood there with her head raised, looking for a long time.

Then she spoke.

There was no script, no prepared lines, no prompting from the director through an earpiece.

She simply recited the ancient verses, word by word, their echoes stirring up an awe-inspiring sense of the sacred.

When she finished, she lowered her head, her eyes somewhat moist, and turned to walk out of the cave.

The director said softly into his walkie-talkie, "That's a take."

The cameraman replayed the footage. When he finished watching, he raised his head, his eyes red.

He did not wipe them.

The second stop was the Library Cave.

The cave was small, only a few square meters. At its center was a statue of the monk Hongbian, a small figure seated with his hands on his knees, his expression subdued, like someone waiting for a person who would never come. Sutra illustration murals covered the walls, their lines from the Tang dynasty, fluid and rounded, each stroke drawn from one end to the other without pause or hesitation.

Su Jin stood at the entrance to the Library Cave without going in.

"I won't go in," she said. The director asked her why.

"There's nothing left inside. People took the sutra scrolls, people took the paintings, and people even took the cloth the sutras were wrapped in. Hongbian sat here, waiting for more than a thousand years, and the people who came weren't there to return the sutras. They came to ask, 'Where are the sutras?'"

The director was silent for a long time, then agreed. They would not go in.

Su Jin turned and walked away.

Lu Shihan gave her a long look, then followed closely in her footsteps. He walked so close that he could smell the silk flower in her hair.

The third stop was the summit of Mingsha Mountain.

The sun was nearly down, and the sky turned from blue to orange, from orange to purple, from purple to black.

The curves of the dunes stretched long in the setting sun, one after another, like still water wrinkled by the wind.

Su Jin stood on the summit as the wind blew from behind, lifting her skirt and her jade pendants. The pendants chimed.

She stood there with her feet together, back straight, hands at her sides, watching the setting sun in the distance.

Lu Shihan stood beside her, also watching the sunset. He did not speak, and neither did she.

They stood there as the wind passed between them, lifting her skirt and the hem of his jacket. The two hems touched, parted, and touched again.

The director watched the monitor from a distance and told the cameraman, "Move in." The camera moved closer, closing in on Su Jin's profile, then Lu Shihan's, then the narrow space between them, blown by the wind, now widening, now narrowing.

The director did not call cut.

The sun went down completely, and the sky darkened.

The production crew pitched tents at the foot of the mountain and lit a campfire.

Su Jin sat beside the fire, holding a cup of hot tea. It was brick tea, boiled for a long time until it was as dark as soy sauce. A sip was bitter, and after the bitterness came sweetness.

Lu Shihan sat across from her, also holding a cup of tea. He did not drink it, only cupped it in his hands. Steam rose from the cup, blurring his features.

He watched her through the steam.

She lowered her head and looked at the fire. The flames were red, and so were her clothes. Red overlaid red, until he could not tell where the fire ended and she began.

He spoke.

"I cried at what you said at the Nine-Story Building today."

Su Jin raised her head and looked at him.

His ears turned red again.

"I've acted in a lot of productions and cried many times. Every time, the director said, 'Cry,' and I cried. Then I wiped my tears dry and moved on to the next shot. But today, when you spoke, no one told you to cry, no one told you to be moved, no one told you, 'You should cry here.' You just stood there and said to a Buddha, 'Remember me.' I was standing behind you, and when I heard that, my eyes started sweating."

He paused, his face a little red.

He shot Su Jin a quick glance, then looked away again.

"I wasn't crying for you, you know. I was crying for the Buddha."

Su Jin laughed softly and looked at him for a long time.

She lowered her head and continued drinking her tea. It had cooled, and the bitterness was stronger, but she did not frown.

Filming was over.

The bus drove back to the hotel. Su Jin sat by the window, and Lu Shihan sat in the front row. He did not look back, but his ears were still red.

Su Jin looked out the window. The Gobi was so black in the night that she could not see it. Only now and then was there the shadow of a camelthorn, like a person crouching on the ground, afraid to stand up.

She closed her eyes and fell asleep. The bus stopped, and she woke.

She stood up and walked past him.

He watched her retreating figure just like that, until she disappeared at the end.

She walked farther away, the sound of her jade pendants growing fainter and more distant, until it could no longer be heard.

Lu Shihan sat in his seat with his hands on his knees, his fingers slightly curled, as though holding something. He opened his hand. There was nothing in his palm.

He looked at it quietly for a while, closed his eyes for a moment, then closed his hand, stood up, and got off the bus.