By Ke Nan

I telephoned Yao Chen for an interview when “Undercover”, a many-episode spy drama, was all the rage on television across the country.Yao starred in it as lead woman. I was worried that my request for an interview might be turned down. To my great joy, she agreed. When I saw her, the first thing I noticed about her was her legendarily big mouth. Seeing what I was thinking, she smiled from ear to ear, her mouth seeming bigger. She explained, “My love started with my mouth.”

She is from Fujian Province. She entered the Beijing Dance Academy. After half a year, she wanted to switch to vocal studies. Her strongly accented mandarin killed her ambition. She was advised to try her luck at the performing department at the Beijing Film Academy. Her audition with performing masters was a huge success. She was able to put tens of different expressions one by one on her face within one minute. All the auditors laughed. They were convinced. She was in.

In a training session, she was partnered with a classmate, a young man with very small eyes but with a name like a kongfu master: Ling Xiaosu. They did not hit off immediately. Their first cooperation was a disaster. Yao Chen blamed Ling for the failure and took it out on him saying his eyes were so small that she had difficulty finding them on his face. Ling did not hesitate to retort that her mouth was as big as that of Juliet Roberts. They disliked each other intensely.

A month later, Yao Chen found Ling on the same bus on her way back to the campus. She ignored him. They got off at the same stop when Yao noticed the threatening rain clouds in the sky. Ling dash off fast. She despised him more for him running so fast in order to avoid being caught in the rain. But to her great surprise, he came back running and handed her an umbrella. He explained that he ran so fast because he saw the rain was about to pour. The rain poured before they were able to open the umbrellas. For the first time, Yao Chen felt the small-eyed man was very considerate. She wanted to say so but what came out her big mouth were “You ran so fast!” Ling Xiaosu immediately looked taller and proud. He said, “You know what, I am a national grade-one athlete. I am a sprinter!”

After the rain incident, they did not dislike each other anymore.Something sprang up between them. They worked hard in partnership, keeping themselves as top students in their class. One day before he would participate in the Beijing Universiade, she called and said that she had dreamed of him winning. He joked that he had dreamed of her for three nights. Love began that day. Ling won the 400-meter championship.

In their third year in college, Yao and Ling had offers and appeared in television series. With remuneration, they toured the country. The big-mouthed Yao has a passion for food whereas the small-eyed Ling loves to see the world. They had a good time together sightseeing and winging and dinging.

The day they graduated from collage, they got married, which astonished all of their classmates. With their previous earnings, the newlyweds were able to pay a down payment for a 60-m2 apartment and have a 6-month honeymoon. They enjoyed life and followed a simple pattern: they would watch movies at home and then would eat out in the evening and drove a secondhand car. After half a year, they needed to work. Ling soon got offers. Yao went through many auditions but no offer materialized. Another six months passed before she got an offer.

Her breakthrough came in 2005. She appeared in “All My Swordsmen”, an 80-episode anti-hero comedy that ridicules kongfu masters and sings of friendship. Ling often came to visit her and brought her tasty food. He hit off with her colleagues. The playwright noticed him. In the end, he was cast into one episode as an extremely narcissistic police officer.

After a year-long shooting was done and Yao got paid, the couple flew to Egypt for a vacation. While they were overseas, “All My Swordsmen” became a national blockbuster. Her mobile phone kept ringing after she was back in Beijing. Some companies wanted to sign her. She declined offers on the ground that the earning from the blockbuster could keep them go a long way.

In March 2008, she was sought after for the lead woman in “Undercover”.She was told that she was cut out for the role. She was supposed to be the assistant to the man and fake as his wife. After going through the script overnight, she hesitated, reasoning that the spy suspension drama features intelligence in every sense of the word but as a woman in the habit of not taking things so seriously, she did not think herself fit for the serious drama. She feared that she might have ruined the masterpiece. Ling Xiaosu believed it would be another blockbuster and another breakthrough for Yao. Ling dared her to face the challenge: Sun Honglei, the lead man in the drama, is very particular with partners in all his productions. If Yao feared him, she should turn down the offer. Yao took the bait and called the producer that she would do the job. Sun and Yao worked together well. The difficult part for Yao was to learn how to behave herself as a lady.

The 63-day shooting was over. It was a national blockbuster. Yao Chen was highly recognized for her brilliant characterization so different from her appearance in “All My Swordsmen”. In a rare humorous moment in the drama, Sun Honglei, who happens to be a small-eyed man, jokingly asked her to make sure their future daughter would have a smaller mouth. She retorted immediately she wanted him to make sure their future son would have bigger eyes. The repartee is hilariously quoted in many reviews. In fact, it was Yaos improvisation on the spot.□