SUPERSTAR ASPIRATION

Chapter 36 (Ling Xiao and Gu Mingxiu)

Translator: Vian

Slightly edited: Vian (Please tell me if you find any mistakes, but it should be readable.)

On the first day of “Black Clouds”, the filming went smoothly. 

This film was essentially Ling Xiao’s personal biography. From his rise to fame to his death, it tells of the life of this person who appeared to be very ordinary but was in fact extremely dazzling.

Ling Xiao has never had any scandal of him, although he did once went through a low period, it was mostly of his shining legend. He lived honestly and cleanly, and had donated hundreds to primary schools in the mountain regions. It’s said that after paying the expensive medical bill, his life savings only had six digits left. Most of the income from the past two decades had been donated to charity. 

It’s not that there aren’t any good people in the world. There are good people in the world, but good people never have a good ending. 

In order to perfectly play this role, under Director Liang’s lead, Rong Xu talked with some of Ling Xiao’s good friends from when he was alive. The more he learned, the more he was moved by such a simple and kind person. Rong Xu believes that he is not a kind person himself, but if truly such a person appeared by his side, he can guess that he would not have any malicious thoughts towards that person in anyway no matter what.

Therefore, when Rong Xu was playing the role of Ling Xiao, he would always smile whenever he can everyday in the crew. 

After putting on his costume, he would lift his lips up into a smile, and keep smiling till he takes off the costume.

According to what a good friend of Ling Xiao’s said: “He likes to smile a lot. Actually, except for that time when he was at his lowest point, he is always cheerful and loved to smile. But even though he was depressed during that time, he was still very optimistic. Just why… why did the Heavens let such a good person leave so early?” 

The “lowest point” the other mentioned was referring to the bottleneck Ling Xiao encountered in his career three years after his debut.

At that time, Ling Xiao was the brightest star in the Chinese music scene. While his looks weren’t outstanding, his singing was enough to give him such a status. But ultimately, the abilities of humans was still limited. Eventually, Ling Xiao hit an important barrier in his creative career. 

He couldn’t write a good song.

No matter how the song was, he didn’t think it was enough. Although his manager and music producers all thought that the song he wrote was great, Ling Xiao was not satisfied with it. So during that time, Ling Xiao didn’t make any new songs for a year until he met Gu Mingxiu.

***

The last scene of the first day of filming was a scene between Rong Xu and Qin Cheng.

Before the filming, Luo Zhentao was acting even more nervous than Rong Xu. He helped prepare a small water bag to warm the hands for Rong Xu, and helped him receite his lines over and over again. Later, even Luo Xiaoqing, the third female lead, ran over and nervously asked: “Rong Xu, you… are you ready?”