The Truths Behind the Life of Maeve Sun Lively

47

I TOOK ON A CHINESE drama, sometime along the time period in ancient China, one of those films. The shooting dates of it were long, and it kept me surely very busy.

I was staying at Cameron's apartment in Beijing instead of a hotel. The apartment me and Mason once shared, we had sold it since we moved to L.A.., thinking or assuming maybe we'd never be back to this place. He wasn't, but I am. And as I sat in Cameron's living room one of the nights, it got me thinking about Mason's past. He never talked about it.

I did bring the topic up once, but he quickly changed it just as I was about to ask him more about it. I am self centered, I think I can admit that pretty honestly. And I used to think that I had the hardest of all the things, that everything I had done had been so much better than everyone else. But sitting there in Cameron's living room, I wondered what Mason had gone through.

Time and work don't always match with thinking, so in those months I never really thought about that again. Instead, I was trying to win myself an Oscar.

金鸡奖 (Jinji Jiang), otherwise the Golden Rooster Awards, was basically an award just like the Academy Awards but in China Mainland, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. And I was trying to win that while filming the Chinese Drama, with the great feeling that the long span show would at least get us nominated for the Awards.

During one of the days on set, while I had just come out of my make up room, ready to get on with a scene, there was a rampage of noises outside near the entrance. I usually didn't care about those stuff, they tend to be some fans getting out of control, and I'd always just walk on and get to what I was doing. But something about that day made me walk over there.

An actress playing my best friend in the show was there, and she quickly pulled me over as we tried to tip toe to see over what was going on over the heads of people.

"What's going on?" I asked her, my hanfu whirling a little in the small wind blowing in. The people were so loud, I wanted to just cover my ears.

She leans in closer to me, whispering as if anyone could even hear us over this mess. "Some guy burst in, the securities tried to stop him but somehow he made it pass them. And now he's making a scene out here on set, the director is trying to get him to leave but..." She looked at me, and I was getting impatient as she just stared at my face and said nothing.

"But what?"

She looked away, out toward the crowd. "He keeps screaming your name, asking for you."

That's when I looked ahead of us, and at the same time, the crowd seemed to make a small pathway for me like they suddenly just knew. Without tiptoeing anymore, I could see what was very clearly in front of me. Or rather, who.

Mr. Wang.

His head has just about fully been bald now, and he had some huge dark circles underneath his eyes. On his knees, half crawling and screaming as the director and security try to pull him away, his eyes all at once just landed on me.

"S-Sun Xue Li!"

The director and two security guards looked up to see me. The director lets go of Mr. Wang and slowly approaches me.

"Sorry about this, I am deeply sorry, Sun Xue Li, I know your time is precious but...the guy just won't leave. He keeps saying he needs to talk to you."

I looked from the director to Mr. Wang, and he was half smiling with a crooked tooth. He looked like a lunatic dumped on the streets.

I patted the director's back, and smiled. "It's not your fault, but if you'll take the crowd away and give me and him a moment, that would be nice."