01
1935 On March 8, 2019, the first generation of actress Ruan Lingyu bid farewell to this world by committing suicide.
She was only 25 years old that year and was in her prime. She once said, "If I wanted to be a very famous person and a myth, I would die when I was the most beautiful and sharp." She did.
In the early Chinese film and film industry, Ruan Lingyu was second only to Hu Die, and she had the likes and loves of thousands of fans. From entering the entertainment industry at the age of sixteen to 25, she has acted in 29 silent movies in just nine years, and currently 10 of them are the most accomplished actress in the silent film era.
She was born in poverty, her father died early, and she lived with her mother for servants. Afterwards, with his own efforts, he was successful in his acting career until his peak. However, at the same time, she was also trapped in the emotional entanglement between the playboy Zhang Damin and the emotional businessman Tang Jishan. Finally, when she asked for help from the third man Cai Chusheng, she left a suicide note "human words are fearful" (it was later confirmed that it was forged by Tang Jishan, and the real suicide note was only discovered in 1933), and swallowed sleeping pills and committed suicide.
Her beautiful years came to an abrupt end, which caught many fans who loved her off guard. On the day she left, women around the world cheered on their festivals. More than 5 female fans followed her fragrant soul in the same way as suicide. They think, "Ruan Lingyu is dead, what's the point of living?" It makes people sigh and sigh...
I had listened to the theme song of the movie "Ruan Lingyu" in the middle of the night, "The butterflies fly away, my heart is not there, who will come to the long night of desolation, wipe the tears and the cheeks... It's not a surprise that the disasters given by the sky are not bad, it shouldn't be, the youth is afraid of loneliness, the flowers in the forest fade, and even the heart is buried. When the spring swallows come back in the future, where is their body?" It seems that her face is there!
02
When I was a teenager, I had many imaginations. What would happen if I met Ruan Lingyu's fragrant soul? What if Ruan Lingyu didn’t die?
I remember when I was studying, I often stayed in school after school and played football. The campus wall was broken and short, and the ball was always kicked out, so he climbed the wall to pick up the ball.
The school was in a remote area of Shanghai at that time. Outside the wall was a large factory with dust and sparsely populated areas. Every winter, it gets dark very early and the north wind is howling. Occasionally, until evening, there was no one outside the wall, only the bleak and cold factory building and a large area of withered smoke and weeds.
If you want to climb over the wall to pick up the ball, you will inevitably feel fear. I could only use the faint light to search carefully among the chaotic weeds. If everyone else escaped in a prank, leaving only one who picked up the ball in the wilderness, he would worry in his heart whether he would run into a ghost when night fell.
It is said that the coverage of this factory outside the school wall was once a famous cemetery many years ago, and Ruan Lingyu was first buried here.
After graduation, I still often think of the wall, the desolate evening outside the wall, the faint crying carried by the north wind - maybe the ghost you encountered in the legend is Ruan Lingyu's fragrant soul?
If it were her, even as a young man at that time, I would not have any fear. Instead, I would be happy to meet this big star of the 20th century. I would hold the football I picked up, regardless of the classmates on the other side of the wall, and walk with her in the cold weeds.
I watched her watch as the cold night slowly descended, listening to her soft voice in her Guangdong accent, looking at the faint sadness in the corners of her eyebrows, listening to her talk about interesting things in the entertainment industry that era, or the tragedy of her short life.
I believe that Ruan Lingyu, who turned into a ghost, will definitely maintain her youthful appearance during her lifetime. Her 25-year-old life will always be solidified in the grave. After traveling through dozens or hundreds of years, she will not be changed or hurt again.
or above is my assumption one.
03
Hypothesis two, if Ruan Lingyu is not dead?
The incident that shocked China and the foreign countries was just to escape the abominable paparazzi and violent men. She had long retired from the world and spent her life peacefully until today.Then I will see an old man with white hair, whose beauty was no longer there, only his loose skin and wrinkles lying on the bed, occasionally recalling the scenery of the past, just like Yuan Zhen's chanting "The white-headed palace maid is here, sitting idle talking about Xuanzong."
I think she would rather choose hypothesis one.
A good youth will last forever, and a good death will last forever, but she will still pay the price.
She will watch the people she once loved grow old, the people she once hated die, and the times she once familiar with slowly passes away. She will be destined to lose all her relatives, be destined to be abandoned by any era, and be destined to be lonely for one hundred years or two hundred years.
Time turned into thick dust, but she was still brightly buried in the dust of the house.
Perhaps, she would be lucky enough to see a boy standing under the cold crescent moon, holding a football in his arms, wild grass singing beside him, the wind blew his messy hair, blurring his simple eyes.
Because, he saw her.
She will give him a smile, she will talk to him, she will take him wandering in the wilderness, she will give him the taste of love for the first time.
But she won't take him away forever.
He will grow up slowly, leave this place after graduation, gradually fade away his youthful color, come to the vulgar world, pursue the ideal of not giving up, but is called the so-called "writer" by the world. He will grow old many years later, so old that he can no longer recall it. He can only leave the image of a teenager outside the wall to her who is always 25 years old.
She will cry forever when she is 25 years old.
This is her own choice, the price she must bear, just like the melancholy prince of Transylvania, like the little girl in the grave of New Orleans, like the many youthful faces underground in Paris.
Death is sad.
Eternal but tragedy.
Love that has been changed and eliminated by time is a sad love song.
Love that is fixed by eternity but can only be recalled is a desperate elegy.
If it were you, which kind of love would you choose?
