FADE IN.
Act 1
INT. SITTING ROOM - DAY
PETER is reading a newspaper.
PETER (V.O.): Oh, there's an exhibition of Hong Kong's traditional cultural expression. I've never been to the Public Records Office too. Let me do my local tour.
INT. PUBLIC RECORDS OFFICE - DAY
Exhibition room. A video is being shown on a screen. Peter is watching it alone.
PETER (V.O.): The century-old Cheung Chau Da Jiu Festival practising Taoist ceremony was a response to a plague too.
Recalling.
PETER (V.O.) (Cont'd): Albert Camus wrote his novel called The Plague in 1947, highlighting individuals' powerlessness to affect their destinies. He sees that as an underlying absurd human condition.
Pausing.
PETER (V.O.) (Cont'd): But ordinary people in Hong Kong have been taking the Taoist way, attempting to contain the plague and mitigating the damages - I see that as performing art.
Pausing.
PETER (V.O.) (Cont'd): Lao Tzu is the father of Taoism. Despite the apparent adversity, Lao Tsu observes that the underlying harmony is Tao - the Way of the world. The Way is one traditional Chinese way to live a good life, through effortless action.
Pausing.
PETER (V.O.) (Cont'd): I think I've only begun living a good life when I turned 60. Let me go to a nearby gallery to see some conventional visual arts.
Act 2
INT. EXHIBITION HALL - DAY
Elegant environment. Sketches and drawings are on display. Peter is appreciating them alone.
PETER (V.O.): While the works might not look that special, I understand the kind of labour, skill and judgment that the authors have put into them.
FLASHBACK
INT. LECTURE ROOM - NIGHT (1975)
A few dozen STUDENTS including Peter (21) are drawing lines on scrapbooks.
PETER (V.O.): I've to practise drawing lines before I can sketch anything.
Later, observing an apple from a fixed angle, Peter begins to sketch a replica of it slowly.
PETER (V.O.) (Cont'd): Just to depict a single and fixed form of a subject is hard enough.
Erasing his sketch time and again, Peter looks frustrated.
Pausing.
PETER (V.O.) (Cont'd): Even plain drawing is so hard for me. I'm changing the form of the apple. I can't simplify what I see in my sketch.
Pausing.
PETER (V.O.) (Cont'd): And I don't have any idea to convey in my sketches either. It's quite meaningless to imitate.
END FLASHBACK
PETER (V.O.) (Cont'd): Then, I didn't have the patience to draw hundreds or thousands of bad drawings. I turned to learning car-repairing instead, as I would know what's wrong with my car and how bad the situation was.
Pausing.
PETER (V.O.) (Cont'd): But I believe I've a sense of beauty. I capture nice photos.
Three LADIES appear.
LADY#1: Could you take photos for us?
PETER: Yes.
Lady#1 passes her smart phone to Peter.
PETER: How should the photos be taken?
LADY#1: You're the author. You decide.
PETER (V.O.): Okay, I do it my way.
Having captured the moments that are gone forever, Peter returns the smart phone to lady#1.
EXT. PROMENADE - DAY
Sunny. Peter walks by leisurely, taking photos of Hong Kong's landscape at times.
PETER (V.O.): I do try to represent my ideas in my photos in my artistic way. Whether others can get them, and treat them as poetic or art-like is a matter of their appreciation.
Thinking.
PETER (V.O.) (Cont'd): To use a two-dimensional visual representation to communicate certain provoking ideas has limitations, I believe.
Pausing.
PETER (V.O.) (Cont'd): I prefer to make them appropriately explicit through texts with the aids such as photos, so that readers and me are in the same picture.
Pausing.
PETER (V.O.) (Cont'd): The works exhibited here and there are limited and spectators are few. How can they have high impact?
Recalling.
PETER (V.O.) (Cont'd): Even Vincent Van Gogh's works weren't recognized before he's dead.
Act 3
INT. STUDY - DAY
Peter is watching YouTube - a documentary about Thomas Hobbes.
PETER (V.O.): His work Leviathan is about the structure of society and the legitimacy of the government.
Pausing.
PETER (V.O.) (Cont'd): It's interesting to hear now that he wrote Leviathan when he was already over 60 - quite an encouragement to me.
INT. SITTING ROOM - NIGHT
Peter is watching TV news.
PETER (V.O.): Coronavirus has returned to New Zealand? It claimed it had effectively eliminated the coronavirus not too long ago
Pausing.
PETER (V.O.)(Cont'd): Just on the coronavirus statistics, Hong Kong fares better than New Zealand. Anyway, politics is the art of the possible.
Thinking.
PETER (V.O.)(Cont'd): In Hong Kong, the Cheung Chau Da Jiu is a good way to deal with plagues psychologically, attracting tourists at the same time.
Reflecting.
PETER (V.O.)(Cont'd): Whether it's right or wrong, good or bad, I've my way in my world now.
FADE OUT.
THE END
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