Longxi, Gansu Province, has the same bleak background as most counties in the northwest, and the backward and dilapidated scene will inevitably make people tired.
Fifteen years ago, when Zheng Yifei, who failed the college entrance examination, set up a stall near the Longxi Drum Tower, he met a big sponge that looked like a "monster".
Back in 2022, Zheng Yifei's documentary "Waste Story" was born, and the protagonist is his long-time friend Big Sponge.
Sponge dropped out of middle school, was too obese, had lip nails and long hair, didn't work, and lay in a garbage heap all day long, singing raps that people around him didn't understand.
Zheng Yifei is in his thirties, insists on making documentaries, and his life is not good, and he is regarded as a "waste" by his father.
This ** was filmed for 5 years. Zheng Yifei and Sponge are not just the relationship between the director and the subject. They are friends, but also witnesses of each other's growth, and together they have been "wasted" in a small town for a long time.
But are they really rubbish?
As written in the judges' recommendation for the FIRST Youth Film Festival:
This film captures the restlessness and emptiness of this era, the pathos of anger and not finding an object of anger.
A few days ago, director Zheng Yifei told me about the days when they did "waste".
The encounter between the two "wastes" occurred in 2009, when 18-year-old Zheng Yifei was preparing to repeat her studies, while setting up a stall in the area of the Drum Tower in Longxi County, selling toys for children to play with, and sleeping in her brother-in-law's van at night. In this familiar land, he met the teenager Sponge. Sponge looks like a weirdo, with a fat build, messy long hair, lip studs, imitating Michael Jackson's space dance steps, humming and rapping with words in his mouth, and is a flexible fat man. 
Sponges in everyday life |Photo provided by the interviewee The sponge of "not doing business" has been made for six years**, which is not known. He knows that in this era, you have to be famous, and only by being famous can you make money. He picked up his mobile phone and started live broadcasting, engaging in impromptu rap on it, the sponge often encounters people who find fault, he will scold back excitedly, the voice is very loud, and the words are intense: "You come, you say I can't do it, then you come, don't pay attention to me like this!" There's only one thing I'm doing right now, and that's to be real, my truest state! ”
After a while, the sponge will calm down again, and calculate the income of the day, a total of more than a dozen yuan, the cost of a meal. 
Sponge Zheng Yifei, who sang live at the end, was deeply attracted to this maverick boy as a gentle idealist. Sponge is 6 years younger than Zheng Yifei, and he can be regarded as the same age, and the two became friends and often wandered together in Longxi County at night. For his hometown of Longxi, Sponge said that it is full of endless loneliness. Sponge's own loneliness is even more pronounced, he is not a lucky man. When he was in elementary school, he bought a grilled sausage on his way home from school, but unfortunately contracted purpura, and later was overused by doctors with hormones, causing him to be severely obese. 
Teenage sponge |Photo courtesy of the interviewee, everything is falling irretrievably. His fat body makes Sponge ridiculed and bullied at school, and his parents don't understand him. The adolescent boy is already sensitive in his heart, and finally he decides to drop out of middle school, leave his parents, and live alone, living in an old house, playing the piano and singing. The meaning of resistance gradually changed from listening to singing. Sponge's talent may come from his father, who is a school security guard and likes to play the violin. In winter, Sponge always wears a red, yellow and green color-blocked scarf around his neck, which is the representative color of Bob Marley, the father of reggae. No one in the northwest county knows this, and they always treat him as an outlier. 
After Zheng Yifei, who failed the college entrance examination, was admitted to Northwest University for Nationalities, he originally wanted to apply for a journalism major, but he became a reporter in the future, but because of his average grades, he was transferred to the Tibetan major. When he was in college, he wrote ** scripts, helped in the drama club, and later met documentary director Zhang Nan, who often helped out, and also lived with him, participated in the filming of the documentary "The Ballad of the Yellow River", and learned a lot of things. In 2014, in the noisy summer of cicadas, the hibiscus flowers were blooming, Zheng Yifei dragged his bags, carried 200 yuan, and took the train to Beijing alone. Later, he rented a shared partition of only 4 square meters, a rent of 1,000 yuan a month, no windows, no sunlight, and barely fit a single bed. This cramped living environment makes people feel depressed, and life is bitter, but fortunately, the dream is finally reflected into life. 
Zheng Yifei's residence |Photo provided by the interviewee In Beijing, he began to try to do all the work related to documentaries, helping director Zhang Nan to do all kinds of chores, adding subtitles, sorting out equipment, recording, and video ......When Zheng Yifei thought of making a documentary, his heart was like a fire, burning in a panic. This fire finally made him decide to make a work of his own, and the subject was his long-time friend Sponge. Zheng Yifei took the train for a day and a night, holding the borrowed machine, returned to Longxi to find his former friend, and told the sponge what he wanted to do, and he agreed. Two friends who haven't seen each other for many years begin to make a new connection from a camera. 
Zheng Yifei |Photo courtesy of the interviewee.
In the middle of the night in Longxi County, under the drum tower, two young people who had been exiled outside of life wandered here, either talking to themselves or being silent. Most of the time, it is the sponge who speaks, sings, and Zheng Yifei listens. One holds a camera in his hand, the other hums a rap with words in his mouth, and when he meets someone he knows, he chats a few words. Zheng Yifei likes to listen to sponges and chat with others, and he finds this process very charming, and he likes people who are fun and seem to love tossing. The county seat is not big, and when Sponge meets friends on the street, he will exchange oranges for each other's chicken cutlets to eat, and he will also stay at the other party's piano shop for a while, discussing each other's fathers and the girls they like. Sponge likes a girl on the Internet, the girl dislikes him for being too fat, and he always promises the other party that he will definitely lose weight. The two made an appointment to meet. In order to appear in front of the girl he likes with the best image, Sponge went to the bathhouse to take a bath, and he called Zheng Yifei to go with him and rub his back. 
After coming out of the bathhouse, Sponge felt refreshed, and in the evening he went to the bus station to pick up the girl he liked as promised, and many people came and went, but his hopes were disappointed, and the girl did not come in the end. Sponge looked through the iron door at the station, where he stood sadly, still looking. That night, he lay on a stone bench, looking into the night, and did not speak much. When there was movement around him, the sponge turned his head to look at the passers-by, as if he hadn't seen anything, and was immersed in his own world. 
The "lovelorn" moment of the sponge in the stills of "Waste Story", Zheng Yifei silently accompanied him. In the past few years of filming, Zheng Yifei has become more and more aware of sponges, and he is not a "waste" in the public sense. In Zheng Yifei's view, the word "waste" represents a very rich meaning today, with a kind of self-deprecation. In the hearts of more people, "waste" tends to lie flat, almost a state of inaction. Zheng Yifei bluntly said that he has never been lying flat, and he believes that no matter how the outside world changes, he must actively do things.
Sponge is also trying to make some changes in life, he is always out of step with the world around him, he always has to do something and move in this world, in order to prove himself, he went to participate in the "China New Rap" variety show.
On the registration form, Sponge wrote his best style "freestyle", but he didn't know how to spell it, so he had to search for words on the Internet.
Before he went on the field, he was so nervous that he was sweating all the time, and his hands were shaking.
After the failure of the audition, the sponge came to an impromptu singing late at night at Dingxi Railway Station, which was a real freestyle, real and rough, without any technology.
Zheng Yifei with sponge.
Before watching "Waste Story", many people may guess about the appearance of the protagonist's story constructed by the director.
The sponge will be a copy of many low-level characters, and in the early days, because a symbol appeared in this society, it brought both attention and shame and harm.
Immediately afterward, he struggled to wrestle with the symbol, which contained the gnashing of teeth like "I am going to be the enemy of this world". There is intense love and pain in these stories.
But Zheng Yifei didn't.
Stills from "Waste Story".
Zheng Yifei likes to photograph people walking, whether the photographer is chattering or chattering on the road, or meeting a familiar person to say hello and farewell, as long as there are many unknown situations and surprises on the road.
One day they wandered on the road and found that the wall of the Drum Tower had been demolished and repaired, and the sponge wanted to go in and see it despite the resistance, Zheng Yifei no longer restrained himself, and asked the workers why he, as a native of Longxi, could not witness the process of the Drum Tower being "destroyed".
The drum tower is the spiritual habitat of the sponge, and he said regretfully: "It has no soul, it is dead." ”
The drum tower that was demolished and repaired.
Cities and people have a causal relationship with each other.
The misunderstanding between the city and people, people's emotions such as loneliness, restlessness and depression are also the emotions of the city.
"Without people like Sponge, cities can lose their vitality," Zheng said. ”
At this moment, Longxi has become a city of sadness.
The sponge sits under the drum tower at night.
In the body of the sponge, there have been many contradictions. There were more live broadcasts, and he gradually became known in this small place. Before that, he was very eager to be famous because he wanted to make money. Once Sponge took Zheng Yi to a restaurant to eat, and as soon as he entered, he was recognized by the clerk: "Aren't you that Internet celebrity, sing a song and listen to it." Sponge felt some kind of strong discomfort, he turned his head and left, and said to Zheng Yifei: "I think they have no brains, I don't want to say a word to them, sing Nima, don't I want money.......""When they were messing around in a dilapidated small county, both Sponge and Zheng Yifei had many opportunities to sink and become bad boys on the fringes of society, destroying their futures, but they both relied on a little spirit to lift up themselves who were about to fall. The sponge relied on **, and Zheng Yifei relied on one lens language after another, and they cherished each other.
Sponge |Photo provided by the interviewee Two young people find more balance in getting along. However, in this process, conflicts cannot be avoided. Once, Zheng Yifei threw the finished melon seed skin into a carton, only to see the sponge roar angrily: "Are you really my scrap station!" At that moment, Sponge was very sad, he knew that he was a waste, but his home was never a scrap factory. The two had a cold war for several days. After this incident, Zheng Yifei learned that in getting along with the sponge, it is necessary to understand his subject better, and he can't lose his respect for him because he has been with him for a long time.
Zheng Yifei with sponge. Photo provided by the interviewee In the process of editing**, there was a sentence posted on the white wall of Zheng Yifei's rented room:
Don't tell the story of a man who repented. When he started filming this story, he thought about how to end it. According to common sense, it is usually said that a teenager resists in the process of chasing **, and in the end he succeeds in **, holds a concert, and reconciles with the world, and no longer disputes with his family, and moves towards a reunion, and all problems are resolved.
Sponge during the performance|Photo provided by the interviewee Zheng Yifei said: "If you do this, it is too cliché. It's as if it's an allusion to the choice that Sponge insisted on turned into a child's play, and he was wrong. ”
This does not conform to the real situation, nor does it conform to Zheng Yifei's perception of the world. In his cognition, people can't easily deny their past selves, can't deny their past choices and values, and that's never a mistake.
As a director, Zheng Yifei hates clichéd stories and refuses to give the characters a false reconciliation in the movie, which is disrespectful to him.
In 2022, Zheng Yifei filmed the "Waste Story" documentary for five years, and was favored by Fan Jian, the director of Yu Xiuhua, at the proposal stage, and personally served as the producer, which was released at the 16th FIRST Youth Film Festival and won the "Audience Honor" award, and then won the "Excellent Chinese Documentary" at the West Lake Documentary Conference. The judges' recommendation for the FIRST Youth Film Festival reads: The luck and misfortune of an Internet celebrity era, he is watched and ignored, he is understood, and at the same time, he is accompanied by a huge misunderstanding. He reveals his true heart to the world, but in a way, it could also be a bigger show that he doesn't know about. This film captures the restlessness and emptiness of this era, the pathos of anger and not finding an object of anger. Director Zheng Yifei thinks that this evaluation is very accurate.
On the day of the premiere of the FIRST Youth Film Festival, after the screening, Zheng Yifei and the audience connected with the sponge in Longxi, and some viewers asked the sponge to improvise, giving three key words: sponge, film, and waste. The sponge sings relaxed and free, completing the penetration from the protagonist to the audience, and the last sentence is: "I say life, you say like a dream." ”
* After the completion of the work, Zheng Yifei felt at ease, he remembered that in the middle of the night a few years ago, he woke up from a 4-square-meter rental room, and thought of his creation, sweating all over. Thankfully, the dust has settled. Zheng Yifei sensed that what he was doing was valuable, and he used his own way to record the fate of the sponge, and spent one seemingly ordinary and extraordinary night after another together.
Waste Story" stills Sponge said: "Brother Fei and I are both in a state of poverty and whiteness, and we are not afraid of losing anything." "Documentaries are a niche category in China, and the state of the industry is not optimistic, which Zheng Yifei certainly knows, and he believes that people should do something idealistic. People around him don't understand this insistence, including Zheng Yifei's family, whose parents have never seen his works. His family didn't understand why he was doing something unprofitable in Beijing, and he made himself miserable, and he couldn't make a lot of money. I'm in my thirties, I'm not married, and I don't have a serious job. Zheng Yifei has long been accustomed to this. When he was a child, he had a deep estrangement from his father. In his impression, the male machismo in the village is very heavy and strong, and Zheng Yifei often saw men beating their wives when he was a child. His mother often cried at home, Zheng Yifei saw his mother crying, and he and his sister also cried. Zheng Yifei's sister is a taciturn person, as if she has never been happy, and when she grows up, she repeats the pattern of her mother's marriage. Too many mistakes, always repeated.
Zheng Yifei said with a smile that the growth experience brought to him by this kind of rural life is: "Men, they are not very good, and they are unreliable." "The lucky people have been in childhood all their lives, and the unfortunate people have been in **childhood all their lives. Zheng Yifei believes that he neither belongs to the former nor the latter, growing up in the countryside, he said: "My childhood can only be said to be not particularly happy. ”
Zheng Yifei |Photo provided by the interviewee After Zheng Yifei became literate, he liked to read, but there were no readers at home, and there were no books. One day he went to his aunt's house to play, and the adults went out to work, leaving him at home. He took out two copies of "** Monthly" published by Baihua Literature and Art Publishing House from the cabinet, which was a very popular local literature at that time, including Zhang Kangkang's **, Zheng Yifei felt very strange when he saw this name for the first time. He stood in the sun and watched in fascination, felt himself flying, as if standing above the village, and began to observe the people of the village. "In my heart, my mother is no longer 'mother', my mother has become a mother, my father has become a father, and the people in the village are no longer neighbors, but people in the village, and I realize that this is life, and the kind of thing that everyone is entangled with is actually a kind of story. I suddenly learned to look at my life in a more literary light. ”
By the time he finished the book, it was getting dark outside. In the afterglow, Zheng Yifei felt a trance.
From that day on, he liked to observe everything around him, watching the women in the village chatting, watching the adults arguing, watching the men beating their wives, and watching the silent ...... of his sisterAfter becoming an observer, Zheng Yifei freed himself from the pain and poverty of concrete life, and he began to write, recording his inner thoughts on a blank piece of paper, which became a way for teenagers to relieve their emotions. Zheng Yifei in his youth was a typical literary and artistic young man, who carried a notebook with him to write poetry, write **, and dance. Before the age of 18, he had never even been to the county seat, let alone taken a train, and seeing the trains coming and going, he desperately wanted to leave this place, and he knew that his life would definitely not stay here.
Stills from Jia Zhangke's movie "Xiao Wu".
Zheng Yifei told me that he likes director Jia Zhangke very much. They have a similar texture, perhaps because they are both northerners, one from Gansu and the other from Shanxi. When Zheng Yifei's "Waste Story" was edited, the most referenced ** was Jia Zhangke's "Xiao Wu", which is a movie he likes very much.
Stills from Jia Zhangke's movie "Xiao Wu" "Xiao Wu" is poorly made, the cost is less than 200,000 yuan, the picture is rough, Liang Xiaowu, a young man in Fenyang County, is taciturn, surviving in the cracks of social transformation, and after losing friendship, love and family affection one after another, he finally lost his freedom and became a prisoner. The film tells the bitterness and loneliness of the little people at the bottom, and Xiao Wu, who tries to find some dignity in the trivial, arouses a strong resonance with Zheng Yifei.
Stills from Jia Zhangke's movie "Xiao Wu" Later, he filmed his own "Xiao Wu". The sponge under Zheng Yifei's lens is Xiao Wu in the Internet era, and they are all wandering aimlessly on the streets of the county, feeling lost in the three emotions of family, friendship, and love. It was a real and naked pain, Zheng Yifei was sentimental and delicate, and it may be because of this kind of character foundation that he naturally has an extremely delicate perception of the outside world.
The picture above is a sponge, and the picture below is Xiao Wu Zheng Yifei, who never denies his homeland complex. His land was a very small village and town, and the railway of the Longhai Line cut a huge arc in the middle, cutting the whole town in half, and Zheng Yifei became a village living by the railway. The hometown in his memory always has golden sunshine, and the loess looks extraordinarily thick under the light of the setting sun.
Gansu Longxi |Photo provided by the interviewee He has irreplaceable feelings for the north, for Longxi in Gansu, and for the land where many stories have happened. Later, every time Zheng Yifei returned to his hometown, he had a strange feeling, but he wanted to get closer to understand that Longxi was his blood land and his home. He said: "Sometimes the golden memories are far more interesting than the gray today. As for the sponge, he may never leave Longxi and go elsewhere. Today's sponges occasionally perform in small bars, take care of their own accommodation, and can make a little money. The cost of living in the county is very low, and he has always been thrifty, so he will not go hungry and can maintain a low-cost life. Unfamiliar cities will make the sponge lose his sense of security, although Longxi is backward, but it gives him a sense of belonging.
Zheng Yifei's WeChat avatar is a still of Stephen Chow, and there is a poster of "The King of Comedy" on the white wall of his rental house. Zheng Yifei likes the little characters in Stephen Chow's movies very much, constantly mocking and deconstructing, people's original inherent understanding of the concept of heroes. They were pressed to the ground and tortured repeatedly, but they never gave in, and their naked suffering was wrapped in a coat of comedy.
Zheng Yifei's residence |Photo courtesy of the interviewee.
Many times, Zheng Yifei feels that what he sees in it is Xiao Wu, countless Xiao Wu are struggling at the bottom, but Xiao Wu under Jia Zhangke's lens is in the northwest county, Stephen Chow's Xiao Wu is in Hong Kong, and his Xiao Wu is in Longxi, the background is the same sad, but the vitality is so strong. Everyone is Xiao Wu. Zheng Yifei is a sensational person, he doesn't like to pretend to be deep. When asked if he and Sponge have a mutually redemptive relationship, he replied with a smile: "Redemption is a bit early now, maybe there will be an answer in many years, and there is growth." * After the release, Zheng Yifei got some attention, and he moved from a 4-square-meter, dark partition to a slightly larger room with a window and sunlight. After all, life has not changed much, there is still no money in his pocket, and he still has to borrow a machine for the next **, but he believes that as long as he does specific things, everything will get better.
Zheng Yifei |Photo provided by the interviewee One night nine years ago, 24-year-old Zheng Yifei was drunk, and that day Jia Zhangke's new movie "The Old Man of Mountains and Rivers" was released, and he went to the cinema alone to watch the film. At the end of the film, in Fenyang County, Shanxi, in the winter of heavy snowfall, Tao, who is in his 50s, stood alone on a familiar land and danced with his companions in the disco in 1999. In the twilight years, Tao became the old man of this mountain and river. Hurt and abandoned mother, this solo dance in the snow is a catharsis of emotions and an understanding of fate.
Zheng Yifei cried when he watched the clip of Jia Zhangke's movie "The Old Man of Mountains and Rivers", he sat in the dark movie theater, and cried on the screen alone. In ordinary days, the undercurrent is surging, some people choose to scribble, and some people choose to be serious Zhou Xuan. Zheng Yifei is obviously the latter. In this life, that's just it.