“Mother-in-law, each work has a different subject matter, and not all movies have to be filmed in the city.”
Wen Yan briefly introduced the story of "Losing Voice" to Granny Zhou.
He added, "However, I cannot reveal the specific details of the filming. Because I signed a confidentiality agreement with the production team, there are some things I can say and some things I cannot say."
Grandma Zhou nodded: "City people have so many rules. But don't worry, I won't gossip about what you told me. But what you acted out was quite realistic; it really happened here, and quite a few times."
"Not a small number? No way!"
Wen Yan was somewhat shocked.
What she was just telling Granny Zhou was that she was acting out a scene where she was a mute girl who had been kidnapped by human traffickers and taken to the deep mountains! She was trying to escape but was caught and brought back!
"Yes," Grandma Zhou said with absolute certainty.
"In the past, it was difficult for men in the mountains to find wives. Because their families were poor, no one wanted to marry into a poor mountain village, so they would buy wives. But think about it, good families would never sell their daughters to others, so most of them must have been kidnapped."
"Anyway, it's pretty much like what you portrayed. Most of the women sold to the mountains are disabled, either unable to speak or hear, or they are lame, or simply mentally challenged."
"The old bachelors in the mountains don't have many requirements. They just need a wife. As long as the wife can have children and carry on the family line, that's fine. I remember that more than ten years ago, many people in the mountains bought wives."
“Some people do try to escape like you did, but those who get caught always suffer terrible consequences. I’ve heard they’re stripped naked and tied up at home, or their legs are broken. As time goes on, or after they give birth, they gradually give up the idea of escaping.”
"..." Wen Yan felt a chill run down her spine. "So the scenes in movies and TV dramas aren't just made up. Doesn't anyone call the police for something like this?"
"Why call the police? Back then, there wasn't even a telephone, and everyone was from the same village. I've lived in these mountains for most of my life and I've never seen the police come before. If you really called the police and they took someone's wife away, they'd beat you to death."
"However, some people have suffered losses in the process of buying wives. For a while, when they heard that the crackdown on human traffickers was strict, they went to buy Vietnamese wives through intermediaries. But most of these people were just scammers to get a dowry."
"They behaved very obediently. After getting the money from home, they said they wanted to go to the market. But as soon as they got to a crowded place, they ran away and even ran off with other people's money."
"But that kind of thing basically doesn't happen anymore. Now, apart from us old folks, who else lives in the mountains? The younger ones have all gone out to work, and they can earn money and find partners on their own."
"But going out to work doesn't necessarily mean you'll meet good people. The world outside is big, but people are all cunning and shrewd, and there are a lot of scammers."
"I remember five or six years ago, a boss drove to the villages near us to recruit workers. He said he wanted to hire dozens of workers to work in a garment factory. The boss didn't want men, only women, and many people wanted to go at the time."
"Three of them went from our village, but none of them came back. Some people say they ran away with other men, some say they died out there, but we can't find them anywhere."
"If you ask me, this isn't a clothing factory owner at all; she's clearly a con artist and a human trafficker. Otherwise, why would she only want women and not men? She just wants to take all these women out and sell them!"
These words are chilling to think about.
Wen Yan couldn't help but ask Granny Zhou, "Didn't anyone realize back then that the employer who was recruiting was a fraud?"
Grandma Zhou shook her head: "At the time, it couldn't be called a discovery. Back then, none of us had ever seen the world. This town was the farthest place we had ever been. When the boss who was recruiting came, many people said they were swindlers and were too afraid to go with him. Those who went were the bold ones who wanted to go out and make a lot of money."
"One thing I remember very clearly is that this boss brought her whole family with her. She brought a daughter with her, who looked about fifteen or sixteen years old and was very pretty. Tell me, what kind of con artist brings their whole family along when they go out to scam people?"
"That's how she completely fooled us mountain folk. We're all women, how can a con artist be so heartless as to specifically target us naive mountain folk?"
"A woman? Mother-in-law, the owner of this clothing factory you're talking about is a woman? Is her surname Zhao?"
For some reason, as soon as Wen Yan heard these keywords, information about Shen Zhirou's adoptive parents immediately popped into her mind.
Because they also happen to own a garment factory.
The man who spoke the dialect that she met at the supermarket last time also mentioned Boss Zhao to Shen Zhirou.
He asked Shen Zhirou if she was Boss Zhao's daughter. However, he didn't mention at the time whether Boss Zhao was her father or mother.
And Shen Zhirou's adoptive mother just happens to be named Zhao Jing.
However, so much time had passed, and they hadn't had much interaction, so Grandma Zhou couldn't answer the question at all.
"I don't know her last name. Maybe I used to know, but I really can't remember now. What's wrong? Do you know her? That shouldn't be the case. I guess you were only fifteen or sixteen years old back then, and you should still be in school."
"Yes, I was in high school six or seven years ago."
However, she had no idea where Shen Zhirou was six or seven years ago.
-
Wen Yan had a night scene to film that evening, but she seemed a little distracted while waiting to be filmed.
On one hand, she empathizes with the character she plays and with the women who are actually abducted to remote mountains in real life.
On the other hand, she still didn't give up dialing that phone number.
After being prompted once again by a mechanical female computer voice that the number was no longer in service, she couldn't help but frown.
Just as she was feeling annoyed, Shen Jinghe's voice suddenly rang out from beside her.
"Who should we call?"
Wen Yan opened her eyes wide and looked at him: "Teacher Shen, you scared me!"
“Act, act again!” Shen Jinghe sneered. “If you’re really startled, the way you instinctively call out ‘Teacher Shen’ won’t be the title you’re using.”
Wen Yan: [This person not only has a sharp tongue, but also sharp eyes; he saw through this too.]
"So, who are you calling? If I remember correctly, this isn't the first time I've seen you make that face while on the phone. But it seems the other person never answers your calls."
[Sigh] Wen Yan sighed heavily in her heart. [Sometimes it's really helpless to do all this research alone. If only Shen Jinghe could help me.]
Unfortunately, even I haven't figured this out; it's a complete mess.
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