blueteamnovel Chapter 3 Little Black Zhang Ziyi
Chapter 3 Little Black Zhang Ziyi
After returning from the Lunar New Year holiday, the school year started, and the assessments were in March.
After the assessment, the way Professor Sun Jianfen looked at Li Si'an changed.
It turned into a look of "Did I just find a treasure?"
The height of the jump was much higher than last semester, and the knees landed steadily, unlike before when it felt like falling to the ground like a dead dog.
When it spins, the core is tightly closed, and after three rotations, the landing point is still in the same position, so you don't have to search the whole room for someone anymore.
The control leg on the barre used to shake like it was getting an electric shock when I tried to control it to 90 degrees, but now I can control it steadily over 120 degrees, and my leg can even bend.
Teacher Sun once kept him behind by himself.
"What did you do extra practice during winter break?"
"I didn't practice much, just eating, sleeping, and regular practice."
Ms. Sun didn't believe it. She had been teaching dance for twenty years and had seen all kinds of students. But it was rare to see someone go from "okay" to "outstanding" in just one semester.
She had Li Si'an do several sets of strength tests—push-ups, sit-ups, and pull-ups. While Li Si'an was doing push-ups, Teacher Sun counted beside him. When she counted to eighty, her expression changed, and when she counted to one hundred, she made him stop.
"You could only do fifty at most last semester."
"The food is good."
Teacher Sun stared at him for a long time. Her eyes conveyed a sense of "Who are you trying to fool?", but Li Si'an looked completely innocent, so she didn't press him further.
"Keep it up."
Li Si'an responded and pushed open the door to go out.
At the end of the corridor, a group of girls were practicing a routine. They were from a folk dance class, wearing black practice clothes, their hair pulled back, revealing smooth foreheads. He glanced at them, paid them no mind, and walked past.
Then I heard someone call out a name.
"Zhang Ziyi! Your movement is wrong, do it again!"
Li Si'an stopped in her tracks.
Zhang Ziyi.
He stood in the corridor and slowly turned his head.
At the entrance of the practice room, a girl was being called on by the teacher. She stood next to the barre, one hand on the barre and the other on her hip, her expression showing a hint of resentment, the kind of resentment that says, "I didn't do anything wrong, you just didn't see it clearly."
Very thin. So thin that her collarbones were deep, and her wrists were so thin they looked like they could be snapped in two. Her skin was also dark, not naturally dark, but a wheatish color from years of sun exposure, which shimmered slightly under the fluorescent lights in the corridor.
Her hair was casually tied into a ponytail, with a few stray hairs sticking to her forehead, damp with sweat.
Her face was small, with a pointed chin and slightly protruding cheekbones; the contours of her face looked as if they had been cut with a knife.
Her eyes weren't big, but they were bright. When the teacher called on her, she pursed her lips slightly, a gesture that made her chin appear even sharper.
Li Si'an leaned against the wall in the corridor and watched for a long time.
Is this Zhang Ziyi?
This is completely different from what I remember. Zhang Ziyi—the woman who walks the red carpet in a halter top with her head held high, an Oscar judge, and the oriental beauty who was called "Zhang" by foreign media on the Cannes red carpet.
She has fair skin, a strong aura, and seems to radiate light wherever she goes.
The girl in front of me, dark-skinned and skinny, is a far cry from the famous "International Zhang".
But that face—the cheekbones, the chin, the distance between the eyes—that contour was indeed hers.
Zhang Ziyi at the age of fifteen.
Li Si'an suddenly felt like laughing. Out of China's more than a billion people, how many have seen Zhang Ziyi being scolded by her dance teacher? How many have seen her as a dark-skinned, thin, bean sprout-like fifteen-year-old?
He had seen it.
This whole thing is quite interesting.
He didn't leave immediately, but leaned against the wall, watching Zhang Ziyi do the movement again. This time she got it right. The teacher nodded, and the defiant look on her face disappeared, replaced by a slight upturn of her lips.
The jump was alright. Not top-notch, but you could tell there was a fierce edge to it; the movements were large, the power was crisp, and there was no hesitation.
It's exactly the same spirit she had when she acted later on.
That night, Li Si'an lay on her dormitory bed, staring at the top bunk.
Zhang Ziyi.
His impression of her from his previous life was entirely from the big screen—Zhao Di in "The Road Home", Yu Jiaolong in "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon", and Gong Er in "The Grandmaster".
He knew she graduated from the Affiliated High School of Beijing Dance Academy, but he never associated the "Affiliated High School of Beijing Dance Academy" with himself.
It wasn't until he heard "Zhang Ziyi" today that he realized—Zhang Ziyi is now in the same school and grade as him.
Can we get to know each other?
can.
Why not? He can get to know a girl without needing any reason.
And to be honest—he was indeed curious about her. Not the kind of fanatical idol worship; in his past life, he was a programmer, not that crazy.
But Zhang Ziyi is, after all, a symbol of Chinese cinema.
To be able to become friends with the fifteen-year-old version of this symbol, to sit at the same table and eat and chat, to see what she looked like when she was still a blank slate—this in itself is a very rare experience.
Out of China's more than one billion people, how many can do that?
He, Li Si'an, is capable.
The next day at noon, in the cafeteria.
When Li Si'an walked into the cafeteria with her lunchbox, she immediately spotted Zhang Ziyi.
She sat by the window, opposite two girls, and the three of them ate and chatted.
She gestured wildly as she spoke, gesturing with a piece of potato she held in the air with her chopsticks, which made the girl next to her laugh. She herself was laughing too, her chin becoming pointed and her eyes curving into slits when she laughed.
Tomboy. Not an exaggeration at all.
The way she sat there—legs crossed, elbows propped on the table, her voice a octave louder than the girl next to her, her head tilted back when she laughed—
She bears no resemblance whatsoever to a "future international film queen," and looks more like a mischievous monkey who ran out of an alley.
Li Si'an carried the rice bowl over.
Is anyone here?
The three girls looked up at the same time. Zhang Ziyi, with a mouthful of rice in her mouth and her cheeks bulging, looked at him for two seconds and then swallowed the rice.
"no."
Then they continued talking about their own things.
Li Si'an sat down and lowered her head to eat. The three girls continued their conversation.
"I still feel awkward." The girl with the ponytail poked at the potatoes in her bowl with her chopsticks. "Why did they cast a woman as Xu Xian? Every time he's with Bai Suzhen, I just can't get into the story."
"You don't understand, that's called cross-dressing," Zhang Ziyi said vaguely while chewing her food. "In traditional opera, men play women and women play men, it happens all the time."
"That's traditional opera, this is a TV drama," the girl with the ponytail retorted. "Why didn't they just cast a man?"
"Exactly," the short-haired girl chimed in, a hint of resentment in her voice. "It would have been so much better to find a male actor. There are so many male actors in Hong Kong and Taiwan, can't they find even one who can play Xu Xian?"
Li Si'an put down her chopsticks.
"Can't find it."
The three girls turned to look at him at the same time.
"What can't you find?" Zhang Ziyi asked.
"Male actors. Famous ones, but nobody wants to take them." Li Si'an gestured with her chopsticks:
"The character Xu Xian is a spineless coward."
The White Snake Lady stole the immortal herb and flooded Jinshan Temple for him, and he, on the other hand, was easily swayed, believing a few words from Fahai and even testing his own wife with realgar wine. Which established male actor would want to play such a role? He'd be criticized for it.
"Then let's find someone who's not famous," the girl with the ponytail said.
"If they're not famous, the audience won't recognize them. Zhao Yazhi is such a big star; do you think the audience would be happy to have her paired with a completely unknown actor as their husband?"
Zhang Ziyi nodded. "So why not just find a woman? If a woman is paired with Zhao Yazhi, the audience won't think in that direction."
"It's not just a matter for the audience." Li Si'an picked up her rice bowl and took a sip of soup.
"When Zhao Yazhi acts with male actors, things can easily go wrong. A few years ago, when she was filming 'Fearless,' the actor who played Huo Yuanjia—Huang Yuanshen—wrote her love letters, which her husband found."
The scandal caused quite a stir, and the two eventually divorced. She's now married to a lawyer surnamed Huang, who keeps a close eye on her. "Acting as a married couple with a man is hard to explain at home. Acting with a woman is much less troublesome for everyone."
The three girls' eyes widened in surprise.
"Really?" Zhang Ziyi's chopsticks hovered in mid-air.
"It was written in the magazine."
Zhang Ziyi leaned back in her chair, looked at him for two seconds, and suddenly laughed. "Which class are you in? How do you know everything?"
"Li Si'an from the music competition."
"Zhang Ziyi." She pointed to herself with her chopsticks, then to the two girls next to her, "My classmates, Wang Ting and Li Meng."
The girl with the ponytail nodded at him, and the girl with short hair smiled as well. "You seem to know quite a lot."
Later, Zhang Ziyi ran into Li Si'an in the cafeteria and often sat down with her food bowl.
Not for any other reason than to listen to his nonsense.
Today it's about Leslie Cheung's debut in "The Dream of the Red Chamber," tomorrow it's about Andy Lau being forced to film a movie with a gun to his head, and later it's about Chow Yun-fat almost getting expelled from TVB's training program because he always came in last place when submitting assignments.
Zhang Ziyi listened in a daze, sometimes laughing, sometimes tapping his rice bowl with her chopsticks to tell him to stop talking nonsense.
Li Si'an wasn't annoyed. Each time, she would order several extra portions of meat dishes, eat one herself, and push the rest to the middle of the table. Zhang Ziyi didn't stand on ceremony either, reaching out her chopsticks to grab some.
Once, while the two were eating, Zhang Ziyi suddenly asked curiously, "Did you not used to eat in the cafeteria much? I don't think I've seen you there often."
Li Si'an took a bite of rice and said irritably, "Before? Back then, our school had such ridiculous rules. They only allowed one meat dish per meal, like feeding a cat. I couldn't stand it. I always ate outside of school."
He then pointed with his chopsticks at the plate of ribs placed between the two of them, "If the school hadn't changed the rules this year, you wouldn't even see me in the cafeteria."
Zhang Ziyi raised an eyebrow: "So you were eating out every day last year? How much allowance would your family have to give you each month?"
"It wasn't given to me by my family; I earned it myself."
"Earned it yourself? How did you earn it?"
"I write for magazines like 'Zhiyin' and 'Teenagers.' One article can cover a month's living expenses."
Zhang Ziyi's chopsticks froze in mid-air, her eyes wide with surprise. "Wow, you're so amazing!" She slammed her chopsticks on the table. "Then you're a big spender! I'll definitely be eating at your place from now on."
Li Si'an watched as Zhang Ziyi took another piece of pork rib from her rice bowl and shook her head. From that day on, Zhang Ziyi came to have lunch with Li Si'an almost every day at noon.
Holding his rice bowl, he plopped down opposite her, sometimes without even saying hello, and started eating as soon as he sat down. As usual, half of the meat in Li Si'an's rice bowl was taken away.
After a while, Li Si'an couldn't hold back any longer.
"Hey Blackie Zhang, why are you eating here with me every day these days? You're not trying to woo me, are you?"
Zhang Ziyi almost choked on her rice.
"I'm warning you, I have no interest in you, you little dark-skinned guy," Li Si'an said with a righteous expression.
Zhang Ziyi was so angry that she grabbed her chopsticks and banged them against his arm, making a loud cracking sound.
While banging on the door, he yelled, "Have you no shame! Have you no shame? Huh? Who's chasing after you?!"
"So you come and hang out with me every day?"
Zhang Ziyi put her chopsticks away, picked up a piece of braised pork and stuffed it into her mouth. She chewed for a long time before opening her mouth.
"My dad taught me to learn to associate with people who are better than me, so I can broaden my horizons and learn new things."
She pointed at him with her chopsticks and said, "I think you're pretty impressive. You're very knowledgeable, and I can hear a lot of interesting things from you."
Li Si'an glanced at her. "Just because of that?"
"Of course, it's also because we can eat meat every day."
Li Si'an laughed. Zhang Ziyi couldn't hold back either, bursting into laughter and revealing a row of white teeth.
And just like that, the two became buddies.