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“A pound of pork, two sprigs of spring onion, then mince up some onion and ginger. Add the salt and pepper, stir it up, and then the meat filling is ready.”
The opening scene and accompanying dialogue to The Coin, a short film by Chinese director Song Siqi, is enough to leave peoples’ stomachs growling, not only for food but for the flavors of home.
At age 10, Song moved abroad to study and she spent most of her adolescent years at a boarding school. She never spent a long stint of time back home until university, where she attended school in both Los Angeles and Beijing. These experiences have largely altered her idea of home. Whenever she traveled back to China to visit friends and family, it never felt like home—she felt like a visitor. In Song’s work though, she approaches the topic of “home” with unabashed clarity and confidence.
“一斤猪肉，两根大葱，姜、蒜，切碎了，加上佐料，搅拌均匀，这样啊，肉馅就做好了……”这部短片《硬币》（The Coin）的第一段，就让不少人给看饿了——这个“饿”，是思乡的胃，饿了。
早在 10 岁的时候，导演宋思琪就已经离开自己的家乡在外地求学，一路寄宿学校读上来，再到大学以后就去了北京和洛杉矶，她对“家乡”的概念有些模糊，那里仿佛只是一年一度走亲访友的念想，长居之所不在此，自己更像过客；但她对“家乡”的概念又很清晰，清晰到每一件作品里都透露着自己的文化和信仰所在。
The Coin centers on the Chinese New Year tradition of slipping a coin inside a dumpling’s filling. Whoever eats the coin-stuffed dumpling is believed to be endowed with good fortune for the rest of the year. “The coin is essentially a wish, a blessing from your own family,” she says.
To capture what this tradition means to her, Song decided to animate the entire dumpling-making process, from preparing the filling and rolling out the dough to wrapping and cooking them. Of course, the most essential ingredient of all wasn’t forgotten: the coin, which to Song, was a “multifaceted symbol that represents parental love and a connection to heritage.”
The six-minute-long film is made up of over 5,000 stop-motion frames, but being a completely independent production, it took nine months to complete.
在《硬币》里，宋思琪找到了一个传统中国北方的文化符号——被包在饺子里的硬币。在逢年过节的时候，按传统习俗是需要在饺子中包上一枚硬币，倘若有人有幸能吃到藏着硬币的饺子，则也代表着交上一年份的好运。在宋思琪的理解中，“硬币就是一个美好的愿景，一个家庭对未来的寄托。”于是她把如何做“剂子”、如何揉面、如何包饺子，统统用定格动画的形式做了出来，她说，她只是“想用‘硬币’这一象征，表达我对家庭的思念，以及我对融入异国他乡的体会。”这部短片是在一个支持独立电影人的艺术项目里完成，所以从剧本到成片用了整整九个月的时间。有六分钟的片场，拍了大约五千张照片，以满足高难度的动作以及运动镜头的要求。
In the film, the female protagonist is moving away from home to a foreign country. On her journey, she’s brought a jar filled with coins collected from the lucky dumplings she’s eaten over the years. Upon arriving, she decides to grab lunch at a local cafe. As soon as she sits down though, she realizes that she left her jar on the train. This realization begins a nightmarish sequence into her psyche, where she’s attacked by an assortment of Western dishes—hamburgers, pasta, and pizzas. Every circular ingredient on these dishes reminds her of her lucky coins, but they’re just not quite the same. This hellish episode represents the intrusion of Western culture, which seems ready to happily erase her Eastern roots. With the coins missing, has the good luck she accused over the years also run out? Is her connection to her homeland forever gone, never to be found again?
Thankfully, the film ends on a happy note. Looking deeper inwards—shown by the protagonist entering her own stomach—she discovers the coin, the symbol of her heritage, isn’t really gone. One of the missing coins is embedded in her stomach lining. As it turns out, cultural roots aren’t that easily upended. “‘Finding’ the coin again is a blessing that I’m giving myself,” Song says.
在短片中，她在前往异国他乡的路途中弄丢了自己积攒的硬币，而这似乎成为了她无法找回身份的一场梦魇：汉堡、披萨、意大利面，西式简餐开始取代她的日常饮食，而包裹着好运硬币的饺子早已不见了身影……每一个圆形的物件都让她回想起硬币，但每一种都不是。硬币弄丢了，好运也不见了，那么其承载的文化根源也消失了吗？
在短片里，宋思琪依然留下了一个美好的结局：它在她的胃里。当然，宋思琪说，“找到这枚硬币也是我对自己未来的一个美好的愿景。”但硬币所代表的深层涵义，她希望能以这样的方式传递出去：外在的文化符号不过是流于表面的物件，但留存在人们身上的，是伴随着一个人成长历程一路走来的记忆，那是牢牢印刻在每个人身上的文化印记。
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Home and family are topics close to Song’s heart, and this affinity is obvious throughout her work. Her short film Sister, which was nominated for an Academy Award in the Best Animated Short Film category, follows these same thematics. “I designed the characters and sets based on old family photos,” she says. “I wanted to tell a story through the lens of my childhood nostalgia.”
Sister is about an only child who’s dreamed up an imaginary sister. He conceives an elaborate story in his mind, of them playing around and growing up together. “It’s based on my own brother,” Song says. “It’s rare to have siblings because of the one-child policy in China. Growing up, when people would hear I had an older brother, they’d ask me, ‘What was it like growing up with an older brother?'” With this in mind, the story was meant to capture the “unique experience of growing up in her generation.”
宋思琪感兴趣的题材，大多都和故乡和家庭有关，此前获得奥斯卡金像奖最佳短片奖提名的作品《妹妹》也是，“我收集了不少自己小时候的家庭照片，然后根据照片来做人物和置景。”宋思琪说，“因为我想创造出一个和儿时记忆一样的环境，去呈现整个故事。”
这部影片讲述的，是一个独生子幻想着和自己从未出生的妹妹一起成长的家庭故事。“我有一个哥哥。”宋思琪说道，“作为被‘超生’的一员，独生子女这个话题从小到大一直围绕着我。因为我大部分的同龄人都是独生子女，从小只要别人听说我有一个哥哥，他们就会问我‘跟哥哥一起长大是什么体验’这类问题。”种种因缘际遇下，她创作了这个作品，以纪念“我们这一代人独有的成长经历”。
In the film, the two siblings’ interactions and mannerisms are all based on Song’s real experiences. Growing up, she and her brother often fought over the most trivial of matters. “We were kids though,” she laughs. “Now that we’re older, we don’t really fight. We’re quite close.”
Song’s brother, now studying as a post-grad, is even working with her on a script about immigrating to the U.S. In real life, her parents are also far more progressive than their in-film counterparts. Song considers herself quite lucky. Even though her parents don’t come from creative backgrounds, they’re fully supportive of her artistic ambitions.
In summing up Sister, Song wrote a singular line: “Dedicated to the siblings we never had.” With this film, she hopes for viewers to walk away with a new perspective on familial love. This heightened sensitivity to family dynamics is perhaps what makes her work so touching—she taps into the primal human yearning to belong and be loved.
短片里面兄妹间发生的事基本都取材于真实事件，从小到大兄妹之间为了小事吵架打架的次数不胜枚举，“不过那些都是小时候的事了，年纪大了以后争吵少了，关系亲密很多。”她笑说，念历史研究的哥哥近期甚至有在和她合作一部关于美国移民历史的长片剧本。而父母则更宽容了，宋思琪表示自己很幸运，即使家人毫无艺术背景，但他们几乎无条件地支持自己的儿女在自己感兴趣的领域深耕和发展。
在《妹妹》的影片简介里，宋思琪写了一句话：“致我们从未拥有过的同胞手足。”她希望这部短片能给更多人对手足至亲这样的家庭纽带有更深入的了解。或许也正是这份对血缘的敏锐与感念，才让宋思琪的作品如此感人——她唤醒了人内心最柔软的一部分，对家庭、对归属的渴望。
As someone who’s experienced both of Western and Eastern culture, Song has conflicting feelings: sometimes the world feels so minuscule, while other times it can feel immensely vast, with large gaps between us as individuals. “I hope people can empathize with one another, and through stories with universal themes, people can realize that they’re not all that different,” she says. “Through my films, I want to bring different people together.”
“我想拍一部能把人与人连接起来的电影。”宋思琪如此说道，作为生长在中美两个文化环境下的一代，有时她觉得世界很小，但有时又觉得世界很大，人与人彼此之间的隔膜很宽。她的愿望是创作出“能帮人们更好地理解彼此”的电影，并让一些通用的故事，把人们联系起来。
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Website: www.songsiqi.com
Instagram: @siqi.song
Contributor: Chen Yuan
