Friendship of Two Showbiz Stars in the Shooting of Confucius

Ren Quan grew up watching television dramas and films that starred Chow Yun-fat， a handsome Hong Kong actor who turned the whole China into his fandom in 1983 when he starred in “Shanghai”， a television drama. Chow won seven best actor awards in his career and in 1995 he went to Hollywood for further development. He is literally a legend in the silver world in China.

Born in Qiqihar， a city in Heilongjiang Province in northeastern China， Ren Quan watched every film and every television drama that starred Chow. One of Ren’s boyhood dreams was to be an actor like his idol Chow. His life unfolded as he dreamed. In 1993， he was accepted by Shanghai Theater Academy. And he began to make a national reputation in a few films and television dramas.

Ren Quan became instantly excited when he was offered the role of Yan Hui in a large-budget film Confucius in early 2009. Yan Hui was Confucius’s best student who did not live long and died in poverty. In order to do his job best， Ren took a crash course reading everything about Yan Hui， trying to familiarize himself with the poor scholar’s life and mentality and tried to imagine himself being that scholar. He prepared himself for the cooperation between him and his idol Chow Yun-fat. But he found he was not well prepared to meet his idol in person when the moment came.

At the launching ceremony of the film shooting on March 30， 2009， Ren Quan was talking on his mobile phone when he suddenly heard someone was asking loudly in accented Mandarin who the actor for Yan Hui was.

Then Chow Yun-fat stood in front of Ren Quan， saying “Are you Yan Hui? Hi， I am Confucius.” Actually they had known they would work together as teacher and student， but they had never met before. They hit off immediately. Chow said that they would be teacher and disciple in the movie， but he wanted the two to be brothers outside the spotlight.

Ren Quan was more than a little bit nervous. And Chow knew the young actor would be very nervous in such a big budget movie and in working with Chow. In the first scene， Ren Quan was so nervous that he could not recall the lines that he had committed to memory fast. Seeing Ren Quan in hopeless jitters， Chow suggested they changed the first scene to the second scene in which Confucius cries over the death of his star pupil， for in this scene， the dead young scholar does not need to speak a word.

Before they started， Chow asked to hold Ren Quan in arms so that Ren could find a comfortable position to be held. Chow said Yan needed to be in a comfortable position as he would be dead for a long while in this scene. Ren Quan was touched by Chow’s thoughtfulness.

With the camera running， Chow cried heartbreakingly over the dead star pupil. Afterwards， Chow asked if Ren had been comfortable in his arms. Ren Quan said whether he was being comfortable did not matter all. Chow quoted Confucius’ remark that a gentleman should consider other people more than himself and chide himself more than he does other people. Chow said that he was acting Confucius and he should act as Confucius did in real life.

At that moment， he suddenly understood why Chow had been widely recognized for his brilliant performance.

Chow did act like Ren’s elder brother off the camera. Ren was under huge pressure for his performance of Yan Hui. He even thought of giving it up. One night he went to a bar alone and tried to drink himself to oblivion of all his frustrations. While half drunk， he got a call from Chow who said he would like to chat with him. When Ren stumbled out of the bar， he was met by Chow himself. It turned out that Chow had seen him step into the bar and guessed something might be wrong. So he waited in his car outside the bar. When he realized his worst fear might be happening， he made the call in the hope of getting his brother off the hook of dark despair.

They had a talk. Chow said that he had been criticized for taking this offer of acting as Confucius in this film. Criticism， Chow said， was a big and normal part of anybody’s success. All he could do was to refuse to crack under pressure and be himself and drive himself hard to be better and best. Chow said that actors needed to prove to themselves as well as to the audience and critics that they could stand up to challenges and come out winners.

Encouraged， Ren did pretty well in the following shooting episodes. The hardest scene for him was “Yan Hui Saves Books from River Bottom”. In this scene， he needed to dive into the five-meter-deep water to get out of the bamboo books that belonged to his master. Ren could have let a double do the job. But he insisted on doing it himself. Tons of ice cubes were purchased and thrown into the river. The brave young man dived repeatedly into the icy water. The shooting was not over until more than eight hours later.

As soon as the camera was off and Ren was down with the take， Chow rushed over and urged Ren to take cold-prevention pills. Chow commented that he had never really cried in his acting， but Ren’s performance made him cry.□