Chen Chong sixty
China News Weekly reporter / Kui Yanzhang
Issued in the 994th issue of China News Weekly on May 5, 2021
Chen Chong is 60 years old.
As an actress, her career has been through from the 1970s to the present.
At the age of 19, she became the youngest winner of the Hundred Flowers Award for Best Actress at the time.
At the age of 27, she was the first Chinese actor to walk on the Oscar podium.
At the age of 36, she turned to be a director and filmed "Heavenly Bath", which won 7 Golden Horse Awards.
After the age of 40, she is still filming and acting.
Recently, she and Zhang Aijia and Li Shaohong co-directed a female-perspective realistic film "There is Her in the World".
In recent years, Chen Chong's writing on Weibo and her independent and modern lifestyle have won her the resonance of many urban young women.
In this actor who is 20 or 30 years older than themselves, they are looking for the path, answers and comfort of how they should live as women.
In fact, like those young girls who use her as a role model, Chen Chong is also confused, and also faces restrictions, distress and controversy that only women can understand.
At the age of 19, she became a "little flower" well-known in China, and her fame and confusion came at the same time, which eventually made her leave the United States.
Went into Hollywood and filmed "Taipan", she was attacked as "corrupted and degenerate" because of the nudity in the film.
At the age of twenty-seven or eighteen, she is like many unmarried women who are nearly 30 years old, anxious to marry, worrying that she will lose her youth after 30.
After she was over 40, she was looking for a balance between motherhood and acting career, and she also faced the general dilemma that middle-aged actresses had fewer opportunities for filming.
However, Chen Chong always seemed to be able to find a way to break through that wall.
This is how she became Chen Chong and the reason why she won the love of young women.
"Let yourself be able to stand on tiptoe often to get something, always keep an open mind, don't say'I have experienced it, I know it', never do this." Chen Chong told China News Weekly .
Living in two places
When the epidemic came, Chen Chong was at his home in San Francisco.
She received photos from friends in China, and saw the openness of Huaihai Road, Nanjing Road in Shanghai, and Sanlitun in Beijing.
She sent WeChat to her long-term art director, "I really want to come back now and take photos of all these materials."
At that time, she wanted to make a movie related to the epidemic, but did not decide whether it was a documentary or a feature film.
Soon, she received a call from the producer Dong Wenjie, inviting her to participate in the filming of "There is Her in the World".
In Dong Wenjie's vision, this will be a realistic film set in 2020, directed by three female directors: Zhang Aijia, Li Shaohong and Chen Chong.
This plan coincides with Chen Chong's idea.
Chen Chong browsed a lot of news about the epidemic, and also read Camus' Plague.
The relationship between the characters exiled from the two places in "The Plague" is similar to Chen Chong's emotional experience in the epidemic.
She was separated from her parents. Her father was hospitalized in Shanghai and was about to undergo surgery. However, due to the epidemic, it was difficult for Chen Chong to return to China.
"I really want to come back and help them, but it is difficult during the epidemic. Just because I have experienced this, I decided to make a love story that exiles the two places." Chen Chong recalled China News Weekly.
Today, Chen Chong lives in the United States two-thirds of his time each year, and the rest of his time in China.
In the United States, Chen Chong lives in the Bay Area with her husband and daughters who are a cardiac surgeon. In China, Chen Chong returns to her parents' home and will watch TV with her parents as much as possible, although she "hates watching TV most often".
This year, Chen Chong's parents were sick and hospitalized. Chen Chong and his brother cooked at home and sent them to the hospital for their parents to eat.
No matter where he is, Chen Chong has to give himself one hour of alone time every day, in a daze and reading, "or I will get mentally sick."
Before the age of 40, Chen Chong's public image had been finalized: "Little Flower" who became famous as a teenager, "Wan Rong" who became an Oscar, and a film director who won the Golden Horse Award.
Chen Chong said that more changes in her life after the age of 40 came from within the family, "it is the joyful and painful learning process of being a mother." Chen Chong told China News Weekly.
After becoming a mother, Chen Chong finally had to face the balance between career and family.
In order to spend more time with her children, she will try to pick up some short-term shooting projects.
Chen Chong said that being a mother is a bit like being a director. "You learn to take care of others, and you are no longer the most important thing. If you want to take care of others and consider others, this instinct will grow from that time on."
Even in the first half of her life as successful as Chen Chong, after 40, her chances of getting a suitable role are still declining.
Chen Chong's solution is to be the director himself.
A few years ago, she adapted the novel "Ingrid" by the writer Wang Gang into a movie, and the filming has now been completed.
In Chen Chong's view, "The current film industry does not believe that there is a market for middle-aged and elderly women's themes. That is because we have not written out the real women in life. They are fresh, rich and three-dimensional. The only way to break through is to create it ourselves. Use real people we know, want to know, admire, despise, love or hate in life to create vibrant characters. I think this is what we should have. Ideal." Chen Chong told China News Weekly.
The scholar Dai Jinhua once mentioned the "Mulan Dilemma" of women, referring to women who want to achieve career success, often at the expense of femininity and turning themselves into men.
Chen Chong believes that this must be due to the experience of many women, but as an actress, she has always worked as a woman, and as a director, she can also be gentle, "I don't need to speak loudly or curse people, I never did. I can do this very gently."
Become an ordinary girl
When preparing the new film "There is Her in the World", the producer Dong Wenjie recommended Yi Yang Qianxi to Chen Chong.
At first, Chen Chong felt that his public image was so trendy, so cool, and so young. It seemed that he was far from the very ordinary characters in the script.
However, after watching "You are a Younger" starring Yi Yang Qianxi and many interviews, Chen Chong's thoughts began to change.
After meeting Yi Yang Qianxi himself, Chen Chong believed that Yi Yang Qianxi "is the most suitable candidate."
In Chen Chong's eyes, Yi Yang Qianxi became famous at a young age, like a goldfish living in a fish tank.
He can't do many things that ordinary people can do.
"For example, traveling, shopping in the supermarket, shopping, and falling in love. He wants to go to Africa, but he never had the opportunity to travel. He just kept flying." Chen Chong recalled to China News Weekly, "Yi Yang Qianxi had another kind. Maturity beyond age, his talent lies in that he can instinctively express feelings that he may not have experienced in life, but extremely eager to experience. He releases his subconscious desires through acting characters in the play, so honest, So low-key, but so infectious."
Back then, Chen Chong was in a very similar situation to today's Yi Yang Qianxi.
After Chen Chong became famous, he couldn't do the things that people of that age aspire to do, such as falling in love.
The story begins when Chen Chong accidentally entered the showbiz in 1975.
Chen Chong was 14 years old that year and was a student of Shanghai Gongqing Middle School.
The Shanghai Film Studio is planning to shoot "Jinggang Mountain", come to the school to select an actor, and recruit her to the performance training class.
Although the film was eventually stopped, Chen Chong remained in the acting training class.
When Xie Jinlai selected actors for "Youth", he noticed Chen Chong. Later, Chen Chong starred in the films "Youth" and "Little Flower". With the huge influence of these two films in the late 1970s, Chen Chong quickly became after the reform and opening up. One of the well-known stars in China.
Chen Chong was born in a medical family. According to the inertia and trajectory of the family, she should have become a scholar or a doctor.
Therefore, after becoming famous, parents are actually more worried than happy.
Chen Chong's father once asked her, "What is the use of this kind of noisy life for your life?" In the eyes of her parents, acting in movies is not a career.
For Chen Chong, who was only 19 years old at the time, the fame that came to her face also made her feel untrue.
Once Chen Chong went to the street and saw two painters at the entrance of the cinema painting her portrait.
The person in the portrait has larger eyes and longer eyelashes than himself.
At that moment, Chen Chongran felt strange to the people on the poster: what people liked might not be her, but the imagination and projection of a female popular idol in people's hearts.
What followed was confusion. She didn't know whether she wanted to follow the family's trajectory to become a scholar or a star.
In China in the late 1970s and early 1980s, she became a scholar. She had her family as a frame of reference and knew a relatively certain future. However, she did not know what it meant to be a star.
The idea of going to the United States is sprouting a little bit.
At that time, she had been admitted to the university and was a 78-level student of Shanghai International Studies University, majoring in English and American literature.
In two years, she read a lot of English novels.
The world presented in the novel makes her yearning: the forests where Hemingway hunts, the beaches of Steinbeck, the grasslands of Jack London.
Many times, after reading an English novel, she would have the desire to go to the place where the novel took place.
In the summer of 1980, an American film art delegation visited Shanghai and Chen Chong served as a translator.
A professor in the regiment suggested that Chen Chong go to the United States to develop, "Film is studied as an important scholarship in the United States. You will have greater development there," the other party said.
This exchange strengthened Chen Chong's idea of going abroad.
Going abroad also means that Chen Chong can become an ordinary person.
The star Chen Chong, who was surrounded by crowds wherever she went, became the 20-year-old young girl Chen Chong, who was 1.63 meters tall and weighed 104 kilograms, loved literature and had fantasy and longing for love.
On August 26, 1981, Chen Chong went to America where no one knew her.
Break prejudice
"When I reach my age, I can still have a certain arc of growth, and it can be said that I have learned something new today than last year. This is the person I want to be." Chen Chong told China News Weekly.
In her new film "There is Her in the World", she tried a new film language: the pictures in the film are mostly black and white, and only the pictures on the mobile phone in the film are in color.
In Chen Chong's view, the current situation of lovers who are exiled from the two places is different from that of lovers in "The Plague".
Nowadays, the way of existence of distant lovers is actually a mobile phone.
When a person looks at a lover in a mobile phone, the surrounding scene will be blurred, and only emotions will be placed on the screen in the mobile phone.
In recent years, Chen Chong has been able to have a lot of initiative whether he is a director or an actor.
But when Chen Chongchu first came to the United States, he had no choice as he has now.
In the beginning, Chen Chong, like many people who went to study in the United States at that time, made a living by working as a waiter in a restaurant, an administrator in a library, and bringing children to others.
At that time, the restaurant manager who worked at the restaurant always liked to show off to customers: "This is the most popular actor from mainland (China)." At that time in the United States, no one knew about Chen Chong, and only took this introduction as a joke.
In order to make a living, Chen Chong began to take some roles.
At that time, Hollywood had a prejudiced aesthetic for Eastern women. Yan Geling's words were "complex and pathological, and a trap for men."
The first role Chen Chong received was Miss Taiwan in the beauty contest. She was wearing a cheongsam and walking across the stage on high heels without a single line.
The second character has only one line: Mr. Hammer, do you need some tea?
It was not until 1986 that Chen Chong was spotted in the parking lot by Italian producer Dino de Laurentiis and was invited to star in the American movie "Taipan", and finally ushered in a turning point.
However, due to the fact that Chen Chong played a Chinese female slave and exposed the scenes, Chen Chong was violently attacked in the domestic public opinion field, and was criticized by the media at the time as "corrupt and degenerate."
The writer Yan Geling is Chen Chong's friend for many years.
In Yan Geling's impression, Chen Chong is "the kind that can be seen well" among women.
When Chen Chong heard negative comments, he would laugh, and then say, "Am I so bad?" When Chen Chong saw articles criticizing her in the newspaper, he would cut them out and collect them together with those that praised her.
It is precisely because of Chen Chong's participation in "Taipan" that attracted the attention of director Bertolucci, he invited Chen Chong to participate in "The Last Emperor", and with this film became the first Chinese actress to walk on the Oscar podium.
The year after filming "The Last Emperor", Chen Chong was 27 years old and was already a well-deserved international film star, but she still had anxiety, worried that after 30 years old, she would be old and her youth was about to end. She longed for a stable and happy marriage. .
Near the age of 30, Chen Chong married a cardiologist.
Husband Xu Yimin likes a woman like Chen Chong who likes to read and is ambitious. Most of the people in Chen Chong's family work in the medical field. Her husband's dedication to medicine makes her feel familiar and kind after a long absence.
Today, they have lived together for 30 years.
Chen Chong said, if I go back now and say a word to the 27-year-old and very anxious herself, she will say, "It's okay, there will be any hits."
According to Chinese custom, 60 years old is the big birthday. This birthday was spent by Chen Chong in the film crew of "The Eight Dogs of the Loyal Dog" in Chongqing.
For her role, she is trying to learn to speak the Chongqing dialect of her father's hometown.
Chen Chong recalled that a few decades ago, her 18th birthday was spent on the film crew of the movie "Little Flower". At that time, she thought that after the performance of "Little Flower", she would change her career according to the wishes of her parents, and she never thought of her 60 The birthday is still to be spent in the crew.
(Intern Xu Ying also contributed to this article)
China News Weekly, Issue 16, 2021
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