My name is Gu Baobei. Dad always calls me baby, baby1, over and over again. Then he points to Nuo, the boy from Uncle Feng’s family, and says, “That kid is your brother.” I nod, knowing from a young age that if I do something wrong, I can hide behind him. Since he’s my cousin, he will protect me.
My mother’s health was not very good. She passed away not long after giving birth to me, leaving only my father to raise me.
From a young age, I knew that Dad really loved Mom, loved her so much that in this lifetime, he would never love again. So I understood even less what love was, and why it could make a person endure loneliness until the end of time.
I also never believed that the world would be unable to go on without someone. So I found many aunties to come to our home. It’s not that I didn’t love Mom, but I hoped that Dad would be happy. He will grow old and be lonely. My father tolerated me for many years until I was seventeen, when he finally became enraged with shame. He threw my mother’s photo at me, very angrily saying, “Get out of here, and don’t let me see you for a while.”
So I really ran away in a fit of anger, but I was pretty pathetic and took the family credit card with me. I ran all the way to Italy.
I became an actress. Miraculously, as I was walking down a small street in Italy, carrying a violin and wandering, I was pulled into a film crew. Then, the bearded director said, “Oh my God, this is the female lead I dreamed of!” He turned around, took my hand, and said, “Will you act for me? Do you know how much you look like Gu Xinyao from back then? Do you know her story? Do you want to film her story?”
At that moment, I paused before pulling my hand away, because I heard my mother’s name, Gu Xinyao.
Then I read the script. That story told of another kind of love, a man named Mo Qian, a man named Kimura Jin, and my dad, who became a supporting role, a lonely supporting role.
I nodded, not knowing why I was willing to act out this love story that was contrary to my understanding, this discordant love.
When the filming of “Regretful Love” was about to wrap up, I met the author of this story. He looked at me for a long, long time, then touched my eyes and said, “Baobei, I am your Uncle Enhao.”
I didn’t dodge, just looked straight at him and asked, “Isn’t this just a story?”
He looked at me, just raised the corner of his mouth in a smile, and said, “Child, this is a matter of the previous generation. The reason why someone lives is to continue the stories written, whether they are good or bad…”
Then I filmed the last scene of this movie, with falling leaves all around. The woman looks at the child in the cradle and her lover who has already gone blind in both eyes, and then slowly dies. When the director yelled cut, for some reason, the tears in my eyes couldn’t stop flowing. And as the child cried with a drawn-out wail, I suddenly felt that some sadness and helplessness could really engulf a person entirely.
It was also because of this movie that I met Jay2, the man who played the supporting role of “Kimura Jin.” He liked to call me “Xiao Ai3.” He said, “Too many people call you Baobei. I want to be different.”
Then I smiled, nodded, and said, “Okay.”
Many years later, when I was wearing a gorgeous evening gown to attend his wedding, I looked at his face stubbornly with my head held high and said, “I wish you happiness.” He laughed, looked at me without moving for a moment, and then, for the first time, he called me, “Baobei…”
After that, I never hid my identity again. I am Gu Baobei, not just an actress who happens to share the same name as a wealthy young lady. I am the daughter of Gu Xinyao and Xiao Moxiao, the girl who had enough money to live a pampered and extravagant life for eight lifetimes, the sister cherished from the bottom of his heart by Mo Nuoyun, the president of Mo Corporation.
When I returned home, Dad met me at the door. He said, “Jay got married.”
I smiled, suddenly feeling a bit lost. I said, “Dad, he and I were the silver screen couple envied by everyone. He and I have acted in so many, many roles together. We’ve been enemies, we’ve been lovers. In the stories, I’ve given birth to his child, with him tenderly embracing me and kissing me as I had a big belly. In the stories, I’ve pointed at his nose and cursed him out, then slowly fallen in love over time. In the stories, we loved each other, got married, and had many, many children. We collaborated again and again, acting out the lives of so many people, as if it was like our own lives… as if we loved each other so much that we just wanted to be together…”
Then I said, “Dad, I will never again force you to love someone else.”
Finally, I understood love. It was just a long journey of different paths to the same destination. It’s just that not everyone has such good luck…
So at a charity auction, I donated a painting of a man embracing a woman and kissing her in a rose garden, with sunlight shining on them and a violin lying in the flower bed. I remember that night I played a song for him called “Dance of Tears.” He asked, “Xiao Ai, what are you playing?” Not answering the question, I said, “Why can’t you love me?”
Later, they asked me what the title of this painting was. I thought for a long time. Suddenly, I saw the silver bracelet left to me by my mother on the dressing table, giving off a strange, dazzling golden light. Facing the sun, I shielded my uncomfortable eyes. The memory of the rose garden suddenly seemed so far away, as if it could no longer be touched, just like when he kissed my brow and said, “We can never go back…”
Then, I said, unable to stop the falling tears, “It’s called Regret…”
- The character’s name ‘??’/Baobei’ also can be literally translated to ‘baby’ or ‘darling’. ↩︎
- ‘Jay’ here is written in English in the original novel. ↩︎
- ‘Xiao Ai’ here can also be translated as Xiao Love. ‘?’/xiao is a prefix often added to a character in a mandarin name to indicate familiarity or affection. ↩︎
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