Editor's note: This is a nostalgic theater.

Winter Solstice poster

At the beginning of the new century, a number of criminal investigation and police dramas such as "Black Hole", "Black Ice" and "Black Fog" were released one after another, which was very lively. "Winter Solstice" directed by Guan Hu obviously did not continue the popularity of its predecessor "Black Hole". But 20 years later, looking back at this TV series with a Douban score of 8.3, the small town with pink walls and black tiles and the water in the south of the Yangtze River, the quiet scenery and people are hidden in the murderous intentions, and the leisurely pace of life is behind the anxious torment of the soul. All of them are excellent portrayals of the social world in China at that time when the urbanization process was surging.

"I believe that no matter how lofty your ideals are, wealth must be part of your dream. In the history of Zen Buddhism, there is a famous story about a fire-headed monk who became the Sixth Patriarch Huineng. Those are all legends of our ancestors. For ordinary people like us, they can only be a distant imagination. Indeed, being able to realize emptiness is the realm of Buddha. We are all people living in the mortal world, and no one can get rid of desires. How can a person be able to move the wind and the trees without moving his heart?"

This narration, which is full of humanity and compassion, comes from the mouth of Jiang Han, a criminal policeman played by Ding Yongdai in "Winter Solstice". The object of the narration is Chen Yiping, a bank clerk who gradually falls into the abyss of crime played by Chen Daoming in the play. Once upon a time, the narration of domestic TV series was an echo that people could not forget, such as Wang Gang in "Harbin Under the Night", Bi Ke in "Besieged City", and Wang Zhiwen in "Never Close Your Eyes"... In "Winter Solstice", Ding Yongdai also contributed the only narration of a film and television drama since he started his career. Unlike in recent years when he often brought out a slight accent when playing roles, the voice of the "storyteller" in "Winter Solstice" is like telling a daily story but low and deep, which is very suitable for the development of the regrettable plot.

The plot of "Winter Solstice" is not complicated. The drastic urbanization transformation at the beginning of the new century, combined with the tide of market economy that began in the 1990s, intensified the tension between sticking to one's duty and pursuing desires in the hearts of the people. Around a bank account with a deposit of 170 million yuan, the greedy president Liu Jiashan (played by Liu Bin) has already got involved, and the bank cashier Xue Fei (played by Li Chengru) who is unwilling to lag behind is trying to take advantage of the situation. The prodigal Dai Wei (played by Zhang Zijian), the descendant of a declining family Yu Qingqing (played by Liu Mintao) and the head of the underworld Ke Zhenhua (played by Du Yuming) are all eyeing this piece of fat meat. The honest and conscientious couple Chen Yiping and Dai Jia (played by Chen Jin) bowed to the game under inducement and coercion... The situation became increasingly uncontrollable. Under the full efforts of the criminal police led by Jiang Han, all the hustle and bustle eventually returned to bleak loneliness.

Divine communication and gaze, the game between the two gentle and refined "heroes"

As for the cast of the drama, the biggest surprise or confusion for many viewers was that Chen Daoming, who was nearly 50 years old at the time, chose to play the image of a petty intellectual who was cautious and even a little weak - not to mention that he had just played the gangster leader Nie Mingyu in the 2001 TV series "Black Hole" directed by Guan Hu. Looking at the series of films he starred in at the beginning of the new century, from the wise ruler in "Kangxi the Great" to the tyrant Ying Zheng in the movie "Hero" and the undercover detective in black windbreaker and sunglasses in "Infernal Affairs 3" - the audience had already gotten used to his image of a big boss with an I-shaped moustache.

Screenshot of Winter Solstice

But this huge contrast in image is not without traces in Dao Ge's acting career. Although he is a native northerner, Chen Daoming was able to interpret the speech and behavior of the southern intellectual Fang Hongjian vividly in "Fortress Besieged"; and Xiaolin in "A Place of Chicken Feathers" is a little man who is bullied everywhere in the government and is humble and "henpecked" at home. Returning to the Jiangnan water town to film in "Winter Solstice" is not unfamiliar to him. After all, in the 1990s, he also filmed the red-top businessman "Hu Xueyan" in Hangzhou.

It can be said that in "Winter Solstice", keeping a diary, listening to classical music with cheap headphones, and riding a bicycle are the external grips of Chen Daoming's interpretation of the bank clerk Chen Yiping, and how to present the character's turbulent inner world is a natural result of his full mobilization of acting skills and life experience. At the beginning of the plot, it was shown that the large courtyard where Chen Yiping lived was in panic due to demolition. Because the demolition fee was too low, the residents almost had a fight with the demolition company. In this small "Qingming Shanghe Tu"-style environment, Chen Yiping lived a peaceful and ordinary life, although not rich. The calligraphy of "Virtue and Accumulation of Blessings" posted in his room has explained his attitude towards life.

Screenshot of Winter Solstice

As the head of the family, Chen Yiping could certainly be content with poverty, but he could not resist the pillow talk of his wife Dai Jia. His income was meager, and the musical instrument factory where his wife worked was half-dead and could not pay wages for several months. In order to make his daughter happy, the family went to a restaurant as if it were a holiday. It was not that he had not thought about changing. He was determined to invite his classmates who were in high positions to dinner, but he really experienced the middle-aged classmates' reunion of climbing up and down, and pretending to be flattering. So he had the first moral debt in his life - he got drunk and pretended to be crazy, shouting "Don't let me have money!" and ran away...

The tree wants to be still but the wind does not stop. After the theft occurred in the bank, Chen Yiping insisted on reporting the case to the public security organs. He was calm and had no idea what kind of window paper he was about to break. A series of bad news followed. Xue Fei, who had saved him, was killed because he had evidence of the president's crime. His friend Lao Cai was in a car accident and became a vegetable and needed him to pay for his medical expenses. In order to shut him up, the president promised him a promotion bonus, which made him lose his mind. An opportunity finally pushed Chen Yiping to the critical point of human ethics. Xue Fei seemed to have a premonition before his death. He put the bank's authority password and the president's evidence of crime on a floppy disk and left it to Chen Yiping. And this seemed like Mozart's "Magic Flute" variations. Between taking and asking, Chen Yiping finally signed the Faustian contract.

Although he had obtained the transfer password that only the bank president was allowed to use, Chen Yiping had to use the most primitive method of "sleeping overnight" at the unit to commit the crime. During the several thefts, he did not actually turn completely evil. If it were not for the instigation of the Dai Jia siblings, he would not have known when to stop, but could only follow the metronome of making one wrong step after another and getting deeper and deeper into trouble, until his family was broken up.

Screenshot of Winter Solstice

Chen Daoming's performance was very well-measured throughout the whole process. It was completely different from the perverse "one thought becomes a Buddha, one thought becomes a devil" in the genre films. Instead, it was framed in the tone of the little people's elegy from beginning to end, thus fulfilling the famous saying that "there must be something hateful about pitiful people". At the end of the play, Chen Yiping went crazy. Chen Daoming, wearing a blue and white striped hospital gown, still brought out the sharpness and ruthlessness that only big men have when he looked back, but he immediately cleverly let out a "呿", which not only dispersed the visitors, but also returned to the character's original spirit lightly and perfectly.

"This cowardly middle-aged man likes to calm down with the sound of The Magic Flute, which is very similar to me. So I know that this person must have an inner world that outsiders cannot know. It is a world that is completely different from his appearance, a fierce, contradictory and even brave world." Ding Yongdai's narration is not only a footnote to Chen Yiping's personal world, but also shows that his rivalry with Chen Daoming in the play will be an evenly matched contest on the intellectual level.

In Black Hole, the duel between Nie Mingyu and Liu Zhenhan (played by Tao Zeru) is not about good and evil and the law, but also about the misunderstanding and uncompromising between different classes. In Winter Solstice, the duel between Jiang Han and Chen Yiping is more like a "game of chess" than a duel - a series of thefts occurred in the bank, and a large amount of public funds were misappropriated on the computers in the system. The judgment of insider crime can easily narrow down the suspects to a few people - even though Chen Yiping is good at being hypocritical and calming things, it seems that like attracts like, and Jiang Han noticed this character as soon as he appeared.

Screenshot of Winter Solstice

Ding Yongdai's appearance in the play was obviously carefully designed. Jiang Han drove alone from Beijing, where the Ministry of Public Security is located, to Qizhou to handle the case. What is very inconsistent with his identity as a criminal policeman is that he actually carried a loud speaker record player that played classical music non-stop in his car. After arriving in Qizhou, his style of doing things is also to often wander around the streets and alleys, communicate and chat with all kinds of people, and go deep into the inner world of the characters during the conversation, and then find out the psychological characteristics of the opponents. It is completely different from the old routines in many film and television works where the police handle cases, mostly inseparable from the leaders convening meetings, collectively studying the case, and deploying mobilization to express determination.

We can even say that Jiang Han showed his uniqueness as soon as he arrived in the ancient city. He has a special sensitivity to the surrounding environment, and in the eyes of others, he also has a bit of "unemployed" leisure and elegance. However, this sensitivity is not entirely due to his profession, but also has a humanistic compassion and the temperament of men and women. He is good at observing the situation, and from the narration and voice-over, he has already told the fluctuations of people's hearts at the transition from the old to the new; he also has feelings, and has feelings with the restaurant owner Hongye (played by Chai Ou) and the ambitious Yu Qingqing that are based on emotions and stopped at etiquette, but he never indulges in the tenderness of women, but gradually clarifies the clues of the Yu family's changes in the above-board communication-so after several important criminals in the bank were arrested, when the city public security bureau had begun to prepare to close the case, only Jiang Han held on to another unaccounted sum of money until all the mysteries were revealed.

The first direct confrontation between Jiang Han and Chen Yiping was seemingly inadvertent during a game of Go. During the discussion of the chess pieces, a few questions and answers showed the latter's intention to divert suspicion, but Chen Yiping's answers were flawless. Jiang Han realized that he could not bring the other party to justice before obtaining solid evidence. And their subsequent exchanges were always polite and humble, because he knew intuitively that Chen Yiping was a well-educated "good man".

Stills from Winter Solstice

The brilliance of this drama is that the game between the two characters is always in a state of being triggered but not yet unleashed. There is no direct confrontation between them throughout the drama, unlike the previous anti-corruption drama "Black Hole", which did not lead to a climax of the plot by the sharp confrontation between the two protagonists. These gave way to the struggles between other characters, which unfolded outside the relationship between the two protagonists. Between these two people, it seems that there is always a spiritual connection and gaze between wise men.

Let's take "Black Hole" as a comparison. Just like Liu Zhenhan's feelings for Nie Mingyu, Jiang Han doesn't want Chen Yiping to be the one who commits the crime from the bottom of his heart. Liu Zhenhan was faced with the choice between emotion and law at the beginning, and only after the situation gradually became uncontrollable and acute did he firmly choose the latter; Jiang Han did not need such a choice, but was able to better unify humanity and rationality. From the perspective of rational analysis, Jiang Han examined the possibility of crime based on the premise of conditions and motivations, and of course Chen Yiping was no exception, but at the same time, he did not rule out his regret for Chen Yiping's crime. With his professional sensitivity, he gradually felt the pulse of Chen Yiping's fall. In such an atmosphere, the audience experienced the hunter's looseness on the outside and the tension on the inside when looking for prey, and the animal's confusion when facing food in the trap.

Jiang Han in the play not only represents the impartiality and fairness of the law, but also has a very humane brilliance. As a criminal policeman, he rarely has action scenes in the play, but in the end, when facing the vicious and stubborn Ke Zhenhua, he shot a shot of justice without hesitation. Another thrilling action scene is when Chen Yiping climbed up a dilapidated water tower in a state of mental disorder. Jiang Han followed closely behind him at the risk of his life, and firmly grasped Chen Yiping's body that had already stepped out of the railing, and pulled and dragged him down.

Screenshot of Winter Solstice

Afterwards, Chen Daoming recalled with some fear that when shooting this set of shots, due to time constraints, he did not even have time to take protective measures on the water tower. However, this set of shots did have an exceptionally good effect in showing Jiang Han's inner truth: he always regarded Chen Yiping as a "person", regardless of whether he was a "good man" in the past or a criminal or mentally ill patient now. The nights are long and the days are short, and the atmosphere of the "old time and space" in the play is unforgettable

After all, TV dramas have to face a large audience. "Winter Solstice" has completed the exploration of the inner world of the characters by extensively touching on social reality, and at the same time has not weakened the many viewing spaces preset for the public. In addition to Chen Yiping's psychological changes, the other clues in the play, whether it is the embezzlement of bank executives or the plundering by Dai Wei, Yu Qingqing, and Ke Zhenhua, are all full of fierce contradictions and conflicts, and dramatic plot changes. These are obviously eye-catching and shocking external commercial viewing elements. However, due to the strong existence of the main line of Chen Yiping's fate, the "violent aesthetics" that may be brought about by the case has been greatly curbed, so that the play is always fixed in the triangular structure of society-psychology-case, and each intense plot point is ultimately pointed to.

After the song ends, the audience who have watched this play will always feel a sense of shock. Although people watch it as bystanders, the play may bring everyone not only a heavy feeling, but also more thoughts about society and human nature.

For example, the eternal philosophical question of whether human nature is good or evil: Chen Yiping's journey from depravity to madness actually reflects the disorder and confusion of ordinary people in the face of the rapid development and changes of the entire society at the beginning of the new century. In this regard, director Guan Hu has a deep and thorough understanding of human nature. Therefore, although Jiang Han faces guilty people in the play, he can go deep into their hearts and judge their feelings, thereby showing the seriousness of the law and the gentleness of law enforcement.

Audiences can certainly have different opinions about this crime drama, which is at the watershed of Guan Hu's career in TV drama and film creation. Looking through the comments on Douban, a bank practitioner said that the drama's interpretation of the banking industry is full of fallacies, but this is completely different from time travel, fabrication, etc. "Because this is an art film. Like most of Guan Hu's works, "Winter Solstice" is also an art film dressed in a realistic coat. Therefore, using too much logical reasoning to measure this film may be a wrong way. It reveals the situation of ordinary people - those who have desires but also the rationality to suppress desires, the motivation to do evil but also the instinct to do good, in an increasingly oppressive society."

Some netizens also defined "Winter Solstice" as a masterpiece of psychological drama. "Psychological drama needs to use a seemingly 'dragging' rhythm to create a depressing and gloomy atmosphere. If you keep tangling with the rationality of the plot, it would be a case of putting the cart before the horse. This is a play that pays great attention to details, and it tells the story in a leisurely manner, with many clues but not chaotic."

Another netizen commented, "The series has 36 episodes and the plot is a bit draggy. I wanted to quit watching it several times, but there was always a feeling of returning to the old time that pulled me back, and I immersed myself in that Jiangnan slum that was about to be demolished. Watching the characters in the series experience a great decline in life in just three months was a stimulation to my stagnant life." This statement really touched my heart. If you were not middle-aged and had not experienced some worldly affairs and had a clear sense of the world, it would be really difficult to understand the ups and downs of the characters in the "old time and space" and their helplessness towards their fate.

Cangqiaozhi Street Historical District in Shaoxing, Zhejiang. Image from Visual China

According to reports, the filming location of the TV series "Winter Solstice" is Cangqiao Zhijie in Shaoxing, Zhejiang. Cangqiao Zhijie is located in the historical district of Yuewangcheng, on the east side of Fushan Mountain, with a total length of 1.5 kilometers. The old street is mainly composed of three parts: river, residential buildings, and stone slab roads. From north to south, there are traditional ancient stone slab bridges such as Cangqiao, Longmen Bridge, Baozhu Bridge, Fuqiao, Shimen Bridge, Jiuwu Bridge, Xiguan Bridge, and Huangyi Bridge, adding to the atmosphere of the water city. The two sides of the river are mainly waterside residential buildings, most of which were built in the late Qing Dynasty and the early Republic of China. Among them, there are 43 various types of terrace gates, which reflect the traditional architectural characteristics and folk customs of Shaoxing. In 2003, the block also won the "UNESCO Asia-Pacific Cultural Heritage Protection Excellence Award".

Stills from Winter Solstice

This street full of historical charm complements the style of the play "Qizhou is an ordinary southern town, calm and peaceful". Many traditional houses from the late Qing Dynasty and the early Republic of China are preserved here, with unique architectural style and historical and cultural atmosphere. The virtual scene "Qizhou Commercial Bank Heping District Branch" and the home of the protagonist Chen Yiping in the TV series were shot on this street. It is worth mentioning that Fengjiataimen on Cangqiaozhi Street is also an important filming location for the play. Fengjiataimen was built in 1927. It is a courtyard in the Republic of China period with typical Shaoxing Taimen architectural features. Its exquisite stone carved windows, wooden corridors and bluestone paved corridors all show the charm of Shaoxing's traditional old houses, and it is not difficult to remind people of the deep and mysterious atmosphere of the Yu family's old house in the play.

Director Guan Hu once said, "Movies are art, and TV dramas are just fast food." This can be seen from his creative shifts and achievements in the past decade. From "Black Hole", "Survival of Migrant Workers" and "Winter Solstice" he filmed after the new century, it is not difficult to find that even in TV dramas that are regarded as "professional work" by the industry, his cinematic approach can often be seen. For example, the old man who pulls the strings by the stone bridge appears from time to time in the play, and the "Second Master" (played by Guan Zongxiang) who sits hunched by the Yindian Bridge in "Old Cannon" later, and the old woman who sits dejectedly on the sofa among the broken walls in the movie "Dog Array" released this year, can all be said to be the "symbols" he often sees in his works when he scans the current bizarre world through the old man's turbid and blurred perspective.

The artistic delicacy of "Winter Solstice" is also reflected in the exquisiteness of many shots. He is good at using space and color difference to deal with the picture, so that the plot that is not very suspenseful can always firmly grasp the audience's attention. For example, at the beginning of the play, Dai Jia heard that her husband's bank was robbed. She walked out of the office in a daze, trotted all the way to the factory gate, and pedaled on the bicycle. In panic, she did not step on the pedals steadily the first time, and finally stepped on it the second time. The bicycle rode out of the alley crookedly... This series of actions was completed by a long shot, and such long shots or scenes that use depth of field to carry out multiple narratives at the same time can be said to be everywhere in the play, which can reflect the director's ability and intentions.

Screenshot of Winter Solstice

In the play, the unshakable Chen Yiping has the habit of keeping a diary. He wrote the day he stepped into darkness as "This day will be the winter solstice of my life." In line with the title of the play, on the winter solstice in the 24 solar terms, the sun shines directly on the Tropic of Capricorn, and the daytime in the northern hemisphere is the shortest and the night is the longest. The nights are long and the days are short, and there are more yin and less yang. Rewatching the TV series 20 years ago in the cold winter, I suddenly realized that this was originally a warning about the weather in the market.