Huayu: A master director who debuted as a singer

Emerging from the Gongbei Customs, Zheng Hui carried his luggage bag and weaved through the bustling crowd. At the border gate square, unlicensed taxi drivers soliciting passengers, smugglers dragging large bags, and hurried commuters mingled together.

He didn't stop and went straight to the bus stop.

The scenery outside the car window rushed past. At this time, Macau did not yet have the later, glittering mega-casino complexes. The Lisboa Hotel remained a landmark, standing tall on the bay.

Back in Fai Chi Kei, a piece of reclaimed land, Zheng Hui stood downstairs and looked up. Several mosaic tiles on the exterior wall had fallen off, revealing the gray-black cement underneath.

I went upstairs and opened the door. The 50-square-meter room had two bedrooms and a living room, the layout of which was rather cramped. After placing a sofa and a dining table in the living room, you had to tuck in your stomach to turn around.

For the next few days, Zheng Hui got up early every day to go out and queue up.

In the days before one-stop services were available, handling inheritance was a troublesome matter.

He first went to the Civil Registry, obtained the death certificate, and cancelled his household registration. Next, he went to the Finance Bureau, where stamp duty was required for inheriting the property.

Then came the bank. Zheng Hui watched as the numbers on his passbook were cleared to zero and then transferred to his own account.

HKD 53,200. (Although Macau has its own pataca, residents mostly use Hong Kong dollars, and many documents, such as wills, are calculated in Hong Kong dollars.)

Adding the few hundred yuan he had left in his pocket, that was all the liquid funds he had.

Finally, at the property registration bureau, the name on the property certificate was changed to Zheng Hui.

On June 5th, all the procedures were finally completed.

Zheng Hui sat in a booth at the downstairs tea restaurant, where a waiter brought him a glass of iced lemon tea and a pork chop bun.

While eating his pork chop bun, Zheng Hui was thinking about what to do next. What could he do with 50,000 yuan?

To become a director?

In this era dominated by film, movies were expensive industrial products.

A roll of Kodak 5219 film, 400 feet long, can shoot about four minutes of footage. Including the processing and transfer costs, even if not a single inch of film is wasted, just recording the images would cost 50,000 NTD, which is enough to buy dozens of tapes.

This amount of film isn't even enough to shoot a Category III film.

Not to mention the cameras, lights, tracks, and cranes.

There are still people.

Macau doesn't have a film industry. It only has cameramen for television stations, who can shoot news and weddings, but making movies? Those are two completely different things.

If we want to assemble a film crew, we have to hire someone from Hong Kong.

The Hong Kong film industry values ​​mentorship and patronage.

These days, which director from Hong Kong and Taiwan you can think of didn't have a mentor? Want to be a director? Go apprentice on a film set for a few years first.

There are stuntmen like Jackie Chan's Stunt Team and Sammo Hung's Stunt Team, and lighting and photography teams also have their own factions. A young man from out of town, with no fame, no background, and no money, went to Hong Kong with 50,000 yuan, but couldn't even hire a proper production assistant.

And those established lighting technicians and photographers are even more arrogant. Without strong connections, they simply won't take your job. Even if they do, they'll take advantage of your lack of expertise, drag their feet, and take kickbacks, squandering your 50,000 yuan in just a few days.

Moreover, without any backing or support, even if the film is made, there's nowhere to show it.

The cinema chains are controlled by a few giants: Golden Harvest, Cinema City, and Win's Entertainment.

Which company would give screenings to an amateur director?

As for pursuing an independent film route and submitting films to foreign film festivals?

Submitting films to film festivals nowadays requires recommenders, distribution channels, and public relations expenses. Even mainland China has to go through channels like the Beijing Film Academy, let alone Hong Kong and Taiwan.

Should I send the mother tape over?

It will most likely be thrown directly into the trash can, without even a chance to be opened; it's doomed.

Zheng Hui picked up his iced lemon tea and took a sip. He decided to give up being a director and find something else to do first.

His gaze casually swept over a newspaper left behind by a guest on the table next to him.

Macao Daily News.

On the newspaper's supplement page, there was a colorful GG printed on it.

It was a soccer ball with the French tricolor flag in the background.

The title, printed in bold, read: "Battle for France – 1998 World Cup Prediction: The Whole City is in a Frenzy."

Below is a densely packed odds table and match schedule.

Brazil, France, the Netherlands, Croatia…

Zheng Hui's gaze was fixed on the soccer ball pattern.

June 1998, the World Cup in France.

For most people, it's just a quadrennial sporting extravaganza. But for Macau, a city where gambling is legal, it's a money-fueled carnival for everyone.

But for Zheng Hui, it was different.

The database in his mind stirred; it contained all the images and data from the past and future.

Movies, TV series, music videos, GoG, and—documentaries.

Zheng Hui closed his eyes.

The bustling tea restaurant fell silent instantly, and the surrounding noise receded like the tide.

In the darkness, a beam of light appeared.

That's the beam of light from the projector.

A documentary titled "Golden Cup and Glory: The Official Documentary of the 1998 World Cup" began to play in his mind.

The screen showed the schedule and scoreboard; the opening match was Brazil against Scotland.

Sampaio scored in the fourth minute, and Scotland's Collins equalized with a penalty in the thirty-eighth minute.

In the 73rd minute, Boyd scored an own goal, making the final score 2-1.

Continue turning the page.

Morocco vs. Norway, 2-2.

Italy vs. Chile, 2:2.

Cameroon vs. Austria, 1-1.

The results of those matches flowed through his mind one after another, especially the unexpected upsets that no one could have predicted.

Everyone thought Spain would win against Nigeria. And what happened?

2: 3.

Nigeria won. What are the odds for this match?

And then there was that famous red card battle, England vs. Argentina.

The regular time ratio is 2:2.

All the data, all the scores, even who received red and yellow cards, are clearly recorded in this documentary.

Finally, in the final, Brazil faced France, losing 0-3, and the scoreboard remained unchanged.

The French team lifted the World Cup trophy, and golden confetti flew everywhere.

Zheng Hui withdrew from his mind. At the next table, the uncle was loudly discussing how the Brazilian team, with Ronaldo the alien, was guaranteed to win the championship.

"Brazil is a sure win even if they give a one-goal handicap! Betting on Brazil is definitely the right choice!" The uncle was spitting as he waved his betting book around.

Zheng Hui not only knew who won, but he also knew the exact score of every game, who scored the goal, and the minute in which the red and yellow cards were issued.

In the world of gambling, guessing the winner is a game for elementary school students, with pitifully low odds.

Predicting the score (correct score) is the real source of huge profits, especially for those unexpected scores.

The current odds show France beating Brazil 3-0 very high. This is because the whole world favors Brazil, with Ronaldo, and nobody believes France can thrash the Samba Army by such a large margin.

And then there's Croatia, this dark horse that stormed all the way to the semi-finals, with a string of upsets, each one a goldmine.

This World Cup is said to be the one with the most serious match-fixing allegations. But that's just as well; it won't have a butterfly effect because he bet tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars.