From Cover, issue no. 345, December 10th, 2007
Translated by Zuo Maohong
Original article: [Chinese]
"Xu Sanduo practiced martial arts for only six years. I've spent ten. He made it... Why can't I?"
Li Xinjun is one of countless aspiring actors waiting anxiously at the gate of the Beijing Film Studio for a chance at stardom. A week ago, Li was moving bricks at a construction site for an hourly wage. He quit shortly after watching Soldiers Sortie, a well-received TV series where Wang Baoqiang, a former extra on the show, plays the leading character Xu Sanduo, a role that rocketed his acting career.
For years, the Beijing Film Studio, the biggest in China, has had a crowd amass daily just beyond its gates, eager to be scooped up by scouts looking for temporary actors. They have been called beipiao, or "Beijing wanderers"—a term that has since been used more generally to describe those who come from elsewhere to work and live in Beijing.
If Li had ever read the stories of those who started from scratch in Studs Kertel's American Dreams: Lost and Found, he would have been encouraged. Born in 1967 in a small town in Shangdong province, middle-aged Li has experienced quite a lot in his life: ten years of martial arts practicing, eight years of farming, four years as a construction worker, and a week as an extra on films and TV series.
But Wang Baoqiang's story has given Li enough courage to sit and wait in front of the studio, and, enough bravado day after day to cram his way into buses heading for filming spots.
At 6:00am on December 4th, Li caught a bus headed to a film shoot for Mei Lanfang. He was paid 30 yuan for a day's work as a temporary actor. The next day was his most lucrative of that week; he was paid 100 yuan to act in a hospital commercial.
Li often shows the screensaver of his cell phone, which displays a picture of him wearing a fierce suit of armor. "I acted a soldier in Cao Cao's army," he says, referring to his role as an extra in the hotly anticipated film, Chibi.
Cao Cao was a king during the "three kingdoms" period in the Chinese history, who lost an important battle against the ally of the other two kingdoms in Chibi.
Li says he was recommended to the Chibi crew by A Sheng, a friend who has worked at the studio's gate for half a year.
Once a security guard, an electric welding worker, a waiter, and a street vendor, 20-year-old A Sheng has now carved his own role in the film industry given his ability to call in 100 to 200 temporary actors at any given notice. Each actor he draws into a project means three to five yuan to him, but despite his commission, he still frequently has problems paying for expensive phone bills.
A Sheng says his dream is to be a vice director who manages actors. "There are vice directors who have never been educated in this field!" he says.
Compared with Li Xinjun and A Sheng, Li Chenchen seems to be closer to his dream. Like Wang Baoqiang, who was picked for a leading role in Blind Shaft, Li Chenchen was chosen by director Jia Zhangke to act as worker "Er Guniang" in his film The World in 2003. But fate seems to favor him less than it does Wang Baoqiang, who later became well-known by A World without Thieves and won even wider praise through Soldier Sortie. The World didn't lead Li Chenchen to fame. Since then, he has only acted as "insignificant characters that did not impress the audience".
"Many at the studio's gate are just like the farmer who waits by a tree for a rabbit to pop up so they can hit it on the head and get a free meal. I thought to myself that I could only bring myself good luck by going out, hunting on my own," says Li Chenchen.
In the summer of 2005, his "hunting trip" began.
Li Chenchen says he was working for a TV series when he was admitted to the Shanghai Theater Academy. "I could feel that subtle change in the way the director and other actors treated me. It was totally different from when I was a walk-on. Wang Baoqiang must have had this same feeling several years ago."
Now studying directing at the Shanghai Theater Academy, Li Chenchen eloquently speaks of the basic elements in directing. Apparently, he doesn't need to wait for work any more. "I've already declined six or seven invitations to act this year," he says, adding that he's been busy shooting videos for a film festival and a drama for the International Drama Festival's opening ceremony.
Unlike the majority of the wanderers at the studio's gate, Li Chenchen has more or less realized his dream. And for this, he didn't become the second Wang Baoqiang, who is probably somewhere bumming around the Beijing Film Studio, or selling sweet potatoes in the countryside, or washing hair at a barber's shop, or standing guard at Beijing's CBD district, or doing martial arts in Shaolin Temple...
Seeing the crowd at the studio's gate, Wang Baoqiang becomes ambivalent. "I really understand them. I want to tell them I have gone through all this. But I'm not sure whether I'm doing something good or bad to them by saying so," he says.
As many of the crowd say, "nobody knows what tomorrow will be like!"
But even Li Xinjun has doubts and grieves when there's no work. Bracing against a chilling gust of Beijing wind, a bleaker Li tells himself, "some of us are here to dream of becoming famous, but some are here just to dream."
