Wu Lei is 23 years old this year. This is still an age that is blazing with blue fire and steaming with the heat of life. Everything in young people’s lives is changing, and their relationship with the world and with the self is no exception. For actor Wu Lei, there is one more thing to deal with, that is, the relationship with the character. How to interact with the current environment. Answering one of the ultimate question of human beings: Who am I? The currently flowing Wu Lei is still completing his own fill in the blank question.
World
Borges has written a very bizarre story: The older self and the younger self, sat together on either sides of a bench, facing the river of time which Heraclitus had stepped over before, chatting eagerly. Both of them know that on the other side is another them – and yet there is clearly a high wall that can be seen between them. The difference that time brings, is a change that even those who have experienced it cannot understand.
In the story, the two people’s ages are 50 years apart, but to the younger self, the clock always moves faster. Wu Lei recently realised that he might not be the same Wu Lei as the Wu Lei a month ago, or even a week ago: The never idle, energetic, “work is his hobby” Wu Lei, this time wants to be a “salted fish*” lying down flat, and thoroughly relax.
(* salted fish is used to call someone who has no ambitions, not doing anything productive with their life)
He did indeed “lay flat”. Literally. December is Wu Lei’s birthday, last year during this time, he convinced his family and staff to go to Wulan Butong which is a 6-hour drive from Beijing, to happily celebrate his 22nd birthday between the sky and the earth. His memories swept back in fragments, he sometimes remembered his frosted eyelashes, and how he couldn’t close his eyes; sometimes he can feel the frozen reins rubbing against his fingers; sometimes tossing and turning reminds him of being on the horse, as if he’s riding the horse across the snow field…. A few months ago, Wu Lei was still full of ambition, “This year let’s do something even more amazing!”. However, as the date drew closer, the answer was quietly re-written, “This year, the energy accumulation failed… if I could I wish that I don’t have to do anything at all on my birthday.”
After arriving at Ulan Butong, the temperature reached negative 30 degrees, wrapped in an extremely frozen sleeping bag, with heating pads stuck all over his body, he slept in a tent in the wilderness; on the last day he went to round up the horses, he carried a 4-metre long lasso and drove around 30 horses to the grasslands to forage. These types of challenge that test the limits in the eyes of ordinary people, in Wu Lei’s perspective is instead the smallest obstacle. Rather, once the preparation were started, he was constantly thinking about: Can the plan be more detailed? Could the alternatives have been better? For the preparation for last years’ travel vlog, <Fly Close to the Ground>, Wu Lei started preparations a few months in advance, no wonder he felt that, every step before departure required vigour and energy, it is very difficult.
He has thought of just going, without doing any planning, but there was hesitation due to concerns with safety. For example last year, it was Wu Lei’s first time camping and it happened to be during Wulan Butong’s fire prevention period, they weren’t allowed to light a fire. There is the danger of hypothermia when staying outside overnight – “if we didn’t plan, there really could be a possibility of an accident occurring at the snowfields. In the end, he decided to try sleeping in the sleeping bag, with the back-up option of driving back to the inn, the car was on stand-by in order to ensure the safety of him and the filming crew.
Wu Lei also thinks that to plan too thoroughly, and keep every development in your control, is tedious. “But it’s a fact, that no matter how much planning you do, you will encounter the unknown in nature, therefore, planning is to face the unknown, safely face the unknown, and survive the unknown.” Often, even when one clearly knows what to do and what to expect next, one can still put himself in the place of a newborn baby and embrace the environment, open up one’s keen and sensitive senses. “It’s just like when I was riding in the snowfields, every moment I felt that it was very happy and refreshing, you have imagined it many times but the actual experience is still completely different.”
Including Wu Lei’s favourite, <Ground-Based Flight>, no matter how many times you cycle on a path it will have a different feeling each time. Sometimes, when he can only hear the wind, he will start to imagine the lungs as they expand and contract in the chest cavity, the blood from the heart flowing to the thighs through the blood vessels, even the bicycle, it’s like a camera has slipped into his body, the logic behind the inner workings become visible and vivid. “It’s like when a protagonist in an anime encounters an emergency, their heart beats faster, pupils change colour, and the background music starts…” A young boy always has a wonderful imagination – however this is not Wu Lei’s condition while he is working.
When he was with the sky and the earth, he didn’t think of anything. To set up a tent outdoors, he first had to hammer nails into the ground, there is usually 30-40, he repeatedly smashed them, smashed them until his fingers became numb. Until there emerged an instinct to observe the body, he gradually perceived the flow of body energy, and the laws of body movement, he realised that you can be so close to your own body: your body is a lot heavier than you expected, but also a lot lighter than expected.
“The modern persons’ life and work is very abundant, good at multi-tasking, for example you can look at your phone for a bit while doing your work”, said Wu Lei. “But when you perform a single, repetitive action, devoting yourself to that one thing, instead you are now spending time with yourself.”
Rebecca Solnit once wrote in <Wanderlust: The History of Walking>, walking in the ideal sense is a state where the mind, body and world are aligned, like when 3 characters can finally talk to each other, or 3 notes suddenly being able to form a chord. Therefore, walking is a way to penetrate the mind. In Wu Lei’s case, the experience of cycling or camping is similar to walking. He also gradually realised that immersing yourself into the world is in order to return to yourself. Your relationship with the world is also your relationship with yourself.
Character
Wu Lei wants to “lay flat”, this is not common. He admits that in recent years such an occurrence was rare. But after filming for <Dwelling by the West Lake> finished, there was a change.
<Dwelling by the West Lake> uses the narrative of the Buddhist scripture <Mulian Rescues His Mother> to tell a contemporary story. Wu Lei plays Mu Lian, who tries to save his mother, Tai Hua, who had mistakenly fallen into a fraudulent organisation. In the end, the hesitant and confused son, and the mother whose faith had collapsed, get caught in an even more hopeless situation together. Reading through the script, understanding the character’s behaviour, understanding how Mu Lian “rescues” his mother, and how the mother “obsesses”, and understanding realistic familial relationships… Even if he had already done his studying, every day Wu lei will still find “things beyond the text”, “Even when filming a relatively simple scene, it will still contain a deep meaning that will shock you.” As the days passed, he finally felt that he had reached his limit, the limit in all aspects of his body and spirit.
It was this “wearing” performance experience this time that made Wu Lei want to “stop” for a while. After filming finished in November, he still had not fully processed the time he had spent in the filming crew, he also was “not certain about my feelings towards this experience.” Whether it’s a challenge or practice, only by having the patience to wait for precipitation after a standstill, will the precipitation be revealed. Rather than saying Wu Lei has recently been “lying flat”, or resting, it’s better to say he’s attempting to examine his self in this stillness and sort out his heart.
“The majority of actors are good at self-reflection. It’s written in our textbooks that an actor is a trinity, they are the creator and also the tool for creation.” An actor said that, “The actor’s self is a tool for creation, therefore it is necessary for them to have a clear ability to examine the tool for creation.”
As an actor, Wu Lei can at least be confident that he is self-aware. In comparison to the unknown and uncertain outcome from his works, the performance process is reliable-first and foremost is the actor’s diligence. <Nothing But You> which was filmed this year, Wu Lei plays Song Sanchuan who is a professional athlete who changes from a badminton player to a tennis player. He is also good at marathons and frisbee. In 3 months he practiced his tennis swings, serve, interceptions, practicing each item in rotation. Speaking of before, in <Dwelling by the West Lake>, because Mu Lian is an elegant and free youth, Wu Lei started to grow plants and tried understanding the feeling of communicating with plants. When filming <Love Like the Galaxy>, in order to act as the lean young general he had in mind, who is capable and experienced, he was on a diet for 4 months and persisted with exercising every day; The even earlier <Upcoming Summer>, he was able to learn how to DJ… to Wu Lei, learning various skills in a short time for his characters is nothing special. He used to joke that other people are intense for 3 minutes while he was 3 months worth of intensity in the filming crew.
This type of diligence is often defined as “dedication”, but Wu Lei thinks that when an actor regards himself as a tool for creation, all the polishing in the earlier stages is all in order to use the tool better to then complete the performance. “So, exercising or learning various skills is a type of sculpting. Although the force is on my own body, that is a part of my job. It at least gives me the important confidence to play as another person.”
The skills of his characters extends to Wu Lei- as well as their personality. Wu Lei occasionally feels unfamiliar in social situations and does not know how to interact with strangers, in these situations he will invite out Xiao Chuang from his body, the one in <Our Times> who love to play and joke around, the familiar Beijing boy, “If it was him, dealing with others will appear reasonable and natural. I will then think, it’s ok, it’s not disgraceful.” While in <Nothing But You>, Song Sanchuan and Liang Youan’s mutual relationship, a sincere and reasonable love, allowed him to start thinking about how to shape realistic and healthy relationships through his characters. These are what the characters payback to the actors for their diligence.
If you were already diligent enough, then what comes next is to relax. “Calm your mind to complete each scene, do your best to give the best performance.” Since starting filming at 6 years old until now, Wu Lei has maintained a fixed filming frequency. He hopes that the accumulated quantity of works or the hard work he put in in the process, can bring about a natural improvement. “I’m not saying that I’m striving for this work to be better than the previous work, but it’s striving for the performance in this work to be the best it can be at that moment.”
Performance is an art, strengths and weaknesses cannot be precisely measured on a scale, growth and progress to him is also not a pressing anxiety. He said: sometimes, an actor thinks that they have improved, but they’re actually getting worse. Sometimes an actor thinks that they’re getting worse, but instead other people think that you have a new change, that you’re doing well.” Discussing improvement and setbacks, in the end, it’s like drawing a prison. The person is framed by the individual’s gaze, trapped by superficial appearances.
Wu Lei knows that improvement is something that happens inadvertently – at this moment, his character is a diligent farmer planting fruit trees, caring about watering, weeding and fertilising all day. As for when the tree will bear fruit, when the fruit will fall from the tree, he doesn’t care. Because he knows, fruit trees will eventually bear fruit, and the fruit will eventually fall to the ground.
Self
20 year old Wu Lei in his book <Ground-Based Flight> has defined the word “self”: Self, that is freedom and me*, balancing the relationship between the two is the process of sculpting the self. He explained, it’s because freedom comes from having choices, clearly knowing what your choices are, having the ability to choose what you want to do, as well as having the ability to bear and enjoy the consequences of your choices – Looking at it in another way, when people have the freedom to make their own choices do they happen to then seek out their self.
(*Self is . Freedom is. Me is . Wu Lei sees “self” as the first character being taken from freedom and combined with the word me )
23 year old Wu Lei looked down in embarrassment, quickly waved his hands and said, he currently lives quite freely, without as many thoughts [as back then], and would not make a distinction towards “freedom and me”.
Wu Lei is aware of the change in relationship he has towards “self”. In the early half of this year, he suddenly realised that he gave different answers in two magazines in response to the same question, “it’s like my views are changing everyday, maybe it’s because of a cup of coffee, because of a song, or because of one phrase…. He used to think a lot of change is a bad thing but he gradually learnt to accept it, that change is one of the traits of being young. Even to actors, change in feelings or thinking is a good thing.
Actually, Wu Lei does not have a lot of time with his self. This 23 year old boy’s most familiar setting is on set, either filming or making preparations for filming. It has taken up the most time in his life. He made the comparison between the camera on set and a nose – their existence is the same, “A person can actually see their own nose, it’s that the brain will automatically block it out. The camera on set is the same thing to me. I’m very used to the existence of the camera, it’s like the air and is a very close companion that co-exists with me.” This has led Wu Lei to think to a degree that him on set is the complete Wu Lei, a never idle, treating work as his hobby as actor.
But self is like a Rubik’s cube, hidden faces will be revealed while it rotates. He had just realised, Wu Lei who is not filming is another person. A person who can be idle, a person who is scared of the camera, a person who is not that self- disciplined.
For example, he can gaze at the rotating wind wheel under the blue sky for a long time in a daze, without thinking of anything. Another example, he realised that he will be at loss in front of cameras outside of the filming set, when shooting for a magazine, or when attending events, when he hears requests such as “a bit more cool”, “a bit more handsome”, “interact a bit with the camera”, he would be at loss as to what to do. Another example, although he has set that he’ll exercise everyday, and has a goal to improve his cardiorespiratory function, he will also put it off, even choosing to give up – and how is Wu Lei when filming? The day never ends, even when finishing work late he will go to exercise.
Towards his undisciplined “only exercising 4 out of 10 days”, he feels helpless. “Once filming finishes, when I don’t have my character leading me forward, I don’t seem to have a strong motivation to supervise myself in completing my goals. I can’t help but sleep late, I can’t help but to give up on exercising”. When the order of things are disrupted, and things do not go the way they are planned, Wu Lei did not fight with himself and did not force himself to compensate for it. He only accepted what had happened. “When I’m not filming, I don’t seem to live up to the word self-discipline – but it’s not that I hate this state. I’m really accepting of it because I think a person requires a temporary stage of “lying flat”.
Ultimately, “A person needs to flow, sometimes trickling downwards, sometimes an upward torrent, sometimes like a steady stream under a small bridge. Go according to your mood, you don’t always have to be at the same state, it’ll be quite tiring that way.” Being in the middle [of two opposite states] might be the safest, and the most balanced choice, but only by constantly moving between the two extremes, that life is then considered to have flow and have force.
How does one interact with their current environment? How do they respond to their relationship with themselves and the world, themselves and their self? One of the ultimate propositions of the person who answers these questions is: Who am I? The currently flowing Wu Lei is still completing his own fill in the blank question.
Translation credit to @forleilei. Article on We Chat.
Wu Lei Galaxy 