EGRV 37 | Skywalker

[It was rather like himself back in the day.]

When Gao Yi walked into the ski shop on crutches, it was already close to closing time. Only a single light was left on at the front desk, and the shop was empty. He walked a few steps further in before spotting Chi Yu in the storeroom. The man was wearing sweatpants and, despite the cold, just a sports t-shirt. With his right arm in a sling, he was standing on one leg on an overturned balance ball, doing stability training for his left ankle.

The balance ball was used to simulate the instability of a snowboard. And his left foot had always been his weaker one. This was a common problem for right-foot-forward riders to begin with, and his left ankle had also gone through injury and rehabilitation. His hand was injured, but training couldn’t stop.

Gao Yi watched him do twenty single-leg squats in one go, all on the wobbly balance ball, and mentally exclaimed, “Damn, impressive.” When he was in Banff, he could only do ten.

Only after he finished a set did Gao Yi call out to him again.

This time, Chi Yu heard him. Seeing who it was, he quickly came out to greet him, “Why didn’t you call? I would’ve helped you bring your board down.”

Gao Yi had brought his skis to get a storage wax. Without a doubt, after breaking his leg, his ski season was over.

Gao Yi couldn’t help but find the sight of him amusing. 

“Look at the two of us, one with only one arm, the other with only one leg, and you’re still helping me…”

Before he could finish, Xiang Weiwei, following behind him, carried Gao Yi’s two pairs of skis through the door. The skis were heavy, and Chi Yu hurried over to lend a hand.

As soon as Xiang Weiwei saw him, she asked, “How’s the arm? Does it hurt?”

Chi Yu answered honestly, “It started hurting after the competition. But I slept in for two days, and it’s much better now.”

Gao Yi, however, was concerned about something else. He asked, “That night, did you tell him? How… how did he react?”

Chi Yu’s eyes dropped, and he didn’t make a sound. He had heard Gao Yi was just coming for a storage wax; how could he not have guessed the couple was here to fish for information. 

“…I didn’t. Something… something came up later, so I didn’t say anything.”

“You…” Gao Yi hadn’t expected such an answer and pressed anxiously, “What happened?”

What exactly happened, that dark night two days ago, Liang Muye’s face pressed against his ankle bone, whispering “it’s all yours” while taking him in his mouth. Every time Chi Yu thought of it these past two days, he would blush. But when he opened his WeChat conversation with the man, the chat history was still stuck at the time he picked him up before the competition. He hadn’t reached out to him once.

Before he got out of the car, he and Liang Muye had reached a verbal agreement. Over the past two days, he had replayed their conversation in his head countless times. If he hadn’t misunderstood, it meant that from now on, he would teach Liang Muye for free, and the man would continue to sleep with him as “repayment.” But he had overlooked the fact that he was still injured. It would be at least three or four weeks before the cast came off.

Seeing his embarrassment, Xiang Weiwei nudged Gao Yi and proactively changed the subject.

It wasn’t until the two of them were out the door that Xiang Weiwei gave Gao Yi a good scolding.

“What else could have happened? Just use your brain and think about what could have happened.”

Gao Yi was completely bewildered.

“What? Hey, hey, don’t hit me! My leg’s already broken, these two arms are all I have left.”

“Did you see his…” Xiang Weiwei lifted her long neck and pointed to the left side of her own.

In that spot on Chi Yu, there was a purple hickey. It was too obvious.

Only Gao Yi would fail to see it.

“Maybe… it wasn’t him…” Gao Yi thought about Liang Muye, then about Chi Yu. The mental image was a bit too much for him, and he gave up.

The snow on the day of the WinterLasts competition wasn’t an isolated weather event. The next day, it rained intermittently in Squamish. Zheng Chenglin helped Liang Muye drive the car back to the city. The two had a simple meal and discussed future plans over a map.

Afterward, Liang Muye took him to a camera equipment store. He had traveled light, bringing almost nothing besides clothes and a laptop, and certainly no camera. When he had tested lenses before, he had used Zheng Chenglin’s own DSLR.

Liang Muye wandered around for a while, then suddenly asked him, “Do you want to be on the big screen?”

Zheng Chenglin thought for a long moment before speaking, “Yes, I want to participate in the Beijing Mountain Outdoor Film Festival. You… you must know about it.”

Not only did he know about it, the mini-documentary “Life is a Mountain,” which he had directed, filmed, edited, and done all the post-production for himself at the age of twenty, had even won the Newcomer Award that year.

Zheng Chenglin added, “Right now, I’m just shooting some training clips. The real preparation will start when I get back to Guizhou. I don’t dare to think too far ahead.”

Liang Muye nodded, speaking as he walked, “I know. But if you want to be on the big screen, the filming style and image quality of every part must be as consistent as possible, 4K high-definition from start to finish. You can use a C300 to shoot, but you must pair it with a cinema lens. When you get to Guizhou, you’ll need the same setup.”

“Considering you’ll need to shoot B-roll life scenes and close-up portraits for interviews, while also covering the rock climbing scenes, the focal length and depth of field requirements for these are all different. A 17-120mm would be more suitable. If the equipment allows, you could even set up a fixed camera and just find a couple of film school students to watch it.”

“For long shots, you could consider a BMD URSA with an ultra-telephoto lens. But this camera is quite delicate; you’d have to buy one and have a spare. The weather in Guizhou isn’t great, and the URSA needs a lot of light, so you might end up having to use the C300 after all. Then there’s the issue of sound recording, which is more troublesome…”

He sketched out a plan for him as they walked, but was interrupted by Zheng Chenglin. 

“Muye… are you really not considering coming to Guizhou?”

Zheng Chenglin’s question wasn’t like Wang Nan’ou’s. Wang Nan’ou was too familiar with him and could ask him the same thing in a hundred different ways. Even if he was rejected, he would ask again next time. Zheng Chenglin’s questions counted. Liang Muye had already refused once, yet he still asked a second time.

Liang Muye smiled and shook his head. 

“There are so many good outdoor photographers in China. And there are definitely plenty of people who want to film an extreme project like free soloing.”

Liang Muye picked up a Canon C300 Mark II and a Canon 17-120mm cinema lens. As he was checking out, he glanced at a nearby cabinet—that’s where the equipment more commonly used by amateur photography enthusiasts was displayed. He swiped his card again and picked up a Nikon D850.

After renting the equipment, the two returned to the house, packed their bags, and drove through the night to Squamish.

When Liang Muye took out his phone to navigate, he accidentally tapped the wrong part of the screen, landing on the contacts page.

A small dot lit up on the official Apple Maps. Chi Yu still had his location shared with him. Judging by the coordinates, he was at the ski shop in town.

Chi Yu wasn’t as crazy as he had thought. With a fractured elbow, he definitely couldn’t go up the mountain for a while, unable to teach lessons or guide students, so he could only work shifts at the shop. After he finished his business here and returned from Squamish, he could go find him at the shop. Skiing together was out, but they could at least have a meal. That night, the guy had been so focused on drinking, it seemed he hadn’t eaten much at all.

Liang Muye thought to himself that watching Chi Yu eat was quite satisfying, even more so than eating a gourmet meal himself.

The next day, after the rain stopped, Liang Muye and Zheng Chenglin returned to the mountains of Squamish.

They were the third car to arrive. While they were still counting the length of their ropes at the base of the mountain, Zhong Yanyun was already coming down from the rock face, his head covered in sweat and his body in dust, a look of excitement in his eyes.

“Yige and I did a free solo this morning, the 5.8 next to it.”

A 5.8 was indeed too easy for those two, and it was a route they had learned the beta for yesterday. Zheng Chenglin knew Liang Muye didn’t film free soloing and was a little apprehensive. He turned to look at Liang Muye, but the latter showed little emotion, merely nodding.

In fact, there was an unwritten rule between the two of them: Zhong Yanyun would never tell him in advance when he was going to free solo.

Zheng Chenglin said, “Then… let’s start shooting.”

The practice route they were to officially film had been given the punny name “Skywalker”* by a Star Wars fan. It was known as one of Squamish’s most classic and beautiful traverses, with a total of five pitches and a maximum difficulty of 5.9. The route was a long traverse, and from the starting point, the finishing point of the climb was not visible.

Zhong Yanyun then said, “Bring the topo over, let me see. I’ll help you clip the quickdraws first, drop the static rope, and set up the protection at the turning points.” This route couldn’t be accessed by circling around to the top from behind. Either the photographer had to climb up with their equipment, or someone had to redpoint it first, find a solid spot to place a cam, and then drop the rope to haul the photographer up.

But Liang Muye said, “Wait a moment.”

Zheng Chenglin looked up again, almost thinking that Liang Muye was about to bail just from hearing the words “free solo.”

But the man pointed to the rock face and said, “Traverses are hard to shoot. Just looking at it like this, I can’t tell which angle would be best for a fixed camera. I need to climb it myself.”

A long-absent smile appeared in Zhong Yanyun’s eyes. He didn’t ask any more questions, simply saying, “Okay. Then let’s go together. I’ll lead?”

But Liang Muye said, “I can do it. You rest down here for a while.”

Before Zheng Chenglin could react, he had already taken off his jacket, put on his shoes, and was sitting on the ground counting his cams. “Skywalker” was a traditional climbing route; there were no bolts on the rock face. Therefore, the task of the lead climber was more arduous. Not only did they have to climb up, but they also had to place protection points along the way.

Once Liang Muye started climbing, Zhong Yanyun focused on belaying him.

Zheng Chenglin whispered from the side, “Hasn’t Muye not touched rock in three years? A few weeks ago at Tianxian Waterfall in Miyun, I asked him if he wanted to climb, and he said no.”

“Maybe he wasn’t feeling it that day,” Zhong Yanyun fed him a meter of rope, mentally calculating the length, and looked down again to check Liang Muye’s figure-eight knot. 

“He knows what he’s doing.”

As they were talking, Liang Muye, suspended more than twenty meters in the air, executed a dyno (a dynamic move) to latch onto a handhold to the side. The hold on the other side of the rock wall was whitened with chalk from other climbers who had been there that morning, making it feel a bit like an open-book test.

“I don’t know what’s gotten into him lately, maybe he’s feeling it now? Watching you guys climb must have made his hands itch,” Zheng Chenglin said, secretly wishing that this feeling of Liang Muye’s would last until he returned to China, and hopefully, he would be moved enough to decide to go to Guizhou with them.

The traverse section wasn’t too high off the ground. Having not climbed in three years, Liang Muye was very conservative when placing protection, estimating that the maximum fall distance would be only one or two meters. It was slow, but each step had to be steady.

The excited look on Zhong Yanyun’s face after he came back from his free solo route did indeed remind him of his own youth. He knew very well in his heart that if he had really made up his mind not to climb, he could have filmed it one way or another. This was just the training phase, and it was at a different location, so there was no need to strive for perfection.

But a voice inside him said, “Go try it, it’s no big deal.”

After he finished the fourth pitch, there was a natural recess in the rock wall, and inside the recess was a protruding boulder, like an eye in its socket. The locals called this “The Eye of God.” He stood there, waiting for Zhong Yanyun to catch up.

From this vantage point, to his right was a dense, lush forest, and to his left, the vast bay. The rising sun was chasing away the morning mist. The moments on the rock face were always absolutely serene for him. Suspended in mid-air, he could see the tangible and intangible around him more clearly.

Conquest, possession, attraction—they were essentially the same feeling. Thinking back now, the way Chi Yu had looked at him that night was no different from the look he had after skiing down from the top of the Diamond Bowl and taking off his goggles. It was a kind of desperation to have something, a drive to burn himself to seize fate in his hands, all for one competition, one chance, one moment.

He had previously thought that this look reminded him of a young, dream-chasing Chen Nian, but it wasn’t Chen Nian, nor Zhong Yanyun, nor anyone else. It was rather like himself back in the day.