SAE CH1

Jiang Fanxing walked out of the Actors’ Guild, having successfully obtained his actor’s license.

Even to be a background extra, you had to have an actor’s license. Fortunately, the requirements for this card were very low: basically, you just needed an ID card, a bank card, and to be under 60 years old.

Only after getting this card and being pulled into WeChat groups could one start receiving extra work.

“Crew XXX needs 200 extras, half male, half female, 150 a day.”

“Crew XXX needs 23 foreground actors. Requirements: males over 175cm, females over 160cm. Those who meet the conditions, sign up immediately.”

“Any special feature actors available? Available special actors, DM me!”

In no time, the messages in the group had reached 999+.

Jiang Fanxing took a glance, closed the WeChat group, and prepared to go check out the apartment he was about to rent.

In truth, his parents didn’t understand his decision at all. Jiang Fanxing had rejected several internship offers from law firms and olive branches extended by senior alumni, choosing instead to come here all alone to be an extra. No matter how you looked at it, it seemed like he had lost his mind. But because the brother next door had developed depression from immense work pressure and was currently resting at home, his parents didn’t dare set their expectations too high for him. They just let him be. After all, though their family wasn’t exceedingly wealthy, they had their pensions and didn’t need their son to support them, which was enough.

“Daddy ain’t going to work today, feeling so damn good—”

His phone rang. Jiang Fanxing answered it, only to be deafened by the roaring voice coming from the speaker.

“Jiang Fanxing! Don’t think just because you passed the bar exam you can slack off. Without getting your lawyer’s practicing certificate, everything is meaningless. I’ve already arranged things for you. Once you graduate, we’ll find a way to get you a permanent position. Do you know how many people beg and plead just to get into our firm…”

On the other end of the phone was Gu Fan, the captain of Jiang Fanxing’s debate team. He came from a privileged background, was two years senior, and was already an officially employed lawyer at a Red Circle firm.

If Gu Fan’s own uncle wasn’t one of the partners, a mere two years wouldn’t have been enough for him to transition from intern to official lawyer, let alone help Jiang Fanxing secure a chance at a permanent position.

“Senior, thank you for your kindness, but I’ll pass. I don’t think being a lawyer suits me,” Jiang Fanxing said earnestly.

“How does it not suit you? You worked so hard, defeated so many people in the college entrance exam to get into our A University’s law department, and you’ve passed the bar, yet you say it doesn’t suit you?”

“Senior, do you want to find a mirror and look at yourself? Also, during our get-together the other day, you got drunk and said that anyone who persuades someone to study law deserves death by a thousand cuts…”

Gu Fan instantly fell silent on the other end.

After all, he was no longer the campus hunk of A University. If Jiang Fanxing hadn’t enrolled, he probably could have kept the title for another two years.

But now, his hair was falling out every day, his figure was expanding horizontally, and even the acne that had never visited him in his youth had arrived.

Gu Fan didn’t even dare look in the mirror at his current self.

“I’m at Hengdian now,” Jiang Fanxing said slowly.

“What are you doing at Hengdian?” Gu Fan was shocked.

“Senior, they say people speak the truth after drinking, and I think you were right.” Jiang Fanxing thought for a moment and said seriously, “Going to be a lawyer would really be a waste of the good looks my parents worked so hard to give me. Besides, didn’t I tell you before? I wanted to be a lawyer because I watched TV dramas when I was a kid. But thinking about it now, I was wrong. The people playing lawyers are actors, so I should be an actor, not a lawyer. I also looked it up, and the most suitable job for me is being a celebrity.”

“Are the sources you looked up legit?”

“Legit, there are tons of users on that one Q&A app. Plus, I only spent ten yuan to get an actor’s license. Working as an extra pays 108 yuan a day and covers two to three meals,” Jiang Fanxing said seriously. “And it’s only ten hours of work a day. When I’m not filming, I can sit on the side and play on my phone. If it goes over an hour, they add ten yuan. When I interned at your place, I worked fifteen hours a day, couldn’t slack off, the internship salary was eighty yuan a day, and you didn’t even provide food! I did it for three months and couldn’t take it anymore. I think law firms are more ruthless than capitalists.”

“But our profession has a future…”

“The entertainment circle has a money future. I calculated it: if I want to retire at thirty-five, the entertainment industry is the fastest way to make money,” Jiang Fanxing replied. “And there’s one more crucial point.”

“What is it?” Gu Fan felt that Jiang Fanxing probably wouldn’t say anything good, but he asked anyway.

“I can’t win an argument against the people at the law firm. But here, working as an extra and defending my own rights, I can definitely win arguments. You have to pick the soft persimmons to squeeze. I think I can put my strengths to better use here…”

“Our profession is highly respected!”

“But this profession has high aesthetic standards. Unlike the law firm, which really hurts the eyes. A campus hunk like me can’t be ruined like that…”

Before Jiang Fanxing could finish his sentence, Gu Fan had already hung up.

Sigh, the senior has only been working for two years, and his temper is getting more and more irritable.

I’m still the one who is mentally stable.

Jiang Fanxing opened his phone’s camera, saw that he was still as beautiful as a flower, and felt relieved.

First, rent an apartment; then, go make money.

At 5:00 AM, Jiang Fanxing sat on the extra actors’ bus, his eyes heavy with sleep.

They were heading to a historical costume drama set today, so they had to go early in the morning to line up for makeup. When they arrived, those whose names were called went to get their makeup done first; the rest grabbed a bag of breakfast each to eat.

On his first day of work, Jiang Fanxing had worried the breakfast quality would be poor, but to his surprise, it was actually pretty good. There were eggs, steamed buns, and fried dough sticks, and almost all of them were still warm. This was much better than the law firm.

“Bro, it’s my first day as an extra. Could you tell me if there’s anything I should look out for?” Jiang Fanxing didn’t have a big appetite, so he handed his extra meat bun to a middle-aged man in front of him.

The middle-aged man took a couple of looks at Jiang Fanxing, didn’t take the bun, and glanced at him, saying, “You’re a live-streamer, right?”

“Ah, no, I’m not.”

“Then you’re a college student. The kind that hasn’t graduated yet.”

“Bro, you’re a really good judge of character.”

“We’re all just here to make a living. You get paid for showing up, and they feed you. If you don’t want to do it, you can leave anytime. We don’t have any dreams of becoming stars. It’s only you youngsters, looking all pretty, running over here to be extras—either to experience life or to shoot videos. We see it all the time,” the middle-aged man said casually.

“Yeah, working is working no matter who it’s for, right?” Jiang Fanxing nodded. “When I was interning outside, they only gave me eighty yuan a day and didn’t provide food. Working as an extra pays and lets me experience life, so I came.”

“Is it really that dark out there now? By the way, how tall are you?”

“I’m 181.5 cm, barefoot,” Jiang Fanxing replied immediately.

“Oh, with that height, you could play a guard or something. It pays better than a simple background extra. You could be a foreground actor or a special feature actor, but you have to take an exam first,” the middle-aged man answered. “I’m just not tall enough, otherwise I wouldn’t be a regular extra.”

The so-called foreground actors were the background boards standing behind the lead actors. If you were good-looking, you might get a couple of extra shots and say a few meaningless lines like “How much is this?” or “This is delicious.” The salary was generally between 220 and 300 yuan. The working hours were a bit longer, at sixteen hours, but if you went over sixteen hours by even a minute, you got an extra half-day’s pay. With a little effort, you could make over ten thousand a month.

Special feature actors were even more expensive, starting at 400 yuan. Plus, there were no set working hours; as soon as you finished your job, you could clock out. The production crew would even send a dedicated car to pick you up. Usually, you’d play a minor guard or a little servant girl.

However, both types of actors required an exam, and you had to sign up online first. The exam consisted of line reading and pantomime. But line reading and pantomime were no problem for Jiang Fanxing. Their A University debate team was nationally renowned, and his articulation during debates had undergone strict training; he even went to the neighboring Communication University to audit broadcasting classes. As for pantomime, that was no issue either. Because of his good looks in high school, he had joined a drama club and managed to learn some basic acting knowledge.

After gaining a rough understanding of the career prospects for actors, Jiang Fanxing eagerly joined the ranks of the extras.

Spare him the bullshit about social status or wasting his degree. He didn’t buy any of it. If you can’t even afford to eat, why care about all that? Anyway, since he had nothing to do in his senior year, he might as well make some money first. What if he got famous? Then in the future, he would be the VIP client for the law firms.

Jiang Fanxing daydreamed for a moment about his unrealistic future of becoming an overnight sensation, and then happily went off to be an extra.

His first role was playing a corpse.

This job was nice. Not only did he get a red envelope bonus, but all he had to do was lie on the ground and he was done.

He didn’t have to use his brain; it was simply amazing.

His second role was wearing mourning clothes alongside the extra bro he had gotten to know earlier.

As a result, the extra bro took him and a few other background actors to find the production crew, and they successfully got an extra fifty yuan added.

Jiang Fanxing was astounded.

“Are film crews really following labor laws this strictly now? Companies on the outside don’t even pay us overtime when we work extra hours.” Labor laws were basically useless on the outside. Even law firms, which specialize in studying the law, didn’t follow them; instead, they loaded internship contracts with clauses designed to exploit legal loopholes. He never expected the film crews in the entertainment industry to follow the rules so closely.

“These crews aren’t just shooting one project. If they delay our pay, word will instantly spread in the group chats, and we won’t show up the next time they start a project,” the middle-aged man had it all figured out. “They dare to withhold pay from screenwriters and stagehands, but they wouldn’t dare withhold ours. Anyway, we aren’t afraid of anything; we just take it one day at a time.”

Jiang Fanxing silently gave a thumbs-up, suddenly feeling that the job of an extra had an exceptionally bright future.

Oh right, the crew’s boxed lunches were also pretty good, basically featuring both meat and vegetables, and you could choose between rice and steamed buns. The only downside was that the extras’ clothes and shoes were almost all stinky, so as soon as he got back to his rented room, he had to take a thorough shower.

Jiang Fanxing opened the Actors’ Guild app, submitted his identity documents, and directly signed up for the foreground actor exam next week and the special feature actor exam a month later.

As long as he passed the exams, he could take on better-paying roles.

“If a foreground actor makes 300 a day, that’s 9,000 a month. My rent is only 2,000, so I can net 7,000,” Jiang Fanxing calculated. Thinking about how he interned at the law firm for three months without making any money—even paying out of his own scholarship fund—he couldn’t help but curse, “Sure enough, the higher the boss’s education, the blacker their heart.”

At this thought, Jiang Fanxing took a picture of the wages he received today and posted it on his WeChat Moments with the caption: “If you’re going to be a slave, the high-paying kind is definitely better.”

Visible only to friends in his work group.

After posting on his Moments, Jiang Fanxing intended to sleep, but what young person doesn’t stay up late? He browsed through classic movies over and over, trying to figure out what “acting skills” really meant, staying up until two or three in the morning before slowly drifting off to sleep.

Right before falling asleep in a daze, Jiang Fanxing was still wondering if he would be able to wake up the next morning. But on second thought, it didn’t matter. When he didn’t have any scenes to shoot, he could just find a spot to sleep and slack off.

Could they really film for ten hours straight anyway? Given how much they’re paying…