Global Film Emperor

Chapter 258 "The Little Bird with Broken Wings"

"Is everything ready? Song Guiyuan! What are you dawdling for? Hurry up! We're just waiting for you! Put on your wings! Lu Ze, give me a hand!"

People do get weak in middle age, and Song Guiyuan is a prime example. The prop was quite heavy, and after wearing it for a while, he started sweating. He was drinking mineral water when Director Chen shouted, which startled him so much that he almost choked on his water.

"Okay! Okay! Coming right away! Lu Ze, you're not tying it right. It'll be a disaster if your arm falls off. Xiao Zhang, come and tie it for me. Wait a minute, let me have a drink of water. Lu Ze, don't look at me. You look like a big green eggplant. I'm afraid I can't hold it in."

Lu Ze's hands suddenly froze, and he suddenly felt suffocated. He stared at Song Guiyuan for two seconds, clenched his fists, and suddenly punched Song Guiyuan hard in the back. If you don't teach this bastard a lesson, he'll keep spewing filth.

But Lu Ze's current look is indeed hard to resist. His face is covered in green paint, and he's wearing a brown tree trunk. His head is covered in fake tree branches with leaves, making him look yellowish-green.

It's not like no one has played the role of Tree Brother before, but this is Lu Ze after all. Whenever Song Guiyuan sees Lu Ze dressed like this, he can't help but want to laugh.

Although he wasn't much better off.
"It's 1:57! Everyone who's going on stage, hurry backstage! There are three minutes left before the show starts! We have a lot of kids here today, the seats are full, don't let them down! Give it your all!"

Upon hearing that there were only three minutes left, everyone perked up and became serious. The narrator took a sip of water, picked up her script, and sat up straight. Then, the red curtain slowly opened.

"Spring has arrived. The ancient trees have sprouted new buds, the ice on the stream has begun to melt, and look, the father and mother birds have also flown back from the south."

Birdsong came from the speakers, attracting the audience's attention. Then, Song Guiyuan and Xiao Wang, dressed in costumes, ran back and forth on the stage and finally sat in the middle of the stage. The adults found it a bit incongruous, as they had never seen a bird with a beer belly before. It must be because the food in the south is so good.

"We need a home, so we need to build a house."

"Yes, Father Bird, we do need a house."

The dialogue is repetitive, which is intentional. After all, their audiences are different. Ordinary children may understand it after one listen, but adults may not. With this in mind, the screenwriter made some adjustments to the dialogue.

Narrator: "The father bird brought twigs and pebbles, and the mother bird brought fresh soil. Soon, their home was built, and the two little birds rested in their warm nest."

"Daddy Bird, I think I'm pregnant. No, I'm sure I'm pregnant."

"Really? Then I'm going to be a dad! That's wonderful!"

After saying that, Song Guiyuan flapped his wings and ran wildly on the stage. Lu Ze, backstage, could see the sweat dripping from his chin onto the ground. He was so tired after running just a few steps. Lu Ze couldn't help but shake his head, picked up a tissue, carefully lifted his bangs, and wiped the sweat from his forehead.

"The father bird informed his good friends: the squirrel, the deer, and the woodpecker. They were all very happy for the father and mother bird. Soon, the mother bird laid an egg, and she began to take care of the little bird that was about to hatch with all her heart. The father bird was responsible for finding food for the mother bird. And so, the days passed by."

The curtain slowly closed, and the staff quickly set up the scene. The person playing the bird crawled into the "bird egg" and was pushed to the center of the stage by the staff. The paper with the bird egg drawn on it was replaced. However, the person playing the bird was no longer the child on the poster, but a petite senior female student from the Beijing Academy of Drama.

Narrator: "One day, the baby bird was about to be born. The father bird's friends also came to see the birth of the baby bird. Everyone craned their necks and waited quietly."

"Eek~ Eek~ Ya!"

The actor inside the egg had the eggshell on his head, and from the outside, it looked like he was bulging up, then going down, then bulging up again. After this happened several times, the little bird crawled out of the egg, waved to the audience, and the other actors on stage jumped up excitedly.

Lu Ze turned his gaze to the audience. As the little bird was about to be born, he noticed that almost all the children were watching the stage intently. When the little bird finally came out, many children exclaimed "Wow!" This was a good sign, indicating that at least these children understood, or at least most of, what was meant.

Narrator: "Everyone was very happy that the father and mother bird had a baby, and they celebrated the two little birds. However, they soon noticed that the little bird's wings were a bit strange."

"Oh my god! Its wings are broken! It can't fly!" the deer shouted, pointing at the bird's wings, and the other animals echoed his words.

"Yes, it can't fly anymore!"

Zhang Min had been watching Dingding's expression closely. Seeing him staring intently at the stage, she couldn't help but feel a little excited. This child was usually uninterested in anything at home. Sometimes, when Zhang Min saw news reports of children addicted to mobile games, she would even think, "How wonderful it would be if Dingding could be addicted to games too!"
This was the first time he had shown such focus on something, which brought some light to his otherwise confused and narrow mind. Zhang Min's gaze shifted to the other parents, and she found that quite a few people shared the same feelings as her.

The father bird angrily chased away his friend, looked down at the little bird with the broken wing, and began to talk to the mother bird.

“Its wing is broken, so it can’t come back south with us. It will freeze to death in the winter. I think we shouldn’t keep it and should have another baby bird.”

"I disagree! This is my child!"

"But it can't fly!"

"Does it mean it's not a bird if it can't fly?"

The two birds got into a fight, and in the end, the father bird flew away in anger, leaving the mother bird to hold her baby and cry.

This sentence didn't have much impact on the children, and they didn't even understand its meaning. But the four sentences struck the parents' minds like a lightning bolt, making a loud bang.

Why abandon it? Does it cease to be a bird just because it can't fly? Does a child cease to be human if he/she isn't intelligent?

Actually, it wasn't just Wang Min who was informed by her doctor during her prenatal checkup that her child might have a birth defect; most of the parents here were in the same boat. Modern medical technology is very advanced; a 3D or 4D ultrasound can generally detect any defects in a child. But even so, these parents still brought their children into the world. This matter cannot be judged by a simple right or wrong answer. Is giving a child the right to live wrong? Or is it right to let a child with a birth defect come into the world to suffer?

This question is unanswerable; it's inherently unsolvable. If you give birth, the child might regret living; if you don't give birth, the parents might regret letting the child die.

This is the most unfair thing in the world. People are all people, and they will all have regrets. But the size and amount of regrets are always different. Someone will always pay the price for it, just like the people in the theater and the family of three on the stage.

The baby bird was completely unaware of the argument between its parents and grew up healthily under its mother's careful care. However, it never managed to fly.

It can only run on the ground and play with the children it knows on the ground, such as a squirrel, a pony, and a turtle. However, all of its friends treat it like a chick.

Whenever its friends call it that, it always loudly clarifies to them, because its mother bird always tells it that it is a bird, not a chicken, just like it is now.

"Little chick, little chick, let's go play."

"I'm not a chicken! I'm a bird!"

"No! You're not a bird! Birds can fly. Can you fly?"

When the little bird was asked this question by its friends, it was always speechless. It could only go home dejectedly and complain to its mother why it couldn't fly. It wanted to fly too and prove that it was a bird. But the mother bird couldn't give it an answer and could only hold it and cry.

This resonated deeply with the parents in the audience, and bursts of sobbing could be heard from time to time. Zhang Min's heart was breaking. This scene had a profound impact on her, because just half a month earlier, she had to discuss work and left Dingding in an indoor children's playground for the staff to look after. When she picked Dingding up from the meeting and took him home, Dingding asked her a question in the car, his speech unclear and his expression very ambiguous.

"Mom, what is a fool?"

She was like the mother bird, unable to provide an answer.

The mother bird didn't answer her chick, which made the chick very sad. But soon, it forgot its worries about not being able to fly and played happily with its friends until autumn arrived, when the parents had to fly south.
"Mom and Dad, where are you going?"

"In a few days, we're going to fly south to spend the winter there."

"what about me?"

"You can stay here and wait for us to come back, or fly south with us."

The father bird's honest abandonment and the mother bird's silence left the chick bewildered. Gradually, it stopped denying that it was a chick, because it truly couldn't fly.

"Damn it! What kind of fairy tale is this? It's more like assimilation."

Don't use foul language in front of children.

Not far away, Zhang Min overheard a conversation between a couple. She also felt this scene wasn't a fairy tale, but rather particularly ironic. She had read the original fairy tale, and it didn't involve the bird acknowledging it was a chick, which was why she felt comfortable bringing Dingding to see it. The children wouldn't understand this scene, but in the parents' eyes, it was truly dark, until Lu Ze entered the scene.
When the green-faced monster came on stage, no one recognized the tree spirit as Lu Ze. They just thought he was an ordinary actor, standing next to the little bird and speaking softly.

"Little bird, little bird, winter is coming soon, why don't you go south?"

"Brother Tree, I am not a bird, I am a chick."

"How could you be a chick? Your mother was a bird. I watched your mother give birth to you, there's no mistake."

"But I can't fly."

"Because you've never tried to fly. You've only heard your parents and friends say you can't fly. How can you know if you don't try?"

"Can I fly?"

"why not?"

Upon hearing this, the little bird stood on a high place. It had never thought of jumping from such a high place before, but thinking of its parents, it finally made up its mind, spread its wings, and tried to fly.

The actress was suspended by wires and flew above the stage. At first, she wobbled a bit and fell to the ground amidst gasps from the audience, but she quickly stood up again, as if she had overcome her fear of flying, and returned to the high point, attempting to fly again and again.

Finally, it soared in the sky, clumsy but still managed to fly. Amidst the children's exclamations of surprise, it reunited with its father and mother birds and flew south in front of its friends.

The forty-minute play performance has ended.

"."

(End of this chapter)