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There is a question on Zhihu, "Who are the people who suddenly appeared in history but later disappeared without a trace and became unknown to the public?" In the answer, someone wrote, "Li Yang, the bad pilot, the author of "The Adventures of Li Xianji", is now a mystery."

This answer was written in 2015. The "Adventures of Li Xianji" mentioned in it is Li Yang's first work, a 20-minute animated short produced in 2009. Its birth is in line with people's imagination of a genius emerging out of nowhere: at that time, Li Yang was producing promotional animations for a game company.The Adventures of Li Xianji" was made for fun because his computer was too old and he couldn't play the games he wanted to play. He dragged his feet on it for two years and almost failed several times. In the end, he finally finished it in order to earn a 300,000 yuan prize from a Beijing Film Academy award. This short film did not win any awards, but unexpectedly became an Internet phenomenon of that period, becoming an overnight sensation and even being remade many times in the years that followed.

In the eyes of the outside world, this film changed Li Yang's fate. He joined a well-known film and television company. In an interview that year, the film and television company's plan was to "train this young man who had some talent but was originally outside the film industry to become a new generation of young directors." Four years later, he directed his first live-action film, "Bad Future" was released. Although it is still a short film, it once again proves Li Yang's talent. According to public information, after "Bad Future", he has already started preparing for his next feature film.

But since 2014, there has been no news of Li Yang on the Internet.Safe Evacuation from the 21st CenturyThe Douban entry for "Li Yang" was created in 2016. In the eight years since then, almost every year someone has left a comment on Douban: "Li Yang, tell me what you are doing?" There have also been reports that the film was about to start shooting, but each time there was no follow-up.

——Until 10 years have passed. In these 10 years, Li Yang has experienced the script being shelved because no one understood it, then being discovered again, the project being restarted, the funds coming in and then being cut off, and spending another three years on post-production. The movie will finally be released this summer.

"Safe Evacuation from the 21st Century" is a story written 10 years ago. Three good friends traveled from 18-year-old bodies to 38-year-old bodies to save the world that disappointed them. The protagonist is the same age as Li Yang: born in 1981, 18 years old. It was 1999, a year when the sense of ending brought by doomsday rumors and the sense of expectation brought by the "millennium" were intertwined. The old world had collapsed and the new order had not yet been established. In that year, the 18-year-old protagonists were full of injustice and expectations, shouting to the world, "Don't become bad."

The film has been screened and has received some praise, as well as some controversy. It is not a conventional plot-driven film. In some places, you can see Li Yang's obvious shortcomings in storytelling, but a precious atmosphere of sincerity permeates it.

On an extremely hot afternoon, the author of People met Li Yang in Beijing. He wore glasses and had a bun on his head. As he described himself, he spoke "incoherently, upside down, and never got to the point." But every minute of this conversation made people realize that every line he designed in the movie was about himself, about his "unwarranted complacency and despair" about the future. The word he mentioned most was "disappointment." Whether it was this movie or his past few decades, "disappointment" was the strongest emotion. It was about Li Yang himself and the post-80s generation.

The conference room where we met was large. From a certain angle, it looked like a high school classroom. The scorching sun shone through the glass, seeming a little gentler, hitting the table between us. It is hard to say what traces time has left on Li Yang. His films are still as immature, passionate, and sad as they were 10 years ago. He talked about his experiences over the years, his feelings of growing up, and the mental and physical loss brought by aging. He did not hide anything, and was even a little brave.

Regarding this film, and what Li Yang has been doing for the past 10 years, here is what he said:

Text｜Rebecca

Editor:Populus chinensis

Picture｜Respondents provided

1

In 2014, I received a project. It was a composition topic. It was about three children who loved to sing. When they grew up, one became a barber, one became a taxi driver, and another became a delivery man. They forgot their childhood dream of singing. Suddenly, there was a singing competition in the market. They rekindled their love for music and won the grand prize. After reading it, I said it was too much like "old boys》, the other party said, if you think this script is not good, you can do it if you can. So I started to revise it.

There are several fixed elements in the project. The protagonists are three good friends who have grown up together. It is a passionate youth with a bright ending. Youth films were very popular at that time. But I was a little anxious because I couldn't find three good friends around me. I tried to make friends and maintain long-term friendships, but failed. At that time, I happened to be a little depressed. The three most obvious manifestations of depression are: the first is no expectation for the future, the second is not asking others for help, and the third is not having a correct understanding of oneself. So I gathered three people and put them in this story.

Wang Zha has no expectations for the future. He hates going into the future because time will only take away his precious things. When he was a child, he carried a huge bag with all his precious things in it. When he opened it, there were cats, birds, his favorite toys, and his parents' urns. The reason why he carried this bag on his back was because he felt that these things were too easy to lose. So when Wang Zha grew up, he suddenly felt very light on his body. When he looked at the big bag he had when he was a child, it turned into a small crossbody bag hanging on his body. He understood everything. Time has taken away those things from me again.

Being honest and brave means not asking for help from others. When he got into trouble, he took all the difficulties on his own and separated from everyone. This old saying is about being manly and responsible. You don't want others to suffer like you. But when I really experienced pain, I found that I was not manly at all. I would avoid others, but the purpose was not to protect them, because I was afraid that they would be disappointed in me and leave me. That scene was very embarrassing, and I realized that such separation was actually a kind of selfishness and cowardice.

Bubble just doesn't have a correct self-awareness. Because he was always bullied at school, he wrapped himself in a hoodie. He wanted to imitate Chengyong, wear the same jeans, do the same double-fingered snap, and live more and more like Chengyong, but he didn't realize it.

I didn't have a correct understanding of myself at that time. Once when I was taking a bus to Fangcaodi, I had a conflict with someone. I thought to myself, just wait. There was a step at the door of the bus. He stood at the bottom of the step and I stood on the top of the step. I thought that as soon as the door opened, I could kick him with my leg.

But I didn't know they were a group. After I kicked him, I ran down, but I found that I ran very slowly. In winter, three people beat me up in the snow. I lay in the snow and looked at the snowy sky, and I realized that I didn't have a correct understanding of myself. It turned out that I became a person who couldn't run away.

I was really disappointed with myself during those years. I broke up with my girlfriends one after another. When I was filming The Adventures of Li Xianji, I still believed the lines, but gradually I found that I was not as persistent as Li Xianji. Love seems to require a huge amount of life energy to burn in order to continue, but humans cannot burn for that long, so love itself is very short-lived. I was very disappointed.

That kind of loss also includes physical aging. Sometimes I dream that I am a high school student, secretly smoking in the gym where I store sundries, and suddenly the key rings at the door, and a girl comes in. She has a lot of troubles. In my dream, I pat my chest and say I can solve them all for you, and then I bite the bullet and rush to the scene where someone wants to beat me up.

When I dream about this, I will wake up. For a few minutes, I cannot return to my current age. I will stay in the identity in the dream. I will slowly look at the ceiling, and then I will know, oh, I am no longer in the school dormitory. I will also slowly feel that my body is not as good as when I was young. Oh, I have become a middle-aged person. Slowly, the memory of middle age returns to my body, oh, I am facing so many bad things now. My body reminds me all the time that I can never go back to that sincere time.

What disappointed me was that there were some cunning people that I couldn't accept. One year on the third night of the Chinese New Year, I went out to take out the trash. There were many bars around our house, and I saw a man and a woman walking out of the alley. The woman was walking in front wearing high heels, and the snow was very slippery. The man pushed her from behind, and she stumbled forward as she walked. I thought the man might have been drunk, so I shouted at him, "That's enough!" I regretted it after I shouted. I thought I was done for, and he might tell me to get out when he heard that I was from another place.

I didn't want to leave. I put the garbage on the ground and walked towards him, sizing up the guy as I walked. I was taller and wider than him, so I might be able to beat him. I went up to him and pushed him down, and then I rode on him and tried to beat him up. But the girl kicked me in the lower back with her high heels, and it was itchy and sore. I punched the concrete floor, and my whole hand was broken. I thought she probably didn't need help, so I went home in shame.

Later, the two of them sued me. I said he was the first to start the fight. But when they checked the surveillance video, I saw myself shaking my head and pushing the man to the ground. My lie was exposed on the spot. After that, they asked me to pay 3,000 yuan for medical expenses. I said, hey, it was fate that we met, and 1,800 yuan is auspicious, on New Year's Day. That's how he looked. I don't think I could have said such words when I was young. The way the whole thing was handled made me realize that I am a very slick middle-aged man. I felt a little disappointed, and this disappointment was a bigger blow to me than the lie being exposed on the spot.

During those years, I also tried to maintain friendship. There was a buddy with whom I went through almost all the pain of my student years. After we started working, we were doing very different things, and we found that every time we met, we had fewer and fewer topics to talk about. The most obvious thing was that we couldn't stay overnight at each other's house. In the past, we called each other's home our second home, and we would stay up all night and stay at each other's house for many nights. After growing up, this rarely happened.

Once when we were eating skewers, he said, let's not finish the skewers this time, let's not finish the topic this time, let's order this dish again when we meet again in six months, and continue talking about this topic. It's like saving a disk now, and reading it again six months later, and continuing the progress from last time, can we fight against time?

Maybe such efforts are too artistic and fail after a few attempts. Maybe we are too old and too ashamed to try such things. Maybe we don’t have the energy to work so hard or we feel that those fun things are not worth it. Anyway, we really hope that this thing will not end and the friendship will not fade away, but the reality is obviously not like this.

I was listening to a podcast once, and a group of people talked like I did when I was a kid, loving each other but insulting each other. I suddenly thought of my youth, and I used to be like that, could I still be like that? I opened my address book and saw that there was no one who could talk to me like that anymore. I didn't have friends like that anymore. It just happened in the blink of an eye.

I have another friend who is a cartoonist. We used to work in the same advertising company. He resigned from his job and had no work or income for a long time. One day, he suddenly wanted to go to Tianjin to work as a contracted cartoonist in a studio.

I was still working at that time and had a salary. When we met, I said I would treat him to a meal, but it was the end of the month and I didn't have much money, so we went to Xianghe Meat Pie. It was 8 yuan per meat pie. It was a very dirty little shop on the roadside, and the lights were not very bright. We sat face to face, and he suddenly said he was going to Tianjin and wanted to borrow money from me. In fact, it was not much, just 1,000 yuan.

I blurted out that it was no problem, but then I thought about it again, I didn't even have 1,000 yuan on my card, and I froze. I had never suffered such humiliation when I was a child, a good friend asked you for help, and you were stuck here. I sat there for a long time without saying anything, and I said to myself, you really have to make as many friends as you can.

I was very disappointed with myself. I was completely different from what I imagined myself to be when I was a child. For example, I thought I would help people solve their problems, but it turned out that 1,000 yuan was just a waste of effort. This incident shocked me so much that I could no longer make friends with my heart. Because I always hope to be a person who will not disappoint others, I am too afraid to face everyone's disappointment, so although I really want to squeeze into the crowd, I have never done so. I am a person with many problems, and I hate myself.

After he went to Tianjin, I broke up with my girlfriend at the time. I was not happy about the breakup. My poverty problem came back. I didn't want to contact all my friends at that time because everyone knew that girl. I stopped talking to them and cut off contact with them. I saw a while ago that his comics had been adapted, and I hadn't seen this buddy for 20 years.

Now think about it, the world is an illusion.

2

The script was written in 2015, but it was stagnant for a long time. Because no one understood it, there was no revision, no progress, because no one wanted to make this movie. For three or four years, I had forgotten about it. Until the script (Safe Evacuation from the 21st Century) was taken out again in 2019, I was doing some planning work and solving survival problems.

I watched a movie calledprisoner”, and I watched another movie on the same day, which was very similar to “Prisoners”. I didn’t understand why the same idea appeared in two movies in Hollywood at that time, until I was doing planning. I came up with an idea in a planning meeting, and I was very tired after talking about it all day. There was another planning meeting in the evening, so I was lazy and talked about the idea in the morning again. I understood it immediately, that there might be people in Hollywood who are just like me.

Around 2019, the company that owns the script wanted toZhang RuoyunHe was invited to act in a spy war TV series, but he was very reluctant to play a similar role. The company felt that they had finally got him involved, so they looked around to see if there were any other projects in reserve. They thought of this script, which was about a young man approaching middle age, and showed it to him, and he understood it.

When I heard the news, on the one hand, I felt happy, you see, I am not a piece of trash; on the other hand, I thought to myself, that was a story from 2014. Is it that five years have passed, and people no longer find the original new things new, and that time has made these things easier to understand?

Maybe Zhang Ruoyun and I have similar knowledge structures. He was very happy and wanted to play the role of Wang Zha. We added each other on WeChat, and the first thing he said was, "I am Wang Zha Ben Zha." It was still a popular phrase at the time. I should be happy to see this sentence, but I couldn't be happy. I wondered how you could like such a weird story? Are you playing truth or dare? If you lose, you must send me a WeChat message like this?

This project, after the leading actors came in, especially Zhang RuoyunJoy of Life》, it became very smooth. I thought, I can't just let my temper do it. The character of Wang Zha, I thought of a completely silly, heartless character at first. The first time I met Zhang Ruoyun, he was fatter than now, so I said that Wang Zha should be very thin. His character characteristics determine that he doesn't eat enough every day and runs around, so he can't be a person who looks well-nourished. Later in the conversation, Ruoyun said that he had a very deep understanding of this role, so deep that I didn't need to provide him with the characteristics of this role.

After hearing what he said, I didn't believe it. After that, due to the epidemic, we didn't see each other for a long time. When I saw him again, he suddenly became very thin. I was very sad because he looked a little sad after losing weight. I asked him what was wrong with him, but he said nothing and didn't tell me in detail.

I thought to myself, Wang Zha should be a happy person, how can you be sad? Later, when filming the scene under the bridge, Wang Zha didn't want Cheng Yong to continue his miserable life, so Cheng Yong told him to leave quickly and pretend not to know him.Song YangA louder voice shouted, "I can't help but know you." Those are the words of a very sad person.

At that moment, I was thinking, why do I have no friends? Because I don't tell my friends what I need. But Wang Zha would say such words very heartbreakingly, even though he knew it was useless. So it was a very appropriate cry of sorrow. I suddenly felt that I couldn't just go my own way and make Wang Zha a silly character who couldn't cry at all. Zhang Ruoyun's way of shaping the character is much richer than what I wrote in the script.

He is a person with a very pure heart, and his innocence has not been extinguished. That is the image of an adult that I yearn for, and I try very hard to become that person who has not been extinguished, but that is not the case.

There is a scene where Wang Zha likes Liu Lianzhi, but he is an 18-year-old boy in his heart. His way of solving problems is too direct, which causes Liu Lianzhi to often reject him. But he feels sorry for Liu Lianzhi, so he tells her that he doesn't want her to be confused in life. Liu Lianzhi says, who doesn't pretend to be confused when living? Wang Zha replies, "I'm not." Liu Lianzhi says that it's because you haven't grown up, and Wang Zha says, "Then you are not an adult either."

This scene was originally designed to be very simple, but Zhang Ruoyun suddenly jumped out of the storyboard, raised a bouquet of flowers in his hand, stood in front of Liu Lianzhi, and shouted a sentence. I really like his design, as if this bouquet of flowers is a soul contract. If you accept this bouquet, we will have a more unbreakable emotion than the love between men and women. Because the two of them are of the same kind, like two seagulls mixed in with a flock of bats, the two of them can see the rise and fall of the sun and the tide, and what they say can only be understood by each other.

If Liu Lianzhi accepted the contract, Wang Zha would fight against the terrible world with her regardless of everything. The aura formed by Zhang Ruoyun's lines and performance at that time made me firmly believe that this was a guy with a pure heart that had never been extinguished. That was the state I longed for, so I was very jealous on the spot, jealous to death. I was twisted and hysterical, talking to him through headphonesZhong ChuxiShout, don't listen to Wang Zha, close that door and use the gap in the door to crush the flowers!

Liu Lianzhi crushed the prop flower with great agility.

3

Before, when I was making animations, it was all my own job. Being a director requires working with many people, which is difficult for me, and it may also be difficult for the actors who work with me.

The first time Zhang Ruoyun and Zhong Chuxi came, we were shooting a night scene. I wanted to tell the story well and pretend to be a professional, so I quoted classics and talked about it for a long time. I thought I was very literary, but when the camera started, the two of us acted out a very comedic scene like a Spring Festival Gala skit.

I was completely desperate. I said that this was not what I was talking about, and then I resumed my incoherent state. I used to ask people if the degree of the Spring Festival Gala could be reduced by 60%. I don’t know where the word “Spring Festival Gala degree” came from. Is it a metric? But I could only say this word on the spot. But they quickly grasped the meaning. The second point was a completely opposite performance method. Later, I watched the behind-the-scenes footage of Chen Kaige’s filming, how he talked to the actors about the play, that was the state I pursued, but I found it difficult, I am not that kind of director.

This was my first time making a feature film. I didn’t even have a concept of how much I could shoot in 70 days. I wrote a lot of scenes and drew more than 3,000 storyboards, with an average of about 2 seconds per shot. I have a little dyslexia, so I can’t watch very complicated plots. Especially for foreign language comedies, I had to translate a long subtitle. When the subtitles were over, I hadn’t finished reading them yet, and the people around me were laughing. I didn’t know why they were laughing. I can only watch action movies because there are very few dialogues. I am very happy to see them fighting. When I was able to make a movie myself, I felt that everyone else had paid for the ticket. Among these people, there might be people like me who have difficulty reading. I can’t let them come for nothing.

When we had the preparatory meeting, everyone thought that we couldn't finish the filming. I said like King Zhou, how can we not finish the filming? We have to shoot it. As time went on, we found that there was really no hope of finishing the filming, and we deleted one-fifth of the script. Later, we encountered a sudden interruption of the funding chain, and part of the filming could not be done.

During the filming, a break in the funding chain was fatal. Everyone had a schedule, even the tea time on the set had a schedule. If we didn’t shoot, it meant we would lose the chance to shoot again. I felt a little sad at that time because I knew that everyone was helping me do this without taking any money.

One day, only the photography department was left. There was no mobile group. There was no track for the action scenes, no wires, and only a double. In the morning, the staff on the actor's side told me that Song Yang had arrived on the set. He was not supposed to be in the notice that day, so I thought I had misheard and ignored it. It was not until noon when I was eating that I looked up and saw a bloody man standing in front of me. Song Yang came in full makeup.

In one scene, he was beaten badly and covered in blood. He stayed there for the whole morning. When he read the script, he found that there should be a complete fight scene here. He knew how much action scenes should be required to fully shape this character, otherwise it would not work. With blood on his face, he questioned me, why didn't you send me a notice?

I was very touched. But even so, there is only so much I can do to make up for it. Because many fighting scenes require everyone to participate, there must be a sense of group. I can only change the script. For example, when there is a fight, suddenly two children start telling a story and narrate the fight. In this way, there is no need to move the group, and one camera can shoot it all.

I am the kind of person who gets angry when my ideas don’t come true, and my aggressive side comes out. During the filming process, the production director once offended the local guide, which resulted in the day-in-advance announcement that the scene we had previously chosen could not be used. The art director and I went out at 2 a.m. to look for new scenes, and found a road in the wild. I thought to myself, I can’t destroy this road, it’s a natural road. But when we went to shoot the next day, we found that two excavators had dug a big hole on the road, and it was impossible to shoot at all.

I was very angry about this. When the actors came, I had to pretend that this scene was what I wanted to change, and I also talked to them about the play, saying that this was better than the previous design. Zhang Ruoyun later found out that every time I talked about the play, I felt guilty. When he asked me, he found out that it was my first time to come to this scene.

Everyone tolerated me, so I didn't let my aggressive side swell up. There was a scene in a hospital, and I shot it in a very vulgar way. One camera shot the wheels of the car, and the other shot the ceiling with many fluorescent lights, pretending to push the car and push it forward. I liked a hospital just because there were continuous fluorescent lights on the roof. There was a temporary change, and I couldn't shoot there anymore. I had to go to a hospital without fluorescent lights. I was shocked. I said how could I shoot this? I only knew that one camera position in the hospital, and this change made my only camera position gone.

I was about to say that I wanted to shoot here, but then I saw that the camera that was used to shoot the snow scene this morning was still there, so I said why not make it snow inside the house. Turn off all the lights, because if it snows you can't see the walls and roof of the hospital clearly.

Everyone on the set suddenly became very cooperative with me. This was a trick, right? How could you make it snow indoors if you can't shoot with fluorescent lights? But everyone suddenly became very cooperative with me and I finished the shot smoothly. That was my favorite shot in the month. I seem to have found a way to fight against the loss, and I will slowly find a way to solve the problem.

When it came to the post-production stage, some special effects shots could not be executed, and my long-lost aggressive personality reappeared. That day, the special effects director suddenly told me that 4 out of 6 special effects scenes had to be deleted because there was no money. I asked what the solution was, and he said the solution was to delete it. I said but it has a narrative function, and he said there was no other way, either leave a blank. These two answers were the same, and I had that face, I said you can delete it, and slammed the door and walked out.

I had nowhere to go, so I went to the bathroom. In the bathroom, I realized that if I said "delete it", it would really be deleted, and it would be a disconnected story. They have been with me for so long, is there nothing I can do? I went back and sat down to think of a solution. When I made Bad Future, I didn't have money to make special effects, so I used animation. This time, I drew a little more and made up for the narrative part.

I want to defend this story, but I don't mean to defend it. I am not that noble, but other people have contributed more to this matter, so I will have that emotion. There are some scenes that I really want to insist on and don't want to remove, because I will think of the main creators. When we went to the south to shoot in 2020, it was said to be the coldest winter. We shot it during the summer vacation and artificial rainfall was used. A group of people in the mountains were freezing, and everyone in the photography crew was coughing in the muddy ground. When I think of that scene, I feel that everyone has wasted 70 days with me, and I have no right to let this thing become a bubble.

I am very grateful to the producer of this film, Wang Hongwei. He always comforted me at the right time. When I was writing the script, there were some parts where I felt very depressed, but for a mature play, one part of depression is enough, and the protagonist should not fall deeper in the later part. It was Wang Hongwei who encouraged me and said that I should keep these parts, because the world cannot be so prosperous forever. He was right.

The filming started at the end of 2020, took 70 days, and was completed in early 2021. It took another three or four years from the completion of filming to the editing. During these years, I was in a very awkward situation.

In the past, when someone asked me to watch a movie, he would work hard to shoot it and ask me if I thought it was good. I said I would give it a score of 5.8 according to IMDB. I was an aggressive person at that time, with a short haircut and a tendency to find faults. Now I regret it very much. Why did I attack others? Because I have also suffered that, and I found that I don’t need to be so harsh when talking to people. Some directors can accept others’ attacks and malice very tactfully. For this position, that is a necessary skill, but I need to devote a lot of energy to digest that attack and malice.

I haven’t formally studied directing, and I don’t have a particularly clear concept of the level of directors, nor do I have such an unbreakable standard to judge which performance method is better. I only know this way of telling stories. Especially when I encountered financial difficulties, I was helpless. I found that I had not updated my post-production knowledge for a long time. I regret that if I had maintained a strong learning energy, I would have jumped out at this time and said that I could do this alone. I would like to play the role of the hero, but my personality makes me unable to be so brave. The whole thing is stuck here and I feel very powerless.

They say I am a sci-fi storyteller. Actually, I am not. I am a coward. I dare not tell my own story. I am short-sighted and only know my own story. But I don't have the courage to tell the story I am familiar with in the first person. So I have to use a fake sci-fi shell so that no one knows it is my story. Maybe after studying hard and mastering the way to tell stories with skills, I don't have to tell my own stories all the time.

You asked me about the changes in the industry over the years. It may be because I am declining faster than the industry, and there are a lot of stressful things in my life, so I don’t have time to deal with this.

When I was a kid, I saw the game producer of "Resident Evil", Shinji Mikami, say that when an idea is born, only 60% will be left. I didn't believe it at the time, but I understand it now. In the end, "Safe Escape from the 21st Century" was about 60% left. It may also be because of my lack of experience that led to this result.

4

The fantasy about the future that I filmed seems to have originated from my childhood. When I was a child, I would feel groundless despair about the future and be complacent without any reason.

My family was relatively well-off before, which gave me a sense of security in life. I practiced sprinting in junior high school. At that time, I thought that if I could be rated as a national second-level athlete, I would not have to worry about my life. At that time, I didn't want to study and was willing to go to the billiard hall or arcade to play.

Later, when I failed to learn sprinting and wanted to take the high school entrance exam, my dad told me not to worry too much, as he knew I wasn’t a good student. He said high school is the time to build connections and form a world view, and no matter how badly I did on the exam, he would accompany me to find a solution.

I believed it and did really badly on the test. I forgot the exact score, but it was exactly half of the full score. I went to see the list with many classmates, and I was still happy there. I said, look, it’s exactly half, and I was happy all the way. It was like Fugui in To Live, who was laughing no matter how big the trouble was. I went home and told my dad about the result. As a result, my dad had never been so angry in his life. He had never seen such a low score. He told him to get out of here. He didn’t want to save me at all.

I went to school in the county town, under military management. I got up at 5:30 every morning, started running without eating, and finished my breakfast in the cafeteria after running for 15 minutes. Then I went to the morning self-study class. Everyone sat there reading aloud, and you would see someone suddenly jump up in fear and run out of the classroom, because he remembered that his toothbrush was facing a different direction than others.

My dad really wanted to teach me a lesson and not let me become a bastard. During my three years of high school, I had very little contact with my dad, and we might only see each other once a month.

My father died unexpectedly the year I took the college entrance exam. It was exactly 1999. At that time, the saying "the end of the world" was popular. I especially loved to make sarcastic remarks to my classmates, saying, "Why are you still studying? The college entrance exam will be the end of the world, and we will all be finished together." In the end, they didn't have the end of the world, only I did.

After my father passed away, my mother found his diary. Many years later, when she read it to me, it was full of disappointment in me. She said he had been upright all his life, so how could I be like this? She also said that I had done something bad again today, and it had happened so many times. She thought I had no hope for the future, and how I was completely the opposite of him. I really wanted to refute her, saying that I was not that kind of person, that I was not like that anymore, that I had a job, and that I was polite to others. But then I thought, I didn't have the chance to refute her.

Later I had a dream, after "Li Xian Ji", my father still looked like he was very young, with a cold and stern look, sitting at the head of the bed. I have already started to age, and my father looked very sad, but very handsome. I asked him why he was sad, he was so handsome. My father said that he didn't do his job well, I said that he still had to work after he died, what kind of job? He said that the hole was not plugged. I comforted him and said that I was not as bad as I was when I was a child. Because I wanted to show off too much, I didn't ask him what the hole was.

Later I woke up and thought that since he mentioned a hole, it must be a hole that everyone knows about. The most famous hole in the world is the hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica. The atmosphere is the basic hardware that protects humans from breathing and living on Earth. I thought, it turns out that people don’t go to heaven after death, but return to this planet and become the atmosphere, continuing to protect the people they care about. So he went there.

After all this, the biggest change in my life was the loss of my sense of security, and it took me a long time to realize that. My family used to be able to protect me, but that was no longer the case when I grew up.

After graduating from high school, I went to Germany to study. At that time, there were two popular majors, one was international trade, and the other was computer science. Since computers can play games, I chose computer science. In fact, I didn’t study hard, and I traveled around Europe with a Schengen visa. I returned to China before graduation and worked as a trainee at the Beijing Film Academy Animation Academy for a year. After graduation, I found a class at an advertising company and a game company. In 2007, because my computer was very old and I couldn’t play games, I found a story I wrote when I was drawing comics and started to make animations, which was "The Adventures of Li Xianji". Later, I bought a new computer and played games every day. I didn’t make any animations for a long time, and I almost gave up halfway. It was not until 2009 that I finished it.

After finishing "The Adventures of Li Xianji", I entered the film and television industry. My life didn't change much. Maybe I had experienced a huge downturn in my life due to my family's decline. I would attribute some problems to myself, maybe I did something wrong, or maybe I made some unforgivable mistakes. This has a very bad side effect: I will feel that I don't deserve good things. At that time, people were very sincere in giving me a benefit, such as some job opportunities, but I had to force it away because I felt that I didn't deserve it and I felt that I was a guy who would definitely mess up.

Later, in order to repay the favor, I wrote two scripts, one was the predecessor of "Bad Future" and the other was about the story of Journey to the West. I told the person that I had no money to compensate you for this project, so you can keep the script. But the person said that I didn't understand either of the two scripts.

Just then, Youku came to me and asked if I wanted to make a short film, so the company took one of them out. After Youku read it, they said that it only had 500,000 yuan, and that the script belonged to a feature film, so it had to be shortened, and finally it became "Bad Future".

At that time, I was totally unprofessional. The whole scene was ridiculous. I used a stick to draw on the ground during the shooting, indicating what could be filmed and what could not be filmed. For example, if I wanted to shoot a scene, I should shoot it in this order: long shot, medium shot, close-up shot. I didn’t understand. After the first long shot, I asked the long shot and lights to be removed, and then the close-up shot was taken. When the third shot was taken, we returned to the long shot and everyone arranged it again. At first, people thought I was Wong Kar-wai, but after a while, they realized that I didn’t understand. I was exhausted every day.

I had a buzz cut at that time. In fact, if you want to observe whether a person is sensitive to violence, just look at his hairstyle. If you have a buzz cut, the other party can't grab your hair during a fight, and you won't be controlled by him. I was very sensitive at that time, and I always felt that the crew was going to beat me up. I practiced push-ups at home every day, thinking that if they beat me up, I wouldn't be able to fight back.

So I know that chaotic scene very well. I also know that the story turned out the way it did in the end because it was not filmed as planned. I also had no ability to control the post-production, so I had to add a lot of narration to make the story complete. I didn't even have the face to ask Duan Bowen to record the narration, because I like him very much, and I didn't want to show him that I was an unreliable person, and I didn't want him to know that I messed up. In the end, you heard a lot of narration in the movie, which was me imitating Duan Bowen's speech.

It was an accident that this film received a very good response. Some people said they liked it, but I know in my heart that you are being too polite.

In the years after filming "The Adventures of Li Xianji", I also had some particularly wrong expectations for the future. I once thought that I was telling stories in a mainstream way and I could tell stories at will.

It was still the era of web1.0 to web2.0. In some interviews, people I met would tell me that they liked my story. This was something I had never experienced before. I have always liked to tell nonsense since I was a child. After telling a story for 10 minutes, everyone would leave because they couldn't listen any more. So when someone came to tell me that they liked the story, and there were more than 10 such people, I would think that my story was mainstream.

Because at that time, it was difficult for me to fit in when there were stories and movies about youth. Everyone was very clean, and had a very pure and bright teenage period, but I clearly remember that my teenage period was very ugly, and the things I did didn’t seem so upright. "Li Xianji" was seen by so many people, and I once thought that such an ugly youth could become mainstream.

At that time, I mentioned in an interview that one day I had a dream that I was a fan of S.H.E. I went to their concert with other fans, holding light sticks and shouting their names, in Chinese and English, I knew them all. It felt really good, because when you become a mainstream person and have mainstream preferences, you will find that you can quickly collect all the information about the person you like, and you will have many more friends. No matter what you say, they can understand it all. You will feel very happy because it is easy to get those things, and everyone around you understands you. So, when you become a person who has nothing to lose, you will find that becoming a mainstream person is a particularly good solution, because you have your own spiritual support.

Maybe at that time I felt that I still had the opportunity and ability to integrate into the mainstream, but now I find that I am a stubborn guy. I am a little confused whether I am too stubborn to integrate into the crowd, or I am convincing myself that it is a good thing not to integrate into the crowd.

But I actually want to tell a mainstream story, I want to tell a story that is easy for everyone to understand, but I have been talking incoherently since I was a child, without any focus. I try my best, even if I try to tell a youth film, people have to turn around to understand what I am talking about.

In life, I can't seem to fit in with the mainstream. Because I'm allergic to alcohol. I recently went to a party where we didn't know each other very well, but we were able to open up to each other in the party. Even those who were a little reserved, after drinking a little, they talked a lot in the second half of the night. But I can't fit in with such a situation by drinking. There were also people who could drink well and came to me and said, "You look quite thief, I drank so much and you didn't even drink a drop."

There are still rigid standards such as the number of fans on TikTok that tell you what is mainstream. Obviously, I can't become mainstream just because I want to. Breaking the illusion of the mainstream is actually a long and painful process. Are many people born in the 1980s still in the mainstream? It's just that I accidentally fell behind. Now I can comfort myself that when I am far away from the mainstream, I can't keep up with the mainstream of the 21st century, but I can still keep up with the mainstream of the 1990s.

Recently, I finished the film "Safe Escape from the 21st Century", and some people told me that they couldn't understand the story. Movies are commodities. For me, I have tried my best to think about everyone and the audience wholeheartedly. I have tried my best.

5

I set the film in 1999, when the three boys were 18 and I was 18. The film uses some Soviet music, and when I was a kid, Soviet songs were very popular.

A lot of this music is placed in the section about Chengyong's father. He is a laid-off worker. One wall of his house is covered with broken televisions, and the other wall is covered with goldfish. The idea is to express that ordinary laid-off workers would open a restaurant in a group, and everyone would support and help each other, but Chengyong's father is a department head. He would not ask anyone for help when he encountered difficulties. After being laid off, he said he would use his skills to repair televisions for people, but heavy industry is different from light industry. The televisions were broken after being repaired for others, and he was embarrassed to ask people for money, so the televisions were piled up at home.

The goldfish on the other wall are because he didn’t know how to repair TVs, so he sold them. But he was a working class man, and he didn’t know how to hawk, so he just smashed the goldfish in his hands, and finally he became a person who made a living by selling calligraphy. So he is a very typical person who was abandoned by the times.

He was very strong and had never cried before. He cried for the first time at the Spring Festival Gala that year because Liu Huan sang "Starting Over Again". "It's just starting over again", he burst into tears. Steel is melting, but it will still turn into steel, and it will still be painful. How can you say it lightly, it's just starting over again.

In the original design of the film, the railway track where the three boys started fighting was a steel mill. When Chengyong was dragged into the water, there was a Buddha head at the bottom of the water, representing the traditional culture that was overthrown during the "Cultural Revolution". But in 1999, the steel mill also became dilapidated. The new century is coming, and the old system will also collapse.

The changes in the world in 1999 were particularly interesting. As we entered the 21st century, the uniforms of the public security system changed from green to blue, the epaulettes used to be made of cloth, but now they are made of iron. The renminbi was also changed, and it seemed that the whole old world was disappearing. Maybe even earlier, like the people born in the 1960s and 1950s, all traces of their existence disappeared one by one, a bit like my situation today. It was an era when old symbols died in large numbers, and the saying of "the end of the world" was also circulating.

At the end of the movie, it is still 1999, and the kid rides away on his bicycle. It seems to be a happy ending, but what they have to face immediately is that the poison in their body will be secreted a little more every day. If they don't fight it today, they will die. They also have to face the cruel reality and will inevitably fall into the troubles of new middle-aged people.

This kind of loss seems to be common to all of our generation. We are the first generation of only children, and there was a discussion in society at the time that we were a generation without hope. Because only children are spoiled at home, but success comes from hardship, that was the value at the time. So when we were in our twenties and thirties, we really didn't do anything groundbreaking, and that kind of loss has become a foregone conclusion.

There was also a doomsday story in 2012. My grandmother was still alive at that time. She was a devout Christian. She urged me to get married before 2012, but on that day she secretly pulled me aside and said, "Don't get married. I'm going to tell you something. Don't tell anyone. The Bible says that 2012 will be the end of the century."

I said that the movie was finished. At that time, I had already faced some difficulties in my life. Why didn't I get married or have children? Because I was afraid that my children would ask me the same questions when they were in their teens. For example, why no one was happy, I couldn't answer them. My mother didn't answer similar questions from me. That year, I felt that some relationships could not continue. If there was an apocalypse, I might be happy. I didn't think about how I would face those problems if we all survived in 2012. One day when I was thinking about this at home, my mother suddenly agreed with me and said that she didn't know either. I found out that she wasn't that happy either.

By now, my peers are all "rich and powerful". My former colleagues in the advertising company have all started their own companies and are all very happy. I am also okay. But my best buddy is not very happy. He is a very far-sighted and foresighted person. He can consider the pain many years later. The year he got married, he suddenly told me that he didn't want to get married, but he had to complete a marriage due to the pressure of life.

We met again two years ago, and he said that if he could live his life again, he would not get married. In the past, I would not have thought that he would tell me one day that he did not want children or marriage, because I thought he would live a life that everyone envied. Two years later, during the epidemic, he became more stressed and slid into a more sad self. This year during the Chinese New Year, I wanted to find him, but he completely ignored me and could not even call me. I guess he may not even like himself anymore.

I have a lot of experience with being disappointed in myself, and I really want to have a discussion with him.