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[xiaohetao]

Zhang Linghe's Theory of Everything

Stephen Hawking once searched for an excellent formula that could be used to ultimately explain all phenomenons in the universe. In his youth, Zhang Linghe once regarded him as a hero and admired him for his research on theoretical knowledge that has an impact on human civilization. Then, he studied hard and spent happy days at school such as deriving interrelated formula. Later, he became an actor & discovered the beauty when rationality & emotion are matched. Now, his logical perception of reality, his empathy perception for the characters & fiction world has formed Zhang Linghe's unique theory of everything.

It was a very early photoshoot schedule. Zhang Linghe was drinking his daily iced americano with oolong tea beside it. His bangs, which hadn't been set was a bit covering his eyes, but he remained to look sincere and witty. We asked him whether he has always like this kind of bitter drink, he said he learned to like it. "At first, I drink it to reduce swelling, but later it became a habit & I keep doing it." Recently, Zhang Linghe's face has filled our sight. Love Between Fairy and Devil is still popular, Story of Kunning Palace has just finished filming and he currently joined the filming of Fox Spirit Matchmaker: Yuehong Chapter. Although the role of Hu Weisheng played by him is not main character, it has unique personality which is different from his previous roles. "Weisheng is a little timid and a bit silly, but at the same time, he also sincere & cute. I already know the crew from previous project, so I feel very familiar when I joined them. This saves times as I already know them, I could quickly get into the work environment." Zhang Linghe still thinks carefully. "I've been thinking about how to make this silly character more lovely. Later, I found that integrity is an important point. As long as he is kind & sincere, everyone will like him.

Let's take a look of characters played by Zhang Linghe. They all have different personality & look. Chang Heng is warm & firm, Xie Wei is thoughtful & meticulous, Hu Weisheng is simple & pure. Among these characters, Xie Wei is the most complex. "It took me some time to find out how this character feels, he's really different from me, so I made a lot of preparations. I try to use his personality to think about every decisions he made. I discuss his thoughts & emotions with the screenwriter, I also talk to the novel author, I want to know as much as possible about what the author gave when creating this character. Combined with the final result expected by the screenwriter, I finally able to understand him & experience his story." As Zhang Linghe said, playing the role of Xie Wei is beyond his experience, his dialogues able to make him think deeply for a long time. "In a scene, I had this dialogue the world is finally at peace, now it doesn't matter if I die However, as I play Xie Wei, I need to understand and figure out his mind & feelings when he said those words. Later, I read the novel. I feel that the reason why he is fighting all the way to get high position is because he has hope in his heart. But then, this hope has gone. Then for him it's what he means by now it doesn't matter if I die.”

People often said that being good at finding out the rules of constant things is the necessary ability for smart people to survive, so it is inevitable that Zhang Linghe, who loves to solve mathematical problems, has summarized his own methodologies for acting. "The concept of my methodology is divided into two parts. In some technical & empirical things such as reading the script and understanding the role will be expertized through the amount of experiences I had. But when I really started acting, I found that the emotion & perception of the characters remain prevailed. I'm not professional-trained actor, so I can learn more about the power of sincerity in acting through more experiences." His tone sounds relaxed, but his attitude is earnest, with a great sincerity for the ‘acting’ itself.

Perhaps the nature of his logical thinking or the feeling of accomplishment brought by obtaining a unique solution that made Zhang Linghe interested to physics. But unfortunately, acting is on the opposite side of rationality. It requires actors to think deeply, but it also requires them to throw away the result of thinking and finally get close emotionally to the character. These two things are mutually opposite, but surprisingly, they reacted wonderfully with each other in Zhang Linghe's life.

What if you have to compare your love for physics with your love for acting?

"Both have their own charm. The joy brought by acting is like the release of dopamine, like there's a 'bang' of fireworks in your brain. The joy of physics is to satisfy curiosity. You will dig deeper & deeper into a conjecture and you must chase after the final answer before you stop. But these two things have their own difficulties at the same time. A thousand people have a thousand hamlets in their hearts (meaning a thousand people might have a thousand different opinions), to what extent you can understand and bring something into the character. While for physics, the road of study might never end".

However, compared to the physics conjectures, acting is more difficult. In this process, Zhang Linghe needs to let go a few sense of control over the results, to let go the strong reins of rationality and let himself enter the character's soul. In the acting class, the teacher told him to freely express his character. He must give up the thinking part and embrace the sensibility. "In the class, the teacher will specially choose a role that has a big contrast with you and ask you to try. I remember at that time the teacher asked me to imitate a kitten, its cute gestures & behaviour. With more training like this, I started to found a few methods of how to get into the characters."

However, when he first truly empathized with a character, it still brought a great emotional impact to Zhang Linghe. "The first time I felt that I was empathizing with the character was when I filmed Flourish in Time. It was a very simple scene. I went to give my sister an examinee identity card. Actually, I didn't need to give her a strong feeling. But when I was acting for this scene, I happened to notice the drama will wrap up. So, when the director shouted "cut", I fall apart. And it lasted for ten or twenty minutes. I felt trapped by Jiang Haoyue's feelings. Later, I realized that I will feel this way when I get into the role." This experience made him realize the feeling of being affected by the characters' emotions. But also from the moment when the characters walked into his heart, Zhang Linghe felt that he could really continue his acting journey.

Recently, Zhang Linghe filmed some costume dramas intensively. At first, he considered wearing a headpiece & using hanging wires as new fun things. But as the filming went deeper, he began to feel the deeper cultural power. "The more costume dramas I filmed, the more I feel it as our powerful cultural characteristics and able to bring us the cultural confidence. After Love Between Fairy and Devil was broadcasted, the ancient culture in the drama has been loved by many audiences, including overseas, which is also one of our cultural export. It's really an honor for me to be able to join this outstanding costume drama. When talking about acting, Zhang Linghe always has a lot to say, eager to share his feelings about the role, but also firmly state his own shortcomings. " In acting, what I want to improve most is (how to express) the dialogues. How can I make the dialogues fit into to the characters? I want to continue exploring and practice it.

After not filming for awhile, Zhang Linghe has back to be a completely rational person. He doesn't believe in things without theoretical support. He also doesn't believe that zodiac sign and personality tests can explain the personality. I think this is the matter of phenomenon & result or vice versa. Actually, the characters commonality exists first and people will put themselves as the result of a zodiac sign or a personality type. Even if there is no astrology, this character commonality will still exists, only we don't know how to describe it. When he was a child, he wanted to be a person like Hawking, Einstein or Galileo. He was fascinated by the exploration of world's law of nature. After getting into the acting world, he like Tony Leung. He watched Infernal Affairs over & over again just to see Tony Leung’s acting. "Tony Leung laoshi looks handsome. He has one kind of highest quality of performance sense. I like this movie because I also like Andy Lau laoshi. The two of them created dramatic tension in that movie."

He just made a great start of his acting career. There are a lot of possibilities and expectations to be accomplished. "The types of roles I've always wanted to play is still a police or crime genre, a mystery one. Maybe I can play as the police or the villain. I'm looking forward for the opportunity." Perhaps his love for reasoning themes comes from his love for detective fiction novels & enjoying the process of battle-of-wits with the author. "I have read quite many of Keigo Higashino's works, because it's not just a simple case of reasoning, there is also a lot of human thoughts in addition to complicated reasoning techniques. Sometimes it's interesting to read this kind of novel. You hope to win over the author & guess the next step of his plan, but you are also expecting to be surprises." Besides the detective fiction novels, he also likes the science fiction novel such as Liu Cixin's works. The kind of hard work that built on a complete set of logical systems. "After I read Three Body Problems and Ball Lightning, I find it’s hard to immersed when I read another novels. These novels gave me a deep impression. He successfuly bridges the gap between fantasy and reality. You will be fully convinced with the world he created. It really is amazing.”

One of science fiction movie that Zhang Linghe recently watch is "The Moon Falls". There is also “Interstellar” which is an irreplaceable masterpiece for him. In his spare time, he will open science fiction category on the streaming platform & will watch it one by one without selection, as if everything about the universe is within his liking. He believes that there are higher dimensions of life observing us & we are just tiny beings in three-dimensional world. "A lot of superstring theories mentioned that the universe is 11-dimensional. We live in a very low-level dimension. There are too many things in the universe beyond our understanding and imagination. There are too many coordinate axes outside of xyz. This world is multi-layered.”

Does this make you feel little? "It will broaden my mind & heart"

Most people who like physics and macro perspective have the courage to face the unknown. It is a precious spirit to be able to happily live even after realizing our insignificance. "Sometimes you go to learn about the universe, look at the satellites and asteroids revolving around the sun, and think about the Milky Way beyond the solar system. Every star is so far apart. Separated in a distance that beyond the reach of mankind lifespan. You will suddenly feel that your world view has expand. The sun, the earth and human beings are just one tiny part of a huge world. You will feel that nothing can bother me. But sometimes we need to change our perspective & don't be carried away by the view of pessimistic and worthless effort. We still need to return to our life, do our work well, be satisfied with the present while keep imagining the future."

Would you be afraid of choice if every choice we made would turn to bring about a parallel universe, as in Coherence?

"Of course not. Maybe there will be some psychological pressure, but I accept the results of every choices."

Indeed, Zhang Linghe has never been afraid to choose acting, roles and sincerity

It is interesting that Zhang Linghe still keeps the habit to read. It may not be a heavy read, but he always maintains the relationship with words. In this era where people tend to look at pictures & clips, this habit seems special. "Words are the foundation. Visual sense is based on content & words. I often need to read scripts & get into the characters from the dialogues. From appearance to the tone of speech, they are all come from words. the script or words are the medium to get the output.

This is your advantage, now there are not many people like to read. "Maybe, but it's something that I have to do"

So far we still don't know whether Zhang Linghe already has his own theory of everything, but considering his sensibility, calmness & sincerity, it's hard not to deduce a wonderful solution, isn't it?