Interview with Fang Shujian ｜ Arena of Life

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In 2018, Fang Shujian became famous with the popular variety show "Sound into the Heart". In the next two years, as a musical actor from Shanghai Conservatory of Music, Fang Shujian performed hundreds of musicals, from Letter, Van Gogh, My The Bucket List to Spring Shanghai 1949, and his works spread all over the country.

However, if measured by the dimension of time, his progress has also been divided by many stages of achievements, such as rehearsing the musical "Zhao Orphan", keeping a sound, and being selected for "Go online!" Huacai Teenager is among the players in the first draft of CCTV.

Although the current life course is not heavy, he has a strange sense of contradiction-as an artist, he believes in relative freedom and absolute purity, hoping to "live like himself." Similarly, the young man’s body rolls away, remoulds and is not disciplined, and those stubborn self condensed into his bones are also his "favorite and most hated character."

Fang Shujian, 22, described competition as his life proposition.

I don’t think there is perfect happiness

Black coat with adjustable hem:　　

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Tie: GUCCI

　Ice-breaking trip

The biggest event in the 2020 draft is "Go online!" hosted by CCTV. Huacai teenager. This program, dubbed by netizens as "CCTV Civil Servant Selection Site", all the contestants are famous school students from all over the world with rich talents. Before entering the formal competitive schedule, there is also a written test to assess the basic cultural literacy.

Fang Shujian, 22, once again returned to the CCTV stage as a contestant. The last time he came to CCTV competition, he was 11 years old, wearing a small red leather coat and skipping through a song "Little Boy". Eleven years passed in a blink of an eye, and in the debut of "Hua Cai Teenager", Fang Shujian’s competing work was "Yue Ren Ge". At that time, he was dressed in a white dress, pure and plain, and he sang, "There are trees on the mountain, and there are branches on the wood. I don’t know if I like you."

The Yue People’s Song is the same as Chu Ci, with delicate and subtle techniques and profound expressions. This combination of words and dances is extremely rare, and Fang Shujian won the "add color" of four instructors on the first stage.

Donnie Yen, the tutor, commented on his "juvenile maturity". There are personality reasons, as well as the blessing of acting experience and stage experience. Fang Shujian’s vocal competition variety "Sound into the Heart" in 2018 has entered the public eye and has a certain popularity base. At that time, fans called him "the little boy of the future", and felt that at the age of 20, he was always smiling and full of energy, which was the pistachio in the team.

And in "Go online! On the stage of "Hua Cai Teenager", it is a different scene. Mentors think he is very young, but his appearance and temperament have a serious end that does not belong to this age. The friends in the program group called him "Mr. Fang", thinking that he was sometimes cold and taciturn, and seemed to be an inaccessible object.

But in Fang Shujian’s own opinion, he was not like this earlier. During the recording of "Sound Into the Heart", he was very enthusiastic and wanted to make friends with everyone. However, after the recording of the program, I entered the entertainment industry, struggled to maintain a balance between my studies and my work, toured all over the country, and faced the unknown future alone as a student. Hard work is obvious, and maturity and pressure also leave a mark on him. "When I went to the society, I found that it was actually very difficult to make friends, so I sealed myself back."

Closure is a kind of self-protection, like wrapping a thick shell, as the only remaining safe area. For people with artistic talent, high sensitivity is both a gift and a burden. Socialization and work can sometimes be a headache. Besides, everything is brand-new. There is no ready-made answer to how to maintain it. You have to explore it yourself. "I will also encounter bad things and I don’t know what to do."　

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Fang Shujian is trying to digest and change. Participate in "Go online! Huacai Teenager is an opportunity. Almost all the players in it are under the age of 25, which is the youthful age. The enthusiasm and vitality of young people once again infected him. "Everyone is very fun, and I have slowly recovered that kind of’ young feeling’".

He described "Go online! Huacai Teenager is a program with many things to learn. The program group requires them to be versatile, not only to sing, but also to dance, to design beautiful dances, to write songs and choreograph, to do PPT and to rap. Once a person is engaged in busyness, his sense of defense will be gradually reduced, and the pressure will make the group condense into a community and share their past experiences with each other, which is exactly the opportunity for his shell to be pried open.

Fang Shujian is a native of Yiwu, Zhejiang Province. His childhood artistic enlightenment was the local tradition and Wu Opera. At the age of ten, he performed a ten-fold performance of Broken Bridge. There is a lyric in "Broken Bridge", "It is difficult to find a lady." -Going to the stage is also a rugged mountain road. To break through in the "fairy gathering together", it depends on the hard work that has been soaked in rhyme, expression and figure since childhood. Especially in the late stage of recording the program, he described that "everyone is hollowing out what he has accumulated in his life in the first ten or twenty years, which is very tiring, but it is also very rewarding".

Fang Shujian is very frank and does not hide his ambition. Go online at first! When he was in "Hua Cai Teenager", his goal was to achieve excellent results in the program and move towards a bigger stage. But as the recording time went on, my mind changed unconsciously. I still have to move forward, but I am no longer afraid of being compared with others. "The competition is just something that is moved to the table, and the results are directly produced. It is necessary to give the audience and themselves an explanation, but it will not end than this. People have spent their lives in invisible competition."

　Ice melting journey

He has become thinner since he joined the group in October. The name of Weibo was changed from "Fang Shujian in the future" to "Hua Cai Juvenile-Fang Shujian". Although there is a need for program publicity, the name change is also a fixed point. After "Sound Into People’s Hearts", his efforts have achieved results, and as a part of the future, he will show it to the audience in stages.

The mutual penetration of TV stage talent campaign variety and draft industry has already constituted an important part of the star-making mechanism in domestic entertainment circles. But it is undeniable that luck is also a key part of fame. Whether you can catch luck depends on whether the artists are ready.

Looking back two years after the broadcast of "Sound Into the Heart", Fang Shujian caught the bad luck brought by the program, relying on his consistent introspection and hard work. He is the eldest son of the family. As the eldest son of a family in the south, it is inevitable that a person will have a strong sense of order in temperament. Fang Shujian’s rigid end is obvious to all. In an interview, he said that the ability he wants most is to "control", and he wants to firmly grasp his emotions, mentality and development path.

The desire for control brought by the sense of order obviously bound him to a certain extent. Especially during the musical tour, no matter how late or tired he is every night, he has to repeat what he did today in his room, where he didn’t do it well and where he could do it better. The actor in the musical said that he was almost never late for rehearsal.

"Go online! The recording of the program "Hua Cai Teenager" is in a hurry, and at the same time, there is a conflict in the musical tour. Fang Shujian always has to catch up with the progress of the team members during the performance. I practice dancing in the interval of backstage waiting, afraid of delaying the progress of the same group. I always practice it several times and then take a video and send it to my personal choreographer for confirmation.

Work hard, be eager to learn, or live up to others’ hopes, and be a good student in others’ eyes-only then can you get praise. Especially in the two years after he became famous, he became an artist from an amateur, and was exposed to the spotlight and the public’s scrutiny, which made him even more unable to unload his tension. "I feel that I am afraid of making mistakes in everything, and I have to think about it before I dare to move forward."

After "Sound Into the Heart", Fang Shujian toured My The Bucket List nationwide in the second half of 2020, during which there was a rehearsal of "Zhao Orphan", "Go online! The recording of "Hua Cai Teenager" and the academic pressure of postgraduate entrance examination. High-intensity running around, let him really realize what is the pressure of survival in society. In the second year of playing Liu Bao, "My The Bucket List" toured 66 times in two years, and "Fang Liu Bao" moved from youth to maturity, and gained more understanding of the stage control.

In the past, Fang Shujian was most afraid of stage regret. "When I was young, I performed on stage, as long as I was cool, but now, there are too many things to think about. I am afraid that it is not good enough and not perfect enough. " That’s why he will try his best to control it, and he wants to be comprehensive and perfect. But in the past two years, I have traveled all over the country. Even if I am stubborn like him, I can’t clap my chest to ensure that every performance is perfect. Therefore, the tense nerves have also loosened. "If you like things again, you will achieve this level again and again, and your mood will change."

This change is accumulated bit by bit, and Fang Shujian realized later that maturity is not necessarily a complete realization, but a little self-knowledge: "I used to want to be perfect, but now I expect myself to go all out, regardless of the result."

In two years, this relaxation slowly seeped out of his shell. He also knows that there is no real absolute freedom and perfection. "I have been luckier than many people. Many people can’t really pursue what they want to do all their lives, and I am already doing it."

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　Go straight ahead and go to the future.

After the musical Van Gogh was performed last year, Fang Shujian decided not to take on character plays in the short term. "Because the proposition is too big to play a person’s life, where did I live?" Fang Shujian knows the boundaries of his ability. It is a young man’s courage for the future to rush, try and make mistakes and even bear the cost of trial and error within the controllable range.

Earlier, when he had some attention, he also thought about different attempts. He thought about staying in school to be a teacher and helping more people to get in touch with vocal music art and musicals. But now it has changed. "I want a bigger stage, a very big one. I still remember the feeling of singing on the stage of the Great Hall of the People." He is looking forward to going out, making movies, seeing the world, and becoming an artist who can give concerts in the gym.

After two years of experience, Fang Shujian has become more relaxed than before and has strengthened his own path. He doesn’t want to be disciplined and wants relative freedom, but in the era of fan economy, this appeal is not "smart".

The place where public figures are located is a harsh system where magnesium lights and magnifying glasses coexist. The safest way is to converge and quietly accept scrutiny and definition. Fang Shujian debuted at the age of 20, with no team and no public relations. The "thorn in the head" revealed this year has clashed with this value system.

He doesn’t know how to express himself properly under the gaze, and he doesn’t know how to keep the distance from his fans. Coupled with being closed and reticent, I don’t like to explain myself, so I face all kinds of whirlpool of public opinion. "Many times I really want to be myself, but sometimes the expectations of others will contradict your expectations of yourself."

Fang Shujian was troubled by this, and silently shouldered the cost of trial and error again and again, accepting the accusation of "uncontrollable". But at the same time, of course, he cherishes fans’ feelings. Thousands of letters are piled up at home, and when they are empty, they will be turned over, which will also be touched by the hearts of many fans. However, the tension in his bones and the disordered state of mind always exist, which constitutes a sense of contradiction that is hard to ignore.

At the beginning, the little boy in Yiwu Baolian Primary School was always running hard, being diligent and lovable. I want to be a good boy in everyone’s eyes, clever, obedient, sensible, filial and never worrying. However, this goodness defined by universal values is usually no longer associated with coolness in the eyes of peers, but is more isolated from the crowd and even bullied by the collective.

Fang Shujian rarely mentioned this past, but the influence of the past always exists. After gaining the freedom to grasp life to a certain extent, he doesn’t want to bother to please people. With the passage of time, he gradually learned to adjust himself, and was tempered by society, and he already had the ability to sort out contradictions. "It was very difficult at first. I don’t know how to explain myself, so I’ll take practical action."

Especially recording "Go online! After Hua Cai Teenager, he began to be more willing to express and pour out his feelings with people around him. From the beginning, he went to eat on his own in the program, and he didn’t talk to the players very much. At the end of the recording, he fought with the members and forged a "revolutionary friendship." He described it as "gradually becoming a younger self".

"Go online! At the end of Huacai Boys, the director group wrote him a long letter, ending with: "People don’t have to ask the little boy if he has grown up, because Fang Shujian belongs to the future."

Fang Shujian likes this sentence because it lies in the "future".

His life, so far, has been inseparable from the competition, but after those assured and tight rests on the stage, he has learned to reconcile with himself slowly. As long as you move forward, there will inevitably be collisions and falls, but Fang Shujian knows that he can only grasp the process.

Fang Shujian already has his own answers to the worries and loneliness of those teenagers who are hiding under enthusiasm, those who are "too direct and unflattering" and deep thinking outside the stage.

Q

A

ICONSPRO: Do you think love is a kind of pressure?

Fang Shujian:The pressure of love, this kind of love will always accompany, praise and controversy will come together, and we must have the ability to distinguish. I hope I can get better and better, and I hope I can have a better platform to do what I want.

ICONSPRO: Do you feel powerful?

Fang Shujian:How strong a person looks, how fragile his heart is. I am.

ICONSPRO: Take part in Go Online! Did you get anything from "Hua Cai Teenager"?

Fang Shujian:Never feel that you are enough. People who are better than you are everywhere. When you feel that you can’t do better than me, someone will definitely come out and beat you.

ICONSPRO: Is the process important or the result important to you now?

Fang Shujian:It’s already changing. I used to think the result was more important, but I participated in "Go online!" After "Hua Cai Teenager", I feel that the process of this stage is more enjoyable for me. Because there are too many things in the competition, which are cruel and professional, such as dancing, folk art, opera, singing and so on, many things are compared together, which is the similarity of art and brings people resonance. The audience thinks that I am moved by you, so I will add color to you. So in fact, compared to the end, I realized what I had learned in the process of watching it, and finally let me get something. So after the recording, I think now I will think that the process is more important than the result.

Venue/North Wind November

Photography/Chengjiu

Special thanks/photographer Nov

Special thanks/Gu Xiang

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