Bonus Chap
Thanks for the kofi 🌟 Michelle in Colorado ✨✨
The story of “Bo Ying” went back twenty years to the case of Bo Ying, the main character Cheng Bo’s wife Jiang Si, in the early hours of March 21, 1998, had an argument with Cheng Bo, ki-lled him, and then ki-lled and dismembered the five members of the Cheng family including her son, in their sleep, to vent her anger. –This was a shocking case at the time, and it was because of this case that the huge number of co-wives, who had been cowering in the shadows, was exposed in an unexpected way.
Jiang Si’s methods were extremely cruel, and the victims were her family members who had been together for nearly a decade, including her own son, who was just in elementary school, and the world was outraged when the case came out, accusing Jiang Si of being worse than an animal – a tiger didn’t eat its son, she was simply heartless!
At that time, the Internet wasn’t yet developed, and people who relied on newspapers to understand the case began to speculate with the worst about this woman called Jiang Si.
She must be the butcher’s daughter, that was why she took human life so seriously.
Her son wasn’t her own son, otherwise how could she be so cruel?
The Cheng family must have treated her very badly and scolded her every day to drive her crazy!
She hadn’t studied, she was usually very arrogant and domineering, her old man was bad, she ……
But as the case deepened, an unacceptable reality faced the world: Jiang Si was the only daughter of the vice president of the city hospital, grew up knowledgeable, good-looking, meek, and the Cheng family was also very good to Jiang Si, treated her as if she were their own daughter, every time her mother-in-law went out, she’d certainly praise her daughter-in-law, the Cheng family itself was a family of scholars, Father and mother Cheng were intellectuals, at less than forty years old, the eldest son of the Cheng family became the secretary of the county party committee, he had a promising future, and Cheng Ying himself had an iron rice bowl civil service job in the institutions ……
If then there was the concept of “life winner”, then it must be Jiang Si.
But why?
Why!
Why did Jiang Si do such a cruel thing when she had such a happy family?!
The nation waited with bated breath for the trial of the Jiang Si case …… Yes, it was called the Jiang Si case, but when the first day of the trial hit the press, people called this very representative case: the Bo Ying case.
The two other main characters involved in the case were: Cai Bowen and Cheng Ying.
They were gay.
And Jiang Si, had been a co-wife for nearly ten years.
Hidden behind the cruelty of the Bo Ying case was the tragedy brought by the times and culture, which was so incisive and gloomy.
After the outbreak of Jiang Si’s case, women across the country seemed to be suddenly stimulated, and the situation suddenly twisted into a rope. With the help of a fearless media at that time, the life of some wives and family tragedies were exposed in front of people.
Shocked or not, unbelievable or not.
What came down on more people’s heads was fear.
Whether it was same-sex couples, families, or those who were gay and their families, they were all terrified of what happened to the Cheng family and Jiang Si.
They realized that bringing innocent girls into the marital swamp wasn’t a salvation, not a cover-up, but an abyss.
The following year, the group was so outraged that the state had to introduce laws related to same-sex marriage and explicitly recognize it.
But as the years passed, China’s same-sex marriage laws and regulations changed and changed, getting stricter and stricter, and the information about the Bo Ying case was intentionally suppressed, leading people to suspect that the law was set back then as a stopgap measure.
But that was all beside the point, now in front of them was the issue of script shooting.
The day after the meeting of the four, they approached Meng Chuan, the original director of “Bo Ying” in his previous life.
In his previous life, Meng Chuan had spent his life working on commercial films, and the only literary film he had ever made was “Bo Ying”, which lived up to his expectations and brought him the highest artistic achievement in his career.
In this life, however, apart from “Bo Ying”, he had already made one “Cat and An Xue”.
” ‘Bo Ying?’ No way! You guys actually even got that book?” As soon as he heard that Xie Yifeng and Zhou Yuhe had asked him to make “Bo Ying”, Meng Chuan’s eyes lit up, obviously he had also heard of it for a long time, but the next moment, his lit up eyes quickly dulled down again.
“But it isn’t the same as back in the day, when it first came out, it was very pretty, now I’m not sure whether it is a blessing or a curse …… “Meng Chuan sighed.
For Meng Chuan’s attitude, Xie Yifeng and Zhou Yuhe weren’t surprised.
Because they had expected him to say so.
In fact, with the case of Bo Ying as the base, as long as it didn’t go out of line, the shooting effect would never be bad. Moreover, “Bo Ying” was still a good script that had been polished many times, so as soon as it appeared in the market that year, it attracted great attention of all capital parties and had been very popular.
But there was also a fatal problem with “Bo Ying” –
The script was incomplete.
The author of the script lived in the same city as the two people involved, and when the story broke, he realized that it would make a great prototype for a screenplay, so he went to great lengths to restore the case as much as possible, and wrote the script with the artistry of film.
With his perseverance in understanding, the story had been learned from most of his friends and relatives, but there was only one thing that he couldn’t understand in any way.
According to the neighbors of the Cheng family back then, Cheng Ying often disappeared for a day or two and didn’t come home, Cheng’s family was anxious at first like the ants on the hot pot, and then they got used to it, but before the crime at the time, he hadn’t come home for a week.
Jiang Si said in the court statement: “Cheng Ying often didn’t come home for a day or two, he never responded when I asked where he went, and then I figured out that he probably couldn’t stand it and wanted to escape …… I knew, but I didn’t care about him, because no matter what, he would eventually come back. Only that one time, I don’t know why I had a premonition that he wouldn’t come back, if he left, he would never come back.”
The one time she said was the night of the murder, Cheng Ying suddenly came home, went back to his room to rummage through the cupboard for something, and was about to leave after getting it, but bumped into Jiang Si, the two of them got into a scuffle.
Afterwards, the police found that he was looking for the hukou book.
Why would Cheng Ying, who had disappeared for a week, suddenly appear in the middle of the night at Cheng’s house?
Where was he going with the hukou book?
This was the secret that couldn’t be learned from Jiang Si.
But it was the most crucial part of the whole script.
It wasn’t that the writers didn’t think about writing this part of the plot themselves, but no matter how they wrote it, it didn’t feel right.
And the whole story didn’t match.
It had no flavor.
The screenwriter tried to write this part of the plot three times and found it tasteless, and then gave up on this part of the creation.
But even so, even the incomplete script was extremely popular in the market of capital and art.
The screenwriters couldn’t check things, but the capitalists could.
Cheng Ying wouldn’t leave home without a reason, just as he wouldn’t go home without a reason to get the hukou book.
Household register.
With that, one could associate it with Cai Baiwen with little effort.
The first investor who bought “Bo Ying” approached the kiosk where Cai Bowen was located.
Unfortunately, no matter how much money was spent to buy his story, Cai Bowen wasn’t moved.
The two words Cheng Ying, like a spell and a secret, were buried by his own hands into the deepest part of the trench.
Because of Cai Bowen’s lack of cooperation, the script of “Bo Ying” was stuck in the hands of the investor for two years, and finally it had to be sold to a second investor because of the company’s financial chain problems.
The second investor wasn’t as good as the previous one, his family had some background, so he wanted to use the method of coercion and bribery to force Cai Bowen to give in.
Unexpectedly, before the downfall of Cai Bowen’s family, his father was a local senior official. Although the Cai family fell, father Cai had many friends in officialdom when he was in office. These networking backgrounds that couldn’t be ignored put an end to the possibility of anyone embarrassing Cai Bowen.
After all, it was just a script, even if it was amazing, it was just a script, and there were few examples of good scripts in the history of cinema that turned out to be bad movies.
Offending those forces just for a script was really unnecessary, so, people continued to buy it back from the market, and people continued to give up.
The market price of “Bo Ying” got lower and lower, and finally Xie Yifeng bought the legendary script at a price that could be described as cheap.
“To be honest you guys really found the right person, I really want to shoot, if not ……” Meng Chuan glanced at Zhou Yuhe, although he didn’t finish, they all understand his unfinished words, “the only literary film I want to shoot is “Bo Ying”, from another point of view, I also know if the difficulties you two are now facing, can be turned over by the film? It’s hard, but if it’s “Bo Ying”, it can indeed be done, and I’m willing to help you both with this favor, but …… you have to take care of Cai Bowen first, he’s really a hard bone. Or we can find another screenwriter to write, not necessarily the original screenwriter.”
Zhou Yuhe wanted to say something but stopped.
In the previous world, the producer of “Bo Ying” spent a lot of effort to move with emotion and reason to pry open Cai Baiwen’s mouth, so that the film could be presented in full in front of the world.
The influence of this film in the previous life was so great that it became almost a textbook of literary films, and there were few filmmakers in the circle who didn’t know the plot of “Bo Ying” by heart.
Zhou Yuhe naturally knew.
At that time, what Cheng Ying went back to get wasn’t a hukou book.
It was his ID card.
He and Cai Baiwen agreed to elope, only to find that he didn’t have his ID card on him, so he had to go home to get it.
When rummaging through the closet, he somehow thought of the hukou book, probably out of some kind of obsession, he took the book with him.
During the police investigation, the deceased carrying his ID card was too normal, what wasn’t normal was the hukou book.
So all eyes focused on it.
Not only these hidden circumstances of the final plot, including the film’s approach, the picture, he was very familiar with, even without the consent of Cai Baiwen, if they wanted to shoot it, there’d be absolutely no problem.
But ……
Zhou Yuhe spoke: “I still hope to get Cai Baiwen’s approval, whether it is with the real story, or we re-edit, this is after all a real case, we have to get the consent of the parties before shooting, this is the principle.”
Hearing him say that, Meng Chuan was a little surprised.
He looked at Zhou Yuhe for a moment, and his gaze became firm.
“OK, I also agree to use the original screenwriter and the original story. I don’t know how many times this book needs to be changed when it is reviewed. Other people may not have this patience. But have you figured out how to persuade Cai Bowen?”
Zhou Yuhe: “……”
Meng Chuan: “……”
Meng Chuan: “No way? You’re looking for a director without even solving the script problem?”
At this point, Xie Yifeng smiled slightly, “I have a way to convince Cai Baiwen.”
He took out a folded newspaper from his pants pocket, the newspaper was very old, it had a faint smell of dust.
The large page in the center had two gray photos of some teenagers.
Xie Yifeng pointed to one of the teenagers, “Look, this is Cheng Ying.”
The two people glanced at the top of the newspaper and froze.
This Cheng Ying, and Zhou Yuhe actually looked five or six points similar.
Zhou Yuhe’s heart shook.
No wonder.
No wonder they looked for him back then.
Thanks for the updates
Ahhhh I’m already having suspicion… After all he don’t HAVE father.
Oh…! Maybe Cheng Ying and Cai Bowen are friends with Zhou Yuhe’s mother, she knew about the boys’ relationship and accepted them, and maybe she offered herself as the surrogate mother for their child, and this child is Zhou Yuhe.