Jiang Yi was a little nervous today — and beneath the nervousness, she couldn’t quite hide a thread of excitement.
She had gotten up at six in the morning, all for the sake of today’s interview. She arrived early at Li Siqi’s villa and waited for the appointed hour.
Opportunities to interview Li Siqi in person were rare — especially after he had retired from the screen at fifty, when he and his wife had begun traveling the world, appearing infrequently in the public eye.
Yet the public’s interest in him had not diminished in the slightest. People were intensely curious about his life.
That curiosity had begun when he was still an unruly little boy.
The sun was well up before the old man finally stirred from his sleep. His wife, Han Sui, reminded him that the time agreed upon with the reporter was nearly here. Li Siqi yawned and shuffled into his study in his pajamas.
When Jiang Yi entered, she saw a clear-featured elderly man sitting in the chair by the window, drinking coffee. Li Siqi had an unhurried temperament; his hair was salt and pepper — black and white intertwined — which only gave him a kind of unrestrained ease. He heard her come in and looked up, and Jiang Yi felt heat rise to her face. No wonder, she thought, he came from such a remarkable family — there was a quality about him that was simply beyond compare, something none of the younger actors could match.
Jiang Yi greeted him with a bow. “Hello, Mr. Li. I’m Jiang Yi, a reporter from Film Weekly.”
Li Siqi smiled at her, which made Jiang Yi’s head spin even more.
Li Siqi set down his coffee cup and said quietly: “I’m still a bit foggy just having woken up — I speak slowly. Just go ahead and ask what you want to ask.”
Jiang Yi sat down quickly and took out her notebook.
As Li Siqi had warned, his reactions were slow from just having woken up, and after many of Jiang Yi’s questions, he would pause a long time before answering.
At the start, Jiang Yi had worried he might respond to the interview with guarded, official-sounding answers. But within a few minutes, Li Siqi had already put her mind at rest.
Jiang Yi asked: “You retired at fifty, and many directors have tried to persuade you to return — yet you remain unmoved. Was the plan to devote your energy to family at that point?”
Li Siqi said: “No.”
Jiang Yi: “Then why?”
Li Siqi: “Laziness.”
Jiang Yi: “……”
Li Siqi yawned and said: “At first it was laziness. But then more people started asking — big-name directors — and that made it even harder to go back. Think about it: if all these important people have gone to such great lengths to invite someone, expectations run high. What if I turn in a poor performance? How embarrassing.”
Jiang Yi was at a loss for words.
The assortment of unexpected answers lightened the atmosphere considerably. Sensing conditions were favorable, Jiang Yi ventured: “Could I ask a few more personal questions?”
Li Siqi: “Go ahead.”
Jiang Yi asked carefully: “Today is the third anniversary of your mother’s passing. Did you choose today for this interview as a kind of remembrance?”
At the mention of his mother, Zhu Yun, Li Siqi’s gaze grew distant and still. He said quietly: “I do miss her very much.”
Jiang Yi added: “And today also happens to be your parents’ sixtieth wedding anniversary.”
Li Siqi laughed. “You all keep much better track of these things than I do.”
Jiang Yi: “They were devoted to each other for so many years — always held up as an example in the field.”
That phrase amused Li Siqi.
“Example in the field.” He looked out the window, his thoughts drifting far. “Any relationship, taken to its end, becomes habit. Maintaining the feeling of being in love all the way through is genuinely very hard — especially when both people are as stubborn as they were. It takes a great deal of effort.” He let out a breath. “Honestly, my father’s coldness in his later years was mostly my mother’s doing. He was spoiled beyond measure at home and had already received more than enough — so whether anyone else liked him or not was simply of no concern to him.”
Jiang Yi had long felt that Li Siqi was something of an anomaly. Most public figures held fast to the principle of careful, measured speech — only Li Siqi had, from childhood to old age, always said precisely what came to mind, never changing. He had caused considerable trouble because of it; his mother, Zhu Yun, had apologized to the media on his behalf many times. But Li Siqi remained entirely his own person.
Jiang Yi had always assumed he would be reprimanded by his family for his ways — but as it turned out, whether it was his brother Li Yuchen, who had gone into government, or his sister Li Yueling, who had taken over the family business, both had independently confirmed that Li Siqi was the most spoiled child in the family.
Li Yueling had once given the reason — “Because he looks the most like Father.”
Jiang Yi repeated this to Li Siqi. Li Siqi burst out laughing: “My dad has a bad temper, but you really shouldn’t scold him quite like that.”
Jiang Yi: “Do you think your father had a very bad temper?”
Li Siqi: “He reeked of arrogance from head to toe.”
Jiang Yi: “……”
Just as Li Siqi’s uninhibited manner of speaking had become something of a trademark, Li Xun’s temper had been a sensation in its day — the stories were too numerous to count.
“You’ve never been on the receiving end of a scolding from him — if you had, the shadow would last a lifetime,” Li Siqi said with a laugh. “How to put it… my father had somewhat low emotional intelligence. Or maybe it wasn’t low — he just couldn’t be bothered to deal with all the social niceties. He saved his patience for his work and for a handful of people.”
Jiang Yi: “It seems like he never had many friends, even until the end.”
Li Siqi: “That’s right. Very, very few.”
Jiang Yi: “In your own life, which parent influenced you more?”
Li Siqi answered without a moment’s hesitation: “My mother.”
Jiang Yi: “Why?”
Li Siqi drew a long breath and said: “Truthfully, when I was little, my relationship with my father wasn’t great. I was disobedient — extremely rebellious — and I was always finding ways to bother him and disrupt his work. And my grades were terrible, which he found deeply unsatisfying.”
Jiang Yi: “Were you afraid of your father when you were small?”
“Terrified!” Li Siqi’s eyes went wide. “Absolutely terrified — especially when he was holding my report card and just looking at me without saying anything. I genuinely wanted to offer up my life in apology.”
Jiang Yi burst out laughing.
“And your mother — what was her attitude in those moments?”
Li Siqi spread his hands: “She watched. My father ran the household — as long as he didn’t physically hit me, my mother wouldn’t get involved. Though actually, my mother was more invested in my grades than my father was. She had more traditional ideas about these things; my father mostly just viewed my playing around with contempt.”
Jiang Yi asked a few more questions, and then the conversation drifted, almost without noticing, to the film that could be said to have shaped Li Siqi’s entire acting career.