Part the First: A Mother-Daughter Moment

~2027~

Zhao Wei was revising the script of of a movie she was being invited to direct when her sixteen-year-old daughter, Wei Ning, walked in and sat down on the bed opposite her.

"Mum?"

"Hmmm?" she asked, still looking at the script, frowning at a large monologue that the main character was supposed to give.

"What was your first kiss with Daddy like?" Wei Ning asked, fiddling with a pillow in her lap.

That made Wei Wei look up. She tried to stifle a laugh, albeit not so successfully. "Why do you ask?"

"Well, I just want to know, was it different from kisses with other people?"

Wei Wei smiled. "Certainly it was different, but not necessarily like you're imagining it. Is there something you'd like to tell me, young lady?"

"Well – " Wei Ning said, dragging out the syllable, "not really. I just…well, did you know he was the one you'd marry someday?"

"That would depends on what you mean by marry," Wei Wei laughed.

"What do you mean, what do I mean by marry? I mean, marry, like, wedding, the tux and white dress and everything." She gestured to the wedding photo on the wall, taken eighteen years earlier.

"The tux and white dress, no, but I did know then, that I would marry him," Wei Wei said, chuckling at her daughter's confused look.

"Mummy! I don't get the joke," Wei Ning pouted.

Wei Wei continued to laugh.

"Was it romantic then?" Wei Ning pressed on.

"Certainly not," her mother answered.

"No?" Wei Ning asked, disappointed.

"It was an onscreen kiss, so I could hardly call it romantic."

"Your first kiss with Daddy was onscreen?"

"Of course," Wei Wei smiled. "We only met filming Huan Zhu Ge Ge, you know that."

"Well, wouldn't that be even more romantic then?"

Wei Wei laughed. "Ning Ning, onscreen kisses only look romantic. In reality, there is little that could be described as romantic about them, especially from the actors' point of view."

"Why not?"

"Simply the fact that one is expected to perform the exact same kiss about a dozen times and every movement of it is scripted. Onscreen kisses can be very mechanical by about the third take, you know, because inevitably there would had been rehearsals before the actual shooting of the scene. And this particular one…"

Wei Wei shook her head and laughed at the memory. Had it really been thirty years since she shot that scene?

"…that particular one didn't even look romantic. My character wasn't even suppose to enjoy it."

"Why not?"

"You should just watch the drama and then you'll know why." She picked up the DVD of the episode in question on the shelf against the wall and handed it to her daughter.

"Mum!" Wei Ning groaned. "It's weird watching your parents in a drama!"

Wei Wei chuckled and put the DVD into the DVD player and turned it on. "To be honest, Ning Ning," she smiled, "it's even weirder to see your twenty-year-old self onscreen thirty years after the drama is made."

"Mum, that was romantic," Wei Ning said with a very girlish sigh after seeing the kiss they were discussing. "I mean, how can you possibly say that wasn't romantic?"

"Maybe because it's the fact that when we performed that, there must had been a few dozen people watching?" Wei Wei chuckled. "That was my first onscreen kiss, you know. We hardly knew each other then, we've only just met a couple of months earlier. It was the first kiss filmed in the whole series and everyone was tittering. Comfortable it was not. The first take, which literally was our first kiss together, was just cringe worthy. I think that must had been one of the later takes when we've done the scene so many times that it's just become a routine."

"Did you like it though?" Wei Ning asked slyly.

Wei Wei laughed. "I wasn't supposed to like it. And back then, I totally focused on the part. I wasn't…thinking of liking it. But your father liked it."

"Oh?" Wei Ning queried cheekily.

"He offered to do another take after Sun Shu Pei, the director, called cut on the last take." Wei Ning giggled. "He made some feeble excuse about another angle or something like that. Lin Xin Ru teased me for days after that scene. And she didn't have a kiss scene in that drama for me to tease her back. I had to wait till we filmed part two for her first kiss scene."

"On average, how many takes do you have to do for a kiss scene?" Wei Ning asked.

"It depends on the number of angles you need. And good chemistry between the actors would help get it done faster."

"What would you have thought if someone told you then that one day you'd marry Daddy?"

"I did know I'd marry him, Ning Ning."

Wei Ning rolled her eyes. "I meant, marry him in real life. Not in the drama."

Wei Wei smiled. "I'd had thought that they watched too many dramas. Just because our characters were in love didn't mean that we would fall in love ourselves. It's called acting for a reason. But I suppose your father had different ideas, even then. At the time I already had a boyfriend though, so it couldn't have developed to anything, then, at any rate."

"It obviously did, later," Wei Ning said archly.

"Not till about ten years after we filmed our last drama together though. We didn't see each other a lot after Qing Shen Shen Yu Meng Meng but I suppose before then we had plenty of time on set together."

"Don't you have more screentime with Daddy than any other actor? You were in, what, 4 dramas with him."

"Yes, I suppose," Wei Wei said, chuckling. "Twenty-four and forty-eight episodes for Huan Zhu 1 and 2, then twenty-five for Lao Fang You Xi, another forty-eight for Qing Shen Shen Yu Meng Meng. Even if you don't count Qing Shen Shen Yu Meng Meng, where our characters weren't in love with each other, that was still a lot of time acting as lovers."

"How many onscreen kisses did you have with Daddy in those other three then?"

"Not many. Four I think."

"Four?" Wei Ning asked, astonished. "Nearly a hundred episodes' worth of screentime and you only kissed him four time?"

Wei Wei laughed. "You look devastated, it was hardly only four times. Each kiss took quite a few takes."

"But still!" she huffed.

"It was hardly our fault. Blame the script writers."

"What were the other kisses like then?"

"Not much more enjoyable, I afraid," Wei Wei said, still amused at her daughter's indignation at the lack of kisses. "The first kiss in Huan Zhu 2 was enjoyable enough, I suppose, but the one at the wedding scene…we were struggling all the time not to laugh at how it would end. I was absolutely freezing in the kiss in Lao Fang You Xi considering it was supposed to be in the pouring rain. While in real life, a kiss in the rain may be considered romantic…when you're shooting it you end up soaking in the rain for hours on end. Not at all romantic when you're frozen stiff."

"When was your first real kiss with Daddy then? One that wasn't onscreen?"

"Not till years after, when we started courting properly. But why all the sudden questions, and on this particular subject anyway?"

"No reason," Wei Ning shrugged, not quite meeting her mother's eyes.

Wei Wei raised a suspicious eyebrow at her daughter. But her daughter was saved from further interrogation when the very person they've been talking about walked into the room.

"Hi Daddy!" Wei Ning said, standing up. "I've got to meet Jing Jing, I won't be home for dinner. Bye Mum, bye Daddy."

And with that, and a swift kiss on her father's cheek, Wei Ning rushed from the room, leaving Wei Wei look after her in amusement.

"What was that about?" You Peng asked.

Wei Wei looked after their daughter for a moment, then looked up at her husband and smiled. "You don't want to know," she answered, before turning back to her script.