When Zhao Zhihan came here, he only had a camera and lies with him.
What she escaped was not only the seemingly prosperous but indifferent city, but also the messy social masks, the family she could never please, and herself who was repeatedly whipped by vanity. Her father is a successful businessman, but he is stingy with praise and care for his family; his stepmother is a rational professor who gives her decent respect, but is always separated by a layer of glass. Caught between emotions and finances for a long time, lying has become her most proficient survival skill.
In a small coastal town, she rented an old house with a terrace and tried to start a more honest life.
She did meet a few people: in a small bar where she often drank, there was a young bartender who could see through her but never pointed it out; a gallery owner who had admired her works in the city but had a family; and she briefly met an international student who was about to travel far away. But the interactions with them all come and go like the tide. The real change happens in some of the quieter moments.
Growth begins to happen in countless small "unmodified" things. She began to record the truths that made her uneasy: screenshots of chats sent by her father that were full of money concerns, her tired face when she woke up without makeup, and the withered and regenerated plants on the terrace. She did not post these photos on her WeChat Moments, but only posted them on her bedroom wall, like a private piece of evidence that her true self was slowly being accepted.
This is a story about "quitting lies". There is no dramatic savior, no fate-changing love. There is only one woman in a strange city, learning how to slowly take off her disguise and accept her true self that she doesn't know how to speak.
Intent: Self-salvation in the "post-lie era". When the world rewards performers, how can a person bravely take off his costume and meet himself without makeup?