Chapter 15 "Interested in Auditioning for a Role?"

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“If—”

“I were a bird…”

Chen Jin’s deep, magnetic voice emerged slowly from his lips, almost one word at a time.

He did not read quickly.

Yet that very measured pace immediately lent the poem a weighty, solemn tone.

He even took several steps forward before coming to a stop.

“I too should sing with a hoarse throat!”

“This land battered by the storm!”

“This river of ours, forever surging with—”

“Grief and indignation!”

Chen Jin delivered these three lines rapidly, each beat sharply defined. His voice rose abruptly, climbing higher with every line.

His whole presence seemed to transform along with the poem into a stillness charged with grief and outrage.

Then that stillness became a tempestuous rush of sound:

“This furious wind—”

“That blows without cease—”

“Inflamed with anger!”

With a sharp sweep of his hand, Chen Jin seemed to summon the wind. His expression turned solemn, and his voice dropped once more, as though he had sighed. After a pause, he continued:

“And that—rising from the woods—”

“Utterly gentle—”

“Dawn!”

His voice descended three times in that final line. His eyes suddenly closed, and his voice grew huskier, lower still.

The word “dawn” sounded like a sigh.

Then came three full seconds of silence.

A silence heavy as soundlessness.

“And then…”

“I died!”

The line drifted softly from Chen Jin’s lips as he stood with his eyes closed, surrendering himself to the feeling.

Those three words—“I died”—sent shivers through everyone in the room.

They were light, almost ethereal, yet those three words stirred a powerful resonance in every listener.

It was as though Chen Jin had truly died.

“Even my feathers rotted in the earth!”

Chen Jin stood with his eyes closed, both arms hanging at his sides, his palms spread open toward the floor as though savoring the moment.

Then, in that very instant, he suddenly opened his eyes.

A fervent emotion seemed to surge within them, slowly turning them red.

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“Why are my eyes always brimming with tears?”

It was a rhetorical question.

The voice was neither as sorrowful nor as impassioned as everyone had imagined. Instead, it carried a helpless, almost questioning quality.

Chen Jin leaned his head forward. At last, as though he had been released from some burden, a faint smile appeared on his face. He let the tears slide down his cheeks, brought both hands to his chest, and spoke with his eyes closed, each word growing increasingly clear:

“Because I love this land—”

“With all the depth of my soul!”

The closing words rang out with crystalline clarity, striking like thunder.

They seemed to roar from Chen Jin’s chest and reverberate throughout the entire performing-arts examination room.

Silence!

At that moment, the room was so quiet that one could hear a pin drop. Everyone stared blankly at Chen Jin, including several of the teachers.

Chen Jin bowed. He did not wipe away the tears on his face, but smiled as he returned to his place.

Only then did Huang Lei come back to himself. After giving Chen Jin a long, searching look, he suddenly raised his hands and began applauding with a laugh.

Clap, clap, clap!

The other teachers followed, and then the students joined in as well.

Several of the girls watched Chen Jin with particular curiosity, still savoring the poem he had just recited.

Was it good?

In the eyes of professionals, unquestionably.

The arts-exam candidates themselves did not really know. They could not say whether it was good or not, but they had all been deeply moved. Even if some of them could not understand why Chen Jin had cried while reciting the poem, and felt that emotion seemed somehow contrived, they had to admit that his performance had been exceptionally convincing.

His body language, his expressions, the emotions required by the poem, and every shift in tone had all been present in his recitation.

It was clearly proof of genuine ability.

That was the power of great poetry: it could pierce through time.

You might feel nothing in the moment, yet one day, when you suddenly recalled what had happened that day and connected it with the final two lines, you might experience an extraordinarily singular revelation.

“All right, last one!”

Huang Lei looked toward a girl. She was candidate number 3199.

Two minutes later, the arts examination for Chen Jin’s group was over. As the candidates filed out one after another, Huang Lei finally turned to one of the teachers beside him.

“That number 3198 was something else!”

“I nearly cried listening to him read!”

Huang Lei rubbed the corner of his eye with a finger. The teacher beside him smiled.

“He really was excellent. We haven’t seen anyone that impressive in the first round in years. His physical presence and vocal qualities are both good, too.”

She looked at several of the other teachers. The instructors responsible for movement and voice all nodded.

“He has no obvious weaknesses. His fundamentals are extremely solid. He must have been training since childhood.”

“I’ve never heard of him before. His background is completely blank—he’s only a high-school student!”

Huang Lei frowned as he studied Chen Jin’s application form and muttered to himself:

“Chen Jin… I don’t have the slightest impression of him. If he were a child star, I would certainly know him. But even with those fundamentals, his acting may not necessarily be at this level.”

“You have to train your diction from childhood…”

Just as with traditional opera, comic dialogue, and the like, where children practiced from an early age with scripts in hand.

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“We’ll see what else he can do in the second round!”

“It’ll be fun if he manages to outshine Yang Zi and Zhang Yishan!”

“They’ll definitely have the advantage in acting, but when it comes to fundamentals, that’s not certain.”

The teachers continued chatting. Soon, the next group of candidates entered, and Huang Lei and the others immediately fell silent.

Outside, Su Wanyu did not ask Chen Jin how the examination had gone, which was unusual.

She was afraid of discouraging her son. Yet several candidates who had finished their exams kept glancing at Chen Jin as they walked past, leaving Su Wanyu puzzled.

“What happened? Why did they all look at you before they left?”

“My performance was so good that it attracted attention!”

Chen Jin said it shamelessly.

Su Wanyu spat out a scornful laugh.

“How did I ever give birth to someone as shameless as you?”

“But it’s true!”

Chen Jin curled his lips. He felt certain that his performance in the first round had been stunning.

Unfortunately, his mother did not believe him.

“When will the arts-exam results come out?”

Although the odds of her son passing were practically zero, Su Wanyu still asked out of courtesy.

“I don’t know. Don’t they notify us by text?”

Everyone who had taken the examination would receive a message on the phone number they had provided.

“I wanted to know the exact date…”

She left the rest unsaid. She wanted to find out so that she could purchase their return tickets in advance.

“I’ll go ask!”

Su Wanyu walked over to the teacher calling out the candidate numbers. A short while later, she returned.

“The list of candidates who passed the first round will be posted on the bulletin board downstairs the day after tomorrow morning. It’ll also be published on the website!”

“Oh!”

Chen Jin acknowledged this, and the two of them prepared to return to the hotel. The next morning, he still had another first-round examination at the Central Academy of Drama.

That examination was even more difficult than the one at the Beijing Film Academy. In addition to poetry recitation, it also included an improvisational performance based on a given prompt.

Having completed one examination, Chen Jin left the performing-arts building looking completely relaxed.

A beautiful, elegant girl wearing glasses suddenly appeared from nowhere and came to stand in front of him. A camera hung from her chest.

“Are you a new student taking the arts entrance examination this year?” she asked.

Chen Jin froze for a moment, then instinctively nodded.

“Yes!”

“I’m not enrolled in an arts-exam preparation course!”

He suddenly remembered something and hurriedly added it.

The girl merely smiled. She smoothed her shoulder-length ash-gray hair, and her smile became even more charming.

“I’m the assistant director of Director Zhang Yimou’s Under the Hawthorn Tree. My surname is Fu. Would you be interested in auditioning for a role?”

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