Interview with Zhao Dexuan: Growing up to understand that home is only going to get further and further away

When he came to Taipei from Burma at the age of 16, after 20 years, Zhao Dexuan did not choose to return to his hometown. But in these years, he used to frequent New North China Street, with the hometown workers before work to have breakfast. He said they can bowl of silk and another bowl of fried rice, workers have to eat a lot of breakfast, eat starch, only physical strength. In 2009, he graduated from Jinma College and made "The Chronicles of Huaxin Street."

Later, he went back to Myanmar to do "Ice Crystal", "The Emerald City", take a camera, a scene of note, he saw the hometown.

He seems to be using various methods, so that he can close to the original folks, so that they can go back. And at the same time, perhaps, he knew he would never go back. In fact, the home is there, and it is him who goes far.

Human growth, at some stage, is originally purposeless.

In front of my eyes, Zhao, is Sven-Wendi, speaking also mixed with Chinese classics; he said that his hometown in Myanmar on the Chinese border, as a child educated in Chinese, radio drama is broadcast from Taiwan Huang Mei tone, Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai, or Luo Dayou singing Taipei is not my home.

He knew he wanted to come to Taipei, where there were neon lights, he could do a lot of jobs and have dreams. He talked about his youth, hormones of the first disturbance, thinking of doing great things, but look away, his hometown, are barren.

As you can imagine, he was a wild boy who had been throwing his head outside the house all day.

At the age of 12 or 3, he followed a group of local children out there. They would wrap up the rest of the house cold rice, twenty or thirty people to go out, withno purpose, walk all the way through the mountain water, said to take a risk. "At that time, we liked to play a game, that is, from the mountain five-story waterfall to jump. Big brother will say, you must fall to the water is the most urgent place, after falling to hold the gas number 30 seconds, eyes do not open, open you will be afraid. Then, the water will take you from the highest rapids waterfall to the shallowest place, and you'll be safe. 」

"Now think about it, we were playing with our lives. You can easily die. 」

But young teenagers, do not know what they are doing all day, only know that the body has wild, there is something to break out, you do not do will be uncomfortable, will hurt. So you place your place in nature, so that the original wildness comes with your own float.

There were a few times and someone drowned. The superstitious man said that it was the water god who took him away.

But he now recalls that it is not god, not heaven and earth, that it is a period of human growth, there is no purpose and no reason to want to riot. Anyway, let me throw myself so hard, where to be taken, how do I know, where I have a way. All things, growing like weeds without any rules. Some of the long suddenly died, some long will climb to another place.

Because everything is intertwined, chaotic mind, can be liberated?

He said you can imagine that every day you will see the fire on the distant mountains burning, spreading to the city, and the village swelled. Children are very excited, as if at last something is breaking the boredom in front of you, your quiet and boring life inside, you expect some disaster and clutter can happen. Can finally someone shout anxious, for life, for life to have emotions.

But after an hour, the wildfire sweded onanother mountain and the village calmed down again.

And you see a group of teenagers standing under a waterfall, knowing they're alive. They shout, this is my home, my hometown, no hope!

Destiny did not take away me this time, then I will be able to seize what fate?

It was my whole family and bought me a passport and a ticket.

A teenager, look out to their hometown, your home is very old, the family needs money every day, you live idle barefoot crazy silly days. And one day, your life sounded a song, bustling city ah, in more than two thousand kilometers away, as long as go, you seem to find hope.

Taipei is not my home, no neon lights in my hometown.
Prosperous cities, transitional towns, people wandering in civilization.

"There was no concept of Taipei when I was a child. The first time we heard it was in Luo Dayou's lugang town, we sang along, thinking it was a kind of wandering, wandering, and leaving related things, it became a yearning. In those years, they were all right all day, running KTV with their big brother in his twenties, and ordering the song every time they went.

Taipei is not my home. The first person in the village to Taipei, heard that he to that day can do four jobs, went to three years, back to the country side to build a house. They hear it so good, it's great, there's a place where you can do so many tasks a day, and that place is called Taipei.

When his father died in 1997, her older sister, who was working in Thailand, returned home and saw him hang out and fight with a group of friends all day long and be held in jail. Big sister then let him take Taiwan's entrance examination, asked him to stop throwing his life in the original country: "She herself has also participated in Taiwan's examination, but the family has no money to help her with a passport, in Taiwan also did not receive a guarantor." She then went to Thailand to make money. She would have been writing to me and asking me to go to Taiwan. This is actually her dream. 」

Leave home, leave that place, or you have no future.

Big sister to their own work all the money sent home, mother went around to borrow money, pawn shop: "the whole family, all the sale, the loan have done, bought me a passport." So he got on the plane and came to Taiwan. He said it was like a Lotto, like one of the heavenly winners, and he chose you.

However, to Taiwan to study high-tech, university, a few years past graduation, he found himself afraid to go back: "The first feeling is that you can not take any living conditions back." You left home, so many years in school, are working to pay off debts, you go back to what to do? Can you afford the financial life of your family? He said, Go back and you're waiting to die.

So I tried my best to drag and grind.

When the imagination of Taipei, in your life sounded that song, bustling city ah, in more than two thousand kilometers away, you really went, but seven or eight years past, the teenager still can not go back to his hometown to build a house.

Later, just the Busan Film Festival finalist news, the finalists began to have work and contact with the film opportunities, how he slowly let himself no longer struggle in this cycle, how to slowly get rid of that forever can not fill the homeland hunger, he did not talk.

Because later, he even wanted to go back, also know that the original country will eventually become a foreign country. Leaving home has always been a chemical change from time to space, and I believe it at the moment.

I left home to get home, but very few people really can go back.

After starting filming, he thought of looking back and shooting his hometown. That's probably a very intimate thing. But that time back, or every time you go back, you find a young man who once ran barefoot in this land, but weakly became ill.

Acclimatized.

"Suddenly it's raining heavily, or suddenly it's very hot, you can't stand it, you're suffering from heat stroke. And take Taiwan's medicine, and will not cure Myanmar's disease. He had to be shaved vigorously by the family's ancient law, scraping the whole body to leave bruises, and saw it. Big brother laughs and says it's the way home welcomes you. At that moment, he felt himself stepping on the land again, knowing that he was standing here.

But there was something in his heart, and he felt alienated from it. 'It's easy to go back in physical space, but mentally, you know it's hard: "You go back home and stay soon, and for a month in that place, you feel like you can't do anything,' he said. Wake up at four or five o'clock every morning, have a breakfast, and soon after lunch, you will hear the village selling, occasionally appear, and then you eat dinner and fall asleep at seven o'clock in the evening. 」

Day after day, like a resting place on the edge of the world, you feel comfortable, but you know you have nothing to do.

What can you do there?

Image caption Zhao Dexuan's Facebook page (Ice)

"I later realized that you left a place to come back. But when you're away, it's hard to come back. Because your external material life has been improved, your state of mind is not the same; Your family no longer understandwhat what you say, what you hide in it, belongs to the truth of your life. This home gave you roots, but the moment you left home, you were already on a fork in the road with the family.

'Home is like, there are some things you'll always miss and you'll always want to be close, but when you're close, you'll feel like it can't be yours forever,' he said. "If I had gone back early there would have been no problem, such as going back when I graduated from college. But now, the problem is getting bigger and bigger. Zhao smiled, as if it were not to say a regret. But it will always be remembered, a chance that might have been able to return home, fell in a corner of life.

Home is a place that will only get further and further away.

I think of the "burning secret" in the head, has been disturbed by the false dream, living in half dream half awake Nina, one of the haunting her, is her hometown home. There was her failed father, the mother who was in the hospital, and a partner who couldn't leave and couldn't take away. In this all this, let her think why there is always something to get rid of, pulling their own?

Nina's heart hides a secret no one knows, but she is not, always feel that her home is staring at that secret, is blaming yourself, said why you left home, want to shine life, but now is broken? (See screenwriter story: Interview with Wu Kexi: I don't feel brave, I just write their story)

Everyone who leaves home has his or her own reasons for not being able to return home. Whatever it is, it's always private; it's harder than you think, like a needle embedded in a gap in your body, and you know how to carefully hold it without getting hurt.

For the dream, home, is not the price I pay?

But you know the purpose of that year's departure was to find a way to better maintain a home. Because to Taiwan, then the people of Myanmar also believe that is the money flooded, in a few years, perhaps to earn a house to go home.

Zhao and I chatted about the words in "The Secret of the Burning Man": "How much are you willing to pay for your dreams?" He mused that when your material life became more and more successful, you pursue your dreams of making movies to do your self-realization, and a lot of things went well, but you didn't really change what "home" was.

"Actually, you know you want to protect your home, but you don't really have that ability. 」

Over the years, he spent a lot of time filming his hometown, which sounds reasonable, a Burmese Chinese, to Taiwan to study films, back to Myanmar to shoot home, leaves to the root. But, he says, it's not what people think. Every time he went back, he didn't know why he wanted to make a film, but the film made him and his mother, his home more and more far away: "I don't care what they're doing, you come home, but you didn't think of the existence of the home." 」

The rebellious teenager returned home, thought it was home, but began to wander outside the door.

Then someone asks, what do you do to change my hometown by filming Burma?

He turned around and told me it was best to change it, and the movie was useless. It's very superficial.

"You know when you go back, you see relatives and friends still having a hard time, my country's medical treatment is poor, there is no gender fairness, there is no basic right to education. What has the film changed? Has the dream changed anything?

For this dream, at the age of 16 he left home and now has little time to really spend with his family. For the native, he was powerless to get close to it, nor to flip. 'People all over the world come to see your movies with their experience and see what you can expect, ' he said. No one is staring at it with life experience: "How do you tell people that your home will suddenly go to war again, and you hear some friends trapped on the road." I have friends who are soldiers who are stopped and shot on the road with their troops. I'm in Taipei, now 2019, and people think I'm bragging. 」

And to dream about this movie, to make these films, to change something, he says, he can change only himself. He makes movies, realistic under the lens, but is actually a kind of love and paranoia about this land in his hometown.

Nina in the movie, how much did she end up paying? And if she can only be half crazy half silly, let herself, then her home, the place of her native, will not come to pick up this living in the dream crying desperate child?

I think about this matter, think of Zhao said, perhaps the home is not touchable, touch back, it may not exist. And if the home is no longer allowed, then he would say that I miss home, miss every inch of cells that can breed or die for home, can not.

The story about Nina, or Zhao's, may also reflect the lives of many north-drift children. We initially left with some bags and some dreams, to a strange place, to work for life. You often miss homesick, miss ingress slotted on familiar table dishes and living-room time with your family, and these thoughts support the day before you to some extent.

But many years have passed, when you go home again, you quietly find that home is no longer familiar with the place. Home people begin to understand what you say, your taste, the little home can not accommodate you brought back the world. Your hometown has become another foreign country.

But as Zhao told me, he loves his hometown, his hometown to give him something, is the world can no longer replace. And if this love makes people down-to-earth, even if the present home can no longer understand you, you will be deeply associated with it.