The Columbia Anthology of Modern Chinese Drama 9780231521604

Table of contents :
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1 The Main Event in Life (1919)
2 Yama Zhao (1922)
3 The Night the Tiger Was Caught(1922–1923)
4 After Returning Home (1922)
5 A Wasp (1923)
6 Oppression (1925)
7 Breaking Out of Ghost Pagoda (1928)
8 Thunderstorm (1934)
9 It’s Only Spring (1934)
10 Under Shanghai Eaves (1937)
11 Return on a Snowy Night (1942)
12 Teahouse (1958)
13 Guan Hanqing (1958)
14 The Young Generation (1965)
15 The Red Lantern (1970)
16 The Bus Stop (1983)
17 Wilderness and Man (1988)
18 Geologists (1995)
19 Che Guevara (2000)
20 Secret Love in Peach Blossom Land (1986)
21 Metamorphosis Under the Star(1986)
22 Crown Ourselves with Roses(1988)
Glossary
Contributors

Citation preview

The Columbia Anthology of Modern Chinese Drama

we a th e r h e a d books on a si a w e a th e r h e a d e a st a si a n i n sti tute , columbi a uni ve rsi ty

Weatherhead Books on Asia Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University LI T E R A TURE David Der-wei Wang, Editor Ye Zhaoyan, Nanjing 1937: A Love Story, translated by Michael Berry (2003) Oda Makato, The Breaking Jewel, translated by Donald Keene (2003) Han Shaogong, A Dictionary of Maqiao, translated by Julia Lovell (2003) Takahashi Takako, Lonely Woman, translated by Maryellen Toman Mori (2004) Chen Ran, A Private Life, translated by John Howard- Gibbon (2004) Eileen Chang, Written on Water, translated by Andrew F. Jones (2004) Writing Women in Modern China: The Revolutionary Years, 1936–1976, edited by Amy D. Dooling (2005) Han Bangqing, The Sing- song Girls of Shanghai, first translated by Eileen Chang, revised and edited by Eva Hung (2005) Loud Sparrows: Contemporary Chinese Short-Shorts, translated and edited by Aili Mu, Julie Chiu, and Howard Goldblatt (2006) Hiratsuka Raicho, In the Beginning, Woman Was the Sun, translated by Teruko Craig (2006) Zhu Wen, I Love Dollars and Other Stories of China, translated by Julia Lovell (2007) Kim Sowo˘l, Azaleas: A Book of Poems, translated by David McCann (2007) Wang Anyi, The Song of Everlasting Sorrow: A Novel of Shanghai, translated by Michael Berry with Susan Chan Egan (2008) Ch’oe Yun, There a Petal Silently Falls: Three Stories by Ch’oe Yun, translated by Bruce and JuChan Fulton (2008) Inoue Yasushi, The Blue Wolf: A Novel of the Life of Chinggis Khan, translated by Joshua A. Fogel (2009) Anonymous, Courtesans and Opium: Romantic Illusions of the Fool of Yangzhou, translated by Patrick Hanan (2009) Cao Naiqian, There’s Nothing I Can Do When I Think of You Late at Night, translated by John Balcom (2009) Park Wan-suh, Who Ate Up All the Shinga? An Autobiographical Novel, translated by Yu Young-nan and Stephen J. Epstein (2009) Hwang Sunwo˘n, Lost Souls: Stories, translated by Bruce and Ju- Chan Fulton (2009) Kim So˘k-po˘m, The Curious Tale of Mandogi’s Ghost (2010) Qian Zhongshu, Humans, Beasts, and Ghosts: Stories and Essays, edited by Christopher G. Rea, translated by Dennis T. Hu, Nathan K. Mao, Yiran Mao, Christopher G. Rea, and Philip F. Williams (2011) H I S T OR Y, S O C I E T Y, A N D C U LT U R E Carol Gluck, Editor Takeuchi Yoshimi, What Is Modernity? Writings of Takeuchi Yoshimi, edited and translated, with an introduction, by Richard F. Calichman (2005) Contemporary Japanese Thought, edited and translated by Richard F. Calichman (2005) Overcoming Modernity, edited and translated by Richard F. Calichman (2008) Natsume Soseki, Theory of Literature and Other Critical Writings, edited and translated by Michael Bourdaghs, Atsuko Ueda, and Joseph A. Murphy (2009)

The Columbia Anthology of Modern Chinese Drama

Edited, with a critical introduction, by Xiaomei Chen

c o lu m b i a u n i ve rsi ty p re ss n e w y ork

This publication has been supported by the Richard W. Weatherhead Publication Fund of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University.

Columbia University Press wishes to express its appreciation for assistance given by The Pushkin Fund toward the cost of publishing this book.

Columbia University Press Publishers Since 1893 New York Chichester, West Sussex

Copyright © 2010 Columbia University Press All rights reserved Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The Columbia anthology of modern Chinese drama / edited by Xiaomei Chen. p. cm. — (Weatherhead books on Asia) Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 978- 0-231-14570-1 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Chinese drama—20th century—Translations into English. I. Chen, Xiaomei, 1954– II. Title. III. Series. PL2658.E5C65 2010 895.1'25208—dc22 2009015252

Columbia University Press books are printed on permanent and durable acid-free paper. This book was printed on paper with recycled content. Printed in the United States of America c 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 References to Internet Web sites (URLs) were accurate at the time of writing. Neither the author nor Columbia University Press is responsible for URLs that may have expired or changed since the manuscript was prepared.

To the generations of Chinese playwrights and theater artists, and the translators, whose talents and spirit have given birth to this anthology

contents

Acknowledgments

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Introduction 1 1. Hu Shi, The Main Event in Life (1919), translated by Edward M. Gunn 57

2. Hong Shen, Yama Zhao (1922), translated by Carolyn T. Brown 66

3. Tian Han, The Night the Tiger Was Caught (1922–1923), translated by Jonathan S. Noble 97

4. Ouyang Yuqian, After Returning Home (1922), translated by Jonathan S. Noble 115

5. Ding Xilin, A Wasp (1923), translated by John B. Weinstein and Carsey Yee 137

6. Ding Xilin, Oppression (1925), translated by John B. Weinstein and Carsey Yee 152

7. Bai Wei, Breaking Out of Ghost Pagoda (1928), translated by Paul B. Foster 165

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8. Cao Yu, Thunderstorm (1934), translated by Wang Tso-liang and A. C. Barnes, revised translation by Charles Qianzhi Wu, with a translation of prologue and epilogue 227

9. Li Jianwu, It’s Only Spring (1934), translated by Tony Hyder 353

10. Xia Yan, Under Shanghai Eaves (1937), translated by George Hayden 397

11. Wu Zuguang, Return on a Snowy Night (1942), translated by Thomas Moran 448

12. Lao She, Teahouse (1958), translated by Ying Ruocheng, revised by Claire Conceison 547

13. Tian Han, Guan Hanqing (1958), retranslated by Amy Dooling 598

14. Chen Yun, The Young Generation (1965), translated by Constantine Tung and Kevin A. O’Connor 674

15. Weng Ouhong and A Jia, revised by the China Peking Opera Troupe, The Red Lantern (1970), translated by Brenda Austin and John B. Weinstein 732

16. Gao Xingjian, The Bus Stop (1983), translated by Shiao-Ling Yu 769

17. Li Longyun, Wilderness and Man (1988), translated by Bai Di and Nick Kaldis 805

18. Yang Limin, Geologists (1995), translated by Timothy C. Wong 879

19. Huang Jisu, Zhang Guangtian, and Shen Lin, Che Guevara (2000), translated by Jonathan S. Noble 927

20. Stan Lai (Lai Sheng-chuan), in collaboration with the cast, Secret Love in Peach Blossom Land (1986), translated by Stan Lai 967

21. Anthony Chan, Metamorphosis Under the Star (1986), translated by Grace Liu and Julia Wan 1026

22. Joanna Chan, Crown Ourselves with Roses (1988), written and translated by Joanna Chan

Glossary 1099 Contributors 1103

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I am deeply indebted to the brilliant playwrights and their generous children and relatives for granting the English translation rights to this anthology and to the talented translators, who put aside their own important work to contribute to the making of this anthology. I thank Edward M. Gunn for his early support of the project and for his permission to include four plays from his pioneering anthology, Twentieth- Century Chinese Drama (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1983), The Main Event in Life, Yama Zhao, Under Shanghai Eaves, and Kuan Han- ch’ing (Guan Hanqing). I am grateful to Indiana University Press for permission to reprint these plays. I am indebted also to Shiao-Ling Yu and the Edwin Mellen Press for granting permission to include The Bus Stop, originally published, in 1996, in Chinese Drama After the Cultural Revolution, 1979–1989. I appreciate Tony Hyder and Bamboo Publishing’s permission to include It’s Only Spring, first published, in 1989, in It’s Only Spring and Thirteen Years. I express my gratitude to Beijing Foreign Language Press for permission to revise their existing translations of Cao Yu’s Thunderstorm by Wang Tso-liang and A. C. Barnes (Beijing: Foreign Language Press, 1958, 1978) and Tian Han’s Guan Hanqing, translated by Beijing Foreign Language Press (1961). My thanks also go to Stan Lai and Joanna Chan for translating their plays for this anthology. I thank Jennifer Crewe, editorial director at Columbia University Press, for her unstinting support of this project and for her professionalism, efficiency, and perseverance

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in guiding me through a long process; the copy editor, Mike Ashby, for his patience, skill, tireless efforts, and editorial decision to convert the format of each play in accordance with the publishing practice of English plays familiar to a general audience; and Leslie Kriesel, Assistant Managing Editor, for her understanding, timely communication, and professional skills. I am indebted also to the College of Humanities, Ohio State University, for the Seed Grant to start this project; to the University of California, Davis, for a publication subvention grant; and to Victor Mair for his early support of the project. I am grateful to my teacher Marvin Carlson, and my friends and colleagues Thomas E. Postlewait, Kirk A. Denton, Timothy Wong, Ban Wang, Xiaobing Tang, Wendy Larson, Michelle Yeh, Chengzhi Chu, Chia-ning Chang, Susan Mann, Lindsey Jones, Judy Andrews, Michael Berry, Clair Conceison, Patricia Sieber, Smriti Srinivas, and many other people for their support and encouragement. I thank my students of the past twenty years, who shared my interest in modern Chinese theater and culture; they, too, have contributed to this anthology. Last but not least, I am indebted to Mark Halperin for his love and faith in me, and to Miriam Halperin for her pictures and Mother’s Day greetings executed on the backs of manuscript pages that had been piled up around the house for years.

The Columbia Anthology of Modern Chinese Drama

in t r o d u c t i o n xia omei c he n

Having taught modern Chinese spoken drama (huaju) in an American classroom for the past twenty years, I have found it possible to put together an anthology with what I believe to be the best, most popular dramatic texts, texts well received by students of diverse cultural and language backgrounds. In compiling this volume for general readers and students of Chinese culture alike, I followed three interlocking criteria. My strategy was to situate this anthology first in the context of modern Chinese literary and cultural history under local and global circumstances, and second in the context of comparative drama and theater. Third, I bore in mind various formalist traditions of both East and West across time so that Chinese theater could be introduced more substantially to readers and students of world drama and theater in terms of dramaturgy.1 These twenty-two plays, from 1919 to 2000, illustrate the historical, cultural, and aesthetic traditions of Chinese drama in the twentieth century and the formation of Chinese national and gender identities and their relationships to the West through the looking glass of theater and performance. Modern Chinese drama came on the Chinese stage at the turn of the twentieth century in imitation of the plays of the Western Ibsenesque tradition. Hua simply means “spoken language” and ju, “drama.” In contrast to Chinese operatic theater, which combines singing, speaking, acting, and acrobatics, Chinese spoken drama, like its Western counterpart, consists mostly of speaking and acting, although dramatists in the later periods experimented with music, singing, and dancing in an attempt to combine the traditions of both the East and the West. The development of modern Chinese drama could not have affected cultural and political history so profoundly without having benefited directly from the late Qing

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dynasty’s operatic reform advocated by Liang Qichao. Along with his theories of a “novelistic revolution” and a “poetic revolution,” Liang promoted reform (xiqu gailiang) to free traditional operatic theater from its ancient rules so that opera might also play a significant role in constructing a new nation. In 1902, while in exile in Japan, he published three operatic texts in the New People’s Newspaper (Xinmin congbao), designed to raise the spirit of the Chinese people and spur them to avenge their humiliation at the hands of foreigners. Between 1901 and 1912, as many as 150 new scripts of southern plays (chuanqi), northern plays (zaju), and other local operas came out in different magazines and newspapers. Some of these works dramatized the deeds of national heroes from ancient times and were meant to advance the goals of the contemporary anti- Qing (antiManchu) movement. Other plays depicted significant contemporary events, such as a biographical play entitled The Injustice of Xuanting (Xuanting yuan) about Qiu Jin, a female revolutionary executed in 1907 for her anti- Qing activities. The tragedy shocked the nation and inspired many writers of fiction and drama. Other new Peking operas protested foreign imperialist aggression against China, such as Russia’s invasion of Heilongjiang province in An Un-Russian Dream (Fei xiong meng), the foreign military expedition in China in 1900 in Wuling Spring (Wuling chun), and the protest against America’s Chinese immigration exclusion acts in The Spring of Overseas Chinese (Hai qiao chun). Liang Qichao’s operatic reform resulted in two distinctive features that affected the development and status of modern Chinese drama. First, Liang transformed the traditional view of wen yi zai dao (literature transmits the Way) into a modern concept of enlightenment, thereby combining a traditional art form with a modern political ideal of democracy. Liang’s concept of new citizens (xinmin) was aimed at turning the Chinese people into modern individuals with regard to ethics, personality, and moral standards, and, given theater’s large audience, Liang believed he had an effective way of constructing a new Chinese nation. Second, Liang’s operatic revolution brought together elite literati (wenren) with theater artists (yiren), who had been regarded as vulgar artisans without grace and culture.2 Liang’s reinterpretation of the social and ideological functions of theater elevated the status of traditional theater and its practitioners. In addition, Liang intellectualized operatic theater by introducing new thematic concerns and modern stories in lieu of centuries- old operatic stories featuring mostly emperors, kings, generals, and statesmen (di wang jiang xiang) and talented scholars and classic beauties (cai zi jia ren). The newly reformed operas (gailiang xinju) became an innovative means of transmitting an ideology directed at bringing about revolutionary changes while benefiting from an existing broad audience at the grassroots level drawn to the traditional form of operatic art. The operas also benefited from new performance spaces, such as the New Stage (Xin Wutai), which opened in Shanghai in 1908 and replaced the old teahouse kind of space with a modern theater and proscenium stage. The impact of the New Stage as a public space for advocating a republican revolution led to President Sun Yatsen’s approving the establishment in 1912 of the Shanghai Association of Theater Artists

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(Shanghai Lingjie Xiehui). Sun attended reformed opera performances and supported the artists’ agenda of promoting revolutionary movements.3 It is thus not surprising that early practitioners of reformed Peking operas such as Wang Xiaonong and Ouyang Yuqian later pioneered an early form of modern spoken drama, then known as “civilized drama” (wenming xi), or more generally referred to as “new drama” (xinju), as opposed to “old drama” (jiuju) of the operatic tradition. Influenced by the “new theater” of Japan (shinpa), which imitated Western modern drama in reaction against its own traditions, playwrights and performers of civilized drama envisioned a new theater in ser vice to the revolutionary cause of overthrowing the Qing dynasty, thereby placing new drama squarely in the construction of a new Chinese national identity. In February 1907, a group of overseas students in Japan organized the Spring Willow Society (Chunliu She) and successfully performed the third act of Dumas fils’s Camille (Chahua nü) in Tokyo as part of a fund-raiser to support refugees from flood disasters in China. This was “the first performance of modern spoken drama staged by the Chinese in the Chinese language,” according to Zhang Geng, a prominent drama historian and critic.4 The performance was so successful that, from a membership of a few people before the performance, the Spring Willow Society developed into a sizable organization of about eighty people. In June of that year, the society staged, again in Tokyo, The Black Slave Cries Out to Heaven (Heinu yu tian lu), a full-fledged dramatic adaptation of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin. This five-act drama was the first complete adaptation written by Chinese dramatists, although impromptu elements were introduced, such as when “Indians, Japanese, Koreans, and other nationals showed up on stage in their own national costumes to take whatever role they liked” in a scene of celebration.5 This early piece presented the socially engaged aspect of modern Chinese drama. While influenced by the founding American concept that everyone is created equal, and using it as an argument against Confucian tradition, the first generation of Chinese dramatists was attracted to Uncle Tom’s Cabin for its powerful judgment against slavery. Thus, issues of racial conflict, national identity, and resistance to oppression took center stage in modern Chinese drama from its origin. Of equal importance, the Spring Willow Society experimented with new creative possibilities unavailable in the old theater. The political orientation of civilized drama shaped the central concerns of Chinese drama at this early stage of development. Among theater organizations of the period, Ren Tianzhi’s Evolution Troupe (Jinhua Tuan), the first professional modern drama troupe, established in Shanghai in 1910, played an important role in developing civilized drama as political theater. In contrast to Western neoclassical rules of the three unities of time, place, and plot, which were a source of inspiration for the young generation of Chinese dramatists, many civilized dramas, as best represented by the Evolution Troupe’s productions, were characterized by an open structure, with many acts in diverse locations, in a form known as mubiaozhi (plot summary). The form also featured improvised dialogues and spontaneous speeches addressing current political events, which

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were based on scripts that provided only outlines of the main plots and dialogues for each act. This style of improvisation was partly related to the radical nature of many civilized dramas as they responded to the concerns of the time, especially the political events surrounding the Republican Revolution of 1911, whose aim was to overthrow the Qing dynasty. As a consequence of theater’s political orientation, new drama developed rapidly in the major cities of Shanghai, Guangzhou, Tianjin, and Hong Kong. For example, in Nanjing, in 1911, the Evolution Troupe produced Blood-Stained Straw Cape (Xue suoyi), set in Meiji Restoration Japan. The play depicts the struggle of Japanese parliamentarians against monarchists, a clear reference to Chinese revolutionaries’ efforts to end imperial rule in China. Similarly, in the same season the troupe produced The Storms of East Asia (Dongya fengyun), dramatizing the story of An Chung-gu˘n, a Korean national hero, who in 1909 assassinated Itoˉ Hirobumi, the Japanese resident general of Korea. The years 1911 to 1914 represented the most prosperous period for civilized drama, but sinking morale after Yuan Shikai’s attempted monarchical restoration in 1914–15 gradually resulted in its decline.6 Instead of its former revolutionary appeal, it became increasingly subject to commercialization and to satisfying the popular taste for family drama. Nevertheless, the ten years of the civilized drama period, from 1907 to 1917, broadly defined, paved the way for the subsequent development of huaju, or spoken drama, and the landmark publication in 1919 of Hu Shi’s The Main Event in Life (Zhongshen da shi), included in this anthology.

N AT IO N A L ID E NT IT Y, GENDER P OLI TI CS, A N D T H E WA R E XPE RIENCE: BUI LDI NG UP T H E CA N O N IN T HE REP UBLI CAN P ERI OD (1911– 1949) Although a somewhat crude imitation of Ibsen’s A Doll’s House and not really the first full-fledged Chinese original script, as some drama historians have claimed,7 Hu’s The Main Event in Life has assumed great significance in the history of modern Chinese drama for several reasons. As a prominent leader of the “new literary movement” (xin wenxue yundong), designed to promote iconoclastic agendas against traditional Confucian culture, Hu wrote this one-act play to address the age- old practice of arranged marriage; the play exerted tremendous influence on young people, who were still having to struggle to overcome this tradition in spite of the rapid changes of the time. Published in New Youth in 1919, a progressive journal influential among liberal intellectuals and students, Hu’s play reached a reading public that welcomed being introduced in this way to Ibsen’s A Doll’s House. It also appreciated his essay “Ibsenism,” which, along with the play, served to promote individualism and the pursuit of love and freedom. Although primitive in terms of dramaturgy, Hu’s play depicts the valiant action of Tian Yamei, who elopes with her Japanese-educated lover against her parents’ will. Hu created a vivid father figure, a superficially “modern” man insofar as his stance against the superstitious

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mother is concerned but stubbornly traditional in his objection to Yamei’s marriage simply because he worries more about the clan members’ opinion of him than about his daughter’s happiness. Hu censured patriarchal fathers steeped in Confucian ideologies and began a century-long tradition in Chinese spoken drama: numerous Nora-like characters would leave their patriarchal homes—whether the home of their parents or of their husband—in order to find out, as Nora asks in Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, who is right, society or me? Soon after the publication of Hu’s play, the May Fourth Movement broke out, signaled by Peking University students’ demonstrations in Tiananmen Square on May 4, 1919. The students protested the intention of Chinese officials to sign the Treaty of Versailles, in which German possessions in China’s Shandong province were given to Japan. Although humiliated by the Western imperialist powers’ subjugation of Chinese territory, Chinese intellectuals like Hu, who had spent several years at Cornell University studying Western philosophy, were at the same time attracted to the modernization program of the West and its democratic system, seeing them as promising models for a progressive, prosperous China; some of Hu’s cohorts went so far as to argue that modern drama in the Western style—more than democracy and science (the two key avenues then being advanced for reforming Chinese society), and more than other literary forms—would indeed become the most effective tool for transforming traditional Chinese society. In sharp contrast to Liang Qichao, who had argued for new content with which to reform the old opera, but without proposing new forms, Hu advocated eliminating the old forms to better express new contents. In a series of critical debates published in New Youth on the future orientation of Chinese theater, some critics called for the closing down of what they believed to be the obsolete operatic theater in order to promote “real drama” (zhenxi), which, by Hu’s definition, could be found only in Western realist plays. All these activities resulted in rapid translation of Western plays; according to one estimate, between 1917 and 1924 there were at least twenty-six literary journals and newspapers and four publishing houses that had printed 170 plays by more than seventy playwrights from about sixteen foreign countries, with Ibsen, Chekhov, Shakespeare, Oscar Wilde, and Maurice Maeterlinck among the most favored.8 Putting theory into practice, Hu, with this single play, launched a realist trend in Chinese drama, using vernacular language and a dialogue- only script to create a “social problem play” (wenti ju), a term he used to describe Ibsen’s works. Hong Shen shared Hu Shi’s realist concerns. However, he played an additional, important role by experimenting, as early as 1923, with such styles of Western modernist theater as expressionism, demonstrated in his play Yama Zhao (Zhao yanwang), the second play in this anthology. In imitation of Eugene O’Neill’s The Emperor Jones, which dramatizes the attempted escape of a Caribbean dictator from his rebellious subjects, Yama Zhao revolves around a military deserter lost in a forest, where he addresses imagined ghosts of enemies and friends and vents his grievances over past tragedies.9 Although the play’s premiere received a lukewarm reception, with some critics lambasting Hong’s “superficial imitation” of its Western counterpart, Yama Zhao deserves a

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place in drama history for its skillful borrowing of expressionist techniques, its vivid depiction of a character’s psychological states, and its concern with such national problems as corruption, poverty, and a weak government confronted by foreign aggression. While focusing on an individual’s unhappy life and complex psyche, Yama Zhao also dramatizes the personal memories and historical consciousness of the Chinese people at the beginning of the twentieth century. Yama Zhao’s shattered life is partly attributed to such national disasters as the warlords’ chaotic warfare and imperialist intrusions such as the suppression of the Boxer Rebellion in 1900, the setting of act 7. As Yama Zhao claims in this act, his family had land, and “mother and son lived in peace and happiness,” until the savage “foreign devils” ruined his family and killed his people, turning them into “bastards without pride, without conscience.” The most astonishing combination of Western cultural components and Chinese characteristics came in 1924 with Hong’s successful adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s Lady Windermere’s Fan. The resulting Chinese play ingeniously transposed the English comedy into the setting of upper-class Shanghai, with its intricate social milieu, all supported by magnificent, realistic staging. Using for the first time a new system of professional directing (replacing the earlier improvisational acting), Hong was immediately recognized as a new authority on the scripting, directing, and theater management of Western-style modern dramas, which he had studied and practiced in America for several years. This achievement enhanced a reputation he had already made for being the first to write a complete film script for a burgeoning movie industry. Drama historians in modern China have often commented on the pioneering efforts of the three founders of spoken drama, Hong Shen, Tian Han, and Ouyang Yuqian, whose plays are also included in this anthology.10 Whereas Hong has been recognized for his script writing and directing in the course of developing a modern, professional stage, Tian Han is celebrated more broadly for his numerous scripts (superior to Hong’s in both quality and quantity), his brilliant organizational talents, as demonstrated by his directorship of artistic institutions, his training of theater and film personnel, and his leadership role in staging dramatic performances by the Southern Drama Society (Nanguo She).11 The last accomplishment spread spoken drama in China, including Shanghai, Beijing, Nanjing, and other cities. Furthermore, Tian was unique in writing spoken drama, traditional operas, and film scripts, combining the best aspects of opera heritage with the modern appeal of spoken drama and film. In this regard, Tian was alone among the rare literary giants in not pitting opera, the traditional / conservative art, against spoken drama, the modern / progressive art, an opposition held by other May Fourth intellectuals. With sixty-four modern spoken dramas by Tian to choose from, I selected his early 1920s play The Night the Tiger Was Caught (Huohu zi ye) for this anthology. A work that combines the romantic and realist aspects of modern drama, it best displays the influence on Chinese dramatists in the 1910s and 1920s by Western writers such as Goethe, Shelley, Schiller, Strindberg, Heine, Hoffmann, Ibsen, Chekhov, Dostoyevsky, Synge, Poe, Verlaine, Tolstoy, Hugo, Baudelaire, Yeats, Turgenev, Gogol, Marx, Lenin, and Stanislavsky, who influenced Tian in his early writings. Whereas Hu’s satirical comedy The Main Event in Life ends with a wittily treated elopement, Tian’s one-act tragedy seems, at first

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appearance, to pose the impossibility of escaping an arranged marriage for an ignorant peasant family. Isolated in a mountain village in southern China where Confucian doctrines demand total obedience, Lotus is told that if a tiger is captured on a certain night, it will be used as her dowry when she is married off to a well-to-do family. The seriously wounded “tiger” they capture in the trap turns out, however, to be Crazy Huang, her heartbroken lover, who kills himself in protest against Lotus’s father after the latter has forbidden his daughter to minister to her lover’s wound the night before her wedding day. An Ibsenesque reading of the play along the lines of the realist tradition has to be complemented with an acknowledgment of Tian’s affinity for neoromanticism (associated later with one of the various schools of modernism), which he wholeheartedly embraced in the early 1920s. Following the aesthetic of Wilde’s art for art’s sake and that of other Western and Japanese writers, Tian created a sentimental, poetic character in Crazy Huang, whose loneliness and sadness are evoked in his watching from afar the dim light in Lotus’s room. Solitude in the dark is perceived as more dreadful than sickness and cold for an orphan drifting in the desolate world without parental love. Upon hearing that Lotus was going to be married the next morning, Huang wanted a last glimpse of her lighted window, and at this moment he was mistakenly trapped as a tiger. This focus on a poetic lover’s sentiments prompted critics to attack Tian’s play for falling short of the realist school’s goal of exposing social problems. Tian countered that such critics did not realize that, in addition to social significance, literature and art had artistic values. Tian believed that Ibsen himself wanted to include poems in his social problem plays, even though his critics praised him for such achievements as inspiring, with A Doll’s House, women’s liberation.12 Typical of modern Chinese playwrights, Tian projected his own longings and sentiments of an intellectual in the depiction of a poor peasant. However, after “turning left” in 1930 to participate in the communist-led left-wing literary movement, Tian crusaded against his own play, now judging his once-beloved characters against the idealist image of the proletariat. Tian argued that Huang’s weakminded suicide and Lotus’s failure to rebel against the patriarchal society reflected his own failure as a playwright to illustrate a hopeful future for the oppressed masses. This revisionist interpretation helped justify the play’s production and reception in the People’s Republic of China (PRC), established in 1949, when it was touted as one of the best works of the May Fourth literary tradition. Critics in the post-Mao period (1976 to the present), moreover, have repeatedly cited it as one of the most brilliant plays in the twentieth-century dramatic repertory because of its closely knit plot and poetic language. In my view, its form and content, as well as romantic sentiments and sympathy for the poor, won this play an enduring place in drama history. Like Tian Han, Ouyang Yuqian, the third founder of Chinese modern spoken drama, was well versed in both Western dramaturgy and Peking opera, the latter being his stronger suit and setting him apart from his two peers. In fact, his claim to mastery of the art was almost equal to that of Mei Lanfang; whereas he was the master performer of Peking opera in the south, Mei Lanfang dominated the opera stage of the north, as attested to by the popular phrase “nan Ou bei Mei” (Ouyang of the south, Mei of the

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north).13 In contrast to Hong Shen, who went to America to study, both Tian Han and Ouyang Yuqian studied in Japan, where they benefited from the introduction of modern Western plays as a part of a comprehensive effort to reform traditional Japanese plays. Ouyang wrote fewer spoken dramas than Tian. However, his 1922 play After Returning Home (Huijia yihou), included here, is one of the earliest plays from the Chinese diaspora. It depicts a Chinese overseas student torn between his loving, understanding homebound wife, acquired through an arranged marriage, and his Chinese American lover, a nagging, jealous woman. Faulting the popular May Fourth imperative that China must learn from the West how to build a strong nation through science and democracy, After Returning Home points to the negative American and European influences on Chinese intellectuals and, by extension, on Chinese society. The sad “prison house” in rural China in Tian’s The Night the Tiger Was Caught is transformed in Ouyang’s play into an idyll where the Western-bound traveler finds love, tranquillity, understanding, and forgiveness in an arranged marriage, a traditional practice attacked by the May Fourth generation. The part of the plot in which Lu Zhiping falls in love with his arranged-marriage wife only after he has returned from the West reflects the playwright’s desire to transcend the oppositions between East and West, traditional and modern, rural and urban, and home and away in search of a universal harmony and happiness. Zifang’s desire to be close to nature, to love and take care of Lu’s family even after Lu has expressed his desire to leave, and her wisdom in letting Lu make his own choices represent an ideal female, who is educated and modern but has not cast aside the positive values of traditional society, such as her responsibility for her in-laws. It is therefore understandable that Hong Shen, in his introduction to the first anthology of modern Chinese drama, published in 1935, pointed out that, if produced carelessly, the play could easily have been interpreted as a “shallow” piece expressing a reaction against “overseas students” 14 and, by extension, Hong implied, against the progressive, iconoclastic agendas of the May Fourth Movement. Ouyang’s other plays substantiated his liberal, feminist stance, as can be seen in his other well-received play, Pan Jinlian, included in Edward M. Gunn’s pioneering anthology.15 In this typical May Fourth play, the heroine, portrayed as an adulteress and murderess typified in the classic Ming novel The Water Margin, becomes a brave modern woman who revolts against the patriarchal society and its system of arranged marriages by openly declaring her passion for Wu Song, the brother of her murdered husband. Interestingly, whether conforming to or opposing the iconoclastic May Fourth agenda, both Hu Shi and Ouyang Yuqian explored the simple form of a one-act play to effectively portray their characters. They also incorporated comedy, with Hu describing The Main Event in Life as “a comedy of games” (youxi de xiju) and the critics of After Returning Home dubbing it one of the earliest examples of “satirical comedy.” 16 Hu played with the ironic setting of a half- Chinese, half-Western family room as a potential compromise between the two conflicting generations, thereby eulogizing the enlightened young while good-naturedly satirizing the superstitious older people. Ouyang, on the other hand, communicated an idealist view of a modern woman through satirizing the hypocrisy and shallowness of her Western-educated Chinese husband.17

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In contrast, Ding Xilin’s A Wasp (Yizhi mafeng) and Oppression (Yapo), both included here, represent two of the best works by a playwright who helped develop the genre of comedy in modern China. Returning to China in 1920, Ding had been a student in England, where he received a degree in physics and explored the works of such Western playwrights as George Bernard Shaw, J. M. Barrie, and George Meredith, whose notion of “thoughtful laughter” 18 appeared in his play. Published in 1923, A Wasp established his reputation as a first-rate writer of comedy, wittily portraying complex, lively characters whose entertaining personalities and opposing desires make up much of the play’s humor, tricks, and reconciliations amid the distinctive social milieu of the 1920s middle class. Moreover, as in Shaw’s and Meredith’s plays, Ding explores, in Oppression, a gender politics that grants female characters more wit and power than their male counterparts. This can be seen, for example, in the incident of the “mistaken identities” of a married couple, wherein the female visitor pretends to be the male visitor’s wife in an effort to fool the landlady, who had refused to rent the apartment to a single man for fear her daughter would fall in love with him. Like The Main Event in Life, which pokes fun at generational differences, Oppression pictures the mother as less resourceful and less intelligent than her daughter, who accepted the male visitor’s deposit for rent so as to catch her mother in a difficult position. The gentle humor and wordplay in Ding’s comedies led some critics to claim that he broke new ground in a direction opposite to that of Ibsenesque plays and their serious social issues, hence producing more artistically mature plays than those of his predecessors. Others, in contrast, valued Ding’s orientation toward proletarian literature, which they saw best expressed by the female visitor, who compares herself and her future roommate to the proletariat “oppressed by the propertied classes.” 19 It was Ding’s democratic and realist spirit,20 they argued, that made his Oppression “the only comic masterpiece” of the 1920s.21 Still other critics believed that Ding satirized ideologically loaded words like oppression and bourgeoisie to mock the then fashionable trend of overusing these terms; the fact that the female visitor had a telephone at home surely gave away that she herself belonged to the bourgeoisie in 1920s China.22 In my view, Ding’s light treatment of everyday life created a comic form acutely sensitive to the social norms of his time. The tragic death of his friend Liu Shuhe, to whom he dedicated this play, aroused in Ding a desire to turn the tragic material into the kind of touching comedy most frequently performed and appreciated by his audience.23 Although the play was based on the real-life experiences of Liu, who had been unable to find an apartment because of the unwritten rule that one had to have a family to qualify, Ding confessed in his dedication that the play was merely a “fantasy” without “issues” or “moral lessons.” He only wished that Liu had been fortunate enough to meet a sympathetic female visitor who could have resisted “all the oppressions and humiliations in society.” The spirit of his friend would never die, and his friend, gifted with “a great sense of humor,” Ding hoped, “won’t fault” him for “writing a comedy to commemorate a dear departed friend.” 24 In the last analysis, the real charm of Ding’s play resides in the playwright’s shunning an attempt to teach a lesson, allowing, rather, his comedy to convey his complex sentiments by means of metaphor, irony, and well-crafted language.

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The art-for-art’s-sake doctrine, which Ding was wrongly accused of having adapted from the West to put across his bourgeois sentiments, found its most indigenous expression in this masterpiece. With the next play in this anthology, the 1928 tragedy Breaking Out of Ghost Pagoda (Da chu Youlingta), by Bai Wei, one of the most important female playwrights of twentieth- century China, we move beyond the “trapped tiger” image of a traditional China as showcased in The Night the Tiger Was Caught. To be sure, as a “student” of Tian Han, who had introduced her to Ibsenesque plays in Japan, and no doubt influenced by Tian’s romantic and realist sentiments, Bai depicts in her play the large family of a rich landlord as a prisonlike establishment. From this prison, Zheng Shaomei, a brave, Noralike concubine, finally breaks free in search of her own freedom. Her story is only a subplot, however, to foreground a more sorrowful story, that of Xiao Sen, a loving mother, and Xiao Yuelin, a long-lost daughter, who dies defending her mother against the bullet directed at her by her “father.” The death of the daughter in her mother’s arms at the conclusion of Bai’s play symbolizes the sheer difficulty, if not the impossibility, of breaking out of the patriarchal home. Xiao Sen’s return home poses a serious question, however: What happens to Nora after she leaves home, as asked by Lu Xun? Xiao Sen’s disastrous fate of losing her daughter despite her public role as a revolutionary leader of the Women’s Federation foreshadows the grim future of Zheng Shaomei, who left Hu Rongsheng’s home without the economic means and social support that would enable her success as an independent woman. Is Zheng going to survive the dark world that presents especially forbidding hurdles for women, or is she going to embrace a revolutionary career, only to lose to the cause of the revolution her identities as a woman and as a mother, as did Xiao Sen? Most significantly, this play provided Bai an opportunity to reflect on, as a feminist, the nature of the Republican Revolution. As the first, rare play directly depicting the peasant revolution sweeping the rural areas of Hunan province (Bai’s home region), Breaking Out of Ghost Pagoda dramatizes the struggle of the poor peasants and their leader, the hero Ling Xia, against the rich and oppressive landlord, Hu Rongsheng. The class conflicts are complicated, however, by three overlapping sets of relationships and by incest, rape, and family secrets. The first set implicates Ling Xia, who competes with Hu Rongsheng and Hu’s son, Mingsheng, for the love of Yuelin. The second concerns Hu’s relationship with his concubine, Zheng Shaomei, and Xiao Sen, whom Hu had raped twenty years before. Compounding this second complexity is Hu’s lust for Yuelin, who, unbeknownst to the two of them, is the daughter of Xiao Sen and Hu Rongsheng. The third set involves Hu, Xiao Sen, and her secret lover, Gui Yi, Hu’s accountant, who had saved Yuelin when she was an infant from Hu’s attempt to drown her in the river. Raised by Gui Yi, Yuelin grew into a beautiful woman and was later adopted by the lustful Hu as his daughter. By means of these relationships, which transcend class background, generational gaps, and normal family ties, the very concept of revolution (which has been conventionally interpreted by critics as the play’s passionate theme) is put on trial. This is particularly evident when Ling expresses more despair with regard to his love pursuit than to his

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troubled revolutionary activities. These complicated developments lead to a darker view of the future of the revolution. Ling cries out, in act 3, that he became a rebel against the class oppressor and jumped “into the revolution” because he “couldn’t bear to see the darkness and oppression in society.” But then he laments, “And now, once again, I can’t bear to see the darkness, oppression, and filth in the revolution.” Where can he escape to, he questions, when the entire world is “utterly dark and absolutely filthy?” “The revolution can only be accomplished by the young children now at their mothers’ breasts!” One could explain away this criticism of revolution by arguing along the PRC line of literary criticism, to the effect that the 1927 revolution was doomed to fail since it was led by the Nationalists. Yet, a feminist critique would emphasize Bai’s voice expressing doubts about all kinds of revolutions mobilized by the patriarchs, whether in the form of  the Nationalist Party, the Communist Party, or lustful father of the ghost pagoda. Bai’s doubt speaks to her role of feminist against nationalist and ideological agendas of all political camps, regardless of the PRC’s promotion of her as a leftist playwright committed to socialist China until the end of her life. As David Der-wei Wang has correctly pointed out, “Bai Wei’s play lends itself to a parallel reading with” Cao Yu’s Thunderstorm, “which was an immediate success when premiered in 1935.” She “may not be the playwright that Cao Yu was, but the eclipse of her play, despite its striking resemblance to Thunderstorm, serves as one more example of a woman writer’s vulnerability when searching for literary power in a male- dominated world.” 25 Bai’s focus on the situation of women and their entangled family and love relationships paved the way for Cao Yu’s Thunderstorm (Leiyu), one of the best, by most critics’ accounts, Chinese spoken dramas of the twentieth century. After its publication in the journal Literary Quarterly (Wenxue jikan), in 1934, Cao, who was only twenty-four, enjoyed almost immediate recognition, unlike his predecessors. Performance of the play in Tokyo in 1935 reportedly prompted a Japanese critic to say that Chinese theater had progressed so markedly from Mei Lanfang to Cao that it would be better if Japanese theater artists translated and produced works such as Cao’s from neighboring Asian countries instead of adapting European plays.26 The comment suggests the improved status of Chinese drama and the extent to which the previous trend in the relationship between China and Japan with regard to drama had reversed: whereas a few decades earlier Chinese students in Japan had been influenced by the Japanese in borrowing from Western drama, now Chinese drama was deemed worthy of a place on the Japanese stage and in world theater. Indeed, Thunderstorm heralded the arrival of Chinese spoken drama’s golden period, in which the best of Western drama was melded with compelling Chinese situations and characters. Both in theme and characters, the play evokes the masterpieces of the May Fourth period, such as Ba Jin’s fiction Family (Jia), which dissects the cannibalistic, patriarchal family based on Confucian ethics that had suffocated the younger generation. Zhou Fanyi and Mrs. Lu, among others, became memorable characters, similar to Ding Ling’s Miss Sophia and Lu Xun’s Sister Xianglin. From 1935, the forceful performances of Thunderstorm by the China Travel Theater (Zhongguo Luxing Jutuan), the first

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professional theater able to support itself while promoting dramatic art, in Tianjin, Shanghai, and Nanjing spread the play’s fame. Some theatergoers could not get enough of the play and repeatedly returned to listen to the authoritative delivery of the dialogues as if they were listening to a Peking opera, their eyes closed and tapping their fingers to the beat of the poetic rhythm. Cao admitted that the China Travel Theater’s popular performances inspired him and other playwrights to continue creating other high-quality dramas, since they were now so much in demand.27 However, in spite of Thunderstorm’s rich layers of meaning and enduring aesthetic appeal, overseas Chinese students involved in the 1935 Tokyo performance of Thunderstorm fashioned an ideological reading of Thunderstorm that shaped the history of its subsequent reception for the rest of the twentieth century. They interpreted the love triangles and incest as the exposure of an evil, bourgeois family shaken by a thunderstorm forecasting its eventual downfall. Thus, they had Lu Dahai, the leader of the workers’ strike, burst forth at the end of the play as if he were a “new type of character,” to replace an otherwise “chaotic and sentimental ending” of the declining bourgeois.28 They also deleted the prologue and epilogue, now presented for the first time in English in this anthology. Similarly, the initial Chinese production of Thunderstorm, affected by the same political reading, interpreted the play not simply as a family drama but rather as a critique of the society’s unhealthy marital29 and ethical systems and as incorporating a clear indication of the arrival of a great new era.30 Even Lu Xun, who had a complicated relationship with the left-wing literary movement, told Edgar Snow that the new star dramatist Cao Yu was a “left-wing writer,” 31 although Cao was not part of the leftist drama movement at the time. Among the leftist critics, Tian Han believed that the play did not provide any hint of a hopeful future, since the weak worker character Lu Dahai is fired once his labor movement has reached an agreement with its capitalist boss. Thus he represents “a tragedy of fate” rather than a “revolutionary worker” against the capitalists, and the play failed to satisfy the practical needs of Chinese audiences in turbulent times.32 In terms of dramatic art, Tian regarded Thunderstorm as a well-made play combining plot elements from Oedipus the King, Ibsen’s Ghosts, and John Galsworthy’s 1909 play, Strife, in which a lonely strike leader is sacked after the capitalist and labor movements have reached a compromise, corresponding closely to the story in Thunderstorm.33 Confronted with these leftist readings, Cao defended himself by claiming that Thunderstorm was not influenced by Ibsen, who had himself repeatedly asserted that he had intended to write poems, not social problem plays, regardless of what his Norwegian critics said. Driven by some events that had touched and disturbed him, Cao had originally wanted to express certain surging, primitive, and irresistible emotions that could not be rationally explained. Risking again the charge that he was imitating Ibsen, Cao pointed out that he had intended Thunderstorm as primarily a “narrative poem” that would offer its readers “continuous new sensations”; it was not meant to address social issues but offered rather as a mythical drama that children would listen to at the fireside “on a snowy winter day,” as if they believed the events had happened to their ancestors “once upon a time.” He thus used the prologue and epilogue to distance the audience

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from the immediacy of a summer night’s suffocating thunderstorm, the central symbol of the play.34 These opening and closing parts of the play transported readers to ten years later, by which time a sad, lonely Zhou Puyuan has turned the Zhou mansion into a Catholic mental hospital, where Mrs. Lu and Zhou Fanyi are now patients and where Zhou Puyuan pays regular visits to redeem himself. In spite of Cao’s complaint, subsequent performances of the play also lacked the prologue and epilogue. His amazing play enjoyed a long history of frequent performances in modern and contemporary China, accompanied by habitual justifications of its political reading. Consequently, after the founding of the PRC, Cao himself fully embraced the leftist, antifeudalist theme, which, he claimed, had only later become clear to him, after critics had pointed it out. He regretted having hewed to his “fatalist approach” in explaining entangled family relationships and failing to portray Zhou Puyuan as an evil member of the declining bourgeois class.35 In the third revision of the play, published in 1951,36 Cao deleted the prologue and epilogue because of their sympathetic view of Zhou Puyuan, and, following the new blueprint for the socialist stage, turned Lu Dahai and Mrs. Lu into more probable working- class characters, even though Premier Zhou Enlai advised him to leave the original play alone.37 During the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976), along with countless other plays, Thunderstorm was criticized as a “reactionary attack” on the working class because of its weak characterization of Lu Dahai.38 Its frequent performances after 1949 were cited among the wrongdoings of Liu Shaoqi, chairman of the PRC from 1959 to 1968, who had called the play “most profound,” and were taken as evidence of Liu’s carrying out “a reactionary line in literature and art.” 39 After the radicals were ousted in 1976, Thunderstorm was staged again to celebrate the end of the ten-year disaster of the Cultural Revolution. With Cao’s endorsement, one recent production of the 1990s went so far as to experiment with deleting Lu Dahai entirely from the play to signify the total rejection of any potential political readings. In my particular experience, Thunderstorm is a perennially popular play among American university students of Chinese drama. Besides situating it in the Chinese historical and cultural contexts, they are encouraged to devise their own interpretations of the play and compare it especially to other masterpieces like Ghosts and Chekhov’s The Three Sisters (despite Cao’s resistance to the Ibsen link). They have enjoyed producing feminist readings along the line of the Nora-like characters so prominently featured in plays that came after Hu Shih’s The Main Event in Life. In one instance, for example, the play was seen to have three Nora-like women who could never leave home. First, there is Mrs. Lu, who was kicked out of the Zhou family over twenty years before while pregnant with Lu Dahai. She may have vowed never to return to the Zhous, yet she finds herself pleading with her daughter, Lu Sifeng, not to elope with Zhou Ping, who turns out to be Zhou Puyuan’s son by Mrs. Lu. Mrs. Lu thus represents a reluctant Nora never able to leave the patriarchal home, no matter how hard she tries. Second, there is Zhou Fanyi, who may represent a frustrated Nora, ensnared in the Zhou mansion after having been “humiliated,” in her words, “at the hands of two generations,” referring to Zhou Puyuan, who treated her as if she were a lunatic, and her stepson, Zhou Ping, who

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discarded her in pursuit of the younger maid. Third, there is Lu Sifeng, an uneducated lower- class woman fortunately led down Nora’s path of leaving home by her equally naive lover, Zhou Ping, but died before that departure could be effected. Zhou Ping, the elder young master, might, by some indications of the play, replicate his father’s story. Just as Zhou Puyuan drove Mrs. Lu out many years before and sought a favorable match with Zhou Fanyi, Zhou Ping could, in the course of time, easily toss away Lu Sifeng for a more suitable wife. By the same token, Zhou Chong, the second young master, has all the earmarks of the younger Zhou Puyuan, who cherished the same youthful, romantic dream of educating the poor and studying science in Germany, although his ideas were much more developed than Zhou Chong’s “half-baked notions.” One might choose to view the encounter between Zhou Chong and Zhou Puyuan as a critique of the unfulfilled May Fourth intellectuals’ vision of modernizing China, though such an interpretation runs counter to some critics’ claim that Zhou Chong, as the play’s most positive character, represents love, equality, and optimism and hope for the future of the younger generation. Students have also enjoyed figuring out how eight characters get involved in three overlapping love entanglements: (1) Zhou Puyuan / Mrs. Lu / Zhou Fanyi, (2) Zhou Fanyi / Zhou Ping / Zhou Puyuan, and (3) Zhou Ping / Zhou Chong / Lu Sifeng / Zhou Fanyi. Students have marveled at how these seemingly artificial plot elements do not appear far-fetched in the process of reading the play and at how even a minor character like Lu Gui, the Zhous’ servant, could be portrayed with depth and vitality. In graduate student seminars, where more time could be devoted to Cao, students have expressed admiration when learning that, within eight years of publishing Thunderstorm, Cao wrote four more classics: Sunrise (Richu, published in 1936 and premiered in Shanghai in 1937); The Wilderness (Yuanye, published and premiered in Shanghai in 1937); Beijing Man (Beijing ren, published and first performed in Chongqing in 1941); and Family (Jia, an adaptation of Bai Jin’s work, published in 1942 and first presented in Chongqing in 1943).40 Enthroned as China’s Ibsen, Cao thus more than merits his paramount place in the history of modern Chinese drama ascribed to him; not only did his plays reflect the maturing of Chinese theater but also his creative imagination and experimental works opened up infinite possibilities for the development of Chinese drama, in which multiple approaches, styles, and ideas could benefit his contemporaries and future generations.41 Cao was not the sole contributor to the golden period of Chinese spoken drama. The same issue of Literary Quarterly that printed Thunderstorm also introduced Li Jianwu’s play It’s Only Spring (Zhe bu guo shi chuntian), the next play included in this anthology. In contrast to Thunderstorm, which was often performed and widely taught as a high school and university text, Li’s astonishing play is much less known to general readers, was never produced on the PRC stage, to the best of my knowledge, and has not been studied much in the scholarly worlds of China and the West. It was, however, popular among female college students after its premiere in 1935 and was frequently performed by girls’ secondary school and professional theaters before 1949. Li defined his play as “pure entertainment”; he was glad to see that “women students were the ones who more

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often enjoyed acting in this comedy” 42 and hoped that they would not grow up “to be like my police chief’s wife,” who lost her innocence after her college years.43 Drama historians have recorded that, in 1947, audiences waited for two hours in the rain in front of a Shanghai theater to see It’s Only Spring,44 evidence of its popular appeal even among more general audiences. With the story taking place over a thirty-six-hour period and more strictly following the “three unities of time, plot, and place” than Thunderstorm, It’s Only Spring presents a single dramatic action revolving around the reunion of Feng Yunping and the police chief’s wife, his ex-lover from college days. The place is the sitting room of the police chief, who seeks to capture the revolutionary Feng, accused of working to overthrow the warlord government during the Northern Expedition in 1927. The female protagonist’s wild passion for her ex-lover and her fierce determination to hold on to it, however temporarily, recalls European counterparts such as the titular heroines of Euripides’ Medea, Wilde’s Salome, and Flaubert’s Madame Bovary. Li studied Flaubert while a student of French literature in Paris from 1931 to 1933, culminating in his landmark study A Critical Study of Flaubert.45 Succinct dialogue and suspense make the play enjoyable both as a poetic, universal expression of a love that can never be realized except in one’s memory and as a detective story in which the cunning detective, Bai Zhenshan, lets financial gain persuade him to allow an entrapped revolutionary to get away. Described by some critics as a “comedy of personalities” (xingge xiju), the play presents a complex female character torn between idealism and reality, pure love and material comfort, vanity and humility, and a desire to hold on to her youth while acknowledging the irreversible passing of time. At the critical moment when her ex-lover’s life is at stake, she resolves these conflicts, hence barely escaping a “moral downfall.” 46 Other critics, however, saw neither possible downfall nor paradoxes in her character but rather a “real woman” who remained faithful to her past love and voluntarily sent him on to pursue his own dreams, a noble woman who would have done the same for the man she truly loved under any circumstances. This emphasis perhaps explains why the play touched so many women students at the time. Few other plays since civilized drama’s inception produced such a rich, compelling, versatile female character on the Chinese stage, as one critic declared.47 Still others argued that Chinese comedy, a latecomer on the Chinese dramatic scene, had come of age with It’s Only Spring, following earlier promising efforts as Hu Shih’s The Main Event in Life and Ding Xilin’s A Wasp and Oppression. Li’s other original dramas, his adaptations of Western plays such as Aristophanes’ Peace, Shakespeare’s Macbeth and Othello, and Friedrich Schiller’s The Robbers, and his career before 1949 as an authoritative drama critic “with a golden heart,” as Ba Jin characterized him,48 established him as one of the most important dramatists and critics of the twentieth century, albeit only belatedly recognized as such upon his death in 1982.49 Whereas It’s Only Spring is set in Beijing a decade earlier, Xia Yan’s Under Shanghai Eaves (Shanghai wuyan xia) depicts the everyday life of Shanghai’s ordinary families in the contemporary time of 1937, when China was facing Japanese invasion. Having studied electrical engineering in Japan for the purpose of “exploring science as a way to save

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China” and having been entrusted by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) with leadership of the League of Left-Wing Writers since its formation in 1930, Xia wrote his earlier fiction, films, and spoken dramas with a strong political bent meant to advance the interests of the proletariat. He was instrumental in developing, in 1935–1936, “defense drama” (guofang xiju), which connected dramatic performance even more closely than before to the defense of the Chinese nation. In the shadow of the impending Japanese invasion, the Friendly Association of the Shanghai Dramatic Circle was organized in 1936 to unite dramatists of diverse political and ideological backgrounds and encourage them to form theater companies for national resistance. Among the most popular pieces of this type were Xia’s Sai Jinhua and Under Shanghai Eaves, representing, respectively, two distinct subgenres, the history play and the contemporary realist play. Sai Jinhua retells the story of the title character, a famous late Qing dynasty courtesan who won over important Western military personnel and statesmen and persuaded them to lessen their demands on China during the Boxer Rebellion. According to PRC drama historians, the play’s obvious allusion to the Kuomintang’s (KMT) nonresistance policy toward the Japanese (reminiscent of the corrupt, cowardly Chinese officials’ “kowtowing to Western powers” in the late Qing dynasty) made the play a popular hit, with a record twenty-two full-house performances in its first season. Its immediate banning by the KMT and the subsequent public uproar (known as the Sai Jinhua incident) seemed only to have confirmed the genius of the playwright, whose allegorical use of a patriotic prostitute to save her nation at a time of crisis when some statesmen hesitated to fight the Japanese aggressors was not lost on either political camp. Whatever the success of Sai Jinhua, Xia viewed his fourth play, Under Shanghai Eaves, as the “real beginning” of his playwriting career, for then he began to write realist drama instead of political propaganda. The catalyst for this momentous change was Cao Yu’s Thunderstorm, as Xia himself stated.50 We thus have the intriguing development of the most leftist playwright of the 1930s, heretofore under the influence of the global movements of proletarian literature, altering the mode of his creative works because of a nonleftist artist like Cao, known for his commitment to perfecting his dramatic art. This paradox has often gone unmentioned in the PRC dramatic histories, which overemphasize the impact of the leftist movement before and during World War II, viewing it as the pivotal force in the development of modern Chinese drama. Focusing on dramatic characters and their psychology in depicting “typical personalities in typical circumstances” (dianxing huanjing zhong de dianxing xingge) rather than staging grand political events as in his earlier plays,51 in Under Shanghai Eaves Xia presents a cross-section of a house in Shanghai occupied by five impoverished families. The characters are a happy-go-lucky schoolteacher, Mr. Zhao, going about his daily routines with his noisy, eavesdropping, complaining wife; a former bank clerk, Mr. Huang, who is trying to hide his unemployment from his father, visiting from an improvised rural area; a prostitute, Mrs. Shi, abused by her pimp but unable to find a way out of her difficult situation, since she has to support her father in the hardscrabble countryside; the lonely old newspaper peddler, Mr. Li, who sings Peking opera in the attic while daydreaming that his son is coming home triumphantly as a general from a war in

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which the son is already known to have been lost; and a clerk, Lin Zhicheng, who feels a great sense of release after having been fired, so that he need no longer ignore his conscience and go back to work in a factory plagued by labor unrest. While members of the five families move about in the separate spaces of this house, the play hones in on an event, the homecoming of Kuang Fu, who, upon his release from prison after eight years, finds Yang Caiyu, his wife, living with (and emotionally attached to) his friend Lin Zhicheng. This compact, innovative structure prompted Li Jianwu, one of the most insightful critics of the time, to applaud Xia for granting “little men and women . . . real sympathy and understanding” and depicting their ignorance, dreams, sadness, complaints, disappointment, and endurance “without benefit of grand legend and bright spots.” The play was indeed realistic, given its accurate portrayal of the common people; it was ethical for pointing a way out of their suffering; it was not a tragedy, since it did not deal in death and superheroes; neither was it a comedy, since it lacked the “typical characters called up by a comic situation.” Under Shanghai Eaves, as Xia himself noted, was truly a “big script for little urban dwellers” (xiao shimen de da juben).52 Only two characters transcend their sad, dark world: Huang’s father, who, although perplexed by the modern world of Shanghai, nevertheless understands his son’s unfulfilled hope for success in Shanghai; his endurance is complemented by the strength of Baozhen (Yang Caiyu and Kuang Fu’s daughter), a “little teacher” who teaches not only other children but also her father, Kuang Fu, who draws strength from the song she leads them in singing about successfully defending the nation.53 Subsequent readings of Under Shanghai Eaves have remained basically unchanged since 1949, along the lines of Li Jianwu’s earlier interpretation,54 and the play therefore enjoyed the good fortune of being performed on the PRC stage, where it was hailed as one of the best works since the beginning of the May Fourth Movement. In the preface to the first edition of the play, published in 1937, Xia emphasized the historical events surrounding the play’s planned performance: the scheduled premiere of Under Shanghai Eaves in Shanghai, on August 15, 1937, was canceled because two days earlier the war with Japan had broken out. Xia later wrote that, instead of feeling disappointed, he was excited about the dramatic turn of events. The war effort and anticipated victory would, he felt, bring an end to such doleful stories as those in his play. In fact, he hoped the play would never have to be performed again so that Chinese children would not be reminded of their parents’ past suffering.55 In teaching this play in the American classroom, I saw that, while appreciating the play’s war background, the students easily connected the story of Yang Caiyu to that of other Nora-like characters they had encountered in other plays. As opposed to Lotus in The Night the Tiger Was Caught and Zhou Fanyi in Thunderstorm, both of whom were captives of a patriarchal home, for instance, Yang had courageously walked out of her parental home to follow Kuang Fu and his revolutionary vision, although after his arrest, she found herself trapped again in another home without the liberty to pursue her aspirations. In a society without professional opportunities for women, Yang could not obtain the economic freedom necessary to survive on her own; at the low ebb of the revolution, she

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did not possess enough will, despite her best efforts, to realize her goals as had her Russian women role models. One can compare Wu Zuguang’s 1942 play Return on a Snowy Night (Fengxue ye gui ren) with Zhang Yimou’s Raise the Red Lantern (Da hong denglong gaogao gua), a popular film many of my students had seen before enrolling in my drama class. Zhang’s film depicts a rich man’s domination of his four concubines, who, despite their initial resistance to him, compete for his favor. Although of an entirely different plot from that of Wu’s Return on a Snowy Night, Zhang’s film features a concubine, a former Peking opera star, whom the man has lured into his house because of her illustrious career and stunning beauty. She at times nostalgically reenacts her performances in longing for a celebrated but vanished past. If she expresses some of the remaining subjectivities seen in Zhang’s subordinate women,56 the concubine Yuchun in Wu’s play sees the vanity and ephemerality of the glory Wei Liansheng experienced at the peak of his career as an opera star. Yuchun observes that, though she is Chief Justice Su’s fourth concubine and Wei his favorite opera star, “I think we can be close, close friends”; Yuchun thus gives voice to her deep sense of bonding with Wei at their first encounter.57 She then asks Wei to reflect on why they are both “the most pitiable of people”:58 they have been chosen by her husband as his playthings for their youthfulness and physical attractiveness, not for what they are as individuals, and only by pursuing their own desires for love and equality can they become real, dignified individuals. Yuchun in effect rejects her concubine status and shows Wei the path to freedom by belittling the splendor of his career. From a feminist perspective, the gender politics in Return on a Snowy Night—in which a male opera performer who impersonates women out of adoration for female beauty is “seduced” and liberated by a powerful woman in real life—also connects with Raise the Red Lantern, in which the male lead character subjects a female opera star to his sexual desires, violence, and imprisonment in a patriarchal home. From the perspective of performance studies, moreover, Return on a Snowy Night gives more weight than the film to the powerful interactions between what happens on the stage within the four walls of a theater and what happens in real life, and the theatricality that both realms share. Yuchun’s insistence on Wei’s bidding farewell to his stage career is a precondition for their being able to set out on their quest for love and freedom. In Raise the Red Lantern, however, the female opera star’s passive disappearance from the stage functions only as a minor subplot, albeit an exotic one.59 Wei’s tragic death twenty years later and the mysterious disappearance of Yuchun on the same snowy night make for a suspenseful, yet perfect, ending to a poetic tragedy, interpreted in the Maoist period as a social commentary on the corruption and oppression of contemporary times under the rule of the KMT.60 Thematically, Wu’s play extends Chinese dramatists’ persistent concern—evident throughout the twentieth century—with the sufferings of the poor, as seen in earlier works such as Hong Shen’s Yama Zhao and Tian Han’s The Night the Tiger Was Caught. Formalistically, Wu creatively adopts Thunderstorm’s use of prologue and epilogue, although in his case, he sees the dramatic action through until twenty years later, whereas in Thunderstorm, a

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character reflects on what has already happened twenty years before.61 Wu develops Cao Yu’s poetic language, the psychological depth typical of his characters, and stage directions that, via their comments on the characters and the period, give readers the pleasure of enjoying fictional narrative. Note, for example, the rather philosophical stage directions at the very beginning of the play: “The audience for a play usually wants to know when and where the story takes place. And when does my play take place? At a moment during the never-ending course of existence. Perhaps it takes place during the era just passed or perhaps during the current era. Perhaps there will be no avoiding a replay of these events sometime in the future, because, while the times may change and the world may be transformed, human nature rarely changes.” 62 All these qualities makes Wu’s play as gratifying to read as to watch—a legacy established by Tian Han with the publication of his early plays, and developed to its perfection by Cao Yu with his Thunderstorm. A tragedy suffused with a romantic preoccupation with love and self-fulfillment, Wu’s Return on a Snowy Night drew on the playwright’s best creative energy, which in turn arose from his experiences as an opera fan in his teenage years and his familiarity with tragic episodes in opera stars’ declining years. While teaching a class on the history of Chinese opera at the National Drama School (Guoli Xiju Zhuanke Xuexiao), in wartime Sichuan, Wu was so touched by the stories of the opera stars that he wanted to burst the bubble of their mythical status in the popular imagination by writing their real stories. Above all, he wanted to explore the flesh and bones beneath the glamorous allure and the question of what was really “noble and base.” How did human beings live their lives in vanity and in submission to their “fate,” or, on the other hand, become masters of their own lives?63 A play so deeply rooted in personal experience and insights into human nature invited similarly emotional responses in the post-Mao society of the 1980s, forty years after its premiere. After a performance in 1982 by the China Youth Art Theater (Zhongguo Qingnian Yishu Juyuan), for instance, one audience member wrote Wu, insisting that the play must have been rewritten by Premier Zhou Enlai,64 since the events of the play did not seem to have occurred four decades ago but rather evoked the society they were currently living in. Wu had received numerous letters since the play’s popular revival, after its earlier PRC production, in 1957, by the Beijing People’s Art Theatre (Beijing Renmin Yishu Juyuan);65 he chose to reply to this particular letter, however, assuring his correspondent (and his audiences generally) the production was certainly based on the original script of 1942. That his play seemed to reflect contemporary experience, Wu argued, merely demonstrated that “our society has progressed too slowly” in ridding itself of the evil personalities depicted in the play, such as Wang Xingui (whose name literarily means “new aristocrat”). A servant submissive to his powerful master at the expense of innocent and less fortunate folk, Wang had the sort of mind-set that brought about the persecution and death of numerous artists and dramatists during the Cultural Revolution. And, in fact, corrupt officials like their counterparts in the play still went unpunished by the legal system in post– Cultural Revolution society.66 By refusing to specify a

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historical time, Wu could thus present in his play a reminder of the unchanging quality of human nature regardless of social changes and revolutionary transformations.

TH E P O L IT ICS O F T H E AT ER I N THE M AO P ERI OD: T H E “RE D CL A S S ICS” AND THE CULTURAL RE VO L UT IO N A RY MODEL THEATER More than a decade elapsed between Wu Zuguang’s Return on a Snowy Night and Lao She’s Teahouse (Chaguan, premiered in 1957), the next play in the anthology. Chinese theater received an unsurpassed impetus when Japan’s aggression against China rallied a large number of Chinese dramatists to participate in wartime drama performances on the battlefields and in the unoccupied areas of the interior to raise the morale of the Chinese armies and to mobilize the masses. Mature spoken drama, as seen in the plays of Cao Yu, Li Jianwu, and Wu Zuguang, and popularized by professional troupes such as the China Travel Theater and amateur theater groups, acquired further momentum by the national call to arms, reaching its first golden age, a level that would prove difficult to eclipse in the later period.67 The founding of the PRC in 1949 changed the dynamics of the Cold War when one of the world’s largest populations joined the Eastern socialist bloc. On the domestic front, 1949 was seen as a fresh beginning of an era characterized by optimism, collectivism, and hope from writers and dramatists who had been leaders of the left-wing movement (such as Xia Yan), had turned left before the war (such as Hong Shen and Tian Han), or had veered left during and after the war (such as Li Jianwu and Wu Zuguang) in reaction to the corruption of the KMT government. In October 1949, Lao She returned from America, where, as a renowned fiction writer, he had been since 1946, invited (together with Cao Yu) by the U.S. State Department to take part in a yearlong lecture tour. Premier Zhou Enlai had personally invited Lao She to come back, and it was he who guided him toward the left-wing movement and even encouraged him to assume a leadership role in the All China Resistance Association of Writers and Artists (Zhonghua Quanguo Wenyijie Kangdi Xiehui).68 In the new socialist China, Lao soon gave up fiction in favor of plays, because they were shorter and took less time to write, vital in this new society, where writers were eager to become “society’s assets” (shehui caifu). Writers engaged in the political and social events around them rather than confining themselves to their writing desks at home in hopes of “avoiding disaster,” as had been the case in the old society, before 1949.69 Lao was not satisfied with the first plays he wrote after 1949, in which he attempted to depict the new life of socialist China, a life foreign to him. He was in his element in Teahouse, however, submerging himself entirely in the past to dramatize episodes in the lives of the “small characters” he knew best: Manchu residents in Beijing, teahouse owners and waiters, bird fanciers, fortune-tellers, pimps, gangsters, eunuchs, folk-art performers, policemen, beggars, deserters, and other ordinary men and women scrambling to make a living. Within the limited production time of two and a half hours, Lao presents more than seventy characters covering fifty years of three periods in modern

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Chinese history. Act 1 begins in 1898, right after the execution of the reformists, who had advocated political change at the end of the Qing dynasty. Act 2 is set nearly twenty years later, after the death of Yuan Shikai, who had declared himself emperor following the dissolution of the Qing dynasty. Act 3 takes place in 1948, “after the defeat of the Japanese in 1945, the period in which U.S. soldiers and KMT secret ser vice agents were running loose in Beijing.” As Li Jianwu noted, all three acts occur not during, but after, major historical events, thus allowing the dramatist to reveal their rippling effects through the comings and goings of customers in a teahouse, the center of contemporary social life.70 Unlike Li Jianwu’s It’s Only Spring, which employs the closed structure principle of unified time, place, and plot, Lao’s Teahouse explores the Shakespearean open structure, characterized by numerous characters, multiple subplots, and a large, historical time frame. This open structure was utilized also by Hong Shen in Yama Zhao and Xia Yan in Under Shanghai Eaves. By dramatizing how people’s lives worsened with the decline of each era, Lao attempts to trace the historical necessity for the establishment of socialist China; indicating the previous regimes, he points to “the dark politics, the weak nation and its citizens, the increasingly strong foreign influences” and “the bankrupt countryside, where poor peasants were forced to sell their children.” 71 Despite Lao’s enthusiasm for the new society, the publication of Teahouse in 1957 and its premiere in 1958, by the Beijing People’s Art Theatre, was given a lukewarm reception. Some critics found fault with Lao’s nostalgic “mourning for the characters of the past” without his “zealously” supporting those characters who, “although living in the old times, persisted in passionately fighting against them.” 72 The cynical, gloomy tone of Teahouse also ran afoul of the optimistic spirit of 1958,73 when the CCP launched the Great Leap Forward, Mao’s fantasy of speeding up China’s industrial and agricultural output so that it would exceed Britain’s in ten years and America’s in fifteen. The second season of Teahouse performances in 1963 encountered another obstacle:  that year radical cultural leaders advocated writing about the great deeds of the “grand thirteen years” (da xie shisan nian), from 1949 to 1962, with an emphasis on the “new people and new events” (xin ren xin shi). Disregarding the unfair labeling of the play as “nostalgic,” “pessimistic,” “sentimental,” and “naturalistic” (i.e., Western and hence bourgeois), the Beijing People’s Art Theatre courageously restaged the play.74 During the Cultural Revolution, the majority of literature and art produced after 1949 was condemned as “poisonous weeds of feudalist, bourgeois, and revisionist cultural residue.” Teahouse was attacked without exception as a play “crooning a eulogy to the old society.” In 1966, public humiliation and beatings by the Red Guards drove Lao to commit suicide, a tragic event subsequently depicted in the spoken drama Taiping Lake (Taiping Hu). In the post-Mao period after the end of the Cultural Revolution, the Beijing People’s Art Theatre revived Teahouse once more in 1979 to unprecedented enthusiasm. The original cast was used, as well as the original stage plan of Jiao Juyin, the director who had guided the play’s earlier productions in 1958 and 1963, and who, like Lao, did not survive the traumatic years of the Cultural Revolution. Jiao Juyin’s version ended the play with three old men staging their own funerals: Master Qin, the failed industrialist;

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Master Chang, the Manchu who could not support himself by selling vegetables; and Wang Lifa, the teahouse owner who could not sustain his business in spite of continuing efforts to “reform.” Teahouse’s European tour in France, Switzerland, and Germany in 1980 marked the first time a Chinese spoken drama had been exported to foreign stages; its subsequent productions in Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, the United States, and other countries signified a global recognition of the stunning achievements of modern Chinese drama. Most significant in this regard is Teahouse’s place as the most artistic piece in the subgenre known as “Beijing-flavored plays,” which Lao himself had pioneered, in the 1950s, with earlier works such as Dragon Beard Ditch (Longxu Gou). The subgenre precipitated another surge in Chinese spoken drama in post-Mao China, as seen in the plays performed by the Beijing People’s Art Theater. Lao’s dramatization of the past in Teahouse met the necessary standards for fashioning a classic text from a PRC drama. Almost at the same time, Tian Han delved further into the imperial past after having failed to write any artistically satisfactory play after 1949. Like Lao, he also chose a subject he was most familiar with—his own playwriting profession—and produced another masterpiece, Guan Hanqing, the next play in this anthology. Dramatizing the artistic career of a thirteenth- century playwright, Guan Hanqing, the play is a unique autobiographical account underscoring the idealism, passion, and lifelong tenacity of Tian himself, who, like Guan, never gave up playwriting. This self-portrait is ingeniously presented as a play within a play. The inner play consists of the central plots of Guan’s most famous opera (zaju), The Injustice of Dou’e (Dou’e yuan), in which Dou’e, a poor woman without influential supporters, is caught up in an instance of social injustice and wrongly accused of murder. The outer play dramatizes the persecution of Guan, who, to protest corrupt officials, writes and stages, with the help of Zhu Lianxiu, a famous actress, The Injustice of Dou’e. Moving freely between Guan’s own life and the wrenching stories that inspired his play, Tian projects onto his ancient peer his own writing career, in the course of which he had also dramatized the lives of several theater artists, writers, and other intellectuals. In Tian’s plays, the most interesting characters are often the female protagonists; Zhu Lianxiu, for example, encourages Guan to persevere despite his difficult situation. “If you’ll dare to write the play, I’ll dare to stage it” (scene 2), Zhu declares, sounding almost like the woman leader of the Communist Party, who many centuries later promoted progressive dramas in defiance of KMT censorship. Tian was at his best in dramatizing the love story between Guan and Zhu, who shared similar aspirations and artistic talents. Their eventual despairing yet romantic separation scene before Guan’s banishment into exile—with their singing to each other the love song written by Guan and performed by Zhu—has been judged one of the best combinations of realism and romanticism, a style promoted in the Mao era and common in the portrayals of the revolution’s martyrs. For these reasons, Tian’s Guan Hanqing was warmly received in 1958, when it was performed by the Beijing People’s Art Theatre to commemorate the seven hundredth anniversary of Guan’s creative activities. That same year the Bureau of the World Peace Council named, in New Delhi, Guan Hanqing a “famous writer of the world.” Political

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figures such as Deputy Premier Chen Yi attended the commemorative event, praising Guan as a “realist artist,” a “great liberal, humanistic thinker,” and an inspiring model for dramatists “to learn from and to try to surpass.” In his speech at the event, Tian designated Guan the “Chinese Shakespeare” and declared that “Chinese artists are obligated to develop a field of Guan Hanqing studies in the manner of Shakespearean studies in the West.” Tian even called on Chinese artists to “follow in the footprints of Guan Hanqing” and create “theaters of the people” in the spirit of socialist ideology.75 In spite of its revolutionary spirit and its initial popular reception from audiences and critics alike, Guan Hanqing was nonetheless condemned during the Cultural Revolution as a disguised attack on socialist China, which was by then corrupted by injustices and persecution against artists. Tian’s tragic death while in custody in 1968, at the peak of the Cultural Revolution, ironically evoked the prison scene in Guan Hanqing, which had earlier reminded some critics of Tian’s own imprisonment in 1935 by the KMT. 76 The period following the Cultural Revolution witnessed revived interest in Tian’s legendary life and his invaluable contributions to the development of modern Chinese spoken drama, so much so that a biographical play about Tian, Torrent (Kuangbiao), opened in 2000 in Beijing.77 In Torrent, An Er, Tian’s passionate lover and the woman slated to become his fourth wife, encourages Tian to finally commit himself to the communist cause, a decisive moment for Tian’s turning left in 1930. Another scene presents Tian’s mother welcoming him home after he has been imprisoned by the KMT for his “crime” of producing leftist dramas, followed by the prison scene in Tian’s Guan Hanqing. With the character Tian playing the role of Guan and the character An Er that of Zhu Lianxiu, the two lovers reenact the memorable scene of prison reunion, singing the song just mentioned expressing their shared destiny and love. This well-known scene, along with the play itself, celebrates not only Tian’s extraordinary career but also the devotion of his women, who sustained him and underwent many sacrifices for the sake of his art. The play ends with the Chinese national anthem, with Tian’s lyrics, thereby illustrating the central position Tian has occupied in the history of modern China while simultaneously advancing the tradition of the “drama of the theater,” which Tian had pioneered in the 1920s and perfected with Guan Hanqing. In contrast to Guan Hanqing, celebrated for its artistic rendering of the historical past, the next play in this anthology, The Young Generation (Nianqing de yidai), by Chen Yun, focuses on the contemporary times of 1960s socialist China. This play became one of the most anthologized dramas in the PRC. As a closely knit work of dramatic suspense and vivid characters, in line with the socialist realist tradition, The Young Generation illuminates the historical context, cultural expectations, and dreams and conflicts of individuals in a utopian socialist state at its most ambitious, imaginative point. As Xiaobing Tang has pointed out, the play provides a typical example of “staging the nation in the form of theatrical spectacle,” as well as “a purposeful enterprise and a phenomenal success,” reflecting “an age of great passion and expectation” “in which the boldest dreams about human happiness were collectively dreamed, and the most ordinary moments in life gloriously poeticized.”78

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The play centers on three geologists who share the goal of using their scientific training to build a strong, industrialized China, but they vary in the degree of their commitment, especially when personal interests are at stake. Xiao Jiye represents the ideological ideal, for he believes that personal happiness is intimately related to hard work and struggle, without which happiness cannot exist. Upon graduating from college, he volunteers to work as a geologist exploring for ore deposits in a remote, barren area of Qinghai province. At the beginning of the play, he has returned to Shanghai seeking medical treatment for his injured leg, after which he will go right back to the frontier. Xiao contrasts sharply with Lin Yusheng, who prefers to live in Shanghai. Lin hopes that he and his fiancée, Xia Qianru, will find research positions in Shanghai, which boasts the most up-to- date research facilities and illustrious, much-sought-after experts to mentor those in the field of geological research.79 In his heady vision of the life he and his future wife might enjoy, Lin imagines working by day and appreciating music, fiction, poetry, movies, and friends in the evenings and on the weekends. However, the influence of classmates who have already volunteered to work in Tibet and other remote areas leads Xia to wonder whether she is too attached to Lin—and to Shanghai—to come to a valid decision on her own. She feels guilty about forsaking her courageous classmates in their difficult yet thrilling adventures; she feels this doubt especially strongly when they gather joyfully together and sing “The Song of the Geologists.” Here one witnesses a Nora-like character in the Maoist era, which provided women with professional, even scientific, training and a means of living and working independently, the fruit of women’s liberation in Maoist China. However, again women had to let the political and ideological agenda of nation building in socialist China subsume their subjectivities as women. This reality is symbolized by Xia’s final decision to reject her comfortable home in the city and join the collective family of the geologists at the frontier, where, at the expense of personal comfort, she is expected to work as hard as her male counterparts. Worse still, Xia’s dilemma can only be articulated by her more aggressive fiancé as he owns up to his bewilderment. Why on earth is it, he asks, that, more than ten years after liberation, members of the younger generation should have to return to the harsh conditions of their parents’ generation? Didn’t everybody work hard for a better life? Lin’s question, which perhaps seems valid to us today, reflects the contradictory nature of Maoist ideology, whose promise of a better life in the new society did not prevent it, when the time came, from continuing to demand sacrifices from the haves for the sake of the have-nots. Maoist ideology, as reflected in Xiao’s loyal choice, gestures toward both modernization in the Chinese socialist context and a paradoxical rejection of it under the pretext that it is tainted by Western decadence. By the end of the play, Lin has decided to pursue his career as a geologist at the frontier; this occurs after he has learned that his biological parents had been executed by the KMT twenty-four years before, leaving behind a will in which they ask their son to “never forget the world that still harbors our class enemies! You must struggle for the sacred ideals of communism.” Thus, The Young Generation called for continuing the revolution, to guarantee that the

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country would not “change color.” The play paved the way for the ideological landscape of the Cultural Revolution, whose main goal was to prevent China’s slipping from peaceful transformation into a revisionist, capitalist country, as the official media were warning might happen. In the same spirit, The Red Lantern (Hongdeng ji), next in this anthology, focuses on what an older generation of revolutionaries did give up in their personal lives for the sake of the ideal of building a socialist China, where the poor gain equality and power and become masters of their own fate. Whereas the parents in The Young Generation are executed by the KMT, Grandmother Li and Li Yuhe—Li Tiemei’s adoptive grandmother and father, respectively—were killed by the Japanese invaders. This creates a dual hatred against the class and ideological enemy, the KMT, and against the Japanese attacker. In fact, while The Young Generation downplays the revolutionary family history in the form of a family will read decades later, The Red Lantern spotlights the revolutionary past to highlight the urgent need to never forget the past. This echoes the national call from Mao and the party leadership in the 1960s to forge ahead with the class struggle lingering in socialist China long after the military battles had been won. To this end, both plays use the device of “telling revolutionary family stories” to effect a dramatic reversal of plot and character development, and to ensure the survival and passing on of revolutionary memories from the old people to the younger generations. Growing up in adoptive families, both The Red Lantern’s Li Tiemei and The Young Generation’s Lin Yusheng remain ignorant of their real identities until this knowledge became essential to guaranteeing they would take up and carry on the revolutionary lifework of their respective families, whether biological or adoptive. When Li appears on stage, she is already a member of the working- class poor (and the knowledge she gains later of her family background merely reinforces her proletarian identity). By contrast, Lin evolves from a carefree youth with “bourgeois tastes” absorbed in gratifying his personal interests into a deserving inheritor of his biological parents’ revolutionary heritage, which he commits himself to perpetuating in the new society. As Xiaobing Tang has written, “This communal family also embodies an unmistakable utopian effort to create a personal revolutionary society.”80 In this respect, The Young Generation was the precursor of The Red Lantern’s much-celebrated theme of fostering proletarian successors by means of collective memory. The Red Lantern originally premiered as a film and then as a spoken- drama performance, but the Peking opera version included here has a significant place in the ten long years of the Chinese Cultural Revolution. During this period, only a dozen or so theatrical pieces were promoted as “revolutionary model works” in the three artistic genres of Peking opera, ballet, and symphonic music.81 These model works were established as exemplary “others” with which to condemn the nearly entire repertoire created before 1966 as “unhealthy” or even “antiparty” for their feudalist, bourgeois, and revisionist contents. One of the most popular “revolutionary modern operas,” The Red Lantern features at least two key characteristics of most of the model theater pieces promoted during the

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heyday of the Cultural Revolution. First, it evokes the memory of the Maoist revolution and, with its re- creation on stage, underlines the need to continue the revolution into post-1949 China. Promoted between the spring and summer of 1967, most of the revolutionary model works are set in the war period, so as to directly represent the revolutionary war experience. The Peking opera Shajiabang, for instance, is about an armed struggle during the War of Resistance Against Japan in which Guo Jianguang (a political instructor of the New Fourth Army) and seventeen wounded soldiers defeat the KMT troops who collaborated with the Japanese invaders.82 The revolutionary modern ballet The Red Detachment of Women (Hongse niangzi jun) tells the story of Wu Qinghua, a peasant girl who flees enslavement by a local tyrant on Hainan Island to join a women’s detachment fighting KMT soldiers.83 In the Peking opera Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy (Zhi qu Weihushan) Yang Zirong, a People’s Liberation Army scout, ventures into enemy headquarters disguised as a bandit to liberate the poor people of this northeast mountain area during the War of Liberation.84 The Peking opera Raid on the White Tiger Regiment (Qi xi Baihutuan) deals with the Korean War, during which Yan Weicai, leader of a scout platoon of the Chinese People’s Volunteers, defeats the invincible South Korean White Tiger Regiment, which is supported by U.S. military advisers.85 The Red Lantern’s particular focus is on the working class’s sacrifices for the war effort on the home front, its bond with the revolutionary cause through three generations of hardship and struggle, its tenacity in the underground work of espionage, and its eventual martyrdom on the execution ground. Second, The Red Lantern, together with other model operas, fully mined the aesthetic riches of Peking opera (one of the oldest genres and, hence, the most “feudalistic” one) to convey contemporary experience and the urgent concerns of the 1960s. As noted elsewhere, the reform of Peking opera into “modern” and “revolutionary” theater did not begin with the Cultural Revolution. It can be traced back to at least the late Qing period, when reformists were exploring Peking opera as a popular means for advocating the republican revolution. Later, dramatists such as Tian Han and Ouyang Yuqian, two aforementioned founders of modern spoken drama, promoted using opera for wartime mobilization efforts; they believed both spoken drama and traditional opera were valuable for depicting contemporary themes and stories. Indeed, the Peking opera version of The Red Lantern even borrows the recitation technique (langsong) from modern spoken drama, as we can see in the long speech by Grandmother Li, in scene 5, when she narrates the revolutionary family story, a passage celebrated for its beauty, tempo, and dramatic effect. It is therefore no surprise that The Red Lantern was a national sensation during the National Peking Opera Festival in June 1964. Mao reportedly attended a performance a few months later and shed tears over the touching story. Despite its reputation during the Cultural Revolution as a radical piece, The Red Lantern rarely went out of favor. Even in post-Mao China, repeated performances have taught the younger generation the wonders of Peking opera and lured the older generation back to the theater, especially when the original cast reappeared, with their familiar faces, singing, and passion. Thus The Red Lantern is a canonical piece linking the previous periods of Republican China,

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the early years of the PRC, the Cultural Revolutionary period, and the post-Mao period, both in terms of artistic experimentation and ideological and sociological concerns.

PO S T- MA O D RA MA : RE F LECTI NG ON “SCARS,” CULT URA L RO O TS, AND M AOI ST D E BT S A N D LEGACY With the next play, The Bus Stop (Chezhan), by Gao Xingjian, we move into the post– Cultural Revolution, or post-Mao, period, which begins with Mao’s death in 1976. This was the year the Cultural Revolution ended, after the Gang of Four were arrested, to be subsequently tried in 1980. As a severe judgment on the policies of the Cultural Revolution, anti– Gang of Four plays appeared on stages throughout China, expressing the public outrage over the political oppression of people from all walks of life. This was another golden period for modern Chinese spoken drama, drawing large audiences to the theater, where they could publicly vent their frustration and opposition to the previous political regime. Realist dramas mushroomed in 1978, when numerous plays took up the theme of heroic struggle against the Gang of Four by leaders, intellectuals, scientists, writers, artists, workers, and others.86 Gao Xingjian’s experimental piece is one of the most astonishing achievements of early post-Mao theater. Premiered in 1983 by the Beijing People’s Art Theatre to critical acclaim and heated debates, The Bus Stop represents one of Gao’s early, most successful efforts at introducing Western modernist theater and thereby breaking away from the rather monolithic mode of realist theater that had dominated the Chinese stage since Ibsen was imported at the turn of the twentieth century. Trained as a French specialist and intimately familiar with the works of Samuel Beckett and other modernist playwrights, Gao adapted for his own play Beckett’s theme of a futile wait for a divine figure. In his play, eight characters wait ten years for a bus, only to realize the bus sign at the stop had been invalidated. The premiere of The Bus Stop, a shockingly innovative play at the time, caused a furor similar to that seen with Beckett’s Waiting for Godot in the early 1950s, when it was deemed “so brilliant and so different from anything audiences were accustomed to that it became a great talking point in cultural circles.” 87 But, whereas Beckett’s characters are defined by a “static sense of waiting, remembering, struggling with the characteristically modern sense of futility,” 88 Gao’s characters are associated with an anguish and frustration that paradoxically inherited and even developed the realist tradition of tackling urgent social problems—of the early 1980s in the case of The Bus Stop. The play satirizes the crowded public transportation system and lack of social order in the wake of the Cultural Revolution; the decline of moral values in a post-Mao society, where everyone is concerned with his or her own needs; the urgency with which young people want to learn English so they can pass their college entrance examinations, after colleges have been closed for ten years during the Cultural Revolution; the difficulties of couples, who can be together only during the weekends; and the corruption and nepotism of privileged party officials, as typified by the character of Director Ma. All these

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previously unmentionable social problems could now be aired under the guise of an anti– Gang of Four theme, and their exposure could be used to celebrate the new political regime as a servant of the people, eager to help people overcome everyday difficulties caused by the Gang of Four. However, while highlighting political and social issues to promote a humanitarian agenda, The Bus Stop also poses problematic questions about women’s status in postMao theater. In contrast to the Nora theme of women’s liberation that had characterized numerous plays since the May Fourth Movement, and whose presence had peaked during the Cultural Revolution with The Red Lantern, the obsession of the twentyeight-year- old unmarried young woman in The Bus Stop has to do with an impending blind date, fixed for her by a friend; the woman frets that if she misses the bus to the city, her search to find a suitable man will be doomed. The mother in the play behaves like the women depicted in, for example, Xia Yan’s Under Shanghai Eaves, specifically the character of Mrs. Zhao. The mother worries, for example, about not being able to wash her bookish husband’s clothes and take care of her daughter’s daily needs. In a time that questioned and rejected Maoist values and ideologies, these post-Mao women characters longed to experience the domestic “bliss” of Zifang, in Ouyang Yuqian’s After Returning Home, and to fulfill their roles as “gracious wife and loving mother” (xian qi liang mu), the traditional Confucian patriarchal ideal for women. Despite this regressive move in feminist terms, Gao’s work is noteworthy for its formalist and aesthetic innovations, which dramatically changed the landscape of modern spoken drama. In tune with his modernism was his declaration, made in the 1990s while he was in exile in France, that “no-isms” stood for “the most basic condition of freedom for the contemporary individual.” 89 His anti– Communist Party political stance and unflagging pursuit of aesthetic autonomy separate from political engagement finally won him in 2000 the Nobel Prize for Literature, the first Chinese writer to receive such recognition. By including The Bus Stop in this anthology, I hope to show Gao’s significance in promoting avant-garde theater. Readers interested in other experimental works reflecting the historical changes of rural China in post-Mao society may well enjoy Sangshuping Chronicles (Sangshuping jishi) and Uncle Doggie’s Nirvana (Gou’er Ye niepan).90 Li Longyun, the author of Wilderness and Man (Huangyuan yu ren), the next play in this anthology, once said that Gao Xingjian had, by virtue of his knowledge of the French language, an unprecedented advantage in establishing himself as leader of the “second wave” of the literary renaissance in the post-Mao period. Gao’s success followed upon the “first wave” of the May Fourth Movement, whose many major writers, such as Lu Xun, Mao Dun, Guo Moruo, and Ba Jin, were fluent in at least one foreign language. Master writers in both waves, Li argued, were equally fortunate in their historical moments: whereas the May Fourth writers had the entire thousand years of feudalist society to challenge, the early post-Mao writers were blessed in having experienced the tragic, extraordinary times of the Cultural Revolution.91 Li’s point can be applied to his own masterpiece; he had access to an experience of his own—his ten years living in, and deep attachment to, the northeastern wilderness of China. This was where millions of middle and high school graduates were sent to from

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various cities during the Cultural Revolution, to live with the local peasants and be “reeducated” by them. In post-Mao China, numerous young writers returning from the countryside developed a genre (zhiqing wenxue) of writing revealing their experience in the countryside and denouncing the political regime of the Cultural Revolution. The genre was integrated, from the late 1970s to early 1980s, into what was then known as “scar literature” (shanghen wenxue), encompassing not only fiction and poetry but also painting, film, and other art forms. However, Wilderness and Man transcends the limitations of the genre as a political and ideological critique by exploring the profoundly self- contradictory nature of human beings, which he considered as culpable as the social and ideological conditions of the times. Undeniably, the banished youth suffered overwhelming physical and psychological hardships, as Li’s surface plot demonstrates; yet, the play’s philosophical perspective comes into focus when Ma Zhaoxin cannot bring himself to forgive Xicao, the object of his passionate, pure love, after she has given birth to a child fathered, against her will, by the company commander, Big Man Yu, the local bully. Despite the claim that the conflict between man and woman is the most universal of themes, Li believed that the conflict with one’s inner self should be considered the most enduring and significant theme.92 In this autobiographical play, Li “divides himself into two halves: the Ma Zhaoxin of fifteen years ago and the Ma Zhaoxin of fifteen years later” in order to completely understand his self of the past. Although the play deals with the exiled youth, it is much more a reflection on universal qualities of humanity and on the individual’s persistent sense of loss and bewilderment.93 Li’s work departed from other plays of his time in that his evil characters were not without redeeming qualities. He carefully describes the childhood trauma of Big Man Yu, whose abusive stepfather accounts for his urge to control others and his evolution into an anguished, lonely man who feels he can be understood only by a pet dog. At the conclusion of the play, Yu engraves his own name on the monument listing those who sacrificed their youth and spirit to the wilderness. He, too, wants to be remembered for volunteering in the 1950s to reclaim the northeast for the socialist motherland. Fifteen years later Ma Zhaoxin clearly registers Yu’s cry for recognition of his portion of suffering and for others’ respect, despite the state he now is in: a wreck of a man with a broken leg that has never healed properly. Indeed, as both critics and the writer himself have pointed out, one can see behind each character a particular kind of subculture unique to the northeast wilderness, which was a melting pot of diverse regional and ethnic groups. These subcultures included White Russians who had fled the Soviet revolution, Japanese women deserted by the retreating Japanese army, poor immigrants from Shandong, Hebei, and Henan provinces seeking a better living, the hundred thousand veteran soldiers and officials transferred to the northeast in 1956 to build up its frontiers, and youth sent from numerous cities from 1963 to the time of the Cultural Revolution. All these elements and their historical residue contributed to the play’s subcategorization as a northeastern regional play (dongbei xiju) as well as its addition to the existing genre of regional plays, including Lao She’s Beijing-flavored Teahouse or Xia Yan’s Shanghai-flavored Under Shanghai Eaves.

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This crossbreeding of northeastern cultures in Wilderness and Man accompanied an even more hybrid mixing of global theater cultures. Chinese critics conceived of the play’s performance, in terms of its dramatic acting style, as having hewed to the spirit of Stanislavsky,94 with the latter’s emphasis on “developing inner resources and on freeing the mind and body to respond to the demands of a script” and “the sense of truth and the importance of emotional memory.” 95 They considered that it was at the same time Brechtian,96 with Brecht’s “alienation effects” operating in full gear to distance the events of fifteen years ago from the intellectual reflection of the present time. The fused presence of two of the “most influential theorists of the century” 97 speaks to the cosmopolitanism of spoken drama that the play incorporated while simultaneously holding on to its local characteristics. Also at play were the elements of Chinese traditional opera, such as a free flow of scenery and symbolic acting, in addition to borrowings from other artistic genres, such as music, recitation, dance, and sculpture.98 All these contribute to poetic form both in the language itself and in the play’s structure, in which characters move freely between the dead and the living, the real and the imagined, the past and the present, and the self and others. In spite of this melding of traditions—or perhaps because of it—Wilderness and Man was ultimately celebrated as a masterpiece of contemporary socialist theater, a landmark play at once “realist” (in its depiction of the youths’ experiences), “romantic” (in its imaginative reach toward the ideal and the beautiful), and “symbolist” (in its use of music and sound effects).99 If Li’s play was one of the peak achievements of the 1980s, when dramatic performances echoed the national trend of reflecting on the woes and wrongs of the Cultural Revolution, Yang Limin’s Geologists (Dizhishi), the next play in this anthology, expresses a theatrical treatment of a nostalgia in the 1990s for Maoist days. The 1990s was the age of globalization, when China’s long-awaited transformation from socialism to modernity brought with it not only wealth and higher living standards but also injustice, inequality, and corruption. In The Young Generation, as discussed in the preceding, the Shanghai couple Lin Yusheng and Xia Qianru, following the example of Xiao Jiye, go to work as geologists in a remote region of the country to make a better life possible for the majority of the Chinese people. Xiao’s confrontation with Lin functions as an expression of the class struggle between the proletarian and bourgeois influences still prevalent in socialist China. In The Young Generation, we hear an early version of the warning “never forget the class struggle,” so that there can be a “continuation of the proletarian revolution on the cultural and ideological fronts,” a key part of Mao’s concept of the Cultural Revolution. The ending of The Young Generation thus presents a group of enthusiastic travelers bidding farewell to Shanghai and its theater audiences: “Goodbye teachers, friends, comrades! We’re going. Soon we’ll be leaving you, going to our different posts, and like seeds scattered over the ground, we’ll grow roots in those places, send up sprouts, blossom, ripen. Goodbye! My dear comrades, we’re leaving, with your hopes and your wishes, to create a beautiful, beautiful future.” It is natural to wonder how this 1963 story, with its happy ending, stood up to real life and to theatrical representation. What happened to Xiao Jiye, Lin Yusheng, and Xia Qianru, the three geologists in The Young Generation who settled in a remote area of

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China? What became of their aspirations, both professional and personal? Was Xiao able to persevere despite his physical condition? Did Lin begin to regret his second departure from Shanghai? How did Xia end up feeling—as a scientist and as a woman— about working in a faraway, isolated region of the country? Did she miss Shanghai? Interestingly, no play from the late 1970s or the entire decade of the 1980s depicts the life of geologists. Not until 1997, when Yang’s Geologists was premiered by the Daqing City Theater (Daqing Shi Huaju Tuan) to critical acclaim, were theatergoers reminded of this profession’s much overlooked contribution to the socialist vision. Geologists can thus be read as a possible sequel to the seemingly unfinished story of The Young Generation, in which the “afterlife” of this revolutionary legacy, and its impact on the lives of young scientists in the next three decades, is examined. Geologists has four acts, set in 1961, 1964, 1977, and 1994, covering high Mao culture, the early post-Mao years, and the post-Deng period, with its rapid modernization and globalization. In an intriguing manner, Geologists glosses over the most disastrous period of the Cultural Revolution while tracing the moral burden and spiritual roots of this young generation. The play takes pains to address the questions where did they come from? What inspired them? What frustrated them? Do they have any regrets? These issues ultimately speak to the values, pitfalls, and sorrows of idealism, socialism, utopianism, postsocialism, capitalism, modernism, and globalization in contemporary Chinese life. Unlike the Shanghai play The Young Generation, Geologists is set in Beijing, the political, cultural, and ideological center of the PRC. The play has only one setting, a geologist’s home close to the Beijing Railway Station in the heart of the nation’s capital.100 Whereas Xia Qianru, in The Young Generation, hesitates about going to a remote area, Lu Jing is determined to do so after college graduation. But, her university assigns her to remain at the school to train future geologists. In the next three acts, within a span of thirty years, Lu periodically receives her classmates in her apartment whenever they return to Beijing for brief visits. Her apartment thus becomes the only dramatic setting, where we hear three couples of geologists remembering the past, navigating the present, and hoping for the future. We learn that Lu is unhappily married to Luo Dasheng, a geologist who was transferred back to Beijing, an initially lucky break that has unfortunately brought him a mediocre career as a bureaucrat with no academic success to boast of. Luo Dasheng has the ideal job Lin Yusheng had initially wanted, but, as it turns out, Luo Dasheng cannot thrive without working as a scientist. For years, Lu longs for the unavailable Luo Ming, but she cannot be united with him since Luo Ming does not want her to follow him; he feels she does not deserve the harsh life that would be her lot. In many aspects, Luo Ming’s story duplicates that of Xiao Jiye, in The Young Generation, especially in terms of his determination to set out for the wilderness to give his best for his country. To realize that aspiration, however, Luo Ming pays a heavier price than does Xiao. In the course of the play, he succumbs to a variety of diseases and at one point cannot even walk on his own. However, one can view Luo Ming’s story as a continuation of Xiao’s life. The Young Generation ends at the beginning of Xiao’s career, when he is still a young, vibrant idealist, but the thirty years over

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which Geologists develops provide ample time for the audience to witness the toll that Xiao’s idealism would probably have taken on him. The third couple enjoys thirty years of happy marriage in Qinghai, but not without the wife’s having to give up her career as a geologist in order to care for her husband. One can imagine the future life of Xia Qianru foretold in the fate of this woman, who has sacrificed her own promise to assure her husband’s success. At the end of the play, her husband is also dying, another potential Xiao at the end of his life’s journey. When the three couples reunite in the last act in 1994, they lament the lifelong deprivations they endured to be geologists but, in the end, they do not regret their youthful enthusiasm for the wilderness back in the 1960s. They would make the same choices again, as we can deduce from hearing them repeatedly singing their graduation song, “Song of the Geologists.” Rather than being the cause of these characters’ suffering, the Cultural Revolution was apparently only part of a long process in the loss of an idealistic dream. The official discourse, when referring to the Cultural Revolution, uses generalized terms like disaster for it; but the real pain, sacrifice, and regrets of those like the geologists continue to come to life in accounts like this play. Ironically, China’s global capitalism in the 1990s as depicted at the end of Geologists seems to fulfill the dire warning in The Young Generation against “capitalist restoration,” which echoes Mao’s admonition to safeguard against socialist China’s peaceful transformation into a capitalist China from the West’s influence—a warning that served to launch the Cultural Revolution. While not attempting to explain why things happened the way they did, Yang considers the deep pathos and despair of his protagonists while nevertheless applauding their selfless spirit, stalwart love, and shared idealism. The play’s strongest critique is directed against the status quo of post-Mao China, encapsulated in its glorification—as well as its mockery—of the symbol of Beijing and its railway station, where outsiders come and go, moving toward the center or drifting away toward the periphery. By the dramatic metaphors of farewell to Shanghai and journey into Beijing, The Young Generation and Geologists evoke nostalgia, compassion, frustration, and forgiveness for a generation of Chinese scientists who sacrificed but do not regret and who dreamed but do not give up. They long for some sort of spiritual strength comparable to what they experienced during the Mao era, and this longing, still unmarred by their experience during the Cultural Revolution, becomes the only memory worth holding on to. If Geologists restages a socialist utopia of bygone years, Che Guevara (Qie Gewala), by Huang Jisu, Zhang Guangtian, Shen Lin, became a smash hit in April 2000, primarily for its call to arms101 against semicapitalist China. Exploring the legacy of an enduring icon of the communist revolution, Che Guevara evokes the Maoist themes of warnings against the transformation from a socialist to a capitalist and revisionist China— warnings that still give pause to those who resent the increasing gap between rich and poor in modern- day China. Economic progress and rising living standards aside, the exploitation of rural migrant workers as cheap labor, the constant loss of agricultural land to urban development, the abuse of the state and party’s power in collaboration with Western capitalist and global invasions of the Chinese market, and numerous

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other social injustices make one reconsider whether Mao had a point after all in campaigning for a continued revolution in socialist China before and during the Cultural Revolution. The play depicts Che Guevara as a military hero of the Cuban revolution at the height of the Cold War period, when he has sacrificed everything to bring justice and equality to the poor of the Third World. Most interestingly, Che Guevara dramatizes six episodes of Che’s life, including his steadfast devotion to revolutionary goals after the Communist Party came to power in Cuba. In the play’s first act, set in 1956, for example, Che joins Fidel Castro’s rebel army of some eighty guerrillas in a voyage on the ship Granma to liberate Cuba’s poor and oppressed people, the historic beginning of the Cuban revolution. Act 2 flashes back a few years to when Che visited the U.S.-run Chuquicamata copper mine, in Chile, where he spent a night with an outlawed Chilean Communist Party member, “a living representative of the proletariat of any part of the world.”102 Act 3 follows Che’s painstaking volunteer work in the sugarcane fields during the weekends and holidays, after the Cuban revolution has been won and after he has assumed the powerful role of Castro’s right-hand man. Building a new socialist society proved to be much more challenging than overthrowing the old society, Che believed; upholding humanity and creating “new men” for the new society required a persistent revolutionary spirit bent on battling bureaucracy and corruption and sustaining a life of personal sacrifice while also safeguarding one’s own interests and comfort. This commitment leads to act 4, when Che bids farewell to Castro’s socialist Cuba and to his own family and ventures to initiate guerrilla warfare in the rural areas of Bolivia, where he can reject his old self in order to embrace a “new man.” 103 Here the stage image of Che departs from that of Mao, who attempted to wage a continued revolution within China, only to bring disasters to his own party and ex-comrades in power. Che, on the other hand, left his adopted socialist country in order to go on fighting injustice in the name of other oppressed peoples, in Latin America and the world over. Act 5 dramatizes Che’s spreading the truth of the revolution to the poor peasants in the mountainous areas of Bolivia. What will the world become without revolution, and how can oppression end without resistance? Che asks in his attempt to enlighten the masses. Act 6 presents Che in detention in the La Higuera schoolhouse before his execution. He pins his hopes on the schoolchildren, who will eventually understand that “revolution can never perish,” and he bids Castro farewell one more time: “We are still very far away from reaching the other bank of the new people and new world.” “Perhaps we will be neglected by the twentieth century. Perhaps we’ll be forgotten by the twenty-first century. But this is all not important. The mission of justice is always filled with twists and turns. The Granma will still set sail again and again.”104 Portrayed by some as a “radical Maoist” who “believed in armed struggle as the only solution for freedom,” Che was executed in 1967, at the peak of the Chinese Cultural Revolution. At a time in post-Mao China when no one could have openly celebrated the start of the Cultural Revolution, presenting Che’s Maoist beliefs on the stage was tantamount to saluting Maoist idealism and its call to hold fast against capitalism and imperialism. In very early twenty-first century China, where many people were victims of party corruption,

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exploitation by the new rich, and a seriously polluted environment as the dangerous results of a Chinese brand of capitalism, the play’s summons to a new revolution through liberation of the disadvantaged poor once again touched a deep chord. In highly poetic language, the cast asks the audience a number of questions. Forty-years ago, Che Guevara gave up his career as a medical doctor to join the Cuban revolution, they say; had he known that the socialist revolution for which he eventually died would “change its colors” by the end of the twentieth century, would he have had any regrets? What would Che Guevara say about the increasing gap between rich and poor in contemporary China, for instance? Had he known of the eventual collapse of the socialist bloc, would he have sacrificed his personal happiness for the noble cause of the Cold War? The cast answers these questions eloquently and unhesitatingly: Che would have had no regrets, since he had always believed in a society that was equal and free from oppression and Western imperialist domination. Had he to do it all over again, he would still have pursued a military career and set out to liberate all the poor peoples of the world. Between the play and the pop cultural fetishes, such as the Che-brand merchandise (T-shirts, biographies, souvenirs, and the like), Che became a new role model, one with real values superseding the old-fashioned values of a socialist China. Indeed, the play embodies a harsh critique of post-Mao society’s materialist culture, its agendas of globalization and capitalization, and a sharp mockery of the intelligentsia’s collaboration with the government in betraying the poor. Paradoxically, however, the play also met the requirements of the status quo: in spite of its attacks on party corruption, it could also be viewed as supporting the party’s own campaign of combating corruption and its much-touted desire to help the majority of poor Chinese eventually get rich—after a small number of people got rich first. Just as Che declares in the play that, as long as oppression and exploitation persist, he will never put down his gun, so one might conclude that, as long as the dream of equality lives, both inside and outside China, military heroes, heroines, and plays will continue to remind us of that dream of Maoist China, a complex era whose memory of the past and vision of the future have come down to the Chinese people as both a remarkable heritage and a burden.

TA I WA NE S E S PO K E N D RAM A: M EM ORY, TRAUM A, A N D T HE S E A RCH F O R A GLOBAL THEATER WIT H L O CA L HI STORI ES The foregoing brief survey of key texts and major issues of Chinese spoken drama of the twentieth century has focused on its metamorphosis on the stages of mainland China. Without attempting, for lack of space, a complete survey of equally important theater pieces in Taiwan and Hong Kong, I include in this anthology Stan Lai’s (Lai Shengchuan) Secret Love in Peach Blossom Land (An lian Taohua yuan), one of the most influential plays from Taiwan. Because of Taiwan’s unique colonial history, the trajectory of spoken drama there presents a different picture from that of the mainland. During Japan’s occupation of Taiwan (1895–1945), following China’s defeat in the Sino-Japanese

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War (1894–1895), Japanese colonizers brought with them “new theater” to entertain the Japanese settlers in Taiwan, and subsequently this new theater helped promote a “new drama” performed in Taiwanese dialect (Taiyu xiju).105 Concomitantly, Taiwanese students seeking a better education in Japan inevitably came under the influence of Japan’s new theater. The influence spurred them to stage their own “new plays” in Tokyo, beginning in 1919,106 in a development reminiscent of mainland Chinese students’ performing their first civilized drama under the direction of the Spring Willow Society. The establishment of Japanese-speaking and Minnan- dialect theaters in the first two decades of the twentieth century encouraged mainland civilized- drama troupes, such as the Society for the People’s Welfare (Minxing She), from Shanghai, to perform in Taipei, thus providing a second source for the subsequent development of Taiwanese theater on top of the influence of Japanese new theater.107 A third source can be traced to the spread of the new literary movement from the mainland to Taiwan in the early 1920s, when, as mentioned, the plays of Ibsen, Shaw, Strindberg, and other Western writers influenced the entire generation of May Fourth writers. In 1923, for example, the Taiwan People’s Journal (Taiwan minbao) printed Hu Shi’s The Main Event in Life, which influenced drama advocates such as Zhang Weixian.108 The journal’s editor, Zhang Wojun, put it in support of the vernacular literary movement from the mainland, introducing the May Fourth literary theories of Hu Shi, Chen Duxiu, and Lu Xun. Zhang Wojun’s attempts to bridge the cultural gap between mainland China and Taiwan typified the strong desire on the part of the 1920s literary critics “to sever ties with the colonial ruling class.” 109 Zhang Weixian, under these multiple influences, traveled to the mainland and to Japan twice to study theater art. In 1933, he adapted Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People (Renmin gongdi) to a Taiwanese setting by having the play presented in the local Minnan dialect, an epochal event in the “new drama movement” (xinju yundong).110 His efforts and those of others to establish spoken drama in the Taiwanese dialect failed. Spoken drama had difficulty taking root in Taiwan.111 The Mandarin per formances of civilized drama staged by the Society for the People’s Welfare from Shanghai in Taipei in 1921, for instance, could not be understood by many Taiwanese audiences; interpreters were needed to explain the plays’ plots in the Minnanese dialect before each per formance.112 The language issue became more complex after the Japanese occupation ended in 1945. The Chinese government banned the colonist’s language and encouraged Mandarinspeaking modern drama troupes such as the New China Drama Society (Xin Zhongguo Jushe) from Shanghai to perform. Headed by Ouyang Yuqian, the author of After Returning Home, the group staged, between December 31, 1946, and February 20, 1947, Cao Yu’s Sunrise, Wu Zuguang’s Cowherd and Weaver Girl (Niulang Zhinü), and Ouyang Yuqian’s Peach Blossom Fan (Taohua shan) to great acclaim. This last required, however, its script being supplied to playgoers, who could read but not understand Mandarin.113 The ensuing tragic incident of February 28, 1947, in which the KMT government arrested and murdered thousands of Taiwanese people, including intellectual elites, intensified the conflict between mainlanders and Taiwanese intellectuals, and consequently

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discouraged politically sensitive theater. After 1949, when the KMT government arrived in Taiwan with 2 million—mostly Mandarin-speaking—immigrants from the mainland and imposed suppressive anticommunist policies, theater became mainly stagings by KMT army per formance units for the purpose of propaganda and mobilization. Ironically, since most established dramatists in the 1930s and 1940s allied themselves with the communist-led left-wing literary movement and few had followed the KMT to Taiwan, the KMT government did not have enough writers and well-trained drama personnel for its own theater activities,114 so it occasionally produced left-wing playwrights’ works without crediting the original writers. Chen Baichen’s Dancing Monsters (Qun mo luan wu) was staged under the new title of A Scroll of Numerous Clowns (Bai chou tu) and reworked as a satire of the CCP, though it had been written originally as a critique of pre-1949 KMT rule. Tian Han’s The Journey of Beautiful Women (Li ren xing), a classic leftist play condemning the Japanese invaders and the KMT government, was produced as Justice in the World (Zhengyi zai renjian) and as a vehicle for anticommunism and anti–Soviet Union sentiments.115 Without substantial changes in the plot and characterization, the Taiwanese production merely replaced the Japanese flag with the flag of the CCP,116 thus indicating the defeat of the people’s enemies. This is an intriguing case of a play traveling across the Taiwan Strait, a divide representing important cultural, ideological, and political differences; with a little restaging, the play not only betrayed its author’s meaning but also served to express deep opposition to the regime across the strait. By several accounts, the 1960s were the beginning of Mandarin-language Taiwanese spoken drama. This was when a new generation of theater artists was promoting “serious drama” (yansu xiju) while steering away from political theater and the conventional forms of acting. In 1960, for example, upon returning to Taiwan after revisiting Europe and America to investigate the theater scenes, Li Mangui began to advocate a “little theater movement,” in the tradition of the West. A theater professor who had received a degree in theater in the United States, Li applied her talents to preparing the way for the flourishing of Taiwanese theater. She trained theater students in the universities, helped universities and theater troupes to organize regular performances, and established a dramatic arts center that eventually published the first collection of Taiwanese drama, consisting of sixty-six plays written after 1949.117 In addition, she wrote forty dramatic plays herself. Li Mangui’s extraordinary achievements were matched only by those of Yao Yiwei, whose teaching career and leadership in organizing five experimental drama festivals in Taipei from 1980 to 1984 profoundly shaped Taiwanese theater and its devoted young artists. Based on both historical legends and contemporary life, his plays are best typified by The Red Nose (Hong bizi), a play about an actor from an acrobatic group who feels most at home wearing his clown mask, for that is when he feels free to express his daring opinions about social realities and to act on his desire to help others. When reunited with his doting wife, who, for three years, had been searching for him, he feels lost and awkward without his mask. In the end, having cast aside a comfortable life in the mundane world, he loses his own life while rescuing a dancer drowning in the ocean, thereby embracing in death his own meaning of life.

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Popular among Taiwanese audiences, The Red Nose became, in 1982, the first Taiwanese play ever produced in Beijing, following thirty-two years of ideological confrontation between the KMT and the CCP. As the renowned female director Chen Yong has indicated, her passionate production of The Red Nose, put on by the China Youth Art Theater, was meant to inspire respect and longing in mainlanders for their brothers and sisters in Taiwan, whose national spirit and selfless sacrifice in pursuit of truth and fulfillment are not unlike those of the mainlanders.118 While the capitalist society of Taiwan fosters greed among the rich and famous dramatic characters, the protagonist (Red Nose) is a recognizable hero in search of the true meaning of life. His noble spirit could be a luminous example for the post-Mao young people, whose moral fiber had not withstood the material attractions of the capitalist world after China opened to the outside world.119 Chen Yong has acknowledged that, in addition to the play’s moral appeal, it offered possibilities for creating something new and exciting on the Beijing stage. Instead of employing acrobatic actors, Chen trained her own cast to perform the acrobatics, and she experimented with innovative lighting and sound designs, an open and extended stage that included the audience, and smooth shifting between the real world and one’s subconscious, all of which helped shape an entirely new stage production for her contemporary audiences.120 The resounding success of the highly artistic, experimental Taiwanese drama on the PRC stage was accompanied by a flurry of political theater, in which high-ranking state officials celebrated in the same breath the dramatic talents of Taiwan and the inevitability of its reunion with the mainland. Even Yao Yiwei’s eighty-five-year- old mother and his brother, a university professor from Jiangxi province, were brought into the national “show”: they gave expression in the news media to their excitement at seeing Yao’s play so beautifully staged in Beijing and to their hope that the epoch-making theatrical event that was bringing together the peoples separated by the Taiwan Strait for more than three decades would lead to the entire family’s reunion in the near future.121 The impact of this mainland production “quietly made its way into Taiwan”; as he later confessed, Yao was pleasantly surprised by the news of the Beijing production, but he restrained himself from trying to obtain more information about it lest he disrupt this subtle beginning of an exchange between two theater communities after three decades of separation. It was not until martial law was lifted in 1987 that he was finally able to meet Chen Yong in Tokyo and Cao Yu in Beijing.122 This case constitutes, then, a reversal of plays traveling from the mainland across the Taiwan Strait. In contrast to the staging, and adulteration, of leftist plays in Taiwan in the 1950s, the PRC performance of The Red Nose introduced Western modernist theater in early post-Mao China, when the PRC stage was struggling to emerge from its conventional realist drama. Yao’s expressionist play, with its symbolic use of the mask, the chorus, and its fluidity of time and space, demonstrated heretofore unimagined possibilities. While The Red Nose had the good fortune of being transformed into a PRC-favored play about hope and reunion, Stan Lai’s Secret Love in Peach Blossom Land, included in this anthology, grew out of the relaxed ideological atmosphere in Taiwan as the country advanced toward democracy.123 Premiered in 1986, the play voices the anxiety of Taiwanese

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society before and after radical changes, such as the lifting of martial law and the end of censorship of the media.124 Placing the issue of national identity and historical memory at its center, the play deals with such sensitive topics as the death of traditional values, hesitation to begin dialogue with China, and the collective cultural consciousness.125 Applying his distinctive vision to the play, Lai created a masterpiece heralding the arrival of a mature period in Taiwan’s theater, with a global impact signaled by soldout tours in Taipei, the United States, Singapore, Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Chongqing, Hong Kong, and other cities. Shifting in time and space, Secret Love is two plays within a play, a structure previously seen in Tian Han’s Guan Hanqing. Lai’s play ingeniously presents two theatrical groups’ competition for the same stage in the course of their respective rehearsals. The first play, Secret Love, is a tragedy in which two young lovers travel from Kunming to Shanghai after the War of Resistance Against Japan but drift apart following the 1949 civil war. Both later move to Taiwan but, because of the difficulty of making contact with mainland China during the Cold War period, they do not realize that they arrived in Taiwan around the same time. The love story is further complicated by the character of the play’s director, who keeps interrupting the rehearsal, since, no matter how hard his actors attempt to re- create the young lovers’ emotions in 1948 Shanghai, they can never be as “real” and as “beautiful” as his own memories. Only after his fellow artists finally persuade the director to briefly let go of his own memories does he become an ideal audience for his play. While watching the playing of the last scene for the first time, he is mesmerized by the reunion between Yun and Jiang in their old age, a scene he has longed to see take place in his real life after many years of displacement and dispossession in Taiwan. In this context the director is actually the protagonist, burdened by memories that become a metaphor for the Taiwanese identity and that are characterized by a time and space in-between, an island isolated from the mainland but also intricately related to it in contemporary life. Thus the play transcends the local context of 1970s Taiwan and also the ideological subject of collective memory and its historical burden; in the pro cess, it carves out a place in the tradition of spoken drama represented by Tian Han’s The Death of a Famous Actor (Ming you zhi si), Guan Hanqing, and Wu Zuguang’s Return on a Snowy Night. Whereas the three plays by Tian Han and Wu Zuguang are the best of what I call theater of dramatists from the mainland—theater examining the lives, social relations, and surroundings of artists— Secret Love focuses on the impossibility of theatrical representation, in the tradition of Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author. However, where Pirandello’s play speaks to the difficulties of scriptwriting, Secret Love emphasizes the confusion and fragmentation of stage production, with the two competing theater troupes deriding each other’s plays and removing the other’s props in order to proceed with their own rehearsals. Once they at last agree to share the space and perform simultaneously, the two plays slowly “merge as their performers complete each other’s lines,” leaving the audience “to contemplate the burdens of memory, history, longing, and love—and the power of theater itself.” 126

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Embedded in this already complex play is the second play, Peach Blossom Land, which could be interpreted as a counterpoint to, or a satire on, the fragile nature of romantic relationships. The female lead, Blossom, for example, longs to be with Master Yuan, even at the expense of abandoning her husband, Tao; but Yuan turns out to be a worse husband than Tao. It is in Peach Blossom Land, far away from their hometown, Wuling, that Tao finds peace and happiness, but he is unable to lure Blossom there, given how beset she is in her own house by disharmony, hatred, and chaos. Based on Tao Yuanming’s “Record of the Peach Blossom Spring” (Taohuayuan ji), the second play deconstructs its predecessor’s utopia. Ironically, Tao’s physical journey to Peach Blossom Land can be juxtaposed with the director’s spiritual journey back to Shanghai, which remains beautiful and romantic precisely because he is unable to physically return to it. On a deeper level of thematic concern, the heavy burden in Secret Love of the traumatic memory of history—resulting from the ideological divide and bitter civil war between the KMT and the CCP—is sharply contrasted with the rejection of all memory in Peach Blossom Land, where “all people live in harmony because they have no historical memory.”127

H O N G K O N G SPO K EN DRAM A: HY BRI D CULT URE WIT H A LOCAL FLAV OR Despite its century and a half of British rule, Hong Kong remained largely a mostly Cantonese-speaking community that benefited from Britain’s English-speaking education and institutional support. As the only part of the “free world” geographically connected to the mainland, Hong Kong provided a front line, a buffer zone, and a window during the Cold War through which the mainland, Taiwan, and the West “spied” on one another. Because of the PRC’s total isolation from the “free” world after 1949, Hong Kong became, for Westerners and anticommunist countries, an important site for research on communist China; it was also a place where diverse opinions could be freely expressed.128 In terms of its literary and intellectual significance, Hong Kong was, in the chaotic history of modern China, a safe haven for people of opposing camps, however temporarily. Thus, there were writers who escaped KMT control in the 1920s and 1930s and later, Japanese occupation, and those who left mainland China around 1949 but did not follow the KMT to Taiwan. These “writers to the south” (nan lai zuojia) made an important contribution to the Hong Kong literary scene, creating an open sphere to various ideological and intellectual backgrounds as well as multiple literary and cultural influences, such as the May Fourth Movement, leftist literature, liberalism, and the traditional cultural heritage. Some Hong Kong scholars have been critical of the PRC emphasis on mainland writers in the development of Hong Kong literature, seeing it as part of the national unification discourse before 1997. The anxieties surrounding the “peaceful coexistence of socialist China and capitalist Hong Kong” were discernible in scholarly challenges to PRC histories of Hong Kong literature, in which PRC authors argued that Hong Kong had always been, in the literary, cultural, and geographical landscapes, an integral part

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of China. Critics pointed out that mainland leftist writers who sojourned in Hong Kong during the war period were given too much coverage, although their writings in Hong Kong had mostly nothing to do with Hong Kong experience and identity. They pointed to Xiao Hong’s autobiographical novel about her life in the northeast, The Story of the Hulan River (Hulan He zhuan); Mao Dun’s fictional work set in Chongqing, Erosion (Fushi); and Guo Moruo’s autobiographical piece about his Japan experience, The Song of Waves (Hong bo qu). Mainland histories of Hong Kong literature viewed these works as belonging to modern Chinese literary history and, hence, to the political discourse about nation and state designed to celebrate the return of Hong Kong to China.129 What, then, are the characteristics of Hong Kong literature that set it apart from mainland literary traditions, in spite of its obvious connections to it? While not neglecting its colonial past, scholars have emphasized the benefit to Hong Kong of Englishlanguage education, which produced a young generation of writers in the 1960s well versed in Shakespeare, existentialism, modernism, and other Western trends. Unlike the “writers to the south,” these indigenous writers (bentu zuojia) focused on Hong Kong experience, identity, and history—whether colonial, national, regional, personal, or otherwise—while translating Western and European works of various schools, which paralleled similar developments in mid-twentieth-century Taiwan and early post-Mao China.130 Hong Kong literature was also enriched by a “fluidity” (liudongxing) across national boundaries since many writers continued to play a role in the literary scene although they no longer lived in Hong Kong; it also boasted an “inclusiveness” (baorongxing) that nurtured popular martial-arts fiction and science fiction just as much as it did experimental poetry and personal essays, all of which exerted their influence on the mainland and on Taiwanese literary movements.131 One Hong Kong scholar has suggested that, instead of arguing against the biased view that Hong Kong has produced no “serious literature,” only an “entertainment culture,” why not declare the latter to be the special attribute of Hong Kong’s urban literature? This literature could be described as being neither Chinese nor Western (bu zhong bu xi) but as the inheritor of both Chinese and Western (yi zhong yi xi) styles and techniques while fashioning its own, broadly appealing character. In the same way that the work of Mo Yan is associated with the red sorghum of Shandong province (Shandong hong gaoliang), that of Li Rui with the yellow earth of the northwest (xibei huang tudi), Su Tong with gentrified families from south of the Yangtze (Jiangnan shijia), and Chen Yingzhen with native Taiwan (Taiwan xiangtu), why shouldn’t Hong Kong writers be associated with and honored for their “south of the ridge” culture (Lingnan wenhua) and be justly celebrated for writing from their experiences of a unique Cantonesespeaking global metropolis?132 While admirably lauding their own local identity, however, critics who voice such sentiments are also unwittingly revealing their own anxieties of influence and their eagerness to counter one hegemony with their own, an opposition between popular and elite cultures and between Hong Kong and “others.” Although less scholarship has come out of the fields of drama and theater than from film, fiction, and poetry, there is nonetheless a balanced view of Hong Kong. Recognizing that spoken drama was originally an aspect of elite culture—and has remained so in

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Hong Kong—critics have carefully delineated Hong Kong theater’s early colonial influence and its subsequent growth into an indigenous form. They have traced its discovery of a space between the seemingly opposing traditions of East and West, the mainland influence and Hong Kong native culture, political and artistic orientations, and elite and popular cultures. The earliest example of Hong Kong spoken drama originated in the 1840s with the amateur theater of the British army, not unlike the performances Westerners put on in Shanghai and those by Japanese settlers in Taiwan, the latter exerting a similar influence on the beginnings of Taiwanese theater. In the first decade or so of the twentieth century, Zhuanggong Testing His Wife (Zhuanggong shi qi) and The Merchant of Venice (Jin zhai ge rou) revealed the earliest glimmers of interest in importing theater from both the Chinese and Western traditions. Known as “vernacular spoken drama” (baihua ju) and similar to civilized drama, this form competed with popular Cantonese theater (Yueju), geared mostly to entertaining local audiences.133 The focus on entertainment started shifting around 1937 and continued during the war, with the arrival of well-known dramatists like Xia Yan, Ouyang Yuqian, Ouyang Shan, Yang Hansheng, Song Dizhi, and others. They had come to Hong Kong to help promote drama such as campus plays and “defense drama” as a means of mobilizing people to join in the war effort. The 1938 tour of the mainland’s China Travel Theater, with its outstanding performances of Cao Yu’s Sunrise, Thunderstorm, and other masterpieces, together with other plays written and published in Hong Kong by such established writers as Chen Baichen, Xia Yan, and Yang Hansheng, raised the level of Hong Kong productions and increased the popularity of modern drama. The subsequent integration of drama as an important part of Hong Kong intellectual and cultural life surely had much to do with patriotic sentiments, a sense of national crisis, and mainland influence at the time. The particular historical circumstances also supplied local writers and artists with inspiration and subject matter for their theater works and helped establish a Hong Kong theater tradition endorsing a belief in the spirit of “theater transmits the Way” (xiju zai dao) and in its patriotic and educational functions.134 After 1949, playwrights such as Li Huiying and Yao Ke left the mainland to settle in Hong Kong, where, trying to avoid political and ideological confrontations, they produced mostly history plays that garnered a lukewarm reception.135 Although the social and ideological circumstances were different, Li’s and Yao’s resorting to history plays parallels Tian Han’s attempt to escape into history plays to avoid sensitive contemporary themes after 1949. The Hong Kong theater scene did not revive until the 1960s, when Hollywood movies, Western and European popular songs, and translated foreign literary works energized Hong Kong culture. An increasingly educated populace proficient in the English language ensured that plays by Arthur Miller, Thornton Wilder, Tennessee Williams, and Edward Albee became extremely popular. Examples include Death of a Salesman (Tuixiaoyuan zhi si), Our Town (Xiao cheng fengguang), and The Glass Menagerie (Boli dongwuyuan). In 1966 alone, the year the mainland initiated its Cultural Revolution and denounced all “feudalist,” “bourgeois,” and “revisionist” art forms, including spoken drama, Hong Kong audiences enjoyed more than a hundred productions of

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translated or adapted foreign plays, thus leading plays in translation to take over as mainstream theater when domestic playwrights seemed not to be up to the job.136 Born and educated in Hong Kong and benefiting from Western thought, literature, and art, while mainlanders were stagnating in their conservative tradition of realist theater during the Cold War, the younger generation of Hong Kong writers engaged in theatrical innovations. Social events of the 1970s, such as anticorruption protests, and Taiwan’s loss of its seat in the United Nations to the PRC resulted in greater attention to Chinese society generally on the part of intellectuals and students and in a resurgence of interest in “drama transmits the Way.”137 The turning point occurred in the late 1970s to early 1980s, when Hong Kong spoken drama achieved the level of an “elite” and “legitimate” art form equal to that of classical music and the fine arts and, complemented by television, movies, and popular music, made its way into university curricula and drama specialists’ training programs. With government financial backing and other institutional support, Hong Kong spoken drama carved out its own “hybrid” space that allowed Western and Chinese traditions to coexist, without the issue of “colonialism” favoring one tradition over the other.138 In the 1990s, when mainland theater was still in crisis, PRC scholars were impressed by Hong Kong theater, its many amateur theater groups, its young, enthusiastic audiences, and its three or four new productions every month, a schedule unsustainable in contemporary Shanghai and Beijing.139 The Hong Kong experience proved that increasing affluence in a society did not necessarily lead to theater’s loss of broad appeal, refuting the claim made by mainland critics in explaining the decline of theater in contemporary China. The flourishing theater of Hong Kong had clearly benefited from what is referred to as the “1997 complex” (jiuqi qingjie) and “indigenous consciousness” (bentu yishi) in the 1985 play I Am a Hong Konger (Ngo hai Heung Gong yan), cowritten by Raymond K. W. To (Du Guowei) and Cai Xichang. It enjoyed a record of 114 performances in Hong Kong, Guangzhou, and Australia. Divided into fifteen scenes and unfolding in reportage style, the play covers the earliest colonial period to the present day and involves seven actors, each playing multiple roles across historical and national boundaries. Character C, for instance, acts out the roles of Deng Xiaoping, a port coolie, a Westernized Chinese gentleman, a government spokesman, a Hong Kong student waiting tables in a New York restaurant, and a Japanese student, all the while stepping out of his role periodically to speak directly to the audience. Switching between Cantonese and English, the actors succeeded in mingling the colonial and local cultures to reflect multiple identities and the complex past. Adding to these intricacies, the first scene begins with a Bretchian invitation to the audience to reflect on the muddy question of Hong Kong’s origin. The director of the play instructs that, in telling Hong Kong’s tale, it does not start with the Song dynasty emperor’s escape to Kowloon, or other similar distant events, but rather with one actor’s ancestor story. The ancestor, a fisherman, having arrived in Hong Kong accidentally in 1841, is met by a British soldier, who cuts off his pigtail, gives him a tie in return, and

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finds him a better job in the British colony. Achieving a more or less balanced stance between the colonists and the colonized, this view remains consistent throughout the play: whereas the British official boasts about being able to “rule over the Chinese of Hong Kong” by taking advantage of “their weak points,” understanding their “racial characteristics,” and making them acknowledge the “superior culture” of the “Great British empire,” the Hong Kong “gentleman” shows off his recipe for success as incorporated in the doctrine of “adapting to the environment and seizing the opportunities,” a slogan that captures the Hong Konger’s shrewd business sense to make the colonial system work for him.140 Furthermore, while depicting the resentment of the people of Hong Kong toward British discrimination against the less-educated class and favoring of the British-taught upper class in scene 7, the play satirizes in scene 10 a rich mother’s panic after the signing of the 1984 Sino-British agreement for the return of Hong Kong to Chinese control. She desperately tries to emigrate with her family to whatever foreign country will take them. At an international students’ event in the United States, where students from other countries heartily sing their national anthems, her son can come up with only a Mongolian love song he cherishes. This choice gives away his lack of a national identity, for, as one born in Hong Kong, he is profoundly influenced by the hybrid existence of living both within and outside the Chinese national boundary. Other, older characters, by contrast, do not have as much difficulty finding their identity, as we see with the retired British official, who has decided to come back to Hong Kong after having lived there all his life. His account is followed by that of a relatively new immigrant, a survivor of the Cultural Revolution, who does not plan to go anywhere, since he believes in Hong Kong’s future now that it is linked with that of the mainland. At the end of the play, the cast says it hopes the audience has enjoyed the Hong Kong stories, which are based on the audience’s own experiences and sentiments; they trust that everyone will do his or her share for the good of Hong Kong and will enjoy a sense of belonging. Before the curtain falls, the cast rushes to register for the next election amid the popular background music “Song of Hong Kong.” Despite being an optimistic play with multiple voices and positions used to “historicize Hong Kong,” I Am a Hong Konger betrays profound anxieties over the possible loss of a unique Hong Kong culture as the return to China draws near, while also reflecting on the problematic nature of the Hong Kong identity, sandwiched between the foreign and the Chinese, the past and the present. A departure from the above play, with its sense of confusion and alienation, is Raymond To’s more mature play, Where Love Abides (Renjian you qing). Premiered by the Hong Kong Repertory Theater in 1986, it confirms the historical link between Hong Kong and mainland culture as well as its history of wars and political turmoil. It is based on extensive research about the legendary Leung So Kee Umbrella Factory, first established in Guangzhou in the late Qing dynasty. Raymond To traces the rise and fall of this epic family enterprise across three generations and through its moves to Macao and Hong Kong during World War II, when, fortified by the love, care, and mutual support of its members, it brought personal fulfillment and commercial success. The family’s

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pride in building a renowned business with an “everlasting warranty” through hard work and empathy for others, for instance, is brought out in the prologue, when the protagonist, Cheung Wah, addresses the audience: “We know nothing of the will of heaven, what it has in store for us, but in the end we take it as it comes, and reconcile it with the will of man to attain that supreme state of peace and equanimity. That’s what we mean by being human [renqing].” 141 Thanks to the inclusion of the play in the Oxford Anthology of Contemporary Chinese Drama, English-language readers can now enjoy this representative play from Hong Kong, along with other plays of this period from Taiwan and the PRC.142 On the surface, Where Love Abides brings to mind similar plays from the PRC, such as He Jiping’s 1988 play The World’s Top Restaurant (Tianxia di yi lou); this play, also based on elaborate research on the grand history of a Beijing roast duck restaurant from 1917 to 1928, was celebrated on the mainland as one of the best of the Beijing-flavored plays continuing the tradition established by Lao She in Teahouse.143 The World’s Top Restaurant was part of the “roots-seeking literature” in post-Mao China, entailing a return to Chinese history and tradition in the course of evaluating contemporary Chinese society. Where Love Abides, however, resonates with the theme of seeking the historical and cultural sources of the Hong Kong experience, underscored here by the distinctive local flavor of the Cantonese dialogue. Intriguingly, the Cantonese dialogue was transcribed in the Chinese text of the play, thus creating a space for Hong Kong theater in the Mandarin-speaking genre of spoken drama. Even though more than three hundred local, traditional operas were preserved and performed in their local dialect in the PRC, spoken dramas were seldom performed in their local dialect; if some did occasionally retain their local dialect when performed, no transcribed text has come down to us. Again, in terms of constructing a sense of a unique local and linguistic history, the particular features of Where Love Abides transcended PRC theater practices. I include in this anthology the 1988 play Crown Ourselves with Roses (Hua jin gao lou), by Joanna Chan (Chen Wanying), which shares with Where Love Abides the realist style dominant since its introduction from the West during the May Fourth Movement. Like Lao She’s Teahouse, which explores a specific historical period in each of its three acts, Crown Ourselves with Roses addresses, in its three acts, events in Hong Kong in the years 1955, 1972, and 1987. The play examines the refugee crises following the war and in the early 1960s; the 1967 riot, prompted by the Cultural Revolution; the stock market speculations and rapid economic takeoff from the 1970s to 1980s; and the anxieties attendant on the return of Hong Kong to China in 1997. These historical landmarks are viewed through the lens of the midautumn festival, when family and friends get together. The playwright said that she intended to focus on three days in which a few people move around in the same location, the seaside stone dwellings of the two families, in order to highlight the radical changes that have overtaken Hong Kong in the past fifty years. Composing the play allowed her to ponder what the people of Hong Kong gained and lost after overcoming difficulties and hardships to achieve their economic miracle. How did they now confront their future with self-respect and dignity?144

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In a Hong Kong where money could purchase almost anything, the only thing money could not buy was certainty about the future—was this the sadness or the glory of Hong Kong culture? What, she asks, can we bequeath to our offspring as our heritage?145 The play answers these questions through two men’s opposing views on love, loyalty, friendship, family, business, and other issues involving ethical decisions. Born in the same year and raised together in Hong Kong amid flight from the PRC, poverty, social protest, and economic development, Jiang Ziliu and Ding Feng grow apart over thirty years. Whereas Ding and his wife are never happy no matter how much money they have made, Jiang leads a peaceful, contented life, resisting the temptation to sell out his less-fortunate neighbors and nearby fishermen for financial gain. Jiang also holds close to his heart the memory of Song Shuwen, lost to the sea as a teenage girl in 1955. Time cannot erase Jiang’s memory of her, the past, and their shared philosophy of life. She had resisted her mother’s attempt to turn her into a “prettier,” “smarter” Western girl, questioned her father’s vision of converting the slum’s stone houses into skyscrapers, and held fast to her determination to make her own decisions regardless of others’ judgments and social trends. Thirty years later, Jiang still remembers his own words to Song before her death: “I want you to promise me, no matter where you go, no matter what happens, you’ll always stay the way you are . . . I . . . I want you to know, no matter where you may be, with mountains and oceans separating us, as long as I can look up at the moon and out at the sea, I’ll think of you. I’ll take courage and see things clearly.”146 Jiang’s keenly felt convictions are revealed in his lament at her death: “She mustn’t die. Someone like us, it means nothing whether we live on. She’s got stories to write, apples to pick, clams to dig. The whole world out there is waiting for her. Someone so brave, so different, with so many questions to ask. She must not be allowed to die. What god do I pray to now? If someone must die, let it be me.”147 Jiang does not die in her stead, but he lives as she might have— and perhaps better than she would have—since time may erode one’s youthful idealism, and no one could guarantee that Song would not have eventually turned into someone like Ding’s vain wife. Song’s death, in her most vigorous and optimistic years, leaves behind a legacy for those who care to treasure it. In the end, it is Chan, through the character Jiang Ziliu, who takes over Song’s mission of telling stories about past dreams, contemporary reality, and the future of Hong Kong, where she would like to see people live a meaningful life without regrets. In this sense, Crown Ourselves with Roses differs fundamentally from Teahouse, in which a better society is sought through nationalist discourse. Crown Ourselves with Roses looks inward, to the individual’s spiritual strength, to celebrate dignity, honesty, and selfrespect, without recourse to national and political paradigms. The playwright’s approach has struck a universal chord, appealing not only to audiences in Hong Kong but also to those in San Francisco, New York, and Toronto, as evidenced by its successful runs in those cities. Ironically, it could even enlighten some audiences in the PRC and other countries where economic booms have, unfortunately, produced many Ding Fengs and his like. These audiences may appreciate a character like Jiang Ziliu, who evokes the role model Lei Feng, popular in the Maoist era for his selflessness and generous

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concern for the welfare of ordinary people. In avoiding the complications of politics, the play indeed narrows the usual distance between socialist China and capitalist Hong Kong. For it was not unimaginable that the ruling party could use this play to educate the mainlanders about their lost spiritual, altruistic values in contemporary China, where the mix of corruption and inequality between rich and poor were boiling over into social unrest and public protest. Contrasting with the realist portrayals of historical events and personal traumas in Crown Ourselves with Roses, Anthony Chan’s (Chen Ganquan) 1986 play, Metamorphosis Under the Star (Xingguang xia de tuibian), experiments with an allegorical story of universal love that is, even more than Joanna Chan’s play, distinctly free of social, political, and ideological concerns. Metamorphosis originated in a bedside story the playwright told his wife when she could not fall asleep one night, a story evident in the play when Charlotte Caterpillar begs Vincent Cabbage to hold her tight as they huddle under the moonlight so that she will not, after falling asleep, be awakened by frightening nightmares. The play no doubt expresses the playwright’s feelings about love, freedom, enlightenment, and other subjects that have come from his life experiences.148 More broadly, however, it embodies a classical Greek structure in which a thesis (Vincent’s desire to love and be with Charlotte) and an antithesis (Charlotte’s desire to fly away as a beautiful butterfly) cannot be reconciled except in a synthesis of the play’s unfolding of these opposing views. In very few pages, the play succinctly and poetically presents strong arguments from both sides, with progressively more sacrifice extended from one to the other, to the point where love conquers all, but also destroys all: Vincent exhausts himself feeding Charlotte in the effort of helping her achieve her dream of reaching the stars as a beautiful butterfly, while Charlotte forfeits her wings to rid herself of her desire for freedom in order to be with Vincent. The play ends romantically, with the two again cuddling under the stars, admiring their purity and beauty, and each wishing for the fulfillment of the other’s aspirations. This play, whose uplifting spirit is undampened by a tragic ending, nicely illustrates the “eventempered” and “inclusive” energy of Hong Kong theater, which reaches out to the Western world for inspiration and combines it with local culture.149 Read together, Crown Ourselves with Roses, a realist play reflecting on Hong Kong’s history and identity, and Metamorphosis, a symbolist, experimental play with a universal theme about love and subjectivity, will help, it is hoped, students of Chinese literature, theater, and history, as well as general readers, to appreciate two fundamental orientations in modern theater, “art for life’s sake” versus “art for art’s sake,” without losing sight of the characteristics they share and the other approaches manifested in the twenty other plays that do not easily fit in these two main categories. The study of Chinese-language theater (Huawen xiju) has, in the twenty-first century, begun to include the various Chinese communities in Macao, Singapore, Malaysia, and North America and Europe. As with comparisons between mainland Chinese, Taiwanese, and Hong Kong theater trends and histories, scholars and artists in these areas are examining the continuities and discontinuities within the theatrical traditions of the twentieth-century Chinese stage, broadly defined, and the metamorphosis occurring in each community expressive of its specific cultural and local identity as well as of its shared consciousness of “being

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Chinese” (tongzhong).150 Limited space in this anthology does not, unfortunately, permit the inclusion of plays from these areas. Nonetheless, I feel optimistic that the remarkable work of the translators who have made this anthology possible will inspire other scholars, students, and general readers to explore the richness of Chinese theater.

not es 1.

For further reading on modern Chinese drama, see Colin Mackerras, The Chinese Theatre in Modern Times: From 1840 to the Present Day (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1975); Constantine Tung and Colin Mackerras, eds., Drama in the People’s Republic of China (Albany: SUNY Press, 1987); Rudolf G. Wagner, The Contemporary Chinese Historical Drama (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990); Xiaomei Chen, Acting the Right Part: Political Theater and Popular Drama in Contemporary China (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2002); Claire Conceison, Significant Other: Staging the American in China (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2004); and Alexander Huang, Chinese Shakespeares: A Century of Cultural Exchange (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009). 2. Fu Jin, “Yingxiang dangdai xiju de lilun” (Drama Concepts That Have Influenced Contemporary Chinese Theater), in 2004 wenxue pinglun (Literary Criticism of 2004) (Beijing: Renmin wenxue, 2005), 342–358; 343. 3. Ye Changhai and Zhang Fuhai, Chatu Zhongguo xiju shi (An Illustrated History of Chinese Drama) (Shanghai: Shanghai guji, 2004), 438. 4. Guo Fumin, Chatu Zhongguo huaju shi (An Illustrated History of Chinese Spoken Drama) (Jinan: Jinan, 2003), 24. 5. Ouyang Yuqian, “Huiyi Chunliu” (Remembering the Spring Willow Society), in Ouyang Yuqian quan ji (Complete Works of Ouyang Yuqian) (Shanghai: Shanghai wenyi, 1990), 6:146–79; 152. 6. Although the 1911 revolution overthrew the Qing dynasty and ended the imperial system, soon after, Sun Yat-sen was forced to concede his presidency to Yuan Shikai, who restored the imperial system and crowned himself emperor in 1914–15. He was forced to abdicate in 1916 and died shortly after. 7. Among earlier, lesser-known plays, most notable are Hong Shen’s 1915 The Pear Seller (Mai li ren), in which the protagonist rebels in vain against a rich man, and A Tragedy of the Poor (Pinmin canju), which premiered in Beijing in 1916. 8. Chen Baichen and Dong Jian, Zhongguo xiandai xiju shigao (A Draft History of Modern Chinese Drama) (Beijing: Zhongguo xiju, 1985), 97. 9. Yama Zhao (Zhao yanwang) was first published in Dongfang zazhi (Eastern Miscellany) 20, no. 1 (January 1923): 117–30 and 20, no. 2 (January 1923): 93–106, and was later collected in Hong Shen xiqu ji (Selected Plays of Hong Shen) (Shanghai: Xiandai shuju, 1933) and in Zhongguo xin wenxue daxi: Xiju ji (Compendium of New Chinese Literature: Drama Volume), ed. Hong Shen, 137– 63 (Shanghai: Liangyou, 1935). The translation included in this anthology was first published as Hong Shen, Yama Chao, trans. Carolyn T. Brown, in Twentieth- Century Chinese Drama, ed. Edward M. Gunn, 10–40 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1983). Both Hong Shen and Eugene O’Neill were students in Professor George Pierce Baker’s English class at Harvard University, in different years.

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10. Xia Yan named Ouyang Yuqian, Hong Shen, and Tian Han as the three “founders” of modern spoken drama. He pointed out that, since the three dramatists first met in Shanghai in 1922, they collaborated closely in developing modern spoken drama, with Tian Han rushing out plays to suit social and political agendas, Ouyang Yuqian perfecting his play writing and stage productions, and Hong Shen excelling in improving both the quantity and quality of his plays. Their different styles pointed to the tension and compromises in the development of modern drama. Most important, all three were well versed in traditional opera, from which they borrowed to advance modern spoken drama (Xia Yan, “Xu” [Preface], in Ouyang Yuqian quan ji, 1:2–4). 11. For a study in English of Tian Han and Nanguo She, see Xiaomei Chen, “Tian Han and the Southern Society Phenomenon: Networking the Personal, Communal, and Cultural,” in Literary Societies of Republican China, ed. Kirk A. Denton and Michel Hockx, 241–78 (Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2008). 12. Dong Jian, Tian Han zhuan (A Biography of Tian Han) (Beijing: Shiyue wenyi, 1996), 205–10. 13. For recent scholarly studies in English on Mei Lanfang, see Joshua Goldstein, Drama Kings: Players and Publics in the Re-creation of Peking Opera, 1870–1937 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007), and Haun Saussy, “Mei Lanfang in Moscow, 1935: Familiar, Unfamiliar, Disfamiliar,” Modern Chinese Literature and Culture 18, no. 11 (spring 2006): 8–25. 14. Hong Shen, “Daoyan” (Introduction), in Zhongguo xin wenxue daxi, 1–100; 70. 15. For an English translation of Pan Jinlian, see Catherine Swatek, trans., P’an Chin-lien, in Gunn, Twentieth- Century Chinese Drama, 52–75. See also Yomi Braester, “Rewriting Tradition, Misreading History: Twentieth- Century (Sub)versions of Pan Jinlian’s Story,” in Witness Against History, 56–72 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2003). 16. Zhang Jian, Zhongguo xiandai xiju shi lun (A Critical History of Modern Chinese Comedy) (Beijing: Beijing Daxue, 2006), 85, 153. Hong Shen classified Ouyang’s After Returning Home as a comedy for the probability that, by the plays’ end, the audience would ally itself with Zifang, seeing her as the winner of her husband’s love with her wit and humor (Hong Shen, “Daoyan,” 70). 17. Zhang Jian, Zhongguo xiandai xiju shi lun, 85–171. 18. Zhang Jian has traced Ding Xilin’s focus on “reason” through “thoughtful laughter” to the influence of Meredith’s theories of comedy (George Meredith, “An Essay on Comedy,” in Comedy, ed. Wylie Sypher [Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980]; cited in Zhang Jian, Zhongguo xiandai xiju shi lun, 226–28). 19. Ge Yihong et al., Zhongguo huaju tongshi (A History of Modern Chinese Drama) (Beijing: Wenhua yishu, 1990), 88. 20. Ibid. 21. Hong Shen, “Daoyan,” 70. 22. Zhang Jian, Zhongguo xiandai xiju shi lun, 235. 23. Chen Baichen and Dong Jian, Zhongguo xiandai xiju shi gao, 178. 24. Ding Xilin, Yapo (Oppression), in Zhonghua xiju bainian jinghua (shang) (Best Plays of 100 Years of Modern Chinese Drama [Volume 1]), ed. Wang Peiyuan (Beijing: Renmin wenxue, 2005), 1:53. 25. David Der-wei Wang, The Monster That Is History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), 59.

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26. Zhang Yaojie identified Kageyama Saburoˉ as having made this claim (Xiju dashi Cao Yu [A Giant Playwright, Cao Yu] [Taiyuan: Shanxi jiaoyu, 2003], 46). 27. Ge Sen, “Cong xiao ximi dao xiao yanyuan” (From a Child Theater Fan to a Child Theater Actor), in Tang Huaiqiu yu Zhongguo Lüxing Jutuan (Tang Huaiqiu and the China Travel Theater), ed. Chen Yueshan, 76– 83 (Beijing: Zhongguo xiju, 2000). 28. Zhang Yaojie, Xiju dashi Cao Yu, 47. 29. Feng Jiao, “Leiyu de yuyan” (Preview of Thunderstorm), Dagong bao, August 17–18, 1934; cited in Zhang Yaojie, Xiju dashi Cao Yu, 50–51. 30. Bai Mei, “Leiyu de pipan” (Critique of Thunderstorm), Dagong bao, August 20–23, 1934; cited in Zhang Yaojie, Xiju dashi Cao Yu, 51. 31. Tian Benxiang, Cao Yu zhuan (A Biography of Cao Yu) (Beijing: Shiyue wenyi, 1988). 32. Tian Han, “Baofeng yu zhong de Nanjing yitan yi pie” (A Glance at the Nanjing Dramatic Scene in a Stormy Season), Xinmin bao, June 9, 10, 12, 14, 29, 1936, in Tian Han quan ji (The Complete Works of Tian Han), ed. Tian Han Quan Ji Bianwei Hui (Shijiazhuang: Huashan wenyi, 2000), 15:282– 96; 287– 88. 33. Ibid., 286– 87. 34. Cao Yu, “Leiyu de xiezuo” (The Writing of Thunderstorm), in Cao Yu lun chuangzuo (Cao Yu on Dramatic Writing) (Shanghai: Shanghai wenxi, 1986), 3–5; 3–4. 35. Cao Yu, “Wo dui jinhou chuangzuo de chubu renshi” (Preliminary Thoughts on How to Proceed with my Writing in the Future), in Cao Yu quan ji, 5:44–45. 36. Liao Li, “Tan Cao Yu dui Leiyu de xiugai” (On Cao Yu’s Revisions of Thunderstorm), in Cao Yu yanjiu ziliao (Collection of Research Materials on Cao Yu), ed. Tian Benxiang et al. (Beijing: Zhongguo xiju, 1991), 1:634, 638. According to Liao Li, the fourth edition, included in Cao Yu juben xuan (Selected Plays of Cao Yu [Beijing: Renmin wenxue, 1954]), returned to the first edition of 1934, and the second edition of 1936, in terms of character and plot changes, but the fourth edition did not recover the preface and the epilogue. The famous 1954 production of Thunderstorm, by the Beijing People’s Art Theatre, with a full house for two months running, was based on this 1954 edition. In all, there are at least five editions, reflecting Cao Yu’s continuous search for the perfection of his play under different cultural and sociological circumstances. 37. Liao Li, “Tan Cao Yu dui Leiyu de xiugai,” 1:638. 38. Tian Benxiang, Cao Yu zhuan, 424. Tian Benxiang has preserved a complete text of a Red Guard essay published by the Revolutionary Committee of Beijing Normal University in 1968 in its aim to “take down reactionary writer Cao Yu,” a “gift” Wu Zuguang sent to Cao Yu in 1986 as a valuable historical archive to “hand down to later generations” (422–23). 39. Tian Benxiang, ed., Cao Yu nianpu (Chronology of Cao Yu), in Cao Yu yanjiu ziliao, 1:65. 40. The years of publication and premieres are from Tian Benxiang, Cao Yu nianpu, 1:29, 31, 32, 38, 40, 41, 43, 45. 41. Qian Liqun, Zhongguo xiandai wenxue sanshi nian (Thirty Years of Modern Chinese Literature) (Beijing: Beijing Daxue, 1998), 321. 42. Li Jianwu, “From the Preface to the 1937 Edition,” in Tony Hyder, trans., It’s Only Spring and Thirteen Years (London: Bamboo; Paris: Unesco, 1989), 63– 65; 63. 43. Li Jianwu, “Postscript,” in Hyder, It’s Only Spring, 60. 44. Guo Fumin, Chatu Zhongguo huaju shi, 201.

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45. Han Shishan, Li Jianwu zhuan (A Biography of Li Jianwu) (Taiyuan: Shanxi renmin, 2006), 136, 138. 46. Ke Ling, “Xuyan” (Preface), in Li Jianwu, Li Jianwu juzuo xuan (Selected Plays of Li Jianwu) (Beijing: Zhongguo xiju, 1982), 4. 47. Han Shishan, Li Jianwu zhuan, 113. 48. Guo Fumin, Chatu Zhongguo huaju shi, 200. 49. Han Shishan has commented on the neglect of Li Jianwu’s contribution in post-1949 literary history and the indifference of the literary realm and the general public to his death in 1982; Han’s biography of Li Jianwu brought to light Li’s mostly unknown career and contributions to literary and dramatic history before 1949 (“Afterword,” in Li Jianwu zhuan, 356–57; 356). In a representative PRC literary history criticizing It’s Only Spring, Tang Tao asserts the play “failed to directly portray the contradiction between revolutionaries and the reactionary government.” Li’s focus on the love triangle, Tang continues, although helpful in revealing the personality and psychological depth of the female protagonist, nevertheless “harmed the image of the revolutionary,” a “serious fault of the play” (Zhongguo xiandai wenxue shi [A History of Modern Chinese Drama] [Beijing: Renmin wenxue, 1979], 281). 50. Xia Yan, “Tan Shanghai wuyan xia de chuangzuo” (On Writing Under Shanghai Eaves), Juben 4 (1957), cited from Xia Yan yanjiu ziliao (shang) (Research Materials on Xia Yan [Volume 1]) (Beijing: Zhongguo xiju, 1983), 1:181. 51. Ibid. 52. Liu Xiwei [pen name of Li Jianwu], “Shanghai wuyan xia” (Under Shanghai Eaves), in Xia Yan yanjiu ziliao (xia) (Research Materials on Xia Yan [Volume 2]) (Beijing: Zhongguo xiju, 1983), 2:155–56. 53. Ibid., 518. 54. For interpretations similar to Li Jianwu’s, see, for example, Tang Tao and Yan Jiayan, Zhongguo xiandai wenxue shi (A History of Modern Chinese Literature) (Beijing: Renmin wenxue, 1980), 90– 92; Wu Zuguang, “Kan Shanghai wuyan xia” (Attending a Performance of Under Shanghai Eaves), in Wu Zuguang tan xi (Wu Zuguang on Drama) (Nanchang: Jiangxi gaojiao, 2003), 231–34. 55. Xia Yan, “Shanghai wuyan xia zixu” (Preface to Under Shanghai Eaves), cited from Xia Yan yanjiu ziliao, 1:175–77; 176. 56. For an important critique of Zhang Yimou’s film, see Rey Chow, Primitive Passions (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995), 143–72. 57. Wu Zuguang, Fengxue ye gui ren (Return on a Snowy Night), in Wang Peiyuan, Zhonghua xiju bainian jinghua, 1:541. 58. Ibid., 542. 59. Yuchun’s class consciousness and ability to enlighten another could be seen as a prototype of revolutionary women leaders such as Li Xinqun, in Tian Han’s play Li ren xing (The Journey of Three Beautiful Women, written in 1946, premiered in 1947), despite Wu Zuguang’s not being considered a leftist writer in the same manner as Tian Han. Nevertheless, the class conflict theme in the play connects Yuchun—a former prostitute from the same poor background as Shi Xiaobao in Under Shanghai Eaves—with Wei Liansheng, Auntie Ma, and her son, all ordinary urban dwellers from impoverished backgrounds who struggled against the abuses and corruption of the rich and powerful.

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60. See, for example, Tang Tao and Yan Jiayan, Zhongguo xiandai wenxue shi (A History of Modern Chinese Literature [vol. 3]) (Beijing: Renmin wenxue, 1980), 3:103. Tang and Yan argue that Wu’s play “exposed the dark, old society” before 1949. For a more balanced reading of this play with more focus on an aesthetic analysis, see Guo Fumin, Chatu Zhongguo huaju shi, 250–54. 61. Guo Fumin, Chatu Zhongguo huaju shi, 254. 62. Wu Zuguang, Fengxue ye gui ren, 1:496. 63. Wu Zuguang, “Wode di san ge juben Fengxue ye gui ren” (My Third Play Return on a Snowy Night), in Wu Zuguang tan xi (Wu Zuguang on Drama) (Nanchang: Jiangxi gaoxiao, 2003), 25–44; 30. 64. This intriguing anecdote casts some light on the relationship between theater and state politics. In the early post– Gang of Four period, Zhou Enlai became a popular icon for those attempting to reverse the damages caused by the notorious foursome. The claim that Zhou must have rewritten the play reveals how far people were willing to go in attributing positive events to Zhou. Wu followed up by recalling that, although Zhou did not rewrite the play, he was indeed a longtime advocate of modern spoken drama (Zhou attended Return on a Snowy Night several times, in Chongqing in 1943, according to one account) who had protected dramatists. Wu also related how Zhou asked him to revise the ending of the play, which allowed a bright and rebellious Yuchun to live with a stranger for twenty years without attempting to change her fate. Wu did change the ending, as seen in the script published in Fengxue ji (On Storm and Snow [Beijing: Renmin wenxue, 1955]), but he decided to change it back to the original ending in later editions (Wu Zuguang, “Cengjing you guo zheyang yiwei Zongli” [We Once Had Such a Premier], in Fengxue yue gui ren de wutai yishu [The Stage Art of “Return on a Snowy Night”], ed. Wang Zheng et al., 15–20 [Beijing: Zhongguo xiju, 1984]). 65. Beijing Renmin Yishu Juyuan, Beijing Renmin Yishu Juyuan, 1952–2002 (Beijing People’s Art Theatre, 1952–2002) (Beijing: Renmin wenxue, 2002), 31. 66. Wu Zuguang, “Wode di san ge juben Fengxue ye gui ren,” 38–39. 67. For discussions on wartime drama, see Edward M. Gunn, “Literature and Art of the War Period,” in China’s Bitter Victory, ed. James C. Hsiung and Steven I. Levine, 235– 73 (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1992). For a detailed study of Chinese literature during the period of the Japanese occupation of Shanghai and Beijing from 1937 to 1945, see Edward M. Gunn, Unwelcome Muse (New York: Columbia University Press, 1980). 68. Shu Ji, “Lao She zhuan lue” (A Brief Biography of Lao She), in Lao She de huaju yishu (The Dramatic Art of Lao She), ed. Ke Ying and Li Ying (Beijing: Wenhua yishu, 1982), 618–19. 69. Lao She, “Shinian bimo” (Ten Years of Pen and Ink), in Ke Ying and Li Ying, Lao She de huaju yishu, 80. 70. Li Jianwu, “Du Chaguan” (On Reading Teahouse), ibid., 384. 71. Lao She, “Tan Chaguan” (On Teahouse), ibid., 156–57. 72. Zhang Geng, “Chaguan mantan” (My Thoughts on Teahouse), ibid., 391. 73. Zeng Guangcan, Lao She yanjiu zongtan (A Survey of Scholarship on Lao She) (Tianjin: Tianjin jiaoyu, 1987), 76. 74. Hu Jieqing, “Guangyu Lao She de Chaguan” (About Lao She’s Teahouse), in Ke Ying and Li Ying, Lao She de huaju yishu, 408–12; 410. 75. Liu Ping, Xiju hun (The Soul of Drama) (Beijing: Zhongyang wenxian), 628–29.

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76. Meng Chao, “Mantan jianguo shinian lai de Tian Han chuangzuo” (On Tian Han’s Dramatic Writings in the Past Ten Years After the Founding of the PRC), Xiju yanjiu 4 (1959): 160–72. 77. My discussion of Torrent is based on the unpublished manuscript, Tian Qinxin, “Kuangbiao: Daoyan gongzuo taiben” (Torrent: Stage Director’s Script); I thank Tian Qinxin for providing the text. Kuangbiao appeared in Xin juben 3 (2001): 4–25. 78. Xiaobing Tang, Chinese Modern: The Heroic and the Quotidian (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2000), 165– 66. 79. Chen Yun, Nianqing de yidai (The Young Generation), in Zhongguo huaju wushi nian juzuo xuan: 1949.10—1999.10 (Selections from Modern Chinese Drama in the Last Fifty Years), ed. Li Moran et al. (Beijing: Zhongguo xiju, 2000), 3:384. The play was premiered in 1963 by the Teacher’s Art Theater, Shanghai Drama College, and the script was first published in Juben 8 (1963): 2–30. The play was revised and published as a separate book in 1964 by Zhongguo xiju chubanshe with Chen Yun, Zhang Lihui, and Xu Jingxian listed as the play’s authors. 80. Xiaobing Tang, Chinese Modern, 190. 81. For an extended discussion of the significance of the Cultural Revolutionary model theater and its historical background, see Xiaomei Chen, Acting the Right Part, 26–42, 73–158. 82. The model play version of Shajiabang, revised collectively by the Peking Opera Troupe, of Beijing, was first published in Hongqi 6 (1970): 8–39. An English version, by an anonymous translator, was published in Chinese Literature 11 (1970): 3– 62. 83. The Chinese script of Hongse niangzijun, revised collectively by the China Ballet Troupe, was first published in Hongqi 7 (1970): 35– 65. An English version, by an anonymous translator, was published in Chinese Literature 1 (1971): 2– 80. 84. The Chinese script of Zhi qu Weihushan, collectively revised by the Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy Group, Shanghai Peking Opera Troupe, can be found in Geming yangbanxi juben huibian (Collection of Revolutionary Model Plays) (Beijing: Renmin, 1974), 1:7–73. An English version was published in Chinese Literature 8 (1967): 129–81. 85. The model play version of Qi xi Baihutuan, by the Shandong Provincial Peking Opera Troupe, was first published in Hongqi 11 (1972): 26–54. An English version, by an anonymous translator, was published in Chinese Literature 3 (1973): 3–48. 86. For anti– Gang of Four plays in early post-Mao China, see Xiaomei Chen, Acting the Right Part, 159–204. 87. David Bradby, “Samuel Beckett,” in The Cambridge Guide to World Theatre, ed. Martin Banham (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 80. 88. Ibid., 81. 89. Julia Lovell, The Politics of Cultural Capital: China’s Quest for a Nobel Prize in Literature (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2006), 164. On Gao Xingjian and the post– Nobel Prize debates and twentieth- century China’s Nobel complex, see pp. 163– 83. 90. Chen Zidu, Yang Jian, and Zhu Xiaoping, Sangshuping Chronicles, trans. Cai Rong, in Theater and Society, ed. Haiping Yan, 189–261 (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1998); and Jin Yun, Uncle Doggie’s Nirvana, trans. Yin Ruocheng, in An Oxford Anthology of Contemporary Chinese Drama, ed. Martha P. Y. Cheung and Jane C. C. Lai, 89–147 (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1997).

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91. Li Longyun, “Xiju wenxue duanxiang” (Random Thoughts on Dramatic Literature), in Huangyuan yu ren (Wilderness and Man) (Beijing: Zhongguo shehui kexue, 1993), 318–37; 330. 92. Du Jiafu, in “Li Longyun xiju zuoping yantao hui” (Seminar on Li Longyun’s Plays), in Li Longyun, Huangyuan yu ren, 281. 93. Li Longyun, “Ren, da ziran, mingyun, xiju wenxue” (Man, Nature, Fate, and Dramatic Literature), in Huangyuan yu ren, 305. 94. Zhu Yizhong, in “Li Longyun xiju zuoping yantao hui,” 287. 95. Marvin Carlson, Theories of the Theatre (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1984), 376, 379. 96. Zhu Yizhong, in “Li Longyun zuoping yantao hui,” 287. 97. Carlson, Theories of the Theatre, 376. 98. Du Jiafu, in “Li Longyun zuoping yantao hui,” 281. 99. Ma Zhongjun, in “Li Longyun zuoping yantao hui,” 279. 100. Yang Limin, Dizhishi (Geologists), in Li Moran et al., Zhongguo huaju wushi nian juzuo xuan, 8:93–159. 101. Huang Jisu, Zhang Guangtian, and Shen Lin, Qie Gewala, in Qie Gewala: Fanying yu zhengming (Che Guevara: Reception and Debate), ed. Liu Zhifeng, 13– 69 (Beijing: Zhongguo shehui kexue, 2001). 102. Jon Lee Anderson, Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life (New York: Grove, 1997), 77–78; Huang Jisu, Zhang Guangtian, and Shen Lin, Qie Gewala, 29. 103. Huang Jisu et al., “Lishi ju Qie Gewala chuangzuo sixiang chanshu” (On the Creative Concept of the History Play Qie Gewala), in Liu Zhifeng, Qie Gewala, 100. 104. Huang Jisu, Zhang Guangtian, and Shen Lin, Qie Gewala, 67. 105. For an informative introduction in English to the historical, intellectual, and literary background of Taiwanese literature, see Michelle Yeh, “Introduction,” in Frontier Taiwan: An Anthology of Modern Chinese Poetry, ed. Michelle Yeh and N. G. D. Malmqvist (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001); for an introduction in Chinese to the history of “new drama” in Taiwan, see Shi Wanshun, “Xinju: Zonglun” (New Drama: An Introduction), in Taiwan wenxue xuanji (Selected Works of Taiwanese Literature), ed. Peng Hsiao-yen (Taipei: Lianjing, forthcoming). 106. Ma Shen, Xichao xia de Zhongguo xiandai xiju (Modern Chinese Drama Under Western Waves) (Taipei: Shulin, 1994), 198. 107. Shi Wanshun and Ma Shen, Taiwan xiju: Cong xiandai dao hou xiandai (Taiwanese Drama: From Modernism to Postmodernism) (Yilan Xian, Xijiaoxiang: Fuoguang renwen shehui xueyuan, 2002), 12–13. 108. Liu Denghan et al., Taiwan wenxue shi, shangjuan (A History of Taiwanese Literature, Volume 1) (Fuzhou: Haixia wenyi, 1993), 1:612. 109. Peng Hsiao-yen, “Seven Decades of Taiwan Literature: An Outline,” in East Asian Cultural and Historical Perspectives, ed. Steven Tötösy de Zepetnek and Jennifer W. Jay (Alberta: Research Institute for Comparative Literature and Cross- Cultural Studies, University of Alberta, 1997), 313–17, 313. 110. Shi Wanshun, “Xinju,” 2–3. 111. Ma Shen, Xichao xia de Zhongguo xiandai xiju, 206; Shi Wanshun, “Xinju,” 6. 112. Ma Shen, Xichao xia de Zhongguo xiandai xiju, 200.

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113. Ibid., 208– 9; Liu Denghan et al., Taiwan wenxue shi, xiajuan (A History of Taiwanese Literature, Volume 2) (Fuzhou: Haixia wenyi, 1993), 2:765– 67. 114. Huang Ren has challenged this commonly held view. He lists more than forty drama specialists in Taiwan who had been active in drama circles on the mainland. Some were recruited as teachers in the film and drama department at the National Art Institute (Guoli Yishu Xuexiao Yingju Xi) to teach drama students, who subsequently contributed to the theater scene in the 1970s and 1980s (Taiwan huaju de huangjin shidai [The Golden Era of Taiwanese Spoken Drama] [Taipei: Yatai tushu, 2000], 96– 97). 115. Liu Denghan et al., Taiwan wenxue shi, xiajuan, 2:767. For another reference on Chen Baichen’s A Scroll of Numerous Clowns, staged in Taiwan in 1950, see Huang Ren, Taiwan huaju de huangjin shidai, 151. 116. Liu Denghan et al., Taiwan wenxue shi, xiajuan, 2:767. 117. Ibid., 2:773. See also Liu Shuofu, ed., Zhonghua xiju ji (Collected Plays of China), 10 vols. (Taipei: Zhongguo xiju yishu zhongxin chubanbu, 1970–1971). 118. Chen Yong, “Daoyan gousi” (Director’s Thoughts), in Hong bizi de wutai yishu (The Stage Art of “The Red Nose”), ed. Lin Kehuan (Beijing: Zhongguo xiju, 1984), 3. 119. Ding Ling, one of the most important women writers in modern China, went further than Chen Yong in interpreting Red Nose’s theme as showing that “only by sacrificing himself for others can he obtain real freedom and happiness for himself.” Ding further assumed that perhaps Yao Yiwei also intended to indicate that one does not need to wear a mask in socialist China, where it is admirable to serve the people, a novel interpretation shedding light on the complex reception across the Taiwan Strait (“Xu” [Preface], in Lin Kehuan, Hong bizi de wutai yishu, 1–3; 2). 120. Chen Yong, “Daoyan gousi,” 5– 6, 8– 9, 10, 28–30. 121. Yao Gongqian, “Ru wen qi sheng, ru jian qi ren” (As If Hearing His Voice and Meeting Him in Person), in Lin Kehuan, Hong bizi de wutai yishu, 289– 90. 122. Tian Benxiang, “Huawen xiju jiaoliu de jinkuang yu zhanwang” (Present Events and Future Expectations of the Exchanges Among Chinese-Language Theater), in Xin shiji de Huawen xiju (Chinese-Language Theater in the New Century), ed. Fang Zixun (Hong Kong: Xianggang xiju xiehui, 2000), 16. 123. The English translation in this anthology, by Stan Lai, differs from that in Cheung and Lai, Oxford Anthology of Contemporary Chinese Drama. For the Chinese text, see Lai Sheng-chuan, An lian Taohua yuan (Secret Love in Peach Blossom Land), in Zhonghua xiandai wenxue daxi, Taiwan 1970–1989 (Compendium of Contemporary Chinese Literature in Taiwan, 1970–1989), ed. Yu Guangzhong (Taipei: Jiuge, 1989), vol. 2 [drama]: 355–467. 124. Stan Lai, “Playwright / Director’s Note,” in the program for Secret Love in Peach Blossom Land (Drama Department, Stanford University, February 22–24, March 1–3, 2007). 125. Tao Qingmei and Hou Suyi, “In the Moment: The Theatre Art of Stan Lai,” http:// www.pwshop.com./ lai/criti.htm (accessed July 26, 2009). 126. “Acclaim in China for Secret Love in Peach Blossom Land,” New York Times, January 5, 2007. 127. Ibid. 128. Zheng Shusen, Huang Jichi, and Lu Weiluan, “Bianji baogao” (Editors’ Report), in Xianggang xin wenxue nianbiao, 1950–1969 (Chronology of New Literature in Hong Kong, 1950–1969) (Hong Kong: Tiandi tushu youxian gongsi, 2002), 16–17, 3–35. I thank Michelle Yeh for this reference.

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129. Wong Wang- chi, Li Siu-leung, and Ching-kiu Stephen Chan, eds., Fuo xiang Xianggang (Hong Kong Unimagined) (Taipei: Maitian, 1997), 113. 130. Wu Hongyi, “Cong Xianggang wenxue de kua diyu shuo qi” (On the Cross-Regional Characteristics of Hong Kong Literature), in Di liu jie Xianggang wenxue jie yantaohui lungao huibian (Collected Essays of the Sixth Seminar on Hong Kong Literature), ed. Xianggang Yishu Fazhanju Banshichu (Hong Kong: Xianggang yishu fazhanju, 2006), 181– 94; 181. 131. Chen Zishan, “Duoyuan yu duoyang: Xianggang wenxue de dutexing” (Multiplicity and Variety: The Unique Characteristics of Hong Kong Literature), ibid., 171. 132. Wu Hongyi, “Cong Xianggang wenxue de kua diyu shuo qi,” 190. 133. Fang Zixun, “Xu” (Introduction), in Xianggang huaju xuan (Selected Plays of Hong Kong), ed. Fang Zixun and Tian Benxiang (Beijing: Wenhua yishu, 1994), 8–34; 15–16. 134. Ibid., 16. 135. Yao Ke is an important playwright whose history play Qinggong yuan (Sorrows of the Qing Palace), which premiered in Shanghai in 1941, ran for more than a hundred performances. His history plays written and performed after his settling in Hong Kong were an important part of Hong Kong theater in the 1950s. For a rare study of Yao Ke, see Jiao Shangzhi, “Lun Yao Ke de xiju chuangzuo” (On Yao Ke’s Dramatic Writing), in Xin shiji de Huawen xiju (Chinese-Language Theater in the New Century), ed. Fang Zixun, 273– 95 (Hong Kong: Xianggang xiju xiehui, 2000). 136. Fang Zixun, “Xu,” 19–20. 137. Ibid., 20–21. 138. Ibid., 22. 139. Tian Benxiang, “Xu” (Introduction), in Fang Zixun and Tian Benxiang, Xianggang huaju xuan, 1–7; 3. 140. Du Guowei and Cai Xichang, Ngo hai Heung Gong yan (I Am a Hong Konger), in Fang Zixun and Tian Benxiang, Xianggang huaju xuan, 63–117; 86– 87. 141. Raymond K. W. To, Where Love Abides (Renjian you qing), in Cheung and Lai, Oxford Anthology of Contemporary Chinese Drama, 665–749; 673. 142. Ibid. 143. An English translation, by Edward M. Gunn, of He Jiping’s The World’s Top Restaurant can be found in Xiaomei Chen, ed., Reading the Right Text (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2003), 132–222. Another translation, by Shiao-Ling Yu, is included in Chinese Drama After the Cultural Revolution, 1979–1989, ed. Shiao-Ling S. Yu, 423– 84 (Lewiston, N.Y.: Mellen, 1996). 144. Joanna Chan, Hua jin gao lou (Crown Ourselves with Roses), in Fang Zixun and Tian Benxiang, Xianggang huaju xuan, 160–256; 161. 145. Joanna Chan, “Zuozhe zixu” (Author’s Preface), ibid., 153–56; 154. 146. Joanna Chan, Hua jin gao lou, 195. 147. Ibid., 197. 148. Anthony Chan, “Ziran de liuxie” (Natural Expression), in Fang Zixun and Tian Benxiang, Xianggang huaju xuan, 123–24; 123. 149. Fang Zixun, “Jin ershi nian Xianggang huaju de fazhan, 1977–1997” (The Development of Drama in Hong Kong in the Past Twenty Years, 1977–1997), Zhonghua wenhua xinsi wang, http://www.ccnt.com.cn/show/xqyj/show.htm?file=01 (accessed July 20, 2009). 150. For a study on Chinese-language theater, see Fang Zixun, Xin shiji de Huawen xiju.

The Main Event in Life (1919) hu shi tra nsla ted by edwar d m. gu nn

C ha r a c t e rs mrs. tian 㝥㜡㜡 fortune- teller 㚛ツ㥸㔶 li ma ⹼⿲ miss tian yamei 㝥㫳み mr. tian 㝥㥸㔶

Setting (The parlor of the Tian home. There is a door on the left leading to the front door, and a door on the right leading to the dining room. Upstage is a sofa, flanked by two armchairs. At center stage there is a small round table with a flower vase on it, flanked by two chairs. There is a small writing desk against the left wall. The walls are hung with scrolls of Chinese paintings and calligraphy, along with two Dutch-style landscape paintings. This East-meets-West arrangement on the walls strongly indicates an atmosphere of a family in transition from tradition to the modern age. It is 1919. The curtain rises slowly so that the audience can hear from onstage the final notes played by the fortune- teller on his stringed instrument. mrs. tian is seated in one of the armchairs, while the fortune- teller, who is blind, sits on a chair next to the table.)

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mrs. tian: I don’t understand very well what it is you’re saying. Don’t you think this match will work out? fortune- teller: Mrs. Tian, , tell it exactly according to the book of horoscopes. All of us fortune-tellers tell it exactly according to the book of horoscopes. You understand that— mrs. tian: And according to the book how is it going to be? fortune- teller: This match can’t work. If the young lady in your family marries this man, then no good will come of it in the future, that is certain. mrs. tian: Why? fortune- teller: You understand, I’m merely telling it just as it is. Now the calculations for the year and day of the man’s birth and the year and hour of the young lady’s birth work out to coincide exactly with the entry in the book that reads: If snake and tiger marry and mate, The male will the female then dominate. If pig and monkey you try to blend, There’s certain to be an untimely end. These are birth calculations which constitute the strongest taboo against marriage. The signs of snake and tiger by themselves spell mutual destruction—and when you add the day and hour signs on top of that, with the pig and the monkey jinxing each other, then these are two most unpleasant fortunes. If these two people become man and wife, they are certain not to survive together into old age. To be specific, the man will emerge as the stronger, the fate of the husband overtaking that of his wife. Probably the woman will die an early death. Mrs. Tian, you mustn’t be offended. I’m telling the fortune just as it is. mrs. tian: I’m not offended, not at all. I like it when people are straightforward. And what you said is definitely correct. It’s what the goddess Guanyin said yesterday, too. fortune- teller: Oh! The bodhisattva Guanyin also said so? mrs. tian: Yes. Over at the temple I got a slip of paper from her with a verse that read—oh, let me get it out and read it to you. (She walks to the writing desk, opens a drawer, takes out a slip of paper, and reads) This is fortune tally number seventy-eight. Most inauspicious. Spouses are chosen before we are born. The course that this takes we must not seek to bend. Those who scorn heaven will find life most forlorn. Their marriage will suffer an untimely end. fortune- teller: “Their marriage will suffer an untimely end.” Why, that’s exactly what I just said. mrs. tian: Of course, what the goddess Guanyin says can’t be wrong, but this is the greatest event in our daughter’s life, and it’s up to us as her parents to take the utmost

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care in our arrangements. So yesterday when I drew this fortune tally I was a little bit uneasy about it, and so I invited you over today to see if there was anything in their birth date calculations that indicated a match. fortune- teller: No, nothing at all. mrs. tian: Since there are only a few phrases on the goddess’s fortune tally it’s not easy to interpret the message. Now that your calculations today coincide with the verse on the tally, then of course that settles it. (Producing money to pay the fortuneteller) I’m much obliged to you, and here is your payment for calculating their birth dates. fortune- teller (taking the money): That’s not at all necessary, not at all. Thank you. Thank you so much. I never imagined that what I said would match the verse on the tally! (He rises.) mrs. tian (calling out): Li Ma! (li ma enters from the door to the left.) Show him out. (li ma exits, leading the fortune- teller off through the door to the right.) (mrs. tian gathers up the slips of red paper with the birth dates of her daughter and the young man on them, folds them, and puts them in a drawer of the writing desk. She then puts the yellow tally with the verse on it in with them.) (Speaking to herself ) What a shame! Such a shame that these two can’t be married! (miss tian yamei enters from the outside through the door to the right. She is twentythree or twenty-four, dressed for outdoors in an overcoat. Her face has the look of a woman with something on her mind. Upon entering, she takes off her coat as she speaks.) tian yamei: Mother, what’s got you telling fortunes again? I bumped into one of those fortune-tellers at the door as he was going out. Have you forgotten that Father doesn’t allow them in the house? mrs. tian: Just this once, my child. I won’t do it again. tian yamei: But you promised Father you wouldn’t have anything to do with fortune-telling. mrs. tian: I know, I know, but this time I had to ask a fortune-teller. I had him come over to check horoscopes for you and Mr. Chen. tian yamei: Oh! oh! mrs. tian: You must understand: this is the biggest event in your life. And you are my only child. I can’t just blindly let you marry a man with whom you’re not compatible. tian yamei: Who says we’re not compatible? We’ve been friends for years. We certainly are compatible. mrs. tian: You certainly are not. The fortune-teller said you’re not. tian yamei: What does he know? mrs. tian: It’s not just the fortune-teller who says so. The goddess Guanyin too. tian yamei: What? You went to ask Guanyin? Father’s really going to have something to say about that.

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mrs. tian: I know your father opposes me in this, just as he opposes me no matter what I do. But think of how we older people presume to decide upon your marriage. No matter how careful we are we can’t insure against error. But the bodhisattva Guanyin never deceives people. And then, too, when it gets to the point that both Guanyin and the fortune-teller are saying the same thing, that’s even more reason to believe it. (She stands and walks to the desk, opening a drawer) Read the verse from Guanyin for yourself. tian yamei: I don’t want to. mrs. tian (left with no choice but to close the drawer): Don’t be so obstinate, child. I like that Mr. Chen very much. He looks to me like a very dependable person. You’ve known him all these years since you met in Japan, and you say you know very well what kind of man he is. Still, you’re young and inexperienced yet, and your judgment could very well be mistaken. Even those of us who are in their fifties and sixties don’t presume to put complete faith in their own judgment. It was because I didn’t dare put such faith in myself that I went to consult bodhisattva Guanyin and the fortuneteller. Guanyin said it wouldn’t work out. And then the fortune-teller said that it wouldn’t work out. They can’t both be mistaken! The fortune-teller said that the calculations for your birth dates were precisely those under the strongest taboo in the book of horoscopes. It goes something like, “If pig and monkey try to blend / There’s sure to be an untimely end.” Since your year and hour of birth and his— tian yamei: That’s enough, Mother, I don’t want to hear it. (Both hands over her face, she sobs) I can’t stand listening to you talk that way! I know Father won’t agree with you. I’m sure he won’t. mrs. tian: I don’t care what he thinks. My own daughter is not going to get married to someone if I don’t agree to it. (Walking up to her daughter, mrs. tian daubs at her tears for her with a handkerchief ) Don’t cry. I’ll leave you to think it over carefully. We’re only thinking of you, and want what’s best for you. I’ll go see if lunch is ready. Your father will be back soon. Don’t cry, that’s a good girl. (mrs. tian exits through the door to the dining room.) tian yamei (Wiping her tears and looking up, she sees li ma enter, beckons to her to come closer, speaks quietly): Li Ma, I need your help. My mother won’t approve of my marrying Mr. Chen— li ma: What a pity! What a pity! Mr. Chen is such a polite gentleman. Why, I ran into him on the street this morning and he nodded and spoke to me, oh my. tian yamei: Yes, he saw you bringing the fortune-teller to this house, and he was afraid our plans might take a turn for the worse. So he telephoned me at school right away to let me know. When I came back he followed behind me in his car. He should still be at the corner waiting to hear from me. Go and tell him. Say my mother won’t let us marry, but Father is coming home, and he’s bound to help us out. Have him move the car to the back street and wait for my message. So go ahead. (li ma turns to go.) Oh, come back! (li ma turns and comes back.)

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Tell him—tell him—tell him not to worry! (li ma smiles and exits.) tian yamei (walks over to the writing desk and opens the drawer for a surreptitious peek at the contents, then looks at her watch): Father ought to be back soon. It’s almost twelve o’clock. (mr. tian, by appearance a man of fifty, enters.) tian yamei (quickly closes the drawer and stands to greet her father): Father, you’re back! Mother is saying—Mother has something important to discuss with you—something very important. mr. tian: What’s so important? Tell me first. tian yamei: Mother will tell you. (She walks toward the dining room and calls out) Mother. Mother. Father’s back! mr. tian: Who knows what you two are up to now? (He sits on a chair by the table as mrs. tian enters from the direction of the dining room.) Yamei says you have something important to tell me—something urgent you want to talk over with me. mrs. tian: Yes, it’s very important. (She sits on the left-hand chair.) I’m talking about this marriage with the Chen family. mr. tian: Fine. I’ve been giving this matter some thought for several days now. mrs. tian: Good. We all ought to give it some thought. For Yamei, this is the greatest event in life. And once I think of how important this matter is, I get so upset that I can’t sleep or eat, either. Now as for this Mr. Chen, we’ve gotten together a lot, but even so I’m still a little uneasy about him. The way things used to be, you got one look at your proposed son-in-law for the sake of principle and that was it. The way it is now, the more we see him the harder our responsibility is to bear. His family may be wealthy, but then children from wealthy families often turn out bad more than good, a lot more often. He’s gone overseas to study, too, but then a lot of overseas students no sooner get back than they get rid of the wives they were matched with in the first place. mr. tian: That’s quite a speech. So after all what is on your mind? mrs. tian: My point is this: that in arranging this important matter for our daughter, we can’t just stick to our own judgment alone. I wouldn’t presume to trust my judgment alone, so yesterday I went to ask advice at the Temple of Guanyin. mr. tian: You what? Didn’t you promise me you wouldn’t go burning incense and praying to Buddha anymore? mrs. tian: I did it for the sake of our daughter. mr. tian: Humph! humph! All right, enough of this. Go on. mrs. tian: I went to the temple and drew one tally. The verse on the tally said that this marriage wouldn’t work. I’ll show you the verse. (She starts to open the drawer.) mr. tian: Phooey! I don’t want to see it. I don’t believe in these things! You said yourself that this is the most important event in our daughter’s life, and that you didn’t

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presume to trust yourself. You don’t mean to tell me that you trust some wood and plaster bodhisattva, do you? tian yamei (joyfully): I said that Father doesn’t believe in that stuff. (Walking over to her father) Thank you. We ought to trust our own judgment, isn’t that so? mrs. tian: It wasn’t only Guanyin who said so. mr. tian: Oh! Who else? mrs. tian: I still wasn’t satisfied after I saw the verse. I still had some doubts. So I had someone go and invite in the most renowned fortune-teller in the city, Blind Chang, to come and make birth date calculations. mr. tian: Humph! humph! There you go again forgetting what you promised me. mrs. tian: I know, but for our daughter’s sake I’ve been so unsettled, so uncertain of how to handle things, that I had to go find him to settle on a decision. mr. tian: Who told you to go to Guanyin and stir up doubts about it in the first place? You shouldn’t have asked Guanyin to begin with—you should have come to me first. mrs. tian: Blasphemy, blasphemy, oh Amida Buddha—that fortune-teller said the same thing as Guanyin. Now isn’t that most unusual? mr. tian: Enough! Enough! No more of this nonsense. You have eyes, but you won’t use them. Instead you take the word of a blind man with no eyes. If that isn’t a joke. tian yamei: Father, you are perfectly right. I knew you’d help us. mrs. tian (turning her wrath on her daughter): Why, of all the cheeky things, to say “help us”! “Us” is supposed to be who? You’re so crass! (Covering her face with her handkerchief, she weeps) You’re all in it together against me! My own daughter’s biggest event in life—can’t I as a mother have anything to do with it? mr. tian: It’s precisely because it is the greatest event in our daughter’s life that we as parents must be particularly thoughtful and sober. This business of plaster bodhisattvas and fortune-telling is all just a swindle. You can’t believe it. Yamei, is that so or isn’t it? tian yamei: You bet that’s so. I knew you couldn’t believe in that stuff. mr. tian: From now on, I’m not going to allow any more of this superstitious talk. We’re finished with plaster bodhisattvas and blind fortune-tellers once and for all. And we’re going to discuss this marriage properly. (To mrs. tian) Now don’t cry. (To tian yamei) You sit down, too. (tian yamei sits on the sofa.) Yamei, I don’t want you to marry Mr. Chen. tian yamei (startled and upset): Father, are you joking or is this for real? mr. tian: For real. This marriage definitely can’t work. It hurts me to say so, but I have to say it. tian yamei: Is it that you’ve discovered something bad about him? mr. tian: No. I like him very much. He’s as fine a son-in-law as one could choose. And that bothers me all the more. tian yamei (bewildered): Do you now believe in bodhisattvas and fortune-tellers? mr. tian: No. Absolutely not. mrs. tian and tian yamei (simultaneously): Then what is it?

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mr. tian: You were overseas for so long that you have forgotten all our customs and rules. You’ve even failed to keep in mind the laws laid down by our own clan ancestors. tian yamei: Just what law am I breaking by marrying Mr. Chen? mr. tian: I’ll go get it and show you. (He stands and exits toward the dining room.) mrs. tian: I have no idea what it is. Amida Buddha, it’s just as well this way, just so long as he doesn’t permit the marriage. tian yamei (Her head bowed in thought, she suddenly looks up showing an air of determination): I know how to handle this. mr. tian (enters carrying a large set of clan records in both hands): Look, here are the records of your clan. (He opens the books, stacking them in an untidy pile on the table) Look, two thousand five hundred years of our ancestors in the Tian clan, and is there one single marriage of a Tian to a Chen? tian yamei: Why can’t someone named Tian marry someone named Chen? mr. tian: Because Chinese custom forbids persons of the same family to marry. tian yamei: But we don’t have the same family name. His family is named Chen and ours is named Tian. mr. tian: We do have the same family name. Long ago the ancients pronounced the word “Chen” and the word “Tian” in the same way. So sometimes our family name was written “Tian” and sometimes it was written “Chen.” 1 Actually, they’re the same. Didn’t you read the Confucian Analects when you were a little girl? tian yamei: Yes, I did, but I can’t remember much about it. mr. tian: In the Analects there appears a fellow named Chen Chengzi. But in the commentaries his name is written as Tian Chengzi, and the reason for that is what I just told you: two thousand five hundred years ago the Chens and the Tians were all one family. It was only in later ages that the people who used the character “Tian” concluded that their surname was Tian and the people who used the character “Chen” concluded that their surname was Chen. To look at them, you’d think that they are two different family names. Actually, they are one family. So descendants with these two names are not permitted to marry. tian yamei: You don’t mean to tell me that a man and a woman whose family names were the same two thousand years ago can’t get married? mr. tian: They can’t. tian yamei: Father, you’re someone who understands reason. You certainly don’t accept a law as unreasonable as this. mr. tian: It makes little difference that I don’t accept it. Society accepts it. Those clan elders accept it. What would you have me do? This doesn’t only apply to people named Tian and Chen, you know. There’s a Mr. Gao working at the local magistrate’s yamen who told me that his ancestors with the name Gao were originally grandsons of Chen Yuliang at the end of the Yuan dynasty. Later they changed their family name to Gao.2 So because six hundred years ago these people named Gao had the name Chen, they won’t marry someone named Chen. On top of that, since two

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thousand five hundred years ago people named Chen were also named Tian, these Gaos won’t marry anyone named Tian, either. tian yamei: That’s even more unreasonable! mr. tian: Reasonable or not, it makes no difference. This is a law of the clan ancestral shrine. If we break the clan shrine law, we lose our place in it. A few decades ago there was a merchant family in the south named Tian, and they married a daughter to someone named Chen. Later, the girl died, but the head of the Chen clan would not allow her spirit a place in the Chen clan ancestral shrine. Before she was allowed a place, her own family had to donate a substantial sum of money to the Chen clan shrine as a fine for their mistake, and change her name from Tian to Shen by lengthening the middle vertical stroke.3 tian yamei: That’s easy enough. I’m willing to extend the vertical stroke and change my name to Shen. mr. tian: It’s easy enough to say. You may be willing. I am not willing! I will not for the sake of your marriage suffer the ridicule and scorn of our clan elders. tian yamei (upset to the point of tears): But we do not have the same name! mr. tian: The clan records say the names are the same, and the clan elders also say the names are the same. I’ve asked a number of the elders and they all say this. You must understand that as parents arranging a daughter’s wedding, while we shouldn’t listen to plaster bodhisattvas and blind fortune-tellers, we have to listen to those elders. tian yamei (beseechingly): Father! mr. tian: Let me finish. There’s one more difficulty. If your friend Chen were not wealthy, that would be fine. Unfortunately, he is a very wealthy man, and if I give you to him in marriage, the clan elders are certainly going to say that out of greed for his money, I would ignore even our ancestors and sell my daughter off to him. tian yamei (in despair): Your whole life you’ve wanted to break free of superstitious practices, and now finally you can’t break with a superstitious clan law. I never dreamed this could happen. mr. tian: Are you angry with me? I can’t blame you. It’s only natural for you to be upset. I don’t blame you at all for being so angry with me—I don’t blame you at all. li ma (entering through the door to the left): Lunch is ready. mr. tian: Come. Come on. We’ll have something to eat and then talk it over. I’m starved. (He goes into the dining room.) mrs. tian (walking over to her daughter): Don’t cry. You must understand for yourself. We only want what’s best for you. Pull yourself together and have lunch with us. tian yamei: I don’t want to eat. mrs. tian: Don’t be so stubborn. Go and calm yourself first, then come. We’ll wait for you. (mrs. tian also goes into the dining room. After closing the door, li ma stands motionless.) tian yamei (looking up and seeing li ma): Is Mr. Chen still waiting in his car?

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li ma: Yes. Here’s a note he wrote for you. (She produces a sheet of paper and passes it to tian yamei.) tian yamei (reading): “This matter concerns the two of us and no one else. You should make your own decision.” (Repeating the final sentence) “You should make your own decision!” Yes, I should make my own decision. (Speaking to li ma) Go in and tell my father and mother to go ahead and eat. There’s no point waiting for me. I’ll eat after a while. (li ma nods and goes into the dining room. tian yamei stands, puts on her overcoat, hastily jots down a note at the writing desk, and places it underneath the flower vase on the table. With one look back, she hurries out the door to the right. There is a pause.) mrs. tian (offstage): Yamei, come on and have lunch now. Your food will get cold. (Entering) Where did you go? Yamei? mr. tian (offstage): Leave her alone. She’s angry. Let her calm down and she’ll be all right. (Entering) Did she go out? mrs. tian: Her overcoat’s not here. Maybe she’s gone back to the school. mr. tian (seeing the note under the flower vase): What’s this? (Reading the note) “This is the greatest event in your daughter’s life. Your daughter ought to make a decision for herself. She has left in Mr. Chen’s car. Goodbye for now.” (Hearing this, mrs. tian staggers backward and sits in an armchair. mr. tian dashes to the right-hand door, but as he reaches it he looks back with a wide- eyed, helpless look of hesitation and uncertainty.)

not es

1. 2.

3.

The editor of this anthology wishes to thank Edward M. Gunn for permission to include here his previously published translation of the play. This play was originally published in Xin qingnian 6, no. 3 (March 1919). The translation is based on the text in Zhao Jiabi, ed., Zhongguo xin wenxue daxi (Compendium of New Chinese Literature), vol. 9, Xiju ji (Drama Volume) (Shanghai: Liangyou, 1935). The character for Tian is 㝥 that for Chen is ⒪. Chen Yuliang (1320–1363) was a powerful military leader in rebellion against the Mongol Yuan dynasty. His chief rival in rebellion was Zhu Yuanzhang, who succeeded in killing Chen, destroying his army, and becoming the founding emperor of the Ming dynasty. Chen Yuliang’s surviving relatives changed their names to avoid being associated with their ill-fated kin. The character for Shen is 㔦.

Yama Zhao (1922) hong shen tra nsla ted by car ol y n t. b r own

C ha r a c t e rs zhao da (yama zhao) 㷸▙ᱤ㷸㬂㠩), a soldier, orderly of the battalion commander lao li, a soldier ⹝⹼ xiao ma 㨏⿷, a guard battalion commander 㱒⒌ others: soldiers, figures in black, a county magistrate of the Qing dynasty, several guards, an old man, a woman, a foreigner, the foreigner’s lackey, bandits

PA RT 1 Act 1 (The action occurs in a military camp located in a deserted village in the early 1920s. The village is not far from a crowded, bustling town with thousands of inhabitants. Aside from a small grocery and five hundred soldiers, the village is empty. Since the weather is cold, everyone is asleep. Only in a few of the officers’ quarters are the lamps and braziers still lit. The scene is the bedroom of the battalion commander. Against the rear wall on the extreme left is a metal, military folding cot, and on it a white wolfskin rug with a Western-style pillow and a pink silk comforter on top. Against the left wall is a low dresser

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with an attached mirror above and storage for clothes below. Piled in a disorderly heap on top are a pistol, an army sword, a military hat, and unbuckled belt, which have been casually tossed there, plus a face-powder compact, perfumed soap, a mirrored case, and a perfume bottle. On the right wall hangs a scroll painting of a traditional beauty, and to its right a door leads to the courtyard. To the left of the painting several of the battalion commander’s uniforms hang from nails. The small square window with paper window panes located on the back wall toward the left is closed. In front of the window are piled two wooden trunks sealed with slips of paper by order of the quartermaster. On the left side of the room, in front of the bed, a small charcoal brazier contains the remnants of a fire. A small square table with four chairs is placed on the right side of the room. Two kerosene lamps sit on the table, one unlit and the other burning very faintly, as if the oil were nearly used up. The door on the right opens violently and zhao da comes in. He is wearing an old and dirty gray uniform. Many of the jacket’s buttons are missing. He is not wearing leggings, but only regular trousers. His cotton padded shoes, which have done many days’ ser vice, are beginning to gape at the toes. The man is stooped, with hunched shoulders, a face full of wrinkles, and a touch of gray at the temples. He is dispirited and very tired. He is only in his early forties, but because he has led a hard life he appears to be over fifty. He is holding a china teapot gingerly, as if it were very hot. After coming in, he turns to close the door, takes a cup from the table, pours it half full of tea, and sips slowly. Then he warms his hands by holding the pot between them. Having finished drinking, he places the teapot on the brazier to keep it warm, and stirs up the charcoal, then pulls a chair over, intending to warm himself beside the brazier, but instead suddenly walks to the window, looks out, shakes his head, and talks to himself. ) zhao da: What time is it? It must be past midnight. But that’s still early for him! He won’t be back for a while. (Looking toward the door) Suppose I slip out, return to my tent, look for something to eat, and then take a long nap. He never finishes playing those sixteen rounds of mahjong before the fourth watch. Damn, it’s cold. (He walks toward the door but changes his mind suddenly again.) Forget it. I’d better do what I’m supposed to. These last few days the commander has lost a lot of money. And that means tough luck for me. Everything always goes wrong. Later when he finds the room isn’t warm and there’s no hot tea—what have I been doing? (He sits beside the brazier.) The more plain tea I drink, the hungrier I get. (He stares vacantly at the fire awhile, feels colder, and shudders from head to toe. He drags the pink silk comforter from the bed, wraps it around himself, and sits down again. He is just about to doze off when he hears a sound outside. He stands up quickly and replaces the comforter.) (Not hearing anything more, he grumbles) He’s not back. I’m hearing things! (Someone stealthily opens the door, sticks his head in, and, in a low voice, says, “Hey, Brother Zhao Da.”)

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zhao da (turning, in a low voice): So it was you outside, you joker! You’re letting the heat out. If you’re coming in, Lao Li, hurry up and come in. (lao li is also a soldier, just a little over twenty. Although his uniform is old and tattered, the man himself is vigorous. He enters tiptoeing, and carefully closes the door.) lao li: This is heaven. If you could sleep in my tent and not freeze to death, I’d be surprised! (He points to the bed) The stakes will probably be high tonight. zhao da: I know. lao li: If Platoon Leader Wang is winning, he probably won’t dare stop playing until dawn. zhao da: Don’t they always play until dawn! (He points to the kerosene lamp) We always use two lamps full of oil every night. lao li (takes a bottle of liquor from inside his jacket): Let’s have a cup. zhao da (takes two teacups from the table, pours the liquor, and drinks): This is good Gaoliang liquor! lao li: When the grocery manager came to town, he brought along two bottles. He sold me one for half a dollar, which really is outrageous. But what can I do? zhao da: Doesn’t he give credit? (As he listens, he extinguishes the lamp, which has been lit, and lights the other.) lao li: He does. But I’ve heard that they’re going to pay us soon. zhao da: Who says so? lao li: Xiao Ma. zhao da: How could Xiao Ma know that? lao li: Eh! (He takes two gulps of liquor, glances at the wooden trunk, feeling slightly embarrassed about giving his reason for coming) Brother Zhao Da, since you work for the battalion commander, you must know more than Xiao Ma. So, brother, how about lending me some money? zhao da (laughs): When a bonze bumps into a baldy, both heads are bare.1 lao li: Don’t say that. You’re better off than we are. zhao da: How could I be? All of us soldiers depend on our pay. And in this camp we haven’t been paid for months. Who isn’t hard up! lao li: You’re really broke? zhao da (sarcastically): I’ve got money. I haven’t seen any pay in over five months. (Cursing, letting out his anger) What bastard has any money? But, Lao Li, we still have a little good luck. We still get fed every day, so wait and see what happens. lao li (stands up angrily): Wait! Isn’t this waiting? Our job is a damn hard one. Those motherfuckers buy our lives for a few stinking ounces of silver. Our lives are worth only eight ounces of silver a month, and even then we don’t get paid for over five months. What are we doing it for? zhao da: You certainly are right. lao li: Every poor bastard in the world has to eat. Even a horse has to have food. We haven’t been paid in half a year, and we haven’t had any job to do, either. If they sent us out to fight, even if the motherfuckers didn’t pay us double rate, we could always

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find something to make it worthwhile. If we got killed, what would it matter? Brother, am I right? zhao da: You’re right. You’re right. (Thinks silently) I think every man has his fate, and we’re stuck with a bad one. lao li: Some soldiers have good luck. Have you heard about the newly formed Eightyninth Division? Originally it was a brigade. Now it’s been changed, and they’re recruiting. They’re not behind in paying salaries: they pay cash. zhao da: So I’ve heard. lao li: A lot of our comrades feel they don’t want to serve here, they don’t want to wait for their back pay, and they’d go wherever cash is being paid just like that. Well, if you don’t get rich when you’re young, when you’re old you just wait to be discharged. zhao da (sadly pensive): Should I go somewhere else again? lao li: Brother, have you also been thinking about it? zhao da (smiles slightly): Lao Li, sit down. (lao li is perplexed, but sits.) Each bag of flesh and bones has his fortune, his fate. When I was eighteen, my father died. I set out to make a living and became a soldier in my early twenties, I’ve been to Guangdong and Guangxi. I’ve been beyond the Great Wall. In Sichuan I fought the Miao; in Nanjing I fought the revolutionaries. In Henan I captured the White Wolves.2 There’s no place I haven’t been, nothing I haven’t eaten, and nothing I haven’t seen. (As he talks, he picks up the gun on the dresser and glances at it.) See this gun I’m holding. It holds six bullets. I would kill seven men, never five. My comrades said that I was as vicious as Yama, the king of hell. In his whole life, this man named Zhao has never suffered at anyone’s hands. Now Yama Zhao is over forty years old. Look! Look what I’ve become! (Laughs bitterly) Yama Zhao is not someone who’s never been rich. (Sighing) Good food, good drink, gold watches, money! Don’t you think I wanted them when I had them? But fate wasn’t with me. They came and went like water. Get rich, indeed! Zhao doesn’t think that way anymore! lao li: Brother, here you’re happy to go on being hungry? zhao da: I’m not happy, but I’m not complaining, either. lao li: You fill his washbasin, empty his chamber pot, boil water, wipe the table, on very cold nights stand watch, get cursed and slapped; you’re a slave, a pig, a dog, and that isn’t enough to make you happy! zhao da: Lecture me, and I’ll kill you! (The two men glare at each other.) lao li (unwilling to ruin his plan, he restrains his anger): I was just thinking how unfairly you’ve been treated. But there is a way to get rich, and I can’t keep from telling you about it. In lots of places, north and south, troops are being recruited. Why don’t we go? It would be better for us. zhao da (knowingly): It’s always the same, north or south. lao li: No. Listen to me. Our battalion commander has a superior, doesn’t he? And even his superior is not that big. He only commands a brigade of a few thousand

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men. Above him is the division commander, who commands over ten thousand men. And above him is the general. Now he has money and power. Even the president in the capital doesn’t have as much as he does. For example . . . zhao da: I know all of that. lao li: Even though the leader who I said was recruiting soldiers is a division commander, he’s in charge of the troops for a whole province. And there’s one advantage. (He comes close, speaks cautiously) He’s our general’s enemy. zhao da: What do you mean? lao li: He’s willing to take anyone, whoever they are. If someone has been a soldier, he may make him a company commander. If someone under our general deserts, he’ll rate him highly. zhao da: I don’t believe it. lao li: It’s something new. It wasn’t this way the first few years. It must be because their hatred has grown . . . But we don’t really need to worry about that, do we? They hate each other; it works to our advantage. If we go, how can we not be rated highly? zhao da (shakes his head): You make it sound so easy. lao li: We’ll slip away! zhao da: Can we do that? lao li: Sure. When we leave camp, we won’t go west. About forty li west is the town, crowded with people. We might be spotted and that could be awkward. But if we run to the north, in less than twenty li there is a pine forest which is twenty to thirty li around, stretching from level ground up into the mountains, forming a solid mass. In that forest during the day, it’s pitch-black. There isn’t even a path through it. The ground is covered with decaying leaves, rotting tree branches, and dead rodents. No bullet can hit its target, and no one can see a thing. A large party of men and horses would be useless. They’d get confused and lose their way. And maybe they wouldn’t be able to get in or out. But since we’d be only two in number and would know the way, we could thread our way through the forest, cross the mountains, and get far away from them. How could we fail to slip away! zhao da: Couldn’t they bypass the forest to get over the mountain? If they caught us . . . lao li: By the time they get over the mountain, we’ll already have been gone three days. They wouldn’t be able to catch us. zhao da: If they did capture us, we would be shot. lao li (with real fear): You’re saying “shot” to scare me! zhao da: Getting caught after deserting is worse than getting drunk, or gambling, injuring someone in a fight, or fooling around with young girls. If you do any of those sorts of things, you can still plead and save yourself. But if you desert . . . all right! Our commanders pay us so that when something happens and they say “fight,” we go all out and risk our lives. When we uphold their honor, it’s called loyalty. But if you eat their food now and then because you’re annoyed, go somewhere else, that’s not appreciating their generosity. If this general who’s been spending his money on you doesn’t shoot you, who else will he shoot?

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lao li: You’re right, if we are captured. (Not conceding and speaking defiantly) But heaven sees everything. We eat their food but we also work for them, why do you call it generosity! What favor have they done me! zhao da: When you reach that other place, will it really be much better? (Patiently) Will it be any better than here? Will you really get anything out of it? lao li: There you get cash when you enlist. zhao da: Right! They give ready cash so they don’t owe you money. (Ironically) But how long will that last? (lao li doesn’t know how to respond. He drinks two cups of liquor in succession and sits down to reflect.) They’ll pay for a few days and then the money will be gone. (lao li drinks and doesn’t reply.) Furthermore, your new comrades may not be as good as the old ones here. We’ve gone through thick and thin together. As for the new general, suppose his temper is worse than our commander’s. If your ser vice is not satisfactory, you’ll suffer. (lao li turns his head, not wanting to hear.) Besides, what camp today doesn’t have money trouble? What officer doesn’t rely on scheming against others, harming them, and treating his men coldheartedly, all so he can get rich! It’s the same everywhere. Why not stay here and make the best of it! (lao li gives him a vicious look.) If your own intentions aren’t good, then will your superiors do you any favors? You still think that respect will come of it and that you will be made a company commander. That’s just dreaming! lao li (stands up, apparently quite tipsy, his body swaying, and his words slurred): Basically my leaving has nothing to do with becoming a “loyal official” and a “filial son.” (He is not really very drunk but is putting on an act as an excuse to speak his mind freely.) When someone has a high post, he has a lot of money, and the world is his. Those who commit large crimes have high positions and get rich. Those who commit small crimes take the blame and get killed. Virtuous intentions and good deeds get you nowhere. (Pounding the table) What I want is fame and money. To hell with “principle” and “morality.” (He raises his foot to give a kick, but stumbles into the chair.) zhao da: Are you drunk? lao li: I’m speaking the truth. zhao da: Go, go, go. Get some sleep. lao li: I’m giving you good advice. (lao li stands up unsteadily. zhao da goes over to support him but is pushed away. Slowly lao li goes to the door, and groping for the knob, opens it. When the cold wind hits his face, he stops, straightens up, and breathes deeply twice. Then becoming clearheaded, as if he were just waking up from a dream, he glances around the room. Almost but not quite smiling, lao li clears his throat and turns to close the door again. He walks back toward zhao da.)

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Brother, look at me. How could I be so mixed up? I’ve forgotten the real thing I came for. zhao da: There’s something else? lao li: I want to borrow several months’ pay to live on for the rest of my life. zhao da (finds this extremely strange): Borrow pay . . . ? lao li: Exactly! Exactly! zhao da: Where are you going to borrow it from? lao li: From this very room! zhao da: Don’t talk nonsense. lao li: There’s a lot of money in this room. Brother, I want to talk to you, and don’t tell anyone else about this. The battalion commander is really rich. zhao da: Ha, ha! Rich! lao li: This is a secret. Brother, I’m not drunk. Xiao Ma, he said that he knows, that he’s seen it. It was by coincidence. Xiao Ma says our pay has already been sent down from above, two months’ worth. There’s eight or nine thousand dollars. zhao da (impatiently): It can’t be. How can the pay be sent down and not issued? lao li: Couldn’t he do that? The battalion commander certainly has some reason for it. (zhao da suddenly stands still. He contemplates this but doesn’t reply.) Brother, that nine thousand, the commander is hiding it; it’s all here in this room. (zhao da shakes his head.) It’s true. This is our chance. In two days the pay may be distributed and then it will be too late. zhao da (with calm confidence): The pay has definitely not been received. lao li (not giving in): You are not going to listen! zhao da (with absolute certainty): I know! lao li: None of our five hundred comrades in camp knows about it. Xiao Ma asked the platoon leader, and he didn’t know, either. You . . . zhao da (calmly): I know! lao li: How do you know? zhao da: The commander’s business is my business. He tells me everything that’s on his mind; all of it. If the pay had been received already, he certainly would have mentioned it to me. But since he didn’t say anything about it, it definitely hasn’t been received. lao li: Brother, I’m not drunk. You’re the one who’s drunk. zhao da: Then you don’t believe that the commander respects me? lao li: Certainly he respects you a great deal, and calls you a bastard and slaps your face. zhao da: That’s true. (Passionately) But he also treats me as a man. He makes use of me; he has faith in me. (Speaking slowly now, and with pain) In the beginning I got into bad trouble and ran east and west with nowhere to stay. I said to myself, how can you have no conscience at all? If someone were willing to take me in and help me to change my ways, I would behave from then on as a decent and upright man. Then I came to this camp and started serving the battalion commander day and night for

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almost four years. And here I am now. The commander has made me his trusted assistant. He trusts me with everything, whether big or small, good or bad. Things that he can’t tell others, he tells me. Things that he hides from others, he doesn’t hide from me. Why is this? Although he doesn’t say, don’t I know why in my heart? Because the commander understands my loyalty and goodwill, and my gratitude toward him. He needs me, trusts me. So what if he curses me and hits me? He doesn’t hold anything against me, and I don’t hate him. Don’t talk about nine thousand dollars. Even if there were ninety thousand involved, he wouldn’t deceive me, Zhao Da. lao li (not willing to give up): Brother, your words are straightforward. The commander wouldn’t deceive you, because he remembers Zhao’s good points. Brother, that Zhao is really lucky. (zhao da glances at him.) Hu Jinbiao got sick from nearly freezing and couldn’t go to drill. Because he didn’t get enough medicine, he slept in his tent feeling miserable. But the commander didn’t care. Zhang Desheng bought food on credit, and when the pay wasn’t issued, he couldn’t pay it back. So he quarreled and had a fight with those people. And when he got back to camp, they recorded his misbehavior, and he was put in prison for three days. And the commander didn’t care. If somebody orders our comrades around, throws them out, pushes them away, curses them as if they were four-footed beasts who can’t talk, and when dissatisfied with their answers beats them thirty or fifty strokes, afterward they still have to bear the pain of the wounds, act grateful, and go on serving. And the commander doesn’t care. Never mind that we are soldiers, despised everywhere we go, and still do a good job. When things go bad, no matter what, it’s on our heads, we’re cursed for eight generations, and that commander couldn’t care less. In the fighting north of the capital, our comrades were thrown into confusion and were wounded and killed. What really was the point of it? Several hundred men were buried in a pit with no separate grave mounds and no coffins. And the commander didn’t care. And he treats us like human beings? (zhao da wrinkles his brow and says nothing.) What I’ve discovered about this money being sent here must be absolutely true, and I have been planning this for a long time. Besides, it isn’t the commander’s own money. Since he’s stashing it away and not issuing it, he probably plans to keep it himself. His own background is questionable. We are thieves stealing from a thief, and there’s no crime in that. When we get the money in our hands, we’ll immediately go to that other camp and enlist. He may even be afraid of hearing other people talk about it and not dare to let anyone know. And if he does try to catch us, we will have found our way through the woods, and been long gone. (zhao da still isn’t completely convinced.) Brother, you’re the only one who knows about the money in this room. If someone else turned the room upside down, he still might not be able to find it. Besides, you’re an insider and I’m on the outside. How could I do anything without you? I came tonight to invite you to come along with me. Really that’s the only reason I talk to you about the money.

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zhao da: It doesn’t matter whether there’s money or not. Even if the room were piled with money and the commander specifically asked me to guard it, I couldn’t do anything against my conscience. lao li: Why are you sticking to him like that? It can’t be that you’re still hoping for something, that you still hope to get promoted, or get rich. Why don’t you take advantage of the fact that your hair is still black and that you still have white teeth and spend a few days in happiness? You said that the battalion commander thinks well of you, has confidence in you. Don’t you remember Wang Gouzi? He and our (lowers his voice) brigade commander were friends for many years, had such great affection for each other. How is it that later on Wang Gouzi died at the hands of that brigade commander? (Hearing him bring up the wang gouzi affair, zhao da suddenly becomes very angry. The expression on his face changes, and his eyes become red.) Whatever you say goes. So we won’t run away and enlist elsewhere. A person who hangs his life on the muzzle of his gun to look for a buyer never knows for certain what day he’ll die. If you had these few thousand dollars, wouldn’t it be enough for you to go back home and live on for the rest of your life? Brother? (No response.) Brother? (Becoming anxious) Where is the money hidden? Show me! (No response.) (Angry and agitated) I must have this money. I want to borrow a few thousand, and I won’t leave without it. (With hatred) Even if I have to kill you. zhao da: What lawless and godless stuff you are talking? You may not be afraid of men, or of ghosts, but aren’t you afraid (pointing to the sky) of the Old Lord Heaven above? (Raises his head and shudders) The gods are right above our heads looking down. You’ll pay for it in good time. No one can escape it, no one can run away from it. If you kill someone, you will pay with your life. If you get somebody, someone else will surely get you! lao li (ruthlessly): What motherfucker doesn’t want to get rich! Don’t interfere with other people’s business. My knife goes in white and comes out red, and it will send any motherfucking bastard into the next world. zhao da (determined): Yama Zhao may be old but his fists aren’t. Don’t even mention money. I won’t let you touch the dirt on the floor. lao li: You really are loyal and patriotic. (As he talks, his eyes are searching the four corners of the room.) zhao da: What are you doing? lao li (rushing toward the dresser): Looking for something. zhao da (moving forward to block his way): You can’t do that! lao li: Bastard! (He punches him. zhao da is knocked unconscious to the ground and for some time can’t make a sound. Meanwhile, lao li searches the room in great agitation. First he rifles the bedding, then quickly dumps out the contents of the top dresser drawer onto the floor. It contains only old books and papers, bits of cloth, and tattered shoes.

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Quickly he opens the lower drawer and finds it filled with clothing, some loose, some in bundles. He feels these, thinking that something may be hidden among them. He can’t see clearly, so he drags the drawer over to the table and examines it carefully under the light, but it’s only everyday clothing. He throws these on the floor and picks out a bundle. He rips it open but there’s no money, only clothes. Furious, he throws the bundle aside, squats down, bends over, and is about to feel through the other things.) zhao da (having now come to, he props himself against the wall to help himself stand up and grabs the gun from the table): Put those things down! lao li: Damn you! (He stands up quickly and turns to strike zhao da.) zhao da: You! (He points the gun at lao li.) lao li (changes his tone): We’re old pals, aren’t we? Look. What’s the point of this? (As soon as he says “this,” he viciously attacks zhao da and, grabbing his right arm, twists and turns it until he knocks the gun to the ground and kicks it away.) zhao da (holds lao li, yells): Thief! Thief! (lao li struggles to get away, but zhao da would rather die than let go. The two struggle with each other all over the room, upsetting the bed and overturning the table and chairs. In the midst of their fighting, a great commotion is heard outside—confused voices, feet running back and forth, police whistles being blown. lao li punches zhao da brutally several times and presses him to the floor. zhao da still manages to hold his legs and refuses to let go. Step-by-step lao li retreats toward the door, dragging zhao da along the floor. Several men in military uniform push open the door, rush in, and grab lao li. As for the last man to come in, although he is wearing military trousers and leather shoes, he has on a fur-lined black brocade jacket with fastenings in the middle of the front. Instead of a military hat, he’s wearing a small, round skullcap topped with a red button. Although his clothes are such a medley of styles as to be ludicrous, he has an air of authority. The whistles have stopped, and the soldiers inside and outside the room are all waiting for his commands.) lao li (struggling): Comrades . . . let go . . . this is none of your business. soldier: The battalion commander wants you. battalion commander (kicking zhao da): Get up! Talk! (Two soldiers half drag, half pick him up and stand him to the side.) commander: What’s going on? zhao da (gasping): In answer to the battalion commander’s question, Li Lianzheng attempted murder and robbery . . . He was going to kill me. He wanted to rob . . . he was searching the room for the pay. He wanted it for himself. commander: Who said there was pay in the room? zhao da: Ask him . . . He’s outrageous. He came in to drink and talk, but everything he said was nonsense. commander (seeing the room turned upside down and the liquor bottle still on the table, he becomes furious. He smashes the bottle): Bastards! You’re trying to get yourselves killed. Everyone in the camp has been disturbed. If I don’t punish you severely, then

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I might as well give up being the battalion commander. You collect your pay. So can’t you behave yourselves and do as you are told? And now you want to revolt! All right. All right. (To the guards) Take him out. Lock him in the courtyard and let him sober up. (To lao li) I’m too busy for you today, but tomorrow I’ll take my time and question you under military law. Shooting you will be easy. lao li: You, Zhao. Listen. Injustice is repaid in kind, and hatred is repaid in kind. I won’t see you again in my lifetime, but when I become a ghost, we’ll meet again. Remember that. (The guards pull lao li out.) commander (calling out): Xiao Ma. xiao ma (from outside): Yes, sir. commander: Go back to Platoon Leader Wang and tell him it’s nothing to worry about. We can go on playing. Tell them not to leave. I still want to recover the money I’ve lost. I’ll be right back. xiao ma (from outside): Yes, sir. zhao da (picking up the clothes and folding them slowly): Everything’s okay. Nothing’s been lost (The commander doesn’t really believe him. He closes the door, drags a leather case out from under the bed, opens it, and examines it. On top are a few old clothes, hidden underneath are bundles of bank notes. Hurriedly he counts them, and seeing that they are all still there, he relaxes. Then he becomes angry again.) commander: Damn him! If he really had stolen the money, all my work would have been for nothing. How quick and easy it would have been to do. (He takes a roll of bank notes, closes the case again, and hides it under the bed. zhao da is dumbfounded, realizing lao li was right, that the commander did hide the money. He feels pain as though a knife were cutting him to pieces.) zhao da (staring wide- eyed at the commander, releases a great sigh of anger and disappointment): Ai! commander (staring back at zhao da, furiously): You dog! (Putting the money in his jacket, he moves toward the door. zhao da opens the door and stands waiting for him to go out. The commander stops suddenly, glances at zhao da, and slaps his face several times.) Bastard! Where do you think this is that you let just anybody come in here? Eh? Just whose room do you think you’re taking care of ? zhao da (doesn’t dare to make excuses or dodge the blows): Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. commander: You really do just as you please, letting Li Lianzheng come in here to drink and talk. You’ve got some nerve! If any money is missing tomorrow, you’ll have to answer to me, you bastard. I’ll take care of you when I get to it (He leaves. The door clicks closed, and his footsteps recede into the distance. For a while zhao da is immobile. Slowly he turns his head and stares at the leather case under the bed as if he’d found an enemy at which to direct all his resentment. He charges across the room violently, stops suddenly, and, calming himself with a great effort, forces out a laugh.)

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zhao da: Ha, ha! Did you see that, Bodhisattva? (Shaking his fists and addressing the heavens) Any man who tries to be good, or has a conscience, who is honest, who cares about being loyal—that man is an imbecile! (First furious, then shaking his head and waving his hand in a gesture of resignation) It’s better to act like an imbecile. (He goes over to pick up the clothes again, and one by one brushes away the dirt and puts them back in the drawer.) So there really was a lot of money, over nine thousand dollars. If it’s getting rich and living well that you want, why, with this much, you’d have no worries about being able to buy a few acres, build a big house, and keep some good horses. It would be nice to be a landlord; I can’t blame Lao Li for wanting that. (He finds the gun and puts it on the dresser.) This is the end for Lao Li. If the questioning at tomorrow’s military trial doesn’t go well, they’ll shoot him for sure. He doesn’t deserve that, and he will hate my guts. He certainly won’t forget all this. I’d better avoid him. Why not run away? (Absently, he rearranges some old books.) What a poor nothing I am. I haven’t one single cent. No money, and no way out! (Suddenly looking speculatively at the case of money) I . . . it’s only petty thievery, which is a small, limited crime. And we suffered a great deal, didn’t we? And I have to say that there’s nothing shameful about taking it! (He mulls it over, stands up, then squats again.) No. No. Up till now has the commander taken advantage of me in any way? He has been good to me. (He puts the two drawers back in place and goes to make the bed.) His temper is terrible, fiery. I’ve never seen anyone that unreasonable before. (Standing up straight, stamping his foot) What’s the point of doing this work? Since I am not an officer, how can I hope to have a future? Since I’m just a lowly soldier, can I look forward to happiness, or peace, or fame, or wealth? Yama Zhao, how can you be so stupid! (Greed beginning to surface) I’ll just borrow a few hundred dollars. The commander probably won’t care about that little bit. It’s not enough to do him any harm. (Glancing at the case and folding his hands in prayer) I swear to heaven. Dear gods, I’ve no other way. I just want to borrow a few hundred dollars as traveling expenses to go somewhere else so I can escape his revenge and avoid disaster. If I have this money, I can go settle down somewhere else. And afterward I really will be good. (Kneeling) Dear gods, just this once, and I’ll never commit a crime again. And if I break my promise, may I be struck down dead by a random bullet. (He stands up and looks around, approaches the bed, when unexpectedly he hears the door open, and turns guiltily.) (Ner vously) Xiao Ma! xiao ma (as he enters): Did I startle you? zhao da: Do you think you can come into the commander’s room anytime you want? You’re disgusting.

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xiao ma: Don’t fuss. Don’t fuss. The commander sent me on official business. The commander has lost again and told me to come get a few hundred dollars. zhao da: I know. I’ll take it to him. You may go. (Seeing that zhao da is so distracted, xiao ma guesses eighty to ninety percent of what is going on.) xiao ma: Say, Yama Zhao, when there’s good rice everyone should taste it. No one man should eat it all by himself. As the saying goes, whoever sees it should get some of it. You’ve found a way to get rich. I’m begging you to take care of me. Think of poor Xiao Ma. zhao da: What are you talking about? xiao ma: There’s no point in spelling it out. We both understand. The commander is keeping the pay. You work for him. “When there’s a river at the front door, it’s very easy to carry water.” (Winking) True? zhao da: I don’t understand. xiao ma: You really don’t understand? Let me speak plainly. The pay is everybody’s property. The commander can use it; I can use it too. To say nothing of you. zhao da (guiltily): Okay. Be dishonest. But you shouldn’t listen to nonsense. xiao ma: Nonsense? zhao da (forcing himself ): There’s nothing to all of this. xiao ma: Do you mean to say there’s no money in this room? zhao da: There isn’t! xiao ma (Looking zhao da dead in the eye, not shifting his gaze): Humph! (zhao da turns his head away.) Okay. (Laughing coldly) It’s not here. Okay, it’s not here. (He leaves.) zhao da (with animosity): You laugh? What are you laughing at? Am I afraid of you? You try to take too much advantage of me. (While he utters reproaches, he pushes the chairs close to the table.) I haven’t been caught at anything. (Stands still, addressing the door) I couldn’t stand it if I tumbled into his clutches. It’s perfectly clear (sits down, his face worried) that as old as I am, I’ve lost face by letting Xiao Ma humiliate me with his laughter. (He can’t stand thinking about it, quickly buries his head in his hands, and covers his eyes.) To be stomped on by that bastard makes me less than dirt. (He lowers his hands slowly and thinks vacantly. He shakes his head, moves his feet slowly, and then paces for a while.) Since Xiao Ma had just come in, how could he have seen anything in so short a time? (More forcefully) “If the tiger doesn’t eat men, he gets his bad name for nothing.” There’s money in this room. There’s an escape route in the forest beyond the mountains. If I take some, why not take three or five thousand and live it up right now! (Vehemently) I haven’t had a good day in my whole life. (Resolutely) So be it! If I get killed, I get killed. It’s worth it. (He goes to open the case under the bed. The door slowly creaks open and closes again with a faint thud. It’s only the wind.)

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zhao da (startled, kicking the case under the bed): Who’s there? (No response. He becomes more suspicious.) Who’s there? (Still no answer. On tiptoe, he goes stealthily to the door, stands still, and listens. Then he pulls it open violently. Outside he doesn’t see a trace of anyone. It’s a bad winter, and the dead of night. Although there are some scattered stars and a moon, their light is hidden by the black clouds blown by the north wind. It’s bitter cold and pitch-black everywhere. He can’t see what’s in front of him, but can only hear what seems like a thousand different sounds in the sky—sounds of men wailing, animals crying, metal clanging, sand whirling, all terrifying. Quickly closing the door, he shrinks back into the room.) Ghosts! (His courage fading, he feels guilty; he addresses himself angrily) Yama Zhao, how can you let your conscience be hidden and think of doing such bad deeds? I was born to be nothing, but I must learn to be good; won’t you let me be a good man all the way through! xiao ma (enters and slouches in a chair): The commander wants you! zhao da (surprised): Wants me? xiao ma: Go right away. The commander lost quickly and wants you to send over five hundred dollars. Why don’t you take it? zhao da: Terrible! I forgot! (Quickly takes several rolls of bank notes from the case, stands up, and sees xiao ma smiling, covetously and enviously looking on. He is suddenly afraid that xiao ma is lying.) Can I bother you to please take it to him for me? xiao ma (not moving): Take it yourself. The commander has some instructions to give you. zhao da: Would you please go back and say that I can’t leave? (He gives a sideways glance at the case, his thoughts apparent.) There are things in this room! xiao ma: Turn the room over to me. I’ll watch it for you. zhao da (increasingly suspicious): You dog. Don’t pull the trick of “luring the tiger out of the mountain.” (Pulling back his hands) You better be telling the truth about this five hundred dollars. xiao ma: You are so careful with the commander’s money. You protect it this carefully and nothing can go wrong. Even the commander himself won’t be able to get to it. (Standing up) Don’t hurry. The commander will reward you! (Viciously) And don’t be afraid of having difficulty explaining yourself. I’ll speak up for you. (zhao da gradually understands that things are going badly. If the commander believes xiao ma, even if zhao da doesn’t steal, he will be accused of stealing anyway, and there will be no chance to explain.) So be it! So be it! (He decides he might as well take lots of bank notes. He stuffs them on his person and gets ready to leave. Just as he’s about to go, he suddenly hears someone at the door. He snatches the gun up at once and points it at the man entering—the commander.

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Both men are startled. Neither speaks. The commander backs toward the door, intending to block the way. zhao da shoots. The commander is hit and hesitates slightly. zhao da has already charged out the door.) (Curtain.)

PA RT 2 Act 2 (The scene is the place where the road ends. Ahead is a forest of large trees that screen the sky and block off the ground. The forest is thick with interconnected vines forming a vague black mass. There’s no way to tell what it’s like inside. Outside of the forest are several straight, old trees and piles of squat, rough rocks, all evil looking. The night has become deeper. A tiny bit of starlight shines on the frozen ground. The cold is bonechilling. Off in the distance can be heard the sound of bugles and drums. zhao da dashes onstage. As soon as he sees the forest, he looks for a stone and sits down.) zhao da: So this must be the pine forest. I’ve finally gotten here. Good. Let me give my feet a rest. (Rubbing them with his hands, he offers them consolation) My poor feet! Today I’ve worked you very hard. When we get home, I’ll give you hot water and warm wine, and wash off the dirt. But now I can’t let you relax. You still have more work to do to take me through the forest. (Looking back at the road he’s come along) This trip hasn’t been easy. I’ve run for twenty li without stopping in only about two hours. (Resting against a tree, he can’t help being troubled by the intermittent beating of the drums.) Dum-de-de. Dum-de-de. Why don’t the damn drums ever stop? Lift your legs. How can you catch me just by beating the drums? (Unable to see his pursuers) It doesn’t matter how far behind they are. I wouldn’t be able to see them if they were only one hundred paces away. (Lifting his head) The whole sky is filled with black clouds. (Laughing for no reason) Tonight it is really black, blacker than the commander’s heart. (As he turns toward the forest, his smile suddenly disappearing) Look at this forest. What kind of place is it? Has any living person in all of history ever gotten through it? (Again the drums beat, and the wind blows the sound to his ears.) Dum- de- de. Go ahead and beat the fucking drums forever! Yama Zhao doesn’t have enough time to do anything about it. (Giving a cold, nasal laugh) They’ve sent the troops out just for me—two hundred, three hundred, the whole battalion. But can they follow me into the woods? (Pointing) You see that tree, and that one, and that one, all sizes, growing every which way so that you can’t tell north, south, east, or west. If several hundred men blindly, wildly stumble around in there, how could they be anything but baffled? It’s easy to get in but hard to get out. In this forest, over ten li around, you’ll go around in circles. You can go around for twenty-five years, and don’t think you’ll get out alive!

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(He makes a calculation, and feeling that he is not worried or afraid, decides he might as well use a stone as a pillow and go to sleep on the ground. A strange rustling is heard in the forest.) (Turning over and sitting up, he shouts) What is it? Who’s there! Who’s there? (He jumps up, takes the gun from his waist, and faces into the darkness.) I’m going to shoot. (But the woods are absolutely still.) What? No one’s there? It must be a squirrel. (Seeing a squirrel climbing up a branch) So it was a squirrel, stupid thing. And you’re making fun of me. (Stretches his arm upward and shakes the pistol twice) If you dare to scare me again, I’ll kill you. (Relaxing instead) Yama Zhao’s eyes can see one hundred paces at night, and I can even hit mice in the dark. (He starts to put the pistol in his pocket, but because he has walked too much for one night with the leather belt and the jacket tied around his body, he is not very comfortable. He undoes the belt to rearrange everything. He digs the bundles of bank notes out of his pockets and spreads them on the ground.) I hadn’t intended to take so many. (Counting them carelessly) This pile has three thousand dollars. Zhao, you are going to have some new experiences real soon. Then you’ll know that you haven’t lived your life for nothing! (He hurries to hide the money in his pockets again. A few bundles are left over, and these he wraps in his handkerchief and ties at his waist.) Tomorrow when I get to the other side of the forest, all of this money will be mine. Let me get going. (In an instant, black clouds cover the stars and moon.) (Afraid) Oh, my god, how can it be so dark! I can’t tell where the road is. (Nodding his head) That’s natural. If I go north, I will be able to get out. (Again looking for the path) But there’s no path. I can’t find any sign of it. How will I know whether I’m going north or south! (Thinks) Right. I heard someone say that at the place where you enter the forest, there’s a tree with torn bark. That’s the marker. Let me take a look. (He strikes a match, goes to the side of a tree, and looks up and down.) Wrong one! (He moves to another tree, lights a dried twig, and looks carefully.) Why can’t I find that tree? Don’t tell me I’ve come to the wrong forest! (Again he moves to another tree, and suddenly blows out his light.) What a lunatic I am! Yama Zhao, usually you are intelligent and clever, more so than a fox, but today you’re all confused. On a pitch-black night you let a light give you away, let everyone see you and aim at you! (He quickly hurls the twig and matches to the ground, scrapes up some dirt, and covers up the remaining fire. The night becomes even darker. Squatting down, zhao da is like a dark shadow, his features indistinguishable.) (He stands up, moves backward. His expression changes; his eyes bulge. Terrified, he cries out) You! You! What are you doing here! Blood! Blood! Blood! Bloody face and head! (Identifying the object more clearly, he is even more terrified) Commander!

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Commander! You! You’ve come to get me! No! No! Not this time! Zhao doesn’t work for you anymore. I want to go. I have to go. Even if I have to strangle you! (All alone, he throws his hands around wildly, fighting with thin air) I can’t get my hands on you. (He opens his eyes and is relieved.) Everything’s disappeared. (Sighs) The commander’s at the camp. I just shot him. Even his shadow couldn’t get here! (Gasping) I’ve walked until I’m too tired. I’ve walked so much I’m feverish. Because my mind is drained and I’m all upset, I’m seeing ghosts and phantoms. Actually there’s nothing to worry about. If I only relax, in a little while I’ll be okay. (Before he finishes speaking, he leaps up again.) Xiao Ma, you’ve come too! What right do you have to share my take? You can’t do this to me. (He wards off something in the air) Get out of here! Get out! (Putting his hands down) He’s gone. Zhao’s nickname is Yama; he’s not afraid even of real ghosts. And certainly not afraid of fake ghosts! (He gives a forced laugh. A gust of wind passes by, making the beating of the drums louder.) Those drums sound closer. (Feeling for the gun) This gun never misses. Don’t you know that, comrades? There’s no feud between us. Why should you have to chase me! (Suddenly becoming cruel) If you turn against me, for every bullet I have, I’ll take one life. There are still five bullets. That’s five lives. Those five who come to get me will find that Zhao’s life doesn’t come cheaply. (He yells wildly in the direction of the soldiers who are pursuing him.) Come and get me! Come and get me! Five of you will die first before you can expect to catch Zhao. I’m going! And you? Get lost, you motherfuckers. (Gathering his resolve, he enters the forest.) (Curtain.)

Act 3 (Inside the forest. The night is dark and still. The moon is faint and gloomy. Ancient trees, thickly spaced, stand straight and towering. Drums can be heard vaguely in the distance. Something at the base of a tree rustles. zhao da enters, treading on broken twigs and fallen leaves, threading his way through, looking carefully for the path. He trips on a tree root, pulls himself up, and leans against a tree to catch his breath.) zhao da: It’s really different in here from outside. What’s wrong with Zhao? Can’t I even run along a path? (Rubbing his knees) I’m always knocking against trees and falling down on stumps. My clothes are ripped and I’m bruised in various places. (He looks at the trees and sighs.) In this black place on this dark night, the trees look very peculiar. No beginning and no end. I’ve passed tall trees and short trees, walked through one area and then another. It always looks the same, and I never finish walking.

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(He sighs and sits down.) If I don’t rest a little, I really won’t be able to go on. (He pats the ground, feeling pressured by anxiety.) And there’s nothing to eat anywhere! (Suddenly a strange sound comes up from the rock by the roots of a tree—a tragic sound like that of seven or eight people weeping and crying. He seems to see several people coming out from behind a tree. Apparently he recognizes them; he stands right up and starts smiling.) So! More than ten of you have come! (He folds his hands in salute to them and waits for them to sit.) Good! Good! Not bad. I’m fine, thank you. (The following speech is delivered as if he were talking to someone, with pauses between phrases as if he were listening to their replies.) What do you have to say, second brother? . . . You’re thinking of going back! . . . Back home . . . Yes. With all those mountains and streams in between it’s so far! . . . Your old mother at home is concerned about you . . . Yes. You’ve been gone over ten years. And should have gone back long ago . . . Your wife waits for you all day long. Everyone feels like that. Every wife expects her husband to come home soon . . . You can’t go back! Why not? . . . Oh! You’ve been wounded . . . When one fights, one can’t avoid being wounded! This time the fighting was savage . . . You saw me, no doubt. I was on the battlefield too . . . Three days and three nights. No break in the shooting . . . And it rained hard. And afterward you were shot. You waited, waited for someone to carry you back to a tent, to give you medicine and heal you . . . What did you say? They ignored you! Second Brother, they buried you alive! . . . You hadn’t died, yet they went ahead and buried you! (Standing up indignantly) What inhuman bastards to do such a cruel thing! Really? Really? . . . They’re animals with wolves’ hearts and dogs’ lungs. Those brutal, inhuman little bastards. (Gnashing his teeth) Just wait. There’s always time for retribution. Lightning will strike them and fire will burn them; heaven will punish them and earth will destroy them! (Yelling) You who were so unjustly killed, were you so helpless that you didn’t seek revenge? (The weeping and crying are heard again. The sound is desolate. After a short time, it stops.) (His face showing terror) Second Brother! . . . I . . . are you blaming me? (Without conviction) I really did do that . . . but it was the general’s orders—take all those seriously wounded with next to no hope and throw them in a pit. (Turns his head away, looking ashamed) I remember everything you said to me then. (Recalling the past event, speaks slowly) You saw thirty to fifty bodies all together in a pit. Don’t mention coffins. There weren’t even straw mats! You had tears in your eyes. You kowtowed and begged. You said you had three bullet wounds and were losing so much blood, you didn’t know whether you would recover or not. You thought chances were you’d die, but you just might live. Because you could still breathe, in your heart you hoped just a bit that perhaps you would heal and your life would be spared. You wanted me to set you aside and not bury you in the pit, to let you test your own luck. If you were

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going to die, then you wouldn’t worry about your corpse being exposed in the field, the rain beating down on it and the winds blowing, the dogs dragging you around and the wolves gnawing at you. You absolutely wouldn’t blame me. And if by chance you were saved, when you got home, all their lives your whole family would remember Zhao’s mercy in saving your life. Because we served the same leader together and ate together in the same camp, you wanted me to remember our previous friendship, leave you there, so that way we wouldn’t have been friends for nothing. Second Brother, when Zhao heard what you said, his heart was grieved, and he could hardly bear to do what he did. (Argues earnestly, trying hard to be convincing) Second Brother, everyone knows that the general’s rules are stringent. No matter who it is, you aren’t allowed to have personal feelings. Even if it’s your own comrades who were severely wounded, they are to be treated the same as the enemy. All must be buried quickly. There was nothing Zhao could do about it. (His hands warding the other off, he bends to the side as if to dodge a blow.) Second Brother, don’t be so quick to start something. Listen to me. Don’t you understand yet? Even if you had healed, you would never have been able to carry a gun or fight again. If I had taken the trouble to save your life, it would have been wasted. The general had it figured out. You were useless, finished. Anyway, you were going to die. Isn’t it better quick and easy, to get it over with sooner? Second Brother, you’re blaming others for your fate. Zhao was just a bystander. (Ner vously) You say I had already agreed to save you, but because I saw that you had over eighty dollars on you, I got the wicked idea of burying you alive? You say that was outright murder for greed? What kind of talk is that? (His shame turning to anger) Get out of here! If I listened to you instead of the general, wouldn’t I have lost my own head? Yama Zhao is going. What can you do to me? (Laughs coldly) This is Yama Zhao’s temper. And if he gets angry he doesn’t give a damn even for a friend. (The only sound anywhere is that of weeping and crying. It’s constant, as if the grief were endless.) (Extremely angry) Shut up! Shut up! I’ll teach you a lesson! (He shoots the pistol at the tree. Immediately all the sounds are silenced. Satisfied, he laughs foolishly.) A cheap sacks of bones! This pistol stopped them. (He calms down. The drumming has become louder.) Why have I delayed so much? They’re beating drums and chasing me. But instead of pushing along here I am shooting at nothing and wasting my bullets. I don’t know what I’m doing. (Quickly he starts to move, but, seeing the forest, he can’t help losing his courage.) Hey! What am I afraid of! There are only trees in the forest. How can there be anything else there! (He enters the forest.) Changxindian, Hebei—1922 (Curtain.)

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Act 4 (Now the moon is showing through the dark clouds, providing some illumination. In this section of the forest, there are no large trees. Nearby are one or two that have fallen on the ground. In the distance is a thicket of low trees. Rushing and stumbling in, zhao da leans against a fallen tree, lies down, and pants loudly. He forces himself to sit up, and groans.) zhao da: Ah, my feet! (With his hands, he moves his feet closer to his body.) I can’t take another step in these shoes. (Taking his time, he removes his cotton shoes.) My feet have swelled up so much. Look how swollen they are! (He stretches his feet out straight.) Aiya! (He looks at the forest and sighs.) How can I still be in the forest? I should have left it already. (Worried) I’ve walked and walked. I must have been walking for hours. (The drumming seems to be louder.) Listen! The damn drums are beating again. (Shakes his head) The sound is a little closer. No, it’s still far away. I can’t tell. (Again consoling himself ) What are you afraid of ? They’re a long way off. How can they catch up with you anytime soon? (He leans backwards and raises his head to look at the moonlight.) Good. When the moon comes out, I can look for the path and not have to go blindly bumping and banging around again, stumbling and staggering. But how can one night be so long? The sky won’t get light. (Looks all around) When there’s sun, at last I’ll know which direction is east, which is north. (Smiles bitterly) Before, when Yama Zhao was in camp, he just went about doing his job. Now suddenly I’m running for my life in a wild forest! (He lowers his head and is silent. A greenish and mysterious will- o’-the-wisp appears from inside a clump of low trees and flickers.) (Feeling his pockets) The money! Good, it’s still there. (Satisfied) This money was meant to be mine. It will always be mine! (He pulls it out) If it weren’t for you! (He is choked with sobs and cannot make a sound. After a while he speaks again.) Okay. Since I can enjoy being rich and finding happiness, having risked my life once is worth it. (He thinks about having shot the commander and is apprehensive.) I’ve got to remember how I got this money. If I do some good deeds, then it will be all right! (Pointing to one roll of bank notes) First I’ll take a few hundred to buy a very small wheat field, and in exchange for my own labor I’ll get food and clothing from it. Then afterward, with a clear conscience, I’ll do everything I’m supposed to do and be a good man! (Pointing to another roll) Then I’ll spend a few hundred to repair the temple of the bodhisattva. I’ll hang a new tablet, and on the first and fifteenth of each month I’ll make offerings and burn incense. If I’ve committed a crime, the

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crime will be forgiven; if I’ve done something wrong, the wrong will be excused. And I will be guaranteed peace and comfort. (Pointing to another roll) These few hundred are for relatives, friends, the poor, the old, for victims of natural disaster or human catastrophe. I’ve met with all kinds of pain in my life. How could I just stand and watch with my hands in my pockets? (Pointing to another roll) With these few hundred I’ll repair bridges and build roads. In the summer I’ll give out medicine and in the winter provide rice gruel. Then the twenty-some years that Zhao has been away from home will not have been wasted. (A rattling sound is heard. A dark shadow drifts forward with the will- o’-the-wisp. As it approaches, it is seen to be a man’s shadow. Its left hand holds a bowl, and its right is tossing dice into it.) (Raises his head to look) I wonder who it is? It’s Wang Gouzi! I haven’t seen you in a long time. I’ve missed you. They said you were a spy for a revolutionary party, and the general shot you. How happy I am to see you! Why don’t you speak? (wang gouzi puts the bowl on the ground and just throws the dice. Then he makes a gesture as if to invite zhao da to join him.) (Immediately becoming furious) You vile, shameless dog! From the first Zhao Da was always basically a decent man. From the first I was always careful about spending money for food and clothing. I saved my money, planning to go back home after my discharge and take up different work as soon as possible. It was you, Wang Gouzi, who tricked me, who invited me to gamble with you and won all my money. What could I do? So I started all over again and became a soldier, asking only to be fed. When I thought about the past and the future, it was you, you stinking bastard, who was responsible for me drifting down this low road, on and on and on down to today. (Grabbing the money, he waves it in wang gouzi’s face, and then quickly stuffs it away.) Today Zhao has gotten rich again, and once again he plans to return home and make good. And are you, Wang Gouzi, with your black, cheating heart, again inviting me to gamble with you? (Pulls out the gun) Gouzi, I’ve already taken your life once. And now aren’t you forcing me to take it again! (The rattle of the dice is heard.) Go to hell! (There’s a gun shot, and then the entire scene disappears.) Spring, 1916 (Curtain.)

Act 5 (A mountain rises steeply to form a small ridge. Beyond the ridge stretch endless mountains and peaks densely covered with trees. On the ridge is a patch of level, bare area approximately one hundred feet around. It is still nighttime.)

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zhao da (shouts as he walks along): It’s so hot! So hot! So hot! (When he reaches the top of the ridge, he looks in all directions. Suddenly his limbs become rigid; he closes his eyes tightly; he turns back and forth moving stiffly, as if he were not in control of himself. After a while he stops to open his eyes and keep a lookout off in the distance. Gesturing a good deal, he keeps talking as if in his sleep.) Smoke! (Pointing to one spot) Black smoke rising straight up. (He shrinks backward) Something’s on fire . . . What a large fire! It’s not far away! Not far away! (Inclines his ear) What? . . . Weeping . . . The sound of women . . . several women weeping. (He stands on a stone and looks around. He’s alarmed.) Aiya! So many girls and women running in all directions. (Gulps) Soldiers chasing them. (Not able to turn his eyes away) Oh! . . . Oh! . . . Oh! (There is the sound of weeping.) A young girl, rushing down the road. They’ve grabbed her. (Looking carefully) Isn’t that Third Sister Wang, the younger sister of Wang the barber? (Worried) They’re laying her on the ground . . . Three soldiers all piled on top of her. (Covers his eyes with his hands) Ah! . . . Ah! . . . Ah! (The drums beat with great agitation.) (Still in a trance) Terrible! The soldiers are coming, coming toward our house! (Waves his hand) No! No! This is my house! I don’t want to go! (Dry laugh) I’m so old, so ugly. What am I afraid of ? (Entreatingly) Sister Yu. You! Run quickly, quickly! Run quickly! (Alarmed) That won’t work. The soldiers are at the door. You can’t run away. (Agitated) Sister Yu, hide, quickly. Hide, hide! It would be better to die! (Sighs) A young virgin, so pretty. (Stamps his foot) Hurry, hurry! . . . Jump out the window! Isn’t that a window! (Holding his breath) Good! Good! (Consoles himself ) My daughter! She’s safe after all . . . she’s dead. (He hides his face and sobs. The drums sound again.) Honorable soldiers, what do you want in here? . . . Why are you opening the chest? . . . We’re a poor family. We don’t have anything valuable . . . (Shouts sternly) Leave that fur-lined gown! . . . Soldiers, I wouldn’t have the nerve. (Changing his tone of voice) Leave the clothes here, for pity’s sake . . . There’s only one piece of silk clothing. It was made for a wedding. My mother-in-law gave it to me . . . Don’t get it dirty . . . I hid it for Sister Yu’s dowry . . . Don’t take it away . . . Listen to what this old lady says . . . a person of over sixty years . . . what she says can’t be wrong! . . . Get out of here. Get out of here! Go to a rich man’s house. Have pity on poor people. Let them go! . . . Are you starting a fire? . . . You’re not going to burn the house . . . oh God! . . . The white smoke goes straight up. In a moment it’s making its way through the roof . . . Why are you so cruel? Are we poor people standing in your way! Honorable soldiers! There’s no one, no one is hidden under the bed . . . (A placating smile) I only have this one son . . . He’s terrified. This child can’t hurt anyone . . . Spare him! Don’t hit him. The butt of the gun is so heavy . . . (Agitated) Don’t point the gun at him. This way is not good . . . (Kneels) I beg you. I beg you on my knees! . . . Oh broad-minded, prosperous soldiers . . . kill me instead . . . Gentlemen, don’t . . . (Loud cry) Oh! . . . Oh! . . . Oh! . . . My son is dead too! Dead! Dead! . . . (Laughs)

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How hot it is! . . . (Takes off his clothes) The fire is getting bigger and bigger. So be it! . . . Fiery goddess bodhisattva, take this old woman too! What do I have to live for? (He hugs his body, leaps, falls to the ground, and wildly rolls around crying. Again the drums sound.) (Gradually calming down and lying still, he suddenly sits up, not comprehending) What have I been doing! (Looks around) Am I still in the forest? (Pointing to the clothing that he has taken off ) Look. My clothes and money are scattered all over the ground! (He puts his clothes back on. Again the drums sound. Blackened human figures appear one by one until there are several dozens of them.) Who are you? . . . All are wronged ghosts who burned to death. Aren’t those three pretty young girls? Why are their bodies black all over and their eyes and noses missing? . . . And here are the old and the young. (Shocked, he steps back.) Thousands of my comrades set the fires too. Why have you only come looking for me? (Pulls out the gun) You think I’m the easiest one to handle! (He fires two shots in succession and everything disappears.) Nanjing—1910 (Curtain.)

Act 6 (The same as act 5) zhao da (prostrate on the ground, praying): Old Lord Heaven, save me. In my lifetime I’ve committed every sin there is. I know I should have paid for them long ago and should have died long ago. But please remember that I never purposely planned to hurt anyone. Old Lord Heaven, I never meant to do those bad things. (Continuous drumming is heard.) (Kneeling and pleading) That time I saw the men and women, the old and the young, in the flames, rolling about and screaming, I asked my comrades to spare them. They said that if we didn’t burn them, we couldn’t rob them, that you have to pull weeds up by the roots. I couldn’t stand it and I wanted to go back to camp, but my comrades held a knife to my throat and said that we would cross rivers together and go down to the water together, would share wealth together and share misfortune together, and that no one was going to be allowed to go off all by himself to be a good fellow. Whoever turned against the group would be killed first. There wasn’t anything I could do. I had to go along with them. Later I stopped thinking about what I was doing and just did whatever I pleased. (The drums sound.) (Kowtows) That Gouzi and I were from the same village. When we drifted around the country, I got the money to cure him when he was sick, and also found him a job. But

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that bastard repaid me with spite. He used loaded dice to cheat me out of my money. What red-blooded man can put up with that! So I just reported that he was a revolutionary. I intended to make him suffer a little and to get my revenge. How could I have known that the investigation would find solid evidence that he really was a spy and that he would be killed by the battalion commander? When the battalion commander was promoted, I felt extremely sorry for what I’d done. That five-hundred-dollar reward—I didn’t take a penny of it. Old Lord Heaven, you saw it too! (Kowtows) Don’t take Zhao Da for a terribly evil man. Mostly I’ve been falsely accused. Old Lord Heaven, have pity on me and be merciful. (Gradually it grows lighter. A yamen appears with an official inside. He’s wearing a plumed hat and a long robe with a jacket. He sits at an elevated table. Ten attendants with angry expressions stand on either side. A penholder, container of bamboo tokens, instruments of torture, and bamboo paddles are all in readiness. This is a court of the old Qing dynasty. A woman is kneeling facing the official. The official intently questions her. The woman only shakes her head. The official thinks a while, a contented expression on his face, and then pointing to zhao da, questions her again. The woman still shakes her head. The official pounds the table and questions her angrily, but she only shakes her head. There’s nothing he can do, so he asks the attendants to take the woman to one side. Now an old man comes forward and kneels in the court. As before, the official questions him. He shakes his head. The official earnestly explains the situation, but the old man stubbornly refuses to go along. He just shakes his head. The official’s countenance is severe. He takes out a bundle of bamboo tokens and points to zhao da. The old man performs one kowtow, kneels, and shakes his head. The official is furious and orders the attendants to torture the old man. The man becomes unconscious from the pain.) (Not knowing what to do, zhao da keeps calling) Old Lord Heaven! (Someone spits a mouthful of cold water on the man and he gradually comes to. The official points to zhao da and asks again. The old man turns his head, glances at him, sighs, and as if he had no choice, gives a slight nod. The official is greatly pleased.) Just and honorable lord, the accusations are unjust! (They bring the woman forward and question her again. Still she shakes her head. The official is furious. He throws down a token, and the attendants hold her down and whip her.) Aiya! Honorable lord! (When the woman has been beaten nearly to death, the official points to zhao da and asks once again. Immediately she nods agreement. The official is greatly pleased.) Just and honorable lord, the accusations are unjust! (The yamen attendants get the bamboo paddles and instruments of torture and look at him savagely.) (Crawls forward and kneels, then kowtows and pleads) Just and honorable lord, the accusations are unjust! (He says this several times, but the official refuses to listen.)

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Your Honor, don’t take me for a murderer. I never killed anyone. Your Honor, they are dazed from the beatings and so they point blindly and make wild accusations. The accusations are unjust! (The yamen attendants throw the instruments of torture on the ground.) Your Honor, be merciful. Please don’t beat me. My legs have already been broken in the press, just and honorable lord. (The attendants rub their hands, eager to begin.) (Lifts his head and addresses heaven) Old Lord Heaven, is this fair? Is this reasonable? When ordinary people like us who don’t have money and don’t have power meet a pack of (filling with resentment) ravenous wolves, how can we hope to survive! (Heatedly) But Zhao will not die easily. I’ll kill some of them first. (Swears) Honorable Spirits. Old Lord Heaven, only this once and then I’ll never commit another crime. Zhao Da will go away to avoid revenge and escape catastrophe. And from now on I’ll be a good man. (Pulls out his gun and points it at the official) Listen, you cur! Now under the republic we have laws. Do you still think that you can make unjust accusations! (He fires one shot and the scene disappears.) 1905 (Curtain.)

PA RT 3 Act 7 (Same as act 4. The drumming sound is nearer.) zhao da (exhausted, walking with difficulty): But how can this be? (He stumbles to the ground.) I’ve used up five bullets, and the sky’s not light yet! (He drags himself up to go and falls down again.) Let them catch me. I really don’t care. (His head buried in his arms, he cries.) How could I come to this! From the beginning— (He sits and thinks of the past, miserable beyond measure.) We were a law-abiding family. We farmed for a living. When the old man died, he left a house and a piece of land. I took care of my mother. And as for Xiao Jinzi, the young daughter of our neighbors the Liu family, across the river . . . (As he thinks of her, his expression grows tender.) We grew up together from the time we were little. Xiao Jinzi consented to be my wife, and we hoped to be married before long. And we hoped that the three of us, mother, son, and wife, would have food and clothing, that we would live in peace

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and have many happy days together. (Long sigh) How could we have known that that year a foreigner would come and say that worshipping the ancestors and respecting the spirits was completely wrong and that when we died we would still be punished in hell. The foreigner came especially to teach the villagers to accept the foreign religion, to speak the foreigner’s language, and to worship the foreign bodhisattva. The motherfucker also wanted to build a foreign church, and that was terrible. I asked how they could keep me from planting my own land. The real reason was that Wang the Tiger, of our village, took advantage of the fact that Mother was a widow and I was an orphan. No one helped us. He appropriated our land to sell to the foreigner, who built a church and a large red brick house. Wang the Tiger made several hundred strings of cash, and we didn’t get a cent of it. The foreigner was powerful, so how could we get our rights? Mother became sick with anger and died. And my Xiao Jinzi, she . . . also . . . died! Damn foreigner! Damn foreigner! (He buries his head and cries again. Two men come out from behind a tree. One has deep-set eyes and a yellow beard, foreign clothes, and a walking stick. The other has a fat face and large belly, and wears a broad-sleeved long gown. The foreigner points haughtily in all directions, and the other, the foreigner’s lackey, fawns on him, smiling in an ingratiating manner as they walk along. In jest, the foreigner beats zhao da lightly over the head with a stick.) (Jumping up, cursing) You bastard! (The foreigner raises his head and peers down his nose at zhao da. Now it is he who is angry.) (Suddenly getting scared, does not know what to do with himself, and so quickly kneels down) Honorable foreigner, great foreigner, don’t beat me. Don’t beat me! Great foreigner! (He kowtows. Satisfied, the foreigner slowly walks away.) So! We’re not human beings! (Pulls himself up and speaks with hatred) Such a savage foreigner! The county heads are afraid of him; the heads of the prefectures are afraid of him. The regional heads and the provincial governors are all afraid of him. Everyone is afraid of him, even the emperor in Beijing. Well, that’s the way it is. (Weeps loudly and bitterly) But the poor aren’t afraid of him. Don’t drive us poor people to the wall. Sooner or later, we’ll rebel and kill the foreigners one by one and get our revenge. (He stands on a stone and looks sideways at the foreigner and his lackey. Suddenly he laughs wildly, his eyes fiery, and his voice ruthless.) I wonder who it is! So it’s Wang the Tiger. You ruined me, ruined me. So. But now the time has come when I’ve got my hands on you. (Laughs wildly) Today those you’ve killed will get their revenge, and will take back the money you owe. (The lackey bows to the foreigner; then the foreigner walks forward to protect him. zhao da is about to grab his enemy, but the foreigner impudently blocks him off. He is angry beyond control.) What’s this? Just because Wang the Tiger has kowtowed to the foreign bodhisattva he gets away with bullying others?

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(The foreigner’s lackey ridicules him from behind the foreigner’s back.) (Slowly, speaking with pain shared by all his compatriots) Foreign devils! Listen to me! You came to our village with honeyed words and smiles on your faces and said that your purpose was to do good deeds and save us from suffering. We are too trusting. We were fooled, and we treated you politely as friends. How could we have known that you bastards said the opposite of what you meant, that you would associate with scoundrels and thugs and take advantage of good people, all to benefit yourselves at the expense of others and to do as you pleased? You are powerful; we were no match for you. Now you’ve become rich and taken away our land. Everything is done according to your rules; everything works to your advantage. And we’ve become a laughingstock. We aren’t even human beings! We deserve our bad luck! We’ll never be as good as the foreigners! We’re not even as good as pigs and dogs. The Zhaos had land. Mother and son lived in peace and happiness. Damn foreign devils! You ruined our family and killed us. Did you think that the Zhaos were bastards without pride, without conscience, afraid to die, too timid to do anything to the foreign devils! I . . . I . . . I . . . (He raises his hand and is just about to commit murder. The foreigner quickly raises his stick straight up in the air. Threatened by the foreigner’s customary powerful status, in the end zhao da does not dare do anything and is completely frustrated. He can only swallow his feelings. And the hand that he has raised, he puts down slowly.) What . . . can . . . I . . . do . . . the foreigner has the stick. (He feels helpless, but his fury increases. The foreigner also is somewhat worried and guards himself with his stick.) (Suddenly, not caring whether he lives or dies, he jumps up and yells) If it weren’t for you pack of hairy barbarians, the Zhaos would never have come to this! Give me back my piece of land, give me back my Xiao Jinzi. I won’t die content until I’ve killed you. (Taking out the gun, he fires three times, but there’s no sound.) Even the gun cheats me. (Hurls it to the ground) I don’t need it. Even if you have a gun, I’m not afraid. I have a special talisman. Your bullets can’t get me. Give me a wooden rod. Give me a stick! (Picks up a tree branch) Zhao has never been a loser in all his life. I’ll kill the big hairy barbarian; I’ll kill the number two hairy barbarian; I’ll kill the number three hairy barbarian!3 (He strikes wildly with the stick; the scene disappears.) The Boxer Rebellion—1900 (Curtain.)

Act 8 (Same as act 4. The drums are even closer. Standing close together in a group are many men, most of them dressed in tatters; they look like beggars. Several have red cloth wrapped around their heads, wearing makeup and clothing embroidered with patterns. They are dressed as the traditional stage characters

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Erlang, San Taizi, the Monkey King, Pigsy, Qin Shubao, Wu Song, Huang Tianba, and so forth.4 Some are holding weapons, some picks and shovels and carrying poles. There are red flags with the trigram for “heaven” written on them. In addition there are several pennons with such slogans as “Support the Qing and Destroy the Foreigners,” “Heavenly Spirits and Heavenly Fighters of the Boxers,” “Kill the Big Hairy Barbarians, Kill the Number Two Hairy Barbarians, Kill the Number Three Hairy Barbarians,” “Jiang Taigong Is Here,” “Master Yueguang Is Here.” 5) zhao da (prostrate on the ground, intoning a spell): Spirits of heaven, Spirits of earth, I respectfully ask the patron saint To display his spiritual powers. (He kowtows thirty-six times) On the left is the green dragon, On the right is the white tiger. Buddha of the Cold Clouds in front, Spirit of Dark Fire behind. First I invite the heavenly king’s general Then I invite the black terror god. (He lies prostrate on the ground without moving. In a short while, white foam oozes from his mouth. He leaps up and commands the group. Holding a stick, he dances and leaps, shouting in time to the drums.)6

Act 9 (Same as act 2. The drumming has blended into a steady rumble. Then it stops. xiao ma, leading a company with lao li acting as guide, has arrived at the place where zhao da entered the forest. xiao ma and lao li peer into the forest while the men hide behind trees and rocks, their guns in readiness, as if a great enemy were near.) lao li: This is the forest! xiao ma (very unhappy): Good grief. We’ve walked over thirty li on foot. (He wipes away the sweat.) lao li (with satisfaction, examining the ground): He went in here. There’s no mistake about that. xiao ma (not believing him): That’s your opinion! lao li (picking up a dry twig): See this twig? Someone had to light it, or do you think it could burn by itself ?

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(The men all turn to look.) xiao ma (still unwilling to concede anything): But you can’t say that he’s still inside! lao li (coldly): He couldn’t run away! xiao ma: He got here six hours ahead of us. By now he’s probably on the far side of the forest. lao li (coldly): Not necessarily. He didn’t know the path. Since he wouldn’t be able to get out and would bump and push his way through blindly, he probably could spend his whole life inside going around in circles. xiao ma: This is a hell of a job! In the dead of winter when we’re even cold sleeping all wrapped up in bed, here we are out in the wilds swallowing up the northwest wind. If we catch Zhao Da and return with the stolen goods, tomorrow all of our comrades in camp will get paid. But we won’t get anything out of all this misery. lao li: Didn’t the commander say that if we don’t catch Zhao Da, he’ll figure that he doesn’t owe us any money this month? xiao ma: If it weren’t for this money, I wouldn’t have come! lao li: We’ll get him. xiao ma: He’s long gone, far and fast. lao li: He’s in there. xiao ma: Okay. So he’s in there. He’s in a dark place and we’re in the light. He’s lying in wait with his gun. Everybody knows that Zhao Da never misses. (lao li has nothing to say. The men, hearing xiao ma, hide quickly.) lao li: Wait! Wait! Wait! The sun’s about to come up. The sky’s getting light. (Suddenly they hear a loud noise inside the forest.) xiao ma: Careful! Careful! (Now they hear zhao da inside the woods, shouting wildly at the top of his lungs.) xiao ma: It’s him! It’s him! It really is Zhao Da. All by himself. Dancing and leaping like a madman. (Very happy) He’s not holding the gun. He’s dancing with a tree branch in his hand. (He signals with his hand and the soldiers follow him and rush into the forest. lao li goes to the edge of the trees with them. He suddenly changes his mind and does not go in.) lao li: So that’s the way it was! The commander put the whole blame on Zhao Da. And Xiao Ma and these bastards believed him! (Laughs to himself ) What I don’t understand is why Zhao Da missed that time. How was a slight wound in the leg supposed to have killed him? (From the forest comes a burst of gunfire. lao li is silent. After a while he heaves a long sigh.) It’s done. All because you didn’t understand people. You wanted to be totally loyal and patriotic toward evil tigers and vicious wolves. Now you’re finished. xiao ma (coming out): We caught him! We caught him! (The soldiers return triumphantly. Some of them carry in the body of zhao da and put it down. lao li unfastens zhao da’s clothing, feels his chest, and shakes his head.)

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lao li: So! (Picking up a roll of bank notes) So much money! There’s sure to be several thousand dollars here. xiao ma: Here. Give it to me. I’ll take it back. (lao li hands it to him, pack by pack. The men watch greedily. He feels a pack of something around zhao da’s waist. It seems to be several rolls of bank notes. He is surprised.) lao li: Oh! (As he wrinkles his brow, a plan comes to mind. He quickly turns zhao da’s body over and takes off his uniform jacket.) There’s more. It’s all in his pockets. (To xiao ma) Take the jacket with you! xiao ma (takes the jacket happily): Lao Li! I’ve counted on you completely. If it weren’t for you, we couldn’t have known that Zhao Da took this path into the woods. When you get back to camp, the commander will certainly be lenient and let your success here make up for your crimes. (Hearing this makes lao li uncomfortable. He knows that even though the commander released him to serve as guide, stealing the pay was originally his idea, and it will be hard to avoid being punished for it. Fortunately he already has a plan. So he nods his head, then deliberately looks at zhao da and sighs.) lao li: But we were friends for many years. We fought alongside together three times. That was a sad way to die. xiao ma (apparently moved): Just bad luck for him, wouldn’t you say? lao li: You gentlemen go on ahead. (Pointing to the body) Let me dig a pit and bury poor Zhao Da. (The men are sad.) (Emotionally) Perhaps we all may end that way someday. (The men listen in silence.) xiao ma: Let’s go. The commander is waiting! (He leads the men off, to the beating of the drums.) lao li (unable to hold back his emotions): Brother Zhao Da! Brother! (Grieving) Dear Yama, in the end your death didn’t go unnoticed. Your comrades in orderly formation are sending you off with drums beating. (Bends down and adjusts his clothing) Did the commander treat you well? Of all the men in camp, you’re the only one really sincere, and really foolish. (Pointing out his weaknesses, both blaming and pitying him) You! Your heart was too bad for you to be a good man, and too good for you to be a bad one. But good or bad, you weren’t at home being, either. I watched you running helter-skelter. Wherever you went, you found trouble. In your whole life, you never had a single good day. (Tears in his eyes) Today only Lao Li is here to bury you . . . Lao Li is begging you to help him. Is it okay if I borrow the money around your waist for my traveling expenses? (He cannot bear to act, stops a moment, but ends by untying the knotted handkerchief around zhao da’s waist. He takes out the money, puts all of it around his own waist, and then wraps the handkerchief around zhao da’s head.)

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Brother Zhao Da, if you don’t turn into a ghost, then that’s that. But if you do have a spirit, then protect me as I cross the forest to go home! (Dragging the body, he turns his head and glances at the sky) It’s getting light. (He walks into the forest.) (Curtain.)

not es

1. 2. 3.

4.

5.

6.

This translation was originally published in Edward M. Gunn, ed., Twentieth- Century Chinese Drama: An Anthology (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1983), based on the text in Zhongguo xin wenxue daxi (Compendium of New Chinese Literature: Drama Volume), ed. Hong Shen (Shanghai: Liangyou, 1935). Professor Gunn has graciously granted permission to publish this translation here, with minor changes. Bonze is a slang term for monks, who traditionally shaved their heads. During 1913 to 1914 in Henan and surrounding provinces, there was a White Wolf Rebellion, so named for its leader, known as White Wolf. The Boxer Rebels classified “hairy barbarians” in three categories: the “big” or “number one” barbarians were foreigners; the secondary barbarians were Chinese Christians under the patronage of foreign missionaries; the tertiary barbarians included all those Chinese who used foreign articles. These are names of famous warriors, often possessed of magical skills, appearing in popular fiction and drama of the Ming and Qing dynasties. Erlang (Yang Erlang or Erlang Shen), the Monkey King (Sun Wukong, or Monkey Aware of Vacuity), and Pigsy (Zhu Bajie, or Pig of the Eight Vows) are all fabulous characters appearing in the novel Xi you ji (Journey to the West, or Monkey). Erlang also appears in the novel Fengshen yanyi (The Investiture of the Gods) along with San Taizi, better known as No Zha. Qin Shubao, a hero of the Sui-Tang period, is portrayed in many paintings as one of the two “door gods” of popular mythology and appears in the novel Shuo tang yanyi (Romance of the Tang Dynasty). Wu Song is a heroic outlaw in the novel Shui hu zhuan (The Water Margin). Huang Tianba was a leader of the Yellow Turban rebels at the end of the Han dynasty and appears in the novel Shi gong an (Cases of Lord Shi). Jiang Taigong (Jiang Ziya) is described in history, drama, and fiction (notably in Fengshen yanyi) as the strategist who helped King Wen destroy the decadent Shang, or Yin, dynasty and found the celebrated Zhou dynasty. Yueguang is a messianic figure common to folk Taoism and Buddhism, especially millenarian Maitreyan sects. The chants and actions that conclude this scene, as well as the allusions to the popular heroes above, follow closely the description of Boxer rites found in Luo Dun-yong, “Quan bian yuwen” (A Further Account of the Boxer Incident), in Gengzi shibian wenxue zhi (Literature on the Incident of 1900), ed. A. Ying, 2 vols. (Shanghai, 1959): 2:960ff.

The Night the Tiger Was Caught (1922–1923) tian han tra nsla ted by jonat han s . nob l e

C ha r a c t e rs mr. wei 㢬⡁㔶, a wealthy hunter mrs. wei 㢬⪞㗉, his wife lotus ⻷⤟, their only daughter grandmother 㢬⨔㗉, Lotus’s paternal grandmother sheriff li ⹼⛍㬠, their neighbor, a local sheriff farmer he ⧨㢞⥏, Li’s relative crazy huang ⪞▙㓱, lotus’s male, older cousin, a poor beggar butcher 㟴▙, third zhou 㺾㑻, second li ⹼✠, hired hands employed by the Wei family Time: A winter evening, not long after the Republican Revolution of 1911 Place: A village in the Xian Gu mountains, east of the city of Changsha (A “fireplace room” within the Weis’ home. The fireplace room is where people who live in the country relax after a meal, entertain guests, and huddle around the stove’s fire to stay warm in the winter. The curtain rises. mr. wei sits next to the stove smoking a water pipe. grandmother sits in an armchair smoking tobacco. The years have taken a toll on her. mrs. wei is steeping tea. lotus, about nineteen, is attractive despite wearing the unfashionable clothing typical of people who live in the mountains. She carries a tray over and offers tea to

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her grandmother and then to her father. She then leaves the fireplace room to offer tea to her family’s workers. mr. wei whispers to his wife as he watches lotus leave the room.) mr. wei: I’m sure Lotus will be chosen to marry if not the first then the second of the most eligible sons in the Chen family. I’ve seen all of their daughters-in-law, and not a single one can compare to our daughter. mrs. wei (spoken with a mother’s pride): That’s precisely what Mr. Luo Da said a few days ago. But you don’t know how much trouble it has been to find enough money for her dowry. If the amount’s too small, then the servant girls will all scoff at her. mr. wei: We should thank the immortal goddess Xian Gu for our great fortune. We’ve been so prosperous these last few years. If we hadn’t caught two more tigers, things wouldn’t have changed for the better. mrs. wei (recollecting): Is the blunderbuss in position? mr. wei: Yes. We’ll set the trip wire up a bit later. We’re not going to end up emptyhanded tonight. mrs. wei: If we get another one, then Lotus can add more to her dowry. I still want to go into town to buy a brocade quilt and an embroidered silk canopy for her. She’ll leave for the groom’s home in just a few days. There’s not much time left. mr. wei: If we get a larger one, we won’t have to go to town to cash it in. We’ll just skin it to make a quilt for Lotus. Then people will know what hunting families like ours are really like. That was my plan for the first tiger. Lotus? (Turning around but not seeing her) Lotus, where did you go? mrs. wei (smiling): She probably heard us talking about her, and, embarrassed, she scampered off to her room. mr. wei: She’s better than before. She used to never do as told. It would make me so angry. mrs. wei: She made me angry too. But when I heard her crying at night, though I couldn’t stand her antics, I felt sorry for her. After all, she is my own flesh and blood. (Thinking for a moment) Is that crazy boy still living in the temple? mr. wei: Yes, he’s living beneath the temple’s stage. I wanted to make him leave. But when I saw how young he was, and an orphan as well, I just couldn’t go through with it. After all, though he is not quite right in the head, he’s not committing any crime. mrs. wei: But now he’s stopped coming by. mr. wei: He’s probably afraid to come back after the beating I gave him the last time. Scolding him alone won’t get through to a crazy boy like him. grandmother: But I really feel sorry for this child. Couldn’t you have warned him not to come back? Why’d you have to go so far as to beat him? mr. wei: You’re too old to understand. The child may seem crazy, but he doesn’t act crazy around Lotus. At first I thought he was crazy, so I didn’t mind that he and Lotus were playing with each other. After he grew up, he kept on coming to see Lotus every day, and Lotus was never happy unless they were together. Then I knew that things had become serious. After his mother passed away, I suggested that he go herd cows in the valley. He refused to go to such a remote place. He also said that,

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although he was homeless, he wasn’t willing to leave the Xian Gu mountains. Since then, he’s been living under the temple’s stage. Although he deserves our pity, when I recall the way Lotus kept refusing to get married because of him, I can’t help but detest him. mrs. wei: You don’t need to hate him anymore. We’ll just have to find a good match for Lotus. mr. wei (suddenly remembering something): Where was Lotus coming back from the other day? mrs. wei: She went with the neighbor girl Second Zhang to visit the weaver’s family. I had her give them several pounds of tiger meat and ask when they will finish weaving the fabric. mr. wei: Next time, have the butcher send the meat over. Young ladies shouldn’t be running around outside the home. It looked like she was coming back from the other side of the mountains. mrs. wei: Why are you bringing this up? mr. wei: Lotus hasn’t been out for a long time. I’m afraid she may end up running off to the temple again. grandmother: What’s wrong with her going to the temple to pray to Buddha? mr. wei: Of course there’s nothing wrong with praying to Buddha, but I’m just afraid she will go to see that lunatic. mrs. wei: She won’t if Second Zhang is along. Besides, after arranging the marriage for her, she’s already forgotten about him. mr. wei: I wish it were so. (A conversation is heard outside. sheriff li has brought farmer he to see mr. wei. The butcher greets them.) butcher (offstage): Hello, Sheriff Li! Come in! sheriff li (offstage): Hello, Is Mr. Wei at Home? butcher (offstage): Come into the fireplace room. Come in. (Entering) The guests are here. (The butcher exits. sheriff li and farmer he enter. mr. wei and the others greet them.) sheriff li: Hello, Mr. Wei! mr. wei: Hi, Sheriff Li. Sit down, please. Who is this? sheriff li: A relative from the valley. mr. wei: Hello, when did you arrive here in the mountains? farmer he: Just this afternoon. sheriff li: He just got here this afternoon. His family has lived in the valley for generations, and he rarely has the chance to come up into the mountains. He’s a distant relative. Last time I went into the valley, I spent the night at his home. We talked about many things, like how mountain life is so interesting, how much one can earn in the mountains, how fertile the soil is, and how the roaring of tigers and leopards is heard at night. He became fascinated by the mountains. I mentioned how you had just captured two tigers and had brought one into the city for a reward and the other one

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was displayed in a cage. No one in his family had ever seen a tiger before and everyone wanted to come and take a look. This cousin was so curious he had to come. His father made him work a few days before leaving, so he just got here. I brought him along with me. farmer he (suddenly hearing the sound of some animal, he grabs sheriff li’s arm): Is that the tiger roaring? mr. wei (laughing along with the others): That’s not a tiger. It’s a pig grunting in the pen out back. farmer he: Why does it sound different from the pigs in the valley? sheriff li: Pigs grunt the same way in the valley as in the mountains. Your ears must be playing a trick on you . . . Will you take the other tiger into the city too? mr. wei: Yes, they left about five days ago. sheriff li: What? You didn’t go? mr. wei: No, I had Second Lao take it so he could bring some supplies back. I’ve been busy with things here. sheriff li: Poor timing, Farmer He. You came all the way into the valley to see a tiger, but it has already been hauled off. mrs. wei (pouring tea for the guests): If you had come five or six days ago, then you would have been able to see it. I’m not sure how many people came to look at it before we had it hauled away. After it was taken away, people still came for a few days, but left when they saw the empty cage. Interestingly enough, Mr. Zhou’s new third wife came in from the city to see the tiger. She got up right next to the cage. When the tiger roared, she jumped away, but the tiger’s two paws crushed her jade bracelet. farmer he: Wow! So ferocious! sheriff li (laughing): News about the tiger sure traveled far! The news made it to Chunhua and a newlywed even traveled all the way here to see it. Too bad you already sent it off to the city. mr. wei: Don’t worry. If I’m lucky tonight, I’ll be able to get another one. But I’m afraid it may not be alive. sheriff li: What? Did you set another trap? mr. wei: Not a trap cage but a trap gun. I’m just waiting for people to quiet down and then I’ll get the trip wire in place. sheriff li: Where’d you put it? mr. wei: In the back of the mountains. sheriff li: People don’t wander out that way? mr. wei: Who’d want to run around out there so late at night? Everyone knows a tiger was heard roaring in the mountains last night. sheriff li: Then I wish you luck in getting a large tiger tonight. Don’t forget to treat me to a drink to celebrate the good news. mr. wei: Of course, I will certainly treat you to celebrate Lotus’s wedding in a few days. If I also capture a tiger tonight, then it will be an even more joyous occasion, and we’ll have even more to drink.

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sheriff li: Great. I heard Lotus would be getting married soon. I should have brought a gift along. mrs. wei: Don’t worry about it. The other day old lady Cheng Da sent over some cloth and two quilts. We already feel ashamed as it is. sheriff li: Don’t. It’s my pleasure. When is the wedding with the Chen family? mrs. wei: The first day of the New Year. sheriff li: Your families are perfectly matched. Families like the Chen family are few and far apart in this county. (The butcher enters.) butcher: Boss, shall I set the trip wire? (The lights are on and a fire is burning in the stove. mr. wei looks out the window.) mr. wei: Go on, but be careful. butcher: Yes, sir. sheriff li: Your butcher is a fine chap. mr. wei: Yes, he is very dependable. mrs. wei: The butcher is a man of his word. He has worked here for six years, but never once has he argued with a member of the family. I just remembered—won’t your second daughter be wedded soon as well? sheriff li: I’ve arranged for her to be married into Duke Jin Yabo’s family next March. mrs. wei: A duke! Now that’s a good family. They feed more than thirty and have seven or eight hired hands. What great fortune your daughter will have marrying into such a family. sheriff li: With so many in the family, her fortune is small, but at least she won’t have to worry about starving. Everyone knows how difficult it is to be a daughter-in-law in that family. One has to wake up early and go to bed late with so many chores: knitting and mending, cooking and serving tea, doing the laundry, and even picking sweet potatoes in the hills and rice in the paddies. She’ll have to labor like a coolie year-round. If she has a baby, she’ll have even more work to do. mrs. wei: But only this type of person is a truly good person. The more a family works and saves, the more it will prosper. sheriff li: True. It was precisely for that reason that I was willing to marry my daughter into that family. My wife dotes on my daughter and at first didn’t even reply to their wedding proposal. grandmother: Mr. Wei, tell Second Hu to go to the woodshed and fetch some wood. We still have a while to wait before the tiger is caught. mr. wei (getting up to leave): I’ll go. sheriff li: Grandma, you look good for your age. grandmother: I’ll have you know that I’m up there in years and no longer as strong as before. farmer he: How old are you, Grandma? sheriff li: Guess. farmer he: Let me see, around the same age as my own grandma. mrs. wei: How old is your grandma?

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farmer he: Seventy-five this year. mrs. wei: Then she’s one year younger than our grandma. sheriff li: His grandma is also in great shape. A few days ago I was in her home and saw his grandma embroidering a vest for her grandson. mrs. wei: Grandma’s eyes are not as sharp as before, but she can still get around. She even climbs up the steep path to Xian Gu Temple. sheriff li: Our generation can’t compare to Grandma’s. mrs. wei: That’s for sure. grandmother: That’s nothing compared to Grandpa. Before he passed away, everyone said how he was in great shape. When he was eighty, he even pushed two boulders up the path. farmer he: Wow, I couldn’t even do that now. grandmother: Eighteen-year- old men like yourself are “young tigers” and can do anything you put your mind to. (mr. wei enters carrying a bunch of firewood in his arms. He puts the wood in the stove.) mr. wei: What have you been talking about? sheriff li: We were just saying that youngsters today can’t compare in strength to that of the older generation. mr. wei: You are right on that. Today’s hunters aren’t as skilled and as strong as the hunters of the past. But today the hunting tools and methods are more precise, so less strength is needed. farmer he: Mr. Wei, how did you manage to capture those two tigers? mr. wei: Actually, it is quite interesting. In previous years, we also captured a few, but they were harder to catch than the two we caught this year. The first one was especially easy to catch. We had just built a trap, but we hadn’t yet set it up in the mountains. We left it open, out behind the pigpen. We thought we might catch some small, wild animal. But in the middle of the night we heard the pigs start to squeal. We got up and grabbed our hunting guns, tiger prod, and a lantern, making our way to the pigpen. A ferocious tiger the size of a calf was in the cage. The tiger had been prowling around the side of our home. When it heard the pigs, it wanted to have a bite to eat, and the only way to get at the pigs was through the cage. As it clawed at the pen, the trap door was set in motion. It found itself locked in the cage with no way to get out. Later we designed a better wooden cage. We set it up in the woods in the mountains. We put twigs around it, leaving a small path leading up to it. Behind the trap, we tied up the legs of some pigs and chickens, causing them to squeal. The squealing of these animals naturally attracted the hungry tigers that live in the mountains during the winter. On the third night, we caught our second tiger. That was the one we sent to town and made a bundle on five days ago. farmer he: Catching a tiger is so easy? mr. wei: Not always! I’ve just had good luck. Haven’t you seen the bare slope on the left side of the Xian Gu mountains? Originally it wasn’t bare but was covered with a forest. People knew about the tiger lair in the forest, so they wouldn’t go there to chop

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for wood. Since no one chopped the trees down, the forest kept growing thicker, until it was so thick that no sunlight could come through. So the tigers increased in number, and they often came out to catch pigs and other animals for food. They roared all through the night, and the people nearby couldn’t get a good night’s sleep. One day, Deaf Yi’s son ended up getting eaten by the tiger. Deaf Yi was a well-known hunter in our village. He and his wife had only one son, and they cherished him more than their own lives. They couldn’t bear the pain and swore to kill the tiger. Deaf Yi had a hunting friend named Rifleman Yuan who was willing to help take care of the area’s menace. Deaf Yi carried a hunting gun and knife each day as he searched for the tiger on the mountainside. One day he found a path that led to the tiger’s lair. The tiger wasn’t there, but four cubs were frolicking in the lair. At first, Deaf Yi was amused by what he saw. Then he noticed the heads and legs of some babies near the lair. He became enraged, pulled out his knife, and killed all of the cubs. He knew that when their mother returned, she would seek revenge. On the next day, he brought Rifleman Yuan and a bunch of other hunters to surround the mountainside. After the mother tiger returned to her lair, she roared all throughout the night. The next day, when the hunters returned, she was waiting for them. (Hunting dogs are barking. The butcher and third zhou have returned from the mountains. The butcher and third zhou enter.) mr. wei: Did you get it set up? butcher: Yes, it’s all ready. mr. wei: Was anyone walking around up on the mountain? butcher: Who would be walking around at this hour on such a precipice? mrs. wei: Please warm up around the fire. It’s cold out there. third zhou: It’s not too cold. (mrs. wei breaks apart a few dry twigs with leaves. They feed the fire’s flames. The butcher and third zhou gather around to warm up.) sheriff li (to the butcher): Your sleeve is torn. mrs. wei: Yesterday I asked Lotus to mend it, but he wouldn’t let her. butcher: I’d never wish to trouble Lotus with mending my shirt. Anyone who works in the mountains would never think of wearing a nice piece of clothing. After a few trips into the mountains, even clothes made out of metal would get torn apart. sheriff li: I’ve urged the butcher for a long time to find a good wife. If he had listened to me, then he’d never have to ask someone else to mend his clothes. butcher: Sheriff, you should know how hard we have it. How can I take care of a wife when I can barely take care of myself ? sheriff li: That may be so, but still one should find a wife. I’ve never met a rich bachelor, nor have I met a married man who is starving. Let me be your go-between. third zhou: I’ll be your go-between too. butcher (laughing at third zhou): You, a go-between? What girl do you want me to marry? third zhou: You’ve seen her before, the eldest daughter of Mrs. Pig, who lives out back.

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butcher: I don’t know of a Mrs. Pig who lives in back. (mr. wei and mrs. wei are already laughing.) butcher (hitting third zhou): You jerk! mr. wei: Go on and get our things ready. We’ll be heading out soon. butcher: Okay. Third Zhou, please hurry and sharpen the knives. (The butcher and third zhou exit.) sheriff li: You’re going to make a fortune again tonight. mr. wei: That all depends on my luck. This should work, but we can’t say for sure. farmer he: Mr. Wei, what happened the next day? mr. wei (caught off guard): The next day? What about the next day? farmer he: The next day on the mountaintop. Did they capture the tiger? mr. wei: Oh, you mean the story about Deaf Yi and the tiger? I might as well tell you what happened. The next day Deaf Yi asked Rifleman Yuan and several other wellknown hunters to encircle the hilltop. Deaf Yi and Rifleman Yuan courageously took the lead. The other hunters followed behind at a distance. Deaf Yi had Rifleman Yuan keep guard from behind. He followed the path they had found the previous day and slowly approached the tiger’s lair. When he got close, he peered at the tiger busy sharpening its teeth and claws. Before the tiger made a move, Deaf Yi aimed the rifle at the tiger’s head and took a shot. When the tiger heard the gunshot ring out, it pounced in the direction of the gun’s smoke. Deaf Yi had intended to stab the tiger in the stomach with his knife, but when the tiger pounced, he dropped the hunting knife. Deaf Yi grasped on to the tiger’s back, butted his head against the tiger’s throat, and pushed his feet up against the tiger’s thighs. He held on with all his might and the tiger failed to shake him loose. Deaf Yi’s good friend Rifleman Yuan and the other hunters saw what had happened. They wanted to save him, but what could they do? Rifleman Yuan climbed up a nearby tree, aimed his gun at the tiger, and took two shots. The tiger frantically rolled on the ground, and the bullet ended up hitting Deaf Yi on the leg. Although he wasn’t hit in a critical place, he curled up in pain, relaxing his head. The tiger took this chance to let out a great roar. It then bit off half of Deaf Yi’s head and ran away. The hunters were too frightened to block the tiger’s path. As Rifleman Yuan gathered up the remains of his friend, he swore to avenge him by killing the tiger. After this, Rifleman Yuan often went alone with his gun to hunt the tiger down. Although he killed a number of tigers, none was the one that had killed his friend. Rifleman Yuan had a son, You He, who was about fifteen years old. He was afraid he would fail to avenge his friend before he passed away, so he often told his son what the tiger looked like. He raised his son to be a hunter so he could track down the tiger and kill it. As a filial son, You He was obligated to kill the tiger as a sacrifice to his friend’s spirit. Therefore the tiger was always on You He’s mind. farmer he: Did his son eventually get the tiger? mr. wei: Just listen to this. In February of the following year, You He and a few of the neighbor’s kids went to the maple tree patch to scavenge for wild mushrooms. The trees hadn’t been cut down, so the forest was very thick there. Many leaves had fallen

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down on the ground, so this was a great place to pick mushrooms. The kids picked so many and became so happy that they forgot about the dangers of the deep forest. They were joyfully picking mushrooms when one kid suddenly became frightened to death and bolted away. When they asked him what had happened, he yelled back: “There’s a tiger!” When they heard this, the kids started running away, and the mushrooms that they had collected spilled all over the ground. But after running for a while, they realized that they weren’t being chased. They peered carefully back into the forest but didn’t hear a sound. They were all very surprised. The bravest among them, including You He, ran back into the forest to take a closer look. He saw a small space cleared away within the forest. The fierce tiger that had just frightened them was lying down there. There was something in the tiger’s mouth. The tiger’s eyes peered out, as large as teacups, making one’s legs numb from fear. The tiger didn’t move an inch, nor did it make even a sound. If one listened carefully, one couldn’t even hear it breathing. You He, being the bravest, picked up a stone and threw it gently at the tiger’s tail. It still didn’t move. He knew no tiger anywhere that could be so gentle. Seeing several scars on the tiger’s head, he knew deep down inside that this was the tiger his father used to tell him about. He told the other kids, but no one dared move any closer. You He ran up to the tiger and gave it a push. It toppled over. Apparently, after the tiger had eaten Deaf Yi, it had escaped seriously wounded and hid away there until its last breath. Now only its hide and bones remained as its flesh had all rotted away. Half of Deaf Yi’s skull is still hanging out of the tiger’s mouth. farmer he: Then why was it still sitting there? mr. wei: You haven’t heard? That’s called “A tiger’s prowess never dies.” Later he had his father go take a look, and indeed, he confirmed that was the tiger. Rifleman Yuan gave the remaining half of Deaf Yi’s skull to his family so it could be buried together with the rest of him. The tiger’s hide and bones were offered in sacrifice to Deaf Yi’s spirit. This brought closure to the matter. (Just at this moment the sound of a gunshot is heard.) mr. wei: Hey! butcher (offstage): A gunshot. sir! Let’s get over there. sheriff li: Mr. Wei, your lucky streak continues. It seems you got another tiger. grandmother: If it’s a tiger, then Lotus’s dowry will get another boost. mr. wei: I hope it’s a tiger again and not some small wild animal that’s not worth a cent. (The butcher enters with a hunting rifle and tiger prod.) butcher: It’s definitely a large tiger. Small animals don’t go along that path. mr. wei: I agree. farmer he: Let’s go together and take a look. mr. wei: Sure, please come along. sheriff li: I’ll go too. mr. wei (to mrs. wei): Hurry and boil a pot of water. I’ll be right back. mrs. wei: I made sure things were ready a while ago.

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third zhou (offstage): Let’s go. mr. wei and the butcher (together): Let’s go. (They exit carrying various tools and other items.) mrs. wei: Mother, you had better get to bed. grandmother: I’ll stay up just a while longer. I’ll go to bed after they bring the tiger back. I might as well stay up and look after the fire. mrs. wei: Oh no, there’s no water in this pot! Lotus! lotus (offstage): Coming! (lotus enters.) lotus: Mom, what is it? mrs. wei: Hurry and boil a pot of water. They’ll be back soon. Tea should be waiting for them. lotus: Okay. (She leaves with the teapot and returns with it full of water. She places the teapot on a hook above the fire.) lotus: Mom, did they get another tiger? mrs. wei: The butcher says it must be a tiger. Other animals don’t take that path, and wasn’t a tiger heard roaring in the mountains last night? grandmother: If they got another tiger, you don’t know how happy your father will be. He said that he wouldn’t sell this one but make a blanket for you from its hide and save its meat to celebrate your wedding. mrs. wei: The day won’t be long now. Have you finished your shoes? lotus: I’m not making them. mrs. wei: Silly child, why not? lotus: I don’t want to wear shoes. mrs. wei: Why don’t you? lotus: I no longer wish to live. (She begins to cry.) mrs. wei: Why not? lotus: If you really want me to get married . . . mrs. wei: You don’t like the Chen family? lotus: That’s not it. mrs. wei: You don’t like the third eldest son in the Chen family? (lotus shakes her head.) mrs. wei: Then why don’t you want to go? lotus: I just don’t! mrs. wei: My child, I thought you had agreed to the marriage. Why have you changed your mind? Do you think the single most important event in your life is merely child’s play? They have already made plans, and now you’re no longer willing to go through with it? Even if I consented, how would you ever get your father to agree? If your father consented, what would we do about the Chen family? You really have to grow up. You’re no longer a three-year-old child. If you give up this chance to marry into the Chen family, then who would marry you instead?

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grandmother: That’s right. There aren’t many other families in our village that can compare to the Chens. That the Chens want you is really your good fortune. If you don’t marry into their family, then can you think of a better family for you? Even if such a person existed, that person wouldn’t want you. lotus: I don’t want to marry anyone. I just want to look after Mom and Grandma. mrs. wei: That’s even sillier. What girl stays by her mother’s side her whole life? You need to stop having these doubts. Get back to making those shoes. I’ll take care of preparing the rest of your dowry. Let’s wait and see if your father gets the tiger, then he’ll make a quilt out of the tiger’s hide. And your uncle will go into town to buy an embroidered silk canopy and brocade quilt for you, so that we can pay our proper respect to the Chen family. I know that you are intentionally being naughty, but what can your mother do? You are about to get married. Just wait, if you are this naughty with your father, and he hears what you just said, you know your father’s temper. grandmother: That’s right. If your father hears you are not willing to get married, you’ll see how angry he can get. lotus: I don’t care if Dad gets angry. I just won’t do it. mrs. wei: Okay, let’s see if you can tell your father that to his face. I won’t waste my time saying any more about this with you. I’m going into the kitchen. lotus (walking up to grandmother): Grandma, I . . . grandmother (holding on to her): Silly girl. Why are you crying? Isn’t your life better than your grandma’s? lotus: No. Grandma, my life is terrible. (The sounds of voices and dogs barking can be heard faintly.) grandmother: Listen. Your father and the butcher are coming back with the tiger. Your dowry will be even larger now, and you can bring good fortune even earlier to the Chen family. Hurry and meet them at the entrance. lotus: No, I don’t want to go. I’m afraid of this tiger. grandmother: Haven’t you seen a tiger before? What are you afraid it will do? You were not afraid of the tiger when it was caught alive, why should you be afraid of a tiger that’s already been shot dead? lotus: Why shouldn’t I be afraid? It’s threatening my life. grandmother: Look at you. You are just as crazy as Crazy Huang. lotus: Grandma, you’re right. I’m just as crazy. I often worry I’ll also become an idiot. grandmother: The more you say, the sillier you become. How can a good girl like you become an idiot? (The sounds of voices and dogs barking are getting closer.) Okay. (She stands up. The sheriff says, “Bring it in.”) Listen. The tiger has already been carried to the doorstep. Go take a look. lotus: No, I don’t want to see it. I’ll leave if they bring the tiger in. (The sounds of voices, footsteps, and dogs barking are mixed together.) butcher (offstage): Push the door open. mr. wei (offstage): Get a door plank in place in the center room.

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grandmother: Lotus, the tiger is being carried in. Go take a look. lotus: No, I don’t want to see it. (The sounds of voices and footsteps are even closer.) mr. wei (offstage): Take it into the center room. sheriff li (offstage): No, take it into the fireplace room. grandmother: Hurry and open the door. They’re bringing the tiger into the fireplace room. mr. wei (offstage): Why the fireplace room? sheriff li (offstage): The weather is cold, so the fireplace room is better. Hurry and set it down. (The door to the fireplace room opens and second li clears off the rattan bed by the wall on the left and places a brocade quilt on the bed and clumps together some clothing to make a pillow. sheriff li comes in and moves a bench out of the way. Much to lotus and grandmother’s great surprise, mr. wei and the butcher carry in a young man in ragged clothing rather than a tiger. His leg is covered with blood. Just at this moment, he passes out. They lift his body, like a corpse, onto the rattan bed.) grandmother: What? You shot a man? mr. wei: Yeah, what can we say? sheriff li: Fan the flames on the fire. The room is very cold. Mr. Wei, go and get a doctor. mr. wei: Where can I find a doctor at this hour? Sixth Liang from the Locust Tree Villa has left for the city again. sheriff li: No, we must get a doctor to come now. His injury is serious. If he were to die, it would be no laughing matter. mr. wei: Butcher, go see Ninth Wen in the Wen mountain village, and do what you have to get him to come over tonight. Second Li, go with him to help carry the sedan chair. (The butcher and second li quickly exit. mrs. wei quickly enters.) mrs. wei: You shot a man! Who’d you shoot? mr. wei: Who do you think! What bad luck! (mrs. wei and lotus turn to look at the face of this young man in ragged clothing.) mr. wei: He’s unconscious. Hurry and splash some hot water on him. (Suddenly turning his attention to lotus) Lotus, you can’t stay here. Go on out. (lotus stares at the ashen face of the young man as if she hasn’t heard what her father just said. She can’t believe her eyes and wipes them to take a closer look.) lotus: Isn’t this Huang, Cousin Huang! (She begins to cry.) mrs. wei: It really is that kid. How’d he get so thin? (She leaves to boil some water.) mr. wei: Lousy idiot. How can you call him “cousin”? You’re still here? Get going. grandmother (taking a closer look): Is it really that kid? mr. wei: Who else other than this crazy kid would be running around on the mountaintop looking to die? I can’t believe my bad luck running into such a wretched person.

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grandmother: Where was he hit? mr. wei: On his leg. If he had been hit just a bit higher, he’d already be dead. sheriff li: He’s still in critical condition. He’s lost a large amount of blood. When we first came up to him, we thought he was a tiger. Only after we got a closer look did we know this kid had been messing around. mr. wei: Even with such a serious injury he still congratulated me. What a bastard! grandmother: Hurry and stop his bleeding. Wake him up. He’s already crazy, and we can’t let him become a cripple too. mr. wei (applying pressure on the leg to stop the bleeding): It’s difficult to stop the bleeding. I’ll go get Barber Li from downstairs. Sheriff, please help stop the bleeding while I go get him. sheriff li: Okay, go on. I’ll take care of it. mr. wei: Thank you, Sheriff Li. (He exits.) lotus (getting next to the injured man to examine the wounds): It is very bad! (Her hand gets covered with blood.) He’s lost so much blood! What can we do! (Crying at first, but then realizing that crying won’t do any good, she exits, and the sound of cloth being ripped is heard.) sheriff li (to farmer he): You came tonight to see a tiger, but you never thought it would be this kind of tiger. You can go back ahead of me. I’ll stay a while. (Walking to the door with him) Go straight and turn at the large camphor tree. Walk up the slope and you’ll see my house. Is it too dark to see? Take a torch with you. farmer he: No need, I can see fine. Thank you. third zhou: I’ll take Farmer He back. I want to go to the Lis’ new house and see if there is any medicine to bring back. sheriff li: That’s better. Tell Grandma I’ll be back soon. (farmer he and sheriff li exit. Rushing onstage holding a white cloth and a bunch of cotton, lotus sits next to crazy huang. She wipes away the blood from the wound and bandages it up. The injured man turns a bit and mutters something.) lotus (calling out): Huang! Cousin Huang! crazy huang (muttering a pained response): Uh! sheriff li: The water has boiled. Hurry and pour some hot water on him. (mrs. wei fills a bowl up with hot water and carries it over to crazy huang. grandmother uses chopsticks to pry his mouth open and then pours water in.) sheriff li: Good, his stomach is moving a little. grandmother: This is a kind of good fortune. lotus (softly calling his name): Huang, Cousin Huang. crazy huang (a bit louder): Yeah. grandmother: Poor child. He’s passed out from the pain. crazy huang (groaning as if he were talking in his sleep): Lotus, it hurts. mrs. wei: Even though he’s in pain, he still hasn’t forgotten about Lotus. lotus (holding on to him): Cousin Huang.

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crazy huang (opening his eyes and looking all around): Why am I here? Why am I sleeping here? sheriff li: You were just shot in the mountains. We carried you here. Are you starting to remember? crazy huang: Yes, a bit more. Sheriff Li, Aunt Wei, Grandma, Lotus. Lotus, why did I just see you up in the mountains? I thought I was still up there. (Wiping his eyes) Lotus, are we dreaming? lotus: Cousin Huang, it’s not a dream. It’s real. You’re lying on the rattan bed in my home’s fireplace room. crazy huang: It’s not a dream. But I never thought I’d see you this evening. You’re going to get married. I heard you’re going to get married. I heard you will be married in the next few days. I wanted to congratulate you, but I hadn’t the courage to come to your home. I thought that on your wedding day the Chen family would get some beggars to carry banners. If I could carry a banner then I’d be able to wish you happiness. Which day is it? Has it been set already? lotus: Huang . . . (She can’t stop herself from crying. mr. wei rushes onstage.) mr. wei: Barber Li is not at home. He’s out. Has the bleeding stopped? sheriff li: It’s better. Lotus bandaged it. mr. wei (looking at lotus): Lotus, you’re still here? Get out of here. (lotus hesitates.) Go on. What a disgrace! lotus: Daddy, tonight I want to look after him. This is all I’ve ever asked of you my whole life. mr. wei: What’s he to you? Why must you look after him? He’s been injured, so of course I want to make sure he gets better. He’s none of your concern. Go to your room! sheriff li: What’s wrong with letting her look after him for a bit? Women are always better at taking care of patients. mr. wei: Sheriff, you don’t know the details. I will not allow my daughter to nurse him. First of all I have no idea why he had to go into the mountains at this hour. Was he playing with death? sheriff li: It’s normal for people whose minds are not quite right. mr. wei: You really think he’s an idiot? Sometimes what he says isn’t crazy at all. I don’t know why he’s always trying to make a fuss with my family. crazy huang: Uncle, I won’t make you worry in the future. I’ll never come back to your home. This is the last time. I never thought I would end up in your home tonight. I never thought I’d be injured and end up like a wild beast collapsed in this place. I just hope in the future I’ll be able to faintly see the lights of this house from a distance in the mountains. mr. wei: Why do you want to see my family’s lights? crazy huang: Not just tonight. Not just the last few nights, I have come just about every night. Since I started living under the stage in the temple, most nights are spent in the same way. Not even high winds and downpours have stopped me. Whenever I

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look at the lights of this house, I feel as if I were peering upon a close relative, and I forget all of my troubles. grandmother: We should take pity on this orphan! mr. wei: Why didn’t you come to talk to me about the way you feel about my family? crazy huang: I wanted to come. But I thought you’d prefer that I didn’t. You scolded me in the past, so I couldn’t find the courage to come back. mr. wei: I only scolded and beat you so that you would study harder. Who taught you to disobey orders? I wanted you to learn to become a carpenter, but you refused. And then you refused to become a tailor. Later, I wanted you to go into the fields and herd cattle, but you still wouldn’t obey. You’d rather hang around and beg for food? Of course I was upset with you. crazy huang: That’s right, I’d rather hang around and beg for food. I’d rather sleep by myself under the stage than leave my hometown. Even if you got the police to send this homeless child away, I would still never leave. mr. wei: I’d send you out of here for being involved in some indecent business. If you’d studied like I told you, then there’d be no need for this. crazy huang: People always want to get rid of poor children. But I think you were worried that I may harm Lotus, not that I was involved with some indecent business. mr. wei: See, I told you so. All along he was just pretending to be dumb. crazy huang: I really am an idiot. I know I’m not deserving of Lotus. As I can’t have her, how can I not become an idiot? Since we were children, Lotus and I have always been together. In those days, my family was doing fine. You even joked around saying that Lotus and I made a good pair. Even if you hadn’t said this, that’s the way we felt, even if as children we didn’t really understand. Later my father passed away and my family lost everything. Your family distanced itself from us. Then my mother also passed away, our home burned in a fire, and we sold all of our land, but it still wasn’t enough to pay off all our debts. I could no longer go to school. Others decided that I should become an artisan. I was told to become a tailor, but I didn’t want to. I ran away, and after being beaten, I was dragged off to become a carpenter. I knew even then that Lotus could never be mine. The morning that I was to leave to apprentice as a carpenter I wanted to say goodbye to Lotus, but you wouldn’t let me see her. I could only blame everything on my bad fate. I tried everything, but there was no changing my fate. The neighbor Eighth Chen pitied me, so he let me go to the city with him to learn how to do business. I thought this would help me to forget about Lotus. But when I was less than a mile from the city, I turned around and came back by myself. I couldn’t forget about Lotus. I couldn’t leave the place where she lived. Fortunately the Taoist priest in Xian Gu Temple pitied me, so he let me live beneath the temple’s stage. I would help him around the temple. When he saw that I hadn’t gotten any food from begging, he would give me leftovers to make sure I wouldn’t starve to death. I’ve lived like this for over a year. (lotus cries.) A child without anyone else—no father, no mother, no siblings, no relatives and no friends. I can get through the day, but it is so cold and depressing at night, sleeping

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in the temple under the stage all alone. I really feel frightened! When I light a fire, I am the only one to glow in its light. When I sing or cry, I am the only one to hear my sad voice. Only now do I know that being alone is much more terrifying than ferocious beasts like tigers and hyenas, and even ghosts and goblins! (lotus’s sobbing intensifies.) I was so lonely that I didn’t know what to do. Every day when the sun set, when the birds on the mountain flew back to their nests, I would start walking up the mountain so that I could look at the lights of this house. When peering at these lights, I felt as if I were a happy kid once again sitting on the laps of my parents six years ago, calling to Lotus to come and play and gathering wildflowers for Lotus to wear. You have no idea how this filled me with joy, made me feel so content! When it drizzled, the window in the distance looked even fainter. This reminded me of the autumn when we chased after fireflies. Lotus would put them in eggshells. It was wonderful! I stared into the distance imagining these things. I wouldn’t even notice getting wet, and I would only go back to sleep under the cold and depressing stage after all the lights had been turned off and Lotus was asleep. (lotus continues weeping.) grandmother: My poor child, didn’t you catch a cold? crazy huang: Who cares whether or not an orphan catches a cold? Loneliness is more frightening than illness. If I could only decrease the feeling of loneliness in my heart then I wouldn’t have other concerns. My health is already ruined, since I’ve been out in the cold and starving for more than a year. I was feeling sick these last few days, so I didn’t go up the mountain to gaze upon the window’s light. I’m afraid it won’t be long before I join my parents in the grave. I also heard that Lotus would be married into the Chen family in the next few days, so this evening I made a special effort to climb up the mountain so as to gaze at the lights in the window that I hadn’t seen the last two days, and perhaps would never again see. I never thought as soon as I got into the mountains I’d stumble on a trip wire and then get shot. I hope I’ll end up dying from this gunshot, then I won’t have to keep on suffering. But since I can see Lotus again, I’m glad I was shot. If I end up dying, it will have been worth it. Lotus, my wound is severe, and I am also ill. Can you look after me? If you could only touch me, my illness would go away, and my sorrow could be forgotten. Lotus, please look after me, that’s all I ask you. lotus: Okay, Cousin Huang, I will look after you. sheriff li: If Lotus takes care of him, his wound will heal faster. grandmother: Poor boy, I didn’t know he loved Lotus so much. mrs. wei: It seems he got shot all for Lotus. It’s too bad that he was ill when he got shot. If his mother were still alive, her heart would be broken. lotus (rubbing the young man’s hand): Cousin Huang, get some rest. I’ll take care of you tonight. crazy huang (looking consoled): Thank you. mr. wei (angrily shouting): No way! Lotus, get inside. I’ll take care of him. Don’t worry about him. You already belong to the Chen family. How can you look after him? How could we ever explain this?

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lotus: Why do I belong to the Chen family? mr. wei: I’ve let the Chen family have you, so you belong to the Chen family. lotus: Then I give myself to Cousin Huang. I belong to the Huang family. mr. wei: What are you saying! Are you really such a stupid girl? How dare you talk back to your father! (Looks at lotus, who is rubbing crazy huang’s hand) You still dare to touch him? Get out of here! This is none of your business! lotus: You’ll have to kill me before I let go of his hand. mr. wei (changing his tone to that of a caring father): Lotus, think carefully. Did I give you to the Chen family because I love you so much? Your dad’s had a hard life, and he only has you, his only daughter. So I don’t want to give you to just anyone. It is hard to find the right person, and only after searching far and wide did I select a good family like the Chen family. I was afraid the Chen family wouldn’t accept us, since we are a hunting family. They must have thought you would make a good wife, so they agreed to the marriage. I just wish you would be happy to marry into the Chen family and have a life filled with joy. You would give birth to grandchildren, and since I don’t have a son, having a grandson would bring us great happiness. I never thought you’d be such a stupid girl and keep procrastinating. Only after your mother and I pleaded with you did you change your mind and finally agree, right? mrs. wei: That’s right. Lotus, you did end up agreeing. lotus: Because my father kept pleading with me, there’s nothing I could do other than finally agree. I had wanted to find a chance to talk to Cousin Huang about running away together before the wedding. mr. wei: I knew you were trying to run away! lotus: I wanted to run away. I’ve wanted to for a long time, I just couldn’t find the right chance. The first time a tiger was caught and many people were coming over to look, I made it halfway up the mountain, until I ran into the butcher. I had to turn around. The closer my wedding day got, the less you would let me leave the house. A few days ago I was able to go with Second Zhang to deliver the tiger meat, and we went to the temple. Because I was with Second Zhang, I was afraid to ask about Cousin Huang, so I never saw him. mr. wei: And if you had found him? lotus: If I had found him, we would have chosen a day to run away. mrs. wei: Where would you have gone? lotus: Into the city. mrs. wei: And then what? lotus: Mrs. Zhang introduced me to a textile factory. mr. wei: Oh, yeah! lotus: I never thought he would end up here before I found him, carried into my home like a seriously wounded tiger. He’s become so skinny, and his leg has a huge wound. He’s lost so much blood. Poor Cousin Huang, I’ll never leave your side. In life or death, I’ll never leave you. mr. wei: I will make you leave him. I won’t let you do this. You disrespectful girl!

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(mr. wei tries to force their hands apart, but they grasp on to each other as tightly as possible.) lotus: Daddy! (grandmother, sheriff li, and mrs. wei speak simultaneously.) grandmother: Wei! sheriff li: Wei! mrs. wei: Please, Lotus, let go. lotus: No, no way. No one in this world could tear our hands apart. mr. wei: I can! (With a force like lightning, he fiercely tears their hands apart and drags lotus out of the room.) You ingrate! You despicable ingrate! How can I not beat you for this! (He drags her into a room and sounds of his beating and her trying to get away are heard.) How dare you talk back! Are you still crazy? Going to call out to Crazy Huang again? Are you going to make me even angrier? (He beats her with each exclamation.) all (together): Wei, Wei! Don’t hit her! (They all run out of the room. crazy huang is left alone. He looks like a corpse as he lies on the bamboo bed and listens to the sounds of lotus being beaten. He is suddenly struck by the pain of his wound and illness.) crazy huang: I can’t take it! (Although in great pain, he manages to get up and pick up the hunting knife that is next to the bed.) Lotus, I’m one step ahead of you. (He stabs himself in the chest and dies. mr. wei’s voice is heard from offstage.) mr. wei: You still won’t listen to me? You still dare to call out Crazy Huang’s name? You will marry into the Chen family! (The sound of a bamboo whip beating lotus is heard. Her weeping and crying out of crazy huang’s name gets louder and louder. The sound of her pleas and her wailing are heard as well.)

note This one-act play was written by Tian Han between 1922 and 1923. It was published in 1924 in the bimonthly Nanguo banyuekan and in a collection of his plays called One Night in a Café. The play was revised in 1954 and published in 1955 in Tian Han juzuoxuan (Selected Plays of Tian Han) and again in 1959 in Tian Han xuanji (Selected Works of Tian Han). In 1983 the play was published in Tian Han wenji (The Literary Works of Tian Han). This English translation is based on the play’s publication in the twentyvolume Tian Han quanji (Complete Works of Tian Han) (Shijiazhuang: Huashan wenyi chubanshe, 2001).

After Returning Home (1922) ouyang yuqian tra nsla ted by jonat han s . nob l e

C ha r a c t e rs lu zhiping ⿇㺰㊿, a college student in New York wu zifang 㣔㽴➜, lu zhiping’s wife lu qichang ⿇㋜␧, lu zhiping’s father grandmother (mrs. gu ⤧㗉), lu zhiping’s grandmother wu youshu 㣔㱸㗰, wu zifang’s father mary liu ⽁⿴⺉, lu zhiping’s second wife lao chen ⹝⒪, a hired hand zhang ma 㷩⿲, a female servant third wang 㠩㑻, a village farmer villagers, children Time: Autumn Place: Hunan province (This modest, one-story home belongs to a well-to-do family in rural China. A large entrance is located at the home’s center. There are trees behind the house. The main road into town runs along the right side of the nearby hills. To the left of the house are trellises for growing beans and squash. Outside, racks for drying clothes are set up in the place used for threshing wheat. Several pieces of foreign attire are drying in the sun on the bamboo racks. There are two benches. zhang ma enters the stage through the door.)

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zhang ma: Miss, the sun has set behind the mountain. wu zifang (as if to herself ): What? zhang ma: Time to bring the clothes inside. wu zifang (entering the stage): I’ll take care of it. Please look after Grandma. She’s rather hard of hearing and might blame you for ignoring her. (mrs. gu, who is inside, keeps calling out to zhang ma.) zhang ma: Coming! wu zifang: See, isn’t she calling you? (zhang ma exits, smiling. wu zifang mutters to herself as she folds the clothing.) This pocket has come loose. I guess I’ll need to mend his clothes. (While examining how to sew the pocket back on, much to her surprise, she finds two dried lotus petals in a pocket.) Wow, funny how flower petals are stitched into clothing bought overseas. There are even words written on them. (Reading out loud) “We shall love each other for the rest of our lives.” (She reads the other petal) “Our endless love will inspire our great career.” (She pauses for a moment and then reads the words again, as if speaking to herself ) People have been saying that Lu Zhiping married another woman. I thought it was just a rumor, but who would have thought I’d find evidence. Their sworn love for each other is right here on these petals. (She looks down at the petals as if trying to memorize the lines. lao chen enters.) lao chen: All dishes are ready to go and I am waiting for you to slice the pork. wu zifang: Leave them there for right now. (She puts away the petals, low in spirit.) lao chen: Your husband and your father-in-law aren’t home yet. It’s still early. I’ll go take a look at the waterwheel. I don’t know if it’s been fixed yet. (He walks off to the right while speaking.) wu zifang: Go on. (lu zhiping has returned home.) lu zhiping: Zifang, what are you doing here? wu zifang: Drying your precious clothes. lu zhiping: Thank you. I’m flattered. wu zifang: You’re too polite. Americans are more polite to women than Chinese. lu zhiping: Women have always been equal to men, so naturally one should be polite to women. wu zifang: Politeness and equality are the same? lu zhiping: Not always, but etiquette is necessary. Don’t Chinese also say “Cherish mutual respect”? wu zifang: No wonder you are like a guest in your own home. lu zhiping: We are all just guests in life. (He takes out a cigarette.) wu zifang: Wow! Clothing made in America is taken to rural China and set out to dry. lu zhiping: I can’t stay in America forever. While there, I always wanted to return home. After coming home, each tree and every blade feels so natural. If we didn’t

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have to worry about Westerners oppressing us, then our village would truly be heaven on earth and we’d know only great joy. The decadence of those modern cities would have no place here. There’d be little difference between the rich and poor. A simple life with natural products could naturally evolve along with the guidance of the enlightened. Wouldn’t that be wonderful? wu zifang: What do you know about the way of life in the countryside? lu zhiping: Why wouldn’t I know? I just walked by Guandi Temple, the place where I went to school as a child, and then I continued on to my maternal grandmother’s home. The words that I carved into the bamboo on the hill behind her home are still there. The images of my childhood are still fresh, and I can’t help but feel overcome by love for this village. wu zifang: But it’s such a pity that there is no one to console you here in the countryside. lu zhiping: Aren’t you my companion? wu zifang: Before you became an accomplished student, I may have been a suitable companion. Now that you have a degree from a university in the United States, I’m no longer in your league. lu zhiping: If you’re not then who is? wu zifang: Naturally there’s a person. lu zhiping: I thought there was only one. wu zifang: Who? lu zhiping (in a very tender voice): Wu Zifang. wu zifang (with a bit of sarcasm): But I’ve never been abroad, and I don’t know much about music and dancing. lu zhiping: Why is that so important? wu zifang: I’m also not good at socializing. lu zhiping: Why does that matter? wu zifang: And I don’t have any knowledge that I can show off. lu zhiping: Is that the point of having knowledge? wu zifang (more assertively): And I don’t know how to write a love letter on a flower petal. lu zhiping (blushing): What are you saying? wu zifang: Why get so ner vous? I’m just joking with you. lu zhiping: You probably heard someone’s idle chatter. wu zifang: Don’t blame someone else. You were the one careless enough to leave evidence in clear sight. (Speaking to the clothing) Thank you for providing me with such intriguing information. I just learned today that “we shall love each other for the rest of our lives.” lu zhiping: Zifang, what do you mean by all this? wu zifang: There’s no need to pretend you don’t know what I’m saying. After you left two years ago, I had heard that you had gotten married to someone else. I even asked you the day before yesterday, but didn’t you say no? lu zhiping: Listen . . .

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wu zifang: At that time, I thought it was just a rumor. Many people love gossip, but since you had proclaimed yourself as the founder of the Association for Individual Ethics, people just ran away with the rumor until it became a joke everyone knew. I really thought you were a young man with strong integrity who would understand the hope your grandmother had for you. So no matter what proof people had on you, I always tried to defend you, and even put my conscience on the line to guarantee that people were making this all up. Who would have imagined that today in the pocket of your clothing I’d stumble upon your love letters written on flower petals. Now I know the truth. You did indeed get married to another woman. (third wang enters carrying telegrams and newspapers.) third wang: Master and Mistress, this package of letters was specially delivered from Mr. Li in town. Shall I put them here? lu zhiping: That’s fine. Thank you. third wang: You’re welcome. I’ll be going now. wu zifang: Have a cup of tea. third wang: I’ll be going. Thank you, my lady. (He leaves.) wu zifang: I know you’ve got a letter in there from you know who. lu zhiping: If I don’t, you shouldn’t mind her. wu zifang: Not mind her? lu zhiping: I can’t tell you how sorry I am. wu zifang: You tell me not to mind her. Isn’t she a person too? And even a person you love! It doesn’t matter whether or not you feel sorry for me. I just hope you’ll think carefully about the future. lu zhiping: I have my own suffering. wu zifang: Because how could you not love such a pretty girl? lu zhiping: There you go again. That’s not it. After I got to America, I was so lonely, and you were so far away. Suddenly there was a person to console me. I couldn’t possibly take her kindness for granted, so I . . . wu zifang: So death do you part? lu zhiping: So we became friends. wu zifang: So you got married to repay her friendship? You think marriage is the only way to repay friendship? lu zhiping: Say what you want. wu zifang: What’s her name? lu zhiping: Liu. wu zifang: Right on. That’s what she said. I even know her first name: Mary. (Taking out the petal) Her name’s written right here! You can have it back. I wouldn’t want your heart to ache. lu zhiping: You don’t want to keep it as evidence? wu zifang: The proof is in the heart! Do you truly love her? lu zhiping: I love her as a friend. Nowadays it’s common for men and women to interact in public.

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wu zifang: You mean swearing one’s love for each other by writing on flower petals is only the love of friends? Have you told her about me? lu zhiping: I’ve told her about you many times. She hopes to be friends. wu zifang: Why don’t schools in China have courses on rhetoric? Schools in America emphasize rhetoric. lu zhiping: I’m not lying to you. wu zifang: The reality has nothing to do with me. lu zhiping: Do you hate me? wu zifang: First tell me if you love her? lu zhiping: Not again! wu zifang: I think you may not really love her, and I don’t want to hate you. If you loved her, then you wouldn’t have lied to her. If I hate you, then I never loved you before. lu zhiping: You don’t love me? But the more you say, the more lovable you become. wu zifang: Don’t say that. I’m really afraid of death. lu zhiping: I truly love you. wu zifang: Then my life is over. lu zhiping: I don’t understand what you are saying. wu zifang: How can I possibly understand what you did? lu zhiping: I guess one could say that while away I was accidentally involved in something not so proper, even if it was for a short while. It has nothing to do with my conscience. Rather, such an experience makes one’s love grow. Even if you don’t understand this now, you will one day. wu zifang: According to your logic, tomfoolery is necessary in order to increase the degree of love for each other. The more times one is married, the stronger one’s integrity becomes. Now I understand that those people behaving absurdly over there are doing so just for the experience. lu zhiping: Zifang, you’re too . . . it seems you are too . . . wu zifang: You mean to say I’m too extreme? We country folk don’t know what love is. It is just a dirty word that’s uttered in the hustle and bustle. It’s unfortunate, but I can read enough words to know from reading books and newspapers that many women die as a result of this dirty word. You can just end it. Talking about it is just wasting time. The flowers could be watered. The vegetables chopped and the wine poured. (Getting his clothes) I’ll put your clothes back in your suitcase. (She picks up the clothing as she speaks with a hint of sarcasm) I won’t hold up what’s important to you. (lu zhiping watches wu zifang as she leaves the room.) lu zhiping: Go on, say what you want. What can I do about it? (Watching wu zifang leave, he pauses silently for a while and takes a deep breath. He then sits down and picks up a letter, muttering to himself.) This letter is from her. Wow! I really shouldn’t have come home. But . . . (He reads the letter. lao chen enters.) lao chen: Master, you won’t be going away again? Your father is really worried. Rumors say that you have a foreign wife and won’t come back. The missus is too generous—

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(lu zhiping quickly interrupts.) lu zhiping: Lao Chen, where’d you just come from? lao chen: I just came back from fixing the waterwheel. The manual waterwheels are tough on the country folk. If only they were mechanical. All foreigners like you know how to make machines. Master, I’ve heard that the human body is like a machine; it can be taken apart and repaired. I’ve also heard that foreigners can dissect a person’s stomach and intestines, wash them, and put them back in again. Is that really so? lu zhiping: Yes, it is. lao chen: That’s so strange! It would be even more wonderful if hearts could also be fixed. So many Chinese people have heart problems. Many have cruel hearts. It would be really great to invite a foreign mechanic to come to China to do some repair work. lu zhiping: If people were turned into robots, that would be really bad! lao chen: But I’m afraid the foreigners wouldn’t repair our hearts but would make them worse. I’ve heard that foreigners don’t smoke opium but rather force Chinese to smoke. I think that’s the same as messing up our hearts. We should fix our own hearts rather than relying on others. lu zhiping: What you have said makes some sense. lao chen: I’ve heard that after you go abroad to study, a Western woman will put you under a spell, and then you will forget all about your homeland. Is that true? lu zhiping: Who could come up with such silliness? It’s crazy. Get going. I’ve got some things to do. (He turns away.) lao chen: You’re speaking like you were still over there. We’re not three-year- old children. No wonder people say there’s a plot against us over there. Maybe it’s no joke! (Turning toward lu zhiping and laughing as he walks away) When you were ten, you were so naughty, climbing over the wall and running away. (Walking into the other room as he speaks) Now you’ve come back from seeing the world. lu zhiping: What if she came? What would happen? (He hears a boy and girl signing a mountain folk song together.) two children (singing): The man plows the field, his wife stays at home, cooking the meal and steeping the tea. Friends and couples are the same. He helps me and I help her. Couples in the country know true love; couples in the cities want nice clothing. Old clothes are thrown out for the new; love grows greater over time. (The two kids look at lu zhiping and whisper to each other as they point at him, laughing. lu zhiping glares at them and they run off laughing. lu zhiping looks lost in thought as zhang ma enters. She is carrying a tray with a bowl on it for lu zhiping. lu zhiping’s grandmother calls to zhang ma from inside an inte-

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rior room offstage. grandmother enters the stage as she continues calling for zhang ma.) grandmother: Zhang Ma! Zhang Ma! Wait! zhang ma (signaling with her hand): Don’t you want me to give this to the young master to eat? grandmother: Wait! Zifang! Zifang! (wu zifang enters.) wu zifang: What is it, Grandmother? (grandmother motions with her hand, pointing at lu zhiping, and signals at the lotus root soup on the tray. What she means to indicate is for wu zifang to give it to lu zhiping. wu zifang understands, but, although she is smiling to indicate her acquiescence, she can’t help but display a bit of reluctance. zhang ma is smiling. wu zifang then brings the tray over to lu zhiping.) (To lu zhiping) What’s on your mind? Is something wrong? Your grandmother made this lotus root soup from scratch for you. lu zhiping: Thank you! (He uneasily puts a few letters into his coat pocket. When wu zifang notices this, she looks on with disdain and ridicule.) wu zifang: Be brave. (Helping grandmother to stand) Hurry and thank your grandmother. (lu zhiping turns around and looks at grandmother, who is laughing. zhang ma brings over a chair and grandmother sits down.) lu zhiping: Why did you take the trouble to make lotus root soup from scratch for me? I haven’t been a particularly filial grandson. (grandmother seems as if she didn’t hear him, but only cares about what she has to say.) grandmother: Is it sweet enough? wu zifang (nodding his head): Yes. grandmother: I heard you had come back. I’ve been waiting, since the lotuses sprouted, for you to come and watch the lotuses with me. wu zifang (interjecting): Lotus leaves are good for writing. (lu zhiping is startled.) grandmother: What? (wu zifang shakes her head as she begins to leave the room, smiling.) wu zifang: Nothing! (She exits.) grandmother: Who would have known that even the lotuses would get so old and that it’d take so long for you to come home. While abroad you could eat so many delicious things, why would you want to eat this country food? But this is the least I could do for you. lu zhiping: Actually, there’s nothing this tasty overseas. zhang ma: You’ll have to speak up, otherwise Grandmother won’t be able to hear you. (lu zhiping thinks before speaking again.)

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grandmother (to lao chen, who is offstage): Lao Chen, are all the hens and ducks in their cages? lao chen (offstage): Yes, not one is missing. zhang ma: Yes, they’re caged in. grandmother: I’m afraid that weasel that came before might come back. My grandson loves to eat eggs, so I don’t want it getting our hens. zhang ma: Zhiping knows how to speak a foreign language, so the weasel won’t dare come back. lu zhiping: What nonsense! zhang ma: It’s afraid Zhiping will shoot it with a foreign rifle. grandmother: Do you really think this is tasty? lu zhiping (loudly): Things in the country are so fresh, so they taste good. You can’t find fresh lotus root like this in the city. grandmother: You should taste our turnips. They’re fresh here in the countryside. (lu zhiping laughs.) lu zhiping: No, I mean in the city, many things are not as fresh as in the country side. grandmother: That’s right, everything you eat in the city comes from the countryside. After sitting out a while, it loses its flavor. But this is trivial compared to the opportunity to be in the city. I have always wanted to go to Shanghai, but I’m afraid the city people will think this country grandma is some monster. In the end I wouldn’t have seen much of the city, but lots of people would have gotten a good look at me! (Everyone laughs. lu zhiping is finished eating.) Had enough? lu zhiping: I’m finished. It was delicious. grandmother: Too bad it was a bit old. It is tastier when it is tender. Tender lotus heart is sweeter. By the time you came back, the lotus was already old. Then the lotus heart is bitter. (Smiling) When you left, I already knew about that place. With man’s aspiration to travel the world, how can he always stay with his family? I was always waiting to receive your letter, so I’d know you were safe and sound and could rest assured. Then I heard that you would be coming back, and I had to worry again about your journey home. One evening I had a dream in which I saw you on an ocean ship. You were wearing shiny clothing and were surrounded by lots of foreign women. Suddenly the ship started to sink, and many people fell into the ocean screaming to be rescued. It was as if I were on a mountain peak looking down on everything as anxious as can be. I suddenly leaped down, and I felt as if I had suddenly grown wings, and I picked you up from the waves and placed you on the beach. You had stopped breathing. All I could do was cry to the heavens, and you regained consciousness. I had just become filled with joy when a foreign girl came along and placed her hand on your arm, grabbing your hand and tugging you away. I was furious and was ready to chase after you when someone tapped me on the shoulder and said, “This is not your world, and he is not your grandson.” It struck me like a hit on the head and I woke up and saw that I was still in bed. (Lowering her voice) Because

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at that time there were rumors about you, so I had this crazy dream, and I never told it to Zifang. (As grandmother babbles on, lu zhiping has a hard time paying attention and responds as if he were in a stupor.) lu zhiping: We think during the day and dream at night. We fall asleep after eating our fill, and we all dream. (lu zhiping’s father, lu qichang, and father-in-law, wu youshu, come in together, allowing for a change in subject.) lu qichang: Please, welcome. (Everyone greets one another.) Mother, you’re here. wu youshu: Grandmother. grandmother: How’s my son-in-law? wu youshu: You’ve left your room to enjoy the nice weather. You must feel in particularly good spirits today. (grandmother doesn’t completely understand, and lu qichang repeats it for her. lu zhiping greets lu qichang. zhang ma moves in a few more chairs.) grandmother: My grandson is now a man, and now that we are all together, why shouldn’t I be happy? I feel so good. My discomfort has gone, and my appetite has improved. Please sit down. Zhang Ma, please go get some tea. (zhang ma exits.) wu youshu: Please sit down. grandmother: Please, you first. (zhang ma brings the tea and wu zifang helps to pour it, first serving wu youshu and then grandmother, and then lu qichang. grandmother invites everyone to start drinking the tea.) wu youshu: Please, you first. grandmother: Zhang Ma, why doesn’t Zhiping have any tea? zhang ma: I poured one cup too few. I’ll go pour another one. (She exits, smiling.) lu zhiping: I don’t want any tea. (wu zifang moves a small table and places it in the center.) grandmother: Youshu, before rumor had it that he wouldn’t be coming back, but now Zhiping has come home. If he didn’t come home, then where would he go? I can’t stand the people who make up such rumors. They even said he had found a foreign wife. (Everyone laughs. wu zifang glares at lu zhiping. He laughs along with everyone else.) lu qichang: Nowadays so many youngsters are rotten to the core. wu youshu: The morals of society these days can hardly surprise you. Only the strong can keep from giving in to these degenerate times. Zhiping can certainly be a model. (zhang ma enters.) zhang ma: Lao Chen has asked for Zifang to help with the meal.

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grandmother: Zifang, you go. Zhiping hasn’t had a chance to eat Chen’s food, and he likes to eat fresh eggs. Make some eggs for him to try. (wu zifang smiles as she leaves and grandmother quickly continues speaking.) He likes Western-style, half- cooked, half-raw, not too well done. Ha, ha! wu youshu: Grandmother really dotes on her grandson. grandmother: It’s a pity his grandfather passed away when he was so young. It was tough raising our son. We all had to rely upon my needlework and doing laundry to raise the family. Things didn’t change until Qichang graduated from the school of political science. lu qichang: At that time the school was very small. After we graduated from the school, everything seemed so new and quickly there were things to do. (wu youshu nods.) grandmother: After Qichang got married, Zhiping was born. Unfortunately, my daughter-in-law passed away not long after, so she never saw the way Zhiping turned out. (Everyone sighs.) When I was fifty, Qichang’s friends wanted to build a decorated archway for me. wu youshu: Then I had asked you for your approval. grandmother: I didn’t think much of the archway then but just wanted everyone to help Zhiping stay in school. In the end everyone helped just as I had hoped. One hopes to make a name for oneself and live without getting a guilty conscience. It’s a pity I never had any talent or skills to depend on. Now that I am old, I’m of even less use. And I don’t want to use up my children’s and grandchildren’s fortune, just as long as they can make themselves useful in this world, then I’ll be able to rest in peace. wu youshu: Isn’t the fortune of the older generation that one’s children and grandchildren are useful? grandmother: Zhiping is really the apple of my eye. I was much stricter in raising his father. I had to be stricter because single sons are very susceptible to being doted upon. lu qichang: It was much easier for Zhiping to have the chance to go to school than it was for us. It’s true that, before, we couldn’t find books even if we had wanted to read them, and it was hard to even borrow them. wu youshu: Now it’s not so easy, either. Tuition is so high. lu zhiping: Books are expensive too. Most books cost twenty dollars. wu youshu: In the future I’m just afraid young scholars won’t have the chance to receive higher education. lu qichang: A while ago I read in the newspaper about a student who asked his father for money. His father said he spent too much. Other than tuition, what other expenses did he have? The student said that he also had to spend money on women. He said that, without a girlfriend, he wouldn’t be able to keep up his studies. (lu zhiping laughs along with wu youshu.)

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wu youshu: Then he should just find a bride earlier rather than later. lu qichang: He did. wu youshu: Then he really should be taught a lesson. (They laugh and sigh deeply. wu zifang comes onstage.) wu zifang: The meal is ready. Shall we go inside or eat here? lu qichang: Here is fine. wu youshu: Why not right here? Grandma? lu qichang: Mom, shall we eat? grandmother: I’ll go inside. Please stay here. wu youshu: Don’t worry about me. There’s a wind out here. grandmother: Stay here. My nerves can’t take the wind. (She points to wu zifang and calls out to zhang ma to help move the table and chairs over.) lu qichang: Sit with us. grandmother: Zhiping, toast your father-in-law. Enjoy the meal. (To wu youshu) Your daughter made it, so you should enjoy it. wu youshu: You taught her well. grandmother: Me? After we finish eating, we can ask Zhiping to tell us news from overseas. I think next year the house will get a special cleaning, and then we’ll have a toast between our families. (Everyone laughs. grandmother leaves and lu qichang, wu youshu, and lu zhiping sit down. lu zhiping pours the wine and wu zifang serves the food. Everyone toasts. wu zifang exits.) wu youshu: She’s in good health. lu qichang: We all owe her so much. Without her, we wouldn’t have this family. When my father passed away, my grandmother told her to come back home, but she said, “This isn’t the right time. After my son has grown up and the Lu family is doing well, then we can go home.” wu youshu: These days one wouldn’t hear such things. She really didn’t have it easy. But with Zhiping, the Lu family has created a talent to benefit the nation and her heart should feel content. lu qichang: It’s too early to say that about Zhiping, but he was brought up in this family, and he is more dependable than other young men his age. wu youshu: Of course. Nice breeze. What smells so nice? lu zhiping: I think it’s the sweet osmanthus flower. lu qichang: It was planted by your daughter. wu youshu: Zifang is addicted to planting flowers and reading books. (wu zifang reenters.) wu zifang: Shall I get more to drink? wu youshu: Haven’t we had enough? lu qichang: Go get another pot. (wu zifang pours out the remaining wine and exits.) wu youshu: Today we can relax, so we can drink as we please.

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lu zhiping: Local wine is very flavorful. I grew up in the countryside, so I will always like the country life. After returning to China, I naturally wanted to come home. After coming home, it’s as if I’d confirmed the dream and returned to the life of being a child. When I hear Grandmother and Father speaking together with many traditional sayings, the more I think Chinese society has a spirit that developed all through the ages. wu youshu: Well said. lu zhiping: Waking up in the morning, I smell the flowers and listen to the birds chirping. It feels much more natural than the hubbub of the city. The simple and honest life of the people in the country is less aggravating than the city’s fierce competition. Although we are being oppressed by the world’s trends, we must know how to make a living in this great whirlpool. (wu zifang brings in the wine.) wu youshu: That sounds like bitter resignation. lu qichang: I’m just afraid that when one returns from a prosperous place, one will think this quiet, simple life lacks interest. wu youshu: That’s not the case. People always cherish their hometowns. The place where we grow up will always remain our heartland. When we were young, we were taught for our hearts to remain with our hometown. Now people are torn. They can’t bear to leave their hometowns, but at the same time, they desire to go to new places. Therefore, they get frustrated, lack initiative, and are just generally confused. But no matter to which illusory place their hearts wander, they will inevitably want to return to their hometowns. lu zhiping: The education that one receives in middle school always determines a person’s ideas for the rest of his life. Sometimes these ideas will be oppressed by other ideas, and then doubt will emerge and perhaps even cause one to struggle with these ideas. This situation will inevitably influence a person’s behavior. wu youshu: Oppression of ideas is not so bad. I just fear it’s some sort of external seduction. lu qichang: External seduction is not so bad. I just fear it’s some sort of internal contradiction. wu youshu: That’s right. The person you just mentioned who couldn’t study without a girlfriend is really suffering from internal contradiction. Isn’t that right, Zhiping? (lu zhiping, unable to conceal his discomfort, laughs.) This has been a good conversation, and we’ve had plenty to drink. Let’s have rice. lu qichang: Let’s have a few more glasses, and we’ll eat the rice when the vegetables are ready. wu youshu: So much food. Zhiping, this time while you’re at home, you won’t leave for a while, right? lu zhiping: I originally had planned to stay here for a while, but I just received a letter from a foreign friend sent from Hankou. We want to set up a trading company together. He is anxious to leave and can’t stay in Hankou for very long. He’s waiting for

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me to negotiate the details, and then he will take a boat back home from Shanghai. I’m afraid I will have to get going this evening. (lu qichang and wu youshu both look surprised.) lu qichang: Tonight? Why haven’t you told us until now? wu youshu: Wait a day or two. It can’t be that urgent. Can’t you still make it in time? lu zhiping: I’m afraid then I would delay his departure. lu qichang: You didn’t plan this with him earlier? lu zhiping: Well, yes . . . wu youshu: A trading company is not a small thing. You suddenly mention it and it is so urgent. lu zhiping: I’m afraid of losing out on this opportunity. (wu zifang brings in some dishes.) wu zifang: Daddy, this is pickled vegetables from our home. See how it tastes. lu qichang: Zhiping says he needs to depart for Hankou tonight. (wu zifang quickly hides her surprise.) wu youshu: He says a friend from overseas wants to start a trading company with him. He’s afraid he won’t get there in time unless he leaves tonight. You too didn’t know about this? wu zifang: I . . . didn’t know. But I know he has already started a company. Perhaps he has some new business and needs to go— (lu zhiping interrupts.) lu zhiping: That’s not true. wu youshu and lu qichang: New business? lu zhiping: Zifang is confused because I had mentioned someone else’s company before. wu zifang: The more companies the better, though it is more to worry about. Daddy, have more to drink. The rice isn’t ready yet. Lao Chen just started cooking the rice. (She quickly exits.) lu qichang: If this is indeed an important matter, then of course you should attend to it. Tonight you’ll need to take the sedan to catch the train. I’ll let your grandmother know. Come right back after you’ve finished your business. lu zhiping: Just as long as my responsibilities are minimal, I’ll come right back. (wu youshu takes lu zhiping aside.) wu youshu: Zhiping, let me tell you something. Men have many ambitions, so we can’t expect you to stay at home forever. But your mother passed away when you were very young, and your grandmother raised you and loves you greatly. You must not forget, if you can come back earlier, you can stay and live with us longer, and you can make your grandmother happy before she leaves us. Living here a few months shouldn’t interrupt your work too much. Grandma isn’t willing to say this to you directly. She’s afraid the family would interfere with your future. You should know that your future is limitless, but your grandmother has already reached an old age, and the sun will soon descend behind the mountains. The remaining light, which is reluctant to leave this world, can still shine on your life. Your grandmother is a

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generous and hardworking woman who raised the Lu family, and she certainly isn’t looking to be repaid by her grandson. Yet, as her grandson, one shouldn’t neglect obligation. lu zhiping: That’s natural. I should repay my grandmother with the career of my future. wu youshu (returning to his seat): Having a distinguished career for your family is important, but you mustn’t forget about carrying on joy and happiness for the family. (wu zifang enters.) wu zifang: Daddy, these are beets. wu youshu (sitting down): I’ve urged Zhiping to go this time, but he needs to come back as soon as he can. lu qichang: Who’s that coming? Isn’t that Third Wang? (third wang runs onstage.) third wang: I’ve got news. There’s a Western woman looking for you. lu zhiping: What? third wang: She’s in a sedan chair, and an escort from the county has come with her. They were asking for directions. Now they’re having tea at the teahouse. I thought I’d come and let you know. It seems as if the Western lady is speaking Chinese. I was afraid I wouldn’t understand her, so I didn’t speak to her. But then she spoke very well, which is very good, because otherwise it would be like a slap on the ear. lu qichang (to lu zhiping): Who’s coming to see you? lu zhiping: I think it must be a friend traveling through. third wang: She’s here. Miss, over here. (mary liu enters, followed by the sedan chair bearer, servants, and a group of people from the countryside. lu qichang and wu youshu stand up. wu zifang immediately knows that this person is lu zhiping’s new wife, and she closely watches lu zhiping’s reaction. lu zhiping doesn’t know what to do, and mary liu doesn’t speak at first.) lu zhiping: My love, why’d you come? mary liu: Why wouldn’t I? Did you not want me to come? lu qichang (to lu zhiping): Who is this lady? lu zhiping: This is Ms. Liu. wu zifang: Aren’t you Mary? This is my father-in-law, this is my father, and this is my husband, Zhiping. mary liu: Zhiping, you already have a wife? lu qichang: He was married over seven years ago. What kind of talk is that? mary liu (pointing at lu zhiping): You loser! How dare you! You said you were single. You intentionally deceived me. (lao chen comes out to look at the spectacle.) lu zhiping: No, I didn’t intentionally trick you. mary liu: Stop. In America, we met only a few times and you made your move on me. Then we got married. When I asked you about your family, you said you had already broken all ties with your corrupt family. Only after you had returned to Shanghai did

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I hear from a former classmate that I had been tricked. She said that you had married me to be your concubine, not your wife. You had already left, and so there was no way I could question you. You had told me that you were just going to Hankou to manage a coal company. You said having me along would be so inconvenient, so you didn’t want me to come. Only later did I find out that you were actually afraid that your father would come to Shanghai and find you out. I sent many telegrams, almost one each day, to find out whether or not you were in Hankou, but I didn’t get a response after the first one, nor after the second, third, or fourth. Then I decided to come and find you. I’m glad my brother knew these county bureaucrats—he wrote a letter asking for their help. Did you think you could hide from me for the rest of your life? Did you think I was so weak and incapable, a woman who can just be taken advantage of however you like? (Irate, she pulls a chair over and sits down, glaring at lu zhiping. lu qichang is also furious.) wu youshu (looking at lu zhiping): The trading company in Hankou was just about this all along? (wu youshu turns around, lets out a sigh, and leaves.) lu qichang: Zhiping, did you really do this? Could you have really done such a thing? I never thought you could ruin our family’s name to this extent. You were educated at home and in school, but how could you lack such self-respect? (wu zifang lowers her head slightly, and mary liu is angry and upset. Everyone sighs without uttering a word. zhang ma comes out to take a look. wu zifang quickly speaks to her.) wu zifang: Why have you run out? Go back in. Don’t let Grandmother know about this. (zhang ma listens to wu zifang as she stares at the new guest. wu zifang whispers in her ear and shoves her away. lao chen appears to have figured out the situation.) lao chen: How could the rumors come true? Zhiping, you will need to make a decision. You can’t let your father get overly concerned about this. (He has the sedan chair bearer go out back to drink tea and also shoos away the people who have come to enjoy the spectacle. They follow lao chen out back, and, as soon as the people have been escorted out, they try to push their way back over. wu youshu is about to say something, but lu zhiping speaks first.) lu zhiping: Father, please forgive me. It’s not that I lack self-respect. I won’t keep anything hidden from you. Please allow me to express my remorse. Since having married Zifang, I’ve been confused about many things about her, so I never felt a very deep love for her. After going abroad, I experienced how vivacious yet gentle Western women were, and I couldn’t help but feel envious, and then I started getting together with Ms. Liu. I’m afraid then that Ms. Liu, saturated in Western ways, is the only one who could keep my attention. This time at home I had planned to discuss this matter with Father and Father-in-Law. I want to get a divorce from Zifang. (wu youshu is shocked, and wu zifang can’t hide the surprise from her face, either. lu qichang makes a fist and lets out a long sigh. Only mary liu lifts up her head to

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look at lu zhiping. She seems to have an endless amount of sadness and tenderness, and she lets out a sigh in a high-pitched voice.) lu qichang: Damn it! God damn it! lu zhiping: Who would have known that after I returned home . . . (mary liu looks ner vous.) mary liu: What happened after you returned home? What happened? lu zhiping: After I returned home, I discovered that Zifang had many good qualities, qualities that the new-style woman lacks. mary liu: Say no more! Not a word more! lu zhiping (more angry than forceful): Mary, you don’t want me to confess? I examine myself and the situation, but feelings can change at any given time. mary liu: With feelings that can change so easily, can you still be a good person? lu zhiping: If feelings don’t change, then wouldn’t one become numb to goodness? lu qichang: Zhiping, how dare you say such undignified and base words in front of me. You are not making any sense. I had no idea my son was so corruptible! mary liu: Sir, how large is Zhiping’s inheritance? lu qichang: What are you saying? Why would he get an inheritance from me? I only gave him knowledge and propriety, and he’s bankrupted them both. mary liu: After a son is over twenty- one, he no longer belongs to his parents. In this day and age, only if the parents have a significant inheritance can they still control their children. It appears as if it’s too late to instruct Zhiping, but all that can be done is to solve this problem. Empty talk won’t do any good. wu youshu: I can’t take this! How can such a thing ever happen? In the end, it takes two people to have a relationship, so we can’t only blame Zhiping for seducing Ms. Liu, and we can’t simply blame Ms. Liu for seducing Zhiping. In the end, the morals of the times have allowed the relationship between men and women to degenerate to this degree. mary liu: Who are you calling a degenerate? wu youshu: Let me finish. How can Ms. Liu interrogate an elder the way she just did? She is but a friend of Zhiping’s. Qichang is clearly in the role of father. Apparently Ms. Liu chose her words incorrectly and behaved improperly. Zhiping’s remarks were irreverent and illogical and should not have been spoken to his father. As for Zifang, she is my daughter and Zhiping’s wife, she should— (mary liu interrupts.) mary liu: Sir, what are you trying to say? What do you mean by saying things like “seducing” and “improper behavior.” Are you trying to humiliate me? Don’t you know that public humiliation is an offense? lu qichang: We don’t need to debate this, but when you decided to marry Zhiping, why didn’t you look into his marital status? wu youshu: How could you be so rash about such an important matter? You think you could be so impetuous with marriage? Zhiping made a mistake, and we blame him for it. We also cannot condone what you have done. No matter what, Zhiping was a married man, and therefore your status should be clear.

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mary liu: I’m not interested in having this absurd conversation with such provincial people. Don’t forget, Zhiping’s reputation, future aspirations, and even his life are entirely in my hands. I won’t let him go. Zhiping, are you still putting on an act? lu zhiping: What would you like me to do? mary liu: You tell me. (wu youshu pulls lu qichang aside. They converse in private.) lu zhiping: The system of monogamy is good, but in the United States there is a religion in which a man marries more than one wife. France is currently encouraging a man to marry more than one wife in order to increase the birth rate. I feel very bad for what I’ve done to you, and all I can do is repent for my sin. It wouldn’t have happened if I didn’t love you, and my heart has still not changed, so maybe you can forgive me. And you can gradually think about whether I am truly a fickle person. I certainly don’t condone bigamy, but today I have a special request. (To mary liu) Zifang is a woman with her own ideas, and I ask that you put all this aside for a while and first become friends with her. Fortunately, I can’t fly off to anywhere else, so you can first exchange your views about the world and learn from each other. When you’ve finished, you can decide how to deal with me, okay? (Although wu youshu and lu qichang are off to the side, they are watching and listening to lu zhiping.) mary liu (ignoring him): Zhiping, think about this. I don’t have time to mess around. lu zhiping (to wu zifang): Zifang, you’ve already been introduced. Although this was unanticipated, I guess there’s no harm in your meeting each other. (Turning to lu qichang and wu youshu) Father and Father-in-Law have worried enough about their children. wu youshu: I’ve never been so worried about my daughter before. lu zhiping (speaking with gravitas): I haven’t been filial. Not even if I were to repent my entire life would I be able to make up for this. I just didn’t want our personal situation to cause so much vexation for our parents. Can’t we find a solution to this problem? wu zifang (with a smile that reveals a feeling of insult but indifference): This has not the least bit to do with me. mary liu: Zhiping? wu youshu: Zifang, go on inside. wu zifang: Father, don’t worry. Wouldn’t it be disrespectful to the guest if it seemed I wanted to ignore her? mary liu: Zhiping, there’s no need to drag this out. I have just two conditions for you: First, you must quickly get divorced from this provincial woman. Second, in the future, you must allow me to supervise everything you do. If you had it in you, then you would kill me. Since you don’t, you must do whatever I say. If you want to keep up with your antics, then I will cause you to suffer so much that suicide would seem pleasant. Hurry! Hurry! You have only five minutes. You hateful scoundrel! You just wanted me to fall into your trap! lu qichang: What is this?

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wu youshu: The Republic of China doesn’t have anything like this, does it? (A bunch of rural folks are laughing. They make strange faces. lao chen chases them away.) lao chen: What are you looking at? What’s so funny? It’s not what you think. People are all about the same. Get out of here! (They scatter off.) Zhiping, why don’t you have a plan yet? You’re not thinking straight today. You should build an eastern chamber and a western chamber and let the young ladies draw straws. Whoever’s the lucky one will live in the eastern chamber. lu zhiping: Get lost! lu qichang: Zhiping, what do you say? wu youshu: Go on! (wu zifang makes up her mind and boldly walks up to mary liu.) wu zifang: Miss Mary, even though this is the first time we’ve met, we’re both women. We should be able to talk to each other about our feelings. wu youshu (indicating with his eyes for her to stop speaking): Zifang! wu zifang: I ask that Father allow me to finish speaking. mary liu: Zhiping, have you decided? You only have three minutes. wu zifang: I beseech Miss Mary to treat me entirely as an outsider and listen to my most earnest remarks. (lu zhiping is afraid that she will say something wrong, and he wants to interrupt her, but he stops himself.) Since getting married to Zhiping, he has rarely been at home, so he doesn’t really know me very well. I also haven’t had the opportunity to really get to know him. My father and Zhiping’s father are old friends. Getting married to Zhiping was just like being sent to live in the home of my father’s good friend. lu qichang: Zifang, what are you trying to say? wu zifang: That’s just the way I see it. wu youshu: My god! wu zifang: I often think that marriage and divorce are merely formalities. I have never sought happiness in such formalities. With the world as large as it is, could there not be another place that can take us in? When Zhiping married her, he never had me in his heart, so he told her that he had never been married before. I’m afraid that his lying to her is precisely because he loved her so much. Since he loved her, Zhiping was brave enough to marry her, and since she loved him, she was willing to marry him without asking so many questions. I’m absolutely not willing to make a scene over this, nor am I willing to insist upon being his wife and give up my sense of pride. Ms. Liu, don’t worry, you and Zhiping are husband and wife. lu qichang: My daughter-in-law, what are you saying? How can you? wu youshu: Zifang, what do you mean? wu zifang: Father cares about his daughter, and his daughter cares not only about herself but also about her entire family. I think Ms. Liu could never stay long in the countryside, and Zhiping can’t do anything in such a rush. I ask Father-in-Law to let

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Zhiping take Ms. Liu to Shanghai. (To lu zhiping) Zhiping, during the long journey shared with each other, you can review your past studies. You won’t have much luggage. I’ll go get it packed for you. (She prepares to exit.) lu qichang: Zifang, hold on. I will never permit Zhiping to leave this home on account of this matter. wu youshu: My family, I think what Zifang said has great value. Our time is already past. I think the person who started the trouble should end it. Go ahead and let Zhiping go. lu qichang: My god! mary liu: I don’t care whether or not this is some scheme or if you are in earnest, just as long as Zhiping can carry out my demands. (zhang ma enters.) zhang ma: Miss, please come. Grandmother says many people outside are wondering who is here. She says she doesn’t understand what she is hearing, but sometimes it seems she can understand everything. (Pointing at mary liu) Why is she still here? wu zifang: Don’t mind us. Go on. (Leaving) I’m going too. lu zhiping: Mary, I understand all of your demands. I need to speak to you. (Trying to pull mary liu off to the side) Come here. mary liu: We don’t have any secrets. You can say it in front of anyone. lu zhiping: Particular to you.1 mary liu: I don’t understand your foreign words. wu youshu: There’s no need for Zhiping to delay his decision. He should just go ahead and do whatever he wants. Don’t make things even worse for yourself. mary liu: I’ve never met such an immoral and undependable man. I can’t stand this smoke-filled scene. If I keep standing here, I’m sure I’ll be eaten alive by a wild man. I can’t believe that an educated woman like myself could be so humiliated. Driver! (To lu zhiping) I don’t care if you run off to the moon. If you want to redeem yourself, it’s entirely up to you. Driver! (She couldn’t be angrier. lao chen enters.) lao chen: Foreign missus, I’ll call the driver for you. Please lower your voice. We don’t want Zhiping’s grandmother to hear. (mary liu quickly shouts out again, even louder.) mary liu: Zhiping, you must understand. Don’t think of changing your mind. Don’t think I’ll forgive you. Don’t think there is a way out of this. Don’t forget, you lied to me and humiliated me. You forced me to resort to my last option. (Louder) My last option! You don’t want to regret it! (The driver enters.) Let’s go! lu zhiping: Mary. mary liu: I’m leaving. Leaving forever! I staked my whole life on you! Don’t regret it! (She exits. The driver and lao chen follow her.) wu youshu: Isn’t she like a wild person?

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(He watches mary liu leave, looking on in anger. lu qichang’s whole body is trembling and he can’t get out any words.) lu qichang: My family is finished! The family that I worked so hard day and night to support is finished! Finished! lu zhiping: Father, don’t worry. That will never happen. lu qichang: That’s what you say! lu zhiping: Although Mary Liu is terrible, she wouldn’t dare ruin my entire life. lu qichang: You’ve already destroyed your entire life. There’s no need for someone else to destroy it for you. It doesn’t matter what we say about Ms. Liu, but what about your wife? How can you make it up to her? How can you make it up to your father-inlaw? How can I ever look at anyone in the eye again? What if your grandmother learns of this? There’s nothing for you to say. Even if Ms. Liu didn’t say anything, society may not tolerate what you have done. How will you live with your own conscience? Just because of these antics you have caused so many people such great suffering. How can you bear what you have done? I can’t bear to say much more. Just how are you going to return to your prior self ? (He’s become deeply grieved. wu zifang enters carrying a leather suitcase, which she puts next to the door.) lu zhiping: Father, I haven’t forgotten my former self. The past and present are linked. Perhaps it is mostly foolishness, or perhaps it is not entirely foolishness. In the end, I can be considered to be a cowardly fool. lu qichang: I’m afraid you are not just a cowardly fool. wu zifang: Has Ms. Liu left? wu youshu: Yes, Grandmother hasn’t asked what’s going on? wu zifang: Grandmother could hear when Ms. Liu was speaking loudly. When she asked what was going on, I made an excuse. Grandmother originally wanted to come and sit with you. But there was a bit of a breeze, and she didn’t feel so well, so I helped her to fall asleep. She was still talking about plans she had for Zhiping. She loves Zhiping so much. It has no limits. (To lu zhiping) Your suitcase is packed. lu qichang: Miss, you are too kind. Zhiping has wronged you. You still keep him in mind. You want him to repent, and he knows this. But I won’t allow him to wrong you. wu youshu: Marrying a second wife is against the law, but we can’t use this to blame Zhiping. We just need to see how Zhiping handles this situation. lu zhiping: I will never wrong Zifang again. wu zifang: That is not the issue. Rather, you need to examine what you have done. You don’t want others to say you came home to bring everyone discomfort. As for me, my parents loved me very much. After coming here, Grandmother and Father-in-Law treated me as their own daughter. I’ve always liked the countryside and have never longed for cosmopolitan life. I love gardening and harvesting silkworms. I love reading and have many worlds right here in my heart. How can I have any expectations of others, needless to say of you? Of course I greatly admire Grandmother as a person. She’s had a hard life, and it’s been tough for her to raise her son and grandson. Even if I were not her granddaughter-in-law, I would still be her neighbor, and I’d want to take

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care of her. She thinks about her grandson the most, and this current situation would certainly deeply concern her. I can’t bear it, but I think we need to find a way to make sure her final years are as happy as possible. I hope Zhiping will not mention Zifang’s business, as Zifang of course has her own ideas. It’s time to make a decision. Go on. (lu qichang and wu youshu both let out a long sigh.) lu zhiping: She’s already broken off things with me. What else is there to say? wu zifang: You must not say that. She is a woman in need of sympathy. wu youshu: Zifang, aren’t you in need of sympathy? wu zifang: In this world the most pathetic and unfortunate individuals are those who are disillusioned and those who are begging for sympathy. I’ve never asked for another’s sympathy, and I don’t accept another’s sympathy. If one doesn’t seek such, then one doesn’t face the suffering of disappointment. Who cares if Zhiping had never come home? Who cares if Zhiping comes home? Living in a melon shed isn’t fit for individuals with a life of dissipation, just like a country girl doesn’t fit with beautiful brocade and flourishing environs. It’s been so long. The food must be cold. I should go heat it up. lu qichang and wu youshu: You don’t need to heat it up. wu zifang (carrying the food away): It’s easy. lu zhiping: Zifang, Zifang. (wu zifang turns around.) wu zifang: Don’t say it. I know what you want to say. (She exits.) lu zhiping: I never would have guessed that Zifang’s intellect would have made such progress these last few years. lu qichang: I never would have guessed that your moral integrity would have degenerated so quickly these last few years. wu youshu (laughing, sarcastically): There are so many unimaginable things in this world. lu zhiping: Thinking about it won’t do any good. I just have to take care of things and come back home quickly. lu qichang: I’m afraid you’ll bring more misfortune back home with you. lu zhiping: I can’t eliminate what has already happened, and it’s hard to limit what will happen in the future. Relationships between men and women are like exploring the South Pole. There is great room for discussion. What just happened provides a great turning point for me. From today on, I know the path that I should work toward. The heavens want us to be happy. Father, I’ll be right back. (lu qichang hangs is head down and doesn’t respond.) I beseech you to take good care of Zifang. wu youshu: Zifang knows self-respect. You needn’t worry yourself about that. Just as long as you’re able to use this opportunity to clearly realize things. (lu zhiping bows down to wu youshu and lu qichang, turns around, and picks up the suitcase before putting it down again. He then calls out to lao chen. lao chen enters.)

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lao chen: What is it? lu zhiping: Please carry this suitcase over to town and get a sedan to take us to the train station. lao chen (looking at lu qichang): Has your father agreed? lu zhiping: He’s already agreed. lao chen (carrying the suitcase and exiting): You just got back and you’re off again. How is Grandmother going to take it? It appears as if she really bewitched you. (lu zhiping looks at his watch and is about to go in to see wu zifang. wu zifang is carrying out the food from inside. lu zhiping calls out to her and she slows down. She wants to ignore him but he moves up next to her to speak to her.) lu zhiping: Has Grandmother gotten up? wu zifang: Not yet. lu zhiping: I don’t want to wake her up. Later, when she gets up, please tell her that I’ve gone into town to take care of some business. I’ll be back in two or three days. wu zifang: Don’t worry about things here at home. (lu zhiping bows to lu qichang and wu youshu and motions to wu zifang. wu zifang slowly puts the food on the table. lu zhiping leaves without hesitation. lu qichang watches as he leaves, both angry and sad.) wu youshu (holding on to wu zifang’s hand): Zifang! (wu zifang faintly acknowledges her father. At the same time, she hears a few children singing mountain songs. She lowers her head but remains silent.)

not es

1.

This English translation is based on the Chinese script originally published in Xiju ji (Drama Volume), ed. Hong Shen, 197–216, vol. 9, Zhongguo xin wenxue daxi (Compendium of New Chinese Literature), ed. Zhao Jiabi (Shanghai: Liangyou, 1935). Xiju ji was reprinted in 2003 by Shanghai wenyi. This line is in English in the Chinese script.

A Wasp (1923) ding xilin t ra nsla ted by john b. we i ns t e i n and c ar s e y y e e

C ha r a c t e rs madame ji ⭀⹝㜡㜡, a woman in her fifties with a slight figure and a strong constitution. Her clothing is plain and modest but extremely clean. mr. ji ⭀㥸㔶, Madame Ji’s son, a young man, aged twenty-six or twenty-seven. He has a strong physique and a lively disposition. He is dressed in a very ordinary, casual style. miss yu 㲈㨏ⰷ, a young woman, aged twenty-five or twenty-six. She has a pretty appearance and a highly expressive face. She is dressed exquisitely. servant ㋏㑉

Setting (A small, rectangular room. In the middle of the rear wall is a set of wide double doors. To the left there is a coatrack and a small table against the wall with fresh flowers on it. To the right stands a bookcase filled with Chinese and Western books. Along the right wall there is a single door and, next to that, a large window. Near the window there is a writing desk laid out with brushes and paper. Along the left wall there is another door at the back, and, along the front half, there is a bookshelf arrayed with ornaments. The walls are hung with Chinese calligraphy scrolls. In the center of the room, toward the front and right, there is a small round table with a tea ser vice on it. To the right of the table is a large easy chair

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and to the left a divan that seats two. A smaller chair sits between the easy chair and the divan. All the seats have back cushions. The curtain rises to reveal madame ji sleeping in the easy chair with her feet raised on an ottoman. The newspaper that was in her hand has fallen to the floor. mr. ji slowly pushes open the door on the left and enters to see his mother asleep in the easy chair. He walks lightly over to the coatrack and grabs a light coat. He then goes over to the easy chair and gently lays the coat down over his mother. madame ji awakens.) mr. ji (smiling): Did you fall asleep? madame ji: I only wanted to close my eyes and rest for a moment, but I inadvertently fell fast asleep. (She sits up.) mr. ji: The elderly have eyes just like children’s—the moment you let them close, you lose all control over them. (He picks up the newspaper and sits down on the small chair.) madame ji: What time is it? mr. ji (takes out a watch from his breast pocket and gives it a glance): It’s a quarter after three. madame ji: And where have you been until now? mr. ji: I was in the study—I wrote two letters. madame ji: Oh, good. Can you write a letter for me? mr. ji: Sure, I’ll do it right now. (He sits down at the writing desk, takes some letter-writing paper and an envelope from the drawer, pours water onto the inkstone, rubs the ink slab to produce ink, and chooses a writing brush.) (Preparing to write) What do you want me to write? madame ji: Write whatever—just a few sentences informing them of my travel dates. Tell them to hire a boat and meet me at the harbor. mr. ji: I’ll write while you dictate. Are you sure you will go next Tuesday? madame ji: The days are slipping by so fast. I won’t delay my departure any longer. mr. ji (reading and thinking out loud as he writes): “. . . Mother will begin her journey back to the South on the nineteenth.” (Puts down the writing brush and counts out the days on his fingers) Nineteenth, twentieth, twenty-first. (Continues writing) “She’ll arrive at the harbor on the twenty-first. Tell Zhang Hong and Auntie Jiang to hire a boat and meet her there.” (Asking his mother) Is that right? madame ji: Yes, and tell them to hire Li Laosi’s boat if they can. It’s clean. If the Li family boat is already hired out, then Deng Xiangfa’s boat will do, too. mr. ji (writing): “Hire Li Laosi’s boat if you can.” (Writing and reading in a low voice) “. . . Deng Xiangfa’s boat will do, too.” (Asking his mother) Anything else? madame ji (lost in her own thoughts): The sun’s been scorching hot these past few days. We’d better have them take the furs from the north-facing room and air them out in the sun.

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mr. ji: Okay, is there anything else? madame ji: No, nothing else. (Talking to herself ) Auntie Wang went home. She said she’d be back after the holidays. I wonder if she’s come back to work yet? (mr. ji continues writing silently.) And Miss Yu—we really ought to send her a thank-you gift of some sort. mr. ji (finishes writing the letter, then responds to his mother’s question as he addresses the envelope): Didn’t you say you were going to give her some dress material? (Finishes addressing the envelope) All right, the letter’s finished. madame ji (her deep thoughts interrupted by mr. ji): Oh, are you finished? mr. ji (walks over and presents the letter to madame ji): Do you want to read it over? madame ji: You read it back to me. mr. ji (reading the letter): “Dear younger sister: ‘The days are slipping by so fast. I won’t delay my departure any longer.’ Mother says . . .” madame ji: What kind of writing is that? mr. ji: It’s letter-writing style. (Continues to read the letter out loud sentence by sentence) “Mother has decided to depart on the nineteenth. She’ll arrive at the harbor on the twenty-first. Tell Zhang Hong and Auntie Jiang to hire a boat and meet her there. Tell them to hire Li Laosi’s boat if they can. It’s clean. If the Li family boat is already hired out, then Deng Xiangfa’s boat will do, too. The sun’s been scorching hot these past few days. We’d better have them take the furs from the north-facing room and air them out in the sun. Auntie Wang went home saying she’d be back after the holidays. Has she come back to work yet?” No mistakes, right? madame ji (laughing): Is that how young people write letters these days? mr. ji: It’s what’s fashionable—the vernacular writing style, plain and direct. We write the way we speak. Are you sure you don’t have anything else to add? madame ji: No. mr. ji: The rest of the letter is my own business. (Continues reading out loud) “Everything about Mother’s visit to Beijing has been fine. Only two things have left her somewhat dissatisfied . . .” madame ji: What has left me dissatisfied? mr. ji (does not answer her and continues reading from the letter): “First of all, one of the main goals of this trip was to persuade her son, yours truly, to hurry up and find his mother a daughter-in-law, so that she might all the sooner hold in her arms a grandson with a fat little head, big ears, and fair skin. But, alas! Mother’s two-month campaign in the capital has been entirely fruitless—not even the shadow of a daughterin-law is in sight, and no news of any grandson, either. Second of all, mother’s heart was set on making relatives of relations by marrying you, my dear little sister, off to her own nephew and would-be son-in-law. She did not, however, anticipate that her unworthy daughter would prove so obstinately opposed and refuse to abide by her mother’s wishes. As a result of the above-mentioned, Mother has said very little these past few days and seems quite moody. As for Mother’s nephew, he has been asking friends and family far and wide to employ every available channel and search high and low for his ideal match. As the saying goes, ‘Sincerity can move the gods, and

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diligence can move mountains.’ How hard can it be to find a wife to one’s liking in a capital city teeming with beautiful ladies and talented young men! Thus we expect that, within a few months, our cousin will indeed secure a marriage match. Perhaps that future glass of our cousin’s wedding wine will provide some small consolation to his almost-but-not- quite mother-in-law. May those in love and those out of love all live together in the world as one big happy family.” Did I say something wrong? Come now, don’t be mad at me. madame ji (looking slightly peeved): Do you think I have the spare time and energy to get mad at you? I told you both a long time ago that you can make your own decisions about your personal affairs. I won’t get involved at all. You two can say whatever you like. (mr. ji seals the letter in the envelope and affixes a stamp. Then he walks over to the easy chair, rests one hand on the back of the chair, and fixes his mother’s hair with the other hand.) mr. ji: Mom, you are a very special woman, extraordinary in everything that you’ve done—an exceptionally virtuous wife and an extremely loving mother. Still, you have never managed to escape the universal law of mothers’ worrying about their unmarried children. madame ji: Hang this coat back up. (mr. ji hangs the coat back in its original place.) (Recalling her past life) “Virtuous wife and loving mother”—I’m hardly worthy of such a label. (mr. ji sits back down in his original seat.) You were only eight years old when your father died. Your little sister, Yun’er, was only five. I had no confidence in the teaching methods of your private tutor at the time; I couldn’t bear to subject you to such cruel constraints. So I made the decision to educate you myself, and I did that until you were sixteen years old. Back then all we had to live off was our share of the family estate—just fifty mu1 of marginal land. Today, neither of you has to worry about food or clothing. I’m not exaggerating when I say that, if it hadn’t been for the thousands per year spent on your tuition fees and living expenses, our family fortune would be at least ten times greater. mr. ji: That’s why I say you’re a very special woman. madame ji: What’s so remarkable about striving to be a “virtuous wife and loving mother”? Young women today do no differently, only they disparage the label all day long. mr. ji: You must forgive them. For thousands of years they’ve been silenced by society, and now that they can express themselves freely, all they want to do is speak, speak, speak! They aren’t even sure themselves what they are trying to say. madame ji: Today’s young women are just not up to scratch. They don’t understand how to behave in society or how to manage a household. I just don’t see what good qualities they could possibly have. mr. ji: They are like the new vernacular poetry—substandard in style and lacking in charm. Others find them totally baffling, and that’s their best quality.

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madame ji: You disapprove of some women for this reason and others for that reason. You say old-fashioned women are like stilted classical essays, yet you compare modern women to substandard vernacular poetry . . . mr. ji: Yes, I find them equally pointless and uninteresting. madame ji: Tell me then, what kind of woman would you be willing to marry? mr. ji (shrugs his shoulders): The problem is, I don’t even know myself what I’m looking for. If finding a wife were as simple as solving for x in an algebraic equation, then things would be easy to resolve. madame ji: How is it possible that you and your cousin could have ended up so different? He is so anxious to get married that he’s asking everyone he knows to help him find a wife; he can hardly wait another day. But you don’t take marriage seriously at all! mr. ji: Not take it seriously? It’s precisely because I take it so seriously that I haven’t yet gotten married. If I treated the matter as lightly as choosing a new pair of eyeglasses, then your grandson would already be in middle school by now. madame ji (feeling frustrated by mr. ji): Pour me a cup of tea. (mr. ji pours a cup of tea for madame ji and then pours one for himself as well. They drink slowly.) madame ji (lost in thought for a long while): Did you know that your cousin asked me several times to be his matchmaker? mr. ji: Yes, of course I know. madame ji: Do you know whom he wants me to approach? mr. ji: Miss Yu, right? Have you mentioned it to her yet? madame ji (answering slowly): Not yet. mr. ji: Why haven’t you asked her? madame ji: Why haven’t I asked her? (Pauses briefly) I thought I would ask her today. (Watching mr. ji as she speaks) Do you think that would be appropriate? mr. ji: Quite appropriate. Miss Yu is a nurse and Cousin is a doctor; they’d make an ideal couple, exhibiting “the principle of mutual aid and the spirit of cooperation.” There’d be no shortage of good material for the toasts at the wedding banquet. (madame ji lets out a faint sigh. The servant pushes open the left door and enters.) servant: Madam, Miss Yu has arrived. madame ji: Ask her to please come in. (The servant exits. mr. ji puts down his cup of tea and scurries over to the writing desk. He straightens the writing brush and inkstone and folds up the newspaper. The servant pushes open the left door and allows miss yu to enter. The servant then proceeds to take away the tea ser vice. miss yu is wearing a hat and gloves and carrying a purse in one hand. After entering the room, she greets her hosts while taking off her gloves, putting her purse down on the small table near the door, and removing her hat.) miss yu: Hello, Madame Ji, Mr. Ji. madame ji and mr. ji: Hello, Miss Yu. (mr. ji takes her hat and hangs it on the coatrack.)

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miss yu: Madame Ji, I’m so sorry for keeping you both waiting. madame ji: Not at all. Please have a seat. (She offers her easy chair to miss yu.) miss yu: Oh no, Madame Ji, you stay there. No need to stand on ceremony. This seat right here is fine. (miss yu gets madame ji to sit back down in the easy chair. She herself takes the small chair, while mr. ji sits down on the divan.) miss yu: I wanted to leave the hospital and come over at two thirty, but a patient suddenly arrived and I had to clear out a room for him. That kept me busy for a while. I decided to call and say that I wouldn’t be able to make it; but then I thought to myself, Madame Ji is leaving for the South soon, so no matter how busy I am, I really must come spend some time with her. madame ji: Thank you so much. We know how busy you are over at the hospital, so that’s why we haven’t invited you to visit with us more often. Now, since I’ll be going back to the South soon, we wanted to invite you over and thank you in person for all your hard work. First you took personal care of my son during his two-week hospitalization, and then you took care of me during my subsequent stay. We really owe you a great debt of gratitude. miss yu: You’re far too kind, Madame Ji. I was just doing my job. Have you been drinking and eating better these past few days, ma’am? madame ji: My appetite is weak but it’s always been that way. When I arrived in Beijing, I was somewhat fatigued from the trip, so I felt a little under the weather. I wasn’t really sick. It was my son who insisted that I go to the hospital. He went on and on about how comfortable and clean it was there. Still, I didn’t want to go. Later on he said that I looked listless and must not have been sleeping well. He absolutely insisted that I go to a quiet place for a few days of rest and recuperation. He finally convinced me to check into the hospital. Even when I checked out, he kept saying I should extend my stay for a few more days. mr. ji: My mother doesn’t trust hospitals or nurses. madame ji: I have never said that I don’t trust nurses. It’s just that I’ve often heard that the quality of care at hospitals leaves something to be desired. mr. ji: Well, never mind that. These days, not only do you trust nurses, but you seem to be quite fond of them. miss yu: We realize that a lot of people on the outside say bad things about us. Now I don’t mean to make excuses, but sometimes it’s actually the troublesome patients— especially certain lady folk—and not negligent nurses who are truly to blame. I often joke with the other nurses that these ladies are so inept, they don’t even know how to get sick properly. mr. ji: To get sick well has never been an easy matter. miss yu: First of all, they refuse to follow their doctor’s orders. They want this, they want that. They press the call button dozens of times a day. If we tell them to fast, they sneak out and buy some fruit, or they have a family member sneak in some chicken

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soup. They try to treat the hospital staff like common house servants. Do you think we have time for that? On average, we each have ten patients to care for. But it’s useless to point that out, because these ladies refuse to be reasonable. mr. ji: Nursing is, of course, such a strenuous profession, because, after drunkards, the most unreasonable people in the world are the sick. miss yu: Yes, they can be quite ridiculous. I’ve come across some strange ones, for example the patient who, at the point of full recovery, still wanted me to stick around and make conversation. (She casts a glance at mr. ji.) mr. ji: That truly seems like the most annoying situation imaginable. Now if the patient were a man, then it might be okay, but if she were a woman, then I’m afraid there would simply be no way to cope. madame ji: Still, I just don’t believe that the other staff at the hospital can all be exactly like you. Even if they are as capable, they certainly couldn’t be as kind or as considerate. (The servant enters from the left door carrying a platter with a teapot, teacups, a plate of candies, and so on. madame ji gets up to pour tea.) miss yu: Please sit down, Madame Ji. Allow me. (She pours a cup of tea for madame ji.) madame ji: Why thank you, Miss Yu. (mr. ji pours a cup of tea for miss yu.) miss yu (receiving the cup of tea from mr. ji.): Thank you. (She tries to pour a cup of tea for mr. ji.) mr. ji: No thank you, Miss Yu. I don’t drink tea. miss yu (as she drinks her tea): Why don’t you stay in Beijing for a few more days, Madame Ji? You have your daughter to take care of things at home, so what have you got to worry about? madame ji: Yes, my daughter can handle anything, but I’ve already been away from home for so long this time. It was because of my son’s illness that I came here to see him in the first place. miss yu: I imagine Miss Ji must be quite capable. madame ji: I don’t know what you mean by “capable.” Nonetheless, I’ve always made sure that my daughter understands everything that a girl needs to know in life. miss yu: But it can’t be easy for her to be as capable as you, Madame Ji. mr. ji: Being the child of “capable” parents is a matter of bitter hardship. In the heat of summer, when we came home for vacation, we were allowed only two weeks off. After that, I was out in the fields planting the crops and my sister was off in the kitchen cooking the meals. madame ji (smiling): Yes, I’m stubbornly old-fashioned, but now that I’m older, I’m not afraid of being laughed at. The way I see it, a person can never know too much; there’s no harm in acquiring additional skills. Just because a woman knows how to cook a good meal, it doesn’t mean that she shouldn’t be able to write a good essay.

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mr. ji: I agree. The difficulty these days, however, is not that women who know how to cook cannot write good essays, but that those who can write good essays don’t know how to cook. miss yu: Will your daughter be coming to Beijing? I’d really like to meet her. I imagine that she’s just as kind and amiable as you are, Madame Ji. madame ji: Aside from that, she doesn’t have many good qualities, though she is very forthright. Then again, I’m not fond of these newfangled habits of hers. miss yu (cheerfully): I think she and I would make great friends. When she comes to Beijing, be sure to have her write to me. madame ji (to mr. ji): Do you have a picture of your sister to show Miss Yu? mr. ji: I do have one, but I don’t know where it is. miss yu (remembering something): Oh yes, Mr. Ji mentioned in his letter that you wanted my photograph, ma’am, so I brought one for you today. (She walks to the small table.) madame ji (not understanding): I never said I wanted your photograph. (To mr. ji) When did I say that . . . ? mr. ji: What do you mean you didn’t? You really are getting older. It’s been only a few days and you’ve completely forgotten what you said. miss yu (pretending not to hear him, she takes a small photograph of herself from her purse): This photo isn’t very good. It doesn’t really look like me at all. I’ll give you another when I have a good one taken. (She gives the photograph to madame ji.) madame ji (examining the photograph): You’re already good-looking in person, but this photograph makes you look even better. mr. ji (snatching the photograph from madame ji and teasing her): Normally, you’re so fastidious about saying the right thing. How is it that you’ve spoken so tactlessly today? You should have said, “Although this photograph is very attractive, it does not match the beauty of its subject.” (He casts a glance at miss yu.) madame ji: I was just being honest. mr. ji: Why don’t you two sit for a while before going out? (To madame ji) I’ll give you a pretty picture frame for this. (Taking the photo, he exits through the left door. madame ji and miss yu sit in silence for a moment. madame ji watches miss yu carefully. Not knowing what to say, miss yu takes a piece of candy and begins eating it.) madame ji: Miss Yu, I have something that I’ve been meaning to discuss with you for quite some time now. (She moves her chair closer. miss yu quickly swallows the candy, adjusts her skirt, sits up straight, and listens attentively.) I suppose you must think that I’m someone who loves comforts, but I’ll have you know that in my youth I experienced a lot of hardships. My son lost his father at a very young age, so I had to manage the entire household on my own. I even took charge of the children’s education and taught them myself. I’ve struggled for twenty-

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odd years to raise my children to this point. Now nothing about them worries me except for one thing: I do not have peace of mind because neither of them is married. (miss yu shudders slightly.) I’ve mentioned my concerns to Mr. Ji several times during this visit, but he doesn’t take them seriously. I have no idea what he’s really thinking. Nowadays, parents are not supposed to get involved in the marriages of their children, so there’s nothing I can do but let them make their own arrangements. (Sighs and pauses briefly) I do have a nephew, though . . . (miss yu shifts her body position and resumes breathing naturally.) You probably remember meeting him when he came to visit me at the hospital. Even though he’s only seen you a few times, he has often heard me speak highly of you, so he respects you very much. He’s asked me several times if I would act as a matchmaker, but I haven’t raised the matter with you until now. Since I’ve stayed out of my own son’s marriage arrangements, why would I get involved with someone else’s? But my nephew says that he couldn’t approach you directly, because he has no idea if you’re at all interested in him. Furthermore, even if he wanted to ask you directly, when would he ever have the chance to do that? He’s a very decent fellow, my nephew. He’s studying Chinese medicine and preparing to open up his own clinic. He has a good disposition and no vices at all. Oh, I know that I’m being a terrible old busybody to bring this up. These days, young people despise matchmaking. If that’s how you feel, please don’t be angry with me. miss yu (as if waking from a dream): I’m very grateful to you for thinking of me, ma’am. How could I be offended by your good intentions? madame ji: My nephew has asked me to get a written reply from you before I go back home to the South. But I think this is something that you shouldn’t decide on the spur of the moment, so if you want to think it over carefully, please take your time. You can write to me later and tell me what you’ve decided. I’m sure that will be fine. (Pauses briefly) So what do you think about this? You can speak openly with me. I want you to know that I think of you as practically my own daughter. miss yu (thinks for a moment and makes up her mind): I think that we young people who haven’t had any experience in life should depend on older, more experienced people to guide us in the right direction. What’s your opinion, Madame Ji? madame ji: Well, since this is a personal matter of yours, you really should decide for yourself. miss yu: If you think this is a good idea, ma’am, then naturally, it couldn’t be wrong. madame ji: Then I’ll tell him that you’re interested? miss yu: On the other hand, I should write home and ask for my parents’ opinion first. madame ji: You’re right. Of course you should do that. You write to your parents first. We can discuss this again when you’ve heard back from them. miss yu: Actually, it might not be sufficiently proper for only me to write to my parents about this.

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madame ji: What would be improper about that? miss yu: May I suggest that you ask Mr. Ji to write a detailed letter on your behalf telling my parents about this proposal? I’ll write a separate letter to them, and then we can mail both letters together. madame ji: You’re right. That’s exactly what we should do. When Mr. Ji gets back, I’ll speak to him about this and have him write a proposal letter from me. When it’s ready, I’ll have someone deliver it to you. Will that be okay? miss yu: That’s a fine idea, ma’am. madame ji: Shall we sit here for a while longer, or would you like to go to the park? miss yu: What would you like to do, Madame Ji? madame ji: Why don’t we go out? I’ll have the servant fetch Mr. Ji. (She walks over and presses the call bell.) miss yu: May I use your telephone? I need to make a call. madame ji: Go ahead. It’s over there in the courtyard. You know where it is. (miss yu leaves through the right door. The servant enters from the left door.) madame ji: Please call Mr. Ji and tell him that we are about to go to the park. (The servant exits through the left door. madame ji returns to her original chair, lost in thought. mr. ji enters through the left door, holding the photograph of miss yu, now properly framed. After entering, he places the photograph on the bookshelf, looks at it for a moment, and adjusts its position.) mr. ji: Where did Miss Yu go? madame ji (lost in deep thought): She’s making a telephone call. mr. ji (sits down on the small chair, picks up a milk candy, slowly unwraps it, and asks casually): So how’s your matchmaking going? Have you asked her yet? madame ji: Yes, I did. mr. ji : And how did she respond? (He is about to put the candy into his mouth.) madame ji: She’s very interested. mr. ji (pulls the candy back out from his mouth): She’s what? She said she’s interested? What exactly did she say? madame ji: She didn’t say anything exactly. mr. ji: If she didn’t say anything exactly, then how do you know that she’s interested? madame ji: There are some things that don’t need to be said explicitly. mr. ji: Oh sure, this sort of thing doesn’t need to be expressed explicitly, right? It’s just like the weather—you can tell what’s going on just by looking! (madame ji glares at him sternly.) mr. ji: So it’s all settled? madame ji: She still has to write a letter home to ask her parents, so we’ll have to wait for . . . mr. ji: To ask her parents? (Suddenly realizing) Oh! (He pops the candy into his mouth.) madame ji: What are you smiling about? You’re laughing at her for respecting her parents so much, is that it? I was quite pleased by that.

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mr. ji: Oh, not at all. I am also quite pleased by that. (Pops another candy into his mouth) Did she say when she’d be writing home? madame ji: She wants you to write a proposal letter for her. mr. ji: She wants me to write her a proposal letter? That’s so bizarre. I’m not her brother or her uncle, so why would she ask me to write such a letter for her? This is totally bizarre! It’s beyond bizarre! madame ji: You find this strange? I don’t find it strange at all. mr. ji: Why not? madame ji: Because . . . because you haven’t figured her out yet. She’s a young lady from a prominent family. She knows what should or shouldn’t be said. She’s shy. mr. ji: Oh, oh! Young lady! Shy! (He pops yet another candy into his mouth.) madame ji: You never liked candies before, but today you’ve been devouring them. What’s going on? mr. ji: Today’s candy tastes especially sweet! (Happily jumps up from his seat) Are you two going to the park now? madame ji: Right after Miss Yu finishes her phone call. mr. ji (thinking): Shouldn’t you change into another outfit? madame ji: We’re only going to the park to sit for a while. Why should I change my outfit? mr. ji: It’s quite cool out today. Even if you don’t change outfits, you should at least put on another layer. I’ll go get you something else to wear, okay? madame ji: I’ll get it myself. You won’t know where to look. (mr. ji opens the door on the right to let madame ji out and then closes the door behind her. He walks over to the bookshelf, picks up the photograph, and examines it closely. He puts it back on the shelf and then walks around the room twice. miss yu enters from the right door.) mr. ji: Did your call go through? miss yu: Yes, it was fine. (Noticing madame ji’s absence from the room, the two exchange looks.) mr. ji (pushing the divan slightly forward): My mother has gone to change her outfit. She asked you to wait for her here. Please have a seat. (Relying on a woman’s intuition, miss yu recognizes that interesting negotiations will ensue. She prepares her defenses by stroking her hair, adjusting her skirt, and choosing to sit at the far end of the divan. mr. ji sits down on the small chair.) miss yu: Your mother is truly someone worthy of admiration. She may be older, but she still has a better sense of fashion than most young women. mr. ji: A person can be careless with just about anything except fashion. miss yu: Why is that? mr. ji: Because people are social animals. When people are born into this world, it is society that provides them with material pleasures and spiritual happiness. Therefore people should do their best to repay that debt to society. miss yu: But what does that have to do with how a person dresses?

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mr. ji: It has everything to do with it! There are many different ways to repay one’s debt to society. Those with professional training do it by practicing their professions. Those with technical skills do it by applying themselves in their occupations. Doctors repay society by curing people, lawyers by suing people, and soldiers by killing people. But then there’s another type of person—people like us who don’t have any professional training or technical skills. The least we can do is dress attractively, so that we don’t end up depressing people when we go out in public. miss yu (laughing): Oh, I get it now. The more useless someone is, the more important it is for that person to dress attractively. Is that right? mr. ji: Correct. But useful people shouldn’t dress badly either. Throughout society, there’s not a single occupation that allows its members the patent right to neglect their attire. From cradle to grave, there’s not a single period of time when we allow anybody the privilege of not having to groom himself. Can you imagine any woman ignoring the style of her hair because she’s already married, or paying no attention to the length of her sleeves because she’s already given birth to a son? Or what about a man who neglects to wash his face because he can dash off a few poems, or one who doesn’t bother to shave his chin or pull up his socks, just because he can slap together a few paintings? These would all be crimes against society! miss yu: According to your analysis, I’m afraid we’d all be considered criminals. mr. ji: You? Oh! (He wants to say something but falters.) miss yu: What about me? mr. ji: You! Two months ago, when you falsely diagnosed me with a fever, didn’t I tell you already? miss yu: I falsely diagnosed you with a fever? mr. ji: Of course you did. A temperature of thirty-nine degrees2 and a pulse over a hundred beats a minute—you made it all up. Yes, it was a total fabrication. But I’m very grateful to you. If it weren’t for your fibs, how would I have stayed in the hospital for a full two weeks? Oh, what a fortnight! Those were the happiest two weeks of my entire life! (Sighs) There’s no way we could ever re- create that experience again. miss yu (recalling those circumstances): Yes, and our constant conversations! I’ve never had a patient who liked to talk as much as you did. mr. ji: Yes, and everything I said then was completely sincere, ordinary, and proper. Why can’t we talk like that under normal circumstances? Why is it only possible when a man shows up at the hospital pretending to be sick? In that case, you would certainly diagnose me with a fever to continue our conversation. But if I told you right now how alluring your eyes are and how adorable your lips look, you would pretend not to have heard me. You’d feel my forehead, fluff up my pillow, and declare, “Get some rest now. You talk too much!” Society is so unnatural! What’s so unspeakable about the things I just said? Why can’t I say them here and now? miss yu: Because—because you don’t have a fever! mr. ji: How do you know I don’t have a fever? I have a year-round fever. I never miss a day. If you don’t believe me, examine me right now.

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(mr. ji extends his hand and lays it down on the edge of the divan. miss yu moves across the divan toward him, first adjusting her skirt and then taking his pulse with her right hand while watching the wristwatch on her left hand. For several seconds no one speaks.) mr. ji: I said a lot of things when I was sick, didn’t I? (miss yu nods.) What kinds of things did I say? miss yu (retracting her hand): You said that China is a pitiable country and that Chinese men should be especially pitied. The only place they can meet women is at the gambling house, and the only way to gain a woman’s sympathy is to be sick. That’s why they go gambling once a week and fake an illness once a month. mr. ji: That’s right! Doesn’t that sound like something a sick person would say? . . . Well, do I have a fever or not? miss yu (hesitating): Your pulse is seventy-seven. mr. ji: It’s obvious that you’re lying. miss yu: Why do you say that? mr. ji: Because you weren’t even counting! miss yu: Oh, so you think that anyone can just tell lies at will? mr. ji: Perhaps not naturally. But we live in such an unnatural society. People always ask questions that ought not to be asked. Yet we can’t seem to say the things that are most worth saying. So the only way to cover up scandals is to tell lies. miss yu: We know from early childhood on that lying is immoral. mr. ji: There is no absolute standard for morality. It changes with the times and varies with the individual. What is ordinarily called “morality” is either the superstitious beliefs of the majority about a minority, or the prejudices of one group of people against another. miss yu: Then, according to you, there is no standard of good and evil in the world? mr. ji: In this world, only filthy habits are bad and ugly acts are evil. miss yu: So what you’re saying is that all lies are permissible, as long as they are pleasing to the ear? Stealing and gambling are fine, as long as you do it beautifully? mr. ji: That’s entirely correct. However, few people in the world have a well- developed sense of aesthetics. Most people are not all that refined when stealing or gambling. As for lying, there are plenty of good liars, but the one that I admire most is you. miss yu: I have never told lies. What proof do you have that I’m a liar? mr. ji: That’s right! I can’t find any proof of your fabrications, and that’s exactly why I admire you so much. But a person who lies too much will eventually end up cornered and exposed. miss yu: I have never liked telling lies. mr. ji: Okay, fine. All this empty talk is pointless. Let me ask you one thing. miss yu: What is it? mr. ji: Is my mother trying to set you up with someone? miss yu (ner vously): You shouldn’t ask me about that. mr. ji: Why shouldn’t I?

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miss yu: Because it’s inappropriate. Not even my own father or brothers would ask me about that, much less a friend! mr. ji: Oh, the “New Culture”! Don’t you get it? In the past, a person’s parents dictated one’s marriage. Nowadays, since there’s no need for parents to arrange a child’s marriage, there’s also no need for them to ask about it. (In mr. ji’s view, if one does not want any help in finding a marriage match, that’s just fine. If one does want help, then one’s parents ought to play the most important role. The reasons young people today might not want their parents involved are: first, that the parents will be dictatorial, and second, that they might not be able to help. This level of his thinking is not readily apparent to others, so it is mentioned here in passing.) Today’s marriages, however, are dictated by one’s friends. If you want to get married, you’re entirely dependent on the help of your friends. So when you argue that your friends shouldn’t take an interest in your marriage prospects, you’re totally wrong. miss yu: I’m going to see how your mother is doing. (She stands up to leave.) mr. ji (stands up and blocks her way): Don’t go. Stay here. There’s something else, something important that I have to discuss with you. Please sit down. (Both sit down simultaneously.) When I was out of the room, my mother said a lot of things to you, didn’t she? miss yu: Yes. mr. ji: Did she tell you that I wasn’t interested in getting married? miss yu: She said quite a bit about that. mr. ji: You know, I really don’t want to get married. miss yu: Why don’t you want to get married? mr. ji: Because the most precious thing in life is one’s sense of aesthetics. When a person gets married, his sense of aesthetics becomes blunted. miss yu: In that case, it’s better not to get married. mr. ji: Yes! Would you do that with me? miss yu: Do what with you? mr. ji: Not get married with me. (Walks in front of miss yu and extends both hands) Join me in rejecting marriage! miss yu (moved by the sincerity and love in his eyes): Yes. (She takes his hands in hers.) mr. ji: Give me some proof of our commitment. miss yu: What kind of proof do you want? mr. ji: Let me embrace you! (He lets go of her hands and tries to embrace her.) miss yu (moving away): Wait until the next time you get sick. mr. ji: But my mother tells me that you’ve already agreed to become the wife of her nephew. What are we going to do about that? miss yu (pleased with herself ): That won’t be a problem. My parents don’t want me to marry a doctor! mr. ji: Oh, I understand. We’re quite the pair—a pair of natural-born liars!

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(He catches her off guard and embraces her with both arms.) miss yu (yelling loudly): Ow! (madame ji enters from the right and the servant from the left, both alarmed by the noise. mr. ji has already let go of miss yu.) madame ji: What is it? What’s the matter? (miss yu is covering her face with one hand. She is blushing and doesn’t know how to respond.) mr. ji (walks in front of miss yu, moves her hand away, and examines her face): Where is it? Did it sting you? madame ji: What is it? What’s happened? miss yu (taking a deep breath): Oh, it was just a wasp. (She thanks mr. ji with her eyes.) (Curtain.)

not es

1. 2.

Ding Xilin’s Yizhi mafeng was first published in Taiping yang 4, no. 3 (October 1923). This translation is based on the text in Ding Xilin ju zuo quan ji (Complete Collection of Ding Xilin’s Plays) (Beijing: Zhongguo xiju, 1985), 1:1–21. This translation is informed by our productions of A Wasp at Harvard University in 1998 and Bard College at Simon’s Rock in 2002. Special thanks to the many participants involved in those productions. Fifty mu is 3.335 hectares, or 8.24 acres. Thirty-nine degrees Celsius is one hundred three degrees Fahrenheit.

In memory of Liu Shuhe

Oppression (1925) ding xilin t ra nsla ted by john b. we i ns t e i n and c ar s e y y e e

Shuhe: This short play is dedicated to you. Although I cannot say for sure if the affable disposition of the protagonist was suggested by your good nature, the plot of this play is indeed based on something that happened to you. As you no doubt recall, last winter you were planning to move out and find an apartment of your own. One evening, we were all sitting by the heating stove, huddled together to keep warm. When your moving plans came up, we joked that if you didn’t get married, you would definitely not be able to find a place, because, in order to rent in Beijing, one must satisfy two conditions: first, you need a guarantor, and second, you must have a family. At the time, I found this topic amusing and said that I would write a short play about it for you. It’s been more than a year since that night. I don’t know how many times I’ve thought about writing this play during the past year, but I just wasn’t able to complete it. And now that I’ve finally managed to crank out this manuscript, you’ve already gone and died! In the past, I’ve always had you look over my experimental writings before getting them published. It is so sad that this piece, which was written especially for you, will never benefit from your criticism. This short play is a mere flight of fancy. It concerns no “issue of the day” or “moral lesson” to be learned. Yet, because of your untimely death, this play has taken on a special significance. Do you know how you died? Your illness was diagnosed as seasonal febrile disease. But I say you were bitten to death by flies. Strictly speaking, flies don’t bite people, but when you were in the hospital and your friends came to visit, there were flies everywhere—on your bed, on your body, on your milk cup; we killed so many of them for you. Under those circumstances, with no one to take care of you, would it be too

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much to say that you were bitten to death by flies? This made me think back to when you were actually looking for an apartment. If only you had been as lucky as the protagonist and met someone as full of compassion as the woman in this play, then the two of you might have “united together” and resisted not only the “oppression of the propertied classes” but all the oppressions and humiliations in society. If that had been the case, I believe that you definitely would not have died. You always had a great sense of humor,1 so I’m sure you won’t fault me for writing a comedy to commemorate a dear departed friend. I am not a pessimist by nature, but, now that I’ve finished writing this play, my thoughts turn to you, and all that I feel is boundless sadness and grief.

Xilin December 12, 1925

C ha r a c t e rs male tenant (man) ㅖ⶝㑉 female tenant (woman) ㇲ⶝㑉 landlady (madam) ➟⛍㜡㜡 el der ly maid (mrs. wang) ⹝⿲ police officer 㫞ⳁ

Setting (An old Chinese-style house. In the rear there is a door that opens onto a courtyard; doors on the left and right walls lead to the side rooms. In the center of the room to the right there is a square table surrounded by four small chairs. The table is covered by a white tablecloth, on top of which lie a kerosene lamp and a tea ser vice. On the left side of the room there is a side table with two chairs leaning against the wall. A raincoat hangs over one of the chairs and next to it sits a suitcase. At the back of the room, against the wall to the left, there is a washstand with a mirror on a small table, on top of which also sit a clock and a flower vase. The room has other furnishings and the walls are decorated with calligraphy and paintings, but everything is simple and economical. When the curtain rises, a man wearing high leather boots and a Western-style suit of heavy woolen cloth is seated on a chair by the side table smoking a tobacco pipe. An elderly maid is standing outside the doorway, extending her hand beyond the eaves to see if it is raining or not.) maid (walks into the room): It’s finally stopped raining. I wonder why Madam isn’t back yet? (She picks up the teapot from the square table, walks over to the side table, and pours some tea for the man.) man (impatiently stands up): Hey, how about getting me something to eat first? maid: There’s plenty of food here, but you’ll have to wait until Madam returns.

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man: I can’t even get a bite to eat until Madam returns? maid (sighs): That’s right. I can’t feed you until she gets back. And the matter of the room rental must also wait. man: Fine then, we’ll wait until she’s back. In any case, the matter remains the same whether she comes back or not. (He sits down again.) maid (shaking her head): From the look of things, it doesn’t seem like Madam will agree to rent these rooms to you. man: She’s not going to rent these rooms to me? Then why did she accept my deposit? maid: Yes, for that we have only the young mistress to blame. Really, though, Madam’s disposition is far too eccentric. I mean renting to someone like you, sir, should be no cause for concern. In the middle of the night, having a man in the house would provide some security. man: Has anyone rented these rooms in the past? maid: They’ve been vacant for more than a year now. man: These rooms aren’t bad. How is it that nobody wants to rent them? maid: What do you mean “nobody wants to rent them”? Every prospective tenant who looks at these rooms wants to rent them. The rooms are clean and well lit, not to mention that flower garden out front. man: Well then, why has this place been vacant for more than a year? maid: Sir, since you’re no longer a stranger here, it won’t do any harm to tell you. You see, Madam just loves playing mahjong, so she goes out all day long leaving only myself and the young mistress at home. When prospective tenants come to see the rooms, it’s always the young mistress who takes care of them. If he’s a family man, the moment he mentions his wife or kids, the young mistress rejects him right away, since she will only agree to rent to a bachelor. But when Madam comes home and discovers that the prospective tenant is single, she sends him away immediately. At this rate, I think these rooms will remain unrentable for the next decade, never mind the past year. man: What? You mean this kind of thing has happened before? maid: Yes, I don’t know how many times. Every time this happens, the young mistress has a big argument with Madam. Normally, the young mistress wouldn’t dare, but this time she has taken matters into her own hands and accepted your deposit, thus producing the present situation. man: If she had taken the initiative sooner, this place would have been rented out long ago. maid: Yes, but usually when prospective tenants are told by the landlady that the place can’t be rented to them, they don’t have much to say about it. They’re not like you, sir, you’re so . . . man: Eccentric? Is that the word you’re looking for? That’s right. Your mistress has an eccentric disposition, but so do I. This time, with two eccentrics bumping into each other, the matter won’t be so easy to handle. You see, I really think this place is pretty good, especially that little flower garden out front.

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maid: Just looking at you, sir, I can tell that you must like peace and quiet. From morning to night, this place is never noisy, and it’s not far from where you’ll be working. So . . . I’ve been thinking of something on your behalf . . . man: What have you been thinking? maid: Just tell her that you have a family, and that they’ll be joining you in a few days. That way, Madam will certainly agree to rent to you. man: Fine, but what happens after a few days when my family hasn’t joined me? maid: After you’ve lived here for a while and Madam knows that you’re a totally decent person, she won’t mind anymore. man: No way. That won’t do. It’s not a crime to be single. How is that a reason to reject me as a renter? maid: I see. I just felt that, since you like this place so much, you would certainly be upset if you couldn’t rent it, so that’s why I came up with this foolish thought. I’m just not very sensible––oh, that’s probably Madam coming home now. (Walks to the doorway, calls in a loud voice) Madam, is that you? (A voice replies from outside.) maid: Yes, we’re in here. (She exits. The man also stands up. After a moment, the landlady enters from the rear door with the maid following closely behind.) landlady: My apologies for keeping you waiting. man: Not at all, I’m sorry to have troubled you. I asked your maid not to go disturbing you, but she didn’t listen to me. landlady: That’s quite all right. (Takes a check from her pocketbook) Here’s the rent deposit that you left with us. Please take it back. man: I’m sorry, ma’am, but I’ve come over here today to move in, not to get my deposit back. landlady: What? Didn’t I make myself clear yesterday? I told you that I can’t rent this place to you. man: Yes, you made yourself quite clear. landlady: In that case, why did you still have your belongings sent over here today? What is the meaning of this? man (cheerfully): You definitely told me not to move in, but those were your words, not mine. I never agreed not to move in, now did I? landlady (increasingly displeased): I don’t understand what you’re saying at all. Are you suggesting that you are the one who gets to decide who can rent this place? man: No, of course not. As the landlady, naturally it’s up to you to decide who can rent this place. But since you’ve already rented it to me, it’s now up to me to decide whether to move in or withdraw from the contract. You know, this is no longer a matter of your not renting, but instead a question of my not withdrawing. landlady (gradually becoming angry): When did I ever rent this place to you? man: The moment you accepted my deposit, this place was legally rented to me. landlady: You tricky devil! When did I ever accept your rent deposit? That was my daughter. She didn’t know what she was doing.

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man: Didn’t know what she was doing? She’s not exactly a child, you know. landlady: Okay, there’s no need to dwell on that nonsense. These rooms of mine—it’s not that I don’t want to rent them out, it’s just that I want a tenant who has a family. Now, sir, if you have a family to move in here with you, then I’ll have no objection to renting the place to you. man: That doesn’t make any sense at all. When you rented this place to me, why didn’t you make it clear that you wanted a family man? Did I mislead you about my marital status? landlady (switches to a milder tone): So it wasn’t mentioned at the time, but I already explained this to you yesterday. We don’t have a man in our household— man (stops her): Hold it right there. Let me ask you, wasn’t this the case when you rented the rooms to me? Why did you wait until now to bring this up? landlady: You’re being completely unreasonable. I don’t have the time or energy to debate this with you. maid (trying to play the peacemaker): Madam, it’s already late in the day and it’s raining outside. It would be quite inconvenient for this gentleman to find another place at this point. Wouldn’t it be possible to let him stay here temporarily for one night, and wait until tomorrow to find another solution? man (stubbornly): No way, you’ve got it all wrong. If I had not rented this place, I’d leave immediately. But since you’ve already got my deposit, you absolutely must accept me as your tenant. landlady: Well, I’m telling you that you absolutely must leave here this evening. man (sneering): Is that so? (He sits down.) landlady (stands directly facing him): Are you leaving or not? man: No! landlady: Mrs. Wang, go fetch the police. maid: But Madam! landlady: Get the police over here now! man: So what if the police come? Even the police have to listen to reason. maid: Madam, I think . . . landlady: I told you to go call the police. Didn’t you hear me? Get going! maid: Alright. (She exits through the rear door.) landlady: Have them come immediately! (She exits through the rear door and shuts the door firmly. Having nothing to do but wait, the man extracts his tobacco pouch and pipe from his pocket. Finding the pouch empty, he takes a tin of tobacco from his suitcase and proceeds to refill his pouch with tobacco leaves. He fills his pipe and is about to light it when he is interrupted by a sudden knock at the door.) man (harshly): Come in! (He remains standing with his back to the door. A young woman pushes open the door and walks in lightly. She is wearing a raincoat. In one hand she is carrying a small

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suitcase and in the other an umbrella. The moment she enters she begins talking. Once she starts talking, she seems unable to stop herself.) woman: Oh! I’m so sorry, please excuse me. (The man quickly turns around and only then sees who has come in.) It’s very rude of me, I know, but what could I do? Your front door was left open; I knocked several times but didn’t get any answer, so I had no choice but to come straight in. man (still startled but remembers to take the pipe out of his mouth and sets it down on the table): What are you here for? woman: Me? I’ve come here to work for Great Success Limited.2 I just arrived from Beijing today. The three o’clock train didn’t get in until six o’clock. Just twenty-eight miles,3 but it took two and a half hours. Can you believe that? Right now I’m looking for a place to live. I asked at the train station and got some addresses. I’ve already visited three or four places, but I haven’t found anything suitable yet. Someone told me that there are some vacant rooms for rent here . . . man (recognizes a rival): So, you’re here to rent this place? woman: Yes. Are the rooms still available? man (replies heartlessly): You’re fresh out of luck—this place has just been rented out. woman: Oh, well. You’re right about one thing, though, my luck has been awful today. The weather’s been miserable and these country roads are terrible for walking. Look at me—my clothes are completely soaked and my feet are aching. (Takes a deep sigh) Do you mind if I sit down and rest for a while? man: Oh, I’m sorry. Please have a seat. (He is no longer annoyed.) woman (puts down her suitcase and umbrella): Thank you. (She takes a seat next to the side table and looks around the room checking everything out. The man’s interest aroused, he sits down on one of the chairs at the square table.) man: Just now you were saying that you’ve come here to work for Great Success Limited. What kind of work will you be doing there? Or perhaps I shouldn’t be asking. woman: Why shouldn’t you ask? It’s no big deal. It’s not something that I can’t tell people about. Two weeks ago, Great Success Limited took out a newspaper advertisement indicating that they wanted to hire a secretary. The ad appeared in all the papers, so I’m sure you saw it. (The man nods his head.) Last Friday, they published a further announcement saying, “The secretarial position at our company has now been filled. To all those who submitted letters of application, excuse us for not responding to each one individually.” Did you see that notice, too? (The man nods again.) Well, the secretary they hired is none other than yours truly! It never occurred to you that they hired a woman, now did it? man: No, it didn’t.

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woman (pleased with herself ): But now what will I do? Think about it: I have to report for my first day of work the day after tomorrow, but I haven’t even found a place to live yet. I’ve been walking around continuously since six thirty. To tell you the truth, I haven’t even had time for dinner. (She gets up and straightens out her outfit, then walks over to the mirror to check her appearance.) man (with a seemingly more sympathetic air): You haven’t even had dinner? That just won’t do. Perhaps I can help you with that, at least. (He gets up and pours her a cup of tea.) woman: Thanks for offering, but I was just telling you about it. I wasn’t fishing for a free meal. man: Oh, sorry. Please, have a cup of tea first. woman: Thanks. (She sits down again.) man (pulls out a pack of cigarettes from his pocket): Do you smoke? woman: No, I don’t smoke. But I really don’t mind if others do. (She takes a sip of tea.) man: Thanks. (He puts away the pack of cigarettes, picks up his pipe, and turns away from her to light and smoke it.) woman (rubbing her feet): Oh, good heavens! Look at these feet of mine—aren’t they just ghastly? man (anxiously turns around): What’s the matter with them? woman: Not only are they soaking wet, but they’re also covered in mud. man (suddenly solicitous): That’s terrible. Would you like to change your socks? If you do, I can step outside for a moment. woman: Thanks, but I don’t want to change my socks, and even if I did, it wouldn’t be necessary to chase you out of the room for that. man: I don’t mind. If you haven’t brought extra socks with you, I can even lend you a pair. woman: Thanks, I really appreciate your good intentions, but what would be the use of changing my socks now when I still have to wade through more water? man: Wade through more water? Why in the world would you want to do that? woman: How can I possibly avoid it? It’s pitch- dark outside now. Once I’m back on the street, how will I be able to tell the puddles from the dry patches? (The man is deep in thought. The woman takes another sip of tea, sighs heavily, and gets up to say goodbye.) Well, I’m very sorry for disturbing you. (She picks up her suitcase and umbrella and prepares to leave.) man (stops her): No need to rush off. Rest here a while longer. You were saying just now that you wanted to rent a place to live, is that right? woman (turns to face him): What? I’ve been talking this whole time and you didn’t hear anything I said?

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man: I heard what you said. But . . . well, what do you think of these three rooms? woman: Excuse me? Didn’t you say that these rooms have already been rented out? (She puts down her suitcase.) man: Well, they have been rented out, but perhaps they could still be rented to you. woman (becomes happy): Rented to me? You really mean that? (She puts down her umbrella.) man: Of course I mean it. (He pours her another cup of tea.) woman (sits down and picks up her teacup): Thanks. But how can the rooms be rented to me? Do you mean to say that if I wanted these rooms, then you wouldn’t rent them to the other person? (The man shakes his head.) Or maybe you were lying to me earlier, and these rooms have not been rented out yet? man: No, I’ve been telling you the truth. The place has been rented out already. And I’m not talking about not renting to that other person. When I said that the rooms could still be rented to you, I meant that the person who has already rented them might be willing to let you rent them instead. woman: I really don’t understand. He’s never even met me before. Why would he allow me to rent this place instead of him? man: You don’t need to worry about that. woman: Is this house haunted? man: What? Someone like you is afraid of ghosts? woman: No, I’m not afraid of ghosts. I meant that perhaps the other person might be afraid of ghosts. man: Well, he isn’t afraid of ghosts, either. But never mind that. Let me show you around the place, okay? (He picks up the lamp from the table and shows her around, beginning with a bedroom. He opens the door to the right and allows her to enter.) Notice the thatched ceiling and the cement floor. That’s a Western-style bed and it’s freshly made. Outside that window there’s a little flower garden. Early in the morning you can hear the birds singing. If you open up the blinds during the day, the whole room floods with sunlight. (The woman exits the bedroom. The man leads her to the side room on the right.) Over on this side, there’s another fully furnished bedroom all ready for use. It’s the same size as the other room, but it’s not quite as bright. With only one person living here, this side could be used as the bedroom and the other side as a study. (The woman exits the second bedroom.) The center room is perfect for taking one’s meals and receiving guests. (Putting down the lamp) These rooms are clean and bright. From morning to night, it’s never noisy. And it’s not far from the place where you’ll be working. In my opinion, you couldn’t find a more suitable place to rent, given your needs. woman: How much is the rent for these three rooms? (She sits down.)

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man: Oh, it’s very cheap—just five dollars a month for the three-room suite. woman: The place is pretty good and the rent’s inexpensive. (Thinking it over) You’re really serious about letting me rent this place? man: Of course I am. Why would I mislead you? woman: But could I move in tonight? Would that be okay? man: Yes, that will be fine. (Suddenly thinks of something) But there is one more thing: are you married or single? woman (jumps up, throws out her chest, and furrows her brow): What?!? man (reiterates): Are you married or single? woman (angrily): That question is totally unreasonable. man: Totally unreasonable? woman: Yes, it’s simply insulting. man (cheerfully): “Insulting”—yes, that’s exactly right. That’s what I said, too. But apparently the most important criterion for renting this place is the marital status of the prospective tenant. woman: What business is it of yours whether I’m married or single? man: That’s right. You’re absolutely right. What business is it of theirs whether I’m married or single? Yet, they insist on asking. You tell me—isn’t that bizarre? woman: I have no idea what you’re talking about. man: Who said you did? Of course you don’t know what I’m talking about. Just be patient and I’ll explain everything to you. Then you’ll understand. Just now you said you’ve moved here to take a job at Great Success Limited, is that right? woman: Your memory must be terrible. How could you so quickly forget what I said just moments ago? man: Don’t get upset. I’m just trying to tell you that I, too, have come to take a job at Great Success Limited. woman: You’ve come to work at Great Success, too? man: Yes. I’ll bet it never occurred to you, did it? woman: What kind of work will you be doing there? man: I’m an engineer. woman: Does this mean that you’re not the landlord here? man: Who said I was the landlord? Did I say I was the landlord here? Look at me—do I look like a landlord to you? woman (jumps in): Oh, I’ve got it now. You’re the new tenant here. You rented these three rooms, but now you think they’re not suitable for you, so you want to give them up. man: Give up these rooms? Who said I wanted to give them up? woman: Didn’t you just say that these rooms could be given over to me? man: Yes, I said they could be given over to you, but I didn’t say that I wanted to give them up. woman: Now I’m even more confused. If you don’t plan to give up this place, then how can you give it over to me? man: You really don’t understand?

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woman: I really don’t. man: It’s because—when I first saw you . . . No, it’s not that. It’s because the landlady refuses to rent to me. woman: Why won’t the landlady rent to you? man: Oh, it’s this marital status business. Now we’re getting to the crux of the matter. A week ago, when I came here to see these rooms, I met the landlady’s daughter. As soon as she saw me, she interrogated me closely, asking if I had a wife or children or siblings. She was only satisfied when I indicated in no uncertain terms that I had never been married. Then she agreed to rent this place to me without haggling over the rent. woman: Don’t you understand? She clearly knows that you’re an engineer and she wants to marry you! man: Really? I hadn’t thought of that. So yesterday afternoon when I came back, the landlady told me that if I don’t have a family to live with me here, she won’t rent to me. Since they already know that I’m single, she’s obviously trying to coerce me. Isn’t that despicable? woman: But why won’t she rent to you? Just because you don’t have a family to live with you? man: I don’t know. She says that it’s because they don’t have a man in the household. woman: That’s ridiculous. man: It’s simply insulting, isn’t it? woman: Sure is. So what happened after that? man: After that, I gave her a good talking to. woman: Did she get the point? man: Get the point? Let me tell you: Once a person reaches the age of forty, their head is completely full of old ideas. There’s just no room left for new ones. woman: So what are you going to do now? man: Now? I’m refusing to leave. woman: What about the landlady? man: She’s gone to call the police. woman: The police? Why is she calling them? man: She wants the police to forcibly evict me. woman: Really? man: Why would I make any of this up? If you don’t believe me, just stick around for a while and see for yourself when the police arrive. woman: This situation is bizarrely intriguing. But if the police really come to evict you, what will you do then? man: Before you got here, I had no idea what I’d do. But now I’ve come up with a plan. woman: What are you planning to do? man: I’ll give the police officer a thorough beating and get myself hauled off to the police station. Then I’ll get the landlady to rent this place to you. That way, we’ll both have places to live. woman: That won’t do.

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(She looks pensive.) man: And why not? woman: Haven’t you finished venting yet? Here, I’ve got an idea. man: What’s your idea? woman (pauses briefly): How about letting me be your wife? man: What? woman: Oh, don’t be so terrified. I’m not asking you to marry me. man: Oh, no, you’ve misunderstood me. I . . . um . . . it’s just that such a plan had not occurred to me. woman: It’s an excellent plan. The landlady says that you can’t rent this place without any family to live here with you. Now you can say that you’re a family man. What further objection could she possibly have? man: None at all. That’s for sure. But are you really willing to do this? woman: Why wouldn’t I? It won’t do me any harm. After all, I’m not really going to be your wife. man: Well, thanks a lot. woman: Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that being your wife would be such a terrible thing. But that’s a completely separate matter. man: Yes, that would be a completely separate matter. Nevertheless, I must thank you for helping me resolve this room rental problem. woman: No need for that. When the landless proletariat are oppressed by the propertied classes, we should unite and resist them together! (She strains her ears and listens attentively.) man: Yes, yes! Well said! woman: I hear people talking. man: That must be the police. (Hurriedly) Hold on—I just told them that I was single. How will I explain this now? woman: We’ll just tell them we had a big fight, you ran away from me, and you didn’t want others to know about our problems. man (hearing the police officer at the door, he nods quickly to the woman and gets her to stop talking): Shh! (The man sits at the square table pretending to be angry. The woman sits at the side table. The rear door pushes open and the police officer enters carrying a storm lantern in his hand. The maid and the landlady follow him in. They notice the newly arrived woman in the room and are extremely surprised. Seeing them enter, the woman stands up and greets them with a modest and amiable gesture. The police officer puts the lantern on the table and salutes the angry man.) police officer: Sir, may I ask your honorable family name? man (rudely): My name is Wu. police officer (nods): Okay. And your home address is? man: Home address? I have no home address. woman (begins playing the role of the aggrieved wife): So, you’ve decided for good that you don’t want me anymore, is that it?

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police officer (acknowledging the interruption by the woman, but still addressing the man): And this lady . . . what’s her family name? (The man, unable to respond, casts a glance at the woman. She looks back at him awkwardly. The man takes up the role of the angry husband again.) man: I don’t know. Why don’t you ask her? police officer (turns to the woman): May I ask your honorable family name? woman (cheerfully): Who me? My name is also Wu. police officer: Oh, your name is also Wu. woman: That’s right. police officer (unable to think of what else to say): And your home address is? woman: My address? I live at number 375 Taiping Alley, by the Xisi Archway in Beijing, across from Guandi Temple. The phone number is Western Exchange 4692. And you’d better write it down because you might just forget it in a while. police officer (actually pulling out a small notepad): Beijing . . . (He writes it down.) woman: Taiping Alley by the Xisi Archway. (Allows the police officer to write) Across from Guandi Temple. police officer: And the house number? woman: Number 375. The phone number is Western Exchange 4—6—9—2. police officer (finishes writing): Thank you, ma’am. (He puts away his notepad and turns again to the man.) You’ve come here to rent a place, is that right? man: Not at all! I’ve come here to move in. I rented this place some time ago. (The police officer is silenced by the man’s firm response. He has no other line of questioning, so he turns back to the woman.) police officer: And you’ve come here to . . . ? woman: Me? I’ve come here to find someone. landlady (unable to keep quiet any longer): And who might that someone be? woman (very politely nods her head at the landlady): I’ve come here to find my husband. landlady: Your husband? Who is your husband? woman: Well, you should know since you’ve already rented this place to him. landlady: What! This gentleman is your husband? woman: I don’t know. Why don’t you ask him? See if he’ll acknowledge me or not. maid (unable to keep quiet any longer): You see, Madam? I told you early on that this gentleman had to be married, but you didn’t believe me. police officer (confused): What? A moment ago, you two told me that this gentleman was single. How is it that he’s now married? maid: Oh, don’t be so baffled. Before his wife arrived, how were we to know he was married? If she had arrived earlier, I could have saved myself the trouble of slogging through the rain to fetch you. woman: My apologies, ma’am. That was beyond my control. The train was scheduled to arrive at five o’clock, but we didn’t get in until six thirty.

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maid: Please don’t take offense. I was only trying to explain things to this dimwit. police officer: Let me get this clear. Madam summoned me here saying that a gentleman had rented these rooms and intended to live in them alone. Since there are only women living here, it would be inconvenient to have a single gentleman as a tenant. That was the gist of her complaint. But now that this gentleman’s wife has arrived, this matter can be resolved. If husband and wife move in together, then there is nothing for me to do here. But if the wife is not moving in, then this matter still . . . maid: Stop your blathering. Naturally his wife will be moving in here with him. You can tell just by looking at them that they’ve merely had a minor dispute over some trifling matter. You should be mediating rather than saying such things. Where else would the young lady live if not here with her husband? Alright then, there’s nothing left for you to do here. Hurry back to your mahjong match. (Handing him the storm lantern) Run along now. police officer: In that case, there’s nothing left for me to do here. Very well then, goodbye to you all! woman: Goodbye, officer. Don’t you worry about us. I’ll inform you personally if I ever move out of here. police officer: Excuse me, then. Sorry for bothering you. (The police officer exits. The maid, in very high spirits, picks up the tea ser vice and exits. The landlady, accepting her defeat, glances at her new tenants, puts on a stern expression, and exits. The man closes the door. He thinks of a question he should have asked long ago and suddenly turns around to ask it.) man: By the way, what’s your name? woman: My name . . . ?

not es

1. 2.

3.

Ding Xilin’s Yapo was first published in a special anniversary issue of Xiandai pinglun (January 1926). This translation is based on the text in Ding Xilin ju zuo quan ji (Complete Collection of Ding Xilin’s Plays) (Beijing: Zhongguo xiju, 1985), 1:59–79. This translation is informed by our productions of Oppression at Harvard University in 1996 and Bard College at Simon’s Rock in 2002. Special thanks to the many participants involved in those productions. Humor is the only English word in an otherwise completely Chinese text. While “Dacheng Corporation” or “Great Success Company” would be more literal translations, we feel that “Great Success Limited” is wordplay worthy of Ding Xilin’s work, and we think that he would approve. Ninety li in the original Chinese, which is forty-five kilometers (one li is five hundred meters), or twenty- eight miles.

Breaking Out of Ghost Pagoda (1928) bai wei tra nsla ted by pau l b . f os t e r

M a i n C ha r acters hu rongsheng ⨔㑗㔶, a despotic landlord hu qiaoming ⨔㎉チ, his son zheng shaomei 㺅㔕み, his pampered concubine xiao yuelin 㦤㴨⼢, his adopted daughter xiao sen 㦤㓩, a Women’s Federation committee member ling xia ⼴㥰, a Peasants’ Association committee member

S e c o n d a r y C hara cters gui yi ⥏㮥, an old accountant hongtao ⨆㝈, a servant girl lingxiang ⼵㦓, a servant girl chunhua ╠⪀, a servant girl policeman ⳁ␖ jailor 㲤⭶ dark shadow 1 (xiao sen) dark shadow 2 peasants ㇭ス (five people) committee members 㢡㴗 (four people)

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male servants ㅖ㋏ (five people) female servants ㇲ⤀ (seven people)

Lo c a t i o n Act 1: A Western-style parlor outside the city Act 2: hu rongsheng’s study and zheng shaomei’s dressing room Act 3: gui yi’s bedroom (a dark room)

A CT 1 (A Western-style parlor outside the city. May sunshine fills the room. In the center of the spacious room is a rectangular table surrounded by chairs. There is a fireplace in the back wall with a large window on each side. Under each window is a flower table containing a pot of flowers. In front of the left wall is a sofa, to the right of which is a small round table with two chairs. There are doors downstage on the left and right. The left door leads to an inner room; the door on the right leads outside. Numerous pictures hang on the walls. A fat, fifty- odd-year- old gentleman wearing a gray Western-style shirt walks back and forth in the room, his belly puffed out in anger. The sound of a piano emanates from the inner room.) hu rongsheng (toward the left door, in a huff ): Hey, Ah Liang! Ah Liang! (A male servant, thirty- odd years old, cautiously emerges from the left door.) male servant: Can I do something for you, Master? hu rongsheng: Go and tell Young Master not to play the piano! The noise is really grating! male servant: Okay. (He nods respectfully and goes out. After a short pause, zheng shaomei walks coquettishly onstage wearing a fashionable, long, light-red jacket. She exudes sex appeal and the kind of haughty demeanor particular to aristocratic ladies, which is entirely unbefitting her status as a concubine. She is about twenty-seven years old.) zheng shaomei: He plays quite well. Why are you telling him to stop? (Smiles and points at him) I think he must be trying to dispel your anger with his playing. (The piano stops.) hu rongsheng: You’re the only one who wants to listen! (Vehemently) So, you can go tell him to play all day and night for you, but it’s not allowed in my home! zheng shaomei (surprised): Huh?! (Looks at him haughtily, with slight revulsion) Be careful what you say! hu rongsheng: What if I’m careful? And what if I’m not? . . . Anyway, I’m getting old and the whole world is yours. zheng shaomei: That’s right. It’s natural that young people have young people’s ideas. They can’t be compared to an old geezer like you. (Walking slowly and softly

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about the room, says in a tone of ridicule) Furthermore, I, Zheng Shaomei, am a respectable girl. You, with that filthy mind of yours, aren’t qualified to put restrictions on me. hu rongsheng: You can put restrictions on me, but I can’t even joke with you? (Smiling, he gropes her.) zheng shaomei (jumping): Ahh! That’s not the same thing . . . (Eyes open wide, aggressively in his face) You molest Yuelin all day long or think of ways to molest her. It’s your daily task . . . So where does that leave me? Is it a crime to love music, too? Or maybe you think you can use this to cast me as a criminal in order to offset your own crimes? hu rongsheng (anger subsiding and the devil coming out, he servilely pats her in fun): Let me tell you, I really don’t want to see you standing there by him, listening to him play the piano. You’re the one I love the most. (He rubs her neck.) zheng shaomei (pushing him away, sternly with contempt): Humph! Are you jealous? hu rongsheng (playing up to her, smiles charmingly and embraces her): What’s this? I’ve never been suspicious of you. I’m just a bit fed up with that kid, Qiaoming. (zheng shaomei gives no response.) hu rongsheng: Qiaoming sits at home all day long, as if he’s gone crazy thinking about Yuelin. What do you think about their situation? zheng shaomei: You probably know everything I know. (She unconcernedly pulls out a chair at the table and sits down.) hu rongsheng: That’s not so, not so. (Hugs her passionately) That child Yuelin has even forgotten about her dad these days. She tricked me into letting her go to that Party school for all this time. You knew about it, but I didn’t. I heard that recently she’s fallen in love with some committee member in the Peasants’ Association. And she loves Qiaoming so much they’re practically inseparable, too . . . What the heck is she up to? zheng shaomei: You’re better off not asking! Anyway, that’s the world of the young. hu rongsheng: Come on, tell me! . . . Tell me everything you know! (He sits at her side and embraces her. zheng shaomei pushes him away, shakes her head, and smiles silently.) Why won’t you tell me? Are you all in this together, rebelling against me? (Head bowed in indignation, he paces in silence.) (Excitedly) Oh, I know what to do! I won’t let Yuelin go to school tomorrow. Right. Starting tomorrow I won’t let her go to the Party school anymore. (Thinking) Women revolting, too. Are they going to revolt all the way to heaven? So, women are paying attention to revolution, too. Just watch her revolt against her father! . . . (Stopping) Right, right. I know what to do! As of tomorrow, Qiaoming will be independent. He’s already old enough. I fathered him and raised him for twenty-five years, so there shouldn’t be anything wrong with making him strike out on his own. (He looks at zheng shaomei for agreement, boorishly takes a drag from his cigarette, and continues his monologue.)

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That child, Qiaoming, just won’t listen to anything! (Resentfully) I advised him to go and study business, but he just plays some music and makes some revolution! Not to mention what he said to me the night before last. He outright insulted his old man! (He angrily stamps his foot and loudly slaps the table.) zheng shaomei (nonchalantly stands up, sneers sarcastically): What’s wrong with what he said? Does it merit such a tantrum? hu rongsheng: What he said? . . . Didn’t he say the other night . . . He told me to back off for a while, to let him go to the countryside and sell the grain. On top of that, he wants me to let him make an agreement with those absurd farmhands there. Didn’t he say that? . . . Look, that’s tantamount to forcing me to abdicate my position as the father! zheng shaomei: It’s the trend of the times. There’s nothing at all wrong with that. hu rongsheng: Hey! (Getting angrier) So I should just give him the property I worked so hard to obtain, just so he can make nice with them? You still say he’s not wrong? zheng shaomei: No, you’re just a capitalist. You got your property by squeezing the blood out of the poor people. The current revolution was caused by this bloodsucking class and it’s going to settle accounts with the bloodsuckers. hu rongsheng (arms waving wildly): Aha! No wonder you all want to move to the provincial capital and learn the fashions! You’ve started chanting Communist Party slogans, too! zheng shaomei: The ideology and battles of the twentieth century are struggles between workers and capitalists . . . You’ve got to take a clear look at the tides of the modern age. Don’t be a straggler in this day and age! hu rongsheng: Enough, enough! You may have learned to say what’s in vogue, but don’t go putting on any stinking airs in front of me! (He appears about to expel zheng shaomei. hu qiaoming bumps onto the stage through the left door. He is a seriously gloomy young man wearing a handsome, black, Western-style suit. He walks from the left toward the right with his head bowed. hu rongsheng excitedly watches him, not disturbing him for the moment. He holds back his anger and lets him pass.) (Suddenly shouting) Qiaoming! (hu qiaoming walks up to the right-hand door, stops suddenly, and turns his head.) Where are you going now? (hu qiaoming leans on the door, not speaking or moving.) I asked where you’re going. Do you have ears? zheng shaomei (gently, to hu rongsheng): He’s going to school to pick up his lover. (She smiles at hu qiaoming.) hu rongsheng: What? Do you go to the school every day to get Yuelin? (hu qiaoming tacitly confirms this in silence.) (Imperiously) You have to break off with her right away. hu qiaoming (emphatically): Can that be done?! hu rongsheng: A brother and sister doing such disreputable things. (Raises his hand at hu qiaoming) You watch out for my fist!

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hu qiaoming (sneers): Yeah, your fist is useless! hu rongsheng (exclaims angrily): Ha . . . You’ve got some nerve, defying your old man! hu qiaoming: We plan to get married soon. hu rongsheng: Mutiny! Mutiny! (Livid, he slaps the table loudly.) zheng shaomei: You’re such an autocratic devil! Marriage is free. Yuelin isn’t your daughter by birth, and those two love each other so much. Why not let them choose freely for themselves if they’re willing? hu rongsheng: Yuelin used to be a slave girl. Will my son be betrothed to a slave girl? hu qiaoming: Please don’t use such old, worn- out language. Nobody wants to hear it. I love her. hu rongsheng (points fiercely at hu qiaoming): Blasphemy! hu qiaoming (with a very earnest expression): I want to marry her. hu rongsheng (looks coercively at hu qiaoming): Are you ready to revolt against your father? hu qiaoming: Aren’t sons born to revolt against their fathers? (He swiftly steps back.) hu rongsheng (returns to zheng shaomei dejectedly, full of anger): What family legacy can we build with such a useless son? I’m better off selling the land and just being happy the rest of my life. zheng shaomei: Honestly, you’re not building a family business and getting rich for the sake of your children and grandchildren. You just want to satisfy your own desire for wealth and happiness. hu rongsheng: Why do you always attack me these days when we talk? Do I treat you so badly? (He cuddles her.) zheng shaomei: What? Am I wrong? Naturally, you couldn’t treat me any better. For instance, you sent your wife and those concubines to the countryside. And you always take me along right at your side wherever you go. How can I say you treat me badly? . . . But I’ve also been with you for eleven years now, and I know you love the new and hate the old. It’s inevitable. hu rongsheng: Who am I supposed to be in love with now? Have I taken another wife since I landed you? zheng shaomei: You appear to be crazy about Yuelin . . . hu rongsheng (eyes bulging out, looking very fierce): Don’t make trouble with me! If you’re out to ruin our family harmony, you’d better find another road to take. (A male servant enters from the left.) male servant: Master! A large group of peasants is here. They’re asking to meet with you, sir. hu rongsheng (flustered): Oh, oh . . . Go and tell them that I’m not at home. (The male servant bows his head and exits. ling xia leads five peasants onto the stage from the right. They all respectfully greet hu rongsheng.)

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peasant a (takes two steps toward hu rongsheng): Your family beat up my older brother the day before yesterday. I’ve already reported it to the Peasants’ Association. hu rongsheng: And now you’ve brought all these people here. What do you intend to do to me? ling xia: You’ll find out after it’s been discussed at a meeting of the Peasants’ Association. I’ve just come to investigate the facts of the situation today. What law did his older brother break that caused you to beat him so severely? hu rongsheng: He’s a thug. He incited some farmers to make trouble for me. And he beat my servants, too, so my servants beat him in return. That’s an eye for an eye. How can you blame me? peasant c (jumps vehemently toward hu rongsheng): Nonsense! It’s all your fault! peasant d (also jumping toward hu rongsheng): Bastard! You’re the one who told them to beat him up! peasant a: You were bullying us. My older brother went to talk to you as our representative, but you didn’t even let him open his mouth. Instead, you called out a bunch of your slaves to come and beat us. Some of the more vicious ones beat my older brother half to death. It was like wolves carrying away a lamb. You’re so ruthless! hu rongsheng: How could anything have happened if you weren’t causing trouble at the time? peasant d: Bullshit! You choked off our wages and wouldn’t pay us in grain. hu rongsheng: You didn’t want what I offered. You’re just deliberately trying to make trouble for me . . . peasant a (jumps in front of hu rongsheng): Don’t deny it! Listen to my appeal to the Peasants’ Association. When your fields were flooded, you hired a bunch of us farmhands to rebuild them. You agreed to wages of thirty cents per day at the time. Some of us were going to take cash, but the majority of us were going to be paid in grain. But you were sly and, seeing that grain prices were low, you wouldn’t pay us in grain at the time. You waited until grain prices skyrocketed and then tried to pay us in grain based on the overinflated price. We’re all just poor commoners. Who’s willing to spend their money on your expensive grain? So we asked you to pay us in grain according to the price at the time you owed us the wages. You refused and cursed us, too. You said we were causing trouble for nothing and drove us out. We had no other choice but to request that you pay our wages in cash. So then you blamed us for repeatedly making unreasonable requests. You blew up at us and beat up my older brother. Excuse me for asking, but who’s the unreasonable one? ling xia (forthrightly, to hu rongsheng): Did he say anything untrue? peasant c (quickly and sharply): Every word is the absolute truth. The only thing missing is a reenactment of his brutality. (Brooding, hu rongsheng thinks of escape. zheng shaomei pushes him from behind, giving him a hint.) ling xia: I’m clear about the facts now. (To hu rongsheng) Please come to the Peasants’ Association, sir!

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hu rongsheng (courage failing): What do you intend to do? (To peasant a) I’ll give you some money so your older brother can see a doctor! peasants (together): Ha, ha! Ha, ha, ha . . . peasant b: I still have a few things to say. I represent a village and two towns. There are a lot of people outside who’ve come with me to your (points at hu rongsheng) residence to buy grain. Sir, we beg you to open your warehouse right away and save the commoners in the vicinity of your hometown by selling them your grain! Our area was struck by the recent floods and military disasters. Nearly all the grain was burned and thousands of victims have become refugees, too, freezing and starving . . . The Disaster Relief Association begs you, sir, to contribute fifty catties of grain now. hu rongsheng: I understand what you’re saying, as well as the plight of the commoners. But my grain has already been sold. What’s left is only enough to feed my own family. (He smiles artificially.) peasant e: I know that you haven’t even sold one tenth of your grain yet. There’s been a famine since last winter throughout the countryside and in every city. Other families’ grain sold at two pecks per dollar, or one peck and eight pints per dollar. Your grain was one peck, five pints per dollar. Nobody wanted yours at the time. After the floods this March, grain sold everywhere at two pecks, three pints per dollar. When your son was in the countryside, people from everywhere rushed to ask him to open the warehouse. Your son sold for just half a day before you stopped him, sir. The other day when you were in the countryside selling grain, a dollar could only buy one peck, four pints. Only those people truly afraid of starving to death wanted yours. So where did all your grain go? peasant c: If that’s the case, why bother reasoning with him? The first thing to ask is whether or not he’ll contribute fifty catties. Second, we must demand he sell the grain cheaper, as our Peasants’ Association decided. hu rongsheng (puffs out his chest imperiously): It belongs to me. I’ll do with it as I see fit. ling xia: The property belongs to the state. Soon you’ll have no right to speak like this. We ask you in earnest to meet our demands. hu rongsheng: Thugs! Communists! (He jumps up furiously and presses a call button.) ling xia: What do you mean by yelling like this? We’re talking quite civilly with you. (Earnestly) If you won’t contribute or sell the grain you have now, it’ll all be confiscated for public use in the future. hu rongsheng: Bastard! Don’t you meddle with my property . . . peasant b: We can’t clear this up here. Maybe we better take him to the Peasants’ Association. peasants (together): Yes! Yes! (ling xia thinks silently. zheng shaomei astutely exits from the right side of the stage. A group of male and female servants emerges ferociously from the left. The peasants sneer indignantly at the servants. Both groups glare at each other.)

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hu rongsheng (suddenly changing from perplexed to cheerful, commands the servants): Throw them out of here! (peasant a whistles and receives a resounding response from outside the right-hand door. The servants grab peasants to drive them out. The room clamors in chaos.) ling xia: Hold him! (Grabs hu rongsheng) Please come with us! (Drags him out the right-hand door. Those onstage exit to the right in agitation. The stage is temporarily empty. xiao yuelin comes onstage wearing a long, chic jacket. Her short, velvety black hair hangs thickly over her bright eyes. Her innocent, attractive, delicate face emanates a mysterious pleasure. She has elegant, long eyebrows, a beautiful crimson mouth, which, in juxtaposition with her snow-white skin, enhances her maidenly beauty. Her demeanor resembles the wisteria’s refinement, and her fi gure is as graceful as young bamboo. She is superior in deportment, seeming to possess unlimited feelings. Her silent expression exhibits an amount of desolation. She appears about eighteen or nineteen years old. She enters from the left door and seems to be searching for something. A female servant comes onstage following xiao yuelin.) female servant: It’s empty in here. Invite her to sit in here. xiao yuelin: She’s here to meet with Seventh Concubine. Why don’t you take her to Seventh Concubine’s apartment? female servant: Seventh Concubine isn’t at home. Her parlor is locked and her room door is locked, too. xiao yuelin: In that case, invite her to come in! female servant: Okay. (She leaves from the right. xiao yuelin straightens up things. The female servant enters through the right-hand door leading xiao sen.) Miss! The guest is here. (She leaves.) xiao yuelin (crosses to the right-hand door to meet the guest): Oh, please come in! (xiao sen comes onstage. She is wearing a pale blue suit, short hair, a matching hat, tan shoes and socks, and is carrying a leather portfolio. Lean and gracefully poised, her face is pale white with handsome, beautiful eyes and a beautiful, long nose. Her comportment is dignified and her attitude warmhearted. Her beautiful agatelike teeth form an intoxicatingly attractive smile. She appears about thirty- odd years old. She stares in amazement upon seeing xiao yuelin.) xiao sen: I take it Mrs. Hu isn’t at home? (A crisp, melodious voice; her elegant gaze dominates xiao yuelin.) xiao yuelin: That’s right. (She gazes at xiao sen with mixed bashfulness and wonderment.) xiao sen: I take it she’ll be right back? xiao yuelin: I don’t know. I just returned home myself. xiao sen (stands at the doorway deciding whether or not to enter): I have a three thirty appointment with her. (Looks at her watch) It’s just now three thirty. xiao yuelin: Please have a seat! She’ll probably be right back.

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(She leads her to the sofa, where they both sit. Both are silent.) xiao sen: Mrs. Hu is rather refreshing. (She takes off her hat, puts it on her knees, and fiddles with it.) (Glances artfully at xiao yuelin) I suppose she’s your mother? xiao yuelin: She is my seventh aunt. xiao sen: I . . . She said there was a very clever and cute young lady in her home. Isn’t that you? xiao yuelin: My father doesn’t have any other daughters, just me, his adopted daughter. xiao sen (observes xiao yuelin’s expression carefully): Your father certainly must love you. xiao yuelin (sentimentally, sighing deeply): It’s hard to say. (A female servant brings them tea.) female servant (sets a small table in front of them): Please have some tea. (She looks at xiao sen and exits.) xiao sen (focuses even more attention on xiao yuelin, holds up a cup of tea as if to drink, but doesn’t): I suppose that being somebody else’s adopted daughter is never as good as being with your own parents. xiao yuelin: I wouldn’t know what it’s like to have parents of my own. I’ve no idea. (Taken with xiao sen’s appearance, she drinks her tea silently.) xiao sen: What? . . . Don’t you go to see your parents? xiao yuelin (shrugs her shoulders bashfully): I don’t have any idea who my parents are. xiao sen (extremely sad and silent for a moment): Oh! xiao yuelin: One could write a novel about the travails of an orphan girl’s life. (Sad and bitter, she stands and walks around.) xiao sen (looks at her warmheartedly): How’s that? xiao yuelin: I’ve been an orphan since birth. (On the verge of tears, she walks around again.) I went through a lot before I was adopted. xiao sen (forces herself to control her emotions, maintaining dignity): Still, isn’t it really lucky for an orphan to become an adopted daughter and young lady of an important family? xiao yuelin: Some important family! This is a ghost pagoda. Who knows when I’ll finally be able to break out of this ghost pagoda! xiao sen: If your home is really a ghost pagoda, shouldn’t it be quite easy to break out if you really have the will? (Walks toward xiao yuelin) Your Mrs. Hu has already filed for divorce with the Women’s Federation. That’ll make it a lot easier for you, her daughter, to broach the issue of leaving the family. I think it’ll be easy to settle. xiao yuelin: You can’t compare me to Seventh Aunt. My position in this family is ten times worse than hers. xiao sen: How’s that? . . . (xiao yuelin collapses miserably into a chair at the center table.)

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(Gently stroking xiao yuelin) Look at you, so young, and your face etched with lines of hardship. It goes without saying that your life has been tough, but people in this modern age shouldn’t be distressed by the old environment. We must remold the environment. We must remold our lives, too. xiao yuelin: You’re right. (Seeming greatly enlightened, smiles at xiao sen) It’s comforting just to hear you say that. xiao sen (smiles and gently shakes her head): No, you have to remold your environment and take the road of reform at the same time. Only then can you talk of consolation. xiao yuelin (with admiration): I don’t know if I should be grateful or happy. I’ve been dependent on someone else for nearly twenty dark years. Meeting you today, madam, makes me feel like there’s finally a bit of light in my future. xiao sen: It’s really strange, but I’m happy, too. Meeting you, it’s like I’m dreaming . . . It seems like we’ve met somewhere once before. (She is inexplicably happy and momentarily silent.) xiao yuelin (searches her memory joyfully): I’ve never seen you before. xiao sen (gloomily leaves the table, says quietly): How do you know? xiao yuelin: You would’ve definitely made a great impression on me if I’d seen you before. How is it that I don’t have any recollection at all? xiao sen: I don’t know when I’ve seen you before, either. I don’t know if it was you, or your mother. (Gazes intently at her face) But I remember a young woman just like you, very clever and very chic, who always emanated a sense of desolation from somewhere deep in her soul. xiao yuelin: Maybe you saw my mother. I think my mother must have had the same kind of fate as me. xiao sen: Do you still miss your mother? If you’ve never seen her, there’s no use missing her. xiao yuelin (tears flowing): When a motherless child sees other people with their mothers, that’s true sadness! xiao sen: Don’t be sad! I’m really lonely, too. If you’d like to, you’re quite welcome to come to chat and have some fun with me. Seeing that mole next to your lips gives me the impression I’ve seen you somewhere before. (She wants to touch it, then appears puzzled, and backs off.) xiao yuelin (touches the mole herself ): I hate this mole! When I was little, all the other kids at the orphanage teased me, saying that I had a “glutton mole.” xiao sen: It’s so pretty. When Westerners paint beautiful women, they often intentionally add a black mole here (points at her mole) to embellish a snow-white face, to make it even more beautiful. xiao yuelin: Easterners and Westerners have different aesthetics. I remember when Madam Yan Fuheng, at the orphanage, called somebody to come and cut this mole off. I ran away crying after one cut, so in the end it wasn’t cut off. xiao sen: Ah, you were at Madam Yan Fuheng’s orphanage? (Surprised, she convulsively walks toward the left, staring at xiao yuelin.)

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xiao yuelin: Yes, I was there for six or seven years. (zheng shaomei returns onstage from the right, appearing unsettled.) zheng shaomei (to xiao sen, joyfully): Madam Xiao! I’m really sorry! Have you been here long? xiao sen: I just got here. (Walks toward the right-hand door) You’ve been busy, Mrs. Hu. zheng shaomei: I’m not really busy with anything. A few people from the Peasants’ Association just came and took her father away. I ran outside to walk for a while, too, and ended up making you wait all this time. I’m really sorry. (Pulls out the chair on the right) Please have a seat! Please have a seat! (She herself stands.) xiao sen: What’s going on with Mr. Hu? . . . Oh, you sit down, too, please! zheng shaomei: It’s nothing important. He’s so old-fashioned. A Peasants’ Association committee member took him away. They’ll let him return after he clarifies things. Yuelin! Go make some tea! (She sits across from xiao sen. xiao yuelin exits from the left with the tea tray.) xiao sen (gets her portfolio from the sofa, comes backs, and sits down at the table by the right wall and pulls out a document): So, you want to divorce your husband? (She flips through the document, reading.) zheng shaomei: Yes, that’s what I’m thinking. xiao sen: And your reason for divorce? (She takes out her pen and takes notes.) zheng shaomei: I can’t go on being with him, neither spiritually nor physically. xiao sen: In the past, these words from you would have been sufficient. But now we  have to go through petition procedures. Please tell me about your marital experiences. zheng shaomei: We can’t really even be called husband and wife. I am his seventh concubine. xiao sen: In that case, tell me a little about your experiences since you’ve been his concubine. zheng shaomei: I’m originally a peasant girl from the countryside. I was seventeen that year when I was picking mulberries in the fields and Hu Rongsheng all of a sudden saw me. He walked over and told me how fine I was, and so on, and then he followed somebody from my family home and asked for my hand in marriage. My father was still alive at the time and totally unwilling to marry me off as his concubine. In addition, I was an upper elementary school graduate and was therefore a rather conceited student. I’d rather have died than become his concubine. Not long after that my father died and my uncle, who was muddled from smoking opium, was after the Hu family’s money, so he forced me to marry him. (Sorrowfully reminiscing, she pulls a tissue from her bag and wipes her tears. xiao sen suddenly stops writing and looks sadly at zheng shaomei.) I was really doted on after we got married. But Hu Rongsheng has seven wives and I’ve always felt this life is a living hell.

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xiao sen: Why didn’t you separate from him sooner? zheng shaomei: First, Hu Rongsheng is thirty years older than me. I fell into his hands when I was so young and there’s no way he’d willingly let me go. Second, I was afraid that I wouldn’t be able to survive if I left since I’d already been married. On top of that, there was no good place a woman could bring a suit at the time. xiao sen (jokingly): Maybe you liked him right after you got married, but now you don’t because he’s gotten old. zheng shaomei: No, no. I can’t say I disliked him after we were married, but he doesn’t like me anymore now that he’s in love with somebody else. Everyday he’s dallying with (lamenting angrily, stops herself )— xiao sen (takes notes, smiling): If he’s dallying with another woman, you should keep a better eye on him. Do you really want to divorce him for something so minor? zheng shaomei: Madam! Don’t think that I’m so shallow! (Standing up in protest) I’ve awoken out of this dark hell. In the first place, I’m not willing to continue being a concubine. I want to use what’s left of my body to become a nurse for the Revolutionary Army’s Red Cross Association. In the second place, the way he’s dallying with his adopted daughter day and night, I’m better off divorcing him as soon as possible rather than being dumped by him later. xiao sen (starts in surprise, incredulously): What? He’s dallying with his adopted daughter?! (Her shocked eyes rolling) You mean the one who was just talking to me? zheng shaomei: Right. That girl was originally a slave. She was sold a number of times before she finally arrived here. The lady of the house liked her because she was smart and adopted her. She also sent her to study for quite a while. Nobody figured that, once Madam had died, he’d be such a beast to his own adopted daughter. xiao sen: Oh. (Very unsettled, she closes her eyes and thinks silently.) Is there anything else you want to say? zheng shaomei: That’s enough. I hope you can wrap this up for me as soon as possible. xiao sen: It is my duty to handle this quickly. It can be solved in about a week. (She puts away the documents and sits up. xiao yuelin and a female servant bring in tea and fruit.) zheng shaomei: How come it took you so long to make tea and snacks? (She lays out the tea and fruit.) xiao yuelin: We had to go out to get the snacks. (She stands near xiao sen, reluctant to part.) zheng shaomei (checks the tea, then urges xiao sen to drink first): Please help yourself! (She offers her snacks.) xiao sen: And you, Miss Yuelin? (She makes xiao yuelin sit.) zheng shaomei: Lingxiang, go get Miss Yuelin a teacup. (The female servant exits from the left door.)

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xiao sen: How old are you, Miss Yuelin? (She cheerfully drinks the tea.) xiao yuelin: Nineteen. xiao sen: Have you been to school? xiao yuelin: I graduated from middle school the year before last. I’m at the Party school now. zheng shaomei: She’d really like to do some Party work. xiao sen: I was just thinking of that for her. I’ll have to introduce you sometime. (She smiles at xiao yuelin.) xiao yuelin: That would be great! (The female servant brings in a teacup. zheng shaomei pours tea for xiao yuelin, and they all drink together.) xiao sen: Come and look me up when you get a chance. I am at the Women’s Federation. It’s right behind the provincial parliament. (She gives xiao yuelin a name card.) (Giving her a piece of paper) And your name is? (xiao yuelin writes on the paper.) Oh! Xiao . . . Xiao Yuelin! (She appears to choke, is momentarily silent, and then suddenly stands up, leaving her seat.) We’ll meet again! zheng shaomei: Please sit a while longer! xiao sen: I’ll be back after your matter is reviewed. (Exiting the stage to the right and still looking at xiao yuelin, she is reluctant to leave. zheng shaomei and xiao yuelin see her out, disappearing with her through the right-hand door. A female servant comes in from the left to clean up the tea and snacks. She puts a snack into her mouth and chews it. xiao yuelin enters from the right to help out, sees the female servant chewing, and smiles naively.) xiao yuelin: Swallow! (Pounds on the female servant’s back) If Auntie sees you, you’ll be flayed. Swallow! female servant: Ah! . . . (Choking, unable to get it down, she rolls her eyes and chews hard, then exits to the left. hu qiaoming jumps out from the left door and speaks sweetly to xiao yuelin.) hu qiaoming: How come you came home by yourself today instead of waiting from me to pick you up? xiao yuelin: I wanted to avoid that old goblin’s eyes. You don’t know it, but he’s always snooping around trying to find out what we’re up to. He’s burning with jealousy. hu qiaoming: I don’t care what he does! (He embraces her from behind.) xiao yuelin: There’ll be big trouble if we don’t avoid his wrath. hu qiaoming: I’m thinking just the opposite. I want us to ride in the same carriage together to see a play tonight. (He cheerily ushers her over to sit on the sofa, then sits down right next to her.)

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xiao yuelin: That’ll make him even madder. Why do you always have to struggle with him? hu qiaoming (slowly drags on a cigarette): Won’t we die in this ghost pagoda if we don’t keep struggling? xiao yuelin: If you resist too much your own life will be in danger. Furthermore . . . hu qiaoming: Would he kill me? . . . If he tries I’ll fight to the finish. Even if he beats me to death, I’ll die happily dripping of blood . . . Anyway, I’ve hated my life for too long. I’ve been in this filthy, degenerate family for twenty-five years now. I’ve simply been a tormented ghost in this ghost pagoda for a quarter century! I’m so sick and tired of it. (He is excited, mournful, and briefly silent.) If I didn’t have you, if I didn’t have the fresh ideas you always give me, ideas that add rain and dew to my withering life, I’d have killed myself long ago . . . It’s only because I have you (places his hand on xiao yuelin’s knee, his sorrow vanishing, and gradually becomes joyful) that I still love life, that I have a grasp on life, that I praise life, and that I’m going to start to live life with burning, red-hot intensity. xiao yuelin: Yes! You have to turn your life around. Sorrow is the young person’s grave. (Grasps him lovingly) Let’s live happily. hu qiaoming (embraces xiao yuelin, strokes her lovingly): I’d like to marry you soon. xiao yuelin: Huh? . . . (Her charming and intelligent eyes look at him for a moment, then she suddenly convulses, as if she’d received an electrical shock, and becomes bashfully silent.) hu qiaoming (stands up and paces): What do you think? . . . I think if we don’t do it, I’ll never be able to express my profound feelings of love for you. Hey (lightly pats her shoulder, extremely affectionately), you don’t have to always put on such delicate airs. Love forces itself on people like this. Hey (lightly shakes her), so what do you actually think? Do you think you’ll ever be able to come to a conclusion if you’re so bashful? . . . Are you still stuck on that mysterious illusion, always thinking that this kind of beautiful love of ours doesn’t need to end in marriage? (xiao yuelin turns red, pushes hu qiaoming away with a vague bashfulness, leans on the arm of the sofa, and holds her head.) hu qiaoming: I used to think it was mysterious, too, just like you. But lately I’m more of the mind that we have to smash the mystery. Love that doesn’t result in marriage will never be able to realize its full intensity. (He looks at her from the left and the right, then ardently embraces and kisses her.) xiao yuelin (appearing astute, presses both hands against his chest): How is it that your thinking has changed so quickly? hu qiaoming (smiles cheerfully): It’s that my thinking has progressed. xiao yuelin: You say your thinking has progressed! . . . (Pushes him gently away) But you’ve become vulgar. hu qiaoming: Not at all. You’re still just thinking like a child. I used to be a fan of respecting that illusion, too. I detested everything about the real world. I thought of all

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kinds of ways to escape every reality. But now, my first priority is the real, and everything is totally in my control. The better grasp I’ve got, the more I feel alive. xiao yuelin: Oh! (Appearing to find this strange, sighs heavily) I just really love you. I truly think about loving you every second of the day. (Smiles lovingly and movingly) But I don’t think . . . hu qiaoming: Life only lasts a few decades. One’s youth flies by quickly. Why don’t we start living boldly? xiao yuelin (proudly shakes her head): No, I don’t want to. (Head bowed, hu qiaoming smokes and thinks.) hu qiaoming: You don’t want to. I can’t do anything about that, either. Simply put, we must escape this ghost pagoda in the next few days, or else that old fiend will gobble one of us up. xiao yuelin: You’re absolutely right! I’ve got that feeling, too. hu qiaoming: What do you think we should do? xiao yuelin: What if we both go out and do Party work? Or you can go to classes at the university, as usual. hu qiaoming: Who wants to go to that lousy school! xiao yuelin (resolutely): Since you love music so much, maybe you should go to Germany to study. hu qiaoming (momentarily gloomy): How could I possibly leave the one person I so terribly love? xiao yuelin (solemn and proper): We’ll have to separate temporarily for the sake of your studies. It’s the only way your father will be willing to finance them. hu qiaoming (ardently, and somewhat tragically): Yuelin! I can think of nothing but you now. You’re the only one who can comfort me. (He excitedly makes as if to embrace her, then is abruptly silent.) xiao yuelin: If you do that I assure you you’re bound to fail. hu qiaominG: I know. (Anguished) My heart is breaking! But we have to escape this place together, no matter what. Even if we don’t actually get married for the moment, we can still leave here on the pretext of getting married. xiao yuelin: That won’t work. I’m not thick-skinned enough to tolerate the loss of face. hu qiaoming: What a waste! . . . If we don’t do it, my father, that ghost, will hound us and destroy our love. xiao yuelin: Well, we have to be completely clear about this with Ling Xia. hu qiaoming (smiles bitterly, forcing self- control): Oh yeah, I forgot you’re still in love with him. xiao yuelin: Although I don’t have any particular love for him anymore, I still feel sorry for him. (She silently leans on the edge of the table.) hu qiaoming: I know you’re trying to prolong the drama of our love triangle for a few more acts . . . You and I certainly won’t be the ones to experience the happiness of marriage.

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(Depressed, he puts his head down on the table, holding it with both hands.) xiao yuelin (jumps up): That kind of talk is just plain abusive! I met him before I met you. He was my best friend when I was a young girl. His mother was treating me so severely, if he hadn’t saved me I would have died long ago . . . He is so sincere to me. His heart has never wavered. I don’t have the courage to sacrifice him. (hu qiaoming disconsolately rushes to the left.) (xiao yuelin agitatedly pursues and catches him, then throws herself ardently into his embrace. ling xia strides in from the right, sees the situation, and stands in shock.) ling xia (walks toward them): Ah! (The two of them hurriedly separate.) (One hand grasping the other hand, he smiles drolly) I really envy you two. I envy your urbane leisure, that of a young gentleman and young lady. (Faintly sad) Someone like me, so busy working, simply doesn’t have the time to participate in our comedy of romance. hu qiaoming (a bit ashamed, shakes hands sincerely with ling xia): You mustn’t be sad! As I see it, I’ll always play the part of the tragic hero in our love triangle. The happy roles most certainly belong to you two. (Impassively) But as long as I still have a day to live, I won’t just slide on by. ling xia: What kind of sentimental rubbish is this! Don’t always act the anguished poet! We all need to drum up the courage to keep on acting, brother! (Grasps his shoulder) Let’s love one another instead of harming one another. It’s just because I’m so busy at work that I rarely come to spend time with you. That is what I’m sad about. (He turns around and grasps xiao yuelin.) hu qiaoming: You know the kind of ambitions my father, that ghost, has for Yuelin. He’s made this family into a ghost pagoda. I’m the first prisoner in his ghost pagoda . . . ling xia: Why are you afraid of him now? (Pats him enthusiastically) Take advantage of this opportunity to leave! hu qiaoming: I’d like to wait another three or four days. I want to go to the countryside to sell off that grain at a cheap price. ling xia: I came specifically to tell you two to leave. You’ve got to get out of this house right away! hu qiaoming: That is not, in fact, possible. I have to go to the countryside to sell grain because of the famine in our hometown. They’re counting on our grain to save their lives. I’m counting on that money, too, since I don’t have a penny of my own. ling xia: You’re dreaming! Your father has been taken away by the Peasants’ Association and you’re still mumbling about not leaving? hu qiaoming (as if in a dream): Huh! What? ling xia: It’s because of what happened over the last few days. These events are not important, so perhaps they’ll release him quickly. But according to the investigation, your father has actually been trafficking in opium. They’re sending people right away to search for it. I’m afraid this will lead to violence. You two should get out of the way for a while!

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(Pulling on xiao yuelin, he pushes hu qiaoming toward the door.) hu qiaoming (quietly, both impassive and angry): I’m not leaving. ling xia (anxiously): Are you going to wait for somebody to come and arrest you? Get going! hu qiaoming (stands impassively): I’m not leaving. That’s not the right way to deal with the problem. xiao yuelin (presses him to leave): What do you plan to do about it? Let’s discuss it after we get out of here. hu qiaoming: It’s better if you go with Brother Xia. I am going to wait here for the people from the Peasants’ Association. ling xia: What’s the use of being here by yourself ? Do you actually think that you can take on that many people? Let’s go! (Forcing him) Go! (He pulls him two steps.) hu qiaoming: You’d better go. Take good care of Yuelin. (Stubbornly) I’m not leaving, no matter what. xiao yuelin: Please don’t be foolish! Let’s leave together. (She gently tugs at him. hu qiaoming, oddly silent, walks into the inner room on the left.) (Pursues him) Brother Qiao! ling xia (gently pulling xiao yuelin): Better leave him alone. (He embraces her swiftly as the wind.) Let’s get going quickly. (Attempts to push her out) Go quickly! xiao yuelin (stands firmly): If he’s not leaving, I’m not leaving, either. ling xia (with vehemence): If he goes to his death, will you also go to yours? xiao yuelin: Maybe. (Expressing intense dissatisfaction, she walks straight to the left.) ling xia (rushes toward the left door, pulls her to a stop): Yuelin! xiao yuelin (severely): What you just said is so disgusting! . . . Are you really going to stand by and watch him die? The thought of that does damage to your own dignity. A frank and straightforward person like you shouldn’t say such a thing. ling xia: Please forgive me! (Lowers his head into her hands, then ushers her a few steps toward the center of the room) You are my soul. You are my entire world. Seven years ago I gave you all my heart . . . xiao yuelin: But your mother sold me off. Since I was sold to the Hu family, it’s been like being in prison. If not for Brother Ming’s love, I would have been ravaged by that beastly father of his. ling xia: But why won’t you leave with me? (Gently embraces her) I love you so much. xiao yuelin (separating from him gently): Why do you think I didn’t agree with Brother Ming when he urged me to run off and marry him even though we’re crazy in love with each other? (She shows her charming, beautiful eyes.) ling xia (in a fl ying leap, embraces her and points to his own heart): Do you still love me?

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xiao yuelin: You were the first person to touch my heart. But Brother Ming and I are incomparably euphoric and incomparably well suited to each other. I’ll love both of you all my life. (hu qiaoming’s anguished cry emanates from the inner room.) voice: Yaa! . . . xiao yuelin: Oh no! (She rushes toward the left in fright and exits.) ling xia: Ah! (He disappears in hot pursuit of xiao yuelin.) (Curtain.)

A CT 2 (Five days later. Twilight is rapidly falling. hu rongsheng stirs his fat body, settling contently into a rocking chair on the veranda of the spacious room. The spacious room is both a study and a dressing room. Under the window on the left wall is a large Westernstyle dressing table with a washstand next to it. Against the right wall is a set of bookcases. There is a desk situated in front under the right window; farther downstage is a passageway into a bedroom. The back wall opens onto the veranda, which is a few feet higher than the room. Upstage on the left is a passageway downstairs. At center stage is a round table and chairs. zheng shaomei is wearing dressing clothes and washing her face; lingxiang is serving at her side. The room is decorated quite extravagantly.) hu rongsheng (extremely unsettled): Can’t you hurry it up? You’re going to be late. zheng shaomei: The play doesn’t start until eight o’clock. There’s no need to be in such a hurry! hu rongsheng: You won’t be able to get good seats if you’re late. And you’re just babbling on about this and that. zheng shaomei: Relax! (She turns on a light, seats herself in front of the dressing table, and puts on makeup.) hu rongsheng (turns his head to look at her): Hey! Hey! (zheng shaomei, busy doing her makeup, doesn’t pay attention to him.) Hey, you! . . . What time are you going to be back tonight? zheng shaomei: I’ll be back right after the play is over, but it’s possible that I’ll go to Mrs. Zhang’s to play cards. hu rongsheng (anxiously): So what time are you going to be back? zheng shaomei: Why are you so worried about it? I’ll hail a carriage from their place. hu rongsheng: Argh, back and forth and still can’t tell me clearly! Tell me what time you’re returning and I’ll be able to send someone to pick you up. zheng shaomei (smiling at him): Ah, you’re so nice all of a sudden!

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hu rongsheng: I always treat you like this. But you still keep bringing up divorce . . . On the whole, I’ve done my best to love you with all my heart for more than ten years now. But right out of the blue you cast me aside and insist on divorcing me! A woman’s heart is truly unfathomable! zheng shaomei: So why did you station a bunch of people outside the wall to shout like the devil and scare me when I returned from seeing a play? Is it right for you to try and scare me to death in the middle of the night, but wrong for me to want to divorce you so that I can pursue a life? hu rongsheng: Are you really going to divorce me over that trifling matter? zheng shaomei (indignantly): It’s proof that you clearly don’t care about my life! . . . You stopped loving me long ago. On top of that, you hoped I’d die. You can’t say it yourself, so you concocted a few ghosts to scare me to death. No wonder your son says you’re a “ghost” and that your home is a “ghost pagoda.” It’s the truth. Do you really think I want to die at the hand of a ghost and spend eternity buried under this ghost pagoda? hu rongsheng: You always came back so late after going to the theater. You know all the rumors I heard. zheng shaomei: What rumors could justify your playing a ghost and terrorizing me in the middle of the night? hu rongsheng: You know. zheng shaomei: I only know what’s in my own heart. How can I know what’s in a ghost’s heart? hu rongsheng: I didn’t want to ruin this family’s reputation. I didn’t want it to be obvious that I was a cuckold. Why would I stop your carriage on the road and catch you at it right in broad daylight? So . . . zheng shaomei: Nonsense! You’re imagining things! (Incensed, she heads toward the veranda.) hu rongsheng: You think you can fool me? Those times you and Qiaoming went out every night to see foreign dances and foreign operas—weren’t you two always returning in the same carriage like a young married couple? Weren’t you two getting romantic? I had no choice but to take action, so I hid myself in the dark and screamed like a ghost, trying to scare you out of the carriage so I could see for myself. (Wearing a long gown of blue silk and puffing out his chest, he comes in.) zheng shaomei (suddenly calming down, joylessly): And the result? Did you catch anyone? . . . Only once—that night it was pouring rain—when my carriage had gone about halfway there, I saw somebody ahead walking slowly in the rain. When I saw that it was Qiaoming, I made him get in and ride with me. We barely even spoke. (She quietly goes into the interior room. chunhua and lingxiang enter.) hu rongsheng (narrows his eyes, appearing demonic): Humph! (hu qiaoming comes onstage.) hu qiaoming: Dad! . . . Dad! hu rongsheng (venomously): What do you want?

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hu qiaoming: Please hide right away! There are going to be a bunch of people from the Peasants’ Association coming tonight. hu rongsheng: How do you plan to deal with me? hu qiaoming: Please hide yourself, sir. I’m afraid they’ll be tough on you. hu rongsheng (looking tyrannical): How are you going to have them deal with me? hu qiaoming: There’s no reason for me to have them deal with you, Father. However, according to their investigation you’ve actually been trafficking in opium, sir. hu rongsheng (anxiously seizes on hu qiaoming’s words, outraged): You’re up to some monkey business, too! Do you think that I don’t know what’s on your mind? . . . You’re going to play the opportunist and ally with the Peasants’ Association to disburse the seven-thousand-odd catties of rental grain that I’ve spent two years accumulating. They’ll naturally deal with me in whatever way you want. hu qiaoming: You’re deluding yourself into hoping for an era when one pint of grain sells for one pint of gold. I’ll simply sell off that grain at a low price to save the commoners of the area and save you, all in one stroke. If I hadn’t come around to this, they would’ve dealt with you as a despotic landlord. Why do you think they released you after only three days? hu rongsheng: Humph! . . . Even if you wanted to sell our whole family to make revolution, you should at least say something to me about it. What’s this bit about your surrendering at the back door when you heard those Party thugs taking me away at the front door? hu qiaoming: Ling Xia came and talked to me not long after you were seized. We were in the drawing room and hadn’t been talking long when a large group of peasants suddenly came to the back door. They wanted to seal off our residence immediately. I argued with them briefly, and they beat me for no reason, and then tied me up. Fortunately, Ling Xia came running out of the drawing room and told them to back off. In the end they demanded that I sell all the grain at a bargain within two days, and that I donate five hundred catties to aid the starving people. I thought their demands were reasonable, so I complied . . . Now that these problems have been solved, there are no issues there. What’s urgent is whether or not you’re trafficking in opium. Has there ever been any opium in our house? . . . If it’s true, we both have to escape right away! hu rongsheng (feigning as if to force him): If you’re so sure of their accusations, go search for yourself! hu qiaoming: Originally I had my doubts, but I’ve been away for a long time, and every time I come home, I get the feeling everything in this place has a ghostly eeriness about it, totally unlike a this-worldly family. hu rongsheng: If this doesn’t seem like a family to you, you should get the hell out of here. And why are you always lurking around the house? hu qiaoming: It’s because I pity a few good people here. I’m afraid those women will be buried alive in this ghost pagoda of yours. I’m always thinking of rescuing them . . . Otherwise, I’d have run away a long time ago . . . (Depressed) The first is Yuelin . . .

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hu rongsheng (violently, with an angry and terrible look in his eyes): Ha, ha! Don’t bother saying it. Now you’re getting to the point! The reason you’re rebelling against me, the reason that you want revenge against me, is to get Yuelin for yourself to share with that guy Ling Xia. No matter how new your learning is, or how new your ideology is, Yuelin is still my daughter. You may have the courage of the Thunder God, but you can’t take her. hu qiaoming: That’s right, Yuelin is your daughter! . . . But a daughter has a daughter’s dignity. A daughter has the rights of a daughter. Just because a father has a daughter doesn’t mean she’s his property. A father who can’t nurture his daughter’s dignity and rights has lost the qualifications to be a father. A father who regards his daughter as property is plainly a criminal father. hu rongsheng (with dangerous eyes venomously protruding at hu qiaoming, poses as if about to pounce and kill him): Ah! . . . Such blazing rebellion! (He pounces at hu qiaoming; hu qiaoming retreats well away.) (Pointing at hu qiaoming) Get the hell out! (Threateningly) You get the hell out of here tonight! hu qiaoming: You won’t be able to handle the people from the Peasants’ Association if I leave. You have to avoid them tonight at all costs. hu rongsheng: I’m not afraid of them. Get the hell out of here! If you’re still here tomorrow, I’ll make sure you die a terrible death. (He chases him.) hu qiaoming (momentarily gloomy, then resolutely): I’m leaving! (He exits the stage. hu rongsheng stands immobile in the middle of the room in a terrific huff.) zheng shaomei (now obviously made up, wearing a green silk shirt, walks out of the bedroom): You really chased him out? . . . (Walks toward him) Don’t you think you’re being too extreme? hu rongsheng: He’s gone. You feel the whole house is empty now, don’t you? zheng shaomei (indignantly): What are you talking about? hu rongsheng (snickers): That’s what you’re thinking! zheng shaomei: Bah! (She quietly walks away.) hu rongsheng: Ha, ha. Look at you pouting! (Points at her, smiling) Every time you see him you smile so touchingly. As soon as you hear he’s leaving, you start crying to yourself. Am I falsely accusing you? (Thinking to himself ) But no matter how much you love him, I’ll still be as obstinate as always. I’m not going to follow the fashion. There’s no way I’ll ever share my wife with anybody else! zheng shaomei: You make me want to puke! (Livid, she looks at him in horror and rushes toward the bedroom. chunhua, coming out of the bedroom, runs into zheng shaomei.) chunhua: Madam! I can’t find the red jade bracelet anywhere. The agate broach and jeweled ring have disappeared, too.

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zheng shaomei (stops a moment, looks back at hu rongsheng): Did you take them again? hu rongsheng (not replying for a long while): So, you can’t show off your beauty without my jewels after all! zheng shaomei (briefly silent, furious): A month ago you took the diamond broach you’d given me for my twentieth birthday. Two weeks ago you took the engagement gift . . . Okay, I’ll give everything back to you. (She goes into the bedroom. Jumping with joy, hu rongsheng sits in front of the dressing table.) zheng shaomei (takes out a silver box and comes over to hu rongsheng): I better return them directly to you. Every single piece of jewelry you’ve ever given me is in here. (She opens the box to show him, takes out necklaces and other jewelry for him to see. hu rongsheng looks at them greedily.) (Briskly walks toward the bedroom) Lingxiang, go and tell the groom to prepare the carriage! (She disappears into the bedroom. After examining each piece of jewelry one by one, hu rongsheng smiles, stashes the box up his sleeve, and paces back and forth in the room by himself. He walks to the bedroom door and looks in.) hu rongsheng (ecstatically): Ah, you’re finally going! It’s really insufferable, always waiting for her to get out the door! (hongtao, holding a note, lively but looking somewhat worried, walks in from the left passageway.) hu rongsheng: Why are you here, Hongtao? hongtao: Young Master asked me to clear out his books for him. (She goes directly to the front of the bookcases.) hu rongsheng (asks enthusiastically): Is he leaving tonight? hongtao (carefully): He’s just about to go. hu rongsheng: Has Madam left? hongtao: She just now left. hu rongsheng: And Miss Yuelin? hongtao: Miss Yuelin? (Innocently, she herself wanting to cry) She’s in the flower garden crying. hu rongsheng: Call her in for me! Quick! hongtao (unwillingly): She’s crying so pitifully. How can I get her to come? hu rongsheng: Say that I have some orders for her and drag her here. Go! hongtao (refuses): No, I have to clear out the books for Young Master. hu rongsheng (grabs hongtao): Oh yeah? (Jokingly) Whose orders are more important, Young Master’s or Old Master’s? (Pats her hand) My good Hongtao, go and tell Miss Yuelin to come right away! hongtao (coquettishly exiting through the original door): Okay, I’ll call her and see. chunhua (entering from the bedroom): Master! You have a guest! hu rongsheng: What guest?

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chunhua: It’s a female guest. She says she wants to see Madam. hu rongsheng: Is there a name card? chunhua: Yes. (She hands him the name card.) hu rongsheng (looks at the card and exclaims in surprise): Ah! What does she look like? chunhua: She’s extraordinarily beautiful and looks as if she could be Yuelin’s older sister. hu rongsheng: Hm. (He holds his head with his hands as if thinking; his crafty eyes dart back and forth.) Go and tell her to come up! chunhua: Okay. (She exits from the left door. hu rongsheng hastily looks in the dressing table mirror, combs his hair, sprays on some cologne, and rushes into the bedroom to change clothes. xiao sen takes the stage. She is dressed from head to foot in an immaculate, white Western suit and is wearing a white straw hat. Her comportment is even more elegant than in the previous act and she also appears a few years younger. She walks in tranquilly from the left door, goes to the middle of the room, and is silent.) chunhua (comes in through the left door and says to her hastily): Please have a seat! (She indicates for her to sit at the small round table in the center. xiao sen stands gracefully erect and still in front of the table; she puts her portfolio down.) Master! The guest is here. hu rongsheng (radiant in a long ivory-yellow gown, feigning stateliness): Ah! Please have a seat, please have a seat! (Extremely respectfully, smiling) My wife just went  out. Chunhua, go and make some tea right away! . . . Hey, close the door properly! (chunhua exits through the left door, closing it. xiao sen observes hu rongsheng sit down, then jumps in surprise.) (Tenderly approaches her) I’m afraid you don’t recognize me. I am Hu Can. (xiao sen convulses, holds her anger, and retreats a little.) We’ve been apart for almost twenty years now, but you still look the same . . . (Looks her over thoroughly) Still as sexy and chic (pleased with himself ), you still look like you did when you were eighteen . . . (xiao sen, resentful, ignores him.) I heard after that . . . afterward, you went to France. When did you return? (xiao sen, depressed, walks even farther away.) You really have ambition! Your paintings must be very famous now. Didn’t you become a great artist? (xiao sen looks gloomy and unsettled.) It’s really ridiculous for somebody who’s become a great artist to also wear the badge of a Party official on her chest! . . . What do you do at the Party headquarters? Can somebody as graceful and aloof as you be an official? xiao sen: Cut the nonsense! . . . That little child of mine, how is she now?

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hu rongsheng (shocked and chilled, appears flustered): Chi . . . Child? . . . It’s been almost twenty years . . . I . . . I don’t know. (He turns his face away.) xiao sen (worried and indignant): You . . . You haven’t been taking care of her at all? (He is silent.) (Angrily) You haven’t been taking care of her at all? hu rongsheng: Taking care of her, taking care of her . . . I’m a man. How was I supposed to take care of her? xiao sen (intensely): I knew you had no sense of responsibility, but how could you have abandoned her! hu rongsheng: You abandoned her first, and I abandoned her second. So let’s not blame each other! xiao sen: You and my mother made a contract to raise that baby when she was born . . . hu rongsheng: Your mother forced me into that contract but let you go to France . . . I’m a man. I can’t help but look after my status and reputation. How could I keep going to the orphanage to look after that illegitimate child? xiao sen: You should have paid the expenses of child rearing since you signed that contract. hu rongsheng: But you yourself didn’t sign the contract so you could avoid responsibility! (Gets angry, hand on his chest, clumsily walks around the room) You were just afraid of losing face and ruining your reputation, so once the first full month was up, you ran off to hide in France. Do you think I should’ve advertised that I’m the father of an illegitimate child? Ha, ha! (Insultingly) The long and short of it is that the illegitimate child is the one who’s most unfortunate. I wasn’t willing to recognize her, but you were even less willing because you wanted to maintain the facade of being a virgin in order to marry some other gentleman. xiao sen (standing next to the table, vehemently): Ah! Who committed the crime? hu rongsheng (ambiguously): If it wasn’t both of us, how could we have had a baby? xiao sen: You have no conscience! I haven’t been able to talk about the pain ever since you raped me. Crying tears like a torrential rainstorm, I lost my youth. The anguish I felt was like being caned daily . . . (Whimpering) I wanted to kill myself . . . I failed to kill myself. I wanted a new life, but . . . my whole body . . . was marked . . . with . . . wretched . . . scars. (Extreme grief and indignation, in a monologue) I pleaded to heaven, but heaven didn’t give me back my innocence. I pleaded to people, but nobody . . . gave me back my . . . my vir . . . gin . . . ity! (Anguished, she pauses briefly, then returns to her earlier intensity) You ruined my virgin beauty. You ruined my whole life. And you still dare to say such unconscionable things to me?! hu rongsheng: Oh, oh, don’t you lose your temper! (Hastily making amends, clownishly) That look of yours makes my heart skip. (He flinches and grasps xiao sen’s hand; xiao sen immediately casts his hand away.) (Sits on the chair in front of her) I remember when you were nine years old and often came to the coal mine with your father. I remember just how you looked, right up until you were seventeen. (Looks blankly at her) Oh, oh, don’t be sad! (Sighs) Every

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time I think of you my body gets hot. At the time, the more you refused me, the more heartbroken I felt. . . . Especially that time—the time we rushed back together from the coal mine to see your sick father. The thick black clouds, the thunderstorm pounding, and then we took shelter in a hut by the side of the road . . . That was the happiest time in my life. It was also the most unforgettable time! . . . Even though you kicked me, hit me, cried and yelled like crazy . . . For me, ah! . . . (He bows his head and sighs.) In all my many years of amorous experience, it only happened that one time. Is that truly criminal? . . . So, ever since then you’ve been constantly on my mind. It’s not just thinking of you. I’ve often shed tears for you, too. (With utmost sincerity) Not only have I shed tears, I’ve also hoped to run into you so that I could make amends for my crime. xiao sen: Don’t give me that nonsense! No matter how a female is insulted in this male-centered society, she simply won’t be forgiven. Don’t you think you’ve harmed me enough? I just want to find that child and raise her myself. hu rongsheng: I don’t know what happened to that child at the orphanage. She’s long gone. (There is a tragic moment of silence.) xiao sen (looks askance at him): Long gone?! hu rongsheng: Right. xiao sen: I don’t believe it. You’d better go find her right away! hu rongsheng: It’s best that you go. xiao sen: If I find her, will you turn her entirely over to me? hu rongsheng: Naturally. But the child has already died, so why bother asking me? (He smiles and pats her on the shoulder.) xiao sen (her desolate eyes brighten): Oh, I’ll search for her, and when I find her, will you be able to make the sacrifice and give her up to me? hu rongsheng: It goes without saying that you can take her away with you. (chunhua comes in with the tea.) chunhua: Master! A representative from the Peasants’ Association is here. (She sets out the tea.) hu rongsheng: You’d better tell Young Master to meet with him. chunhua: Young Master has closed his door and turned out the lights. He’s in the room, depressed and crying to himself. What makes you think he’ll be willing to come out? (xiao yuelin sings a melancholy song from inside, and the piano begins playing at once.) hu rongsheng: He’s in there playing the piano. Go call him! chunhua (mischievously): It’s only that man Ling. He wants you to come out to meet him. hu rongsheng: Don’t be naughty! You go! (chunhua exits the stage. ling xia comes onstage. He’s wearing a yellow military uniform. His boots and hat are trim and handsome; his smiling face is spirited and

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youthful. He energetically walks directly into the room, sees xiao sen, and secretly signals her with his eyes, then briefly greets hu rongsheng.) ling xia: At first my orders from Party headquarters were to search your home for opium and seal it up tonight. But because a few days ago your family acknowledged the Peasants’ Association’s request to sell your grain inexpensively, and also contributed five hundred catties to aid the poor, we advocated a peaceful settlement. Tonight we’ll just make a cursory check of suspicious places. Please show us around! hu rongsheng (smirking, nobly): Ah, so many innocent people have been wronged in the world! (Arrogantly) If you really must inspect, I’ll take you wherever you want to look. (Angrily accompanying ling xia, to xiao sen) I beg your pardon! I’ll call my daughter to keep you company. (He goes. The singing stops; the piano also stops. xiao sen, silently thinking, sits down, opens her portfolio, and takes out documents to read. xiao yuelin comes onstage. She is wearing a soft white sleeping gown. Her hair is loose, and she has a crystal- clear expression. Her eyes still show traces of tears. She enters from the veranda, sees xiao sen, and joyfully grasps her.) xiao yuelin: Have you been here long? xiao sen: A quarter of an hour. xiao yuelin: Did you meet my auntie? xiao sen: No. xiao yuelin (sits down in front of her): How about her case? xiao sen: Everything is properly arranged for her. I came specifically to tell her. xiao yuelin: It’s a pity she’s not at home. xiao sen: Just tell her to come to the Women’s Federation tomorrow. This is her deposition. Now the Women’s Federation can settle it. There is no need to go through further legal procedures. We don’t need this thing. (Hands over the document) Please give it to her. xiao yuelin (takes it): Okay. xiao sen: As for the case you reported the day before yesterday, we’re giving it special attention and are quite sympathetic to you. We’d be happy to help you out. Everyone unanimously says your father is quite evil and this must be handled carefully. So we can’t proceed at the moment. xiao yuelin (depressed): But I hoped to get it done as quickly as possible. I can’t wait much longer. In this abominable home, my foster father (sobs of grief constrict her throat), that . . . that . . . demon . . . xiao sen (carefully observes her expression): How is your foster father treating you? xiao yuelin: He . . . he is a . . . hideous monster! . . . As soon as it’s nighttime, he secretly turns into a beast! (Ashamed and angry, she hangs her head.) xiao sen (an extremely pained expression, her ice- clear eyes wide open): Ah! . . . He’s your biological father. I’m afraid he doesn’t know it yet. xiao yuelin (extremely surprised, quite woefully): Huh! . . . He’s my biological father?! (Suspiciously) What’s going on here?

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(She grabs xiao sen’s hand.) xiao sen (gloomily): He committed a crime, and as a result, you were born. xiao yuelin: Oh? (Surprised, gloomily silent for a moment) And my mother? Where is my mother? xiao sen: She died long ago. Your mother was a very pure young lady from an important family. After being ruined by your father, she was inconsolably heartbroken and died shortly thereafter. (xiao yuelin is tragically silent.) xiao yuelin: How do you know? xiao sen: She was my older sister. I am quite familiar with every detail. xiao yuelin (collapses into her bosom): Why didn’t you tell me earlier, Auntie? xiao sen (hugging her tightly, utterly anguished, she slumps and strokes her): There are so many twists and turns in this affair. We didn’t know where you ended up any earlier than this. It was only a few days ago, when I ran into you and found out your name was Xiao Yuelin, that I noticed you looked quite like my older sister when she was seventeen or eighteen. As soon as I saw you, I was suspicious, so I went to inquire at Madam Yan Fuheng’s. She told me all the details. She presented the evidence quite clearly so that I was finally convinced. The most important sign was that you have this black mole. (She touches xiao yuelin’s mole.) xiao yuelin: Oh, no wonder the family servants all said I look a little like you . . . This news, it’s truly the first time in my life I’ve ever been happy! (The sound of a cough is heard. hu rongsheng immediately enters from the left door.) hu rongsheng (talking to himself ): What a bunch of imbeciles! Trying to stir up trouble for this old man. Ah, but they can’t do anything to me. (Swaggering and full of himself, he smiles at xiao sen) Sorry! (Gesturing clumsily) Those bastards were so infernally noisy! I kept you waiting for so long. xiao sen: Madam still hasn’t returned. I must go. (She picks up the portfolio.) hu rongsheng (stops her): Please sit for a while longer. xiao sen: It’s late, goodbye! hu rongsheng: At any rate, please sit a while longer. I already told the kitchen to prepare some snacks. (Physically obstructs her) Please have a seat! xiao sen (gives him a look of unspeakable loathing, resolutely rushes out): I have to go now. (She exits. xiao yuelin, reluctant to let her leave, follows her out the left door. hu rongsheng, partly let down, partly entranced, follows to see her out. The stage is temporarily empty.) hu qiaoming (looks in from the veranda, runs directly toward the bedroom door, pushes the door, and, just as he puts one foot in): Ah! Auntie! How come you’re back so soon? (He backs out.) zheng shaomei (walks out of the bedroom, looking haggard): I got halfway there and still felt miserable, so I came right back . . . Did you come in here to see your father?

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hu qiaoming (extremely depressed): No, I just saw father going out and thought I’d come in and steal a little money. zheng shaomei: You sound so pitiful! . . . Don’t you have any money? hu qiaoming: How could I? He made me turn over every penny after selling the grain. zheng shaomei: There’s no money in here, either. I don’t know where he hid it. This time it appears that he’s hidden his money extremely well. hu qiaoming (anxiously): What? How can I leave tonight if I don’t have any money? zheng shaomei: I have a little money, but I can’t get at it tonight. And I gave all the jewelry back to your father. There’s nothing I can do about it now. (Thinks in gloomy silence for a moment, then says happily) Oh, I’ve got it! Wait while I go borrow some from Mrs. Zhang. hu qiaoming (suddenly looks happy): Thank you! Thirty or fifty dollars would do. zheng shaomei: I’ll have Hongtao give it to you in a while, but you must not tell anyone! (Disappearing into the bedroom with a very vivid, coquettish expression, then suddenly coming out again, she leans on the doorway and says very seriously) Qiaoming! (Already on his way out, hu qiaoming reenters upon hearing her call.) hu qiaoming (standing in the middle of the room): What can I do for you? (zheng shaomei quite leisurely walks toward him, silently.) (Gazing at her with a fanciful look) So, what can I do for you? zheng shaomei (fantastically entrancing eyes, infatuated): Are you willing? hu qiaoming: You’ve never spoken with me about matters of the heart . . . If you want to say something, please do! I greatly sympathize with you. (Looking at her solicitously, very tensely, he then suddenly turns his head away and takes a drag on a cigarette. zheng shaomei reaches with both hands from behind him toward his dark black hair. At first unaware, hu qiaoming turns around. zheng shaomei hurriedly retracts her hands.) What were you going to do? . . . Huh? zheng shaomei (sighs from a place deep in her belly, then with a beaming smile): I wanted to touch your hair . . . hu qiaoming (innocently and sympathetically): So why didn’t you touch it? . . . It’s okay with me. zheng shaomei: Now . . . I think it’s unnecessary. (With a meaningful smile, she dashes into the bedroom and closes the door. hu qiaoming sighs deeply, his eyes kindled brightly, and looks at her door, then exits the stage from the veranda. hongtao hurries in through the left door carrying cups, chopsticks, and a white tablecloth.) hongtao (hesitates): Ah, no guests here! (hu rongsheng and xiao yuelin come onstage.) hu rongsheng: And the liquor? hongtao: Didn’t the guest already leave? hu rongsheng: Might as well bring it out anyway! Go and tell the kitchen staff we don’t want snacks. Bring food and liquor instead.

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hongtao (places the cups on the round table): What kind of liquor do you want? hu rongsheng: Whiskey and brandy. (To xiao yuelin) Why don’t you ever come when I invite you? . . . (hongtao exits. Two male servants enter with liquor and numerous food dishes; they put them in place and exit.) xiao yuelin: Take your time eating, Dad! I’m going now. hu rongsheng: What! Won’t you have a drink with me? (He pours two glasses of liquor.) Did you know I’ve been waiting a long time for you? xiao yuelin: I don’t want to drink. hu rongsheng: I’ll tell you some good news. Have a seat! (He guides xiao yuelin to sit with him at the round table and begins to drink. xiao yuelin, unhappy, fidgets.) Your aunt wants to divorce me. I am going to allow it. (He raises the glass and drinks, observing her.) xiao yuelin (takes a little drink): That’s good. hu rongsheng: I’m glad! You think so, too? (He smiles energetically, takes a big drink.) xiao yuelin: If you free her right away, she may still be able to get something out of life. hu rongsheng: She is so shrewd and so bad. It just isn’t good to keep her in the house. xiao yuelin: I think she’s very nice. You’ve disliked her for more than ten years. But didn’t you get rid of seven wives for her? (Quite upset and unsettled, she stands up and appears to be about to leave.) hu rongsheng: But now I don’t want to see her anymore. She’s not even one-tenthousandth as good as you. (He smiles at her obsequiously, gradually petting her, takes another big drink, and puts his hands on her.) xiao yuelin: Dad! (She looks at him intensely and venomously and moves away.) hu rongsheng (forcefully pulls her to a stop): Yuelin! You just gave me quite a nasty look. Don’t you really know what’s on my mind? . . . (Indignant, he downs two glasses of liquor.) I’ve doted on you for nine years now. Nine years ago you were petite and dainty; now you are fair as a flower and the moon. The girl you were nine years ago was barefoot on the street and dressed in rags, yelling, “Flowers for sale! Flowers for sale!” Now, nine years later, you’re wearing satin, living in a young lady’s bedroom, and riding in a luxurious carriage pulled by well-fed horses. For you, the circumstances have gotten better and better over these nine years. For me, the days and months during these nine years begin and end with the sentiment “I love you.” (He pauses, pours himself a drink, and slowly drinks it.) Nine years ago I saw you in the rain yelling, “Flowers for sale! Flowers for sale.” You were so pathetic and so lovable. So I paid a hundred and seventy dollars to buy you . . .

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(xiao yuelin, shoulders sagging and head drooping, courage completely exhausted, is lost in sad thoughts.) Ah! . . . You were only eleven years old at the time . . . (Sighs) No matter what I said, your stepmother wouldn’t let me take you. It was her idea, after all, to make you a servant girl. I don’t know what ghost possessed her later, but you became our adopted daughter. Ah! . . . When I start thinking of this, I really begin to loathe your stepmother! It wasn’t until she died this year that my hopes for you gradually began to revive. (He pours her glass full for her, then drinks again himself.) Yuelin! All you have to do is agree and all my property is at your disposal. I’ll give you all the jewelry to wear. (Takes the jewelry box that zheng shaomei returned to him and shows it to her) Enjoy your fortune in whatever way you want. I’ll treat you like a queen. (He puts his arm around her soft shoulders and gropes her opportunistically.) xiao yuelin: Don’t bother me! (She twists and escapes.) hu rongsheng (chasing her): How can I let you go? I bought you because I wanted you. How can I let you go without achieving my objective? (He pulls her into his embrace and drinks, fills her cup again.) xiao yuelin (holding the cup of liquor, severely): Dad! My life was quite bad, but since you and Mother took me as your adopted daughter, I’ve enjoyed your beneficence. Consider the reputation of the entire family, consider our own mutual dignity. Please don’t continue this debauchery! hu rongsheng: What’s this adopted or not adopted daughter! . . . That was just your mother’s cruel way of dealing with me! xiao yuelin: Would you still insult me this way if I was your biological daughter? hu rongsheng: Humph! Did I buy you so that you could lecture me?! (Angry, he releases her, drinks and eats by himself.) xiao yuelin (silent a moment, then in a low voice): Dad! It appears that I am your biological daughter . . . hu rongsheng: Bullshit! (He slaps the table and gulps down his drink.) xiao yuelin: Dad! (Mournfully, then suddenly grabbing his chest, intensely) Dad! . . . (hu rongsheng pretends not to notice her, drinks happily, and smiles with wicked ecstasy, then grabs both her arms and forcefully gropes her again, from top to bottom, part by part. xiao yuelin reacts in shock, jumping away.) Ah, ah! When I touch your soft and tender arms, slender waist, and round buttocks, I’m so happy I could die! (With an animal sexual impulse, he ferociously embraces and gropes her) Ah! I’ve wanted you for so many years and today I’ve finally got you! (He caresses and kisses her in a mad rush. hongtao comes onstage holding a plate of food and liquor.) hongtao: Master!

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(Startled upon encountering this scene, she jumps abruptly and all the things shatter; she flees.) xiao yuelin: Hongtao! Help . . . Help . . . (Resisting for all she’s worth) Get off! . . . Beast! hu rongsheng (forcing liquor into her and soaring to even more terrible heights): Oh, time and again I’ve asked you to drink with me but you weren’t willing. So tonight you’re going to your death drunk! (He holds her down and forces liquor into her. She battles him with all her might for a long time. He fiercely picks her up and goes toward the bedroom. xiao yuelin bites his arm, inflicting a wound, and gets away. hu rongsheng pursues her hotly, circling the room. She dashes toward the left door hoping to rush out. He ferociously pulls her to a stop and locks the door. xiao yuelin desperately dashes toward the veranda in hopes of jumping. He captures her like a hungry tiger and rushes into the bedroom.) (Arrogantly) Humph, now! xiao yuelin (clinging to the room door so as not to be taken in, she screams loudly): Help! Help! (hu rongsheng simultaneously covers her mouth and tries to carry her in.) hu qiaoming (jumps in from the veranda, hastily runs toward hu rongsheng): What are you doing, Dad? hu rongsheng (fiendishly): Get the hell out of here! hu qiaoming (looks sharply at him): Put her down now! hu rongsheng: Son of a bitch! Who asked you to meddle?! hu qiaoming (pressing him): Are you going to put her down or not? hu rongsheng: What’s it to you? Get lost! hu qiaoming: Give her to me! (He flies at him fiercely, fights over xiao yuelin.) hu rongsheng (spitting): You think you’re going to force your old man to give you what belongs to him? (He kicks hu qiaoming.) hu qiaoming: She’s mine . . . (He leaps, fighting ferociously.) hu rongsheng: Bastard! You don’t have a big . . . I bought her! hu qiaoming: She’s my wife! (He forces xiao yuelin from hu rongsheng’s arms.) hu rongsheng: Huh! (The violence suddenly ceases.) Nonsense! (He sullenly retreats to the front of the desk at the right-hand wall.) Bastard! (Searching for something in the drawer) When did you do it? hu qiaoming: Nobody’s going to interfere with our affairs. (Caresses xiao yuelin in his embrace) We’re going, Yuelin.

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(Holding xiao yuelin, he scoots off to the left. xiao yuelin, embarrassed, goes with hu qiaoming.) hu rongsheng (looking depressed, walks toward the two of them): Yuelin! Aren’t you even going to say goodbye? (He gives a pathetic look. xiao yuelin stops.) Okay, you two go far away! Just don’t look back at me. (A blade flashes, forcing hu qiaoming to separate from her.) hu qiaoming: Ahh! (Bleeding profusely, he twists and collapses in the middle of the room.) xiao yuelin: Ah! (Beside herself with panic, stupefied, she immediately collapses on top of hu qiaoming’s body.) Brother Ming! . . . Brother Ming! . . . (With a tragic look in her eyes, she goes into a trancelike state. hu rongsheng, in a ferocious posture, raises the bloody knife in his hand and goes over and shakes the prone hu qiaoming.) xiao yuelin (head hanging low, she suddenly cries out twice in lament): Brother Ming! . . . (Softly) Brother Ming! (She faints. hu rongsheng pulls xiao yuelin up and sees that she has fainted dead away. In shocked sadness, he desperately hatches a plan. He throws down the knife, opens the left door, and flees through it. hu qiaoming’s corpse lies twitching. xiao yuelin lies at its side, unmoving. The stage is gloomy and quiet; there is a pause. ling xia enters abruptly through the left door; immensely shocked, he hastens to shake hu qiaoming.) ling xia (tears of sadness welling up, he caresses xiao yuelin): Yuelin! Yuelin! (Lifts her to her feet, xiao yuelin’s body slumping) Yuelin! (xiao yuelin is unconsciousness and utterly silent.) (Panicked) What happened? . . . What happened? (xiao yuelin, barely conscious now, gazes blankly all around the room.) Say something, Yuelin! (He shakes her; xiao yuelin is unresponsive.) Did you do this! (He caresses hu qiaoming, grieves for a moment, picks up the bloody knife and examines it, then looks at xiao yuelin again. A policeman appears on the veranda and peers in.) (Cocks his ear and listens, extremely shocked, pulls xiao yuelin along) Get going . . . go! (Male and female servants file onstage with hongtao in the lead, all greatly astonished.) policeman: Humph! (Jumps in and swiftly handcuffs ling xia) Let’s see where you can go now. ling xia (yells gruffly): Take these handcuffs off me! policeman: Ha, ha! . . . Save it for the judge.

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ling xia (resists): Don’t be stupid! I didn’t kill anyone. policeman: Does the murderer want to play hero? (He fiercely drags ling xia away.) xiao yuelin (anxious and dazed, looking for ling xia, her lips moving but unable to speak, she hits the policeman, crazed): No . . . it wasn’t . . . him . . . policeman: Was it you? . . . You look like you could have killed someone. (He forcefully pushes xiao yuelin off, then he drags ling xia off the stage through the left door. Some servants look at the corpse in astonishment, some talk among themselves, and some follow the policeman off the stage.) xiao yuelin (after watching ling xia go, she dances insanely): Ha, ha, everyone is gone!. . . . Ha, ha, everyone is gone! . . . Ha, ha, ha! (Twirling, she falls to the floor. A female servant helps her up. At the same time, hongtao picks up the bloody knife and examines it thoroughly. Male and female servants, except for hongtao, converse in succession.) male servant a: That guy Ling is really vicious! lingxiang: He really ought to be killed! chunhua: He was in Young Master’s room talking with him just before this . . . Why would he kill Young Master? hongtao (holding the bloody knife, rushes in pursuit): Mr. Policeman! (She exits.) xiao yuelin (crawls wildly to her feet and crazily commands the servants): Strike! . . . Break out! . . . Break out! (She swaggers around, dancing spasmodically.) zheng shaomei (emerges from the bedroom in alarm, holding a money bag in her hands): What are you all doing? chunhua (sobbing): Madam! . . . male servant a: Young Master is dead. zheng shaomei: Ahh!! (Shocked and grief-stricken, she drops the money bag to the floor; she is transfixed and unable to move.) (Curtain.)

A CT 3 Scene 1 (A small building built on the grounds of an ancient pagoda. The walls are gray-blue. There is a small window about a foot long and not quite a foot wide in the center of the back wall. The shutters are closed, allowing only a beam of dim light to enter through the crack, making the room especially dark and dismal. Under the window are a table and three benches, to the left of which is a wooden bed draped with an old-style blue sheet. Along the left wall are a bookcase and a small table, both piled high with books, account ledgers,

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and the like. Along the right wall are a tall wardrobe and a few tattered boxes. Farther back down the right wall is a door that leads, via a railing, to the main house. The old accountant, gui yi, sits under the window in the wretched silence. He suddenly lights up a cigarette, which burns red and emits white smoke. It is a month after the events of the previous act. hongtao comes onstage.) hongtao: Uncle Gui! . . . Ah, it’s dark in here! gui yi: It is dark, Hongtao. You can’t see? I’ll light a candle for you. (He lights a candle so she can see to come in.) hongtao: Uncle Gui, Madam is here. gui yi (happily surprised): Ah! Madam is here?! (zheng shaomei comes onstage. She is wearing an ensemble of pure black that resembles mourning attire. Aggrieved and haggard, she has a kind of divine beauty that is serene and stately. She walks in with a heaviness that is vastly different from her previous lively coquettishness. lingxiang follows her in.) gui yi: Ah, Madam! (He stands up quickly, respectfully greets her, then leads her over to the table to sit with him.) zheng shaomei: I trust you’re well, Mr. Gui? gui yi: Many thanks to you! lingxiang: Look, Uncle Gui! Madam’s appearance has changed completely. She looks like she’s aged ten years in the last few days. You definitely suffer more living outside the house than at home, that’s for sure. gui yi: Are you used to living outside yet, Madam? zheng shaomei: Almost. (Calmly looks at gui yi) Please don’t call me “Madam” anymore, sir . . . Lingxiang believes that being Madam is the height of luxury, so she thinks I’m suffering in the outside world. But on the contrary, I hope I’ll never experience the glamorous luxury of being “Madam” again in this life. (She gives a slightly tragic smile.) gui yi: Oh, don’t speak like that. You’re just being defiant because of a few setbacks! Lingxiang, let’s not talk about this stuff! Let’s talk about something else . . . What brings you here today? Everyone here hated to see you leave. We all hope you’ll come back. (He lights another lamp.) zheng shaomei: I didn’t come to say goodbye to you the day I left. So I’ve come today especially to see you, sir. gui yi: I don’t deserve the honor! zheng shaomei: You certainly do. You are my teacher and my benefactor. I should’ve come to see you. I’ll pick up some things while I’m here . . . lingxiang (watching her attentively, quickly seizes on her line of reasoning): You didn’t take anything when you left. I knew you’d have to come and get a few things. (She smiles self-satisfiedly.)

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zheng shaomei (smiles ironically): Yes, you are clever! (Unhappily) But I only came to get one thing. lingxiang: Ah! (Thinking, brow furrowed) You must have come to get Young Master’s blanket. Madam would never go into the bedroom to sleep after Young Master died. She just lay in Young Master’s sleeping chair every night and covered herself with his blanket. I figured you’d eventually come to get it. zheng shaomei: Yes. (Quite unhappily) I said you were clever and you’ve guessed it! But you didn’t know that I was the one who bought it for him. I really like it. Now that I’m going on a trip, I’d like to take it with me to use on the road. lingxiang: Ah, so you really have been falsely accused! Everybody says that you’re lovesick, so you treat that blanket like a person, hugging it . . . Ha, ha! . . . zheng shaomei (outraged): Huh? . . . lingxiang: Madam! Why are you angry?! . . . Let them talk if they want. It’s probably because they’ve seen you putting fresh flowers on Young Master’s grave so often. They don’t know that one of the ways to show respect for the dead these days is with fresh flowers and by burning incense paper. gui yi: Has Madam seen Master? zheng shaomei: I’ve seen—you called me Madam again! gui yi: Ah, I forgot! . . . (Smiles) How did Master treat you? zheng shaomei: He couldn’t care less. Anyway, the day I left I went to say goodbye, and he still pretended that he didn’t know what was going on. He entirely avoided me. lingxiang (quickly): That’s natural! In Master’s heart there’s a more elegant, more beautiful, even younger . . . zheng shaomei (ridiculing her): Stupid girl! . . . You’re babbling again! Do you think that all the more elegant, more beautiful, and younger girls in the world want to be that clownish old jerk’s concubine? (Deprecatingly) If so, then all the inelegant and foolish women pining for Master will just pine away to their deaths. lingxiang (smiles stupidly): So, only those young and beautiful girls can enjoy happiness. (She makes a poignant expression.) gui yi (looks at her unhappily): Lingxiang! What do you mean? lingxiang: I don’t know if I mean anything. Only that Xiao girl knows what I mean. None of you realize how good that Xiao girl’s got it these days. She has Master wound around her finger and is enjoying happiness to the utmost. hongtao (impatiently, with the innocent expression of a young girl): Tsk! You’re being facetious! . . . You don’t know what a scoundrel Master is, treating her like a whore! lingxiang: I don’t think Master’s that bad . . . hongtao (stares at lingxiang with intelligent eyes): Naturally . . . Whatever Master does, it’s fine to you. But if Master treated you even the least bit shabbily, you’d be jealous of everyone else. lingxiang: Nonsense! (Somewhat embarrassed, ashamed and hateful, to zheng shaomei) Madam, please stay awhile! I’m going.

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(She exits the stage.) gui yi (waving his finger, smiles at hongtao): Ha, ha . . . the big guns! (He closes the door.) hongtao: If I hadn’t done that, how would we ever have gotten rid of her? The only way to get rid of her is to fire the big cannons. zheng shaomei: And Yuelin? Is she still locked up on the third floor? hongtao: Yes, she’s locked up so pitifully. gui yi: Master just now told me that he wants Miss Yuelin to come to my place here today. hongtao: Don’t believe that scoundrel! gui yi: Why not? hongtao: This place is a bit remote, so he can better molest her, better force her . . . Master also thinks that it’s somewhat dangerous in the house as of late. He’s afraid somebody will come and take Sister Yuelin away. So he has one pistol by the window and another mounted above the door. zheng shaomei: Ah! . . . gui yi: I still think it would be better to have Miss Yuelin come here. The iron door upstairs is very heavy, like a sea full of sin. There is no way we can get in there. My place here is quite close to the back gate. Walking out of here would be quite easy. hongtao: What? . . . (Enthusiastically leans toward gui yi) Are you going to rescue her? gui yi: What about you? . . . Isn’t that what you’re thinking? (They smile at each other.) hongtao (sighs deeply and dejectedly): I’ve had the idea for a while, but no way to do it! zheng shaomei: Can you get her to come here? . . . We have to wait until I ask her opinion on the matter. hongtao (impatiently): But she’s there drinking with Master. zheng shaomei: She’s still there drinking? Aren’t committee members from the Peasants’ Association and the Women’s Federation all there to meet with Master? hongtao: Master simply placates them and then goes back in to drink some more. He drinks a glass and goes out, then goes back in and drinks another. zheng shaomei: Today I’m going to meet with Yuelin, no matter what. But I’ll have to do it secretly. Sneak her out for me. (She smiles and pushes hongtao to go.) hongtao: I’m afraid I can’t. zheng shaomei: But I have to see her. Go on! hongtao: What’s so important that you can’t tell me? zheng shaomei: I’m acting under orders, as an envoy. gui yi: Aha! . . . Did Madam Xiao Sen send you? zheng shaomei: Yes. gui yi: Did you bring anything for me? zheng shaomei: Three whistles and a letter. (She hands them over.)

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gui yi (very happily): The letter is to me! zheng shaomei: Inside is a letter for Yuelin. gui yi: Good, good! Hongtao, hurry and go get Miss Yuelin! Just say that Master said to bring her . . . We’ve got to use this opportunity to get her out! (He solemnly places the letter inside his gown.) zheng shaomei: Wait a minute! If she can’t come down, please give her this whistle. (She hands over a short, silver- colored whistle.) Tell her that no matter what difficulty she encounters, all she needs to do is start blowing this whistle. hongtao (curiously examines the whistle with care): What kind of treasure is this? gui yi: It’s an emergency whistle. When the situation becomes critical, she should blow it urgently; if the situation is a little less critical, she should blow it a little less urgently. If there’s nothing wrong, she shouldn’t blow it at all. zheng shaomei: Oh, you get the idea! gui yi: Yes, I’ve been waiting for her to send them. (Gives one to hongtao) This is for you. If you’re guarding Miss Yuelin and run into danger, use the same signals. But you must do it secretly! If Miss Yuelin is not clearheaded, don’t give it to her. hongtao: Oh, I understand. gui yi: Then get going! (hongtao stashes the whistle in her pocket and happily exits the stage.) zheng shaomei: I really am grateful to Madam Xiao this time. I’ll be able to go to the front tomorrow or the day after. gui yi: Huh?! You’re going to the front tomorrow? zheng shaomei: Yes. Madam Xiao recommended me for a position again. Tomorrow or the day after, I’m going to the front to see the nurses. And you, when are you going? gui yi: Oh? . . . Where can I go? The battlefield is no place for an old relic like me. I’m just the slave who guards this dark building. I’ll die in this dark place. Ha, ha . . . zheng shaomei: Please don’t joke. You can’t live in this house much longer. Someone will come and close it up. You have to get out of here right away! (Searches and pulls out a handful of bills) Here’s fifty dollars. Please take it for travel expenses. gui yi (in an adamant tone of refusal): You’re giving me money? zheng shaomei: Of course, I don’t have any money, either, but I won this playing cards. That day Qiaoming asked me for money I ran out and got it. Who would’ve thought that when I returned with it he’d be dead! . . . So, I can’t bear to use it. This is a gift to use in his memory . . . You’ve taught me for many years and I’ve never paid you back. It’s embarrassing to give you so little. gui yi: Don’t be so formal! Neither of us is rich, and our responsibility from now on is to pay particular attention to overthrowing the oppression and tyranny of the rich. zheng shaomei: That won’t be difficult. The tide of revolution is so high now . . . (gui yi shakes his head.) There’s talk of freedom, equality, and overthrowing all oppression everywhere . . .

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gui yi: No, none of the revolutionaries themselves are liberated yet . . . Their battle cry, each and every one of them, is “I’ll overthrow you and take your place.” I don’t know how many generations we’ll have to wait until people’s minds are finally liberated. zheng shaomei: The Peasants’ Association will definitely achieve its objective of overthrowing Hu Rongsheng. In the next two to three days this place will certainly be toppled. You’d better leave right away! gui yi: I won’t leave as long as Yuelin is still here. zheng shaomei: Her problem can probably be solved very quickly as long as you’re helping out! gui yi: Of course, I’ll naturally lend a hand. But Master is taking Yuelin on a trip tonight. zheng shaomei: Huh! . . . They’re going on a trip tonight? . . . A honeymoon! That’s really dangerous! . . . gui yi: There’s only four or five hours until they leave, so you’d better hurry and go ask Madam Xiao what we should do. zheng shaomei: Yes, yes . . . (xiao yuelin comes onstage. She is wearing a suit with a pattern of large red persimmon flowers on white silk. Her white shoes and socks are also adorned with large red flowers. On the toe of each shoe is a large, bright red pom-pom. A bright, sparkling headband of pearls binds her short hair. Red flowers are tucked at each temple. Pearl and gold necklaces hang around her neck. The gold necklace has a brooch of red jade. She is majestically attired, like a girl in a foreign circus. She enters in a drunken haze, staggering crazily, with hongtao holding her up.) (Shocked upon seeing her) Ah, Yuelin! (She goes sadly to lead her over to the edge of the bed to sit.) How come you’re so drunk? . . . Can’t you control yourself ? hongtao: You think she has a choice? . . . She’s even worse off than you. zheng shaomei: Yuelin! (She shakes her, sits with her at the edge of the bed; gui yi brings the lamp over.) I’ve come especially to ask you something. You wanted to leave your family a while ago, so you sent a report to the Women’s Federation. Now the Women’s Federation wants to solve the problem for you. Why aren’t you responding to them? xiao yuelin (smiles dismally): I don’t know . . . zheng shaomei: There’s nothing to know, you just need to be willing to do it . . . Even if you were out of your mind the last time, you ought to be a bit better this time . . . Why don’t you be a little more resolute? Just be totally resolute and do it! xiao yuelin: I don’t know . . . (She laughs insanely.) zheng shaomei: You know you can ask someone else to handle this for you. For example, Uncle Gui is very sympathetic. You know Madam Xiao Sen, too. She can handle this for you. xiao yuelin: Handle . . . handle . . . handle . . . handle what?

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(She sneers unconcernedly.) zheng shaomei: Huh? . . . You have to leave . . . xiao yuelin (ner vously, her eyes rolling back and forth): Leave? . . . Absolutely not! zheng shaomei Absolutely not?! . . . (In a sympathetic, sad tone) Aren’t you afraid your father will ruin you? xiao yuelin: Yes! . . . hongtao: Sister Yuelin! You’ve just got to leave! zheng shaomei: Yuelin! Let me tell you what happened to me. When I was young and beautiful, I was ruined by that pig of an old man. It was much worse than going to hell . . . My misfortune was like being trapped in nine levels of hell. (She is woeful, silent.) gui yi: That’s right! I’m the only one who knows how much you suffered. When I saw your sorrow, your hopelessness, your listlessness and thoughts of death every time you studied here, it broke my heart! . . . Miss Yuelin, you have to break out of this cage now, while it’s still easy to do. All you have to do is go to the Women’s Federation and ask them to intervene again. You can get your freedom immediately. hongtao: Miss Yuelin! Are you afraid you won’t be able to walk out of here? I’ll help you. I can help you with everything. Go on! xiao yuelin (in the same tone of voice): Absolutely not! zheng shaomei: Yuelin! Is there something that you can’t tell us? You’re no unenlightened fool. How can you willingly hand over your youth and beauty to that fat old pig? . . . Yuelin, ah! . . . (Sorrowful and solemn, her body trembling, she pauses.) Just saying it makes the blood rush to my head! . . . (Sighs deeply) A young girl, ruined by becoming a concubine to that beastly, fat old pig! Someone who hasn’t experienced the suffering caused by such humiliation to their body and grief to their soul can never imagine it! (Anguished) Like me, my body was ruined by that fat old pig. My soul was humiliated by that evil beast. It’s just like being stuck with a red-hot needle and injected with a boundless poison. The poison is now flowing throughout my body, from the top of my head to the tips of my toes. Not only was I cast into the bitter sea in the prime of my youth, but my whole body was polluted, too; this abomination can never be cleansed! (Laments woefully, tears flowing) You are young and intelligent. You have to show your spiritual fortitude in the face of this looming catastrophe! You must show your spiritual fortitude! (She passionately grasps xiao yuelin, with an expression intended to excite her.) xiao yuelin: How can I show my spiritual fortitude? Ha, ha, ha! zheng shaomei: The Women’s Federation can help you solve this problem. All you have to do is put it forward again. Do it right away! Or else you can leave. Let’s get you out tonight, okay? xiao yuelin: Absolutely not! No way! (She jumps off the bed with a crazy laugh and walks madly all around the room.) There’s no way I’d be able to escape from here! I’m going to die, going to die! Going to die . . . Going to die!

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gui yi (looks on hopelessly, sorrowfully): There’s nothing we can do right now! Wait until she comes to her senses. Hongtao, take her in right away and absolutely do not let Master know! hongtao: Okay. (As she leads xiao yuelin offstage, chunhua coincidentally comes in, and hongtao hands xiao yuelin off to chunhua, whispering.) zheng shaomei (unenthusiastically): Do you understand what’s going on in her head? gui yi: She’s both crazy and drunk, so of course she’s like this. What a pity! hongtao (skids in, in a panic): Uncle Gui, Mr. Ling is here. (zheng shaomei hurries offstage. ling xia comes onstage. He is wearing a yellow military uniform, long boots, and a leather belt. He scurries in, left hand manacled, a chain dangling from it.) ling xia (anxiously): Ah, where am I? Hide me! Hide me! hongtao: Mr. Ling! (Goes to give him a hand) Mr. Ling! What are you doing? I’m Hongtao. ling xia: Ah! (Collapses in front of the table) Hongtao! I came in through the back gate. The gatekeeper hit me a few times. hongtao: Where are you hurt? Where are you hurt? (With gui yi, she helps him to a seat.) ling xia (vaguely points to his injuries, eyes ardently beseeching): I have to see Yuelin . . . hongtao: She just went inside. If you’d have come a couple minutes earlier you would’ve seen her. ling xia: Just went in?! I came especially to see her. Tomorrow is the last day of my trial. I still want to ask her to give evidence for me. hongtao: You wait here! I’ll go call her. (She exits.) gui yi: Hongtao! I’m afraid Mr. Ling can’t stay here for long. Master is about to come. (hongtao has already gone offstage.) ling xia: It’s okay. I’m out by permission of Party headquarters and the court. I came with those four committee members. (Voices are heard outside the door.) gui yi (anxiously): Uh- oh! It looks like Master’s here. Hide yourself! If you run into Master here, I’ll be blamed for sure. (In a panic, he pulls the bed out a little, waves at ling xia to hide behind it, then carries the lamp away. hu rongsheng comes onstage leading two committee members.) hu rongsheng: Please take a look. Check all these rooms thoroughly! (gui yi quietly leaves the stage.) committee member b (looks casually around, with the oily appearance of an old bureaucrat): Forget it, there’s nothing to see. hu rongsheng: Committee Member Zhang! I sent someone this morning with a letter for you. Did you receive it?

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committee member a (quite indifferently): I got it, but the lawyer won’t go along. hu rongsheng: I said if Committee Member Zhang thinks this case can be concluded that way, I’ll give Lawyer Zhong five hundred dollars foreign cash, and give you two committee members one thousand. committee member a (coldly shakes his head, completely in the style of a stinking bureaucrat): It won’t do. hu rongsheng (smiles insincerely, anger submerged): I’d like to trouble you two committee members to take care of me and wrap up this case right away. Here is a thousand dollars as an expression of my gratitude. (He respectfully hands over a bunch of bills and smiles insincerely.) “Although the gift is trifling, it’s the thought that counts.” (The two committee members shrug their shoulders and look at the bills without comment.) committee member b: Lawyer Zhong is really quite foolish! He refused the money you sent him and put it right into my hands. hu rongsheng: Ah . . . (Terrified and deeply angry) So he wants to reverse the verdict again! . . . Right! Instead of taking advantage of the girl’s madness, he’d rather settle the case by relying on a couple of crazy things said by a crazy person . . . With this kind of clever lawyer in the world it’s no wonder that right and wrong and rationality are all confused! committee member a: Perhaps Lawyer Zhong is relying only on Committee Member Ling’s statement . . . hu rongsheng (vehemently): That’s for sure! All in all, the great lawyer Zhong can’t even understand the simple reasoning that Ling Xia wants revenge against me! committee member a: The lawyer hasn’t got much authority in this case. (With a sly expression, smiling obsequiously) All the authority still lies with our Peasants’ Association. For example, the day before yesterday Committee Member Ling raised an objection, asking that he be released to secretly search your residence one time before his last day in court . . . Some people in our Peasants’ Association agreed completely. Party headquarters approved it, so he was released today. hu rongsheng (nods his head, plotting): Humph! Humph! . . . Well then, Committee Member Zhang, Committee Member Cai! Thank you for your extreme indulgence, for your special help and great efforts in quickly resolving this matter! . . . I’ve heard that there are many people outside who hate Ling Xia. He is a villain and a thug. I think Party headquarters should put him directly to death. (Pulls out a handful of bills) Here is another thousand dollars. Please accept it! . . . I will reward the two of you again after this matter is settled. (The two committee members express satisfaction, their eyes fixed on the bills. They look at each other, smiling, and each accepts a stack and stuffs it into his coat pocket. Both nod to hu rongsheng.) committee members (together): Thank you! Thank you! jailor (offstage): Committee Member Ling? . . . Committee Member Ling! hu rongsheng: Let’s go!

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(In a panic, he leads the committee members toward the railing on the right.) jailor (offstage): Committee Member Ling! . . . Where are you? Committee Member Ling! (The shadows of hu rongsheng and the committee members disappear completely. ling xia gloomily walks out from behind the bed and sits dejectedly in front of the table; he appears to be in high dudgeon, unspeakably indignant.) gui yi (walks quickly in, hurries over and pats ling xia, bends over and whispers softly in his ear): Go! ling xia: Didn’t I say I want to see Yuelin? Go and ask her to come! gui yi: Miss Yuelin is upstairs, locked in. She can’t come. Go now and come back later. (The jailor, twenty-something years old, wearing a jailor’s uniform, comes onstage.) jailor: Ah, Committee Member Ling! Why did you disappear right after you charged in? The gate guards almost split my head open. (He points at an injury on his head.) ling xia: I told you to wait a while and come in with the peasants. You didn’t believe me because you were afraid I was going to run for it. Am I some lowly coward who’d flee? (Lifts his head and laughs crazily) Ha, ha, ha! In the past, I couldn’t bear to see the darkness and oppression in society, so I rebelled. I escaped and jumped—I escaped to the rebels and I jumped into the revolution. And now, once again, I can’t bear to see the darkness, oppression, and filth in the revolution. I’m rebelling and want to escape and jump again. But the human world is utterly dark and absolutely filthy. Where can I jump? (With a vehemently tragic laugh) Ha, ha, ha! Go to my death? Right, go to my death! . . . The minds of humanity have all been eaten away by a filthy fungus. Everybody over the age of twenty is going to their deaths! Everyone over the age of ten is going to their deaths! Die! Die! (Raises his fist in indignation and strikes the table) Everybody die, everybody die, everybody die! . . . The revolution is the mission of the young children who are now at their mothers’ breasts! The revolution can only be accomplished by the young children now at their mothers’ breasts! jailor: What are you grousing about now?! (Grabs him) Hurry, go and find those four committee members! Talk it over with them quickly and call the peasants in to search right away! . . . It’s already five o’clock. You have to return to jail at six thirty. ling xia (oppressively): What the hell are you going to do?! (The jailor, holding the chain, pushes him, but ling xia doesn’t move.) jailor: You won’t go get them? If you can’t find it today your life will be in danger. (He attempts to force him to go, but ling xia holds his ground and doesn’t move.) gui yi: Mr. Ling, please go quickly! If Master sees you, I’ll be punished severely and you won’t be able to see Yuelin again. jailor: Hey, get going! (He drags him toward the right railing and disappears. gui yi straightens up the bed, sits down on it, and puffs on a cigarette. hu rongsheng enters holding a silver jewelry box in his left hand and a bunch of keys in his right hand.) hu rongsheng: Gui Yi! Ah, ah! . . .

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(He puts everything onto the table in a flurry.) These keys are really heavy. This is a jewelry box. (He solemnly hands him the box.) There are jewels and pearls and gold jewelry in here. I’ll leave them here with you for now. It’s safe here. Even if the peasants search again today, they won’t search here. But be alert and be on guard! On the surface, they give this and that excuse, but their unabashed banditry is really just a plot to steal my property. (In a sweet tone of voice gently patting gui yi) So you have to be especially alert. Don’t let them fool such a smart guy as you! (Smiling, he pats him heartily.) gui yi (with an extremely loyal look on his face, nods sincerely and cautiously): Yes, yes. hu rongsheng: You’ve been looking out for me all your life, giving me support right up to now, and I am really grateful to you! Today you have to be especially alert and on guard! Don’t let my good reputation be tarnished! gui yi: I understand, Master! hu rongsheng: Good. You hold the fort here. After this is over I’ll reward you with money. (Smiles genially) You’re smart; you have ideas, looking out for me all my life . . . Really, after this is over I’m going to reward you. (He again pats him, smiling.) gui yi: Master, enough. (Smiles tepidly) Don’t worry! hu rongsheng (very amiably): Okay, you stay here; don’t leave. If things get nasty, I can still bring my luggage to your house here. Yuelin and I will depart from here. gui yi: Master! . . . Are you definitely going on a trip? hu rongsheng: Yes. Maybe it’ll be a honeymoon. gui yi: I understand. You wholly intend to go and marry Miss Yuelin. Ha, ha! hu rongsheng: Ha, ha! You really are pretty clever! (He exits. The stage is quiet. gui yi bows his head in silence, deep in thought. Peasants’ committee members and peasants come onstage. There are four Peasants’ committee members and five peasants. male servant a and male servant b accompany them onto the stage via the railing on the right. gui yi feigns a depressed look and walks back and forth.) committee member a: I’ve already seen this building. Needless to say, we won’t find anything here this time, either. (The jailor jumps swiftly onto the stage, pushing ling xia along.) ling xia: Let’s search! (Bravely directing) Search! This row of buildings is quite suspicious. Everybody search! (They all search vigorously by the light of three flashlights.) peasant a (grabs gui yi): Old man! Where did your master put the opium? Talk! gui yi: You’re the ones searching. Let me ask you, if you don’t find anything here, are you going to think that I’ve swallowed it? committee member d: This old man looks like he’s got a secret. Let’s take him in for questioning. (He approaches gui yi, intending to grab him.)

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ling xia: Nonsense! (Valiantly searching with the group) Let’s keep searching! committee member b: Even if there were opium hidden here, it would get all moldy in such a dark room. I don’t see anything here. Let’s go . . . (All at once there is the sound of many people beating the ground with sticks.) peasant c (finds the jewelry box and large pile of keys in the wardrobe): Ah, ah, take a look at this! (He raises them high to show everyone.) voice: What is it? Did you find it? Oh, what’s that? peasant c: Jewelry, pearls, and a big ring of keys. voice: Aha! Just about there! . . . Keys! (peasant d holds out his hand to peasant c.) committee member d (pats gui yi): Old man, this is the key to your secret. You’re still not going to tell us? (Lifts up the keys and gives them to gui yi) Get going, lead our search! gui yi: Humph! (Angrily throws down the keys, goes forward, and grabs the jewelry box, intentionally appearing panicked) All the secrets I know are in here! (Dashes into the crowd and yells) Jewelry box! voice: We want to see, let us look! Bring it over here so we can see! . . . (Everybody swarms like flies, curiously and greedily looking at the jewels.) ling xia: Out, get out of here! (Drives them away) Get away! We are not bandits. We came to search for opium. These things have nothing to do with us. (The group scatters like birds.) gui yi: Did you get them all? Ah! These . . . these . . . (He feigns anxiousness, draws everyone’s attention to himself, and carefully puts everything back in the jewelry box.) committee member d: Hey, let’s go search a different building. Come on, everyone! Come on! committee member c: What a fiasco! We didn’t find anything this time, either. (Looks worriedly at ling xia) You’re in trouble for sure. peasant d: If we can find the opium today, Committee Member Ling can be cleared of the crime. (Looking at ling xia, kindheartedly and sadly) If we can’t find it, that means you’ll stand falsely accused. committee member a: We actually believe Committee Member Ling’s investigation is accurate. You say there are more than four thousand pounds of opium hidden in his house. But for some reason we still can’t find it, no matter how hard we search. ling xia: The devil swallowed it! The devil wants my life so he can get rich by my death. committee member d: Everybody out! There are only two rooms left. We have to search carefully! (He hurries the people out.) ling xia (to committee member d): Please be my representative and search conscientiously! I’m going to try and see Miss Yuelin. Maybe she will be my witness. committee member d: Okay. Agreed! Let’s go. voice: We’ll meet you outside.

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(The group exits the stage. ling xia, the jailor, and gui yi remain.) ling xia (softly, to gui yi): Can you ask Miss Yuelin to come? gui yi: Let me go and see. (He gathers up the jewelry box and keys and exits the stage.) jailor: When you see her, just keep it short. It’s about time to return to jail. ling xia (angrily): All you think about is the time! . . . My life, my whole life . . . Is it merely limited to the time up to my execution?! jailor (smiling insincerely): You were given a death sentence. ling xia: I was sentenced to death and I’m willing to die. But can’t you let me live one minute or one second longer just to make sure that the truth comes out? jailor: I can’t blame you for that. No matter what charges Hu Rongsheng brings against you, the police will act according to the evidence. The government will deal with you based on the evidence. The prison merely implements the government’s orders. As for me, I’m just the servant who implements the prison’s orders. I can’t do anything for you. ling xia: Listen! (Enthusiastically turns an ear to listen) It sounds like they’re here. (xiao yuelin’s chic figure strides crazily in. She flies toward ling xia as if she has grown wings. Her crazy demeanor suddenly disappears and she sinks into silent agony, unbearably woeful. hongtao follows her in and closes the door behind her.) (Crazy with joy) Yuelin! Ah, how are you, Yuelin? (He gazes warmly at her.) xiao yuelin (very seriously, a mournful look in her eye): Do you have something to say to me? ling xia: Yes, I’ve really wanted to see you. I’ve wanted to speak with you. xiao yuelin: Then hurry up and say what you’ve got to say! I have to go and keep him company drinking. ling xia: Drink? . . . Go and drink? hongtao: She’s been drinking with Master every day, as of late . . . ling xia (lets go of xiao yuelin): Ah! I haven’t seen you for a while. How could you have come to this?! (He sighs worriedly, then inspects her overall appearance.) xiao yuelin: Are you blaming me? . . . Can you blame me? . . . I’ve been waiting and waiting for you, but you never came to see me! . . . Now . . . (Laughs insanely, her body swaying) Ha, ha, ha! (ling xia stands shocked, sadly bewildered.) Come on and say it! (In high dudgeon, she stares at him with eyes wide, appears about to leave) I’m afraid Master is waiting for me. ling xia: Humph! Vanity has killed you! Superficial female . . . (Gnashing his teeth, he pushes her away.) hongtao (defiantly): Mr. Ling! (She hurries to hold xiao yuelin up.) ling xia (outraged, his hands on his hips, snorts angrily): Humph! Qiaoming just died and you’re acting so bewitched, so full of yourself! . . .

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(Extremely chagrined, he abruptly bows his head.) hongtao (forcing ling xia’s attention, with severe dissatisfaction): Hey, Mr. Ling! What’s that got to do with her? . . . If you’ve got something to say to her, then get on with it! ling xia: Ah, I don’t know . . . (Sighs, is silent, then suddenly excitedly) But . . . I . . . I want her to run away with me . . . xiao yuelin (crazily, turning rapidly toward him): What are you prepared to do? (ling xia is stumped.) (Plays with the manacle on ling xia’s arm, a naive, romantic smile spreads across her face) Have you committed a crime? Why are you wearing this manacle? (She laughs stupidly. ling xia gives a sudden start. The jailor also expresses surprise. They both fix their eyes on her.) ling xia: Are you dreaming? I was charged with murder the night Qiaoming died. How come you still don’t know? xiao yuelin (aroused to indignation): You’re the murderer?! . . . ling xia: I’ve been falsely accused. You’re the only one who can prove who did it. Testify for me. Who really killed Qiaoming? (hongtao is on the verge of very bravely saying something to ling xia, but she suddenly stops.) xiao yuelin: Oh, oh! (Perplexed) I never thought you were scary. How could you have ended up killing somebody? ling xia: Ah, ah! . . . (Suddenly comprehending, he sighs deeply) You’ve gone mad! (Tears well up in his eyes) You’ve gone mad! (Gently strokes her, affectionately and despondently) How is it that you’re mad? xiao yuelin (laughs tragically): Ha, ha! I’ve been at Master’s side day and night recently . . . Don’t you know I’ve been imprisoned? ling xia: I know. Now I know. I’ve been imprisoned, too, but I haven’t gone insane yet. You’re the one who’s really been imprisoned. You’ve ended up insane! (Anguished, hugs her) Ah! What should we do about it? (Disconsolately) I can’t save you . . . But . . . (Resolutely) Let’s flee! (Pulling her hand to leave) You and I will escape together! xiao yuelin: Escape? . . . Absolutely not! (Her body sways, head turns, and she backs away.) ling xia: You have to leave. How will you endure this family’s oppression if you stay? (He urges her to go.) jailor (blocking their way): Don’t you know your punishment will be worse if you run away with her? ling xia: What is punishment?! . . . (Forcibly dragging xiao yuelin) Let’s go! If we leave we can be human. We can’t just meekly submit to this violence. I won’t go to my death under this cloud of injustice! xiao yuelin (looks joyfully at ling xia with a flash in her eyes and declares resonantly): Good! Tomorrow, I’ll testify before the masses that you’ve been falsely accused. ling xia (unexpectedly surprised): Ah! Really, Yuelin?

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hongtao (giggles cleverly): I can also testify on your behalf. ling xia: Ah! (To the jailor, overjoyed) How about it? (Euphoric, looking at the jailor with elation) The injustice I’ve suffered will be exposed and I’ll be cleared. Let’s take the two of them out with us. (He takes the manacle from his arm and throws it on the floor.) (Commands the jailor) Go! I don’t need you anymore. (Shooing the jailor away, he takes xiao yuelin and hongtao by the arm.) Yuelin, Hongtao, let’s get out of here now! (He pulls the two of them forward as if he’s gone crazy. hu rongsheng pushes the door open and enters. Furrowing his brow, he looks viciously at xiao yuelin.) hu rongsheng: Yuelin! . . . Where are you going? ling xia: They’re getting out of here with me. hu rongsheng: Huh? . . . You want them to go to jail with you? jailor: No, he wants them to go to court tomorrow to testify. The young lady is willing to give evidence. hu rongsheng: Humph! . . . She is the heiress of a rich family. Do you want her to lose face by running off to court with you? Come over here, Yuelin! (He fiercely goes to snatch xiao yuelin, as if to challenge ling xia. xiao yuelin leans on ling xia, her eyes flashing with panic.) (In a towering rage of jealousy, glares at the two of them, his eyes appearing to spout blood) Think about it, Committee Member Ling! You’ve already been sentenced to death. What kind of happiness do you think you can give her if you take her with you? (Smiles artificially) Even if you love her? ling xia: Let’s go, Yuelin! hu rongsheng: “If a gentleman loves a person, he will try to realize his virtue.” She’s already gone crazy, so whatever she says is unreliable. Why make her suffer more since she’s already so pathetic? ling xia: Yuelin, let’s get going! (He tries to force her to walk, but xiao yuelin doesn’t move; she stands there for a long time, her mind gradually becoming clearer.) hu rongsheng: You have no authority to make her go. (Angrily pulling ling xia to a stop with one hand and putting his other arm around xiao yuelin) If she must go, then it should be done by lawful means. ling xia: The law! The law is the guard dog for you rich people, your magic charm! The reason society is so dark is all because of the vicious laws used to punish the masses. (Boldly going to snatch xiao yuelin from hu rongsheng’s arms) Yuelin, let’s go! Let’s resist! Resistance is our gospel. Resistance is our road to being human! Let’s go, Yuelin! (He extends his hand to pull her; xiao yuelin lightly shifts toward ling xia.) hu rongsheng (outraged, points fiendishly at xiao yuelin): If you must go with him . . . I guarantee that you’ll be a widow in less than three days. (He violently pulls xiao yuelin to a stop, pinning her under his arm.) ling xia: Humph!

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(He gnashes his teeth and hatefully strikes hu rongsheng a blow.) Your humiliating tricks are truly despicable! . . . Yuelin, let’s go! (xiao yuelin gently shakes her head at ling xia, then meekly goes along with hu rongsheng.) hu rongsheng (heads toward the door and sticks his head out): Hey, Ah Liang! Ah Bao! (The response “Yes” comes from offstage.) Come quickly! Hurry . . . come quickly! (Trading blows, he fights hard with ling xia.) jailor: Hey, hey, hey! (Obstructs them) Don’t make trouble! Don’t make trouble! xiao yuelin: Ahh! (She retreats in a panic, her big black eyes shining brightly. hongtao helps her over to the front of the bed. Four male servants and one female servant swarm in, all surprised.) male servant a: Master, what should we do? hu rongsheng: Lead Committee Member Ling out right away! (At his command, the servants start descending upon him like animals of prey.) ling xia (extremely anguished, extending his hands toward her): Yuelin! (But xiao yuelin settles into hu rongsheng’s bosom, not even daring to move. His heart tortured, ling xia loses hope and stands immobile, like a stone statue. The servants menacingly shove ling xia along to exit the stage. Dumbstruck and dispirited, ling xia acquiesces to being pushed along by the evil servants. His eyes remain fixed on xiao yuelin for a long time. hu rongsheng smiles and keeps the jailor behind, having a furtive conversation with him. The jailor then rushes contentedly offstage.) hu rongsheng: Hongtao, I’m going to kill you! (He brutally strikes hongtao.) I told you to watch Miss Yuelin upstairs. So why did you have to bring her here? (He viciously kicks her. hongtao begins wailing pitifully. The stage goes dark and silent.)

Scene 2 (Same setting as before. The stage is dark for five minutes—representing the passing of four hours—and then suddenly bright. The intense light of numerous table lamps and three hanging lanterns shatters the previous gloominess of the room. There are five male servants and seven female servants in the room, among whom are female servants b, c, d, and e, who have been hired temporarily and who are relatively less meek and relatively wittier. male servants b and c are youngsters with strongly rebellious natures. The whole group chats and jokes. Some are seated, some are lying down, some are standing, and some are walking around freely. The curtain opens and loud laughter resounds.) male servant c: He’s going to change into a camel, Ah Liang! You’d better change into an elephant. You should change into a hundred elephants so you can carry Mas-

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ter and all his wives’ and concubines’ property on your backs. Just like a mighty, ancient tribal chief on the march, taking Master to hide on a desert island! male servant b: Excellent, Ah Liang! You’ve been loyal now for thirty years. And once again you’re taking Master to seek refuge. If Master becomes the king of the island, he’s sure to make you a high official. male servant a: Little Ghost, don’t cause trouble! The Peasants’ Association is such a bunch of nonsense! Why are they fighting like this! Arguing for two whole months, and then, just when things settle down for a moment, they go right back at it again! You should’ve heard the ruckus before four o’clock! male servant c: You think it was noisy before four o’clock? The worst is yet to come. It was just quiet for a moment in memory of Young Master . . . Young Master died for us peasants. He was leading the peasants’ vanguard. He was his father’s stalwart enemy. We can’t surrender to the enemy because our vanguard is dead. We have to use the most direct means to eliminate the enemy now. male servant a: You sound just like a communist! Why are all you folks in the Peasants’ Association so mean? Do you think Master will tolerate your type of servant if he doesn’t go into hiding? female servant a (speaks quickly): Hey! Hey! Who says Master should go into hiding? Wouldn’t it be a shame to give up such a nice house? male servant d: It’s either because Cheng Lao’er2 died, or because of Ling Xia’s case. Even if Ling Xia dies, this matter won’t be settled. The investigation will continue. Ling Xia wants to wait until Miss Yuelin comes to court to testify. But isn’t Master going to take Miss Yuelin into hiding? Like this afternoon, when the Peasants’ Association came, and Master hid Miss Yuelin from them? female servant d: I heard that Cheng Lao’er’s died because you thugs kicked the shit out of him. Why did you all have to beat him so ruthlessly when the peasants were agitating for their pay? You people just have no conscience! . . . The only thing you’re good for is being running dogs! male servant c: Humph. We wouldn’t be able to get into Master’s good graces if we weren’t like this! male servant b: Just to be a slave these days you have to be able to kiss ass. (male servant a is angry and agitated.) female servant e: Ha, ha, Ah Liang . . . You say Young Master died because he said that Miss Yuelin was his wife. So, they did get married. (male servant a doesn’t reply.) male servant d: Them? Get married? That was part of Young Master’s plan. If he hadn’t said that, Master would have taken Miss Yuelin as his concubine for sure. And then that loving couple would have been miserable their whole lives! female servant a: Oh, but isn’t one still alive and the other already under the ground? Isn’t that even worse? male servant c: How was Young Master to know that Master would kill him? Master has always believed that men are thieves and women are whores! Anyone with any connection to him will come off the worse for it. Look at how he dealt with Committee

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Member Ling . . . First, he accused him of killing Young Master. Second, he accused him of insulting Master by claiming he was trafficking in opium. Third, he accused him of suspicion of being a communist and having a communal wife. Not one of these is true. female servant b: Tsk! If I were the judge you’d have something to see! Isn’t he both a communist and wife sharer? But he joined the communists and never came out. Weren’t these little buildings built on the land Master grabbed from a widow? . . . He was afraid the widow would sue him, but he still raped her, which was the same as murdering her. female servant a: The land on which this building stands was originally that of an ancient pagoda. When Master built these buildings he dug up some people’s bones, so their ghosts frequent this building. female servant b: I’m afraid that means the widow wasn’t willing . . . Naturally she wasn’t willing, so she howled like a ghost. female servant f: Naturally the widow wasn’t willing, so she’d often howl like a ghost. These days she even makes ghost fire. male servant a: There aren’t any ghosts! It was just Master playing tricks on people. female servant e: As soon as the night gets late, you often can see ghost fire within these walls. Haven’t you seen it? male servant a: I don’t believe in ghosts, so how could I have seen any? But I know that Master often pretends to be a ghost and howls about these rooms just to scare his concubines. So the wives all call this ghost tower. Young Master said that this is a ghost pagoda. The name “ghost pagoda” scared them all and none would dare enter. male servant d: What?! . . . You think “ghost pagoda” refers just to this small building? Tsk! . . . Young Master referred to Master himself as “ghost pagoda.” Although Master doesn’t look like a ghost, he does oppress the youth of this family. Isn’t that just like Leifeng Pagoda oppressing the White Snake Spirit? male servant c: Ha, ha! Always borrowing the word “pagoda” for names. Leifeng Pagoda collapsed, and the ghost pagoda will collapse, too. Are we still going to be his slaves, especially tonight? male servant b: It won’t collapse if nobody finds the opium. male servant A: Master has been unlucky all year! The government wants to seize all the opium so it can sell it for itself. It strictly prohibits private sales, too. Master is really unlucky. female servant b: Master deserves it, too. He wants to sell opium to make money. He also uses his power as a member of the gentry to force people to smoke opium. Hasn’t he done enough harm to this area yet? female servant c: I’m afraid my aunt has been harmed the most. Master hired my older cousin as the opium manager. My cousin ended up smoking opium after a few years, too. Then Master chased him away because he was smoking opium. He returned home and squandered everything in the house. Then he became a bandit and stole his mother’s things to sell. Sacrifice fields, inherited land, and funeral clothes, he

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nearly cleaned her out before she realized it. My aunt eventually found out and was furious. She told two of her slimmer sons to beat him and throw him in the river to soak. Now my aunt is in jail, and who knows what sentence my two young cousins are going to get? The whole family is rotting in jail. female servant d: You hear about the disaster wrought by opium everywhere these days. Why doesn’t the government prohibit it? male servant b: The government merely confiscates it and sells it. And the government is even more outrageous than that! They force the commoners to transport the opium in their boats but give the boatmen virtually nothing. And if the boatmen don’t transport it, their boats are wrecked. Sometimes they sink a dozen or so boats in a small creek. Think about it, those commoners rely on their boats for their livelihood. A whole family depends on that one boat. How miserable are they going to be if you destroy the boat? female servant d: Why does the government want to sell opium? male servant b: The government needs the money to pay the military. female servant d: Oh my god! It’s ghosts fighting ghosts with no end in sight. And they hurt the commoners, too. They take their money to pay the military! . . . No wonder men always mess up China. All you male jerks should retire! servants (together): Ha, ha, ha . . . (hu rongsheng comes onstage.) hu rongsheng: What’s so funny! (Looks at the group of servants) Is everyone here? . . . Ah, come on everybody! (The male and female servants all stand up and gather around him.) I asked all of you to come tonight and everyone gets three dollars pay. But you absolutely cannot tell anyone else what you’ve been doing! You must remember that! (The family servants and hired servants are all silent.) Come! Everyone move the bookshelves aside! Break the bed apart! (The servants follow his orders and set to work energetically.) Carry all this outside! . . . The wardrobe, these boxes . . . (The servants carry the things out of the building. female servants b and f light lanterns to show them the way. The bed is moved away; behind the headboard is a secret door. hu rongsheng squats down and digs in the wall with his fingers. gui yi comes onstage.) gui yi (enters holding a nail puller and small drill; smiles at hu rongsheng): Oh, Master! Let me get that. (He pulls out a nail in the corner of the wall, loosens a section of plaster- covered false wall, gradually drags it farther and farther out, stopping when the opening is six feet high. Inside is a stack of square, wooden crates, each measuring one foot six inches, piled from the floor to the ceiling.) hu rongsheng (smiling, pats him): Thank you very much, Gui Yi! I’ve really beaten them using this method of yours! Those little devils may be clever, but you’re smarter.

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(gui yi smiles slightly, loyally, and takes three crates from the very top of the stack and puts them in front of the group of servants. The surprised and curious servants huddle around to look; they are impressed, smiling and silent.) male servant d: Pretty neat trick. Looked just like a real wall. Can’t tell any difference. (All the servants take turns examining the false wall.) hu rongsheng: I wouldn’t move this stuff out if I wasn’t afraid the Peasants’ Association would burn the place. female servant f: Master! How much will all this opium fetch? hu rongsheng (points at the right wall): There’s still more in that wall, hidden the same way. Ah, you all come and carry it! Put out the lights, blow them all out! (After a few of the lanterns are blown out, hu rongsheng hurriedly opens a secret door on the left. When all the lights have been extinguished, the dim light from the moon can be seen through the door.) Everybody load up! Carry it to the dirt mound out back! Gui Yi, you go keep an eye on them. Make sure they put all of it down there! Light a lamp on your way! (Directs his attention to the female workers) Hey, two of you go light lanterns and show him the way! Go light all the hanging lanterns! (He busily directs the group of servants to start carrying crates.) Don’t bother lighting lamps inside the building. I have flashlights. (The room is dark.) female servant a: No need to light the lanterns outside, either. There’s a little bit of moonlight, so we can see the way. hu rongsheng: Ah, that’s right! We don’t need any lamps. Blow them all out! . . . Get a move on, faster! . . . Good, don’t anybody say anything, quietly! (The only thing visible in the pitch-black room is the flickering of flashlights and the coming and going of shadows. The only sound is that of crates being moved. What’s being done is not visible, and when the left side is done, the action changes to the right side. This continues for a while and then faint voices start up.) voices: Done yet? . . . Done! . . . Go, go and apply the plaster! . . . Finished! (The voices die out, shadows disappear, and the room is empty. The shadows of two people carrying small fl ashlights enter through the front door and walk softly into the center of the room. They shine the lights and examine the walls all around.) voice a: Aha! So that’s how he hid the opium! voice b: Is he going to get away with it this time? (He shines the light to look.) voice a: You had a good idea. If we hadn’t been hiding here, we couldn’t have caught him. voice b: Hurry, let’s go! We’d better not be caught by him this time. voice a: How do we get out of here? voice b: Through that back door. The wall outside that door has a place that’s collapsed a bit. We can get out over there. voice a: Do you want to go see where they’re burying it?

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voice b: I know the place. I saw that mound a while ago. Hurry! (The two people exit through the back door. After a brief pause, hu rongsheng and the servants all come onstage. Some servants light the lamps and they all gather around.) hu rongsheng: You all have to keep the secret. Don’t let a word of it out! Good. Gui Yi, take them all inside! Go to Ah Liang’s room and give them their pay! (gui yi nods his head.) Okay, hurry and straighten up this place. Arrange those things like they were originally! (The servants follow orders, straightening up and putting everything back into place; only the bed is not moved inside. lingxiang comes onstage.) lingxiang (all smiles at hu rongsheng): The luggage is all ready to go, Master. hu rongsheng: Okay, all of you go inside to Ah Liang’s room, everybody in. gui yi (closes the back door, lights a lamp, and smiles at the servants): Please, come on everyone! (He exits. The servants all exit the stage. Only one lamp remains in the middle of the room, situated on the table.) lingxiang: Master, it’s time to get moving! hu rongsheng: Yes, but don’t say anything in front of them . . . And Yuelin? Is she dressed and made-up? lingxiang: She won’t change clothes, not to mention put on makeup. She just keeps staring at those pistols you’ve hung above the window. Then she was totally absorbed in writing a letter. hu rongsheng: Writing a letter? . . . Where did she get pen and paper? She’s so crazy, who knows what she’s writing?! lingxiang: She sent Hongtao out to get them. She had Hongtao mail the letter, too. hu rongsheng (bursts out indignantly, about to run out in a flurry): Ah, she’s rebelling! lingxiang (pulls him to a stop from his side, smiles obsequiously): Don’t make such a big deal out of it! . . . Do you think Miss Yuelin is really crazy? . . . She’s just living in her own world. hu rongsheng (excitedly): She and I are going on a trip. Isn’t it enough that she has this world of mine? lingxiang (flatteringly, smiling charmingly): Ha, ha, Master! Do you think the two of you can be happy, given the things she’s been through? (Coquettishly, she devilishly pinches hu rongsheng’s cheek, then embraces him and kisses him.) hu rongsheng (not paying much attention to lingxiang, daydreaming): I gave her all the happiness . . . lingxiang (very unhappily): Ah! You can’t create happiness by yourself. After all, you can’t dig up Young Master’s body and bring him back to life for her. You can’t exonerate Ling Xia of his crime and marry Miss Yuelin off to him. She’ll never feel at ease because of this, never be cheerful. Could you be happy with a wooden beauty who is never cheerful?

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(She sits on his lap). hu rongsheng (thinks a moment, then joyously embraces lingxiang): You come with me, too. How about all three of us going together? lingxiang: You’ll take me too? . . . Okay, let’s go! I’ll go anywhere. (Overjoyed, she tightly embraces hu rongsheng.) hu rongsheng (embraces her tightly, kisses her, and gropes her whole body): Ah, your body really feels nice! . . . You know the undershirt you left on my bed last time you were in my room? I still have it stashed there. lingxiang (bashfully): Ah! . . . Why didn’t you return it to me? hu rongsheng (smiles wickedly): I regard it as a treasure. lingxiang (smiles alluringly): Master! If you really regard my clothing as a treasure, what other treasures do you have for me? hu rongsheng (goes to the wardrobe and takes out a silver box, takes out a jeweled ring, and gives it to her with a grin): How about this? (He then takes out a pearl necklace and puts it around her neck.) lingxiang (dancing with delight, grips hu rongsheng with both hands): Ah, Master! (chunhua comes onstage.) chunhua (very flustered): Master! Miss Yuelin has disappeared! hu rongsheng (jumps up, bursts out angrily): You slut! You let her escape. I told you over and over to keep an eye on her. How dare you deceive me! You let her go! (He pounces toward chunhua to hit her.) chunhua (nimbly retreats and shouts loudly): Master! You can’t blame me for this. A dark shadow appeared over and over outside your window. When I went to look at it, I saw that it was a trace of ghost fire. It was gone in a flash and scared us to death. I ran outside, scared out of my wits. When I came back in again, I couldn’t find Miss Yuelin. hu rongsheng: Stinking girl! You think you can fool me with your talk of ghosts? (He is about to rush out violently, but he remembers to take care of the jewelry box.) chunhua: Master, it’s the honest truth. When I first saw the shadow, I thought it was a robber, so I was going to take that pistol you fixed above the window and shoot him. But the person’s shadow disappeared in a flash, leaving only a spot of firelight in the distance. hu rongsheng (closes up the jewelry box and turns around): Don’t deny it! If I can’t find her, I’ll beat you to death! (He slaps chunhua once, then fiercely drags her out. lingxiang walks out the door with them, then turns around and reenters. She closes the door and searches through the wardrobe for the jewelry box, pulls it out, and looks at it greedily for a moment. She then boldly removes piece after piece, stuffing them inside her blouse. Then she anxiously stashes the box in the wardrobe. A knock sounds on the window from outside and a faint light flashes by. lingxiang runs for her life off the stage. The room is temporarily quiet. A door at the left rear opens and a dark shadow slowly extends its torso inside

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and looks around. Then it withdraws suddenly and the door closes. The incessant sound of a whistle is heard offstage. xiao yuelin comes onstage, rushing in through the front door. She appears shocked, like a small rabbit scared by a cat. She is wearing the same clothes as in the last scene, but she is also wearing a modest bamboo-green overcoat, the lapels of which are wide open. Her hands are stuck in the pockets of the coat. Her hair is mussed up and her crown of flowers is about to drop off. Face pale and startled eyes protruding, she looks unwell and gasps for air, as if on the verge of vomiting. She peers into the dark corners of the room, then suddenly squats at the base of the wardrobe and reaches both her hands underneath it. Then she stands up and paces manically around the room.) xiao yuelin: Yes, I have to do it . . . It’s the only way! . . . Vengeance can’t be timid. No matter what . . . I have to get rid of that evil man . . . Even if I have to sacrifice my own life, I must get rid of that evil man! . . . Yes, it’s the only way! I’m not leaving, absolutely not! . . . Absolutely not . . . I’m absolutely not leaving! hu rongsheng (rushes onto the stage in pursuit, closes the door, and smiles at her, selfsatisfied and happy): Humph, once again you couldn’t escape! (Grabs her) I knew you couldn’t escape from me. (xiao yuelin, shaking, is dragged into the center of the room; a look of loathing burns in her eyes.) I told you, you’re going on a trip, so why are you running all around? xiao yuelin (feigns tenderness, smiles softly): I’m not going. hu rongsheng (happy, kisses her smiling cheek): You’re going! Go somewhere new for a change. It’ll improve your mood. You’re too sad being here at home. It’s true that everything around here makes you sad. Going on a trip somewhere will help dispel those sad memories. The fresh new scenery will be good for your mood, too. Your spirits will naturally recover in no time at all. You can relax and live it up. Come on! xiao yuelin (smiles crazily): Huh? . . . hu rongsheng If the Peasants’ Association weren’t coming and causing trouble—if they weren’t coming to burn my house down—there’d be no happier place for the two of us. (Evilly strokes xiao yuelin’s arm) But unfortunately, it’s dangerous here right now. I’m worried about you. Let’s go quickly! xiao yuelin (in a rebellious voice): I said I’m not going. hu rongsheng (forcefully taking hold of her): I think you’d better shape up a bit, be a little more obedient. If you get full of yourself all of a sudden, you’ll just ruin your own future . . . As for me, I’ve never been so nice before, and it’s certainly no coincidence. I’ve been planning this for a long time . . . (Takes xiao yuelin’s arm and presses it to his face) Ah, others would give anything for the feelings I have for you. What more can you ask for? (Although the hate in her heart is already at its peak, xiao yuelin endures it silently. Flames of an imminent explosion can be seen in the flashes of alarm in her eyes.) Don’t always be so haughty and arrogant, or you’ll spoil your good fortune!

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(He goes to kiss her arm again. xiao yuelin draws her head back, leans her body away, then runs to the window.) (Fixes on her) Yuelin, you have to think clearly! If you miss this opportunity you’ll regret it. (He bears down on her. Flames of hate growing stronger, her alarmed eyes rove all around, xiao yuelin sticks out her chest at him, but restrains herself again.) Happiness is the only thing in this world worth living for. I’ve told you time and again—(pulls out the key to the silver jewelry box and waves it in front of her face) if you want precious pearls, they’re yours. If you want money, all my property is yours. Not counting my real estate, I have eight million taels deposited in foreign banks right now. (Smiles obsequiously) If you want to dress extravagantly, live richly, and travel, it’s all up to you. xiao yuelin: Okay, hand it all over! . . . (Laughs insanely) Ha, ha! hu rongsheng (places the jewelry box and keys in front of her): Look, it’s all yours now. I’m a real man of the world, but I’m sincerely surrendering my heart to you like this. And your heart is still as hard as iron! . . . (He gazes intently at xiao yuelin, but she doesn’t pay attention to him.) (Shaking her angrily) Hey, why don’t you even look at me? (Violently) You think that because I’m spoiling you so much you can bully me? You’re going to eventually want to . . . Otherwise . . . I will use force. (He looks dangerously at xiao yuelin, then seizes her abruptly.) xiao yuelin (springs up and bravely jumps away): What are you going to do to me? hu rongsheng: Why did I just say all that? What was the purpose? . . . Well, are you going to surrender or not? Do you think that I won’t be able to have you if you don’t surrender? (He fiercely grabs xiao yuelin, tries to embrace her.) xiao yuelin: Ah! . . . (She screams, whistles furiously and ceaselessly, resisting with all her might. Throwing him off, she flies nimbly to the wardrobe, now even more full of fight. Her eyes dart back and forth. hu rongsheng fiercely goes to snatch the whistle, moving in on her. The two of them fight in a circle around the room. gui yi rushes onstage.) gui yi: Master, the car is ready for your trip. Do you want to go now? (Takes the jewelry box) Aren’t you taking this box with you? hu rongsheng (hurries over to gui yi, takes the box, opens and inspects it): Gui Yi! You . . . Now you’ve done it! What happened to the things inside? (xiao yuelin takes the opportunity to pull a pistol out from under the wardrobe, points it at hu rongsheng.) (Simultaneously chasing her and protecting the jewelry box as if his life depended on it) Aha, you wicked bitch! xiao yuelin: You fiend! You’ve slaughtered so many people just to carry out your evil plans. You’ve trampled on so many people. You had your servants beat Cheng Lao’er to death and then bribed your way out of it. You yourself killed your own son and

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plan to have somebody else die for the crime. You murdered my mother and now you want to ravage me? . . . (Courageously jumps toward him) I’m your illegitimate daughter. Must I now be your concubine? (Raises the gun, about to fire) The world is not big enough for the two of us! hu rongsheng (viciously pounces toward her): Bullshit! (Hurriedly wrests the gun from her) You’re talking crazy again! gui yi: Master, is anything she said untrue? hu rongsheng: Go to hell! I’ll have a go at her, just you see. (He spitefully balls up his fists and gnashes his teeth at xiao yuelin.) gui yi (calmly shows him his fist): I’ll have a go at you first, just you see. hu rongsheng: Slave! (Points the gun at him) Perhaps you no longer want to live? gui yi: I’ll hang on to this old life of mine so I can settle accounts with you. You’ve harmed me in so many ways. You broke up and killed my family. But we’ll wait until you get to hell to settle that account. Didn’t you know? Yuelin is both your daughter and mine. (xiao yuelin is surprised and bewildered. hu rongsheng is peeved.) When you abandoned your daughter, you discarded your responsibility as a father. I’ve fulfilled my responsibility as a stepfather by nurturing this daughter and I am going to protect her. (In the midst of indignation he smiles happily, then goes to caress xiao yuelin.) hu rongsheng (showing denial of this assertion to xiao yuelin, looks disdainfully at gui yi): Why are you making trouble for me? Get lost! gui yi (with extreme indignation): You tricked the daughter of mining technician Xiao Jiepeng, had a child with her, and then abandoned the child at an orphanage on the west side of the city. Did you forget that? hu rongsheng (suddenly appears about to pounce on and kill gui yi): You’re crazy. Barking mad! gui yi (looks imposingly and antagonistically at him): And you hated Yuelin’s maternal grandmother, who urged you to take care of Yuelin. So you secretly went to the orphanage to fetch Yuelin and threw her in the river. I don’t suppose you’ve forgotten this. Yuelin was only two years old at the time. (xiao yuelin is deeply shocked; hu rongsheng gets angrier.) You thought all along that the child had drowned so you were in the clear. But you didn’t know that I was following behind you in the twilight. I was able to save that poor child and began to raise her . . . I am Yuelin’s rebirth father. Yuelin’s mother was my only love. You ravaged my lover and Yuelin was born . . . (Utters a throaty cry, extremely grievous, his tears flow) I feel such sorrow for Yuelin! hu rongsheng: Gui Yi! (Fiercely grabs him) You’ve gone insane! gui yi: Get off, you vulture! (Courage multiplying, he pushes him away) Yuelin, let’s go! (Puts his arm around xiao yuelin’s shoulder and walks) Why have I been a slave here for these years? For you! (Walking intimately together) To you, I look sixty years old, but I’m actually only forty-two.

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hu rongsheng: Yuelin! (He violently pulls her away and fires a shot at gui yi. gui yi urgently blows the whistle, fights valiantly and ferociously, clobbers hu rongsheng. The mass of servants jostle in through the front door, greatly surprised.) voice: Why? How? gui yi (still beating hu rongsheng): Everybody, rebel! . . . Attack! He’s a bloodsucking devil, the enemy of humanity! . . . He’s drunk our blood, eaten our brains, and stripped us of our lives . . . He’s our enemy; hit him, beat him to death! (He twists hu rongsheng around.) hu rongsheng: Hey, all of you, pick him up and throw him into the old well outside! Quick, hurry, carry him away quickly! (Directing with all his might, the servants not daring to do it, hu rongsheng livid) You won’t do it? Take him away! gui yi: Listen everybody. I didn’t do anything wrong, but he ruined my entire life. I was his good friend, a young man ten times better than him, and you can see the extent to which he ruined me. But he doesn’t even recognize me anymore . . . (Although unwilling, the servants have no alternative, so lift him up. gui yi dies. The servants are shocked. During the chaos, xiao yuelin has taken another pistol from under the wardrobe. Now she raises the gun and points it at hu rongsheng.) xiao yuelin: Fiend! hu rongsheng: Humph! (He also raises a gun and points it at her. Just at this critical moment, a dark shadow, whose head is covered by a black veil and body clothed in black, sticks its head through the back door. The dark shadow strikes the door violently once, pushes it, and enters rapidly, coming onstage. It bravely faces hu rongsheng, solemn as the angel of death. It makes an ancient sound that is neither male nor female. At the same time, two more dark shadows walk in and stand silently at the doorway.) dark shadow 1: Hold it! . . . You’ve already played enough murderous games in this world. Let me play one for you to see. (It pulls xiao yuelin over by its side.) dark shadow 2: Should everyone come in? dark shadow 1 (turns its head toward dark shadow 2): Not quite yet. (A few powerful flashlights shine in through the door and the crack between the window shutters.) hu rongsheng: Who the hell are you? (He sinisterly raises the gun and points it at dark shadow 1.) xiao sen (pulls off the veil and says in the strong voice of a beautiful woman): Who am I? . . . Hu Can! (Two people fire at each other: xiao yuelin has hurried over to stand in front of xiao sen, guarding her, and has deftly fired at hu rongsheng, hitting him. At the same time, hu rongsheng’s bullet hits xiao yuelin in her left side. xiao yuelin staggers and topples. hu rongsheng is shot twice in succession and falls, then he pulls himself up. But he is dizzy and unable to support himself. Men and women dressed in

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black, as well as a large group of peasants, enter through the back door. lingxiang leads the crowd of servants in through the front of the residence. All are stunned.) all dark shadows: Hurray! Hurray! (Among them, zheng shaomei removes her black veil and tragically approaches xiao yuelin.) peasant b (ridiculing hu rongsheng): Oh, are you going to jail still? Maybe you’d better be burned along with your opium. We’ve already found it. xiao yuelin: Ha, ha! It’s done! We’ve eliminated a monster! (She removes the crown of flowers from her head and the clothes from her body and piles them piece after piece in front of hu rongsheng along with the jewelry box and keys. She remains wearing only a white silk undergarment.) (With an insane laugh) Take all these to hell with you! Take them to hell! (Seeing this, lingxiang’s eyes pop out, but she doesn’t dare to take a step toward hu rongsheng. She is shocked.) xiao sen: Yuelin, you’ve been injured. (Distressed, she goes to help her up.) xiao yuelin: It’s nothing. The spirit of life is surging through my whole body. My heart and soul are singing. (Stepping crazily) Ah, I’m happy! I’m happy! (She dances insanely in a circle, staring at xiao sen. hu rongsheng dies.) Oh, who’ll drag him out? Don’t let the corpse block my way! (The servants carry hu rongsheng’s corpse off. zheng shaomei covers her eyes and moves out of the way.) xiao sen: Yuelin, you’re hurt, you’ve been injured. Calm down! (She slowly goes to hold her.) xiao yuelin (getting more excited, dances offbeat, laughs tragically): Ha, ha, ha! . . . (Sings) Looks like the Thunder God is going to burst from my throat, Me, I’m the bastard child who killed the bastard. (The crowd is shocked.) Look, I’m a bastard child with no father or mother! Who knows, who knows who I am? My blood-red song rushes forth from the bottom of my heart! xiao sen: Yuelin! . . . (Reaches toward her, deeply concerned, in a grieved tone, stands towering, erect like a bronze statue) Come! xiao yuelin (dancing and singing): One dark night when I was seven, A cripple came from somewhere,

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Hobbling onto a small road from my stepfather’s home, Forcing me, forcing me . . . forcing me to die. He sold me into an evil woman’s home, That was my first time being a slave girl! I was sold a number of times in succession, sold back and forth, The beast who sired me tricked me into becoming his young wife. Enduring humiliation, enduring humiliation . . . I couldn’t stand it, Revenge, revenge . . . I swore to the wide seas. Ah, what a world it was then! (Points toward the crowd) Red, yellow, green . . . a menagerie of colors! (Ever more insane, flaunting herself, dances insanely) Ha, ha, ha! . . . Rebel! . . . Rebel against everything! The world has been turned upside down! . . . New and wonderful! Ha, ha, ha! . . . Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha . . . Everything is upside down—this is the gift of “death”! The world is new and wonderful—this is the gift of “death”! Upside down, everything is new now! I’m rocking in the cradle of “birth,” rocking, rocking . . . I am born, I am born! Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha! . . . Determination informed me of my road ahead, I am “going to death,” “going to death,” “going to death” . . . Returned to my “birth!” Returned to my “birth!” “Death” gives me new life! “Death” gives me new life! (Her air of insanity gradually subsiding, she suddenly cringes in pain and crumples. xiao sen has been supporting xiao yuelin up until her collapse.) xiao sen: Yuelin, are you conscious? (Half in loving joy, half deeply sorrowful, she holds xiao yuelin and examines her injuries.) The fiend is dead. It’s our world now . . . (Suddenly shocked) Yuelin! Yuelin! . . . Ah, Yuelin! . . . (Shakes her, stupefied) Ah, you’re seriously injured! (In utter sorrow) But you can come out of it! Wake up and look at me . . . (Cuddles her, shakes her hard, panic-stricken) Yuelin! . . . Yuelin! . . . Yuelin, ahh! . . . (xiao yuelin is startled as if from a dream; her watery eyes are clear as stars, and she looks penetratingly at xiao sen.) xiao yuelin (with a pure and innocent expression): Auntie! xiao sen: I am your mother, Yuelin! (Everyone in the room is stunned.)

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xiao yuelin (startled): Huh?! . . . xiao sen (tenderly caresses her): I am your mother, the one who gave birth to you. xiao yuelin: Ah, Mother! I have a mother like you! (Overjoyed, she embraces xiao sen’s neck in shock, her tears flowing.) xiao sen: Ah, child, that’s right. (She holds her tightly, lovingly, crystal- clear eyes roving, bleak and desolate, she continues to console her insofar as possible, cuddling her with motherly love.) xiao yuelin: Mother! Mother! Why do I deserve such happiness? xiao sen: It’s because you resisted that evil man to the end. xiao yuelin: Ah, I’ve broken out of the ghost pagoda! I have my own mother! I’ve broken out of the ghost pagoda and I have my . . . own . . . mother! Ha, ha, ha! . . . ha . . . ha . . . (The observers smile eerily. Mother and daughter smile peacefully in mutual embrace. xiao yuelin throws herself into xiao sen’s bosom and collapses, not moving.) xiao sen: Yuelin! Yuelin! . . . (Her shocked eyes protruding, bereaved and unable to speak, she puts xiao yuelin down at her feet and stands towering, erect like a stone statue.) (Curtain.)

E x p l a n a t o ry N ote The original title of this thing was Go, Go Die! It was written at full speed in one week last summer in Wuchang at the request of Mr. Zhang Ziping while I was working in the International Compilation Committee at the General Political Department. The day came that Mr. Xiang Peiliang arrived, coincidently just after I had finished writing it, and borrowed it, saying that he wanted to stage it in Hankou at some theater in Xuehua World. He had it for a month and neither put it on stage nor returned it. I wrote him a letter asking for it back because I wanted to turn it in as my achievement to the General Political Department. I personally went to ask for it some ten or twelve times altogether. No matter how scorching hot the day, no matter how dark and stormy the night, like a small boat on the mighty Yangtze River I traversed between the two shores all by myself, ner vous and flustered. I finally went to look for him three or four times a day. In the end, not only did he not hand over the play, but he even hid himself upstairs and had friends stop me at the door of the hotel, saying he was not at home. The script disappeared without a trace into Xiang Peiliang’s scheming world! Xiang Peiliang ran away. Can the law resolve such behavior as his toward me? Or is there anyone who sympathizes with me? Or perhaps, should I congratulate Mr. Xiang Peiliang with the kind of courageous diatribe of those who criticized my Lin Yu, or, better yet, like those who cursed me one hundred times more intensely, saying that I was cowardly as a pig? After the script was annihilated by him, I had heatstroke in my anger. Actually it was an attack of dysentery, and an attack of intestinal tract disease, which laid me up during

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the Wuhan depression. I put it off until just recently and then wrote this skeleton of the original. It is scattered about like an irreparably shattered roof tile. I hope readers will forgive me! Bai Wei Early autumn, 1928

not es

1. 2.

Bai Wei’s Da chu Youlingta: San mu shehui beiju (Breaking Out of Ghost Pagoda: A Social Tragedy in Three Acts) was originally published in vols. 1, 2, and 4 of Torrent (June, July, September 1926). This first English translation is based on the text in Zhongguo xin wenxue daxi (Compendium of New Chinese Literature), vol. 15, Drama Part 1, 3–77 (Shanghai: Shanghai wenyi, 1985). Romance appears in English in the script. Cheng Lao’er was the peasant who was beaten to death by Hu Rongsheng’s men, which caused the peasants to confront Hu Rongsheng in act 1.

Thunderstorm (1934) cao yu t ra nsla ted by wa ng tso- l i ang and a. c . b ar ne s Revised Tra nsla tion by C har l e s Qi anzhi W u

Scenes Prologue: In an unusual lounge of a church-affiliated hospital, on a winter afternoon Act 1: Ten years ago, on a sultry summer morning; in the drawing room of the Zhou residence, identical with the hospital lounge in the prologue, with more or less the same setting Act 2: The same place as in act 1, the afternoon of the same day Act 3: In the small inner room at the Lus’, around ten o’clock that evening Act 4: In the Zhous’ drawing room, the same as in act 1; around two that night Epilogue: Back to ten years later, on that winter afternoon, the same place as in the prologue (The time span from act 1 to act 4 is just one day.)

C ha r a c t e rs sister a ⤟ㅒㅒ⭭, a Catholic nun sister b ⤟ㅒㅒ㮼, a Catholic nun little sister ⰷⰷ, fifteen little brother ♀♀, twelve

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zhou puyuan 㺾ᖕओ, fifty-five, chairman of the board of directors of a coalmining company zhou fanyi 㺾➑䤺, thirty-five, his wife zhou ping 㺾㊾, twenty-eight, his son by a former marriage zhou chong 㺾ᝌ, seventeen, his younger son by his present wife lu gui 咺䁣, forty-eight, his servant lu shiping 咺㗆㊾ (or mrs. lu 咺஘), forty-seven, lu gui’s wife, employed as a servant in a school lu dahai 咺▙⦽, twenty-seven, her son by a former marriage, a miner lu sifeng 咺㙼坯, eighteen, her daughter by her present husband, a maid at the Zhous’ Various other servants in the house մ㑉⭭, մ㑉㮼, . . . ⹝մ

PRO L OGUE (The spacious lounge of a church hospital. Three o’clock on a winter afternoon. In the middle of the room upstage is a two-paneled door leading to the outside. The panels are heavy looking, painted brown, with antiquated, semi-European carvings. In front of the door hangs a thick curtain dotted with stains. Its dark-purple color has faded, its designs are threadbare, and in its middle there is a hole. On the right (facing the audience) is a door leading to what is now a ward. The paint on the door has peeled off, and the bronze knob has lost its luster. The door has a tall and wide frame with yellow patterns painted over a gray base, and an uneven surface with European-style decorative figures in relief. All this suggests that the former owner of the house must have studied abroad sometime ago and seen his heyday after his return to China. This door also has a half-worn, dark-purple curtain. It is half drawn back, with its lower end in tatters and touching the floor. On the left is another door, also double paneled, leading to the dining room, from which one may either go upstairs in one direction, or go outside the house in the other. This door is even more ornate and aged in color than the one in the middle. It turns heavily on its hinges, making a mellowed sound from long years of friction, like a weathered, quiet, and gentle old man. It has no curtain, and the decorative patterns where the paint has peeled off are clearly visible. To the right of the center door, the wall curves into an alcove. The upper part of the alcove is a set of prismatic, French windows with elongated, exquisite glass panes. The lower part is a slightly raised semicircular platform, which may be used as a table or a seat. In front of the alcove are thick velvet drapes in folds. When drawn, they shut out both the windows and the sunlight, so that the room is gloomy and stuffy. Indeed these drapes are drawn when the curtain rises. The walls are dark brown, faded and in disrepair. All the furnishings are ornate but have lost their former splendor. Downstage on the right is a fireplace framed in marble inlaid with star-shaped stones, but the mantelpiece is totally empty, except for a cross with the crucified Jesus hanging over it. A coal fire is burning in the fireplace, the glow lighting up an old armchair in front of it. This slight bit of warmth lends the ancient house a thin

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breath of life. A coal scuttle and some firewood are placed near the fireplace. To the left of the right-hand door hangs a scroll painting. Further left, standing against the wall close to the upstage corner, is an old-fashioned sandalwood bureau. The corners of its doors are all wrapped in copper. On top of the bureau stands a thermos bottle, and two white bowls placed on a copper plate. In front of the bureau is a rectangular rug, on which is placed a low sandalwood table, standing parallel to the bureau. It may have been used to display porcelain and other knickknacks in the past, but now we see stacks of white tablecloths, bedsheets, and other fabrics, just cleaned, piled up on it, waiting to be stored in the bureau. Further downstage, between the bureau and the alcove, stands a round stool. To the left of the alcove and right of the center door is a rectangular mahogany pantry table, on which are placed two old candlesticks. On the wall over the table hangs a huge but musty classical oil painting. To the left of the center door stands an exquisite glass-front sandalwood cabinet, which had seen better days when used to display antiques but is now empty. In front of the cabinet is a long and narrow bench. Not far from the left corner and at right angles to it is a large, dark- colored sofa, with a long table in back and a short, low table in front, with nothing on either. On the left of the sofa stands a yellow floor lamp. A small bay in the left wall slightly downstage contains a side table, over which hangs a small oil painting. Next to this table, further downstage, is the left door leading to the dining room. In the center of the room is a rug, along which are placed, face-to-face but slightly askew, two large sofas, between which is a round table with a white cloth draped over it. As the curtain rises, bells are heard tolling in the distance. The choir in the cathedral is singing, to the accompaniment of the organ, preferably Bach’s Mass in B Minor, “Benedictus qui venit in nomine Domini.” The room is quiet, without a single soul. A few minutes pass. The heavy door at center stage is pushed open slowly. sister a, of the convent, enters. Dressed like nuns of any cathedral, she wears a snow-white cloth headgear that makes her look like a Dutch country girl, and a dark-blue robe of coarse material, the skirt of which almost touches the ground. She wears a cross on her necklace, and a bunch of keys at her waist, which clink- clank as she walks. Entering quietly and with peaceful demeanor, she turns around to face the outside.) sister a (kindly): Come in, please. (A pale-faced old man comes in, wearing a well- cut but old fur coat. He takes off his hat as he enters, revealing a head of gray hair. His eyes are deep-sunken and melancholic, his chin studded with white beard, his face wrinkled. He takes off his goldrimmed glasses as he walks in and places them in a case with his shaky hands. He rubs his hands and coughs feebly a couple of times. The music from outside stops.) (Smiling) It’s cold outside! old man (nodding): Uh-huh—(concerned) is she doing fine? sister a (with sympathy): She’s fine. old man (after a moment’s silence, pointing at his head): How’s it up here? sister a (with pity): That—still the same. (She sighs softly.) old man (quietly): I know there’s no easy cure.

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sister a (with compassion): Take a seat and warm yourself first before you go see her. old man (shaking his head): No. (He walks toward the ward on the right.) sister a (stepping forward): Excuse me, this is the wrong way. This is Granny Lu’s ward. Your wife is upstairs. old man (stops, looking lost): I—I know. (Pointing at the room on the right) But may I see her now? sister a (courteously): I don’t know. Granny Lu’s ward is another sister’s charge. I suggest you go upstairs first, and then come back to see the old lady. How’s that? old man (dazed): Um, okay. sister a: Follow me, then. (She leads him into the dining room on the left. The room is quiet once more. Footsteps are heard from outside. sister b comes in with two young kids. sister b looks exactly the same as sister a, except that she is a little younger and livelier. The children are sister and brother. Both are in their winter wear, plump and round, their faces chubby like apples. The sister is around fifteen, her pigtails swaying behind her. The brother is wearing a red woolen hat. They both look happy as they come in. The sister, who walks in front, seems a little quieter.) sister b (cheerfully): Come on in, young man. (The boy looks at the girl after he enters, both of them trying to warm their hands by breathing on them.) Cold outside, isn’t it? Little Sister, why don’t you sit here with your brother? little sister (smiling): Yes, Sister. little brother (holding his sister’s hands and whispering): Sis, where’s Mom? sister b: Your mom will be here shortly after she’s seen the doctor. Just sit here and get warm, okay? (little brother looks up at his sister.) little sister (speaking like a grown-up): Brother, I’ve been here before. Let’s just sit here and I’ll tell you a joke. (little brother looks around curiously.) sister b (watching them with interest): Right. Ask your sister to tell you a joke. (Pointing to the fireplace) Sit closer to the fire, both of you. little brother: No, I want that stool! (He points to the little stool in front of the chest of drawers on the left.) sister b (kindly): That’s fine. Now you just sit here, but (softly), sweetie, be good and don’t make a noise! There’s a patient upstairs—(pointing to the ward on the right) there’s another patient in there. little brother and little sister (nodding obediently): Oh. little brother (suddenly, to sister b): Is my mom coming back soon? sister b: Oh, yes, she’ll be back shortly. Sit down, you two. (little brother and little sister sit down on the same stool, looking at sister b.) Sit still. (Looking at them) I’ll be right back.

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(little brother and little sister nod. sister b goes into the ward on the right. little brother stands up abruptly.) little brother (to little sister): Who’s she? Why’s she dressed like that? little sister (exhibiting savvy): She’s a nun, and a nurse at the hospital. Sit down, Brother. little brother (ignoring her command): Sis, look, look! (Proudly) See the new gloves Mom bought me? little sister (superciliously): Yes I did. Just sit down! (She pulls him down to his seat. They are seated again like two good kids. sister a comes back from the dining room on the left and walks toward the bureau on the right, not noticing anyone in the room.) little brother (standing up again, whispering to his sister): Here comes another, Sis. little sister (in a low voice): Shh! Don’t talk. (She pulls her brother back to his seat. sister a opens the bureau on the right, and starts putting the clean linen piled on the table into it. sister b enters from the ward on the right. She sees sister a. They nod to each other in silence. sister b helps sister a put away the clean linen.) sister b (to sister a, laconically): Done? sister a (puzzled): Which one? sister b (briskly, pointing upstairs): The one upstairs. sister a (with empathy): Done. She’s asleep again. sister b (curiously): Didn’t hit anybody? sister a: No. Just laughed a lot and broke some glass. sister b (sighing in relief ): Well, not too bad. sister a: What about her? sister b: You mean the one downstairs? (Pointing to the ward on the right) As usual, weeping most of the time, not talking much. Haven’t heard her say a single sentence the whole year I’ve been here. little brother (in a low voice, urgently): Sis, tell me your joke. little sister (in a low voice): No, Brother. Listen to what they are saying. sister a (pitifully): How sad. She’s been here nine years now, only one year less than the one upstairs. But neither of them has improved. (Cheering up) Oh, yes, Mr. Zhou just came and he’s upstairs. sister b (puzzled): How come? sister a: It’s Chinese New Year’s Eve today. sister b (surprised): Oh, yeah? New Year’s Eve . . . That means the one downstairs will come out here, to this room. sister a: What do you mean, come out here? sister b: Right. (Talkatively) Every Chinese New Year’s Eve she comes out here, into this room, and stands in front of that window. sister a: What for? sister b: Maybe to watch for her son to arrive. Her son left her one evening ten years ago and never came back. What a tragedy—her husband is no longer with her, either.

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(Softly) They say he used to work in Mr. Zhou’s house and died from drinking too much one night. sister a (realizing): So that’s why Mr. Zhou asks about the one downstairs every time he comes to visit his wife—I guess he’ll soon be coming down to see her. sister b (devoutly): May Mother Mary bless him. (She goes back to putting away the linen.) little brother (in a low voice, imploringly): Sis, tell me your joke, even if just half of it. Will you? little sister (has been listening with rapt interest and so quickly shakes her head. In a subdued voice): Brother! sister b (wondering): Strange! It’s such a beautiful house. Why did Mr. Zhou sell it to the hospital? sister a (calmly): Don’t know. They say three people died in this house on the same night. sister b (shocked): Really? sister a: Yes. sister b (logically): Then why did Mr. Zhou leave his sick wife upstairs and not move her out? sister a: Exactly. But she went crazy right there, upstairs, and refused to be moved out. sister b: I see. (little brother suddenly stands up.) little brother (protesting loudly): Sis, I don’t want to hear all this! little sister (trying to calm him, softly): But my dear brother! little brother (imperatively, raising his voice even higher): No, Sis, I want you to tell me your joke! (sister a and sister b turn around and see them.) sister a (surprised): Whose children are these? How come I didn’t see them when I came in? sister b: Their mother’s seeing a doctor. I just brought them here to sit and wait. sister a (cautioning): Better not let them stay here—what if they get scared? sister b: There’s no other place. It’s too cold outside, and the hospital is packed full. sister a: I think you’d better bring their mother over. What if the one upstairs runs down? That would scare the wits out of them. sister b (submitting): Okay. (To the two children, who have been watching them wideeyed) Little Sister, you two wait here quietly; I’ll go get your mom. little sister (respectfully): Thank you, Sister. (sister b exits by the center door.) little brother (hopefully): Is Mom coming soon, Sis? little sister (still unhappy with her brother): Hm. little brother (cheerfully): Mom’s coming! We can then go home. (Clapping his hands) We’ll go home and have our New Year’s Eve dinner! little sister: Keep quiet and sit down! (She pushes him down to his seat.)

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sister a (closes the bureau; to the children): Young man, sit here quietly with your sister. I’m going upstairs. (sister a goes into the dining room on the left.) little brother (all of a sudden showing interest and standing up): What’s she going to do, Sis? little sister (as if it was a stupid question): Of course to see the one upstairs. little brother (eagerly): But who’s the one upstairs? little sister (softly): A lunatic. little brother (presuming by intuition): A man? little sister (with certainty): No, it’s a woman—a wealthy lady. little brother (abruptly): And the one downstairs? little sister (with equal certainty): Also a lunatic. (Knowing the boy is getting too inquisitive) No more questions. little brother (curiously): Sis, they just said three people died in this house. little sister (feeling uneasy): Um—Brother, let me tell you a joke. Once upon a time, there was a king. little brother (curiosity aroused): No, just tell me: how did these three people die? And who were they? little sister (timidly): I don’t know. little brother (not believing, cleverly): Hm—I know you know. You just don’t want to tell me. little sister (reluctantly): Don’t ask about this in this house. It’s a haunted house. (All of a sudden there is the noise of someone throwing things on the floor upstairs, the clanking of chains, footsteps, and a woman laughing and shrieking.) little brother (somewhat scared): Listen! little sister (holding little brother’s hand tightly): Brother! (The noise stops.) little brother (calms down, realizing): Sis, that must be the one upstairs. little sister (scared): Let’s go. little brother (stubbornly): No. I’m not going anywhere unless you tell me how the three people died in this house. little sister: Don’t you be naughty. Mom will spank you when she knows! little brother (not caring): Hm! (The door on the right opens. A gray-haired woman wobbles in and stops in the middle of the room, as if blind. She drags herself to the window, looks out from between the curtains, steps onto the raised floor in front of the bay window, as if listening for something. The two children watch her ner vously.) little brother (in his normal voice): Who’s that? little sister (in a low voice) Shh! Don’t talk! She’s a lunatic. little brother (in a low voice, secretively): That must be the one downstairs. little sister (her voice trembling): I . . . I don’t know. (Weak and fragile, the old woman starts to collapse.) Brother, look, she’s falling!

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little brother (boldly): Let’s go and help her up. little sister: No, no, don’t! (The old woman suddenly falls on her knees, center stage. Lights dim. The chorus is heard again from the distance.) little brother (pulls his sister forward to look at the old woman): Sis, tell me all about this house. What are these lunatics doing here? little sister (terrified): No, you ask her. (Pointing to the old woman) She knows. little brother (urging her): No, Sis, you tell me. How come three people died in this house? Who were they? little sister (flustered): I told you to ask her. She surely knows it all. (The old woman slowly rolls onto the floor. Complete blackout. The chorus of the mass and the organ music rise again from the distance.) little brother (clearly): Sis, you go ask her. little sister (softly): No, no, you ask her. (The curtain falls.) You ask her! (The high mass is heard again.)

A CT 1 (The curtain rises on a stage in complete darkness. Ten seconds later, the lights come on. The scene is more or less the same as that of the prologue, but the entire ambience is more luxurious. It is a summer morning ten years ago in the drawing room of the Zhou residence. The alcove is still hidden behind the drapery, but a pot of gorgeous flowers placed there will later be revealed. The door in the middle stands open, and through the wire-gauze screen in front of it one can see the shady green of the trees in the garden and hear the shrilling cicadas. The bureau on the right, now covered with a yellow runner, has on it a number of objets d’art. What seems most conspicuously out of place among these objects on display is an old photograph. On the long coffee table is an extravagant smoking set with some knickknacks scattered around it. Over the fireplace are a clock and a vase of fresh flowers on the mantelpiece, and on the wall above hangs an oil painting. In front of the fireplace are two armchairs, with their backs to the wall. The glass cabinet at center left is filled with curios. The footstool in front of it has a green cushion on it. The long sofa in the left-hand corner is not old yet; on it are several plump cushions cased in satin. On the low table in front of the sofa is another luxurious smoking set surrounded by odds and ends. The two smaller armchairs and the round table between them all register opulence, and on this table are a Philippine cigar box and a fan. The curtains are brand new, the furniture is spotless, and all the metal fittings are gleaming: everything in this house shines with prosperity. The room is hot and stuffy, the air very close and oppressive. Outside is a gray, overcast sky. A thunderstorm seems imminent.

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When the curtain rises, lu sifeng is standing at the long table against the center upstage wall with her back to the audience, filtering some herbal medicine1 and wiping her perspiring face every now and then. Her father, lu gui, is polishing the silver knickknacks on the low table in front of the sofa. With sweat on his forehead, he seems overwrought. lu sifeng is a healthy, rosy- cheeked girl of eighteen with a well- developed figure and large, white hands. When she walks, the undulation of her overly endowed breasts is plainly visible under her blouse. Her shantung slacks and cloth slippers are old and slightly worn, yet she is neatly dressed and brisk in her movements. Her two years’ ser vice with the Zhous has taught her poise and ease of manner, but this does not mean that she does not know her place. Her big, limpid eyes with their long lashes will dance with animation but are also capable, with knitted eyebrows, of watching with solemn attentiveness. Her mouth is large, with full lips that are naturally and deliciously red. When she smiles, we see that her teeth are good, and a dimple appears at each corner of her mouth, yet her face as a whole retains its expression of dignity and sincerity. Her complexion is not particularly fair. The heat has brought a faint perspiration to her nose, and she dabs it from time to time with a handkerchief. She is aware of her good looks and usually enhances them with a smile—though at the moment she is frowning. lu gui is a mean-looking man in his forties, whose most conspicuous features are his thick, bushy eyebrows and his swollen eyelids. His loose, pendulous lips and the dark hollows under his eyes tell a tale of unbridled sensual indulgence. He is rather fat, and his flabby face remains expressionless most of the time, though he will put on a cringing, obsequious smile when occasion demands. Like most servants in big houses, he is shrewd and has faultless manners. He has a slight stoop, which gives him the appearance of being forever on the point of saying, “Very good, sir,” but the look of greed and slyness never leaves his sharp, wolfish eyes. He is astute and calculating. His clothes are showy but untidy. At the moment he is rubbing the silver over with a piece of cloth. On the floor at his feet is a pair of brown shoes that he has just polished. Every now and then he wipes his perspiring face with the front of his shirt.) lu gui (breathing hard): Sifeng! (She pretends not to hear and goes on filtering the medicine.) Sifeng! lu sifeng (casting a glance at her father): Whew, isn’t it hot! (She walks over to the bureau, picks up a palm-leaf fan, and begins to fan herself with it.) lu gui (stopping what he is doing and looking across at her): Did you hear me, Sifeng? lu sifeng (tired of him, looking at him with unconcern): Why, what is it now, Dad? lu gui: I mean did you hear what I was telling you a moment ago? lu sifeng: Yes, every word of it. lu gui (who is used to being treated like this by his daughter and so can do nothing more than make a feeble protest): Oh, darn! What a daughter! lu sifeng (turns around to face the audience): You talk too much! (Fanning herself vigorously) Whew! It’s so stuffy, I bet it’s going to rain. (Suddenly) Did you clean the

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master’s shoes that he’ll be wearing to go out? (She goes across, picks up one of the shoes, and scoffs at it.) You call this cleaned? Just a couple of wipes with a duster! You know the master’s tantrums. lu gui (snatching the shoe from her): I’ll thank you to mind your own business! (Dropping the shoe on the floor) Now listen, Sifeng, while I tell you again: when you see your mother, don’t forget to get all your new clothes out and show them to her. lu sifeng (impatiently): I heard you the first time. lu gui: Let her see who knows what’s best for you, she or your dad! lu sifeng (scoffing): Why, you, of course! lu gui: And don’t forget to tell her how well you’re treated here—good food, light work, just waiting on the mistress and the young gentlemen in the daytime and going straight home to bed in the evening just as she told you to do. lu sifeng: There’s no need for me to tell her that; she’s sure to ask anyway. lu gui (complacently): And then, there’s money! (Chuckling avariciously) You must have quite a bit put by! lu sifeng: Money? lu gui: Yes, two years’ pay, and tips, and—(meaningfully) and the odd little sums every now and then, which they— lu sifeng (cutting him short): Yes, and you’ve relieved me of every penny of it, a dollar or two at a time! And it’s all gone to drinking and gambling! lu gui (chuckling self- consciously): There you go again! Getting worked up over nothing! Don’t—don’t you worry; I’m not after your money. No, what—what I mean is— (lowering his voice) he—er—hasn’t he been giving you money? lu sifeng (taken aback): He? Who? lu gui (bluntly): Master Ping. lu sifeng (crimsoning, raising her voice and walking up to lu gui): Where did you get that idea? Master Ping giving me money indeed! You must be off your head, Dad, to talk such crap! lu gui (smirking): All right, all right, so he didn’t, then. But you must have saved quite a bit these last two years—don’t worry, I’m not after your money. All I meant was you can show it to your mother when she comes. That’ll be an eye- opener for her! lu sifeng: Humph! Mother isn’t like you—show you a handful of coppers and you’ll break your neck for it! (She goes back to the table to attend to the medicine.) lu gui (sitting down on the sofa): Money or no money, where do you think you’d be without your old dad? If you’d taken your mother’s advice over the last couple of years and not been to work in a big house like this, you think you’d be able to live as comfortably off as you are now? And still wearing that nice, cool silk in the heat of summer? lu sifeng (turning around): Yes, but mother has her principles. She’s educated, and she can’t bear to see her own daughter at someone else’s beck and call. She’s got her pride, you know.

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lu gui: To hell with pride! If that isn’t just like her! What do you think you are, missy of the house? It’s all bullshit! A servant’s daughter, and making a fuss about losing her pride working as a servant! lu sifeng (watching her father with shock and bursting out in disgust): Look at your face, Dad. You might at least wipe it! And you’d better have another go at those shoes, too. lu gui: Pride indeed! You want to learn that poor man’s pride from your mother? Just look at her! She travels three hundred miles to be a lousy cleaner in this girls’ school of hers, and all for the sake of eight dollars a month and the privilege of coming home once every two years! That’s where her “principles” have gotten her! So much for her “education”! A lot of good that’s done her! lu sifeng (restraining herself ): You’d better keep that till we get home. Remember you’re at the Zhous’ now, not in your own house. lu gui: Why should that stop my discussing my family affairs with my own daughter? Now, listen here: your mother— lu sifeng (suddenly): Just a minute! I’ve got something to tell you first. It isn’t every day that mother can get home, and when she does it’s only to see Dahai and me. If you say anything to upset her, I’ll tell Brother Dahai what you’ve been up to these last two years. lu gui: Me? And what have I done? (Feeling that his paternal dignity is at stake) Yes, I drink a little, gamble a little, and have a bit of fun with the girls. Well, so what? After all, I’m nearly fifty. What’s it to him, anyway? lu sifeng: Oh, he couldn’t care less about that sort of thing! But what’s happened to the money he sends home from the mine every month for mother? You’ve spent every penny of it on the sly, and if he found out about that he wouldn’t let you get away with it! lu gui: What could he do about it? (Raising his voice) His mother’s married to me, so I’m his father! lu sifeng (embarrassed): Shh! No need to shout. Mistress is resting upstairs. lu gui: Humph! (With sudden eloquence) Now just you listen to me. I’ve never stopped blaming myself for marrying your mother. To think that a smart guy like me should go and do a thing like that! Now, is there a single person in all this big house who doesn’t think I’m one of the best? I hadn’t been here two months when I got my own daughter a nice job in the house, and even your brother—he’d never have gotten that job in Zhou’s mine if I hadn’t put in a word for him. Could your mother ever have done as much for the two of you? And what thanks do I get for all that? Your mother and your brother are still ganged up against me as much as ever! If she still pulls a long face this time she’s back, I’ll disown her, and in front of your brother, too! I may even divorce her. I don’t care if she’s given me a daughter—and brought along that rotten brother of yours into the bargain! lu sifeng (fed up): Dad! How can— lu gui: Humph! (Quite worked up) God knows what bastard fathered him!

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lu sifeng: How can you say such things about Brother Dahai? What’s he ever done to upset you? lu gui: What’s he ever done to make me feel proud of him? He’s dabbled at being a soldier, a rickshaw boy, a mechanic, a student—but which trade is he really good at? After all the trouble I had getting him this job in the mine, he has to go and pick a quarrel with his foreman and beat him up! lu sifeng (cautiously): But from what I heard, he didn’t get the miners to fight back until the master told the mine security to open fire on them first. lu gui: Whatever happened, the boy’s a stupid ass. If he’s working for someone for his paychecks, he’s got to take orders from that person. But no: he has to go on strike, and depend on his poor old dad again to smooth things out with the master for him. lu sifeng: You’ve got it all wrong. He’s not asking you to do anything of the sort. He said he’s coming to see the master himself. lu gui (smugly): Well, after all, I am his father, and how can I just stand by and let him work it out for himself ? lu sifeng (eyeing him contemptuously and heaving a sigh): Well, why don’t you take a break? I have to take this medicine up to the mistress. (She picks up the bowl of medicine and goes toward the dining room on the left.) lu gui: Just a minute. I’ve got something else to tell you lu sifeng (in an effort to change the subject): It’s nearly lunchtime. Have you made the Pu’er tea for the master yet? lu gui: That’s not my job. The errand boys should’ve taken care of it. lu sifeng (trying to get away): Well, that’s fine. I’d better be off then. lu gui (standing in her way): What’s the hurry, Sifeng? There’s something I want to talk over with you. lu sifeng: What? lu gui: You know yesterday was the master’s birthday? Well, Master Ping gave me a tip, too—four dollars. lu sifeng: That’s great! (Letting her tongue run away with her) But if I were him, I wouldn’t have given you a penny! lu gui (smirking): You’re right on the mark! What can you do with four dollars anyway? I paid off a debt or two and now I’m broke again. lu sifeng (smiling, adroitly): You’d better talk to Brother Dahai, then, when he comes. lu gui: Don’t be like that, Sifeng. When did I ever borrow money and not pay it back? Now, what about a little loan of seven or eight dollars, now that you’ve got the dough? lu sifeng: I haven’t got any money. (She pauses and puts down the bowl of medicine.) Did you really use that money to pay off your debts? lu gui (swearing): I’ll be damned if I tell lies to my own daughter! lu sifeng: Don’t you dare! Now tell me the truth. Maybe I can think up something for you.

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lu gui: Really? It isn’t really my fault. The little tip I got yesterday wasn’t enough to pay off the big debts, but there was some leftover after I’d paid off the small ones, so I played a couple of games with what was left—you see, I hoped I’d win enough to get out of debt once and for all. How was I to know I was going to have a run of bad luck? Anyway, what with the losses and a few drinks, I’m now in debt to the tune of around ten dollars. lu sifeng: Is that the truth? lu gui (from his heart): Every word of it. lu sifeng (tauntingly): Then let me tell you something that’s just as true: I haven’t got any money, either! (She goes to pick up the bowl of medicine again.) lu gui (becoming agitated): Now, Sifeng. What’s the matter? You’re my own daughter, aren’t you? lu sifeng (ridiculing him): Yes, but you can’t expect your own daughter to sell herself to pay your gambling debts! lu gui (solemnly): Now my dear girl, be reasonable. Your mother only talks about loving you, but I take a real interest in everything that matters to you. lu sifeng (knowing he’s up to something but not sure exactly what): What else do you want to say? lu gui (after a swift glance all around, moving closer to her, sheepishly): Listen. Master Ping often talks to me about you. Yes, Master Ping, he says— lu sifeng (unable to contain herself ): Master Ping! Master Ping! Are you crazy! Well, I got to go. The mistress will be asking for me in a minute. lu gui: No, don’t go yet. Just let me ask you one thing. The other day I saw Master Ping buying material for a dress— lu sifeng (darkly): What about that? (She eyes lu gui, expressionless.) lu gui (looking her up and down): Hm—(slowly picking up her hand) this ring of yours—(chuckling) didn’t he give you this, too? lu sifeng (with disgust): You make me sick, the way you talk! lu gui (a bit angry, straightforwardly): You don’t have to put on an act with me. You are my daughter. (Suddenly leering avariciously) No big deal, nothing wrong with a servant’s daughter accepting gifts or money from people. Nothing wrong at all. I quite understand. lu sifeng: Don’t beat around the bush. Exactly how much do you want? lu gui: Not much. Thirty dollars would do. lu sifeng: I see. (Maliciously) Then why don’t you ask your Master Ping? lu gui (mortified and angered): Now listen, my girl, you don’t really think I’m such a fool that I don’t know what’s going on between you and that young scoundrel? lu sifeng (agitated): Call yourself a father? That’s a fine way to talk to your own daughter! lu gui (nastily): Just because I’m your father, I have to keep an eye on you. Now tell me, the night before last—

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lu sifeng: The night before last? lu gui: Yes, the night when I wasn’t at home. You didn’t show up till midnight. What were you doing all that time? lu sifeng (inventing an excuse): I was looking for something for the mistress. lu gui: And what kept you out so late? lu sifeng (contemptuously): A father like you has no right to ask such questions. lu gui: Ho, getting superior, aren’t we! You still can’t tell me where you were. lu sifeng: Who says I can’t? lu gui: Come on, then, let’s hear it. lu sifeng: Well, as a matter of fact, the mistress heard that the master had just gotten back, and she wanted me to get his clothes ready for him. lu gui: I see. (In a menacing undertone) And who was the gentleman that brought you home that night—sat in his car, had had a drop too much, and kept chattering to you? (He smiles triumphantly.) lu sifeng (terrified): Oh that!—er . . . lu gui (guffaws): No, you don’t have to tell me; it was our rich son-in-law, of course! To think that our rickety little hovel should be honored by a visit from a gentleman in a car, running around after a servant’s daughter! (Suddenly sternly) Now, tell me, who was it? lu sifeng: He, he is— (Enter lu dahai, lu sifeng’s half brother and lu gui’s stepson. He is tall and powerfully built, with bushy black eyebrows and slightly hollow cheeks. His stubborn character shows in his square jaw and his piercing eyes. His lips are thin, in striking contrast to his sister’s, which are the full, red lips of a passionate southerner. He speaks with a slight stutter, but when he gets excited his tongue can have a sharp edge to it. He has just arrived from the coal mine two hundred miles away, where he has helped to organize a strike. The strain of the past few months has told on him. Weary and unshaven, he looks old enough to be lu gui’s brother, and only the closest observation reveals that his eyes and his voice are just as youthful and ardent as his sister’s. Like her, he is inwardly consumed by the white-hot passions of youth and has the latent energy of a simmering volcano. He wears a miner’s short jacket of coarse blue cotton and in his hand is a greasy straw hat. One of his shoes has lost its lace. As he comes in, he seems rather ill at ease. He unbuttons his shirt and then puts a couple of the buttons back in again. His speech is terse, which makes him appear cold and aloof.) lu dahai: Sifeng! lu sifeng: Dahai! lu gui (to lu sifeng): Now, come on! Don’t pretend you’re dumb. lu sifeng (appealing to her brother): Brother! lu gui (ignoring this): It makes no difference with your brother here. I still want to know. lu dahai: What’s the matter? lu gui (takes a look at lu dahai and turns back): None of your business.

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lu sifeng: It’s nothing important, Brother. (To her father) It’s all right, Dad, we can talk it over later. lu gui (knowingly): Later? (Giving her a significant glance) All right, then, we’ll leave it at that. (To lu dahai, haughtily) Now then, what do you mean by just barging in like this! lu dahai (simply): I got fed up with waiting in the porter’s lodge. lu gui: That’s just like you, Dahai, a boorish miner with no idea how to behave in a big house. lu sifeng: He’s not a servant here, you know. lu gui (rationally): But his paychecks still come from Zhou’s pocket. lu dahai (coldly): Where is he? lu gui (pretending not to understand): “He”? Who’s “he”? lu dahai: The company chairman. lu gui (lecturing): A master’s a master. I don’t care if he’s a chairman or what, he’s “the master” to you while you’re in this house. lu dahai: Tell him a miners’ representative is here to see him. lu gui: I think you’d better go home first. (Confidently) Leave it to your old dad to straighten out things at the mine for you. Have a couple of days at home with your mother and your sister, and when your mother’s gone you can go back to the mine, and you’ll find your job still waiting for you. lu dahai: You mean after all this strike I should come to ask you to put in a good word for me so I can go back to work? lu gui: That wouldn’t make you look bad. lu dahai (finding it useless to argue): Okay, just tell him I have something else to talk to him about. lu sifeng (anxious that her father should go and leave them alone together): Dad, why don’t you go and see if the guests have gone? If they have, you could take Dahai in to see the master. lu gui (shaking his head): Hm, I’m afraid he’s not going to see you. lu dahai (with the confidence of a man convinced of the righteousness of his cause): He’s got to see me. I’m one of the miners’ representatives who saw him in the office only the day before yesterday. lu gui (hesitantly): Well, in that case let me go and find out first. lu sifeng: Yes, go on, Dad. lu gui (turning around as he reaches the door of the study): If he does agree to see you, you’d better watch your mouth, okay? (He disappears into the study with the confident tread of a senior servant with years of lucrative ser vice behind him.) lu dahai (watching lu gui out of sight and shaking his head): Ugh! He forgets he’s a man! lu sifeng: Brother! Don’t talk like that. (Pauses and heaves a sigh) After all, he’s our father. lu dahai (looking at her): He’s yours. I don’t know him.

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lu sifeng (looks at him timidly, suddenly remembers, rushes to the door of the study, and takes a peek inside): Better not speak so loud. The master’s right there in the next room! lu dahai (looking at her with disdain): All right. Mother will be back soon. I think you’d best quit this job here and go back home. lu sifeng (surprised): But why? lu dahai (curtly): This is no place for you. lu sifeng: Why not? lu dahai: I—hate them. lu sifeng: Oh. lu dahai (bitterly): Most of the Zhous are up to no good. I’ve seen enough of their doings at the mine these last years . . . (Deliberately) I hate them. lu sifeng: And what are these things you’ve seen? lu dahai: Take this house, Sifeng. A magnificent house, you might say. But it was all built with the blood of miners crushed at the coal face! lu sifeng: Don’t you start this. They all say the house is haunted. lu dahai (suddenly): You know what? Just now I saw a young man in the garden. He was lying there with his eyes closed and his face so pale I thought he was not going to last much longer. And they tell me this is our chairman’s oldest son. Ah, that’s called retribution—gets what he deserves! lu sifeng (indignantly): How can you—(checking herself ) he treats people very decently, d’you know? lu dahai: Of course he can afford to play the philanthropist. His father has struck it rich with all his evildoings! lu sifeng (looking at him): It’s two years now since I saw you last. You’ve changed. lu dahai: I just worked on the mine for the last two years. I didn’t change. I think it’s you who changed. lu sifeng: I don’t quite get it. You sound—like the younger master. lu dahai: Are you trying to cuss me? “Young master”! There’s no such expression in this world! (lu gui reappears from the study.) lu gui (to lu dahai): Well, the guest’s left at last, but just as I was going to tell him you were here, another one came in. Looks like we’d better go out the back and wait. lu dahai: In that case I’ll go in and see him myself. lu gui (blocking the way): What are you doing? lu sifeng: Oh no! Don’t! lu dahai: All right. We don’t want him to think that we miners have got no manners. lu gui: Now, now, don’t you give yourself any more airs! If the old man says he won’t see you, then he won’t. Now, why not go down and wait a bit longer in the servants’ quarters? Come on, I’ll take you along, otherwise in a big house like this you’ll be losing your way and stumbling into places where you shouldn’t be. (As he goes toward the center door he calls over his shoulder to his daughter.) You stay here, Sifeng. I won’t be a minute. You hear me?

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lu sifeng: All right, you just go ahead. (Exit lu gui and lu dahai.) lu sifeng (wearily rubbing her forehead): Oh my gosh! (A young man’s cheerful voice is heard outside in the garden calling her name. Quick footsteps mixed with jumps come closer and closer to the center door.) (Slightly alarmed) Oh dear, it’s Master Chong! voice: Sifeng! Sifeng! Where are you? (lu sifeng hurriedly hides behind the sofa.) voice: Sifeng, are you in there? (zhou chong comes in. Small of build but large of heart, he is something of an idealist, like all kids of his age. He is young, only seventeen. He has dreamed countless dreams of the impossible. In fact he lives in his beautiful dreams. Right now his eyes are dancing with joy, his cheeks flushed; he is perspiring and laughing. He carries a tennis racket under his left arm and, with his right hand, he is mopping his perspiring face with a towel. He is dressed in a white tennis outfit. Softly he is calling lu sifeng.) zhou chong: Sifeng! Sifeng! (lu sifeng takes a quick peek.) Gee, where is she? (He tiptoes across to the door of the dining room, opens it, and speaks in a low voice) Come on out, Sifeng. I’ve got something to tell you. (He now goes quietly across to the door of the study and speaks in an even lower voice.) Sifeng. voice (from inside the study, sternly): Is that you, Chong? zhou chong (timidly): Yes, Father. voice: What are you doing there? zhou chong: I’m looking for Sifeng. voice (commanding): Go away! She’s not in here. zhou chong (turns away from the door and makes a face): Well, that’s odd. (Disappointed, he walks across the room and disappears into the dining room, calling lu sifeng softly as he goes.) lu sifeng (now that he has gone, she comes out of her hiding place and heaves a sigh of relief ): So he’s gone. (She looks anxiously through the center door into the garden. lu gui comes in through the center door.) lu gui (to lu sifeng): Who was calling you just now? lu sifeng: Master Chong. lu gui: What did he want you for? lu sifeng: Who knows? lu gui (reproachfully): Why did you dodge him like that? lu sifeng: Oh, oh—(wiping off tears) you told me to stay here, didn’t you? lu gui (comfortingly): Come, come. Have you been crying? lu sifeng: No, I didn’t cry. lu gui: Don’t cry, child. There’s nothing to be upset about. (As if playacting) It’s all because we are poor. Poor people can’t afford to be picky. There’s nothing we can do except put up with things. Everyone knows my child is good.

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lu sifeng: There you go again. Let’s hear what you’ve got to say. lu gui: You see, it’s like this. When I went down to the servants’ quarters just now, all those scoundrels I owe money to were there waiting for me. They stopped me in front of everybody and demanded their money back on the spot. It looks like I’ve got to raise at least twenty dollars before I can get rid of them. lu sifeng (producing some money): That’s every penny I’ve got. I’d been keeping it to buy Mom a new dress, but now you’d better take it. lu gui (hypocritically): But won’t that leave you broke? lu sifeng: Forget it. Quit acting like the polite gentleman. lu gui (taking the money with a smile and counting it): Only twelve dollars? lu sifeng (candidly): It’s all I’ve got. lu gui: How am I going to get rid of these people, then? lu sifeng (controlling herself with difficulty): Tell them to come around to our place tonight. I’ll see what I can do after Mom arrives. You’d better keep this money for your own use. lu gui (delighted): For me, eh? Then I’ll accept it as a gift of love from my daughter. I always knew you loved your old dad. lu sifeng (helplessly): Perhaps now you’ll let me go upstairs? lu gui: Why, who’s stopping you? Go on, and tell the mistress that Lu Gui’s been thinking of her. lu sifeng: Okay, I won’t forget. (She picks up the bowl of medicine.) lu gui (rather pleased with himself ): Oh yes, Sifeng, there’s something else I want to tell you. lu sifeng: Couldn’t you save it for later on? I’ve got to take the medicine to the mistress. lu gui (mysteriously): Ah, but this is something that concerns you. (He smirks.) lu sifeng (seriously): What’s it got to do with me? (Putting down the bowl) All right. Let’s get everything straightened out before we leave this room. lu gui: There you go again. Quite the young lady, with your airs and your tantrums! lu sifeng: I’m ready, out with it. lu gui: Now don’t be like that, my dear. (Seriously) I just want you to watch out. lu sifeng (sarcastically): Watch out for what, now that I don’t have a penny left? lu gui: Tell you what, the mistress hasn’t been in a very good mood these last few days. lu sifeng: What’s the mistress’s mood got to do with me? lu gui: I’m afraid she’s not happy to see you around. lu sifeng: Why? lu gui: Why! Let me remind you of a thing or two. The master is years older than the mistress, and they don’t get on very well with each other. Master Ping is only her stepson, and there’s not much difference in age between them. lu sifeng: I know all that.

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lu gui: But the mistress cares for Master Ping more than she would her own son, a lot more. lu sifeng: That’s all a stepmother could do. lu gui: But do you know why no one ever comes into this room after dark, and why it’s not used even in the daytime all the time the master’s away at the mine? lu sifeng: Well, isn’t it because the room’s haunted at night? lu gui: Haunted? Do you know what the ghosts are like? lu sifeng: I only heard there used to be sounds of sighing, weeping, and laughing in this room. They say someone died of injustice here, that’s the ghost. lu gui: Oh yes, it certainly is. And I’ve seen the ghosts, too. lu sifeng: You have? What did you see? lu gui (complacently): Yes, and lucky for me that I did. lu sifeng: How’s that? lu gui: It was before you came. The master was away at the mine and the mistress and the two young masters were left alone in this huge, dark mansion. This room was already haunted then, and Master Chong—he was still only a child—he was afraid and wanted me to sleep at his door. I remember it was in the autumn. Well, one night, about midnight, he suddenly woke me up and said he’d heard ghosts in the drawing room. He insisted that I should go and have a look. His face was blue with fear, and I was getting the creeps, too. But I was new here then, and I didn’t dare disobey the young master. lu sifeng: So you went, then? lu gui: I had a shot of hard liquor to steady my nerves. Then I went around past the lotus pond and sneaked up to the veranda outside this room. As soon as I got near the door, I heard a faint noise. It sounded like a woman ghost sobbing her heart out. I was scared out of my wits, but the more scared I was, the more I wanted to have a good look. So I braced myself and peeped in through this window here. lu sifeng (breathing hard): What did you see? lu gui: There was a candle on this table here. It had burned right down and it was just flickering as if it was going out. There was just enough light to make out two ghosts dressed in black sitting side by side with their backs toward me. They looked like a man and a woman. The woman seemed to be leaning on the man’s shoulder and crying, and the man sat with his head bent, sighing to himself. lu sifeng: So it’s true this room is haunted. lu gui: You bet! Well, with the drink inside me, I managed to pluck up enough courage to put my face close to the window and give a little cough. The two ghosts sprang apart with a jerk and looked around toward me. Just for a moment I got a clear view of both their faces—and then I really did think I was seeing things! lu sifeng: What? (lu gui pauses and looks quickly all around.) Who were the ghosts? lu gui: Well, the woman turned out to be—(glancing over his shoulder, then dropping his voice to a whisper) the mistress herself!

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lu sifeng: The mistress? And the man? lu: And the man—don’t be shocked—was Master Ping. lu sifeng: No! lu gui: Yes, it was him all right. He and his stepmother were the ghosts who’d been haunting the place nights. lu sifeng: I don’t believe it. You must have made a mistake. lu gui: Not me. Don’t you kid yourself. You see now, Sifeng, why I say you should come down to earth and stop being so silly. That’s the Zhous for you! lu sifeng (shaking her head): No, it’s impossible. lu gui: You’re forgetting that Master Ping is only six or seven years younger than the mistress. lu sifeng: I don’t believe it. No, no, it can’t be. lu gui: All right. Believe it or not as you please, but don’t say I didn’t warn you. The reason the mistress hasn’t been in a very good mood about you lately is because you—because you and— lu sifeng (hurriedly changing the subject): If the mistress knew it was you, she’d never forgive you. lu gui: You’re telling me.! Instantly I was in a cold sweat, and before they came out to get me, I was gone. lu sifeng: But I can’t imagine the mistress letting it go like that. lu gui: Oh boy, she was tough. She tried to sound me out more than a dozen times, but I didn’t breathe a word. Still, that was two years ago, and I expect by now they’ve decided it must have been a ghost they heard coughing that night. lu sifeng (to herself ): No, no, I can’t believe it. Even if this were true, he would have told me. lu gui: You said Master Ping would have told you. But don’t you know who you are, and who he is? Your father’s a good-for-nothing, just a servant. You think he’d really be serious about you? Don’t you be dreaming your young lady’s dreams again! You— lu sifeng (in an outburst): Stop it! (Rising to her feet) I suppose you think I’m too happy because Mom’s coming home today. Is that why you’re talking all this stupid trash? It’s all trash! Get out of here! lu gui: There you go again! I was telling you the truth and wanted you to be smart, but you go and get upset again. What can I say? (Taking a brief, supercilious glance at lu sifeng, he feels quite satisfied with the effect of his remarks and is convinced he is smarter than anyone else. He walks across to the low table, picks up a cigarette from the cigarette case, and is about to light it when he realizes that he is now in the Zhou residence. Changing his mind, he puts down the cigarette and, with a practiced hand, conveys some of the cigarettes in the case along with a few cigars to his own battered old cigarette case.) lu sifeng (looking on with disgust as lu gui completes his thievery, contemptuously): If that’s all, I’ll be going. (She picks up the bowl of medicine and starts to go.) lu gui: Wait a minute. I haven’t finished yet.

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lu sifeng: Not finished? lu gui: I’m just about to come to the point. lu sifeng: Sorry, I don’t want to hear any more. (She turns to go again.) lu gui (grabs her by the arm): You got to hear this. lu sifeng: Take your hands off me! (Desperately) I’m going to yell! lu gui: I’m going to tell you one thing. Don’t you make a scene. (In her ear) Your mother will be coming here to see you. (He lets go of her.) lu sifeng (turning pale): What? lu gui: She’s coming here straight from the station. lu sifeng: What did you have to tell her to come here for? You know she never wanted me to be a servant. I can always see her in the evening when I get home, so what’s the point of bringing her here? lu gui: It’s none of my doing, Sifeng. The mistress wanted me to fetch her here. lu sifeng: The mistress, did you say? lu gui: That’s right. (Mysteriously) Strange, isn’t it? She’s no relation of your mother’s, or friend either, and yet she goes out of her way to invite her here for a little chat. lu sifeng: Oh, my gosh, can’t you be a little more forthcoming? lu gui: Do you know why the mistress is hiding herself upstairs writing poetry and doing calligraphy and faking sickness? lu sifeng: Well, she always does that whenever the master comes home. lu gui: Wouldn’t you say it was different this time? lu sifeng: Then tell me why. lu gui: Don’t you feel there’s something wrong? Hasn’t Master Ping mentioned anything? lu sifeng: All I know is for the last six months or so he and the mistress don’t have much to say to each other. lu gui: Is that so? Then how’s she been treating you? lu sifeng: Better than ever these last few days. lu gui: Just as I thought! Now listen. She knows I don’t want you to leave this job, so this time she’s going to speak to your mother and get her to take you away, bag and baggage! lu sifeng (in a low voice): So she wants to get rid of me—but—but why? lu gui: You know very well without my telling you. One more thing— lu sifeng (still in a low voice): But what can she want Mom here for? lu gui: Right, she has something important to tell her. lu sifeng (the truth suddenly dawning on her): Oh, Dad! Whatever happens, Mom mustn’t find out what I’ve been up to here. (Overcome by remorse and apprehension, she bursts into tears.) Just think, Dad. When Mom went away two years ago, she told you to look after me and not bring me to this place to work. You didn’t listen and brought me here anyway. Mom still doesn’t know about anything. She loves me. I love her. I’m her good

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girl. I just couldn’t bear her finding out what’s been going on here. (Flinging herself down on the table.) Oh, Mom! Mom! lu gui: There, there! (Knowing how to play his part as the drama unfolds, stroking her tenderly) Now, your dad’s on your side, see? Your dad loves you, and you’ve got nothing to worry about. There’s nothing she can do. She’s not going to fire you. lu sifeng: Why not? She hates me, she hates me. lu gui: She hates you, that’s true, but she should know there’s one person in this house she’d better be afraid of. lu sifeng: Who’s that? lu gui: She’s afraid of me. Remember the two ghosts I told you about. When I asked her to give you a day off last night, she said I could bring your mother here when she comes. Well, I knew what sort of a mood she’d been in these last few days, so I pretty much guessed what she was up to. Then, casual-like, I dropped a word or two about what happened that night. She’s no dummy, you know, and she must have figured out what I was getting at—humph! If she tries to play games with me, we could cause her some serious trouble, especially with the master at home now! I know she can be a nasty piece of work, but anybody who tries to push my daughter around will have to step over my body first! lu sifeng: Dad! (Looking up) Don’t go do anything stupid! lu gui: I don’t think much of anybody in this house, except the old man. Don’t worry, your dad will look after you. Besides, I may be wrong about her. Perhaps she isn’t thinking of doing anything of the sort. At least on the surface she did say she only wanted to meet your mother because she’d heard your mother could read and write. lu sifeng (suddenly straining her ears to listen): Shh! I think I heard someone coughing (pointing left) in the dining room. lu gui (listens for a second): It’s not the mistress, is it? (He goes across to the door leading to the dining room, peeps through the keyhole, and hurries back to her.) It’s she. Funny, she’s coming downstairs! lu sifeng (wiping her tears): Dad, do I look all right? lu gui: Now, don’t panic and don’t breathe a word to her about anything. I’d better go. lu sifeng: All right, but be sure to let me know when Mom arrives. lu gui: Yes, and when you see her, pretend you haven’t heard a thing. Are you with me? (He goes across to the center door, then speaks over his shoulder) And don’t forget to tell the mistress that Lu Gui thinks about her. (He hurries out through the center door. lu sifeng picks up the bowl of medicine once again and goes toward the dining room, but just as she reaches the door, it opens and zhou fanyi appears. She is obviously a woman of ruthless determination. The faint red of her lips is the only touch of color in her otherwise pallid face. Her large, dark eyes and straight nose are quite fearsome. The eyes beneath her long, still lashes betray her unhappiness. Sometimes, when the smoldering fires of misery in her heart blaze into life, these eyes will fill with all the anguish and resentment of a frustrated young woman. The corners of her mouth are slightly drawn back, revealing her to be a repressed

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woman controlling herself with difficulty. Whenever she coughs in her quiet way, her slender, delicate white hands press against her flat, emaciated chest, and when the coughing is over, leaving her panting for breath, they will go up to feel her face, now flushed from coughing. With her delicate health, her secret sorrows, her intelligence, and her love of poetry and literature, she is an old-fashioned Chinese woman; yet there is a primitive wildness in her that shows in her courage, in her almost fanatical reasoning, and in her sudden, unaccountable strength in moments of crisis. The overall impression she gives people is one of crystalline transparency, as if she is the sort of woman who can offer a man no companionship but the platonic kind, and her broad, unclouded forehead is expressive of a subtle intelligence. But when, lost in sentimental reverie, she breaks into a sudden smile of happiness, or when, at the sight of someone dear to her, a flush of pleasure suffuses her face and dimples appear on her cheeks, she makes one feel for the first time that it would be possible to love her and that she does indeed deserve to be loved. In fact, one realizes that she is a woman after all, a woman no different from all the others. When she loves, she loves like a hungry dog chewing on a bone after three days’ starvation, and when she hates, she hates as fiercely as a vicious cur that chews you up without making a noise. Yet on the surface she appears serene and wistful: when she stops beside one, it is like a leaf falling by one’s side on a late autumn afternoon. She seems to feel that the summer of her life is now over, and that the shades of evening are falling around her. She is dressed all in black, and her dress is trimmed with silver-gray piping. A round fan hangs from her fingers. Her eye sockets are slightly sunken. As she comes in she looks casually at lu sifeng.) lu sifeng: Why, ma’am! I didn’t know you’d come downstairs! I was just coming up with the medicine. zhou fanyi: Is the master in the study? lu sifeng: Yes, he has a visitor. zhou fanyi: Who is it? lu sifeng: Well, it was the engineer who built the new house, but I don’t know who it is now. Did you want to see him? zhou fanyi: No. Nanny told me this house has been sold to the church to become a hospital. Is that true? lu sifeng: That’s right. Master wants all the small belongings packed up, and all the big furniture has been moved to the new house. zhou fanyi: Who says we’re moving? lu sifeng: Master wanted the moving to get started as soon as he came back. zhou fanyi (pauses, then suddenly): How come no one told me? lu sifeng: Master said you were not feeling well. He didn’t want to disturb you. zhou fanyi (pauses again and looks all around): After two weeks upstairs, this room looks quite different. lu sifeng: I know. Master didn’t like the way it was arranged before, so he had some of your new furniture moved out. He’s got the room arranged just the way he wants it.

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zhou fanyi (noticing the bureau on the right): That’s his favorite old bureau. It’s back again where it used to be. (Sighing) Everything has to be done his way. He just won’t give an inch. (She coughs and sits down.) lu sifeng: Your face looks feverish, ma’am. Wouldn’t it be better if you went back upstairs and lay down? zhou fanyi: No, it’s too hot up there. (She coughs again.) lu sifeng: Master says you’re very sick and asks you to rest in bed quietly upstairs. zhou fanyi: I don’t want to stay in bed—oh, I forgot to ask you. When did the master get back from the mine? lu sifeng: Two days ago, late at night. When he saw you in a high fever, he told us not to disturb you. He’s been sleeping downstairs all by himself. zhou fanyi: But I don’t seem to have seen him in the daytime, either. lu sifeng: Well, he’s been busy every day meeting with the directors of the mine. So he goes up to see you only in the evenings, but then your door’s always locked. zhou fanyi (nonchalantly): I see—why, it’s just as stifling downstairs. lu sifeng: Yes, it’s very stuffy. It’s been very cloudy and dark since first thing this morning. I expect we’re in for a storm. zhou fanyi: Give me a larger fan. I’m practically suffocating. (lu sifeng hands her a large palm-leaf fan. She looks at lu sifeng for a moment, then deliberately turns her face away.) How come I haven’t seen Master Ping lately? lu sifeng: He’s probably very busy. zhou fanyi: I hear he’s going to work on the mine, too. Is that true? lu sifeng: I don’t know. zhou fanyi: Haven’t you heard about it, then? lu sifeng: No. But I do know his maid’s been busy packing his things. zhou fanyi: What’s your father doing? lu sifeng: Maybe he’s gone to get some incense for Master—oh, he said he was anxious to know how you’re getting on. zhou fanyi: Glad he was thinking of me. (After a pause, suddenly) Isn’t he up yet? lu sifeng: Who? zhou fanyi (rather taken aback by the unexpected question, but hastily recovering herself ): Why—of course I mean Master Ping. lu sifeng: I don’t know. zhou fanyi (casting a swift glance at her): You don’t? lu sifeng: I haven’t seen him the whole morning. zhou fanyi: What time did he get home last night? lu sifeng (blushing): You know I go home to sleep every night. How would I know? zhou fanyi (blurting it out, sarcastically): So you sleep at home every night, do you? (Realizing that she has made a faux pas) But why should you go home every night now that the master’s at home with no one to wait on him?

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lu sifeng: But, ma’am, didn’t you tell me to yourself ? zhou fanyi: Yes, but that was when the master wasn’t at home. lu sifeng: I thought Master was a Buddhist and wouldn’t want the likes of us to stay on and wait on him. I was told Master hates to be in the company of womenfolk. zhou fanyi: I see. (Watching lu sifeng, she thinks of her own experience) Yep. (In a low voice) But it’s hard to say. (Suddenly looking up) So he’s leaving in a couple of days, where can he be going? lu sifeng (timidly): Master Ping, you mean? zhou fanyi (eyeing her sideways): Hm. lu sifeng: I haven’t heard a thing. (Hesitantly) He—he never gets in till two or three in the morning. This morning my father was muttering something about having to open the gate for him in the early hours of the morning. zhou fanyi: Was he drunk again? lu sifeng: I’m not sure. (Changing the subject) Ma’am, what about having your medicine now? zhou fanyi: Medicine? Who says I need medication? lu sifeng: Master wanted it ready for you. zhou fanyi: But how can there be any medicine when I haven’t even seen a doctor? lu sifeng: Master said it must be your liver again, and this morning he happened to remember about the prescription you had last time, so he sent it out to be refilled and had it boiled for you. zhou fanyi: Is it ready? lu sifeng: Yes. It’s been here getting cool for some time now. (Handing her the bowl) Here you are, ma’am. zhou fanyi (taking a sip): Very bitter. Who boiled it? lu sifeng: I did. zhou fanyi: Tastes awful. Dump it. lu sifeng: Dump it? zhou fanyi: Hm—okay (remembering her husband’s stern face) perhaps you should leave it on the table for the time being—no (with loathing), you’d better dump it. lu sifeng (hesitantly): Yes, ma’am. zhou fanyi: I’ve been taking this disgusting stuff for years now. I think I’ve had more than enough of it. lu sifeng (holding the bowl): Take it one more time, ma’am. As they say, the worse it tastes, the more good it’ll do you. zhou fanyi (suddenly taking it out on her): Who asked you for advice? Dump it, I say! (Realizing that this outburst is rather undignified) My maid tells me the master looks much thinner this time. lu sifeng: Yes, he is thinner, and darker in the face, too. I hear the miners are out on strike, and Master’s very worried. zhou fanyi: Is he very cross? lu sifeng: He’s the same as usual. Except for seeing visitors, chanting sutras, and meditating, he doesn’t say a word to anybody in the house.

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zhou fanyi: Not even to Master Ping and Master Chong? lu sifeng: He just nodded when he saw Master Ping. Didn’t even say a word to him. But he did ask Master Chong about school—oh yes, that reminds me: Master Chong was asking after you only this morning. zhou fanyi: I’m not in the mood to talk. You can just tell him I’m quite well—and tell them in the office to give him forty dollars. Say it’s for him to buy books with. lu sifeng: Master Chong was hoping to have a word with you. zhou fanyi: Tell him to come and see me upstairs then. (She stands up and walks a few steps.) What a horribly stuffy room this is! The furniture all smells so musty, and the people are all so creepy. lu sifeng (after a moment’s hesitation): Ma’am, may I have the afternoon off, please? zhou fanyi: Because your mother’s coming back from Jinan,2 do you mean? Your father was saying something about it. zhou chong’s voice (from the garden): Sifeng! Sifeng! zhou fanyi: That’s Master Chong calling you. Go and see what he wants. zhou chong’s voice: Sifeng! lu sifeng: Here I am. (zhou chong comes in through the center door, in a white jacket.) zhou chong (seeing only lu sifeng): Ah, here you are, Sifeng. I’ve been looking for you all morning. (Noticing zhou fanyi) Mom! What are you doing downstairs? zhou fanyi: Why, Chong, what have you been doing? Your face is flushed. zhou chong: Oh, I’ve just been playing tennis with a schoolmate. (Affectionately) I’ve been wanting to see you. I’ve got so many things to tell you about. Are you feeling any better now? (He sits down beside her.) I’ve been up to see you several times in the past few days, but your door’s always locked. zhou fanyi: I wanted to be left alone. How do you think I look?—Sifeng, why don’t you get Master Chong a bottle of soda? Look, your face is red all over! (lu sifeng goes into the dining room.) zhou chong (delighted): Let me have a look at you. Well, from what I can see, you’re perfectly all right—nothing wrong with you at all. Why should they always say you’re sick? You’ve shut yourself away in your room and Father’s been home three days now. You haven’t even seen him yet. zhou fanyi (looking at him sadly): I don’t feel myself, somehow. zhou chong: Oh, no, Mom, don’t say that. Father hasn’t been good to you, but he’s old. I’m your future. I’ll marry someone really, really nice, and you, Mom, will live with us together. We’ll make sure to make you happy. zhou fanyi (a faint smile flickers across her face.): Happy? (Suddenly) Chong, you’re seventeen, aren’t you? zhou chong (liking his mother’s occasional abruptness): Now, Mom, if you forget my age again, I’ll be really angry with you.

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zhou fanyi: Mom hasn’t been a good mother to you. Sometimes I even forget where I am. (Lost in thought) Yes, it’s now eighteen years since I came to live in this house—but tell me: don’t you think I’m getting old? zhou chong: No. Why, what’s worrying you? zhou fanyi: Nothing. zhou chong: Mom, do you know we’re moving? A new house! Father told me yesterday we’ll move over the day after tomorrow. zhou fanyi: You know why your father wants to move? zhou chong: No. When has Father told us anything in advance? But I think he’s getting old. He says he’s not going to work on the mine anymore. Besides, this old house seems quite ominous—oh yes, Mom, don’t you know this house is haunted? Two years ago, on an autumn night, I thought I heard something. zhou fanyi: Let’s not talk about that. zhou chong: Mom, do you also believe in such things? zhou fanyi: No I don’t. But there’s something strange about this old house that makes me like it. I always feel there’s something spiritual about this house that keeps pulling me and won’t let me go. zhou chong (suddenly cheerful): Mom— (lu sifeng comes in with the soda.) lu sifeng: Here you are, Master Chong. zhou chong (standing up): Thank you. (Blushing, lu sifeng pours out the soda for him.) Do you mind getting another glass for the mistress? (lu sifeng goes out.) zhou fanyi (who has been watching them closely all this time): Chong, why are you two being so polite to each other? zhou chong (drinking): Mom, that’s just what I was going to tell you about. It’s because— (lu sifeng comes in again.) —I’ll tell you about it some other time. Mom, didn’t you say you wanted to do a fan painting for me? zhou fanyi: Don’t forget I’m sick. zhou chong: Oh, yes. Sorry about that. I, I—why is it so stuffy in this room? zhou fanyi: Maybe because the windows are closed. zhou chong: I’ll open them then. lu sifeng: Master said he wouldn’t let anyone open them. He says it’s hotter outside than inside. zhou fanyi: No, Sifeng, open them. He’s usually away two years at a time and doesn’t know how stale and airless this room can be. (lu sifeng draws aside the curtains in front of the bay window.) zhou chong (seeing that lu sifeng is having some difficulty moving the flowerpot on the windowsill): Don’t bother, Sifeng. I’ll get it. (He goes across to the window.) lu sifeng: I can manage, Master Chong. zhou chong (struggling with her): Let me do it.

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(Both pick up the pot at the same time. When they put it down, it lands on lu sifeng’s hand. lu sifeng lets out an “Ouch!”) Are you okay, Sifeng? lu sifeng (pulling back her hand): I’m fine, Master Chong. zhou chong: Don’t worry, I’ll get a bandage for you. zhou fanyi: Chong, that won’t be necessary. (Turning to lu sifeng) Go down to the kitchen, will you, and see if the vegetarian dishes for the master are all ready. (lu sifeng goes out through the center door. zhou chong watches her go.) Chong! (zhou chong comes back across the room to her.) Now, sit down and tell me all about it. zhou chong (looking at her with eyes bright with hope and happiness): Mom, I’ve been very happy these last few days. zhou fanyi: If you can be happy in this house, so much the better. zhou chong: I’ve never kept any secrets from you, Mom. You’re not just an ordinary mother. You’re the most courageous, the most imaginative, the most sympathetic of mothers—sympathetic to my ideas. zhou fanyi: I’m glad to hear that. zhou chong: I want to tell you something—no, I mean I want to consult you about something. zhou fanyi: Well, let’s hear what it is. zhou chong: Mom—(mysteriously) you won’t be cross with me? zhou fanyi: No, I won’t. Go on, child. zhou chong (elated): Oh, Mom—no, no, no, I don’t think I will tell you. zhou fanyi (breaking into a smile): Why not? zhou chong: Well, I—I’m afraid you’ll be angry. Will you still love me just the same after I’ve told you? zhou fanyi: Of course I will, you silly boy. Always. zhou chong (smiling): Dearest Mom! You mean that? You’ll still love me? And not be angry? zhou fanyi: Of course. Now tell me all about it. zhou chong: But you mustn’t laugh at me when you hear what it is. zhou fanyi: I won’t. zhou chong: Promise? zhou fanyi: Yes, I promise. zhou chong: Well, Mom, I’m in love. zhou fanyi (her suspicions and fear confirmed): Oh! zhou chong (meeting her gaze): Now, Mom! You look as if you don’t like it. zhou fanyi (shaking her head): No, no, what you said reminds me—makes me think of my own . . . oh, no, no, no, just go on. Who’s the girl? zhou chong: Oh, she’s the most—(casting a glance at zhou fanyi) you see, you’re going to laugh at me again, Mom. Well, anyway, I think she’s the most wonderful girl

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in the world. She has a heart of gold; she knows how to enjoy life; she’s understanding and kind; and she realizes the importance of hard work. What’s most important, she isn’t one of those aristocratic young ladies who’ve been pampered and spoiled all their lives. zhou fanyi: But I thought you’d prefer an educated person. Has she been to school? zhou chong: Of course not. That’s her only—I might say that’s her only weakness, but you can’t very well hold that against her. zhou fanyi: I see. (The sparkle has now faded from her eyes, but she cannot very well abandon her questioning now.) Chong, I suppose you wouldn’t be referring to—er—Sifeng? zhou chong: Oh, yes, Mom—Mom, I know other people will laugh at me, but I’m sure you’ll understand. zhou fanyi (stunned, to herself ): How come my own son . . . zhou chong (becoming anxious): Why, don’t you approve? You think I’ve done wrong? zhou fanyi: No, no, it’s not that. It’s just that I’m afraid a girl like her wouldn’t be able to bring you happiness. zhou chong: But she will! She’s intelligent and warmhearted—and she understands me. zhou fanyi: You won’t care if your father disapproves? zhou chong: This is my own affair. zhou fanyi: And if people talk when they hear about it? zhou chong: That would worry me even less. zhou fanyi: Like mother, like son. But I’m afraid you’re going the wrong way. In the first place, when all’s said and done, she’s still an uneducated girl from the lower classes. For a girl in her position it must be a marvelous stroke of luck to have a young man like you in love with her. zhou chong: Now, Mom! Don’t you think she has a mind of her own? zhou fanyi: You’re always setting people up on pedestals, Chong. zhou chong: I think you’re doing her a great injustice, Mom. She’s the purest, most independent, nicest girl alive. When I proposed to her yesterday— zhou fanyi (with growing astonishment): What! Proposed to her? (The very idea seems ludicrous) You mean to say you proposed to her? zhou chong (seriously, annoyed by his mother’s attitude): No, Mom, there’s no need to laugh about it! She turned me down. But I’m glad, in a way, because it strengthens my conviction that she’s a girl with a noble mind. She said she didn’t want to marry me. zhou fanyi: So! Turned you down—(that also sounds ludicrous) she turning you down? Humph! I know why. zhou chong: Now, don’t imagine she’s just putting on an act by refusing, because it just isn’t true. She said her heart belonged to another. zhou fanyi: Did she say who?

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zhou chong: I didn’t ask. Most probably some neighbor of hers, someone she sees every day. Still, the course of true love never runs smooth. I love her, and gradually she’ll come to understand me and love me in return zhou fanyi: No son of mine shall ever marry a girl like her! zhou chong: Mom, why do you dislike her like that? Sifeng’s a decent girl. She always speaks of you with great admiration and respect. zhou fanyi: What are you going to do now? zhou chong: I intend to tell Father all about it. zhou fanyi: You forget what sort of man your father is. zhou chong: I must tell him. Of course, it’s not absolutely certain that I’ll ever marry her, but even if she doesn’t want me for a husband, I’ll still have great respect for her and try to help her. In the meantime, I want to make sure she gets an education. I’m hoping that Father will let me give her half the money set aside for my education, so that she can go to school. zhou fanyi: You’re just a kid. zhou chong (offended): No, I’m not a kid, I’m not a kid! zhou fanyi: One word from your father, and all your dreams will be shattered. zhou chong: I don’t think so. (A shade despondently) All right, don’t let’s talk about it anymore. Oh, I saw Ping yesterday. He said he really is going to the mine to work this time and that he’s leaving tomorrow. He said, would I tell you he’s terribly busy and probably won’t have time to go upstairs and say goodbye to you himself. You won’t mind, I hope? zhou fanyi: Why should I? zhou chong: Somehow I can’t help feeling you don’t get on with him as well as you used to. You know, Mom, when you consider that he lost his own mother when he was still a child, it’s not really surprising that he should appear as somewhat weird. His mother must have been a very emotional sort of woman, judging from what he’s like. zhou fanyi: Now that your father’s at home, it would be better if you didn’t mention Ping’s mother; otherwise your father will be going around looking as black as thunder again and making everybody feel miserable. zhou chong: But it’s true, Mom. Ping has been acting rather peculiar lately. He’s been drinking heavily and flying off the handle all the time. Sometimes he goes to a church. I don’t know what he does there. zhou fanyi: What else? zhou chong: The other day, when he got very drunk, he took me by the hand and told me he hated himself, and then reeled off a whole long rigmarole that I couldn’t make head or tail of. zhou fanyi: Oh! zhou chong: In the end he suddenly told me that he’d once loved a woman that he never should have loved! zhou fanyi (to herself ): Once? zhou chong: After that he burst into tears, and the next moment he made me leave his room.

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zhou fanyi: Did he say anything more after that? zhou chong: No, nothing. He looked so miserable that I felt really sorry for him. Why isn’t he married yet? zhou fanyi (murmuring): Who knows? Who knows? zhou chong (looking around at the sound of footsteps outside the door): Why, if it isn’t Ping himself! (The center door is pushed open and zhou ping comes in. He is about twenty- eight, very pale, and slightly taller than his half brother. His features are well formed—one might even say handsome, though he is not exactly the sort of young man who makes women swoon at a glance. His bushy black eyebrows, his thick-lobed ears, and his large, powerful hands may give you the impression, at first sight, of simple honesty; but if you remain in his company a little longer you will realize that his appearance of rough, likable simplicity is deceptive. His is a crafted personality, of which the dregs have been refined and prettified in the smoldering furnace of education. But because of this suffocating tempering, the uncouth, pristine “savagery” that permeated his human vitality has evaporated, and what remains is doubt, timidity, and the nondescript. It takes only a couple of minutes of conversation with this man to discover that you are talking to a beautiful but empty shell. It’s like a stalk of wheat plucked from the fields and transplanted into a greenhouse. It may still flower and even bear fruit, but being empty and fragile, it cannot withstand the wind and frost of the real world. In his dull, troubled eyes you will see uncertainty, hesitation, timidity, and conflict. As his eyes dim to a mere faint glitter in the pupils, you know he is engaged in an introspection of his erroneous decisions while fearing being perceived by others as so inept that he can survive only by hiding in his small inner world. However, you must not think he is incapable of doing something shocking, or lacking in masculine daring. Oh no, when the tide of his passion surges, when you see the thrilling and ever-flickering light curving from the corners of his eyes, when you see his extremely impetuous and sensitive, thick red lips, you know that is the moment when he may recklessly commit an act for which he will curse himself for the rest of his life. And his life never follows a plan. The corners of his mouth droop slackly, and at the slightest fatigue his eyes will become set in a lifeless stare, so that you feel he is unable to exert any control over himself or settle down permanently to any regular occupation. He is conscious of his weakness and tries to remedy it—no, perhaps it would be more accurate to say that he suffers perpetual remorse for something wrong that he once did. Nevertheless, when some fresh impulse seizes him, all his passion and desire come flooding back in an overwhelming torrent, and what little is left of his reason becomes nothing more than a dead twig caught up in a whirlpool. Almost in a delirious state, he does what he knows he shouldn’t do. Under these circumstances it is quite natural that one act of folly should be succeeded by an even greater one. So, being a man with a moral outlook and a sensitive nature, yet at the same time with a strong yearning for life and an awareness of his carnal desires, he suffers, he bates himself. He envies all those who, untroubled by scruples, dare abandon themselves to any wickedness. That is why he can empathize with lu gui. At the same time, he also envies those who can firmly embrace a career and forge steadily

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ahead with it, keep to the beaten track of what is generally accepted as morality, and finally emerge as model citizens and model family men. It is this that lies behind his admiration for his father, who, so far as he can judge from his own limited experience, is a man of flawless character—except for a certain amount of obstinacy and coldness— and he admires him even for this, for these are traits that he is conscious of lacking in himself. He feels he has done wrong in deceiving his father, not so much because he loves his father all that much (although he cannot but say he does) as because he finds this demeaning, just like a mouse taking a bite of a sleeping lion. Yet, like all introspective but impetuous people, the minute his intuition leaves him and cold reason returns, he hates himself with redoubled bitterness and feels more deeply than ever that it is inhuman to take upon himself all the agonies of sin. He wants to rid himself of this feeling, but for this he needs new strength—anything so long as it will help him extricate himself from the morass of tormenting indecision that is dragging him down. His search has brought him to lu sifeng, and he has discovered in her the things he most desperately needs, for she has youth, beauty, and passion in overflowing abundance. It is true that he finds her rather unrefined, but he has now realized that this lack of refinement is just what he needs. He has now come to loathe overly melancholic women, for melancholy has already eroded his heart. He also hates women refined by education (because they would remind him of his own weakness) as much as he finds all the subtler emotions “sickening.” Nevertheless, his mind is still troubled by a hidden, fitful undercurrent of emotion. He allows himself to drift along with this current and refuses to dissect himself with cold reasoning. He is afraid, yes, afraid sometimes to see inner flaws. Now he has to love lu sifeng, love her with heart and soul, and thereby forget himself. Of course he is fully aware that this time he is not just courting love as a spiritual remedy. There is another realm of desire that he has to quench. But in this he no longer feels the qualms that he did in his past experience. He tells himself that as long as he treats her well everything should be fine. Having tasted the warm fragrance of the virgin’s flesh, he feels his mind is clear, and his heart is lit up by sunshine. “Maybe she is my savior!” So thinking, he surrenders all his life to this girl. But remembrance of the past still clutches his heart like a huge iron hand. Every now and then, especially in the presence of zhou fanyi, he has felt the pangs that pierce his heart. That is why he wants to leave this place, this nightmare of an old house, and go anywhere. However, before he can escape from the narrow confines of this cage, whenever he becomes obsessed by the idea that lu sifeng is incapable of understanding and comforting him, he plunges headlong into heavy drinking, into all the riotous pleasures and external stimuli. This leaves him more depressed than ever, a prey to perpetual restlessness. At the moment he is wearing a dark-blue silk gown, European-style trousers, and patent leather shoes. He is unshaven and generally untidy. He is yawning.) Hello, Brother! zhou ping: So here you are. zhou fanyi (feeling slighted): Ping!

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zhou ping: Oh. (Lowers his eyes, then looks up again) You—er—I didn’t know you were here, too. zhou fanyi: I just came downstairs. zhou ping (turning to zhou chong): I suppose Father’s still here? zhou chong: Yes, he is. Did you want to see him? zhou ping: I was thinking of having a chat with him before I go. (He walks straight toward the door of the study.) zhou chong: Not now. zhou ping: Why? What’s Father doing there? zhou chong: Probably having a business discussion with a visitor. When I saw him a moment ago, he said he’d be out soon and told us to wait for him here. zhou ping: I’d better get back to my room first; I got a letter to write. (He turns to go.) zhou chong: Don’t go, Ping. Mom says she hasn’t seen you for a long time. Why not sit down with us and have a chat? zhou fanyi: Don’t stop him, Chong. Let him go and have a rest if he wants to. I expect he wants to be left alone. zhou ping (somewhat nettled): Not necessarily. It’s just that I thought you’d be very busy now that Father’s at home, and so— zhou chong: But don’t you know Mom’s been sick? zhou fanyi: Why should he keep my being sick in his mind? zhou chong: Mom! zhou ping: Are you better now? zhou fanyi: Yes, thank you. I just came downstairs a moment ago. zhou ping: Oh, by the way, I’m leaving for the mine tomorrow. zhou fanyi: Oh. (After a pause) That’s good. When do you expect to be back? zhou ping: Hard to say, really. I may be gone two years, perhaps three. Whew, it’s suffocating in here! zhou chong: Well, we’ve opened all the windows—seems to me we’re in for a heavy storm. zhou fanyi (after a pause): What will you be doing at the mine? zhou chong: Don’t forget, Mom, Ping specialized in mining when he was in college. zhou fanyi: Is that the reason why you’re going, Ping? zhou ping (picking up a newspaper by way of shielding himself ): I don’t quite know how to put it. I feel I’ve been at home too long and I’m getting fed up. zhou fanyi (with a smile): Maybe it’s because you’re afraid. zhou ping: How do you mean? zhou fanyi: You’ve forgotten that this room was haunted once. zhou ping: No, I haven’t forgotten. I’ve lived here long enough, that’s all. zhou fanyi (smiling): If I were in your place, I’d be absolutely sick and tired of everybody here, and I’d get out of this hellish place, too.

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zhou chong: You mustn’t say such things, Mom. zhou ping (gloomily): No, I can’t hate myself enough; who am I to be sick and tired of other people? (Heaving a sigh) Well, Chong, I’m off back to my room. (He stands up. The door of the study opens.) zhou chong: Don’t go. I think Father’s coming out now. (The door of the study opens halfway, revealing zhou puyuan, speaking on his way in.) voice from inside: Well, I think that’s the way we’ll do it. No problem. Right, well, goodbye . . . You know your way out? (The door opens wide and zhou puyuan enters. He could be anywhere between fifty and sixty. His hair is already graying at the temples. He wears oval, gold-rimmed spectacles, and his deep-set eyes flash with a hawklike intensity. Like all founders of family fortunes, his forbidding presence overawes his children. He is dressed in the fashion of twenty years ago—a patterned satin gown with a white silk shirt underneath and the collar unbuttoned to reveal a fleshy neck. His clothes, neat and spotlessly clean, look slack and comfortable. He is a little overweight and has a slight stoop and a loose, flabby jowl. His eyes are slightly sunken, yet they glitter harsh and keen. Every now and then he closes his eyes in fatigue. The lines on his face tell a tale of long years of toiling and scheming, and his cold, insolent stare and the sardonic smile that occasionally twists the corners of his mouth proclaim his tyrannical temper, self-righteousness, and obstinacy. All signs of the wild abandon of his youth are now buried deep beneath his wrinkles, except that his hair, though graying, retains its youthful luster. It is neatly parted and combed back from the forehead, sleek and glossy. In the sunlight his face will take on that silvery sheen that is popularly supposed to be the hallmark of a man of wealth and position. This is the secret of his success as a mine owner, no doubt. His beard is also graying, and he often combs it with a small ivory comb. He wears a huge ring on his thumb. Right now he seems in high spirits. He enters with preponderant airs.) zhou ping and zhou chong: Hello, Father. zhou chong: Your visitor’s gone? zhou puyuan (nodding, then turning to zhou fanyi): I’m surprised to see you here downstairs. Quite well again? zhou fanyi: Oh, I wasn’t all that sick in the first place. How are you this time? zhou puyuan: Well enough. I think you ought to go back upstairs and rest. Now, Chong, how do you think your mother’s looking today? zhou chong: There’s never been anything wrong with her at all. zhou puyuan (doesn’t like being talked back to by his sons like this; opening his eyes wide, domineeringly): Where did you get that idea from? I hope you made it your business to inquire after your mother’s health all the time I was away. (He sits down on a sofa.) zhou fanyi (sensing that one of his usual lectures is imminent): Puyuan, you seem to have gotten thinner since last time—what about the strike at the mine? zhou puyuan: Oh, they’ve been back at work since yesterday morning. It’s all over now.

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zhou chong: Then why is Lu Dahai still here waiting to see you, Father? zhou puyuan: Who’s Lu Dahai? zhou chong: Lu Gui’s son. He got hired the year before last and became a miners’ representative this time. zhou puyuan: Oh, him! I guess he has some dubious background. Anyway, he’s already been fired. zhou chong: Fired! But Father, this man knows what he’s talking about. I was just chatting with him a while ago. You can’t just fire a man simply because he’s a strikers’ representative. zhou puyuan: Hm! It seems quite the fashion nowadays for young people to schmooze with the workers and go around mouthing meaningless words of sympathy! zhou chong: I think we ought to sympathize with them, because they’re doing their best to help their own people. Besides, it’s not right that people who are as well off as we are should grudge them a meager livelihood. And it’s not a matter of fashion, either. zhou puyuan (turning up his eyes): What do you know about society? How many books on sociology and economics have you read? I remember how I used to have the same sort of ideas when I was a student in Germany—except that my ideas were much more thorough than your half-baked notions! zhou chong (thoroughly browbeaten, yet firing a parting shot): Father, I hear the miners who were injured this time didn’t get a penny in the way of compensation. zhou puyuan (looking swiftly up): I think you’ve said more than enough for the time being. (Turning to zhou fanyi) He’s been getting just like you these last couple of years. (Looking at the clock) I’ve got another appointment in ten minutes. Now, have any of you got anything to see me about? zhou ping: Yes, I wanted to see you, Father. zhou puyuan: Oh, yes? What about? zhou ping: I want to leave for the mine tomorrow. zhou puyuan: Have you finished handing over at head office? zhou ping: Just about. I hope you’ll give me some real work to do this time. I don’t want to just stand by and watch. zhou puyuan (pausing a moment, then looking him full in the face): You think you’re up to a really tough job? There’d be no backing out once you’d taken it on, you know. I won’t have a son of mine make a fool of himself. zhou ping: I’ve been having much too easy a time here these last couple of years, and I’m really keen on getting away from the city and having a spell in the interior. zhou puyuan: Now let me think. . . . Yes, you may as well leave tomorrow if you want to. I’ll send you a wire when you get there and let you know exactly what your job will be. (lu sifeng comes in from the dining room with a bowl of Pu’er tea.) zhou chong (hesitantly): Father. zhou puyuan (sensing fresh trouble from this quarter): What is it now? zhou chong: There’s something really important I want to discuss with you.

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zhou puyuan: Well? zhou chong (hanging his head): I’d like to share my tuition allowance with someone. zhou puyuan: Eh? zhou chong (screwing up his courage): I want to give a portion of my school allowance to— (lu sifeng places the tea in front of zhou puyuan.) zhou puyuan: Sifeng—(to zhou chong) just a minute—(to lu sifeng again) what about the medicine I told you to get ready for the mistress? lu sifeng: It’s done, sir. zhou puyuan: Then why isn’t it here? (lu sifeng looks at zhou fanyi but says nothing.) zhou fanyi (sensing something ominous in the air): She got it for me just a short while ago, but I didn’t take it. zhou puyuan: Why not? (Pauses, then turns to lu sifeng) Where is it now? zhou fanyi (quickly): Down the sink. I told her to pour it away. zhou puyuan (slowly): Pour it away? I—see! (Even more slowly) Poured away! (To lu sifeng) Is there any of it left? lu sifeng: There’s still a little left in the jar. zhou puyuan (slowly and in a low voice): Go and get it. zhou fanyi (protesting): I won’t touch it—it’s too bitter. zhou puyuan (to lu sifeng, raising his voice): Go on. (lu sifeng walks across to the left and pours the medicine into a small bowl.) zhou chong: But, Father! If Mom doesn’t want it, there’s no need to force her to take it. zhou puyuan: Neither you nor your mother knows what’s wrong with either of you. (To his wife, in a low voice.) Come now, it’ll make you quite well again if you’ll only take it. (Seeing that lu sifeng seems still undecided, he points to the medicine bowl) Hand it to the mistress. zhou fanyi (forcing herself to yield): All right. Put it down here for the moment. zhou puyuan (with annoyance): Nope. You’d better take it at once. zhou fanyi (bursting out): Sifeng, take it away! zhou puyuan (with sudden harshness): Take it, I say! Don’t be so headstrong. And in front of these grown-up children, too! zhou fanyi (her voice trembling): But I don’t want it. zhou puyuan: Chong, hand your mother the medicine. zhou chong (protesting): Now, Father! zhou puyuan (glaring): Go on! (zhou chong reluctantly takes the medicine across to zhou fanyi.) zhou puyuan: Now say, “Take it, Mother.” zhou chong (holding the medicine bowl with trembling hands, then turning around, loudly): Father, you’re taking it too far! zhou puyuan (yelling): Say it!

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zhou ping (going across with bent head to zhou chong and speaking in an undertone): You’d better do as Father says. You know what he’s like. zhou chong (helplessly, to his mother, with tears in his eyes): Please take it, Mom, if only for my sake. Father won’t let up until you do. zhou fanyi (pleading): Can’t I take it in the evening? zhou puyuan (with icy severity): Fanyi, as a mother, you’ve got to be always thinking of the children. Even if you don’t care about your own health, you should at least set the children an example of obedience. zhou fanyi (looking from zhou puyuan to zhou ping, then picking up the bowl, in tears, and putting it down again): No! I can’t! zhou puyuan: Ping, ask your mother to take it. zhou ping: But Father, I— zhou puyuan: Go on! Down on your knees and beg her! zhou ping (going across to zhou fanyi, then looking appealingly toward zhou puyuan): Father! zhou puyuan (shouting): Down on your knees! (zhou ping looks dumbly at zhou fanyi, who is in tears, while zhou chong is trembling all over.) Down on your knees, I say! (zhou ping is about to kneel down, when—) zhou fanyi (hurriedly, her eyes on zhou ping): All right! I’ll take it now. (She takes a couple of sips, but immediately the tears stream down her cheeks again. Then, with a glance at her harsh- eyed husband and the distressed zhou ping, she swallows her resentment and finishes the medicine at a single gulp.) Oh—oh—oh— (She runs out weeping through the dining-room door. There is a long silence.) zhou puyuan (looking at his watch): There’s still three minutes to go. (To zhou chong) You were saying? zhou chong (looking up, slowly): Eh? zhou puyuan: You were saying something about wanting to share your allowance with someone. Well, what’s it all about? zhou chong (in a low voice): I’ve changed my mind about it now. zhou puyuan: You’re quite sure there’s nothing worrying you? zhou chong (with a sob in his voice): No, nothing, nothing—Mom was right. (He hurries toward the dining room.) zhou puyuan: Chong! Where are you going? zhou chong: Upstairs to see Mom. zhou puyuan: Just like that? zhou chong (controlling himself and turning back): Sorry, Father. May I be excused? zhou puyuan: All right. You may go now. (zhou chong turns and makes for the dining room again.) Come back! zhou chong: Yes, Father?

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zhou puyuan: Tell your mother I’ve asked Dr. Kramer to come and have a look at her. zhou chong: But she’s already taken the medicine you got for her. zhou puyuan: I think your mother’s becoming mentally unbalanced. It looks serious to me. (Over his shoulder to zhou ping) And the same’s true with you, too. zhou ping: Well, Father, I think I’ll go back to my room for a rest. zhou puyuan: No, don’t go yet. I want to have a talk with you. (To zhou chong) Tell her Dr. Kramer is a famous neurologist. I got to know him when I was in Germany. When he comes, make sure she sees him. You understand? zhou chong: Yes, I hear you. (Turning back after a few steps) Anything else, Father? zhou puyuan: No. Off you go (zhou chong goes out into the dining room.) (Turning and finding lu sifeng still there) Sifeng, I think I’ve told you that the servants are not supposed to hang around in this room when they’re not wanted. lu sifeng: Yes, sir. (She also goes out through the dining-room door. lu gui enters from the study.) lu gui (begins to stutter at the sight of his master): Ss—Sss—Sir, a—a gentleman to see you. zhou puyuan: Oh, show him into the big drawing room. lu gui: Yes, sir. (He leaves.) zhou puyuan: Oh, no! Who’s been opening these windows? zhou ping: Chong and I opened them. zhou puyuan: Shut them. (Taking off his spectacles and wiping them) I don’t want the servants running in and out of this room all the time. I’ll be resting in here shortly and I don’t want to be disturbed. zhou ping: Sure. zhou puyuan (still wiping his spectacles, and looking all around at the furniture): Most of the things in this room were your own mother’s favorites. That’s why, when we moved up here from the south, and all the times we’ve moved house since then, I’ve never been able to abandon any of it. (He puts on his spectacles and clears his throat.) I want the furniture in this room kept just the way it was arranged thirty years ago. It makes me feel good just looking at it. (He strolls across to the bureau and looks at the photograph on it.) Your own mother always liked the windows closed in summer. zhou ping (with a forced smile): But, even if you do want to keep up Mother’s memory, I don’t see why you have to— zhou puyuan (suddenly looking up): I hear you’ve done something quite dishonorable. zhou ping (alarmed): Wh—What! zhou puyuan (walking up to him, in a low voice): Do you realize that what you’ve done is a disgrace to your father? And also—to your mother? zhou ping (beginning to panic): Father!

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zhou puyuan (kindly, holding zhou ping’s hand): You’re my oldest son, and I don’t think this needs to go any farther than the two of us. (He pauses a moment, then his voice becomes stern) I hear your private life’s been highly irregular while I’ve been away these last two years. zhou ping (the color draining from his cheeks): Father! zhou puyuan: If a man goes out on a limb, he must be prepared to take the consequences. zhou ping (pale with panic): Father! zhou puyuan: They told me at the head office that you spend all your time hanging around the dance halls, and that the last two or three months you’ve gotten worse, out all night drinking and gambling. zhou ping: Oh, that. (With obvious relief ) You mean— zhou puyuan: Is all this true? (After a long pause) Come on, I want the truth! zhou ping: It’s all true, Father. (He blushes.) zhou puyuan: A man approaching thirty should have learned a certain amount of selfrespect! Do you remember why you were named Ping? zhou ping: Yes. zhou puyuan: Tell me why, then. zhou ping: It’s because Mother’s name was Shiping. She gave me the name Ping herself, on her deathbed. zhou puyuan: Then may I ask you to mend your ways out of respect for your own mother? zhou ping: I will, Father. It was only a momentary lapse. (lu gui enters from the study.) lu gui: Ex—cuse me, sir, but the vis—visitor’s—he’s been here some time now. zhou puyuan: All right. (lu gui withdraws.) I pride myself on having one of the most perfect and most orderly families possible, and I think my sons are by and large good, healthy kids. I’ve brought the two of you up, and I won’t have you giving anybody any excuse for gossip. zhou ping: No, Father. zhou puyuan: Come here, somebody!! (To himself ) How come all of a sudden I’m feeling tired? (zhou ping takes his father’s arm and steers him to a sofa, where he sits down. lu gui comes in.) lu gui: Yes, sir? zhou puyuan: Show the visitor in here. lu gui: Very good, sir. zhou ping: No, Father. Won’t you have a rest first? zhou puyuan: No. Don’t worry about me. (To lu gui) Show him in, then. lu gui: Yes, sir.

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(He exits. zhou puyuan produces a cigar. zhou ping gives him a light. He sits sedately, puffing slowly at the cigar.) (Curtain.)

A CT 2 (After lunch. Beneath a dark, overcast sky, the afternoon is even more sultry and oppressive than the morning has been. The close, damp air is of the kind that makes one lose one’s temper on the slightest provocation. zhou ping appears from the dining room. He is alone. He peers out at the garden: it is silent and deserted. He tiptoes across to the door of the study: the study is empty. He suddenly remembers that his father is seeing visitors in another part of the house. Reassured by this thought, he goes over to the window again, opens it, and looks out at the green, tree- canopied garden. He gives a peculiar whistle and calls “Sifeng!” several times in a low voice. After a short while, there seems to be a distant whistle in response coming closer little by little. He then lets out a prolonged “Feng!” A woman’s voice is heard at the door: “Ping, is that you?” At this point zhou ping closes the window. lu sifeng slips into the room.) zhou ping (turning to watch lu sifeng enter through the center door, speaking softly and with warmth): Sifeng! (He takes her hands in his.) lu sifeng: No, no. (Pushing him away) Don’t. (Listening tensely and glancing all around) There may be someone around. zhou ping: Not a soul, Feng. Come and sit down. (He steers her to a sofa.) lu sifeng (uneasily): Where’s the master, then? zhou ping: Oh, he’s seeing visitors in the large drawing room. lu sifeng (sitting down, then looking up into his face with a long sigh): It’s always like this, always so secretive. zhou ping: Mm. lu sifeng: You don’t even dare call out my name. zhou ping: That’s why I want to leave this place. lu sifeng (after thinking for a moment): I’m really sorry for the mistress. Why should the master have gotten into such a temper the first time he saw her after he came back? zhou ping: That’s Father all over. His word is law, and he’ll never take anything back once he’s said it. lu sifeng (ner vously): I—I’m terribly afraid. zhou ping: What of ? lu sifeng: What if the master should find out about us? I’m terrified. You said once you’d tell him about us. zhou ping (shaking his head, darkly): There are worse things than that to worry about.

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lu sifeng: Such as? zhou ping (suddenly): You haven’t heard anything? lu sifeng: What? (After a pause) Why, no. zhou ping: Nothing about me? lu sifeng: No. zhou ping: Have you never heard anything at all? lu sifeng (not wishing to go into it): No, never. What do you mean, anyway? zhou ping: Well, er—oh, nothing. Nothing at all. lu sifeng (earnestly): I trust you. I trust you to be true to me, always. That’s all I want—a little while ago you were saying you’d be leaving for the mine tomorrow. zhou ping: I told you all about it last night. lu sifeng (coming straight to the point): Why won’t you take me with you? zhou ping: Because—(smiles) because I don’t choose to. lu sifeng: But you know I’ll have to leave this job sooner or later. The mistress may even fire me today. zhou ping (to whom such a possibility has never occurred): Fire you! But why would she want to do that? lu sifeng: Never you mind why. zhou ping: But I want to know. lu sifeng: Well, for doing something wrong, of course. But I don’t think she will—just wild guesses. (After a pause) You will take me with you, won’t you, Ping? zhou ping: No. lu sifeng (tenderly): I’ll do anything I can to make you comfortable, Ping. You need someone like me to look after you. I’ll cook for you and sew on your buttons for you— I’m very good at all these things—if only you’ll let me go with you! zhou ping: You mean after all these years I still need a woman to follow me around, wait on me, and make me comfortable? Haven’t I had enough of this kind of life at home? lu sifeng: I know for sure that once you get away from home you’ll be lost without someone to look after you. zhou ping: But don’t you see, Feng? How can I take you with me at this point? Aren’t you being rather childish about it? lu sifeng: Do take me with you, Ping! I promise I won’t be any trouble to you. If people started gossiping about you because of me, I’d go away right away. There’s nothing you need to be afraid of. zhou ping (irritably): Now, Feng! You don’t imagine I’m that selfish, do you? You mustn’t think I’m like that. Humph. What have I got to be afraid of ? (Unable to restrain himself ) After all the things I—after all these years my heart has long been dead, and I’ve hated myself with all the hatred I could muster. Do you imagine that now, now that I’ve begun to revive and summoned up the courage to fall in love with a woman—do you imagine I’m going to start worrying about what people say? Hah! Let them talk! Let them say what they like about “young Mr. Zhou falling for one of the servants”—what do I care? I love her.

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lu sifeng (soothingly): There, Ping. Don’t let it upset you. Whatever you’ve done, I won’t hold it against you. (She becomes lost in thought.) zhou ping (calmer now): Now what are you thinking? lu sifeng: I’m thinking what’s to become of me after you’re gone. zhou ping: You just wait for me. lu sifeng (smiling helplessly): But you forgot someone. zhou ping: Who? lu sifeng: He just won’t let go of me. zhou ping: Oh, him—what about him? lu sifeng: He’s repeated what he said a month ago. zhou ping: You mean that he loves you? lu sifeng: No, he asked if I would marry him . . . zhou ping: And what did you say? lu sifeng: At first I said nothing. Then he pressed me hard and I told him the truth. zhou ping: Truth? lu sifeng: Oh I didn’t say anything other than that I was already engaged to somebody else. zhou ping: Didn’t he want to know more? lu sifeng: No. Though he did say he’d like to pay for me to go to school. zhou ping: Go to school? (He laughs) How naive! Still, who knows? You may like it if you do as he says. lu sifeng: You know I won’t like it. I’d rather be with you all the time. zhou ping: But I’m almost thirty, and you’re only eighteen. And my prospects are no better than his, either. Besides, I’ve done a lot of—of unspeakable things. lu sifeng: No, let’s be serious, Ping. I just feel miserable right now. You must help me find a way out. You know he’s still only a boy, and I hate to keep him guessing all the time. Besides, you don’t let me tell him the truth. zhou ping: I never said you couldn’t tell him. lu sifeng: But every time you see me with him, you look so—so— zhou ping: Well, naturally I will look unhappy. When I see the girl I love best hanging around with someone else, even if he is my own brother, well, of course I don’t like it. lu sifeng: There you go again. Let’s get back to the subject. Tell me honestly how you really feel about me. zhou ping: How I feel about you? (He smiles. He doesn’t like to answer the question. He thinks all women have a touch of stupidity about them and remembers another woman who once asked him the same question. And that hurts.) You want me to tell you honestly? (He laughs) Well, what do you want me to say? lu sifeng (feeling wretched): Please don’t treat me like this, Ping. You know very well that I’m yours now, all yours, and still you—you still keep on making me miserable like this.

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zhou ping (annoyed at this, and feeling at the same time that she still doesn’t quite understand him): Eh? (Heaving a sigh) Oh, God! lu sifeng: You know how it is, Ping: my father’s only interested in cadging money off me, my brother looks down on me because he says I haven’t got any character; and my mother, if she should find out about us, she certainly wouldn’t have anything more to do with me. You’re all I have, Ping. My father, my brother, my mother—they may throw me over one day, but you can’t, you can’t. (She breaks down sobbing.) zhou ping: No, no, Feng. Don’t be like that. Just give me time to think things out. lu sifeng: My mother really does love me. She was always against my going into service, and I’m afraid she might find out I’ve been lying to her, she might find out what I’ve been up to, and about us and—and what if you are not serious about me? If that happens it—it would break her heart. (Sobbing) And besides— zhou ping: Don’t be so suspicious of me, Feng. Tell you what: I’ll come around to your place tonight. lu sifeng: You can’t. Mother’s coming home today. zhou ping: What about meeting somewhere outside, then? lu sifeng: Won’t do. Mother’s sure to want to talk with me this evening. zhou ping: But I’m leaving on the first train tomorrow morning. lu sifeng: So you’ve made up your mind not to take me with you, then? zhou ping: But my dear girl! How can I take you? lu sifeng: In that case, you—let me think about it. zhou ping: Now, I’ll leave home first, and then find some way of talking Father around and getting him to let you come out and join me. lu sifeng (looking him in the eye): Oh, all right, then, I suppose you’ll have to come around to my house tonight. We have two rooms. I expect Dad and Mom will be sleeping in the front room, and Dahai never sleeps at home, so by midnight I should have the back room all to myself. zhou ping: Well, then, shall I whistle as usual? (He whistles.) You’ll be able to hear me all right, won’t you? lu sifeng: Yes. If the coast is clear, I’ll have a red lamp in the window. If there’s no lamp there, you mustn’t come near the place. zhou ping: No? lu sifeng: That’ll mean I’ve changed my mind because there are too many people in the house. zhou ping: All right, as you say. Eleven o’clock, then. lu sifeng: Yes, eleven. (lu gui appears through the center door. Seeing lu sifeng and zhou ping together, he stops short and smirks knowingly.) lu gui: Oh! (To lu sifeng) I was just looking for you. (To zhou ping) Good afternoon, Master Ping. lu sifeng: What did you want me for?

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lu gui: Your mother’s arrived. lu sifeng (her face lighting up with delight): She’s here? Where is she? lu gui: In the porter’s lodge. Your brother’s just gone down to see her, and they’re having a chat. (lu sifeng hurries toward the center door.) zhou ping: Sifeng, give your mother my best when you see her. lu sifeng: Thank you. See you later. (She goes out.) lu gui: Is it tomorrow you’re leaving, sir? zhou ping: Mm. lu gui: May I see you off at the station? zhou ping: Don’t bother. Thanks all the same. lu gui: You’ve always been so kind to us. My daughter and I will miss you. zhou ping (smiling): You mean you’re broke again, eh? lu gui (simpering slyly): You’re pulling my leg, sir. I really mean what I said. Lu Sifeng can tell you how highly I always speak of you, sir. zhou ping: Mm, yes. You’re not—after anything, are you? lu gui: Oh no, nothing like that. I just thought you might be able to spare a moment for a little chat. As you know, Sifeng’s mother’s here—the mistress wants to see her— (He breaks off as he catches sight of zhou fanyi coming in from the dining room.) Why, ma’am! You’re downstairs! Are you quite well again, ma’am? (zhou fanyi nods briefly.) I kept inquiring how you were. zhou fanyi: All right, you may go now. (lu gui bows and goes out through the center door.) (To zhou ping) Where’s he gone? zhou ping (blankly): Who? zhou fanyi: Your father. zhou ping: Oh, he’s busy—got a visitor. Shouldn’t be long. Where’s Chong? zhou fanyi: He’s gone out, the crybaby. zhou ping (ill at ease to be left alone with her in this room): Oh, I see . . . I got to go. I’ve got some packing to do. (He goes toward the dining room.) zhou fanyi: Come back. (zhou ping stops.) I wish you’d stay for a moment. zhou ping: What for? zhou fanyi (darkly): I want to talk to you. zhou ping (seeing her mood): You seem to have something important to say to me. zhou fanyi: Right. zhou ping: Go ahead. zhou fanyi: I hope you fully realize what that scene this morning was all about. It’s not just an isolated incident, you know.

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zhou ping (evasively): Oh, well, Father’s always been like that. What he says goes. zhou fanyi: But it’s not in my nature to do just as I’m told by anybody. zhou ping: Yes, I know what you’re like. (Forcing a smile) Then just don’t take any notice of him. zhou fanyi: Oh, Ping, I wish you’d be as warm and sincere as you used to be. I don’t like to see you adopting this cynical attitude that’s so fashionable among young people these days. You must realize how bad I feel when you’re not around. zhou ping: That’s why I’m going away. So that we won’t have to keep seeing each other and being reminded of what we most regret. zhou fanyi: I don’t regret it. I’ve never regretted anything. zhou ping (wishing he didn’t have to say this): I think I’ve made my position quite clear. I’ve been keeping out of your way all these days—I think you understand why. zhou fanyi: Only too well. zhou ping: I’ve been stupid, an utter fool. Now I’m sorry because I realize I’ve made such a mess of my life. I’ve done injustice to myself, to my brother, and what’s worse, to my father. zhou fanyi (in an ominously low voice): But you’re forgetting the person you’ve done the worst injustice to. A little too conveniently, I think. zhou ping: Of course there is such a person, but I don’t have to tell you who. zhou fanyi (smiling sardonically): But that’s not her! It’s me, your stepmother, the woman you seduced! zhou ping (starts panicking): You must be crazy. zhou fanyi: You’re in my debt. You’ve incurred certain responsibilities. You can’t just run off on your own the moment you discover a new world. zhou ping: That’s an outrageous thing to say! You can’t talk like that in a—a respectable family like Father’s. zhou fanyi (furiously): “Father”! “Father”! To hell with your father! “Respectable”! From you of all people! (With a sneer) Eighteen years now I’ve been in this “respectable family” of yours. I’ve heard all about the sins of the Zhous—and seen them— and committed them myself. Not that I’ve ever considered myself one of you. What I’ve done I’ve done on my own. No, I’m not like your grandfather, or your great-uncle, or your dear father himself—doing the most atrocious things in private and wearing a mask of morality in public. Philanthropists, model citizens of society! zhou ping: Well, of course, you have the occasional black sheep in any big family, but our branch, except for me— zhou fanyi: You’re all the same, and your father’s the biggest hypocrite of the lot. Years ago now he seduced a good girl from a decent family. zhou ping: You don’t have to mouth off like that. zhou fanyi: Ping, listen to this carefully: you’re your father’s illegitimate child! zhou ping (shocked and at a loss): You’re lying! What proof have you got? zhou fanyi: Go and ask your “respectable” father yourself. He told me all about it one night fifteen years ago, when he was drunk. (Pointing to the photograph on the

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bureau) That girl was your mother. Your father turned her out, so she drowned herself. zhou ping: You’re—you’re—you’re just—oh, all right, all right—(smiling wryly) I’ll take your word for it. Then what? What is it you want with me? zhou fanyi: Your father let me down. He tricked me into coming here—the same old wiles. There was no escape for me, and so I had Chong. All these years he’s been the hateful tyrant that you saw this morning. Bit by bit he ground me down until I became as cold and dead as a stone. Then, suddenly, you showed up from our place in the country, where you’d been living. It was you who made me what I am, half stepmother, half mistress. It was you who seduced me! zhou ping: “Seduced” indeed! I’d rather you didn’t use that word, if you don’t mind. Do you remember what actually took place? zhou fanyi: Have you forgotten what you told me here in this very room, in the middle of the night, while I was crying? You sighed and said you hated your father. You said you wished he were dead, even if that meant patricide. zhou ping: Ah, but don’t forget I was too young then to keep my head cool. I came out with all that nonsense when I was hotheaded. zhou fanyi: Aren’t you forgetting something? There may have been only a few years between us, but I was still your mother. Don’t you see you had no right to say such things to me? zhou ping: Oh—(sighs) well, anyway, you shouldn’t have been married into this family in the first place. The air of the Zhous’ house is filled with sin. zhou fanyi: Right, it’s all sin, sin! Your family has never been clean, from your ancestors down. zhou ping: You mean you can’t forgive a young man for doing wrong in a moment of stupidity? (He frowns in agony.) zhou fanyi: It’s not a question of forgiving anything. I thought I was already half dead and was quite prepared to go the rest of the way in peace when someone came along and brought me back to life and then dumped me again so I’m left to wither away and slowly die of thirst. Now you tell me what I should do. zhou ping: Er—well, I’ve no idea. What do you say? zhou fanyi (hammering out her words one by one): I don’t want you to go away. zhou ping: Eh? You mean you want me to stay here with you, in this home of ours? So that every day we’re reminded of our past sins until they gradually suffocate us? zhou fanyi: If you know this is a suffocating place, how can you have the heart to go away by yourself and leave me here? zhou ping: You’ve no right to say that. You’re still Chong’s mother. zhou fanyi: No! I’m not! I’m not! Ever since I placed my life and my name in your hands I’ve shut myself off from everything else. No, I’m not his mother, no, I’m not! And I’m not Zhou Puyuan’s wife, either! zhou ping (icily): Even if you don’t regard yourself as my father’s wife, I still consider myself his son.

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zhou fanyi (rendered speechless for a moment by this unexpected remark): I see, so you’re your father’s son. I suppose the reason you’ve made a point of not coming to see me lately is because you’re afraid of your father? zhou ping: I suppose you could put it like that. zhou fanyi: And the reason why you’re going away to the mine is because you’re following your father’s heroic example by throwing away the one person who really understands and loves you? zhou ping: I see no reason why you shouldn’t interpret it like that, if you want to. zhou fanyi (coldly): So you’re truly your father’s son. (She laughs) His father’s son! (Laughs hysterically) His father’s son! (More hysterical laughter, then suddenly returning to stern calmness) Humph! You’re both the same—useless, cowardly creatures, not worth anyone’s self-sacrifice! I’m only sorry I didn’t find you out sooner! zhou ping: Well, you know now, don’t you! I’ve let you down, but I’ve explained to you at great length that I find this unnatural relationship between us repugnant. Yes, repugnant. I take responsibility for what I did wrong, and I freely admit my mistake, but you cannot disclaim all responsibility for what I did. I’ve always looked upon you as a most intelligent and understanding woman, and so I’m sure that one day you’ll understand and forgive me. You may accuse me of being cynical or irresponsible if you want, but I want to tell you this: I hope this meeting will be our last. (He goes toward the dining-room door.) zhou fanyi (in a heavy voice): Wait. (zhou ping stops.) I hope you understand what I meant just now. I’m not begging you for anything. I just want you to think back, and go over in your mind all the—(pauses, distressed) all the things we ever said to each other in this room. Remember, no woman can be expected to submit to humiliation at the hands of two generations. Just think it over. zhou ping: I’ve already thought it over—from top to bottom. I don’t think you can be entirely unaware of the torment I’ve gone through these past few days. And now perhaps you’ll excuse me. (He disappears into the dining room. As zhou fanyi watches him go, tears run down her cheeks. She walks over to the mirror and looks at her pale and wrinkled face. She throws herself on the dressing table and sobs. lu gui comes in stealthily through the center door and sees that she is weeping.) lu gui (softly): Ma’am! zhou fanyi (starting): What are you doing here? lu gui: Mrs. Lu’s here. She’s been here some time. zhou fanyi: Who? Who’s been here some time? lu gui: My wife. You asked me to bring her here, didn’t you, ma’am? zhou fanyi: Why didn’t you tell me earlier? lu gui (smirking): I meant to, only I—(lowering his voice) I saw you were having a conversation with Master Ping, I didn’t want to disturb you. zhou fanyi: Oh, so you—you were—?

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lu gui: Me? Oh, I’ve been waiting on the master and his visitor in the main drawing room. (Pretending not to understand her suggestion) Why, did you want me for something, ma’am? zhou fanyi: No. Well, you’d better show Mrs. Lu in. lu gui (smiling obsequiously): You mustn’t mind my wife, ma’am; she’s from the lower class and doesn’t really know how to talk. zhou fanyi: She’s a human being the same as anyone else. I only want to meet her and have a little chat with her. lu gui: It’s very kind of you, ma’am—oh, yes, the master was telling me to ask you to find that old raincoat of his, because he thinks there’s going to be a storm tomorrow. zhou fanyi: Sifeng looks after his clothes. Can’t she get it for him? lu gui: Well, that’s what I said to the master, since you’re not feeling very well, but he insists that you should get it, ma’am. zhou fanyi: All right, I’ll get it shortly. lu gui: The master says he wants it now. He may be going out any minute. zhou fanyi: Oh, I see. I’ll go and get it right away. You go and ask your wife to come in and wait in here. lu gui: Very good, ma’am. (He goes out. zhou fanyi’s face is paler than ever now; she is making a great effort to suppress her anguish.) zhou fanyi (opens the window, draws a deep breath, and speaks to herself ): Oh, this terrible heat! It’s absolutely stifling!—really can’t live in this house anymore. Oh I wish I could become a volcano at this very moment and just erupt with a bang and burn everything down to the ground! Even if it meant I would then turn into ashes in a glacier, that once-in-a-lifetime ignition would be well worth it. My past is already dead, so is my future, most likely. So I’m ready. Now, come on, all those who hate me, all those who have disappointed me, all those who make me jealous, come on, all of you! I’m waiting. (She gazes listlessly into the distance, then bows her head. lu gui reenters.) lu gui: The master just sent somebody along about the raincoat: he wants it immediately. zhou fanyi (lifting her head): All right. You needn’t wait. I’ll tell Nanny Chen to bring it along. (She goes out through the dining room. lu gui goes out through the center door. After a while, mrs. lu, or lu shiping, enters with lu sifeng. She is about forty-seven, and her hair is beginning to gray at the temples. Her complexion is fair and clear and makes her look eight or nine years younger. Her eyes are somewhat dull and lifeless and, from time to time, will become fixed in an unseeing stare; yet, there is something about the long, delicate lashes and the large, round pupils that tells us of the charm and sparkle that must have been hers in her younger days. Her clothes are plain but neat, giving one the impression of a woman of good family who has fallen on bad times. Her gracious demeanor forms a sharp contrast with the mean vulgarity of her husband.

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She wears a white towel around her head, apparently to keep the dust off her hair during her train journey. Whenever she speaks, she smiles slightly. She is especially delighted at the sight of her daughter, whom she hasn’t seen for the past two years, such that her cheeks glow with joy. Her voice is low and steady. Her accent is that of a southerner who has lived a long time in the north, with a characteristic lilt but clear-cut articulation. Her teeth are good and evenly set, and when she smiles, deep dimples appear at the corners of her mouth, reminding us of the fainter dimples that accompany lu sifeng’s smiles. She comes in hand in hand with her daughter, lu sifeng, who is nestling affectionately up against her. lu gui comes in behind them carrying a bundle wrapped in a piece of old cloth. He is smiling complacently. Compared with the joyfully innocent mother and daughter, he is all the more coarse and vulgar.) lu sifeng: Where’s the mistress? lu gui: She’ll be down in a minute. lu sifeng: Sit down, Mom. (mrs. lu sits down.) Aren’t you tired? mrs. lu: Not a bit. lu sifeng (in high spirits): Mom, just sit back and relax. I’ll get you a glass of iced water. mrs. lu: No, don’t go away. I don’t feel hot. lu gui: Get your mother a bottle of soda, Sifeng. (To his wife) In a big house like this they have everything! In summertime, there’s lemonade, fruit juice, watermelon juice, oranges, bananas, fresh lychees—whatever you want. mrs. lu: No, don’t, Sifeng. Don’t listen to your father. Those things don’t belong to us. You just stay here with me a little longer and then, when Mrs. Zhou comes, we can see her together. I’ll enjoy that more than all your cold drinks. lu gui: The mistress should be down any minute now. Look at that head scarf of yours. Why don’t you want to take it off ? mrs. lu (with a good-natured smile): You are right. We just kept talking and talking. (Beaming at lu sifeng) Look, I’m still wearing the white towel that I put on for the train. (She starts removing it.) lu sifeng (smiling): Mom, I’ll do it for you. (She goes over to help. In the meantime, lu gui goes over to the low table and puts away a few cigarettes into his own cigarette case.) mrs. lu (removing the white towel): No smuts on my face? It was so dusty on the train. My hair’s okay? I don’t want to look a mess. lu sifeng: No, you look perfect. You know, you haven’t changed a bit these past two years. mrs. lu: Oh, Feng, I almost forgot. You see what a bad memory I have? I’ve been so busy talking all this time that I forgot to show you the one thing I’m sure you’ll like best of all.

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lu sifeng: What is it, Mom? mrs. lu (producing a small packet): Have a look. I’m sure you’ll like it. lu sifeng: No, don’t let me see it yet. Let me try and guess. mrs. lu: Okay, see if you can. lu sifeng: A little stone figure? mrs. lu (shaking her head): No, you’re too big for things like that. lu sifeng: A little powder puff ? mrs. lu (shaking her head again): What use would that be to you? lu sifeng: It must be a little sewing kit, then. mrs. lu (smiling): Close. lu sifeng: Let me open it then. (She undoes the packet.) Gee, Mom! A thimble, a silver thimble! Look, Dad, see what I’ve got! (She shows it to lu gui.) lu gui (without looking at it): Good, good. lu sifeng: Oh, what a beautiful thimble! And there’s a precious stone in it. lu gui: What! (Coming quickly across for a closer look) Let me see it. mrs. lu: It’s a present from the headmaster’s wife. You see, the headmaster lost an important wallet. I found it and returned it to him, and his wife insisted on giving me a present. She brought out a whole lot of little trinkets and told me to choose one—for my daughter, she said. So this is the one I chose for you. Do you like it? lu sifeng: Oh, yes, Mom. It’s just what I’ve always wanted. lu gui: Hah! Humph! (Handing the thimble back to lu sifeng) Forget it! The stone’s fake. See what you chose? lu sifeng (contemptuously, her tongue loosened by the excitement of seeing her mother again): Humph! That’s just like you! Even real stones would turn to paste in your hands! mrs. lu: Sifeng, Don’t speak to your father like that. lu sifeng (playing the victim): But Mom, you’ve no idea how Dad’s been taking it out on me when you were away. He’s been bullying me all the time. lu gui (full of contempt for the two women’s rustic behavior): Look at yourselves, chattering away in a corner like a pair of poor bumpkins! Why don’t you make the most of being in a big house and see what they’ve got. Sifeng, show your mother all the clothes you’ve bought these last two years. lu sifeng (scornfully): Mom’s not interested in such things. lu gui: And haven’t you got a bit of jewelry of your own, too? Bring it out and show her, and then see who she thinks was right: her, who wanted to keep you locked up at home, or me? mrs. lu (to lu gui): I told you before I left that I wouldn’t let my daughter go into service in a big house, and every time I wrote to you over the past two years I reminded you about it. But you still go and—(suddenly breaking off as she remembers that this is no place to discuss family matters, turning to her daughter instead) where’s your brother?

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lu sifeng: I thought he was waiting for us at the porter’s lodge. lu gui: It’s not you two he’s waiting for, it’s the master he wants to see. (To his wife) I sent word to you last year about Dahai. He’d become a foreman at the mine. It was all because I put in a word for him. lu sifeng (finding her father’s repeated bragging distasteful): Dad, hadn’t you better go and look after Dahai? He’s a bit short-tempered and may lose patience waiting and get into a fight with Mr. Zhang and Mr. Liu. lu gui: Oh, shoot, I’d forgotten all about his bad temper. (Going toward the center door, then stopping and turning for a last few words) You’d better stay here in this room and not go fooling around all over the place. The mistress will be down any minute. (lu gui exits. Once he is out of the room, both mother and daughter breathe a sigh of relief, like prisoners seeing their warden gone. They look at each other with a wry smile. All of a sudden, their faces light up with joy, and this time it’s the smiles of happiness from the bottom of their hearts.) mrs. lu (holding out her hands to lu sifeng): Let me have a good look at you, child. (lu sifeng goes across to her mother and kneels down.) lu sifeng: You’re not cross with me, are you, Mom? You’re not going to chide me for not listening to you and coming to serve at the Zhous’ house? mrs. lu: No, no. What’s done is done. But why have you kept quiet about it all this time? I only heard from Mrs. Zhang that you were here after I got home from the train station. lu sifeng: I didn’t dare to tell you, because I was afraid you’d be angry with me. Actually, Mom, we are not some rich family, and even if I do work as a servant, I don’t think it matters much. mrs. lu: No, it’s not that I don’t like being poor or that I’m afraid of having people laugh at us because we’re poor. No, child, I don’t mind a bit and I’m most content with fate. What really worries me is that you’re still very young, and you might easily go and do something foolish. I’ve suffered, I know. You don’t understand that the world is too—I mean people are too—(heaving a sigh) well, well, let’s not talk about it now. (She gets up.) I wonder what your mistress wants to see me about. Strange, isn’t it? lu sifeng: I suppose it is. (Becoming apprehensive, but still trying to be optimistic) You know, Mom, the mistress here hasn’t got many friends. She’s heard that you can read and write, so perhaps she feels you’ve got something in common and wants to talk to you. mrs. lu (incredulously): D’you think so? (She looks slowly around the room at the furniture.) This room’s very elegantly furnished—although the furniture looks pretty old. (Pointing to the mahogany table) And this is? lu sifeng: This used to be the master’s desk. Now it’s just for display. They say it’s thirty years old, but the master loves it and takes it wherever he goes. mrs. lu (pointing to the bureau with the mirror on it): What about that?

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lu sifeng: That’s another piece of old furniture. They say his first wife was very fond of it—the young master’s mother, that is. See how cumbersome the furniture from those days is? mrs. lu: That’s funny—why should all the windows be kept closed in this weather? lu sifeng: Yes, it is queer, isn’t it? One of the master’s queer ideas. He will have the windows closed in the heat of summer. mrs. lu (trying to remember something): You know, Feng, I seem to have seen this room somewhere before. lu sifeng (laughing): Oh yeah? You must’ve been thinking about me too much, and come here in a dream. mrs. lu: Yes, it does seem like a dream—so weird, this place is really weird. It suddenly reminds me of so many things. (She hangs her head and sits down.) lu sifeng (alarmed): Mom, are you feeling all right? It must be the heat. Shall I go and get you a glass of water? mrs. lu: No, I’m all right. Don’t go—I’m scared. There are ghosts in this room. lu sifeng: What’s the matter with you, Mom? mrs. lu: I’m really scared. All of a sudden all the things that happened thirty years ago have come back to me. All the people I’ve long forgotten are back in my mind again. Sifeng, feel my hands! lu sifeng (feeling her mother’s hands): Icy cold. Mom, don’t scare me, I easily get frightened. Mom, Mom, this room was haunted once. mrs. lu: Don’t worry, child. I’m all right. But, Sifeng, I do seem—I mean my soul seems to have been here before. lu sifeng: Oh, don’t be so silly, Mother. How can you have been here before? It’s twenty years since they moved up north here, and you were still living down south then, weren’t you? mrs. lu: No, no, I still say I’ve been here before. Look at all the furniture—I just can’t recall, but I’ve seen it somewhere. lu sifeng: Mom, don’t you stare like that. You scare me. mrs. lu: Don’t, don’t be scared, child. (Her voice dwindles to a whisper as she racks her brains to remember. Her entire body shrinks deeper and deeper into the abyss of her memory.) lu sifeng: Mom, why are you staring at that bureau? It used to belong to the first mistress, the one who died. mrs. lu (suddenly, in a quivering voice): Feng, you go and look, go and look, the third drawer on the right, is there an embroidered shoe in there—one of those that kids wear? lu sifeng: What’s wrong with you, Mom? Don’t tell me you’re seeing things! mrs. lu: No, no, Feng. You go, you go and take a look. I’m terrified, I can’t move. You go! lu sifeng: Okay, I’ll go and look. (She goes to the bureau, opens a drawer, and looks.)

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mrs. lu (anxiously): You see it? lu sifeng: No, Mom. mrs. lu: Are you sure? lu sifeng: Sure, only some tea things in here. mrs. lu: Oh! So I must have been daydreaming. lu sifeng (feeling sorry for her mother): Don’t talk anymore, Mom. Just relax for a while. Mom, it must have been tough for you out there. (Tearing up) You weren’t like this before. (Hugging her) Poor Mom! Are you better now? mrs. lu: It’s all right. I gathered when I was down at the porter’s lodge just now that there are two young masters in this house. lu sifeng: Yes, there are. Very nice, both of them, very kind. mrs. lu (to herself ): No, my daughter just can’t stay here. That won’t do, won’t do! lu sifeng: What were you saying, Mom? You know what, everyone here has been nice to me. Mom, the master and mistress are never cross to the servants, and the two young masters are both very kind. In fact, all the Zhous are nice people, not only those who are living, but even the dead ones had good hearts. mrs. lu: The Zhous? Is that their name? lu sifeng: Now Mom. Didn’t you have to ask the way to the Zhous’ when you came? You can’t have forgotten already. (Smiles) You must have got a touch of the sun on your way here. Look, here’s a photo of the master’s first wife. You take a look while I go and get you some water to drink. (She brings the photograph across from the dressing table and stands behind her mother, holding the photo in front for her to look at.) mrs. lu (taking the photograph and looking at it): Ah?! (She is too astonished for words and trembles.) lu sifeng (still standing behind her): You can see how good-looking she was. She was the oldest son’s mother. Look, how beautiful the way she smiles. They say she looks a bit like me. It’s a pity she’s dead. Otherwise—(sensing mrs. lu’s head tipping forward) Mom, Mom! What’s wrong? What’s the matter? mrs. lu: Nothing, I’m just feeling dizzy. Get me a drink of water. lu sifeng (ner vously, pinching her mother’s fingers, rubbing her forehead): Mom, you’d better come over here. (She takes her mother by the arm and leads her across to the large sofa. mrs. lu still has the photograph clutched tightly in her hand.) Just lie down here for a minute. I’ll go and get you some water. (She hurries out into the dining room.) mrs. lu: Oh, my God! . . . So I’m dead. But this photo, and this furniture—how come? Oh, isn’t the world big enough to—how come after all these years of misery my own poor child should have to be put back in his—his house of all places? Oh, isn’t God being unfair! (She weeps. lu sifeng comes in with the water. mrs. lu hurriedly wipes her tears.) lu sifeng: Here you are, Mom. Have some more.

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(mrs. lu drinks.) Feel a bit better now? mrs. lu: Mm, yes, I’m all right now. You’re coming straight home with me, Sifeng. lu sifeng (surprised): Why, what’s the matter now? (zhou fanyi’s voice calls “Sifeng!” from the dining room.) Who’s calling you? lu sifeng: It’s the mistress. zhou fanyi’s voice: Sifeng! lu sifeng: Yes, ma’am? zhou fanyi’s voice: Come here, Sifeng, where have you put the master’s raincoat? lu sifeng (loudly): I’m coming. (To her mother) I won’t be long, Mom. mrs. lu: Go on, then. (lu sifeng goes out. mrs. lu looks all around the room, then goes across to the bureau and touches this familiar piece of furniture. Suddenly hearing footsteps from the garden, she turns around, waiting. lu gui comes in through the center door.) lu gui: Where’s Sifeng? mrs. lu: She’s been called away by her mistress. lu gui: Well, when you see the mistress, tell her she needn’t send the raincoat along when she’s found it. The master will be coming here himself because he wants to see her about something. mrs. lu: You say the master’s coming to this room here? lu gui: Yes, and make sure you tell her properly, because if you don’t and she’s not here when he comes, the old man will go right up in the air again. mrs. lu: You’d better tell her yourself. lu gui: I’m up to my eyes in work with all these servants to look after. I haven’t got time to stand about here. mrs. lu: Well, I’m going home. I won’t be seeing your mistress after all. lu gui: But why not? She’s sent for you, and you never know, she may have something important to see you about. mrs. lu: I’m taking Sifeng home with me. She won’t be working here any longer. lu gui: What! Who d’you think you— (zhou fanyi enters from the dining room.) lu gui: Ma’am! zhou fanyi (speaking back into the dining room): Bring the other two as well, Sifeng, and let the master choose. (Turning to mrs. lu) Ah, you must be Sifeng’s mother? I’m sorry I’ve kept you waiting all this time. lu gui: You shouldn’t apologize to her, ma’am. You’ve done her a great honor by allowing her to come and pay her respects to you. (lu sifeng enters from the dining room with the raincoats.) zhou fanyi: Won’t you sit down? You must have been waiting a long time. mrs. lu (looking zhou fanyi up and down, but not sitting down): Only a few minutes, ma’am.

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lu sifeng: Shall I take all three raincoats along to the master, ma’am? lu gui: The master wants them left here; he’s coming for them himself. Oh, and ma’am—he said, would you please wait for him here, because he’d like to have a word with you. zhou fanyi: Very well. (To lu sifeng) Go to the kitchen and see how they’re getting on with dinner. Make sure they know what’s wanted. lu sifeng: Yes, ma’am. (Shooting a glance first at lu gui and then, apprehensively, at zhou fanyi, she goes out through the center door.) zhou fanyi: Lu Gui, tell the master I’m engaged here with Sifeng’s mother and that I’ll let him know when I’m ready to see him. lu gui: Very good, ma’am. (He does not move.) zhou fanyi (seeing that he is still there): Is there something else you want to see me about? lu gui: Yes, ma’am. This morning the master asked the German doctor to come for a visit. zhou fanyi: I know. Master Chong’s already told me about it. lu gui: The master was just saying that he’d like you to see the doctor as soon as he arrives. zhou fanyi: All right. You can go now. (lu gui goes out through the center door.) zhou fanyi (to mrs. lu): Let’s sit down, then. Make yourself at home. (She seats herself on a sofa.) mrs. lu (sitting down on a nearby chair): The moment I got off the train, I was told you wanted to see me. zhou fanyi: Yes, I’d heard so much about you from Sifeng. She tells me you’ve had an education and that you come from a very good family. mrs. lu (not wishing to bring up the past): Sifeng’s a silly child. Not much sense. She must have caused you a lot of trouble. zhou fanyi: On the contrary, she’s very intelligent and I’m very fond of her. I don’t think a girl like her should be in service at all. She should be given a better start in life mrs. lu: Thank you for your kind words. Actually, I’ve been against her going into service all along. zhou fanyi: I know just what you mean. Now, I know you’re an educated, sensible person, and both of us are pretty straightforward, so I may as well tell you right now why I asked you to come. mrs. lu (intuitively): Why, has this girl of mine done anything that has caused gossip? zhou fanyi (smiling and assuming an air of complete assurance): Oh no, nothing like that. (lu gui comes in through the center door.) lu gui: Ma’am? zhou fanyi: What is it?

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lu gui: Dr. Kramer’s here. He’s just arrived in our car and is waiting in the small drawing room. zhou fanyi: I have a visitor. lu gui: A visitor?—but the master would like you to see the doctor now, ma’am. zhou fanyi: All right. You needn’t wait. (lu gui goes out.) zhou fanyi (to mrs. lu): Well, let me tell you something about the family first. To begin with, there are very few women in the house. mrs. lu: I suppose not. zhou fanyi: In fact, there’s only myself who’s a woman. There’re the two young masters, and the master himself. We do have one or two maids, but the rest of the servants are all men. mrs. lu: I see. zhou fanyi: Sifeng’s very young; only nineteen, isn’t she? mrs. lu: Eighteen. zhou fanyi: Oh yes, that’s right. I remember now, she does look about a year older than my son. Yes, so young, so attractive—and working away from home. mrs. lu: Ma’am, if Sifeng’s done anything improper, please don’t keep it from me. zhou fanyi: No, it’s nothing like that. (She smiles again.) She’s a very nice girl. I’m only telling you how things are here. I’ve got a son, just seventeen—you may have seen him in the garden when you came in—not particularly bright. (lu gui comes in from the study.) lu gui: The master wants you to go and see the doctor immediately, ma’am. zhou fanyi: Is there no one to keep the doctor company? lu gui: Bureau Chief Wang’s just left. The master’s with him himself. mrs. lu: Ma’am, you go ahead and see the doctor. I can wait here, no problem. zhou fanyi: No, we haven’t finished yet. (To lu gui) You can tell the master that I’m not sick. It wasn’t I who asked for a doctor. lu gui: Yes, ma’am. (He remains where he is.) zhou fanyi (looking at him): What are you waiting for? lu gui: I thought there might be something further, ma’am. zhou fanyi (struck by a sudden thought): Yes, there is something. After you’ve told the master what I said, go and find an electrician. I’ve just heard that an old electric cable on the wisteria trellis has snapped. It’s trailing loose and it’s live. Tell him to get it fixed as soon as possible. We don’t want any accidents. (lu gui goes out through the center door.) (Seeing that mrs. lu is on her feet) There’s no need to get up, Mrs. Lu. Phew, this room’s getting more stifling than ever. (She goes across to a window, opens it, then returns to her seat.)

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Just lately I’ve noticed that my son isn’t quite his usual self. All of a sudden, he told me that he’s very fond of Sifeng. mrs. lu: What! zhou fanyi: He wants to share his school allowance with her to pay for her education. mrs. lu: That’s out of the question, ma’am. zhou fanyi: He even says that he wants to marry her. mrs. lu: You needn’t go on. Now I understand what it’s all about. zhou fanyi (pressing further): Sifeng is older than my son, and she’s a very intelligent girl. In a situation like this— mrs. lu (resenting zhou fanyi’s insinuating tone of voice): I think I can trust my daughter. I’ve always believed that she’s a sensible girl and knows the difference between right and wrong. I’ve never liked her going into ser vice in a big house, but I have confidence in her and I don’t think she could have done anything foolish in the two years that she’s been with you. zhou fanyi: Yes, Mrs. Lu, I agree that Sifeng’s a sensible girl, but now that this unfortunate situation has happened, well, I’m afraid it can easily cause misunderstandings. mrs. lu (with a sigh): I never expected to find myself here today. I’m going to take her home with me, so I’d appreciate it if you’d let her take a permanent leave. zhou fanyi: Well—if you think it would be for the best, I’ve got nothing against it. Though there is one thing: my son’s a bit reckless, and I’m afraid he may try to see Sifeng at your home. mrs. lu: You needn’t worry about that. I can see now how stupid I was. I should never have left her for her father to look after. I’m leaving here tomorrow and I’ll be taking her with me to a faraway place, so she’ll never see any more of the Zhous. Ma’am, I’d like to take her away this very moment. zhou fanyi: Well, if you insist. I’ll get the office to make up her wages, and her personal belongings can be taken around to your house by a servant—and I’ll also send a suitcase of some of my old clothes that she may have some use for at home. mrs. lu (to herself ): Oh, Feng, my poor child! (Sits down on the sofa and starts weeping) Oh my God! zhou fanyi (going up to her): Don’t take it so much to heart, Mrs. Lu. If you have any difficulty with money because of this, please don’t hesitate to come and see me. You can rely on me to help you. Now, take her home where you can look after her. With a good mother like you to guide her, she’ll be much better off than working here. (zhou puyuan enters from the study.) zhou puyuan: Fanyi! (zhou fanyi turns, while mrs. lu slips away into a corner. Greatly alarmed, she observes him closely.) Why haven’t you gone yet? zhou fanyi (all innocence): Gone where? zhou puyuan: Aren’t you aware you’re keeping Dr. Kramer waiting?

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zhou fanyi: Dr. Kramer? Who’s he? zhou puyuan: Why, the Dr. Kramer that you saw before. zhou fanyi: I’ve had enough medication. I don’t want any more. zhou puyuan: Then what about your disease? . . . zhou fanyi: But I have no disease. zhou puyuan (patiently): Dr Kramer’s been a good friend of mine since we first met in Germany. Specializes in gynecology. You may be experiencing a slight ner vous breakdown. I’m sure he’ll fix it. zhou fanyi: Who says I’m having a ner vous breakdown? Why are you all cursing me like this? There’s nothing wrong with me, I tell you, nothing at all! zhou puyuan (coldly): Look, you’re raving and screaming in front of other people. You’re sick but refuse to admit it and get seen by a doctor. Aren’t all these symptoms of a ner vous problem? zhou fanyi: Humph! If there were indeed something wrong, it wouldn’t be anything a doctor could cure. (She goes toward the dining-room door.) zhou puyuan (at the top of his voice): Stop! Where do you think you’re going? zhou fanyi (nonchalantly): I’m going upstairs. zhou puyuan (imperiously): Do as you’re told! zhou fanyi (as if not understanding): Oh? (Pauses and looks him disdainfully up and down) Look at yourself! (Breaking into shrills of laughter) You simply make me laugh. (Laughs disdainfully) And who do you think you are? (She laughs again and dashes out through the dining room, slamming the door shut behind her.) zhou puyuan: Here, somebody! (A servant appears.) servant: Yes, sir? zhou puyuan: The mistress is upstairs. Tell Master Ping to take Dr. Kramer up to her room. servant: Yes, sir. zhou puyuan: Tell Master Ping the mistress has a serious ner vous problem. Tell him to be careful and ask the nanny upstairs to keep an eye on the mistress. servant: Yes, sir. zhou puyuan: And tell Master Ping to ask the doctor to excuse me. I’m tired and I’ll have to leave him on his own. servant: Very good, sir. (He goes out.) zhou puyuan (lights a cigar, then, noticing the raincoats on the table, addresses mrs. lu) Are these the raincoats the mistress hunted out? mrs. lu (looking at him): I think so. zhou puyuan (picking them up for a closer look): No, no, these are not the ones I want. They’re all new. I want my old one, tell her. mrs. lu: Mm.

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zhou puyuan (seeing that she does not stir): Don’t you know that servants aren’t allowed to be in this room unless they’re sent for? mrs. lu (looking at him): No, I didn’t know that, sir. zhou puyuan: Are you a new servant here? mrs. lu: No, I came to see my daughter. zhou puyuan: Your daughter? mrs. lu: My daughter, Sifeng. zhou puyuan: Then you’re in the wrong room. mrs. lu: Oh. Will that be all, sir? zhou puyuan (indicating the open window): Who’s opened that window? mrs. lu: Oh, yes. (She strolls across to the window as if quite at home here, closes it, then goes slowly toward the center door.) zhou puyuan (suddenly struck by something odd about the way she closes the window): Wait a minute. (mrs. lu stops.) Who—what’s your name? mrs. lu: Lu. zhou puyuan: I see, Lu. You don’t sound like a northerner from your accent. mrs. lu: You’re quite right. I’m not. I’m from Jiangsu.3 zhou puyuan: It sounds rather like a Wuxi4 accent. mrs. lu: Well, I was born and bred in Wuxi. zhou puyuan (deep in thought): Wuxi, eh? Wuxi . . . (Suddenly) When were you there, in Wuxi? mrs. lu: The twentieth year of Emperor Guangxu’s reign.5 About thirty years now. zhou puyuan: So you were in Wuxi thirty years ago, eh? mrs. lu: Yes. Thirty years ago. I remember we still didn’t use matches in those days. zhou puyuan (deep in thought again): Thirty years ago . . . Yes, it’s a long time. Let’s see, I must have been in my twenties then. Yes, I was still in Wuxi then. mrs. lu: So you’re from Wuxi, too, aren’t you, sir? zhou puyuan: Yes. (Meditatively) Nice place, Wuxi. mrs. lu: Yes, very nice. zhou puyuan: And you say you were there thirty years ago? mrs. lu: That’s right, sir. zhou puyuan: Something happened in Wuxi thirty years ago, quite a to- do— mrs. lu: Oh! zhou puyuan: You know about that? mrs. lu: Well, I might still remember if I knew what you were referring to, sir. zhou puyuan: Oh, it happened so long ago that I expect everyone’s forgotten all about it. mrs. lu: You never know. There may be someone who still remembers it. zhou puyuan: I’ve asked dozens of people who were in Wuxi at that time, and I’ve sent people down to make inquiries on the spot. But the people who were there at the

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time are either too old or dead, and the few who are still alive either knew nothing about it or else they’ve forgotten all about it. mrs. lu: If, sir, you are still interested, there are still people in Wuxi that I know. Although we haven’t heard from one another for a long time, I think they wouldn’t mind making some inquiries for me, no matter what. zhou puyuan: I’ve sent people down to find out. But perhaps you might happen to know. Well, there was a family in Wuxi thirty years ago named Mei. mrs. lu: The Meis? zhou puyuan: There was a young lady in the family, very intelligent, and very proper in her conduct, too. One night, she suddenly went and drowned herself. Then, afterward—you heard about it? mrs. lu: I don’t think so. zhou puyuan: Oh. mrs. lu: But I did know a girl by the name of Mei. zhou puyuan: Oh? Tell me about her. mrs. lu: But she wasn’t a lady, and not very intelligent—and not very proper in her conduct, either, by all accounts. zhou puyuan: Perhaps—perhaps you’re talking about the wrong girl—though I’d like you to go on, all the same. mrs. lu: Well, this girl Mei threw herself in the river one night, though she wasn’t alone. She held in her arms a three- day- old baby boy. She had conducted herself rather improperly, so they said. zhou puyuan (wincing): Oh? mrs. lu: She was a low-class girl and didn’t seem to know her place. It was said she’d been having an affair with a young master of the Zhou family. She’d had two sons by him. Well, just three days after the second one was born, this young Mr. Zhou suddenly turned her out. The first child was left with the family, but the newborn baby was in her arms when she threw herself in the river. That was on a New Year’s Eve. zhou puyuan (with beads of perspiration on his forehead): Oh! mrs. lu: She was no lady, only the daughter of a maid at the Zhous’ in Wuxi. Her name was Shiping. zhou puyuan (looking up): What’s your name? mrs. lu: My name’s Lu, sir. zhou puyuan (heaving a sigh and becoming lost in thought): Yes, Shiping, Shiping— that was the name. They say some poor man found her body and had it buried. Could you make inquiries and find out where her grave is? mrs. lu: But I don’t see why you should take such an interest in all this business, sir. zhou puyuan: She was a sort of relative of ours. mrs. lu: A relative? zhou puyuan: Yes, er—we’d like to look after her grave. mrs. lu: Oh, but there’s no need to do that.

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zhou puyuan: How do you mean? mrs. lu: She’s still alive. zhou puyuan (shaken): What! mrs. lu: She never died. zhou puyuan: Still alive, you say? But how can she be? I saw her clothes on the bank of the river, and inside them was a note she’d left. mrs. lu: But she was rescued by a kindhearted person. zhou puyuan: She was? mrs. lu: But because she was never seen in Wuxi again after that, everybody there thought she was dead. zhou puyuan: Where is she now, then? mrs. lu: She’s living alone, miles away from Wuxi. zhou puyuan: What about the baby? mrs. lu: He’s alive, too. zhou puyuan (suddenly standing up): Who are you, anyway? mrs. lu: I am Sifeng’s mother, sir. zhou puyuan: Hm. mrs. lu: She’s getting on now. She’s married to a poor man, and they’ve got a daughter. She doesn’t have an easy time of it. zhou puyuan: D’you have any idea where she is at the moment? mrs. lu: I saw her only the other day. zhou puyuan: What! You mean she’s here of all places? In this city? mrs. lu: Yes, in this city. zhou puyuan: Oh! mrs. lu: Would you like to see her, sir? zhou puyuan (hurriedly): No, no, thanks. mrs. lu: Fate has been hard on her. After she left the Zhous’, the young Mr. Zhou married a rich, well- connected young lady. But this girl Mei was on her own, far from home, without a single relative or friend to help her. And, she had this child to support. She did everything—from begging to sewing, from working as a maid to being a servant in a school. zhou puyuan: But why didn’t she go back to the Zhous’? mrs. lu: Perhaps she didn’t like the idea. For the child’s sake she got married, twice. zhou puyuan: So, she married again, twice, eh? mrs. lu: Yes, and both times to very low-class people. She’s been unlucky in her husbands. Perhaps you’d like to help her in some way, sir? zhou puyuan: Well, I think you’d better go now. Let me think. mrs. lu: Will that be all, sir? (She gazes at him, her eyes filling with tears.) zhou puyuan: Er—oh, you can tell Sifeng to get my old raincoat out of the camphorwood chest—and she can take out those old shirts while she’s about it. mrs. lu: Old shirts, did you say?

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zhou puyuan: Yes, tell her they’re in that oldest chest of mine—silk ones, with no collars. mrs. lu: But aren’t there five of those silk shirts, sir? Which one did you want? zhou puyuan: What do you mean “which one”? mrs. lu: Well, isn’t there one that’s got a hole burnt in the right sleeve, and wasn’t it patched up by having a plum blossom6 embroidered over the hole? And then there’s the one— zhou puyuan (startled): A plum blossom, you say? mrs. lu: Yes, and there’s another silk shirt that has a plum blossom embroidered on the left cuff, with the name “Ping” embroidered next to it. And there’s another— zhou puyuan (rising slowly to his feet): Then you—then you—you’re— mrs. lu: I used to be one of your servants. zhou puyuan: Shiping! (In a low voice) So it is you, then? mrs. lu: Of course you never would have imagined seeing Shiping looking so old one day that even you wouldn’t recognize her. zhou puyuan: You—Shiping? (He glances automatically at the photograph on the bureau, then looks back at mrs. lu.) mrs. lu: Puyuan, weren’t you looking for Shiping? Well, here she is. zhou puyuan (with sudden sternness): What did you come here for? mrs. lu: I didn’t ask to come. zhou puyuan: Who sent you here, then? mrs. lu (bitterly): Fate! Unjust fate brought me here! zhou puyuan (coldly): So you’ve found me anyway, after thirty years. mrs. lu (indignantly): But I wasn’t looking for you. I wasn’t. I thought you were dead long ago. I never thought I would find myself here today. It’s heaven that wants me to meet you again. zhou puyuan: Well, you might be a bit calmer about it. We’ve both got families of our own now. If you think you have a grievance, let’s at least begin by saving all these tears. We’re a bit too old for that kind of thing. mrs. lu: Tears? I cried my eyes dry long ago. No, I’ve got no grievance; all I’ve got left is hatred, and regret, and the memory of the misery I’ve gone through, day in, day out, for the past thirty years. You may have forgotten what you did. Thirty years ago, on New Year’s Eve, just three days after I’d given birth to your second child, you turned me out of your house in a snowstorm, just because you were in a hurry to get rid of me so that you could marry a young lady of wealth and status. zhou puyuan: What’s the point of raking up old scores after all these years? mrs lu: The point? It’s just because while our young Mr. Zhou has done well all these years and is now a respectable member of society, I was turned out by your family, and, after trying to kill myself, lost my mother to shock and grief. And your family forced me to leave my two babies behind at your house. zhou puyuan: But you took the younger one with you, didn’t you?

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mrs. lu: Yes, your mother let me take him, but only because she thought he wouldn’t survive long. (To herself ) My God! It all seems like a bad dream! zhou puyuan: I don’t see the need to go on raking up the past like this. mrs. lu: But I do! I do! I’ve kept it pent up inside me for thirty years! After you married and moved out of the district I thought I’d never see you again for the rest of my life. The last thing I expected was that my own daughter would come to work in your house of all places and do the kind of job her mother did. zhou puyuan: No wonder Sifeng looks so much like you. mrs. lu: I waited on you, and now my child is waiting on your sons. That’s called retribution, yes, retribution. zhou puyuan: Now, calm down. Let’s be sensible about it. I’m not as cold-blooded as you think. You don’t imagine anyone can stifle his conscience as easily as that? You’ve only got to look at this room: all your favorite furniture of the old days is here. I’ve kept it all these years to remember you by. mrs. lu (with bent head): Mm. zhou puyuan: I always remember your birthday, April the eighteenth. Everything is kept as you would’ve liked it as my lawful wedded wife. Remember how you insisted on keeping the windows closed because of your delicate health after you had Ping? Well, I still keep them closed in memory of you to help make up for the wrong I did you. mrs. lu (with a sigh): Now, we’re both getting on, please don’t say such silly things. zhou puyuan: I couldn’t agree more. Now we can have a straight talk. mrs. lu: I don’t think there’s anything to talk about. zhou puyuan: On the contrary. You don’t seem to have altered much in temperament— Lu Gui strikes me as being rather a shifty character. mrs. lu: You’ve got nothing to worry about. He’ll never know anything about it. zhou puyuan: Which is a good thing for both of us. There is one other thing I’d like to know: what’s become of the boy you took with you? mrs. lu: He’s working at your mine. zhou puyuan: I mean, where is he at this moment? mrs. lu: In the porter’s lodge, waiting to see you. zhou puyuan: What! Lu Dahai? You mean—he’s my son? mrs. lu: Because of your negligence, to this day he has a missing toe. zhou puyuan (wryly): That means it’s my own flesh and blood who has turned against me and is inciting a strike in my mine! mrs. lu: He and you are poles apart. zhou puyuan (lost in thought): And he’s my son. mrs. lu: Don’t think he’ll own you as his father. zhou puyuan (suddenly): All right! Let’s have it! How much do you want? mrs. lu: What? zhou puyuan: To keep you in your old age. mrs. lu (with a twisted smile): Ha! So you think I came here purposely to blackmail you, do you?

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zhou puyuan: All right, let’s say no more about that for the moment. I’ll tell you first what I have in mind. Well now, Lu Gui will have to go, and Sifeng can’t very well stay here, either. However— mrs. lu: You needn’t be afraid. You think I’d blackmail you with our relationship? Don’t worry, I won’t. In three days’ time I’ll be going back to where I came from, and I’ll be taking Sifeng with me. This is all a bad dream. I just couldn’t bear to stay in this place any longer. zhou puyuan: Good idea. I’ll pay all your fares and expenses. mrs. lu: You’ll do what? zhou puyuan: It’ll make me feel a bit better. mrs. lu: You? (She laughs) I managed the last thirty years on my own all right, and now you think I need money from you? zhou puyuan: All right, all right, what is it you want, anyway? mrs. lu (after a pause): Well, there is—there is one thing I’d like. zhou puyuan: And what’s that? Say it. mrs. lu (blinded by tears): I—I just want to have a look at my son Ping. zhou puyuan: You want to see him? mrs. lu: Yes. Where is he? zhou puyuan: He’s upstairs with his stepmother and her doctor. I can send for him now if you like. Although— mrs. lu: Although what? zhou puyuan: He’s grown up. mrs. lu (recalling): He should be twenty-eight now. I remember he’s just a year older than Dahai. zhou puyuan: And he thinks his mother’s been dead for years now. mrs. lu: Now do you think I would beg him in tears to call me Mother? No, I’m not that foolish. Don’t I know that I’m not the sort of mother that any son could feel proud of ? I quite understand that neither his social status nor his education would allow him to own a woman like me as his mother. I have learned a thing or two all these years, you know. No, all I want is just to have a look. After all, he’s my own child. You’ve got nothing to worry about. Even if I did spoil everything for him by telling him, he’d still never own me. zhou puyuan: So that’s settled, then. I’ll have him down here and let you have a look at him, and after that, no Lus will ever set foot inside this house again. mrs. lu: All right, then. And I hope I’ll never set eyes on you again as long as I live. zhou puyuan (taking a leather- covered checkbook from an inside pocket and making out a check): Fair enough. Here’s a check for five thousand dollars, which I hope you’ll accept. I hope it’ll help to atone for my sins. mrs. lu (takes the check): Thank you. (She tears it up.) zhou puyuan: Shiping! mrs. lu: No amount of your money can cancel out all these years of suffering. zhou puyuan: But you—

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(He is cut short by angry voices outside. lu dahai’s voice is heard shouting, “Get out of my way. I’m going in.” Then come the voices of several footmen: “Stop. You can’t go in. The master’s resting.” The noise of a struggle follows.) (Going to the center door) Come here, somebody! (A servant appears in the doorway.) Who’s that making all that noise? servant: It’s that miner, Lu Dahai. He won’t be reasonable and insists on seeing you now, sir. zhou puyuan: I see. (Hesitating a moment) You’d better let him come in, then. Wait a minute: send someone upstairs for Master Ping. I want to see him. servant: Very good, sir. (He goes out through the center door.) zhou puyuan (to mrs. lu): Don’t be so stubborn, Shiping. If you don’t take the money, you’ll regret it one day. (mrs. lu looks at him without so much as a word. Three or four servants bring in lu dahai. He stands on the left with the servants clustering around him.) lu dahai (noticing his mother): Mom, I didn’t know you were still here. zhou puyuan (sizing him up): What’s your name? lu dahai: Don’t you put on airs with me. Are you trying to tell me you don’t know who I am? zhou puyuan: All I know is that you were the biggest troublemaker during the strike. lu dahai: Precisely. That’s why I’ve come to pay you a visit. zhou puyuan: What is it you want? lu dahai: As chairman of the board of directors, of course you know what I want. zhou puyuan (shaking his head): I’m afraid I don’t. lu dahai: We’ve come all this way from the mine, and since six o’clock this morning I’ve been cooling my heels in your porter’s lodge, just so that I can ask you, Mr. Chairman, what exactly you’re going to do about our demands. Do you accept them or not? zhou puyuan: Hm. What about the other three representatives, then? lu dahai: I’ll tell you: they’re busy contacting other trade unions. zhou puyuan: I see. But didn’t they tell you anything else? lu dahai: It’s none of your business what they told me. And now I want to know what exactly you think you’re playing at, blowing hot and cold all the time. (zhou ping comes in from the dining room. Seeing that his father has company, he turns to go.) zhou puyuan (catching sight of zhou ping): Don’t go, Ping. (He glances at mrs. lu.) zhou ping: Very well, Father. zhou puyuan (gesturing to one side): Come and stand here by me, Ping. (To lu dahai) You’ll find you need something more than just emotion if you’re going to be a negotiator.

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lu dahai: Humph! Don’t think I don’t know your tricks! I know them all. All this stalling is to give you time to buy over a few miserable scabs. You’re just keeping us here out of the way until you’ve done it. zhou puyuan: I must admit that your perception is not entirely groundless. lu dahai: But you’re wasting your time. The miners are solidly behind the strike this time, and they’re very well organized. We representatives are not here to beg you. Get that straight: we’re not here to beg you. If you accept our demands, well and good; if not, then the strike goes on until you do. We know just how long you can last out: two months, and you’ll have to close down. zhou puyuan: So you think all these representatives and leaders of yours are reliable, eh? lu dahai: At least they’re much more reliable than anybody in your money-grabbing corporation. zhou puyuan: Then let me show you something. (He looks for a telegram on the table. A servant hands it to him. Just at this moment zhou chong slips in from the study and stands there listening.) (Handing the telegram to lu dahai) This telegram came from the mine yesterday. lu dahai (reading it): What! They’ve gone back to work! (Putting the telegram down) Impossible, impossible. zhou puyuan: The miners went back yesterday morning. You mean to say you didn’t know, and you one of their representatives? lu dahai (outraged): So the mine police can get away with opening fire on the miners and killing thirty of them, eh? (He bursts out laughing) Hah, it’s a fake. You faked this telegram to break us up. What a dirty, low trick! zhou ping (unable to contain himself any longer): Who do you think you are? How dare you speak like that! zhou puyuan: You keep out of this! (To lu dahai) So you have complete faith in the other representatives who came with you, eh? lu dahai: All right, don’t waste your breath. I know what you’re getting at. zhou puyuan: Very well, then. What if I show you the written agreement to call off the strike? lu dahai (laughing): You needn’t try to bluff me; I wasn’t born yesterday. An agreement doesn’t mean a thing without the representatives’ signatures on it. zhou puyuan: Get the agreement. (A servant goes into the study and returns with a document, which he hands to zhou puyuan.) There you are: the agreement, complete with the signatures of the other three. lu dahai (looking at it): What! (Slowly, in a low voice) They’ve signed it. All three of them. How could they just sign like that, without consulting me? They can’t just ignore me like this! zhou puyuan: So there you are, you young fool. Shouting and blustering won’t get you anywhere. Experience is what you need. lu dahai: Where are the other three?

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zhou puyuan: They caught a train back last night. lu dahai (as the scales finally fall from his eyes): So the three of them have doublecrossed me, the spineless rats! And sold their mates, too! So your money’s done the trick again, you shameless members of the board of directors! zhou ping (angered): You scoundrel! zhou puyuan: Hold your tongue. (Turning back to lu dahai) You’re no longer in a position to speak to me, Lu Dahai—you’ve been fired by the mine. lu dahai: Fired? zhou chong: That’s not fair, Father. zhou puyuan (turning to zhou chong): You shut up and get out! (zhou chong storms out through the center door.) lu dahai: Okay, very well. (Grinding his teeth) Your dirty tricks are nothing new to me. You’d do anything that could bring you money. You get the police to mow down your men, and then you— zhou puyuan: How dare you! mrs. lu (going over to lu dahai): Come on, let’s go. That’s enough. lu dahai: Yes, and I know all about your record too! When you contracted to build that bridge over the river at Harbin, you intentionally breached the dike— zhou puyuan (harshly): Get out of here! servants (tugging at lu dahai): Come on! Go! Go! lu dahai (to the servants): Take your hands off me, you bastards! Yes, I want to speak. You drowned two thousand two hundred coolies in cold blood, and for each life lost you raked in three hundred dollars! I tell you, Zhou, you’ve made your money by killing people, and for your ill-gotten wealth you and your sons are damned for ever! And now you’re still— zhou ping (hurling himself on lu dahai and striking him twice in the face): Take that, you rascal! (lu dahai returns a blow but is seized and held by the servants.) Give him what for! lu dahai (to zhou ping): You, you—! (The servants set upon him. Blood appears on his face. mrs. lu shields lu dahai, crying and protesting.) zhou puyuan (harshly): Stop! Leave him alone! (The servants stop but still keep hold of lu dahai.) lu dahai: Let go of me, you hooligans! zhou ping (to the servants): Take him away! mrs. lu (breaking down): Yes, you are a bunch of hooligans! (Going across to zhou ping) You’re my—mighty free with your fists! What right d’you have to hit my son? zhou ping: Who are you? mrs. lu: I’m your—your victim’s mother. lu dahai: Take no notice of the rat, Mom. You don’t want them to lay their hands on you, too.

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mrs. lu (staring dazedly at zhou ping’s face, then bursting into tears again): Oh, Dahai, let’s go! Let’s get out of here! (She holds on to lu dahai’s injured head and keeps on crying. lu dahai is escorted out by the servants, followed by mrs. lu. Only zhou puyuan and zhou ping remain on the stage.) zhou ping (apologetically): Father. zhou puyuan: You were a bit too rash. zhou ping: But the fellow had no right to throw mud at you like that. (Pause.) zhou puyuan: Did your mother see Dr. Kramer? zhou ping: Yes, but he couldn’t find anything wrong with her. zhou puyuan: Hm. (Lost in thought for a while, then, abruptly) Here, somebody! (A servant comes in through the center door.) Tell the mistress to check the pay for Lu Gui and Sifeng. They’ve been fired. servant: Yes, sir. zhou ping: But what have they done wrong? zhou puyuan: Aren’t you aware that this fellow we had here just now is also a Lu, Sifeng’s brother, in fact? zhou ping (taken aback): That fellow’s Sifeng’s brother? But, Father— zhou puyuan (to the servant): Tell the mistress that the office is to give Lu Gui and Sifeng two months’ extra pay, but they must leave the house today. That’s all. (The servant goes out through the dining room.) zhou ping: But, Father, Sifeng and Lu Gui have both been excellent servants, and very loyal. zhou puyuan: Mm. (Yawning) I’m tired. Think I’ll go and have a rest in the study. Tell them to bring me a cup of Pu’er tea—strong. zhou ping: Yes, Father. (zhou puyuan goes into the study.) (Heaving a sigh) Phew! (He hurries toward the center door. Just at that moment zhou chong comes in through the same door.) zhou chong (anxiously): Ping, where’s Sifeng? zhou ping: I’ve no idea. zhou chong: Is it true that Father wants to fire her? zhou ping: Yes, and Lu Gui, too. zhou chong: Even if her brother did upset Father, he got beaten up for it, didn’t he? No point in taking it out on the girl, is there? zhou ping: Go and ask Father. zhou chong: It’s just outrageous. zhou ping: Yes, isn’t it? zhou chong: Where is Father? zhou ping: In the study.

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(zhou chong goes into the study, leaving zhou ping pacing up and down. lu sifeng comes in through the center door, drying her eyes.) (Hurrying across to her) I’m sorry, Sifeng. I really had no idea who he was. (lu sifeng gestures helplessly. Her heart is too full for words.) But your brother shouldn’t have said such wild things, either. lu sifeng: No use bringing it up again. It’s all wrong. (She makes straight for the dining room.) zhou ping: Where are you going now? lu sifeng: I’m going to pack my things. It’s goodbye now. Since you’ll be leaving tomorrow, I may never see you again. zhou ping: No, don’t go. (He stands in her way.) lu sifeng: No, let me go. Don’t you know we’ve already been fired? zhou ping (hurt): Feng, you—will you forgive me? lu sifeng: No, no, don’t say that. I’m not blaming you. I knew it would end up like this sooner or later. But don’t come to see me tonight, whatever you do. zhou ping: But—what about the future? lu sifeng: Well—we’ll just have to wait and see. zhou ping: But, Sifeng, I will see you this evening—I must. I’ve got so many things to talk over with you. Sifeng, you— lu sifeng: No. Whatever happens you mustn’t come. zhou ping: Then you’ll have to find some other way to see me. lu sifeng: There isn’t any other way. Can’t you see how things are? zhou ping: Then I’ll have no choice but to come. lu sifeng: No, you mustn’t. Don’t be a fool. I absolutely forbid you— (zhou fanyi enters from the dining room.) Oh, ma’am. zhou fanyi: Oh, I didn’t know you two were here. (To lu sifeng) Your father’s gone for the electrician. He’ll be back shortly. I’ll have him take your things home for you. Or else one of the servants can come—where do you live? lu sifeng: No. 10, Apricot Blossom Lane. zhou fanyi: Don’t let it upset you. You can come and see me whenever you’re free, as often as you like. Yes, I’ll have one of the servants take your things along. No. 10, Apricot Blossom Lane, did you say? lu sifeng: Yes. Thank you, ma’am. mrs. lu’s voice: Sifeng! Sifeng! lu sifeng: Yes, Mom? I’m in here. (mrs. lu comes in through the center door.) mrs. lu: Come on, Sifeng, pack up your things and let’s go. It’s going to pour. (There is the noise of wind, and distant thunder approaching.) lu sifeng: All right, Mom. mrs. lu (to zhou fanyi): I’ll have to say goodbye to you now, ma’am. (To her daughter) Thank your mistress for everything, Sifeng.

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lu sifeng (dropping a curtsy to zhou fanyi): Thank you, ma’am! (She gazes tearfully at zhou ping, who slowly turns his head away. mrs. lu and lu sifeng go out through the center door. The sounds of wind and thunder grow louder.) zhou fanyi: Now, Ping, what were you and Sifeng talking about just now? zhou ping: You’ve no right to ask me that. zhou fanyi: Ping, don’t imagine she could ever understand you. zhou ping: What do you mean? zhou fanyi: Don’t try and put me off with lies again. I want to know where you said you were going. zhou ping: It’s none of your business. It’s beneath your self-respect to ask a thing like that. zhou fanyi: You must tell me: where is it you’re planning to go tonight? zhou ping: I—(abruptly) I’m going to see her. Now, what are you going to do about it? zhou fanyi (menacingly): Do you realize who she is and who you are? zhou ping: No. All I know is that I’m really in love with her now, and that she loves me in return. I’m well aware that you’ve known all about it all the time. Since you now want to have it out in the open, there’s no need to conceal it from you any longer. zhou fanyi: To think of a well-educated young man like you carrying on with such a low- class girl, a mere servant’s daughter— zhou ping (exploding): How dare you! Who are you to call her low- class, you of all people! zhou fanyi (with a sneer): Oh, be careful. Careful! Don’t drive a disappointed woman too hard. She’s capable of anything. zhou ping: I’m prepared for the worst. zhou fanyi: All right. Go, then! But be careful—(looking out of the window, half to herself, hinting ominously) the storm’s coming! zhou ping (understanding her): Thank you. I know. (zhou puyuan comes in from the study.) zhou puyuan: What are you all talking about? zhou ping: I was just telling Mother what had happened. zhou puyuan: Have they gone? zhou fanyi: Yes. zhou puyuan: Fanyi, I’ve gone and made Chong cry again. Call him out and calm him down, would you? zhou fanyi (going across to the door of the study): Chong! Chong! (Receiving no answer, she goes into the study. Outside, wind and thunder howl and roar. zhou puyuan goes over to the window. A shrieking gust of wind sends flowerpots on the windowsill outside crashing to the ground.) Ping, the flowerpots have been blown down by the wind. Tell the servants to hurry up and close the shutters. Looks like a big storm’s coming. zhou ping: Yes, Father. (He goes out through the center door. zhou puyuan stands in front of the window, watching the lightning outside.) (Curtain.)

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A CT 3 (Inside lu gui’s house—at No. 10, Apricot Blossom Lane. First let us look at the scene outside the house: The station clock has struck ten, and the people of Apricot Blossom Lane, old and young, are taking the air along the banks of a pond that, although it is the source of evil exhalations drawn up by the summer sun in the daytime, provides late at night an open space where one may catch the fresh, cool breezes from the less- crowded area of the foreign concessions.7 Despite a sharp downpour a moment ago, it is still unbearably hot and close, and the sky is dark with thunderclouds, black and ominous. It is the sort of weather that makes people feel like sun-scorched blades of grass moistened by a light dew during the night but still parched inside and thirsting for another thunderstorm. Yet the frogs that crouch among the reeds by the pond are as untiringly strident as ever. The voices of those hanging out there come in desultory snatches. From time to time a silent flash of lightning splashes the starless sky with a harsh blue glare and for one startled moment shows us the weeping willows by the pond, drooping and trembling over the water. Then, just as suddenly, it is dark again. One by one, the air-takers drift away and silence closes in on all sides. A rumble of distant thunder seems to cow even the frogs into silence; a breeze springs up again and sifts through the rustling leaves of the willows. From some echoing alleyway comes the lonely, frantic barking of stray dogs. Presently the lightning blazes again, stark and terrifying. Then a jarring burst of thunder goes shuddering across the sky. In its wake comes a close, oppressive silence, broken only by the occasional croaking of a frog and, what is louder, the sharp clack of a night watchman’s bamboo clappers. A storm is about to break. And when it does, it will last right through to the final curtain. All the audience can see, however, is the interior of lu sifeng’s room. (It is, in fact, the back room of lu gui’s two-roomed hut.) Of the scene just described, apart from the sounds, the audience can see only what is visible through the window in the middle of the back wall. Now let us examine lu sifeng’s room. The Lus have just finished their evening meal. All four of them are in a bad mood, and each of them is occupied with his or her own thoughts. lu dahai is sitting in a corner cleaning something. mrs. lu and lu sifeng keep an uncomfortable silence. The former, her head bent, is clearing away the bowls and chopsticks from the round table in the center of the room. A fuddled lu gui sits slumped back like a monkey in a rickety easy chair on the left. He stares at his wife from bloodshot eyes and hiccups. He puts his bare feet now on the staves of the chair, now on the floor with his legs sprawled wide apart. He wears a white T-shirt, sweat-soaked and clinging. He fans himself incessantly with a palm-leaf fan. lu sifeng is standing in front of the window. Her back is toward the audience as she stares anxiously out. From outside the window comes the croaking of the frogs and the lighthearted voices of passersby. She seems to be listening uneasily for something, and

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from time to time she looks around at her father and then looks swiftly away again in disgust. Next to her, standing against the left wall, is a plank bed covered with a mat and a spotless double quilt. A mat pillow and a palm-leaf fan are neatly placed on it. The room is very small and, as is always the case in the houses of the poor, the ceiling comes oppressively low overhead. On the wall over the end of the bed hangs an illustrated poster advertising a brand of cigarettes, while on the left-hand wall is pasted an old reproduction originally put up as a New Year decoration and now very tattered and torn. A small table stands by the only chair in the room—now occupied by lu gui—with a mirror, a comb, and various cheap cosmetics on it: apparently lu sifeng’s dressing table. Along the left-hand wall stands a bench, and by the table in the middle of the room there is a solitary stool. At the foot of lu sifeng’s bed, there is a trunk draped with a white cloth and with several pairs of fashionable shoes, a teapot, and several cheap bowls on it. An oil lamp with a bright red paper lampshade stands on the round table. The light is not very strong, yet one sees enough of the articles on the table to know that it is a woman’s bedroom. The room has two doors, of which the one on the left—the side where the bed is—is no more than a gaudily patterned red curtain hanging over a recess that, besides providing storage space for a heap of coal and bits of old furniture, also serves as lu sifeng’s dressing room. The door on the right is of cracked and battered planks and leads to the front room. This is lu gui’s room, and it is in this front room that he and his wife will sleep tonight. From the front room a door opens on the muddy path leading to the edge of the pond. Just inside the door between the two rooms, leaning against the wall, are several long planks with which to make an extra bed. When the curtain rises, lu gui has just delivered a voluble and highly colorful lecture to his family. In the tense silence following this spirited outburst one can hear the strains of some indelicate love song coming from the direction of the pond, mingled with the murmur of conversation from the people outside relaxing in the cool of the evening. Inside the room, the four heads are bent in silent preoccupation. Hard drinking and the effort involved in the delivery of such a forceful lecture have bathed lu gui in perspiration from head to foot, and now he sits with slobbering lips and his face an ugly red. He is apparently reveling in his position of authority as head of the family, judging by the gusto with which he brandishes his tattered palm-leaf fan and the way he points and gestures with it. His sweat-soaked, fleshy head is thrust forward and his glazed eyes swing from one member of his family to another. lu dahai is still busy cleaning the object in his hand, which the audience now sees to be a pistol. The two women wait in silence for lu gui to launch another shrill tirade against them. The croaking of the frogs and the voice of a street singer now drift in through the window. Still standing in front of the window, lu sifeng now and then heaves a deep sigh.) lu gui (coughing): Darned! (Spits on the dirt floor, heatedly) Just look at you. There’s not one of you can look me in the face! (Turning to lu dahai and lu sifeng.) It’s no good your pretending not to hear, either. I’ve worked my fingers to the bone to

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bring you two up, both of you, but what have either of you ever done to show your gratitude? (To lu dahai) Eh? (To lu sifeng) Answer me that! (To mrs. lu, who is standing by the round table in the center, triumphantly) Or perhaps you can tell me, since they’re your darling children? (He spits on the floor again. Silence. From outside comes the sound of someone singing to the accompaniment of a Chinese fiddle.) lu dahai (to lu sifeng): Who’s that still singing at this time of night? It’s almost half past ten. lu sifeng (listlessly): Oh, some blind man and his wife. They’re here every day. Street singers. (She heaves a faint sigh as she fans herself.) lu gui: All my life I’ve just had one patch of bad luck after another, and every time it’s been because some miserable nobody has put a spoke in my wheel. Just when I’d been with the Zhous two years and got my children fixed up with good jobs, you (pointing at his wife) came along and messed it all up. Every time you come home there’s trouble. Look at what happened today: I go out to get an electrician and when I get back what do I find? Sifeng’s lost her job and I got uprooted, too. If you hadn’t come home, damn you (pointing at her again), all this would never have happened! lu dahai (putting down the revolver): If you want to cuss me, just go ahead. There’s no need to beat around the bush and take it out on Mom. lu gui: Me cussing you? As if I’d dare cussing a young gentleman like you! You have the guts to cuss rich people in their face! Me cussing you? lu dahai (losing patience with him): You get two or three drinks down your throat and then you go and shoot your mouth off. It’s been half an hour now. Can’t you give us a break? lu gui: A break? No way! I’ve had a bellyful of wrongs and now you want me to take a break? Oh no, I haven’t finished yet! It’s not as if your old dad had always been a servant. There was a time when I had people waiting on me. I lived like a lord wining and dining and womanizing—what didn’t I have? But from the day I married your mother, I started going to rack and ruin, each day from bad to worse. Yes, from bad to worse . . . lu sifeng: You know very well it was gambling that ruined you! lu dahai: Take no notice of him. Let him babble on. lu gui (carried away by his own eloquence, as if he had been the only one to have suffered): I tell you I’ve been going to rack and ruin, from bad to worse. I’ve been trampled upon by them, and I’ve been trampled upon by you. And now, I don’t even have a workplace where I can be trampled upon! I’ve just got to stay here and starve to death with you! Now just ask yourselves, what have you ever done for me that you can be proud of ? (He suddenly finds that he has nothing to rest his legs on.) Shiping, bring that stool over here for me to put my legs on. lu dahai (frowning discouragement at his mother): No, Mom!

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(Nevertheless, mrs. lu brings the only stool in the room anyway and places it at lu gui’s feet. He puts his legs on it.) lu gui (looking across at lu dahai): And who’s to blame for it all? If you have to go and call people names and upset them, it’s only natural that they’re going to fire us. I can’t help being your father, can I? Now just think, Dahai. Think of me, an old man, having to starve to death because of you. Would you have anything to say to clear yourself ? Eh? What if I did die like this? lu dahai (rising, unable to contain himself any longer. loudly): Get on with it and die, then! Who do you think you are, anyway? lu gui (brought back to earth with a jolt): Well, I’ll be darned! mrs. lu and lu sifeng (together): Dahai! lu gui (awed by lu dahai’s tall, muscular body and the gun in his hand, smiling nervously): Well, well! Doesn’t the kid have a temper! (After a pause) But you know what, come to think of it, it’s not all Dahai’s fault. There isn’t a single decent Zhou in the whole of their family. I’ve been with them two years, and what I haven’t found out about their little antics isn’t worth knowing. Still, it’s always the same for people with plenty of money—they can get away with anything. The worse they behave the more respectable they pretend to be. The more civilized their language, the filthier their minds! Shit! Look at the way they carried on when I left this afternoon. There they were, both of them, trying to smooth me down with their soft soap. Well, just you wait and see! They think I don’t know about the goings- on in the house! lu sifeng (afraid he may create a scandal): Dad! Don’t you, don’t you go back to the Zhous’. lu gui (with a swagger): Ha! Tomorrow I’m going to make a public statement and tell it all about the lady of the house and the oldest son. That should bring the old man himself to his knees to beg for my mercy, that ungrateful old bastard! (He coughs with satisfaction.) Shit! (Spits on the floor again; to his daughter) Where’s my tea? lu sifeng: I think you must be drunk, Dad. Didn’t you see me put it on the table for you a minute ago? lu gui (picking up the cup, inspecting it, and turning back to lu sifeng): What’s this, my lady? Plain water? (He empties the cup on the floor.) lu sifeng (coldly): Of course it is. There isn’t any tea. lu gui (disgruntled): Bullshit! Don’t you know I always have a nice cup of tea after my dinner! lu dahai (sarcastically): Well, well, so Daddy would like tea after his dinner. (To lu sifeng) What do you mean, Sifeng, upsetting Father like that? You should have made him a pot of Dragon Well tea—it’s only four dollars eighty an ounce. lu sifeng: Dragon Well! Why, there isn’t even a pinch of tea dust in the house. lu dahai (to lu gui): Hear that? You’ll have to make do with boiled water and lump it, and stop being so damned fussy.

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(He pours out a cup of boiled water, puts it on the table beside lu gui, then walks away.) lu gui: This is my house, and if you don’t like it you can clear out. lu dahai (advancing on him): Now, you— mrs. lu (holding him back): No, don’t do anything, there’s a good boy. Don’t quarrel with him, for my sake. lu gui: You really think you’re somebody, don’t you! You haven’t been here two days before you start all this trouble, and before I’ve even breathed a word about it you’re threatening to attack me! Go on, get out of my sight! lu dahai (keeping his temper): Mom, I’m not staying here any longer if he goes on like this. I got to go. mrs. lu: Don’t be silly. It’s going to rain any minute. Where would you go, anyway? lu dahai: I’ve got some business to take care of. If I don’t pull it off, I’ll probably go rickshaw-pulling. mrs. lu: Now look here, Dahai— lu gui: Out he goes. Don’t stop him. He’s just a worthless pauper! He can get out. Right out. Go on! lu dahai: You’d better watch it. Don’t get me too riled. lu gui (brazening it out): Don’t forget your mother’s here. You wouldn’t dare do a thing to your dad, would you? You bastard! lu dahai: What was that? Who do you think you’re swearing at? lu gui: At you, you— mrs. lu (to lu gui): Now shut up and stop making such an exhibition of yourself. lu gui: Me make an exhibition of myself ? Look who’s talking! At least I didn’t produce bastards—and take one of them along—(pointing at lu dahai) into a marriage. mrs. lu (hurt and incensed): Oh, my God! lu dahai (drawing his pistol): I’ll—I’ll kill you for that, you old dog! lu gui (leaping to his feet, he dashes to the inner room and stands petrified, shouting): A gun! A gun! A gun! lu sifeng (rushing across to lu dahai and seizing his wrist): Dahai! mrs. lu: Put it down, Dahai. lu dahai (to lu gui): Now, tell Mother you’re in the wrong, and promise that you’ll never say such vile things to her again. lu gui: Er— lu dahai (taking a step forward): Say it! lu gui (intimidated): If—if—if you put that gun down first. lu dahai (angrily): No. You say it first. lu gui: All right. (To mrs. lu) It was wrong of me, and I’ll never say such vile things to you again. lu dahai (pointing to the only chair in the room): And sit over there again! lu gui (completely deflated, he sits down on the chair, hangs his head, and mutters to himself ): Bastard! lu dahai: Humph! You’re not worth my wasting my energy on!

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mrs. lu: Put that gun down, Dahai. lu dahai (putting it down and smiling): Don’t worry, Mom. I only wanted to scare him. mrs. lu: Give it to me. Where did you get it from? lu dahai: I brought it from the mine. Police dropped it in the scuffle when they fired on us. mrs. lu: What are you carrying it around on you now for? lu dahai: No particular reason. mrs. lu: Oh yes. Now tell me. lu dahai (smiling cruelly): It’s nothing, really. But if the Zhous drive me to the wall, this will be one way out. mrs. lu: Nonsense. Give it to me. lu dahai (protesting): Mom! mrs. lu: I told you at dinner. Our family’s finished with the Zhous, and we’ll never mention them again. lu dahai (quietly and slowly): And what about the blood they spilled at the mine? What about the slap in the face I got from that young Mr. Zhou? You expect me to forget these things just like that? mrs. lu: Yes, I do. You can never get these scores settled. Once you start taking revenge, there’ll be no end to it. It’s all fate. I’d rather see my son suffer a little. lu dahai: It’s all right for you, Mom, but I— mrs. lu (raising her voice): Now, listen to me, Dahai. You’re my dearest child, and I’ve never talked to you like this before. But let me tell you this: if you hurt any of the Zhous—I don’t care whether it’s the master or the young gentlemen—if you so much as lay a hand on any of them, I’ll have nothing more to do with you so long as I live. lu dahai (pleading): But Mom— mrs. lu (decisively): You should know what I’m like by now. If you go and do the one thing I just couldn’t bear you to do, I’ll kill myself before your eyes. lu dahai (heaving a long sigh): Oh no, Mom—(looking up, then lowering his head) then I’ll hate—I’ll hate them for the rest of my life. mrs. lu (sighing): God, you can’t blame me for that. (To lu dahai) Give me that gun. (lu dahai refuses.) Give it to me! (She goes up to him and seizes the pistol.) lu dahai (hurt): But Mom, you— lu sifeng: Let Mom have it, Dahai. lu dahai: Okay. You take it, then. But you’ve got to tell me where you put it. mrs. lu: Very well, I’ll put it in this chest here. (She puts it in the chest by the bed.) But—(looking at lu dahai) I’ll take it to the police and hand it in first thing tomorrow morning. lu gui: Quite right. That’s the most sensible thing you can do. lu dahai: You shut up!

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mrs. lu: Dahai, you mustn’t speak to your father like that. lu dahai (looking at lu gui, then turning back to mrs. lu): Well, Mom, I’m off now. I’ll go down to the rickshaw depot and see if I can find any of my old mates. mrs. lu: Go on, then. But you must be sure to come back. We can’t have all the family falling out with one another like this. lu dahai: All right. I’ll come straight back. (He goes out through the outer room on the right. The sound of his closing the outer door is heard. lu gui stands up to see lu dahai go, and then returns resentfully to the side of the table.) lu gui (muttering to himself ): The bastard! (Turning to mrs. lu) Why didn’t you buy some tea? I told you to, didn’t I? mrs. lu: We can’t afford it. lu gui: But, Sifeng, where’s my money—the wages you brought from the Zhous’ this afternoon? lu sifeng: You mean the two months’ extra pay? lu gui: Yes. There should be sixty dollars altogether. lu sifeng (realizing that he will have to be told the truth sooner or later): It’s all gone. To pay off your debts. lu gui: What do you mean, “all gone”? lu sifeng: That fellow Zhao was here again not long ago. Wouldn’t go away till we’d paid off your gambling debts. So Mom gave him the money. lu gui (turning to mrs. lu): The whole sixty dollars? You gave him the lot? mrs. lu: Yes. That means that your latest gambling debts are all paid off. lu gui (really anxious now): Darn! No wonder you’ve ruined me, if that’s the way you carry on. What’s this—is this the time to pay off debts? mrs. lu (calmly): It’s better to have all your debts paid. I’ve decided to give up this house. lu gui: You’ve what? mrs. lu: I’m thinking of going back to Jinan in three days. lu gui: But when you’ve gone there’ll still be Sifeng and myself here. We’ll still need the place even if you don’t. mrs. lu: I’m taking Sifeng with me this time. I’m not going to leave her here on her own anymore. lu gui (smiling at lu sifeng): Hear that, Sifeng? Your mother wants to take you away with her. mrs. lu: When I went away last time, I didn’t know how this job of mine would turn out. I was going to a strange place and I didn’t have any friends there. Here she’d at least have Mrs. Zhang next door to look after her, so naturally I didn’t take her with me. Now that I know my job’s a steady one, and she’s lost her job here, so why shouldn’t I take her with me? lu sifeng (alarmed): So you—you really want to take me with you? mrs. lu (in a pained voice): Yes. Mom will never leave you on your own anymore. lu gui: Here, hold on. We’ll have to talk all this over properly first.

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mrs. lu: What’s there to talk about? If you want to come with us, we can all go together. But you won’t find any of your cronies there. lu gui: Of course I’m not coming with you. But I still don’t see why you should want to take Sifeng with you. mrs. lu: It’s only natural that a girl should be with her mother. I had to leave her here last time because I had no choice. lu gui (glibly): If Sifeng stays with me she’ll have all the goodies in life and she’ll only mix with the best people. If she goes with you, her life will be miserable. So what’s the point? mrs. lu (giving him up as hopeless): Oh, it’s no good talking to you. You just won’t understand. You’d better ask her if she wants to come with me or stay with you. lu gui: She wants to stay with me, of course. mrs. lu: Ask her! lu gui (confident of winning): Come here, Sifeng. Now, you’ve heard what it’s all about. Well, which way do you want to go? It’s all up to you. You want to go with your mother, or stay here with me? (lu sifeng turns around, her face streaming with tears.) Well, I’ll be—what are you crying for? mrs. lu: Oh, Feng, my poor child! lu gui: Well, come on. It’s not as if you were being married off! Say who you want to go with. mrs. lu (comforting her): That’s all right, Feng, you can tell me. You promised to come with me a little while ago, but perhaps you’ve changed your mind now? Tell me, my dear, tell me truly. I’ll still love you whichever way you choose. lu gui: You see, you’ve upset her with all your talk about taking her with you. I happen to know that she can’t tear herself away from this place. (He smiles.) lu sifeng (to lu gui): Oh, go away! (To her mother) Don’t ask me, Mom. I feel so sad. Oh, Mom, Mom! I am coming with you. Oh, Mom! (She flings herself sobbing into her mother’s arms.) mrs. lu: There, there, my dear. I know you’ve had a bad time of it today. lu gui: See what I mean? She’s too much of a lady with her little scenes. She’ll find it tough going if she goes with you. mrs. lu (to her husband): Be quiet, you. (To lu sifeng) It’s Mom’s fault. I’m sorry, Feng, Mom was born under the wrong star. But don’t feel miserable. From now on you’ll be with me, and no one will dare to bully you. My own dear child! (lu dahai enters from the right.) lu dahai: Mrs. Zhang’s back now, Mom. I just ran into her. mrs. lu: Did you say anything to her about selling our furniture? lu dahai: Yes, I did mention that. She said she can help. mrs. lu: Did you find anybody you know down at the rickshaw depot? lu dahai: Yes, but I’ll have to go out again to find a guarantor. mrs. lu: I’ll come with you. I won’t be a minute, Sifeng, I’ll be right back.

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lu dahai (to lu gui): Are you sobering up yet? (To mrs. lu) I won’t be home tonight. (He and his mother go out together.) lu gui (following them out with his eyes): Humph! Shit! (Noticing that lu sifeng has gone back to her place at the window, he turns to her) Well, that’s your mother out of the way, Sifeng. Now, tell me, what are you going to do? (lu sifeng sighs but pays him no attention. She stands listening to the frogs outside and the rumble of distant thunder.) (Scornfully) Seems you’ve got quite a load on your mind. lu sifeng (covering it up): What load? It’s the weather, so stuffy. lu gui: You can’t fool me. Ever since dinner you’ve been miles away, just staring into space. What’s worrying you? lu sifeng: Nothing. lu gui (playing sentimental): Feng, you’re my clever child, my only daughter. If you go away with your mother, I’ll be left here all on my own. lu sifeng: Please don’t go on. I feel all mixed up inside as it is. (There is a flicker of lightning outside.) Listen, it’s thundering now. lu gui: Don’t change the subject, child. Have you really made up your mind to go to Jinan with your mother? lu sifeng: Yes. (She heaves a short sigh.) lu gui (singing dispiritedly): Flowers blossom, flowers die, Another year’s passing by. Spring’s youth come and gone, Life’s short, time moves on. Ai! (Suddenly) You know, Sifeng, we’re only young once, and we have to make the most of it. And opportunity only knocks once. lu sifeng: Oh, please go. I’m ready for bed. lu gui (letting down the bait): You don’t have to worry about your job at the Zhous’. With me on your side, we’ll get right back there tomorrow. (Insinuating) Do you really believe you could tear yourself away from a nice place like that? Could you really let go of the Zhous? lu sifeng (afraid): You’d better stop talking and go to bed! Look, everybody’s gone home outside. Why don’t you go to bed? lu gui: Don’t you be a little idiot. (For once from his heart) You can’t trust anyone in this world. Money’s the only real thing. What a shame, you and your mother are the only ones who don’t see the good of money. lu sifeng: Listen. I thought I heard a knock. (A knock is heard at the front door.)

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lu gui: Who can it be at this time of night? It’s nearly eleven. lu sifeng: Let me go and see, Dad. lu gui: No, I’ll go. (Opening the door on the right halfway) Who is it? voice outside: Hello! Is this where the Lus live? lu gui: Yes. What do you want? voice: I’ve come to see someone. lu gui: Who are you? voice: My name’s Zhou. lu gui (his face lighting up): There you are! What did I say? Somebody from the Zhous’. lu sifeng (alarmed, hastily): No, Dad. Tell him there’s nobody at home. lu gui: Eh? (Throwing her a shrewd glance) What’s the idea? (He goes out. lu sifeng hurriedly straightens up the room as best she can. She puts some of the things away into the curtained recess on the left, then stands in the right-hand corner, waiting for the visitor. In the meantime, zhou chong can be heard in conversation with lu gui. After a moment they both come in.) zhou chong (delighted to find lu sifeng there): Why, Sifeng! lu sifeng (looking at him, puzzled): Master Chong! lu gui (smiling obsequiously): I hope you don’t mind, sir. This isn’t much of a place to welcome you to. zhou chong (laughing): Really wasn’t easy to find this place. You’ve got quite a stretch of water outside—quite nice. lu gui: You must take a seat, Master Chong. Sifeng (pointing to the round table), bring the good chair over here. zhou chong (struck by lu sifeng’s silence): What’s the matter, Sifeng? Are you feeling unwell or something? lu sifeng: I’m all right. (Behaving flawlessly) Master Chong, why did you have to come here? If the mistress finds out, you’ll— zhou chong: But it was Mom who sent me. lu gui (not sure if he understands): The mistress herself sent you? zhou chong: Yes, but I wanted to see you all in any case. (To lu sifeng) Where are your brother and your mother? lu gui: They’ve gone out. lu sifeng: How did you find out where we live? zhou chong (naively): Mom told me. I didn’t expect to find such a lot of water outside. And it’s so slippery after the rain. You have to be careful in the dark, otherwise you might soon fall into the water. lu gui: I hope you didn’t do anything like that, Master Chong? zhou chong: Oh no. I came in our own rickshaw. Great fun. (His eyes stray around the room and finally come to rest on lu sifeng; beaming at her) So this is where you live! lu sifeng: I think you’d better hurry up and get back. lu gui: What!

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zhou chong (suddenly): Oh yes, I almost forgot what I came for. Mom says she’s rather concerned about you all now that you’ve left. She was afraid you might not be able to find a job right away, so she’s sent a hundred dollars for your mother. (He produces the money.) lu sifeng: What! lu gui (taking this to be an act of conciliation on the part of the Zhou family, he smiles smugly at lu sifeng): You see how kind and generous they are? After all, you know, they are people of wealth. lu sifeng: No, Master Chong. Please thank the mistress for us, but we can manage all right on our own. Please take it back. lu gui (turning to lu sifeng): Wait, what do you think you’re saying? See how kind the mistress’s been in sending Master Chong in person to deliver her gift to us! How could we not accept such kindness? (He takes the money.) Give Mrs. Zhou our best regards and tell her we’re all fine. Tell her not to worry about us, and thank her for everything. lu sifeng (obstinately): Dad, this will never do. lu gui: You’re too young to understand. lu sifeng: Mom and Dahai would never let you keep the money if you did take it. lu gui (ignoring her and turning to zhou chong): Thank you for coming all this way. I’ll be off and buy you some fruit. Just take a seat and Sifeng will keep you company. Please excuse me. lu sifeng: Dad, you mustn’t go! That won’t do! lu gui: Stop talking and pour Master Chong a cup of tea. I won’t be long. (He hurries out.) zhou chong (ambiguously): May as well let him go. lu sifeng (with loathing): Ugh! It’s sickening! (Displeased) What business is it of yours to come here with money? zhou chong: You—er—you don’t seem particularly pleased to see me. What’s the matter? I’ll watch my mouth from now on. lu sifeng (making conversation): Has the master had his dinner yet? zhou chong: Yes, he’s just finished. He lost his temper again, and Mom rushed upstairs before she’d finished eating. She was in a tearing rage. I went up to her and spent a long time trying to cheer her up. I could have gotten here a bit earlier. lu sifeng (casually): How’s Master Ping? zhou chong: I haven’t seen him, but I know he’s pretty upset. He’s been drinking in his room again, so he’s probably drunk by now. lu sifeng: Oh! (She heaves a sigh) Why couldn’t you send one of the servants around with the money? There was no need for you to come to this slum of ours yourself. zhou chong (earnestly): You’ve got a grudge against us now, isn’t that true? (Shamefaced) That was a bad business today. It made me feel ashamed to see you folks treated like that. You mustn’t think Ping really meant any harm. He’s terribly sorry for what he did. He’s still very fond of you, you know.

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lu sifeng: Master Chong. Please remember that I’m not one of your family’s servants now. zhou chong: But can’t we always remain good friends? lu sifeng: I’m going back with my mother. To Jinan. zhou chong: No, don’t go yet. We can get you and your father back with us sooner or later. By the time we’ll have moved into our new house, Father will probably have gone back to the mine. Then you can come back to us, and I’ll be so glad to have you back! lu sifeng: You’ve got a good heart, really. zhou chong: Sifeng, you mustn’t let a little thing like this upset you. The world is such a big place. You should go to school, and then you’d learn that there have been lots of people like us in this world—putting up with suffering, working hard, and biding their time, and in the end enjoying happiness. lu sifeng: Ah, but a woman’s just a woman after all! (Suddenly) Listen! (The croaking of frogs is heard.) Why don’t the frogs go to sleep? Why are they still croaking in the middle of the night? zhou chong: No, you’re no ordinary woman. You’ve got strength, and you can put up with hardships. We’re still young. We’ve got all our lives ahead of us to work for the well-being of mankind. I hate this unequal society. I hate people who believe in tyranny. I loathe my father. You and I are in the same boat together—we’re both victims of oppression. lu sifeng: You must be thirsty, Master Chong. I’ll get you some tea. (She stands up to serve tea.) zhou chong: No, I’m all right. lu sifeng: Yes, let me wait on you once again. zhou chong: You mustn’t say things like that. The world as it is now should never have been in the first place. I’ve never thought of you as a servant. You’ve always been my older sister, my guide. Our world, the real world, is not this one. lu sifeng: You certainly know how to talk! zhou chong: Sometimes I forget the present—(dreamily) I forget my home, I forget you, I forget my mother—I even forget myself. It seems like a winter morning, with a clear, bright sky overhead . . . On the boundless sea there’s a little sailing boat, light as a gull. When the sea breeze gets stronger, and there’s a salty tang in the air, the white sails billow out like the wings of a hawk and the boat skims over the sea, just kissing the waves, racing toward the horizon. The sky is empty except for a few patches of white clouds floating lazily on the horizon. We sit in the bow, gazing ahead, because ahead of us is our world. lu sifeng: Us? zhou chong: Yes, you and me. We can fly—fly to a place that is truly clean and happy, a place where there is no conflict, no hypocrisy, no inequality, no—(lifting his head as though such a world were there before his eyes, then, abruptly) do you like it? lu sifeng: You’ve got a wonderful imagination.

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zhou chong (affectionately): Will you go there with me? You could even bring him, too, if you wanted to. lu sifeng: Who? zhou chong: The one you told me about yesterday, when you said your heart already belonged to another. I’m sure he must be just like you—someone nice and friendly. (lu dahai comes in.) lu sifeng: Hello, Dahai. lu dahai (coldly): What’s all this? zhou chong: Ah, Mr. Lu! lu sifeng: Master Chong from the Zhous’ has come around to see us. lu dahai: Oh. I didn’t expect to come in and find you two here. Where’s Father? lu sifeng: He’s gone out shopping. lu dahai (to zhou chong): Isn’t this strange—at this time of night—you, young master of the Zhou house, should want to come down to this wretched slum of ours—to see us! zhou chong: It was you that I really came to see. Would you want to—shake hands with me? (He offers his right hand.) lu dahai (disagreeably): I don’t understand these foreign habits. zhou chong (taking back his hand): Then, let me say this: I feel I owe you an apology. lu dahai: What for? zhou chong (blushing): This afternoon, at our house, when you— lu dahai (flaring up): Better not mention that! lu sifeng: Don’t be like that, Dahai. He’s come with the best of intentions—to offer us his sympathy. lu dahai: We’ve no use for your sympathy, Master Chong. We were born paupers and we’re used to being treated like that. We don’t need to have anybody coming here in the middle of the night to give us their sympathy. zhou chong: Oh, I think you’ve got me all wrong. lu dahai (distinctly): No I haven’t. There wasn’t a third person in this house: my sister was here, and you were here. What was this all about? zhou chong: I didn’t expect you to think along that line. lu dahai: But everybody would think along that line. (Turning to lu sifeng) You go out. lu sifeng: But, Dahai! lu dahai: Go and leave us on our own: I want to have a word with Master Chong. (lu sifeng makes no move.) Go on! (lu sifeng goes out slowly through the door on the left.) I’ve already had a chat with you, and I realize you’ve got a little more sense than the rest of your family. But remember this: if you ever come here again to—to show us your sympathies (with a sudden ferocity), I’ll break your leg!

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zhou chong: Break my leg? lu dahai (affirmatively): Yep. zhou chong (with a smile): But I don’t see how anybody can be offended by an offer of sympathy. lu dahai: There could never be any sympathy between you and me. Our stations in life are too far apart. zhou chong: I think your prejudices get the better of you sometimes, Dahai. It’s no crime to be wealthy, so why shouldn’t I make friends with you? lu dahai: You’re too young to understand. I’d be wasting my breath if I tried to explain any further. I’ll just say this much: you should never have come here. This is no place for you. zhou chong: But why? Only this morning you said you’d like to be friends with me, and I think Sifeng would like to be friends with me, too, so why won’t you even let me come and offer my help? lu dahai: Don’t imagine you’re doing us a good turn, Master Chong. They tell me you wanted to send Sifeng to school, that right? Well, she’s my sister, I know her. She’s just another gullible, ordinary young girl, with all her dreams of silk stockings and cars. zhou chong: Then you’ve got her wrong. lu dahai: No I don’t. The more she sees how you rich people live, the more confused she becomes. Your cars, your dance parties, your days of idleness—they’ve all quite dazed her over the last couple of years, so much so that she’s quite forgotten where she’s from. Now when she comes home she can feel unhappy about everything she sees. But she’s nothing but the daughter of a poor man, and her lot in life will be to marry somebody from her own class—a life of washing, cooking, and scavenging. Go to school, get an education, and then marry a rich guy? That’s the dream of a respectable young missy! Something we poor people can’t even afford to think about. zhou chong: There’s something to what you say, but— lu dahai: So, if you, young master and son of a mine owner, should really be concerned about Sifeng, then would you please have nothing more to do with her? zhou chong: I think you’re too prejudiced. Just because my father’s a mine owner, that’s no reason why you should— lu dahai (glaring at him): Now I’m warning you. zhou chong: Warning me? lu dahai: If I ever catch you here with my sister again, I’ll—(some of the tension suddenly goes out of him) oh, forget it, I just hope this will never happen again. It’s getting late. Time for bed. zhou chong: I—I never expected that you’d be like this about it. I never expected that what Father said would turn out to be right after all. lu dahai (grimly): Humph! (Exploding) Your father’s an old scoundrel! zhou chong: What! lu dahai: And your brother’s a— (lu sifeng comes running back into the room.)

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lu sifeng: Stop! Stop saying such things! (Pointing at lu dahai) I think you—you’re a monster! lu dahai: You, you’re an idiot! lu sifeng: I’ve nothing more to say to you! (To zhou chong) Now go, go. Don’t say another word to him. zhou chong (looking helplessly at lu dahai): All right, then, I’ll go. (To lu sifeng) I’m really terribly sorry. I didn’t know I’d only make things more unpleasant for you by coming here. lu sifeng: Forget it, and please go. This is no place for you. zhou chong: All right, I’m going. (To lu dahai) Goodbye. I forgive you. (Goodnaturedly) I’d still like to be friends with you. (Holding out his hand) Won’t you shake hands with me? (lu dahai ignores him and turns away.) lu sifeng: Humph! (Having nothing more to say, zhou chong makes for the door. Just then, lu gui comes in with fruit, wine, and various kinds of food. His face looks even more flushed than before, and he wobbles a little.) lu gui (seeing that zhou chong is leaving): What’s this? lu dahai: Get out of the way. He’s going. lu gui: No, wait, wait. Why are you rushing off like this, Master Chong? You’ve only just gotten here. lu sifeng (angrily): Ask Dahai! lu gui (guesses what’s happened; with a smile, to zhou chong): Don’t mind him. Stay a little longer, won’t you? zhou chong: No, I really am going. lu gui: But you’ll have something to eat first, won’t you, sir? I’ve been a long way to get these things for you. You will have a bite and a glass of wine before you go, won’t you? zhou chong: No, it’s getting late now. I’ve got to get home. lu dahai (to lu sifeng): Where did he get the money to buy all this stuff ? lu gui (turning around): It was my own money. I’d earned it myself. lu sifeng: No, you didn’t, Dad. It was money from the Zhous. And you’re squandering it. (Turning to lu dahai) Mrs. Zhou sent Mom a hundred dollars. Mom was out, and Dad took it. He wouldn’t listen to me. lu gui (looking daggers at lu sifeng, then turning to lu dahai): Master Chong brought it in person, so I couldn’t very well refuse it, could I? lu dahai (going up to zhou chong): So! You came to bring us money, did you? lu sifeng (to lu dahai): Now perhaps you’ll understand! lu gui (to lu dahai, obsequiously): You see what kindhearted people the Zhous are? lu dahai (turning to lu gui): Give me the money! lu gui (apprehensively): What for? lu dahai: Are you going to give it to me or aren’t you? (With menacing voice and eyes) If you don’t, just remember what’s in the chest there.

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lu gui (terrified): All right, you can have it! (He fishes the notes out of his pocket and hands them over to lu dahai) Here you are. A hundred dollars. lu dahai (after counting the notes): Ten dollars short. Well? lu gui (forcing a smile): Well—er—I—I spent it. zhou chong (not wishing to see any more): Well, bye. I’m off now. lu dahai (grasping his arm): Oh no, not yet. Don’t imagine we can be tricked as easily as that. zhou chong: What do you mean? lu dahai: Yes, I have the money, I have the money. Just ten dollars left in my pocket. (He produces some silver and small notes, then counts them.) Ten dollars exactly. Here’s your money back. We’ve no use for it. lu gui: This is outrageous! zhou chong: You don’t seem to be able to appreciate kindness. lu dahai: You’re quite right. I don’t. And I don’t understand your family’s hypocrisy and crocodile tears, and their— lu sifeng: Dahai! lu dahai: Take it away. Now get out. Go on, out! zhou chong (his illusions half shattered, he stands there lost for a moment, then suddenly picks up the money.) Okay, okay, I’m leaving, I’m sorry. lu dahai: Now I’m telling you: if any of you Zhous come here after this, I’ll kill you, whoever you are! zhou chong: Well, thank you! But I don’t suppose anyone else in the Zhou family would be as foolish as I was. Goodbye! (He goes toward the door on the right.) lu gui: Dahai! lu dahai (shouting): Get him out of here! lu gui: All right, all right. I’ll give you a light. It’s dark in the front room. zhou chong: Thank you. (lu gui and zhou chong go out through the door on the right.) lu sifeng: Master Chong! (She runs out after them.) lu dahai: Don’t go, Sifeng! Sifeng! (Seeing her gone) Oh, she just doesn’t understand! (mrs. lu comes in through the door on the right.) Mom! Did you know that Master Chong of the Zhous was here? mrs. lu: Well, I saw a rickshaw outside the door. I didn’t know who it was so I didn’t dare come in. lu dahai: You know I just threw him out? mrs. lu (nodding with a heavy heart): Yes, I know. I’ve been listening at the door for a while. lu dahai: Mrs. Zhou sent you a hundred dollars. mrs. lu (indignantly): I don’t want any money from her. I’m leaving and taking Sifeng with me. lu dahai: So you are leaving? And taking Sifeng with you?

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mrs. lu: Yes, tomorrow. lu dahai: Tomorrow? mrs. lu: Yes, tomorrow, I’ve changed my mind. lu dahai: Glad to hear it! Then I don’t have to say anything more. mrs lu: What’s that? lu dahai (ambiguously): Nothing, really. Just that when I got back I found Sifeng here chatting with this Master Chong. mrs. lu (in spite of herself ): What were they talking about? lu dahai (insinuating): I don’t know. They seemed very close. mrs. lu (alarmed): Oh? . . . (To herself ) Silly girl! lu dahai: Mom, did you see Mrs. Zhang? mrs. lu: Yes, she’ll sell the furniture for us. Everything’s settled. lu dahai: Well, I’ll be off now, Mom. mrs. lu: Where to? lu dahai (looking lonely): The last of my money’s gone, so I’m thinking of doing a night’s rickshaw pulling. mrs. lu: What for? There’s no need to do that. I’ve got some money here. You stay home and sleep. lu dahai: Keep it. You may need it yourself. I’m off now. (He goes out through the door on the right.) mrs. lu (calling after him): Dahai! Dahai! (lu sifeng comes in.) lu sifeng: Hello, Mom. (Uneasily) You’re back, then. mrs. lu: You were too busy seeing your young Mr. Zhou off to notice me. lu sifeng (making an effort to explain): It was his mother who told him to come. mrs. lu: Dahai tells me you had a long chat together. lu sifeng: You mean me and Master Chong? mrs. lu: Yes. What did he say to you? lu sifeng: Nothing much. Just the usual sort of thing. mrs. lu: You’re sure, Feng? lu sifeng: What’s Dahai been telling you now? He just doesn’t understand people. mrs. lu (sternly): Feng! (Looking her daughter full in the face and holding her hand) Look at me. I’m your mom, am I not? lu sifeng: What’s the matter, Mom? mrs. lu: Feng, don’t you know that I love you more than anyone else? lu sifeng: Why do you ask that, Mom? mrs. lu: Answer me. Is Mom the most pitiable and most miserable old woman on earth? lu sifeng: No, Mom, don’t talk like that. I love you. mrs. lu: I want to ask a favor of you, then. lu sifeng: Of course. What is it? mrs. lu: You’ve got to tell me what there is between you and that Zhou boy. lu sifeng: That’s Dahai’s silly nonsense again. What’s he been telling you?

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mrs. lu: No, it’s not Dahai. He hasn’t told me anything. It’s just that I want to know from you. (The rumble of distant thunder is heard.) lu sifeng: But what makes you ask these things, Mom? Haven’t I told you there’s nothing at all between us? There isn’t, Mom. (There is the sound of thunder again.) mrs. lu: Listen. There’s thunder. Now be fair with your poor mother. I can’t have my own daughter deceiving me about such things! lu sifeng (after a pause): I’m not deceiving you, Mom! Haven’t I told you that for the past two years— lu gui’s voice (from the front room): Shiping. Come on in to bed. It’s late. mrs. lu: Don’t worry about me. Get to bed yourself. lu gui: Come here! mrs. lu: Leave me alone. (To lu sifeng) What were you saying? lu sifeng: Haven’t I told you that in these past two years I always came home—every night? mrs. lu: Now you must tell me the truth, child. Mom can’t go through any more catastrophe. lu sifeng: Mom (sobbing), why can’t you trust your own daughter? (She flings herself into her mother’s arms. mrs. lu hugs her tight.) mrs. lu (shedding tears): Feng, my poor child, it’s not that I don’t trust you. I love you so much that I can’t afford to let people take advantage of you. (With anguish in her voice) I just can’t trust this world. You’ve no idea, you silly girl, all that I’ve been through all these years. I could never begin to describe it. I never had anyone to warn me when I was young. And that’s the pity of it. One false step, and I lost my way completely. You’re the only daughter I ever had, Feng, and I can’t bear to see you go the way I did. Human nature is all too unreliable. I don’t mean to say that human beings are all bad. But human nature is just too weak, too treacherous. My child, my only one. You will love me forever, promise me. If you ever deceive me I’d rather die. Oh, my poor child! lu sifeng: No, Mom, I’ll never deceive you. From now on I’ll be yours—always. mrs. lu (abruptly changing the subject): Feng, I can’t feel at ease as long as we are here. We must go tomorrow—get away from this place. lu sifeng (rising): Tomorrow? As soon as that? mrs. lu (with finality): Yes. I’ve changed my mind. We’ll go tomorrow and we’ll never come back here again. lu sifeng: Right, we’ll never come back here again. But Mom, why do we have to be in such a hurry? mrs. lu: You’ve got nothing else to do here before you go, have you? lu sifeng (hesitantly): I—er— mrs. lu: Don’t you want to leave here with me as soon as we can? lu sifeng (with a sigh and a wry smile): All right, then. Let’s go tomorrow.

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mrs. lu (suddenly suspicious again): Child, I think there’s still something you’re keeping from me. lu sifeng (wiping her eyes): No, there isn’t, Mom. mrs. lu (tenderly): You’ll remember what I was telling you just now, my dear? lu sifeng: Yes, Mom, I will! mrs. lu: Feng, I want you never to see any of the Zhous again so long as you live! lu sifeng: All right, I won’t. mrs. lu (gravely): No, you must swear that you won’t. (lu sifeng looks fearfully at her mother’s stern face.) lu sifeng: Oh, must I? mrs. lu (as gravely as before): Yes, you must. lu sifeng (falling to her knees): Mom—(throwing herself on mrs. lu’s lap) I—I can’t. mrs. lu (with tears streaming down her cheeks): Do you want to break your mother’s heart? You forget that three years ago when you were sick I almost died taking care of you? And now you— (She turns her head aside and sobs.) lu sifeng: All right, Mom. I swear. mrs. lu (rising): Then do it on your knees, like you are now. lu sifeng: I promise you, Mom, I’ll never see any of the Zhous again. (A peal of thunder rolls across the sky.) mrs. lu: Hear the thunder? Now, what if you forget what I’ve told you and see any of the Zhous again? lu sifeng (apprehensively): But I won’t, Mom, I won’t. mrs. lu: No, my child, you must swear that you won’t. If you should ever forget what I’ve told you— (There is another peal of thunder.) lu sifeng (in desperation): Then—then, may I be struck dead by lightning. (Flinging herself into her mother’s arms) Oh, Mom! (She bursts into tears. There are more crashes of thunder.) mrs. lu (her arms around lu sifeng, crying aloud): Feng, my child! It’s Mom’s fault. Mom’s a sinner. Mom’s done you wrong, Mom’s done you wrong! (She sobs. lu gui comes in wearing nothing above the waist except a sleeveless undershirt, revealing a body of fat, his face streaming with greasy sweat. Singing an erotic ditty, he leers at mrs. lu and lu sifeng.) lu gui (to his wife): Aren’t you ever coming to bed tonight? What’s all the gabble about? mrs. lu: None of your business. lu gui: What! lu sifeng: Now go on, Mom. Please go to bed now and leave me to myself. lu gui: The poor kid’s had enough to put up with for one day. What have you got to keep on at her for? mrs. lu: You sure you don’t want me to stay with you? lu sifeng: No, Mom. I only want to be left on my own.

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lu gui: Come on. What the heck? Let the kid have a good rest on her own. She always sleeps by herself. I’m off. (lu gui goes out.) mrs. lu: All right, go to bed like a good girl, then. I’ll come and see you later. lu sifeng: Yes, Mom. (mrs. lu goes out. lu sifeng closes the door on the right. In the next room lu gui is singing his song again: “Flowers blossom, flowers die . . .” She goes over to the round table and turns the lamp down to a glimmer. From outside come the croaking of frogs and the barking of dogs. She undoes two or three buttons as she paces restlessly up and down, then goes and sits on the edge of the bed. Finally, she heaves a deep sigh and throws herself down on the bed. In the next room, lu gui is still humming his ditty, and his wife is telling him to call it a day. The regular, hollow clop- clop- clop of a night watchman’s bamboo clappers breaks the silence. lu sifeng sits up again and fans herself vigorously with her palm-leaf fan. Finding the air too close and stifling, she opens the window and stands in front of it. She lets down her hair, takes a deep breath, then closes the window halfway. Feeling restless and remembering all kinds of things, she wipes the sweat on her face with a handkerchief and walks over to the round table. Once more lu gui is heard talking and singing. Depressed, she lets out a cry, “Oh my God!” and suddenly picks up the bottle of liquor and takes a gulp. She touches her chest, feels her heart burning, and sits down at the table. lu gui comes in by the right door, his bare feet slipshod.) lu gui: What, still up? lu sifeng (throwing him a brief glance): Uh-huh. lu gui (seeing her holding the liquor bottle): So you’ve been drinking? (Picking up the bottle and the food he bought, smiling) Come on, now, get some sleep. lu sifeng (absentmindedly): Mm. lu gui (at the door): It’s getting late. Mom’s already asleep. (He goes out. lu sifeng goes across to the door on the right and closes it. She stands by the door for a few moments, listening to her parents’ talking in the next room, then goes back to the round table with a long sigh, puts her fists down on it heavily, and throws herself down across it, sobbing, “Oh God!” Suddenly, someone whistles outside, from a distance. lu sifeng starts up and listens, holding her breath. She quickly turns up the lamp and runs across to the window. She puts her head out for a quick look around, then closes the window and stands leaning against the windowsill, afraid and breathing heavily, her chest heaving and falling. The whistles become more distinct. She puts a red paper lampshade over the lamp and places the lamp in the window. She looks pale and starts panting. The whistles come nearer and nearer. There is a distant rumble of thunder. She is scared and takes back the lamp, turns it down, and listens, leaning on the table. Then comes the sound of footsteps outside the window, plus a couple of coughs. lu sifeng goes softly to the window and, turning to the audience, leans against the windowsill. There is a tap on the window.) lu sifeng (gasping): Oh! (There are more taps on the window.)

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voice outside (in an undertone): Hey! Open up! lu sifeng: Who is it? voice outside (muffled): Guess! lu sifeng (her voice trembling): What—what are you doing here? voice outside (ambiguously): Guess! lu sifeng: I can’t see you now. (She looks very pale, and her voice keeps trembling.) voice outside (with a subdued chuckle): Is that what you really mean? lu sifeng (desperately): Mother’s at home. voice outside (seductively): You can’t put me off with that. She’s gone to bed. lu sifeng (with a note of concern in her voice): You’d better be careful. My brother hates you like poison. voice outside (indifferently): I know he’s not home. lu sifeng (turning away from the audience): You must go away! voice outside: Not I! (He tries to force the window open by pushing it inward, but lu sifeng holds it shut by pressing as hard as she can against it.) lu sifeng (anxiously): No, no, don’t. You can’t come in. voice outside (in an undertone): Now, come on, Sifeng. Open up. Please! lu sifeng: No, I can’t! It’s the middle of the night, and I’ve already gotten undressed. voice outside (urgently): What? Undressed? lu sifeng (nodding): I’ve already gone to bed! voice outside (quivering): In that case . . . I’d—I’d better— (He heaves a long sigh.) lu sifeng (pleading): Then you will go away, won’t you? voice outside (submissively): All right, then. If I must. I’ll be off, then. (Suddenly becoming urgent once more) But first open the window a minute, so I can— lu sifeng: No, no. You must go away at once! voice outside (pleading urgently): No, Sifeng, all I want is—is to give you a kiss. lu sifeng (painfully): Oh, Master Ping, this is not your home. You must forgive me this time. voice outside (bitterly): So you’ve forgotten me. You no longer want— lu sifeng (decisively): Right. (Turning around to the audience, in a pained voice) Yes, I’ve forgotten you. Now go away. voice outside (suddenly): Wasn’t my brother here a short while ago? lu sifeng: Yes . . . (Hesitantly) He . . . he . . . he was. voice outside (acidly): Oh! (Heaving a deep sigh) That explains it. lu sifeng (helplessly): You know very well that I don’t love him. voice outside (viciously): Humph, you heartless little creature. If you throw me over, you’d better watch out. I— lu sifeng: What do you mean, “throw you over”? voice outside (impatiently): Then why won’t you open the window and let me in? Don’t you realize that I love you? That I can’t live without you?

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lu sifeng (pleading): Please don’t pester me anymore. All day you’ve been making trouble for us. Don’t you think you’ve done enough? voice outside (sincerely): I know I did wrong. But I now want to see you—I must. lu sifeng (with a sigh): All right, we’ll see about it tomorrow. I’ll do whatever you want tomorrow. voice outside (earnestly): Tomorrow? You really mean that? lu sifeng (smiling tearfully, wiping her tears): Yes. I really mean it. Tomorrow. voice outside (suspiciously): Tomorrow, really? lu sifeng: Yes, really. I never deceived you. voice outside: All right, then, let’s make it tomorrow. Don’t you trick me. (There is the sound of footsteps.) lu sifeng: You going now? voice outside: Yes, I’m off. (The footsteps fade into the distance.) lu sifeng (to herself, as if a weight has been lifted from her mind): He’s gone! (Puts her hand on her chest) Oh, it’s so stuffy, so hot. (She opens the window to let in the breeze. She puts her hand on her burning cheek and heaves a deep sigh.) Oh! (All of a sudden zhou ping appears at the window.) Oh my gosh! (She quickly closes the window. But zhou ping has forced it ajar. The two engage in a tussle.) zhou ping (with hands pressed against the window): You won’t get rid of me so easily this time! lu sifeng (straining to hold the window shut): No—no—go away! (zhou ping finally succeeds in forcing his way into the room. He is covered with mud and his face is bloody.) zhou ping: You see? I’ve gotten in after all. lu sifeng (recoiling from him): You’re drunk again! zhou ping: No. (Pitifully) Sifeng, why did you try to avoid me? You weren’t like that before. I’m leaving early tomorrow morning, and you tricked me by promising to see me tomorrow. This is the only time I can see you. What is it that makes you so afraid to see me? (He turns his bloody cheek toward her.) lu sifeng (frightened): What’s happened to your face? (She points to his cheek.) zhou ping (feeling his face with his hand, which comes away covered in blood): That’s from falling over on my way here—just to see you. (He comes close to lu sifeng.) lu sifeng: You must go! Please, please— zhou ping (with a strange laugh): No. I want to have a good look at you first. (He grabs hold of her hand. There is a peal of thunder.)

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lu sifeng (shrinking away from him): Don’t. Listen! Thunder, thunder! Shut the window for me. zhou ping (shuts the window and closes in on her): What are you afraid of ? lu sifeng (her voice trembling): Of you. (Retreating) You look awful. There’s blood all over your face . . . I just don’t recognize you—you are— zhou ping (again with a strange laugh): Who do you think I am? You silly girl! (He takes her hand. A woman sighing is heard from outside, followed by taps on the window.) lu sifeng (pushing him aside): Listen. What’s that? Someone’s knocking on the window. zhou ping (listening): Nonsense. There’s nothing. lu sifeng: There is, there is! Listen, a woman’s sighing. zhou ping (listening again): No, nothing. (Suddenly laughing) You must’ve seen a ghost. (Against the background of a crescendo of thunder there is a deafening crash overhead.) lu sifeng (in a subdued voice): Oh, Mom! (Taking refuge in zhou ping’s arms) I’m frightened! (Runs to a corner to hide. As the thunder roars and the rain pours down in torrents, the lights are gradually dimmed. A gust of wind blows open the window. It is pitch- dark outside. A sudden blue flash of lightning lights up an eerie white face at the window. It is zhou fanyi’s. She looks like a corpse as she stands there, heedless of the rain that pelts down on her disheveled hair, tears streaking down the corners of her eyes as she gazes at the couple in each other’s arms. The lightning stops for a moment. The sky is pitch-dark again. A new flash of lightning shows her reaching her hand inside and pulling the window to, then fastening it on the outside. As the thunder crashes and roars louder than ever, the stage is plunged into complete darkness. Only lu sifeng’s low voice can be heard.) lu sifeng (in a low voice): Hold me tight. I’m afraid. (During the blackout, only the flickering light of the lamp on the table and the blue flashes of the lightning can be seen. lu dahai’s voice is heard outside shouting to be let in. lu dahai is heard entering the house. The lights gradually come on again. zhou ping is sitting on the chair, while lu sifeng stands close by. The bedsheets are somewhat ruffled.) zhou ping (listening): Who’s that? lu sifeng: Shh! Don’t make a sound! mrs. lu’s voice: What, back again, Dahai? lu dahai’s voice: It rained so hard that the sheds of the rickshaw depot collapsed. lu sifeng (in a low, urgent voice): It’s my brother. You’ll have to get out. Fast. (zhou ping dashes to the window and tugs at it.) zhou ping (unable to make it budge): That’s funny! lu sifeng: How’s that? zhou ping (anxiously): Someone’s fastened the window from the outside. lu sifeng (frightened): No! Who could have done that?

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zhou ping (tugging at the window again): It’s no good, it won’t budge. lu sifeng: Quiet! They’re just outside the door. lu dahai’s voice: Where are the bed planks? mrs. lu’s voice: In Sifeng’s room. lu sifeng: They’re coming in. Hide yourself in here, quick. (Just as she is pushing zhou ping into the curtained recess on the left, lu dahai comes in with a lamp.) lu dahai (slowly, in a hissing voice): What’s this? (He sees the pair of them standing petrified) Mom! Come in here, quick! I see ghosts! (mrs. lu rushes in.) mrs. lu (stunned): Oh my God! lu sifeng (seeing mrs. lu, bursting out of the room by the right door) Oh no! (mrs. lu, clinging to the door, almost faints.) lu dahai: So it’s you, is it! (He snatches the kitchen knife from the table and rushes at zhou ping with it.) mrs. lu (catching him by the sleeve and holding him back with all her strength): Stop, Dahai, stop! Over my dead body! lu dahai: Let me go! Let go of me! (He stamps his foot.) mrs. lu (seeing zhou ping still standing there rooted to the spot): Run, you fool! Don’t just stand there! (zhou ping runs out through the door on the right.) lu dahai (shouting): Grab him, Dad! Grab him! (He tries to catch him but is held down by his mother. The result is mrs. lu gets dragged along on the floor for quite a few steps.) mrs. lu (waits until she is satisfied that zhou ping has made good his escape before releasing lu dahai, then sits down on the floor in a stupor): Oh, my God! lu dahai (stamping his foot): Mom, Mom! What a stupid thing you did! (lu gui comes in.) lu gui: Has he gone? Hey!—where’s Sifeng? lu dahai: She’s bolted, the little slut. mrs. lu: Oh, my child! The river’s in flood out there! You mustn’t do it! Sifeng! (She goes to run out.) lu dahai (holding her back): Where are you going? mrs. lu: It’s pouring so hard. She’s out on her own. I’ve got to find her! lu dahai: Sure. I’m coming with you. mrs. lu: Quick, then! I can’t wait! (Shouting) Sifeng! (She runs out. Her voice fades in the distance. Suddenly, lu gui puts on his hat and follows her out. lu dahai goes across to the chest and takes out the pistol. Thrusting it inside his coat, he hurries out. There is the noise of a raging storm outside, drowning the sound of mrs. lu’s calling lu sifeng.) (Quick curtain.)

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A CT 4 (In the Zhous’ drawing room, about two o’clock in the morning. When the curtain rises, zhou puyuan is sitting on a sofa, reading some documents by the light of the floor lamp beside him. The rest of the room is in darkness. The distant rolling thunder and the hiss of the rain are clearly audible, though the window curtains are drawn and the center door closed. Through the glass pane above the door the garden is shrouded in utter darkness. Every now and then a dazzling streak of lightning across the sky reveals the dark blue silhouette of a tree here and an electric wire pole there. The next moment it’s pitch- darkness again.) zhou puyuan (putting down the documents and stretching wearily): Hello, there! (Picking up his glasses, rubbing his eyes, raising his voice slightly) Here, somebody! (He walks across to the dining- room door, polishing his spectacles as he goes, resuming his normal voice pitch) Anybody there? (There are flashes of lightning outside. He goes over to the bureau and rings. His eyes happen to land on shiping’s photo. He picks it up and puts on his glasses to take a closer look. A servant appears.) servant: You rang, sir? zhou puyuan: I’ve been calling you long enough. servant: Quite a job to hear anything with this rain, sir. zhou puyuan (indicating the clock): What’s happened to the clock? It’s stopped. servant: Well, you see, sir, it was always Sifeng’s job to wind it, but since she’s gone today, it’s been overlooked. zhou puyuan: What’s the time now? servant: Er—must be about two. zhou puyuan: I told the office to wire some money to Jinan. Are they clear what they’ve got to do? servant: The money that was to go to somebody in Jinan by the name of—er—Lu, you mean, sir? zhou puyuan: Yep. servant: It’s been attended to. (There are flashes of lightning outside. zhou puyuan turns and looks out at the garden.) zhou puyuan: The electric wire down by the wisteria trellis—did your mistress send for someone to fix it? servant: Yes, but the electrician said he couldn’t work in this heavy rain and that he’d have to come back tomorrow. zhou puyuan: But wouldn’t that be dangerous? servant: Precisely. Just a little while ago Master Ping’s dog ran by and hit the wire and got electrocuted. Now the place has been roped off so no one can pass through. zhou puyuan: I see. Er, what did you say the time was?

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servant: Nearly two o’clock. Will you be retiring now, sir? zhou puyuan: You can ask your mistress to come down here. servant: She’s retired for the night. zhou puyuan (casually): What about Master Chong? servant: He went to bed quite a while ago. zhou puyuan: Well, see if Master Ping’s still up, then. servant: Master Ping went out after dinner and isn’t back yet. (There is a long pause.) zhou puyuan (going back to his seat on the sofa and speaking in a mournful voice): So there’s no one else in the house still up, then? servant: No, sir, not a single one. zhou puyuan: No one visited here this morning? servant: No, sir. It’s been raining so hard that anyone who has a home would prefer to stay home. zhou puyuan (yawns, feeling an even deeper hollowness): And in this home I’m the only one still up. servant: Right. Almost everyone is asleep. zhou puyuan: All right. That’ll be all. servant: Nothing more you need, sir? zhou puyuan: No. (The servant goes out through the center door. zhou puyuan gets up again and paces moodily up and down. He stops in front of the bureau, picks up shiping’s photo again, and switches on the main light. zhou chong comes in from the dining room.) zhou chong (not expecting to find his father there): Father! zhou puyuan (obviously glad of the interruption): Haven’t—haven’t you gone to bed yet? zhou chong: No. zhou puyuan: Did you want to see me? zhou chong: No, I thought I’d find Mom here. zhou puyuan (disappointed): Oh—er—your mother’s upstairs. zhou chong: I don’t think she is, though. I knocked at her door a long time. It was locked . . . that’s right . . . Then maybe . . . Well, I’ll be going now, Father. zhou puyuan: Chong. (zhou chong stops.) Don’t go yet. zhou chong: Is there anything I can do for you? zhou puyuan: No. (Affectionately) How is it you’re still up? zhou chong (submissively): Sorry, Father. I am up rather late. I’ll turn in straight away. zhou puyuan: Did you take the medicine Dr. Kramer gave you? zhou chong: Yes, I did. zhou puyuan: Did you play tennis today? zhou chong: Yes. zhou puyuan: Happy?

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zhou chong: Uh-huh. zhou puyuan (getting up and taking zhou chong by the hand): What’s the matter? Afraid of me? zhou chong: Yes, I am, Father. zhou puyuan (dryly): You seem to be a little unhappy with me. Is that it? zhou chong (ill at ease): I—I really don’t know how to put it, Father. (There is a pause. zhou puyuan goes back to the sofa and sits down with a sigh. He beckons zhou chong across to him.) zhou puyuan (mournfully): Today I—er, well, I somehow feel I’m getting old . . . Know what I mean? zhou chong (indifferently): No, I don’t. zhou puyuan (abruptly): If I should die one of these days and leave you alone, with no one to look after you, wouldn’t you be worried? zhou chong (without any trace of emotion): I expect I would. zhou puyuan (affectionately, in an attempt to put his son at ease): You said this morning you’d like to share your school allowance with someone—well, let’s hear all about it. Maybe I could give you my consent. zhou chong: I was just being silly. I promise I won’t say anything like that again. (There is a long pause.) zhou puyuan (ingratiatingly): We are moving into our new house the day after tomorrow. Don’t you like it? zhou chong: Uh-huh. zhou puyuan (staring reproachfully into zhou chong’s face): You don’t seem to have much to say to me. zhou chong (listlessly): I—I don’t know what to say. As a rule, you don’t seem particularly willing to see us. (Falteringly) But—but today you seem rather—rather different, somehow. I—I— zhou puyuan (who has heard enough): All right. You may go now. zhou chong: Very well, Father. (He goes out through the dining room. zhou puyuan looks disappointed as he watches his son out of the room. When he is alone, he picks up shiping’s photo again and looks around him, feeling deserted. He switches off the light and turns toward the study. zhou fanyi comes in quietly through the center door. Her raincoat is still dripping wet, her hair drenched. Pale and haggard, her entire visage is like that of a plaster statue, with her high and pallid nose and thin, red lips carved on a deathlike face, creating the image of a stern mask. Her face is totally without expression. Only her eyes are burning with the fire of madness from within her heart. But even that is cold and merciless, her love and hate having burned to ashes every ounce of her femininity. She seems to have abandoned all, and all that is left are the thoughts of revenge that rise wave upon wave from her calculating mind. She sees zhou puyuan, who watches her with astonishment.) zhou fanyi (showing no surprise): Still up? (She remains standing by the door.)

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zhou puyuan: You! (Going across to her) Where have you been? (Gazes at her, pauses) Chong’s been looking for you all evening. zhou fanyi (simply): I was just out for a walk. zhou puyuan: What, when it’s pouring like this? zhou fanyi: Uh-huh—(suddenly vindictive) I’m neurotic, remember? zhou puyuan: Now tell me: where’ve you been? zhou fanyi (crossly): None of your business. zhou puyuan (looking her up and down): You’re wet through. You’d better get those wet things off. zhou fanyi (coldly but meaningfully): I felt feverish inside, so I went out to cool off. zhou puyuan (impatiently): Cut all that crap. Where exactly have you been? zhou fanyi (listlessly, looking him full in the face, a syllable at a time): I’ve been at your place! zhou puyuan (annoyed): At my place? zhou fanyi (gloating with a faint smile): Uh-huh. Enjoying the rain in the garden! zhou: What, all this time? zhou fanyi (ecstatically): Yes, I’ve had a nice long soak. (There is a pause. zhou puyuan stares at her in startled bewilderment. She just stands where she is by the door, impassive as a statue.) zhou puyuan: Fanyi, I think you’d best go upstairs and get some rest. zhou fanyi (coldly): Uh-huh. (Suddenly) What’s that you’ve got in your hand? (Scornfully) Humph! That woman’s photo again! (She reaches out for it.) zhou puyuan: You needn’t look at it. It’s Ping’s mother, you know. zhou fanyi (snatching it from him and looking at it under the light): Ping’s mother was very good-looking. (zhou puyuan ignores her and goes and sits down on the sofa.) Mm? Don’t you think so? zhou puyuan: I suppose so. zhou fanyi: She looks very good-natured. (zhou puyuan looks blankly ahead.) zhou fanyi: Intelligent, too. zhou puyuan (contemplating): Uh-huh. zhou fanyi (pleased): And so young! zhou puyuan (unconsciously): No, she’s old. zhou fanyi (recalling): Isn’t she long since dead? zhou puyuan: Right. Long since dead zhou fanyi (putting the photo down): It’s funny, I seem to have seen her somewhere. zhou puyuan (looking up, suspiciously): Impossible! Where could you have seen her? zhou fanyi (abruptly): Her name sounds very elegant—Shiping, Shiping—only a little like a maid’s name. zhou puyuan: Now, come on, time for bed. (He gets up and takes the photo from her.)

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zhou fanyi: Well, what do you want to hold that for? zhou puyuan: I’m afraid it might get lost during our move the day after tomorrow. zhou fanyi: Uh-uh! (Taking the photo from him) Leave it over here for the night! (With an unnatural laugh) You won’t lose it. I’ll look after it for you. (She puts it on the table.) zhou puyuan: Don’t act like you were crazy! You’re playing the fool with me! zhou fanyi: But I am crazy. And I’d rather you left me alone. zhou puyuan (agitated): All right. Now you go upstairs. I need a break here on my own. zhou fanyi: Oh no. I need a break here on my own. You’ll have to get out. zhou puyuan (sternly): Fanyi, I’m telling you to go upstairs! zhou fanyi (contemptuously): I don’t wish to. You hear? (Irritably) I do not wish to. (Pause.) zhou puyuan (in a low voice): Better watch out—(tapping his own head) up here. Remember what Dr. Kramer said. He wants you to be quiet and not talk too much. He’ll be here again tomorrow. I’ve made an appointment for you. zhou fanyi: Thanks. (Looking straight in front of her) Here again tomorrow? Humph! (A crestfallen zhou ping comes in from the dining room and walks with bent head toward the study.) zhou puyuan: Ping. zhou ping (looking up with a start): Why, Father! You’re still up. zhou puyuan (censoriously): Only just got back home, I suppose? zhou ping: Oh no, Father. I’ve been back some time now. I only went out to do some shopping. zhou puyuan: What do you want here? zhou ping: I was going to the study to see if your letter of introduction was ready. zhou puyuan: But you’re not leaving until tomorrow morning, are you? zhou ping: I suddenly remembered there was a train leaving at half past two tonight, so I’ve decided to go straight away. zhou fanyi (suddenly): Straight away? zhou ping: Mm. zhou fanyi (meaningfully): You’re in a tearing hurry, aren’t you? zhou ping: Yes, Mother. zhou puyuan (paternally): But it’s raining hard. Not the kind of weather to go out in at this time of night. zhou ping: If I go on this train I’ll get there first thing in the morning. That’ll give me more time to look up all the people I’ve got to see. zhou puyuan: The letter’s on the desk in the study. I suppose it’s not a bad idea if you want to go now. (zhou ping nods and turns to go into the study.) Wait. You needn’t get it yourself. (To zhou fanyi) You go and get the letter for him, will you? zhou fanyi (looking distrustfully at her husband): Okay.

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(She goes into the study.) zhou puyuan (waiting until she has gone out and then, cautiously): She refuses to go upstairs. I want you to take her up to her room and tell one of the maids to see her into bed all right. zhou ping (helplessly): Very well, Father. zhou puyuan (even more cautiously): Come here! (zhou ping comes closer.) (In an undertone) And tell the servants to be on the lookout. (With disgust) I think her nerves are getting worse than ever. She had suddenly been out all by herself a short while ago. zhou ping: Out? zhou puyuan: Yes. (Gravely) She’d been out in the rain all the evening. And she was talking weird! I don’t like the look of it at all. (Feeling the onset of a bad omen) I’m getting on in years, and I want everything to go smoothly in the family . . . zhou ping (uneasily): I think, Father, if you don’t attach too much importance to these things, you’ll find they’ll straighten themselves out. zhou puyuan (recoiling): No, no. Sometimes things turn out in a way you’d never have imagined. This thing called the will of heaven—pretty weird. What’s happened today has made me suddenly realize just how risky, how absurd life can be. (Wearily) I’m tired. (Relieved) Well, the day’s over, more or less. (Reassuring himself ) I don’t think there would be—shouldn’t—any more upheavals. (Shudders) No, there shouldn’t be. (zhou fanyi comes back in with the letter.) zhou fanyi (resentfully): Here’s your letter! zhou puyuan (coming back to earth with a start and turning again to zhou ping): All right, you can go now. I’m going to bed. (Suddenly cheered up) Yes, we’ll definitely move into our new house the day after tomorrow. Have a good rest in the meantime. zhou fanyi (eager to see him go): Yes, I will. (zhou puyuan goes out through the study.) zhou fanyi (as soon as zhou puyuan is gone, despondently): So you’ve really made up your mind to go, then. zhou ping (somewhat resentfully): Yes. zhou fanyi (with sudden edginess): What was your father saying to you just now? zhou ping (evasively): He said I was to see you up to your room and ask you to go to bed. zhou fanyi (with a sardonic smile): He should’ve had me dragged upstairs by the servants and locked in! zhou ping (pretending not to understand): What on earth do you mean? zhou fanyi (letting fly): Don’t think you can pull the wool over my eyes! I know all about it. (Bitterly) He’s been telling you I’m neurotic—lunatic. I know quite well he’s trying to convince you that I am. He’s trying to convince everybody that I am. zhou ping (ner vously): No, you mustn’t go getting ideas like that.

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zhou fanyi (looking bewildered): You, too? Even you trying to deceive me? (In a low voice, morosely) I can see it in your eyes, both of you. You and your father are both the same—you wish to see me go mad! You—father and son—you gossip about me behind my back, and laugh at me, and plot against me. zhou ping (calming himself ): You’re imagining things. I’ll see you up to your room. zhou fanyi (suddenly raising her voice): I don’t want your help! Get away from me! (Restraining herself, but speaking under her breath with detestation) I haven’t gotten to the stage yet where your father needs to go behind my back and tell you to be careful and see the lunatic up to her room! zhou ping (suppressing his distaste and annoyance): If that’s the case, perhaps you’ll give me the letter so that I can get out of your way. zhou fanyi (puzzled): Where are you going? zhou ping (reluctantly): I’m going away. I’ve got some packing to do. zhou fanyi (suddenly cold and calm): Tell me, where did you go tonight? zhou ping (with animosity): You don’t need to ask. You know very well. zhou fanyi (menacingly, in a hushed voice): So you went to see her after all. (There is a pause. zhou fanyi stares at zhou ping until he drops his head.) zhou ping (with sinister firmness): Yes, I did, I did. (Defiantly) What are you going to do? zhou fanyi (crumpling): Nothing. (Forcing a smile) It was wrong of me to say what I did this afternoon. You mustn’t think too badly of me because of that. There’s just one thing I want to know: what are you going to do about her after you’ve gone? zhou ping: After I’ve gone?—(impulsively) I’ll marry her! zhou fanyi (abruptly): Marry her? zhou ping (with finality): Yes. zhou fanyi (touching him to the quick): What about your father? zhou ping (nonchalantly): Plenty of time to think about that. zhou fanyi (mysteriously): Ping, I’ll give you a chance. zhou ping (blankly): Eh? zhou fanyi (persuasively): If you don’t leave today, I think I can get around your father for you. zhou ping: Thanks, but there’s no need. This business is quite square and aboveboard as far as I’m concerned. I can talk to anyone about it. As for her, she—she’s just poor. zhou fanyi (agitated): You’re talking like your brother now. (Miserably) Oh, Ping! zhou ping: Well? zhou fanyi (moodily): You realize what will become of me after you’ve gone? zhou ping: I’ve no idea. zhou fanyi (trembling at the prospect): Just look at your father. Can’t you imagine? zhou ping: I don’t understand what you mean. zhou fanyi (tapping her head): It’s all here. Know what I mean? zhou ping (not sure whether he understands or not): What exactly do you mean? zhou fanyi (as though speaking about someone else): Well, first of all, this specialist, Dr. Kramer, is bound to come here every day, giving me medicine and forcing me to

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take it. And so it’ll go on—medicine, medicine, medicine, day in and day out! Gradually there’ll be more and more people to wait on me, to look after me, to keep watch over me, as if I were something peculiar—a freak. They’ll— zhou ping (impatiently): Now listen to me: you’re just imagining things, okay? zhou fanyi (ignoring what he was saying): They’ll gradually start talking the way your father does: “Be careful, watch out. She’s got a touch of insanity.” Wherever I go, I’ll hear people whispering behind my back, gossiping about me. Gradually everyone will become wary of me, and no one will dare come and see me. Finally I’ll be put in chains, and by that time I really shall have gone mad. zhou ping (at a complete loss): Oh, no! (Glancing at his watch) It’s getting late. Give me the letter, then. I’ve still got some packing to do. zhou fanyi (pleading): Ping, don’t think that that can’t happen. Think it over, Ping. Haven’t you even a—even a spark of feeling? zhou ping: If you—(with deliberate venom) if you’re so set on taking that road, what can I do about it? zhou fanyi (indignantly): What! Have you forgotten that your own mother was also hounded to her death by this father of yours? zhou ping (abandoning all reserve): My mother wasn’t like you. She knew what love meant. She loved her son, and she did nothing to betray my father. zhou fanyi (her eyes ablaze with the light of madness): What right have you to say a thing like that? Have you forgotten what you did three years ago, in this very room? You forget that you yourself are the culprit. You forget we—(checking herself abruptly, sneering) but what’s the use of bringing all that up again? It’s over and done with. (zhou ping, his head bowed, drops into a sofa. Regret grabs his heart, his facial muscles twitching.) (Turning to zhou ping, in desperation) All right, Ping. This time I’m begging you— begging you for the last time. I’ve never gone down on my hands and knees like this to anyone else, and now I’m begging you to have pity on me. I can’t stand this house any longer. (Plaintively) You saw with your own eyes what I went through today, and it isn’t only going to be today: it’ll go on for days, months, years until I’m dead. He hates the sight of me, your father. And he’s afraid of me, because I know all about him. He wants everybody to think I’m a freak, a lunatic! Oh, Ping!— zhou ping (profoundly disturbed): Don’t—don’t talk anymore. zhou fanyi (insistently): I’ve got no relatives, Ping, no friends, nobody I can trust. I beg you, Ping, stay a little longer— zhou ping (trying to put her off ): Oh, no, I couldn’t do that zhou fanyi (imploring him): Well, if you must go, take me with you, away from this— zhou ping (horrified): What! You’ve lost your senses! zhou fanyi (still imploring him): I’ve not, I’ve not. Take me with you, away from this place! (In utter desperation) And afterward, if you wanted to have Sifeng come and— and live with you, I’d agree to that, even, if only—if only—(frantically) if only you don’t leave me!

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zhou ping (looking at her in horror and astonishment and backing off, pausing for a long time, then in a trembling voice): I’m—I’m beginning to think you really are mad. zhou fanyi (reassuring him): No, you mustn’t say things like that. I’m the only person that really understands you. I know your weaknesses—and you know mine. I know you inside out. (Putting on a seductive smile, beckoning at him in a queer manner, and smiling even more seductively) Come here. What—what are you afraid of ? zhou ping (gazing at her, then shouting in spite of himself ): Stop smiling like that! (More emphatically still) Don’t smile at me like that! (Beating his head in distress) Oh, I hate myself. I wish I were dead! zhou fanyi (miserably): Am I such a burden to you? But you know I haven’t got many more years to live. zhou ping (in an anguished voice): But surely you realize that such a relationship must seem revolting to anyone else? You know I’ve been drinking and carousing every day just because I hate—hate myself ? zhou fanyi (coldly): How many times have I told you that I don’t look at it like that? My conscience isn’t made that way. (Solemnly) Ping, I was wrong in what I did this afternoon. If you’ll follow my advice now and not go away, I can get Sifeng to come back here. zhou ping: What? zhou fanyi (distinctly): It’s still not too late to get her back. zhou ping (going up to her and hammering out each syllable): Get out of my sight! zhou fanyi (pauses, slowly): What! zhou ping: You don’t seem to be thinking straight. Get upstairs to bed. zhou fanyi (knowing her destiny): That’s that, then. zhou ping (wearily): Yes, Go now. zhou fanyi (despairing and dejected): I saw you with Sifeng at the Lus’ tonight. zhou ping (astounded): Eh? Is that where you went, then? zhou fanyi (sitting down): Yes. I spent quite a long time standing about near their place. zhou ping (disturbed): What time were you there? zhou fanyi (hanging her head): I watched you get in through the window. zhou ping (anxiously): Then what? zhou fanyi (looking straight ahead with lifeless eyes): Then I went over to the window and stood there. zhou ping: Then there was the sound of a woman sighing. Was that you? zhou fanyi: I suppose so. zhou ping: Then you went on standing there for a long time? zhou fanyi (slowly and distinctly): Right up until the time you left. zhou ping: I see. (Going across to her, in a low voice) So it was you who closed the window! Right? zhou fanyi (gloomily, in an even lower voice): Yes, it was me. zhou ping (revolted, venomously): Why, you’re a monster, worse than I ever imagined. zhou fanyi (looking up): What?

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zhou ping (in an outburst): You are a lunatic, every inch of you! zhou fanyi (looking at him, totally expressionless): Well, what are you going to do about it? zhou ping (viciously): I want you to go to hell! Goodbye! (He storms out through the dining room, slamming the door behind him.) zhou fanyi (sits there in a daze, staring at the dining-room door. Catching sight of shiping’s photo, she picks it up and then, in a low, despondent voice): So this is your child! (Then, slowly taking the photo from the backboard, she tears it up piece by piece. Calm and poised, she stands up and begins pacing up and down.) Strange, how peaceful I feel. (The center door opens quietly. zhou fanyi turns to find lu gui stealing in, his sly eyes smiling at her.) lu gui (with a slight bow): Good evening, ma’am. zhou fanyi (somewhat taken aback): What are you doing here? lu gui (with an oily smile): I’ve come to see how you’re getting on, ma’am. I’ve been waiting outside the door for some time. zhou fanyi (calmly): I see, outside the door, were you? lu gui (in a low voice): That’s right. (Mysteriously) When I saw that Master Ping was quarrelling with you, I—(smirking) I didn’t like to come in. zhou fanyi (still poised and unruffled): What did you want? lu gui (with complete assurance): Well, I really came to tell you that Master Ping got drunk again tonight and came around to our place. But now that I know you were there yourself, ma’am, there’s nothing more for me to say. zhou fanyi (with disgust): What are you after now? lu gui (haughtily): I’d like to see the master. zhou fanyi: The master’s gone to bed. What do you want to see him about? lu gui: Oh, nothing important. If you’d like to see to it yourself, ma’am, then we needn’t trouble the master. (With a meaningful look) It all depends on you, ma’am. zhou fanyi (deciding, after a pause, to put up with him): Very well, then. Tell me what it is. Perhaps I can help you. lu gui (repeating, craftily): If you would like to handle the matter and save my seeing the master, that’ll save everybody a lot of trouble. zhou fanyi (still unperturbed): Just say it. lu gui (ingratiatingly): Bless your heart, ma’am, if you can help us out. All we want is to ask you to give us our jobs back. zhou fanyi (crossly): Do you suppose I—(softening) very well, that’s no big deal. lu gui (pleased with himself ): Thank you, ma’am. (Shrewdly) Then perhaps you’d fix a definite date for us to come back, ma’am. zhou fanyi (simply): Make it the day after we move into the new house, then. lu gui (bowing): Thank you for your kindness ma’am. (Suddenly) Oh, I almost forgot. Have you seen Master Chong, ma’am? zhou fanyi: No. lu gui: Didn’t you send him around to our place with a present of a hundred dollars?

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zhou fanyi (irritated): What’s that? lu gui (euphemistically): But—but the money was sent back by our own young master. zhou fanyi: Your young master? lu gui (explaining): That’s to say Dahai—that wretched son of mine. zhou fanyi: Well, what about it? lu gui (smoothly): Well, Shiping—our Shiping, still knows nothing about it. zhou fanyi (alarmed, under her breath): Shiping? (Seriously) Who is Shiping? lu gui (feeling slighted, haughtily): Shiping is Shiping, my wife, Mrs. Lu. zhou fanyi: Did you mean to say that Mrs. Lu’s name is Shiping? lu gui (bragging): You see, she’s been to school, too. Her name is quite elegant. zhou fanyi: Do you know how to write the two characters for “Shiping”? lu gui: I, I—(embarrassed, forcing a smile) I don’t remember. Anyway it’s the same “Ping” as Master Ping’s name as far as I can recall. zhou fanyi: Oh! (Suddenly she picks up the bits of the torn photo from the floor and pieces them together for him to see) Take a look. Do you know this person? lu gui (looks at it for a while, and then looks up): No, I don’t, ma’am. zhou fanyi (anxiously): You know of no one who looks like her? (After a slight pause) Just think, anyone close to you? lu gui (shaking his head): Not a single one, ma’am, not a single one. (Suddenly alarmed) Ma’am, are you okay? zhou fanyi (reflecting, no longer sure of herself ): Most likely it’s my fantasy. lu gui (greedily): Ah yes, ma’am, didn’t you send us a gift of a hundred dollars just now? But it was sent back by our Dahai. You see— (The center door opens.) (Looking around) Who is it? (lu dahai comes in, his clothes drenched and his face glum. He looks around with unease, showing fatigue, with obvious hatred in all his movements. zhou fanyi looks at him in astonishment.) lu dahai (to lu gui): So here you are! lu gui (hates to see his son): How did you get in? lu dahai (coldly): The gates were shut and I couldn’t make anybody hear, so I climbed over the wall. lu gui: What are you doing here? Why didn’t you go and see if your mother’s found Sifeng? lu dahai (wiping the rain off his face with a wet towel): Sifeng’s nowhere to be found. Mother’s waiting outside. (Grimly) Did you see Sifeng? lu gui (with contempt): No, I didn’t. (Frowning with annoyance at what he regards as much ado about nothing) Oh, forget it. She’ll be back home any minute. (Walking up to lu dahai) Now you come home with me. I’ve fixed everything with the Zhous here. Everything’s all right now. Let’s be off. lu dahai: I’m not leaving yet. lu gui: What do you want?

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lu dahai: Don’t you go yet, either—not until you’ve gotten me the young gentleman here. I can’t find him. lu gui (apprehensively, stroking his chin): What are you up to now? I just fixed everything, and now you want to start trouble again? lu dahai (calmly): Nothing. I just want to talk to him. lu gui (disbelieving him): Oh no, you don’t. It looks like you are going to— lu dahai (flaring up, grabbing lu gui by the collar): Will you find him for me or won’t you? lu gui (cowed): Okay, okay, take your hands off me first. lu dahai: All right. (Letting go of him) Go on. lu gui: Dahai, you—you promise me first: you’ll just have a few words with Master Ping and will not— lu dahai: Well, I can tell you I’m not here to pick a fight. lu gui: Really? lu dahai (going up to lu gui menacingly, in a low voice): Are you going or not? lu gui: I, I, Dahai, you, you— zhou fanyi (calmly): Go and get him, Lu Gui. It’ll be all right with me here. lu gui: OK. (To lu dahai) But after I’m done with Master Ping, I’ll leave by that door. I—(smirking) I have some other business. lu dahai (commanding): Tell them to open the gate and let Mother in. She needs shelter from the rain. lu gui: All right, all right. (Headed toward the dining room) But as soon as I’ve finished I’m off for other business. lu dahai: Stop! (Making one step forward, in a low voice) You go in there, but if you sneak away without getting him here, you’d better watch out when we get home— humph! lu gui (irritated): You, you, you—(in an undertone, to himself ) you little bastard! (With no alternative, he goes out through the dining room.) zhou fanyi (getting up): Who are you? lu dahai (rudely): Sifeng’s brother. zhou fanyi (in a tender voice): Are you here to look for her? You want to see Master Ping, you say? lu dahai: Yes. zhou fanyi (gloomily): I’m afraid he may not want to see you. lu dahai (calmly): That’s possible. zhou fanyi (easily): I think he’s about to leave for the station to catch a train. lu dahai (looking around): Eh? zhou fanyi (hinting darkly): In fact, he’s leaving immediately. lu dahai (enraged): Running away, eh? He— zhou fanyi: Right, he— (zhou ping comes in from the dining room, looking uneasy. He sees lu dahai and gives him an awkward nod.) zhou ping (steadying himself with an effort, his voice trembling): Oh!

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lu dahai: Ah, good, you’re still here. (Looking around) Ask the lady to leave us. I want to have a word with you alone. zhou ping (looks at zhou fanyi, and when she does not move, he goes across to her): Please go upstairs. zhou fanyi: All right. (She goes out chin up through the dining room. There is a pause. Both men hold their fists tight. lu dahai glares angrily at zhou ping.) zhou ping (unable to bear the suspense any longer, in a trembling voice): I didn’t expect to see you again so soon. lu dahai (ominously): I hear you’re going away. zhou ping (alarmed but soon calming himself, forcing a smile): It’s still not too late, though. You got here in plenty of time. What is it you want? I’m ready. lu dahai (smiling viciously): Ready, you say? zhou ping (looking at him glumly): Yes. lu dahai (going up to him): Take that! (He strikes zhou ping hard in the face, opening the old wound, which bleeds again.) zhou ping (His fists clenched in an effort to control himself ): Why, you— (He takes a white handkerchief out of his pocket and wipes the blood off his face with it.) lu dahai (grinding his teeth): Humph! So you were going to run away! (Pause.) zhou ping (suppressing his anger and explaining in a deep voice): I’d made plans some time ago. lu dahai (with a malicious laugh): You had, eh? zhou ping (becoming calmer): I think there’re too many misunderstandings between us. lu dahai: Misunderstandings! (He notices the blood on his hand and wipes it off on his clothes.) There isn’t much I misunderstand about you! I know you are a spineless creature who cares about nothing but yourself, a downright scoundrel! zhou ping (in a soft, even voice): We’ve met twice, but on both occasions I’ve been in a filthy temper. I’m afraid you must have gotten a rather bad impression of me. lu dahai (contemptuously): Keep your excuses. You may be a young gentleman, but you act like a rat. Life’s too easy for people like you. You’ve got plenty of surplus energy and nothing to do with it, so you pick up a poor man’s daughter to amuse yourself with. When you’ve finished with her, off you go and responsibility be damned. zhou ping (disappointed at lu dahai’s stance): I can see it’s no use explaining anything to you now. I know you’re here for something. (Calmly) Well, out with your gun or your knife or whatever it is. Dispose of me as you think fit. lu dahai (tauntingly): Very generous of you!—and in your own house, too! You’re very clever. But you’re not worth it. I’m not ready to pay with my own useful life for a halfdead creature like you.

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zhou ping (looking him full in the face with renewed audacity): I suppose you think I’m afraid of you. Well, you’re wrong. I’m more afraid of myself than I am of you. I’ve made one mistake, and I don’t want to make another. lu dahai (scornfully): So far as I can see, your biggest mistake was to be born. If it hadn’t been for my mother, I’d have slaughtered you there and then! (Threatening) I hold your life in my hand even now. zhou ping: Death would be a welcome release for me. (Sadly) You imagine I’m afraid of death? No, I’m not, I’m not! I hate to be alive. I welcome your visit. I’ve had enough of life; I’m fed up with it. lu dahai (disgustedly): Oh, so you’re fed up with life, are you? But not too much to make my poor young sister share it with you, with you—huh! zhou ping (helplessly, with a wry smile): You mean I’m selfish? You really think I’m a heartless creature who only wants her for his own amusement? Just ask your sister, will you? She knows I really love her. She’s all I live for now. lu dahai: You’ve got a smooth tongue, haven’t you! (Suddenly) Then why don’t you— why don’t you marry her? zhou ping (after a slight pause): That’s just what I hate myself most for. My position is an extremely difficult one. Can you imagine a family like mine approving of a thing like that? lu dahai (with pungent scorn): So you think you can say you really do love her, and make that an excuse for doing whatever you like with her, while at the same time you’ve got to consider your family and your board chairman of a father, eh? Then anytime they want you to dump her and marry some rich young lady who’ll be the right match for your family status, you will—is that it? zhou ping (finding this too much to swallow): I wish you’d go and ask Sifeng. She can tell you why I’m going away. It’s to get away from my family and try to shake myself free of my father so that I’ll have a chance to marry her. lu dahai (mocking him): You talked your way out of that pretty well! But how do you account for this business of coming around to our place in the middle of the night? zhou ping (roused): I’m not talking my way out of anything, and I don’t need to make excuses to you. I’m only telling you all this because you’re Sifeng’s brother. I love her. And she loves me. We’re both young, and when two young people are in each other’s company day after day, something’s bound to happen. But I’m sure I’ll be able to do the right thing by her one day and marry her. My conscience is perfectly clear. lu dahai: Well, you sound as if everything you’ve done is well justified, eh? But who do you imagine is going to believe that you, the boss’s son and heir, had fallen in love with a poor girl whose brother’s a miner and whose mother’s a servant? zhou ping (after a pause, hesitantly): Well, I—er—I may as well tell you this: my hand was forced by a woman who left me no alternative. lu dahai (tensed up, in a low voice): What? You mean there’s another woman involved? zhou ping: Yes. The lady that was here just now.

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lu dahai: Her? zhou ping (distraught): Yes. She’s my stepmother! All these years I’ve kept this secret bottled up inside me. I’ve never dared tell anyone. She’s had a good education and all that, but—the moment she set eyes on me she developed a passion for me and wanted me to—(breaking off abruptly) of course I have to take part of the responsibility as well. lu dahai: Does Sifeng know about this? zhou ping: Yes, I’m sure of it. (With tears of agony in his eyes) I was a fool ever to have started. As time went on I became more and more afraid, and the whole business became more distasteful and hateful to me. I hated this unnatural relationship. Can you understand? I wanted to leave her, but she tightened her grip on me. She wouldn’t let me go. She’s a monster, capable of anything. My life became a burden to me. You understand? I drank, I messed around, I was ready to do anything, even die—as long as I could free myself from her. She made me sick of any woman with a good education and a respectable surface. But then Sifeng came along. She gave me hope—and another year of life. lu dahai (breathing a sigh of relief ): I see. zhou ping: All this—I’ve never been able to bring myself to tell anybody about it, and yet—(slowly) the funny thing is, I’ve suddenly told it all to you! lu dahai (grimly): This is probably a retribution on your father. zhou ping (rather put out by lu dahai’s unexpected remark): That’s bullshit! (He now feels he’s been too impetuous in letting a stranger in on his private thoughts. It takes him a while to calm down and reflect on his rashness. Suddenly, in a measured tone) The reason I’m telling you all this is because you’re Sifeng’s brother. I want you to believe that I’m sincere. I’ve never had the slightest intention of deceiving her. lu dahai (showing some goodwill): Then you really intend to marry Sifeng? You know she’s a silly girl. She’d never marry anybody else after this. zhou ping (in all sincerity): Yes, I’m leaving today, but in a month or two I’ll be back to get her. lu dahai: Now look here, you son- of-the-boss you, you don’t expect anyone to believe that, do you? zhou ping (taking a letter out of his pocket): You can read this letter that I just wrote her. It’s all explained here. lu dahai (evading): I don’t want to see it. I—I haven’t got time now. zhou ping (looking up after a moment’s silence): Then I’m afraid there’s no other way of proving my good faith. Though that lethal weapon you’ve got there in your pocket should be guarantee enough. If you still don’t believe me, I’m still at your mercy, you know. lu dahai (acidly): My dear young master, you think I’m going to let you get away with it as easily as that? (With a sudden ferocity) You really think I’m ready to let my sister marry a creature like you? (He suddenly whips out his pistol.) zhou ping (panic-stricken): What are you going to do?

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lu dahai (ferociously): I’m going to kill you! Your father may be evil, but he at least looks pretty decent. You, you are the most useless, spineless thing in the world! zhou ping: All right, go on, then! (He shuts his eyes in terror.) lu dahai (exhaling sharply, he hands the gun to zhou ping): You’d better take this. It belongs to your mine. zhou ping (puzzled): What’s the matter? (He takes the gun.) lu dahai (despondently): Nothing. Old ladies are all muddleheaded. I know my mother. My sister is all she lives for. If you can give Sifeng a decent life, I’ll let you go this once. (zhou ping opens his mouth to speak, but lu dahai stops him with a wave of the hand. Grimly zhou ping goes and puts away the gun in the drawer of the long table.) (Peremptorily) And now will you bring in my sister? zhou ping (bewildered): What? lu dahai: Sifeng. I take it she’s here. zhou ping: No, no, she’s not here. I thought she was at your house. lu dahai (uncertainly): Well, that’s queer. Mother and I spent two hours looking for her in the rain, but there wasn’t a sign of her. I thought she must be here. zhou ping (anxiously): You mean she’s been out wandering around in the rain for two hours? Isn’t there—anywhere else she could have gone to? lu dahai (positively): No, where could she have gone in the middle of the night? zhou ping (suddenly panicky): No! Don’t say she’s gone and— lu dahai (knowing what zhou ping means): You think she’s—no, she wouldn’t do that. (Contemptuously) No, I don’t think she’d have the guts. zhou ping (trembling): Yes, she would. You don’t know her. She’s proud, and strongwilled, and she—but she should have seen me first. She (as if seeing her body floating in the river) shouldn’t have been so rash. (Pause.) lu dahai (suddenly): Humph! A fine bit of playacting that was! Think you can put me off like that? Eh? She’s here! She must be here! (A whistle is heard outside the window at a distance.) zhou ping (raising his hand for silence): Shh! Stop shouting. (The whistling comes closer and his face lights up) That’s her! Here she is! I can hear her! lu dahai: Eh? zhou ping: That’s her. We always do this when we meet. lu dahai: Where is she, then? zhou ping: Probably out in the garden. (He opens the window and whistles back. The response comes even closer.) (Over his shoulder, smiling between tears) Here she comes! (There is a knock on the center door.)

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(To lu dahai) I think you’d better keep out of sight in the next room for the time being. She wouldn’t be expecting to find you here. I don’t think she could stand any more shocks. (He takes lu dahai to the dining-room door. lu dahai leaves.) lu sifeng’s voice (low): Ping! zhou ping (hurrying across to the center door): Feng! (Opening the door) Come in! (lu sifeng comes in, her hair disheveled and dripping, sticking into the corners of her eyes, her clothes drenched and clinging to her skin, her face wet with tears and rain. The chill after the rain makes her shiver and her teeth clatter. She sees zhou ping the way a lost child finds her mother. She stares at him as if in a trance.) lu sifeng: Ping! zhou ping (touched): Feng. lu sifeng (timidly): No one around? zhou ping (sad and compassionate): No, it’s all right. (He grasps her hands.) lu sifeng (letting herself go): Oh, Ping! (She flings her arms around him and sobs convulsively.) zhou ping (as if he had not seen her for a long time): How—how did you—how did you find me here? (Babbling with relief ) How did you get in? lu sifeng: I slipped in through the back entrance. zhou ping: Your hands are like ice. You’d better get changed first. lu sifeng: No, Ping—(with a sob) let me have a look at you first. zhou ping (taking her over to a sofa and sitting her down beside him, ardently): But— but where have you been, Feng? lu sifeng (looking at him and smiling with her eyes full of tears): Here you are at last, Ping. It seems like ages. zhou ping (picking up a purple cotton yarn blanket and wrapping it around her): My poor darling, how can you be so silly? Where have you been, my silly girl? lu sifeng: I just ran on and on in the rain until I didn’t know where I was. The thunder kept rumbling and cracking and all was dark and blurry in front of me. My mind was a total blank. I thought I heard Mom calling after me, but I was afraid, and I ran as fast as I could. I was looking for the river out in front of our place. I was going to throw myself in. zhou ping (tightening his hold on lu sifeng’s hands): Feng! lu sifeng: But somehow I couldn’t find it, round and round in circles looking for it. zhou ping: Oh, Feng, it’s all my fault. Please forgive me. It was I who let you go through all this. Do forgive me and not hold it against me. lu sifeng: Ping, I’ll never hold it against you. Somehow I stumbled here in a daze and found myself under that pole with the broken wire. Suddenly I wanted to die. I knew all I had to do was to touch that live wire and I could put everything behind me. I loved my mother. I was afraid of the oath I had made in her presence. I was afraid that she would call me a bad girl. I’d rather be dead. But just before I was to touch

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that wire, all of a sudden I saw there was a light in your window and I realized you were in. Oh, Ping, suddenly I felt that I couldn’t just die: I couldn’t bear to be parted from you. It occurred to me that the world is big and we can still go away—only we must go away together. Oh Ping, you— zhou ping (gravely): Are we leaving together? lu sifeng (earnestly): It’s the only way out, Ping. I’ve got no home to go to now. (Sadly) Dahai hates me, and I just couldn’t face Mom now. I’ve got nothing now—no family, no friends. I’ve got only you, Ping. (Imploringly) Take me with you tomorrow. (Pause.) zhou ping (shaking his head glumly): No, no— lu sifeng (disappointed): Ping! zhou ping (looking at her, gravely): No, no—we must go right now. lu sifeng (incredulous): What, this minute? zhou ping (tenderly): Yes. I was planning to go alone and then come back for you later, but there’s no need to wait now. lu sifeng (still incredulous): You really mean it? We’ll go together? zhou ping: Yes, really. lu sifeng (delirious with joy, she throws away the blanket, stands up, seizes zhou ping’s hands and kisses them wildly while wiping the tears streaming down her cheeks): So it’s true! It’s true, it’s true! Oh, Ping! You darling, you! You’re my savior, you’re the best person in the whole world. You’re my—oh, I love you! (She weeps in his arms.) zhou ping (moved, wiping his tears with his handkerchief ): Feng, from now on we’ll be together for ever. We’ll never be separated. lu sifeng (assuring herself, cuddling in his arms): Yes, we’ll leave this place now, and we’ll never be parted from each other. zhou ping (restraining himself ): All right, Feng, but before we go there’s someone we must see. As soon as we’ve done that, we’ll be away. lu sifeng: Who do you mean? zhou ping: Your brother. lu sifeng: Dahai? zhou ping: He’s been looking for you. He’s in the dining room there. lu sifeng (frightened): No, no, don’t you see him. He hates you. He’ll hurt you. Let’s go—let’s get out—quick. zhou ping (comforting her): I’ve already seen him. And now we must see him once more—(with an air of finality) otherwise we just won’t be able to go. lu sifeng (timorously): But, Ping, you— (zhou ping goes across to the dining-room door and opens it.) zhou ping (calling): Lu Dahai! Lu Dahai!—I say! He’s gone! That’s funny. He must have gone out through the other door. (He looks at lu sifeng.) lu sifeng (going up to zhou ping and pleading with him): Never mind, Ping, let’s go. (Dragging him toward the center door) Let’s go just as we are.

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(As lu sifeng gets zhou ping to the door it opens. mrs. lu and lu dahai come in. mrs. lu looks a changed woman. She has cried and shouted herself hoarse in the rain. Her eyelids droop in despair. The wrinkles in her forehead look deeply etched. Overagitation has turned her into a stupor, her whole figure a statue of rigid agony. Her wet clothes are now partly dry. Her hair is still a little wet, disheveled and sticky at the temples. Her hands trembling, she enters gingerly.) (In alarm) Mom! (There is a slight pause, mother gazing at daughter with sad compassion.) mrs. lu (in an agonized voice, her arms held out toward lu sifeng): Feng, come here. (lu sifeng rushes toward her mother and kneels.) lu sifeng: Mom! (She clasps her mother’s knees.) mrs. lu (stroking lu sifeng’s head, distressfully): My child, my poor, poor child. lu sifeng (sobbing her heart out): Oh, Mom, forgive me, forgive me. I forgot your warnings. mrs. lu (pulling her up): Why didn’t you tell me earlier? lu sifeng (hanging her head): I love you, Mom, that’s why I was afraid. I didn’t want you to dislike me, and despise me. I just didn’t dare tell you. mrs. lu (sorrowfully): It’s my own fault for being so stupid. I should have thought of it before. (Bitterly) But who could have expected anything like this? And to think that it should have happened to my own children of all people! Your mother’s fate has been hard enough, so is yours now. lu dahai (unemotionally): Let’s go, Mom. Sifeng will be going home with us first. I’ve arranged everything with him—(pointing to zhou ping) he can go on in advance and come back for Sifeng later. mrs. lu (bewildered): Who said that? Who said that? lu dahai (looking at his mother, unperturbed): I know what’s on your mind, Mom. There’s no other way out. So I’m not going to have any more to do with the Zhous. Just let them go. mrs. lu (perplexed, sitting down): What! Let them go? zhou ping (hesitantly): You can trust me, Mrs. Lu. I’ll be good to her. I’m taking her with me and leaving right now. mrs. lu (holding lu sifeng’s hand, trembling): Do you want to go with him, Feng? lu sifeng (hanging her head, tightly gripping her mother’s hands): Mom, I’m afraid I’ll have to leave you for a while. mrs. lu (unable to hold it back anymore): You can’t live together! lu dahai (surprised): What’s the matter, Mom? mrs. lu (standing up): No! It wouldn’t do! lu sifeng (anxiously): Mom! mrs. lu (ignoring her pleading, grabbing her by the hand): Sifeng, we’re going home. (To lu dahai) Go and call a rickshaw. I think Sifeng’s too weak to walk anymore. We must go—as fast as we can! lu sifeng (recoiling from her in desperation): You can’t do this to me, Mom!

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mrs. lu: No, it wouldn’t do! (Woodenly and monotonously) Let’s go, let’s go. lu sifeng (imploringly): Do you want to drive your daughter crazy and see her die before your very eyes? zhou ping (going up to mrs. lu): Mrs. Lu, I know I’ve done you wrong, but I’ll do my best to make up for it. Now that things have gone this far, you— lu dahai: Mom! (Puzzled) Mom, I don’t get it, Mom. mrs. lu (seeing no alternative, sternly): You go and get a rickshaw! (To lu sifeng) Now listen to me, Feng: I’d rather you didn’t exist than see you living with him! Come on, then. (Just as lu dahai gets to the door, lu sifeng screams.) lu sifeng (screaming): Oh, Mom! Mom! (She faints into her mother’s arms.) mrs. lu (holding lu sifeng in her arms): My child! You— zhou ping (agitated): She’s passed out. (mrs. lu feels lu sifeng’s forehead and softly calls her name. She breaks down into tears. zhou ping runs toward the dining room.) lu dahai: Don’t panic: a drop of cold water and she’ll be all right. She was like that when she was little. (zhou ping gets some cold water and sprinkles it on lu sifeng’s face. She gradually comes to but her face is deathly pale.) mrs. lu (feeds lu sifeng with the cold water): Feng, my good child, come back. Come back, my poor child. lu sifeng (gradually opening her mouth, then her eyes, drawing a deep breath): Ah, Mom. mrs. lu (trying to comfort her): Don’t be hard on me, child. I’m not being hard-hearted. I just can’t tell you what I’m going through. lu sifeng (sighing deeply): Mom! mrs. lu: What is it, Feng? lu sifeng: I—I’ve got to tell you something, Ping! zhou ping: Feel better now, Feng? lu sifeng: I—I’ve been keeping it from you all the time. (Looking piteously at her mother) I couldn’t even bring myself to tell you, Mom. mrs. lu: What is it, child? Tell me. lu sifeng (sobbing): I, I—(summoning all her courage) he and I are going to have a . . . (she breaks down in a flood of tears.) mrs. lu: What? You mean you— (Prepared for the worst, she is expressionless.) zhou ping (seizing lu sifeng’s hand): Sifeng! Is it true? You— lu sifeng (weeping): Yes. zhou ping (both sad and happy): But when? How long? lu sifeng (hanging her head): About three months now. zhou ping (relieved): But, Sifeng, why didn’t you tell me? I—oh, my—

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mrs. lu (under her breath): My God! zhou ping (going over to mrs. lu): You just can’t stand in our way now, Mrs. Lu. It’s all my fault. I beg you! (Kneeling) I beg you: let her go. I give you my word I’ll be worthy of her, and of you. lu sifeng (stands up, walks over to her mother, and goes down on her knees at her mother’s feet): Have pity on us, Mom. Say yes and let us go. mrs. lu (sitting there in a daze, unable to speak for a moment): I must be dreaming. My children, my own children, after thirty years—oh, my God! (She buries her face in her hands and bursts into tears, then waves them away) Go away! I don’t know you! (She turns her face away.) zhou ping: Thank you! (Rising) We’d better go, Feng. (lu sifeng gets to her feet again.) mrs. lu (turning back, uncontrollably): No, you can’t! lu sifeng (falling on her knees again, pleading): What’s the matter with you, Mom? My mind’s made up. Doesn’t matter if he’s rich or poor, doesn’t matter who he is, I’m his now. From the first my heart was promised to him, and all I see is him. Mom, this is where I am now: wherever he goes, I go, whatever he is, I am. Can’t you understand, Mom, I— mrs. lu (gesturing to her to stop, painfully): Child! lu dahai: Well, Mom, since she’s gone this far, we may as well let her have her way. zhou ping (grimly): Mrs. Lu, if you refuse to let her go, we’ll have no choice but to disobey you and just go. Feng! lu sifeng (shaking her head): Ping! (Still watching mrs. lu) Mom! mrs. lu (deeply grieved, in a low voice): Oh, God knows who has committed the sin, who deserves to be punished. My poor children, they didn’t know what they were doing. Oh, God, if anyone has to be punished, let it just be me. I alone am guilty. It all began when I took the first false step. (Heartbroken) Now I understand, now I see. What is done is done. No use blaming heaven for injustice. When you commit the first sin, the second is bound to follow. (Stroking lu sifeng’s head) They’re my innocent children; they deserve a good and happy life. The guilt is here in my heart, and I should be the one to suffer for it. (She rises to her feet and looks heavenward) And tonight, here I am letting them go away together. I know I’m doing wrong, but this way the responsibility will all be mine; all this trouble was caused by me in the first place. My children are good kids; their hearts are pure. If there must be a punishment, let me take it—me alone. (Looking away) Feng— lu sifeng (uneasily): Mom, you must feel very sad. But I don’t understand what you’ve been saying. mrs. lu (turning her face away, tenderly): It’s nothing. (Smiling) Now get up, Feng. You can go now, both of you. lu sifeng (getting up, deeply touched, embracing her mother): Oh, Mom! zhou ping: Come on, then. (Looking at his watch) We haven’t got much time. Only twenty-five minutes before the train goes. Tell them to get the car out. Come on.

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mrs. lu (calmly): No. You’re going away in the dark of night. Don’t disturb anyone. (To lu dahai) Dahai, you go and get a rickshaw. I’m going home now. You can see them off at the station. lu dahai: All right. (He goes out through the center door.) mrs. lu (to lu sifeng, with sad tenderness): Come here, my child. Let me kiss you goodbye. (lu sifeng goes up to her mother and embraces her.) (To zhou ping) you come here, too. Let me have a look at you. (zhou ping goes and stands in front of mrs. lu, his head bent.) (Looking at him and wiping her eyes) Okay, you can go now. But I want you both to promise me one thing before you go. zhou ping: What is it? mrs. lu: If you don’t promise, then I won’t let Sifeng go after all. lu sifeng: Tell us what it is, Mom. I’ll promise. mrs. lu (looking from one to the other): When you go, you’d best go as far as you can and never come back. Once you’ve left tonight, you must never see me again as long as you live. lu sifeng (in distress): Oh, Mom, don’t— zhou ping (tipping her a wink and whispering): She’s upset right now, that’s why. She’ll be all right later. lu sifeng: All right, then. We’ll be off now, then, Mom. (Her eyes fill with tears as she kneels for a farewell kowtow to her mother. mrs. lu is controlling her own emotions with an effort.) mrs. lu (waving them away): Go away. zhou ping: Let’s go out through the dining room. I’ve still got some of my things in there. (Just as the three of them—zhou ping, lu sifeng, and mrs. lu—get to the diningroom door, it opens and zhou fanyi comes in. The three are startled and eye each other.) lu sifeng (involuntarily): Ma’am! zhou fanyi (with composure): Why, where are you all going? There’s still a thunderstorm going on outside, you know! zhou ping (to zhou fanyi): So you’ve been eavesdropping at the door, have you? zhou fanyi: Yes, and I’m not the only one. There’s someone else here. (Turning back to the dining room) Come out here, you! (A sheepish zhou chong emerges from the dining room.) lu sifeng (startled): Master Chong! zhou chong (disconcertedly): Sifeng! zhou ping (annoyed): How come you are so childish, Chong? zhou chong (still at sea): It was Mom who told me to come here. I’d no idea what was going on.

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zhou fanyi (coldly): You’ll know soon enough. zhou ping (to zhou fanyi, fuming): Now what’s the meaning of all this? zhou fanyi (mockingly): I just wanted your brother to come and give you two a send- off. zhou ping (furiously): How despicab— zhou chong: Now, Ping! zhou ping (to zhou chong): I’m sorry! (Rounding abruptly on zhou fanyi again) But there isn’t another mother like you on earth! zhou chong (bewildered): What’s going on, Mom? zhou fanyi (to lu sifeng): Where are you going, Sifeng? lu sifeng (stammering): I . . . I . . . zhou ping: Don’t tell them a single lie! Tell them proudly, with chin up, we’re going away together. zhou chong (now he knows): What’s this, Sifeng? You’re going away with him? lu sifeng: Yes, Master Chong. I—I’m— zhou chong (somewhat reproachfully): Then why didn’t you tell me before? lu sifeng: Not that I didn’t. I told you to leave me alone because I—I was no longer a good woman. zhou ping (to lu sifeng): No, why should you say you are not good? Go on, tell them! (Pointing to zhou fanyi) Tell them that you’re going to marry me! zhou chong (rather taken aback): Sifeng, you— zhou fanyi (to zhou chong): Now you know what it’s all about. (zhou chong hangs his head.) zhou ping (turning to zhou fanyi with sudden viciousness): You spiteful creature! You think he’ll help—and spoil everything? Well, Chong, what ideas have you got? Tell us what you want to do to me. Speak! I’ll forgive you. (zhou chong looks from his mother to lu sifeng, then hangs his head in silence.) zhou fanyi: Come on, Chong! (After a pause, more insistently) Why don’t you say something, Chong? Why don’t you grab hold of Sifeng and ask her? Why don’t you grab your brother and ask him? (There is another pause. Everybody looks at zhou chong, who stands mute.) Say something, Chong! You’re not dead, are you? Or dumb? Or are you just a stupid child? Surely you’re not just going to stand there and feel nothing when you see your own sweetheart snatched away from you? zhou chong (lifting his head and reacting as tamely as a lamb): No, no, Mom. (Looks at lu sifeng again, then hangs his head) So long as Sifeng is willing, I’ve no objection. zhou ping (going up to zhou chong, holding his hand): Oh my good brother, Chong! My sensible brother! zhou chong (with a puzzled frown): No, no. I suddenly realize—I feel—as if I wasn’t really in love with Sifeng after all. (Staring abstractedly into space) It was—I, I, I think it was—probably just a silly infatuation.

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zhou ping (gratefully): But, Brother Chong— zhou chong (shrinking back from the ecstatic zhou ping): Yes, take her away with you—only be good to her. zhou fanyi (all her hopes dashed): Ugh, you! (With a sudden fury) You’re not my son! You’re not a bit like me! You—you’re just a dead pig! zhou chong (feeling insulted): Mom! zhou ping (shocked): What’s wrong with you? zhou fanyi (incoherently): You’re no man at all! If I were you, I’d smash her, burn her, kill her! You’re just a poor, feeble idiot—not a spark of life in you! You’re your father’s son, your father’s little lamb. I should have known better—you’re none of mine—no son of mine! zhou ping (outraged): Aren’t you Chong’s mother? How could you talk like that! zhou fanyi (distressed): Ping, you say it. You tell him. I’m not afraid. Tell him I’m no longer his mom. zhou chong (pained): What’s the matter with you, Mom? zhou fanyi (throwing off all restraint): I’d already forgotten who I was when I got him here. (To zhou chong, hysterically) Don’t think I’m your mother. (Raising her voice) Your mother died long ago. She was crushed to death, smothered to death by your father. No I’m not your mother, but a woman brought back to life by Zhou Ping. (With total abandon) Yes, she also needs true love from a man, she wants to be a truly living woman! zhou chong (heartbroken): Oh, Mom! zhou ping (winking at zhou chong): She’s sick. (To zhou fanyi) You’d better come upstairs with me. You probably need a rest. zhou fanyi: That’s all trash. I’m not sick, I’m not sick, I tell you, no mental illness, nothing. Don’t you think I’m talking nonsense. (Wiping her eyes, in an anguished voice) How many years have I endured in this hell of a place, this prisonlike residence of the Zhous? Eighteen years in the company of this king of hell! But my heart is not dead. Your father may have made me have you, Chong, but my heart—my soul is still my own. (Pointing to zhou ping) He’s the only one that’s ever possessed me body and soul. But now he doesn’t want me, he doesn’t want me anymore. zhou chong (considerably distressed): Mom, my dearest mom, What is all this about? zhou ping: Take no notice of her. She’s going off her head! zhou fanyi (heatedly): Don’t you talk like your father. No, I’m not mad—not in the least! And now it’s your turn to speak, and tell them all about it—it’s my last chance to get even with you! zhou ping (fiercely): What do you want me to tell? I think you’d better go upstairs to bed. zhou fanyi (sneering): Stop pretending! Tell them that I’m not your stepmother. (There is general astonishment, a short pause.) zhou chong (at a loss): Mom! zhou fanyi (recklessly): Go on, tell them. Tell Sifeng. Go on, tell her!

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lu sifeng (overcome): Oh, Mom! (She throws herself into her mother’s arms.) zhou ping (looking at his brother, then turning to zhou fanyi): Why do you have to do that? Why do you have to dwell on the past? See how unhappy that would make Chong feel the rest of his life. zhou fanyi (abandoning her maternal sentiments, screaming): I have no child, no husband, no family. I have nothing. All I want to say to you is: I—I’m yours. zhou ping (distraught): Oh, my brother, look at poor Brother Chong. If only you still have some of your mother’s heart left! zhou fanyi (vindictively): Copying your father now, are you? You hypocrite! Remember: it was you, and you alone, that deceived your brother, and deceived me, and deceived your father! zhou ping (furiously): You liar! I didn’t. I didn’t deceive him. Father’s a good man, a moral man all his life. (zhou fanyi sneers.) (To lu sifeng) Take no notice of her. She’s mad. Let’s get out of here. zhou fanyi: You wouldn’t get far. The gate’s locked. Your father will be down any minute. I’ve sent for him. mrs. lu: Oh! Ma’am! zhou ping: What are you trying to do? zhou fanyi (with icy calm): I want your father to meet his dear future daughter-in-law before you leave. (Calling her husband) Puyuan! Puyuan! zhou chong: Mom, please! zhou ping (advancing on zhou fanyi): Don’t you dare shout again, you lunatic! (zhou fanyi runs to the door of the study and shouts again.) mrs. lu (in panic): Let’s get out of here, Sifeng. zhou fanyi: No. He’s coming! (zhou puyuan comes in from the study. There is a deathly hush, and no one moves an inch.) zhou puyuan (in the doorway): What’s all the shouting for? You ought to be in bed by now. zhou fanyi (haughtily): I want you to meet some relatives of yours. zhou puyuan (astonished to find mrs. lu and lu sifeng together): Why, what the— what are you two doing here? zhou fanyi (taking lu sifeng’s hand and turning to puyuan): Let me introduce your daughter-in-law. (To lu sifeng, indicating puyuan) Greet your father! (Then to puyuan, indicating mrs. lu) And I’d like you to meet this lady here, too! mrs. lu: Ma’am! zhou fanyi: Come here, Ping! You can pay your respects to your new mother now that your father’s here. zhou ping (embarrassed): Father, I—I— zhou puyuan (taking in the situation): Why—(to mrs. lu) so you’ve come back again after all, Shiping.

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zhou fanyi (taken aback): What? mrs. lu (unnerved): No, no, you’re mistaken. zhou puyuan (remorsefully): Yes, Shiping, I thought you’d be back. mrs. lu: No! No! (Hanging her head) Oh, God! zhou fanyi (stupefied): Shiping? You mean she’s Shiping? zhou puyuan: Yes. (Irritated) Fanyi, don’t start pretending you didn’t know and asking silly questions. She’s Ping’s mother, the one that died thirty years ago. zhou fanyi: In heaven’s name! (A long silence follows, broken only by a cry of anguish from lu sifeng as she stares at her mother, who sits there with her head bent, as if in pain. Dazedly, zhou ping’s eyes travel from his father to mrs. lu, while zhou fanyi steals around to zhou chong. She is suddenly aware that a far greater tragedy than her own is unfolding before her eyes. This gradually arouses her sympathy for zhou ping. She now sees the frenzy in her action and is thus quickly restored to her normal maternal sentiments. In spite of herself, she looks at her own son zhou chong with remorse.) zhou puyuan (with a heavy heart): Ping, come here. Your own mother never died at all. She’s here, alive. zhou ping (beside himself ): No, it can’t be her! Father, say it’s not her! zhou puyuan (severely): Shut up, you idiot! You are not supposed to talk like that! Ping, she may not be from a good family, but she’s your mother just the same. zhou ping (in utter despair): Oh, Father! zhou puyuan (seriously): Don’t feel embarrassed to find you and Sifeng have the same mother. It is against human nature to deny your family ties. lu sifeng (turning to her mother): Oh, Mom! (She is overcome with grief.) zhou puyuan (despondently): Forgive me, Ping. This was the only real mistake I ever made. I never imagined for one moment that she was still alive and that one day she’d find us here. I can only put it down to divine justice. (Turning to mrs. lu with a sigh) I’m getting old now. I felt very sorry after I told you to go this afternoon, and I’ve arranged to have twenty thousand dollars sent to you. Now that you’ve come back again, I think Ping will be a good son to you and look after you. He’ll help to make amends for the wrong I did you. zhou ping (to mrs. lu): So you—you’re my— mrs. lu (unable to control herself any longer): Oh, Ping! (She turns her head away and sobs.) zhou puyuan: Down on your knees to her, Ping! You’re not dreaming. She’s your mother. lu sifeng (utterly confused): This can’t be true, Mom. (mrs. lu makes no reply and continues to sob.) zhou fanyi (smiling to zhou ping, repentantly): I never expected it to—to turn out like this, Ping! zhou ping (smiling wryly, to zhou puyuan): Father! (With his wry smile, to mrs. lu) Mother! (Looking at lu sifeng and pointing at her) You—

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lu sifeng (exchanging looks and weird smiles with zhou ping, suddenly at the end of her tether): Oh, my God! (She rushes out through the center door. zhou ping throws himself down on the sofa and buries his head in his arms. mrs. lu stands motionless, lifeless.) zhou fanyi (calling anxiously): Sifeng! Sifeng! (Turning to zhou chong) I don’t like the look of this, Chong. You’d better hurry out and find her. (zhou chong runs out through the center door, calling after lu sifeng.) zhou puyuan (going up to zhou ping): Now, Ping, what’s all this about? zhou ping (bursting out): You should never have brought me into this world! (He runs out through the dining room. Suddenly, a heartrending shriek is heard from lu sifeng in the distance, followed by zhou chong’s frantic shouting of “Sifeng! Sifeng!” Then comes a similar shriek from zhou chong.) mrs. lu (shouting): Sifeng, what’s happened? zhou fanyi (simultaneously): Chong! My boy! (They both run out through the center door.) zhou puyuan (hurries to the window, pulls aside the curtain, and quavers): What’s happened? What’s happened? (A servant comes running in through the center door.) servant (gasping): Sir! zhou puyuan: Quick! What’s happened? servant (in a panic-stricken gabble): Sifeng—she’s—she’s dead! zhou puyuan (aghast): What about Chong? servant: He’s—he’s dead, too. zhou puyuan (in a trembling voice): No! No! How—how come? servant: Sifeng ran into the live wire. Master Chong didn’t know about it, and he caught hold of her. They were both electrocuted. zhou puyuan (almost passing out): No, it can’t be true! It’s—it’s impossible! Just impossible! (He hurries out with the servant. zhou ping comes in from the dining room. He is deathly pale, yet his manner is perfectly calm. He goes over to the long table, opens the drawer, and takes out the pistol that lu dahai has left him. Then be goes into the study. There is a hubbub of voices outside—a babel of weeping, shouting, and altercation. mrs. lu comes in through the center door, followed by an old servant with a flashlight. She stands silent at center stage.) old servant (trying to comfort her): Now come on, ma’am, you can’t just stand there like that. Go ahead and cry. What you want is a good cry. mrs. lu (expressionless): I can’t cry! old servant: Well, that’s the will of heaven. There’s nothing you can do about it—but you need to cry for your own good. mrs. lu: No, I need a quiet moment. (She stands there in a daze. The center door is flung wide open and zhou fanyi appears in the doorway, surrounded by a number of servants. It is hard to tell whether she is laughing or crying.)

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servant (behind her in the doorway): You’d best go in, ma’am, and not look. (The servants shepherd her into the room, but she stops just inside the door. She leans against the doorpost in a fit of hysterical laughter.) zhou fanyi: Why are you gaping at me like that, Chong? Why are you smiling at me like that? Oh, Chong, my silly boy! (zhou puyuan appears in the center door.) zhou puyuan (tears on his face): Come on in, Fanyi! My hands feel numb. You mustn’t look at them anymore. old servant: Come on in, ma’am. They’re burned to a cinder, and there’s nothing anybody can do about it now. zhou fanyi (coming forward into the room, convulsed with sobs): Chong, my boy, my boy! You were alive and well a moment ago. How can you be dead—so horribly dead? (She stands in a stupor.) zhou puyuan (now inside the room): Steady, now. Steady. (He wipes his eyes.) zhou fanyi (laughing hysterically): You deserve to die, Chong, you deserve to die! With a mother like me you deserve to die! (From outside comes the noise of a scuffle between lu dahai and the servants.) zhou puyuan: Who’s that? Who’s that quarreling at a time like this? (The old servant goes out to find out. Another servant comes in immediately.) What’s going on out there? servant: It’s that Lu Dahai again, the one who was here this morning. He’s back again now, and starting a fight with us. zhou puyuan: Tell him to come in. servant: Sir, he injured several of us kicking and hitting. Now he’s gone by the back entrance. zhou puyuan: Got away, you say? servant: Yes, sir. zhou puyuan (suddenly): Go after him, then, and bring him back here. servant: Very good, sir. (All the servants go out, leaving only zhou puyuan, mrs. lu, and zhou fanyi in the room.) zhou puyuan (brokenhearted): I’ve lost one son. I can’t afford to lose another. (They all sit down.) mrs. lu: Let them all go! Perhaps it’s best that he has gone. I know what the boy’s like. He hates you, I know. He won’t come back. zhou puyuan (as if bewildered by the sudden quiet): It doesn’t seem true that the youngsters have gone first and left us old—(suddenly) Ping! Where’s Ping? Ping! Ping! (There is no reply.) Come here, somebody! Where are you all? (There is still no reply.) Go and find him for me! Where’s my oldest son?

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(There is the sound of a pistol shot from the study, followed by a deathly silence in the room.) zhou fanyi (suddenly): Ah! (She runs into the study. zhou puyuan stands motionless, like a man in a trance. zhou fanyi returns at once, wailing dementedly.) He—he— zhou puyuan: He—he— (They both run into the study. mrs . lu stands up, staggering a few steps toward the study until she reaches center stage. She then starts to fall, gets on her knee, in the same posture as the old lady at the end of the prologue. As the stage lights dim, the same high mass by Bach played in the prologue is heard again from a distance, crescendoing till complete darkness, just like at the end of the prologue. The curtain falls and rises again immediately for the epilogue.)

E PIL OGUE (The curtain rises on a dark stage. The church choir singing the mass with organ accompaniment is heard from a distance. Accompanied by the music is the echo of the little brother and little sister’s dialogue from the prologue.) little brother: Sis, you go ask her. little sister (in a low voice): No, no, you ask her. You ask her. (The stage is gradually lit to reveal the same scene as in the prologue, ten years later on the afternoon of Chinese New Year’s Eve. The old woman, mrs. lu, is still lying on her side, center stage, with little brother and little sister standing close by watching.) You ask her. She knows. little brother: No, I’m afraid. You, you go! (He pushes his sister. The chorus stops. sister b enters from the center door, is shocked to see the old woman lying on the floor, rushes over, and helps her up.) sister b (holding the old woman): Stand up, Granny Lu! Stand up! (She walks her to the fireplace on the right and sits her down. She hurries back to the brother and sister.) (Comfortingly) You weren’t scared, were you, young man? Go now, your mom’s waiting for you outside. Honey, go with your brother. little sister: Thank you, Sister! (She helps her brother button up.) sister b: It’s cold outside. Both of you should bundle up. little sister: Right. Bye-bye! sister b: Bye! (Sister and brother exit by the center door. sister b rushes back to the fireplace to look after the old woman. sister a enters from the dining room on the left.)

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Hush! (Pointing to mrs. lu) She came out. sister a (in a low voice): Mr. Zhou will be down in a minute to see her. You take care of her. I have to go. sister b: Okay. Wait a minute. (Picks up an umbrella from a corner) It looks like snow outside. Take this. sister a (amiably): Thank you. (She takes the umbrella and exits from center door. The old man enters from the left, stands at the door, and watches.) sister b (pointing to mrs. lu): Here she is! old man: I see. (There is a long pause.) old man (showing concern): How is she? sister b (sighing softly): Still the same. old man: Is she eating fine? sister b: Not much. old man (pointing to his own head): How about here? sister b (shaking her head): No good. She still doesn’t recognize people. (There is another long pause.) sister b: Did you get to see your wife upstairs? old man (woodenly): Yes. sister b (encouragingly): She’s been doing fine lately. old man: Right—(pointing to mrs. lu) No one’s been here to see her? sister b: You mean her son? old man: Yes. A man by the name of Lu Dahai. sister b (sympathetically): No. How sad! She misses her son so much that every holiday she comes to the window and watches the whole evening. old man (sighs in despair, to himself ): I’m afraid—I’m afraid he’s dead. sister b (with hope): Can’t be. old man (shakes his head): I’ve been looking for him for the last ten years—not a shadow of him has been found. sister b: Ai, if her son comes back, I’m sure she’ll recognize him. old man (walks to the fireplace and bends down): Shiping! (The old woman turns around, stares at him as if not knowing who he is. She rises to her feet and, completely expressionless, walks toward the window.) old man (in a low voice): Shiping! Shi— sister b (waving at him, in a low voice): Let her be. Don’t disturb her! (The old woman reaches the window, slowly pulls back the curtain, and looks out in a daze. The old man turns around, despairing, and gazes at the flames in the fireplace. Suddenly from outside comes the sound of children laughing and footsteps. The center door is thrown wide open. little brother and little sister come in.) little sister (to her brother): Here? Are you sure it’s here? little brother (weeping, nodding): Uh-huh. sister b (glad they are there to break the silence): Sweetheart, why are you crying?

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little brother (sobbing): I lost my gloves! It’s snowing. My gloves, my new gloves are missing. sister b: Don’t be upset, sweetheart, I’ll look for them with you. little sister: Brother, let’s look together. (The three of them look for the gloves in the left corner.) sister b (to little sister): Did you see anything? little sister: No. little brother (gets behind the sofa, jumps up, then suddenly): Here they are! Here they are! (Waving the gloves) Mom, here they are! (He dashes out.) sister b (envying the joy): Good. Go now. little sister: Thank you, Sister! (little sister exits by the center door. sister b closes it. There is another long pause.) old man (looking up): What’s that? Raining again? sister b (nodding calmly): Yes. (The old man takes another look at the old woman standing in front of the window, then turns around to sit down in the armchair next to the fire. He gazes long into the fire. Meantime sister b sits down on the sofa, picks up a copy of the Bible, and starts reading. Lights dim.)

not es

1.

2. 3. 4.

This is the first complete English translation of Cao Yu’s masterpiece according to its first edition, written in 1933 and published the following year. The existing translation by Wang Tso-liang and A. C. Barnes (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1958, 1978) is based on the 1956 edition of the play. The latter version makes significant cuts, notably the entire prologue and epilogue, following the by-then established practice of its stage productions. A careful comparison between the two editions also reveals a deeper level of significance beyond technical considerations in that the cuts and changes made in the 1956 edition point to a conscious but subtle shift of emphasis from a classic human tragedy to a more radical drama of social critique. The translation here adopts, after a line-by-line reexamination, the bulk of the Wang-Barnes translation in recognition of its overall excellence. But, in restoring all the omitted and altered parts, it is necessarily an extension and revision of that translation. This revised translation also includes stylistic changes targeting mainly British usage and undue literariness in some of the dialogue. The herbal ingredients of a prescription in traditional Chinese medicine have to be boiled in a special pot before the concoction is poured out through a strainer into a bowl or cup to be drunk, while hot, by the patient. Jinan is the capital of Shandong province, a northern province on China’s east coast. Jiangsu is a province on China’s east coast, south of Shandong, with Nanjing as its capital and the Yangtze River flowing through it into the sea. Wuxi is a city in Jiangsu, on the southern bank of the Yangtze.

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5. 6. 7.

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Emperor Guangxu reigned from 1875 to 1908. The twentieth year of this reign was 1895, and if that is “thirty years” ago, the story of the play is set around 1925. The word for plum in Chinese is the same as the surname Mei. Beginning with the Treaty of Nanking, 1842, following the Opium War of 1840, the imperialist powers coerced the weakened Chinese government into “leasing” to them areas in major cities such as Shanghai and Tianjin (where the story of this play takes place) as semicolonial “concessions.”

It’s Only Spring (1934) li jianwu tra nsla ted by t ony hy de r

C ha r a c t e rs police chief ⳁ␖㝲㝲⒌, forty or more years of age his wife 㝲⒌⟒㑉, approaching thirty years of age headmistress of a primary school for girls ㇲ㽳㨏㫓㨑⒌, the wife’s cousin, unmarried, aged thirty or so wang yicheng 㠩㮷䀇, secretary to the police chief, about thirty years of age bai zhenshan ⊅㸕㓹, a spy, about fifty years of age feng yunping ⟋㴰㊿, aged about thirty manservant ㅖ㋏ Place: Beiping1 Period: One spring, during the Northern Expedition2 Time: Act 1: one afternoon, act 2: the next afternoon, act 3: the following morning

A CT 1 (A sumptuous living room furnished comfortably and strikingly in the modern style. On the right it adjoins the large drawing room from which, beyond diagonally draped velvet curtains, comes the sound of raucous laughter. In the rear wall, near the left-hand corner, there is a small door to the inner courtyard, which is always closed after use.

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Without a word an elegantly dressed young woman enters from the drawing room, stops, and sighs. She then takes a couple of steps forward, throws herself onto a couch, and closes her eyes as if exhausted. When she opens them the manservant is standing by the curtains holding an official letter.) wife (angrily, sitting up): What on earth are you doing standing there like that? Aren’t you going to close the curtains for me? manservant: Yes, madam. (He turns and lets down the velvet curtains.) wife: That letter in your hand? manservant (facing front): Official business for the chief. wife: So you choose to follow me about! manservant: If madam pleases. (He turns and hurries to the small door.) wife: Come back! What business? manservant: It’s a communication from the authorities. When the secretary read it he told me to take it to the chief. wife: Which authorities? Let me see it. manservant: Yes. (He hurries back and hands her the letter.) wife (glancing at the envelope and tossing it onto a round table): What’s the hurry? It’s bound to be something unpleasant! manservant: Yes. wife: First go and tell my cousin, the headmistress, that I’ve a bit of a headache and ask her to look after my guests. manservant: Yes. (He goes over, lifts the curtains, and immediately stands to one side.) The headmistress. (Enter the headmistress of a girl’s primary school.) headmistress (to the wife): What an uninhibited person you are, sneaking in here to hide. To your guests you are like a magnet: once you have gone there is nothing to keep them together. Some pull long faces and virtually slip into a trance; others walk off in search of their friends to chat about their own affairs, so it begins to look more like the Taoran Pavilion3 than someone’s drawing room. To put it bluntly, each goes his own sweet way. wife: I am weary of entertaining. They prattle on about this and that, but I’ve heard it all so many times before and I’ve had enough. headmistress: You’re not weary. You’re work shy. wife: All right, then, work shy. But with a “woman,” it amounts to the same thing. headmistress: With a “heart,” too, don’t forget. wife: I prefer it heartless.4 (To the manservant) What are you still hanging about here for? Go and deal with that letter. manservant: Yes, ma’am.

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(He scuttles forward, picks up the letter, turns toward the small door, and goes out.) headmistress (walking across and sitting down): You have been a lady of leisure for a good while now, but your temper seems to get worse and worse. wife: You think bad tempers are the prerogative of little girls, but the very first thing a wealthy woman learns is how to let off steam. headmistress: I’ve been your friend for many years, but, in all truth, I understand you less and less as time goes on. An outsider would merely put it down to the apparent difference in our lives, but when you get to the bottom of it, it’s nothing of the kind. You have your passions and I my principles; we were on different tracks right from the start. wife: You know, sometimes when I’m alone I’m bored out of my mind. As now, I lie in a chair like a sugar doll soon to melt in the heat, contemplating—yes, contemplating— your world, contemplating the reality beyond. But it is totally obscure, all out of my reach. Is there happiness there? Perhaps. I’ve never been inside to see. Don’t ask me to break through the pretty paper wrapping and mingle with those within—forgive me, I simply don’t have that degree of determination. headmistress: Of the two of us you are the more delicate, it’s true. wife: But the days pass so tediously for me, what would you have me do? headmistress: Well, if I were you I’d spend my money on things to amuse myself. wife: That’s a bit much from you, Headmistress! Come on, who has the money to buy another husband, to buy another home, different surroundings, another world? headmistress: Who can buy a change of heart? That’s the real question. wife: Exactly. You’ve hit the nail on the head, dear. How is it you’re so sure of yourself ? headmistress: I am not so simple as you imply. If you don’t believe me I’ll let you be headmistress for a couple of days. wife (shaking her head): I am terrified of those children of yours. headmistress: You too are a child: naughty and full of devilry; and cruel, curious, and self-willed to boot. Blow cold and you’re chill like water from the well. Blow hot and you forget yourself completely; but later, when you’ve had enough of playing, you become unspeakably miserable again. wife: You forget one thing: I don’t have the innocence of a child. headmistress: That’s why you can’t face the children. Do you remember? The year before last, when I asked you to come to school and give a talk, you stood there on the dais mumbling heaven knows what. wife: Yes. Yes. I remember. But let me tell you, I wept the whole way home. When I saw all those children, I felt—I felt nothing if not brokenhearted. (Getting up) I’m going inside to have a rest. You look after my guests for me. headmistress: Sit down. I’ve something to tell you. wife: I’ve heard enough. It’s bound to be about money for the school. headmistress: We’ll come to that later. Come on, do sit down and listen. You’ll never guess what it is.

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wife: Oh?! (Sitting down again) Did the sun rise in the west? headmistress: I’m not such a pessimist as you. The sun cannot rise in the west, nor can the world stop turning. wife: I can see you’ve some good news. Out with it. My drowsiness is disappearing fast. headmistress: A friend has come a long way to see you. wife: To see me? headmistress: You. wife: Now let’s be clear about one thing: if he’s looking for a job, I won’t see him. headmistress: You forget just how vast the world is and how many people it contains. wife: Do you know him well? headmistress: Thanks to you. wife: An old friend? headmistress: One you haven’t seen for years. wife: Feng Yunping! headmistress: I see his journey has not been in vain. You haven’t forgotten his name. wife: How do you know he’s here? headmistress: He came to see me at school this morning. wife: And he asked you about me. headmistress: Correct. wife: He wishes to see me. headmistress: Correct. wife: Merciful Father, my heart’s beating fit to burst. headmistress: I thought you’d forgotten him completely. So, when he mentioned you, I offered to pave the way for him. (The manservant enters by the small door and makes to slip out again.) wife: Don’t worry. I’m all right. headmistress (catching sight of the manservant): A Mr. Tan will be calling on madam presently. Bring him straight in here. manservant: Yes, ma’am. (He goes toward the drawing room.) headmistress (stopping the manservant): Just a moment. First pour madam some tea. manservant: Yes. (He goes out through the drawing room.) wife: And he’s coming right away to see me here? headmistress: And where else, may I ask? wife (faltering): Of course, of course. What I meant was: is he coming directly? headmistress: Surely you wouldn’t have anyone behave in the devious way they had to when you were still single? wife: You say the unkindest things! headmistress: All right, I’ll shut up. Have some tea. Then we’ll continue. wife: What a difficult woman you are, dear! (Calling out) Gaosheng, what have you done with the tea?

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(The manservant responds by calling “Coming!” and brings in two cups of tea on a tray. He sets them down in front of them and waits.) headmistress (to the manservant): Remember to bring Mr. Tan in here. manservant: Yes. (He goes out through the drawing room.) headmistress: Have some tea. wife: I’m not thirsty. headmistress (emphatically): Will the police chief’s lady wife please have some tea. wife (sighing): Madam Headmistress, how could I refuse? (She takes a sip.) He’s coming now, you say? headmistress: We agreed on a time, and I came on ahead to wait for him here with you. wife: Really there was no need. headmistress (standing up): I didn’t suppose there was; but I was scared you might throw a tantrum, child that you are. If I forewarned you, you’d be well prepared. wife: Stop! (Getting to her feet) I won’t see him. headmistress (looking at her): You won’t see him? wife (losing heart): I’ll see him. (Softly) Did you say his surname was Tan? headmistress: I did. He has changed his name to Tan Gang. It’s the surname of our uncle in Shanghai. wife: So I can call him cousin? headmistress: If you like. Now then, are you going to help me with the fundraising? wife: I’ll contribute five hundred. headmistress: My thanks to the police chief’s lady wife. And the chief ? wife: May also be put down for five hundred. headmistress: And now I must go. wife: One more thing. It is a good many years since I last saw him. Do you think he has changed much? headmistress: He seems much the same to me. A bit more seasoned, perhaps. wife: Wait! Do you think I’m still as pretty as I was? headmistress (looking back): Don’t be silly, dear. We’re all that much older now and we each have our own purpose in life. Even if you don’t mind people pestering you, you really must refrain from interfering with others. He is visiting you as an old friend and as such should you receive him. There can be no harm in treating him slightly better than he deserves; and if you give him a bit less than his due no one will fuss. In any event you should consider your reputation—and then there’s that husband of yours, the police chief. wife: Yes, teacher ma’am. Won’t you sit a while longer? headmistress: I’m not going. When Dr. Liu’s wife was ill neither he nor a trio of foreign doctors could make a diagnosis. Then, apparently, along comes this exorcist fellow and she gets better. Now I’d quite like to hear Dr. Liu’s explanation of all

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this—particularly of the sort of spook involved. Won’t you come through into the drawing room? wife: To listen to Dr. Liu’s endless stories of the supernatural? I’ve better uses for my ears. headmistress: It seems you don’t appreciate him one bit. If he were conscious of it, it would upset him deeply. wife: He knows perfectly well it isn’t me but my delicate stomach that doesn’t appreciate him. (The manservant enters from the drawing room.) manservant: Mr. Tan, madam. wife: Ask him to come and sit in here. manservant: Yes, madam. (He leaves by the same door.) wife: Help, there’s no mirror here! You keep him company for me. (She runs to the small door and turns around) I’m going for a quick look in the mirror; then I’ll be back. (The headmistress awaits the guest. The manservant ushers in feng yunping.) manservant (somewhat taken aback at the absence of the lady of the house): Mr. . . . Mr. Tan. headmistress: Please sit down, Mr. Tan. feng yunping: The police chief’s wife . . . ? headmistress: Will be along immediately. (The manservant goes out by the small door.) feng yunping: You told her I was coming to see her? headmistress: I did. (Inviting him to sit on the couch) Well? It wasn’t as awkward as you thought, was it? You expected one of those impenetrable mansions where she would not be at liberty to receive people. You were quite mistaken, you must admit. All those men and women you saw as you crossed the drawing room were the guests of the lady of the house, and her husband never shows the slightest concern. Indeed, that is one of the good things about modern wealthy families. You won’t realize it, but you will have immediately aroused envy in the company by being asked in here on arrival. I hope that in a day or two you will be able to move about at will among that cosmopolitan concoction of regulars. feng yunping (smiling): In two days’ time I shall have to leave. headmistress: When you do, you’d better not come to say goodbye. feng yunping: Oh? headmistress: You find that odd? It is such a long time since you featured in our conversation that it’s as if you did not exist. But she’s a strange creature. Ignore any superficial show of indifference to you; forget her position as wife of the police chief; she still thinks of you. She was sitting here just now, but when she heard you coming, she was off out to the back—not to hide from you but to check herself in the mirror. feng yunping: But I did not come here prepared for romance. headmistress: Well, there’s still time for preparation.

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feng yunping (smiling): Should I prepare acceptance or rejection? headmistress (laughing): That’s a question you yourself must answer. (Pausing for reflection) Or, rather, your sense of duty must answer. feng yunping: Wasn’t she bothered by my change of name? headmistress: Didn’t give it a moment’s thought. feng yunping: Do you think I’ll really be able to deceive her? I’m pretty scared and I’ll tell you why. I’m frightened not of revealing things about myself but of reigniting the embers of my past passion for her and betraying my principles. My heart suffered enough ten years ago, and I’m afraid it may be out for revenge of some sort. That would destroy me, destroy me completely. headmistress: I don’t think it would. If I didn’t have confidence in you I certainly wouldn’t expose you to further risks. feng yunping: I had my fill of love’s uncertainties ten years ago and I’m frightened— do you know, when I got to the main door here, I made up my mind immediately not to go in and, if it had not been for the servants’ accosting me with “What are you poking your nose in here for?” I’m certain I should not have kept this appointment. You say she has not forgotten me. Does she seem to love me still . . . ? headmistress: I would think so, yes; but, as I see it, her love may come in useful. To you it is more of an advantage than a threat. It’s a kind of insurance. feng yunping: Insurance? Do you mean . . . ? (The manservant opens the small door and stands aside.) manservant: Madam is here. (The guests stand. The wife flutters in wearing a completely different outfit. She bows to feng yunping and smiles at the headmistress.) wife (stopping and addressing the manservant): Telephone Mr. Bai and ask him to come over. The chief is expecting him. manservant: Yes, madam. (The manservant goes out through the drawing room.) headmistress (to the wife): I’m going into the other room. wife: Won’t you stay a little longer? headmistress: I’ll go and look after your guests for you. wife: Thank you, dear. That’s good of you. headmistress (to feng yunping): Please excuse me, Mr. Tan. (She goes into the drawing room.) feng yunping: It is many years since we last met and getting back to familiar territory was rather difficult, so I decided to visit you first. wife: I’m grateful that you did. Shall we sit over here and talk? (Each behaving toward the other with the greatest courtesy they take their seats.) Would you care for some tea? This was poured for the headmistress a moment ago, but she didn’t drink it. feng yunping: Thank you. wife: It may be a bit cold. Let me get you a fresh one. feng yunping: There’s no need, really.

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(But the wife does not get up to call for more tea. She does not want anyone to disturb their conversation but, at the same time, can think of nothing to say.) You still look pretty well. wife: Really? I certainly don’t feel it. Sometimes I get a bit of stomach trouble; sometimes I suffer from pains in my chest, but in fact the days pass comfortably enough. Doctors’ advice is just like their prescriptions: utterly useless, in my opinion. feng yunping: I seem to remember that you suffered from stomach trouble before, but I never imagined it would still be with you now. wife: For that very reason do I cherish it; nor would I for one moment have it cured. Apart from anything else it’s an old friend: it turns up right on time, day or night, come the appointed hour. It is very predictable: far more so than ants on a hot saucepan—or, rather, than fluctuations in the temperaments of lovers. feng yunping: Quite so. (Silence descends.) wife (deliberately): Did you say something, Mr. Feng?5 feng yunping: You forget, my name is Tan. wife: I am sorry, the old one just slipped out. The familiar has pride of place regardless of the passage of time. But don’t you think it’s a bit odd reappearing after all these years with a different name? Still, in these days when everything goes—communal wealth, communal wives—you must wonder at my asking all these questions. feng yunping: You should have asked sooner. wife: Very well, then. What was the reason? feng yunping: I’m sure you’ll find my explanation ridiculous. If a person does something and gives it no further thought for a while his attempts later to reconstruct his reasoning are likely to be totally fruitless. Well, let’s say you put on a dress that is neither tatty nor unfashionable: if you don’t feel happy in it, that’s that. From your wardrobe full of clothes you pick perhaps an old and dowdy thing. But, with your amah standing there wide-eyed, what do you do? With a toss of your head you throw it on and walk out of the room. Why? You’d have a hard time explaining it yourself. wife: Perhaps I too experience such periods of depression, but they occur so infrequently that I consider them exceptional. feng yunping: That’s it, depression. Once that sets in you’re bound to be a little unreasonable whatever you do. Not that you don’t long for contentment; you are simply bent on self- deception. Clearly you remain your old self, but you merely think that, like Monkey’s rapid transformations,6 a new name will make you into a new man. In reality, though, it doesn’t happen that way at all. In fact it takes a while for the new practice to become established and, by the time it has been accepted by society, you feel you’ve undergone a complete physical change. So if, out of the blue, someone calls you by your old name, you are startled somewhat and think you’ve been mistaken for someone else. wife: First time I’ve heard such an apology for name changing. You must be exceedingly contented now, I’m sure. feng yunping: I wouldn’t quite say that, but at least life has some purpose to it.

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wife: You imply that formerly your existence had none. (Motioning him to be silent) No point in denying it. Drink your tea. Is it all right? It’s still hot. (feng yunping picks up his teacup. The wife gazes at him attentively over the cup, and the thread of the conversation is momentarily broken.) feng yunping: Could I see the police chief ? wife: Of course. But he was up all last night playing mahjong and has only just gotten out of bed. He’s inside having breakfast. (Pointedly) Do you have something to see him about? feng yunping: No, nothing. But as I’m visiting you I ought perhaps to say hello to your husband. wife (mocking him): So all these years of separation have been spent improving your manners. Do you know, not one of my guests has asked specially to see my husband. feng yunping: Nor did I ask specially. I merely felt it was customary to mention it. wife: I sensed there was something different about you, and the more I listen to you, the more I am confirmed in my impression. I can still remember when you left; but that was a good many years ago now and you have probably forgotten. I was a child then, a conceited, silly young girl, but I’m older now—older indeed than I would wish to admit. If my cousin had not been here when I came in just now, would you have recognized me? feng yunping: Specially do I now declare that I have not the slightest intention of flattering you. I can’t see any change in you. Whether you’re more attractive is hard to say, except . . . wife: Except I’m a bit older. feng yunping: No. Except that you are more august. wife: How kind of you to use such an awe-inspiring expression. To ascribe such qualities to the wife of a police chief is certainly not unbecoming in a person of your wide talents. feng yunping (smiling): You are much more like the chief’s secretary than his wife—or one of those quarter session clerks in imperial times so clever at getting people into trouble. wife: Obliged to you, I’m sure! But don’t you dare cast me in the same mold as the clerk’s scheming wife. That would be more than I could take. feng yunping: I can see I’ve put it too strongly. (Preparing to take his leave) I’ll come back another day and apologize. wife: Tell me, now: where are you staying? No, I won’t let you put up anywhere else. Where are your things? I’ll get someone to bring them over. feng yunping: It’s more convenient if I live in a hotel. wife: And what is inconvenient about living here with us? I can arrange for two servants to be at your beck and call. feng yunping: I’ve no need of servants. wife: So much the better. You will be free to rest and rise as you please. A host of servants will greet you when you come and go but no one will ask you what you’ve been doing.

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feng yunping: I may have to go without saying goodbye. wife (getting to her feet): Like you did before? (Smiling) What a strange person you are! Just where have you been all these years? feng yunping: Nowhere in particular; but there’s hardly a province I haven’t visited. wife: Tell me everything you saw. feng yunping: How can I? It’s rather a long story. wife: All right, then. Stay and take your time. You hated me bitterly all those years, did you not? feng yunping: A person in love harbors no hatred. Despair was what I felt. wife: I expect you’re saying that because you eventually forgot me. What about that first year? feng yunping: I tried to make allowances. wife: You are my cousin, after all, and you’re expected to be forgiving in everything. Do you realize you’re my cousin? feng yunping: You do me too much honor. wife: Are you looking forward to acting out this play with me? feng yunping: What play? wife: In the new jargon they call it Life. But before we tread the boards together you must tell me everything about yourself: your moods, your likes, what you have been doing and what you’re doing now. feng yunping: Where shall I begin? wife: First tell me where you have come from. feng yunping: Hankou. wife: Indeed? (More calmly) What were you doing in Hankou? feng yunping: Teaching. wife: Really now, you should have stuck at it. What has brought you scarpering north instead? feng yunping: I’m revisiting the playgrounds of my childhood. wife: That’s just one of the reasons. What about the others? feng yunping: Isn’t one enough? There are too many reasons; I can’t identify them sometimes. wife: You are being evasive. feng yunping: You have been quizzing me for a good while. Do you reckon I’ve passed? (The wife is on the point of replying when suddenly the small door opens and the police chief enters holding the official letter. feng yunping gets to his feet.) police chief (to feng yunping): I beg your pardon. Please sit down. (To his wife) Isn’t Bai Zhenshan here yet? wife: He was telephoned a while ago and should be here any minute. (Indicating feng yunping) You don’t know each other? This is . . . Tan, Mr. Tan. We are related. (To feng yunping) The police chief. (feng yunping bows. The police chief nods.) police chief (to his wife): You have an aunt called Tan, I recall. wife: Yes. And he is a cousin from that branch of the family. Was there something else?

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police chief: I’m waiting for Bai Zhenshan . . . wife: Good. You two have a chat while I go and get them to make up a room. police chief: You have invited Mr. Tan to stay? wife: How did you guess? (To feng yunping) Excuse me, Mr. Tan. (She leaves by the small door.) police chief: Please sit down, Mr. Tan. Make yourself at home. feng yunping: Yes, indeed. (They both sit down.) police chief (still holding the official letter): Your other names . . . ? feng yunping: Gang—I only have the one, and no style.7 police chief: You ought to have a style, you know. Easier to address you. feng yunping: Indeed, yes. police chief: My wife mentioned your father once. Doesn’t he run a business down south? feng yunping: That is so. But I wouldn’t call it “running” exactly; he simply does his best to keep it going. police chief: Where is it based? Shanghai? feng yunping: In Shanghai. police chief: What is its particular line? feng yunping: It is . . . police chief (yawning): Textiles, if my memory serves me correctly? feng yunping: Textiles, just so. police chief: I understand that a good many firms established in Shanghai really have their factories over the river in Pudong. feng yunping: It is more economical to build factories in Chinese territory.8 police chief: Even so you have to have a certain amount of capital. Is your father’s company private or public? feng yunping: It is a . . . a private venture. police chief: It must have required capital of a hundred thousand at least. feng yunping: It was over one hundred thousand in all. But I never took much interest in it, so I’m not too clear about the details. police chief: You don’t seem to have a Shanghai accent. feng yunping: I went to school in the north when I was a boy and afterwards I never worked in Shanghai. Naturally I didn’t pick up the accent. police chief: I see. (Yawning) Where has your work taken you in recent years? feng yunping: I teach in Hankou. police chief: Teaching . . . teaching . . . teaching is pretty hard. You and my wife share a cousin who runs a primary school for girls. It is permanently impoverished and she’s always got her little book at the ready for fund-raising. (Something seems to occur to him) In Hankou news of Guangdong must be easier to come by. You haven’t heard any rumors? feng yunping: Only what one reads in the papers every morning. The day I left they were saying the revolutionary army had passed through Shaoguan.9

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police chief (amazed): Through Shaoguan! feng yunping: I got it from an English paper in Hankou. police chief: In the north the press has been very silent and I certainly wasn’t aware of this. (Muttering to himself ) Through Shaoguan! I suppose, since I’m responsible for police not troops, headquarters did not inform me. (Coming out of his reverie, yawning) Do you think this so- called revolution will ever succeed? feng yunping: As I see it, it’s purely a military problem. If they win it will succeed; if they don’t it won’t. Logic doesn’t enter into it. police chief: But it must also depend on people’s feelings. The teaching profession, they tell me, now consists entirely of members of revolutionary factions. feng yunping: Not exclusively, I would think. Now I’m a teacher, but I haven’t joined; neither, to my knowledge, have many of my colleagues. police chief: It was the same at the collapse of the empire: with secret organizations being set up everywhere it is virtually impossible for an outsider to find out what’s going on. But tell me, where do you teach? feng yunping: At a private secondary school. police chief: That’s very different. No wonder you’re unaware of the situation. feng yunping: Quite. (The police chief’s attention seems to wander. He gives a big yawn, realizes the breach of good manners, gets up quickly in an attempt to cover up, but that too turns into a stretch.) police chief: I simply don’t have the energy. I spent all last night playing mahjong and only got to bed at dawn; but even before I’m up again there are matters awaiting my attention. (He scans the document in his hand.) feng yunping: Sir, yours is an excessively demanding existence. police chief: And once again it’s one of those irritating affairs: headquarters has received a report from heaven knows where dealing exclusively with “missing persons.” feng yunping: Indeed. (The police chief hovers by the round table and feng yunping makes to get up.) police chief: Stay where you are, I need to stretch my legs. (Stopping, grumbling) This really is a footling business, picking up some nameless individual when as likely as not you’ll have to release him later. Nevertheless if you fail to give a good account of yourself and are unlucky into the bargain, your future may well be affected by a matter of no consequence. There is no shortage of people biding their time, waiting for the chance to step into your shoes. They that are bound must obey—there is much truth in that saying. One is better off in commerce, and your father had the good sense to see it. feng yunping: The prospects there are similarly uninspiring. (The wife enters through the small door. feng yunping stands.) wife: Did you know the lilac buds were shedding their sheaths? They will soon be in leaf. Spring has come! With its wild winds and bitter cold this winter has been such a dreadfully oppressive time!

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police chief: Child! wife (bowing): I wasn’t talking to you, sir Chief sir. police chief: You haven’t the slightest idea what’s happening. The Guangdong army is already through Shaoguan! wife (looking up): Welcome. On behalf of all north China I welcome you! police chief: You’re insufferable! wife (approaching): There, there. Don’t be angry; now you’re being childish too. Shaoguan, Shaoguan, what if they’re through Shaoguan? No fear for your job, you’re still in command! (The police chief is caught between anger and laughter. The manservant enters from the drawing room.) manservant: Mr. Bai is here. (bai zhenshan enters from the drawing room.) bai zhenshan (bowing to the police chief): Chief! police chief: I’ve been waiting some time. bai zhenshan: Yes, it won’t happen again. (Bowing to the wife) Madam! wife (nodding and turning to feng yunping): Shall we go and sit in the drawing room? bai zhenshan (to feng yunping): Pardon me for enquiring . . . wife (to bai zhenshan): Mr. Tan, a relative of mine from the south. (To feng yunping) This is the renowned Bai Zhenshan, secret agent. No knowing how many lives are delivered into his hands each year. bai zhenshan: Madam flatters me. (To feng yunping) I shall have the opportunity to benefit from your advice later, I hope. wife (to feng yunping): Shall we go. Don’t take any notice of his pleasantries. It’s all flannel. Were you to err into his hands, he’d wipe the smile off his face and turn stiff and impassive, as though he’d never even met you before. bai zhenshan (laughing): Whatever will madam say about me next? (The wife and feng yunping go off in the direction of the drawing room. The manservant crosses to pick up the tea things and leaves the way he came in.) police chief (sitting down on the couch): Sit down, Zhenshan. bai zhenshan: Your orders, sir? I’m quite happy to stand. police chief: Sit down. I’ve a letter for you to read. bai zhenshan: Yes, Chief. Thank you, Chief. (He perches himself precariously on the edge of the couch.) police chief (handing him the official envelope): Read through this first. bai zhenshan: Yes. (He reads through the contents of the envelope in a most respectful manner. The police chief slaps his thighs and yawns. bai zhenshan puts down the letter and looks up.) police chief: Well, what do you think?

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bai zhenshan: It looks a rather tricky one. They haven’t given us the slightest clue. police chief: What is he called? bai zhenshan (scanning the letter): Feng Yunping—not a very common name. First time I’ve come across it. police chief: It says he was sent from Guangdong, so he’s bound to speak broad Cantonese. bai zhenshan: Good thinking, Chief. police chief: Keep a close watch on the railway station. bai zhenshan: He’s probably already here. police chief: And there can be no harm in examining all the hotel registers. bai zhenshan (obliged to suppress his impatience): Yes, I’ll see to it. But, Chief . . . police chief: Go on. bai zhenshan: Naturally we give priority to communications from headquarters. However, without any indication of his whereabouts, they expect us to pluck this fellow Feng out of thin air. What is more, since we have no information at all about him, unless we offer some reward . . . police chief (wearily): I’ll certainly bear it in mind. bai zhenshan: But . . . police chief: We’ll discuss it again tomorrow when I’ve had your report. (The manservant brings in two cups of tea, which he sets down in front of them. The police chief makes to get up, signifying that bai zhenshan should have his tea and go. bai zhenshan puts away the letter and gets up.) bai zhenshan: As you wish, Chief. I’ll be on my way. (wang yicheng enters from the drawing room.) police chief: That was well timed, Yicheng. Keep Zhenshan company while I attend to something inside. wang yicheng: Yes, Chief. (The manservant hurries over to open the small door.) police chief: Remember the invitations for the day after tomorrow. wang yicheng: Yes, Chief. There is also the matter of that big game we broke up the day before yesterday. (Hurrying forward, sotto voce) What do you think, Chief ? police chief: You’ve made absolutely certain there’s no one from headquarters among them? bai zhenshan: There’s a departmental head from the Ministry of Finance. police chief: Oh? wang yicheng: Apart from him the most important figures were businessmen, landlords, and storekeepers . . . There were also two or three whores. police chief (thinking): Start with the whores: release them for a hundred dollars each. wang yicheng: And the others? police chief: Relieve them of a thousand dollars, accept a shopkeeper’s surety,10 and let them go. wang yicheng: Yes. (In pursuit) And the man from the ministry?

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police chief: Behave as if he weren’t there, but detain him for a few more days. wang yicheng: Yes, of course. (The police chief leaves by the small door and the manservant follows.) wang yicheng (going to the round table): Evidently you don’t find this a straightforward matter. bai zhenshan: The chief thinks it’s all too easy, but revolutionaries are not like burglars. If the authorities don’t offer some sort of reward their subordinates can’t get on with the job. wang yicheng: Where do rewards come into it? bai zhenshan: In routine cases involving thieves and their arrest we volunteer our services without any pressure from above. Such operations are very profitable. Myself, I keep to the straight and narrow, and petty rewards are of no consequence; but those men of mine are not like me: they won’t do favors for the chief. Money makes the mare to go—know what I mean? wang yicheng: To be honest, I don’t. bai zhenshan: Well, take this bolshie-catching business: if he’s not some poor deprived college student he’s sure to be an equally impoverished college lecturer. Ransack their rooms and all you’ll find is piles of tatty papers or a few boxes of matches. And when young people like that get angry, they’re worse to handle than mad dogs and more stubborn than stone memorials on a windswept plain. You can’t squeeze a brass farthing out of them. If the authorities don’t press the matter we may as well forget the whole thing. You see now, don’t you, that this case merits an exceptional bonus. wang yicheng: So what sort of sum do you think you need to put Feng behind bars? bai zhenshan: A thousand dollars at the very least. wang yicheng (shaking his head): You’re too greedy. bai zhenshan: The thousand dollars are of no consequence—I don’t want a penny. It’ll all go in rewarding our associates for their efforts. wang yicheng: I foresee difficulties. The chief won’t fork out that much. bai zhenshan: Of course he won’t. Our worthy chief’s probity prevents it; everyone knows that. (Lowering his voice) What I’m saying is: help things along a bit when you can. That big gambling case for instance— wang yicheng (not allowing him to finish): This is getting absurd. bai zhenshan (sighing): Oh very well. I’ll go back and talk it over with my men. wang yicheng: Have you something in mind? bai zhenshan: I’ll start by sending them around to the schools. (Changing the subject) Have you seen Madam’s relative yet? wang yicheng: We met in the drawing room just now. bai zhenshan: His name’s Tan, isn’t it? wang yicheng: Yes. Her cousin, apparently. bai zhenshan: When did he get here? We never got wind of it. wang yicheng: He has just arrived from Hankou. Shall we go and sit in the other room.

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bai zhenshan: Why not? (Talking as they go) You should get to know him better; I’ve noticed the lady’s very thick with him. And keep an eye on him for me, won’t you. Maybe he can give me a hand to track down that fellow Feng. wang yicheng: You don’t believe there’s a reputable person on this planet. bai zhenshan: There is one at least. wang yicheng: Who, then? You can’t be referring to yourself ? bai zhenshan: How could I now? (Gesturing toward the interior of the house) I’m talking about our boss. (They grin knowingly and, each deferring politely to the other, walk toward the drawing room.) (Curtain.)

A CT 2 (The same living room. The police chief is pacing to and fro. He eventually comes to a halt and watches his secretary. Seated on the couch wang yicheng is glancing through papers on the table, observing the police chief’s expression as he does so. From the direction of the drawing room come the unsettling strains of a piano. The police chief goes over and lets down the velvet curtains, but the music, though fainter, is still audible.) police chief: It was sent here this morning, you say. wang yicheng: The wife of the departmental head brought it herself. It’s a check for five thousand dollars, made out to madam. police chief: Good. What about the others? wang yicheng: The three whores were released last night. The keepers collecting them paid the hundred dollars with profuse expressions of gratitude and respect. Besides them, we let a couple of others go who had made over the thousand dollars and arranged sureties. Only, Chief . . . police chief: Only what? wang yicheng: Only I’m afraid there is one that won’t be able to pay the price. His woman came down herself and pleaded that the whole family depended on him for their existence. Even if they sold the furniture it wouldn’t raise enough. police chief: He went gambling even when he was broke? wang yicheng: Yes, that is so. police chief: In that case whatever he can raise is yours. wang yicheng (unable to believe his luck, getting up): Thank you, sir. police chief: Sit down. wang yicheng: Yes, of course. (He sits down again.) The departmental head . . . ? police chief (thinking): Yesterday, when you were doing the invitations, you said there was someone who couldn’t come.

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wang yicheng: Yes. He was having a party of his own. police chief: Right. Make out another invitation and send it around to the departmental head’s house. wang yicheng (not understanding): But he’s still in custody at the station. police chief: Then take my card along and see to it personally that he is allowed to go home. Tell him that the police chief was unaware of the circumstances and begs his indulgence. And when you’ve done that take him back in my car. wang yicheng (suddenly catching on): Of course, of course. police chief: It is essential that you go yourself. What is more, the invitation must be delivered before he gets back. wang yicheng: I’ll see to it. police chief: Nothing from Bai Zhenshan? wang yicheng: No. police chief: We’ve got to catch that man Feng. Headquarters phoned just now and they mentioned him again. wang yicheng: I’ll have another word with Bai Zhenshan. (Ingratiatingly) This morning madam wrote a check and asked me to send it to Miss Fang. police chief: How much? wang yicheng: A thousand exactly. police chief (astonished): A round thousand? Why my salary is only five hundred a month! (He walks over, lifts the curtains, and calls out) Stop that, Yuehua! I want to ask you something. (The sound of the piano ceases.) wang yicheng (anxiously): Chief, it . . . police chief: Have you sent it off ? wang yicheng (rising): I took it myself. police chief: Go into the other room. The letters we haven’t looked at yet you can leave for me. And don’t forget what I said about getting in touch with Bai Zhenshan. wang yicheng: Yes. (He gathers together the papers that have been dealt with and goes toward the drawing room. Just as he lifts the curtain the wife enters.) Madam. (He waits until she has come right into the room and then leaves.) wife: What can I do for you? police chief (not knowing quite how to begin): Aren’t your fingers tired from being at the piano so long? wife: You said you wanted to ask me something. police chief: You’re mistaken. wife: Will that be all, then? (She moves in the direction of the drawing room.) police chief: Why are you going? wife: To get on with my piano.

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police chief: Come back, come back. I do really have something to ask you. wife (turning around): Ask away, I’m listening. police chief: It’s . . . he . . . well I heard you wrote a check for a thousand dollars this morning. wife: Surely I didn’t get the figure wrong? police chief: No, not that. wife: Then did I make it out for too little? police chief: No, certainly not. If you come over here and sit down we can have a little chat. wife: Your wish is my command. (Sitting down on the couch) Well? police chief: You are just too— wife: Too what? police chief: Too, too awkward. wife: Oh. Well we’d better do something about it, then. (Striking an attitude) Is that more to the chief’s liking? police chief: I haven’t said a thing. Why are you getting so angry? wife: Me, angry? How could I be? I am here to do your lordship’s bidding. police chief: Seriously though, I have never questioned your spending before, but you simply must exercise some control. A hundred would have been too much; but we really cannot afford to make daily presents of a thousand dollars. As you’ve never experienced hardship you don’t understand the tribulations of life that to me are only too familiar. We have no means of telling when the present situation may change and, since people aren’t like they used to be, we should try to let others take the strain rather than bear the brunt ourselves. Wherever we can we should be saving a few pence so that, if I fall from grace and find myself out of a job, you won’t have to worry where the next meal is coming from. wife: I appreciate the advice. police chief: Tell me now: for what purpose were the thousand dollars given? wife: You really want to know? police chief: I might then be able to come to a conclusion. wife: All right, then. I forgot to mention that it included five hundred dollars as your contribution to the school. police chief: Whenever did I contribute? And if I had, would it have been that much? wife: The other five hundred is my donation. police chief: I gave, then you sent more? The . . . the devil’s had a hand in this, clearly. I was never told a thing about it. wife: I am telling you now. police chief: With generosity on that scale I’d be cleaned out within a month. wife: It was merely an act of restitution—I don’t see what’s so special about that! You extort hundreds of thousands from the public, but when I give a thousand of it back it upsets you so much that you frown, glare, foam at the mouth, and look cut to the quick.

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police chief: You don’t understand: money is not so easily come by. I have to use all my ingenuity to make good every penny. Dish out a thousand dollars a time and people will think I’m a millionaire. And if we do it so ostentatiously I shall be squeezed to death for military levies well before the revolutionaries get to us. wife: I had no idea wealth imposed such a burden. police chief: Well you have now. wife: In that case the next time the headmistress comes around I’ll get her to alter the total in her book to four hundred. police chief: Too much, too much. wife: Two hundred. police chief: Two hundred it is then. But you mustn’t forget that the newspaper announcement should also say two hundred. wife: Naturally. police chief (picking up the papers from the table): I’m going inside to read through these. (Magnanimously) What position do you think would be suitable for your relative, Mr. Tan? wife: Has he spoken to you about employment? police chief: I thought I might raise the matter with him. wife: I wouldn’t put yourself to any trouble. Prominent people in your position are always reluctant to see an unfamiliar face, and when one turns up they invariably think it’s looking for a job. Independent of you and your friends no one has the right to exist, apparently. police chief: Come now, you’re making me out to be really unpleasant. (Going to the small door and turning) Today you seem to have time on your hands. wife: I spent the whole morning in the garden seeing to the clearing of the straw; then what with the cleaning up and the watering I got myself covered in mud. police chief: You seem in a better mood. wife: Of course. In the wake of spring I too am changing season. police chief (embarrassed): I’m going inside to look at these letters. (He leaves by the small door. But the tedium is not dispelled by his departure. The wife stretches and looks toward the curtains, saying nothing. The curtains move. wang yicheng trips in lightly, empty-handed and carefree.) wife (stock-still): The chief has just gone inside. wang yicheng (approaching): No, no. I came back to ask madam about something. wife: Oh! Please sit down. wang yicheng: I don’t think I should. wife: That’s enough. Sit down. On the fringe of officialdom people are always so punctilious. wang yicheng: Yes, yes. (Complying) It’s just that I was hoping to arrange supper this evening for a few friends, including Mr. Tan—that is to say Tan Gang, Mr. Tan who arrived yesterday. It’s a sort of welcome party, and what I’d really like to know is Mr. Tan’s style. wife: You’re going to send out invitations?

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wang yicheng: It would be more polite. wife: Why don’t you ask him? wang yicheng: We have already been introduced. To enquire again would be a bit embarrassing. wife: You have an exceptional grasp of etiquette for a secretary of two years’ standing. No wonder the chief often speaks highly of you. He considers you remarkably reliable for a member of the younger generation and says the care you take over minor matters is indicative of a general prudence in your approach to assignments. wang yicheng: Madam flatters me. wife: No, I’m not exaggerating at all; I’m being quite frank with you. But, if I may continue to be frank, I have a suggestion to make too. wang yicheng (taking fright): Yes, yes. wife (continuing): If you intend to keep in the master’s good books, on no account abandon the mistress. Indeed, one favor to please her could ensure three promotions in as many days. The master, on the other hand, will only remember you when he’s got things to do. wang yicheng (frantically): Madam, madam. wife: You can see for yourself your master receives more visitors each day than I do; but those who manage to see me get the jobs first. wang yicheng: Yes, yes. wife: So the key to professional success is pleasing the boss’s wife. Since you’re a bit naive and—with only two years as a secretary—somewhat lacking in experience, I have purposely spelled it out for you. Returning now to the subject of my relative’s style: it is Yunping. (She gets up and leaves by the small door without waiting for an explanation. wang yicheng breaks out in a cold sweat, puts on a pitiful face, and is about to stammer some excuse but wary, also, of irritating her by going too far, can only resort to indeterminate mumbling. Seeing her go he wants to follow and rescue something of his tottering future, but he is unable to get up. His shoulders seem buckled under an intolerable yoke of fear, shame, pent-up anger, and inferiority. Only when he recovers his composure does he notice bai zhenshan standing beside him and, startled, makes to get up.) wang yicheng: Sit down. Do sit down, please. I didn’t hear you come in. bai zhenshan: What’s the matter? You look awful. wang yicheng (with a sardonic smile): Nothing. I was just thinking about personal things. Any sign of that fellow Feng? bai zhenshan: No. wang yicheng: The chief asked me to tell you it’s urgent. He says headquarters has been on the phone. bai zhenshan: Did they mention any reward? wang yicheng: They did not. bai zhenshan: Believe me, Mr. Secretary, I may have sent men to keep watch on all the schools, but Feng’s arrest depends entirely on the reward. wang yicheng: I can’t take that back to the chief; you’re getting close to blackmail.

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bai zhenshan: Anyway, there’s no sign of Feng, so let’s change the subject. As I came in I sensed that someone had just left by the other door. Who was it? The chief, I suppose? wang yicheng: No, not the chief. bai zhenshan: Then it must have been his wife. wang yicheng: You were bound to get there in the end. bai zhenshan: Ah! (Sotto voce) What was that all about, then? I’ve never been a blabbermouth; it’s safe to tell me. wang yicheng: There’s nothing much to tell. It was just a bit of bad luck: I caught her in a bad mood and was stupid enough to let myself in for a lecture. bai zhenshan (attentively): Hm, so she lectured you. wang yicheng: This morning she made out a check for a thousand dollars and gave it to me to send to the headmistress. bai zhenshan: A thousand dollars! For Miss Fang, you said? wang yicheng: Exactly, the primary school headmistress. And when I was seeing the chief a few minutes ago, stupidly I went and spilled the beans. bai zhenshan: Really! Go on, go on. wang yicheng: The chief immediately called for his wife. Seeing that things were getting a bit tricky I slipped out of the room, put away the papers, and came back to eavesdrop on their conversation. bai zhenshan: That was smart of you. wang yicheng: Madam had in fact promised the thousand dollars to the school collection. bai zhenshan: Forgive me for butting in, but if everyone were as charitable as she, the proceeds could be put to use closer to home and there would be no problems. Shame I’m a detective and not on their staff. If I were you I’d pay less attention to the master and more to the mistress. wang yicheng: Exactly. That was her counsel too. bai zhenshan: See! You’re still in favor, then. wang yicheng: But there was more to it than that. bai zhenshan: Naturally. As I said, you’re still a bit naive. wang yicheng: But, you know—eh? (As if something had just occurred to him) That’s strange! (Steadying himself ) The Feng in that dispatch—wasn’t he called Yunping? bai zhenshan: Feng Yunping. Quite right. wang yicheng: Tan’s name is Yunping too. bai zhenshan: Did he tell you that himself ? wang yicheng: I was planning a welcome supper for him, so I asked madam. bai zhenshan: But his surname is Tan; and he’s the lady’s cousin. wang yicheng (at a loss for words): That’s no good, then. (The two men break from their huddle. One stands still, staring into space; the other paces to and fro deep in thought.) bai zhenshan: Is Mr. Tan here? wang yicheng: They say he went out early and hasn’t come back yet.

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bai zhenshan: Why did he come here? wang yicheng: No one has given any reason, so far as I know; and he himself says very little. The man’s either a bit simple or else he’s putting it on. Ask a short question and you’ll get a short answer, just like some copycat or tongue-tied toff—take your pick, it makes no difference. bai zhenshan: Does he only behave like that when he’s with you? wang yicheng: What do you mean? bai zhenshan: It’s—well, it’s quite simple really: he intends to replace you as secretary. wang yicheng (unburdening himself ): That’s just what I’m afraid of. I’m almost sure that’s what he’s after. And, if he isn’t yet, as likely as not he soon will be. That lecture she gave me was probably intended to shame me into resigning. bai zhenshan (consolingly): I doubt it. wang yicheng: What should I do? It was hard enough for me to get this far and secure a job that enables me to make ends meet. If that falls through what will happen to my family, not to mention anything else. You don’t know, but I’ve a mistress and a second home as well to care for. Between finishing at college and getting my present job I worked my fingers to the bone! (Floundering) As I see it he must be Feng, the revolutionary! He can’t be called Tan—that’s just a disguise. If his father has opened a factory in Shanghai, why on earth did he come here from Hankou? bai zhenshan: Couldn’t the firm have a branch in Hankou? wang yicheng: Why isn’t he in Hankou instead of chasing up here to pinch my job? bai zhenshan: I don’t follow you at all. wang yicheng: He teaches in Hankou; so if he’s not a revolutionary what is he? bai zhenshan: He’s a teacher, is he? wang yicheng: He said so himself. Surely you don’t think I’d try to frame him? bai zhenshan: Which school? wang yicheng: How should I know? The chief himself does not seem clear on that point. bai zhenshan: You were talking about a party tonight. Would it be all right if I came along? wang yicheng: Delighted. bai zhenshan (alerting him): Someone’s coming! (They part and turn toward the drawing room. The manservant lifts the curtains and ducks to one side, making way for feng yunping. The latter carries sprays of halfopen peach blossom in his arms and is fresh and relaxed.) manservant: Please sit down, Mr. Tan. Have you had lunch? feng yunping: I have. Madam? manservant: She is inside. I will tell her you are here. (The manservant goes out through the small door. feng yunping hurries over to wang yicheng and bai zhenshan; they smile and exchange greetings.) wang yicheng: Wherever did you find such beautiful blossoms? feng yunping: I picked them in a friend’s garden.

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bai zhenshan: Spring is really here; the flowers are all about to open. I haven’t been to the park for a while—I really must go sometime. Mr. Tan, have you visited the park since you got here? feng yunping: No, but I have on previous occasions. bai zhenshan: If you like flowers, Mr. Tan, the park is exceptionally well stocked. There are crab apples, lilacs, tree and border peonies; and then there’s a conservatory that has something in bloom at all times of the year. If you wish I’ll take you around sometime. feng yunping: I’d like that very much. wang yicheng: Mr. Tan, I was planning a little welcome for you this evening. I don’t know whether you’d do me the honor? feng yunping: I’d be embarrassed to put you to so much trouble, particularly as it’s the first time we’ve met. bai zhenshan: Since it’s the first time you’ve met, Mr. Tan would be even more embarrassed to decline. feng yunping: Masterly repartee, if I may say so, Mr. Bai. wang yicheng: Your kind consent would be much appreciated. I’ll send the invitation later. But—how careless of me—I never asked you your courtesy names? feng yunping: Just Gang. wang yicheng: And your style? feng yunping: None as yet. I’m still a bit young for that. wang yicheng: You are too modest, Mr. Tan. (He gives bai zhenshan a meaningful look that the latter acknowledges while more or less simultaneously smiling at feng yunping.) feng yunping: I did not expect the northern spring to come quite so quickly. bai zhenshan: Mr. Tan must have brought it with him. If I remember rightly, this time last year we were still lighting fires. wang yicheng: Indeed we were. The weather changes constantly: each year has its own individual pattern. (The manservant opens the small door.) manservant: Madam is coming. bai zhenshan: Please excuse me if I go on ahead. Why don’t you both take a seat? wang yicheng: No, we’d better go together. bai zhenshan: All right, then. Do sit down, Mr. Tan. wang yicheng: Mr. Tan, we’ll have the pleasure again this evening. feng yunping: You’re too kind. Until this evening, then. (feng yunping accompanies them to the curtained door and, after an exchange of civilities, remains behind. Enter the wife, as vivacious and lithe as ever. feng yunping can hardly believe she is really thirty. Her chatter seems to follow her into the room.) wife: If you weren’t coming back for lunch you should have phoned—(she stops) oh! Peach blossom!

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(Smiling, feng yunping goes to meet her and gives her the flowers, which she accepts and puts to her cheek. The manservant leaves by the drawing room.) They aren’t quite in bloom yet, but if I put them in a warm room for a day or two, I expect they’ll all open up. There, I’ve taken them; but were they meant for me? feng yunping: Yes. I picked them for you myself, off the tree. wife: Then I really am most grateful. With flowers but no leaves on each tiny branch don’t you think they are like the winter plum? On the tree, of course, they bloom in a mass of clusters, presenting a floral spectacle all of their own. Then you like spring flowers, don’t you? Personally, though I’m fond of peach blossom, I prefer crab apple. feng yunping: They don’t flower at the same time. wife: That’s the beauty of nature—a beauty that stems from the variety of its transformations, just like— feng yunping: Your putting on a different dress each day. wife: I was talking about nature. Seriously, the beauty of a good many lovely things is certainly innate, but their charm depends in part also on their position in the seasonal cycle. For example, I expect the warm welcome we all now give to the peach blossom reflects our pleasure at the passing of winter. It comes just at the right time, like— feng yunping: Like my arrival. wife: Ah! (The manservant brings in tea.) (To the manservant) Put it on the table. (The manservant sets out the cups.) Take these flowers to Mrs. Zhao in my room. (The manservant takes the flowers from her and goes out through the small door.) Let’s sit down and have some tea while it’s still hot. (The two cross over and sit down. Silence descends, seemingly because they are drinking.) feng yunping (trying hard to pick up the threads): You say you’re fond of crab apple blossom. Why? wife: Because it is set off by a mass of green leaves. Though the tree is covered in flowers, you are spared the monotony; yet, if you look closely you’ll find each and every one of those tiny round blooms is elegantly fixed to its branch. What do you think? feng yunping: I agree with you. wife: I prefer plants that leaf before they flower. On those that flower first the blooms seem brash somehow. feng yunping (smiling): Displaying unbridled passion, one might say. wife (forced to change the subject): You haven’t told me where you went this morning. feng yunping: To visit some friends. wife: And they had you to lunch. feng yunping: Yes. wife: Did they know you were picking the blossoms for me? feng yunping: They knew. wife: That they were for me?

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feng yunping (dryly): They knew they were for you. wife (showing interest): How could they have known? Did you tell them, or did they guess? feng yunping: They guessed. wife: You must have told them you were staying here with me. feng yunping: I expect so. wife: From your tone I’d say you did not. Were there people there I know? feng yunping: Possibly. wife: Then they were old friends. Come on, tell me who they were. The old crowd were so much more interesting than the tedious bunch I see nowadays. feng yunping (even more dryly): Why worry about them? They’re past history. You wouldn’t recognize one another now. wife (hurt): Oh. It’s my fault, isn’t it? You think I’m to blame. You sit there in front of me so cool and so calm; and your words, even more cool, more calm, are like little nails pinning down my limbs! From your self, your conversation, your voice I’m trying to recover a little of you—that’s right, recover. But it’s all in vain! You’re so miserly you won’t part with a sliver of your shadow. At first I said you hadn’t changed; but you’ve changed all right, fearfully and fundamentally! feng yunping (getting up): You forget who you are. wife (smiling sarcastically): As I said once before, I’m taking part in an entertainment. feng yunping (walking away): You must remember the character I’m playing is called Tan. wife: But I’m aware only of one named Feng Yunping! feng yunping (cautioning her): Keep your voice down! (Discerning some movement of the small door) The tea is too hot; you should not have drunk so much. wife (puzzled): What? (The manservant enters by the small door, hoping to slip through.) wife (abruptly, to the manservant): Did you give them to Mrs. Zhao? manservant: Yes, madam. wife: Would you phone the Dongxing Restaurant and book a room for this evening? manservant: Yes. feng yunping (to the wife): Tonight I have an engagement with Mr. Wang. wife (to the manservant): Go and find out if Mr. Wang is here. If he is, tell him I’d like to see him. manservant: Yes, madam. (He goes out through the drawing room.) feng yunping: The secretary, have you summoned him for some purpose? wife: My pleasure. Just like your running here to Beiping for no apparent reason on the pretext of seeing me. (Vindictively, at the lack of response) Yes, it was only a pretext. (Muttering to herself ) If you’re told a friend you haven’t seen for ten years is coming to visit you, there is pleasure in the anticipation. When he turns up, though, he’s more like an old flunky than an old friend. Either you hardly set eyes on him or he’s standing there po-faced, looking like death warmed up.

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feng yunping: You are just the same; you haven’t changed one bit. Not only do you not look any older, you are just as young at heart. (Looking at her, the words rolling freely from his tongue) I knew you weren’t free to choose which way to turn, but, since you’d lived so long in the vain world of wealth and power, I’d expected great changes in you. Not in your looks, for in my memory you’ll always be as lovely as you were then; I’m talking about the spiritual side: your soul or, in simpler terms, your personality. There must be many facets that have altered—you yourself must be aware of them—but I cannot detect them; and when I’m with you I’m seized by confused sensations. Your presence overwhelms me utterly . . . My brain is incapable of thought and it’s a real curse. wife (without venom): You’re wrong, it’s a blessing. feng yunping: You’re welcome to your interpretation. If you want me to explain, the truth is what I’ll give you. wife: And it’ll be a pleasure to listen. Go on, it’s some time since I heard any plain speaking. feng yunping (from experience): Actually, in this world there are no truths worth telling. However, providing you don’t hold it against me, I’ve one or two things I’d like to get off my chest. wife (resting her chin in her hands): Carry on, I’m listening. feng yunping: Imagine there’s this girl who’s just like you when you were little. Pampered from the cradle, she’s stubborn, quick-tempered, hard-hearted, and whimsical. Her hands are tiny, delicate, and white (the wife instinctively conceals her hands) and she has nothing to do all day except go to the cinema and buy pinups of her favorite stars—oh, yes—and pop out to the mission school for a couple of days each week on the pretext of learning English . . . Then, perhaps, her family falls on hard times or she marries a pauper. Suddenly this immaculate girl is pitched into a very different world and resigns herself to a full decade of suffering. Well now, what sort of condition would you expect to find her in after that? wife: Are you asking me? feng yunping: No, not you. (Pensively) I’m asking myself. I’m forever asking myself how this poor girl would have changed. When the last glow of sunset is seen no more, sky, earth, and man, all turn an ashen gray. During these ten years she has taken many shapes in my imagination, but the dominant one, the most plausible of them all, turned her into a right common hussy. Yes, common, do you hear? That should send a shiver down your spine. wife: That’s just why I didn’t marry a pauper; and why there’s nothing to stop my throwing tantrums. feng yunping (earnestly): You mustn’t talk like that. I’ll tell you one thing I’ve learned over the past ten years: despite their hard and humdrum lives, they have clear consciences, those women, and are steadfastly loyal; so their souls should be immaculate. At times, when I look at my mother’s white hair and wrinkled hands, or see someone with hair and hands like hers, I can’t restrain my tears. (Pulling himself together) I’m sorry. I’m in danger of turning into a sentimental moralist.

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(He retires to the back of the stage. wang yicheng enters from the drawing room.) wang yicheng (to the wife): I understand you wanted me, madam— wife: Yes, I’m sorry. What are the times of the afternoon trains to Tianjin? wang yicheng: There’s one at four o’clock, and then there’s— wife: The one at four will do fine. I want you to go to Tianjin for me. wang yicheng (taken aback): Today? wife: Yes, today. wang yicheng (somewhat put out): May I know the purpose of the journey? wife: You are to ask Dr. Peng to come. Tell him I’ve had stomach trouble for two days now. wang yicheng: Would it not be possible to make a long distance telephone call? Or— wife (spelling it out): I—want—you—to—go. wang yicheng: Yes, of course. But what about the chief ? He . . . wife: Heavens, you do go on! Surely I don’t have to order you? wang yicheng: No, of course not. But I’ve invited Mr. Tan— wife (losing patience): I am aware of that. Another time. wang yicheng: Very well. Another day will make no difference. wife (looking at her watch): It’s a quarter to four. You must leave right away. wang yicheng: Yes, I’ll go immediately. (He bows once and then a second time; and, visibly irritated, goes out through the drawing room. feng yunping, who has been looking on sympathetically, returns downstage.) wife: Now don’t you feel I’ve changed? feng yunping: I don’t feel anything, but if you were to press me, I’d say it was another symptom of hidden anguish. The illness you suffer from isn’t gastric; it is psychiatric. wife (beseechingly): And where should I look for the appropriate doctor? feng yunping: No doctor can cure your sickness. wife: Not even you? feng yunping (gently shaking his head): Not even me. wife (jumping to her feet): So why have you come? Why? You’re here to drive me to despair, to revive memories of my one great mistake. All these years you never gave me a moment’s thought, yet now you wish to add to my distress. Let me repent; leave me to my bitterness; allow me to vent my spleen on whatever takes my fancy. I’ve no white hair, no wrinkled hands; I’m not worthy of your tears. What, may I ask, have you been doing these ten years that prevents your facing the world under your real name and obliges you to use such a variety of ruses to create this totally bogus image of yourself ? feng yunping (making her sit down): You are overplaying your part. (The wife’s energy is completely spent, but her outburst has done her some good and she lapses into gentle sobbing. feng yunping is exhausted too. He stands behind her, lifts both hands intending to console her, but drops them back to his side and moves quietly downstage, where he stands in silence. When she becomes conscious of the

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sound of her own sobs the wife stops weeping, wipes away her tears, and looks calmly at the man before her. Aware that she has now betrayed her weakness, she can see no point in holding back.) wife: In the past I may have missed opportunities, but I can’t let this one slip by, even if a little force is necessary. You cannot go; you must stay with me. That fellow Wang—you saw him just now—I’ll have the chief dismiss him and appoint you in his place. Yes, you’ll be secretary! Then you’ll always be near me, at my beck and call. Go on, say you will and from tomorrow the job will be yours! feng yunping (chuckling): And I’m to do it just like Wang? wife: No, not quite like him. (Smiling sweetly) You’ll do another job for me as well. feng yunping: You mustn’t get carried away. We are only young once. Things change. I cannot stay, I tell you. wife: Secretary or no, you have to stay! feng yunping: As I said before, I may have to leave without saying goodbye. wife: Just give it a try. From now on I shan’t let you go. feng yunping: You could get the police to lock me up, I suppose. wife: I can do anything once I put my mind to it. feng yunping: Ten years of extravagance have not sapped all your energy11 and one must admire you for that. So who knows? Give it a try. (The wife is furious and would dearly like to destroy him, but as his manner betrays no hint of destructibility, she can only smile. The manservant enters from the drawing room.) manservant: Madam, the Dongxing Restaurant suggests you go a bit later. It cannot manage a room for the early evening. wife: Tell them we’ll come at half past eight. manservant: Yes. wife: Come back. Has the secretary left yet? manservant: He is just about to go. wife: Tell him not to bother and that he’s to dine with us tonight at the Dongxing. manservant: Certainly. (The manservant leaves the way he came in.) wife (getting up): Now then, will you be secretary or won’t you? feng yunping (decisively): I will not. wife (running to him): Stay until summer at least. Then we could holiday together at Beidaihe or Qingdao, as you like.12 Just the two of us. My husband might visit us for a few days, I suppose, but no longer; he can’t get away from his job. One summer’s day would be enough to make me happy. I’ll be counting the days from now until we leave. Yes, let’s bring it forward, go sooner, go earlier. When we’re by the sea there will only be the two of us, alone with our dreams, with our—no, don’t say anything, I haven’t finished yet. You can take the secretary’s job, or not, as you wish. I shan’t force you. And please understand you are to do whatever you like; it won’t bother me in the least. I’m giving you your freedom. feng yunping: You know, I think I’d like to kiss you.

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wife (untroubled by his impetuosity): As I was saying, I’m giving you your freedom. No, wait. You haven’t seen our garden yet. Let me show you round. (Curtain.)

A CT 3 (The same living room. Of course, as it is now morning, the light is somewhat subdued, but the gloom lifts gradually and, by the end of the play, the room is as bright as before. Snatches of birdsong drift in from the distance. wang yicheng is keeping bai zhenshan company while the latter waits for the police chief to appear.) wang yicheng: If it turned out to be true, would you have the nerve to arrest him? bai zhenshan (hesitating): I’ll have to play it by ear. I have no intention of doing so at the moment. Anyway, I’m not in charge; I merely do as I am told. My personal feelings don’t come into it. wang yicheng: Tan’s true identity is unimportant; the real problem is madam’s involvement. bai zhenshan: That is why I’ve come to talk it over with the chief. wang yicheng: You should find out what his wife feels about it first. bai zhenshan: No, I must sound him out. Public duty before private transactions— that’s what I always say. wang yicheng: In that case Feng has as good as had it. To be honest I can’t stand that brat’s impudence and, if there were no risk of offending the lady, I should be more than happy for you to get rid of him. bai zhenshan: If I were to put him behind bars how would you show your gratitude to me? wang yicheng: Me? bai zhenshan: At the very least your job as secretary would be immediately secure. wang yicheng: I’m sure something can be arranged. bai zhenshan: It looks as if the chief hasn’t got up yet. wang yicheng: He’s giving a banquet later on. If he’s going out it’s got to be soon. bai zhenshan (going to the round table): Two cups of tea and both still warm. Someone has just called, apparently. wang yicheng: The headmistress. bai zhenshan: She must have come to tell her. So be it. We’ll let her be forewarned. One should always give spendthrifts time to do their sums. wang yicheng: Tan went out early this morning. bai zhenshan: Even better. This scene should be played out behind his back. (The manservant enters from the drawing room.) manservant: The chief will come through when he has finished breakfast. bai zhenshan: There is no hurry. I can wait a little longer. manservant: Madam and the headmistress are coming in from the garden.

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bai zhenshan (catching on): Right, we’ll wait outside. Would you mind letting the chief know when he comes through? (To wang yicheng) Shall we go and sit in the other room? (They go out into the drawing room. The manservant crosses to open the small door and stands to one side. The wife and the headmistress enter slowly, arm in arm, chatting to each other. The manservant leaves the way he came in.) headmistress: You’d better think it over. I brought him here; now I’ll take him away. There is nothing to be gained by this stubborn insistence on detaining him. It can’t possibly do you any good. wife: Did he go to your school this morning? headmistress: No. I haven’t set eyes on him yet. wife: I thought perhaps he had asked you to come. headmistress: No. I wanted to see you. Let’s sit down and talk this over. (They both sit down on the couch.) wife: The tea’s cold. Shall I get some fresh? headmistress: Not for me, thanks. wife: Would you like to stay to lunch? headmistress: You mustn’t keep on interrupting me. Pay attention to what I have to say, there’s a good girl. wife: Go on, then. I’m all ears. headmistress: You have got to let him go. Pining for him as you do, one indiscretion will be enough to put you at the mercy of others; then all hope of your retaining your dignity as an official’s wife will be lost. To ruin oneself is of little consequence, but to drag another down with one goes against the grain. What is more, a grown man of thirty can hardly be nagged into staying. No longer is he the student who returns your love; his passion shifted long ago to other things. You’ve been cooped up with him for the past two days; if you can’t see it, surely you must sense it. Look at me, my dear. Can you really say you haven’t felt it a little? Absolute silence: you’re not prepared—or haven’t the strength—to admit it. That’s quite obvious. wife: No, it is not. headmistress: As you wish, but your obstinacy is merely a veil for self- deception. Black is black and hard is hard; and there’s no getting away from it. But people are like that. When they get accustomed to the adulation of others, enjoy a high social position, and lead a sheltered life, they tend not to believe in the existence of anything distasteful to themselves. They get totally preoccupied with their own desires and, if faced with failure, unwittingly mimic the fawner’s mien and flatter themselves obsequiously. Pathos, some call it; and, darling, you’re wallowing in it! wife: Darling, if you’d only let me get a word in, I’d be frank with you. Just now you spoke of failure, but you’re well aware I suffered one ten years ago and fell so hard my heart, and all else besides, went flying. I ended up an empty shell. So it can’t happen to me again; nor would I wish it to. Not until he came this time and I detected the flickering familiarity in that face and the fitful tenderness of his heart, did I realize

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I’d been missing something for the past ten years. Yes, I want to keep him here. And even if I didn’t he has no pressing reason to go away. You are fussing unnecessarily, in my view. headmistress: But, encountering that flickering familiarity and fitful tenderness, did you honestly feel no sense of disillusionment—and no sadness at that sense? Appearances suggest the contrary. Indeed, you have assumed the determinedly brazen manner of someone out to fool others and herself into the bargain. In fact, those eyes of yours, brimming with tears, were the first to give you away. Take notice now of what I say and send him packing. wife: You have that much faith in my power? Do you think I really have the guile to hold him and bind him to me forever? headmistress: You are not so bewitching now, perhaps, but you’re capable of anything. wife: You forget one thing. Even in the old days when I was so young and pretty he  couldn’t take a little teasing without walking out on me in silence. Now that I’m older, married to a man he despises and tainted with malpractices he finds offensive, do you really think I can hang on to him, a good-looking man who must have come across countless women in his ten years of drifting? It’s very nice of you, but you overestimate me, dear, really you do. headmistress: We are both women, after all; so, if what I’m about to say is a bit harsh, you must remember it’s entirely for your own good. A moment ago you painted such a frightful picture of yourself. Look at me and I’ll tell you: was it your conscience talking? Or were you joking? I don’t believe you spoke from the heart. There’s not a woman alive who’d willingly lay bare her inner self; but if there were, as I said before, she’d be capable of anything. wife: Do you think I could commit murder? headmistress: No. You haven’t the nerve. wife: Could I try for a divorce? headmistress: You? Divorced after a decade of luxury? Like a fish out of water you’d asphyxiate forthwith. If you spurned poverty before, would you tolerate it now? You must remember what happened the year you parted. You were concerned with prospects so distant and put forward arguments so devious that you were able to convince yourself you were full of good intentions. You may have forgotten, but I haven’t. It went something like this: “Oh Yunping, you’ll make out all right. Don’t worry about me. The day will come when you’ll be famous, as famous as Cai Songpo,13 and I’ll be ready then, even if it’s just to be your amah!” wife (butting in, derisively): What a fantastic memory you have. No wonder you wanted to be a teacher! headmistress (ignoring her and continuing): You think he left you because he couldn’t stand your taunts. But now here he is, back again after ten years, not the slightest bit eminent—indeed fame has completely passed him by—and you are determined to keep him by you willy-nilly. It’s hard to know what to make of it.

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wife: My dear, I am a real live human being, not an inanimate set of scales for you to weigh out, tipping up, tipping down, adding or subtracting the odd pennyweight here and there. headmistress: We are all human; you’re not the only one. You forget others have aspirations too. He did not leave because of your carping; he was scared you would destroy his ideals. wife: That is just where you are wrong. Certainly I taunted him, but I did so because I cared so deeply for him, pinned all my hopes on him. I didn’t want him to spend his whole life as a penniless student who could talk about nothing but love; I wanted him to have ambition. headmistress: You call yourself an informed modern woman, yet you won’t calm down for a minute and try to bring some order to those chaotic ideas of yours. You dream of the ideal romantic couple, the peerless prodigy with his radiant heroine, unaware that such fantasies are merely musings of the pen pushers at their desks. All that about being “as famous as Cai Songpo” was just like the heroine longing for her beloved to gain the highest academic accolade. Your old friend has probably spoken too frankly but—and you mustn’t be angry—now I must be even more blunt: Feng may be no peerless prodigy; neither, then, are you the radiant heroine.14 wife: The more you say the more perplexing it becomes. headmistress: All right, then, here’s something that won’t puzzle you in the least. A moment ago I was talking about when Feng left you. Well, two years later you married our much-respected chief of police. In the ten intervening years you haven’t received a single letter from him, not even a New Year card. (Looking at her) Am I right? wife (despondently): Not a single one. headmistress: Well, as it happens, I did get a couple of letters. I never told you about them—what would have been the point? You were very comfortable and he had his job. Anyway, it was all water under the bridge: each of you had gone his own way, he his and you yours. If you couldn’t keep him then, it would he pretty silly to try now. Do you think you can take as a lover today someone whom you previously considered unsuitable as a husband? You’re not that stupid, surely? wife: I didn’t ask him to come. He came of his own accord. headmistress: If a person comes out of friendship, must you take it for love? You’ve gotten so used to people paying court to you that you can’t tell the difference between one man and the next. Do you want him calling in each day to fawn on Madam just like the rest of your cronies? To be quite honest he is not here solely to see you. wife: I haven’t the slightest intention of bullying him into submission. headmistress: Doesn’t it come to the same thing in the end? A couple of balmy days—no more—and here you are, true to form, on the verge of having him taken on as part of the administrative staff. Come, I put it to you: could you turn your back on your present prosperity and run away with him? wife: Are you mad? headmistress: Ah! So you couldn’t, could you?

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wife: Of course I couldn’t. headmistress: I didn’t expect such a definite answer. Fine. I’ve no more questions, since you are clear on that point. wife: But, as you just said, I am capable of anything. headmistress: Anything to satisfy your own selfish whims, wouldn’t you say? You look upon others as pebbles to fill the potholes: they allow you to travel more quickly, more safely, and help you to an earlier fulfillment of your desires. wife: I’m not as awful as you think. headmistress: I’m not going to quarrel with you. wife: You brought him here and you’ll take him away—impossible! I don’t crumple like a paper puppet.15 You won’t take him away. I love him and he kissed me too. headmistress: You are a stubborn child and I refuse to talk to you. wife: And you are a contrary schoolmarm. I have nothing to say to you. (She turns away but covertly watches the headmistress’s expression.) headmistress: Come, come. Don’t sulk. wife (losing control): You must help me think of some way of holding him. headmistress: Has he told you he’s going? wife: Not exactly. But he told me to “Give it a try.” headmistress: I really don’t understand these childish expressions of yours. Why “Give it a try”? wife: He said I couldn’t keep him here; I said I could, and he said “Give it a try.” headmistress: That’s no concern of mine. wife: You must persuade him to be secretary. headmistress: If you can’t do it, how on earth can I? wife: He listens to you. headmistress: But you love him and he kissed you too. wife (getting to her feet): You’re jealous, and without reason! headmistress: Thank you so much. That is the last conversation I have with you. wife: Get out of my sight at once! headmistress: I’m sorry but I’m waiting for a certain person to return. I want to have a word with him. wife: I won’t let you see him! headmistress: Well, he can see me. Look! Turn around! (feng yunping enters from the drawing room. Stunned by the sight of them at daggers drawn, he comes to a halt in the middle of the room and remains there.) feng yunping: What is the matter? wife (retreating rapidly): Nothing’s the matter. She is in love with you! (She dashes out through the small door. feng yunping wonders whether he should fetch her back. He hesitates for a moment, then turns around and goes over to sit on the couch.) feng yunping: You’ve been quarrelling? headmistress: Nothing serious. You know what her temper’s like. She’ll make it up with me in no time.

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feng yunping (wearily): I’m worn out with all this running around. headmistress: You went out early, I gather. I’ve been waiting some time. feng yunping: For me? headmistress: Something strange has happened; I came to tell you about it. At dusk yesterday there was a man around at the school enquiring about you. feng yunping (attentively): What man? headmistress: At first, from what they said at the lodge, I thought it was only a friend of yours. However, this morning someone else was asking after you and, according to our janitor, there’s been a man by the school gate most of the time, pacing to and fro as if he’s keeping track of someone’s movements. feng yunping: Oh? And what sort of thing did he want to know? headmistress: I’m not sure; but, from what our fellow was saying, a young man of twenty, dressed in a long blue gown a bit like a student, came into the lodge and asked for a Mr. Feng Yunping. feng yunping: Strange! Why should he enquire at your place? headmistress: What is strange is that another person called this morning. This time it was an older man, fifty or more. He too asked for a Mr. Feng—Feng Yunping—just as if he were an old friend. And when the janitor told him there was no person of that name he started to enquire about a Mr. Tan. feng yunping: My friends don’t know my name is Tan and none of them is over fifty. headmistress: Someone is clearly trying to track you down. feng yunping (getting up and walking about): Possibly. It’s hard to say. headmistress: Who can know that Feng and Tan are one and the same? Except . . . I think you should get out of here immediately. As a recent arrival from the south you may have attracted official attention, but if that’s not it, someone is secretly hatching a plot against you. feng yunping: Perhaps Wang is scared I’ll replace him as secretary. headmistress: When you were out yesterday and today, you didn’t feel you were being trailed? (feng yunping shakes his head.) A good many people have disappeared through being careless. You must keep your wits about you. feng yunping (coming to a halt): You didn’t tell her? headmistress: No. I was afraid she’d make such a fuss it would hamper your work. feng yunping: You think things are really getting that dangerous for me? headmistress: It must have crossed your mind too. (feng yunping nods. Both ponder the situation.) Are you going to stay on here? feng yunping: No. I’ll pack up and be off. I’ve nothing more to do. headmistress: Did it all go smoothly? feng yunping: Yes—thanks to the enthusiasm of our comrades. They did much of the legwork for me.

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headmistress: I’m afraid your hostess may not let you go. She pines for you dreadfully, as you can see. feng yunping: But when I’ve gone, most likely it will be as if I’d never come. headmistress: For you, do you mean, or for her? feng yunping: It could apply to us both, I suppose; but it was really her I had in mind. headmistress: Your few days here with her must have given you some pleasure and made up for ten years of haunting memories. (feng yunping nods.) (Getting up) On your way, then. feng yunping: I really ought to thank you. headmistress: Not at all. Indeed, it is I who should be thanking you, for the school fund is richer by a thousand dollars on your account. (They shake hands.) I don’t suppose you’ll be looking in on me again? feng yunping: I doubt it. (The wife reenters by the small door. She is full of smiles and seems to have undergone a complete change of personality.) wife (to the headmistress): Why, dear, are you leaving? headmistress: I am. How is it you’ve calmed down so quickly? wife: I never was angry, really. headmistress (to feng yunping): You saw for yourself how she ran out. Huff or no huff, it’s all the same to me; but she was casting aspersions and I must protest. wife: As a gesture of conciliation I’ll have you to lunch. headmistress: I left early this morning and it’s high time I got back to school to see what’s going on. On another occasion, if you’re nice and polite and write me an invitation, I’ll be delighted to accept. wife: You mustn’t go, really. The chief is going out soon and I shall be all alone in the house. headmistress (walking toward the door): I know just the person to keep you company. wife: But I want your company. headmistress: And my kisses too? (She runs out laughing into the drawing room.) wife: I’ll pinch your face, see if I don’t! (She goes off in pursuit. feng yunping remains, his lips curling in a faint smile; but, hearing the muted sounds of “Goodbye, goodbye!” in the distance, he seems to come to his senses and makes to go out through the small door. The manservant comes in through the small door and stands to one side. The police chief follows wearing a green cape and a beret. He sees feng yunping and nods.) police chief: Didn’t you go out this morning? feng yunping: I just got back. police chief: Oh! Weather’s not too bad. (To the manservant) Ask Mr. Bai to come in.

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manservant: Yes, sir. police chief: And see to the car. manservant: Yes, sir. (The manservant leaves through the drawing room.) police chief: Mr. Tan, if you have things to do please feel free . . . feng yunping: Yes, of course. (feng yunping leaves by the small door. The police chief walks to the round table, then sits down on the couch. After a brief pause bai zhenshan appears at the curtained door. Seeing the police chief he makes his bow from a distance and hurries in.) police chief: Sit down, Zhenshan. bai zhenshan: I don’t think I should. police chief: It’d be easier if you would. bai zhenshan: Yes, Chief. police chief: Tell me and be quick about it. I’ve an engagement and I must be leaving. bai zhenshan: Of course. (He perches on the edge of the couch) It concerns the arrest of the man called Feng. police chief: Yes, yes. I remember. (Trying hard to concentrate) What was his name again? bai zhenshan: Feng Yunping. police chief: Right. How did your investigation go? Does the man exist? bai zhenshan: He does. police chief: Excellent. Have you run him in? bai zhenshan: That’s the problem. I must be straight with you, Chief. We really have to buy over some competent informers. As you are aware, there is no one in our force who knows Feng. police chief: Where is he hiding out? bai zhenshan: At this point in time I shouldn’t like to say for certain. We have our suspicions, and I’ve already detailed men to keep watch at those places. police chief: Then it’s a simple matter. If you see anyone unfamiliar or behaving suspiciously you should act immediately. bai zhenshan: We’ve never come across anyone quite like this before. Since he is an important member of the southern intelligence ser vice he’s hardly likely to give himself away. police chief: The way you put it, it’s going to be pretty difficult. bai zhenshan: There can be no harm in offering a reward. police chief: Reward? bai zhenshan (audaciously): Yes. There are plenty of other situations where we have to use money. You can’t hire informers without forking out the cash. In my humble opinion, Chief, if you set aside a thousand dollars or so, it would be about right. police chief: Ridiculous! A thousand dollars to run in a revolutionary when there’s as yet no certainty we can catch him.

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bai zhenshan: Revolutionaries may not seem important now but in the future some collusion may be . . . police chief: Absolute rot! And coming from you, too! bai zhenshan: Yes, yes, unpardonable of me! Nevertheless, if the Chief were graciously to make an award of some kind my men would take that much more pleasure in doing the job. police chief: Do they not draw wages? bai zhenshan: Certainly they do. police chief: People on the government payroll like yourself never take their salaries into account and are forever haggling for more. When headquarters handed me this job were any figures mentioned? My police pay is by no means regular and I make daily representations to headquarters about it. How can you reasonably ask your superiors to write you a check when you’ve yet to make the arrest? bai zhenshan: Yes, sir. police chief: You’ve worked with me for so many years and still not grasped this aspect of official procedure? bai zhenshan: Sir. (The manservant enters from the drawing room.) manservant: The car is ready, Chief. police chief: Then I’ll be on my way. manservant: Yes, sir. (The manservant goes out through the drawing room.) police chief (standing up): You must tell your men to be more diligent. bai zhenshan (getting up): Yes, Chief. police chief (walking out): And when the arrest is made I’ll ask headquarters for a hundred dollars or so. bai zhenshan: Sir, we rely on your good offices. (He makes a deep bow, but the police chief is already out of sight; he straightens up, turns around, grimaces, and sticks out his tongue. His trepidation seems to have subsided and to have been replaced by contempt, mockery, and vindictiveness. Hearing the sound of light, quick footsteps he immediately resumes a serious expression and pretends to be on his way out. Enter the wife from the drawing room. When she perceives that the person she wants is not there, she stops and her expression changes.) wife: Oh! Mr. Bai! bai zhenshan (obsequiously): Yes, madam. Is madam well? There happens to be a small matter I should report. wife: Strange, your having something to discuss with me. All right, let’s sit over here. bai zhenshan: Yes, madam. (He waits until the wife has settled and resumes his original seat.) wife: What is it, then? bai zhenshan: I must first ask madam to run her eye over something. (From his pocket he pulls out an official envelope, extracts a document, and offers it to her) Here it is. If madam would be so kind . . .

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(The wife takes it and reads it through. She is badly shaken but remains silent, doing her best to look calm as if nothing were amiss. She now understands about feng yunping, and the realization that she has been deceived wounds her deeply. Since the hurt directly affects her composure it is vented mutely, not in a scream. bai zhenshan watches her expression and she is aware of his attention. She looks up and he looks away.) wife: The chief gave this to you? bai zhenshan: He did. wife: And did you uncover anything? bai zhenshan: The end is now in sight. When I have acquainted you with the facts I’ll make the necessary arrangements. wife: Was it this you were discussing with the chief a moment ago? bai zhenshan: Indeed it was. You will, however, understand that, though my superiors may insist I find him, a successful arrest depends entirely on the men. wife: And supposing you weren’t to turn him in? bai zhenshan: One would respect madam’s intimations. wife: I make none. bai zhenshan: No, of course not. Supposing I weren’t to turn him in. wife: How would you handle it? bai zhenshan: I’d make a brief report to the chief that our man had smelled a rat and cleared off. wife: And the chief, what would he do? bai zhenshan: He’d send a memo to headquarters stating his investigation revealed no evidence of the man’s presence here. wife (on the verge of tossing the letter away): And suppose you did hand him over? bai zhenshan: There are no grounds for that supposition. wife: Why is that? bai zhenshan: As madam will be aware my superiors have offered no reward. wife (smiling): The chief won’t put up the money. bai zhenshan: Exactly. wife: How much did you have in mind? bai zhenshan: One thousand dollars was the figure I mentioned to the chief; he told me not to be ridiculous. wife: And if someone gave you that, you’d let him go? bai zhenshan: I would. wife: Are you serious? bai zhenshan: I give you my personal undertaking. wife (getting up): Wait here. I’ll be back. bai zhenshan: Yes, madam. (He stands up, trots over to open the small door and, bowing, waits until the wife has gone out. He then straightens up, turns around and, like ripples subsiding on the surface of a pond, his face relaxes into its familiar expression.) (Talking to himself ) One thousand dollars! And into my pocket, all of it. Ha, ha. You can keep your “hundred or so,” my worthy chief. Revolutionary or no, could I

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care less if Feng goes free? Let them burn this town, my most worthy chief, and halt the progress of your professional graft. Considering the size of my cut your fate is of no consequence to me. Yes, let the revolutionaries raise Cain! Hand over the civil ser vice to women—I’d be delighted. Our good lady—now she’s certainly got what it takes! Candor, wit, brains, an open hand; and she’s young and pretty into the bargain. Were there no money in it even, it’d be a pleasure to do her bidding. (Hearing footsteps he promptly turns and makes to open the door, but as the wife has already entered, he can only fall in behind her, bowing obsequiously and smiling.) wife: Here is a check for five hundred dollars. (She puts it on the round table.) Tomorrow I’ll make out another for the rest. bai zhenshan: Yes. Thank you, madam. (He hurries over and picks up the check, examining it carefully.) wife (scornfully): It’s not bogus, you know. bai zhenshan (hurriedly putting it away): The very idea. I am indebted to Madam for educating me in such matters. wife: People like you only understand ready cash. bai zhenshan: No, no. I mean, yes, of course. wife: See me again tomorrow when you’ve finished with the chief. bai zhenshan: Yes, madam. I know how to sort this out. wife: Good. I’ll see you tomorrow, then. bai zhenshan: Yes, madam. wife: One moment. On your way out would you mind asking Mr. Wang to come in? bai zhenshan: Yes, madam. I’ll be here in the morning. (Spluttering “madam this” and “madam that” he goes out into the drawing room. The birdsong, which had abated for a while, suddenly bursts forth again outside the window. Shadows of branches fall flickeringly on the whiteness of the window parchment. It is high noon. The wife gazes motionless at the curtains, listening to the spring refrain outside. Suddenly her reverie is shattered. She walks slowly to the couch and throws herself onto it, sobbing. She needs to cry but taut emotions prevent the welling tears from spilling over. She fails to notice someone entering by the small door. He stops beside her and, calmly, kindly, watches her gradually recovering her composure. When, eventually, she notices feng yunping she says nothing, for it is both impossible and unnecessary for her to pretend.) feng yunping: I said I might go without saying goodbye, but that would be too inconsiderate and I must not commit the offence a second time . . . I am grateful to you for your generous hospitality. wife (in a husky voice): Sit down. feng yunping: I came specially to take my leave. wife: I know. I was just preparing for your departure. Sit down and listen to the arrangements that I’ve made. (feng yunping has no alternative but to comply. wang yicheng appears at the curtained door.)

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wang yicheng: You wanted me, madam? wife (summoning some strength): Yes, Mr. Wang, I’m sorry. Tianjin, again: I want you to go there now and fetch Dr. Peng for me. wang yicheng: Certainly, but I should have to catch the train at four this afternoon. wife: No, go in my car. wang yicheng (procrastinating): I haven’t had my lunch yet. wife: Have it on the way. wang yicheng: Of course. It makes no difference. wife: Please come and tell me when the car is ready. wang yicheng: Certainly. (He goes out the way he came in.) wife: If you’re off to Tianjin you may as well have a lift in my car since it’s going there anyway. It can’t be anywhere else, I reckon. There you can pick up a boat to Shanghai and in Shanghai change to another for Guangdong—am I right? feng yunping (touched): Your arrangements are excellent. (Making to kiss her hand) You are the most wonderful woman in the world. wife (moving her hand away): Couldn’t you be a little less objectionable? feng yunping: I was mistaken. To you gratitude should be unspoken. wife (derisively): Well, I’m touched by your reticence. Maybe I haven’t the right to ask, but the words are already forming and it’s no use my swallowing them—tell me now: have you finished all you have to do? feng yunping: Everything. wife: In that case—and forgive me for being so brazen—was it really because of me that you came? feng yunping: No. wife: Wasn’t I even one of the reasons, my Mr. Tan? (Not waiting for him to reply) You took advantage of my feelings for you, duped your old friend, and made a complete fool of me—you deceived me, do you understand? feng yunping: It was not deception. There was nothing to be gained by that. wife: Well, what was it, then, you glib-tongued activist, you? feng yunping: It was discretion, and it stemmed from a concern that, in the circumstances, was hardly avoidable. wife: A concern that I would sell you—sell you to my big white chief ? feng yunping: To be honest I’m under no obligation to offer you an explanation. wife (furiously): And were you under any obligation to use me? Hold your tongue! I don’t want to listen to you. I’ve heard enough, enough of your honeyed words. I’ve seen enough too, enough of your shameless behavior! Just what do you take me for? Am I unfit to be taken into your confidence? Yesterday you kissed me too. Yes! You went out of your way to seduce me—do you know that? And are you aware that last night I got right to the door of your room before turning back? You have no idea how much I love you. To you work is everything and love nothing, more trivial than a wild flower trampled underfoot. If you despise me so much why ever did you come

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to see me? Underneath you’re such a beast yourself, you can’t conceive that I’m a member of mankind. But I am human and I’ll prove it, you heartless wretch. Yet, for all that, I still long for us to be together, to holiday together and happily while away at least one summer’s day. But in your heart I have no place! You alone, it seems, are fit to live and all others dispensable. But I shall survive, just you see. Well, be off then. On your way. I won’t keep you! (Without a word feng yunping gets to his feet and holds out his hand in a gesture of farewell.) Oh, I don’t want you to go, I don’t want you to go. Come, sit down and talk to me. You’ve hardly said a word as yet. (Making him sit down) I went too far; you’re not offended, are you? (Gently) You don’t know how much I love you. When I get worked up I lose all sense of proportion. It seems to me people are always like that when they’re in love. You wouldn’t quarrel with that, now would you? feng yunping: I’ve wounded your pride, definitely. wife: Never mind that. What you have done definitely is wound my heart. Go on, say something and I’ll listen to your voice, for our paths may never cross again. Or, if they do, I’ll surely be an old woman—yes, with white hair and wrinkled hands that’ll likewise make you weep for me! (Affectionately) If you travel north again come and see me, just like this time, won’t you? feng yunping (grasping her hand): I shan’t be able to, I’m afraid. When I return everything will be different: I’ll be together with my comrades in that vast, fervent throng singing songs and shouting slogans. I shall be quite transformed—fired with a passion you’d never think possible. wife (smiling grimly): I know, I know. Well, I won’t be able to remain in Beiping that long. I now free the tiger to return to the mountain and set the seal on my own destruction. You should—couldn’t you forgive me? feng yunping: Forgive you? wife: For not agreeing to marry you then. feng yunping: There’d be no point. I’ve long felt you and I wouldn’t get on together. Besides, I haven’t the time to fret about the past. wife: Certainly you work dreadfully hard for your party. What do you do when you go out morning after morning? I simply can’t imagine how one sets about starting a revolution. With your friends you hold discussions, establish contacts, go to ground and destroy—that’s it, isn’t it? You are an organizer, clearly—maybe a high-ranking one. You see, I know all your secrets. Don’t you find that strange? Maybe it’s silly to mention it, but I’ve made a very expensive purchase and it looks like it’s not going to be worth it. Well, never mind that; but I’ve gone and invested a thousand dollars in unforeseen misery—I’m a prize ninny and everything I do is idiotic. feng yunping: Someone is trying to run me in. Who is it? wife: Our omnipotent headquarters—who else? feng yunping: And nobody suspects you? wife: Of what? feng yunping: Your friendship with me.

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wife: I thought you meant they suspected me of being a revolutionary. The other would be of no interest at all to women like us. Just because I’m married to the chief of police do you think I behave myself as is expected of me? Maybe other women could, but not me. I’m a bit muddled, I admit, but I haven’t entirely dispensed with my zest for living. I’m constantly seeking ways to survive. Like a pot plant down in the cellar I grow as and when I can. feng yunping: As a philosophy that is undoubtedly admissible. wife: You pretend to agree, but your tone verges on the insolent, I’m afraid. I can tell; I’m not that stupid. Yet, what would you have me do? Though my life may seem a stagnant pool, it is fluid, nevertheless, and seeps through any cracks it may encounter. I’m quite proud of that, in fact. I’m not like you men. An onset of irritability and off you go to the ends of the earth making revolution, getting yourselves inextricably involved, even risking your lives for the cause. Your rebelliousness has its origins in pique and I challenge you to deny it. feng yunping: A woman married to the chief of police cannot possibly comprehend revolution. wife: But when it comes to love at least she’ll understand as much as any activist. feng yunping: I wouldn’t know. wife (jumping to her feet, laughing bitterly): You wouldn’t know? Oh Yunping, my Yunping, you wouldn’t know? Ha, ha, ha. So my little pet provo doesn’t know! (Stopping face-to-face with him) I don’t much care for you as the speechless—graceless—and even motionless hero! (Seeing his face twitching) Have you got a grenade on you, or a pistol? feng yunping: Whatever for? wife: If I were you I’d start by blowing up a certain chief of police. feng yunping (smiling): You reckon he’s worth it? You think too highly of your husband. wife (pensively): There’s something in what you say. When it comes to the crunch he’ll be the first to surrender. Listen: what if I were to come with you? feng yunping: You? wife: Yes, me. feng yunping: Now? wife: Now. feng yunping: I don’t believe you. wife: You’re just like the headmistress: she doesn’t think I’m capable either. feng yunping: She is right. wife: You despise me that much? feng yunping: No, but your attitude to life is too frivolous. We can’t be together; it’s quite impossible. wife (disconcerted but forcing a smile): Nevertheless you did come to see me. feng yunping: I came to see the girl I’d been in love with ten years ago, a girl who, as an aspiration, as a dream, had already perished. wife: Perished?

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feng yunping (more gently): Fortunately my memory is still intact. It could help the child live out her life unscathed. wife: Do you know what I’d like to do to you? Get a gun and shoot you, that’s what! (Realizing he is not going to respond) No. We will always be friends, won’t we? The gong and drum have not sounded the start of the performance, yet the play is drawing to a close. Can it really be over so soon? In my heart I feel a pang of sorrow— don’t you feel sad too? Shake hands. You really must be going! (Wishing her well feng yunping takes his leave and, crushed by a sense of total desolation, hangs his head. wang yicheng appears at the curtained door, observes them shaking hands and, disconcerted by what he sees, coughs discreetly. Catching sight of him the wife takes a rapid step backward.) wang yicheng: The car is ready. I’ll be on my way. wife: Good. Mr. Tan wants to go to Tianjin. Take him along; it’ll be company for you. wang yicheng (unprepared for this): Mr. Tan, with me, to Tianjin? wife: He has something else to attend to. wang yicheng: That’s fine, then. Would it be convenient if we were to leave immediately? feng yunping: I’ll come with you now. (To the wife) Goodbye! wife: Goodbye! (Her energy draining away) Goodbye! (She takes a couple of steps forward in their company, grips the table for support, and, standing there motionless, stares after them.) (Curtain.)

Not es

1.

2.

3.

This translation was originally published in Tony Hyder, trans., It’s Only Spring and Thirteen Years: Two Early Plays by Li Jianwu (London: Bamboo; Paris: Unesco, 1989). The editor wishes to thank Tony Hyder for his permission to include the play in this anthology. Li’s play was first published in Wenxue jikan 3 (1934) and, in 1937, as a book by Shanghai shangwu yinshuguan. This translation is based on the (Shanghai) Wenhua shenghuo chubanshe edition of 1940, but a more accessible version can be found in Li Jianwu juzuo xuan (Selected Plays of Li Jianwu) (Beijing: Zhongguo xiju, 1982). The following notes are taken from Tony Hyder’s translation. Beijing (Peking/Northern Capital) was renamed Beiping (Peiping/Northern Peace) in 1928, after the Nationalist government had set up its administration in Nanjing (Nanking/Southern Capital). It remained Beiping until the communist victory in October 1949, when it reverted to its former name. Since It’s Only Spring is set before, but was written after, the capital moved, the anachronism is understandable if, at times, confusing. A successful military campaign launched by Republican forces in the south against an alliance of reactionary autocrats in the north, which lasted effectively from July 1926 to March 1927. The Taoran Pavilion is part of a traditional architectural complex, now set in its own park, in the southern part of Beijing. It was constructed by a wealthy scholar in 1695 and

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8. 9.

10. 11. 12. 13.

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became a favorite place for sophisticated literary gatherings and, later, during the twentieth century, for revolutionary meetings also. Close to the slum district of Nanxiawa, where Li Jianwu spent his teenage years, its “garden” contained the graves of his favorite teacher, the writer Shi Pingmei, and her revolutionary lover, Gao Junyu. It is mentioned in this play, possibly as “local color.” Jocular wordplay: if the Chinese character for “woman,” or that for “heart,” is added to the left-hand side of the character for lai, meaning “work shy,” it becomes the character read as lan, meaning “weary.” “Mr.” is in the Chinese text. At that time English terminology was fashionable among the intellectuals: those who had not been educated abroad derived much of their knowledge from foreign-sponsored schools and universities, and foreign textbooks. In act 2, the wife is chided for having dabbled in English. Monkey (Sun Wukong) is the ingenious magical companion of the priest Tripitaka whose legendary exploits are recounted in the early Chinese popular novel Xi you ji (Journey to the West). The best-known English translation, under the title Monkey, is that of Arthur Waley (New York: Grove Press, 1994). Chinese names consist of, in this sequence, a surname and a given name (e.g., Tan Gang). The surname, inherited from the father, is usually monosyllabic (e.g., Tan); the given name, awarded to the child by its parents, may consist of one or two syllables (e.g., Gang, Yicheng). In the first half of the twentieth century it was still customary for an educated man or woman, on reaching the age of maturity, to choose a “style,” or courtesy name (zi [e.g., Yunping]), for use socially by his or her friends or colleagues. The International Settlement and the French Concession together occupied over half of metropolitan Shanghai and were governed by separate foreign administrations. A Republican advanced force from Guangzhou (Canton) took trains to Shaoguan (near the northern border of Guangdong province) and continued northward on foot, crossing the border into Hunan province on May 20, 1926. Shortly after, at Liangtian, it encountered resistance and engaged in the first battle of the Northern Expedition. The expedition proper was not officially launched until July 9. A shopkeeper’s surety was a kind of bail by which the shopkeeper became guarantor of a person’s good behavior. “Energy” is in English in the original text. In this paragraph, “as you like [it]” and “husband” are in English in the original text. Cai Songpo (i.e., Cai E [1882–1916]) was an important military figure in southwest China and an active campaigner on the Republican side, particularly against Yuan Shikai. He died very young, of cancer of the throat, and became something of a folk hero in the progressive camp. The relationship between the peerless prodigy and his radiant heroine is one dominant theme in Chinese popular literature that persisted in twentieth- century pulp fiction. Escapism of this kind was much despised by realists of the modern school. The Chinese term zhizharen (paper person) is used of figures burned at funerals and during other religious ceremonies. Here it indicates frailness and dispensability.

Under Shanghai Eaves (1937) Xia Yan Tra nsla ted by G e or ge Hay de n

C ha r a c t e rs lin zhicheng ⼢㺠⒱, sublessor of the lane house, thirty-six years old yang caiyu 㬚⏴㲙, lin zhicheng’s wife, thirty-two years old kuang fu ⶿⡒, yang caiyu’s former husband, thirty-four years old baozhen 䏵㸈, yang caiyu’s daughter by kuang fu, twelve years old huang jiamei 奐⭨䲵, garret tenant, twenty-eight years old guifen ⥌➲, huang’s wife, twenty-four years old huang’s father, 奐⡖, fifty-eight years old shi xiaobao 㖣㨏⌒, tenant of the front room upstairs, twenty-seven years old “little tianjin” 㨏㝢ⱆ, shi xiaobao’s pimp, in his thirties zhao zhenyu 㷸㸕㲖, tenant of the scullery, forty-eight years old zhao’s wife 㷸㋠, forty-two years old a xiang ≐㦓, the Zhaos’ daughter, five years old a niu ≐㇧, the Zhaos’ son, thirteen years old li lingbei ⹼⼶⌚, tenant of the rear room upstairs, fifty-four years old others: secondhand goods vendor, vegetable peddler, restaurant delivery boy, et al.

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A CT 1 (The time is April 1937, on a day during the rainy season. The setting is the same throughout the play. The curtain rises on a cross- section of a “lane house” typical of Shanghai’s east side. On the right is an open back gate through which people can be seen walking along the lane. Adjoining the gate is the scullery, with a water faucet and a cement water basin downstage. Slightly beneath the open window of the garret above the scullery is a galvanized steel awning that, on rainy days, shelters the women washing clothes and rice around the basin. At this window hang flat baskets used for washing rice, steaming racks, and laundered diapers, left there to dry. To the left of the scullery is a steep staircase, its edges worn down in the middle through constant use and its bottom steps patched with boards. A door to the garret is to the right of the stairway landing, and over the landing hangs a five-watt light bulb, with only half its shade remaining. A banister leading to the front room upstairs is visible to the left of the landing. Slats partition off a “rear room” to the right of the stairs, and when no light is on, nothing can be seen in it. Further to the left on the ground floor and separated by a wall of boards is the parlor with its long and narrow French windows. Furthest left is a small courtyard and half the front gate. This courtyard, like the one in the back, is covered by a galvanized steel awning, and beneath it, dilapidated furniture, a small cookstove, plank tables, and such are piled every which way.

In all, five households occupy this two-story house. The sublessor, lin zhicheng, and his family occupy the parlor. The scullery makes up the room of the primary school teacher, zhao zhenyu. Through the window and doorway of the scullery can be seen an iron bed at a right angle to the window and, close to the window, a square table and a small cot across from it. On the wall are hung a cabinet, hamper, and other items, and, by the entrance, there are a coal cookstove set on a pedestal built of broken bricks, a wok, and other cooking

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utensils. huang jiamei, once an employee of a foreign-owned company but now unemployed, lives in the garret. A kerosene stove is on the stair landing; here his family does their cooking. The upstairs front room is where shi xiaobao lives alone; she does no cooking but has lunch and dinner sent over from a caterer. The attic, not visible to the audience, is the home of an old newspaper vendor who drinks heavily from time to time and is a bit eccentric. His fondness for singing the line from the traditional Peking opera Li Ling bei [Li Ling’s Monument] “When I gaze on the lovely child, I can hold back no longer” has earned him the name of the play as his sobriquet. The parlor, as the residence of the sublessor, is furnished with somewhat more care than the other rooms. A desk and a glass bookshelf, now converted to a clothes cabinet, show that lin zhicheng was once, perhaps, a writer. It is the rainy season and uncomfortably stuffy. From the opening curtain to closing curtain the fine rain rarely stops. Heavier rain can be heard occasionally, gurgling in the drainpipes and pouring off the eaves, but then, a minute later perhaps, a pallid sun may thread its way through the clouds. The barometer is low and the air is very heavy, which has its effect on the emotions of the tenants. Their actions and speech reveal the depression, irritability, and anxiety they all share, so that the slightest provocation can at any moment trigger an outburst of excessive pent-up anger. The time is shortly before eight o’clock in the morning. Since it is raining, the rooms are very dark. yang caiyu is in the process of tidying up the apartment and the breakfast dishes. baozhen sits alone at the table, playing a toy piano and singing softly, her eyes intent on some books. At the back gate, zhao zhenyu’s wife, a xiang close by her side, is buying vegetables. zhao zhenyu, wearing his eyeglasses, is concentrating on his newspaper, and a niu, about to leave for school, is gathering up his schoolbooks. The constant noise of peddlers and their loud chatter comes from the front and back lanes.) baozhen (sings): . . . But let me ask you this: From one bolt of cloth, how much can you earn— (The melody is not quite right, and so she starts over.) . . . But let me ask you this: From one bolt of cloth, how much can you earn? Once they have your money, Once they have your money. They’ll turn it into bullets right away . . . yang caiyu: Baozhen! It’s getting late! baozhen (wrinkling up her mouth and paying no attention):

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. . . Once they have your money, They’ll turn it into bullets right away, And one by one, one by one— They’ll get you right in the heart . . . yang caiyu: Listen to me; it’s getting late! baozhen: But I haven’t learned the song right yet, and I have to teach it after school. yang caiyu: You’re going to teach something when you don’t even know it yourself ? (Picks up a piece of clothing from the bed) When you take off your clothes, you wouldn’t dream of hanging them up nicely, oh no, you just toss them on the bed. Twelve years old now, and you can’t even take care of yourself, much less teach anyone else. What kind of a “little teacher” are you going to make? baozhen (puts her books in a stack): That’s for the laundry! yang caiyu: Laundry? Well, you have all the answers, don’t you? It would never get dry with all this rain, even if I did launder it. (She hangs up the clothing.) baozhen (runs over and quickly takes it off the hook, and then throws it into the leftover water in the washbasin): It’s unsanitary to wear dirty clothes! yang caiyu (both amused and angry): I need you to tell me that, do I? (She goes to the courtyard with the washbasin.) baozhen (packs her book bag): A Niu! (She picks up the book bag and walks toward the scullery.) zhao’s wife (offstage): If it’s for sale, then sell it and be done with it; if it isn’t, then haul it away! (She enters in a huff, carrying a grocery basket. A vegetable peddler, counting the coins in his hands and wearing an expression of enormous grievance, forces his way through the gate and speaks with a tone of desperation.) peddler: All right, have it your way, two and a half cents an ounce; even that’s three cents off. With the basket it’s one pound, two ounces; without the seven- ounce basket it’s eleven ounces, twenty-seven and a half . . . zhao’s wife: Seven ounces? What are you talking about? (Dumps the Indian rice stalks out of the basket and weighs the basket on the scales) Looks like eight and a half to me . . . peddler: Hey, look . . . zhao’s wife (goes through the motions of weighing the basket, considers her point made, then heads indoors): If you’re going to sell it, sell it; if you’re not, then take it out of here! peddler: All right, all right, two cents more . . . zhao’s wife (turns around and feels in her pocket, hesitates on purpose, then grudgingly hands him two coins; when he picks up his carrying basket and is just leaving, she quickly snatches a stalk from the basket): One more! peddler (flustered): Oh no you don’t . . .

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zhao’s wife (slams the gate, a xiang trying to help by propping the gate closed with her body): You vegetable peddlers never stop arguing! (Turns her head and says to herself ) After half a month or so of rain, it’s getting so you can’t even afford spinach or rice stalks anymore! peddler (offstage): Hey! Hey! (Pushes on the gate a few times, then gives up and, with a long, quavering voice) Ehh . . . rice stalks, oh, cabbage for sale . . . (zhao zhenyu gives his wife a glance and a slight smile, then quickly turns back to the newspaper.) baozhen (loudly): A Niu, have you learned the song I taught you yesterday? a niu (sticks his head out of the scullery): You’re not supposed to call me that; you have to call me Zhao Zhen! baozhen: I’ll call you that if I want to. A Niu, A Niu, Niu . . . 1 a niu: So, you’re really going to call me that, are you? baozhen: Well, weren’t you born in the year of the ox? a niu: Then I’ll call you something! I’ll call you A Tuo, for stepchild!2 baozhen (urgently): Zhao Zhen! a niu: Ha, ha, ha! (He ducks back inside and grabs his book bag. yang caiyu is just coming out with her grocery basket; baozhen pouts and gives her mother a look.) yang caiyu: What are you— baozhen (pointing to a niu): A Niu said it again; he called me— yang caiyu (softly but with force, as a shadow passes across her face): Don’t pay any attention to him. Go to school! Do you have your snack money? (baozhen shakes her head. yang caiyu goes back inside, gets some money, and gives it to her. At this moment lin zhicheng enters through the front gate. His face wooden, as if beset with countless injuries, without a sound he crams the door key of a spring lock into his pocket. He takes a glass of water from the table and gulps it down, then flops down on the bed.) yang caiyu (a bit surprised): What’s wrong, aren’t you feeling well? (Silence.) You aren’t even changing your clothes . . . (Hands the house robe to him, but lin zhicheng says nothing; angrily) What is it? You, always taking your anger out on me; well, I won’t have it! (On seeing that yang caiyu is upset, lin zhicheng sits up in order to change his clothes. He is about to say something but stops short. yang caiyu ignores him, picks up the grocery basket, and leaves with baozhen, closing the door between the parlor and the back room on the way out. lin zhicheng, after changing, plunks himself down and goes to sleep.) a niu (seeing that baozhen is leaving for school, shouts): Wait up, Baozhen! (Turns back to his mother) Mom, five cents for pencils. zhao’s wife: Don’t have it! a niu The teacher says I have to have it!

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zhao’s wife: That may be what he says, but I say you don’t! (zhao zhenyu, laughing, hands a niu some money from his pocket.) a niu (to baozhen): I still don’t know the last two lines . . . baozhen: The last part . . . (sings) “One by one, one by one . . .” a niu: Okay, one more time . . . (They both start to leave.) yang caiyu (after them): Baozhen! Come right home after school. If you run around like crazy outside and your dad finds out, you’ll . . . baozhen (irritated): What “dad”? (She exits. guifen, on her way back from buying groceries, comes face-to-face with yang caiyu; zhao’s wife steals a glance at yang caiyu.) yang caiyu (to guifen, trying to cover up): Oh, good morning! (She leaves through the gate.) zhao’s wife (quickly, to guifen): Did you hear that? guifen: What? zhao’s wife (she purses up her mouth in the direction of the gate, then says softly): When they started talking about her dad, Baozhen got angry and started pouting (imitating baozhen), “What ‘dad’?” Hm, times have certainly changed. Children are getting so they understand grown-up things early now; you can’t get the slightest thing past them anymore! guifen (smiling): She’s twelve or thirteen now; why shouldn’t she understand? (She takes her vegetables out one by one near the water basin.) zhao’s wife (cocks her ear toward the parlor, then says softly): But I hear that when Lin married her mother she was still very small. guifen: To be fair about it, Lin treats her very well indeed. I always say, a stepfather like him is pretty hard to come by these days. zhao’s wife (breaking in): You’re so right. It’s been almost a year since we moved here, and I’ve never heard him spank her or bawl her out. Sometimes, when Lin is having a fight with her mother and gets in a fit of temper, all he has to do is look at the young girl and he won’t have anything more to say at all. guifen: Hm, I suppose that’s human nature, to treat someone who’s not your own child a little differently. What’s more, her playmates like to tease her about being a stepdaughter . . . (Laughs) Children are always trying to best each other. zhao’s wife (after a pause): Well, let me tell you, when she’s talking with our A Niu and the conversation gets around to Lin, it’s always “Uncle Lin”; I’ve never heard her refer to him as “Dad.” guifen: Isn’t that because they knew each other before? zhao’s wife: More than that; Lin and her own father were good friends, from what I hear. guifen: Oh, then why . . . (Suddenly the rain, as if a thundershower, comes down in large drops.) zhao’s wife: Ugh, the rainy season is such a nuisance, wet and stifling; you feel you’re being suffocated!

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guifen: Yes, with the rain never stopping, it even gets through your rubbers! zhao’s wife (sees the fish and meat that guifen is washing): Oh, you bought all that today? (In the garret, huang’s father coughs loudly.) guifen (gives a strained smile): Our dad’s here from the country, so we have to buy a little extra! zhao’s wife: Oh, that’s right, I forgot—his first time in Shanghai? (She peels a rice stalk.) guifen Uh-huh, actually he was supposed to come last fall . . . zhao’s wife: Oh (as if recalling something) he’s here to see the new grandson, right? guifen (smiles in a forced manner): He—it’s been five or six years now since we’ve visited him! zhao’s wife: Well, he looks in good health! The big department stores on Nanjing Road—I suppose you’ve taken him to see everything? guifen: Almost everything; you know, the usual things for somebody in Shanghai for the first time. zhao’s wife: He got back late last night. Did your husband take him to the Great World Theater? guifen: No, to somewhere close by, the movies at Eastern Sea. (Laughs spontaneously) But once the money was spent on the tickets, he didn’t like it, said people’s heads were big one minute and small the next, and as soon as he was getting the hang of what was going on, poof, everything would jump away. zhao’s wife (agreeing): I don’t like movies, either; all that flashing makes me dizzy. Older people always like the theater; take him to The Burning of Red Lotus Temple. The end of last year, my brother took me once, and oh, it was wonderful! The costumes were fine, and the scenery was all new. When they turned the lights off, everything onstage was suddenly completely different. Right, let him have a look before he goes back to the farm, and (laughs) he may never stop talking about it for days on end. guifen: Yes, that’s what Jiamei says. zhao’s wife: Will he be staying a few more days in Shanghai? guifen (lowers her eyes): I can’t say for sure; a few more days, I suppose. zhao’s wife: Lucky for him! His son getting established in Shanghai, and a grandson . . . guifen: But . . . if only Jiamei had a job . . . (Glances at the garret, then softly) It’s what they mean when they say you don’t always know what’s going on in a family. In my father-in-law’s eyes, a life like ours must be pretty disappointing. A farming family sweats blood to raise a son and put him through college. Country people have such a narrow way of looking at things; they’re thinking, Jiamei has become a success in Shanghai and is doing something important, but . . . (becoming somewhat despondent in spite of herself ) now that he’s come to Shanghai and seen for himself, a whole family living in a garret . . . (She finishes washing the vegetables and stands up.)

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zhao’s wife: Does your husband have any brothers in the country? guifen: Well, it would be nice if he did; he is the only son. zhao’s wife (tries to offer some kind of consolation): But your husband has a lot of spirit, and the day will come when— guifen (breaks in): What good is it, when in this godforsaken Shanghai the ones without it seem to get by all right, and he, he has that bad attitude of his, won’t settle halfway on anything! zhao zhenyu (puts down his paper and, removing his glasses with one hand, rubs his eyes with the back of the other): No, no, to take it easy and settle halfway, that’s a bad attitude. Society goes bad because people go bad, and a good man starts with himself. If everyone were as serious and uncompromising as your husband— guifen (about to leave): Taking things seriously entitles you to live in a garret, is that what you mean? zhao zhenyu: No, no, that’s not what I’m getting at. All you need is a clear conscience; for example— zhao’s wife (in exasperation): Spare us your “for examples”! If you don’t get going, you’ll miss class, that precious class of yours that’s worth a few cents an hour, and they’ll deduct something from your salary too . . . zhao zhenyu: Not at all. It’s quarter to eight now, and four and a half minutes is all it takes to get to school. (Turns back to guifen, then earnestly) For example— (When he looks up, he finds that guifen has already gone upstairs.) zhao’s wife (smiling scornfully): Do you think anybody wants to listen to what you have to say? If you want to talk like that, go to the classroom and give a lecture, go hoodwink the children! zhao zhenyu (undisturbed): They can listen or not, as they choose, but whether I speak or not is my business! I, I— zhao’s wife: Fine, fine, now get going or Lin will come by soon, and you’ll never stop talking, you and your verbal diarrhea . . . zhao zhenyu (looks toward the parlor): Has he been on the night shift the past few days? zhao’s wife: Day shift, night shift, what do you care? (Outside the gate the sweet rice peddler is heard.) a xiang: Mom, I want some sweet rice! zhao’s wife (searches her pocket, apparently finds no money, and so changes her tone): Didn’t you just have some porridge? a xiang: Uh-huh! I want— zhao’s wife (exasperatedly): Wait till your dad gets rich! (a xiang enviously looks out the gate. In the front room upstairs, shi xiaobao has just gotten up. Her room is very dark, and, after stretching herself, she lets in some light by jerking aside the window curtain. She lights a cigarette, then opens the window, frowns, and makes a face at the rain. Taking along a thermos bottle with her, she ambles downstairs. When she reaches the

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garret landing, she glances through the crack in the garret door and, as if having seen something amusing, smiles to herself with pursed lips. She is a so-called cheap modern young woman. Her hair is fashionably curled, and some makeup from the previous day remains on her sleep-filled eyes. The mandarin collar on her deep red flower-print dress is loose, and she scuffs along in her slippers. She is not really very pretty, but her eyes hold a certain charm, and there is a kind of languid grace in her walk. She goes to the scullery entrance and casually throws away her cigarette, not yet half smoked. When zhao’s wife hears her coming down, she gives her a scathing look, then purposely averts her eyes, meanwhile energetically fanning the coal brazier and producing a straight column of white smoke.) shi xiaobao (gives zhao’s wife a glance): Oh, you’re all up so early! (yawns) Raining again. The sound of the raindrops makes me want to stay in bed . . . (She yawns.) zhao’s wife (maliciously): Well, aren’t you the lucky one! shi xiaobao (gives her a smile): Oh, aren’t you going to school today, Mr. Zhao? (zhao zhenyu concentrates on his newspaper.) (a bit taken aback) What’s the matter with you today? Even when people don’t speak to you, you usually have plenty to talk and laugh about anyway. Now, when I speak to you, you don’t pay any attention to me. zhao zhenyu (quickly puts down his newspaper): Ah ah, it’s you; look at this, the paper says . . . shi xiaobao (casually pours the leftover water out of the thermos): What does the paper say? (The water splashes onto zhao’s wife, who shoots her a murderous glare.) Ah, sorry! (She leisurely opens the rear gate and goes out to get some boiled water. lin zhicheng, unable to sleep, tosses and turns, finally sits up.) zhao zhenyu (on seeing his wife’s furious expression, cannot hold back): Ha, ha . . . zhao’s wife (suddenly turns around): What are you laughing at? zhao zhenyu: Why can’t you ever get along with her? Here you are, living in the same house, and you start bickering the minute you lay eyes on her. It’s disgraceful! zhao’s wife: It’s the way she acts that I can’t stand: a streetwalker pretending to be something else. The witch, her husband never around, and bringing all kinds of trashy men home with her . . . (In the garret, huang jiamei coughs violently and leans halfway out the window. He is pale and emaciated, with a melancholy expression. He fans away the coal smoke with his hand and closes the window. From within comes the sound of a baby crying.) zhao zhenyu: Eh, what business is that of yours? You can’t exactly blame her, either. Haven’t I told you? She has to eat, what with her husband roaming all over the world on a ship, Japan today, the South Seas tomorrow, America the day after that, able to come home less than three or four times a year; no resources, no ability, no way to

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earn a living, and you want her to be a paragon of fidelity. Now, aren’t you being a little too . . . too . . . zhao’s wife: If you’re going to give a sermon, go to church and do it! No matter what it is, out you come with one of your long sermons. But I know you’re just sounding off. You for one have some talent and education; how are you at earning a living? Huh! Suppose I can’t get along with her; what does that have to do with you? When I talk with other people, I don’t want you butting in! zhao zhenyu: What? I . . . ridiculous . . . (Gesticulating, he walks up to his wife and is about to make some kind of pronouncement when, at the call of a cake seller outside the gate, a xiang runs back and interrupts.) a xiang: Mom, I want to buy some cake! zhao’s wife: Are you ever full? You just . . . (shi xiaobao, back from getting hot water, pushes the gate open with one hand.) shi xiaobao (toward the lane): Cake, hey! (Buys several pieces, turns her head and catches sight of a xiang’s expression, then back to the cake seller) Hey, another piece! (To a xiang) Come on, come on! (a xiang walks over to take it.) zhao’s wife: Don’t take it. shi xiaobao (laughs): What’s the harm? Children love it. zhao’s wife: Don’t take it! Listen to what I tell you! (a xiang watches her mother but still has her hand outstretched.) shi xiaobao: It doesn’t matter; go ahead. zhao’s wife (jerks a xiang away): Spineless little brat! Haven’t you ever had cake before? (Face suffused with anger, she looks at shi xiaobao.) shi xiaobao (raises her eyebrows): Oh, for heaven’s sake! zhao’s wife: For heaven’s sake what? shi xiaobao: She’s just a child; why take it so seriously? zhao’s wife: The child happens to be mine, so even if you don’t care to take it seriously, I do! I’ll tell you this: we may be poor, but we’re not about to let our children eat anything bought with dirty money! shi xiaobao (also angry now): What do you mean? Whose money is dirty? zhao’s wife (laughs scornfully): You have to ask me that? shi xiaobao: Oh, why are you so unreasonable? You don’t even know what’s good for you, and when someone with the best of intentions— zhao’s wife (as if spitting it out): Who needs your “best of intentions”? shi xiaobao: All right then, forget it! (laughs) Unreasonable—(starts upstairs) idiot! zhao’s wife (mounts one step): Who are you calling an idiot? shi xiaobao (turns back from the staircase with a look of disdain, but still smiling): You! (She skips upstairs. Just when zhao’s wife is about to say something further, huang’s father comes down the stairs with a two-year- old child in his arm. guifen, carrying dirty clothes, follows. All zhao’s wife can do at this point is spit.)

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zhao’s wife: Shameless! (huang’s father is very much a man of the countryside; over his rough denim robe of faded blue he wears an apron. His hair and beard are grizzled. Holding his grandson with an air of satisfaction, he descends cautiously, step-by-step, as if unfamiliar with the narrow staircase. With a glance of curiosity toward shi xiaobao, guifen speaks to her father-in-law in a loud voice.) guifen: You can take a walk in the lane, but don’t let him near its entrance to the street. There are cars out there. huang’s father (waves eagerly to zhao zhenyu and points to the child): He wants me to carry him out on the street. Ha, ha, Shanghai does not let you walk anywhere you please; now, if we were in the country . . . zhao zhenyu (joining in the conversation): Do you find Shanghai more interesting than the countryside? huang’s father (not having heard zhao zhenyu’s question): A few days ago he was bewildered by seeing me, but after a while he started to get used to me around here! Look how he always wants me to carry him. zhao zhenyu (at a loss): Hm? guifen (to zhao zhenyu): He’s hard of hearing; he didn’t hear you. zhao zhenyu (nods, then loudly): Do you find Shanghai more interesting than the countryside? huang’s father: The countryside? Oh, oh, I’ll be staying a few more days; Jiamei and she (points to guifen) won’t let me leave. It’s all right, though; the silkworms have been taken care of. We don’t make silk ourselves, so once we’ve sold off the cocoons, we don’t have anything more to do . . . zhao zhenyu: Hm, how interesting. (to guifen) How do you carry on a conversation with him? Can’t he hear anything at all? guifen (laughing): You shout or make hand signals! (huang’s father, carrying the boy, pushes open the gate and steps through, and a xiang, seizing this opportunity, follows along behind.) guifen (runs up): Hey (loudly), don’t buy him anything to eat! He’ll get a stomachache. (turns back in, speaking to herself ) He loves him so, he’ll give him anything at all to eat, and I just can’t get it across to him. (to zhao’s wife) Still, there’s something to be said for his being hard of hearing! We can keep unpleasant things from him; even now he has no inkling whatever that Jiamei is out of a job. We’ve told him that it’s examination time at school and classes have been out these past few days. He doesn’t understand anyway, so . . . zhao zhenyu: You’ve told him your husband teaches school? So we’re colleagues, are we? guifen (with a forlorn laugh): Jiamei told him he teaches at a YMCA night school, and he believed every word of it. The other day when we were on a streetcar going by the front gate of the YMCA, he started shouting, “Ah! that’s Jiamei’s school,” as if he owned the whole building. That gave everybody on the streetcar a good laugh! (She starts washing the clothing.)

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zhao zhenyu: Ha, ha, ha, that’s the way to look at it: I own the whole building! Ha . . . (The sun suddenly appears. lin zhicheng paces back and forth, then pushes open the French windows.) zhao’s wife (hearing these sounds, very quickly): It’s time now, get going. Lin’s up; in a little while he’ll be here, and once you start talking to him, you’ll never get away. zhao zhenyu: It’s all right. zhao’s wife: What do you mean, “all right”? Hurry, he’s already up. zhao zhenyu: What’re you afraid of ? He’s not a tiger, and he’s hardly going to ask you for the rent right now. zhao’s wife: I just don’t like his manner, cold as ice, as if you’d done him some kind of a wrong, and when you say hello to him, the air catches near his throat, “Mm.” Even the children are scared of him (solicits agreement from guifen), isn’t that right? (guifen nods.) zhao zhenyu (with a self-satisfied expression): But he gets along well enough with me; whenever he sees me, he— zhao’s wife (interrupting angrily): God, I’m sick of hearing it: verbal diarrhea; he can’t even manage his own affairs, yet he still talks about the nation, soc-, soc-, society. (to guifen) I could never learn all that blather, even if I wanted to! (guifen smiles.) shi xiaobao (comes to the edge of the stairs, softly): Mr. Huang! Mr. Huang! huang jiamei (steps out of the garret): What is it? (somewhat embarrassed as they approach each other) I . . . these past few days . . . your money . . . shi xiaobao (with a charming smile): No, don’t mention it; what does such a little amount matter . . . Uh, Mr. Huang, I wonder if you would do me a favor? huang jiamei: What? (guifen is listening to this.) shi xiaobao (takes a letter out of her pocket): Please read this to me! huang jiamei (looks the letter over): This is from your father. Hm . . . he says everything’s fine at home. shi xiaobao (before he can finish): But he wants some money, doesn’t he? huang jiamei: Hm . . . a windstorm blew down the wall, so he’d like . . . shi xiaobao: It’s always the same. Don’t read any more, Mr. Huang; just tell me how much he wants. huang jiamei: Mm, at least fifteen dollars. Plus . . . shi xiaobao (suddenly takes the letter back): Fifteen again; well, his daughter’s rich, isn’t she, a lady of the house and everything . . . (She is about to leave.) huang jiamei: Oh, about the five dollars I owe you; at the end of the month . . . shi xiaobao (gives him an arch look): You—take everything too seriously; what does it matter? (Laughs) The world doesn’t have enough honest men like you! (She gives his chin a gentle tap with a magenta-polished fingernail, then blithely walks off. Somewhat embarrassed, huang jiamei feels the spot where she touched him and returns slowly to the garret.)

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lin zhicheng (walks to the faucet and rinses his mouth, muttering): Buying groceries, huh? What’s taking her so long? zhao zhenyu (beaming): Good morning. Were you on the night shift? lin zhicheng (without a trace of a smile): Mm . . . zhao zhenyu (as if speaking to himself ): You must be very busy, with business so good at the silk factory . . . lin zhicheng: Huh! It’s all the same with us, no matter what business is like. When business is off, we worry every day about a shutdown or a layoff, and when business finally gets going again, then it’s three shifts a day and work all night. They don’t care whether you live or die; they can always get another workhorse! zhao zhenyu: Still, it’s surely better for business to be good than bad! For example— lin zhicheng: No such thing. Right now the factory’s driving us day and night, and the goods have been ordered all the way up to March of next year. Our boss was having a rough time for a few years and got ten million or so into debt, but now he’s paid every penny of it back in one year. Altogether he’s got five factories now. He must be taking in an average of thirty-five thousand dollars a day, and in a month, let’s see, three times five is fifteen, three times three makes nine—over a million a month, and of course that makes twelve million a year. We’re the ones who suffer, though. If the workers can’t take it, they can always cut a shift or two, but an office worker doesn’t have that privilege. For thirty to fifty dollars a month, you’ve bought yourself a manager, who’ll do your arithmetic and your paperwork, your cuffing and your bawling out for you . . . zhao zhenyu: Hm, thirty-five thousand a day, twelve million a year; why, in ten years that comes to a hundred and twenty million . . . lin zhicheng: Everything else aside, take payday, several thousand dollars every half month; all that bright- colored paper slipping through my fingers. Everybody thinks paying the wages is a fat job, but I can’t get used to that sort of monkey business. And yet, if you act in good conscience, they make you pay for any little discrepancy. Just today I failed to deduct thirty-five cents for savings3 and got a “reprimand” from the head of the labor department. Reprimand! He joined the plant two years after I did, but he’s good at kissing up to the top men, so now he’s head of a department. Ah, none of it makes any sense at all! zhao zhenyu (nods): Mm, one is never happy with one’s own job, as the saying goes. But there’s another way of looking at it: to be with a factory for five or six years, as you have, why, there’s something to be said for that, at least. A life like ours naturally seems bad when you compare it with those on top, but we’re still better off than the ones on the bottom . . . (points to a newspaper article) Scads of people in Shanghai are destitute. Now when you put yourself alongside them— lin zhicheng (before he can finish): No, the way I see it, when you’re on top or on the bottom, at least you know where you are; the worst off are people like us. If you’re rich, all right, you live in a big foreign-style house and ride around in a car, and everything’s just fine. And if you’re poor, then you might as well be like Li Lingbei up there in the attic, and that’s that. He eats when he can, and when he can’t, well, he

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just cinches up his belt, climbs up to the attic, and goes off to sleep. He doesn’t have to worry about appearances or reputation; no wife or children, no social obligations, and when his clothes get tattered, he gives a seamstress a few pennies to fix them up. He goes out on the street, just the same as you or I, and nobody laughs at him, but we, now, do you suppose we could get away with going to work with patches in our clothes? Goddamned office types, we’ll put on a show even if we have to go into debt to do it! (guifen glances at him surreptitiously.) zhao zhenyu: But from Li Lingbei’s point of view, our life just might seem better than his! A person can never be satisfied, and when he’s dissatisfied, he starts to complain. The complaining makes him pessimistic, and the pessimism ruins his health. Now, tell me, since my health is all I have, why should I want to do it any harm? So, here’s the way I handle it: whenever I’m dissatisfied about something, I compare my lot with people worse off, and then I calm down. For example— zhao’s wife (interrupts in an explosive tone): “For example, for example”! You’ll never amount to anything, the way you’re always stooping beneath you! Why don’t you try comparing yourself with the people with money and power sometime? zhao zhenyu (paying no attention to her but settling down for a long conversation): For example— zhao’s wife: No more “for examples,” please! Aren’t you going to school today? zhao zhenyu (as if he hadn’t heard): For example, we had an opportunity to be educated and find out about things. And we can observe this bustling world we live in, even come out with an opinion from time to time. This, after all, is a privilege. (Loudly) Ha, ha, ha . . . lin zhicheng (in sharp disagreement): Oh no, I don’t feel I’m entitled to privileges like that at all! zhao zhenyu: But, Mr. Lin, looking at it dispassionately, you’ll have to agree that society has been pretty good to us educated people. After all, how many people are there in China who can read, who can, as we do— zhao’s wife (sarcastically): Oh, yes, pretty good, all right! Hah, so you can go out begging for a living! zhao zhenyu: I say that nowadays everyone in the whole world is equally miserable; everybody has his own particular suffering. Look at this news item. (He offers him the newspaper.) When we see them on the street, they look fierce and proud, sitting in their armored cars. There’s such a vicious expression on their faces; those hard, glinting eyes under their helmets look as if they’d like to gobble us up. But take off their tiger skins, and they’re no different from us! lin zhicheng (takes the paper and looks at it, then, with an expression of pain): What— (huang jiamei pushes the window open and looks down.) zhao’s wife (her curiosity piqued): What’s the matter? zhao zhenyu: It’s all beyond you!

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zhao’s wife: So that’s why I’m asking in the first place! zhao zhenyu: All right, then I’ll explain it to you. (unconsciously assuming the tone he uses in telling stories to his grade school students) It says in the paper, in . . . a country right next to our China, there was a soldier who had been in combat and had earned a medal—do you know what I mean? A medal you wear on your chest—but when he got his discharge, he found he couldn’t support his wife and parents, and one evening he sneaked off to a room he’d taken for the purpose and swallowed opium . . . No, no (takes a quick look at the newspaper) he swallowed poison and killed himself! In his suicide note he said, “I’ve sold what I can, and now I have nothing left but the body my mother and father gave me. I’ve heard that medical schools buy corpses; if that’s so, then sell my corpse so that my family can eat . . .” The upshot of it was that they did sell the corpse as he’d requested, for thirty-six dollars, minus the hotel bill of a dollar twenty, and with tears in his eyes, his father took away an estate of thirty-four dollars and eighty cents! The newspaper reporter gave the story a headline—you know what a headline is, don’t you? It means title—“Hero for Sale: $34.80”! lin zhicheng (vehemently): Goddamn it (throws the newspaper away), the bastard who took away the dollar twenty is nothing but a robber! zhao zhenyu: You’re so right. Just for money, for such a piddling amount too—(turns and deliberately teases his wife) so you see, I hate the sight of money. huang jiamei (in an aggrieved tone): Guifen. (guifen is absorbed in the conversation and does not reply.) lin zhicheng: Huh . . . with corpses floating all over this China of ours, I wonder if any one of them could get a price like that!4 zhao zhenyu (off on a new topic): Say, speaking of floating corpses, it says in today’s paper . . . (little tianjin, a young Shanghai street type, pushes his way through the gate, eyes everyone, and goes straight up the stairs. With an expression of disgust mixed with some self-satisfaction, zhao’s wife whispers in guifen’s ear.) guifen (eyes alight with interest): Really? zhao’s wife (points to her own eyes): I saw it with my own eyes. He sneaked out with her night before last, and they didn’t get back till daylight yesterday. Right here last night (points to the water basin) I saw him get his cut from her! guifen (covering her mouth): Disgraceful! lin zhicheng: Damn it, the men are thieves and the women whores in this world, and it’s all for money. There’s nothing they don’t do for it! (Upstairs, shi xiaobao catches sight of little tianjin and yells, “Get out of here!” Everyone looks up.) There will come a day when I’ll have some power, and then I’ll get those— zhao zhenyu (interrupts loudly): Oh my god! (jumps up) I’ve got only three minutes! (He picks up his books from the table and dashes out.) zhao’s wife (staring angrily after him): Won’t you ever change? huang jiamei (from upstairs): Guifen! Guifen!

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guifen (raises her head): What? zhao zhenyu (pushes through the gate violently): Forgot my hat! (He rushes into the house, gets his hat, stuffs it on his head, and rushes out again.) zhao’s wife (chasing after him and shouting at the gate): Hey, why haven’t you put your rubbers on? (She sees that he is well on his way and so turns around and mumbles something. guifen is wringing out the laundry.) lin zhicheng (returns to his room, now that his companion in complaining and conversation has left): Shopping for groceries, huh? Nine o’clock, and not back yet. huang jiamei (descends from the garret, while guifen, wiping her hands, is on her way up): Come here! guifen: What is it? I haven’t finished all the laundry yet. (zhao’s wife cleans up her room, and lin zhicheng, alone, pours out some water and washes his face.) huang jiamei (standing in the middle of the stairs): What’s the rush? With the weather the way it is, it’ll rain in a little while anyway, and it’ll never get dry. guifen (looking at him): What’s the matter? huang jiamei (hesitates for an instant): Do you have anything left? guifen (uncomprehending): What do you mean? huang jiamei: Yesterday’s . . . (He swallows the rest.) guifen (understands his meaning now, lowers her head): I have a few dimes leftover from groceries. huang jiamei: Then, today . . . guifen (looks up at him): Today? huang jiamei (falls silent a moment, then, as if searching for another topic, with a wry smile): Guifen! Do you think Dad—do you think Dad is disappointed in me? From his expression . . . guifen: Why? I can’t tell. huang jiamei (painfully): Why? He sold his land, mortgaged his house, borrowed money at a bloodsucking rate just to raise his son, but now— guifen (cutting him short): There you go again; what’s the good of all that? You haven’t done anything wrong; you’re not too lazy to look for work. If you can’t find some little job or other in a place as big as Shanghai, well, it’s not your fault. huang jiamei (runs his fingers through his hair, becoming more and more excited): It’s all because of the bad advice of that elementary school teacher Mr. Yao. He told my dad, “This boy is a genius. Our school had never had such a gifted student, and he’s really going to amount to something. It would be a shame to keep him buried out here in the country!” But if he were alive today, I’d like to invite him here for a good look at his genius, living in a garret! (He coughs.) guifen: Oh, for heaven’s sake, you’re . . . (Worried that others will hear, she tries to calm him down.)

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huang jiamei (after a pause, exhales and lowers his voice): Now that Dad’s finally gotten to Shanghai, to have him stay in the room all day looking after the baby is a damned shame! guifen: I know, but— huang jiamei: Doesn’t the baby still have his locket? (He averts his eyes.) guifen (raising her eyebrows): The three dollars or so I gave you last time, wasn’t that from the gold locket? huang jiamei: That’s right! (In despair) Poor little child, even an insignificant thing like that . . . (guifen looks at him and says nothing.) Then you— (He breaks off.) guifen: What? (She looks at him. huang jiamei lowers his head and says nothing.) Actually, I suppose, when you’re rich, you should live like a rich man, and when you’re poor, you should live like the poor. Perhaps—your dad isn’t going to be here for very long . . . (huang jiamei says nothing.) (in a spontaneous outpouring) But what I’m worried about is the future. If we keep on borrowing three dollars here, five dollars there, and living hand to mouth from one day to the next, the day will come when— huang jiamei (suddenly raises his head and as if exploding): You think I’m never going to find a job, is that it? (He stops abruptly and looks down.) guifen (in consternation): No, no, that’s not what I mean. Oh, you (shifts to a pleading tone), Jiamei, I just didn’t put it the right way! (Silently, huang jiamei caresses her shoulder, turns, and goes toward the stairs. At this moment, the back gate creaks open, and huang’s father enters holding his grandson. He seems to be very happy. The boy has a piece of cake in one hand and a string of water chestnuts in the other. a xiang, her hands behind her back, follows along behind, stealthily, her eyes glued to her mother.) huang’s father: Ha, ha, that’s right, that’s right, this is the place, all right; say, you’re pretty clever! huang jiamei: Ah, you’re back, Dad! (He is about to go up to him but is suddenly seized with a fit of coughing.) guifen: Go upstairs; it’s windy here. zhao’s wife (looking at her daughter’s hands): What in the world? Who gave you . . . a xiang (also has a string of water chestnuts; pouts): I told him I didn’t want any, but he (points to huang’s father) insisted on giving me some. zhao’s wife: Idiot, you just don’t have an ounce of manners! (She is about to say something to huang’s father, then suddenly remembers his deafness and shows her thanks with gestures.)

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huang’s father (loudly): I’m much obliged to her. The houses in Shanghai all look alike, and as soon as I was out the door, I couldn’t tell which one it was! Ha, ha, ha! (He goes to the stairs.) zhao’s wife (takes three water chestnuts from a xiang’s string): You can have half! (puts her apron to a xiang’s nose) Blow! (a xiang gives a hefty and very noisy blow.) Five years old, and can’t even blow your own nose! (She takes a xiang into their room.) huang jiamei (holding back a cough and forcing a smile, takes the boy in his arms): Little rascal, just have to have your grandpa hold you, don’t you? (To his father) Dad, go on up and lie down for a while. We’re going to the theater tonight, The Burning of Red Lotus Temple! (guifen stares at the water chestnuts in her son’s hand.) huang’s father (has not understood): Ai, that’s all right, that’s all right, it doesn’t matter! Kids in the country eat thirty or fifty or so at a single sitting. The more you eat, the more you get used to them! Ha, ha . . . (With a downcast expression, guifen goes back to the water basin, but when it suddenly pours down rain, she retreats to the scullery door. huang jiamei comes out of the garret and coughs violently, holding a handkerchief to his mouth, as if to prevent his father from seeing him. guifen is listening to him.) zhao’s wife (in an admonishing tone): You’d better have a doctor come and see what’s wrong with your husband! Early in the morning his coughing sounds really terrible! guifen: But he . . . zhao’s wife: Oh, while we’re on the subject, I have a prescription that’s done the trick for quite a few people. At noon of the fifth day of the fifth month, you take forty-nine large cloves of garlic, and when nobody is around . . . (All of a sudden, from shi xiaobao’s room comes an earsplitting noise as if something has been pushed over. zhao’s wife, guifen, and lin zhicheng simultaneously look up, listening. Immediately afterward, little tianjin comes out with a nonchalant air. He is whistling—probably the latest dance hall tune—and shi xiaobao is close on his heels, shouting.) shi xiaobao: I’m not going, I’m not, I’ll be damned if I will! (little tianjin stops on the stairs, turns his head, and looks at her. He keeps on whistling and says nothing. shi xiaobao walks down to the landing.) Go tell him it’s not my fault. He wants me to apologize to him, does he? Forget it! If I hit him, he had it coming. Hah! What a pig, asks me out to eat, then starts to get ideas! I told him Johnnie’s coming back, and if he has anything he wants to say, he can say it to him! (She turns and is about to go off. little tianjin beckons her with his chin.) (descends a few steps) What? (She raises her eyebrows.) little tianjin (casually grabs a banister rail, gives it a light twist or two, breaks it off, and brushes the wood chips from his hand, then coldly, to shi xiaobao): You’ll still

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have to walk in the Shanghai Bund perhaps. If you don’t listen to me . . . well, your legs aren’t any stronger than that wood, are they? (He resumes his whistling, continues downstairs under the fixed stare of several pairs of eyes, and saunters out the gate. zhao’s wife hurriedly follows him out and watches him leave, then slams the gate closed.) shi xiaobao (a little shaken, but feels compelled to put up a bold front): Thieving son of a bitch! (She goes back upstairs and throws herself on the bed. lin zhicheng, hearing the quarrel, has run out from the parlor and stood watching little tianjin’s departure. Finally he goes over to the stairway and picks up the banister rail.) lin zhicheng (angrily): I must have been blind! What a splendid bunch of tenants I’ve got! (He is about to turn around and go back when there is a knocking at the back gate. Since zhao’s wife doesn’t dare to answer it but stands watching lin zhicheng instead, he gathers his courage and pulls the gate open. The person at the gate is a middle-aged man with disheveled hair and a beard, in ill-fitting Western clothes that are soaked through at the shoulder. His eyes, long and narrow at the corners, are kind. He has a high-bridged nose. From his bearing it is clear that at this moment a surfeit of hardship has left him physically and spiritually exhausted. This is yang caiyu’s former husband, lin zhicheng’s close friend, and baozhen’s father—kuang fu.) kuang fu: I wonder if a certain Mr. Lin—(sees lin zhicheng and looks him up and down) ah, there you are, Zhicheng! I’ve been looking all over for you! lin zhicheng (taken aback, stares with bloodshot eyes and steps back a few paces): You . . . you . . . kuang fu: You don’t recognize me anymore, eh? I . . . lin zhicheng (after close scrutiny, turns pale): Ah, Fusheng! What . . . kuang fu (warmly extends his hands): Oh, I’ve changed, all right! I’ll bet if you’d run into me on the street, you wouldn’t have known me, would you? (He smiles sadly.) lin zhicheng (almost as if struck by lightning, speechless and utterly bewildered): Ah— kuang fu (grabs lin zhicheng’s hand in great enthusiasm): Zhicheng! lin zhicheng (after the shock of recognition, seized now with the emotion of seeing an old friend): Fusheng! You’ve come back! It’s you! (He starts to embrace him but stops and assumes a bleak expression. kuang fu looks around him, sees the others staring at him, and politely greets them.) (To lin zhicheng) Are these people all your family? lin zhicheng (as if waking from a reverie): Ah, no, no. Come on in and sit down! (He leads kuang fu to the parlor while the others look on in astonishment. As soon as they are inside, lin zhicheng closes the door.) kuang fu (walking along): This area’s changed entirely; you’ve got a trolley bus through here now, and most of the houses are new. When I lived here seven or eight years ago— (lin zhicheng looks at him as if in despair.) What’s the matter, Zhicheng? You see the way I look . . .

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lin zhicheng (trying to mask his confusion): Uh-huh, sit down, sit down. Have a smoke? (He searches a drawer for cigarettes.) kuang fu: Hm? Have you forgotten I don’t smoke? lin zhicheng: Oh, oh, then . . . (He tries to pour some boiled water from the thermos but is unaware that it is empty and that he is merely going through a pantomime of pouring.) Have some water! (His hands are shaking.) kuang fu (watching lin zhicheng’s hands and beginning to be alarmed at his distraught expression): What’s the matter, Zhicheng? Did I come here too unexpectedly? Is it too much of a shock? How have you been feeling? There’s nothing wrong, I hope. lin zhicheng (even more distressed): No, no . . . kuang fu: Then, my old friend, why aren’t you happy over my newfound freedom? If you count the year and a half before I went in, it’s been ten whole years since we last saw each other! lin zhicheng: Uh-huh, Fusheng, I—I’m very happy, but, it—it must be a dream! kuang fu (laughing): No, squeeze my hand. It isn’t a dream, it’s real! (lin zhicheng grips his hand, glances at him, then lowers his head in silence.) (emotionally) I dreamt for eight years in that pigeon cage, and now, by god, it’s all come true! Whenever we’d get out into the yard and I’d breathe the fresh air, or when the wind would blow in from far off, I’d think of you right away, Zhicheng. And when my time was up, I had to find you first of all, so that I could see my Caiyu and my Baozhen! Zhicheng, they, they . . . lin zhicheng (with a gleam of terror in his eyes): They, uh, they . . . kuang fu: Are they all right? They . . . (grips lin zhicheng’s hand tightly) Oh, Zhicheng, I don’t know how to thank you. Tell me how they’ve been for the past few years. (lin zhicheng is unable to reply.) Are they all right? Zhicheng, say something! lin zhicheng (his throat constricted): They— kuang fu (alarmed): What’s happened to them? (lin zhicheng cannot speak. kuang fu jumps up.) Zhicheng, tell me, how are they? They . . . no use trying to fool me, they’ve— (He is grief-stricken.) lin zhicheng: No, no, they’re all right . . . In a little while— kuang fu (relieved): Oh, they’re all right, are they? Zhicheng! If I hadn’t had a friend like you, they might have been dead by now, or drifting around in the streets. I don’t know how many terrible dreams I’ve had, of Caiyu and Baozhen begging for food in the streets. My god . . . (While they are talking, a xiang goes on tiptoe to the door and peeks in, listening. zhao’s wife is frying vegetables on a small stove, and when she sees that a xiang has

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run off to eavesdrop, she immediately rushes over and pulls her away, threatening her with her fist. Helplessly a xiang walks away. But when zhao’s wife hears kuang fu mention yang caiyu, she stops short and, in spite of herself, assumes a xiang’s identical stance, eavesdropping through the crack in the door. a xiang stands by the stairs and, pouting, glares at her mother. Before kuang fu has finished speaking, there is a sudden knock at the front gate. lin zhicheng, in embarrassment, stands up but does not go to answer it. He finally makes a decision.) lin zhicheng: She— voice (interrupting from outside the gate): Ma’am, do you have any bottles or old newspapers? lin zhicheng (furiously): No! voice (monotonously): Got any used-up pots and pans, old clothes, old shoes to trade in, anybody? (His cries drift away.) kuang fu (After this interruption, he picks up the glass, notices that it has no water in it, and puts it down again. He looks the room over for the first time, and his gaze falls upon a dress hanging on the wall): Oh, Zhicheng. (with forced enthusiasm) I had no idea; are you married? lin zhicheng (with increased anguish): Mm . . . kuang fu: For how many years, and who is she? (Again lin zhicheng can’t speak.) I don’t know why it is, but when I was inside, the days seemed to crawl by. Actually, now that I think about it, the time went pretty fast, and now my old opponents in the dining hall fights at school are all already middle-aged men! Zhicheng, you’re thirtyfive now? lin zhicheng (can hold off no longer): Fusheng! Why haven’t you written in the last few years? You might at least have sent me a letter saying you were all right! It wouldn’t have been impossible, would it? kuang fu: What do you mean? lin zhicheng: Ever since I got that one letter from you when you were in the Longhua prison, not a word—and at that time your case was so serious! kuang fu: My friend, I’m sorry. I had no idea what the situation was like outside, and it might have been dangerous for you if I’d sent you a letter. lin zhicheng (on the brink of tears): But, but, Fusheng! In that way, in that way you made me commit a crime, a crime so horrible I can’t even face you, my friend! Fusheng, spit on me, curse me, I beg you to do it! I’m vile, I’ve done a terrible thing to you . . . kuang fu (shocked): What is it? Tell me! lin zhicheng: I’m unspeakable, I can’t face you, I . . . (He holds his head in his hands.) kuang fu: What are you talking about? I don’t understand; tell me! Tell me! lin zhicheng: Fusheng! kuang fu: What?

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lin zhicheng: I— (He stops.) kuang fu: What’s the matter? Go on. lin zhicheng: Caiyu and I . . . (between clenched teeth) Caiyu and I have been living together! kuang fu (confused and unconscious of his actions): Uhh—(collapses onto his chair; as if by rote) living—together! guifen (loudly): Oh dear! Mrs. Zhao, your vegetables are getting burnt! (zhao’s wife runs back awkwardly. guifen takes some laundry upstairs.) lin zhicheng (softly but emphatically): Once I got the letter you’d had relayed to me from Longhua, I went to Caiyu, and as you had feared they were living in poverty in an attic, almost everything you owned having been taken away when you were in trouble. I . . . (takes a deep breath) I looked out for them as well as I could, but a year went by, then two, and I didn’t get any news at all from you. Some of the ones sentenced along with you died, others changed completely. I waited for you three full years (in gradually increasing excitement and louder voice) and I just didn’t know if you were alive or dead. (quickly changes his tone) But no, no; I can’t use that as expiation; I did a criminal act, and I’m ashamed to face you. But, Fusheng! I’m a human being, I have feelings for them, and because I wanted them to be happy, I . . . kuang fu (excitedly): You wanted them to be happy! (with great effort brings his confused emotions under control) Mm . . . wait, I . . . let me think . . . lin zhicheng: I understand now that the cause of my misery was a worthless thing called devotion. I wanted to help a friend, help a friend’s family. Every time I’d see Baozhen, I would think to myself that I had to protect her and make sure she got an education, so that she could follow in your footsteps . . . But that made me commit my crime, and I . . . kuang fu (as if lost in thought and oblivious to what lin zhicheng has just said): Wanted them to be happy . . . lin zhicheng (with a touch of hysteria): I’m a man, and I have some education. You used to treat me like your own brother, and so when you were up against it, do you suppose I would do anything to hurt you? After a month or two, I felt the danger, and I made up my mind several times to leave. I planned to gather up a good amount of money and give it to Caiyu. In that way I wouldn’t have to look after them all the time, but— kuang fu (has finally recovered his equilibrium): So, what about Caiyu? lin zhicheng: I suppose you could say the same thing happened to her; fate covered both our eyes, and the more we struggled, the worse the danger became, until finally— kuang fu: Wait, so now— lin zhicheng (before he can finish): Now? Isn’t everything clear enough already? I’ve committed a crime, and I’m waiting for your sentence. No, before you pronounce sentence, I must tell you I’ve already suffered the inquisition of my conscience. Whenever I would feel even the slightest degree of happiness, something of the warmth that a family can bring, at that very instant, some invisible instrument of torture

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would clamp down on my heart. But it’s all right now, you’re here, and I’ve confessed to you, held nothing back . . . I acknowledge my crime before you and await your verdict! (After all this in one stream, he takes a long breath, exhausted but seemingly content.) kuang fu: No, I don’t care about that. What I want to know is whether you and Caiyu are happy. lin zhicheng (curtly): Do you think happiness can be built on misery? kuang fu (sadly): Mm . . . (After an interval of silence, guifen comes out of the garret with a bottle.) huang’s father (offstage): Don’t buy anything to drink; I’m not having anything. (guifen goes to the back gate just as li lingbei, the attic tenant, comes in with several unsold newspapers under his arm. He has already had a bit to drink and, unmindful of the others, is singing to himself as he goes up the stairs.) li lingbei (sings): “When I gaze on the lovely child, I can hold back no longer, the tears fall like pearls from my eyes . . . (plaintively) My son, my seventh son, gone back to Wild Swan Gate for more troops to come in aid, why, oh why, now that you are gone, do you not come back . . . ?” kuang fu (following with his eyes li lingbei’s voice as it proceeds to the roof, then despondently): I should never have come to see you; I’m just stepping in where I’m not wanted . . . lin zhicheng: What do you mean? (kuang fu is silent. Someone knocks at the gate, and lin zhicheng gets up without the slightest hesitation. He has clearly come to a decision.) Good, she’s back. I—I’m going out now, so you two can talk, and I’ll agree to anything you decide. My friend, I’ll be waiting for your decision . . . (He opens the gate, but the person who enters is a young man in working clothes.) young man (excitedly): Mr. Lin, hurry, the head of the labor department wants to see you right away; there’s trouble at the factory. Hurry . . . lin zhicheng (with indifference): It’s the day shift; it’s none of my affair. young man: No, no, it’s really a mess. Hurry, everybody’s waiting! (He tugs, at the point of coercion.) lin zhicheng: No, no, I’m busy . . . (Under pressure, he finally changes his clothes and leaves. kuang fu once again examines the room closely; he walks over to the desk, picks up a songbook left by baozhen, and gives it a glance.) kuang fu (to himself ): Lin Baozhen; hm, Lin! (Puts the book down and counts on his fingers) She was five then . . . (He absentmindedly plays a few notes on baozhen’s toy piano. At this moment there is a flash of sunlight. huang’s father, holding his grandson, leans out of the garret window and looks at the sky. huang jiamei hurries down the stairs with a package and, when he reaches the water basin, comes upon guifen, back from buying some liquor.) guifen (noticing his package): What’s that?

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huang jiamei (somewhat ashamed): Some clothes . . . guifen (pulls out part of a piece of clothing sticking out from the package, looks at him, then): Jiamei, that’s all I have to wear when we go out. (huang’s father is watching from the window.) huang jiamei (as if in self-justification): Well, you don’t have any social life anyway, and it’s so hot now you don’t need it. In a few days . . . (He sees guifen’s reluctance to part with it and so, with forced indifference, walks away.) guifen: Jia— (huang jiamei walks on without turning his head. Her eyes fixed on his retreating form, guifen suddenly covers her face with her hands and bursts into tears. huang’s father, watching from upstairs, turns solemn and comes rapidly downstairs. When the two come face-to-face by the stairway, guifen greets him with a strained attempt at a smile.) guifen: Dad . . . huang’s father (looking at her): Mm . . . (At the back gate, yang caiyu, holding a grocery basket, directs a curious glance at them. The rain increases, as does the shouting of children in the lane.)

A CT 2 (It is the afternoon of the same day. In the parlor, yang caiyu is slumped over the table in tears. kuang fu paces back and forth aimlessly, his hands behind his back. Both are silent. Above the parlor, little tianjin is lying on shi xiaobao’s bed, smoking a cigarette and smiling maliciously. shi xiaobao is sitting at her dressing table and applying makeup to her sad face. They too are silent. In the garret, amid the sound of a child’s crying, huang jiamei is talking loudly to his father, but the words are muffled. guifen, her expression distraught, slowly descends the stairs with a thermos. As she opens the rear gate and steps out, she listens to the conversation. In the scullery, zhao’s wife is silently mending clothes. A minute passes. The sun appears and casts a dazzling beam of light into the house, long soaked with humidity. zhao’s wife quickly gets to her feet and opens a soggy umbrella outside to dry, then puts a bamboo pole with wet clothing on it into the sunlight.) huang’s father (offstage): Look, isn’t that the sun shining? (He opens the window.) huang jiamei (offstage): Stay a few more days, Dad. When it clears up tonight we’ll go see The Burning of Red— (He coughs.)

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huang’s father (offstage): After a half month’s rain, I’m afraid the lower land has been flooded over by now, and if I don’t get back to replant, what’re we going to eat this year? (After finally putting all the clothes out to dry, zhao’s wife goes back inside, gets herself settled comfortably, and picks up her sewing. The sunlight disappears, and it showers heavily again. She gets up immediately and retrieves the clothes.) zhao’s wife (peevishly): Damn! kuang fu (paces up to yang caiyu and stops): So you mean . . . you’ve been living with Zhicheng . . . You’ve been living with Zhicheng just to stay alive, not on account of any feeling . . . (Without making a reply or raising her head, yang caiyu automatically reaches for her handkerchief with her right hand. kuang fu picks her handkerchief up from the floor and hands it to her without speaking. There is a moment of silence. From the back gate comes the voice of a peddler. a xiang quietly opens the back gate but, apparently worried about her shoes, which are thoroughly wet, is afraid to step inside.) kuang fu: Hm, to stay alive, just to stay alive! (nods and sits down in dejection, then after a moment, as if in both ridicule and release of pent-up resentment) Ten short years have changed us completely! Ten years ago, for the sake of love you forsook your family; ten years ago, for the sake of love you risked everything and married a man without roots like me, but now after those ten years . . . the courageous disciple of love triumphant over all has finally turned into a timid little housewife! (yang caiyu makes no reply but wipes her eyes and looks at him.) Caiyu, I doubt if anybody would have thought you could— (He breaks off.) yang caiyu (softly): You still hate me, don’t you? kuang fu: No, I don’t hate anybody! yang caiyu: Then you must be laughing at me . . . you must despise me. While my own husband, whom I loved, was suffering in prison, I was thinking of marriage as just an occupation and was confusing sympathy with love, and so, very cautious and circumspect about everything, I’ve been keeping house for someone else. kuang fu: Caiyu! yang caiyu (on a slightly higher pitch): But before you blame me, you have to try to imagine what it’s been like for the last ten years! After we got married, we didn’t spend a day in peace: poverty-stricken, on the run, separated from all our friends and family. At that time, I suppose you could say I was just barely hanging on, hanging on for the sake of your ideals and for everyone else’s future. But once you went to prison, I couldn’t locate a single one of your friends. Oh, the ones I did find might not have said so in so many words, but I could tell from the way they acted they were afraid I’d get them involved. All right, I was Kuang Fu’s wife and I’d have to get by on my own, so I made up my mind to look for a job. But I had Baozhen tied to me, she was only five then; I tried everywhere, thought of everything, but do you think anybody would spend his money to hire a woman with a child? On days so hot the

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asphalt on the streets would stick to the soles of our shoes, Baozhen would go along with me. At first, before she could get very far, she would cry out that her feet were sore, but as the days went by, when I would ask her, “Baozhen, can you keep going?” she would smile and say, “I’m used to it now, Mommy; I’m not a bit tired.” (tries to fight back her tears but fails) That was—how we lived! kuang fu (painfully, walks over to her and puts a hand on her shoulder): Caiyu, I haven’t the slightest intention of blaming you; I just think . . . yang caiyu: Do you think there’s a chance at all in this world for us women to find any job? They use every trick they can think of—sarcastic smiles, contempt, pressure, insults, anything to force you into marriage, to force you into the role of the nice, sweet housewife! kuang fu: Caiyu, it’s no good talking about the past; you can’t bring it back, anyway. You’ve got to calm yourself; we can talk about other problems, after all. yang caiyu (after a pause): Other problems? (She turns around.) kuang fu: Yes . . . (He falls silent and resumes pacing. guifen comes in with boiled water and several biscuits, a xiang enviously following along. guifen goes upstairs and, after a moment, comes out onto the stairs again with huang jiamei, who is furious.) huang jiamei: What did you say to Dad the minute I stepped out? (guifen shakes her head.) Nothing? Then why was he on top of the world this morning and now all set to go back home? He said he’s going back tonight! guifen (in surprise): Tonight? Didn’t you tell me we were going to the theater? huang jiamei (viciously): He’s already packing his things, as if you didn’t know. guifen: As if I didn’t know? What do you mean? huang jiamei: I mean you forced him to go! guifen: I . . . forced . . . him . . . to go! Jiamei! You can’t just say everything that comes into your head like that; why would I want to force him to go? How could I? huang jiamei (coldly): As for why, because I’ve pawned your clothes, and as for how, with your tears, that’s how, with that frowning look you carry around with you all day. He may be deaf, but he isn’t blind yet, and your intentional worrying and sighing over our poverty have kept him . . . kept him from staying on. guifen: My intentional— huang jiamei: My dad is getting old, and you, you— guifen (finally goaded to a retort): You can’t be so unreasonable! Don’t try to get the idea from somebody else around here that you can use your wife as a whipping boy. You’d like your dad to stay on a few days, I understand that, it’s a natural thing to want. But let me ask you this: what good would it do for him to stay a few days more under these circumstances, for him, and for you? You keep on this way and you’ll drive us all to our deaths, all of us together. Why (begins to weep), why would I ever want to force him . . . to go?

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(huang jiamei says nothing but savagely runs his hand through his hair.) (tenderly) Jiamei! Your health . . . (From the garret comes the sound of a child’s crying.) haung’s father: Oh, don’t cry, don’t cry. I’ll hold you. It’s all right, it’s all right . . . (guifen wipes her tears with her sleeve, and huang jiamei quickly wipes her eyes with his own handkerchief. He steps back to allow guifen into the room, then with head bowed follows her inside.) kuang fu (after listening to the huang jiamei’s conversation): So—your life now . . . yang caiyu (with a sad smile): See for yourself! kuang fu: I see that Zhicheng has aged a lot. I suppose my coming today was too much of a shock, but the moment I laid eyes on him, I had the feeling that, on top of the melancholy he’s had ever since childhood, there’s anxiety too . . . How is he getting along at the factory? (yang caiyu shakes her head.) He still can’t get along with anybody, is that it? yang caiyu (nods, then after a pause): What about me? I’ve aged, haven’t I? kuang fu (has some difficulty in answering this): Uh . . . yang caiyu: Haven’t I? (kuang fu looks at her.) Go ahead and say it, I— (He is still silent. She gives a forced laugh.) You won’t say it; all right, I will. I’m no longer the Yang Caiyu of ten years ago! kuang fu (ner vously): No, no, I was just thinking . . . (silence) yang caiyu: You were thinking, were you? Well then, do you think I’ve been happy? kuang fu: I hope so! yang caiyu: Tell me the truth! Do you think he’s been able to make me happy? kuang fu: I hope he has. yang caiyu (smiles sarcastically and avoids his eyes): You say I’ve changed, but I think you have, too. You’re not as natural as you used to be, or as candid. kuang fu: What do you mean? yang caiyu (quickly continues): Suppose I told you that Zhicheng has been unable to make me happy, that I’ve been miserable, that Baozhen, along with me, has been treated badly? He can’t get along with people at the factory; he takes all kinds of abuse, he’s the target of jokes, and his juniors climb on past him, one after the other. He worries all day about losing his job, and by the time he gets home, he’s ready to let out all his frustrations on me with a vengeance. At the slightest provocation he pouts and refuses to say anything, plays dumb for three days or even more . . . Fusheng! Can you possibly consider a life like that happy— kuang fu (in anguish): Caiyu, I’m ashamed of the way I’ve treated you. (The back gate opens, and baozhen enters in a rush. When zhao’s wife sees her, she quickly beckons to her, but baozhen seems not to notice and strides directly into

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the parlor. The conversation thus interrupted, kuang fu, in a reflexive action, gets to his feet.) yang caiyu: Baozhen, come here; this is— (She hesitates.) kuang fu (breaks in): Is this Baozhen? (He looks at her tenderly.) baozhen (startled): Do you know me? May I ask your name, sir? yang caiyu: Baozhen— (She finds it impossible to go on.) kuang fu (laughing): My name is Kuang. baozhen (innocently): How do you write “Kuang”? kuang fu (writes on the table with his finger): Like this: the “king” character inside a box. baozhen: Kuang? I didn’t know there was such a strange name! What does the character mean? kuang fu (caught short): Well, let me think— baozhen (quickly goes to the table and finds a tiny dictionary, which she leafs through): “Box” radical, one, two, three, four strokes . . . here it is; hm, “Kuang, to reform, to correct.” But, Mr. Kuang, do people still use a character like this? kuang fu (never takes his gaze, amazed yet loving, from her): Well, yes, but pretty seldom now. baozhen: My teacher says useless characters should be done away with, isn’t that right? yang caiyu: Baozhen! kuang fu: Mm! You’re right! (laughing) From now on I’ll do without it. baozhen: Oh good! Mom, why are you staring at me that way? Come on, give me something to eat; I’m off to school. kuang fu: How’s that? Didn’t you just get through with school? baozhen: No (proudly), what the teacher just got through teaching me, I’m going to go teach somebody else. I’m a “little teacher”; I teach singing and reading. kuang fu: “Little teacher”? (yang caiyu gives her a few crackers; she takes them and eats while she talks.) baozhen: You don’t know what “little teacher” means? The idea is “once you find out, pass it on”; once we learn something, we tell it to other people . . . Oh, it’s getting late; bye-bye! (Bounds off, singing) “It’s bootleg, dirt cheap!” zhao’s wife (softly but with force): Baozhen . . . (baozhen, paying no attention, exits.) kuang fu (unconsciously follows her for a few steps, then, after watching her leave, turns around): Hm, where have all the days gone? yang caiyu (nostalgically): Don’t you think she acts just the way you did when you were young? When you were a student, wouldn’t you stay up for several nights on end and get sick, just on account of an algebra problem? She’s the same way; she just has to get to the bottom of everything!

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kuang fu: But I don’t have that attitude any more . . . (ponders, then as if remembering something) Caiyu! I’m content now, because when I was in prison and the beriberi was bad, I’d already given up hope of ever seeing you both again, but now, now that I’ve seen Baozhen with my own eyes and find she’s just like me when I was young— yang caiyu: Content? Do you think Baozhen is happy? kuang fu: No, that’s not what I mean . . . yang caiyu (despondently): Her memories used to be so unclouded, but a stain is on them now that can never be washed away. The other children call her . . . (She looks at kuang fu.) kuang fu: What do you mean, that even she has— (At this instant, the sound of children fighting comes from the rear gate. zhao’s wife looks out the gate.) a niu’s voice: Give it back! Give it back! a xiang’s voice: It’s mine! Mommy! (She screams.) zhao zhenyu (apparently just back from school, enters holding the two children apart): Go on inside! Go on! (a niu and a xiang wrestle.) Ha, ha . . . a niu: Give it back! (turns to his father) It’s my “work project,” and she took it. Give it back! a xiang: Mommy gave it to me to play with! It’s mine! (The two wrestle and hit each other. zhao zhenyu makes no attempt to interfere but looks on, smiling. zhao’s wife immediately sets her sewing down and steps outside.) zhao’s wife: A Niu! (sees zhao zhenyu’s expression, then furiously) Hope you’re enjoying the show! They could be beating each other to death, for all you care! (She pulls on a niu.) zhao zhenyu (calmly): No chance, no chance of that at all. It’s the rainy season, and they need all the exercise they can get! zhao’s wife: No hitting, A Niu! You brat! (a niu hits a xiang, who cries.) zhao zhenyu: Ha, ha, ha . . . zhao’s wife (jerks a niu away): Have a good laugh. (With mocking obedience, zhao zhenyu stops laughing. At this instant, a niu charges by and grabs a cardboard model from a xiang’s hands.) What are you doing, stealing that! (She pulls a niu into the room.) zhao zhenyu (squats down and wipes a xiang’s tears with a handkerchief, meanwhile, in a tone that only a teacher could perfect): Don’t cry now. I’ve told you, don’t laugh when you win and don’t cry when you lose. Only crybabies cry! (softly, for fear his wife will hear) You can fight again tomorrow! (takes a xiang into the apartment) You’ve heard the story I’ve told your brother; now, when Napoleon was banished to Elba,

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what did he say? Hm? Hm? . . . Ah, look! There’s A Niu laughing already. (loudly) Ha, ha, ha. (In the front room, shi xiaobao, her makeup completed, hears zhao zhenyu’s laughter and heads downstairs, as if remembering something she had forgotten.) little tianjin (angrily): Where do you think you’re going? shi xiaobao (raising a slippered foot): What are you getting so excited about? I can’t exactly run away. (descends the stairs and goes to the scullery door, where she surreptitiously beckons to zhao zhenyu) Mr. Zhao! zhao zhenyu: Oh, you’re home, are you? (He walks over, while his wife glares angrily.) shi xiaobao (softly): Would you mind looking something up in the last few issues of the newspaper for me? zhao zhenyu: What is it? (His wife gets to her feet and stands at the scullery door.) shi xiaobao: If you would try to find out about Johnnie—when his ship is due back in Shanghai. zhao zhenyu: Oh, oh (turns back in to get the newspapers, then, seeming to recall something), what’s the name of the ship? shi xiaobao: Well, let’s see . . . Uh, it’s got a “maru” on it. zhao zhenyu: Ha, ha . . . a lot of ships have a “maru” in their names; for example— shi xiaobao: Then— zhao’s wife (making it a point to be heard by shi xiaobao): Shameless! zhao zhenyu: Your husband is coming home soon, is he? shi xiaobao (turns away and becomes despondent): If only he could! (She climbs partway up the stairs, thinks of something, and comes back down again. She goes to the parlor, sees that there is a visitor, and hesitates.) Oh, sorry. Is Mr. Lin out? yang caiyu: Uh-huh, is there anything I can do? shi xiaobao (has difficulty in broaching the subject): Mrs. Lin! I’d like to talk to you about something. yang caiyu (walks to the doorway): What is it? shi xiaobao: Is Mr. Lin coming back right away? yang caiyu: Do you have some kind of problem? You can tell me. shi xiaobao (falters for a moment, then decisively but softly): Is there any way you can get rid of that thug in my room for me? yang caiyu: What do you mean, thug? (kuang fu stands up.) shi xiaobao: He, he wants me to—I don’t want to go, and if that man of mine comes back in a day or two, there could be trouble. yang caiyu: I don’t understand; who is your— little tianjin (somewhat suspicious, gets up and goes to the head of the stairs): Xiaobao! shi xiaobao (in alarm, quickly): He’s a gangster, and he’s trying to make me go to— little tianjin: Xiaobao!

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shi xiaobao (turns around and mounts the stairs; in a pleading tone): When Mr. Lin gets back, would you tell him to . . . (She goes upstairs.) kuang fu (once she has left): What’s the matter? yang caiyu: I have no idea! (They look upstairs.) shi xiaobao: What are you getting so excited about? We’re not rushing to a coroner’s office! little tianjin: He’s waiting; let’s go! shi xiaobao (against her will, sits down and puts on high-heeled shoes): Cigarette. (little tianjin pulls out his cigarette case, sees that it is empty, and hands her the cigarette he is smoking. shi xiaobao takes a long drag, then flips the cigarette away.) (With an intentionally nonchalant air) Johnnie’s coming back tomorrow, you know. (little tianjin seems unconcerned.) Aren’t you afraid he’ll raise hell? little tianjin (ignores this, suddenly stands up): Let’s go! shi xiaobao (smiling archly): But let’s get something settled before we do! (She approaches suggestively.) little tianjin: You want me to get rough? (He yanks her sharply.) shi xiaobao (concealing her distress): Then tomorrow I’m going to tell him; the whole story, since you’re not afraid of anything anyway. (She starts off, with little tianjin following her downstairs in a coercive manner.) little tianjin (on the stairs): Let me tell you something. Johnnie’s in the States right now, got that? (shi xiaobao says nothing. As they leave, zhao’s wife’s angry eyes follow them out. She looks back, about to make a remark, but stops when she finds she has no one to make it to. A peddler is calling his wares outside the gate. The sky darkens suddenly. guifen steps out to the landing and shouts.) guifen: Mrs. Lin, would you turn the main light switch on, please? (When yang caiyu, without a word, turns on the main switch, the garret is suddenly filled with light. Thunder sounds in the distance, and while kuang fu and yang caiyu are talking, the tenants of the garret and the scullery begin to prepare dinner.) yang caiyu: You still haven’t answered my question just now; do you think our life now is a happy one? (He does not reply.) If, tell me the truth now, if you thought Baozhen and I were unhappy, then . . . Could your conscience be at peace? (kuang fu, distressed, makes no reply.) yang caiyu (takes a step toward him): Why don’t you say something? Didn’t you used to tell me you would do anything to make me happy? kuang fu (painfully): Don’t press me, Caiyu! My mind is all confused, and I don’t know what to do. I—I . . . (He gets to his feet and paces aimlessly.)

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yang caiyu (after a moment of silence): Oh, Fusheng! Do you remember about Dasha? kuang fu (stands still): Dasha? yang caiyu: Uh-huh, when we were living on Little Sandbar Lane and I had the flu, you sat by my bed and told me stories. Wasn’t there a woman in a novel who was called Dasha? kuang fu: Ah, ah . . . yang caiyu: You said then that I was too weak, and when you told about Dasha, you would say, “Yang Caiyu! You should try to be brave like Dasha!” What book was that? I can’t remember! kuang fu: Hm, it was . . . the name of the book was Cement, by Gladkov, wasn’t it? yang caiyu: That’s right, Cement. How do you feel about a woman like Dasha now? (kuang fu makes no reply.) Out of all the stories you told me, I don’t know why, but I’ve never forgotten Dasha. Maybe— kuang fu (interrupting): Don’t say anything more, Caiyu; I understand what you mean, but— yang caiyu: I know I can’t compare myself to Dasha, but didn’t you used to say you always, always wanted me to be happy? As long as you lived. Do you think I can’t be like Dasha? Just as in the novel, when her husband comes home— kuang fu (despairingly): But though you could be Dasha, I’m no longer a Gleb. When Dasha saw her husband again, he was a hero back from victory, while I am just a casualty from life’s battlefield. yang caiyu: Fusheng! kuang fu: Just now you said I’d changed, too. You’re right, I’m aware of it myself, I have changed. I used to look at everything so simply, as if everyone were just like me, and with determination anything at all could be accomplished. But in the past few years I’ve seen too much, and things just aren’t that simple. Pettiness, deceit, selfseeking, hurting others for no purpose, like wild animals, these are the things men do . . . (seems to remember something suddenly) Oh, but don’t misunderstand. I don’t mean Zhicheng; he’s like me, he’s one of the weaklings, too! yang caiyu (shocked): Is this you talking, Fusheng? Weakling, you’re admitting you’re a weakling? Didn’t you used to say time after time— kuang fu: So, I admit openly that I’ve changed. Look at me. These past few years have ruined my health and destroyed my courage, and when I think about going on with life, I have no more confidence in myself. Do you think a casualty like me could still make anybody happy? yang caiyu: Then you think . . . our . . . kuang fu (in despair): I just got through saying to Zhicheng, I regret coming here to see you; I’m just making things worse! yang caiyu: Fusheng! Is that what you really think? You never used to lie! (There is a pause. She continues, with a trace of anger.) Then you’re too selfish; you’ve tricked me! All the time we’ve been married.

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kuang fu: What do you mean? (He takes a step toward her.) yang caiyu: Ask yourself! kuang fu: Caiyu! That’s not what I meant. I was only saying that as far as going on living is concerned, I’ve lost faith in myself and have no guarantee that I can make you and Baozhen more— yang caiyu: Then let me ask you this, very simply: suppose for these eight and a half years you hadn’t had a friend like Zhicheng and he and I hadn’t had the relationship we now have, then, as a matter of course, suppose Baozhen and I had been on the streets, destitute, and, perhaps, one of us dead by now. Suppose, in a situation like that, you had found me and I had asked you for help. Could you have said then, as you just did, “I no longer have the self-confidence to make you happy; I can only let you starve to death on the streets”? kuang fu (stymied): I—I— yang caiyu: Then I can only say that you’re either cruel, or jealous! kuang fu (at a complete loss): Caiyu! yang caiyu: If the situation were different, you would no doubt say to me, “Caiyu, I’m home now. Don’t be afraid; we’ll make a new start.” But now—you, you’re casting me aside—because I wanted to stay alive . . . kuang fu (in anxiety and pain): Don’t say things like that, Caiyu. What, what should I do? I just can’t think of any other solution! (At the impatient cry of “Evening paper!” in the lane, zhao zhenyu hurries to buy a newspaper.) yang caiyu (in a tone of supplication): Fusheng! You can’t leave me again; you can’t leave Baozhen, who everybody thinks has no father. For Baozhen’s sake, for our only . . . kuang fu (after a moment of reflection): Wouldn’t—wouldn’t that make Zhicheng . . . make Zhicheng even more miserable? yang caiyu (pauses): But I told you before, it was only for survival. kuang fu (hangs his head, then listlessly): Caiyu . . . yang caiyu (gripping his hand): Be brave . . . It’s my turn now to tell you what you used to say to me. (He laughs and raises his head.) You’re still young. (feels his chin) Now then, shave off that beard of yours . . . (While speaking, she gets lin zhicheng’s safety razor and various other articles from a drawer.) Fusheng! Don’t think any more about it. Today we’re supposed to be happy, aren’t we? kuang fu (as if all his pent-up affection is bursting forth): Caiyu! (He leans his head on her breast.) yang caiyu (stroking his head): Fusheng! You, you . . . (Overcome with emotion, she weeps; they embrace. The sky gradually darkens. A hoarse, tired voice calling, “Evening News, Evening Gazette, radio programs . . .” passes by outside the front gate, along with the piercing voice of a woman crying,

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“Evening paper” and so forth. A light comes on in the scullery. Suddenly there is a sharp knock at the front gate. In reflex, kuang fu and yang caiyu break apart.) yang caiyu: Who is it? (She opens the gate. A young employee of the factory, leading someone who looks like a foreman, enters, his face covered with perspiration.) young man: Hurry, they want Mr. Lin right away! yang caiyu: He isn’t back yet. young man (as if wanting to charge in and conduct a search): Mrs. Lin, I need your help. The head of the labor department is already in a fit, and it’s none of my responsibility. (loudly) Mr. Lin! yang caiyu (startled): It’s true, he hasn’t come back. He left this morning and hasn’t been back since! Is anything the matter? young man (impatiently): I’ll say there is . . . Mrs. Lin, did he really—then, do you know where he went? yang caiyu (worriedly): How should I know? When did he leave the factory? Is anything the matter? . . . young man (does not reply but turns to the foreman): All right, hurry over to Number 2 Plant and take a look. (The foreman looks kuang fu over, then exits.) Mrs. Lin, this is serious. If he doesn’t come . . . (Wipes the perspiration from his forehead) Well, when he does get back, ask him to come over right away. The boss is waiting for him, too. (He hurries off.) yang caiyu: All right . . . (She shuts the gate and looks anxiously at kuang fu.) kuang fu (worriedly): What’s the matter? yang caiyu: There’s been a lot of trouble at the factory lately, but . . . kuang fu: Where did he go? (uneasily) He wouldn’t do anything . . . yang caiyu (lowers her head): No, I’m sure he wouldn’t, but . . . (She also feels uneasy. Amid the sounds of laughter and cursing, the back gate swings open, and li lingbei staggers in drunk, singing to himself. A crowd of women and children, apparently enjoying the scene he is making, follows along behind, a xiang among them. kuang fu perks up his ears, but yang caiyu is accustomed to such perfor mances. She glances at the safety razor and pours some water.) li lingbei (drunkenly): You want a song, all right, you’ll get one, that’s nothing to . . . (Sings) “The sun is sinking, the moon is rising, it is twilight. When I gaze on the lovely child, I can hold back no longer, the tears fall like pearls from my eyes . . .” voice (outside the gate): Great! About as good as the master Ma Lianliang!5 second voice: One more verse! third voice: Hey, Li Lingbei! Your “lovely child” is dead! Dead! li lingbei (suddenly turns around): Goddamn it, who says so, who says so? Our A Qing is a general; he may be a division commander, or a commissioner, or maybe . . . maybe . . .

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first voice: Or maybe he’s cannon fodder by now! second voice: Don’t interrupt him; let him sing! li lingbei (threatening a child by the gate with his fist): Goddamn it, even you dare to treat me bad too, huh? (The children give a yell and scatter, then with a sound of laughter begin to gather again.) When A Qing comes back a general, I’ll be . . . (speech thickening) the patriarch, goddamn it . . . (walks up to zhao zhenyu and rudely snatches his newspaper away, then points to it) Mr. . . . Mr. . . . Mr. Zhao, is there anything in the paper about General Li, General Li A Qing coming to Shanghai? (zhao zhenyu smiles at him.) When there is, you . . . you tell me, and I . . . I’ll buy you a drink! (returns the newspaper) Goddamn it, one fine day A Qing’ll come home . . . (lurches upstairs, singing plaintively) “With tears of sorrow, I enter the camp. My brows are knit in worry; I am hungry and cold, trembling . . .” zhao zhenyu (gets to his feet and disperses the onlookers): Nothing to see here . . . (turns his head and spots a xiang, grabs her) So you’re enjoying the show, too. I’ve told you before, when Li Lingbei comes around, you’re not to laugh. You . . . you . . . (unconcerned whether or not she understands him) You just exult in another person’s pain, don’t you? That, that . . . (The sky grows even darker. yang caiyu turns on a lamp and, after pouring out some water for kuang fu, watches him.) kuang fu: What was that all about? yang caiyu: The roomer in the attic, a strange man. He had an only son, who joined the army during the January 28 Campaign against the Japanese and was killed.6 They never found the body. He insists that his son is still alive and is a general. He’s not quite right in the head. kuang fu: Mm . . . (He is affected by this; he begins to shave.) li lingbei’s voice (plaintively): “. . . I can hold back no longer, the tears fall like pearls from my eyes . . .” (huang’s father comes down the stairs holding the boy. There is distant thunder.) guifen (from the garret door): Dad, it’s late, don’t take him out! (huang’s father has not heard this; he sees zhao zhenyu and waves to him eagerly.) zhao zhenyu: Mr. Huang! It’s going lo rain! huang’s father (has not heard this, either): I’m going back home tonight (with a touch of sadness), so I’m holding him a little extra, ha, ha . . . zhao zhenyu: What’s that, going back to the country? (turns to ask his wife) Didn’t you say they were going to the theater tonight? (huang jiamei leans out the window.) huang’s father: Too much rain this year; I’ve got to replant the spring shoots in the lower fields.

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zhao zhenyu: Enjoy yourself a few more days. There are a lot more places to see in Shanghai. huang’s father (playing with the child, to himself ): All right, all right, let’s go out and I’ll get you something to eat . . . (Just as he is about to step out the gate, there is a flash of lightning and a clap of thunder. He turns around and looks at the sky.) (to zhao zhenyu) That’s why I say the world has changed. When we were young, there would always be thunder with the lightning, but now that it’s the Republic, the lightning doesn’t make a sound anymore, right? They say, “The thunder god’s drum is broken.” zhao zhenyu: What do you mean? Wasn’t that thunder just now? (after a moment of consideration, understands) Ha, ha . . . (loudly) Mr. Huang! The thunder god’s drum isn’t broken; it still makes a noise. You’re hard of hearing, so you just can’t hear it, ha, ha, ha . . . huang’s father: What’s that? What I say is if there isn’t any thunder, the spring flowers will . . . zhao zhenyu (suppresses his laughter with some effort, to his wife): Did you hear that? He said now that it’s the Republic, there’s no thunder anymore, ha, ha, ha—(earnestly, to huang’s father) the thunder in the sky is electricity, and it makes a noise even with a change of rule . . . (There is another roll of distant thunder.) Yes, yes, there it goes again. huang’s father (puzzled): What’s that? In the sky? . . . zhao zhenyu (loudly): The thunder in the sky isn’t a bodhisattva, it’s electricity (into his ear), electricity! huang’s father (still uncomprehending): City? What about the city? zhao zhenyu (loudly): Electricity, like in an electric light . . . zhao’s wife: We’re out of soy sauce, go get some! zhao zhenyu (loudly): The clouds in the sky have a kind of electricity in them, elec— zhao’s wife (holds the soy sauce bottle under his nose): Go buy some soy sauce! zhao zhenyu (without thinking, to his wife in an even louder voice): Have A Niu go buy it! zhao’s wife (startled, then angrily): I’m not deaf! (The usually melancholy huang jiamei finds himself smiling at this.) zhao zhenyu (with sudden realization): Ah, right you are. (softly) Have A Niu go buy it, all right? (turns back to huang’s father, softly) There’s a kind of electricity in the sky . . . zhao’s wife (angrily): A Niu’s studying. (She stuffs the soy sauce bottle into his hand.) zhao zhenyu (out of excuses, to huang’s father, loudly): Wait, I’ll be right back. (He exits.) huang’s father (confused, to zhao’s wife): What was he talking about? Hm, my bad ears . . . (He turns and goes upstairs.)

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guifen (just coming down with a pail, from the stairs): Be careful, Dad. (She turns on the stairway light.) huang’s father (startled): Mm . . . (He looks at the light, then continues upstairs.) zhao’s wife (notices guifen coming down): Say, why is your father-in-law going back tonight? (guifen nods but makes no reply.) Is there something urgent? At home? guifen: Older people sometimes act a little funny! He just upped and said he wanted to go, and off he’s going tonight. zhao’s wife (surreptitiously): You know (points to the parlor, softly) Mrs. Lin’s former husband . . . zhao zhenyu (reenters and sees his wife’s expression): Incorrigible! I keep telling you not to meddle in other people’s business, and that goes for other people’s husbands, too— zhao’s wife (interrupting angrily): Pah! (in a low voice) Then what are you doing meddling in mine? zhao zhenyu (scratches his head, suddenly remembers something): Ah, where’s old Mr. Huang from upstairs? We haven’t finished our conversation. zhao’s wife (to guifen, surreptitiously as before): Just now I heard Lin tell him such and such about Baozhen . . . (when a xiang comes over to listen in, angrily) What are you listening for? Little brat! (again to guifen) Lin ran off, and I just now heard her crying. Good heavens, it’s really a mess! Have you seen him? guifen (shakes her head): Is he still here? zhao’s wife (nodding): Uh-huh, with rags on his back, like Xue Pinggui in the play . . . 7 (She is about to go on, but lin zhicheng, exuberant, enters through the back gate. She quickly swallows what she was going to say and assumes a bland expression. He has a bottle of liquor and some snacks; as usual, he ignores everyone as he walks in.) zhao zhenyu (noticing): Oh, Mr. Lin! (stands and points to a newspaper item) Today your factory— (When lin zhicheng walks on past, seemingly oblivious, zhao zhenyu sits down again. zhao’s wife excitedly watches lin zhicheng walk away.) yang caiyu (looks at kuang fu, now clean shaven): Now, don’t you feel a lot younger? (When lin zhicheng enters without saying a word, yang caiyu and kuang fu step away from each other, the latter feeling somewhat ill at ease.) yang caiyu: Young Chen from the factory was here just now; he said they want you. lin zhicheng (morosely): I know. (He hands yang caiyu the bottle and the food.) yang caiyu: Is there something the matter at the factory? He said they want you to come right away. lin zhicheng: I know. We were out of food, so I went to the little place on the corner and ordered a few dishes. (to kuang fu) I thought we’d do a little drinking tonight.

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kuang fu: Zhicheng, you— lin zhicheng (with unnatural joviality): Fusheng! It’s been a long time since we’ve had a meal together. You don’t drink, I know, but you’ve got to have a glass tonight. I haven’t had a drink in a long time myself, but I feel very good today. You’ll be glad to know I’ve been liberated. kuang fu (pained): Zhicheng, don’t talk like that. lin zhicheng: No, no, I feel so relieved now. I’ve been freed from the life I’ve been living: taking it from one side and dishing it out to the other. (loudly) I’m out of a job, but from now on I don’t have to act against my own conscience toward anyone. kuang fu and yang caiyu (almost simultaneously): What have you . . . lin zhicheng: Ridiculous, wanting me to go out and hire gangsters to beat somebody up. Hah! Why should I do a filthy job like that? I quit instead! Hah, what a relief! Head of the labor section, always so high and mighty (gets increasingly excited), well, I saw through him today! (to yang caiyu) How about fixing something to eat? kuang fu (concerned): Relax a little, Zhicheng; you look exhausted! lin zhicheng: No, no, I feel just fine. A big stone that’s been pressing down on my mind has finally been taken away! Fusheng! It’s strange, isn’t it? I was always afraid of losing my job. Whenever they were making noises at the factory about letting people go, I’d always go in and take a look at the head man’s expression. And whenever he’d send for me, I could feel all the blood in my body rushing to my face. But today when he got blue in the face, pounded on the desk, and said, “Get out!” I wasn’t frightened a bit, I was very calm. I can hardly believe it myself. yang caiyu (carrying a basin of water to him): You . . . lin zhicheng (still in a state of excitement): Plant manager isn’t a job for a human being at all. The ones over you treat you like an ox, and to the ones under you you’re a dog. From morning to night, nobody, top or bottom, will give you the time of day. But now I don’t have to take the rap for anybody; I don’t have to be treated like a dog by anybody. (hysterically) Ha, ha, ha. kuang fu: Don’t get too excited now, Zhicheng— lin zhicheng: But first of all, you’ve got to be happy for me, that I got out of that kind of life! yang caiyu (unable to keep from asking): Then from now on you— lin zhicheng: From now on. Hm . . . (He washes his face. At this moment zhao’s wife seizes an opportunity to peer in; meanwhile a xiang, seeing that her mother is absent, makes a beeline out the gate.) zhao zhenyu: A Xiang, A Xiang! (zhao’s wife glances back. A restaurant delivery boy enters through the back gate with a food basket and heads upstairs. He knocks at shi xiaobao’s door and, when there is no answer, peeks through the crack in the door. He puts the basket down before the door and leaves. lin zhicheng finishes washing his face. With yang caiyu gone to prepare dinner, he walks up to kuang fu and is about to say something, then hesitates.) lin zhicheng: Uh, Fusheng!

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kuang fu: Yes? lin zhicheng: Can we still be friends . . . the way we were before? kuang fu: Of course . . . but about this matter, I still have to . . . no, ahh, I just don’t know what to say . . . (lin zhicheng sits down dejectedly. zhao’s wife returns to her room, finds a xiang gone, and runs to the gate.) zhao’s wife: A Xiang, A Xiang! (goes out the gate, then comes in dragging a xiang) Twerp! Fooling around outside all day, don’t you want to eat anything? (On the landing, guifen is cooking on the kerosene stove. yang caiyu is about to go out to buy groceries.) lin zhicheng (routinely): Isn’t Baozhen back yet? Yang, go look for Baozhen! (Outside the gate, there are the sounds of peddlers as usual.)

A CT 3 (The evening of the same day. In the parlor, after dinner, lin zhicheng has had a little too much to drink and is slumped in a chair. yang caiyu is silently gathering up the dishes. kuang fu is engrossed in a conversation with baozhen, while a xiang sits beside them, staring at kuang fu. The room above the parlor is dark and empty. In the garret, guifen is busy packing her father-in-law’s things. In the scullery, zhao zhenyu is contentedly reading a book; he frequently waves his head back and forth while reciting a passage. In one hand he holds a rush fan, with which he mechanically drives off the mosquitoes. zhao’s wife is wiping her hands after having finished washing the dishes. a niu is bent over his homework at the table. There is the sound of rain. In the distance, a popular Cantonese song can be heard on a radio. When the curtain rises, kuang fu and baozhen are laughing.) kuang fu: Now that’s interesting. baozhen (with a touch of self- satisfaction): That kind of thing happens a lot. When a “little teacher” holds class, the grown-ups sometimes like to make trouble. For example, we would ask, “Do you understand that? Those who do, raise your hands,” and at that point they would stick their feet up, just to have fun with us. So I told everybody, “Don’t pay any attention to them. Grown-ups who don’t know how to behave are worse than we children.” The children ignored them and studied as usual, and later on they stopped trying to fight me. kuang fu: Hm . . . baozhen: The “middle teacher” who teaches us said to me that they must have been thinking how humiliating it was for a child to know something they didn’t. kuang fu: Are there a lot of those “big students”? baozhen: I teach five: a fruit seller, a laborer—there’s an old man whose grandson is as tall as I am.

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kuang fu: Then you— a xiang: Baozhen, teach me a song. baozhen: Wait a minute for your brother to get here. I’m teaching him a really good one. a xiang: I still haven’t learned the one you taught me yesterday. baozhen: Yesterday’s? Hm . . . (As she goes through the song on the piano, kuang fu avidly watches them.) a niu (taking his schoolbook over to his father): Dad, “ ‘A’ saves sixty-five dollars a month; after three years and eight months, what do his total savings come to?” What’s the answer? zhao zhenyu (assuming a strict attitude): A Niu! If you bother me again when I’m reading, you can forget about hearing any more of my stories. a niu (goes to his mother): Mom, somebody saves sixty-five dollars every month; after three years and eight months, how much does he have altogether? zhao’s wife: Saves money? Who is that, pray tell? If we don’t run into debt we’re doing all right. Think we have anything leftover? Sixty-five dollars every month! Are you dreaming? a niu: It’s in the book. zhao’s wife: What does something in a book have to do with us? Sixty-five dollars, hah! If your dad has six dollars and fifty cents left every month, it’s a miracle! a niu (can do nothing now but go back to the table): Three years and eight months, three years, thirty-six months . . . (huang jiamei, holding an umbrella, returns with bananas, apples, and biscuits; he hurries upstairs. lin zhicheng tries to stand up, but his legs give way, and he sits down again.) lin zhicheng: Hm, I have such a feeling of relief tonight! huang jiamei (loudly): I told you before not to buy anything; take it back to the store, go on, take it back! guifen (loudly): It’s nothing much, just a snack for the trip. huang’s father: I don’t want anything! Jiamei, I can’t eat that foreign stuff . . . yang caiyu (helps lin zhicheng to his feet): You’ve had too much; go to bed. lin zhicheng No, no, just a drop or two . . . kuang fu: Go take a rest, Zhicheng! I—I— lin zhicheng: No, no, I want to have a talk with you. (yang caiyu helps him into the back room.) a niu (once again takes the book to his mother): Mom, a man named Wang gets paid three hundred and fifty dollars a month, and a man named Li gets two hundred and eighty. After three years, what’s— zhao’s wife (before he can finish, as if exploding): I don’t want to hear any more of that business! Your dad doesn’t even make thirty-five dollars a month! zhao zhenyu (startled): What’s that? a niu (pleading): Tell me! The teacher’s going to ask me tomorrow. It’s something in the book. A man named Wang gets three hundred and fifty dollars a month . . .

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zhao’s wife (irritably): Go ask somebody who’s rich; I’ve never laid eyes on three hundred and fifty dollars in my whole life! a niu (in resignation goes to his father): Dad, after three years, what’s the difference between the amount of money each one has? zhao zhenyu: Hm, hm, three hundred and fifty and two hundred and what? a niu: Two hundred and eighty . . . zhao zhenyu: What you have to do first is find out the difference between the two men’s salaries of one month, do you get that? (He does some calculations with his pen.) zhao’s wife (still incensed): Three hundred and fifty dollars a month’s salary, saves sixty-five dollars a month, fantastic! a niu (turns around in rebuttal): It’s in the book! zhao’s wife: In the book, huh? This kind of book is for the rich people! zhao zhenyu (to a niu): Hey, hey, look, look at what I’m doing here. (yang caiyu waits for lin zhicheng to get into bed, then pours a cup of tea and places it on the bedside table.) yang caiyu: Would you like some tea? (lin zhicheng mumbles a reply, as if already asleep. She puts a small quilt over him. Carefully opening a chest with a key, she takes out a large quilt and spreads it over a smaller bed. She then takes the pillow from the small bed into the parlor. baozhen finishes teaching her song.) kuang fu (with great enthusiasm): Hm, then on rainy days like these, don’t your students skip class? They’re all . . . baozhen (proudly): Not a bit. Not only on rainy days, they come even when it’s snowing, and they’re not a minute late. They’re more on time even than the students at school assembly. A few days ago a fruit seller’s kid— yang caiyu (interrupts): Calling the others “kids” makes you an adult, I suppose? (She laughs.) baozhen: A fruit seller’s daughter was coming to learn how to read. When somebody outside yelled, “Anybody have any bananas for sale?” she didn’t even answer but ran straight over to us with basket and everything. kuang fu: Hm, that’s a good story. But I’ll tell you something: when we were little, we’d always pretend to have a stomachache and ask the teacher to let us stay home. baozhen (innocently): Then you weren’t a very good student! yang caiyu: Baozhen! baozhen: If one of our students gets lazy and doesn’t come to class, the next time he has to write on the board! “So-and-so is a lazybones and doesn’t work”! kuang fu (unable to keep from laughing; then, off guard): But when you were little, you used to be lazy, too! baozhen: I was? How did you know that? (yang caiyu gives kuang fu a warning glance.) kuang fu: Ah, that’s not right; I was talking about my own daughter. She’s the same age as you . . .

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baozhen (looks at kuang fu closely, then at yang caiyu): Mom! (steps away) I have a question to ask you. yang caiyu: What? (She follows her.) baozhen (softly, so that kuang fu cannot hear): Just now Mrs. Zhao told me—(whispers in her ear) . . . Is that right? (She glances at kuang fu.) yang caiyu (somewhat embarrassed): Nonsense! Oh, don’t bother about it—that’s something that concerns grown-ups; just don’t bother about that. baozhen (pouting): I’m a grown-up now. Tell me, come on, tell me, is it the truth? Hey . . . (She leans up so that her ear is close to her mother’s mouth.) yang caiyu: What a nuisance; you’re such a busybody! baozhen: Is it true? Nod your head if it is! yang caiyu: Busybody! (She nods.) baozhen: Ah! (She jumps up and looks at kuang fu without blinking. lin zhicheng turns over, listening.) kuang fu (unmindful now of anything else, walks toward her): Baozhen! Say it to me! Say it to me! baozhen (faltering): Da—(runs away bashfully) . . . A Niu! A Niu! kuang fu (breaks out in fresh, spontaneous laughter, in sharp contrast to his previous melancholy and taciturnity): Ha, ha . . . (The laughter arouses lin zhicheng; he sits up and listens.) a niu: I’m busy! You come over here! yang caiyu (joyfully): Do you think she . . . ? kuang fu: There’s a saying from overseas, “We live through our issue”! The spirit I had ten years ago still survives in Baozhen. She has taught me so much! yang caiyu (gripping his hand): That’s right, and you’re still young. For her sake, you should try all the harder now! (picks up a mirror from the table and holds it up to him) See? (She laughs.) kuang fu: Oh, I’m so grateful to you. And you, too, should— yang caiyu: Fusheng! (They embrace.) baozhen (at the door of the back room): A Niu, come on, I’ll teach you a song! a niu: Wait a minute. Figure it out for me; A gets a salary of three hundred and fifty dollars a month, and B gets . . . zhao’s wife (furiously): I don’t want to hear any more about it! If you have to do your arithmetic, go to the front room. (muttering) Three hundred and fifty indeed . . . zhao zhenyu: Ha, ha . . . (Making a face, a niu tiptoes to the parlor. On hearing his approach, yang caiyu steps away.)

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yang caiyu (pointing to kuang fu’s shirt): Oh, it’s torn here. Take it off and I’ll mend it for you. You won’t get too cold, will you? kuang fu (taking off his shirt): No, no, it’s so hot and humid. yang caiyu (hands him his jacket, now dried): You’re not very strong. If you’re not careful, you’ll catch a chill . . . baozhen (to a niu): Where’s your dad? Go get him to tell a story. a niu: Let’s sing first, then he’ll come over. (baozhen brings out her toy piano and a songbook. After mulling things over for a long while, lin zhicheng gets up in a determined manner, then holds his head in his hands, thinking. huang jiamei glumly comes downstairs carrying a net basket.) guifen (at the garret door): Jiamei, we need three rickshaws. huang jiamei (turns his head): What’s that? guifen: I’m going, too. huang jiamei: Then the baby will wake up . . . guifen: It won’t matter if he does. I’ve arranged with Mrs. Zhao to look after him. (huang jiamei puts the basket under the stairs and leaves to get the rickshaws. a xiang sneaks out in the direction of the parlor.) zhao zhenyu (to his wife): Huh, is he really leaving? (She pays no attention. zhao zhenyu stretches.) Ah, ah . . . Where’s A Niu? A Xiang! (He stealthily gets to his feet and glances at his wife, thinks about sneaking away as well, but just as he is about to move—) zhao’s wife: Where are you going? zhao zhenyu: Nowhere; I’m going to look for A Xiang! zhao’s wife: No you don’t! Forgetting your own age and learning songs from children; aren’t you ashamed? zhao zhenyu: What’s the matter with that? Confucius said that to feel no shame— zhao’s wife (in a swift counterattack): I don’t want to hear about your precious Confucius! (From outside the gate come sounds of rickshaws and voices.) huang jiamei’s voice: Come in and get the luggage! (enters and shouts upstairs) The rickshaws are here! guifen’s voice: You come up! Papa won’t let me carry the luggage! voice of huang’s father: It’s not heavy, not heavy at all . . . huang jiamei (going to a rickshaw man): The net basket goes. (turns to zhao zhenyu) Mr. Zhao, sorry, but would you mind keeping an eye on things? zhao zhenyu: Fine, fine. huang jiamei (going upstairs): I’ll get it, Dad! huang’s father (comes down carrying an old-fashioned chest): If I can’t even manage this little thing, how am I supposed to do any planting? Have to haul a load of rice, too . . . (He refuses huang jiamei’s offer of help.) huang jiamei: Dad, let the rickshaw man . . .

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guifen (comes down holding the boy): Heavens, older people are really— (She turns the light off in the garret.) zhao zhenyu (sticks up his thumb toward huang’s father): Bravo! Bravo! huang’s father (proudly): That’s nothing; when I was young, I used to haul two hundred pounds of grain and still . . . (when a drop of rain from the eaves falls on his neck, looks up at the sky) Still raining? Damn! The lord in heaven never gives poor people a break! Got to get back right away! The land by Xia’s Pond must be washed away by now! (When a rickshaw man comes up to take the luggage, he is refused firmly, but to huang jiamei, as if suddenly remembering something) Keep an eye on this! I . . . guifen: Mrs. Zhao, I’m really sorry to trouble you with the baby. He’s sleeping right now . . . zhao’s wife: Fine, I’ll hold him. huang’s father (comes back in): Let me hold him one more time. (takes the baby) Mm, sound asleep. (leans down and nuzzles him) Mm, mm, I’m not getting any younger, and I never know what the next day is going to bring. (half to huang jiamei, half to himself ) You never come out to the farm, and I can’t come to see you very often. Maybe . . . I won’t be able to hold him too many more times. Mm, one more time. (To guifen) Take good care of him now. Let him eat all he wants, and whatever he wants. None of this foreign business about several hours between meals; you’ll starve him to skin and bones that way! (when no one is looking, stuffs a paper envelope into the child’s clothing) Ha, ha, ha . . . (to zhao zhenyu) Once you’ve held your own grandson, you’ve lived a full life. Ha, ha . . . zhao zhenyu (loudly into huang’s father’s ear): Fortune has been good to you! huang’s father (joyfully): Thank you! Goodbye! (gives the child to guifen, who puts him on the Zhaos’ bed.) huang jiamei: Mr. Zhao, I’m sorry to trouble you like this! zhao zhenyu: Not at all. huang’s father (at the gate, turns back once more to zhao zhenyu and the others): Come on down to the country and see us sometime! Ha, ha . . . (huang jiamei and his wife exit with huang’s father. The sound of rickshaw men shouting is heard.) zhao’s wife: A Niu! A Xiang! (The steadily increasing rain pours through the downspouts.) Damn, it just keeps on raining—for most of the month, drip, drip, drip! zhao zhenyu: What are you upset about? So it keeps on raining; it’ll clear up someday. zhao’s wife: It’ll clear up, huh? Take a look for yourself! zhao zhenyu (placidly): Even so, do you say the rain will last all year? zhao wife (angrily): I’m through talking to you! (sees zhao zhenyu timidly sneaking out) Where do you think you’re going? zhao zhenyu: Uh, I’m going to check on A Niu . . .

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zhao’s wife: To check on A Niu! We don’t even have any money for groceries tomorrow, and it seems it’s up to me alone to run this household; as soon as you get home, it’s read your newspaper, read your books, blather on about God knows what, and sing songs with the children, not giving a damn about anything to do with household . . . (zhao zhenyu is aware that she is off on another of her tirades and quickens his steps in the direction of the parlor. In the back room, lin zhicheng, after a siege of agonized reflection, gets to his feet, as if he has settled on a plan of action. He stands in the dark, absorbed in thought and listening to the conversation in the front room.) baozhen: When I raise my hand (to a niu and a xiang), sing in unison, and when I drop my hand, listen to me sing the solo, got that? a xiang (shaking her head): I don’t know it! baozhen: Listen to me play it through first! yang caiyu (finishes with the mending): Finished. Now put it on; it’s going to cool off soon. (She puts it on him.) zhao zhenyu (steps in, mistakes kuang fu, whose back is toward him, for lin zhicheng): Ah, Mr. Lin, didn’t your factory have a big—(when kuang fu turns his head in zhao zhenyu’s direction) ah, I’m sorry, uh, uh . . . (to yang caiyu) Where is Mr. Lin? Has he gone out? I—I was— kuang fu (a bit ill at ease): Your name, sir? zhao zhenyu (searching a long time for a name card but cannot find one): Ah, ah, I’m Zhao Zhenyu. May I ask . . . yang caiyu (speaking for kuang fu): Mr. Kuang, Zhicheng’s old classmate . . . zhao zhenyu: Oh (offers his hand), it’s a pleasure . . . ha, ha . . . Mr. Lin and I really get along very very well— a niu (before he can finish): Come on, Dad, tell us a story! zhao zhenyu: What, a story? Haven’t I finished telling it? a niu (pushing him): Tell us one! zhao zhenyu: Ha, ha . . . We have a visitor today, and we’re talking. Uh, sing some songs, why don’t you? baozhen: No, no, tell us a story first, and after you get through, I’ll teach you a fine song, one I just learned today! zhao zhenyu (to kuang fu): Will you look at them, always wanting me to tell—ha, ha, what’ll I tell this time? Say, how about an old favorite, one about Napoleon . . . a xiang: No, you’ve told us about Napoleon ten times already. zhao zhenyu: But you’ve forgotten what I just asked you, haven’t you? When Napoleon was sent in exile to Elba, what did he say? a xiang: No, no! zhao zhenyu: Well . . . well then, you sing your songs now and let me think of something . . . (turns back and glances into the room, then to yang caiyu) Has Mr. Lin gone out?

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yang caiyu: No, he had a little too much to drink and is sleeping in back . . . zhao zhenyu: Hm? Mr. Lin drinking? That’s strange; I thought he never used to touch it. a niu: Dad, listen to this, “Brave little children . . .” (baozhen plays the piano. Meanwhile, lin zhicheng quietly packs some things together in the back room, as if preparing to leave. yang caiyu, reminded by zhao zhenyu, goes to the back room to look in on him and is astonished to see him standing in the dark.) yang caiyu: Oh dear, you’re up? (kuang fu listens to this intently, while zhao zhenyu and his children are listening to baozhen teaching her song. lin zhicheng gestures to her to be quiet.) What’s the matter with you? (turns on the light) Aren’t you feeling well? (sees that he is packing and stops in surprise) What are you doing? (In the lane, a wonton peddler shouts.) zhao zhenyu: Who taught it to you? baozhen: Never mind about that. I’ll teach it to you now. (She plays the piano.) yang caiyu (alarmed, but softly): Zhicheng! What are you doing? You— lin zhicheng (looks at her without replying, then, as if having made up his mind, stretches out his hand to her): I have to be going now, Caiyu. yang caiyu: Going? (She grips his hand.) lin zhicheng (nods): I’ve nothing to worry about now, and it’s time for me to leave. yang caiyu: But . . . (She turns and is about to call to kuang fu but is pulled back by lin zhicheng.) lin zhicheng (softly): Don’t let Fusheng find out; let me go quietly! (grips yang caiyu’s hands again) I wish you both well. yang caiyu: No, no, Zhicheng, where are you going? lin zhicheng (shakes his head): Right now I don’t know myself, but no matter what . . . yang caiyu (panicky): What do you mean? Are you going to— lin zhicheng (stops her): No, I’m free now, and content. Just as long as you and Fusheng can forgive me, I’ll have peace of mind. (kuang fu is listening closely, his expression troubled.) yang caiyu (weeping): But you . . . lin zhicheng: Don’t cry! No matter what, the world has a lot of room in it, and there has to be one place where I won’t be the odd man out. All right then! Caiyu! Forget about me, forget all about me. Look on these past eight years as a dream. yang caiyu: No, no, you can’t go, I—I can’t let you go—I know (weeping), I know you don’t want to leave us— lin zhicheng (in a burst of emotion): Caiyu! (He holds her tightly as she sobs. kuang fu is standing, lost in thought.) baozhen: Good, now watch my hand, one, two, three . . .

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(She sings) “Little children, little children, Everyone clasp hands and join in the game!” all (in unison): “Little children, little children, Everyone clasp hands and join in the game!” baozhen (sings): “Who is a brave little child?” all (in unison): “I am, I am!” baozhen (sings): “Let me ask you this.” all (in unison): “Go ahead and ask, go ahead and ask!” baozhen (sings): “If the bandits come, will you fight?” all (in unison): “We’ll fight, we’ll fight! If one’s not enough, everybody help!” baozhen (sings): “Right! If one’s not enough, everybody help! When you walk in the dark, are you afraid?” all (in unison): “I’m not afraid, I’m not afraid! If I fall, I can pick myself up!” baozhen (sings): “Right! If I fall, I can pick myself up!” (kuang fu becomes absorbed in their song.) baozhen (sings): “When you cry, are you foolish or not?” all (in unison): “You’re foolish, you’re foolish, You’re a good-for-nothing fool!” baozhen (sings): “Right! You’re a good-for-nothing fool! When the going gets rough, are you afraid?”

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all (in unison): “I’m not afraid, I’m not afraid! The rougher it gets, the braver I am!” baozhen (sings): “Right! The rougher it gets, the braver I am! Good! We’re all brave little children! All uniting to save our country!” all (in unison): “Save our country!” baozhen and others (in unison): “Good! We’re all brave little children! All uniting to save our country! Save our country!” (The children and zhao zhenyu applaud enthusiastically.) zhao zhenyu: That was wonderful! “When you cry, are you foolish or not?” that’s in the story about Napoleon, too. Napoleon had never cried before, so— a niu: Baozhen, sing the first few lines again by yourself! baozhen: You still don’t get it? You really are an ox—(looks at zhao zhenyu and laughs) then listen! (She softly sings again, everyone joining in. kuang fu comes to a decision, and his expression is no longer as forlorn as before. As if to keep baozhen and the others from noticing, he takes up a pen, leans over the desk, and writes something. He then stands and walks over to baozhen.) kuang fu: Come here! Let me look at you! baozhen (stops singing, surprised): What’s the matter? Don’t you think we sing well? kuang fu (nods emphatically): You sing very well, Baozhen. You deserve to be a “little teacher”; you’ve certainly taught me a lot! (Upon hearing kuang fu’s voice, lin zhicheng and yang caiyu fall silent.) baozhen (innocently): You sing, too, okay? kuang fu: No, no, it’s all clear in my mind now, Baozhen! Let me have another look at you! (overcome with emotion, kisses her tenderly) You be a brave little child now! My blessings go with you, through the rest of your life! Goodbye! baozhen (changes from shyness to surprise): What do you mean? Are you going? Da— kuang fu (stops her): Goodbye! (He holds her tightly, then, taking his hat and stepping out into the rain, quickly pulls the gate open and is gone.) baozhen (puzzled, as she watches him leave): Mom! Daddy—is going away! (a niu, a xiang, and zhao zhenyu are at a loss. lin zhicheng and yang caiyu run out, yang caiyu wiping her eyes with her sleeve.)

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lin zhicheng: What’s happened? yang caiyu: Going away?! (She sees the note on the table.) lin zhicheng (snatches up the note): He . . . yang caiyu: What does it say? lin zhicheng (reads aloud in a puzzled tone): “It makes me very happy to know now that your life together means more than just survival! I realize that by staying on, I would be disturbing the peace you share . . . I shall always love you both . . .” yang caiyu (half crazed): Fusheng! (Rushing out into the rain without waiting for lin zhicheng) Fusheng! lin zhicheng (comes to his senses): Yes, I’ve got to get him back! (He rushes out.) zhao zhenyu: What is going on? (baozhen, shocked, looks at the others. a xiang runs out to look but shrinks back immediately when the cold rain hits her. Amid the sound of rain and the shouts of the wonton peddler, the back gate squeaks open, and shi xiaobao enters. Her clothes are torn, and her hair is awry. Her face is streaked with tears. She almost hurls a handful of coins at a rickshaw man, and half of them fall onto the ground. As the rickshaw man picks up the coins, he stares at her in surprise. zhao’s wife, startled from her nap by the noise, looks up, glaring, and sees shi xiaobao’s sorry condition, then, curious, gets up. While shi xiaobao is running straight upstairs, zhao’s wife follows her to the staircase and stares upward. shi xiaobao runs into her room, turns on the light, and collapses onto the bed, weeping.) shi xiaobao: Johnnie, Johnnie . . . (She sobs.) zhao’s wife (with a disgusted expression): Pah! (looks toward the parlor) A Niu! A Xiang! It’s late! (On hearing his wife’s shouts, zhao zhenyu returns on tiptoe.) (angrily) You’re hopeless, always with those children. A Niu! A Xiang! a niu (makes a face): We’re singing. (There is a knock at the back gate, and when zhao zhenyu opens it, huang jiamei and guifen enter, their clothes drenched.) huang jiamei (notices zhao zhenyu): Sorry! In all this rain! (to his wife, resentfully) I said to take a rickshaw, but no, you wanted to walk . . . guifen (to zhao’s wife): Thank you, Mrs. Zhao. Did he wake up? zhao’s wife: No, he’s been sleeping nicely. guifen (holding the child): Thank you. It’s late; see you tomorrow! (goes to the staircase, then to huang jiamei) Yes, we could have taken a rickshaw, and there would have gone tomorrow’s grocery money . . . (climbs a couple of steps, then turns around, as if having made a sudden discovery) Jiamei! huang jiamei: What? guifen: Look! It’s . . . (takes a red envelope from the child’s pocket) Your father must have left it for him.

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huang jiamei (his eyes wide with astonishment): Huh? Let me see! (As he grabs the envelope, one or two silver dollars roll onto the ground.) guifen (snatches them up): What in the world . . . huang jiamei (counts out several bills and three silver dollars, then stands stock- still on the stairs, a grief-stricken expression on his pale face): Probably the only money Dad has left after all the sweat and pain he’s been through! (bitterly) We tried to deceive him! We tried to deceive him, but he knew all the time! (guifen suddenly breaks out in tears.) (in sorrow, to the baby) You must never forget, your grandfather’s hopes in me have come to nothing, and now they lie in you! guifen (stops him): Sh, don’t wake him up . . . (With her head bent down, she carries her son upstairs, followed by huang jiamei. The garret light comes on, and guifen’s sobs can be heard faintly. The front gate opens, and lin zhicheng enters holding yang caiyu; both are soaked by the rain. As if in a daze, they walk into their room and forget to close the door, the children watching them in amazement. lin zhicheng stands with his head bowed.) baozhen: Mom, what’s the matter? yang caiyu (pays no attention; after a moment, suddenly, to lin zhicheng): He wouldn’t . . . he wouldn’t take his own life, would he? lin zhicheng (startled): What? yang caiyu: What if something should happen . . . (She gives a choked sob.) lin zhicheng (gravely): I think you can rest assured on that score. Look, he says, “Baozhen has taught me so very much. In leaving you, I am not running in flight, and I will never disappoint you. Live your lives in courage, my friends. Goodbye!” (yang caiyu reads the letter.) He will hold on to his courage, for all of us who suffer . . . yang caiyu (bursts out in bitter weeping): Fusheng! (Without a word lin zhicheng steps up and puts his arm around her heaving shoulders. There is the sound of rain. baozhen walks over and tugs at her mother’s dress. li lingbei comes down from the attic, one step at a time, singing sadly to himself.) li lingbei (sings): “Day after day, burning oil pours onto my heart . . .” a niu (frowns toward baozhen and a xiang): Oh, there goes Li Lingbei again. Don’t listen to him; let’s sing! (sings) “When you cry, are you foolish or not?” a niu and a xiang (in unison): “You’re foolish, you’re foolish, You’re a good-for-nothing fool!” baozhen (joins in): “Right! You’re a good-for-nothing fool! When the going gets rough, are you afraid?”

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a niu and a xiang (in unison): “You’re foolish, you’re foolish, You’re a good-for-nothing fool!” baozhen (sings): “Right! The rougher it gets, the braver I am!” (lin zhicheng and yang caiyu realize what the children are singing and look up. While his wife is turned the other way, zhao zhenyu comes in again on tiptoe and listens to the children’s singing.) all (in unison): “Good! We’re all brave little children, All uniting to save our country! Save our country!” (During the song, the curtain slowly falls.)

Not es

1.

2. 3. 4.

5. 6.

7.

This translation is based on the text in Zhongguo xin wenxue daxi xubian (Continuation to the Compendium of New Chinese Literature) (Hong Kong: Xianggang wenxue, 1968), 9:379–452. Niu means “ox.” Along with the southern familiar prefix “A” it makes up the boy’s childhood name; on formal occasions he would be called by his legal given name, Zhen. In the same way, A Xiang is his sister’s childhood name, or “milk name.” “A Tuo” is a derisive term for “stepchild.” “Savings” is a euphemism for a mandatory deduction from a worker’s wages. The “floating corpses” were those of miners and factory workers tossed into rivers after they had been beaten or collapsed from exhaustion under abusive labor conditions. During the 1930s such incidents were familiar enough to inspire the play Fushi (Floating Corpse), by Yu Ling, another communist playwright, written at the same time as Under Shanghai Eaves. For the text of that play, see Yu Ling, Yu Ling juzuo xuan (Selected Plays of Yu Ling) (Beijing: Renmin wenxue, 1958), 136–77. Ma Lianliang (1902–1967) was a leading actor of “old man” (laosheng) roles in opera, whose very successful career lasted until the Cultural Revolution in the mid-1960s. The January 28 Campaign, or Shanghai Incident, of 1932 involved Japanese ground and air attacks on the city of Shanghai to break a boycott there of Japanese goods. Chinese troops assisted by civilians resisted until the Chinese government reached an accommodation with Japan in May of that year. Xue Pinggui is the name of a character in various local traditional operas, a warrior from an impoverished background.

Return on a Snowy Night (1942) Wu Zuguang Tra nsla ted by Thomas Mor an

C ha r a c t e rs li rongsheng ⹼㑖㔶 wang xingui (man seen through the window) 㠩㨰⥏᮪⭊╖‫☨פ‬ㅖ㽳 auntie ma 刿▙㔰 chen xiang ⒪㦙 wei liansheng (sick man who collapses in the snow) 㢬⻷㔶᮪☝㵀㫕⹽ ☨⏋㑉 clown 㨏ⓛ su hongji 㚍⨅⫑ xu fucheng 㩚⡆⒱ miss zhang 㷦㨏ⰷ miss yu 㲉㨏ⰷ yuchun 㲙╠ orchid ⹊✛ ma ershazi ⿷✠㓱㽳 first beggar boy ㋴✛⭭ second beggar boy ㋴✛㮼 little orchid (servant girl seen through the window) 㨏⹊᮪⭊╖ㅠ☨㫪⪏

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Setting Prologue: The garden of a rich man at twilight after a snowfall Act 1: Backstage at an opera house on a spring evening Act 2: The following evening in a small, two-story building in the garden of the prologue Act 3: The morning of the fourth day following act 1, in the home of an actor Epilogue: From dusk to darkness on an evening twenty years later in the building in the garden

PRO L OGUE (The audience for a play usually wants to know when and where the story takes place. And when does my play take place? At a moment during the never- ending course of existence. Perhaps it takes place during the era just passed or perhaps during the current era. Perhaps there will be no avoiding a replay of these events sometime in the future, because, while the times may change and the world may be transformed, human nature rarely changes. As for the setting . . . I would rather not fix the setting as any one particular place, because doing so might place certain constraints on the story. But just as one must book a table if one is to entertain one’s guests at a banquet, I must “book” a place at which this story can take place. It is just that I would rather not reveal the name of the place. It is a famous city with a complicated history; a history of both glories and evils. A city, therefore, that can make one love it and can make one hate it. You will recognize this city by and by, my dear friends. And what is the story about? When the lights go down and the curtain rises, we see a world bathed in silvery light after a snowfall. We are in the garden of a well-to- do family. The flowers and trees that once flourished and sparkled in spring sunlight have withered away. Amid the trees and flower beds rises the back wall of a small building. It is a fine building with a covered veranda with crimson lacquered railings. The veranda runs all around the building, and so even on the back side there are broad eaves. There are windows above. The shutters are closed tightly and covered inside by red cloth drapes that look thick and soft. We can see for some distance through the low hanging branches of the garden trees. At the limit of our vision and disappearing out of sight is the wall that surrounds the garden. The plaster on the wall has fallen away from the brick in a few places, and there is a large new hole in the wall where the recent storm has caused a collapse. It is twilight, and darkness is closing in. The snow has stopped, but it is not yet completely clear. The sky is heavy, gray, and oppressive, as if the snow would start to fall from it again if you touched it. The snow lies thickly everywhere except on the floor of the covered veranda that circles the building. The snow is thick on the branches of the trees. All is white; only the sky is dark. But everything—the dark sky, the white ground, the shadows under the covered walkway

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that leads to the building, the beautiful, delicate branches of the trees—everything is sinking into the vast indistinctness of twilight. It is dusk after a snowfall, and the garden is empty, bleak, cold, and still. From time to time snow drops softly in clumps from the branches. The snow makes no sound when it hits the ground, but its movement does signify that the world still lives; the twilight still breathes. With the suddenness of a stone falling into the still waters of a pond, voices are heard from the far side of the garden wall. The clear and slightly tremulous voices of two children break the silence of the twilight. Each voice calls in turn: May you have happiness at every moment, And wealth in every year! May the Wealth-Summoning Lad knock upon your door, While the God of Wealth sends you fortune. First we bring you riches for a thousand years, And second we bring you wealth to last a thousand more. Third we bring you the lucky stars of longevity, joy, and profit, And fourth we bring you treasures enough for every season. Fifth we bring success in the imperial exams for all your sons, And sixth we bring high official rank for the master of the house. Seventh we bring the romance of the Cowherd and the Weaving Maid meeting in the heavens, And eighth we bring the Eight Immortals crossing the sea to bring their blessings. Auspicious words need not be many for nine sons in ten to pass the imperial exams, Auspicious words are efficacious, and nine sons in ten place first in those exams. After a moment of silence, the two call out again: “Good-hearted gentlemen and gentlewomen, if you have food leftover, please grant us the favor of a bowl to eat!” After this, the garden falls silent once again. Through the gloom, we can see someone climbing through the gap in the wall.) first beggar boy (pausing as he climbs over the wall, but continuing to call out): Good-hearted gentlemen and gentlewomen . . . (He looks all around to make sure there is no one in the garden. He jumps down from the gap in the wall to the ground, then turns and looks back.) (Calling in a low voice toward outside the wall) Come on, come in! Nobody’s here. (Noticing that nothing is happening outside the wall) Really, there is no one here. (The second beggar boy’s head and trunk are visible through the gap in the wall.) second beggar boy: No. (Hesitates) No. first beggar boy (getting a little anxious): Get in here! second beggar boy (shaking his head): I’m a little . . . afraid.

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first beggar boy: Look at you. Coward. What are you afraid of ? second beggar boy (still hesitating): I don’t . . . first beggar boy (glaring at his companion): You’re making me mad. (Suddenly, the first beggar boy jumps up onto the wall, grabs the second beggar boy by the hand, and pulls him along as he jumps back into the garden. Both boys are now in the garden. As is the case with all such beggar boys, there is no way to say where they have come from. They never knew their parents or relatives; much less do they have any notion of what “home” and “family” are. One might say that the world has raised them, and for relatives they have the homeless, along with stray dogs and cats. The outdoors is their home, but the outdoors is often unmerciful, as it is now, for example. Brutally cold winter weather has descended. The cold by itself is enough to make the boys suffer, and now a bone- chilling north wind and a seemingly endless snowfall have made things worse. Not only are the boys cold, they are also under another torment; they are starving. Some are watched by guardian spirits; these boys, and others like them, are followed by cold and hunger. Some like them, of course, die young, but it seems that no one notices. Sailors with long experience at sea become accustomed to the lashing of storms, and the longer a boy is out on the street, the greater his ability to withstand trials and tribulations, and beggar boys like these two somehow become immune to illnesses that plague others. Sometimes random chance will bring about alliances among these boys, who otherwise make their way alone. The two boys in the garden are an example. Their fates, by coincidence, have been similar, and by even more of a coincidence, they have met, and so naturally they have joined forces to face hardship together and stand by each other in times of trouble. They are partners on the rocky road of life. As for the questions will they will survive to adulthood? and, if they do, what will they do? no one can say. No one knows what the future holds for them or how their lives will end. The boys are both around fourteen or fifteen years old, but we cannot see their faces clearly in the evening light. We can see only the locks of their hair, thick on top and falling over their eyes. Their clothes are stitched together from worn- out cotton rags and burlap sacks. But this can’t really be called clothing. Their rags hang on their little bodies and look ready to fall off at any moment. Their shoes are like mismatched lovers, each at the altar with the wrong partner, and are as worn and pitiful as their clothing. Each boy has a bamboo pole, what folks call a “dog-beating stick,” so named because the guard dogs of the rich like to bite the poor and helpless. But a “dog-beating stick” is not used as actively and aggressively as its name might suggest. It is used passively and defensively to fend off attacks from dogs; these poverty-stricken drifters know very well what retribution they would suffer if they ever hurt a rich man’s dog. Besides his bamboo pole, the second beggar boy is also carrying a rough-hewn rice bowl, which the two boys share. This constitutes the entirety of their possessions; their pockets are empty, and besides their poles and the bowl, they do not have a thing.) second beggar boy (shivering): Look . . . (Glancing up) Take a look at that window. first beggar boy (startled): Where? Where?

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second beggar boy (pointing with the hand holding the bowl): That window there! There is somebody in there. first beggar boy (angrily): What are you scaring me for? . . . Can’t you see? The windows are dark. What do you mean somebody is in there? second beggar boy: You’re wrong. I used to come by here and there was always a light in that room. Somebody lives there. first beggar boy: There is no light on today, is there? second beggar boy: Sometimes you can’t see the light. That’s because they close the . . . (cannot think of the word) . . . the cloth things on the windows. first beggar boy: That’s right. The windows are shut up tight and the drapes are drawn tight. With all this snow, they aren’t coming out. As long as we keep our voices down, no big deal. second beggar boy (his voice quiet): I’m cold. first beggar boy: And I’m not? (Taking hold of the second beggar boy) Come on, let’s go over there. (The boys walk across the gleaming snow to the veranda.) second beggar boy (looking like someone who has found paradise, he puts down his pole and bowl and says contently): Nice! first beggar boy (feeling heroic): Watch this. In a minute I promise you’ll say, “Even nicer!” (As he speaks, he takes scraps of cloth and paper from inside his “clothing” and piles it on the edge of the veranda floor) Don’t just sit there, get out the box of matches and light this. second beggar boy (takes a box of matches from the folds of his shirt and lights the fire): It’ll get going in a second. first beggar boy (smiling): No rush! (The first beggar boy walks down the veranda steps, bends, stirs around in the snow with his bamboo pole, and gathers sticks and leaves. He makes a few trips back and forth; the fire burns more vigorously, and a pile of kindling grows next to the fire. The boys sit contentedly by the fire and warm themselves, putting more kindling on as the fire needs. The fire lights up their faces, which glow rosily.) (With satisfaction) Now will you admit I was right? second beggar boy: It is comfortable. (Looks around) But I think we are overdoing it a bit. What if somebody sees us? . . . first beggar boy (with a little anger): I told you, on a day this cold . . . Man, you’re a coward. Stop worrying about getting caught, you’re hopeless. second beggar boy (feeling hurt): I’m not hopeless. first beggar boy: If somebody did see us, what are they going to do? second beggar boy (looking at the fire): You just like to show off. A year ago I had more guts than you do now. first beggar boy (sarcastically): Could have fooled me. When did you stop being brave then? second beggar boy (his voice low): I’ve been in here before. first beggar boy (surprised): Here? You’ve been in here?

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second beggar boy: Yeah. Spring of this year. (Remembering) It wasn’t like it is now. The trees were green, the flowers were red. I walked by outside the garden, and I could see crab apple trees, pear trees, apricot trees. They were all in bloom, and the blossoms were coming out over the garden wall. I thought it would be nice to come in and have a look. It was like the crab apple tree was saying to me, “Come on in. Come in. It’s more fun inside.” first beggar boy (laughing): You dreamed that. second beggar boy (ignoring the first beggar boy): I thought about it and thought about it, and then kept on walking. But guess what? (Points) That little gate there was open a little bit, and so I slipped inside. first beggar boy (jealously and with ridicule): So, what did the crab apple tree say to you then? second beggar boy (forgetting himself, lost in the memory): It was so nice. The flowers, the trees, the grass. It was amazing. Birds were singing in the trees. Butterflies were flying over the flowers. (Looks at the sky) The sky was blue, and it wasn’t cold like now. first beggar boy (with envy): You were alone? What did you do? second beggar boy (pointing out beyond the veranda steps): I was right there. There wasn’t snow everywhere like there is now. It was all grass, really, really green. I just lay down in the grass. I rolled around, did some somersaults. A gust of wind came and petals from the crab apple blossoms fell down all over me. first beggar boy: Then what? second beggar boy: Then I fell asleep. The breeze was blowing on my face, everything smelled good, it was so warm. And I had a dream. first beggar boy (excitedly): I bet it was a sexy dream, just like they say. Right? second beggar boy: If you make fun of me, I’m not going to tell you. first beggar boy (imploringly): I won’t, I won’t. Tell me. second beggar boy: I was sound asleep, dreaming crazy dreams. The crab apple blossoms turned into a person and came down out of the tree. first beggar boy (claps his hands): Had to be a girl. second beggar boy (a bit abashedly): A really, really pretty girl. first beggar boy (laughs): Was I right or what? So what did you do, guy? second beggar boy: She came down from the tree and stood there. She stood under the tree smiling at me. And she was waving at me. first beggar boy: She was telling you to come over. Did you go over? second beggar boy: I didn’t dare. I was a little afraid. first beggar boy: You dummy! second beggar boy: But then I saw that she was really friendly, so I got up, and I was going to . . . first beggar boy (giggles): You little sneak. You are bad to the bone. (The second beggar boy has stopped talking.) What? You’re trying to keep me in suspense! What happened then? second beggar boy (lowers his head and stirs the fire): What happened then? (Glumly) Then I woke up.

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first beggar boy (very disappointed): Oh . . . second beggar boy (afraid): That gets me to the point of the story. (Looks all around) Then I felt somebody kick me in the back, hard. I opened my eyes and saw a man standing over me. He looked mean. He cursed me, hit me. He said I shouldn’t be in there, said I was a thief. He cursed me like I was a dog, and beat me like a dog too. Then he had his men take me to the police station, where they locked me up for two days. After that, every time I come by here . . . I can’t help but be afraid. first beggar boy (pointing): That dark scar on your face, that’s from a cut you got then? (The second beggar boy nods silently.) (Teasing) The crab apple goddess deliberately led you on to harm. She fooled you into coming in, flirted with you, and got you all worked up, and then just when it was about to get serious, she called somebody in to beat you up and throw you out. (The sky by now has gradually darkened.) (Holding his stomach) I’m starving. (The second beggar boy is deep in his own thoughts.) (To himself ) Right, when I go to sleep tonight I’ll sleep with my head lower than my feet and I’ll pile a bunch of grass under my butt. Then, with my stomach hanging in on itself it won’t feel empty. (He stretches wearily, finds a good spot, lies down on his back, and gets comfortable.) We’re out of the wind, there’s a fire, who the hell cares if we’re hungry? We’re going to sleep nice and comfortable tonight. second beggar boy (still lost in thought): There’s something that bothers me about the whole incident. Just thinking about it makes me afraid. It still gives me goose bumps. (All is quiet.) first beggar boy (suddenly sits up): Quit scaring me. second beggar boy (his bright, dark eyes open wide): Look . . . (Moving closer to the first beggar boy) Look at those trees. first beggar boy (a bit scared): The trees? What about them? second beggar boy (putting his arms around the first beggar boy): Am I seeing things? (Pointing to the gap in the wall) See that? first beggar boy (terrified): Oh my god! The trees are alive! (Indeed, a person is standing by the gap in the wall. In the dark night the boys can just make out the indistinct image of a man reaching out with both arms and slowly feeling his way forward; he is unsteady and about to fall over. The boys are scared stiff, and in the light of the fire we can see them pressed tightly against each other, their faces white, their frightened eyes staring fixedly.) man (haltingly): Young lads . . . come here . . . (Steadies himself on a tree and stops) . . . Help me along . . . take my arm . . . first beggar boy: What? Take your arm? second beggar boy (grabbing his bamboo pole and preparing to wield it): Who are you?

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man (his voice hollow): A passerby . . . A sick man . . . second beggar boy (to the first beggar boy): It’s not a ghost. (He puts down his bamboo pole.) man: I’m freezing to death . . . Let me warm up by the fire . . . first beggar boy (glancing at the second beggar boy): Go help him. (Gets up) We’ll both help him. man (short of breath): Young lads . . . Do a good deed . . . Quick now . . . first beggar boy (pulling the second beggar boy along with him): We’re coming . . . We’re coming. man (suddenly puts his head in his hands and moans): Oh . . . oh . . . (He collapses into the snow with a thud. The boys look at each other in alarm and then run down the steps. They struggle to pull the sick man up from the snow, and then they help him, step-by-step, to the veranda stairs. They help the man to the fire and sit him down beside it with his back leaning against a wall. The second beggar boy stirs the fire to make it burn brighter. The fire lights up the man’s face. He is an old man who has been battered by poverty, illness, hunger, and cold. He is thinner than any human being should be. Heaven knows, however, that in truth he is not old. The trials of survival in our society have taken his health and made him old beyond his years. His fine hair is soft and thin but now has turned completely white, and because it is dirty and uncombed, it makes him look all the more wretched. His face is thin, and his nose is straight and sharp. His mouth traces a fine arc, his ears are delicate and well proportioned to his face. His eyes are large, deep, distant, and full of feeling. His handsome features make it difficult to imagine that this is a man who has been beaten down by life, but, indeed, the ceaseless pounding of the storms he has weathered has driven him to destitution and despair. His cheeks are sunken and his complexion is pale, without a trace of color. His breath is labored, his nostrils flare again and again, his mouth opens and closes again and again. His eyes are unfocused and listless. He seems confused, as if he were dreaming. He is wearing a dark brown cotton-padded silk scholar’s gown. His gown is as old, worn, and faded as his face. He is nearing his end. His tired face is like a death mask. Disappointment, frustration, and worry have weighed him down, but he has something special about him that sets him apart from most of the unfortunate. In his face one can see tranquillity, amiability, and kindness. He has the look of a sage.) first beggar boy (calling softly): Mister, mister! Wake up. second beggar boy: Mister, are you okay? man (sighs softly and opens his eyes): A fire! (His voice is full of surprise and delight) A fire! (He puts his hands out over the fire.) second beggar boy: He’s half frozen to death. (To the man) Yeah, we have a fire, warm up. When you warm up you’ll feel better. man: Yes, yes. Thank you. I’m a lot warmer now. My heart is warmer too. (The boys get settled in by the fire again.) first beggar boy (laughs): You really gave us a start just now.

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second beggar boy: We were starting to feel a little afraid, you showed up at just the right time. man (using all his strength to speak): Yes . . . It is dark and cold . . . This place is deserted . . . (Suddenly growing alert) Deserted! (Seems to be looking for something) Deserted? (As if on the verge of madness) What? Where am I? second beggar boy (holding the first beggar boy tightly, frightened almost to tears): He’s scaring me again! He’s scaring me again! man (calming down): I apologize . . . (Catching his breath) I’m all upset . . . I don’t want . . . I shouldn’t have come here. first beggar boy (perplexed): What is he saying? man: I shouldn’t have come here . . . Why did I come here? I . . . first beggar boy: Did you come here for a reason? second beggar boy (timidly): Why don’t you just knock on the door? (Points) Those two big red doors there. first beggar boy: Are you here looking for somebody? I’ll knock on the door for you. man (lifting his head): Looking for somebody? first beggar boy: Yes, looking for somebody. man (shaking his head): I’m not looking for anybody. I’m looking . . . I’m looking for . . . second beggar boy: If you’re not looking for anybody, what are you here for? man (haltingly): I’m looking . . . I’m looking for my shadow . . . I’m looking for my footprints . . . (The boys are taken aback and are struck dumb for a moment.) (Smiles and laughs dejectedly) I’m looking for . . . I’m looking for the footprints I left here in the past . . . It’s the same place . . . same building . . . same trees . . . same person . . . (Everything is quiet; it is as if we are listening to the monologue of a ghost.) All older little by little . . . Diminished bit by bit. (To the boys) Lads, I’ve . . . I’ve come back. (With great love) Such good lads . . . I’ll be on my way soon . . . Soon . . . (He stops talking and gasps violently as he tries to catch his breath.) second beggar boy: Don’t try to talk. first beggar boy: Lean against the wall, rest awhile. man: I’ll be at rest soon. It’s been a hard life, I should rest now . . . (Looks around, then up at the sky)  My gosh . . . such a huge city . . . so many people . . . such difficult times . . . such a clamorous world . . . But all this snow has buried everything . . . It hasn’t snowed enough . . . We need more snow . . . We need more snow . . . first beggar boy (finds this funny): Mister, it already snowed a ton. Any more snow and we’ll freeze to death. second beggar boy: If we don’t freeze to death, we’ll starve to death. man (his breath growing weaker): I’m so . . . I’m so lucky to have two good boys here by me. (Stares) And a fire too. (Lifts his arms) The fire . . . it’s so warm . . . it’s so hot. The fire. (Something bright and shiny flashes inside one of the man’s sleeves.) Help me up.

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(The boys, a little befuddled, stand and help the man to his feet, then help him down the stairs.) (Looking at the sky) The wind is going to start up again . . . It is going to start snowing again. (The man walks away from the supporting arms of the boys and comes forward by himself. He reaches out to lean against an old tree. He stands still for a long time. His eyes turn slowly as he looks intently to the front and then to the sides. The boys stand transfixed at the edge of the stairs. Suddenly, the man’s lips close tightly, then his eyes close, and he smiles faintly. His arm that is against the tree slowly lowers to his side. His body goes limp, and he falls over in the snow, his head against a tree root. Snow shakes down from the tree branches. The garden is deathly quiet.) second beggar boy (whispering): He’s asleep. first beggar boy (solemnly): No. He’s dead. second beggar boy (shocked): Dead? first beggar boy (waving his hand): Quiet! Didn’t he die peacefully? He looks so comfortable. (The boy is right. The man has died peacefully. He is comfortable, safe, at peace. His final smile is pure and radiant.) second beggar boy (a little panicked): We should go, right? I don’t like this place. Before it gets completely dark we should find someplace else to spend the night. first beggar boy (nods): Right. second beggar boy (relieved): Then let’s get out of here. (He goes up on the veranda and picks up both bamboo poles and the bowl, then comes back down the steps.) first beggar boy (stopping the second beggar boy): Not so fast! We need to get a little profit before we leave. second beggar boy (startled): What are you saying? You would rob a dead man? first beggar boy (nods): Uh-huh. second beggar boy: Look how poor he is. He’s got no money on him. You telling me you’re going to strip the clothes off him? You can’t get that low. first beggar boy (righteously): I won’t. second beggar boy: I don’t care what you say, I’m not doing anything that despicable. first beggar boy: Listen to me. He has a gold bracelet on his arm. second beggar boy: How do you know? first beggar boy: I saw it. (As he speaks, he walks from the steps and lifts the dead man’s arm. The dead man’s sleeve slips down and, indeed, there is a shiny gold bracelet on his arm. The first beggar boy lets the man’s arm drop.) second beggar boy: How do you know that is worth anything? first beggar boy: Don’t be stupid. What is worth more than gold? Enough with the stupid comments. I know what I’m doing. second beggar boy: A dead man’s things. I can’t do it . . .

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first beggar boy (sharply): Then you must be well fed and warmly dressed. second beggar boy (lowers his head, dejected, and starts to cry): I . . . first beggar boy: What are you crying for? Listen while I explain this to you. He is dead. He can’t take the bracelet to the afterlife with him. Tomorrow somebody else is going to find his body, and then who knows who will end up with the bracelet. We’re here, we’re cold, we’re hungry, and we’ve found something that’s worth money. And it doesn’t belong to anybody anymore. Why shouldn’t we take it? Besides, do you know where he got it or how he got it? second beggar boy (quietly): Take it. Take it and then let’s go. first beggar boy (bends down and removes the gold bracelet from the dead man’s arm, speaking in a low voice as he does so): Mister, you’ll have to forgive me. But actually there is nothing to forgive. Riches are to be shared. It’s not a good use of the bracelet to leave it on your arm. Me and my friend are about to freeze to death, or starve to death. So we have to do this, even though it’s not right. You’ve got money—let us poor kids have a little taste. We’ll never forget the good you’ve done. second beggar boy (imploringly): Shut up. Let’s go. first beggar boy (giggling): Come on. (Takes his bamboo pole from the second beggar boy) I’m so hungry I can barely walk. My stomach is wrapped around my spine. First thing after we sell this bracelet, we’re going to have ourselves a good meal. (Just as they are about to leave there is movement inside the row of windows high up on the building. One pair of tightly closed shutters is suddenly thrown open, letting out strong light from inside that shines down on the garden.) second beggar boy (very surprised): Oh no! Somebody’s there. first beggar boy (ducking to one side): Come here. (He grabs the second beggar boy. The boys hide behind a big tree. They can vaguely make out a person through the window. Then the window opens wide. A girl of about sixteen or seventeen leans halfway out the window. She is wearing an emeraldgreen cotton-padded silk jacket; she is dressed and made-up with exquisite taste. She’s like a fairy maiden descended from heaven. Anyone’s eyes would light up to see her.) servant girl (notices the now dying fire and a look of surprise and puzzlement appears on her face): There’s a fire! Who built a fire? first beggar boy (whispering and pointing): Is that the little goddess of the crab apple tree? (The second beggar boy, scared stiff, gestures to the first beggar boy to keep quiet.) servant girl (alarmed): There’s somebody lying under the crab apple tree! (She turns and disappears back into the room. A man appears in the window. He is wearing a gray cotton gown and over it a black mandarin jacket. He appears to be around fifty years old. He looks angry as he pushes by the girl to the window.) man (shouting angrily): Who let those tramps in! first beggar boy (exclaiming out loud): That’s the guy who beat me up! (The boys don’t dare remain any longer, and they turn and run. They leap through the gap in the wall and disappear into the deep dark night beyond.)

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man (yelling loudly): That’s a dead body under the tree! Two guys just ran away! There’s a hole in the wall! Where’s the watchman? Where the hell has he gone?! Useless bastard! Bastard . . . (The wind starts to blow. It starts to snow. The snowflakes float to the ground like goose down.) (Curtain.)

A CT 1 (We have gone back in time about twenty years. We are in the “huge city” mentioned by the man in the garden just before he died. It is a time of peace, when nothing of import is happening anywhere in the land. The gentry spend their days in music and song. The pipes and strings of the Brocade City1 play music of peace and joy. It is said that “when someone above shows a preference for anything, there is certain to be someone below who will outdo him,” 2 and with such a trend prevailing in society, the city prospers materially and culturally, and incense drifts over damask. In these times it is the Peking opera theaters of the city’s southern district that people find most addicting and distracting. The theater offers nothing but ephemera and illusion, but to poets, writers, seductresses, and smooth young men the theater is a place where hearts can be unburdened and feelings expressed, and so the puppets on the stage have become the objects of their romantic fantasies. Their interests have gradually shifted from the characters in the opera to the actors who play them, and the objects of their infatuations have shifted from what is on the stage to what is offstage, from the stage to backstage. Backstage has become a place of romance and mystery that stirs emotions and makes imaginations run wild. And, as luck would have it, our setting is backstage at a Peking opera theater. The backstage area of a Peking opera theater is usually divided into several sections. Closest to the stage is an area that serves as a common dressing room and is also the space through which one passes when entering and exiting the stage. There are also separate, private dressing rooms for each of the two leading actors, and we are looking at one such private dressing room of one such leading actor. We are looking into a corner of the dressing room. The room looks well settled into. The walls are wallpapered in off-white with a white floral pattern and a red rose border running along the top. In the wall on the right, near where it meets and forms a corner with the wall on the left, is a door. The door, which is hung with a red flannelette door curtain, leads to the common dressing room, which otherwise can be reached only from the stage. This dressing room is lower than the stage, and so when entering it from the stage one comes down three steps. To the right of the door is a kang3 faced with ebony wood. There is a low table in the middle of the kang and on its west side is a six-sided rectangular pillow. The kang is laid with a blue cotton-padded mattress and fits two people lying down. On the kang table is a teapot and two cups. On the kang toward the back is a black satin skullcap with a red tassel.

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We can see more of the wall to the left. There is a window, and its shutters, which are papered in white, are propped open. Below the window are a table and chair, and on the table is a small wooden box. The box is open and face powder, greasepaint, and rouge are spread across the table. In the middle of the table is a round mirror, beside which is a kerosene lamp with a glass shade. The lamp is lit. To the left of the table there is a washbasin on its stand; a towel is draped over it. Further to the left there is a clothes rack with long arms anchored to the wall; the clothes rack is heavily laden. Hanging on it are a lined gown of gray serge, a black silk Manchurian vest, and a black and white silk scarf. Still further to the left are props and articles of opera costume, including pieces of silk gauze worn under wigs, long hairpieces, horsewhips, and so on. All the way over to the left is a door, which is open. It leads to a long corridor that goes directly to the front door of the theater. Part of this corridor is illuminated by red lanterns. To the left of the door is a large, full-length mirror that stands at an angle to us; its mahogany frame is carved with traditional decorations. A horsetail whisk hangs from the mirror. There is a small tea table and two round stools in the middle of the room. A kerosene safety lamp with a white china shade hangs from the middle of the ceiling and lights up the whole room. There is, of course, nothing wondrous per se about this sort of a room, but we see what we want to see and our world is shaped by our imagination. If one has ever believed in the “magic of backstage,” then backstage is a magical place. It is a spring evening; the sky is clear and the air is fresh. A spring breeze comes in through the open window, warming the room nicely. The air is fragrant and soft. It is a bit after eleven o’clock, the most exciting time at the theater. The last item on the night’s program is reaching its conclusion. We cannot see the stage, but we can easily imagine how crowded it is out front. Not only are all seats—orchestra seats, box seats, front-row seats, seats in back—full, but there are even people sitting on stools in the aisles. And all the way in the back, packed in front of the exits, is a crowd of seasoned opera buffs who are enjoying a free show. Tickets were checked for the last time before the finale and no one is watching the doors anymore. In the leading actor’s private dressing room, however, all is quiet. We can hear only the occasional sound of drums, gongs, huqin,4 and cheering coming from the stage. There are only two people in the room at the moment: li rongsheng and wang xingui. li rongsheng is straightening up the things from the makeup case that are scattered across the table. He puts each item in turn into the wooden box. wang xingui, for his part, is sprawled on his back on the wooden kang, one leg bent up at the knee and the other crossed over it and lifted high.) wang xingui (sighing contentedly): This is comfy, this is comfy. (He turns and spits on the floor.) All that shoving and pushing. I was standing all the way at the back, on tiptoe, craning my neck. And for nothing. I still couldn’t see, I couldn’t hear. So I said, who needs this torture? It’s quiet backstage. I’m better off backstage resting a bit.

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(wang xingui is around thirty-four or -five years old; he is short and stocky. His face is weatherworn, his skin is dark, leathery, coarse, and rough. He has a thin nose and narrow lips; he has gleaming dark eyes that seem to be constantly darting about. There is a type of person found in society who likes to make trouble, boast, and flatter; the type of person who forgets right and wrong when there is profit to be made and who delights in the misfortunes of others. This sort of person is as slippery as quicksilver and will take any advantage he can. He’ll play the toady and suck up to people but often will turn on those closest to him. You have to be ruthlessly selfish to survive in this world, which perhaps is why you can find people like this everywhere. wang xingui is this sort of person. He lost his parents when he was young, and since boyhood he has been out on his own, moving through the world of grifters and hustlers. He has spent time on the street in the company of young toughs and hooligans, learning the skills he needs to survive. Most important, he has developed a quick wit and a sharp tongue; he is glib and garrulous. He says he is bored with the rambling life he has lived for more than a decade. He wants to “turn over a new leaf ” and live a peaceful, settled life. He is here today looking for a favor. His crew cut is new and neat, and he is wearing a freshly laundered gray gown. On his feet are black cloth shoes with thick soles. His socks are white; his pants are gray; and he is wearing black leggings.) li rongsheng (still tidying up, answers politely): Yes, it is more peaceful and quiet back here . . . (Looking back and smiling) But nobody comes back here looking for peace and quiet. (A long time ago, when he was young, li rongsheng was a student in a Peking opera school. He was clever and articulate, impressed everyone around him, and enjoyed great popularity for a time. He was even called a prodigy. Heaven, however, is unjust, and he fell victim to what an opera student fears most. His voice changed, he could not sing, and his fate was sealed. Right before the eyes of the audience a young star who had once burned brightly dropped straight from the sky. The poor fellow was just a boy, and he had no words for what he felt, no words for his pain. Glory and acclaim became things of his past, and someone new took the stage. He was just a boy, barely into his teens, and already he had learned what it was like to have one’s world overturned. It is difficult to imagine how deeply this wounded him. And how does he express his sadness and bitterness? He does not speak of them; he does not complain. But in the quiet of the night, when he lies in bed in his dreary, empty room, he remembers the splendor of the stage and longs for it, and bitter tears quietly roll down his face. Time has worn away his ambition and has extinguished the glory of his past. He is now thirty years old. He has known a lot of hardship, and like an exhausted bird returning to roost, he has become the attendant5 and occasional vocal coach of the famous huashan6 actor wei liansheng. wei liansheng was li rongsheng’s younger classmate under the same teacher in the opera school, but one has proved worthy and one unworthy, and the distance between them is great. This thing fate is all too unpredictable. li r ongsheng has an honest face. His slender features still carry some of the grace of an actor who plays female roles. But his looks betray depression and fatigue with none of

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the vitality of youth. His hair is a little mussed and his beard is uneven. He is wearing a faded black silk-lined shirt; his sleeves are rolled up, so we can see the white lining.) wang xingui (nodding and sounding his agreement): Right! You are right about that! Nobody who comes back here is looking for peace and quiet. Your job definitely has its fun. Every day of your life is exciting. li rongsheng: Hmm. (Turns and sits in the nearest chair) You . . . (Covers his mouth and yawns) You don’t have to say that. Everybody finds a reason to complain about what they do. We certainly don’t find anything terribly fun about it. wang xingui: How can that be? li rongsheng (smiles wearily): It’s funny when you think about it. An empty theater slowly fills up. Up onstage there is a performance, down below the stage people watch the performance. The lights are bright, the drums, gongs, and strings get going. (He stops.) wang xingui: That’s right! Isn’t that fun? li rongsheng: It’s not fun backstage. When the finale ends and the suona7 blows, that’s it, show’s over. People go back to where they came from. The place was full, people everywhere, up in the balcony, down below, in the orchestra seats, in both aisles, and then just like that it empties out completely. Then the lights go out and the whole place is dark and silent. Completely still, not even a shadow of a person moving anywhere. wang xingui (getting up): True, I suppose. li rongsheng: You wouldn’t notice how dead everything seems if it didn’t start off so lively. First it’s bustling and alive, then all of a sudden it’s cold and quiet. wang xingui: Nothing good lasts forever—why dwell on it? li rongsheng (shaking his head): No one likes to see a party end. (Emotionally) How can it not make you sad when day after day goes by like that? (The sound of applause and cheering comes from out in the theater.) wang xingui (excitedly): Listen to that! li rongsheng (standing up): What can you say? That Wei Liansheng of ours is about as popular as a man can get. (Reminded of his personal concerns, lowering his head) Yeah, he has done okay for himself. wang xingui (getting a little emotional too): You know what they say, “When luck goes against you, even gold loses its luster, but when luck is with you, even iron turns to gold.” 8 They also say, “Just like each wave on the Yangtze is bigger than the last, there is always somebody new to take the place of those who came before.” To think that when Wei Liansheng was just a little kid . . . (Shakes his head) Well, no point in bringing that up! li rongsheng (surprised): You’ve known my boss that long? wang xingui (smugly): I’ve known him a long time, a long time. I watched him grow up. (Indicates with his hand the changing height of a growing child) When he was ten he joined the opera school and I knocked around on the road for more

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than a decade. Who would have expected that I’d come back to find out he is a big shot? li rongsheng: As long as Mr. Wei remains serious about his work, he is going to be even bigger in the future. wang xingui: No doubt! Every profession has its number one. Things have really changed, you know. When Liansheng wanted to go to the opera school, his old man was really unhappy about it. He blamed himself; he said because he was a failure and couldn’t support his family, his kid was forced to become an actor.9 (Proudly) It was a good thing I was there to speak up for the kid and tell his father that, like anybody else, an actor relies on his talent to make a living; there is nothing to be ashamed of. That’s what settled it finally. li rongsheng: It’s been a decade since then, went by in a flash. The old man and his wife have both been dead for five or six years. Those poor folks. They worked hard for their entire lives, and when their son finally gets a break and runs into some good luck, they are not around to see it. They’re dead. wang xingui (lifting his head): That’s just fate. li rongsheng (moved by this talk of wei liansheng’s parents): “Nothing good in the world lasts forever, clouds blow away and glass breaks.” 10 That’s an old line that gets it right. wang xingui (finds li rongsheng’s emotion funny, laughs): Mr. Li, are you one of those people who “sheds tears when listening to the storyteller and worries on behalf of the ancients”? (Cheering erupts from the theater.) li rongsheng (his expression changing to a smile): That’s me alright; I can’t change. I don’t have time to worry about my own affairs, but I’m always worrying about other people’s problems for them. wang xingui: Besides, the guy is hugely popular these days . . . (A face appears in the doorway that leads to the corridor on the left but withdraws right away.) li rongsheng: Who is it? wang xingui (looking out through the door): There’s nobody there. voice from outside (a woman’s voice, a little shaky): Mr. Li? . . . li rongsheng (puzzled): There is somebody there . . . They’re calling me. voice from outside (almost in a whisper): Mr. Li? Mr. Li, can I trouble you to come out for minute? li rongsheng (walking toward the door): Who would come looking for me at this hour? (Reaching the door and looking out, surprised) Oh, Auntie Ma! What’s wrong? auntie ma (her voice muffled by tears and sobs): I’m so worried. Mr. Li . . . li rongsheng: Come in and tell me about it. Don’t be upset, Auntie. (li rongsheng walks out.) auntie ma: No, Mr. Li. No . . . (Her voice drops to an indistinct murmur. li rongsheng walks back in.)

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li rongsheng (addressing auntie ma through the door): Come on in, Auntie. Don’t be worried. We’re all friends here. (auntie ma follows li rongsheng in timidly.) auntie ma (her tears fall as she speaks): I’m so worried. I’m worried to death . . . (auntie ma is drowning in distress, and her anxiety casts a pall on the room. I am told that in ancient times there was a village called Getianshi where the people lived their days free from worry and care. They were well- off and happy, and for all who came later “the people of Getianshi” become a byword for the perfect life. auntie ma’s life is close to this ideal, but only close to it, not exactly like it. auntie ma has consistently been free of anything to worry about or care about, and she is most assuredly free from happiness, which perhaps makes her life the sublimation of the life lived by “the people of Getianshi.” I do not know if auntie ma can represent the class of people who have it most difficult, but she was born poor and does not know the meaning of prosperity and happiness. She has never wasted much time thinking about what it would be like to be well- off and happy, because she has never even gotten close to prosperity, and so naturally she does not know what is meant by suffering either, and she has no way of conceiving of herself as unfortunate. She is alive and so she lives; life and death are the same to her. She does not blame heaven. She does not blame man. She does not hold any grudges and she does not have any aspirations. auntie ma is one of the numberless millions who have been so ground down by life that they have become numb. auntie ma is around fifty years old. Her hair is unkempt and her face is dirty. Her clothes are ragged. Today she is for once worried, and this is because, although she is numb, she still retains that most precious of instinctive emotions, namely love, love for her son.) li rongsheng: What is wrong? Tell me. What is the matter? auntie ma: My second eldest, Ershazi11 . . . (Chokes back a sob) He’s been arrested . . . They locked him up. li rongsheng: Your boy? Why? auntie ma: It’s his own fault. Yesterday just after dark, he brought his cart home and got right into bed and fell asleep. So then, surprise, Auntie Niu’s son Delu from next door came by looking for him and said he made a little extra cash that day, and he made my boy go out drinking with him. I could tell how happy the boys were, so I let him go. How could I know they wouldn’t come back all night? In the morning, first thing, I went out to ask around, and I found out they’d gotten into trouble. (Starts to cry again) He got arrested . . . li rongsheng: What kind of trouble did they get into? auntie ma: You know that my boy can’t hold his liquor. Just takes three glasses to make him drunk as a skunk. They left wherever it was they were drinking, and it was cold outside and windy, and they were staggering around, and who knows how, but they ended up in Bull’s Horns Alley. They were so drunk they couldn’t keep going, so they just lay down and slept on somebody’s doorstep. Just so happens the police came by. Delu wasn’t quite as drunk as my boy, so he got up and ran away, leaving my boy there. Like a fool he said something to the police and he even took a swing at them. So they took him away.

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li rongsheng: Where did they take him? Have you seen him? auntie ma: I’ve been running around all day, asking for help, trying to find out. I didn’t find out until dark that he is locked up in what they call a “detention center” in Bull’s Horns Alley. I begged them and gave them ten strings of cash, and they finally let me see him. The poor boy has been locked up only a day and you should see him. They beat him up! The police say he was loitering on the steps of an important man’s house in the middle of the night, which means he was definitely intending to burgle the place . . . Can you imagine? Ershazi do that? Can you imagine? li rongsheng: What shall we do? What shall we do? (wang xingui casts a disdainful glance at auntie ma, then climbs up onto the kang and closes his eyes. Another burst of cheering is heard from the theater.) auntie ma: We have to ask Mr. Wei for help. Ershazi says the place he lay down drunk was in front of the home of Chief Justice Su. Mr. Wei and Mr. Su are on good terms. If he can get Mr. Su to say the word, they’ll let my boy go. li rongsheng: Well then, don’t you worry. You came at the right time. Mr. Su is out front right now in the audience. He could come backstage any minute now. auntie ma (surprised and pleased): Thank goodness! Ask Mr. Wei to put in a word for me! I made three trips today trying to find him. li rongsheng: You went to his home looking for him? auntie ma: Yes. li rongsheng: He had five separate invitations today. He went out first thing in the morning and stayed out all day. auntie ma: Yes, I know Mr. Wei is busy. I’m embarrassed to have to bother him. (Sighing) You know that I depend on the money my boy makes to eat. If he . . . li rongsheng: Don’t get upset. This is no big deal. Sit down and relax. auntie ma: No, no, Mr. Li. Can I see Mr. Wei? li rongsheng: Mr. Wei is onstage right now. Sit down and wait for him. The show will be over in another half an hour. auntie ma: Okay. I’ll go wait at the entrance for a while and then come back. Auntie Niu is waiting for me at the entrance. Delu didn’t come home all last night either. I bet you that he saw Ershazi being taken away and was so scared he didn’t know what to do. Auntie Niu is worried to death like me. That blind old man of hers is home just turning circles from worry. li rongsheng: Okay. You come back in a while. Let me talk to Mr. Wei. Just relax and leave everything else to me. auntie ma (bows12): Thank you, thank you. (Walks out wiping her tears away) Those boys! They’re young and reckless, always running around getting into trouble. Does it ever occur to them how much their parents worry?! li rongsheng (seeing auntie ma out): Everything will be okay, trust me. (The two of them exit through the door that leads to the corridor.) voice from outside (auntie ma’s voice): Half an hour, right Mr. Li? voice from outside (li rongsheng’s voice): Right. Half an hour. The hallway is dark, be careful.

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voice from outside (auntie ma’s voice): I can feel my way along. I can see well enough. Thank you. (Her voice grows fainter as she moves away. li rongsheng walks back into the room.) li rongsheng: Boy, these days they just won’t let good people be. wang xingui (snorts in derision): “Docile horses get ridden and good people get cheated.” That is the way it has always been. (li rongsheng sits with head lowered.) wang xingui: Who was that? li rongsheng: A neighbor of mine, Old Lady Ma. (Sighs) She has it tough. wang xingui: About Mr. Wei, you know, I was wondering, I haven’t seen him in more than a decade, is he still the same sort of guy he was? li rongsheng: What kind of guy is that? wang xingui: You know, honest, a little naive, tears up easily, always helping people out. li rongsheng (smiles faintly): At his age you think he still tears up easily? But he’s still a good man; he still helps people. That won’t change. I’ll go so far as to say that it is guaranteed that Mr. Wei will get Old Lady Ma’s son out of jail. wang xingui (smiles): He’s good people. (Stretches) I wonder if he did me that favor I asked him for. li rongsheng: Are you here tonight because Mr. Wei asked you to come backstage? wang xingui: Yup. I talked to him two days ago. He didn’t tell me anything specific, just told me to come here tonight. li rongsheng: Well, that means it’s all good. I promise you he’ll have good news for you. wang xingui: I wonder what job he’s found for me. I sure hope it doesn’t involve a lot of running around. I’ve been run ragged these last dozen or so years. I’m ready to live a more quiet life. (Forces a smile) It’s all my own fault for not having made anything of myself. I’ve knocked around for half my life, and I end up having to come ask for help from a junior. li rongsheng: And by this you mean . . . (Someone approaches before li rongsheng finishes speaking. He was not sure what to say to begin with, and so he does not finish the sentence. chen xiang enters through the door from the corridor.) chen xiang (all smiles): Hey! (chen xiang is around twenty years old. He is a student and comes from a wealthy, powerful family. He has been spoiled ever since he was a child, and so of course he finds studying to be an annoying bother, and whenever he feels like going out to enjoy himself, he does. He may be a student, but five days out of ten he does not touch a book. If you were to ask him how he has spent the last fifteen years of his life, he probably would not be able to tell you. He would probably remember that first he learned to walk, and then he liked setting off firecrackers, flying kites, and playing hopscotch. Then he got a little older and made some friends, but then he fought with his friends. Then he started reading martial arts novels and imitating swordsmen and knights-errant by practicing

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with spears and cudgels at home, and at Spring Festival he likes playing dominoes and gambling. These days he has a new hobby. He likes theater and has become a devotee of Peking opera. And he has started to patronize actors.13 He comes every day to watch wei liansheng perform. Whenever wei liansheng enters the stage or exits it, chen xiang yells, “Bravo!” in a peculiar way. And he is always hanging around by the stage and backstage. As soon as chen xiang, the little wretch, comes in through the door he reaches out and grabs a short spear that is leaning against the wall and walks forward waving it.) li rongsheng: Aha, we haven’t seen you in a few days, Mr. Chen. chen xiang: Couldn’t help it. Had to stay in. Testing at school. li rongsheng (humoring chen xiang): I see. Testing. chen xiang: Tested for five days all together. I’m really done in. li rongsheng: Well then, it’s time to have some fun. You’ve been watching the performance? chen xiang: That’s right. I was in the fourth row. Two friends of mine are going to be coming backstage to hang out in just a bit. li rongsheng: Very good. Mr. Wei will be coming offstage very soon. Have a seat and wait for him. chen xiang (exiting): I’ll come back when he’s offstage. li rongsheng: You take care now. (At the door chen xiang lifts the short spear and strikes a pose like a Peking opera actor exiting a stage, then he throws the spear into a corner and marches out grandly.) wang xingui (glancing sideways at the door): What was that all about? li rongsheng: Friend of Mr. Wei’s. wang xingui: A patron? (li rongsheng nods his head.) And he is still a student? li rongsheng: That’s right. wang xingui (sneers): He is a bloody disgrace. “Not a single trade has he learned, all he has learned is how to inspire disdain.” He’s not fit to be a student. (The sound of cheering, like spring thunder, comes from the theater.) li rongsheng (standing up): Liansheng—(quickly correcting himself ) Mr. Wei is coming offstage. wang xingui: What? Opera’s over? li rongsheng (walking toward the clothes rack on the wall): There is one act left. He needs to change his costume. (li rongsheng takes a red satin cape and a horsewhip from the rack and holds them. He walks to the middle of the room and stops. With a whoosh the door curtain on the door to the stage is thrown open and a costumed beauty comes in gracefully.) wang xingui (rolling off the kang): Brother! wei liansheng (smiles): You’ve come. (Peking opera stars are not ordinary folks, and wei liansheng is like a gust of wind or a burst of dazzling, colorful light. Strange to say, but there are people in this world

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who can go against the design of creation, transforming themselves. They can manipulate yin and yang and make hard steel soft. They can take a man, put rouge and powder on him, and turn him into a woman. Some do not find this strange. When you see something that is wrong enough times it begins to seem right. There are even those who think that a man made up to look like a woman is more like a woman than a woman herself. wei liansheng has long since become habituated to his life. He knows how to flirt by tilting his head or casting a glance. In fact, in adopting the gestures, movements, and habits of speech of a woman, he has slowly forgotten that he is a man. wei liansheng is enjoying the height of his success; he has won accolades and admiration and is the theater’s shining sun, its glittering star. But what are these accolades and admiration really? Just mud on a beautiful piece of jade buried in the ground. The jade, however, remains jade; its luster may be obscured by mud, but if you wash and polish it, it will again be as beautiful as it once was. Now, evil knows it is ugly and so it dresses itself in pretty clothing, and therefore the mud on the jade is dazzlingly colorful. wei liansheng became famous because of his talent, but now he is surrounded by licentious sycophants, and he has become accustomed to their fawning and their ostentatiousness. He has a good heart, but any good he does he can do only with the help of the men who flatter him, and so his is a cut-rate charity. He is honest in his dealings; he helps friends in need, and he likes to be thanked and complemented by the people he helps. It would not be fair to say that he cannot get enough of this, but he has begun to think of it as routine. People are often blind to their real problem, and so while wei liansheng has determined to save the world, it has never occurred to him to save himself.) wang xingui (ingratiatingly): Yes. You told me to come and so I got here early. (li rongsheng drapes the cape around wei liansheng’s shoulders.) wei liansheng (turning and straightening his hair and jewelry in the mirror on the table): You didn’t go out front to watch? wang xingui (rushing forward): I got here a little late. It was too crowded, and I couldn’t squeeze through. But sitting back here I can hear the applause from out front, and that’s about the same, right? wei liansheng (giggles): You still like to joke. wang xingui: It’s no good, though. “My temples are gray but I have not accomplished a thing.” I joke around just to get by, my young friend. wei liansheng (turns): Rongsheng (touches the hair at his temple), my flower fell out. (li rongsheng opens the wooden box, takes out a flower, and pins it in wei liansheng’s hair. wei liansheng turns and inspects himself in the mirror and then turns back.) wang xingui: Uh, Liansheng, that thing for me? wei liansheng: All taken care of. wang xingui (anxiously): Where will I be working? wei liansheng: Chief Justice Su Hongji needs a house steward. He told me he was looking for somebody, and I recommended you.

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wang xingui (bowing deeply and saluting with cupped hands): My wonderful young friend, may the future hold even greater success for you. I have had many friends and acquaintances in my life, but you are the only one who is a true gentleman. wei liansheng: You are just being polite. wang xingui: This is not politeness. May your many good deeds be rewarded. I will never forgot what you have done for me. wei liansheng: Chief Justice Su is out front at the opera. He’ll be coming back here in a while. li rongsheng (handing the horsewhip to wei liansheng): You are due onstage. (wei liansheng takes the horsewhip and heads toward the door to the stage.) wang xingui (following wei liansheng for a step): I should wait for him here, right? wei liansheng (coming back): You wait here; I’ll bring him in and introduce you in a little while. wang xingui (inspecting his clothing): These clothes okay? wei liansheng (laughs): Why wouldn’t they be? You look nice and tidy. wang xingui (rubbing his head, unable to hide how happy he is): You’re teasing me. (The curtain on the door to the stage opens and a Peking opera clown, a white rectangle painted across his nose and cheeks, leans through it.) clown (whispering): Hey, Mr. Wei, time to go onstage. wei liansheng (frowning, stubbornly): I’m coming! clown (rushing down the stairs into the dressing room): “I’m coming”? You’re late for the stage, madam. wei liansheng: What did you say? (Raises the horsewhip and hits the clown on the head with it) If I’m late, too bad. clown (ducking): Okay, okay. (The clown takes a dancing step toward wei liansheng, takes hold of him, and pulls him out through the door. li rongsheng stands motionless looking at the door.) wang xingui: Mr. Li, is it going to be a long time before the show is over? li rongsheng: Just one more act. It will be over soon. (The two men sit down.) wang xingui: I never thought I’d get a job with Su Hongji. li rongsheng: You said you wanted some peace and quiet. wang xingui (happily): That’s right. And Su Hongji’s place is just perfect.14 Liansheng did a pretty good job with this. That’s friendship. li rongsheng: But your first day on the job you may run into a little excitement. wang xingui: What excitement? li rongsheng: Tomorrow Mr. Su is celebrating his fortieth birthday. There is going to be a party for him at his mansion in Bull’s Horns Alley. They’re having a private performance of opera. And Mr. Wei is singing. wang xingui: Really? (He smiles very brightly.)

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li rongsheng: Absolutely. He is going to sing A Nun Longs for Secular Life.15 Mrs. Su specially requested it. Mr. Wei has never performed it before. wang xingui (not paying attention): Excellent. I get to see some opera tomorrow. li rongsheng: All the stars will be there, and for the finale they are all going to get up onstage together and do Grand Wedding in the Enemy Camp.16 The party will last until morning, no doubt. wang xingui: How fortunate to have the opportunity to see that. Looks as if my luck is really turning this time . . . How many are there in Hongji’s—(correcting himself ) in Mr. Su’s family? li rongsheng: It’s a big family. There is Su Hongji’s mother, his wife, his senior concubine, and his second concubine. The third concubine died last year, but this year at New Year’s he brought in a fourth concubine. He has five children, three young gentlemen and two young misses. The oldest young gentleman is sixteen this year. wang xingui: Three concubines . . . Do you know which of the three concubines is the favorite? li rongsheng: You need to ask? The youngest of course. wang xingui (lowering his voice): What is her background? li rongsheng: Her family are theater people. (wang xingui gives a small smile.) They say she’s from a well-known family and has an education. I’ve met her a couple of times. She’s actually very friendly, very nice. There is nothing unpleasant about her personality at all. Oh yes, she’s watching the opera with Chief Justice Su right now. wang xingui (perking up): Really? (It is silent for a moment, then the sound of cheering comes from the theater.) (Sighs) Mr. Li, I hope you forgive me for complaining, but what makes Su Hongji so great? Ten years ago, before he was anything, he was about as poor as I am now. We lived only a block apart, and when we saw each other, which we did sometimes, we addressed each other as equals. But now . . . li rongsheng (sympathetically): People like us have to accept our fate. What can you do? wang xingui: Do you know how he got rich, I mean actually? (li rongsheng shakes his head.) (Moving closer to li rongsheng and lowering his voice) He was an opium smuggler! That’s a capital offense! li rongsheng: No surprise there. Nobody ever got rich being honest. wang xingui (angrily): But he is an official, of the highest rank! An official! Officials are nothing more than bloody crooks. li rongsheng: Not so loud! wang xingui (laughs loudly): Nobody else knows the score, but I’m very clear about it. I tell you, when he sees me, he isn’t going to act all high and mighty with me. I’ve got his number. He can’t play the big shot with me. He—

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li rongsheng (stands up suddenly and waves his hand at wang xingui): He’s coming. (wang xingui shuts up, slumps his shoulders, and turns away. su hongji and, following him, xu fucheng come in through the door from the corridor.) li rongsheng (respectfully): Mr. Su, so glad you’re here. (su hongji nods grandly.) Sit down please. su hongji (extending his arm toward xu fucheng and indicating the kang): Do sit here, please. xu fucheng (murmuring in response): Mm. (su hongji and xu fucheng sit on the edge of one side of the kang. su hongji, the so- called official, the so- called chief justice—one may pause over this title, but it does name the position that su hongji holds—is a middle-aged man of around forty. He is dressed in satins and silks, which marks him as a man of unparalleled power and arrogance. When he walks he struts in a supercilious manner, and when he sits he slouches lazily. He is full of bluster and in conversation tends to break out in loud laughter for no discernible reason. There is no mistaking that he is a man of influence and privilege who has done very well for himself. He is enjoying his season of fame, wealth, and success. Not everything wang xingui has said about su hongji is a lie, but much of what he has said is unreliable. His wounded pride is the main reason he has claimed that su hongji came from a humble background. Perhaps su hongji did start out a poor wretch and did bring himself up by his bootstraps. Or perhaps he was born into an official’s family but the family fortunes declined, but then perhaps su hongji’s fortunes took a turn for the better. Or perhaps everything wang xingui has said is nonsense and su hongji inherited his rank and privilege, and that is how he became a big official who cuts such a grand figure. In truth, so- called high-ranking officials like su hongji have been around forever. They are nothing new. And people have forever believed that there is nothing better in life than rising to high official rank, because that is the route to riches. High official rank has always been known to be the source of all wealth and power. It is a rule. Why should one expect su hongji to be an exception to the rule? Therefore, it doesn’t matter at all what he was once like or how he once lived. We do not need to speculate about how he acquired his position and rank. These days he gets to govern others and do whatever he wants, simple as that. How could he not put on airs? How could he not end up rich? The other stranger in the room is su hongji’s friend, xu fucheng, who is yet another rich official. He is around thirty years old, and he seems not to have been an official for very long, which would explain why he is still somewhat forthright and sincere and just a bit more cautious than su hongji, a bit more reserved. But, in the end, the two are “jackals from the same lair,” and any difference between them is only a difference of degree.) su hongji (coughs and then takes a white handkerchief from his sleeve and wipes his mouth): You haven’t been here before, Fucheng? xu fucheng (bowing slightly): No. This is the first time. li rongsheng (bringing over two cups of tea): Tea for you.

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(su hongji nods. li rongsheng goes to a corner of the room and sits down on a bench. wang xingui still has his back turned. A burst of applause comes from the theater.) su hongji: We came back here at just the right time. When the show ends in a minute everybody will be pushing and shoving; it would have been difficult to fight our way through. xu fucheng: Mm. su hongji: Liansheng will be offstage in just a minute. We won’t have to wait long at all. (There is another burst of applause.) So, Fucheng, my good man, what do you think? Was the performance engaging for someone like you who hasn’t seen much opera? xu fucheng: It was excellent! Excellent! . . . It’s just that . . . I didn’t really understand it all that well. su hongji (a little stiffly): Well, that’s how it goes. That’s how it goes. When I first started watching opera I was the same way, then I gradually became acquainted with it. Then I got addicted to it, and now “I cannot go a day without seeing the gentleman.” xu fucheng (half jokingly): And would “the gentleman” be Wei Liansheng? su hongji (laughs heartily): I’ll introduce you to him in a minute. Not only is he a very versatile performer, but he is refined and cultured. (Gives a thumbs-up) He is the genuine article. xu fucheng: It’s right what they say, “You can find a loyal and trustworthy man in the smallest of towns, and there are talented men everywhere one goes.” Plus you have an eye for talent. su hongji (tickled and proud): No, no. Not at all. (Another resoundingly loud round of applause and cheering comes from the theater. After a brief moment of drums and gongs, a suona blows, marking the end of the per for mance.) (Standing and walking toward the door that leads to the stage) Here he comes. Here he comes. (The door curtain is pushed aside, and wei liansheng runs down the stairs from the stage into the dressing room. He stops in front of su hongji.) su hongji: Liansheng! wei liansheng (catching his breath): Chief Justice Su! (He hands the horsewhip to li rongsheng.) su hongji (in a tone suggesting great closeness): Liansheng. Come, let me introduce you. (Indicating xu fucheng) This is Mr. Xu; he has just been made salt commissioner for the south. (To xu fucheng) This is Wei Liansheng. Mr. Wei. wei liansheng (cupping his hands together in salute): Mr. Xu. Thank you for gracing me with your patronage. (Removing his cape) Please, have a seat. (li rongsheng hurries to take the cape from wei liansheng. xu fucheng returns to where he was sitting. wei liansheng goes to the dressing table, looks in the mirror, and begins to remove his makeup. li rongsheng helps him take off his hair

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pins and headdress and places each piece in a small damask case. su hongji stands at wei liansheng’s side and watches him remove his makeup.) (Turning to su hongji) Have you been here long? su hongji: We got here just in time for your part. (Points to xu fucheng) Mr. Xu will be leaving in four or five days to take up his new post. Today was his first time seeing you perform. (wei liansheng turns and smiles at xu fucheng.) xu fucheng: I don’t know a thing about Peking opera. I’m a neophyte. But I really think you sang well, Mr. Wei. Today was my first time hearing you sing, but unfortunately it may also be the last time. I’m leaving in just a couple of days. su hongji: No, no. You have another chance tomorrow. xu fucheng: Oh yes. Tomorrow at your home. wei liansheng (turning to xu fucheng again): That’s right. Tomorrow evening we will be celebrating Chief Justice Su’s grand occasion. su hongji: Come now, come now. It’s no grand occasion, just friends getting together. But, Fucheng, tomorrow Liansheng is going to sing A Nun Longs for Secular Life. Now that is a very fine work. xu fucheng (nodding): It is very well known, very well known. I will listen with the greatest respect and attention. su hongji (clapping wei liansheng on the shoulder): Right then. You get your costume off, and Mr. Xu and I will go first and wait for you at the Autumn Flower restaurant. We’ll all have a meal and some conversation. (Checks his watch) It’s still early, only twelve. (He turns to leave.) wei liansheng (standing up): Don’t go quite yet. (Turns to wang xingui) Let me present you. This is Chief Justice Su. wang xingui (bowing and saluting): Sir. (su hongji draws himself up like a big shot and regards wang xingui and wei liansheng blankly as if he has no idea what this is all about.) wei liansheng: I mentioned this to you, remember? I said I had found a house steward for you? su hongji (pretending that suddenly he has remembered): Oh yes! Good good good. What is your name? wang xingui (respectfully): My name is Wang. su hongji: Mm. Fine. As it happens we have an affair at my house tomorrow. Show up at my place early tomorrow. Do you know where it is? Bull’s Horns Alley . . . wang xingui (standing at attention): I know the place. su hongji: Right. Right. Liansheng can tell you. (Nods to wei liansheng) That’s all good then. Get changed and come join us. xu fucheng: Shall we go around front and fetch Fourth Mistress? su hongji: Fourth Mistress? No need to go get her. I’ve already spoken to her. I told her to go home after the performance. Orchid is with her, which is good, plus she has a horse carriage of her own.

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xu fucheng: Mm. su hongji: Liansheng, by the way, Yuchun wants to study Peking opera with you. wei liansheng: Fourth Mistress wants to study Peking opera? su hongji: She wanted me to tell you. wei liansheng: I’m just afraid I won’t do a good job teaching her. su hongji: Humph. As if women could learn opera. (Laughs loudly) They just make a big racket, that’s all. Fucheng, my man, let’s go. Liansheng, we’ll be waiting for you. Don’t be long. wei liansheng: Of course. See you soon. (wang xingui walks to and stands beside the door to see su hongji and xu fucheng out. Already he is conducting himself like a household servant.) xu fucheng (halfway out the door he turns back): See you shortly. (xu fucheng and su hongji exit through the door to the outside. li rongsheng continues to help wei liansheng with his costume.) wang xingui (walking over): Liansheng, friend, I am not even going to try to express my thanks for this. This is not something that just saying thank you can cover. (Looking as if he is moved to tears of gratitude) To put it simply, I will remember for the rest of my life what you have done for me. wei liansheng: Listen to you . . . (Very pleased) The timing was right. Tomorrow is Mr. Su’s birthday. If you do a good job on your first day and make a good impression on him, everything will be easy from there on in. wang xingui: My good young friend, you’re a good man. (chen xiang comes in from outside. Following him are two young women, miss zhang and miss yu.) chen xiang: Liansheng, good work, good work. wei liansheng: Mr. Chen. chen xiang: Liansheng, let me introduce you. (Indicating miss zhang) This is Miss Zhang, and (indicating miss yu) Miss Yu. (wei liansheng nods politely to each in turn.) wei liansheng: Please have a seat. It’s filthy and a mess back here—so sorry. (The young women exchange a look and laugh. The two women are Peking opera fans. They go to school and do needlework in their chambers, and beyond that they are into opera. But they are not completely “liberated” and cannot shake the feeling that men are wolves and should be feared and avoided. When it comes to actors such as wei liansheng, however, they cannot help themselves; they feel a tugging on their heartstrings. They often sneak out behind the backs of their parents to come to the opera, and when a star they are fond of comes out onstage, they blush and their hearts beat faster. Unconsciously, they lower their heads and lower their eyes, as if they think the man onstage could see through them and understand their secret. When they go home after the opera, they always end up sitting in their rooms replaying in their minds what they saw while the music lingers in their heads. They can while away hours thinking about an actor’s subtle angry look or his faintest smile. These things occupy them even

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in their dreams. When they are with their girlfriends, miss zhang and miss yu often end up talking about their secrets without really meaning to. They are, of course, cautious. Even when laughing most freely, they observe a limit and do not allow themselves to say too much. Naturally, if somebody else mentions wei liansheng or another star, they hang on every word. They wanted to meet the actor of their dreams, of course, and they knew this would take a little courage. Once they did meet him, then what? they wondered. What should they say? How should they dress so as to make a good impression? They even planned clever and original things to say. But now that they are faceto-face with wei liansheng all their clever words are gone. Looking at the famous young actor sitting there in front of them taking off his makeup, they cannot tell whether he is a god or just a very beautiful human being. miss zhang is a little flustered and doesn’t know what to do with herself. miss yu is trying desperately to calm herself; it looks as if “her heart is full and her silence speaks volumes.”) miss zhang (finally finding something to say): No need . . . No need . . . No need to be so polite. (She turns red.) chen xiang: Miss Zhang is a classmate of mine, Liansheng. Miss Yu is my cousin. They both really like watching you perform. wei liansheng: Rongsheng, get them some tea. (li rongsheng stops what he is doing and goes to get tea.) miss zhang: You don’t . . . you don’t . . . (She is having trouble getting the words out again.) wei liansheng (having removed all the hairpins and jewelry from his hair): Excuse me for a minute, I need to wash my face. chen xiang: Go ahead, go ahead. Don’t mind us. They came here to watch you get out of costume. Someday they want to come see you get into costume. (wei liansheng goes over to the washbasin to wash his face. li rongsheng puts the tea on the table, and the two young women thank him. Then he returns to the task of putting away the things on the table. miss zhang tugs at the front of miss yu’s jacket; they look at each other and smile. chen xiang picks up the horsewhip that li rongsheng has placed on a chair and cracks it. wang xingui sees that his presence is unnecessary and decides to leave.) wang xingui: I think I’ll be going, pal. wei liansheng (looking up): Okay. Tomorrow . . . wang xingui: Don’t worry about me. I’ll go over to Bull’s Horns Alley first thing tomorrow morning. You’ll be there for the birthday party too, right? wei liansheng: Yes. We’ll see each other tomorrow. (He goes back to washing his face.) wang xingui: Right. Bye now. (wang xingui exits through the door to the corridor.) chen xiang: Liansheng, did you hear me cheering for you? wei liansheng (absentmindedly): Yeah.

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chen xiang (imitating an opera actor’s miming of the motion of riding a horse): As soon as the curtain opened and you came out, I gave you a big cheer in welcome. Altogether I yelled “bravo” for you in eight different ways. (The two young women giggle.) Those two were cheering for you too. miss zhang (embarrassed and turning red): Chen Xiang! (miss yu picks up her teacup and takes a drink. wei liansheng dries his face with a towel, then rubs on moisturizing cream.) wei liansheng (searches for something to say): The different ways of cheering for a performance are kind of interesting. (miss zhang, angry, makes a face at miss yu. wei liansheng takes his lined shirt and vest from the clothes rack and walks behind the screen.) (From behind the screen) Sorry. Why don’t you three have a seat? chen xiang: Change your clothes. Don’t worry about us. (li rongsheng has taken everything that was on the table and the gauze hair wrap et cetera from the clothes rack and put it all in the wooden box, which he now closes.) (Handing the horsewhip to li rongsheng) Straightening up? li rongsheng (taking the horsewhip): Yes, thank you. (li rongsheng also gathers up the swords, spears, and so on that are out on the table and exits with them through the door to the stage.) miss zhang (crosses over, tugs at chen xiang’s sleeve, and whispers): Chen Xiang! You awful creature! chen xiang: What’d I do? (The young women are very worked up, and they grab hold of chen xiang. He points at the screen behind which wei liansheng is changing his clothes. Both women fix their eyes on chen xiang and glare at him.) Liansheng, we’d like to trouble you to do a particular opera for us. Is that okay? wei liansheng: Sure. Just tell me what opera. chen xiang: The Tale of the Red Whisk.17 A lot of our classmates and friends want to hear you sing it. wei liansheng: Why pick that opera of all things? That is precisely the one opera that I don’t do well. (chen xiang signals to the women that they should answer.) miss yu (shyly): You sing so well, Mr. Wei. All of us love that opera. wei liansheng: Okay then. I’ll give it a try. miss yu: When can you do it? wei liansheng: I have to rehearse it first. Today is the third of the month, it’ll take five days—I’ll do it the evening of the eighth. (miss yu is so happy she can’t stop herself from jumping up in the air.) chen xiang: Excellent. A lot of people we know will show up for it, I’m sure. Tomorrow I’ll figure out how to get a notice in the papers. wei liansheng: Don’t overdo it. If I mess up, I’ll lose face. miss yu: Don’t be ridiculous. Mr. Wei, you’re being too humble.

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chen xiang: That’s what we’re always saying about you. We always say that what is so great about you is that you aren’t arrogant, which is terrific. I’ve found that truly extraordinary people are good-humored and treat others well. It’s poseurs who make a big fuss about everything. (Grimaces) The hell with them—they aren’t worth a damn. (auntie ma comes in from outside. As soon as she is in the room she notices that it is filled with strangers and so she stops short.) (Threateningly) What are you doing! auntie ma (scared stiff ): I . . . I . . . chen xiang (yelling): Speak up! What do you want in here?! auntie ma (too scared to say anything): I don’t . . . I don’t . . . (Turns and walks out) I don’t want anything. (Scared, auntie ma runs away.) chen xiang (following auntie ma with his eyes): Who the hell does she think she is? (Having changed his clothes, wei liansheng comes out from behind the screen. He is buttoning up his vest.) wei liansheng: Who was that? chen xiang: Some beggar woman. (Proudly) Just a sneak thief. One look and I could tell she was up to no good. She was thinking there’d be nobody here and she could steal a few things. Good thing we were here. wei liansheng (his vest buttoned, he walks to the full-length mirror and looks himself over): That’s right. You find all manner of people backstage. miss yu: You should be more careful in the future. It would better if you kept the door closed and locked. (miss zhang, indeed, acts on this and shuts the door to the corridor. li rongsheng enters from the stage.) chen xiang: Rongsheng, somebody wandered in just now. She was hoping to steal things. I yelled at her and drove her off. If she hadn’t been so old, I would have hit her. li rongsheng: Thanks so much, really. chen xiang: So we’ve closed the door. Best if you keep that door closed from now on. li rongsheng: Absolutely, absolutely. (li rongsheng goes behind the screen and picks up the clothing wei liansheng has changed out of and takes it to the kang to fold. wei liansheng takes the silk scarf from the clothes rack, looks in the full-length mirror, and drapes the scarf around his neck. The two women signal to chen xiang.) chen xiang: Liansheng, do you have any free time tomorrow? wei liansheng: What’s up? chen xiang: We want you to come get your photo taken with us in costume. wei liansheng (frowning despite himself ): I’m afraid tomorrow’s no good. chen xiang: You’re busy? wei liansheng: Tomorrow Chief Justice Su is having a birthday celebration at home. We are performing there. chen xiang: Well, day after tomorrow then.

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wei liansheng (shaking his head): Uh, you know . . . (With an expression that is both proud and annoyed, he picks up a stack of invitations from the table and waves it) Look at this. What free time do I have? chen xiang (glancing at the women): What can you do? Some other time then. wei liansheng (worried he has offended them): But we can do it as soon as I’m free, for sure. chen xiang: Fair enough. We’ll get in touch to set it up. (miss zhang tugs at chen xiang’s sleeve and nods toward the door.) Right. We’ll say goodbye then. (chen xiang and the two women turn to leave.) wei liansheng: Miss Zhang, Miss Yu. We’ve been poor hosts to you. I feel bad about that. miss yu: We’ve taken up a lot of your time—we’re the ones who should feel bad. (From behind, miss zhang pokes miss yu; this is an expression of approval.) chen xiang: Come on now, everybody’s being too polite. Bye now, bye. (chen xiang pulls the door curtain aside and the three exit.) wei liansheng (standing by the door and bowing politely): Take care. Sorry for not seeing you out. (li rongsheng has finished folding wei liansheng’s costume, and he bundles it up in a large piece of patterned blue cotton.) (Walking back): Ah . . . (Puts his hand on his head and says with annoyance) It’s enough to drive you crazy. li rongsheng (with the tone of an older brother): Don’t say that. They mean well. wei liansheng: They mean well . . . (Between tears and laughter) But it’s more than a person can take. li rongsheng (noticing wei liansheng’s expression, with concern): You’re tired. You should make it an early night. wei liansheng: Can’t. Justice Su is waiting for me at the Autumn Flower for a late dinner. (li rongsheng looks at wei liansheng with sympathy but does not say anything.) (Stands still for a moment) I’m going now. (He heads for the door.) li rongsheng (stopping wei liansheng): You need to wait a minute. Auntie Ma is coming to see you. wei liansheng (surprised): Auntie Ma? What does she want with me? li rongsheng: Ershazi got arrested and locked up by the police. Auntie Ma wants you to talk to Justice Su on Ershazi’s behalf and get him out. wei liansheng: What can Justice Su do about it? li rongsheng: Ershazi got arrested because he got drunk and fell asleep on Justice Su’s doorstep. He’s locked up in the “detention center” on Bull’s Horns Alley. wei liansheng: Then you need to see Police Chief Chen, right? Justice Su might not know anything about this. li rongsheng: Whatever you think is best is fine.

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wei liansheng: If she doesn’t show up soon, I’ll have to go. (Suddenly chen xiang runs back in.) wei liansheng: Why, Mr. Chen. chen xiang (grabbing hold of wei liansheng and catching his breath): Liansheng . . . question for you. wei liansheng: What? chen xiang: What opera are you doing tomorrow at Justice Su’s home? wei liansheng (without enthusiasm): A Nun Longs for Secular Life. chen xiang: I’ve never seen that. I’d like to. wei liansheng: They’re really putting me on the spot. I can’t sing Kunqu opera. Old Mrs. Su would have to pick that piece. What can I do? chen xiang: We want to hear it. What can we do? wei liansheng: So come watch. chen xiang: We’re afraid they won’t let us in. wei liansheng: It’s a birthday party. They’ll probably let you in. chen xiang: If they don’t let us in, can we come find you? wei liansheng: Sure. Sure. chen xiang: Justice Su’s mansion is on Bull’s Horns Alley, right? wei liansheng: Right. The first big red doors near the west entrance to the alley. chen xiang: Great. See you tomorrow. The girls are waiting for me out front. wei liansheng: See you tomorrow. (chen xiang turns and rushes out. We hear him speaking just after he exits.) chen xiang (from outside): Who’s that! (Angrily) You! You’re back. You want a whipping? (auntie ma is outside the dressing room.) auntie ma: I’m . . . I’m here to see Mr. Wei. chen xiang: You’re looking for Mr. Wei too? (wei liansheng hurries out and runs into chen xiang, who is coming back in followed by auntie ma.) Liansheng, this is her. She was here a while ago trying to steal stuff and almost got away with it, and now she’s . . . wei liansheng: No, no. You’ve got it wrong. This is a neighbor of mine, Auntie Ma. She’s come to ask me something. auntie ma: Mr. Wei, you have to help me. chen xiang (stands stock-still for a moment): Well . . . (Losing interest) I’ll be going then. (chen xiang rushes out.) auntie ma: Mr. Wei, I, I came looking for you four times. I’m just . . . (She starts to cry.) wei liansheng: Settle down, settle down, Auntie Ma. Have a seat, catch your breath. Slow down and tell me about it. li rongsheng: Liansheng, I’m leaving. (To auntie ma) Auntie, don’t worry. We can handle Ershazi’s problem. I’ve told Liansheng all about it. (Picks up the box in one

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hand and the bundle of wei liansheng’s costume in the other) Auntie, I live a long way from here. I have to be going. auntie ma: Don’t worry about me. You go on. (li rongsheng puts down the box, goes to the kang, picks up the skullcap, and puts it on. He picks up the box again and exits through the door.) auntie ma: Mr. Wei, I’m an old woman with no money. Please, you really must help me with this. You know that if Ershazi doesn’t get out it’ll be the end of me. wei liansheng: Have a seat, please. (auntie ma sits on a stool.) You just relax and leave the rest to me. I guarantee you that he’ll be out tomorrow. When did this happen? auntie ma: Just last night, but in just a day the boy already is in terrible shape. Rongsheng said that Justice Su was at the opera tonight. Please talk to him for me and get him to let Ershazi go. I’ll always remember you for this good deed. wei liansheng (a little pleased with himself ): I’ll be seeing Justice Su in just a little while. He is waiting for me at the Autumn Flower for a late meal right now. auntie ma (surprised and happy): Well that’s perfect. (Stands up) Are you going now? wei liansheng (nods): However, we can handle this without going to Justice Su. auntie ma: Who will you go to then? wei liansheng: I’m also good friends with Police Chief Chen. (Thinks it over) But then again it’s not worth going to him over such a small thing. auntie ma (perplexed): Small thing? wei liansheng: Yeah. He probably couldn’t be bothered to even check into something like this. auntie ma: What do we do then? What do we do? wei liansheng: Aha! I’ve got it. Bull’s Horns Alley is in the Fifth District. I know Director Liu, the head of that district. I’ll have a word with him tomorrow, and Ershazi will be out in no time. auntie ma (completely at ease now): Well then . . . (Bowing and cupping her hands together in salute) Thank you so much . . . wei liansheng: You know what they say, “It is not the official at the top that matters but the official on the spot.” With something like this it’s better to go to a lowerranking official than a higher-ranking one. (Noticing that auntie ma is bowing) Come on now, what are you doing? auntie ma: Good deeds are rewarded in kind. May heaven protect you, may you take a good woman as a wife in the coming year, may you be blessed with sons and grandsons, may you live well and live long, may you rise in rank and get rich. wei liansheng: Auntie Ma, I’m not an official, how I am going to rise in rank? auntie ma: You seem like an official to me. You’re always spending time with officials. (Seriously) Honestly, I knew that if I came to you it wouldn’t be in vain. Today midday, when I was at my wit’s end, I went to Blind Zhao’s and had him do a divination. He said that it was Ershazi’s fate to be locked up but it didn’t matter because an important man would save him. Well, hasn’t it come out just like he said it would?

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wei liansheng (laughs): Blind Zhao was just spouting nonsense, and you believed him. auntie ma: Heavens! What do you mean nonsense? Didn’t everything he said turn out to be right? It may have been Ershazi’s fate that this would happen, but it was still his fault. I’ve got to be stricter with him from now on and not let him drink anymore. He’ll take his cart out, and then he’ll stay put when he gets home. He’s a grown boy; he should be a little smarter about things. This time your connections have saved him, but what happens next time if we can’t find you, Mr. Wei? Blind Zhao says we should keep to our station and live quietly. If Ershazi had kept this in mind he wouldn’t have gotten in so much trouble. wei liansheng: Okay then. I’ll take care of it first thing tomorrow. But now I’ve got to leave right away for the Autumn Flower. Justice Su is probably tired of waiting. auntie ma: You get going. That is important, don’t be late. (To herself ) Who would expect to find such a good man these days? wei liansheng (ready to leave but stopping himself ): Auntie, have you had anything to eat? auntie ma (suddenly turning pale): No. I haven’t felt like eating. wei liansheng: You have to eat. Don’t think I don’t know that you need what Ershazi makes to get by. If he doesn’t work for a day it means you don’t eat for a day. auntie ma: I won’t lie to you. All I had left to my name was a single string of cash, and I used it to pay Blind Zhao to do the divination. wei liansheng: That’s what I thought. (Takes out some money) Take it. Nothing is more important than food. Especially as you’re getting on in years, Auntie. auntie ma (taken completely by surprise): How . . . how . . . how can I take your money? (Locks her hands behind her back) I can’t . . . wei liansheng: Take it. Don’t act like a stranger with me. auntie ma (takes the money and holds it tightly): Mr. Wei . . . (She chokes up again.) wei liansheng: Go on now. Go home. Go home and get some rest. auntie ma (moved to tears): Mr. Wei, there is nothing I can ever do to repay your kindness. wei liansheng: Enough of that. Enough of that. auntie ma: I’ll go home then and wait for news. wei liansheng: Okay. auntie ma (again she bows and salutes): Mr. Wei . . . wei liansheng: Stop worrying. (auntie ma exits through the corridor door.) wei liansheng (standing by the door to see her off ): Auntie, you really don’t need to be so polite with me. You knew me when I was a kid. You know you really should call me by my first name or my nickname. When you call me “Mr. Wei,” “Mr. Wei,” it sounds like we’re strangers. auntie ma (from outside the door): Mr. Wei, how can you say that!

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(auntie ma exits. wei liansheng returns to the middle of the room and looks all around. He is feeling very happy and fulfilled. He should head straight for the Autumn Flower, but he is finding it a little hard to calm himself down. He feels comfortable in the room—it is pleasant and it suits him. He can’t bring himself to leave right away. He walks in front of the full-length mirror, stops, and regards himself. He looks to himself as if he were glowing. From somewhere comes the sound of Peking opera music.) wei liansheng (picks up the horsetail whisk that is hanging on the mirror frame and begins singing into the mirror): “In ancient times there was a monk named Mulian who went to the gates of hell to save his mother. How far then to Soul Mountain? Tens of thousands of miles and more . . . All praise Amida Buddha!” (wei liansheng hears giggling from behind. When he leans slightly to one side he can see someone else reflected in the mirror. He finishes the phrase he is singing and the gesture that goes with it, then stops short. The person whom he can see in the mirror has parted the red curtain on the stage door and is standing at the stop of the stairs, where she has been for a moment or longer. She is a beautiful woman of around twenty years old. It is yuchun, su hongji’s fourth concubine.) yuchun (smiling prettily): You seem very relaxed, Mr. Wei. (yuchun is exceptionally beautiful. We encounter countless numbers of people in our daily comings and goings, and putting aside the majority, who are poor and destitute, many are dignified, refined, graceful—goddesses descended to earth, the envy of mere mortals. But how many among us have the discernment to be able to tell at a glace that behind a beautiful countenance there may lie a poor, suffering soul? yuchun is in the prime of her life; she is the very picture of youth. Her face is a well-proportioned oval; her eyebrows and nose are slender and pleasing; her mouth curves slightly, like a bow. Below her long eyelashes her large eyes shine like stars. They can light up a dark day. In the era during which our story takes place, people had no choice but to accept what fate brought them. yuchun’s twenty years of life have been filled with worry, hurt, sadness, and despair. No one would ever guess that this young woman has already experienced the many vicissitudes of life. She is intelligent by nature and sensitive, and so naturally she is not satisfied with her life as a fourth concubine. She has all the clothing and food she wants, and she is waited on hand and foot by servants, but this is not happiness to her. Real happiness is waiting for her if she can find it, and she is looking. She is smart and beautiful, but she is unhappy and unfulfilled. yuchun is exceptionally beautiful, and this is true of both her appearance and her character. yuchun has also had an exceptionally difficult life, but she has never revealed this to anyone.) wei liansheng (standing still, struck dumb for a moment): Fourth Mistress . . . (He puts down the horsetail whisk in his hand.) yuchun: You didn’t expect to see me here. (Turns back, lifts the door curtain, and says quietly) Orchid, come in. (yuchun comes down the stairs. orchid follows yuchun into the room. orchid looks all around as if she had a secret. orchid is sixteen or seventeen years old, and she is what for centuries has been called by the colorful cliché “a pretty maid.” She is a

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bond servant and bond servants are for waiting on people, and so orchid follows yuchun everywhere like her shadow. She has long since grown accustomed to taking directions and doing exactly as she is told. “Tell her to go east and she dare not go west; tell her to beat the dog, and she dare not curse the chicken,” as they say. She lives her life in ser vice to others. The role of the “pretty maid” is to make her mistress look good. orchid does not have a life of her own; all she knows is submission to the will of another. Perhaps she has more than this on her mind, but if so she has never said a word about it. Girls like orchid probably had unfortunate childhoods and lost their parents early on and so came to live in another’s house. The lucky among them get to live peaceful lives. If they are unlucky they live in a hell of beatings and scoldings. And what happens to them in the end is too sad to discuss. When a girl reaches the right age she is married off, or her master takes her as a concubine and she becomes a slave for life.) Wait for me out at the end of the corridor. Mr. Wei and I have something to talk about. (orchid nods. Her big bright eyes shine and the suggestion of a sweet smile is on her lips. She goes out through the door to the corridor. The room is silent. yuchun runs a hand through her hair and smiles.) Mr. Wei, you are a saint. wei liansheng (a little undone and scared by her allure): Me? yuchun (biting her lower lip): Uh-huh. A saint. wei liansheng: Fourth Mistress . . . you’re making fun. yuchun (shaking her head): No, I never make fun. (She fixes her gaze on wei liansheng.) wei liansheng (ill at ease): Then you . . . yuchun (giving a thumbs-up): You are really great! You are the Goddess of Mercy out to save the poor and suffering. You answer all prayers. And not only do you save those who pray to you, you also give them money so that they can eat. wei liansheng (relaxing): She’s a neighbor of mine. A poor old woman. It’s terrible how poor she is. And now her son has gotten into trouble. If I didn’t help her out she would die of worry, or hunger. yuchun (nods): Yes, she has an unfortunate lot. wei liansheng: She does, right? You agree she’s had it rough, don’t you? yuchun: But there are a lot of people who have it worse than she does. For example, the beggars you see every day on the street. wei liansheng (doesn’t know what to say): Well . . . yuchun: I know, whenever you come across a beggar you always give him some money. Right? wei liansheng: Right. One should help the poor. yuchun: But have you ever thought about this: You give a beggar money and he can eat lunch. But what about his dinner? And what is he going to do tomorrow? There are millions of people in the world who don’t have enough to eat. How many can you run into? How much money do you have to hand out?

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wei liansheng: I . . . I . . . that’s . . . yuchun: And so I say there is a kind of person who has it worse than people like her. wei liansheng: What kind of person? yuchun (quickly changing the subject): Enough about that, enough about that. Mr. Wei, you are something, aren’t you? You’re famous and you know a lot of wealthy people. wei liansheng (turning red): I never said . . . yuchun: Just listen. (Reaches out and picks up the stack of invitations from the table and begins to go through them) I bet that there is one here from Police Chief Chen, Director Liu, of the Fifth District, and a bunch of other bureau chiefs and department heads. And, of course, don’t forget that Chief Justice Su of “ours,” and all sorts of other big shots and little shots that I haven’t even heard of. (She throws the stack of invitations back onto the table with a flick of her wrist.) wei liansheng (stammering): They come to see me . . . yuchun: Of course they do! Mr. Wei, you’re famous and you’re rich, and you have some influence too. Life is good—you have everything you want, right? wei liansheng (a little put out, stares at yuchun for a moment): I never think about it like that. yuchun: That’s exactly right. You “never think about it,” and that’s because you’re completely satisfied with your life. (wei liansheng looks at yuchun.) My goodness! I forgot, that chief justice of “ours” is waiting for you. He’s been waiting at the Autumn Flower a long time; he might be angry. You should go. wei liansheng (hesitating): It’s okay . . . yuchun: I am very glad that “it’s okay,” because I still have something to ask you. wei liansheng: You . . . (Tentatively) Is it that you want to . . . ? Earlier the chief justice said . . . yuchun: What did the chief justice say? wei liansheng: The chief justice said . . . I don’t know if this is right or not, but he said you wanted to study Peking opera. yuchun: Yes indeed. I want to study opera with you. (yuchun advances a step; wei liansheng retreats a step.) yuchun (smiles enigmatically): In fact, I just mastered two different scenes. The first was a real opera that you and that older lady performed. Then there was a fake opera that you and your reflection performed. (Strikes a pose) Take a look. What do you think? Do I have it down? (Tilts her head) If I spend a lot of time with you, I’ll learn a lot more opera. Think so? wei liansheng (doesn’t know what to say): Fourth Mistress? yuchun: You really are a little confused, aren’t you? You’re thinking that we’ve only met two or three times and haven’t said more than six sentences to each other, but that doesn’t matter. That doesn’t stop me from being concerned about you. I think we can be close, close friends. I may be Chief Justice Su’s Fourth Mistress, but you’re a star that Chief Justice Su is fond of and patronizes.

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(wei liansheng lowers his head and says nothing.) You’re a little afraid, right? wei liansheng (with a little steel in his voice): No. yuchun: Good. Then I have a question for you, okay? Have you . . . (She starts to speak, then laughs, as if it is a little difficult to say what she wants to say, and as if she is a little sad.) wei liansheng: Go ahead and ask. yuchun: Then I will, I will ask you. Have you ever felt . . . ? Do you ever feel that the really pitiable one is yourself ? wei liansheng (at a loss): No, I’ve never . . . never felt that. yuchun: But how come I do? It always seems to me that my life is more pitiable than anyone’s, if you can even call it a life. wei liansheng: I don’t believe it. How can you say that? yuchun: You too, you’re not so different from me; it’s just that at the moment, you . . . wei liansheng: How can you say I’m more . . . yuchun: Wouldn’t you say that’s right? wei liansheng: Me? yuchun (hurrying to speak and waving her hand quickly, as if shaking a child’s drum rattle): Quiet. Quiet. I don’t want you to tell me right away. You need to go home and think it over. Think about it overnight. If you realize what it is I’m saying, then come see me tomorrow. wei liansheng: Tomorrow? Come see you? yuchun: Yes, tomorrow. You’re coming to our place tomorrow, right? wei liansheng (quietly): Yes. yuchun: In the morning you’ll pay your birthday respects and then perform late in the day, right? (wei liansheng nods.) You’ll probably go onstage around twelve; you’ll get into costume at eleven. Come at ten. I’ll have Orchid tell you where I’ll be waiting for you. wei liansheng: Mm. (yuchun fixes her gaze on wei liansheng and does not remove it. Her eyes are like flames that burn into wei liansheng’s heart.) yuchun (with emotion): I, I really don’t know how to explain it to you. wei liansheng (feeling awkward, looks for something to say): You’ve been standing this whole time—have a seat. yuchun (laughs uncomfortably): Now it occurs to you to ask me to sit down? Don’t get all polite with me. (Retreats a step) I’ve said too much. (Quiet for a moment) You really should be going. wei liansheng: It’s okay . . . yuchun: And I should be going home. (But not moving) Don’t forget, when you go home tonight think it over. You and I are the most pitiable of people. Think about what makes us so pitiable. Aren’t the most pitiable of people those who don’t realize how pitiable they are?

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wei liansheng: Yes. yuchun (smiling): Okay then? (Toward the outside) Orchid! (orchid enters.) Mr. Wei, I’ve upset you, but you’ll have to excuse me for that. I had a few drinks tonight to toast that chief justice of “ours” on the eve of his birthday. (Puts a hand to her flushed face) I’m a little drunk. (orchid exits. yuchun walks out, then turns and looks at wei liansheng, her eyes bright. wei liansheng is a little dazed and feels as if he were dreaming. He stands in the middle of the room not knowing quite what to do.) (Curtain.)

A CT 2 (The next evening, just after nine o’clock, in the “golden room” 18 of “the Bull’s Horns Alley Mansion of Chief Justice su hongji.” A “golden room” should not be large, and this room is small, quiet, and cozy. A “golden room” is, of course, for keeping beautiful things, and so chief justice su hongji has come up with a good name for it; he calls it “Madam’s Study.” Starting on the left there is a door—this door leads to the room next door and also to stairs down to the garden—and on the door is a red satin door curtain, on which an image of Ma Gu, the goddess of longevity, is embroidered in bright colors. To the left of this door is a mahogany Eight Immortals Table, an old-fashioned table for eight, with matching chairs. In front is a Fujian-made lacquered zither table inlaid with gold flowers. To its left are a bookshelf made of nanmu wood and a beautifully engraved writing desk with a chair as impressive as a throne. Colorful, bright porcelain stools in the shape of small drums are placed all around the room. On the zither table are two bonsais with ferns and pretty little rocks covered in moss. The four treasures of the scholar’s study—writing brush, ink stick, ink slab, and paper— are arrayed on the writing desk. The bookshelf is full of books that are neatly stacked in their cases one upon another; it looks as if they have never been opened. A painting with calligraphy livens up one of the light green walls. The characters are too small to read what they say. The painting on the upper half is of a beautiful woman. On the wall facing us is a tall window. The window lattice, which is carved in a floral pattern, is papered in white. The shutters are open to allow the night air to gently waft in. Outside, tree branches slant across the window. These are the branches of a crab apple tree that is in full bloom, and the blossoms seem to want to reach through the window. A garden is outside the window; it is spring and everything is in full flower. Bright stars are in the sky; the stars are now in view, now hidden. It is a beautiful spring evening. On the Eight Immortals Table is a pair of brightly burning candles, one decorated with a dragon and the other with a phoenix. Their red flames fill the room with a happy light. Also on the table are an elegant tea set, a cigarette case, and a bowl of fruit. The chairs are covered in red fabric embroidered with flowers, and red satin cushions are on all the porce-

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lain stools. A lantern hangs in the middle of the room, but it is not lit, and so the room pulsates with a red glow from the red door curtain, the red chair covers, and the red cushions. yuchun is dressed entirely in new clothing of soft white satin that is embroidered with little red flowers. Her shoes are also white satin embroidered with flowers. Her hair is done up and she is wearing makeup. There is a flower in her hair, her earrings sparkle, her lipstick is red, and her complexion is pale with a pink flush. She is smiling faintly, but behind this is melancholy, wistfulness, and, it seems, slight intoxication. She is seated at the table, leaning over it, cheek in palm, staring blankly at the flickering candle flames. The flames light up her face with a rosy glow. orchid too is wearing new clothes and has a flower in her hair, and this adds to the celebratory feeling of the room. She is sitting on a stool, her back to her mistress, head down, lost in thought. A long moment passes in silence.) yuchun (quietly): Orchid. (orchid does not hear.) (Turning her head and speaking more loudly) Orchid! (orchid jumps; this time she has heard, but she pretends not to have.) (Standing up) Orchid! orchid (slowly turning around): What?! yuchun (half seriously, half in jest): You little devil. Pretending you didn’t hear. Come over here. orchid: Just say what you want. Why do I have to come over there? yuchun (raising an eyebrow): Are you coming over here or not? (Raising her fist) I’ll beat you. orchid (walks over lazily): Here am I. What is it? yuchun (looking orchid up and down): You little monster. Sitting there daydreaming. What were you thinking about? orchid: Slaves like me just keep to our station. How would I dare be thinking about anything? yuchun: I detest you. orchid: Fourth Mistress detest a lowly maid? Nobody would believe that. yuchun (grabbing hold of orchid’s hand): Sweetie, how could I hate you? There is a favor I have to ask you. orchid: Orchid’s purpose in life is to do as Fourth Mistress says. You don’t need to ask a favor. yuchun (nodding toward the door): Run an errand for me. orchid: What errand? yuchun: I want you to go do something for me. orchid: Go where? yuchun: Out front, where they are doing the opera. yuchun: Go there and do what? yuchun (staring long and hard at orchid): Don’t play dumb.

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orchid: Heavens! Is that fair? You tell me to go do an errand for you, but you won’t tell me where to go, and then when you tell me where to go, you won’t tell me what to do when I get there. Now you say I’m playing dumb? (Turning to leave) I’m going to go complain to somebody. yuchun (grabbing her): Don’t you dare. orchid: Hey! I sure am. Nobody should be that unreasonable. yuchun (pleadingly): Oh! Quit messing around. I’m begging you. orchid: I thought you wanted to beat me. yuchun: Just listen to me for a second . . . (orchid ignores her.) (Really annoyed now) Fine! (She lets go of orchid and sits down.) orchid (laughing): Fourth Mistress. yuchun (waving her hand): Get away from me! Leave me alone! orchid: I was just kidding. You’re taking it too seriously. yuchun: I wasn’t kidding with you. orchid: What do you want me to go do out front? Tell me and I’ll go right now. yuchun: You seem to have forgotten all I’ve done for you. Next time your boyfriend comes around I won’t let you see him. orchid (immediately losing her smile and pouting her lips): Oh! You’re on about that again. I’m not doing anything for you now. yuchun: Have a heart. You must have a heart. orchid: I don’t care what you say, I’m not going now. yuchun: Okay, okay. We’ll both stop messing around. But you need to go down there for me. orchid (changing her tone): Then you have to tell me what you want me to do. yuchun: Go . . . go to the Longevity Hall19 and see if Mr. Wei . . . orchid: Only that? What’s the big deal? Why didn’t you just tell me in the first place and save all that trouble. yuchun: You miserable little . . . Go down front and see if . . . orchid (grinning): See if Mr. Wei is here and if he is, tell him to come here because Fourth Mistress wants him to “teach her opera.” yuchun: And if he isn’t here yet . . . orchid: And if he isn’t here yet, wait. Wait for him to come. yuchun: You’re terrible. Get going. orchid: You tell me to go do something for you and then you say I’m terrible? I’m not going now, no matter what you say. yuchun (frowning): That’s enough horsing around, enough! Get going. (Pulls open the sleeve on her right arm, revealing a gold bracelet) I’ll give you this bracelet. orchid: I don’t think it’s so special. (orchid turns and runs out the door. yuchun raises her hand to hit orchid but can’t reach her. We hear the sound of orchid’s footsteps as she runs down the stairs. Suddenly, we hear the sound of people talking on the staircase.)

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su hongji (his voice coming from the bottom of the stairs): Why are you running? Orchid! orchid (her voice also coming from the bottom of the stairs): I’m going out front to listen to the opera. su hongji (heading up the stairs): You don’t have to run! Silly girl. (orchid doesn’t answer; we assume she is out of earshot. su hongji walks into the room looking very relaxed.) (Gesturing) Yuchun, I knew you’d be hiding up here by yourself, taking it easy. (yuchun doesn’t stir; she sits staring into the candle flames, ignoring su hongji.) (Walking over to yuchun and cupping her chin in his hand) What’s wrong? yuchun: I had too much to drink—my head’s spinning. su hongji (as if he were talking to a child in need of cheering up): So, you were trying to impress us! No matter, you’ll feel better shortly. Aren’t these dragon and phoenix candles nice? They make the room very cheery, which is just right for our double happiness. (yuchun stands up and walks to the window. su hongji is a little taken aback by this, and a look of displeasure crosses his face.) (Unhappily) Yuchun! yuchun: Yeah? su hongji: It’s that you’re not feeling well, right? yuchun: No. su hongji: If you’re feeling okay then you should be happy. It’s my birthday today. This is a special day for me, and it’s a special day for you. yuchun: I know. I’m not unhappy. su hongji: Hm. Okay then. You know there are a lot of guests down there and I’m very busy. I made a special trip up here to come see you because you had too much to drink and I was concerned you weren’t feeling well. yuchun (bowing and saluting su hongji): Thank you so very much. su hongji (smiling broadly): Nothing for you to be so polite about, dear . . . (He walks forward.) yuchun (retreating toward the door): I’ll get you a cup of tea. su hongji: Don’t. I don’t want it. (He reaches out and grabs hold of yuchun. yuchun tries to duck out of the way but cannot, so she stands still.) Yuchun, listen, I asked Mr. Xu Fucheng to meet me up here to discuss something. yuchun (indifferently): Uh-huh. su hongji: A business proposition. yuchun (moving to leave): I’ll get out then. su hongji: But that’s just it, I don’t want you to leave. I want you to stay and do your best to . . . to be a good hostess to him. yuchun: How can I . . . ? su hongji: I have to talk him around to seeing things my way and it is going to take some effort. Xu Fucheng is an honest fellow . . . (Notices that yuchun is not at all interested in what he is saying) Did you hear? I want you to stay here.

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(We can hear someone on the stairs.) He’s here. (He lets go of yuchun. wang xingui lifts the door curtain and leans his head into the room.) wang xingui: Mr. Xu is here. (su hongji nods and walks out. wang xingui lifts the door curtain as high as he can.) su hongji (from outside the door): This is my wife’s study. Come in, come in. xu fucheng (from outside the door): Gladly, gladly. (xu fucheng enters, followed by su hongji. wang xingui, with polite formality, lowers the door curtain and leaves. xu fucheng and yuchun greet each other.) You’re not watching the opera, Fourth Mistress? su hongji: Yuchun had too much to drink. She’s having a rest here. xu fucheng: Fourth Mistress can really hold her liquor. Yesterday she drank an awful lot, and today she had even more than yesterday. yuchun (coldly): I can’t drink. And I didn’t have that much. (xu fucheng does not know what to say.) su hongji: Fucheng, sit down, sit. Let’s sit and have a chat. (su hongji and xu fucheng sit on adjacent stools.) I’m thirsty. Yuchun, tell Orchid to go make a pot of tea. yuchun: Orchid . . . su hongji: Oh, how stupid of me. Orchid’s gone down to see the opera. Get somebody else to do it then. yuchun: There’s hot water next door. I’ll go. (yuchun picks up the teapot from the table and goes out the door.) su hongji (watching her go): Fucheng, what do you think of my girl? xu fucheng: You’re lucky in love, indeed. su hongji: Have you thought about taking a concubine, my good man? I can be the matchmaker. xu fucheng (waving his hand repeatedly): No way, no way. I’m not in that class. That good fortune is not in the stars for me. su hongji: Your wife’s too strict to allow it! That’s got to be it. (He laughs much longer than is necessary.) xu fucheng: Actually no, that’s really not it. My wife and I both think that there’s much more peace and quiet in the house with fewer people. su hongji: Well then, if your wife doesn’t mind, you just leave everything to me. Just sit back and let me take care of everything. (xu fucheng loses his composure but covers up with a smile.) Your wife is truly a wonderful and respectable woman. She’s out front at the opera now, right? xu fucheng: Yes. It’s fun for her. She doesn’t go out to the opera that often. su hongji (shaking his head): Officials as upright as you are, Fucheng, are as rare as hen’s teeth these days. One has to be lucky to stumble across an upright official. (His tone both admiring and mocking) Ha . . . ha . . .

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xu fucheng (bashfully): I haven’t been an official long and I don’t have much experience. I need advice in a lot of areas, and so I hope you’ll take me into your confidence. su hongji: Oh, come now. Don’t be so polite. As long you and I help each other out and watch out for each other, and stay on our toes, everything is going to go smoothly for us, of course. xu fucheng (bowing): I am grateful for your advice. I am. (yuchun parts the door curtain and comes in with the teapot. xu fucheng looks very uncomfortable. yuchun pours tea into two cups on the Eight Immortals Table and hands the cups to xu fucheng and su hongji. su hongji smiles at her.) (Cupping his hands in salute) Sorry to put you out. su hongji: This is Pu’er tea from the imperial storehouse. It was given in tribute, and it’s excellent. Try it, Fucheng. It helps the digestion, sobers you up, quenches the thirst, and stimulates the salivary glands. xu fucheng (taking a sip): It’s very good, really. su hongji (also taking a sip): Shall we talk about our business now? yuchun: I’ll leave. su hongji (taking her hand): You don’t have to leave, you don’t. Better that you stay here. yuchun: No. I’m going for a walk in the garden. su hongji (giving in): Okay. You’ve had a lot to drink. A walk in the garden will do you good. Or go around front and watch some opera. Don’t mope around all by yourself. Why isn’t Orchid keeping you company? That girl! yuchun: I don’t want anybody to keep me company. I told her to go away. su hongji (affectionately): In a while you can go listen to Liansheng sing Longing for Secular Life. yuchun (nodding): Mm. (To xu fucheng) If you’ll excuse me then. xu fucheng (bowing): Of course, of course. Don’t mind me. (yuchun exits.) su hongji (pulling his stool forward a bit): Well? Shall we go over that idea of ours in detail and settle on a plan? xu fucheng: I don’t have an opinion. I don’t have any experience in this, and I’ve never . . . su hongji: You’ll learn in time. I promise you this business is a sure thing. (Drawing on the table surface with his finger) It’s the most profitable business there is. As long as we can get the goods here we’ll make a five hundred percent profit. Moving the stuff has always been the problem. Just think about it. A thousand miles and dozens of taxation bureau checkpoints, where you get cross- examined, hassled, and ripped off. You have to swallow your pride and talk your way around dozens of people. xu fucheng (shaking his head): I never knew it was that hard. su hongji (very pleased with himself ): But even so, you make money. xu fucheng: There is always a risk.

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su hongji: Gosh. Let’s be honest about it. There is not a single one of those guys who isn’t . . . (He gestures with his hand as if accepting cash.) You just make sure that everybody benefits a little, make sure everybody gets a little taste. Besides, it will be ministry goods, so no problem, right? xu fucheng: True, true. su hongji (getting to the point): That’s why this setup is so perfect. Every month your Salt Commission has vehicles coming and going, right? We’ll just use your vehicles to move the stuff. No inspections, no hassle. By our calculations we can make a tenfold profit for sure. If so, then after a year or two not only are we going to be set up for life but we’ll have so much our children and grandchildren won’t even be able to go through it all. xu fucheng: Well . . . su hongji (seeing that xu fucheng is uncertain): This is a foolproof plan. There is no reason at all for second thoughts. xu fucheng: I don’t have second thoughts. It just seems . . . (He cannot bring himself to say it.) su hongji: It seems illegal, right? xu fucheng (nodding): Yes. su hongji: If you’re worried about that, I should be even more worried, right? But look at it this way: we are just doing a little business on the side, and we’re not betraying the country or hurting any citizens. Plus we’re doing it for our children and grandchildren. In the history of the world no one has ever said it’s wrong to plan for your children and grandchildren. These days anybody who is an “honest and upright official” is an idiot. (xu fucheng lowers his head and is quiet.) Fucheng, I’m not trying to play the wise elder with you, but you really are green. I should treat you like a little brother. xu fucheng (a little displeased but forcing himself to be cordial): Yeah. I’m still learning. su hongji: Can I ask you how old you are? xu fucheng: I turned thirty two years ago. su hongji (clapping xu fucheng on the back and laughing): No wonder. You’re still very young. xu fucheng (in a quiet voice): I’ve never thought about all this. su hongji: But you have to start thinking about it. You’re still young and you don’t have many family responsibilities, but wait until the day comes when you have appearances to keep up like I do. When you have a big household you’ll understand just how important money is. You have no choice but to find a way to make some money. Even if not for your children and grandchildren then for your old age. (xu fucheng does not say anything.) And down the line you’re definitely going to have an appearance to keep up. You are going to need to start carrying yourself like a salt commissioner, otherwise people

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aren’t going to take you seriously. That’s why I was telling you that you should take a concubine. Same logic. Who ever heard of an important official who didn’t have several wives and concubines? (He laughs loudly.) xu fucheng (nodding): True enough. su hongji: Of course, you’re busy getting ready for your move, so we’ll have to put that off for now. We’ll work it all out in good time. As for that business venture of ours, it’s a golden opportunity that comes once in a lifetime. It won’t cost us much and it will pay well. We can’t miss this opportunity. xu fucheng: I’ll let Chief Justice Su take charge of that. su hongji: Of course, of course. Let me handle it, let me handle everything. (su hongji is satisfied with how the negotiations have gone and so he laughs loudly.) xu fucheng: And as for the specific method . . . su hongji: There is precedent, so we can get all the details squared away quickly. Let me get you a cigarette. We got involved in our conversation and I forgot to be a good host. (su hongji takes matches and two cigarettes from the cigarette case on the table, gives a cigarette to xu fucheng, and lights it for him.) xu fucheng: Thanks. su hongji (blowing a smoke ring): Let me check the details. (Opens a drawer, then suddenly turns back to xu fucheng) Fucheng, as they say, “The only reason for the long journey to becoming an official is the money.” We didn’t come by our positions easily. (The door curtain is lifted aside and wang xingui pokes his head in, then enters, carrying himself respectfully.) su hongji: What do you want?! wang xingui: Premier Lu is here to pay his respects on your birthday. su hongji (utterly delighted): Where is he? wang xingui (reporting his good work): I showed him to the small living room. su hongji (nodding): Good. Fucheng, let’s go see Premier Lu. We’ll finish talking about the details later. xu fucheng: It’s good there are still a few days left before I leave. We have plenty of time to talk later. su hongji: In that case I’ll go over everything carefully tonight, and we’ll make final plans tomorrow. (su hongji and xu fucheng are about to exit. yuchun enters.) su hongji: Yuchun, you’ve come just at the right time. Come down front with us for the opera. yuchun: No, I’m still dizzy. I’ll come as soon as my head clears up a little. su hongji: Okay. When you do, come find me. I’ll introduce you to Premier Lu. (To xu fucheng) After you, Fucheng. (xu fucheng and su hongji exit. wang xingui follows them. yuchun sighs lightly and takes a candle trimmer from its stand and trims the candlewicks. The room

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brightens a bit. Suddenly, wang xingui comes in, peering around as he does. yuchun, sensing that someone has entered the room, starts.) yuchun (spinning around): Who’s there? Oh, Mr. Wang. wang xingui (bowing and saluting): Fourth Mistress. yuchun: Do you need something, Mr. Wang? wang xingui: No. (Solicitously) I heard that you were a little indisposed, Fourth Mistress. yuchun: I’m fine. I had a little too much to drink. I’m a little dizzy, but I’ll be fine in a bit. wang xingui: Would you like something to eat to help get the alcohol out of your system? yuchun (taking a seat): No, thanks. Thank you for your concern. wang xingui (bowing and saluting again): I’m new here. The mansion is big and there are a lot of people. If I fail to look after you properly or make a mistake, I hope you will forgive me and put in a good word for me with the master. yuchun (understanding now why wang xingui has come and humoring him): No problem. There is nothing terribly difficult to do here. Just do your job well and you’ll be fine. wang xingui: Mr. Wei’s attendant, Li Rongsheng, told me that you were magnanimous and he was right. I’ll do my very best in everything. I don’t want to make Mr. Wei look bad for doing me the favor of a recommendation. yuchun: Mr. Wei recommended you? wang xingui: We’ve been close friends since we were small. yuchun: Oh. wang xingui (gradually letting himself speak freely): Liansheng is something like ten years younger than I am. Our families have been friends forever. His dad and my dad were close. We were playmates from when we were very young. He was so little then, running around in split-bottom pants; he even wore one of those flaps over his bare butt. (yuchun was looking quite melancholy because of all she has in her heart, but now she cannot stop a smile from crossing her lips. The smile gives wang xingui renewed confidence.) It was me who got Liansheng to study opera in the first place. His old man was not at all happy about it at first, but now look. “You can’t judge a person by his appearance and you can’t measure the sea with a bucket.” 20 That little kid is now a big star. yuchun (not at first interested in talking to wang xingui, she now cannot stop herself from asking questions): Oh? His father wasn’t in the opera? wang xingui: No. He was a blacksmith. (Quite haughtily) My father was a teacher, but we were neighbors and Liansheng was a cute kid, so I played with him a lot. yuchun: Who else is in his family? wang xingui: It’s sad. Five years ago his old man and his mom died within two months of each other. He also had an older brother, but he died of an illness last winter. (yuchun is silent.)

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You can never have everything, right? No matter how famous Liansheng becomes, fate has been tough on him. Losing his parents was bad enough, but he lost his brother too. He is a star on the stage, but offstage he is just an unlucky kid. (yuchun lifts her arm and looks at her watch.) All us friends of his want to find him a wife so he won’t be so alone and uncared for all the time. yuchun: It’s ten o’clock. Don’t you have things to do out front? wang xingui: I’ve got nothing to do. Nothing. All eighty tables at the banquet are taken care of and the guests are watching the opera now. yuchun (hinting that wang xingui should leave): I imagine you’re tired, Mr. Wang. wang xingui: I’m fine—it was nothing, Fourth Mistress. (yuchun, growing annoyed, goes to the window and looks out at the garden.) (Rambling on) It’s ridiculous, really. The pavilion they set up can fit only five, maybe six hundred people, but there has to be more than a thousand people here. At least half of them are people who just wandered in off the street. Some of them we don’t even know. They just got dressed up, put a little money in a red envelope, and came pretending they were here for the birthday party. In fact, they just want a free meal and free opera. (yuchun ignores him.) It’s jam-packed down there. Some of the audience is even up on the stage. (yuchun does not react at all.) (Realizing that yuchun is unhappy about something) I hear you’re going to study Peking opera with Liansheng? (yuchun turns around and gives wang xingui a look. She walks to the large chair by the writing desk and sits down with her back to wang xingui.) (Still not realizing he should adopt a less-familiar tone) It’s nice to sing a little opera when you’ve got nothing else to do. These days everybody likes to sing a little bit of opera . . . (Finally catching on) Well, you should get some rest. yuchun (turning around): Best that you go attend to the guests. There is sure to be something you can do. wang xingui (bows and salutes with cupped hands again): Understood. In future whenever you need something just tell me what to do. yuchun: Yes. In future, unless there is a specific reason, you don’t need to come up here. (wang xingui, abashed, turns and is about to leave. Suddenly there is the sound of lively footfall as someone comes running up the stairs.) orchid (yelling from the stairs): Fourth Mistress, Fourth Mistress! Your guest is here. (orchid runs into the room like a gust of wind. Seeing that there is someone else in the room she stops, surprised.) wang xingui: Been taking in the opera, Orchid? (orchid looks at yuchun, unsure what to do.) (Sensing that something odd is going on) I’m going down front. (wang xingui walks to the door and lifts up the door curtain.)

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(His expression is unreadable) Liansheng! (He lifts the curtain up high. wei liansheng stands in the doorway, not knowing whether to come in or turn around.) yuchun (standing up): Mr. Wei, you’re here. Do come in and have a seat. wang xingui: Oh, Liansheng is here for your Peking opera lesson. (wang xingui leaves the room. wei liansheng enters.) orchid (looking as if she has rid herself of a burden, she sticks out her tongue): Fourth Mistress, I want to watch some more opera. (yuchun takes orchid by the hand and leads her out.) yuchun: Go listen for a while, but then come back. orchid (laughs): No. (orchid pulls her hand away and runs out. wei liansheng, feeling embarrassed again, stands still where he is.) yuchun (smiling at wei liansheng): Have a seat. (wei liansheng says nothing as he sits himself down politely on a porcelain stool beside the Eight Immortals Table. yuchun sits down opposite him. In the quiet, the light from the red candles dances around the room.) Well, say something. wei liansheng (looks around and hesitates for a long moment): It’s nice here. yuchun: What’s nice about it? wei liansheng: The sound of the gongs and drums and all from down front—up here you can’t hear it at all. yuchun: Are you saying it’s quiet here? wei liansheng (nodding): Yes. yuchun: Do you know why it’s quiet here? wei liansheng (shaking his head): I don’t know. yuchun (pointing out the window): That small hill of rocks placed in the garden there, it blocks all the sound. wei liansheng: Right, as soon as I came around that hill I couldn’t hear the drums and gongs anymore. (wei liansheng stops talking, not knowing what else to say. yuchun looks directly at him and keeps her gaze on him.) (Made uncomfortable by being looked at) They did a good job with that hill. yuchun: How so? (wei liansheng can’t say and so he stops, at a loss. yuchun starts to laugh.) wei liansheng: Are you laughing at me, Fourth Mistress? yuchun: No, no. I’m just thinking the two of us are very dull. To listen to us, you would think I’d asked you to come here so we could talk about the hill in the garden. (wei liansheng laughs too.) Ridiculous, right? Okay, let me ask you a question. How did Orchid get you to come up here? wei liansheng: I was in the Longevity Hall; I’d finished paying my respects and I saw Orchid standing outside a window.

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yuchun: What did she say to you? wei liansheng: She nodded toward the back and then left. So I followed her and ended up here. yuchun: I mean, what did she say to you? wei liansheng: She didn’t say anything. yuchun: Then you’re quite clever. (wei liansheng blushes from his neck to his ears.) (Teasingly) Oh-ho! You’re turning red. (wei liansheng can sit still no longer so he stands.) What? You’re angry? Please don’t be, please don’t be. Let’s not argue, okay? I had too much to drink again. I’m still not sobered up from what I had yesterday, and I drank quite a bit today too. Don’t listen to half of what I say. As to which half, you . . . (Raises a hand and sweeps it toward a window) Hey! (Her gaze turns out beyond the window) Look at that big star! (yuchun reaches out and grasps wei liansheng by the hand. wei liansheng cannot help being startled.) Come with me and look at that big star. (Pulling wei liansheng by the hand, yuchun walks to the window and stands there.) Isn’t that crab apple tree annoying? It’s trying to bloom its way into the room. wei liansheng: I don’t think it’s annoying. yuchun: Then break me off a twig with flowers. (wei liansheng leans out and breaks off a spray of crab apple flowers.) Give it to me. (Takes the small spray of flowers and puts it in her hair) Let’s talk about that big star, okay? wei liansheng: Okay. yuchun (pointing): Do you see it? That big one there. wei liansheng: I see it. yuchun: It’s about to set. wei liansheng: How do you know that? yuchun: Don’t interrupt. Listen. There are two big stars in the sky. Before dark this star here rises up and goes ever so lightly across the sky. It goes from that part of the sky there to over there. It goes all the way to the west and then sets. As soon as it sets, the other star comes up from over there. One comes up in the east, one goes down in the west. Both stars are in the same sky, but in a thousand years, in ten thousand years, in all the years since Pangu separated the heavens from the earth, those two stars have never met. wei liansheng: Why not? yuchun: Who knows why not? I think maybe the two of them had a quarrel and went off in a tiff. The two of them really should get together, but this one always leaves just as that one shows up. When this one just gets here, that one leaves. (wei liansheng listens transfixed.) (Looking at wei liansheng) What are you thinking?

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wei liansheng: I’m thinking that they have a sad fate. It’s been decreed by heaven. yuchun: What sad fate? What heaven? That’s not the way I see it. wei liansheng (a little embarrassed): Well, what do you think? yuchun: I always think, wouldn’t it be nice if one day they did meet? What would they do then? (When wei liansheng doesn’t answer, she shoves him) I asked you a question. wei liansheng (gaining courage, moves a bit closer to yuchun): Certainly they would never be willing to part again. yuchun: Not necessarily so. There are advantages to being together, but there are advantages to being apart too, I say. Don’t you think so? wei liansheng (earnestly taking one of yuchun’s hands in his): I think it’s better for them to be together. (Suddenly, yuchun pulls her hand back and retreats to her seat beside the table. She laughs quietly.) wei liansheng (mystified): You’re laughing? yuchun (her laughter fades and she becomes serious): Mr. Wei, please sit down. I have a question for you. wei liansheng (his demeanor solemn, sits): What is it, Fourth Mistress? yuchun: Why did you come here today? wei liansheng (haltingly): To pay my respects to the chief justice on his birthday. yuchun: I mean why did you come up here, to this room? wei liansheng (a little ner vous): Because . . . because Orchid brought me here . . . yuchun (smiles slightly): You misunderstand. What is your purpose in coming here? wei liansheng (considers the question and realizes what yuchun means): You asked me a question and told me to go home and think about it until I’d figured it out and then come back tonight and tell you. yuchun: Well then, did you think about it? wei liansheng: I didn’t sleep at all last night. I thought about it all night. yuchun: Is it clear now? wei liansheng (dejectedly): No. yuchun: How could it not be? wei liansheng: I don’t know what to think. yuchun: Well, that means you didn’t even think about it. wei liansheng: No. It’s just that I don’t know how to say it. yuchun: Well, wait and let me ask you a question. Tell me, you didn’t come from a family of Peking opera performers, right? wei liansheng: I didn’t. I’m the first one in the family to go into the opera. yuchun: What did your dad do for a living? wei liansheng (very surprised at the question): My father? yuchun (nodding): Your old man. wei liansheng: He passed away some time ago. yuchun: I know. I’m asking you what his profession was. wei liansheng (cannot bring himself to say): He was . . .

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yuchun: What did he do? wei liansheng: He was . . . yuchun: Tell me. wei liansheng (feeling pressed, lies): He, he didn’t do anything. yuchun: He didn’t work? wei liansheng: That’s right. He stayed home. yuchun: He was an intellectual? wei liansheng (with a guilty conscience): Yes. yuchun: He didn’t work. He stayed home. Sounds like he had a bit of money, yes? wei liansheng (his voice weak): Not really, no . . . yuchun: Well, I guess I was just too unfortunate then. I am the one who had a truly hard childhood. I’ll tell you about the first part of my life some other time. The second part you should know already. wei liansheng (embarrassed): No, no. I don’t know. yuchun: Don’t play dumb. It’s not embarrassing. My dad sold me when I was sixteen. I come from what people call the “pleasure quarters.” I’m a prostitute. wei liansheng (astonished): Fourth Mistress, you . . . ! yuchun: Have I shocked you? You didn’t think I would say it so freely, did you? True, women with such a shameful past generally don’t talk about it. But stop and reconsider. What’s so shameful about it? It’s just because of poverty. And why are people poor? wei liansheng (at a loss): Why? yuchun: And why are people rich? wei liansheng (to himself ): Why? yuchun: You can’t even imagine how bad those days were for me. And not just me. There are countless people who suffer like I did. (Suddenly, her expression changes to a smile) But what is suffering? Do you know what suffering is? Did you know there is happiness in suffering too? (wei liansheng lowers his head.) Last winter Chief Justice Su bought my freedom and took me as his fourth concubine. Everybody said, “Yuchun, you’re so fortunate! Your luck is changing. No more hard times for you!” (Lifts wei liansheng’s chin with her hand) Lift your head up. Look at me! (wei liansheng doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry.) But that wasn’t good fortune and my luck hasn’t changed. I was just like a bird who got out of one cage and went right into another. I eat well and I have nice clothes to wear, but I am just his plaything. (Her expression darkens) In the middle of the night I get upset. I always think I hear someone calling me, saying, “Yuchun! You’ve sinned! How could you leave all your friends to their suffering? What gives you alone the right to enjoy a happy life?” (A large flame grows on one of the red candles and then fades; yuchun picks up the candle scissors and trims the wick.) (Angrily) Heaven is aware if I am enjoying a happy life or not. Heaven is aware if these nice clothes and this good food and this fancy house and these guests who

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flatter me and my doting husband and those fawning maids make me happy or not. (Stops) Liansheng! Listen to me! Everybody suffers. How can we turn our backs on our friends in their suffering? wei liansheng (confused): Turn our backs? yuchun: I’d guess that you’ve never considered yourself to be among the suffering, have you? You help people out, you rescue them from difficulty, but are you relying on just your own power? If you’re relying on the power of others, why are they willing to help you? You’re happy. What do you have to be happy about? You smile, but are you smiling from your heart? And not just that, have you ever asked yourself what the purpose of your life is? Have you thought about the fact that you’re a man. A real man. (Gives a thumbs-up) A true man . . . (Pained and embarrassed, wei liansheng turns away.) You’ve made no progress at all from when we met last night until now. Your father was a blacksmith. Why would you try to hide that from me? Do you think you’re above having a father who was a blacksmith? Do you think that intellectuals are better than blacksmiths, or carpenters, or tanners, or gardeners, or bricklayers? Do you think you . . . wei liansheng: Enough. Enough. That’s . . . yuchun: No. I know this is making you uncomfortable, but you can’t stop me. You must . . . wei liansheng: Say what you like. I’ll listen to it all. yuchun: You came here today by the avenue, right? wei liansheng: Yes. yuchun: You came down the avenue, you crossed through downtown. You saw hundreds and hundreds of people going about their business. wei liansheng: It’s busy every day. yuchun: That’s right. And you, and me, we’re part of that crowd too. Everybody goes about his own business. Some people are happy, some are not. Some walk fast, like they are in a hurry to get something done, and some stroll along slowly. Some look up at the sky, some keep their heads down, thinking. Everybody carries himself differently. Just like bald people, blind people, hunchbacked people, fat people, skinny people, tall people, and short people are all different. wei liansheng: That’s right. No two people are alike. yuchun: But all people are the same in one way. wei liansheng: What way? yuchun (bluntly): Their heads are empty! (Thinks about this) Well, maybe I should say that they have brains but they never use them. (Lightly) And if you don’t use something, after a while moss grows on it. It gets rusty. Its parts stick. What a shame! Decades go by entirely wasted. wei liansheng: You’re talking about me. yuchun (waving her hand): I’m not finished yet. Among all of these people are some who are naturally intelligent and decent. They have a good foundation. But as the saying goes, “As virtue rises one foot, vice rises ten.” True, there are many precious

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stones on earth, but they get buried in muck and disappear. It’s actually not so difficult, however, for them to get back to what they once were and shine again. wei liansheng: How do they do that? yuchun: All they need is a little luck, a lucky opportunity. wei liansheng: Luck? A lucky opportunity? yuchun: Put it this way. It’s like a needle: you get stuck, a little blood is drawn, and it gets your attention and makes you think about things you’ve never thought of before. Will you become a sage? A buddha? A devil? A demon? Will you go up to heaven or down into hell? It all depends on a single change of heart. wei liansheng (beginning to understand): What happens after that change of heart? yuchun: Then and only then do you become fully human. Then and only then do you know what real happiness is and what real suffering is. Then and only then do you start to ask, what is happiness? What is suffering? (Notices that wei liansheng is quiet) Understand? wei liansheng: A little. yuchun: Not good enough. You must understand completely. Otherwise you’ll spend your life in a fog, and how is that any different from living like an animal? (yuchun stops.) wei liansheng (lowers his head, sounds a little troubled and a little regretful): Maybe my entire life has been wasted . . . yuchun (slowly brightening): Not at all. No part of a life is wasted. We make mistakes every day, every hour, and every minute; we have all kinds of shameful ideas and the worst sort of arrogant pride. But the road forward becomes clear as soon as we recognize our shortcomings and admit our mistakes. wei liansheng: A new road? yuchun: That’s right. When we know what road we should take, everything we have done wrong in the past becomes the compass that points our way down the new road. (There is a moment of quiet.) yuchun: Precious stones and gems are everywhere, but they aren’t so easy to find when they’re covered with dirt. But if you’re lucky enough to find one, you should pick it up, clean it, and put it someplace where it can do some good. wei liansheng: Who are you talking about? yuchun (not anticipating this question, she can’t quite bring herself to answer it, laughs): It’s just a metaphor. wei liansheng: No it isn’t. You have to answer my question. (yuchun shakes her head.) If you don’t answer me then I won’t be able to understand. yuchun (laughs harder): What . . . what won’t you understand? wei liansheng: Everything you’ve been talking about. yuchun: You mean you really want me to say it out loud? You want me to tell you that you have a lot of fine qualities and are a decent person but it’s a shame that . . .

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(She points at wei liansheng but does not finish the sentence. wei liansheng is no fool; he has understood what yuchun has been implying, but he wanted to hear her say it directly. Now that she finally has, wei liansheng does not know what to do.) (Trying to break the tension) Oh, what’s wrong with me? What nonsense have I been saying? I’m being a terrible hostess. (Goes to the table, pours a cup of tea, and gives it to wei liansheng) Allow me to wait on you. (wei liansheng takes the teacup, raises it in his cupped hands, and takes a sip.) Do you smoke? wei liansheng: No. yuchun (nodding): Good. Good boys don’t smoke. (wei liansheng can’t help but laugh.) What are you laughing at? wei liansheng: You’re acting like you’re my mother. (yuchun laughs too. The room is warm and quiet. Neither of them moves; neither wants to disturb the stillness. A moment passes.) yuchun: Liansheng, maybe those two big stars in the sky can never meet, but I want to find a friend. (Lifts a finger) But there is a condition. wei liansheng: What condition? yuchun (sits, her arms wrapped around her knees, gazes out the window): It’s this. My friend must be a member of the “poor and downtrodden.” It can’t be somebody who has it good. I’m not fit company for anybody who has it good. wei liansheng (with a rush of emotion): Fourth Mistress! yuchun: No. Call me Yuchun. wei liansheng (surprised and happy): Yuchun! yuchun: Because you do seem a bit like my friend. wei liansheng: I . . . yuchun: But unfortunately you’re not downtrodden. You have it too good. You wouldn’t want to be like me. wei liansheng (desperately): Yuchun, don’t criticize me anymore. I get it now. I’m not happy. I know my happiness isn’t real. Yuchun, you have to tell me, what do I do? What should I do? yuchun (as if to herself ): This is no place for us. Take me away somewhere. wei liansheng (startled): Leave? yuchun (shaking her head): Oh! Maybe I’m being too impetuous. One must always allow others the time to think things over. (yuchun casts a glance at wei liansheng that is full of feeling.) wei liansheng (standing up suddenly): Yuchun! (He stops again, unsure of himself. yuchun sits still, watching wei liansheng. All is still for a moment.) yuchun (smiling slightly): My silly boy. (wei liansheng, seized by a moment’s resolution, moves forward and takes yuchun’s hand tightly in his.) What are you doing?

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(wei liansheng hesitates and cannot find words.) Let’s take another look at that star. (wei liansheng helps yuchun get up and the two of them walk shoulder to shoulder to a window. They lean on the windowsill in silence. Suddenly, the door curtain is lifted slowly and slightly, and wang xingui cautiously leans his head in and looks around. Then he draws back again and the door curtain closes.) (Spinning around and looking at the door) Who’s there? wei liansheng (also startled): What is it? yuchun: I thought there was somebody there. (All is still.) wei liansheng: It’s nothing. yuchun: I thought I saw the door curtain move. wei liansheng: It was the wind. yuchun (quietly): Be waiting at home for me tomorrow morning at ten o’clock. I’ll come to your place. wei liansheng (taken by surprise): To my house? yuchun: You’ve paid me a visit, I should return it. (The two of them turn back around.) wei liansheng: You don’t know where I live. yuchun: I do. I have for a while. wei liansheng: Ten o’clock. Can you get away? yuchun: You don’t know them. They never go to bed until the middle of the night. No one will be up at ten o’clock. It’s the best time if I want to get out. The people in this place think the night is the day and the day is the night. wei liansheng (moved): Yuchun, how can I ever thank you? yuchun: We can talk about that tomorrow. You should get going. Get yourself down front. You need to get in costume soon. You have to do a good job with this performance of A Nun Longs for Secular Life. wei liansheng: I’m going be lousy. How could I be in the mood to sing? yuchun: But you have to sing well. I’m going to be watching. wei liansheng: And that is our burden. The given hour comes and we must sing. We must sing whether we want to or not. yuchun (teasingly): Nobody forced you to pick this line of work. wei liansheng (a little reluctant to leave): I’ll be on my way then. yuchun: Go on. (But stopping him) Hold on. (Takes the crab apple blossoms from her hair and places them in wei liansheng’s hand) In a moment that little nun can wear these in her hair. (The candles’ orange light flickers, and the flowers outside the window are silhouetted against starlight.) (The curtain falls.)

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A CT 3 (We are at wei liansheng’s residence. It is not a home. wei liansheng has no home because “he is a star on the stage, but offstage he is just an unlucky kid.” He is alone, friendless, uncared for and has no kin to turn to. Therefore, while this is the residence of one of the most famous actors of the era and can be said to be beautifully furnished, it still has some of the cold cheerlessness of a single man’s apartment. We are looking at a small room outside a bedroom; its walls are papered in white with a floral pattern, and it is spacious and bright. In the wall to the left is a door that leads to the bedroom; it is hung with a green woolen door curtain. Above the door is a horizontal scroll on which “Simple Living” is written in gaunt, forceful clerical script in the manner of the Cao Quan Stele.21 To the right of the door and set against the wall is a mahogany and rattan couch with an inclined backrest. The room’s central scroll hangs above the couch and on it is a four-line poem of seven characters per line by Gong Dingan written in the gentle, fresh, and flowing calligraphic style of Zhao Mengfu.22 The poem reads, “I cannot help but praise you to everyone; / So mad, so gallant, so gently refined. / Your heart shines on others like a Qin moon; / Your feelings at my departure resemble clouds above mountains.”23 The dedication reads, “A gift for Liansheng, my companion in literature.” And it is marked, of course, as presented by the Master of the Pavilion of Adornment or the Study of Adornment or some such. There is a tall plant stand in the corner, on which is a “pure heart” orchid,24 its green leaves branching out in all directions. It has a few blossoms that bend upward, as if the flowers were trying to rise into the sky to gaze down on the world. On the wall facing us is a row of windows, the lower halves of which are papered in white. The upper halves of the windows are papered in green gauze. The blinds are rolled halfway up. Below the windows are arranged four chairs and two tea tables. On the right are two lattice doors that are closed; outside these doors is a garden. On the wall to the right hang two large gilt- edged picture frames with paintings of wei liansheng in costume. A zither table is against the wall and on it are a matching pair of cylindrical, hollow hatstands, a larger flower vase, and a clock. Stuck down into the hatstand on the left is a feather duster; in the flower vase is a long pheasant tail feather of the type worn on warriors’ helmets in Peking opera. A number of round stools are scattered about the room. Tossed on the couch are a few articles of stage clothing and a horsewhip. On the left in the corner is a drum stand that holds a single-skin drum, on which are drumsticks and clappers. A huqin is on the floor leaning against the drum stand. On the floor in front of a tea table is a pair of thin-soled boots embroidered with pink flowers. The boots look as if they have been carelessly removed and tossed aside rather than put away; one is upright, the other lies on its side. The room is in some disorder. It is eight or nine o’clock in the morning. Outside it is a bright, beautiful day and sunlight is dappled across the walls. When we look closely, the light seems to move. Spring, after all, is in motion. li rongsheng arrives at the door. He lifts the door curtain and puts one foot inside. Seeing that there is no one in the room, he stops, surprised. Then he enters, turns, and shuts the door behind him. He is carrying a birdcage, which he lifts up

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high as he whistles at the bird inside the cage. He regards the bird for a long moment, then puts the cage on a tea table.) li rongsheng (calling through the door to the bedroom): Liansheng. (There is no answer.) (To himself ) Not up yet? (Walking toward the door to the bedroom) Liansheng, are you up yet? The sun’s all the way up and coming in the window. (He is about to lift the door curtain. The door curtain lifts aside and wei liansheng enters. He seems a little distracted.) You’re up. I thought maybe you weren’t up yet. wei liansheng: Morning, Rongsheng. What have you been doing this morning? li rongsheng: I got up early and took my bird for a walk by the city moat.25 Then I stopped for a while at the Number One Teahouse and had some tea. Then I made my way over here. wei liansheng: Oh. (He sits down.) li rongsheng: How did you sleep last night? wei liansheng (sluggishly): I slept poorly again. I was tossing and turning all night. li rongsheng: You still can’t sleep? (Joking) That’s because you did yourself in singing Longing for Secular Life two days ago. wei liansheng (making a face): You’re an older brother to me so you shouldn’t make fun of me like that. li rongsheng (somewhat apologetically): I can tell you’re not feeling well. We should call a doctor in. wei liansheng (waving his hand repeatedly): No, no, no. I’m not sick. No need for that. li rongsheng: Well, this won’t do. What do you say I come over and spend the night here. Keep you company. wei liansheng (continues to look distracted): That’s okay. I’m fine. li rongsheng (studying wei liansheng’s face and pausing for a moment): You’re still not that familiar with the lento passage in The Tale of the Red Whisk. You’re performing it tomorrow night. Time to practice, yes? wei liansheng (nodding): Mm. li rongsheng (reaches into the folds of his gown and takes a huqin in a cloth case from a pocket): Han Qing said he has to go to the East City to see a friend. He asked me to help you practice this part today. (Removes the cloth case and drapes it on his knee, and tunes the huqin) Okay? Want to give it a try? wei liansheng (distractedly): Sure. (li rongsheng can sense wei liansheng’s mood, and he lifts his head to look at him. li rongsheng wants to say something; he opens his mouth, but he doesn’t speak. li rongsheng plays the opening bars, but wei liansheng does not start to sing.) li rongsheng (stops playing): What’s wrong? Sing.

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wei liansheng (coming to his senses but stalling): I, uh . . . I forgot the lyrics. li rongsheng: Hey, you couldn’t have forgotten. wei liansheng: I really can’t think of them. Get me started. li rongsheng: “Although favored among the singing girls . . .” (He starts playing the huqin again.) wei liansheng: Hold on. What’s the rest? li rongsheng: Gosh, how could you have forgotten everything? It’s only four sentences in all: “Although favored among the singing girls, Hongfu’s youth and beauty deserve more, my young woman’s heart is in turmoil because spring is not my own, and who will still love a beautiful woman when she grows old?” Got it? wei liansheng: I remember now. li rongsheng: Okay. Let’s try it again. (li rongsheng starts playing and finishes the opening bars. wei liansheng opens his mouth but does not sing.) li rongsheng (stopping): What’s with you? (wei liansheng shakes his head.) (Displeased) You forgot again? wei liansheng: No. (Rubs his forehead) I, I . . . li rongsheng (putting the huqin and its case on the tea table at his side and speaking in a sincere, somber tone): Liansheng! (wei liansheng lifts his head up slightly and tries to get across how he is feeling in the look he gives li rongsheng.) Something is troubling you, right? wei liansheng (evasively): No, nothing. li rongsheng (standing, crossing to wei liansheng, and placing a hand on his shoulder): Liansheng, don’t try to fool me. You can’t fool me. If I think something is troubling you, then something is definitely troubling you. You’ve been wandering around like a lost soul for days now. I’ve seen it. I wanted to ask you about it, but I kept it to myself. Still, two friends as close as we are shouldn’t have anything they can’t talk about. You need to tell. Tell me. wei liansheng (forcing a smile): It’s nothing, Rongsheng. There’s really nothing the matter. li rongsheng: I have never seen you like this, ever. You can’t sleep and you can’t get out of bed in the morning. You can’t even remember the lyrics to a piece you’re about to perform, and still you refuse to practice, you refuse to rehearse. What is wrong with you?! wei liansheng: Nothing’s wrong. li rongsheng (retreating and taking a seat): Well, now you’re just treating me far too much like a stranger. You really aren’t treating me as a friend. wei liansheng: Rongsheng, don’t be angry. I’m in a little bit of trouble, but you just have to forgive me—I can’t tell you what it is yet. But I will tell you sooner or later. li rongsheng: Okay then. But what about right now?

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wei liansheng: I . . . I don’t want to do it anymore. I don’t want to do opera anymore. li rongsheng (shocked): Liansheng! Are you crazy?! What are you talking about? You don’t want to do opera anymore? wei liansheng: I can’t keep performing like this. I need a break. li rongsheng: Don’t get ahead of things. You’re going to have to deal with this The Tale of the Red Whisk. It’s been advertised in the papers, the posters are up, the tickets have even been sold. You’re onstage tomorrow night. wei liansheng (sighing): This business will eat you up. li rongsheng: Liansheng, you’re going to get a lecture here in a minute. wei liansheng: I need a lecture. Go ahead and lecture me. li rongsheng: Liansheng, I don’t mean that. Listen, yes, you’re in a tough business. But what line of work isn’t tough? That’s the way I see it. No job lets you work only when you feel like it. (wei liansheng stands up and begins to pace around the room.) Especially in our work, especially in the opera. You give it your all onstage, and why? You do it to please the guys in the audience. You’re still fairly young, but you’ve been onstage for half your life. So why now do you suddenly say you’re going to quit? wei liansheng (getting upset): Rongsheng, you still don’t understand me. li rongsheng (quite put out): I don’t understand you? I understand everything about you! When have I ever not been by your side over the last fifteen years? Especially these last five years when you’ve been without your parents. I don’t have any parents either and so I treated you even more like my own brother. After all that time, you say I don’t understand you! I’m your friend, and when you say things like that it hurts. wei liansheng (anxiously): Rongsheng, don’t be angry. I didn’t mean it that way. Don’t . . . (He sits down.) li rongsheng (sighing): Fine then. Liansheng, we’ve got nothing else to do today, so let me tell you what’s on my mind. wei liansheng: Go ahead. I’m listening. (He can’t help but steal a glance at his watch.) li rongsheng: Liansheng, we’re friends, it doesn’t matter what we say to each other. All that matters is honesty, right? wei liansheng: Rongsheng, I know that. li rongsheng: So all this time I have never complained about anything. I treated you right, you treated me right. Neither one of us has anything to complain about. wei liansheng: We feel the same. You don’t have to say anything and I know what you mean. li rongsheng: You don’t know as much as you think you do. You’re twenty-five. I’m thirty. wei liansheng (a little annoyed): Yes. You’re five years older than me. I’m five years younger than you are, sir. I know that.

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li rongsheng: Yes, but when I was having my success onstage, you weren’t even in the opera school yet. wei liansheng: I was still little then. li rongsheng (thinking about his past glory): For three years, from when I was ten through twelve, everybody in Beijing and the surrounding provinces knew about Li Rongsheng, the Peking opera huadan. Every day people came in droves to applaud him and yell for him! A lot of people were infatuated with him. Anytime Li Rongsheng’s name appeared on the program, the theater would be packed to the raf ters. wei liansheng: I’ve heard people talk about that. li rongsheng: Everybody said that in the future the kid was really going to be something, was really going to be great, better than ever, more popular, more famous, climb to even higher heights. But nobody ever stopped to think that the higher you climb, the harder you fall. (There is a moment of silence.) You’re right. This is a tough business. It’s just fate whether you succeed or fail. It’s too much a matter of chance. You look good in costume and makeup, you sing well, you act well, you thrive in the public eye, but you don’t stand a chance if heaven starts to get jealous, starts to envy you. The year I turned thirteen was the turning point—my voice changed. It cracked. It was like somebody was choking me. When the huqin started playing, I couldn’t sing a word. wei liansheng (with sympathy): Rongsheng . . . li rongsheng (laughs sardonically): “Seventy-two battles, victories all, but then the songs of Chu were heard, and next came crushing defeat.” 26 I was like the king of Chu, hemmed in at Gaixia and falling into an ambush. I was pushed back to the Wu River with no choice but to cut my own throat. Then, like a comet gone from the night sky, Li Rongsheng never appeared onstage again. wei liansheng: That’s all in the past. Why bring it up? li rongsheng: I couldn’t accept it. When I was a kid I always tried to do the right thing, always tried to be a good boy, always treated people well, never let a hint of a bad thought cross my mind. But heaven didn’t treat me right. Heaven gave me one nudge, one little nudge, and I fell out of paradise into hell, and I could never get out. But I would not accept it. I tore my throat to pieces and made an awful noise, but I couldn’t sing. My voice was ruined. So I changed roles and sang scholar and magistrate roles, but I wasn’t any good at that. So I sang the roles of generals and demons, but I couldn’t carry it off. I was a little kid, skinny, and so I couldn’t do martial roles. So then it was really over. There was nothing for me onstage. wei liansheng (beseechingly): Rongsheng, don’t say anymore. li rongsheng (smiles bitterly): “The real man doesn’t talk about how brave he used to be.” There is nothing to say anyway. But I just can’t forget how much it hurt. My patrons left me to patronize other actors, but I don’t blame them. The ones I can’t forgive are my teachers and classmates. They’d been like family to me, but one by one they just slipped away until they were all gone. Every night when the performance started, I’d hide away in an empty room in the courtyard in back of the theater and

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lie on a pile of straw in some out of the way place and cry. I could hear the drums and gongs pounding away in the theater and the audience making a huge noise yelling its approval. I was thinking those drums and gongs played for me. “Bravo” was shouted at me. The theater was lit up for me, no? I’d worn all those fancy embroidered costumes. But it all happened so fast. The blink of an eye and it had changed, it had all changed. (Stops) You have to remember, I was just a kid of thirteen then. wei liansheng: Rongsheng, it isn’t always going to be so bad for you. Things are going to get better. li rongsheng (waves his hand): You don’t have to try to cheer me up. I’m just talking for the heck of it. But hear me out. From then on everybody looked down on me. There are all kinds of derogatory names for bit-part actors, and they all fit me. I would sing anything, but I couldn’t sing anything well. I would take on any role, but I couldn’t do any role well. Whatever you needed, I’d do it. But I wasn’t right for any role . . . I don’t need to tell you how I’ve spent the last fifteen years. I could have left, but where would I have gone? I could have changed professions, but what would I have done? (Looks miserable and dejected) I could have killed myself, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it . . . It was that way for me until I saw you. wei liansheng: Saw me? What about me? li rongsheng: I wondered, what is it about this kid? His manner, his looks, his disposition, even his drive for recognition, he is just like I was. But luckier than me. His voice changed but he can still sing, and so what problem could there possibly be? His future is unlimited. I said to myself, okay, I’m ruined, I’ve got no hopes, so I’ll take my hopes, put them into this kid, and put all my effort into his career. (He bends over and takes a long Beijing Eight Inch pipe and tobacco pouch from his gown, fills the bowl with tobacco, lights it, and takes a puff.) After I made that decision, the rest was easy. And I’ve been your attendant for a long time now. (Sighs deeply and with emotion) Yes, you’re twenty-five, but I’m thirty. wei liansheng (with great emotion): Rongsheng, really, you . . . li rongsheng: Liansheng, you have no idea how I worry about you. I want every success for you; I want you to prosper and live a long, happy life. There isn’t a minute of any day that I’m not thinking about what is best for you. When you’re sick, I wish I were a doctor. When you’re hungry, I wish I were a chef. When you’re cold, I wish I were a tailor so I could make warm clothes for you. wei liansheng: Rongsheng, I’ve let you down . . . li rongsheng: If you don’t want to let me down, it’s easy. All you have to do is remember how lucky you are. You’re still young and you’re known all over China. You have a friend who will do anything to take care of you, and you have a lot of rich and powerful people as your patrons. Think about all the good deeds your ancestors must have done to make all this possible. And you don’t cherish everything that has been given to you? Heaven has treated you pretty well, and then on some arrogant whim you just say you’re quitting? You’re feeling a little out of sorts and so you say you need a break? True enough, when you’re young the grass always seems greener on the other side and you can’t help having doubts about what you’re doing from time to time, but the

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old saying is right, “When they ride horses and you ride a donkey, you feel bad for yourself, but only until you see somebody on foot.” In other words, “You don’t have it as well as the best, but you have it lots better than the worst.” Also, just think about how much everybody else envies your success. You should be happy. wei liansheng: Rongsheng, I’ve already told you. Sooner or later you’ll understand me. li rongsheng (sighing): And I’ve already told you, I understand you completely. Just wait. You can’t go wrong taking my advice. Put your heart into the opera and stop thinking crazy thoughts. It’s better not to think so much. The more you think about things, the more you worry. wei liansheng (decisively): Rongsheng, everything you say is very true, but I have my own problems. But let’s not talk about that now. Tonight—no, tomorrow morning— I’ll explain every last thing to you. li rongsheng: Why not just tell me now? (He has finished his pipe, and so he taps the bowl clean, puts the pipe in its case, and puts the case back in his pocket.) wei liansheng: No. I am asking you to please just go along with me this once. li rongsheng: Okay. I guess I was a little talkative today, but that’s okay. I got things off my chest I have been wanting to say for a long time. (Stands up) I’m going to go call on some friends then. Since you’re unhappy today no singing for now. I’ll come back this evening. (He puts the huqin in its case and slips it into a pocket. li rongsheng has just picked up his birdcage when someone is heard calling from outside.) wang xingui (his voice is heard before he is seen): Liansheng, my brother! Are you home? (As he is speaking, wang xingui pushes the door open and sticks his head in. His manner is spirited, quite unlike the last time we saw him.) (Greeting li rongsheng and wei liansheng) I haven’t seen you two in a few days. Liansheng, your door was open, so I just came in. wei liansheng: The doorkeeper is off on an errand. wang xingui: You really are the big star. (He sits down on a chair.) li rongsheng: What are you doing out so early? wang xingui: Salt Commissioner Xu and his family start their trip today to his new post. My employer sent me to Ruichong’s on East Peace Street to buy two large pieces of Old Mountain Ginseng as a departure gift. The trip took me by here, so I stopped in. li rongsheng: So how is it going? Does the job at Chief Justice Su’s home suit you? wang xingui: I’ve only been there three or four days—can’t tell yet. I’ll wait and see. Just wait and see. The master of the house and I seem to get along quite well. Who knows, I might stay with him for the next few years. (Pointing at wei liansheng) And for this I have our brother here to thank. wei liansheng (flatly): Don’t mention it.

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wang xingui (obviously hinting at something): Longing for Secular Life the other night (gives a thumbs-up sign) was top-notch. wei liansheng: It wasn’t. wang xingui (shaking his head emphatically): No. You had spirit. Now that I think about it, it had been a decade since I’d seen you perform. (Tilts his head to the side as he counts up the years) Then day before yesterday I heard you . . . (Sighs approvingly) You’ve really got something. No wonder you’re so famous. (wei liansheng laughs hollowly.) Mr. Li, I watched Liansheng grow up. “You put up with being a daughter-in-law long enough, you get to be mother-in-law yourself one day” 27 eh? (Goading wei liansheng deliberately) My friend, do you still remember when you’d throw a little basket over your shoulder and go looking for coal along the wall in the West City? wei liansheng (captured by this memory of his childhood): The wall in the West City . . . looking for coal. wang xingui: And do you remember? Once by South Lake you saw a woman who was all dressed up, you were walking along looking at her—bam! you smacked your head into a tree. You got a huge bump on your head. (Looks at wei liansheng’s face) And a branch cut your face. wei liansheng (happily): Look here. (Points to beside his left eye) I still have the scar. wang xingui (to li rongsheng): Right? I’m thinking, what a close call! If that branch had been just a bit to one side, it would have put his eye out. How could a one-eyed man play huadan roles? He would have had to sing the clown’s parts. wei liansheng (smiles): It’s fun to think about childhood. wang xingui: Strange. I was sure you’d get mad if I brought all that up. But you like it? wei liansheng: You don’t know how much I wish I had someone from my childhood around so we could talk about things. You really are like a big brother to me. wang xingui: Yeah, well, big brother is more and more worthless. I even needed little brother’s help to get a job. wei liansheng (embarrassed): Don’t say that. wang xingui: All joking aside, “A man of twenty-five, and no one to mend his clothes.” It’s understandable that you would stay a bachelor when you’re all alone, but now that I’m back, I should take care of things for you: I should find you a wife. Let me be your matchmaker. li rongsheng (his birdcage still in his hand, on hearing wang xingui’s remark, joins in): Wang Xingui is absolutely right. This is important. (To wang xingui) I’ve urged him to get married many times but he won’t listen. wang xingui: Hm. (Nods) Now that I’m back, it isn’t up to him. wei liansheng (frowning): No way. It’s terrifying. li rongsheng: That’s something a child would say. You take a wife, the happy couple spends their days together. What’s terrifying about that? wei liansheng: I’m better off by myself. It’s less trouble alone. li rongsheng (to wang xingui): Would you listen to him. You’d think he had been taken advantage of many times.

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wang xingui (a sly expression on his face): You never know. How do you know what he’s been up to? Maybe he’s been taken advantage of. li rongsheng (earnestly): Never happened. I know. wei liansheng: Why do you keep talking about me? Aren’t you a bachelor too? Why don’t you get married? wang xingui (laughs loudly): My boy, I’m afraid too! wei liansheng: What are you afraid of ? wang xingui: I’m afraid of being cuckolded. li rongsheng (does not like hearing this): What sort of language is that? wang xingui (hinting at something): Women these days, unmarried and married alike, love pretty boys. An old guy like me (touches his face), bad skin, ugly, I’ll be cuckolded for sure. (wei liansheng is taken aback.) li rongsheng (shocked): Nonsense! Nonsense! wang xingui: I see things very clearly, I understand the way things are, I have a handle on things, and I am definitely going to keep myself out of all that bother. li rongsheng (making a move to leave): Liansheng, I’m leaving. wang xingui: Hold on, I’m going too. Can’t stand here chatting all day. Don’t want to hold up anything important. (Makes a show of walking over to check the clock) Oh no! It’s after nine! Time to go. Liansheng, you have something to do at ten, right? wei liansheng (startled): What?! What do I have to do? wang xingui: Don’t you have something to do every day at ten? (wei liansheng freezes and doesn’t know what to say.) li rongsheng (confused): What? What do you have to do? wang xingui (chuckles): Nothing. Nothing. I was joking around. li rongsheng: I was going to say . . . wang xingui: See you later. I might be back in a while. (li rongsheng, looking utterly befuddled, and wang xingui exit. wei liansheng sees them to the door.) (From outside) You don’t have to see us out. (wei liansheng stops where he is. Suddenly li rongsheng turns and comes back to the door.) li rongsheng (with concern): Stop getting yourself all worked up thinking crazy thoughts. I’ll be back in the evening. wei liansheng (nodding): Yes, Rongsheng. li rongsheng: If you’re not feeling well, go back to bed for a while. wei liansheng: Yes, Rongsheng. (li rongsheng looks wei liansheng in the eye and says no more. li rongsheng slowly turns and leaves, pulling the door shut behind him. wei liansheng stands still, not knowing what to do. He checks the clock again. He looks around the room. He decides it is too messy and gets to work straightening things up. He puts the drum stand and all the other things in order and starts to fold and put away the articles of stage costume that are on the couch. He is halfway done folding the clothes when the door

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suddenly opens. Surprised, wei liansheng spins around. The clothes he was holding drop to the floor. There is no one outside the door. No one is there. wei liansheng is a little frightened, and he walks carefully toward the door. When he reaches the door he hesitates, not daring to go out. Suddenly someone laughs, making wei liansheng jump in fright. chen xiang bounds in.) chen xiang (looking around): So nice and quiet! wei liansheng (quite annoyed): Mr. Chen. (He goes to the couch and sits down.) chen xiang: It’s Sunday. No class. I came to see you. wei liansheng (with no choice but to put up with chen xiang): You’re here early. chen xiang: It’s not early. It’s after nine. Almost ten. (Happily) I knew you were home. wei liansheng: How did you know that? chen xiang: I ran into Li Rongsheng out at the front gate. He said you were home alone and bored. He told me to keep you company. Relieve your boredom. And look, not a soul here. Used to be that you always had a room full of guests. wei liansheng (finally telling chen xiang the truth): I like being by myself in peace and quiet. chen xiang (sits down on a chair with the manner of someone who intends to stay for a while): Then I’m here at the right time. It’s nice and quiet, which is perfect for you and me to have a nice, long chat. (Standing up) I should close the door so the riffraff doesn’t come in and bother us. wei liansheng (stopping him): No, no. Leave it open. It’s okay. chen xiang: If you say so. (He sits down again. Feeling put out, wei liansheng sits down but ignores chen xiang.) Liansheng, I was there at the performance two days ago at the Su mansion. wei liansheng: Oh. chen xiang: I put on a mandarin jacket over my gown. I brought ten strings of cash wrapped up in red paper and gave them as a gift. And so I got to listen to a whole evening of opera. Hey, your Longing for Secular Life was really good. wei liansheng: You were cheering for me nonstop again? chen xiang: That’s right. That’s right. You heard me, right? As soon as I saw you come out, I yelled at the top of my lungs. wei liansheng: During Kunqu opera the audience is not supposed to shout. You were showing your ignorance. chen xiang: The hell with that. It was good. Think they can stop me from cheering? wei liansheng (finding chen xiang annoying but amusing): You are really something . . . chen xiang: Miss Zhang and Miss Yu wanted me to bring them with me, but I wouldn’t. You bring women with you to a place like that, and they follow you all around like flies. It’s annoying. wei liansheng (can take it no more): Don’t you have something to do?

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chen xiang: No. I’ve got nothing. I just told you, today’s Sunday, I have nothing to do at all. I can spend all day with you. You’re not performing today, right? wei liansheng: I have to go out in a minute. chen xiang: That’s fine. We’ll go together. wei liansheng: No, I . . . I’m waiting for somebody to meet me here. chen xiang: Then I’ll stay a while longer. I’ve got nothing to do anyway. (wei liansheng cannot sit still.) Me and a bunch of friends reserved a row of seats for The Tale of the Red Whisk day after tomorrow. The fourth row—great seats. I told them that this opera is your specialty and it’s not every day that you do it. I really had to put myself out for this, and I’m sure you’re really going to give it your best. We’ll have to give it our best too to cheer you on. wei liansheng (forcing a smile): I’m grateful for that. chen xiang: You’re being polite with me. (Looking at wei liansheng) What are you wound up so tight about? What’s wrong with you? wei liansheng: It’s nothing. chen xiang: You don’t look good. Watch out you don’t get sick. (wei liansheng doesn’t respond. He looks at his watch again. chen xiang is also silent for a moment.) wei liansheng (suddenly): Let me ask you something, Mr. Chen. chen xiang: What is it? wei liansheng: There’s something I’ve never understood. chen xiang: I’m not likely to understand anything you don’t understand. But go ahead and ask. wei liansheng: You’re a patron of mine, right? chen xiang: Of course I am. Who doesn’t know that? If I’m not your patron, I’m nobody’s. wei liansheng: Don’t be angry now, but what I don’t understand is what you’re after in spending all that time and money on me. chen xiang (never anticipating this question): What do you mean? How could you ask me that? wei liansheng: As long as my asking doesn’t make you angry . . . chen xiang: I actually never thought about it. wei liansheng: You should think about it. chen xiang (confused, turns the question back to wei liansheng): How come you’re acting like some old man today? (wei liansheng notices a red scratch on chen xiang’s face.) wei liansheng: What happened there? chen xiang (not following wei liansheng’s meaning): What? wei liansheng: How did you get that big scratch? chen xiang (dismissively): Oh. Cat scratched me. wei liansheng (moving closer to look carefully): You’re not telling me the truth. It doesn’t look like a cat scratch. You got in another fight, didn’t you?

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chen xiang: Gosh. “Got in another fight”? It’s like you think I’m always getting in fights. wei liansheng: I know you are. I know about every fight you get into. chen xiang (laughs): Who tells you? wei liansheng: I just know. So tell me, what was it about this time? chen xiang: If you want me to tell you, I’ll tell you. Yesterday Little Yu and I went to the Zhongxing Garden for the opera. Little Yu was cheering for Li Lianquan, and down below in the stalls somebody was trying to out shout him. I was cheering along with Little Yu to help him. We were going back and forth like crazy. So then this guy comes up from downstairs and says to Little Yu, “You guys trying to start something?” Little Yu says, “Who said anything about starting anything? We’re just patrons of Lianquan, simple as that.” The guy says, “I’m his patron and so nobody else is allowed to be!” As he is talking he makes a move like he wants to fight. That was enough for me, so I said, “You want to fight? Let’s be clear. If we want to patronize him, we will. If we want to cheer him, we’ll cheer as long as we want.” Then I yelled, “Bravo!” again. The guy says, “Come downstairs. Let’s go out by the Forbidden City wall.” And so we went downstairs. wei liansheng: Come on! What were you thinking? What for? chen xiang: Listen. We get downstairs and we find out there are more of them than us. wei liansheng: How many more? chen xiang: Well, not that many more. Four more. Exactly twice as many as we were. wei liansheng (shaking his head): “Two can’t beat four.” You shouldn’t have fought. chen xiang: Gosh. Give me some credit. We went downstairs, didn’t say a thing, just went straight to a place by the Forbidden City wall. It’s deserted there, and broad and open. It’s perfect. wei liansheng: That’s a new one on me. You need to find the perfect place for a fight. chen xiang: We always do our fights there. Besides, you can’t get a fight going on a busy street. Before anybody lands a punch you attract a big crowd of onlookers. Before you can get started somebody steps in and breaks it up. That’s no fight. That’s just a monkey show. (wei liansheng checks the clock again and says nothing to encourage chen xiang.) (His face animated) As soon as we got there, they say, “So sorry, punk. Seems there are a lot of us.” Little Yu says, “Anyone who is afraid, isn’t here. Anyone who is here, isn’t afraid.” I tell them, “I don’t give a damn. I walked here but I don’t care if they have to carry me back.” Then we started fighting. wei liansheng: What can I do with you? chen xiang: We were outmanned, but we didn’t shame ourselves. wei liansheng: So how did it end up? chen xiang: Things always get settled in the end. wei liansheng: No, I mean, how did the fight end? chen xiang: We got tired and nobody wanted to keep fighting. That was that. wei liansheng: So who gets to be Li Lianquan’s patron?

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chen xiang: No change. They’ll patronize who they want and we’ll patronize who we want. Little Yu said, “The harder you beat us, the more sure we are to patronize him.” (Little Yu’s remark seems to indicate, of course, that he and chen xiang lost the fight.) wei liansheng: So won’t there be another fight? chen xiang: If there is, there is. Who cares? We have lots of people on our side too! wei liansheng: Getting in a fight is no big deal, but you look terrible with your face all cut up like that. chen xiang (touching his face): This is nothing. Last year I almost got beaten to death in a fight over you. wei liansheng: It’s not worth it. What if the worst happens and you end up crippled? It’s not going to look very noble if you have to say it happened in a fight over who gets to be patron to a Peking opera star. chen xiang: It won’t go that far. wei liansheng: Honestly, you have to come to your senses. You’re supposed to be a student, but I know you never go to classes and you don’t study. If you don’t mind my being direct . . . chen xiang: Sure. Sure. No taboo subjects between us. Say what you want, say what you want. wei liansheng: In my opinion you aren’t living a very respectable life. chen xiang (without a trace of anger): Okay, you tell me—what’s a respectable life? wei liansheng: You’re a student. Students should study. chen xiang (shaking his head): Hm. Study, huh? It gives me a headache just thinking about it. You seem to think that study is useful, but I don’t see any point to it. wei liansheng (making a joke at his own expense): “Everybody finds a reason to complain about what they do.” Very true. chen xiang (quite indifferently): I don’t know how many arguments I’ve gotten into with my mom and dad over this. They figure that after I graduate I’ll become an official and get rich. But I don’t plan on that. wei liansheng: What is your plan then? chen xiang: My plan? (Very pleased with himself ) I’m going to become a professional actor! wei liansheng (startled): What? chen xiang: I’m going to become a professional actor—I’m going to join the opera! wei liansheng (laughing): Join the opera? chen xiang (in dead earnest): I mean it. I’m not just saying it. wei liansheng: Have your folks agreed to this? chen xiang: They’re going to have to agree to it whether they like it or not. Nobody can stop me when I make up my mind to do something. That old man and that old lady don’t run my life. wei liansheng (to himself ): Absurd. chen xiang: Listen. I’ll play wusheng roles, heroic male roles. When I’m home with nothing else to do, I work on my moves. For example, I’m already pretty good at the

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tiger leap, the shoulder roll, the king’s entrance, the stealth walk, the short spear, the single broadsword, double broadswords, and the double spinning swords.28 I can do a handstand and a somersault too. wei liansheng: You’re getting a little carried away. chen xiang: What do you mean, carried away? wei liansheng: It’s a lot more difficult than you think. You keep on like this, you’re going to regret it. chen xiang: No way. I’ve never regretted anything I’ve done my whole life. wei liansheng: Impossible. For example, do you mean to tell me that if you do something wrong, you don’t regret it? chen xiang: If I do something wrong, I do something wrong. No reason to regret it. (wei liansheng falls silent.) wei liansheng (to himself ): No regrets . . . chen xiang: Regret is pointless. Who wants to waste time on something pointless? wei liansheng: Well, if you want to talk about whether there is any point to things, tell me, what is the point of a life that is devoted entirely to fun and games? chen xiang (at a loss): You’re giving me a hard time today on purpose. Okay, you’re talking about my spending all my time on Peking opera, right? Come on. Everybody has to have a passion. I have a passion for opera, so I go to the opera. No big deal. wei liansheng: It’s fine that you’re passionate about opera. But you should be content to go to the theater and listen to the opera. Why are you spending all day at the homes of opera singers? chen xiang (upset, stumped for a moment): With nothing but good intentions I set out to make friends, and that somehow puts me in the wrong? wei liansheng: You can make friends anywhere. Why not make friends with actors who aren’t stars? Why not make friends with bit players? Why make friends with just me? chen xiang (even more unhappy, finding it hard to answer): You don’t think about all that when you’re making a friend. wei liansheng: What’s more, for friendship both people have to want to be friends. You don’t pester a person endlessly . . . Take today. You came to see me and spend time with me. Maybe I have things I have to do or maybe I have something on my mind or maybe I don’t feel like spending time with anybody. chen xiang (stands, flushes, holds his temper for a long moment, then explodes): You . . . you’re saying that I’m forcing myself on you. You’re saying one of us is hot and one of us is cool. You’re saying I have a case of unrequited love. wei liansheng (cannot stop himself from laughing29): Do you really have to put it in those crude terms? chen xiang (his anger turns to disappointment, on the verge of tears): I . . . I finally see you for who you are. Who the hell . . . ? (He is about to ask, “Who the hell do you think you are?” but he swallows the words.) wei liansheng: Who the hell do I think I am? I’m just a Peking opera singer, that’s all. (Amiably, as he guides chen xiang back to his seat) Mr. Chen, let me say

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something to you heart-to-heart. You say that what you want is to make a friend. Everybody has to have friends, absolutely. But you and I aren’t friends. chen xiang (his anger has subsided): That’s how you see it. wei liansheng: Exactly right. The person you have made friends with is not me. chen xiang (yelling angrily): Who else would it be?! wei liansheng: Your friend is the huge celebrity Wei Liansheng who is famous for playing women onstage. chen xiang (innocently): But that’s you, isn’t it? wei liansheng (waving his hand): No. Say things turn bad for Wei Liansheng one day and he becomes a bit player or an attendant to another actor. Or say Wei Liansheng quits the opera, goes into some other trade, and becomes a pauper. If we ran into each other on the street in those circumstances Mr. Chen, you would not acknowledge me. chen xiang: That sounds so depressing. You think I’m that worthless. Besides, would you quit the opera? wei liansheng: You probably won’t believe me, but I really don’t want to do it anymore. chen xiang (as surprised as wei liansheng was when chen xiang said he planned to become a professional actor): What did you say? wei liansheng: I am going to quit the opera. chen xiang (thinking himself clever): Yeah, but not until you’re fifty, not until you’re old. wei liansheng (shaking his head): I mean now. Starting today. chen xiang (leaping up): You’re lying! wei liansheng: Why would I lie? Believe me or not, up to you. chen xiang: Well, I don’t believe it. You’re going to do The Tale of the Red Whisk. I even bought a ticket. wei liansheng (heaving a long sigh): Gosh . . . (He turns away from chen xiang.) chen xiang: I really don’t know what’s gotten into you today. wei liansheng (turning back to face chen xiang): Mr. Chen, we haven’t known each other that long. Listen to me. As the years go by and you get older, you’ll find that you can’t just spend your life in dissipation. You have to get serious about things, try a little harder. Life doesn’t last long. chen xiang (bewildered): You really . . . wei liansheng (taking chen xiang’s hand): Listen to me. Listen to me. (Suddenly there is a voice from outside.) voice from outside: Is Mr. Wei home? wei liansheng (flustered): Who is it? voice from outside: Me. Name’s Ma. wei liansheng: Oh. (Walking out) Auntie Ma, I’m here. (auntie ma enters.) auntie ma (turning and looking back out): Come in, boy!

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(ma ershazi comes in slowly. Friends, ma ershazi should be no stranger to us. We are sure to see him often. Perhaps we’ve hired him and his pushcart to move our luggage or our furniture or the like for us. ma ershazi has a complexion as dark as the bottom of a wok. His skin has been tanned by the sun and dried by the wind. Add to this a layer of grime, and it all leaves him looking disheveled. His freshly shaved scalp, clean as a monk’s pate, looks smart; his whole head is dark and shiny and looks like a mace. He has a broad forehead and a low hairline; his eyebrows are thick and his eyes are deeply set. His nose is flat and broad, his cheekbones prominent, his lips thick, and his chin sharp. His eyes reveal nothing. He keeps his gaze straight ahead, the result, naturally, of a lifetime as a carter. He has a cloth belt wrapped around his waist and he is wearing leggings. His clothes are dirty with every wrinkle and fold full of dust, and if you shook it all out, it would probably fill a large bowl. If we assume that there are two types of human strength, intellectual strength and physical strength, then there is no question that ma ershazi is endowed with only the latter. He is not smart, but he is very strong. The life he has led and the world in which he has grown up have given him strength and energy, even if his face is always expressionless and even if he never speaks. He is crude, stupid, ugly, and ignorant. When members of the “social elite” see him, they assume he is “not of the same race” as they. They “hold their noses” when they pass by him. auntie ma’s beloved boy is just this sort of “beast.” After entering, ma ershazi stands still and looks around blankly, saying not a word.) (Noticing chen xiang, with whom she has previously “crossed paths,” she retreats a step) You have a guest. wei liansheng: It’s alright. We were just passing the time. It’s okay. (chen xiang, feeling conscience-stricken, turns and goes to one side of the room.) (Noticing ma ershazi) Ershazi’s here too! You’ve had a bad time of it, Ershazi. auntie ma (with reproach but also affection): Ershazi, there you go again standing there like a lump. (ma ershazi looks at his mother but does not move.) (Nodding and gesturing) Why don’t you . . . Gosh. You make me so angry. (ma ershazi stands still for another moment then suddenly drops to his knees, throws himself down in front of wei liansheng, and touches his head to the floor three times.30 Then he gets up.) wei liansheng (reacts too slowly to stop ma ershazi): Auntie Ma, what is this? What is this? auntie ma: Ershazi owes his worthless life to you, Mr. Wei. We really don’t know how we can ever thank you. wei liansheng (pained): Mrs. Ma, what are you saying? What are you saying? auntie ma: You entirely deserve all three kowtows. We’re poor people . . . How else can we thank you but kowtow and curtsy? . . . The boy was released three days ago in the evening. He and I came looking for you the day before yesterday morning and we came back yesterday morning, but both times your front gate was closed and nobody answered when we shouted. I told Ershazi that today we had to get here earlier, and we found you in.

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wei liansheng: Auntie, you’re being too polite. I really didn’t do that much at all. auntie ma: You’re just saying that. If it hadn’t been for you, my boy wouldn’t have been able to get out. (chen xiang finds all this uninteresting and decides to leave.) chen xiang (walking over): Liansheng, I’m going. wei liansheng: Okay. We’ll finish our talk another time. chen xiang: I’ll come back later. wei liansheng: Come back? No. I have something to do soon. chen xiang: You said you would go get your picture taken in costume with me. Miss Zhang and Miss Yu want to be in a picture with you too. wei liansheng: But I really have no time today. chen xiang: Besides, if you really do quit the opera, the picture can be a memento. wei liansheng: We’ll talk about it tomorrow. chen xiang (surprised and happy): Tomorrow for sure then. wei liansheng (trying to hurry chen xiang on his way): Okay. chen xiang: I’ll come for you tomorrow morning? wei liansheng: Okay. chen xiang: Good. See you tomorrow. See you tomorrow. (Exits through the door, then comes back) Liansheng, tell me the truth, are you going to sing The Tale of the Red Whisk or not? wei liansheng (very flustered): Yes, yes, yes. I have to, don’t I? chen xiang (relaxing): Didn’t I say you were kidding? (Earnestly) Liansheng, listen, I’ll do what you say. I’m going to study hard from now on. I won’t spend every day at the opera anymore. See you later. (chen xiang runs out. Watching chen xiang leave, wei liansheng cannot quite say what it is he is feeling. While chen xiang and wei liansheng are talking, auntie ma is standing to the side with her gaze fixed on them in an attitude of respect and affection. Might she be thinking that as a child wei liansheng was just another typical poor kid in a poor neighborhood but now he stands before her as a celebrity who should be respected from a distance? Might she be thinking that if her son had studied opera he might have ended up with wei liansheng’s status? No, she is not thinking anything of the sort. Beyond all expectation her son has been released from prison and can go back to pushing his cart and can go on living with her. This is enough for her. Likewise neither has ma ershazi ever had any extravagant hopes. As he stands here in the home of a man who as a boy once ran around in the street picking up coal scraps just like he did, he is dazzled by the furnishings. He strains his eyes looking all around; he almost cannot take it all in. By accident his hand brushes against a chair next to him and he jumps back in fright. Then he reaches out to touch it again when no one is looking. He is awed by its smoothness and luster.) auntie ma (excitedly): It was good fate and good luck that an important man such as yourself came along to save my boy. Day before yesterday in the afternoon I went back to the “detention center,” and as I’m sure you’ll guess the gentlemen there were

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very polite to me. They said Director Liu had already sent down the order that, out of respect for Mr. Wei, Ershazi was to be released right away. (wei liansheng gives a pained smile.) They even gave Ershazi a big meal before he left. With good rice! wei liansheng: Oh. auntie ma: It was already dark by the time we got home. The next day I didn’t let him take his cart out. I told him to stay home for a day. I still haven’t spent the money you gave me. He took his cart out yesterday. (Happily) And nothing happened. I told him, from now on, “If you see something, keep your mouth shut; if you’re asked about something, say you don’t know; just mind your own business, and come home early.” wei liansheng: Good idea. It’s good to be in early. auntie ma (full of pride and tenderness): Ershazi, you’re not a child anymore. You should understand that cigarettes and alcohol are for the rich. How can people like us afford alcohol? As long as we don’t die of starvation or freeze to death, we should be thankful. “What is fated to be yours, will be yours by and by; what is not fated to be yours, you should leave be.” Isn’t that right, Mr. Wei? (wei liansheng gives another pained smile.) I always say that a person should keep to his station and live a quiet life. Ershazi, you shouldn’t drink. Look what happens when you drink. You get in trouble, don’t you? wei liansheng (to himself ): When you drink . . . auntie ma (continuing): You aren’t like rich people. If it hadn’t been for Mr. Wei, who knows what would have happened to you this time? Luckily Mr. Wei knows a lot . . . wei liansheng (finding these words very painful): Auntie Ma, now you’re finding fault with me. (auntie ma is surprised.) (Forcing a laugh) Enough about that, enough about that. Auntie, I didn’t . . . (Suddenly yuchun appears in the door. She is dressed simply and is listening to them talk with great interest. She is standing calmly and quietly. ma ershazi sees yuchun and unconsciously backs up a step.) auntie ma: You’re so good to us, really . . . (Turning her head) Ershazi . . . ma ershazi (trying to get his mother’s attention): Mom . . . (Now wei liansheng and auntie ma notice that someone is there.) wei liansheng (exclaiming): It’s you . . . yuchun (smiling slightly): I’m late. (She enters.) auntie ma (not knowing what to do): Mr. Wei . . . (She readies herself to leave.) yuchun: Liansheng, look at you, you haven’t even asked your guests to sit down. auntie ma: No. We should be going. wei liansheng: Please sit down. Please sit down. yuchun: Stay a while longer, ma’am. Don’t mind me.

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auntie ma (at a loss): No, no. We should be going. Besides, Ershazi has to take his cart out. wei liansheng: Okay then. Drop by when you get a chance. And bring Ershazi too. auntie ma (shoves ma ershazi): Well, answer him. Silly boy. (ma ershazi acknowledges wei liansheng with just the slightest change in his expression.) Let’s go. Let’s go. (auntie ma heads to the door; ma ershazi exits in front of her. wei liansheng follows them out to say goodbye.) (Turning back) Thank you so much. Really, thank you so much. May heaven protect you. wei liansheng (imploringly): Please, Auntie Ma, that’s enough. (auntie ma is still talking under her breath as she exits. wei liansheng sees her out. yuchun is left alone in the room. She looks around, then gets to work tidying up. She folds one by one the articles of costume that are scattered about, stands the boots up together, and straightens up the furniture, knickknacks, and so on. Then she sits in a chair and looks the room over. wei liansheng enters.) yuchun: Have they left? wei liansheng: They’ve left. I’ve closed the front gate. yuchun: It’s not good to have your front gate closed all the time. People will start to gossip. wei liansheng: I can’t tell you what a bother it is to have it open. From first thing this morning until right now I haven’t had a moment’s peace. (Sits down) Look, I didn’t even have time to pick up the room. yuchun: Your footman? wei liansheng: I sent him out on an errand. yuchun: So I tidied up for you. wei liansheng: I’m overwhelmed. What did I do to deserve such favor? yuchun: Listen to how glib you are. A second ago you seemed absolutely tonguetided. wei liansheng: I never expected you to just walk in like that. yuchun: I could hear you talking to somebody from the courtyard. I was going to leave, but then I realized it was that older woman, so I . . . Had it been anybody else, I certainly wouldn’t have come in. wei liansheng: I’m glad you came in when you did. Auntie Ma and her son were kowtowing to me, bowing to me, apologizing to me, flattering me. I didn’t know what to do; I felt like hiding. yuchun (tilting her head to the side in thought): It wasn’t so long ago that you really liked it when people kowtowed to you, bowed to you, flattered you, and thanked you. I remember it very clearly. In fact, it was likely to put your nose out of joint if people didn’t do it. wei liansheng (giving yuchun a look): Don’t say that, okay?

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yuchun: You can’t stop me from saying it. Liansheng, I’m happy that all by myself I was able to change black into white. I changed a bad boy into a good boy. wei liansheng: I’m not going to put up with your acting like my mother. I’m an adult too now. yuchun: Okay. We’re both adults—let’s talk about adult things. (Getting serious) Liansheng, do you know what I’m here to say to you? wei liansheng: Say whatever you want. I see it all now. yuchun: Can you guess what I’m going to say? wei liansheng: You want me to guess? yuchun: You should know what I’m going to say. wei liansheng (thinks it over): Better that you tell me. yuchun: We’re going to leave, right? wei liansheng (it dawns on him what she means): Oh. Yes. Yes, we’re going to leave. I can’t keep wasting my life like this. yuchun: I mean we’re leaving soon. wei liansheng: Yes. yuchun: I mean leave right away. wei liansheng (not believing what he’s hearing): Right away? yuchun: Today, right away, right now. wei liansheng (confused): Why? Why so . . . Why such a hurry? yuchun: Is something stopping you? wei liansheng: No. I just never expected . . . yuchun: When should we leave if not right now? wei liansheng (stumped by the question, quiet for a moment): Where should we go? yuchun: It’s a great big world. If we get out of this city, there is no place we can’t go. wei liansheng: How can we leave just like that? yuchun: How else should we? wei liansheng: There are always things to take care of first, aren’t there? I’ve lived here more than twenty years . . . yuchun: Okay. Well, think about it. What do you need to take care of ? Name one thing you can’t just drop. wei liansheng (thinking it over): Strange, it seems that there should be things, but I can’t think of anything. yuchun: Well then . . . wei liansheng (suddenly realizing something): All this stuff. (He looks around.) yuchun (mockingly): You want to take all your things! Well, what a coincidence, Auntie Ma’s son Ma Ershazi next door is a carter. Get him to come move your trunks and bedroll. Hurry up, he just left, maybe you can call him back. (After this gibe, wei liansheng is silent. He frowns, pondering something. yuchun watches him.) wei liansheng (stands slowly): Let’s go . . .

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(yuchun stands up too; she watches wei liansheng and is quiet.) (Resolutely) Okay! Let’s go! yuchun (with concern, tenderness, and affection): Liansheng . . . wei liansheng (looking all around, feeling uncertain): Leave just like that . . . yuchun (gently pushing him back to his seat): Compose yourself first. wei liansheng (unable to calm himself ): It’s okay, it’s okay. It doesn’t matter. I can leave. I can . . . yuchun: No rush. You rest a while. wei liansheng (very flustered): Let’s leave right now! Let’s leave right now! I don’t want any of this stuff. (He readies himself to leave.) yuchun (stopping him): Stop it. Stop it. What are you getting so worked up about? Can you get a grip on yourself ? wei liansheng (silent for a long moment, then suddenly): I can’t leave right now. (Sits down dejectedly) I almost forgot something important. yuchun: What? wei liansheng: I have to see Li Rongsheng. I told him I would explain things to him. yuchun: Li Rongsheng, that attendant? What do you have to tell him? wei liansheng: I have to tell him everything. I have to make him understand me. He’s been so good to me. If someone is good to you, you have to be good to them. I can’t just ditch him and leave. yuchun: How come you’ve never said a word to me about him? wei liansheng: My fault for being stupid. It was only today that I finally understood him. Finally understood what a decent person he is. If I just up and leave, he’ll be very angry and worried to death. yuchun: Okay. wei liansheng: I’m wondering, can he go with us? yuchun: Go with us? wei liansheng: He can. Let’s do that. We’ll leave first thing tomorrow and Li Rongsheng will go with us. yuchun: In that case I’ll go home now. wei liansheng (happily): Hold on a minute. Listen to me. yuchun (smiling): Go on. wei liansheng: Tomorrow this time we’ll have left this place for good and we’ll be off to a good life. yuchun: I think it’s going to be a difficult life. wei liansheng (smiling): You still think I’ll regret it, don’t you? Not a chance. I understand now what a good life is and what a bad life is. yuchun: What would you say a bad life is? wei liansheng: Like our lives now. It’s like being in a cage. You have to obey somebody else; you have to please somebody else. You don’t control anything in your life. yuchun (nodding): And tell me, what is the happiest of days? wei liansheng (with great conviction): Tomorrow.

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yuchun: Tomorrow? wei liansheng: Tomorrow by this time we’ll be out of this city, we’ll be away from all those people it makes us sick just to look at. I won’t ever have to see this miserable room again. I won’t ever have to smell the stink of their coins again. I’ll never just be somebody’s amusement or diversion again. yuchun: We’ll take boats, we’ll ride horses, we’ll walk. We’ll listen to the rivers running and smell the wildflowers . . . wei liansheng: There is so much time and the world is so big. We can go wherever we want. yuchun: “We can go wherever we want.” But what will we do when we get there? wei liansheng: We’ll find friends. yuchun: What friends? wei liansheng (joyfully): Poor friends. yuchun (laughing): Will you tell them then? Will you say, “My dad was a blacksmith. I’m a smithy’s son”? wei liansheng (fervently): Yuchun. yuchun (leaning up close to wei liansheng): We’ll spend our lives together. (Enchanting birdsong comes from outside the window. Time seems to stand still. The sound of a brass door knocker banging against a door is heard.) Somebody’s here. wei liansheng: Ignore it. (The knocking grows louder and more rapid and someone starts yelling.) yuchun: It must be something important. wei liansheng: It’s nothing important. It’s just more of those annoying people. (The banging at the door reaches a crescendo.) yuchun: This won’t do. Go have a look. (wei liansheng nods and runs out. yuchun is uneasy. She stands at the door listening attentively. A split second later wei liansheng runs back in.) wei liansheng (his face ashen): It’s . . . yuchun: Who is it? wei liansheng (in a panic): That guy Wang. Wang Xingui. yuchun: Did you let him in? wei liansheng: I didn’t open the gate. I could see through the crack that it was him. (The knocking at the front gate continues.) yuchun: What does he want that’s so urgent? wei liansheng: He has men with him. yuchun (turning pale): He has men with him? wei liansheng: Three or four. yuchun (settling herself and speaking quite calmly): Do you know why? wei liansheng (looks at yuchun blankly and shakes his head): No . . . yuchun (clenching her jaw): How could anybody be so ungrateful? Wang Xingui has betrayed you.

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wei liansheng: What do we do? What do we do? Let’s run . . . (Turning back to her at a loss) But then . . . yuchun (grabbing wei liansheng): Liansheng, life is difficult. “Tomorrow” doesn’t come so easily. wei liansheng (clenching his fists and glaring in anger): There has to be a way out. yuchun: Settle down. It won’t help to get all worked up. wei liansheng (steeling himself ): I’ll open the door and let him in. yuchun: What else can we do? There’s no way not to. wei liansheng (taking her hand in his): Yuchun! yuchun: If we had left earlier . . . (Sighing) But what is the point in thinking about that now? (Takes a brocade purse from a pocket) Here is “my” jewelry, “my” precious stones and so forth. I know you don’t have much cash on you—take this just in case. wei liansheng (with love in his voice): I . . . yuchun: Just don’t forget me, and I won’t forget you. We may not be able to be together, but separately we still have things we must do. wei liansheng (trying not to cry): Yes. (He puts the purse into a pocket.) yuchun (taking a bracelet from her right arm): Liansheng, I’m giving you this bracelet too. Nothing is more reliable than gold. Take it. If someday you have to sell it, it should be worth something. (She slides the bracelet onto wei liansheng’s arm and pushes it up under his sleeve out of sight. The furious pounding from the front gate does not stop.) voice from outside (wang xingui’s voice, yelling): If you don’t open this door we’re going to break it down! yuchun: Go open the door. wei liansheng (resisting): No. (There is a loud crack from outside and then the sound of men rushing in.) yuchun: They broke the door bar. (The sound of the men reaches the other side of the door to the room.) wang xingui (from outside): Stay here. Don’t come in. Keep an eye on the front gate and don’t let anybody in! I’m afraid we have frightened my friend. (wang xingui walks in as if he owned the place. He struts like a military man.) Liansheng, my boy, you’ve been found out and brought to justice. (yuchun sits on the sofa, her back straight, keeping still. wei liansheng, his back straight and his expression stern, stands in the middle of the room. This is the first time in his life that wei liansheng has stood up straight and we should not fail to take note of this. It is the strength he will get from straightening his back that will carry him down the long and difficult road that awaits him.) (Cupping his hands and bowing in salute) Fourth Mistress, Master ordered me to follow you these last three days. You’ve been coming here first thing every morning, and after you get here the gate is closed and barred behind you. That’s not necessary for opera lessons; that’s going a little too far. Besides, could I forget the way you rebuked me that time in your study? You were so cold to me that I couldn’t just let it go.

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(yuchun does not appear to have heard anything wang xingui has said.) Liansheng, when a gate is barred it means somebody is up to no good, right? Don’t be angry with me for being tough on you. My philosophy is, “I serve the country with loyalty and repay the emperor with fealty.” I work for whoever is paying me. Even if you were my real brother, if you cross my employer, then I’m going to make it tough on you. But we’re friends after all; the chief justice wanted you thrown in jail, but I spoke up for you and got you “banished” instead. As long as you get out of the city, you can go wherever you want and nobody will bother you. (Pleased with himself ) But as for you, Fourth Mistress, you I must ask to come back home. (Suddenly, there is a commotion from outside and the sound of a struggle.) (His expression darkening as he yells out) Who is it! Grab him— (Before he can finish, the sound of the fight reaches the courtyard just outside; we hear the sound of someone being knocked to the ground and the confused shouts of men fighting. yuchun and wei liansheng are surprised, but they don’t move. Somebody comes sweeping in in a rush. It is ma ershazi. His clothes are torn, his face is bloodied, and his eyes are on fire. He enters and grabs wang xingui by the collar. He hits wang xingui, and wang xingui drops to the floor before he can make a sound. auntie ma, breathless and dismayed, runs in.) auntie ma: Mr. Wei! Mr. Wei! Mr. . . . (Sees that her son is beating wang xingui) Ershazi . . . (ma ershazi pays her no mind and goes on flailing at wang xingui with his fists. wang xingui suffers his beating. yuchun remains seated and still.) yuchun (getting up and coming forward): Ershazi, lay off him. (ma ershazi ignores her.) wei liansheng (his face stern): Stop it now! (ma ershazi obeys; he stays his hands and stands up, keeping his eyes locked on wang xingui.) (His tone softening) Ershazi, guys like him are not worth the effort. How much longer can they live? Let him get up. (ma ershazi bends over and yanks wang xingui to his feet.) wang xingui (brushing off his clothing and touching the places where he is beaten and bruised): What is the meaning of this? auntie ma (flushed and short of breath): Mr. Wei, what is going on? wei liansheng: Auntie, it’s nothing. Don’t worry about me. Ershazi should go get his cart and go to work. wang xingui: Mr. Wei is going away on a long trip. He won’t be singing The Tale of the Red Whisk tomorrow after all. auntie ma (anxiously): No, no. Mr. Wei, tell Ershazi to go find Director Liu. Ershazi . . . (wang xingui laughs derisively.) wei liansheng: Don’t bother. There’s no need for that, Auntie. auntie ma: You know so many officials and rich men . . . wei liansheng: Auntie, from today on I don’t know a single rich man.

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auntie ma (confused): What? wang xingui: Showing some backbone are you, my boy? Isn’t it time for you to get moving? wei liansheng (ignoring wang xingui): Auntie, do me a favor. After I’m gone, go get Mr. Li Rongsheng. I’m giving this house to him. He can take care of whatever needs to be taken care of. Tell him I won’t fail to get in touch with him. auntie ma (her face streaming with tears): I will. wei liansheng: All the stuff in the house . . . (Turns to wang xingui) I can do what I want with my things, right? wang xingui (with “magnanimity”): Sure. Whatever you want. wei liansheng: Auntie, all the stuff in the house, including the furniture—you take it all. I’m giving it to you. auntie ma: No, no, no. I can’t. I can’t take it. wei liansheng: Okay, we’ll say you’re just going to look after it for me. (auntie ma cannot hold back her tears.) (To wang xingui) Brother Wang. wang xingui: Son, you can’t blame all this on me. We’re still friends. Whatever you want me to do, just tell me. I’m at your ser vice. wei liansheng: Listen, it’s not you I hate and there’s nothing I want you to do for me. But that beating Auntie Ma’s son gave you, pretend it never happened. If you use your boss’s power to try to hurt him or get back at him, then you’re no true man! wang xingui (laughing loudly): As a favor to you, I won’t try to get back at him. wei liansheng (looks around, then calmly): I’m really leaving now. yuchun (standing up): Liansheng, it was me who brought this harm on you. wei liansheng: It was you who saved me. yuchun: Do you mean that? wei liansheng: If I’m lying, then let heaven strike me dead. yuchun: Liansheng, you have a long road ahead, take good care of yourself. wei liansheng: Don’t worry. I might die of poverty, or freeze to death, or starve to death, or just die from hard times, but as long as I live I’m going to be happy. yuchun: Liansheng . . . (Her eyes redden and she lowers her head.) wei liansheng: After we say goodbye, who knows if we’ll ever see each other again? Yuchun, think about me often, remember my good points, okay, and forget about my shortcomings. wang xingui (sarcastically): Okay, that’s about enough of that, I think. (wei liansheng’s many worries and cares fall away from him; he nods toward yuchun and heads for the door. yuchun stands silent and motionless; no one knows what she is feeling at the moment. ma ershazi stands in the middle of the room, as solid as a mountain, his gaze unblinking. auntie ma sobs on and on. Is she bitter because of her helplessness? Is she bitter because of the lack of justice in the world? Or is it just the sorrow of saying goodbye? wang xingui follows wei liansheng out the door.) (Curtain.)

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E PIL OGUE (The time has flown by quickly and twenty years have passed. The small building in the garden is doing fine, but the same cannot be said for the affairs of men. yuchun’s “golden room” of twenty years ago is now su hongji’s meditation room. It is both his study and his Buddhist prayer hall. Two decades have slipped by, and the master of the house cannot help feeling nostalgic for times gone by. Therefore, he has been reluctant to redecorate the room. Still, the writing desk, the bookcase, and the tables and chairs have, over time, taken on the patina of antiques. In twenty years the walls have been repainted a few times and now are a darker green. Other than this, the room is little changed, except that the windows, which were papered lattice, are now dimpled glass. It is winter now, and so the windows are hung with dark red velvet window drapes that are closed tightly against the wind. A heavy blue woolen curtain hangs on the door and affixed to it with copper studs at the top, middle, and bottom are three strips of mahogany. One piece of furniture has been added to the room: an armchair of nanmu wood that is upholstered in bronzecolored velvet. In front of the chair is a footstool and beside it is a tea table. Under the chair is a thick carpet with blue flowers on a yellow ground. The furniture that was here twenty years ago has been moved. The bookcase and writing desk that had been against the left wall have been moved forward, opening up a space in which there is now a fireplace. A fire crackles heartily in the fireplace and the armchair is in front of it. On the mantel above the fireplace is a clock. The scrolls on the wall have been changed as well. The painting of the beautiful woman is down. Apparently, the tastes of the “master of the house” have changed. The zither table has been moved to the left side of the room, and on it are a bonsai of narcissus, a few other knickknacks, and a porcelain statue of Guanyin holding in her hands a vase of the sweet dew of compassion that she spreads upon the world. In front of the statue of Guanyin is a copper incense burner, in which sandalwood incense is burning. The large Eight Immortals Table is below the window, and on it is spread a tablecloth embroidered with a blue floral pattern. In the center of the table is a large porcelain flower vase that is full of red plum blossoms, which brings a bit of charm and grace to the room. It is late in the twelfth lunar month, the depth of winter. We have already seen the cold, snowy garden that lies beyond the windows of the room, two poor boys who were so happy at having found a place to spend the night, and a sick, homeless man who died in the snow. There is a man in the room now. He is dressed warmly and sitting in front of the fire, but still he shivers and complains of the cold. su hongji is wearing a gown lined with fox fur and a leather mandarin jacket. He is curled up in the armchair, a cotton-padded black satin quilt over his lap. The old saying has it right, “Old age is the one thing that the rich cannot buy their way out of.” su hongji may have wealth, power, and status, but he cannot escape his fate. The passage of twenty years has turned him into an old man with white hair and a white beard. When he runs into friends, he is in the habit of joining his hands in salute and saying, “Sad to say, sad to say, but I’ve muddled through my whole life with nothing to show for it. Shocking how quickly time passes.” He is just being polite, but, in fact, what he says is true. He likes to say that all he wants is “a moment of reflection in

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the midst of this hurried life”—in fact he has nothing but time for reflection now—and maybe this time comes in the still of the night when he searches his conscience and, as he often does, goes over the mental books in which the accounts of his life are kept. These accounts are by no means easy to settle. su hongji himself cannot say where his merits and demerits lie. As an example, we may take his career as an official. His career went exceedingly well; his success in this area is, of course, self- evident. If we consider things in detail, however, it seems that he did no good. But did he do only bad? su hongji, of course, would rather not believe so, and he certainly is convinced he never did anything outrageously wrong. But from ancient times down to the present great good has always gone unrewarded, while great evil has always gone unpunished. One imagines that if su hongji has done any wrong it has gone unpunished. su hongji often puts it this way: “No man is a saint, who hasn’t done some wrong?” As ones gets closer and closer to the grave, one’s heart becomes as still as water at the bottom of an old well and one does not worry about quotidian affairs. It is time to get ready for the next life, is it not? And for this preparation one may find guidance in the lives of the sages of the past. Therefore, su hongji has taken up Buddhism, just as so many do. Practicing Buddhism has always been good for two things: one, it is how clever people cover up their wrongdoing; and two, it is how stupid people waste their time. There is a folk saying to the effect that, “The only reason a person is not licentious is because he is too poor to afford it.” This may be a rather harsh way of putting it, but it is probably true. Ordinarily the practice of Buddhism is a difficult undertaking; to worship properly one must avoid the “five hun”—the five pungent vegetables such as garlic, for example—and purify the “six roots” of sensation, namely the eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, and mind. su hongji, however, is not going about it this way. As is fitting for his station, he makes sure he has warm clothing and plenty of food; his practice of Buddhism is a way to pass the time. It sounds impressive if he calls it “practicing Buddhism,” and, as it happens, it is good for conserving his health. At the moment su hongji is “studying through the night while a beautiful girl tends his incense burner.” And is there a beautiful girl about? There is. There is a beautiful girl in the room and she is tending the incense burner. The maid, little orchid, is kneeling on a round prayer cushion in front of the zither table, leaning over it and resting almost her whole weight on it. She has a copper poker in her hand and she is stirring up the sandalwood that is burning in the incense burner. Incense smoke coils up and is thick in the room, like fog. The sight of little orchid brings back memories of orchid from twenty years ago. orchid has gone! We have no way of finding out where orchid has gone, but one can just make out a trace of orchid in the little orchid who is here today. One can even venture to say that little orchid is a second-generation orchid. Perhaps there will be a third generation and a fourth generation. This all depends whether or not there is a change in the fate of girls like them—their names have not changed too much, wouldn’t you say? little orchid is still quite young. She is petite and pretty, like a flower bud that is swelling and just about to open. She may be a slave, but she lives a free and unfettered life. The old man she serves is affable, and so her ser vice never makes her unhappy.

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In truth, she has no reason to be unhappy. Her days are peaceful and quiet, just like she is. A smile often lingers on her face. su hongji is sitting in the armchair with a traditional, string-bound book in his left hand—he reads a lot these days—and with his right hand he is fingering the 108 sparkling, smooth prayer beads on the necklace he is wearing. His eyes are directed at his book, but they are half closed, and he is saying something under his breath. He may be reading, but he may be reciting a prayer. The electric lamp that hangs from the middle of the ceiling is off. The only light is from a desk lamp with a green floral porcelain shade that is on the writing desk, and so the room is dark. This makes the light from the fireplace seem brighter.) su hongji (wriggles a bit in his seat, then pushes his hat back with his hand that holds the book and scratches his head; moves the book to in front of his eyes and begins to read aloud in a low voice): “Behind you are peach blossoms, in front of you there is snow. It is difficult not to turn to look behind.” (His concentration fails and he turns his head) Little Orchid? little orchid (casually): Hm. su hongji (cannot be bothered to look up from his book at the clock in front of him): Check the clock. What time is it? little orchid (stands up slowly, walks over, and looks at the clock): Twelve thirty. su hongji (surprised): What? You’re joking. little orchid: If you don’t believe me, sir, take a look at the clock yourself. su hongji (lifting his head to look): The clock’s stopped. It’s not moving. little orchid (playing dumb): Oh, it’s not moving. But I was still right. su hongji (reaching into the folds of his jacket for his watch as he speaks): Delinquent girl. The clock stops and it doesn’t occur to her to wind it. little orchid (grumbling): I was asleep. su hongji (taking out his gold watch): You’re always sleeping. If you’re not sleeping, you’re eating. It’s five o’clock, almost dark. You slept four and a half hours this afternoon. (He puts his watch away.) little orchid (returning to her seat on the prayer cushion): What do you want me to do about it? If I fall asleep I can’t help it if I don’t wake up. su hongji (snorting in laughter): Has Steward Wang come home? little orchid: He went out at dawn; hasn’t come back yet. su hongji (to himself ): Odd. Why has he been away all day? That wind a while ago was blowing hard enough to scare a person. Is it still snowing? little orchid: The wind has stopped; the snow has stopped too. But it’s still overcast; it might start snowing again in a bit. su hongji: We can open the drapes in a while. It’ll be nice to have a drink and look out at the snow. (Shivers) It’s cold! Little Orchid, come here. Stir the fire up some. (little orchid walks over and squats in front of the fireplace. She picks up the poker that is on the floor and stirs the fire.)

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little orchid (lifting her head): Old man, you’re wearing a fur-lined gown and a leather jacket, and you’re still cold. I’m just wearing this little bit, but I’m not cold at all. su hongji: That’s because I’m an old man. (Rubs little orchid’s shoulder) You’re just a child. little orchid: Children don’t get cold? su hongji: Children have a lot of internal heat. You’re like a little bowl of coals. little orchid (pushes su hongji’s hand off her shoulder): Then you better not touch me. su hongji (surprised): What? little orchid (laughing long and hard): Watch out you don’t burn your hand and then blame me for it. su hongji (laughing along): Oh yeah? Watch out I don’t slap you if you keep talking back. little orchid (pouting): Don’t. su hongji: It’s late. Go see if the bird’s nest soup is ready. If it is, just bring it. little orchid (turning away): I don’t want to go. It’s a long way and it’s all snowy. It’s cold and windy too. su hongji (pretending to lose his temper): How dare you disobey me? little orchid (acting spoiled): I don’t want to go. su hongji: This is an example of why they say “it is women and men of low birth who are difficult to deal with . . .” 31 (He laughs loudly.) little orchid: There is no way I’m going to go if you’re going to say nasty things. su hongji (suddenly looking severe): Ahem. (little orchid giggles, but when she sees that su hongji’s stern expression doesn’t change, her smile fades. Slowly her mouth turns down in a frown and she begins to cry.) su hongji (pulling himself up into a posture befitting the master of the house): It’s all my fault for spoiling you. You’re hopeless now. (Tears roll down little orchid’s face.) (Changing his approach) You really are a child. (Very pleased with the imposing figure he makes in front of women and children) A child. (Leans forward and strokes little orchid’s head) You can’t bear even a single word of reproach. (little orchid does not say anything.) (Smiling) Too much silliness always ends in tears. (little orchid takes her handkerchief from where it is tucked into the seam of her blouse under her arm and wipes her eyes. She moves toward the door.) Go on now. Good girl. If the soup’s ready, go ahead and bring it to me. (little orchid lifts the door curtain and exits. su hongji stands up slowly. He puts his book on the tea table to his side and begins to run his prayer beads through his fingers. His mouth moves; he seems to be reciting the words “All hail Amida Buddha.” He walks to the zither table and bends his head to check on the sandalwood incense, which is burning just right. Next, he walks over to the wall and reaches a hand out to straighten

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a scroll. He backs up to look the scroll over, then walks once around the room. He sniffs the flowers in the vase and checks a few other things in the room before returning to his chair to resume his “hibernation.” He squirms around a bit in the chair and has just gotten comfortable when someone moves the door curtain slightly to one side and leans his head in to look around. This is an example of the principle that “it’s easier to change the contour of a mountain or the course of a river than it is to change a person’s nature.” Twenty years on and wang xingui still cannot break this habit of his; no matter where he is, before he can walk through a door he finds it necessary to stick his head in to see what is what. The man enters, and we see that it is wang xingui. He is, of course, much older now. For the last twenty years su hongji and his house steward, wang xingui, have been master and servant, but it is also fair to say that they are two of a kind. That they have stayed together for so long is owing to wang xingui’s ability to adjust and submit to the moods and will of another. One might assume that the “master” is in charge but “lying low.” In fact, he has “shut himself up to ponder over his mistakes.” Meanwhile, the slave wang xingui, going beyond his station, has taken over the affairs of his master and handles everything that happens beyond su hongji’s door. wang xingui is wearing a thickly padded gray cloth gown and a black mandarin jacket. He is wearing a crimson wool knit hat with a mask that covers his entire face except for his eyes and the bridge of his nose. He has an old dark woolen scarf around his neck. He is wearing leggings and black felt boots with a deep nap.) (Turning his head around with some effort) Oh, you’re back, huh? wang xingui (walks over; his voice sounds deep and far away, as if it were coming from the bottom of a barrel): Yeah. (Takes off his hat; his nose and eyes are red from the cold) It’s so cold today. (Puts his hat on a stool, reaches his hands out over the fire, then tugs on his ears) Almost froze my ears off. (Flexes his feet repeatedly) My feet are so numb I can’t feel them. su hongji (ignoring wang xingui): How did that business go? wang xingui: For fifty thousand we can buy it for sure. I guarantee it. su hongji: You sure? wang xingui: It’s a widow and her son who own the place—they have debt up to their asses and they’re desperate to raise money to pay it off. They’re going to get hounded to death by their creditors if they don’t sell the house. su hongji: Oh. wang xingui: In any other circumstance the house would sell for a hundred thousand. (Slaps himself on the chest) I guarantee that there is no way anybody is going to get this deal but us. su hongji: Did you see the guy who’s flipping houses? wang xingui (slowly): No . . . He had to go to the countryside today. su hongji (displeased): So, this conversation’s been a waste of time. If you didn’t see him, then what’s the point? wang xingui (with a devious smile): I’ll see him tomorrow, same difference. (The air of mystery remains with him) All you have to do is relax. I’ve already got it all figured

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out. It’s an absolute sure thing. We’ve got that little widow in our grasp and she’s not getting out of it. su hongji: Well, if you didn’t see the house flipper, then why were you gone all day? wang xingui (growing animated): It’s a long story. (Takes off his scarf and tosses it onto the chair beside him) There’s something I need to tell you. I promise you’ll find it interesting. su hongji: What is it? wang xingui: It’s like this. I go to see the house flipper at ten o’clock, right? He’s not there. So I go to Dog’s Tail Alley to look for Mr. Xie, to talk to him about the house. So we’re talking and talking and it gets to be noon. He won’t let me leave. He has me stay for steamed dumplings. su hongji (with disdain): Who cares about that? wang xingui: I’m not finished. (Still with an air of mystery) So we finish the dumplings and there’s something else he wants me to do . . . (He stops talking.) su hongji (interested now): What? wang xingui: Go see Peking opera. su hongji: Go see opera? wang xingui: And not just any opera. Opera that no one will ever have a chance to see again no matter what they’re willing pay. su hongji: Where? Who was singing? (By rule, servants do not sit in the presence of their master and wang xingui is standing as he talks. As for little orchid, she is the exception to the rule.) wang xingui: If I tell you where, you’ll laugh your head off. At the east entrance to Dog’s Tail Alley there’s a big square, right? There’s always a commotion there. There are martial arts performers, jugglers, people selling potions and things, fortunetellers, and of course people singing opera. su hongji (snorting in derision): Itinerant opera. wang xingui: That’s exactly right. Everybody there is low-class. Carters, pimps, hooligans, thugs, ruffians, kidnappers. You can’t find a single decent person there. There’s no way you would ever want to go there. su hongji (with the tone of a ruler expressing an interest in the doings of the common folk): Not true. “One may find a knight in a mob and a dragon in a mire.” I’d actually quite like to visit this place. wang xingui (does not fully understand the quotation but goes along with su hongji): That’s no problem, no problem. I’ll take you there you sometime. su hongji: So what opera did you hear? wang xingui: That’s what was interesting. Mr. Xie said that a guy named Wang Fushuo in the itinerant opera troupe, a guy who plays the clown, was sick. Wang is poor and he’d already pawned or sold everything he owned, so of course he couldn’t afford medicine, and he’s close to being done for. So his buddies in the troupe got together and decided to do a benefit performance. su hongji (laughing): An iterant opera troupe does benefits?

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wang xingui (laughing along): They said it was out of solidarity with their brother. su hongji: Those kind of people care about solidarity? wang xingui: There’s something else even more incredible. They had something on the program that was worth its weight in gold. su hongji: What? wang xingui: Those amateurs actually got a famous singer to perform with them. su hongji: Who? wang xingui: The guy was hugely famous twenty years ago. But he quit a long time ago. By luck he showed up in the city a couple of days ago, and one of the folks in the opera troupe ran into him and insisted he come help out. Because it was to help raise money for Wang Fushuo’s recovery, the guy said yes. su hongji: Who was it? What roles is he known for? wang xingui: He’s a huadan, but his name wasn’t announced beforehand and nobody in the troupe would say either. He said he was going to sing his part, then leave, and he would do only the one show. It was absolutely going to be his very last performance. su hongji: What opera did he do? wang xingui: Marriage in the Bandit Lair.32 Four acts from it: “Learning the Daggers,” “Revealing the Secret,” “The Farewell Dinner,” and “Leaving the Mountain.” su hongji: That opera isn’t challenging at all. wang xingui: True, but the guy, it turns out, is sick, plus he’s well past forty, almost fifty, and can’t handle a difficult opera. su hongji (shaking his head): A guy who’s almost fifty doing a huadan part . . . wang xingui: Guess who it was? su hongji: Who? wang xingui: When the curtain parted I almost yelped. (Very pleased with himself ) Nobody else recognized him, but I did. su hongji: Who was it? wang xingui: Wei Liansheng! su hongji (shocked): Liansheng? wang xingui: Yup, Wei Liansheng. su hongji: Wei Liansheng? wang xingui: You’d forgotten about him? su hongji (composing himself ): I . . . that’s right . . . I remember him . . . I remember now. wang xingui: You remember him now, right? I never expected him to come back. su hongji: He’s still performing? wang xingui: To be honest, he’s still good. He deserves his reputation. The expression in his eyes was perfect and his figure looked good. He’s still got it. Sure the partition around the stage was ratty and the costumes were old, but when he came out, he still looked like a star. su hongji: He didn’t look old?

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wang xingui: He doesn’t look as good as he once did, for sure. But when he was in character, he didn’t seem old. But because he was sick, you could tell he was having to strain. I told Mr. Xie that it was definitely worth coming to see him. su hongji: Did you say hello to him? wang xingui: I was going to, but no—what a shame. There you go, fate wouldn’t allow it. A big wind came up and it started to snow hard! The wind blew the stage awnings all over the place; the partitions were old and torn up to begin with, so the wind blew right through them. The audience couldn’t sit through it, everybody took off. The wind was howling, people were yelling, but Liansheng stayed right there onstage singing for all he was worth. Like he was trying to drown out all that hubbub. su hongji: Wow. wang xingui: But he’s old and sick, and of course he couldn’t take it. All of a sudden he just collapsed onstage. su hongji (a certain tension seems to leave him and he stands up): Dead? wang xingui: I don’t know. It was a good performance, but that ended it. su hongji: You didn’t go check on him? wang xingui (cupping his hands in salute): I didn’t. I followed your instructions, “Do not linger where there is trouble.” I didn’t want to bring trouble on myself. In other words, “I have learned the way of the turtle,” and “when it is time to pull my head in, I pull my head in.” Besides, that whole rickety stage setup was about to collapse and we were too cold to stay there any longer. So Mr. Xie and I took off back to his house. (su hongji sits silently.) Mr. Xie and I talked about the house for another long while, and after that I came back. su hongji (with compassion): So sad. wang xingui: He brought it on himself. Twenty years ago I could tell that punk was never going to amount to anything. I never expected him to have the gall to show his face around here again. su hongji: No, no. When we were young we were all hot-tempered. Now, when I think about it, what was the point? I made an enemy for no reason. wang xingui: It was him who wronged you first. You have nothing to apologize for. Besides, you weren’t that hard on him. su hongji: Go see him first thing tomorrow. wang xingui (stupefied): You want me to bring him back here? su hongji: No. Take him a hundred yuan from me and ask him what he plans to do to support himself. wang xingui (not convinced this is wise, holds his tongue for a long time): And after I ask him that? su hongji: If need be, I’ll find a way to help him. wang xingui (changing his tone and flattering su hongji shamelessly): You’re a true disciple of the Buddha. “The prime minister’s heart is as big as the world.” You’re a man of great good fortune but great benevolence as well.

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su hongji (in dead earnest): No, I’m not. Listen. wang xingui (flatly): Yes. Yes. su hongji (sits solemnly with an air of authority, his prayer beads in his fingers): They say it is “better to make a friend than make an enemy,” and they’re so right. I’ve been worshipping the Buddha for a decade and I understand this principle very well now. Of course, what Wei Liansheng and Yuchun did was wrong, and while it’s understandable that I ran him out of the city because I had been hurt, you can’t say that my actions were blameless. There are a lot of stories about things like this in the classics, and I’m embarrassed when I compare myself to the ancients. But now—well, I can’t make the same mistake twice. “Let he who tied the bell on the tiger take it off.” I started this, I should stop it. We have found where Wei Liansheng is, and we have found out he is in difficulty, so it all must have been decreed by heaven. He and I have some predestined business that is not finished. That’s why I want you to go see him. wang xingui (humoring su hongji): Sure, sure, sure. I’ll go get Mr. Xie first thing tomorrow and we’ll go see him together. Mr. Xie knows everybody in that troupe. su hongji (standing up): Even without twenty years of tough times he’ll certainly have recognized and repented his sins from back then. “Put down your butcher’s knife, and turn and find the shore of repentance at hand.” Saving those in need is the duty of those of us who believe in the Buddha. wang xingui (does not know what else to say to show he is moved): That’s right, that’s right. You truly are a living buddha and the salvation of those in need. su hongji (growing happier as he speaks and beginning to pace around the room): Now I know what happened to Wei Liansheng, but there is still something I need to have settled if I’m going to be at peace . . . wang xingui (alert now): You mean . . . (Deciding he shouldn’t finish the thought, he stops short.) su hongji (very slowly): I’m talking about Yuchun. wang xingui (feigning surprise and putting on a sad expression): Fourth Mistress . . . su hongji: Mr. Xu and Mrs. Xu took her with them and left in a rush. Poor girl, she was pampered and spoiled here and she had to stoop to being somebody’s slave. And she had to make that long trip. I was really worried about her. wang xingui: Do you know if Mrs. Xu is decent to her? su hongji: The odd thing is, Xu Fucheng and I agreed that we wouldn’t lose touch, but it’s been twenty years since I heard from him. He just vanished like a stone in the ocean. wang xingui (feigning concern): Nothing happened to him, did it? su hongji: No. I hear what he’s up to all the time from my friends in government. But he hasn’t written to me once. It doesn’t really matter, but (finds this difficult to say) I just never thought that he was so . . . wang xingui (trying to seem as baffled as his master): It really is strange. su hongji (clasping his hands behind his back and sighing): Let’s not talk about it. My heart has long since grown as still as water at the bottom of an old well. I don’t think

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about quotidian affairs anymore . . . (Casting a glance at wang xingui) Naturally you can’t understand. wang xingui (suddenly thinking of something): Oh yeah! I almost forgot. su hongji: What? wang xingui (confidently and animatedly): Sir, let go of your anger at Mr. Xu. Today Mr. Xie gave me some news. He got another shipment of contraband. su hongji (not expecting this): What? wang xingui: An opium deal! (He looks as if he is expecting praise. su hongji was expounding on matters of the greatest solemnity and importance and wang xingui’s words have taken him completely by surprise. It is as if he has been splashed in the face with cold water. He is shocked, but still the water feels refreshing. How, then, should he react? He decides simply to stare at wang xingui.) I’ll inquire about all the details for you. su hongji (his heart beats excitedly but he preserves an outward calm): It will fall through. wang xingui (rushing to disagree): No, definitely not. Mr. Xie is very reliable. He has lots of connections. I’ve known him since we were small. He— su hongji (raising his hand and stopping wang xingui): Okay. We’ll work it all out in good time. wang xingui: In any case, I’ll go see him tomorrow and find out what’s what. su hongji (nodding): That will be fine. (little orchid raises the door curtain and enters. She puts the red lacquer serving tray she is carrying on the table. On the tray is a small covered bowl of bird’s nest soup and beside it a silver soup spoon.) Is it still snowing? little orchid: No. But it’s dark and quiet out. I was afraid. So Old Yang walked me over. su hongji (noticing that there is a name card on the tray): What’s this? little orchid: Somebody is here to see you. Old Yang is waiting downstairs. He wants to know if you’ll receive the guest. (su hongji picks up and reads the name card, then draws up in great surprise, his mouth open.) wang xingui (coming over): What is it? su hongji: Am I dreaming? wang xingui (softly): Who is it? su hongji: Go tell Old Yang to bring the guest up right away! (Reading from the name card) Xu Fucheng. (wang xingui is also surprised and he rushes out the door.) little orchid: Hurry up and eat. It’s going to get cold. su hongji (lifts the cover off the bowl and stirs the soup with the spoon, a little distractedly): All things that are united for long must part; all things that are parted for long

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must reunite. “Water flows a thousand years then returns to the sea.” Everyone who left has returned. little orchid (rolls her dark, limpid eyes): You’re saying weird stuff again. su hongji (laughing despite himself ): The guest is an old friend of mine. I’m happy. little orchid (saucily): Well, thank goodness. May heaven see that you stay happy. That would be nice. That way you wouldn’t take your bad moods out on me. su hongji: Listen to you. When did you get such a glib tongue? We have a guest. Turn the lights on and pick up the room. (little orchid turns on all the lights and the room brightens considerably.) (Covering his eyes with his hand) Oh. little orchid (squinting): It’s too bright, I can’t see. (little orchid straightens up the room. su hongji eats the hot soup as quickly as he can.) su hongji (giving the bowl to little orchid): Take this next door. Go pour some tea. (Cocks his head to listen to the sound of people downstairs) They’re here, they’re coming up. (In a flustered hurry, su hongji runs out the door. little orchid watches su hongji exit, then picks up the serving tray and puts the bowl on it.) little orchid: What’s the big deal about a guest?! (As little orchid exits through the door she amuses herself by imitating the way the old and unsteady su hongji ran out. A moment passes. Footsteps and voices are heard from outside the door. wang xingui is the first to step through the door; he lifts the curtain aside in a posture of absolute deference and respect.) su hongji (outside the door and speaking to his guest): After you, after you. (xu fucheng and su hongji enter, each bowing and nodding to the other. xu fucheng is, of course, older now. But he is still fit. He still stands straight and is still full of energy. His hair is partly gray and his skin is more swarthy than it was, but aside from that he looks much the same as he did twenty years ago. xu fucheng takes off his leather hat and his leather- collared overcoat. wang xingui takes these with two hands and puts them on a chair. He picks up his scarf from the chair and exits. Host and guest each picks an appropriate seat and sits down. They make small talk.) This is a bolt from the blue, your coming by. It’s as if you got blown in on that storm. xu fucheng: It’s a surprise to me too to find you here in this same room after twenty years. su hongji: When did you get to town? xu fucheng: I’ve been here for two days. I’ve just now rested up from the trip, so I came to pay my respects. su hongji: And your wife? xu fucheng (awkwardly): She didn’t . . . she didn’t make the trip. su hongji: You’re by yourself ? xu fucheng (answering vaguely): Yes . . . and with a few others. su hongji: Where are you staying?

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xu fucheng: In a hotel. su hongji: You should come stay with me. xu fucheng (politely): You’re too kind. I’m comfortable anywhere. And I’ll be on the road again in two days. su hongji: Oh. You came back for consultations. xu fucheng (smiling): Nothing so grand as that. su hongji: I haven’t seen you in twenty years. You carry yourself with every bit of the grace and dignity you did in the past. You really were born a cut above the rest. xu fucheng: Oh please. Decades have gone by and it seems to me I’ve done nothing with my life. su hongji: Come now. You’re one of the most honest and upright officials of the era. Everybody respects and admires you. We’re friends, no need to be so polite. xu fucheng (with equal parts self-satisfaction and polite humility): It doesn’t seem to me that I’ve done anything worth mentioning. Over twenty years I’ve won an undeserved reputation. In fact, I’m not out to win any great merit; I just want to avoid demerit. su hongji: I’m sure that in twenty years you have seen a lot of very interesting things. Can I get you to talk about it? I’m sure I could a learn a lot from you, an old fool like me who has always just waited for good luck to find him. xu fucheng: If you really want to hear about it. I just don’t think it’s all that interesting to talk about. su hongji (sighing softly): No news from you in twenty years. I was sure we would never see each other again. xu fucheng: That’s my fault, now that you bring it up. I shouldn’t have fallen out of touch . . . But . . . su hongji (trying to get the conversation out of this impasse): Let’s forget it, let’s forget it. These days “I decline the jade belt and official robe,” much less do I . . . (little orchid brings in two cups of tea on a tea tray. She puts the cups of tea in front of su hongji and xu fucheng.) Little Orchid, meet Mr. Xu. little orchid (bows her head): Mr. Xu, sir. xu fucheng (leaning forward): Who would this be? su hongji: A servant of mine. xu fucheng: She looks like a bright girl. How old are you? little orchid: Sixteen. xu fucheng: Wonderful. Oh, what about that girl Orchid from before? su hongji (the name has long begun to seem distant to him): Orchid? She got married a long time ago. Her son is probably already in university by now. xu fucheng (inwardly disappointed and also surprised): Oh . . . su hongji: She married well. (Pointing to little orchid) In three to five years at most this girl will be getting married too. (little orchid gives a squeal, stamps her foot, turns away, and retreats to sit in a corner of the room. su hongji laughs loudly and, as if by reflex, takes his prayer beads in his fingers.)

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xu fucheng (with surprise): Su Hongji, are you Buddhist now? su hongji: I’m getting closer and closer to my grave, sad to say, and I’m lost to despair. Worshipping Buddha gives me solace. And it prepares me for the next life. xu fucheng: True, true. su hongji: I’m not strict about it year-round. I avoid meat a few times a year for religious purposes. I avoid meat on days when we worship Guanyin. I eat vegetarian on the third of each month, and on the nineteenth day of the second, sixth, and ninth lunar months. Those three days. Other than that I read the sutras, pray to the Buddha, and I sit, I meditate. xu fucheng: You have my admiration, truly. (Changing the subject to lighten the mood) This room looks the same. su hongji: Yes. I’ve kept its old-time feel. It reminds me that I’ve shut myself up to ponder my mistakes. xu fucheng: I see, I see. xu fucheng: The room is the same but the people are all gone. Can I ask, how is Yuchun these days? xu fucheng: How nice of you to ask, Hongji. I was just about to mention Yuchun. su hongji (pressing xu fucheng): Why? Where is she now? xu fucheng: I really owe you my thanks, Hongji. For twenty years I’ve been going from place to place for the government, and, while I’ve done nothing of merit, fortunately I haven’t got any big demerits either, and a lot of that is owing to her help. su hongji (not understanding): What do you mean? xu fucheng: When you first gave Yuchun to my wife, we were worried that she was too accustomed to an easy life and would have trouble getting along. Who knew it wouldn’t turn out that way? She turned out to be gentle and kind and able to take responsibility for all sorts of things by herself. She handles everything beautifully and thoroughly. su hongji: I see. How wonderful. xu fucheng: About ten years ago my wife’s health declined and she couldn’t take the difficulties of travel anymore. So she moved back home to live and we decided Yuchun would be with me. su hongji (a singular emotion sweeping over him): They say, “You can plant a flower with all the care in the world and it may not bloom; but plant a willow carelessly and you’ll get a grove of willows.” Some things are just meant to be. (Laughs loudly) Who knew that I was putting you two on the road to a happy marriage. xu fucheng (not knowing how to respond): That’s why . . . that’s why . . . That’s why I’m so grateful. I’m so grateful, Hongji. su hongji (not entirely in control of his emotions): That’s what they mean by a blessing in disguise. (Laughs loudly) Yuchun is a very fortunate person. (With feeling) It’s all so unbelievable. (Looks all around) “An old acquaintance comes to visit on a snowy day.” And you’ve brought all this good news . . . Little Orchid, clean everything off the table and open up the drapes. (Pointing to the table drawer) Get out some dishes. Mr. Xu and I are going to enjoy a cup of wine while we look at the snow.

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(little orchid stands up and does what su hongji has asked.) So where is Yuchun now? xu fucheng: She’s . . . she’s just outside. su hongji (so surprised he jumps): What did you say? xu fucheng: She’s . . . she’s outside in the car. She wanted me to tell you she was here before she came in. su hongji: Oh my! This is really . . . This is really . . . xu fucheng: She said she wanted to come back for a look around . . . It was she who encouraged me to come. su hongji: Hurry and invite her in. (To himself ) Is Steward Wang next door? (little orchid nods.) (Yelling) Steward Wang! (wang xingui lifts the door curtain, puts his head in, then enters in response to su hongji’s summons.) Hurry outside and invite the woman in the car . . . invite Mrs. Xu to come in. It’s dark out, so get Old Yang to take a lantern to her. Then tell the kitchen to prepare some food and drink. Bring a jug of that good Shaoxing wine that Minister Zhang gave me. Little Orchid, set an extra place. (To xu fucheng) Yuchun can handle her wine. (wang xingui, recalling his last encounter with yuchun, cannot help but feel awkward, and it shows. He has no choice but to obediently do as he is told. He is about to exit. little orchid pulls open the drapes on one of the windows. From outside there is the soft glow of a fire. little orchid reacts in surprise. su hongji stands up. wang xingui stops where he is.) (Alarmed) There’s somebody in the garden! Open a window! (little orchid pushes open the shutters on the window.) little orchid: There’s a fire! Who built a fire? (xu fucheng stands up. wang xingui comes forward.) (Crying out in surprise) There’s somebody lying under the crab apple tree! (She turns back to face the others. wang xingui comes over to the window, pushing little orchid aside.) wang xingui (shouting angrily): Who let those tramps in! (Yelling loudly) That’s a dead body under the tree! Two guys just ran away! There’s a hole in the wall! Where’s the watchman? Where the hell has he gone?! Useless bastard! Bastard . . . (su hongji had looked as angry as wang xingui but now he becomes calm.) su hongji (frowning): Quiet down! wang xingui (reluctantly turning to face su hongji): What? It’s outrageous. It’s completely . . . su hongji (making a show of his magnanimous nature, in part for the benefit of xu fucheng): Now, don’t be that way. (His demeanor calm) A man has died here at our place, which means he and I have a karmic connection. No doubt the Buddha has done this to redeem a lost soul. xu fucheng (approvingly): You’re a worthy Buddhist, Hongji.

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su hongji (with even greater self-satisfaction than before): He’s already departed this mortal realm. He’ll have already arrived in paradise. (wang xingui is about to give vent to his annoyance.) (Silencing wang xingui) Hang on. (Ticking the tasks off on his fingers) First, go invite Mrs. Xu in. Second, make sure the food and wine are ready. Then, third, go get a coffin, put the dead man in it, take him outside the city, and bury him. wang xingui: We need to report this to the authorities. su hongji: You take care of everything. Right now hurry and ask Mrs. Xu in. Then straight away get somebody to carry the body out. (wang xingui nods and exits.) xu fucheng: Su Hongji, you do live by Buddhist principles. (Outside the snow is floating down.) su hongji (stroking his chin and smiling): “In any green hillside men’s remains may lie.” To die in the snow is a good death, I must say. (Something occurs to him) Fucheng, think of how amazing it is. You and I haven’t seen each other in twenty years, but, to our surprise, we were fated to meet again. And even more incredibly, somebody else we know has returned at the same time. xu fucheng: Who? su hongji: Wei Liansheng. The Peking opera actor. xu fucheng (taken completely by surprise): Wei . . . su hongji: It’s really just too much of a coincidence. I already told Wang Xingui to find him and bring him around tomorrow. xu fucheng (not knowing what to say, wanders to the window and looks out): So much snow! su hongji: What? Is it snowing again? xu fucheng: It has even covered up the body. (Suddenly the wind begins to howl and wind and snow come in through the window. xu fucheng is startled and retreats.) su hongji: My! Little Orchid, quick, close the window. (little orchid closes the window; outside the snowstorm grows more intense.) (Running his prayer beads through his fingers, walks over and warms himself by the fire) It is a cold and snowy night everywhere in our vast land. Who knows how many people have frozen to death in this snowstorm. (su hongji puts on a look of great “compassion.” xu fucheng stares blankly out the window. little orchid stands still. The room is silent for a moment. Suddenly wang xingui runs into the room in a panic.) wang xingui (his mouth open, temporarily at loss for words): Mrs. Xu has disappeared. The car’s empty! There’s nobody in the car! (Everyone is dumbstruck.) xu fucheng (his voice breaking, as if he had just taken a blow that has knocked the life out of him): What! su hongji (yelling in a panic): Go find her! Light some lanterns and go find her!

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(The lights go out. su hongji, xu fucheng, and wang xingui exit through the door and go down the stairs. We hear their voices shouting, “Yuchun!” “Yuchun!” Where has yuchun gone on this cold, snowy, windswept night? little orchid sits on the prayer cushion in the darkness, lost in thought, looking out through the window at the snowstorm. The wind howls and the snow beats against the window lattice. With a crash, the wind blows open the shutters on a window, and snow sweeps into the room. What power now takes hold of little orchid? She stands, turns to face the snowstorm, and looks out the window into the raging sky. Will she cease to be a bird in a cage? Is it not fitting that the new generation is coming of age in the midst of storms? But the wind is not yet strong enough! Not yet strong enough! And the snow must fall harder! Who among us does not long for the eternally pure silvery world of the ice-capped mountains of the north? We need a driving snowstorm to cleanse the world of evil.)

Not es

1.

2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

7. 8.

This English translation is of Wu Zuguang, Fengxue ye gui ren (n.p., Kaiming shudian, 1944). Li Chang has concluded that, of the four editions of the play, Wu Zuguang favored that of 1944 (“Fengxue ye gui ren banben weisheng zhi bijiao” [A Comparison of the Epilogues in the Editions of Return on a Snowy Night], Wenxue pinglun, no. 9 [September 2005]: 182– 83). The title of the play comes from the last line of the poem “Fengxue su Furongshan zhuren” (A Snowy Night at Hibiscus Mountain), by Tang poet Liu Changqing (fl. 755–763) (Chen Yixin, ed., Zengding zhushi quan Tang shi [The Annotated Complete Tang Poems: Revised and Enlarged Edition] [Beijing: Wenhua yishu, 2003], 1:1101). “The pipes and strings of the Brocade City” are the first words in Du Fu’s poem “Zeng Hua qing” (Presented to General Hua), which William Hung dates to the summer or fall of 761. The “Brocade City” is Chengdu. Hung finds the poem to be “a hint that General Hua had better not indulge in so much luxury” (William Hung, Tu Fu: China’s Greatest Poet [Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1952], 178–79; Chen Yixin, Zengding zhushi quan Tang shi, 2:222). This admonition is from the Confucian sage Mengzi; the translation is by D. C. Lau (Mencius [London: Penguin, 1970], 96). A kang is a raised platform for sitting and sleeping, built usually of brick, that is heated with flues from a hearth. This kang has a wooden facing. Huqin is a general term for two-string, bowed instruments, including the erhu; huqin is sometimes translated as “fiddle.” Its sound is sharp and piercing. The Chinese attendant (genbao) performed duties similar to those of a dresser in Western theater. A huashan actor is a man who plays female roles, including both the vivacious and flirtatious huadan and the more modest and sedate qingyi; huashan roles require both singing and acting. A suona is a horn. Wu Zuguang has his characters repeat many aphorisms and folk sayings (as in this instance), as well as lines from poetry, fiction, and opera; he sometimes but not always uses quotation marks, which have been preserved in this translation except where say-

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9. 10.

11.

12. 13.

14.

15.

16.

17.

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ings do not translate easily, in which cases the meaning has been preserved but the quotation marks omitted. Acting was not a respected profession in traditional China; Wei Liansheng’s father uses a derogatory word for actor (xizi) that has no equivalent in English. This is from the last couplet of Tang poet Bai Juyi’s “Jianjian yin,” with “world” substituted for Bai Juyi’s “capital city”; Bai’s poem is about the short life of a beautiful young woman. Hugh M. Stimson renders the title as “Simplicity’s Song” (Fifty-five T’ang Poems [New Haven, Conn.: Far Eastern Publications, 1976], 148–50). Auntie Ma’s son’s name means “Second Dummy,” “Second” because he is her second eldest child; the name does not sound as harsh in Chinese as in English. In Chinese it is affectionate, if candid. Here and throughout, this bow (qing’an) is made by sweeping one’s right arm down in front of one while bending one’s left knee. Pengjuer (from pengchang, which means “sing the praises of or flatter”) means to “boost or support a star actor”; this word combines “in approximately equal parts, the concepts of fan and patron” (Joshua Goldstein, Drama Kings: Players and Publics in the Re-creation of Peking Opera, 1870–1937 [Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007], 198). Male actors who performed female roles became the objects of the sexual desire of some male fans/patrons and sometimes their sexual partners, as is implied in Wu Zuguang’s play. Wang Xingui uses a play on words—Zheng He shi (Mrs. Zheng, née He) as a pun for zheng heshi (perfect)—that cannot be translated. In the 1944 edition of the play, Wu Zuguang includes a note in brackets in the body of his text explaining this pun for obtuse readers. Nigu si fan (a title often abbreviated to Si fan) is an opera about a young woman’s distress and eventual escape when she is forced to train as a nun. Andrea S. Goldman discusses the textual history of the opera in “The Nun Who Wouldn’t Be: Representation of Female Desire in Two Performance Genres of ‘Si Fan,’ ” Late Imperial China 22, no. 1 (June 2001): 71–138. This opera is based on an episode in the Sanguo zhi (A History of the Three Kingdoms). In the opera, Liu Bei travels to marry the sister of his enemy, which puts Liu at a tactical advantage (Xu Chengbei, Peking Opera, trans. Chen Gengtao [Beijing: China Intercontinental Press, 2003], 52). Grand Wedding in the Enemy Camp is Chen Gengtao’s loose translation of the opera’s title, Long feng cheng xiang, which Tom Gee renders more literally as The Happy Auguries of the Dragon and the Phoenix (Stories of Chinese Opera [Taipei: Liberal Arts Press, 1978], 234–37). The twentieth- century Peking opera Hongfu zhuan has its origins in the trilogy of plays by Ling Mengchu (1580–1644) Hongfu san zhuan (Three Stories of Hongfu), which is in turn based on the story “Qiuranke zhuan” (The Story of the Curly-Bearded Stranger), by Du Guangting (850– 933). Hongfu (or Hong Fu), the girl with the red whisk, is a maid kept by a debauched high official. She escapes with Li Jing, a good man, and they end up helping to establish the Tang dynasty. See Xu Yongbin, “Ling Mengchu Hongfu zaju chuangzuo kao,” Journal of Inner Mongolia University (Philosophy and Social Sciences) 40, no. 4 (July 2008): 85– 88; and William H. Nienhauser Jr., ed., The Indiana Companion to Traditional Chinese Literature (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986), 823. Hongfu is one of the “heroes” in the related opera Fengcheng san xia (The Three Heroes of an Age of Turbulence) (Gee, Stories of Chinese Opera, 127–28).

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18. The term jin wu (golden room) conventionally connotes the room of a beautiful woman who has been taken as a concubine by a rich, powerful man. 19. This hall is a pavilion set up for the birthday celebration. 20. Wang Xingui’s somewhat unconventional use of this saying, equivalent to the English “You can’t judge a book by its cover,” implies that Wei Liansheng’s father had underestimated Wang Xingui as well as Wei Liansheng. 21. This is an important stele from the Later Han dynasty that was unearthed during the Ming dynasty (Nakata Yuˉjiroˉ, ed., Chinese Calligraphy, trans. Jeffrey Hunter [New York: Weatherhill, 1983], 166). 22. Zhao Mengfu (1254–1322) was a descendant of the Song dynasty royal house and the most important calligrapher of the Yuan dynasty. 23. Gong Dingan was the hao (literary name) of poet, scholar, and influential progressive thinker Gong Zizhen (1792–1841). The poem is one of a famous series of 315 quatrains Gong wrote in 1839. The translation of the poem is by Shirleen S. Wong (Kung Tzuchen [Boston: Twayne, 1975], 83). 24. The common name for this orchid (suxin lan) echoes the inscription over the door to Wei Liansheng’s bedroom, “Su shi,” which means both an undecorated room and ordinary people. 25. Bird fanciers walk and swing their birdcages in order to exercise their birds, which must grip their perches tightly. 26. This is from the opera Bawang bieji (Farewell My Concubine), in which the Han army defeats Xiang Yu, the king of Chu, with a ruse: the Han soldiers sing the songs of Chu, and Xiang Yu’s soldiers grow dispirited because they believe, wrongly, that the Han has already conquered Chu. 27. I.e., one eventually rises to a position of power. 28. Chen Xiang begins his list with names of specific moves. “The king’s entrance” (qi ba), for example, refers to the stylized gestures made by a general before entering camp to suggest his adjustment of his helmet and armor, which enhances his martial bearing. 29. Chen Xiang has used two comically elaborate euphemistic figures of speech, which necessarily have been reduced in translation to “forcing myself on you” and “one of us is hot and one of us is cool.” 30. For kowtow, Wu Zuguang uses the elaborate metaphor “like pushing over a golden mountain and toppling a jade pillar,” which he borrows from an incident in chap. 81 of the Ming- dynasty novel Shui hu zhuan (The Water Margin) (Shi Nai’an and Luo Guanzhong, Shui hu quan zhuan [The Complete Water Margin] [Shanghai: Shanghai guji, 1984], 3:992). 31. The quote is from the Analects of Confucius. 32. The Chinese title is De yi yuan; the English title is that supplied by Tom Gee. The play is about righteous bandits, political intrigue, and young love that is put to a test (Stories of Chinese Opera, 360– 61).

Teahouse (1958) Lao She Tra nsla ted by Y i ng R u oc he ng Revised by Cla i r e C onc e i s on

C ha r a c t e rs silly yang 㬚▙㓱, a male professional beggar who goes from shop to shop reciting improvised doggerel wang lifa 㠩⺉➂, when we first see him, in act 1, he is only a little over twenty years old. Though young, he is already the manager of the Yutai Teahouse because of his father’s early death; shrewd, somewhat selfish, but not really bad at heart tang the oracle 㜼㝰㾌, a man around thirty years old who makes his living by fortune-telling; an opium addict master song 㚁✠㮙, timid and talkative, in his thirties master chang ⒋㙼㮙, a man around thirty years old, upright and robust, a good friend of master song’s; both regular customers at the Yutai Teahouse li san ⹼㑻, a waiter at the Yutai Teahouse, in his thirties, hardworking and kindhearted erdezi ✠☦㽳, an imperial wrestler, in his twenties master ma ⿷㙼㮙, a minor character, in his thirties, of some influence, who lives off the Christian missionaries and bullies people pockmark liu ⽁⿳㽳, a professional pimp, vile and venomous, in his thirties kang liu ⶅ⽁, a starving peasant from the outskirts of Beijing, about forty years old tubby huang, ⪞㈚㽳, an underworld boss, in his forties

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qin zhongyi ㎘㺻㯏, owner of wang lifa’s premises, in his twenties in act 1, son of a rich family, later becomes a capitalist with reformist leanings old man ⹝㑉, eighty-two years old, destitute peasant woman 㦗⡜, in her thirties, so poor that she tries to sell her young daughter little girl 㨏䩦, daughter of the peasant woman, ten years old eunuch pang ㈗㜡⭶, forty years old, having amassed a fortune, wishes to take a wife xiao niur 㨏㇧✛, madame pang’s personal attendant, in his teens song enzi 㚆✙㽳, an old-fashioned secret agent, in his twenties wu xiangzi 㣔㦙㽳, a colleague of song enzi’s, in his twenties kang shunzi ⶅ㙫㽳, daughter of kang liu, fifteen years old in act 1, sold to eunuch pang as his wife wang shufen 㠩㗡➲, wang lifa’s wife, about forty years old, more fair-minded and upright than her husband policeman 㫞ⳁ, in his twenties paperboy ⌔㟣, sixteen years old kang dali ⶅ▙⻲, twenty years old, a son purchased by eunuch pang; he and his foster mother, kang shunzi, are deeply attached to each other lao lin ⹝⼢, a deserter from the warlord armies, in his thirties lao chen ⹝⒪, another deserter, thirty years old, lao lin’s sworn brother cui jiufeng ▄ⳕ⟅, a former member of parliament, now in his forties, who devotes himself to Buddhist canonical studies; tenant in the lodging house attached to the Yutai Teahouse army officer ⴎ⤵, thirty years old, with the execution squad wang dashuan 㠩▙㙡, wang lifa’s eldest son, about forty years old, a man of principle zhou xiuhua 㺾㩑⪀, forty years old, wang dashuan’s wife wang xiaohua 㠩㨏⪂, thirteen-year- old daughter of wang dashuan ding bao ⛃⌒, seventeen-year- old waitress of easy virtue, but with a mind of her own and a lot of courage pockmark liu jr. 㨏⽁⿳㽳, son of pockmark liu, in his thirties, carrying on and advancing his father’s “profession” electricity bill collector 㐟♋☪➱☨, in his forties tang the oracle jr. 㨏㜼㝰㾌, son of tang the oracle, in his thirties, carrying on his father’s profession and entertaining hopes of becoming a “heavenly teacher” in a superstitious cult supported by the KMT chef ming タ㖠⡓, a banquet chef, in his fifties zou fuyuan 㽾⡁㴜, a well-known professional storyteller, in his forties wei fuxi 㢲⡁㥢, originally a storyteller, trained by the same master as zou fuyuan, but now a Peking opera singer, in his thirties fang liu ➝⽅, a crafty dealer in secondhand goods, in his forties che dangdang ⒝☕☕, a dealer in silver dollars, about thirty years old

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madame pang ㈗㙼ㅒㅒ, an ugly and repulsive woman of forty years of age, wife of eunuch pang’s fourth nephew, aspiring to be the empress of China chunmei ╠み, nineteen years old, bondmaid of madame pang old yang ⹝㬚, peddler of pawned goods, in his thirties erdezi jr. 㨏✠☦㽳, son of erdezi and a professional thug, thirty years old yu houzhai 㲂⨋㷏, wang xiaohua’s teacher in the primary school, in his forties xie yongren 㨩㱪㑈, teacher in the primary school, in his thirties song enzi jr. 㨏㚆✙㽳, son of song enzi, a secret agent like his father, about thirty years old wu xiangzi jr. 㨏㣔㦙㽳, son of wu xiangzi, a hereditary secret agent, about thirty years old xiao xinyanr 㨏㨲㬇, a nineteen-year- old waitress of easy virtue director shen 㔮╌⒌, chief of a division in the military police headquarters, forty years old several tea house customers ␒⶝㑲⡧㑉, all male tea house waiters, one or two, ␒➟㮥⼉⢔, male some refugees, of both sexes and all ages, ㅗス㗷㑉, 㱸ㅖ㱸ㇲ 㱸⹝㱸㔕 several lodgers ⤇㴈㽁⶝㗷㑉, all male several soldiers ▙⍤㑻㣗㑉, all male execution squad 㫦▙⼺☨⍤㋡㑉, seven, all male four military policemen 㦌⍤㙼㑉, all male

PRO L OGUE (As some time must be allowed between acts for the actors to change their makeup, I have devised a character [who should be considered as one of the dramatis personae] reciting seemingly improvised rhyme with bamboo clappers, as a sort of entr’acte. That may make the intervals seem shorter and at the same time give people some idea about the background of the play.) silly yang: I’m Silly Yang, and from shop to shop I make my rounds till here I stop. This great teahouse, Yutai by name, A booming business, fortune and fame. Trade is brisk, lots of tea sold, Everyone welcome, young and old. Some sing or hum, others sit and chat, Each in his gown, each in his hat.

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This is where bird fanciers meet, Where cricket and grasshopper owners compete. With tea and snacks, you can while away the day, But not a crumb for those who cannot pay. Here chess players meet for their favorite game, Tasty meatballs, the winners claim. Pomp is loved, but manners one must note, Everything has style, even clearing the throat. But above all else, get this straight, Never, if you please, discuss affairs of state. Matters there, alas, aren’t good at all, The Great Qing Empire seems headed for a fall. Mandarins and generals have one common trick, Faced by foreign armies, they turn tail double quick. Foreign goods you’ll find everywhere, With opium thrown in as an extra fare. The peasants’ plight, words cannot say, Forced to sell their children, there’s no other way. The rich got richer, the poor got worse, Till Tan Sitong demanded a reverse. Kang Youwei supported him and Liang Qichao, All wanting the reforms, here and now. But such major changes the despots’ doom presaged, No wonder the empress dowager was enraged. “Treason!” she screamed, wanting blood, So the movement was crushed, nipped in the bud. But I’d better stop and hold myself in check, Talking too freely will surely risk my neck! Beating my clappers, into the teahouse I go, Hoping that somebody some interest will show. Would you like a story to cheer you up, Of heroes and heroines, while you enjoy your cup? Manager Wang, for you these seem profitable times, Don’t be hard on poor old me, living by my rhymes!

A CT 1 (The time is early autumn in 1898, just after the reform movement, led by Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao, has been crushed. Morning; the place is the Yutai Teahouse, Beijing. The curtain rises: One doesn’t find large teahouses like this anymore. A few decades ago, every district in Beijing had at least one. Tea was served as well as simple snacks and quick meals. Bird fanciers, after having spent what they considered sufficient time stroll-

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ing about with their caged orioles and thrushes, used to come here every day to rest, sip tea, and demonstrate the singing virtuosity of their birds. The teahouse was also a meeting place for all sorts of discussions and transactions, and a haven for go-betweens and pimps. Gang fights were common in those days, but fortunately there were always friends around to calm things down. Between thirty and fifty thugs from both sides, reconciled through the good offices of a mediator, would gather here to drink tea and consume bowls of noodles with minced pork [a specialty of large teahouses, cheap and easy to prepare], and peace would once more have been restored in the land. In short, the teahouse was a most important institution, a place where people could come for business or just to while away the time. At its tables one could hear the most preposterous stories, such as how a giant spider turned into a demon until it was finally struck by lightning; or the most extraordinary views, such as how far it was possible to prevent all foreign armies from landing by the simple expedient of building a long high wall along the seacoast. Yet this was also the place to learn the latest aria devised by some Peking opera actor or the most sophisticated method for preparing opium. Here, too, one could see newly acquired treasures such as an excavated jade fan pendant or a three- color glazed snuffbox. The teahouse was indeed an important place, almost a center of cultural exchange. Immediately inside the entrance we see the counter and the brick stove (though, for staging purposes, the actual stove can be replaced with the clatter of pots and pans offstage if necessary). The building is extremely large and high- ceilinged, with rectangular tables, square tables, benches, and stools for customers. Through the window an inner courtyard can be seen, where there is a matted canopy for shade and seats for customers. There are hooks for hanging up birdcages, both in the teahouse and in the courtyard. Paper signs saying do not discuss affairs of state are pasted on walls throughout the teahouse. Two customers, whose names are not given, are softly humming a tune, keeping time with their hands, their eyes narrowed and their heads rocking. Two or three others, also nameless, are fascinated by some crickets in an earthenware jar. Two men in gray gowns, song enzi and wu xiangzi, are talking to each other in whispers. From their appearance one can deduce they are agents from the Northern Yamen, the security authority in those days. Another gang fight has been brewing today. The reason, according to some sources, was a dispute over the ownership of a pigeon. It seemed quite likely that the whole affair would end in violence. If so, then a loss of life would result, for the thugs invited by both parties included characters well known for their physical prowess, such as the imperial wrestlers and guards of the imperial storehouses. Fortunately, nothing of the sort will happen, for before either party had assembled their ranks, mediators were already busy trying to bring about some kind of truce; so now the two sides are meeting in the teahouse. Throughout the first part of this act, these thugs, in twos and threes, looking belligerent and dressed in short clothes [for fighting, as opposed to long gowns], will enter the teahouse and head for the inner courtyard. master ma, alone in a corner, sits inconspicuously drinking tea.

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wang lifa sits at a vantage point behind the counter. tang the oracle enters, his shoes half off his feet and wearing an extremely long and dirty gown, some scraps of paper tucked into his hat near the temples.) wang lifa: Mr. Tang, why not take a walk somewhere else? tang the oracle (with a wan smile): Oh, Manager Wang, boost up poor old Oracle a bit. Offer me a cup of tea, and I’ll tell your fortune for you. With palm reading thrown in, it won’t cost you a copper! (Without waiting for wang lifa’s consent, takes hold of his hand) Now, it’s the twenty-fourth year of Emperor Guangxu’s reign, the year of the dog, and your honorable age is . . . ? wang lifa (snatching his hand away): Enough, enough! I’ll give you a cup of tea, but spare me the sales talk. What’s the point of fortune-telling? In this harsh world, we’re all on our own. Life will never be easy. (Comes out from behind the counter and makes Tang sit down) Sit down! Listen to me! If you don’t stop smoking opium, you’ll never have any luck. There, you see, I’m a better fortune-teller than you! (master song and master chang enter, each carrying a birdcage. Greeted by wang lifa, they hang up the cages, then look for a place to sit. master song, who has a genteel air about him, carries a delicate oriole’s cage, whereas master chang, looking bold and sturdy, has with him a thrush’s cage of much greater dimensions. The waiter li san hurries over to prepare their lidded cups of tea, the leaves of which they have brought themselves. When the tea is ready, master song and master chang offer it to the customers around them.) master song and master chang: Drink some of this! (They look toward the inner courtyard.) master song: Trouble again? master chang: Don’t worry, they won’t come to blows. If it was serious, they’d have left the city long before this. Why come to a teahouse? (erdezi, one of the thugs, enters just in time to overhear master chang’s words.) erdezi (moving closer): What do you think you’re talking about? master chang (refusing to be intimidated): Who, me? I’ve paid for my tea. Do I have to bow to someone as well? master song (after sizing up erdezi): Excuse me, sir, you’re with the imperial wrestlers, aren’t you? Come, sit down. Let’s have a cup of tea together. We’re all men of the world. erdezi: What I do is none of your damn business! master chang: If you want to throw your weight around, try the foreigners! They’re tough all right! You’re on the public payroll, but when the British and French armies destroyed the old Summer Palace, I didn’t see you lift a finger to stop them! erdezi: Leave the foreigners out of this! (Raising his fist) I’ll teach you a lesson first! wang lifa: Now, now, gentlemen! Surely we can settle this as friends. Master Erdezi, why not take a seat in the inner courtyard now? (erdezi, ignoring wang lifa, suddenly sweeps a teacup off the table, smashing it. He makes a move, trying to grab master chang by the collar.)

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master chang (dodging him): What do you think you’re doing? erdezi: Perhaps I don’t touch foreigners, but I’ll show you a thing or two. I will! master ma (without getting up): Erdezi, you’re quite an important person, aren’t you? erdezi (looking around and spotting master ma): Oh, It’s you, Master Ma! Pardon, sir, I didn’t see you sitting there. (erdezi goes over to master ma, dropping on one knee in the traditional gesture of obeisance.) master ma: Settle your disputes in a reasonable way. Must you always resort to violence? erdezi: I’m paying for the tea for this table! (He exits to the inner courtyard.) master chang (going over to master ma, wishing to air his grievances): Sir, you’re a sensible gentleman. Please tell us who you think was right. master ma (standing up): I’m busy. Goodbye! (He exits.) master chang (to wang lifa): How odd! Strange character, isn’t he? wang lifa: Don’t you know that’s Master Ma? No wonder he snubbed you. You offended him. master chang: I did? This is my lucky day! wang lifa (lowering his voice): You were saying something about foreigners just now. Well, he lives off the foreigners. Follows their religion and speaks their language. If he wants, he can go straight to the mayor of Beijing on business.1 That’s why even the authorities handle him with care. master chang (going back to his seat): Pshaw! I have no time for people who serve foreign masters! wang lifa (tilting his head slightly in the direction of song enzi and wu xiangzi, in a whisper): Be careful what you say! (In a louder voice) Li San, a fresh cup of tea here! (wang lifa picks up the shards of the smashed teacup.) master song: How much for that teacup? I’ll pay for it. We men aren’t like mean old shrews! wang lifa: No hurry. We can settle that later. (He exits. The pimp pockmark liu leads kang liu into the teahouse. pockmark liu greets master song and master chang.)2 pockmark liu: You gentlemen are early today. (Takes out a snuffbox and measures out a little) You must try this! I just got it, the real thing from England! So fine and pure! master chang: Imagine! Even our snuff has to come from abroad. How much silver must flow out of the country every year! pockmark liu: Our great Qing empire has mountains of silver and gold. It’ll never run out. Please be seated, I have some business to attend to. (He leads kang liu to a seat. li san brings over a cup of tea.) Now, let’s talk it over. Will ten taels of silver do? Be quick! I’m a busy man. I haven’t got all day to wait on you! kang liu: Master Liu! A fifteen-year- old girl only worth ten taels?

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pockmark liu: A brothel might give you a few taels more, but you don’t want that. kang liu: My flesh and blood, how could I . . . ? pockmark liu: But you can’t feed her. Who’s to blame? kang liu: We peasants can’t live anymore. If we each had a bowl of gruel every day and I still wanted to sell my daughter, then I’d be a beast! pockmark liu: That’s your problem, not mine! You asked me to help you, so I’ll see to it you’re not cheated and your daughter fills her belly. What more do you want? kang liu: Who’s she being sold to? pockmark liu: This should please you: a palace official! kang liu: What palace official wants a peasant girl! pockmark liu: That’s why your daughter’s a lucky girl! kang liu: But who is he? pockmark liu: The grand eunuch Pang! Even you must have heard of him. A personal attendant of the empress dowager, her great favorite! Even the vinegar bottle in his house is made of agate! kang liu: But Master Liu, please. How could I ever face my daughter again if I sold her to be the wife of a eunuch? pockmark liu: But you are selling her, aren’t you? How can you face her anyway? Don’t be a fool! Think about it. Once she’s married, she’ll eat delicacies and wear brocades! I call that a lucky fate! Well, make up your mind, yes or no? Let’s get it over with! kang liu: But who has ever heard of such a thing . . . ? Ten taels. Is that all he’ll pay? pockmark liu: Where in your whole village can you scrape up ten taels? You know very well in the countryside a child can be bought for five catties of wheat flour. kang liu: I, well, I’ll have to talk it over with my daughter. pockmark liu: I’m telling you, you won’t find another opportunity like this. If you lose it, don’t blame me! You’d better get a move on. kang liu: Yes. I’ll be back as soon as I can. pockmark liu: I’ll be here waiting for you. (Exit kang liu, dragging his feet.) pockmark liu (moving over to master song and master chang): These country bumpkins are a nuisance. They’re so slow making up their minds! master song: Another big deal? pockmark liu: Not so big. If all goes well, I may get about twenty taels of silver. master chang: What’s going on in the countryside? Why are they selling their children like this? pockmark liu: Who knows? That’s why people say that even a dog wants to be born in Beijing. master chang: Master Liu, it takes nerve to have a hand in such a business! pockmark liu: But if I didn’t bother, they might not find a buyer! (Changing the subject abruptly, takes a small pocket watch out of his pocket) Master Song, have a look at this! master song (taking the watch): What a fine little watch!

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pockmark liu: Listen to it, ticking away merrily! master song (listening): How much does it cost? pockmark liu: Why, you like it? Then it’s yours! Just five taels! Whenever you’re tired of it, give it back to me and I’ll refund you to the last copper! It’s really top quality, fit for a family heirloom. master chang: It puzzles me, the amount of foreign things we all have. Take you, for instance, Liu—you have foreign snuff, a foreign watch, a gown made from foreign satin, and a jacket and trousers made of foreign cloth . . . pockmark liu: But foreign things look so nice! If I went around in simple cloth, looking like a country bumpkin, who would ever talk to me? master chang: I still think our own satin and Sichuan silk are much nicer. pockmark liu: Master Song, you really ought to keep this watch. Nowadays, if you carry a foreign watch around, people will treat you with new respect. Isn’t that so? master song (in love with the watch, but hesitating at the price): I . . . pockmark liu: Keep it for the time being. You can pay later! (tubby huang enters.) tubby huang (with a severe case of trachoma, has very poor eyesight; bending one knee as soon as he enters): Now, now, folks, for my sake, please, I’m here greetin’ you all! We’re all brothers, ain’t we? Let’s have none of them bad feelings! wang lifa: These aren’t the people you’ve come to see. They’re in the inner courtyard. tubby huang: Oh, my sight ain’t too good! Manager Wang, prepare them bowls of noodles! With me, Tubby Huang, here, no one’s goin’ to fight! (He heads for the inner courtyard.) erdezi (coming out to greet him): The two sides have already met. Come quick! (erdezi and tubby huang go in. Waiters begin to busy themselves taking hot water for tea into the inner courtyard. The old man enters, carrying metal toothpicks, beard combs, ear picks, and such items. He moves slowly from table to table, his head bent. No one is interested in his wares. Just as he is heading for the inner courtyard, he is stopped by li san.) li san: Now, old man, better try somewhere else. They’re trying to settle a dispute in there. No one will buy your things. (He hands him a cup of leftover tea in passing.) master song (lowering his voice): Li San! (Pointing at the inner courtyard) What’s it all about? Why are they going to fight? li san (in a low voice): It’s supposedly all over a pigeon that flew from the Zhang family over to the Li place. The Lis refused to return it . . . Well, better not go into it. (To the old man) Old man, you must be well on in years. old man (drinking the tea): Thanks a lot! I’m eighty-two! No one to look after me. These days, a pigeon’s better off than a man. Well, well! (He goes out slowly. qin zhongyi, meticulously dressed and in high spirits, enters.) wang lifa: Oh! Master Qin! How can you spare the time to visit the teahouse? Not even a servant to accompany you?

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qin zhongyi: Just taking a look around to see if a young fellow like you can run a business like this. wang lifa: Well, I learn as I go along. I have to. It’s my living! With my father dying so young, I have no choice. Luckily my customers were all friends of my father’s. They’re ready to overlook my slips. In a business like this you have to be popular. I do everything just like my father—always be polite, always make obeisances, try to please everybody. Then there won’t be any serious trouble. Please take a seat, sir. I’ll make you a cup of our very best tea. qin zhongyi: I don’t want any tea and I won’t sit down. wang lifa: Just for a moment! You’ll be doing me a great honor. qin zhongyi: Oh, all right. (Sitting) But don’t make such a fuss. wang lifa: Li San, a cup of our choicest tea. Sir, your family is well, I hope? And what about your business? Thriving? qin zhongyi: Not so good. wang lifa: But surely you’ve got nothing to worry about. With so many different interests, a mere trifle to you would be my entire fortune and more! tang the oracle (edging his way closer): Oh, what auspicious features! Truly an inspired forehead and a commanding jaw! Not the makings of a prime minister, but the potential for fabulous wealth! qin zhongyi: Leave me alone. Go away! wang lifa: Mr. Tang, you’ve had your tea. Now go somewhere else. (He gently pushes tang away.) tang the oracle: Oh, very well! (He exits dejectedly.) qin zhongyi: Now, young man, don’t you think it’s about time we raised the rent a bit? The pittance your father used to pay me as rent won’t even keep me in tea! wang lifa: Of course, sir, how right you are! But there’s no need for you to bother yourself over such small matters. Send your steward around and I’ll work it out with him. I’ll certainly pay what’s fair. Yes I will, sir! qin zhongyi: You rogue, you’re even more crafty than your father. You just wait, one of these days I’ll take this place back. wang lifa: You’re joking, sir! I know perfectly well you’re concerned about my welfare. You’d never drive me out onto the streets, to sell tea from an earthenware pot! qin zhongyi: Just you wait! (A peasant woman enters, leading by the hand a little girl with a straw stuck in her hair, indicating that she is for sale. li san is on the point of stopping them, but, feeling a twinge of pity, leaves them alone. The two make their way slowly into the teahouse. The customers suddenly stop their talk and banter to watch them.) little girl (stopping in the middle of the room): Ma! I’m hungry! I’m hungry! (The peasant woman looks blankly at the little girl. Suddenly, her legs give way and she sinks to the floor, sobbing into her hands.) qin zhongyi (to wang lifa): Get rid of them! wang lifa: Yes, sir. Go away! You can’t stay here.

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peasant woman: Won’t some kind person do a good deed? Take this child! Only two taels of silver! master chang: Li San, fetch two bowls of noodles, and take them outside to eat. li san: Yes, sir! (Going over to the peasant woman) Get up! Wait at the entrance. I’ll get you the noodles. (The peasant woman rises and goes to the entrance wiping her tears, looking dazed as if she has forgotten about the child. After a few steps, she suddenly turns around and takes the child in her arms, kissing her.) peasant woman: My little darling! wang lifa: Now, now, move on! (The peasant woman and the little girl exit. li san follows them a moment later with two bowls of noodles.) wang lifa (coming over): Master Chang, you’re really softhearted giving them noodles! But let me tell you, there are so many cases like this. Too many! You can’t help them all. (To qin zhongyi) Don’t you think I’m right, sir? master chang (to master song): It seems to me that the great Qing empire is done for! qin zhongyi (with a superior tone): Whether it’s done for or not doesn’t depend on giving bowls of noodles to the poor! Really, Wang, I’m serious about taking back this house. wang lifa: But you can’t do that, sir! qin zhongyi: Oh, yes I can. Not only the houses, but also the shops in the city and the land in the countryside. I’m going to sell them all! wang lifa: But why? qin zhongyi: I’m going to put all my capital together and start a factory! wang lifa: A factory! qin zhongyi: Exactly. A really big factory! That’s the only way to help the poor, keep out foreign goods, and save the empire. (Speaking to wang lifa but with his eyes on master chang) But what’s the use of talking to you about such things? It’s over your head. wang lifa: Do you mean you’re going to get rid of all your property, just for the sake of others, with no thought for yourself ? qin zhongyi: You wouldn’t understand. It’s the only way to make the country prosperous and strong. All right, time for me to go. Now, I’ve seen with my own eyes that you’re doing good business. Don’t you dare play your tricks and refuse to pay up when I raise the rent! wang lifa: Just a moment. I’ll get you a cart! qin zhongyi: Don’t bother. I’d rather walk. (qin zhongyi turns to go with wang lifa seeing him off. eunuch pang enters, supported by xiao niur, who is carrying a water pipe.) qin zhongyi: Your Excellency, Master Pang! eunuch pang: Why, Master Qin! qin zhongyi: You must be feeling a lot more relaxed these past few days.

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eunuch pang: Of course. Peace reigns once more. The imperial edict has been proclaimed and Tan Sitong has been sentenced to death. I tell you, anyone who dares to meddle with the statutes laid down by our ancestors will have his head chopped off! qin zhongyi: I always knew that. (The customers are suddenly silent, as if holding their breath listening.) eunuch pang: Ah, yes, you’re so smart! That’s why you’ve made such a fortune. qin zhongyi: My little bit of property isn’t worth mentioning. eunuch pang: How modest you are! Who in Beijing hasn’t heard of Master Qin? You’re more powerful than the mandarins. I’ve heard it whispered that quite a number of the rich support the reformists. qin zhongyi: Well, I wouldn’t say that. What little influence I may wield won’t go far in your presence. eunuch pang: Well said! Let’s both try our best, and see what happens. Ha, ha, ha! qin zhongyi: Allow me the pleasure of paying you a visit one of these days. Goodbye! (qin zhongyi exits.) eunuch pang (muttering to himself ): Bah! If an upstart like that dares to exchange words with me, times must really have changed! (To wang lifa) Is Pockmark Liu here? wang lifa: Your Excellency, please take a seat. (pockmark liu had spotted eunuch pang the moment he entered but refrained from interrupting the latter’s conversation with qin zhongyi.) pockmark liu: Oh, my master! May heaven bestow fortune on you! I’ve been waiting for you for a long time! (pockmark liu helps eunuch pang sit down. song enzi and wu xiangzi come over to pay their respects. eunuch pang whispers something to them. The other customers in the teahouse, after being silent for a while, resume their conversations.) first customer: Who is this Tan Sitong? second customer: I seem to have heard of him somewhere before. He must have committed a horrible crime. Otherwise he wouldn’t have been sentenced to death. third customer: In the past two or three months, some officials and scholars have been trying to stir up all sorts of trouble. We’ll never know what mischief they were up to. fourth customer: One thing’s certain. My bannerman’s subsidy is safe again. That Tan Sitong and Kang Youwei were saying all subsidies should be abolished and we should make our own living. I call that wicked! third customer: Anyway, by the time we get our subsidies, our superiors have skimmed off the best part of them. It’s a dog’s life whichever way you look at it. fourth customer: Still, it’s better than nothing! A dog’s life is better than no life. If I were to earn my own living, I’d surely starve. wang lifa: Gentlemen, let’s refrain from discussing affairs of state, shall we? (People quiet down and turn to discussing their own affairs once more.)

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eunuch pang (already seated): What’s that? Two hundred taels of silver for a country girl! pockmark liu (standing in attendance): A country girl, true, but what a peach! Once in the city, with a bit of makeup and instruction, you’ll have a well-mannered beauty on your hands. I’ve done more than I would for my own father. I left no stone unturned trying to serve Your Excellency! (tang the oracle comes back.) wang lifa: Hey, Tang, what are you doing here again? tang the oracle: The streets are crawling with soldiers and horsemen. What’s happening? eunuch pang: They have to weed out Tan Sitong’s supporters, don’t they? Don’t worry, no one wants to lay hands on you. tang the oracle: Thank you, Your Excellency! Now, if you would oblige me with a few grains of your prepared opium, I’d be most grateful. (Several customers, sensing trouble, begin, one by one, to slip out.) master song: We’d better start moving too. It’s getting late. master chang: Right. Let’s go. (The two men in gray gowns—song enzi and wu xiangzi—approach them.) song enzi: Just a moment! master chang: What’s the matter? song enzi: You said just now, “The great Qing empire is done for!” didn’t you? master chang: Me? I love the empire! I hope it isn’t done for. wu xiangzi (to master song): You heard him? Did he put it like that? master song: Now, now, gentlemen, we have tea here every day. The manager knows us well. We’re both law-abiding men. wu xiangzi: I’m asking you whether or not you heard him! master song: We can easily settle this. Please take a seat. song enzi: You refuse to answer? We’ll take you in too. Since he said “the great Qing empire is done for!” he must be a follower of Tan Sitong. master song: Well, I—I heard him, but he was only saying . . . song enzi (to master chang): Get going! master chang: Where to? I demand an explanation! song enzi: Oho! So you’re resisting arrest? Look, I’ve got the “law” here with me! (He pulls out an iron chain from under his gown.) master chang: Remember, I’m a bannerman! wu xiangzi: Bannerman? A bannerman turned traitor gets a heavier sentence! Restrain him! master chang: Don’t bother! I won’t run away! song enzi: Just you try! (To master song) You come along too. Tell the truth in court and you won’t get into trouble. (tubby huang, accompanied by three or four others, comes out from the inner courtyard.)

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tubby huang: Well, we’ve done it again! All smoothed over! I never come here for nothing! master song: Master Huang! Master Huang! tubby huang (rubbing his eyes): Who’s that? master song: It’s me, Song! Please come over here and put in a good word for us. tubby huang (finally understanding the situation, turns to the two secret agents): So! It’s you two gentlemen! On official business, are you? Carry on! Carry on! master song: But Master Huang, please help us. Just a few kind words! tubby huang: What the authorities can’t handle, I do. But when they can, I keep my nose out of it! (To all present) Ain’t that so? customers: Yes! That’s right! (song enzi and wu xiangzi escort master song and master chang toward the entrance.) master song (to wang lifa): Please take care of my birds! wang lifa: Don’t worry, I’ll send them to your houses. (master chang, master song, song enzi, and wu xiangzi exit.) tubby huang (having been told by tang the oracle that eunuch pang is present): Ah, Your Excellency! I hear that you’re starting a family. Allow me to congratulate you before the happy event. eunuch pang: You’ll be invited to the banquet! tubby huang: What an honor! I’m so honored! (tubby huang exits. The peasant woman enters with the empty bowls, which she places on the counter. The little girl follows her inside.) little girl: Ma! I’m still hungry! wang lifa: You’d better go now. peasant woman: Let’s go, my child. little girl: You’re not going to sell me now? Oh, Ma! I won’t be sold! peasant woman: Come! (Weeping, the peasant woman leads the little girl away. kang liu enters leading kang shunzi. They stand in front of the counter.) kang liu: My daughter! Oh, Shunzi! Your father’s a beast! But what can I do? You have to find somewhere to feed yourself or you’ll starve. I must get a few taels of silver or our landlord will beat me to death. Shunzi, accept your fate and have pity on us! kang shunzi: I . . . I . . . (She is unable to speak.) pockmark liu (rushing over): So you’re back! She agreed? Good! Come and meet His Excellency. Kneel down before His Excellency! kang shunzi: I . . . (She faints.) kang liu (supporting his daughter): Shunzi! Shunzi! pockmark liu: What’s wrong with her? kang liu: She’s so hungry and upset that she’s fainted. Shunzi! Shunzi!

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eunuch pang: I ordered something alive. I won’t take it dead! (Silence.) first customer (playing a chess game with the second customer): Check! You’re finished! (Curtain.)

E NT R’ ACTE silly yang: Beating my clappers, here I am again, Life’s hard for a rhymester, so a beggar I remain. The republic was set up and we all did acquiesce, Our queues were cut off, but the country’s still a mess. Manager Wang, reforming, all the tricks did play, To give his teahouse a new look in every way. But all his efforts, alas, are looking pretty thin, For with heads he lost, nor with tails did win. Warlords were rampant, civil wars routine, One warlord hardly ousted, another on the scene. Zhao would fight Qian and Sun would fight Li, Wars involving thousands for no reason one could see. In order to fight, one must buy guns, So to foreign countries went the silver by the tons. And warlords are encouraged in their careers, While China is carved up into many spheres. When armies appear, poor peasants are squeezed, Since their grain and beasts are always seized. Now, Manager Wang, his reformer’s zeal burning, Has turned his shop into a seat of learning. With well-spoken students as lodgers in the place, The teahouse has acquired a more educated face. But pray to heaven no brutish soldiers come, For wrecking the teahouse is their idea of fun. But I’d better not go on in this gloomy way, I ought to wish him luck on his opening day. With the crowd of well-wishers, I’ll now mingle, After all, I’m great at making up some jingle!

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A CT 2 (The time is nearly twenty years later. The place is the same as in act 1. It is now the period after Yuan Shikai’s death, when the warlords, at the instigation of the imperialist powers, forcibly set up their separatist regimes. There were continual civil wars. Early summer, before noon. The curtain rises. The large teahouses in Beijing have closed up shop one by one. The Yutai, the only one still open, has had to change both its appearance and line of business in order to survive. The front part continues to serve tea, but the rear section has been converted into a boardinghouse. Only tea and refreshments like melon seeds are sold; “noodles with minced pork” are a thing of the past. The stove has been moved to the back, for preparing meals for lodgers. The teahouse has undergone a great improvement too. The tables are now smaller, with pale green tablecloths and wicker chairs. The huge painting of “the intoxicated Eight Immortals” on the wall and the shrine of the god of wealth have disappeared. In their place are posters of fashionably dressed beauty queens—advertisements for foreign cigarette manufacturers. The do not discuss affairs of state signs, however, have survived, written in even larger letters. Like “a sage who follows the fashions,” wang lifa has not only managed to keep the Yutai going but also given it a new look. The teahouse has not been open for the last few days, owing to slight repairs. Now it is getting ready for its formal opening the following day. wang shufen and li san are busy putting the place in order, trying out different positions for the tables and chairs, adjusting and readjusting them until the desired perfection is achieved. wang shufen has her hair coiled up in a round bun, fashionable at that time. li san, however, still wears the queue stipulated by the previous Qing dynasty.3 Two or three students come out of the boardinghouse, exchange greetings with them, then go off.) wang shufen (not happy about li san’s queue): Master Li, with our “reformed” teahouse, don’t you think it’s time you got rid of that queue? li san: Reformed indeed! Soon you’ll have nothing left to reform! wang shufen: Don’t put it like that. You must have heard, the Detai Teahouse, at Xizhimen, the Guangtai Teahouse, at Beixinqiao, and the Tiantai Teahouse, in front of the Drum Tower, have all closed down. Of all the large teahouses, our Yutai is the only one still in business! Why? Because my husband’s good at reforms! li san: Humph! The emperor’s gone—isn’t that reform enough for you? But, with all that reforming, Yuan Shikai still wanted to be emperor. After he died, what a mess! Guns firing away today, the city gates closed tomorrow! Reform indeed! I’ll keep my queue where it is. What if they decide to reform the reform and bring the emperor back again? wang shufen: Don’t be so stubborn, Master Li. Since the country’s been reformed and a republic set up for us, we’d better conform, hadn’t we? Look at our teahouse. With all the rearranging, doesn’t it look more tidy and smart? Now our customers

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will be fine gentlemen. Won’t that be more respectable? But that queue of yours, it’s an eyesore! li san: It may be an eyesore to you, but I’m sore about other things! wang shufen: Why, what are you sore about? li san: Don’t you know? A teahouse in the front, a boardinghouse in the back. And only the manager and me to staff them! We’ll never be able to cope! wang shufen: Leave the teahouse to him. I’ll always lend a hand with the boardinghouse. li san: Even with your help it’s too much. Twenty- odd rooms to clean and twenty- odd mouths to feed. Plus making tea, fetching hot water, doing the shopping, and delivering letters. I ask you, how can one man do all that? wang shufen: You’re quite right, Master Li, but these days you can thank your lucky stars if you have a job at all. We all have to be a bit patient. li san: Well, I’m at the end of my rope! I can’t go on. Only four or five hours’ sleep every night. I’m not made of iron! wang shufen: None of us has it easy! You wait, Dashuan will finish primary school this summer and his brother is growing up fast. When they can give us a hand, life will be easier. You’ve been with us since the days of the old manager. You’re our old friend, our old partner! li san: Old partner? It’s more than twenty years now. Did I ever get a raise?! Since you’re so keen on reforms, why don’t you reform my wages? wang lifa : That’s no way to talk! If business gets better, of course I’ll give you a raise! Enough of that now. We’re opening tomorrow. We need all the luck we can get. Let’s not argue. Just leave it at that, all right? li san: Leave it at what? If you don’t reform my wages, I’m leaving! (Someone calls from the back “Li San! Li San!”) wang lifa: Mr. Cui is calling you—better hurry up. We can talk about this later. li san: Huh! wang shufen: Yesterday the city gates were closed and they might be closed again today. Master Li, let the manager tend to things here. Please go and buy some food. If nothing else, at least some pickled turnips! (More calling from the back: “Li San! Li San!”) li san: I like that. Ordering me here and calling me there! You might as well cut me in half! (li san goes off grumpily to the back.) wang lifa: Well, old girl, Master Li’s getting on. You’d better . . . wang shufen: He’s been grumbling all morning. But he has his grounds. I didn’t want to say so in front of him, but I tell you frankly, we must get more help! wang lifa: More help means more wages! Where’s the money going to come from? If I were good at something else but refused to budge from this teahouse, I’d be a fool! (There is the distant rumbling of cannons.) Those damn cannons are at it again! And you stand there making a scene! How are we going to open tomorrow? What a mess!

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wang shufen: I didn’t expect to hear such nonsense from you! What have the cannons got to do with me? wang lifa: Oh, stop arguing! Go and do some work! wang shufen: One thing’s certain. Either your slave- driving or those cannons will finish me! (wang shufen reluctantly goes off toward the back.) wang lifa (relenting): Now, now, old girl, no need to be so jumpy! We’ve been through this cannon fire quite a few times, but we’ve never been hit. Beijing’s a charmed city! wang shufen: Charmed indeed! My heart’s always in my mouth! Well, I’ll go and get some money for Master Li to do the shopping. (She exits. A group of refugees gather at the entrance, begging.) refugees: Kind sir! Do a good deed. Take pity on us! wang lifa: Move on. We’re not handing out anything today. We’re not open yet. refugees: Have mercy! We’re all refugees. wang lifa: You’re wasting your time! I don’t even have enough for myself! (The policeman enters.) policeman: Go away! Move along now! (The refugees disperse.) wang lifa: How are things, my friend? Is the fighting bad? policeman: Terrible! Otherwise there wouldn’t be all these refugees. We’ve been instructed by our superiors that you’re to provide us with eighty catties of pancakes before noon. We must feed the soldiers in the city before sending them out to the battlefield, mustn’t we? wang lifa: That’s reasonable! But you know I only provide food for the lodgers now. The teahouse doesn’t serve meals anymore. And we haven’t opened yet. I can’t even hand over one catty of pancakes, let alone eighty! policeman: You have your excuses, I have my orders! Well, do as you like. (He makes as if he is going away.) wang lifa: Wait a minute! I’m not open yet. You know that! When we are, we’ll need your help even more. Take this and buy yourself a small packet of tea. Put in a good word for me and I’ll be most grateful! policeman (accepting the money): All right, I’ll try, but don’t count on it. (Several soldiers in tattered uniforms, all armed with rifles, charge in.) Look here, sirs, I’m making a routine check of the residents. This place isn’t open yet. a soldier: Bastard! policeman: Manager Wang, offer them some money for tea. Then they’ll go elsewhere. wang lifa: Sirs, I’m so sorry we’re not in business yet, otherwise we’d be honored to put you up here. (He hands over some banknotes to the policeman.) policeman (passing the money on to the soldiers): I’m sure you’ll understand. He really can’t serve you today.

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a soldier: Bastard! Who wants paper money? Give us silver dollars! wang lifa: Sirs, where can I get silver dollars? a soldier: Bastard! Beat the shit out of him! policeman: Quick! Give them some more! wang lifa (taking the money out of his pocket): You can burn my house down! I haven’t one dollar more! (He hands over paper money.) a soldier: Bastard. (He takes the money, turns to go out, and, in passing, snatches away two tablecloths. Exit the soldiers.) policeman: There! Saved you from real trouble. If they’d stayed, it would have been the end of you! Not a single teacup left! wang lifa: And I mustn’t forget such a ser vice, eh? policeman: Aren’t you going to do something about it then? wang lifa: Right! How stupid of me! You better search me, I haven’t a copper left. (Lifting up his gown to be searched) Go ahead, search me! policeman: Okay, you win. See you tomorrow. Tomorrow’s anybody’s guess! (He exits.) wang lifa: Mind your step! (Stomping his foot after the policeman has gone) Damn it! War, war, all the time! What the hell is all the fighting about? (tang the oracle enters. He is as emaciated and as dirty as ever, but now he wears a silk gown.) tang the oracle: Ah, Manager Wang. Congratulations! wang lifa (still grumpy): It’s Mr. Tang! No free tea anymore. (Takes another look at him and smiles) So, you’re doing all right. In silk too! tang the oracle: Somewhat better off than before, thanks to the times. wang lifa: Thanks to the times? tang the oracle: The more chaos, the better my business. Nowadays life and death are a matter of luck. More and more people want their fortunes told and their features read. You understand? wang lifa: Well, that’s one way of looking at it! tang the oracle: I hear you’ve converted the courtyard into a boardinghouse. What about renting me a room? wang lifa: Now, Mr. Tang, with that addiction of yours, don’t you think . . . ? tang the oracle: I’ve given up opium. wang lifa: Good! Then you’ll be able to make something of yourself! tang the oracle: I’ve taken up heroin instead. (Pointing at the cigarette advertisement on the wall) Look, see that Hatamen brand of cigarettes? They’re long and the tobacco’s loosely packed. (Taking out a cigarette to illustrate his point) By knocking one end gently you get an empty space, just right for heroin. British imperial cigarettes and Japanese heroin! Two great powers looking after poor little me. Aren’t I lucky? wang lifa: Yes, very lucky indeed! But our place is full. As soon as I get a vacancy, I’ll hold it for you.

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tang the oracle: I know, you don’t think much of me. You’re afraid I won’t pay the rent. wang lifa: Nothing of the sort! We all grew up in the streets. It’s not for us to look down on one another. See, I’m being perfectly frank, like an old friend! tang the oracle: You’ve got a smooth tongue! Better than mine! wang lifa: I’m not just talking. My heart’s in the right place. How many cups of free tea have you had off me all these years? Count for yourself. Now that you’re better off, has it ever crossed your mind to pay me back? tang the oracle: I’ll pay you back one of these days. But altogether, it won’t come to much! (Muttering these words, he tries to beat a retreat. The paperboy is heard crying in the streets: “Read all about the great battle at Changxindian!” The paperboy pokes his head in.) paperboy: Hey, Manager! Latest news about the fighting at Changxindian. Won’t you buy a copy? wang lifa: Any news about people not fighting? paperboy: Maybe. Look for yourself! wang lifa: Go away! I’m not interested! paperboy: Won’t make no difference, Manager! The fighting will go on just the same. (To tang the oracle) Sir, you interested? tang the oracle (points to wang lifa): I’m not like him. I’m always concerned about affairs of state. (He takes a copy and sneaks off without paying. The paperboy runs off after him.) wang lifa (to himself ): Changxindian! Changxindian! That’s near here. (Shouts) Master Li! Master Li! You’d better go for the food right away. The city gates are sure to close soon. We won’t be able to get anything. You hear me? (When no answer comes from the back, he goes toward there angrily. master chang enters with a string of pickled turnips and two chickens.) master chang: Manager Wang! wang lifa: Who’s that? Why, Master Chang! What are you doing these days? master chang: Selling vegetables. Earning my own living. I’m not going to fall apart. Today there was such a pandemonium outside the city. I couldn’t pick up any vegetables. All I could get were these two chickens and some pickled turnips. I heard you’re opening tomorrow. Thought these might come in handy, so I brought them along. wang lifa: Thanks a lot! I wasn’t sure how I was going to manage. master chang (taking a look around): Nice! Very nice! You’ve done it up well! All the large teahouses have closed down. You were the only one sharp enough to make the most of the changes and reforms. wang lifa: Thanks for the compliment! I do my best, but if the country carries on in this mess, it’ll all be wasted. master chang: Well, someone like me won’t be able to afford a seat in such a fancy teahouse, that’s for sure!

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(master song enters, his clothes looking threadbare, though he still carries his birdcage.) master song: Manager Wang! You’re opening tomorrow? I’ve come to offer my congratulations! (Sees master chang) Oh, Master Chang, my old friend! How I’ve missed you! master chang: Master Song, my brother! How’ve you been? wang lifa: Why don’t you both sit down? master song: Oh, Manager Wang! How are you? How’s the missus? How are your boys? How’s business? wang lifa (trying to answer all the greetings): Very well, thank you. Master Chang (picks up the chickens and the pickled turnips), what do I owe you? master chang: As you like. Whatever you think is fair. wang lifa: Of course! I’ll get you a pot of tea. (He goes to the back with the things.) master song: Master Chang, how’s life treating you? master chang: Now I’m selling vegetables! Since the bannermen’s subsidy was abolished, I earn my own living. What about you? master song: Me? Just hearing you ask that brings tears to my eyes. Look at my clothes! They’re a disgrace! master chang: But you read and write, and do accounts! You can’t find a job? master song: Exactly. Who wants to starve? Yet who wants a bannerman! Looking back, the great Qing empire wasn’t so good, but now, in the republic, I’m starving! wang lifa (returning with a pot of tea and giving master chang some money): I don’t know what you spent. Hope that’s enough! master chang (taking the money without counting): Never mind! wang lifa (pointing at the birdcage): Still crazy about orioles? Does it sing well? master song: Of course, it’s an oriole! Look! He’s such a handsome bird! I may starve, but I won’t allow my bird to. Whenever I look at him, I don’t want to die anymore. wang lifa: Master Song, you mustn’t talk of dying. One of these days your luck will change! master chang: Come, brother, let’s go and have a drink. Drown our sorrows in wine. Manager Wang, I won’t invite you. Not enough money, you understand? wang lifa: I’ve got work to do, anyway. Forgive me for not keeping you company. (Just as master chang and master song head for the entrance, song enzi and wu xiangzi enter. They are still in gray gowns, but with narrower sleeves because of the new fashion, and with black jackets.) master song (recognizing them, involuntarily goes down on one knee to pay his respects): Oh, it’s you, gentlemen. (wang lifa, apparently influenced by master song, also greets them in the same way. The two secret agents are disconcerted.) song enzi: What’s the matter with you? We’ve been a republic for several years now. No need to bend the knee. Don’t you know how to bow in the new style?

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master song: Seeing your gray gowns makes me feel it’s still the Qing dynasty. I can’t help bending my knee! wang lifa: Me too. I feel that bending the knee’s more satisfying than bowing. wu xiangzi: Ha, ha! Master Song, your bannermen’s subsidy used to be a sure source of income. Well, that’s all gone now. But our gray gowns proved a better bet, eh? Ha, ha! (Seeing master chang) It’s Master Chang, if I’m not mistaken? master chang: Yes, you have a good memory. In 1898, I made the remark here “the great Qing empire is done for!” For that I was arrested by you two and imprisoned for more than a year! song enzi: Your memory’s not bad either. Doing all right these days? master chang: Yes, thank you. It was 1900 soon after I got out of prison, the year of the Boxers. Their slogan was “Support the Qing and annihilate the foreigners.” I joined them and fought a few battles against the foreign armies. But that didn’t help. The great Qing empire was done for after all! It deserved it! I’m a bannerman, but I must be fair! Now I’m up every day before dawn, carrying two baskets of vegetables to the city. By ten they’re sold. I earn my own living and I’m stronger than ever. If foreigners come here again with their armies, I’m ready to fight them. I’m a bannerman, but bannermen are Chinese too! How’s life treating you two gentlemen? wu xiangzi: Oh, muddling along! When there was an emperor, we served him. When there was President Yuan Shikai, we served him. Now, Song Enzi, how should I put it? song enzi: Now we serve anyone who puts rice in our bowls. master chang: Even foreigners? master song: Master Chang, let’s get going! wu xiangzi: Understand this, Master Chang. Everyone we serve is backed by some foreign power. How can anyone make war without foreign arms and guns? master song: You’re so right! So right! Master Chang, let’s go. master chang: Goodbye, gentlemen. I’m sure you’ll soon be rewarded and promoted! (He goes off with master song.) song enzi: Damn fool! wang lifa (pouring out tea): Master Chang has always been stubborn, won’t bow down to anyone! Take no notice of him. (Offering them tea) Have a cup, it’s fresh. song enzi: What sort of people do you have as lodgers? wang lifa: Mostly university students, and a couple of old acquaintances. I’ve got a register. Their names are always promptly reported to the local police station. Shall I fetch it for you? wu xiangzi: We don’t look at books. We look at people! wang lifa: No need for that. I can vouch for them all. song enzi: Why are you so partial to students? They’re not generally quiet types. wang lifa: Officials one day and out of office the next. It’s the same with tradesmen: in business today and broke tomorrow. Can’t rely on anyone! Only students have money to pay the rent each month, because you need money to get into college in the first place. That’s how I figure it. What do you think?

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song enzi: Got it all worked out! You’re quite right. Nowadays even we aren’t always paid on time. wu xiangzi: So that’s why we must make arrests every day, to get our bonus. song enzi: We nab people at random, but they never get out at random. As long as we make arrests, we get our bonus. song enzi: Come on, let’s take a look back there! wu xiangzi: Yes, let’s go! wang lifa: Gentlemen, gentlemen! Don’t trouble yourselves. Everyone behaves himself properly, I assure you. song enzi: But if we don’t take a look, we can’t nab anyone. How will we get our bonus? wu xiangzi: Since the manager’s not keen to let us have a look, he must have thought of another way. Ought to try to help him keep up a front. Right, Manager Wang? wang lifa: I . . . song enzi: I have an idea. Not all that brilliant perhaps . . . Let’s do it on a monthly basis. On the first of every month, according to the new solar calendar, you will hand in a— wu xiangzi: A token of friendship! song enzi: Right. You’ll hand in a token of friendship. That’ll save no end of trouble for both sides. wang lifa: How much is this token of friendship worth? wu xiangzi: As old friends, we’ll leave that to you. You’re a bright fellow. I’m sure you wouldn’t want this token of friendship to seem unfriendly, would you? li san (entering with a shopping basket): Oh, gentlemen! (Bends down on one knee) Are the city gates going to be closed again today? (He heads for the entrance without waiting for an answer. Two or three students return in haste.) student: Master Li, better stay at home. The army’s seizing people on the streets for coolies. (They proceed to the back of the teahouse.) li san (not stopping): So what? I’m just a coolie here, aren’t I? (pockmark liu, frightened out of his wits, rushes in and collides with li san.) li san: What’s wrong? You look like death! pockmark liu (breathlessly): Don’t—don’t go out! They nearly grabbed me! wang lifa: Master Li, better leave it for now. li san: What about lunch? wang lifa: Tell everyone there will only be pickled turnips and rice for lunch. That’s the best we can do. For supper, we’ll have those two chickens. li san: As you like. (He goes off to the boardinghouse.) pockmark liu: Oh, lord! Almost scared me to death! song enzi: So what! You’ll only buy and sell a few more girls! pockmark liu: Well, some wish to sell and some wish to buy. All I do is lend a helping hand! Don’t blame me!

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(He drinks three cups of tea left on the table, one by one.) wu xiangzi: I’m warning you! Since the time of the empire we’ve been dealing with revolutionaries. We don’t like dirtying our hands with slave traders and pimps like you! But now if we catch you at it, we won’t turn a blind eye anymore. When the likes of you get pulled in, you can be sure of this: you’ll get chained to the piss pot! pockmark liu: Now, now, gentlemen, no need to put it like that! These days I’m down-and- out like everyone else. In the good old days, I had connections with the Manchu nobles and eunuchs of the court. Since the revolution, I’ve been leading a dog’s life. When ministers and vice ministers, generals and colonels take concubines, they want singsong girls and Peking opera stars. They’ll pay thousands of silver dollars for them. I can’t even get my toe in the door. Why pick on my miserable bit of business? song enzi: You’ll change your tune when you’re chained to that piss pot! pockmark liu: Gentlemen, gentlemen! I have nothing to offer you today, but one of these days, I promise you something worthwhile. wu xiangzi: You must be doing a deal of some sort or you wouldn’t poke your nose out on a day like this. pockmark liu: No! I’m not! song enzi: There’s never a word of truth from you. Lying to us won’t do you any good! Manager Wang, we’ll take a walk around. The first of next month, according to the new solar calendar—don’t forget! wang lifa: I may forget my own name, but never your business! wu xiangzi: That’s settled, then! (He exits with song enzi.) wang lifa: Master Liu, had enough tea, I hope? Now take yourself somewhere else! pockmark liu: Carry on! Don’t mind me! I’m waiting here for a couple of friends. wang lifa: I’d better make it clear, once and for all! Conduct your line of business elsewhere! We’ve reformed! We’re civilized now! (kang shunzi, a parcel in her hand and leading kang dali, peeps in at the entrance.) kang dali: Is this the place? kang shunzi: It’s the place all right! But it looks so different. (She enters, takes a good look around, and sees pockmark liu.) Come in, Dali. This is it, all right! kang dali: You sure, Ma? kang shunzi: No mistake! With him here, I’m quite sure. wang lifa: Who are you looking for? kang shunzi (without answering, goes straight to pockmark liu): Pockmark Liu, recognize me? (Wants to strike him but is unable to raise her hand; seized by a fit of trembling) You! You! (She wants to swear at him but finds it too difficult.) pockmark liu: Why pick on me, miss, for no reason at all?!

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kang shunzi (summoning all her strength): No reason? Take a good look at me! Do you see who I am! Couldn’t you make a decent living any other way? Do you have to follow your filthy trade? Bah! wang lifa: Now, now, ma’am! Don’t get so upset! Calm down! kang shunzi: Are you the manager? Do you remember, almost twenty years ago, there was a eunuch who bought a wife? wang lifa: Ah, so you’re Eunuch Pang’s . . . kang shunzi (pointing at pockmark liu): And it was all his doing! Today I’m going to make him pay for it! (She attempts to strike him once more but is still unable to bring herself to do it.) pockmark liu (dodging): Hold on! Hold on! What decent man would fight a woman! (Backing away) I—I’ll get someone to make you see sense. (He runs to the back.) wang lifa (to kang shunzi): Please sit down, ma’am. Take your time. Where’s the eunuch? kang shunzi (sits down, out of breath): Dead! Starved to death by his nephews! After the republic, he still had money, but no more influence. His nephews treated him badly. When he died, they threw us out, without so much as a blanket! wang lifa: And this is . . . ? kang shunzi: My son. wang lifa: Your . . . ? kang shunzi: Also bought. As the eunuch’s son. kang dali: Ma, is this really where your father sold you? kang shunzi: That’s right, my dear. This is the place! I fainted as soon as I came in. I’ll never forget it. kang dali: But I can’t remember where my father sold me. kang shunzi: Well, you were only a year old then. Ma brought you up. We’ll always be together, won’t we, dear? kang dali: That old ogre! He used to pinch you, bite you, and jab me with his opium skewer! There were too many of them. There was nothing we could do. Ma, if it wasn’t for you, I’d have died long ago. kang shunzi: Yes, there were too many of them, and we were too soft. Just now, when I saw Pockmark Liu, I wanted to bite him, but I couldn’t even slap him. I just couldn’t do it! kang dali: Ma, when I grow up I’ll help you beat them all up! I don’t know who my real mother was, so you’re my mother, my real mother! kang shunzi: Yes, my dear. I am! We’ll stick together, always! I’ll earn some money so you can go to school. (At a loss for a moment) Manager, since I was sold here twenty years ago, it seems a bit of luck that we’ve met again. Can you find me a job of some kind? It’s not for myself, but he’s a good boy with no one but me to look after him. He mustn’t starve. (wang shufen enters and stands there unnoticed, listening.) wang lifa: What can you do?

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kang shunzi: Washing, sewing, mending, cooking—things like that. I come from the countryside. I don’t mind hard work. As long as I’m not a eunuch’s wife, any bitterness will seem sweet. wang lifa: How much would you want? kang shunzi: I’ll be happy with three meals a day, a bed to sleep in, and enough to send Dali to school! wang lifa: Right, I’ll keep an eye open for you. Fact is, I’ve never forgotten what happened here all those years ago. Always left a bad taste in my mouth! kang shunzi: But where can we go now? wang lifa: How about going back to the countryside and looking up your old father? kang shunzi: Him? I haven’t a clue if he’s alive or dead. Even if he’s still around, I won’t look him up. He never stood by me, his own daughter, back then—I won’t call him father now! wang lifa: But a job right away won’t be all that easy to find! wang shufen (coming over): She’s good at housework and not asking too much. I’ll keep her! wang lifa: You? wang shufen: Don’t I run half the teahouse? You want to work me and Master Li to death? kang shunzi: Manager, give me a chance. Whenever you feel I’m not up to it, just say the word and I’ll go. wang shufen: Come with me, Sister. kang shunzi: Since I was sold here, this is like my parents’ home. Come, Dali. kang dali: Manager, if you don’t beat me, I’ll help with the work too. (He goes off with wang shufen and kang shunzi.) wang lifa: Damn! Two more mouths to feed! The eunuch’s gone but I get stuck with his family! li san (coming out with pockmark liu, screening him): Better get going! (He goes back.) wang lifa: Make it snappy! Unless you want your face slapped! pockmark liu: I told you, I have to wait for two friends! wang lifa: I can’t think of a good enough name for you! pockmark liu: Nothing you can do about it. Once in a trade, always in the trade. You’ll always be selling your tea. I’ll always be doing my business! Till my dying day! (lao lin and lao chen 4 enter, beaming.) pockmark liu (despite the two deserters’ being younger, he insists on addressing them respectfully): Elder Brother Lin! Elder Brother Chen! (Sensing wang lifa’s anger, hastily adds) Manager Wang, there’s no one around. Let me borrow your place just this once—I promise it’s the last time! wang lifa (pointing to the back): Don’t forget she’s in there! pockmark liu: Never mind, she can’t do much. If she tries, these fellows can help me. wang lifa: You! Bah! (He retires to the back.)

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pockmark liu: Sit down. Let’s talk it over. lao lin: You say it, Second Brother. lao chen: No, you say it, Elder Brother. pockmark liu: What’s the difference who speaks? lao chen: You say it, you’re the elder brother. lao lin: Well, it’s like this, we’re sworn brothers. lao chen: That’s right! Sworn brothers—so close we’d share the same pair of trousers. lao lin: He’s got a few silver dollars. pockmark liu: Silver dollars? lao chen: Elder Brother here also has some. pockmark liu: How much altogether? Tell me! lao lin: We’re not going to tell you that yet. lao chen: Not till we know if it’s possible. pockmark liu: With silver dollars everything’s possible! lao lin and lao chen: Really? pockmark liu: If I’m lying to you, I’ll be damned! lao lin: You say it then, Second Brother. lao chen: No, no! You say it, Elder Brother. lao lin: See here. There are two of us, right? pockmark liu: Right! lao chen: Our friendship’s so close we can share the same pair of trousers, right? pockmark liu: Right! lao lin: No one would laugh at our friendship, would they? pockmark liu: Friendship is friendship. Who laughs at that? lao chen: And no one makes fun of friendship among three people either, do they? pockmark liu: Three people? Who? lao lin: Us and a woman! pockmark liu: Oh! Oh! Now I get it! But this is going to be a bit tricky. I’ve never done anything like it before. People usually talk about some nice young couple. But who’s ever heard of a nice young triple? lao lin: Tricky, eh? pockmark liu: Very tricky! lao lin: What do you think? lao chen: We’re not going to call it off, are we? lao lin: Hell, no! We’ve been in the army for more than ten years and can’t even end up with half a wife? Damn it all! pockmark liu: We won’t call it off. Let’s think it over! How many silver dollars do you have? (wang lifa and cui jiufeng come out from the back, walking slowly. pockmark liu and the two deserters cease talking.) wang lifa: Mr. Cui, why didn’t you go when Master Qin sent you an invitation yesterday? You’re a learned man. You know all about heaven and earth. You’ve been a member of the legislature. Yet you shut yourself up here chanting Buddhist scriptures! Why

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not do something more useful? A good man like you should go into politics! With worthy men like you in office, we ordinary folk might enjoy a few days of peace! cui jiufeng: You make me feel ashamed! Yes, I was a member of the legislature, a grievous sin. What has the revolution accomplished? We mislead ourselves and others. Now I spend my days in meditation and repentance. That’s all I can do! wang lifa: But look at Master Qin! Running a factory and getting ready to open a bank! cui jiufeng: With all his factories and banks, what can he do? He says he’s going to save the country by industry and commerce. But who has he saved? Himself! He’s richer than ever. And all his industry and commerce will collapse if the foreigners lift just one little finger. Then he’ll never get on his feet again. wang lifa: Oh please don’t say that! Isn’t there any hope for us? cui jiufeng: Hard to say. Very hard to say. Now Marshal Wang wages a war on Marshal Li. The next day Marshal Zhao attacks Marshal Wang. Who’s behind it all? wang lifa: Who? The bastard! cui jiufeng: The foreigners! wang lifa: The foreigners? I don’t understand. cui jiufeng: One day you will, when China is reduced to a colony and all of us are slaves! I took part in the revolution. I know what I’m talking about. wang lifa: Then why don’t you do something? Save us from being slaves. cui jiufeng: As a young man, I thought my ideals could save the world. I tried to follow them. Now I’ve seen through it all. China’s finished! wang lifa: But we must try to save her! cui jiufeng: Save her? That’s just wishful thinking! A corpse can’t be brought back to life. Everything dies sooner or later. Well, I’m off to Hongji Temple. If Master Qin should send for me again, just tell him I’m only interested in chanting Buddhist scriptures. (He exits. song enzi and wu xiangzi enter again.) wang lifa: Gentlemen, any news? (The two say nothing and take seats near the entrance, watching pockmark liu and the two deserters. pockmark liu, nonplussed, looks at his toes. lao lin and lao chen, also uncomfortable, look at each other.) lao chen: Elder Brother, shall we go? lao lin: Yeah! song enzi: Just a minute! (Standing up, he blocks the way.) lao chen: What’s up? wu xiangzi (also standing up): You’d better be telling me what’s up! (The four of them stare at one another for a moment.) song enzi: Better come quietly! lao lin: Where to? wu xiangzi: Deserters, right? Trying to hide in Beijing, with a few silver dollars in your pockets, right? When the money runs out, become bandits, right? lao chen: None of your damn business! I can lick eight of your kind with one hand!

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(He prepares to fight.) song enzi: You? Pity you sold your gun, right? Bare hands ain’t no match for a gun, right? (Patting the gun under his gown) I can lick eight of your sort with one finger! Right! lao lin: We’re all brothers, aren’t we? No need for unpleasantness. wu xiangzi: That’s more like it. Let’s sit down and have a little chat. Make your choice. Your silver dollars or your lives! lao chen: We went through hell to earn this bit of money! We fought for whoever paid us! Shit! The number of battles we fought! song enzi: But you know very well how they treat deserters! lao lin: Let’s talk it over. After all, we’re all brothers. wu xiangzi: That’s the way to talk among friends. Now let’s get down to business! wang lifa (at the entrance): Hey! The execution squad’s coming! lao chen and lao lin: Oh? (In a panic, they try to run to the back.) song enzi: Stop! Our word of honor: split the silver dollars with us and you’ll be safe. We’re friends, right? lao lin and lao chen: Yeah! Friends! (The execution squad enters: two soldiers carrying rifles and broadswords swathed in red cloth in the lead, one bearing the execution edict shaped like a huge arrow in the middle, and four soldiers carrying clubs painted red at one end and black at the other bringing up the rear. The army officer enters last, dominating the squad.) wu xiangzi (standing at attention with song enzi, lao lin, and lao chen in a line, takes out his credentials from under his cap and shows to the army officer): May I report, sir? We’re interrogating a deserter here. army officer (pointing at pockmark liu): Him? wu xiangzi (pointing at pockmark liu): Yes, him! army officer: Tie him up! pockmark liu (screaming): Sir! I’m not! I’m not! officer: Tie him up! (The execution squad and pockmark liu exit.) wu xiangzi (to song enzi): Let’s go and pull in those two students. song enzi: Yes, come on! (The two hastily head for the boardinghouse.) (Curtain.)

E NT R’ ACTE silly yang: When trees are old, their sap is spent, When men are old, their backs are bent. Needless to say, I’m done for altogether,

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Even Manager Wang’s at the end of his tether. Worn down by age, his money gone, His shabby winter jacket is all he has on. The Japs held old Beijing for eight long years, Those were the days of blood and tears. For those who survived, life was hell on earth, The Eighth Route Army’s victories, the only source of mirth. Hoping against hope such days would soon be past, Till the day came when the war was won at last. Then to old Beijing came the KMT! As cruel a tyrant as the Japs could ever be. Poor old Wang, disillusioned through and through, Keeping alive is all that he can do. His teahouse collapsing before his eyes, Won’t perk up, no matter what he tries. What in the heavens above or the earth below Can stop the officials from having all the dough?

A CT 3 (The time is around 1948, after the defeat of the Japanese in 1945, the period in which U.S. soldiers and KMT secret ser vice agents were running loose in Beijing. An early morning in autumn. The place is the same as in the previous act. The Yutai Teahouse is no longer the dignified establishment of earlier times. The wicker chairs have disappeared, replaced by stools and benches. Everything, from the building to the furniture, looks gloomy. If there is anything outstanding that catches the eye, it is the paper signs with do not discuss affairs of state on them. Their number has increased and the Chinese characters have been enlarged. Alongside them, new paper signs have been added, with please pay in advance written on them. It is early morning, and the wooden shutters have not yet been taken down from the windows. wang dashuan, son of wang lifa, is in low spirits as he tidies the premises. His wife, zhou xiuhua, leading their young daughter, wang xiaohua, by the hand, enters from the back. They are talking to each other as they enter.) wang xiaohua: Ma, make me some hot noodle soup for lunch. It’s been ages since we’ve had some. zhou xiuhua: I know, pet, but who knows if there’ll be any flour in the shops today? Even if there is some, I don’t know if we have money to afford it. What a life! wang xiaohua: Let’s hope there will be both, Ma. zhou xiuhua: You can hope, but that won’t get you far. Off you go now! Be careful of those jeeps on your way! wang dashuan: Xiaohua, wait!

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wang xiaohua: What is it, Dad? wang dashuan: About last night . . . zhou xiuhua: I’ve drilled it into her. She’s a sensible child. wang dashuan: Never tell anybody about your uncle Dali. If you do, we’ve all had it! Understand? wang xiaohua: I won’t say a word, even if they kill me. If I’m asked about Uncle Dali, I’ll just say he’s been gone for many years. No news about him at all! (kang shunzi enters from the back. Her back is now slightly bent, but she’s still going strong. She is calling out to xiaohua as she comes in.) kang shunzi: Xiaohua! Xiaohua! You still here? wang xiaohua: Granny Kang, what is it? kang shunzi: My dear, let me have another look at you. (Stroking xiaohua’s hair) How pretty! But too thin! With more to eat she’d look even better. zhou xiuhua: Auntie, have you made up your mind to go? kang shunzi: Yes, I’ll go. Then I won’t be a burden to you. I brought Dali up. Now he wants me to go with him. How can I refuse? When we first came here, he wasn’t even as big as Xiaohua is now. wang xiaohua: Now he’s so strong. He’s wonderful! kang shunzi: He was here only a few minutes, but I really feel years younger. I haven’t a thing in the world, but when I see him, I feel I have everything. Yes, I’ll go with him. With him, whatever hard labor comes or whatever bitterness I have to eat will be sweet. Have you seen those big hands and feet of his? He’s a real man! wang xiaohua: Granny, I want to go with you! kang shunzi: Xiaohua, I’ll come back and see you. wang dashuan: Xiaohua, go to school now. Don’t be late. wang xiaohua: Granny, don’t go till I’ve come back from school. kang shunzi: Yes, yes! Run along now, my dear! (wang xiaohua exits.) wang dashuan: Auntie, has Dad agreed to let you go? kang shunzi: He hasn’t decided yet. What worries me is, if Dali’s visit somehow leaks out and then I suddenly disappear, it may mean trouble for you. People are getting arrested all the time. I don’t want to let you down. zhou xiuhua: Now, Auntie, you just go ahead. You’ll have a chance to live if you go away. Customers are always whispering to one another, “If you want a chance to live, go to the Western Hills.” wang dashuan: That’s right. kang shunzi: Well, Xiuhua, let’s talk it over. I mustn’t think of only myself and let all of you suffer for it. Dashuan, you’d better think it over too. (She goes off with zhou xiuhua. ding bao enters.) ding bao: Hi, Manager, I’m here! wang dashuan: Who are you? ding bao: Little Ding Bao. Pockmark Liu Jr. told me to come here. He says the old manager here asked him to find a hostess.

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wang dashuan: Take a good look around, miss. You think a dump like this needs a hostess? But the old manager here is so desperate for money, he’s always thinking up some crazy scheme! (wang lifa enters with a slow gait. He’s still in good health, but shabbily dressed.) wang lifa: Now, Dashuan, who taught you to talk about your elders behind their backs? Who’s full of crazy schemes? Take down the shutters! The teahouse should have opened hours ago. (wang dashuan goes to take down the shutters.) ding bao: Old Manager, you look pretty fit! wang lifa: Yes. If there were some noodles with fried bean sauce around, I could pack away three huge bowls. Only there aren’t any. Still in your teens, miss? ding bao: I’m seventeen. wang lifa: Only seventeen? ding bao: Yes. My mother was a widow, tried to bring me up. After the war, the government insisted that the little house my father left us was traitor’s property and took it away from us. The shock killed my mother. So I became a waitress. Old Manager, I haven’t a clue what “traitor’s property” means. Do you know? wang lifa: Better watch your tongue, miss. One wrong word can make anything traitor’s property. Take the place behind here. Used to be a warehouse of Master Qin’s. Then someone frowned at it. Said it was traitor’s property. Simple as that! (wang dashuan comes back.) ding bao: You said it, Old Manager. Even I’m traitor’s property! I have to suck up to whoever’s the boss. Hell! I’m only seventeen but I often wish I were dead! At least my body would be my own! This job rots you away slowly. wang dashuan: Dad, do you really want to hire a hostess? wang lifa: I had a chat with Pockmark Liu Jr. about it. I’ve always been keen on reforming. And with business so bad, I’m worried. wang dashuan: Me too! But don’t forget the Yutai’s good name. A respectable old name of sixty years’ standing now hiring a hostess? ding bao: Good old name my foot! The older you become, the more worthless you are! You don’t believe me? If I were twenty-eight years old, I could call myself Tiny Ding Bao or Ding Baby, but I bet no one would look at me twice. (Two customers enter.) wang lifa: You’re early, gentlemen! Brought your own tea? Dashuan, get the water. (wang dashuan goes off.) I’m sorry, but please pay in advance. first customer: I’ve never heard such nonsense. wang lifa: I’ve been in this business for fifty years now, and I’ve never heard such nonsense either. But, as you know, the prices of coal and such things are always going up. Perhaps while you’re having your tea now, they’ll go up again. So, it saves a lot of trouble if you pay in advance. second customer: Having no tea at all saves even more trouble! (The two customers exit.)

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wang dashuan (entering with hot water): What? They’re gone! wang lifa: Now do you see what I mean? ding bao: If I’d gone over and said, “Hi, you two suckers!” they’d have handed over a shiny silver dollar right away. wang lifa: Dashuan, you’re as stubborn as a mule! wang dashuan (putting down the hot water): Do what you like! I’ll take a walk. It’s too stuffy in here. (He exits.) wang lifa: Stuffy? I can hardly breathe! (pockmark liu jr. enters. He is in Western clothes and carries a briefcase.) pockmark liu jr.: Hi, Little Ding Bao, so you’re here! ding bao: On your orders! How could I refuse? pockmark liu jr.: Manager Wang, what do you think of this little baby I’ve found for you? Looks, age, fashion, experience—she’s a real winner! wang lifa: Only snag is I can’t afford her. pockmark liu jr.: No problem. She doesn’t want any wages. Right, baby? wang lifa: No wages? pockmark liu jr.: Leave it all to me, old man. Me and baby have got a way all worked out. Haven’t we, baby? ding bao: Sure, without your crooked ways, where would you be? pockmark liu jr.: Crooked? You’ve said it! So was my old man. He was nabbed right here! If you don’t believe me, ask the old manager. Wasn’t that so? wang lifa: Saw it with my own eyes. pockmark liu jr.: See, baby, I’m not just shooting my mouth off about something that never happened. He was dragged right to the middle of the street, and with one big whack of the sword, his head was chopped off. Right, Old Manager? wang lifa: I heard that whack. pockmark liu jr.: So I wasn’t just telling you stories, baby, was I? But my old man didn’t have what it takes. All that work, but he still didn’t get far. Now it’s my turn— I’ll get an American to back me up and I’m going to hit the big time! (Opens briefcase and takes out the plan) Here, baby, take a look at my plan. ding bao: I don’t have time. I think I’ll take a day off and come back to work tomorrow. wang lifa: Ding Bao, I haven’t made up my mind yet. pockmark liu jr.: Manager Wang, I’ve made it up for you! You’ll see, tomorrow morning baby will stand at the entrance giving everyone the eye. Before you know what’s happened you’ll have two hundred customers on your hands! Now, baby, better listen to my plan, because you’re in it. ding bao: Huh! I was hoping I wasn’t. pockmark liu jr.: What’s the matter, baby? You’re such a wet blanket! Listen . . . (The electricity bill collector enters.) collector: Hey, Manager, your electricity bill. wang lifa: Electricity bill? How many months behind am I? collector: Three.

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wang lifa: Wait another three months and it’ll be half a year. I still won’t be able to pay you! collector: That’s nonsense! pockmark liu jr.: No, I’m serious! This joint’s under Director Shen’s control. Member of the municipal KMT party committee, director of the military police. You want to collect his electricity bills? Come on, tell us. collector: What do you mean? No, no! Sorry, I guess I came to the wrong place. (He exits.) pockmark liu jr.: See, Manager Wang, you can’t do without me! Your Qing dynasty methods are way out of date! wang lifa: Right. That’s why, as they say, one must live and learn. And I’ve got a lot to learn! pockmark liu jr.: Now you’re talking! (tang the oracle jr. enters. He wears a silk gown and new satin shoes.) pockmark liu jr.: Oh, shit! It’s you, Oracle Jr.! tang the oracle jr.: Oh, shit! It’s you, Pockmark Jr.! Come, let me give you the once- over! (Looking him over, front and back) You little bastard! In that Western gear, from behind you look more foreign than a foreigner. Old Manager, I’ve been studying the stars and there’s irrefutable evidence that the true Son of Heaven will come among us very soon now. That’s why prodigies like me and Pockmark Jr. here and— pockmark liu jr.: Little Ding Bao—the talk of the town! tang the oracle jr.: Ah, yes—and Little Ding Bao have been sent into the world. Look at us, endowed with wit and beauty, accomplished in letters and prowess—just right for the times! And, boy, aren’t we going to enjoy it! Old Manager, turn your face here. I’ll read your features. Good, good, a fine forehead! You’re in for a spell of good luck! Now what about a cup of tea? wang lifa: Oracle Jr.! tang the oracle jr.: Don’t call me Oracle anymore. My new title is Tang the Heavenly Teacher. pockmark liu jr.: Who gave you that? tang the oracle jr.: You’ll hear about it in a few days. wang lifa: All right, Heavenly Teacher, but don’t forget, your father had free tea off me all his life! That’s not going to be hereditary, I hope! tang the oracle jr.: Manager Wang, when I have put on my special robes, you’ll regret what you’ve just said. You just wait! pockmark liu jr.: Tang, my old pal, I’ll treat you to a coffee later with baby here to keep us company. But first I want to tell you something important. tang the oracle jr.: Manager Wang, has it never entered your head that by offering me some free tea now I may make you a county magistrate later? Now, Liu, my old buddy, say your piece. pockmark liu jr.: I’ve got a tremendous plan. tang the oracle jr.: I’m all ears.

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pockmark liu jr.: I’m going to organize a trust. That’s an American word, so perhaps you don’t understand it. In Beijing dialect, we’d say, “It’s all yours.” 5 tang the oracle jr.: Of course, I see it. It means you want to take care of all the girls. pockmark liu jr.: Right! That brain of yours really works! Baby, listen carefully. You’re a part of this too. Even the old manager here’s included. wang lifa: That’s why I’m listening. pockmark liu jr.: I’m going to organize all the dance-hall girls, prostitutes in the brothels, and tarts on the street, jeep girls and hostesses from the whole city into a huge trust. tang the oracle jr. (with his eyes closed): Got all the official backing you need? pockmark liu jr.: Sure! Director Shen will be chairman of the board. I’ll be general manager. tang the oracle jr.: What about me? pockmark liu jr.: If you can think up a good name for it, you’ll be our adviser! tang the oracle jr.: I won’t take national currency bills for my fees. pockmark liu jr.: Only greenbacks every month! tang the oracle jr.: Fire away! pockmark liu jr.: The business will have four departments: purchase and sales, transport, training, and ser vice. Whoever wants to buy or sell girls, whether they’re to be transported from Shanghai to Tianjin or from Hankou to Chongqing, whether it’s training jeep girls or hostesses, or girls serving U.S. army personnel or our own officials, all this will be taken care of by our firm. Total satisfaction guaranteed. What do you think of that? tang the oracle jr.: Marvelous! Marvelous! Theoretically, it follows the principle of getting everything under control. In practice it satisfies the needs of the GIs, and that’s in the interest of the state. pockmark liu jr.: So, think of a nice name. Something real classy, like “Willow-Leaf Eyebrows,” “Almond-Shaped Eyes,” “Cherry-Red Lips of a Dainty Size.” Poetic, you know. tang the oracle jr.: Hmm . . . Trust, trust . . . No, that’s not classy at all. In Beijing dialect the word sounds like “Pull them in and tear them to pieces”! Sounds too much like kidnapping to be classy. pockmark liu jr.: It may not sound classy, but it’s an American word and that’s fashionable. tang the oracle jr.: I still feel that “Such and such Incorporated” sounds better. It’s got more taste. pockmark liu jr.: You’ve got a point there. But what “Incorporated”? ding bao: How about “Crooked Incorporated”? pockmark liu jr.: Look, baby, this is serious! Don’t be so smart! Do your job well and there’s a good chance you’ll become the chief instructor of the hostesses. tang the oracle jr.: What about this: “Two Blossoms Incorporated”? What do pretty girls make you think of ? Blossoms! If people want these girls, they’ll spend lots of

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money and your business will what—blossom! The two blossoms! And in traditional opera there are many references to two blossoms. So what do you think? pockmark liu jr.: Tang, my friend, I thank you. Thanks a lot! (Shaking his hand warmly) I’ll go right now and see Director Shen and discuss it with him. If he agrees, you’ll definitely be our adviser. (He puts the briefcase in order, ready to leave.) wang lifa: Hey, what about Little Ding Bao? pockmark liu jr.: Leave it to me! The trust will have everything under control. I’ll try it out here first. ding bao: Didn’t you say something about coffee? pockmark liu jr.: See if Tang’s coming. tang the oracle jr.: You go ahead. I’m expecting someone here. pockmark liu jr.: Then let’s get going, baby. ding bao: Bye-bye, Old Manager. Bye, Heavenly Teacher. (ding bao goes off with pockmark liu jr.) tang the oracle jr.: Old Manager, where’s the paper? wang lifa: I’ll have to look for it. Perhaps some copies from two years ago are still lying around somewhere. tang the oracle jr.: Oh, stop talking nonsense! (Three customers enter: chef ming, zou fuyuan, and wei fuxi. chef ming finds a place for himself, while zou fuyuan and wei fuxi sit together. Knowing them all, wang lifa greets them.) wang lifa: My friends, I’m sorry to ask you, but please pay in advance. chef ming: We all know that, old man. wang lifa: Pay in advance! I’m really ashamed to say it. (He busies himself preparing the tea.) zou fuyuan: What about it, Manager? How about storytelling as an added attraction in the evenings? wang lifa: I tried, but it was no good. Only increased the electricity bill, but not the number of customers! zou fuyuan: Exactly! Take me. Day before yesterday at the Huixian Teahouse, I told the story of the three gallants, four worthies, five braves, ten heroes, thirteen celebrities, nine elders, and fifteen youngsters’ storming Phoenix Mountain, how the hundred birds paid homage to the phoenix, and how the phoenix’s leg was hurt. Guess how many came to listen to me? wang lifa: How many? You’re the only one left who can tell that story. zou fuyuan: A true connoisseur! But only five turned up, and two of them didn’t even pay. wei fuxi: Well, anyway, you’re better off than me. Another month now and I’ve had no work. zou fuyuan: But why did you give up storytelling for Peking opera? wei fuxi: I’ve got the voice and the looks. zou fuyuan: But onstage, you don’t throw yourself into the part!

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wei fuxi: Damn it, for singing the whole opera, I don’t get enough to buy three corn buns! Why tire myself out? You think I’m crazy? zou fuyuan (sighs): Well, Fuxi, it looks as though we’ve been beaten by pop songs and trashy operettas like Spinning Cotton. The way I see it, it doesn’t matter if you or I live or die, but it breaks my heart to think that what’s left of our art will die out in a few years! We’ve failed our legendary founders. It’s an old saying that evil will never vanquish good. But these are evil times, and everything good is rotting away at the roots! wang lifa: Ah! (Turning to chef ming) Chef Ming, I haven’t seen you for ages. chef ming: Can’t get out so much these days. I’m now in charge of the food at the prison. wang lifa: What? You? But you used to cater for those fancy imperial-style banquets with more than a hundred tables. Now you’re cooking for jailbirds! chef ming: What can I do? Nowadays it’s only in jail that you can find so many mouths to feed. Imperial-style banquets indeed! I’ve even sold off my cooking utensils. (fang liu enters, with some traditional painted scrolls.) No, thanks. I’m just waiting for someone. fang liu: Master, it’s you! Is your wife not coming? chef ming: Mr. Fang, come over here, please. What happened to my two dinner services? I need the money! fang liu: Chef, pick one of these scrolls instead. chef ming: But what would I do with a scroll? fang liu: They’re so well painted. Even better than the originals! chef ming: They may be the best in the world, but they won’t fill my belly. fang liu: When the owner handed them over to me, he was in tears. chef ming: So was I when I handed over my dinner ser vices! fang liu: I know damn well who’s in tears and who’s stuffing his face! That’s why I’m always so upset. Don’t imagine people in my trade have no heart and just go around buying and selling things. chef ming: Mr. Fang, everyone has at least a little humanity. You’re surely not going to cheat an old friend, I hope? fang liu: Only two dinner ser vices, wasn’t it? Peanuts! Please don’t mention them again. Doesn’t sound friendly somehow. (che dangdang enters, rattling two silver dollars.) che dangdang: Who’ll buy silver dollars? Anyone want to buy silver dollars? Heavenly Teacher, won’t you favor me? (tang the oracle jr. ignores him.) wang lifa: Dangdang, try your luck somewhere else. I can’t even remember what silver dollars look like. che dangdang: Have a good look, then, old man. Free of charge! (che dangdang drops the silver dollars onto the table. madame pang enters with her bondmaid, chunmei. Her fingers encrusted with all kinds of rings, the woman is overdressed to a nauseating degree. old yang, the peddler, enters in her wake.)

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tang the oracle jr.: Your Imperial Majesty! fang liu and che dangdang: Your Imperial Majesty! madame pang: Heavenly Teacher! tang the oracle jr.: At your ser vice. (He helps madame pang to a seat, pours tea for her.) madame pang (as che dangdang prepares to go): Dangdang, just a minute! che dangdang: Yes, ma’am! old yang (opening up his chest of goods): Have a look, Your Imperial Majesty. madame pang: Let’s hear that jingle of yours. It just kills me! old yang: Yes, ma’am. (Recites) Yankee needles, Yankee thread, Toothpaste white and lipstick red. Patent potions, facial lotions, Nylons sheer, you’ll find them here. In my small box, all goods are fine, But atom bombs just ain’t my line. madame pang (laughing, picks two pairs of nylon stockings): Chunmei, put them away. Dangdang, settle the accounts with Yang. che dangdang: Oh, Your Imperial Majesty, don’t do that to me. madame pang: But I lent you money, so what do you owe me now, at compound interest? Heavenly Teacher, check the accounts! tang the oracle jr.: Immediately. (He takes out a small notebook.) che dangdang: Heavenly Teacher, don’t bother! I’ll settle everything with Yang. old yang: Your Imperial Majesty, have pity on me. I’ll never get that money. madame pang: Don’t worry, Yang. I’ll see to it that he won’t cheat you. old yang: Yes, ma’am. (To the others present) Anyone else want to buy something? (Begins his recitation again) Yankee needles . . . madame pang: Enough! Beat it! old yang: Sure. (Recites) Yankee needles, Yankee thread, If I don’t go, I’m a silly fathead! Let’s go, Dangdang. (old yang and che dangdang exit.) fang liu (coming over): Your Imperial Majesty, I managed to get hold of a set of cloisonné incense burners, five pieces in all. Antiques! The real thing! Dirt cheap too. Just right for the altar of our secret society. Why not have a peek at them? madame pang: Show them to the emperor.

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fang liu: Of course! I hear that our emperor is going to have his coronation soon. My congratulations! I’ll go and get the incense burners now and take them to the altar. (Making his way out) If Your Imperial Majesty puts in a good word for me, I won’t forget it. chef ming: Mr. Fang, what about our bit of business? fang liu: Keep an eye on those scrolls for the time being. (He exits.) chef ming: Hey! Wait! Swindle me out of my dinner ser vices, would you? Remember I’ve still got my meat chopper left. (Pursuing fang liu, he goes off.) madame pang: Manager Wang, is Aunt Kang around? Please ask her to come here. tang the oracle jr.: I’ll do it. (Running to the door at the back) Old Mrs. Kang, please come here. wang lifa: What’s all this about? tang the oracle jr.: Momentous affairs of state! (kang shunzi enters.) kang shunzi: What do you want? madame pang (welcoming her effusively): Mother-in-Law! I’ve longed to see you for such a long time. I’m the wife of your fourth nephew. I’ve come to take you home. Please sit down. (She forces kang shunzi into a chair.) kang shunzi: Wife of my fourth nephew? madame pang: That’s right. But when you left the Pangs, I hadn’t married into the family. kang shunzi: I’ve finished with the Pangs. Why look me up? madame pang: Your fourth nephew, Haishun, is the high priest of the Tri-emperor Society, a big wig in the Kuomintang, and a sworn brother of Director Shen. Soon he’s going to be made emperor! Isn’t that fantastic? kang shunzi: Going to be made emperor? madame pang: Yes. His imperial dragon robes are all ready. The coronation will soon take place in the Western Hills. kang shunzi: The Western Hills? tang the oracle jr.: Old lady, don’t you know the communist Eighth Route Army units are in the Western Hills? When Master Pang becomes emperor, he’ll wipe out those commies. Of course the Nanjing government is all for it! madame pang: I have nothing against the master, except that he’s taken to boozing and women lately. Got himself several concubines already! tang the oracle jr.: But, Your Majesty, an emperor should have seventy-two concubines apart from his official wives. That’s all laid out in the old books. madame pang: You’re not an empress. How can you know what an empress has to suffer? Now, old lady, I’ve got an idea. If you side with me, I’ll make you the empress dowager. Then between us we’ll have the emperor under our thumb. That’ll make

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my life a lot easier. Come with me, old lady, and I promise you the best food and drink, plus some silver dollars to jingle in your pocket! What a posh life! kang shunzi: And if I refuse? madame pang (on the verge of an outburst): What? Refuse? tang the oracle jr.: Give her time to think it over. Give her time! kang shunzi: I don’t need it. I’m finished with the Pangs forever! Wife of my nephew, you carry on being an empress and I’ll carry on being a poor old woman. Let’s keep out of each other’s hair! Just now you were about to make a scene. You think that’d scare me? After all these years of suffering on my own, I know how to take care of myself. Try something, and I’ll teach you a lesson! (She stands up and walks to the back.) tang the oracle jr.: Old lady! Old lady! kang shunzi (stops and turns to tang the oracle jr.): As for you, you young loafer, why don’t you stand on your own two feet and make a decent living? (She exits.) madame pang (venting her wrath on wang lifa): Manager Wang, come here! Go and talk some sense into that old hag! Persuade her, and I’ll give you a bag of flour. If not, I’ll have your teahouse smashed up! Heavenly Teacher, let’s go! tang the oracle jr.: Manager Wang, I’ll be back for your answer this evening. wang lifa: Suppose I kick the bucket this afternoon? madame pang: Bah! Then good riddance! (She goes off with tang the oracle jr. and chunmei.) wang lifa: Huh! zou fuyuan: Now, have you ever seen a better act? Ha, ha! wei fuxi: I know more than two hundred operas, but I’ve never come across this one before. Where does the old cow come from? zou fuyuan: Everyone knows! Her father’s a local gangster who runs the eastern district in Beijing. She herself, before she got married, gave birth to . . . er, well, let’s not go into the details! Looks as though those thugs are having their last fling before they go under. It won’t be long now! (wang dashuan comes back.) wang lifa: Keep an eye on things, Dashuan, I have to go and talk something over. (He exits.) erdezi jr. (with a thunderous shout before entering): Get out of the way! (Enters) Brother Dashuan, a pot of the very best. I’m in the money today! (Takes out four silver dollars and puts them down one by one) Work it out for me. Just spent one dollar. Got four left. Half a dollar each, how many I done in? wang dashuan: Ten. erdezi jr. (counting on his fingers): Right! Four the day before yesterday, six yesterday. That’s ten all right. Brother Dashuan, here’s a couple of dollars. When I’m broke, I drink your tea free. When I’m in the money, I pay you. Take ’em! (Picks one up, blows on it, then holds it to his ear) That’s a good one. Good enough for two! Take it!

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wang dashuan (without accepting the money): Erdezi Jr., what’s your racket? Silver dollars don’t grow on trees! erdezi jr.: I’m studying at the university! wang dashuan: You can’t even read the character for “one”!6 What are you doing at university? (erdezi jr. picks up the teapot and gulps down tea from the spout.) (In a whisper) The Beijing KMT party headquarters sent me to the Institute of Law and Politics. What a pushover! A dream! Better than mixing with those bums  in Tianqiao. Half a dollar for every student I do in. How many did I get yesterday? wang dashuan: Six. erdezi jr.: Right. Including two chicks. One punch after another. A dream! (Flexing his biceps) Brother Dashuan, feel this. Feel it! Reinforced concrete! Imagine that on the students. Beautiful, huh? wang dashuan: Of course they take it all lying down? erdezi jr.: I go for the easy ones. Think I’m nuts? wang dashuan: Listen, Erdezi Jr., beating up people is wrong. erdezi jr.: Who says so? Look at the dean of the institute. He teaches KMT party doctrine. When he gives a lecture, first thing he does is take out his pistol and bang it on the table. Me, I only use my fists, not pistols! wang dashuan: Dean indeed! He’s a gangster! erdezi jr.: Right! A gangster! Ah, no, that makes me a gangster too! Now, Brother Dashuan, you have a strange way of mocking me! You’ve got guts! Don’t my reinforced concrete muscles scare you? wang dashuan: You can beat me to death, but if I never give in, you don’t win, do you? erdezi jr.: Such an odd way of putting things! You should come and teach party doctrine. You’ve got what it takes. Well, today I won’t be beating up any more students. wang dashuan: Why only today? Give it up altogether. erdezi jr.: I’ve got another job today. wang dashuan: What’s that? erdezi jr.: The teachers! I’m going to tear into them! wang dashuan: Why? Beating up students is bad enough. Now you want to start on the teachers? erdezi jr.: I do what I’m told. My boss told me the teachers are going on strike. That means they’re breaking the law. That means they get what’s coming to them—a licking. I was told to wait here and beat up all the teachers I see. zou fuyuan (sensing danger): Brother, let’s go. wei fuxi: Let’s. (wei fuxi and zou fuyuan exit.) erdezi jr.: Here, Brother Dashuan, take this dollar! wang dashuan: I won’t take money you got for beating up students.

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erdezi jr. (takes out another dollar): I know what. You keep an eye open for me, and I’ll run out and treat you to a good meal! What’s life without good chow, good drinks, and a bit of fun? (He pockets the money and goes off. kang shunzi comes onstage carrying a parcel. wang lifa and zhou xiuhua follow her.) kang shunzi: Manager Wang, if you’ve changed your mind and want me to stay, I will. wang lifa: I . . . zhou xiuhua: Madame Pang wouldn’t dare smash up our teahouse. wang lifa: How do you know? It doesn’t pay to tangle with the Tri- emperor Society. kang shunzi: What really worries me is Dali’s coming here last night. If that leaks out, we’re all finished. That’s more serious than smashing up the teahouse. wang dashuan: You’d better leave, Auntie! I’ll see you off. We’ll go to Deshengmen, since Xizhimen is closed. Dad, I can see her off, can’t I? wang lifa: Well— zhou xiuhua: All these years Auntie has done so much for us. The least we can do is see her off. wang lifa: Did I say no? You go ahead, see her off! wang dashuan: Just a minute, Auntie. I’ll grab a coat. (He exits.) zhou xiuhua: What’s wrong, Dad? wang lifa: Don’t ask me any more questions. I can’t think straight. I’m all muddled. Never been so muddled before. Xiuhua, you go with Auntie first. I’ll tell Dashuan to catch up. Auntie, if you have any trouble, you just come back! zhou xiuhua: This will always be your home, Auntie. wang lifa: But who knows what will . . . ? kang shunzi: And I’ll never forget you. Old Manager, I wish you good health! (She exits with zhou xiuhua.) wang lifa (follows them a few steps and stops): Good health! What’s the use? (Two teachers, xie yongren and yu houzhai, enter.) xie yongren (after a look at the wall, places money on the table): Old Manager, a pot of tea, please. (He sits.) wang lifa (takes money first): Right. yu houzhai: Yongren, perhaps this is our last time in a teahouse? xie yongren: I may be coming here a lot from now on. I’ve decided to give up teaching. I’m going to start pedaling a pedicab instead! yu houzhai: You’ll certainly earn more than a primary school teacher! xie yongren: It’s crazy! Being a gym teacher when both the kids and I are starving! (wang xiaohua runs in.) wang lifa: Why are you back from school so early, Xiaohua? wang xiaohua: Our teachers are on strike! (Sees yu houzhai and xie yongren) Oh, Teacher Yu, Teacher Xie! Aren’t you going to teach us anymore? Oh, please come

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back! We missed you so much. We were all crying. We had a meeting—everyone promises to behave and never make you angry again. yu houzhai: We hate upsetting your studies as much as you do. But we can’t teach on empty stomachs. We have children of our own. It isn’t fair to let them starve while we teach other children, is it? There, there, don’t worry! After we’ve had our tea, we’re going to a meeting. Maybe we can find a way out. xie yongren: Stay at home and revise your lessons. Don’t go fooling around, Xiaohua. (wang dashuan enters from the back, a parcel under his arm.) wang xiaohua: Dad, these are my teachers. wang dashuan: Teachers, get out of here quickly! They’ve got a thug lying in wait. wang lifa: Who? wang dashuan: Erdezi Jr.! He was here a moment ago. He’ll be back any minute. wang lifa: Gentlemen, here’s your money back. (Handing over the money) Please go! Now! wang dashuan: Come with me. (erdezi jr. enters.) erdezi jr.: The streets are full of demonstrators! Can’t buy a damn thing! Brother Dashuan, where are you going? Who are those two? wang dashuan: Customers. (He starts to exit with yu houzhai and xie yongren.) erdezi jr.: Hey! Stop! (The three ignore him.) What’s this? Don’t listen, eh? I’ll show you! wang lifa: Erdezi Jr.! erdezi jr. (already swinging his fist): Take that! xie yongren (giving erdezi jr. a slap with his hand and a kick with his foot): And you take that! erdezi jr.: Ouch! (He falls down.) wang xiaohua: Serves you right! Serves you right! xie yongren: On your feet! Another round! erdezi jr. (struggles to his feet, a hand to his face): Ow! Ow! (Backing away) Ouch! wang dashuan: Let’s beat it! (He drags the two away. They exit.) erdezi (venting his anger on wang lifa): You just wait, you old fool! You let them get away. You’ll pay for that! Maybe I can’t lick those two, but I can sure beat the shit out of an old geezer like you! (He exits.) wang xiaohua: Grandpa! Grandpa! Is Erdezi Jr. after our teachers? What can we do? wang lifa: Don’t worry! He wouldn’t dare do anything! I’ve seen lots like him in my time. Bullies like him are all cowards. wang xiaohua: But what if he comes back here after you? wang lifa: Me? Grandpa knows how to charm him with a few nice words.

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wang xiaohua: Where’s Dad gone? wang lifa: He’ll be back soon. Don’t worry. Now go and do your homework. There’s a good girl! wang xiaohua: I hope nothing will happen to our teachers. I’m so worried! (She exits.) ding bao (entering): Old Manager, I have something to tell you! wang lifa: What, miss? ding bao: Pockmark Liu Jr.’s up to no good. He’s going to take over your teahouse! wang lifa: How come? What would he want with a shabby old place like this? ding bao: They’ll be here any moment. No time to explain! You’d better think of something quick! wang lifa: Thanks for the heads-up, miss. ding bao: I just want to help you! Don’t tell on me! wang lifa: I haven’t lost it yet, my girl! Don’t worry! ding bao: Okay. See you later. (She exits. zhou xiaohua comes back.) zhou xiuhua: Dad, they’re gone. wang lifa: Good. zhou xiuhua: Dashuan said you’re not to worry. He’ll be back as soon as he’s seen her safely there. wang lifa: That’s up to him! zhou xiuhua: Why? What’s the matter, Dad? Why are you so upset? wang lifa: Oh, nothing, nothing! Go and see to Xiaohua. Didn’t she want some hot noodles? If there’s any flour left, make her some. Poor child, nothing good for her to eat! zhou xiuhua: There’s not a scrap of flour left in the house! I’ll see what I can do. Maybe make a bowl of dough- drop soup with corn flour. (She exits. tang the oracle jr. returns.) tang the oracle jr.: Manager Wang, did you persuade her? wang lifa: This evening. I promised you an answer this evening. tang the oracle jr.: You were complaining my father never paid you for his tea. So, in return, here’s a piece of advice that may save your neck. Listen, the Tri-emperor Society’s even stronger now than it was under the Japs. Smashing up a teahouse like yours is kids’ play to them! You’d better watch out! wang lifa: Oh, I understand all right! You don’t want to get my dander up. Yet at the same time, you want to get in your empress’s good graces. Right? (song enzi jr. and wu xiangzi jr. enter, both in brand-new Western-style suits.) tang the oracle jr.: Gentlemen, quite a busy day, eh? song enzi jr.: Too damn busy! There’s a teachers’ riot! wang lifa: So, now you gentlemen call it a “riot” instead of a “strike”? tang the oracle jr.: What’s happening? wu xiangzi jr.: They won’t get away with it! We’ve already nabbed more than a hundred and beat the daylights out of more than seventy. That’ll teach them!

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song enzi jr.: They don’t know which side their bread’s buttered on. If they toe the line, the Yankees’ll send over rice and flour. tang the oracle jr.: Exactly. If there’s any rice and flour on the way, don’t forget me! When the time comes to divine an auspicious site for your ancestral tombs, I’ll do it for free. Well, gentlemen, back to business! (He exits.) wu xiangzi jr.: You were asking just now how a “strike” becomes a “riot,” weren’t you, Manager Wang? wang lifa: I’m too old to understand newfangled things. I just asked, that’s all. song enzi jr.: Hmm! You all belong to the same bunch. wang lifa: Me? You flatter me! wu xiangzi jr.: We got no time to waste on you. Let’s make it snappy. wang lifa: That means? song enzi jr.: There’s someone behind the teachers’ riot. wang lifa: Who? wu xiangzi jr.: Who came here last night? wang lifa: Kang Dali! song enzi: That’s the man! Hand him over! wang lifa: If I’d known he was such a character, would I have told you his name? I dealt with your fathers long enough to learn at least that much, I hope! wu xiangzi jr.: Talking about your age won’t get you anywhere. Let’s get to the bottom of this. wang lifa: Hand him over or else pay up! Right? song enzi: Dad trained you well! You said it yourself! Either hand him over or hand over those gold bars you’ve stashed away. Other shops come and go, but you’ve managed to keep your head above water. You must have a neat little pile tucked away somewhere. (erdezi jr. rushes in.) erdezi jr.: Come quick! There ain’t enough of us in the streets. Hurry up! wu xiangzi jr.: You little bastard, what are you paid for? erdezi jr.: I did my best. Take a look at my face! It’s all swollen! song enzi jr.: Manager, we’ll be back in a jiffy. So make up your mind! wang lifa: You aren’t afraid I’ll run off ? wu xiangzi jr.: Giving us some of your lip, are you, you old devil? We’ll follow you to hell and back! (He slaps wang lifa, then goes off with song enzi jr. and erdezi jr.) wang lifa (calling to the back): Xiuhua! Daughter-in-Law! zhou xiuhua (rushing out with wang xiaohua): I heard everything! What are we going to do? wang lifa: Get out of here! Try to catch up with your aunt Kang! At once! wang xiaohua: I’ll get my satchel. (She exits.) zhou xiuhua: Take some clothes along, Xiaohua. Dad, what will you do all alone?

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wang lifa: This is my teahouse. I’ve lived in it. I’ll die in it! (wang xiaohua, her schoolbag slung over her shoulder and some things under her arm, runs back.) zhou xiuhua: Dad! wang xiaohua: Grandpa! wang lifa: Don’t cry! Off you go now! (Takes out all his money and an old photograph) Daughter-in-Law, take the money. Xiaohua, you take this. It’s a photo of the old Yutai Teahouse taken thirty years ago. Give it to your dad. Now go! (pockmark liu jr. and ding bao come back.) pockmark liu jr.: Xiaohua, going to your granny’s because the teachers are on strike? wang xiaohua: Yes. wang lifa (taking up the cue): Xiuhua, be back soon! zhou xiuhua: Dad, we’ll only stay a couple of days. (She goes off with xiaohua.) wang lifa: Congratulations! pockmark liu jr.: Congratulations to you too! The director also approved fixing up the teahouse. As soon as I suggested it he said “okay.” It’s the way he says it: “Okay!” Just like a foreigner! wang lifa: What’s all this about? pockmark liu jr.: Your troubles are over! The whole place will be managed by me. You can clear out. Get this straight now. I don’t want you pestering me later on. wang lifa: Don’t worry! Pure coincidence! I’m on the point of moving out myself. ding bao: Pockmark, the old manager’s been here for ages. That’s no way to treat him. pockmark liu jr.: We’ll see. I always play fair. Now, Manager Wang, I’m going to fetch the director to look over this place. You tidy it up! Baby, you get hold of Xiao Xinyanr. The two of you should be here to welcome the director. Remember to bring some perfume and spray it around this place—it stinks. Let’s go! (He goes off with ding bao.) wang lifa: Wonderful! Truly wonderful! Too wonderful to be true! Ha, ha! (master chang enters with a small basket, in which there are some peanuts and paper money—white paper cut in the shape of coins that is scattered at funerals for the dead to use in the next life. He’s over seventy but still holds himself straight.) master chang: What’s so wonderful, my old friend? wang lifa: Why, Brother Chang! Just the man I was wanting to have a chat with. I’ll make a pot of the very best tea. We’ll drink it together. (He goes off to make the tea. qin zhongyi enters. He has aged beyond recognition and is very shabbily dressed.) qin zhongyi: Is Manager Wang here? master chang: Yes he is. You’re . . . ? qin zhongyi: My name’s Qin. master chang: Master Qin! wang lifa (bringing the tea): Who? Master Qin? I was just thinking of telling you, another great “reform” is about to take place. Sit down! Sit down!

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master chang: I’ve got some peanuts here. (Taking some out with his hand) Tea and peanuts, what more can you want? qin zhongyi: But who’s going to chew them? wang lifa: Well, I never! At last we manage to get hold of some peanuts but we don’t have any teeth left to chew them with! Isn’t that a joke? How are things with you, Master Qin? (They sit down.) qin zhongyi: No one wants to listen to me anymore, so I’ve come to you. I just went to Tianjin to have a look at my factory. wang lifa: But it was confiscated, wasn’t it? So they’ve given it back to its rightful owner again? Congratulations! qin zhongyi: It’s been torn down! master chang and wang lifa: Torn down? qin zhongyi: Flattened! Forty years of my sweat and blood razed to the ground! Others may not know it, but you do, Manager Wang. Since my twenties I’ve advocated national salvation through industry. And now . . . When they seized my factory, I couldn’t lift a finger. I was a nobody. No match for them! Still, I hoped they’d run it well. It could have helped the country to prosper and benefited the people. Now it’s demolished! All the machines sold as scrap! Where in the world, in the whole wide world, can you find another government like this one? I ask you! wang lifa: Years ago, my boardinghouse was doing fine. But you insisted on building your warehouse here. Then what happened? The warehouse was sealed up and all the goods stolen! Years ago, I warned you not to sell off all your property. But you insisted so you could start your factory! master chang: Remember the time I gave that young woman selling her daughter two bowls of noodles and you mocked me? qin zhongyi: Well, I know better now! Manager Wang, I want to ask you a favor. (Takes out one or two small machine parts and a penholder) My factory’s been demolished. This is all I picked up from the rubble. This penholder has my name engraved on it. A witness to the number of checks I signed and the number of plans I drew up. I’ll leave these things with you. You can tell your customers stories about them when you have nothing better to do. Tell them, once upon a time there was a foolish man called Qin who was mad on industrialization. After many years, these were the only things he salvaged from the rubble of his factory. The moral of this story is: If you have money, spend it all on wine, women, and gambling. Just enjoy life. Never try to do anything useful! Tell them, this man called Qin didn’t understand these simple truths until he was in his seventies because he was such a damn fool! wang lifa: You’d better take care of the penholder yourself. I’m moving out of here soon. master chang: Where will you go? wang lifa: What does that matter? Master Qin, Master Chang, I’m not as great as you. Master Qin, you had great wealth and ambitions. But, as they say, it’s the tall tree that bears the brunt of the storm. And you, Master Chang, you never gave in, never

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accepted injustice to yourself or to others. You never feared the consequences. Me, I’ve been an obedient subject all my life. I bowed and scraped to everyone. I only wanted a good future for my children. Food and clothes. To be safe and sound. Then, when the Japs were here, my second son ran off, and my wife died of a broken heart. When the Japs finally left, we all hoped life would be better. Who’d have thought—Ha, ha! . . . master chang: I’m no better off than you! I earned my own living and worked hard all my life. But where’s that got me? Selling peanuts in my seventies. One man’s life doesn’t count. But what I hoped for was that our country would become a decent place. No longer sat on by foreign powers. But—(laughs grotesquely) ha, ha! . . . qin zhongyi: When the Japs were here, they called it cooperation. That was the last I saw of my factory. When our own government came back, my factory somehow became traitor’s property. wang lifa: Reform, that’s one thing I never forgot! Always afraid I’d lag behind. When tea wasn’t selling well, I started the boardinghouse. When that went bust, I threw in storytelling as a draw. When that didn’t work, I swallowed my pride to hire a hostess! One has to live! I did everything just so that we could live! Yes, I handed over bribes when I had to. But I never did anything bad or criminal. Why shouldn’t I be allowed to live? Who have I hurt? Who? All those bastards, that “emperor” and his “empress” are having the time of their lives. Why am I singled out to starve? Whose idea was that? master chang: All I hoped for is that everyone would be fair and no one bullied. But I saw with my own eyes how my friends, one by one, starved to death or were killed off. I wanted to weep, but no tears came! My friend Master Song starved to death! I had to go and beg alms to get a coffin for him. At least he had a friend like me who could get him a rough coffin made of thin planks. What’ll happen to me when my time comes? I love our country, but who loves me? See here (taking paper money out of his basket)—whenever I see a funeral, I try to pick up some of this paper money. I won’t have any burial clothes. I won’t even have a coffin. All I can do is save some paper money for myself. Ha, ha! qin zhongyi: Master Chang, let’s offer ritual funeral sacrifices for ourselves. Throw the paper money in the air. Something special for us three old fogies! wang lifa: Right! Master Chang, don’t forget to chant it like in the old days! master chang (stands up, chanting): Pallbearers at the four corners; from the family, a reward of one hundred and twenty strings of cash! (He throws the paper money into the air.)7 qin zhongyi and wang lifa: One hundred and twenty strings of cash! qin zhongyi (holding a hand of each): No need to say anything more. Goodbye! (He exits.) wang lifa: Goodbye! master chang: One last cup of your tea! (Drinks it at one gulp) Goodbye! (He exits.)

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wang lifa: Goodbye!8 (ding bao and xiao xinyanr enter.) ding bao (spraying perfume in the room): They’re here, Old Manager! wang lifa: Good. I’ll make room for them. (He picks up the paper money and heads for the rear.) xiao xinyanr: Mr. Wang, why the paper money? wang lifa: Who knows? (He exits. pockmark liu jr. enters.) pockmark liu jr.: Here he comes. One on each side, attention! (ding bao and xiao xinyanr stand on either side of the entrance. There is the sound of a car stopping outside the entrance. Two military policemen enter first. director shen enters in off- duty clothes, riding boots, and spurs, with a short whip in his hand. Two more military policemen follow him in. director shen, as at a military inspection, examines ding bao and xiao xinyanr.) (After looking them over) Okay! (ding bao gets a chair for director shen to sit in.) pockmark liu jr.: May I report? The old Yutai has been in business for more than sixty years. It’s well known in every part of Beijing. Well situated too! Such an old name would be ideal for our purposes of setting up an intelligence center. I carry on selling tea here, and Little Ding Bao and Xiao Xinyanr will be the hostesses. I’ll be here keeping an eye on people from all walks of life. We’re sure to pick up a lot of information and get our hands on the commies! director shen: Okay! (ding bao takes a packet of Camel cigarettes from a policeman and offers one to director shen; xiao xinyanr takes a lighter and lights it for him.) pockmark liu jr.: Behind here there used to be a warehouse. You’ve already got rid of the goods in it. It’s quite empty now. I’m going to do it up, with a small ballroom in the middle and a few bedrooms at the side, complete with bathrooms. When you have a moment to relax, sir, you can come here to dance, play cards, and have coffee. If it’s late, and you feel like it, you can stay the night. Like it’s your private club. With me in charge, compared to your official residence, it’ll be easier, freer, and livelier. director shen: Okay! ding bao: It’s a pity about the poor old manager here. If we give him a doorman’s uniform, he can take care of the honored guests getting in and out of cars. He’s been here for ages. Everyone knows him. He’s like a trademark! director shen: Okay! Summon him! pockmark liu jr.: Yes, sir! (Running to the back) Manager Wang! Old Manager! Friend of my father! Old Mr. Wang! (He disappears, reappears a moment later.) May I report, sir, he’s hanged himself! He’s dead! director shen: Okay! Okay! (He gives a thumbs-up.)

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E PIL OGUE (At the end, after wang lifa’s death, silly yang enters once more, to find ding bao weeping.) silly yang: Now, little girl, don’t be so forlorn, It’s always darkest before the dawn. Now, little girl, don’t let it haunt you so, Water from the Western Hills to the east shall flow. That water is sweet, not the bitter stuff of yore, And all who drink it will be slaves no more. (Curtain.)

Not es

1. 2.

3.

This text is based on the 1999 publication of the 1978 translation of Lao She’s 1956 play Chaguan (Teahouse) by the late Ying Ruocheng (1929–2003) in preparation for the 1980 European tour of the original 1958 Beijing People’s Art Theatre production, directed by Jiao Juyin (and revived in 1979 on the eightieth anniversary of Lao She’s birth). The current version has been revised by Claire Conceison for this anthology. Ying’s translation was first published in Chinese Literature (Beijing) 12 (1979) and, in 1999, as a separate volume in a bilingual edition by China Foreign Translation Publishing. The same bilingual edition (but with extensive production photographs and a production history appendix added) was published jointly by the Beijing People’s Art Theatre and China Foreign Translation Publishing in 2005, when the play toured the United States. Ying Ruocheng was a renowned actor, director, translator, and China’s vice minister of culture from 1986 to 1990. His autobiography in English, Voices Carry: Behind Bars and Backstage During China’s Revolution and Reform, was published in 2008 by Rowman and Littlefield. Lao She’s original says “magistrate of Wanping county” (Ying Ruocheng changed this to “Mayor of Beijing” to make it more familiar to foreign readers/audiences). Ying Ruocheng played the part of Pockmark Liu in the original 1958 production and in the 1979 revival, subsequent overseas tours, and 1992 final performance with the original cast. Voices Carry includes detailed information about these stagings of Teahouse. The queue was the hairstyle of the later Qing dynasty: it featured a shaved hairline above the forehead, with the remaining hair grown long and gathered into a single braid starting at the nape of the neck and extending down the back; it was fastened at the end (sometimes with a tassel elongating the braid). Ying Ruocheng’s original translation of Teahouse used the term pigtail, but this can be confused with a different hairstyle. In Voices Carry, Ying uses the term queue to refer to the hairstyle.

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4.

5.

6. 7.

8.

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Lao Lin and Lao Chen may be called instead “Old Lin” and “Old Chen,” since the word lao is not their surname but rather a term for “old” that indicates familiarity and respect when used as a form of address. In the original Chinese, Lao She uses the transliteration “Tuolasi” for the English word “trust”; Ying Ruocheng translates Lao She’s phrase in Beijing dialect baoyuanr as the English phrase “it’s all yours.” The Chinese character for “one” is the simplest character, a single horizontal stroke. Following is a translation of a footnote in Lao She’s original text: “Thirty or forty years ago [this refers to the second and third decades of the twentieth century], when wealthy Beijingers died, either thirty-two, forty- eight, or sixty-four pallbearers were hired to carry their coffins at funerals. Four other men holding banners were positioned at the four corners of the coffin, and at a signal from these four, shifts of pallbearers would change. During this process, one of these men would call out the ‘money sum’ [jiaqian], announcing the tips that the family of the deceased had donated. As the tips were called out, people would scatter paper funeral money.” The version of Teahouse often performed (including the performance that toured the United States in 2005) ends here. The original ending of Lao She’s play follows.

Guan Hanqing (1958) Tian Han Retra nsla ted b y Amy Dool i ng

C ha r a c t e rs mistress liu ⽁▙ㅵ, proprietress of a tavern erniu ✠䩦, her daughter, later called autumn swallow guan hanqing ⤴⧔㎤, a prominent playwright during the Yuan dynasty, also known as Jizhai xie xiaoshan 㨩㨏㓹, a member of the literary society, an artist, and authority on folk songs of the Jin dynasty qian shuaqiao ㍷㙛㎎, an actor, later sai lianxiu’s husband young lord ⤇㽳, akham’s twenty-fifth son henchman 㠕べ㽳, addressed as Fourth Master Cui by mistress liu zhu lianxiu 㻎⻽㩑, a famous entertainer and actress xianggui 㦓⥌, her maidservant yan shanxiu 㬌㓹㩑, zhu lianxiu’s pupil ma er ⿷✠, yan shanxiu’s husband sai lianxiu 㑺⻽㩑, another of zhu lianxiu’s pupils; later becomes qian shuaqiao’s wife entertainment house procuress 凟ㄾ akham’s mother ≐ㄾ akham’s twenty- fifth daughter- in- law ⥏⡜ spring cuckoo ╠⳻, the maid of akham’s mother

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guan zhong ⤴㺴, guan hanqing’s old servant yumei 㲙み, the “Flute King” yang xianzhi 㬚㦄㺐, guan hanqing’s old friend, nicknamed Patchman Yang, a great contemporary dramatist ye hefu 㮠⧧⡄, a black sheep in theatrical circles wang heqing 㠩⧧㎤, guan hanqing’s old friend superintendent he ⧨㽼⤸, manager of the Yuxianlou Playhouse bodyguards 㗆㢲 play house attendants ⨍㜞⤸㖼 wang zhu 㠩㻚, military commander of Yizhou hao zhen ⧜伫, assistant to the prime minister, akham’s henchman horikhoson ⧧⹿⫌㚧, a high minister, later prime minister akham ≐⧩⿷, deputy prime minister, Kublai Khan’s favorite warden 㲤⺂ prison officers ⱏ㽳 female prison officer ⱏ㋇ prison guards 㲤㾄 zhou fuxiang 㺾⡁㦙, a messenger, erniu’s husband long- life liu ⽁⒌㔶, a prisoner tselbukhe ⒡⹽⏥⪀, horikhoson’s confidential secretary peasant liu ⽁▙㮙, erniu’s father peasant zhou 㺾⹝⧔, erniu’s father-in-law young peasant ㎠ㅰ㇭ス liang jinzhi ⼆ⱌ㺐, a composer and physician wang shifu 㠩㖯⡄, another great dramatist wang neng 㠩ㅢand li wu⹼㣖, deportation escorts petty official 㨏⺂ brothel manager 㨾㴠㽼⤸ subordinate 㨾㴠㽼⤸☨㗐㥲㑉

S CE NE 1 (The capital city of Cambaluc [present- day Beijing], during the reign of Kublai Khan, in the year a.d. 1281 A small tavern on a street corner near the city gate. A crowd of people has gathered in the road to watch an execution procession. Amid a flourish of trumpets, the Mongol officer in charge gallops past, followed by attendants beating bamboo clappers and shouting, “Make way, make way!” Then, to the rumble of gongs and drums, the executioner marches by, sword in hand, a long plume in his hat, escorting a mule- drawn cart with a female convict. Her hair is disheveled and her head slumped down, and the placard across her back bears her death

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sentence. An old woman trails behind the cart, crying frantically, “My child, my child! Heaven, spare my child! Don’t let them do this!” The attendants snarl at her savagely: “Out of the way, old woman! D’you want lose your head, too?” mistress liu, proprietress of the small tavern, stands waiting, holding a bamboo basket filled with wine, meat, and sacrificial paper money. From the look of it, she is on her way to intercept the procession but, finding it impossible to make her way through the crowd, retraces her steps, murmuring to herself, “The poor, poor child!” Just then a few manservants, wearing Mongolian-style clothes, happen to pass her. She swallows her tears, dries her eyes, and beckons her daughter, erniu, who is looking on as though spellbound. erniu, though dressed plainly, is a real beauty.) mistress liu: Come, Erniu, what’s the point of watching? There’s housework to do. erniu: I’m coming, Mother. (Nevertheless she keeps watching.) mistress liu: I hear you but you haven’t budged. Not a month goes by without this sort of public spectacle. What could be so interesting? erniu (turning back reluctantly and taking her mother’s hand): What a shame, Mother! How could such a pretty young woman be a murderess? mistress liu: Who said she was? She’s as sweet and innocent a child as you are. Don’t you remember Xiaolan, who came to visit two springs ago? erniu: Xiaolan? You mean Mistress Chen’s daughter-in-law? mistress liu (wiping her eyes): That’s right. erniu: But she doesn’t look anything like she used to! Mother, isn’t there something we can do to help her? mistress liu: What can we do, foolish child? (Pointing at the bamboo basket) I prepared some sacrificial wine and meat to make an offering, but I daren’t even do this. Poor Xiaolan! To think she should have run into— (She stops short. guan hanqing, a playwright of great renown, also a physician of the Royal Academy of Medicine, who has been watching the procession from the back of the crowd, comes over to join them.) guan hanqing (in a hushed voice): I beg your pardon, Mistress Liu, do you know her? mistress liu: Good heavens! You’re here to watch all the commotion too, Master Guan? guan hanqing: Not exactly. I happened to be on my way out of town to see a friend. As I was passing by, I found the street blocked off. erniu: Ah, Uncle Guan, won’t you come in and sit down for a while? (She hastens to serve tea.) Please have a cup of tea. guan hanqing: Thank you, Erniu. You get prettier all the time. And you still remember me, eh? mistress liu: Of course she does. We used to be neighbors, and it’s only been a little over two years since you moved away—how could she have forgotten you? Have a seat.

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guan hanqing (sits): How’s business? mistress liu: Not too bad. Only we’re shorthanded and can’t afford to hire any help. The old man spends most of his time down in Wanping Village and only makes it back once or twice a month at best. guan hanqing: Not to worry. Erniu must be a great help. mistress liu: She is, but I wish she were a boy. A daughter in public is an invitation to trouble, I tell you. guan hanqing: I know what you mean . . . Tell me, Mistress Liu, are you acquainted with the condemned? mistress liu: I am. As a matter of fact, I’m distantly related to her mother-in-law. (Heaving a sigh) To think I should see with my own eyes an innocent child sent to her death and not be able to do a thing about it. Really . . . (She dries her tears.) guan hanqing: What happened? How could such a young thing have committed such an atrocious crime?! mistress liu: What crime? She’s a good girl. guan hanqing: Then, why . . . ? mistress liu (in a hushed voice, seeing that the crowd on the street has begun to disperse): Master Guan, what I am about to tell you is what her own mother-in-law told me. And it is the whole truth. You can’t save the living, but perhaps you will be able to avenge the dead. guan hanqing (eagerly): Go on; I’m listening. mistress liu: The name of the unfortunate girl is Zhu Xiaolan. She comes from a peasant family in Xiangyang. Xiangyang, as you know, was under siege for a number of years. After its fall, Lord Alihaiya1 seized a huge tract of grazing land for his horses. He not only confiscated the small plot belonging to Xiaolan’s family but also conscripted her father as a stable hand. He fled in indignation. Abandoned, Xiaolan and her mother had no way to survive, so they came here to the city in search of an uncle. Unfortunately he was away. They took up lodging at the house of Mistress Chen, who was also a native of Xiangyang. Then Xiaolan’s mother fell ill and was laid up for more than six months. They had to borrow ten taels of silver from Mistress Chen to pay for a doctor and medicine. Mistress Chen had a son named Wenxiu, an honest enough young fellow, but he had been in poor health since childhood, so no betrothal arrangements had been made. One day Mistress Chen demanded her ten taels of silver back. Xiaolan’s mother, of course, had no money to repay her. So she promised to wed her daughter to Mistress Chen’s son in partial settlement of the debt. In the meantime, her illness persisted. She would get a bit better for a spell and then have a relapse, until finally last autumn she died. guan hanqing (sympathetically): What became of Xiaolan after that? mistress liu: She married Wenxiu. The young couple lived together quite happily. Mistress Chen loved her like her own flesh and blood. And so the small family prospered. But then, somehow, calamity struck from within!

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erniu: Mother, please, let’s not talk about this! Isn’t there something we can do to save Xiaolan? I’m worried sick. Can’t Uncle Guan think of something? There’s no time to spare. Hurry! mistress liu: My poor child, Uncle Guan is a physician. His business is to save people when they come down with colds or coughs, not when their heads are about to be chopped off. Now, listen, I’m in the middle of a conversation, don’t interrupt. (Restless and frustrated, erniu dashes back outside.) guan hanqing: Go on, Mistress Liu, how did calamity strike from within? mistress liu: You see, Mistress Chen’s maiden name is Li. She had a paternal cousin called Li Liushun, who had come to live in the Chen residence in his old age. Mistress Chen was short of help and so he was entrusted with various household affairs. Then the year before last, Liushun’s son, who had not been seen in years, turned up. His name is Li Yi, but because he is such a reckless good-for-nothing, people call him Donkey Li. He drifted about with the army for a while and supposedly enlisted in the southern expeditionary army under Commander Sa, but when he got to Lin’an,2 he somehow scored big and quit. From the time he returned, he set his eye on Xiaolan and wanted her for his wife even though Xiaolan didn’t give him the time of day. Even after Xiaolan married Wenxiu, Donkey Li wouldn’t give up. One day Wenxiu went out and never came back. It wasn’t until two days later that they found out he had been drowned. People said it was Donkey Li who had done it. guan hanqing (banging the table): What a vile scoundrel! Preying on good people. Obviously it was to get his hands on Xiaolan, right? mistress liu: Precisely. After Wenxiu was buried, Xiaolan wept day and night. But that brazen-faced Donkey Li lost no time in asking her to marry him. She refused and vowed to serve her mother-in-law for as long as she lived. As for Mistress Chen, she was so distraught over the loss of her son that she cried herself sick. One day, she felt well enough to have a bit of mutton tripe soup. After Xiaolan had prepared it, Donkey Li came up with an excuse to send her on an errand and then slipped in some arsenic. His scheme was to poison Mistress Chen, thereby removing the final obstacle to marrying Xiaolan. But it so happened that the patient took a turn for the worse and didn’t even taste the broth when it was served. It was the old man, Li Liushun, who loved food, who carried it off to eat. No sooner had he done so than blood began to pour from his mouth, nostrils, ears, and eyes, and he died right there on the spot. Then Donkey Li threatened Xiaolan, saying he would hush up the incident if she promised to be his wife; otherwise he would drag her to court. But Xiaolan knew she was innocent and said, “Fine, go ahead and turn me in.” As fate would have it, her case wound up before a corrupt official. guan hanqing: Hm, nowadays few are those who are not corrupt. Who heard the case? mistress liu (in a whisper): The case was brought before the Daxing prefecture. The prefect, Lord Khoshin,3 as you well know, is greedy beyond measure and so concerned about his reputation that he often demands to be presented with the ten-

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thousand-name homage umbrella.4 He is a Semu,5 and, seeing that Xiaolan was the daughter of a lowly “barbarian,” 6 who, moreover, had left her home village, he disliked her from the start. Then Donkey Li handed over a personal letter from Commander Sa and some silver to boot, so whose side do you think he took? At her hearing, Xiaolan told the whole story exactly as it had happened, but the prefect simply turned a deaf ear to her defense and instead subjected her to all manner of torture to get her to confess that she had poisoned Donkey Li’s father. Xiaolan stoutly maintained her innocence, however, and refused to plead guilty. guan hanqing: Good for her! She shouldn’t have pled guilty under any circumstance. mistress liu: But then Lord Khoshin insisted that since Zhu Xiaolan had not confessed, it must have been the mother-in-law who had mixed the poison in the broth. So he ordered the old woman be subjected to a flogging of eighty lashes. As soon as she heard this, Xiaolan knew that her elderly mother-in-law would never survive such a beating. Steeling herself, she resolved to plead guilty even though she hadn’t done anything wrong. guan hanqing: Oh heavens, why did she go and do that? mistress liu: If she hadn’t, that corrupt official would have beaten her mother-in-law to death, don’t you see? guan hanqing: But she should never have signed a confession. Didn’t it occur to her that to plead guilty was to give up her own life? mistress liu: How could she have not known? But her one and only concern at that moment was to save her mother-in-law; she wasn’t thinking about herself. That’s the way she always was—straightforward and resolute. guan hanqing: She certainly was a woman of fine character. It’s a pity a more attentive official hadn’t presided over her case. mistress liu: But, Master Guan, who would that be? These days, the life of a Han is worth less than a mule. Xiaolan was granted just one hearing the day before yesterday; today she’s already been sentenced to be beheaded. guan hanqing: They’re everywhere—these damned officials who trample on human life as though it were nothing but grass! mistress liu (lowering her voice): Master Guan, watch what you say. (More people in the street crowd their way past the tavern. erniu dashes back in.) erniu (tugging her mother’s sleeve): Mother, do something! Hurry! (Looking at guan) Think quickly, Uncle Guan. You have many friends. Do something quick! (A cannon sounds in the distance.) mistress liu: It’s too late now. She’s no longer with us. Poor Xiaolan! (She sits down crying with her face buried in her hands. erniu begins to sob, too.) guan hanqing (with great disappointment and sadness): What kind of world is this! (Rising from his seat) Mistress Liu, thank you. I must be going. (Talking to himself ) Treating people’s colds and coughs, is that all I’m good for? mistress liu: Watch your step, Master Guan. Come visit again when you have time. Are you heading home?

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guan hanqing: No, I must go out of town to see a friend. (He takes leave with a heavy heart, but before he can make his exit, two literary friends, xie xiaoshan and qian shuaqiao, enter the tavern. The moment xie xiaoshan sees guan hanqing, he grasps his arm. The latter, absorbed in thought, is startled.) xie xiaoshan: Lao Guan,7 I’ve been looking for you. When I went by your house you were out. I didn’t expect to find you here drinking. guan hanqing: I haven’t been drinking. I was talking with Mistress Liu about the woman convict who was just executed. xie xiaoshan: I heard a bit about it, too. I understand she was falsely accused. qian shuaqiao: I heard some guy set her up when she refused to marry him. guan hanqing: Mistress Liu told me the whole story just now. It makes my blood boil! xie xiaoshan: Why get angry? These days nine out of ten verdicts are unfair. If you’re going to get so worked up each time, you might as well hang yourself . . . Now, I wanted to ask you about something, so why don’t you come over to our place for a drink? guan hanqing: No thanks, I have to go out of town. What did you want to ask? xie xiaoshan: Some fellow has asked me to teach him one of your ballads. The first line, as far as I can remember, goes, “Drink when thirsty; eat when hungry; and sing when you’ve had one too many.” But Qian Shuaqiao insists that it’s “Drink when thirsty; sing when you’ve had one too many,” without the part “eat when hungry.” Now that we can check it against the original, tell us, who’s right? guan hanqing: You both are. qian shuaqiao: Come on. Just tell me which one of us is right. guan hanqing: You are. “Eat when hungry” was inserted later to make the line easier to sing. But some people thought the change broke up the melody and was not as clever as the original. xie xiaoshan: That’s true. I think I’ll stick with the original version when I give the singing lessons. The gentleman is particularly fond of the lines “To till your own land, to retire to the mountains—in quiet leisure one can brood over what has come to pass. My rival may be wise; I may be a fool. But why struggle?” He thinks these lines have been superbly written. guan hanqing (thoroughly opposed to this sort of detached outlook on life): No, they aren’t good in the least. My rival is not necessarily wise, and I’m not necessarily a fool. We’ve got to duke it out to see who is wise and who is a fool, to determine what is right and what is wrong. Xiaoshan, I think you’d better stop teaching that ballad. xie xiaoshan: Why? What’s come over you? Then, what about the piece entitled “Feng liu ti”? Do you still intend to learn it? guan hanqing: Yes, I do. I’ll be over later. (To qian shuaqiao) Is Fourth Sister Zhu in today? qian shuaqiao: Probably. guan hanqing: Probably? What about Sai Lianxiu? Is she feeling any better?

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qian shuaqiao (tossing his head): I wouldn’t know. guan hanqing: You wouldn’t know? I thought you two were quite close. xie xiaoshan: It’s all over between them. This guy got drunk the other day and forgot all his lines when he was onstage. Sai Lianxiu really told him off. He couldn’t take it and has been playing hooky for several days now. guan hanqing: Tell me, Qian Shuaqiao, should a fellow in our profession forget his lines onstage, no matter how good an actor he might be? qian shuaqiao: Of course not. guan hanqing: Then you know she did it for your own good. Why take it so hard? qian shuaqiao: Because . . . because . . . guan hanqing: Because you were scolded by a woman, right? Well, the truth is the truth whether you are a man or a woman. I want you to come with me to Fourth Sister’s place and apologize to Sai Lianxiu. (To mistress liu and erniu) Mistress Liu and Erniu. Good day. We’re going now. mistress liu: Take care. (They walk to the corner of the street.) guan hanqing (taking leave of xie xiaoshan at the street corner): Xiaoshan, will you make an appointment for me with the drummer, Lao Rensi, and the flutist, Yumei? I have a new play in mind, and I want to consult them about the melodies8 and the stage directions. xie xiaoshan: Fine. (He heads toward town. guan hanqing and qian shuaqiao head toward the city gate. At this juncture, the servants in Mongolian attire who had just passed by turn back again, followed by an opulently dressed young lord and his henchman. They enter mistress liu’s tavern.) mistress liu: Young Lord, sit down, please. young lord: No. (To his henchman) Tell her. henchman: Well, Mistress Liu, what do you have to say about the matter we discussed yesterday? mistress liu: The matter we discussed yesterday? Oh, yes, Fourth Master Cui, but I thought I had already made it clear. My daughter, Erniu, is engaged to be married. Sixth Master Zhang, you know, served as the matchmaker. Her fiancé, Zhou Fuxiang, comes from a peasant family from Wanping. He works at the residence of His Lordship Horikhoson. The wedding will take place after the fall harvest. (She gestures to erniu to go into the inner chambers. erniu does as she is told.) henchman: Don’t bother repeating all that. I’ve heard it before and reported as much to the young lord already, but this is what he said, “That doesn’t matter. A mere servant at the minister’s residence! Why, even the minister’s own son would have to stand aside. Give this Zhou fellow some cash and tell him to go marry someone else.” mistress liu: But the rules of decency and propriety would never permit such a thing. My daughter is already betrothed. henchman: Rules of decency and propriety? The twenty-fifth son of His Excellency, Lord Akham, has taken a fancy to your daughter, and that is the greatest form of

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decency and propriety. Few people ever have the chance of gaining access to our great house. The young lord, however, has deigned to call on you here in person on several occasions. Don’t tell me you still decline such an honor. Now, are you in agreement or not? mistress liu: Fourth Master Cui, please say something to the young lord on my behalf. Erniu has already been betrothed to somebody else, and so she simply cannot accept this good fortune. henchman (to the young lord): What shall I say? young lord: It’s no use wasting any more breath on her. Seize the girl! henchman (to the servants): Seize her! (The servants start dragging erniu from the inner chamber.) erniu (resisting): Mother! Help! Help! mistress liu: Young Lord and Fourth Master Cui, you can’t do this! Her father has gone to Wanping. I am in no position to make a decision like this. Can’t you wait until he returns? I beg you. (She sinks to her knees.) henchman: When he gets back, send him over. mistress liu: But I won’t allow you to take her. henchman: Oh yes you will! (Without another word the servants drag erniu away, with the young lord leading the way. The henchman follows behind. mistress liu hangs on to his robe desperately.) mistress liu: How dare you abduct someone’s child in broad daylight! Don’t you know the law? henchman: Don’t be an ass. You should know, Mistress Liu, this is the way of His Excellency, Lord Akham, and his whole family, and so it has been for the last twenty years. If you want to talk about the law, go to Daxing prefecture. You’ll find out soon enough that the prefect of Daxing, who is also the governor of Dadu province, is none other than Lord Khoshin, the first young lord of our house! (He shoves mistress liu away, then swaggers off.) mistress liu: Woe is me, woe is me! I shall die, I shall die! (She lies on the ground and wails.) (Lights out.)

S CE NE 2 (zhu lianxiu’s apartment in the outskirts of Cambaluc, where the pleasure quarters are located. On the wall hang a pipa, a flute, a sword, and a whisk broom. zhu lianxiu is the fourth-born child in her family and is thus known to her friends as Fourth Sister. In the Yuan dynasty, female entertainers customarily took the character “xiu” [elegance] as one component of their names. zhu lianxiu [pearl-screen elegance] had achieved renown early in her career. A versatile actress gifted with an exceptional

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voice, she is a star of the first magnitude. Among her pupils are sai lianxiu and yan shanxiu, and her acquaintances include hu zishan and feng haisu et al. But her dearest friend is guan hanqing, who once presented her with a ballad9 as a tribute to her per for mances in many of his plays, such as Rescued by a Coquette, The Cunning Maid, The Riverside Pavilion, and The Prayer to the Moon. zhu lianxiu comes from a fine family and is noble-minded and brave. As the scene opens, zhu lianxiu is elegantly dressed in purple, in accordance with the regulation about courtesan dress codes. In the tenth month of the year 1268 it was announced that “because courtesans and prostitutes dressed in a manner similar to the elites, the noble and the lowly cannot be differentiated. Therefore, it is decreed that they be classified properly and wear dark purple gowns and headwear.” Because zhu lianxiu is a famous courtesan, she dresses in particularly gorgeous attire. She is listening to guan hanqing as he finishes telling her all about zhu xiaolan. Her maid, xianggui, serves him tea from an exquisite tea set.) guan hanqing: So you see, they stole a precious life so brutally and shamelessly, yet they still have the gall to call themselves “fathers of the people.” (He pounds the table.) zhu lianxiu (hastening to steady the teacups): Why take it out on the table and teacups, my dear Master Guan? guan hanqing: What kind of world is this? Can one not be outraged, Fourth Sister? zhu lianxiu: Of course not. My heart is numb with disgust. Some people no longer expect anything else. But you, with your graying hair, still have the spirit of a man in his prime who rages against injustice. (Draws near him) It is precisely because of such courage that you have won people’s love and respect, you know? guan hanqing: That’s enough! (Rises and turns away from her) Perhaps it is because I have not seen enough of the world that I feel differently from you about the matter. zhu lianxiu: It’s not that. It’s just that you haven’t quite lost that “pure childlike heart” that you often go on about. But those who no longer get upset over the present state of affairs are not necessarily less worthy than you. It may be that they suffer more bitterly than you. With talent and learning, you men can go far. You may face an occasional setback, but chances are you will see your dreams come true. We women are the ones to be pitied. I was from a decent family, too. But in order to pay off the exorbitant rent imposed by Prince Puhua, my father died in jail and I was sold off to this playhouse as an entertainer. I’ve been stuck here for over a decade now. Haven’t I suffered injustice all these years without any way to air my grievances? And yet I’m better off than most. There are twenty-five thousand women quartered outside the city walls of Cambaluc living in the most inhumane conditions. Some struggle to stay alive but fail; others yearn in vain for death and would be better off being executed. guan hanqing: You certainly do suffer a great deal. But exactly what kind of future do we men of learning have? Remember, according to customary ranking, artisans

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occupy the seventh place, courtesans the eighth, Confucian scholars the ninth, and beggars the tenth.10 So these days our social status is even lower than yours. On the other hand, I must confess that I have held an unduly high opinion of myself. Du Fu said, “Having pored over ten thousand volumes, one can write with godly power.” I’ve always considered myself pretty resourceful. But today, when I witnessed with my own eyes a pack of bloodthirsty thugs drag an innocent woman off to the execution ground to chop off her head, I hadn’t the slightest idea what to do. I am the author of The Butterfly Dream,11 in which, upon Wang Shihe’s acquittal by Justice Bao, I had his mother sing: “Our sadness has turned to joy, our debt of sorrow is paid. We have left the castle of darkness.” How I longed then for another Justice Bao to turn our sorrows into joy. But instead, what we have are man-eating beasts, and in the face of such beasts our hands are tied. Mistress Liu was right: Dr. Guan Hanqing merely saves people from coughs and colds! Her rebuke stung, but it is the truth. I am indeed merely a physician who writes out prescriptions for peppermint and licorice root. “Black Whirlwind” Li Kui,’ 12 a complete illiterate, had the courage to raid the execution ground at Jiangzhou. But me? All I could do was to stand there at the back of the crowd with folded arms and look on, restraining my indignation. That was me, the proud Guan Hanqing. How I despise myself! zhu lianxiu (holding his hand to comfort him): Li Kui was very brave indeed. But would he have made the raid on his own? It had been carefully planned by the heroes of Liangshanbo. Now, what can you possibly do, if you perchance come across something unjust? guan hanqing: When the ancients encountered injustice on the road, they would draw their swords and go to the rescue. In my case, I have no sword to draw, only an old worn- out brush. zhu lianxiu: Isn’t the brush your sword? Aren’t your plays your sword? In your plays you have unmasked such villains as Lord Yang, Ge Biao, and Lu Zhailang.13 And right along with us, your audiences despise those men who defy moral principles, persecute the innocent, and terrorize ordinary citizens. So why don’t you depict Donkey Li, Khoshin, and their like as the monsters they are to right the wrongs done to many women? guan hanqing: But those monsters aren’t an isolated few. There’s a huge pack of them conspiring in this man- eating business. How can they all be represented? I had always believed that, though the ways of the world were unfair, heaven, earth, and the gods had eyes and upheld justice and equity. But now I realize that this just isn’t so. zhu lianxiu: Well, then, if the wicked are too numerous, just single out the worst, the most hideous to write about. If heaven, earth, and the gods have unseeing eyes, then condemn them as well. guan hanqing: Exactly. On my way over I was thinking about Zhu Xiaolan’s case, and I’ve decided to write a play about it. I’ll lay bare the hypocrisy of these vicious, corrupt officials for all to see in broad daylight. I’ll give voice to the resentment and

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grievances of women who have been wronged. Let all know that, in their hearts, the common people still understand justice and the difference between right and wrong. zhu lianxiu: Wonderful! I know a thing or two about this prefect Lord Khoshin, too. He uses the influence of his powerful father to commit all manner of crimes. Recently he was charged with mistrial in a sentence he handed down. Lord Xu Heng14 came to investigate the proceedings. Khoshin feigned illness and refused to receive him. Xu could do nothing about it and had to drop the matter. guan hanqing: Help me gather more evidence of his crimes. He’ll never get away with his misdeeds. I have an outline of the script in my head, and I’ve got a name for the female lead, too. There is one question, however. zhu lianxiu: What’s that? guan hanqing: What if no one dares perform the play once it has been written? zhu lianxiu (after a moment’s thought): Hanqing, just write it. If you have no objections to my troupe, we’ll give it a try. guan hanqing: Why would I object to your troupe? zhu lianxiu: Well, didn’t you once say that only private performances by respectable offspring of good families can be called true stagecraft, whereas what we singing girls and actors do amounts to little more than crude entertainment? guan hanqing: Please! I said nothing of the sort. Don’t believe everything Zhao Mengfu15 says. Nowadays, whether someone’s an amateur artist from a respectable family or a professional entertainer, it makes no difference. They are all oppressed and downtrodden. They are all slaves! zhu lianxiu: Well then, if you’ll dare to write the play, I’ll dare to stage it. guan hanqing: For my part, then, if you dare to stage it, I’ll surely write it without delay. zhu lianxiu: Fine, that’s settled then. I’ve been acclaimed for my performances as Zhao Pan’er, Tan Ji’er, Wang Ruilan, and Yanyan.16 Now, on Zhu Xiaolan’s behalf, and on behalf of wronged women everywhere, I promise to perform my new role well. guan hanqing (grasping her hands, visibly moved): Well said, Fourth Sister! zhu lianxiu: What name do you intend to give to the female role? guan hanqing: I’m going to call her Dou E. zhu lianxiu: Dou E? Perfect! I remember you once thought about writing a play about a filial daughter called Cao E. Now you’ll simply turn the filial daughter into a filial daughter-in-law and call her Dou E instead. Am I right? guan hanqing: Exactly. You guessed it. (Enter yan shanxiu, her husband, ma er, sai lianxiu, and qian shuaqiao, talking and laughing.) yan shanxiu (to zhu lianxiu): Teacher, here’s something very strange! Qian Shuaqiao has actually apologized to Sai Lianxiu! ma er: We have Master Guan to thank for that. I was beginning to think you two were mortal enemies.

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guan hanqing: Ha, ha, ha! He was really pigheaded about it, though. It took ages to talk him around. zhu lianxiu: You owe it to him. It had to be done, of course. He models himself after you. He’s always saying you call yourself “the prince of gentlemen” and “the king of gallants.” I can see he has made himself into quite the young gentleman, to say the least. guan hanqing: I don’t see anything wrong with that. But the point to remember is this: those of us in theater strive to be fair and reasonable, for it is reason that makes us human. If we stray too far from reason or go so far as to totally abandon it, then how can we consider ourselves gentlemen and gallants? zhu lianxiu (to the others): Did you all hear that? To be a true gentleman you must uphold reason and respect yourself. Oh, by the way, Sai Lianxiu, I have some good news to share. Master Guan is going to write a fantastic new play. And he says he’ll let our troupe stage it. sai lianxiu: Wonderful! Only I hope we won’t mess it up. guan hanqing: You needn’t be so modest, Sai Lianxiu. sai lianxiu: I hope it doesn’t take you long. I’m all better now. I’m dying for a new part. ma er: Master Guan, Qian Shuaqiao is dying for a new part, too. Why don’t you write him something like “The Uncouth Li Kui Tenders His Apology”?17 (Everyone bursts out laughing.) qian shuaqiao: Ha, ha, ha, ha! (Changing the subject and turning to guan hanqing) That reminds me. There will be a party at Liulang Village in the western suburbs. We’ve been asked to perform your play Lord Guan Goes to the Feast.18 Will you be able to attend? guan hanqing: When is it? qian shuaqiao: Sometime early next month. I’ll let you know as soon as the date is fixed. guan hanqing: Of course, I’ll go if I’m free. I myself used to perform at Liulang Village. ma er: We seldom see you onstage anymore. How about joining us? I suggest we  present your The Jade Mirror Stand.19 Fourth Sister can play Liu Qianying; you, Wen Qiao; Sai Lianxiu, Mistress Liu; Yan Shanxiu, the maidservant; Qian Shuaqiao, the matchmaker; and of course we couldn’t do without me as Prefect Wang. guan hanqing: Ha, ha! Your casting isn’t bad. But I’m afraid the villagers won’t necessarily go for something so genteel. How about The Wife-Snatcher?20 Fourth Sister can play Li’s wife, you take Zhang Gui; Qian Shuaqiao, the silversmith, Li Si; and I’ll be Justice Bao. ma er: Good, that’s even better. (Reciting some lines) “It is said Lu was brazen beyond words. He is an official but obeys no law. Even the courts are under his thumb. He seizes people’s wives and daughters at will, and tramples the common folk beneath his feet. Few officials have such power as he . . .”

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qian shuaqiao: Citizens today are just like wild geese whose beaks have been pierced by arrows: no one even dares cough. Such a play, I am sure, will be more than welcome. ma er (to guan hanqing): Then we look forward to seeing your performance as Justice Bao. (Enter the entertainment house procuress. She greets guan hanqing.) procuress: The superintendent stopped by just now to say there will be a reception at the prime minister’s residence this evening in honor of the guests from Persia. You are all to go rehearse the program at once. yan shanxiu and the others: Excuse us, Master Guan. (They retire with the entertainment house procuress.) sai lianxiu: Master Guan, if you will excuse me. I must go, too. (To zhu lianxiu) Teacher, have Master Guan stay. (She and qian shuaqiao exit.) guan hanqing (rising to his feet): Well, Fourth Sister, I must be off. zhu lianxiu: Why, are you going home to work on the play? (Warmly) Why don’t you stay and write here? I’ll be rehearsing. Afterwards we can dine together. Sai’s father sent over some carp he caught at the lake. You might as well have some to show your appreciation. (To the maid) Xianggui, please see to the tea. Use the finest I have. (xianggui nods in compliance.) But you mustn’t disturb Master Guan. Close that door so that he won’t hear the noise of the drums and gongs. xianggui: Yes, but Master Guan wouldn’t be bothered by anything like that. Wasn’t he working on a script backstage just the other day? He didn’t even seem to notice the music and singing up front at all. He’s a real genius. zhu lianxiu: Silly girl. You think I don’t know how capable Master Guan is? But this play is quite different from his others. He needs peace and quiet and mustn’t be disturbed, that’s all. Understood? xianggui: Yes, of course. guan hanqing: Fourth Sister, it’s very thoughtful of you. Please give my thanks to Sai Lianxiu, too. I am still working it out in my head, so I’m afraid it’ll be a few days before I can commit it to paper. Right now I have to go out to the Western Hills to make a house call. zhu lianxiu: Make a house call? guan hanqing (smiling): Don’t forget I’m still a physician. And when the Royal Academy of Medicine sends for you, you must go. Some patients don’t want us to know anything about their identity. You might make several visits and still not even know their names. zhu lianxiu: Why do you carry on with this nuisance of a profession? Wouldn’t you be better off resigning and devoting yourself to your writing? guan hanqing: Well, if I resigned, I’d have to fork over all sorts of taxes and levies. And I’d be forced to accept some other menial job. So I’m better off doing this, for at

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least I have time to do things of my own. Besides, physicians, you know, rank fifth on the social scale. As a writer I’m one rank below you female entertainers, but, as a royal physician, I’m a few ranks higher. Ha, ha, ha, ha! zhu lianxiu: So that’s why! All right, then, I won’t keep you any longer. Allow me to wish you riches and good luck in bringing a miraculous cure to your patient, my dear Dr. Guan. guan hanqing: You! (Lights out.)

S CE NE 3 (A gorgeous villa outside the capital city in the heavily wooded Western Hills. It belongs to akham, the most powerful minister of the day. guan hanqing is attending to his patient, akham’s mother. An aristocratic young woman, akham’s daughter- in- law, and spring cuckoo, a maidservant, are standing in waiting.) guan hanqing (to the patient): How are you feeling today, Your Ladyship? akham’s mother: Much better. You’re a brilliant doctor. This ailment had been weighing on me for years, and I’ve consulted many of the best physicians before you. Now at last it has taken a turn for the better. It’s no small accomplishment. akham’s daughter- in- law: You really are a brilliant doctor. The last few days not only has Her Ladyship’s heartburn disappeared but her appetite has returned to normal as well. Yesterday she ate quite a bit and had no indigestion whatsoever. She has never had the chance to see the Western Hills, even though this is where she resides. Today she was absolutely delighted to be able to go out and take a walk for the first time. akham’s mother: I certainly was. To think of all I have missed these years. Why, I  haven’t been anywhere at all! We must be sure to show our appreciation to the doctor. akham’s daughter- in- law: Yes, of course. I’ve already seen to it. (To the maid) Spring Cuckoo, help Her Ladyship back to the inner apartment. But first have Autumn Swallow bring some refreshments for the doctor. spring cuckoo: Yes, madam. (She exits.) akham’s mother (making friendly conversation): Doctor, may I ask your age? guan hanqing: I’m forty-eight. akham’s mother: I trust your mother is in good health? And how many children has your wife borne you? guan hanqing: My mother is quite well, thank you. My wife died several years ago. She left me only one child, who does not live with me at the present moment. akham’s mother: That is most unfortunate. Don’t you need someone to look after you at your age? guan hanqing: I manage, Your Ladyship.

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(spring cuckoo returns. Then enters autumn swallow, carrying a tray of pastries. When she and guan hanqing see each other, they both give a look of surprise.) autumn swallow: Oh my, close . . .21 spring cuckoo: Close what? (The curtain swells with the breeze.) autumn swallow: Will you close the window, Sister? spring cuckoo: All right (She shuts the window and then helps akham’s mother into the inner apartment. akham’s daughter- in- law also withdraws.) guan hanqing (cautiously): Aren’t you Erniu? What are you doing here? autumn swallow: Uncle Guan, Akham’s twenty-fifth son wanted to marry me. His wife found out and had me sent here to serve the old lady. That one just now is Akham’s twenty-fifth daughter-in-law. But the twenty-fifth young lord still comes out here all the time. Please find a way to get me out of here. guan hanqing: This . . . autumn swallow: This, that, the other. Don’t tell me you still have no idea what to do. (akham’s mother, having changed her gown, reappears, flanked by spring cuckoo and akham’s twenty- fifth daughter- in- law. The latter steps aside as autumn swallow helps the old lady to her seat.) akham’s mother: Doctor, you have been here quite a few times. Do you know who we are? guan hanqing: I do not, Your Ladyship. At the Royal Academy of Medicine, we are not allowed to ask such questions. akham’s mother: You know how to follow the rules and you have cured me, and for that you have earned yourself a fortune that should last a lifetime. Now, Spring Cuckoo, present my gifts to the doctor. spring cuckoo: Yes, Your Ladyship. (She brings over a large tray covered with a brocade cloth underneath which are obviously pearls, gold, and silver pieces.) akham’s mother: Just a small token of my appreciation. Please accept it with my compliments. guan hanqing: I couldn’t, Your Ladyship. Your recovery is honor enough for a physician. I could never accept such lavish gifts. akham’s mother: Perhaps they are unworthy of acceptance? guan hanqing: Not at all. akham’s mother: But it is no small feat to have cured my illness. By all means your kindness must be amply rewarded. Perhaps you prefer something else? Well, not to boast, but, except for the stars in the sky and the jewels in the hands of the Dragon King, I think we can pretty much secure any worldly treasure you desire. Now do tell me what you want. guan hanqing: If I do, I hope Your Ladyship will not begrudge me. akham’s mother: Certainly not.

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guan hanqing: Your humble servant craves neither jade nor gold. (Casting his eyes upon erniu) I admire only the swallow nesting under your roof. akham’s mother: Ha, ha! So the doctor has taken a fancy to our Autumn Swallow. You have very sharp eyes indeed. But I’m afraid (looking at her granddaughter-in-law) this girl isn’t available. akham’s daughter- in- law (speaking to akham’s mother in a whisper): Grandmother, she is. akham’s mother: She is! Very well! (Turning to erniu) Autumn Swallow, are you agreeable? (erniu nods bashfully.) Very well then. Now give them two hundred thousand paper currency22 for a dowry and see them off on my behalf. (Lights out.)

S CE NE 4 (guan hanqing’s study. Hanging on the wall are a zither and a sword. guan hanqing is seated facing a flickering candle that has burnt nearly all the way down. Sometimes he hums and reads aloud, sometimes he pauses to think or bends over the desk scribbling. Now and then he gets up to stretch his legs and does some swordplay for exercise. The drum tower sounds the third watch. The cock crows. guan hanqing is still busy writing. Enter guan zhong, an old servant, with a coat draped over his shoulders.) guan zhong: You’re still at it, sir? You should really get some sleep. It’s almost daybreak. guan hanqing: Never mind. Once I’ve finished act 3, I’ll have the basic outline for the play. guan zhong: Sir, you yourself are a doctor. And you are always cautioning people not to ruin their health by staying up all night. Why do you refuse to heed your own advice? guan hanqing: You don’t understand. As a doctor I am obliged to tell my patients not to stay up late, but as a writer I must stay up late myself. These are two entirely different things. guan zhong: I’m afraid I don’t get it. All I know is, you’re working much too late. You must be cold and hungry. And we haven’t much to eat in the house, either. The best I can offer you is boiled eggs. In the old days your wife used to take such good care of you, and you pretty much listened to what she said. But now you work as late as you please. At first I thought I’d be able to look after you, too, but these last few years I’ve gotten so old and now even my eyes and ears fail me. I can’t do as much as I’d like to. guan hanqing: Why tell me all this? Who needs you here in the first place? Why don’t you go to bed?

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guan zhong: How can you expect me to sleep with you working here like your life depended on it? You ought to know better. I’m going to boil you an egg. guan hanqing: Honestly, I’m not hungry. If you want to help, leave me alone and go to bed. guan zhong: All right, I’ll leave you alone. But you must get some rest as soon as you’ve finished. First thing tomorrow morning, Mistress Liu and her husband are coming by to thank you in person. guan hanqing: What do they want to thank me for? I’m busy tomorrow. (He stops writing.) What? Was Liu there when you escorted Erniu back home? guan zhong: Not just Erniu’s father but her fiancé, Zhou Fuxiang, too. Needless to say, it was quite a family reunion. They feel enormously indebted to you. They said but for your help they wouldn’t have even learned about Erniu’s whereabouts. Zhou Fuxiang told me he wanted to come tomorrow, too, but he works over at Lord Horikhoson’s. He and Erniu are to be married soon. This time, sir, you have done a kind deed equal to the goodness of heaven. For this you deserve another good wife and many more children. guan hanqing: Enough of this nonsense! Go and get yourself some sleep. guan zhong (walking to the window): Look, the eastern sky is getting light already. guan hanqing: Oh, could you fetch me another candle? guan zhong: Really, sir, that’s enough. Call it a day when this one burns out. (He trims the wick and removes the melted wax.) guan hanqing: All right then. (He bends over the desk and resumes his work. The cock crows. Suddenly there is a knock at the door.) guan zhong (answering the door): Who is it? a voice (outside the door): Me. guan zhong: Who—at this hour? the voice: What? Don’t you recognize my voice? It’s Xie and I’m here to see Lao Guan. guan hanqing: Open the door for him. It’s Master Xie. guan zhong (unbolting the door): Why, Master Xie. Isn’t it rather late, though? (The cock crows.) xie xiaoshan: Why, here I am before daybreak, yet you complain that I’m late? (Everyone laughs. yumei steps inside after xie xiaoshan. He holds a long cloth pouch containing various flutes. He is known in dramatic circles as the “Flute King.”) guan hanqing (rising to receive the visitors): Oh, so Yumei is with you. Sit down, sit down. xie xiaoshan: You told me you wanted to see Rensi and Yumei. Someone invited Rensi to Dongzhou, so he’s away. Yumei performed today, and I had to wait for him until just now. He wanted to go home to bed, but I’ve kidnapped him. guan hanqing (to yumei): How come it ended so late?

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yumei: It was a reception at General Juri Timur’s23 residence. Our program started yesterday afternoon and lasted until now. Altogether they requested three long operas and five short ones. Only when the audience got tired out were we allowed to take a break. I played the flute so long my lips bled. In this profession you really get worked like a horse! xie xiaoshan: Yumei hasn’t had his dinner yet. guan hanqing: Oh! . . . (Looking at guan zhong) Is there anything to eat? guan zhong: I’d better go and boil a few eggs. (Serves tea) I’m sorry the tea is a bit cold. (He exits.) guan hanqing: You’ve come at just the right moment. (To xie xiaoshan) Do you remember how I told you I was going to write Dou E? Well, I’ve reached act 3, but I’m stuck. I’m hoping that perhaps you gentlemen can give me some advice. xie xiaoshan: Is the story the same one we talked about last time? I thought it was pretty good. What’s the problem? guan hanqing: Please check the melodies for the first three acts. xie xiaoshan (takes the manuscript and reads with yumei): I see the melodies you use: You begin with “Dian jiang chun,” of xian lu gong, in act 1; with “Yi zhi hua,” of nan lu gong, in act 2; and “Mu yang guan,” “Ma yu lang,” “Gan huang en,” “Cai chage,” and so on, of nan lu gong, again in act 3. So you’ll use these tunes when Dou E sings her address to the court, when she is tortured, and when she is forced to plead guilty. “How could I allow you to be flogged, Mother? And how can I save your life except by giving my own?” Your finale here is excellent. guan hanqing: But that’s precisely where I’m at a loss. In the very next scene Dou E is to be executed. In the hour of death she is so overwhelmed with anger and vengeance that she utters three vows—that her blood will gush up and stain the banner on the flagpole, that snow will fall in June, and that there will be a drought for three years to come. Obviously nan lu gong won’t do for such an outburst. So, beginning with “Duan zheng hao,” I’ve switched it to zheng gong. The tune “Gun xiu qiu” is fairly satisfactory to me. Then at the hour of execution, I’ve switched to “Shua hai er,” “Er sha,” and “Yi sha.” So, within a single act, the gong diao tune changes three times. This is how I’ve written it, but I’m afraid it goes against all the rules. What do you think? xie xiaoshan: I don’t see anything wrong with that. The music is supposed to reflect the emotion. If the emotion changes, naturally the music must as well (To yumei) Yumei, what’s your opinion? yumei: I quite agree with you. I feel it’s high time something was done about these socalled dramatic conventions. Ordinarily they’re not that noticeable. But last night playing the flute in three long operas in a row—I could really feel how monotonous the rules can be. Why, for instance, must a play always be limited to four acts, and each act have only one tune? And why is only one singer permitted per play? It seems to me that sooner or later all these rules are bound to be broken. Last year at Bianjing,24

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I saw an adaptation of your Madam Liu Gives a Feast.25 It had been redone in the local style and no longer adhered to any of these rules. guan hanqing: Is that right! So they turned it into a southern drama. yumei: Yes, indeed. It was absolutely delightful. (To guan hanqing in a serious tone) You, sir, lead the way in the drama world today. As such, you’re expected to guide us in the right direction. This is better for others and for you, too. Don’t lead us down treacherous windy paths that will be hard on us and on you also. Am I not right, Master Guan? (They all laugh.) xie xiaoshan: I must say windy paths aren’t half as bad as the dead ends certain luminaries would have us go down. (guan zhong enters with a bowl of boiled eggs.) guan zhong: Oh dear, I’m very sorry. We only had three eggs left to begin with, and then one got broken by the cat. That leaves only two. What shall we do? guan hanqing: Well, there are two guests, so that’s one each. xie xiaoshan: Please, I’m not hungry. Give them both to Yumei. yumei: No, that won’t do. xie xiaoshan: This is no time for ceremony. (yumei tucks in.) guan hanqing (to xie xiaoshan): Xiaoshan, as long as you’re here, why don’t you go over all three acts to see if they read smoothly and won’t tangle the tongue? xie xiaoshan: With pleasure. (He starts reading the manuscript with great interest.) yumei (having finished eating): Mm, I do declare those two eggs were a lifesaver. xie xiaoshan: A friend in need is a friend to feed. (Discovers something wrong and points it out) Look, Yumei, read this line. Wouldn’t it be easier to sing without these two words? yumei: Where? (He reads the line then tries it out on his flute.) Hm, you’re quite right. xie xiaoshan: I say, Lao Guan, how about striking these two words here? (There is no response from guan hanqing.) yumei: He’s fallen asleep! xie xiaoshan: Lao Guan, Lao Guan! yumei: Don’t wake him up. He must be exhausted. Just go ahead and strike them out. xie xiaoshan: All right then. (He does so.) Guan Zhong, help him to bed. We’re leaving. guan zhong (supporting guan hanqing by the arm): Sir, sir. (He helps his master to bed. guan hanqing snores.) xie xiaoshan: Yumei, my home’s not far. Why don’t you come over and take a nap? Later on I’ll treat you to a drink.

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yumei: No, thanks. It’s morning, and I’ve got to get to Nan Tianxiu’s place right away for her singing lesson. xie xiaoshan: What! Have you no life of your own anymore! yumei: I’m getting paid for it. What can I do? xie xiaoshan: Well, Guan Zhong. We must be off. See you tomorrow. (xie xiaoshan and yumei leave.) guan zhong: Goodbye, and mind your step. (He closes the door.) Good heavens! At last I can get some sleep. (The cock crows. The dawn brightens the sky.) (Lights out.)

S CE NE 5 (Still guan hanqing’s study. His good friend yang xianzhi, nicknamed Patchman Yang, is reading the finished script. guan hanqing is looking over yang xianzhi’s shoulder.) guan hanqing: Well, Xianzhi, what do you think? yang xianzhi: I think it’s a masterpiece. But there are a few points I’d like to ask you about. First, is the mother-in-law Cai supposed to come across as a good or a bad character? If she’s supposed to be bad, how do you account for the fact that Dou E actually sacrifices her own life to save her? guan hanqing: On the whole I would say she’s rather good-hearted. After all, she’s very fond of Dou E, right? yang xianzhi: But if she’s supposed to be a good woman, then how come she’s a moneylender? She lends five taels and collects ten a year later, principal and interest, or loans ten and demands back twenty. If you haven’t the money to repay her, you’ll have to hand over your own girl as a daughter-in-law. How can such a woman be a good person? I rather think Doctor Lu did the right thing when he tried to strangle her with a rope.26 guan hanqing: And once she’s been strangled there’ll be no more moneylenders? yang xianzhi: There will still be others. guan hanqing: Well, there you are. Society is filled with money usurers and loan sharks. But compared to most of them, this old woman’s not half bad. Only when all usurers have been wiped off the face of the earth will you find truly good, honest people. yang xianzhi: All right, I’ll let it go. Now let me ask you another question. The Shanyang magistrate announces his sentence, “Dou E shall be executed tomorrow,” immediately after forcing a confession out of her. Now, not only was she denied the legal procedure known as “three appeals and six hearings,” but the sentence was not

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even submitted to the Ministry of Justice for approval. Now, if this is supposed to be a historical play, don’t you think it’s at odds with customary practice? guan hanqing: That’s a good question. But tell me, under this great Yuan dynasty, does the trial of a capital crime necessarily go through “three appeals and six hearings” and have to be approved by the Ministry of Justice? Is it not a fact that, in the case of Zhu Xiaolan, she was granted but a single hearing by Khoshin and then executed the very next day in a most hasty manner? yang xianzhi: Oh, I see. If that’s what you mean, I’ve nothing more to say. Now, from a literary standpoint, I quite like these lines from act 2: “I fall unconscious from pain, come to once more only to faint away again. I must suffer a thousand strokes and my body drips with blood. At each stroke, my skin is streaked with blood and a layer of flesh torn away.” It’s quite moving and profound. But in the verse that follows, “Oh earth, you fail to distinguish between right and wrong! Oh heaven, I blame you for the injustice I suffer!”—it seems to me that you’d be better off changing the last line to “Oh heaven, in mistaking the sage and the fool, you wield celestial power in vain.” Don’t you think it’s more powerful that way? guan hanqing: Oh yes. Go ahead and change it. yang xianzhi: But hadn’t you better think it over? I was merely making a suggestion. guan hanqing: And a fine suggestion it is. Go ahead and make the correction for me. (yang xianzhi does so. A sheet of paper falls off the table, which he quickly picks up.) yang xianzhi (as his eyes run down the page, reads quietly): “There’s a spirit of righteousness existing between heaven and earth in various guises. It becomes mountains and rivers as it descends, but becomes the sun and stars as it rises high above. In man, the spirit overwhelms the entire universe . . .” Who wrote this? guan hanqing (in a low voice): Prime Minister Wen. yang xianzhi: Who? Prime Minister Wen? Oh. You mean Wen Tianxiang,27 of the Song dynasty. guan hanqing: That’s the one. yang xianzhi: Have you ever met him? guan hanqing: No, I haven’t, but Liang Jinzhi has. yang xianzhi: But isn’t he under detention? guan hanqing: Yes, he is, but as physicians, we have opportunities like that. yang xianzhi: Has the prime minister taken ill? guan hanqing: Being confined to a damp place like that all these years, who wouldn’t have? Luckily for him, he has a cultured mind and a firm constitution coupled with a strong will, so that he doesn’t succumb to illness easily. Otherwise he’d have been dead long ago. yang xianzhi: I understand the emperor has great respect for those Song officials who have sworn their allegiance to him. How is it that Prime Minister Wen is being quartered in such a miserable place? guan hanqing: Precisely because he refuses to declare his allegiance. In the three years since the fall of the Song dynasty, Prime Ministers Bayan 28 and Bor 29 have tried

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time and again to get him to change his mind, but he adamantly refuses. His sole wish is death. A man of iron, I must say! yang xianzhi: That reminds me of a recent poem by Xu Weiqing,30 which reads, “If His Majesty spares the life of Prime Minister Wen, it will be a case of royal magnanimity and will encourage personal loyalty.” Do you think the emperor will spare his life? guan hanqing: It’s hard to say. Do you really suppose His Majesty is that charitable? . . . I was deeply moved by Prime Minister Wen’s “Song of Righteousness Prevailing,” which Jinzhi brought to me. Would you like to read it? yang xianzhi: Very much, but I must be off now. I’ve got something to do. guan hanqing: What’s the big rush? yang xianzhi: Reading your new play has got me thinking about my Riverside Inn in Autumn Rain.31 I think I’m going to strengthen that part where Cui Tong is taken to task. What do you think? guan hanqing: Riverside Inn is an excellent piece of work. It gives the reader the feeling of being caught in an autumn rainstorm with Zhang Cuiluan and listening to the patter of the rain with her. You make the rain itself tell a tale of companionship. But couldn’t you make the conclusion more forceful, such as the part dealing with Cui Tong? yang xianzhi: Exactly my feeling; that’s why I want to make some changes. I’ve also polished up The Bitter Cold Pavilion32 a bit here and there. Well, I think I’ll take Prime Minister Wen’s poem with me, if you don’t mind. guan hanqing: Don’t lose it, though, and don’t tell anyone about it. yang xianzhi: I won’t. (He walks out in a hurry. guan hanqing pores over the first three acts where changes have been made by yang xianzhi, and, unable to resist, he reads aloud. He doesn’t notice when guan zhong enters to announce a visitor, ye hefu, a boorish literati who mixes in theater circles to curry favor with the authorities. Presently he holds back guan zhong, tiptoes in alone, and pricks up his ears, hanging on every syllable.) guan hanqing (chanting with feeling): For no reason at all I am accused of violating imperial law, And condemned to be beheaded— My cries of injustice stir heaven and earth! I reproach both heaven and earth, For they do not save me. The sun and moon appear by day and by night, And the gods and spirits have power over life and death; Yet heaven cannot tell the innocent from the guilty, And confuses the wicked with the good! The virtuous suffer poverty and die before their time, The wicked enjoy wealth and longevity. The gods fear the mighty and bully the weak,

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And push the boat along with the current. Oh earth! You fail to distinguish between right and wrong; Oh heaven! In mistaking the sage and the fool, You wield celestial power in vain! Alas! Tears stream down my cheeks like rain! guan zhong (getting guan hanqing’s attention): Sir, Master Ye is here to see you. guan hanqing: Who? (As though aroused from his literary reverie) Oh, Hefu. guan zhong: Master Ye has been here for quite some time. guan hanqing: Do sit down, please. I didn’t realize you were here. Excuse my belated greetings. ye hefu: Oh, it is I who should apologize for the intrusion. Perhaps my unexpected visit has disturbed your literary efforts. guan hanqing: Not at all. Guan Zhong, a bit of tea. guan zhong: Yes, sir. (Serving ye hefu a cup of tea) Please have some tea. ye hefu: Lianxiu informed me yesterday that you were writing her a play. Is that what you were reading just now? guan hanqing: Indeed. ye hefu: Is it done? guan hanqing: Not quite. There’s one more act to do, but it’s almost done. ye hefu: No doubt another masterpiece. What you just read sounds charming. May I take a quick peek? (He takes the manuscript from guan hanqing and glances over it.) guan hanqing: It isn’t anything much. It’s still a bit rough around the edges, as they say. I wanted to have Xianzhi polish it up for me, but he doesn’t have the time. ye hefu: Rough around the edges, yet a natural beauty. That is your trademark. But judging by what you’ve just read, it must have been written with pent-up fury. “Oh earth! You fail to distinguish between right and wrong; oh heaven! In mistaking the sage and the fool, you wield celestial power in vain!” Why, you even revile heaven and earth! Couldn’t you make it a bit more pleasant and entertaining like your other works? guan hanqing: You are no stranger to the literary world. So naturally you are aware that the style of a play changes according to the plot. Now, the plot of this play is anything but pleasant and entertaining, and so it would be ridiculous to present it that way. As a matter of fact, I detest excessively pleasant and entertaining writing. I feel such efforts are no different from prescribing peppermint and licorice root to cure colds and coughs. ye hefu (unable to follow the drift of the remark): But I still prefer your usual style. If you sell peppermint and licorice root, then that’s what people will come to buy from you. Isn’t that perfectly natural? guan hanqing: Is that what you people think of me? ye hefu: Oh, I’m just joking, of course. (Changing the subject) In what dynasty does the story of the play take place?

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guan hanqing: It’s not specified. Perhaps the Han dynasty. During the Han dynasty, as you know, in the Donghai district a filial woman was wrongfully executed by the prefect of Dong’a.33 Thereupon, the district suffered three years of severe drought. ye hefu: And it started raining only after another prefect, Yu Gong, overturned the unjust verdict, right? Well, the incident happened over a thousand years ago, and you’re still so sentimental about it. Aren’t you a little overly concerned about the ancients? guan hanqing: But injustice of this kind still occurs. ye hefu: Ah, now I see. Lianxiu told me that you felt very strongly about the case concerning Zhu Xiaolan. guan hanqing: Yes, I do. I should think any person with his heart in the right place would feel the same way. ye hefu: I should say so, too. You hear the matter being discussed on every street corner. A sentimental man of letters like yourself, of course, cannot be expected to keep quiet. Nevertheless, no matter how much other people discuss it, under no circumstances should you write anything about it. guan hanqing (annoyed): Why not? ye hefu: In the first place, your recent productions, such as Rescued by a Coquette,34 The Gold-Thread Pond,35 and The Riverside Pavilion,36 deserve the high praise they garnered. No theater can make money without your plays. The female roles you’ve created are so successful that you’re looked upon as the great master of “rouge and powder.” But now all of a sudden, you want to write about a legal case. If your new play is successful, so much the better. But if not, you’ll sink into obscurity overnight. It’s not worth it, I tell you. guan hanqing: Me, the great master of “rouge and powder”? Rubbish! It’s true some of my plays are tinged with “rouge and powder.” But I wrote Rescued by a Coquette because I wanted to sing the praises of the noble courtesan Zhao Pan’er. I wrote The Gold-Thread Pond because I felt deep sympathy for Du Ruiniang and her wretched fate. I wrote The Riverside Pavilion because I wanted to extol the wit and courage shown by the widow, Tan Ji’er, in her struggle for a happy life. But in these same plays I condemned that oppressor of women, Zhou She; I condemned Mistress Du, who forced her own daughter into prostitution, and I condemned Lord Yang, who relied on his influence and position to terrify others and abduct their wives. None of the villains in any of my plays escape with impunity. And I’ve certainly never used my plays to flatter or appease people like that. As a playwright, I have covered practically every subject, including court cases, such as The Butterfly Dream and The WifeSnatcher. But whatever I wrote, I’ve always spoken up for the downtrodden common people. I’ve never sought fame, so why would I worry about sinking into obscurity now? . . . ye hefu (trying to outtalk guan hanqing): Don’t be offended, I haven’t finished yet. My second point is this: there are varying accounts of the Zhu Xiaolan case. You mustn’t listen to just one side of the story. According to Donkey Li, Zhu Xiaolan

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actually intended to poison her mother-in-law so that she could marry him. It was his father who unexpectedly became the victim. guan hanqing (angrily): And yours is not a one-sided account, eh? That son of a bitch Donkey Li had an innocent woman framed on a murder charge, and now that she’s dead, he continues to fling dirt on her good name! ye hefu: Wait. I have a third point. Just now you read, “The gods fear the mighty and bully the weak.” Actually, in all actions and words one ought to be realistic and weigh carefully who is mighty and who is weak. Of course, Donkey Li is a nobody, but he has the backing of Commander Sa and Lord Khoshin. Lord Khoshin, as everybody knows, isn’t much of a man. He’s greedy and corrupt, and he couldn’t care less about upholding justice. I’m not just flattering you when I say you’re right to condemn him. But what good will it do? He is Lord Akham’s eldest son, and Lord Akham is His Majesty’s most trusted God of Wealth. Nobody dares utter a negative syllable against him; those who do come to no good end. Haven’t you heard, for instance, about the imperial censor, Bai Dong, who filed a petition to impeach Lord Akham? To this day he is being held in the cells of the Ministry of Justice. Or take a look at the fate of Qin Changqing, the chief of the imperial guards. He’d been handpicked by His Majesty, so you’d think he’d be in royal grace. Well, he, too, filed a charge against Akham. Not a hair on Akham’s head was touched, while Qin was suffocated to death in prison with his mouth and nose plugged with wet paper. All this goes to show who is mighty and who is weak in this world of ours. You could compare Lord Akham to a massive boulder and everyone else to chicken eggs. Not only earthly beings, I tell you, even heaven keeps him at a distance. And you dare snub him? guan hanqing: What? Are you here to threaten me? ye hefu (energetically): Listen, it makes no difference what dynasty you pretend to write about. Once the play is staged, everybody will know who it’s really about. In act 3 you deliberately assign the clown role to the part of the Shanyang magistrate and you have him say, “I’m a hardworking official; for lawsuits, gold and silver are my price; and when my superiors come, I stay home sick in bed.” Now, who won’t know that you’re poking fun at Lord Khoshin? And you even make the official kneel before the litigants and say, “Any party to a lawsuit who supplies me with food and clothes is as dear to me as my own parents.” Just think about it, will any official stomach such an insult? And if this ever reaches Akham’s ears, both the playwright and the actors will lose their heads. guan hanqing: I don’t know what you’re talking about. What has my play to do with Akham? ye hefu: It’s obvious. Do you think that if you rebuke Khoshin, it will be of no concern to his father? As a matter of fact, Lord Akham admires your work. Hanqing, let me tell you some good news. The day before yesterday Lord Hao Zhen sent for me. He wanted Lianxiu to perform The Riverside Pavilion at his residence. Lord Hao Zhen is a favorite of Lord Akham’s. In other words, it had to have been Lord Akham’s idea. Now that the God of Wealth has become a fan of your plays, you’ll never want for

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food to eat or wine to drink. And we may partake of your good fortune, too. Won’t that be wonderful? guan hanqing: Mr. Ye, are you finished? ye hefu: Yes, for the moment. guan hanqing: Well, then, I’ve something to tell you in return. First, as you’ve all said, I always have women in the leading roles in my plays. Now, while the play I am currently writing does differ somewhat from previous ones, it, too, is nonetheless about a woman—a most extraordinary woman, one who is willing to sacrifice herself to save another, whose sterling qualities have moved me so deeply that I must write about her. So you see the play is not simply an attack on any particular person. I sincerely hope you’ll assist me in getting this point across. Second, I write plays because I enjoy it, not because of food and drink or riches. If all I wanted to do was get rich, perhaps I wouldn’t write at all. Indeed, have any of our friends who write plays ever made any money? Therefore, just as I have no desire to share others’ fortune, so I’ll have no fortune for others to share. There is an old saying, “Each man has his own aspirations.” So, if you’ll please excuse me. I’ve made up my mind to write this play, and I’m prepared to suffer the consequences. I certainly wouldn’t want to involve you. ye hefu: Whoa, what are you suggesting? We’re old pals, are we not? When I smell trouble, naturally I want to caution you. Whether you believe me or not is entirely up to you. (Sees zhu lianxiu come in from outside and looks greatly relieved) Ah, here comes Lianxiu. Thank goodness! Try and talk to Hanqing. He’s being rather stubborn. As far as I can see, writing this play is to court disaster, and it’s just not worth it, I tell you. You’re the one who cares most deeply about him, and he’s more likely to listen to you. Come, your words will certainly yield better results than mine. zhu lianxiu (glancing at guan hanqing, who is facing ye hefu, looking furious): All right, Master Ye, you can go now. I’ll talk to him. ye hefu: Good. Do talk him out of it. I have to report to Lord Hao Zhen about The Riverside Pavilion. You will perform it, right? zhu lianxiu: How could I decline such an honor? ye hefu: Very well. I’ll see to everything else, of course. This time the God of Wealth himself will grace your play with his attendance. You can rest assured that he’ll bestow more than a pittance. zhu lianxiu: Much depends on your help. ye hefu: Goodbye, Hanqing, and mind you think over what we discussed. guan hanqing: You . . .! (Sensing his anger, ye hefu slips out the door.) zhu lianxiu: What’s the matter? Have you two been quarreling? guan hanqing: That jerk gets more and more impossible. zhu lianxiu: Perhaps he means well. guan hanqing (taken aback): What? It was both blackmail and bribery. And you call that being well intentioned?

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zhu lianxiu: Perhaps he was afraid you might offend the God of Wealth and then you’d be sorry for it. guan hanqing (glares at her): So you’re really here to try to coax me, too! zhu lianxiu (laughing): Yes, that’s what I’m here for. guan hanqing: Go ahead and try. (He muffles his ears with his hands.) zhu lianxiu (removing his hands): I want to coax you to hurry up and finish your play so that we can stage it at once, my dear Master Guan. guan hanqing (brightens with a smile): Now that sounds more like Fourth Sister. Have you read the first two acts? zhu lianxiu: Not only have I read them, I’ve learned nearly every word by heart. I’m particularly fond of the ballad in act 2: Where is there one like Lady Zhuo,37 who humbly served in a tavern? Or like Meng Guang,38 who raised the dinner tray as high as her eyebrows? As for women today, You can neither know their character from their speech, Nor judge them by their actions. They forget past affections, and favor new love; And before the earth on their husbands’ graves has dried, They hang up new clothes. Where is the woman whose tears for her husband made the Great Wall crumble?39 Where is she who left behind her washing And drowned herself in the river?40 Where is she who turned to stone41 while longing for her husband? How shameful that women today are so unfaithful, So few of them chaste, so many wanton. We are fortunate having exemplars from the past, But claim not women today follow their example. There you give these fickle, unchaste women quite a dressing- down. And it’s the filial Dou E who is reproaching her mother-in-law for her second marriage. On the other hand, though Dou E speaks so harshly, the moment the corrupt official threatens to flog her mother-in-law, she saves her by pleading guilty and chooses death herself. What a beautiful soul! Hanqing, when I play this part, rest assured, I will do it well. guan hanqing: Splendid. Now that you so thoroughly grasp the stuff Dou E is made of, I have no doubt that you will. You know, of course, that even though the examples in the ballad are all women, what I’m actually condemning is the dishonorable, faithless, lustful life led by men. I used to think that, were it not for our memory of virtuous forebears, our generation would have become complete degenerates. But after reading Prime Minister Wen’s “Song of Righteousness Prevailing,” I came to realize that there

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are still men today who, no less than our forefathers, can be truly called the corners of the earth and the pillars of heaven, and I find this greatly uplifting. zhu lianxiu: Hanqing, your courage is truly impressive! I told you to reproach heaven and earth if they were unjust, and so you have written, “Oh heaven! In mistaking the sage and the fool, you wield celestial power in vain.” What powerful words! guan hanqing: Now read this last part. I’ve fixed it. zhu lianxiu (takes the script and reads with feeling): “You say expect nothing from heaven, for it pities not the human heart; but heaven is just. Otherwise, why did the rain not fall for three years? It was all because of the injustice suffered by the filial woman from Donghai. Now the time has come for Shanyang district! Because you officials have no heart to uphold the law and the common people have mouths but dare not speak out.” I love the line “because you officials have no heart to uphold the law and the people have mouths but dare not speak out.” You’ve really got some guts. I have no doubt that the play will cause quite a sensation, and that the common people will thank us for speaking up on their behalf. But the officials will take offense and will almost certainly make trouble. guan hanqing: And the trouble won’t be insignificant. I know I’m risking my neck by writing it. But, Fourth Sister, are you sure you want to take such a chance? zhu lianxiu: I’ve given you my word already. If you’ll risk writing it, I’ll risk performing it. guan hanqing: You won’t regret it? zhu lianxiu: Well, to quote Qu Yuan, “I shall not regret it even though I shall die nine times!” guan hanqing (holding her hand in a firm grasp): Fourth Sister! zhu lianxiu (thinks for a moment, then, with great seriousness): Hanqing, it’s all very well for you to have the temerity to write and for me to dare to perform, but whether the play can be successfully staged remains to be seen. guan hanqing: Why’s that? zhu lianxiu: For one thing, we require a theater. And whether any theater will put this play on depends upon the owner. That, of course, is beyond my control. In addition, there are quite a few characters besides Dou E. I’ll play the part of Dou E, of course, but will anyone else have the courage to play Mistress Cai, Donkey Zhang, and the Shanyang magistrate? guan hanqing: You’re right. It looks as though I’ve written the play in vain. So, that’s that. zhu lianxiu: It’s not all that bad. You’re an old hand at this game. It’s never so simple. guan hanqing: But didn’t you just say that there may be no theater willing to stage the play and that we may not be able to find a cast? zhu lianxiu: “May not” is not necessarily the same as “will not.” Let’s have a think; perhaps there is a solution. guan hanqing: You’ll have to do the thinking alone. I’m one of those people whose minds draw a blank when their hands are full.

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zhu lianxiu: I’m not sure yet what to do about a theater. As for the cast, I think I can more or less count on my pupils. I’ll let Sai Lianxiu play Mistress Cai; Yan Shanxiu will do Dou Tianzhang; we can have her husband, Ma Er, play Donkey Zhang; and Qian Shuaqiao can take the part of the Shanyang magistrate. It seems to me that will make a fairly strong cast. guan hanqing: Doesn’t Yan Shanxiu always play female roles? Will she be able to perform the role of Dou Tianzhang? zhu lianxiu: Don’t underestimate that girl. She can handle both male and female roles. We’re a small troupe with a big repertoire, so everybody has to be able to play all parts. Take me, for instance. I play royal roles as well as all types of male and female characters. Now, if a few agree to it, the rest will follow. My pupils pretty much do as I say. Besides, they’re used to life on the road and they’re no scaredy-cats. So, the real problem is the theater. Of course, we must take care not to give any owner the impression that the play would land him in any trouble. Just say you’ve got a new play. They all know both your Riverside Pavilion and Prayer to the Moon were big hits, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they saw you as a moneymaker. guan hanqing (laughing a sardonic laugh): Since when have I become a money maker? (Enter guan zhong.) guan zhong: Master Wang is here, sir. guan hanqing: Which Master Wang? guan zhong: Master Wang Heqing. zhu lianxiu: Heqing! Splendid! We can ask him about a theater. He’s on good terms with Manager Chen. guan hanqing: You’re right. (wang heqing, a native of Bianjing, is a noted composer. He serves in Cambaluc as a petty official. He and guan hanqing are very close friends and often joke around with each other. He sails into the room in a familiar way.) wang heqing (throwing a glance at guan hanqing and zhu lianxiu, hastens to back up): Well, pardon me, I can see my visit is most untimely. guan hanqing: What makes you think so? wang heqing: Looks to me as though three would make a crowd, wouldn’t it? guan hanqing: Well, as a matter of fact we were just about to sing a dipengzi42 but were short a clown. wang heqing: Have you taken a look in the mirror? And you still have the nerve to take the role of the handsome young hero? zhu lianxiu: That’s enough, Heqing. Don’t waste your breath. We’ve got serious business and we were just looking for a clever chief of staff like you. Now, do come and sit down. (She pulls him by the sleeve and seats him in a chair.) wang heqing: Aha! “We,” “we”! When’s the wedding? zhu lianxiu: Stop fooling around and listen to what I have to say. Hanqing has written me a play. The cast is almost complete. But we’re having some difficulty booking a

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theater. You and Manager Chen are from the same hometown, aren’t you? And I know the two of you are related somehow. If you talked to him, I’m sure he’d let us have his theater. Can you help us out? wang heqing: Is the script done? guan hanqing: Almost. wang heqing: Anything in it that will offend the authorities? zhu lianxiu (hastening to cover up the truth): I should think not. wang heqing: Good, so long as you aren’t staging Dou E, you may rest assured that I’ll have a talk with Chen. guan hanqing: But it is precisely Dou E that we want to stage. How did you know? wang heqing: “If you don’t want others to know about something, don’t do it.” Now, you’ve written Dou E reproaching heaven and earth and the authorities and you expect me to arrange for the theater so that I’ll take the fall when trouble comes. Is that it? guan hanqing: You must have seen that blasted Ye Hefu. (Gruffly) Well, to tell you the truth, we’ve made up our minds to put on the play and we will, even if we have to do it without a theater. I’ve told Ye that we’ll take the consequences, good or bad. We don’t need your esteemed self to take any fall on our behalf. So, please take your leave, too, lest you are inconvenienced. wang heqing: Ha, ha! A toad may be rather small, but it sure can hold a lot of air in its belly. Will your esteemed self please rub your eyes so that you can see that Wang Heqing is not Ye Hefu? The difference is that, without my help, your Dou E really won’t be staged anywhere. zhu lianxiu (seizing the moment): Didn’t I tell you both to stop this nonsense? (To wang heqing) I wouldn’t argue with Hanqing. You know how stubborn he can be. And you know full well that he only wrote Dou E to vindicate justice. I bragged that if he had the courage to write the play, I’d have the courage to perform in it. But the theater presents a problem. Just now Ye Hefu came to see Hanqing and dampened his enthusiasm. Now he hears the same thing from you; naturally he’s upset. wang heqing: Upset? Being upset won’t produce a theater, will it? zhu lianxiu: Indeed, no! That’s why I said we had to come up with a solution. Heqing, you have far more connections than Hanqing. Be serious now and help us out. In return I promise to invite you to some of our best shows. wang heqing: So it turns out Fourth Sister is the reasonable one. Well, since Hanqing has guts enough to write the play, and you have guts enough to act in it, for my part, I ought to have guts enough to book a theater for you. zhu lianxiu: Bravo! Will you go see Manager Chen today then? wang heqing: Why Chen? What’s so great about that dilapidated playhouse of his? Wouldn’t you rather have me book the Yuxianlou Playhouse? zhu lianxiu: The Yuxianlou? A fine building, excellent location, plenty of seats—why, what could be better! We never even dreamed of putting the play on in such a good location. But would they rent to us? wang heqing: They will if I say so.

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guan hanqing: Heqing, we are asking you to do us this favor in dead earnest. You’d better not be teasing. wang heqing: Who’s teasing? You’d better keep your honorable mouth shut in this matter and leave it to Fourth Sister. zhu lianxiu: Tell me right now how exactly you’ll manage to rent the Yuxianlou. wang heqing: Actually renting the theater isn’t the hard part. The hard part is finding a patron more influential than Akham. If such a man sponsored your play, anything is possible. zhu lianxiu: Okay. But who could we find? Who could be more influential than Akham? wang heqing: Well, as luck would have it, Prime Minister Bayan is out of town. His wife is planning a birthday celebration for his mother and wants to make it a public occasion. The old lady is one of those sentimental types who enjoy going to the theater after a good dinner, to shed tears over something sad. Now, she would love to see a new tragedy. But where on earth can one be so easily found? I thus recommended Dou E. zhu lianxiu: Is that so! How wonderful! I never knew you had connections with Prime Minister Bayan’s family. wang heqing: Who says I have? guan hanqing: Then . . . wang heqing: Here’s what happened. Prime Minister Bayan’s family has put Superintendent He, of the Yuxianlou Playhouse, in charge of entertainment for the birthday. He and I know each other. And he knows that Hanqing and I are good friends, so he’s been pestering me to get hold of Hanqing for him. guan hanqing: He wants to see me? wang heqing: Don’t flatter yourself. He’s not interested in your plays but in your prescriptions. guan hanqing: My prescriptions? wang heqing: Yes, your prescriptions. He suffers from heart trouble. I recommended you as one of the top royal physicians as well as a heart specialist by family tradition. When he heard that, he asked me to make an appointment for him. I took the opportunity to mention your new play, Dou E, how tragic the story is and what a perfect cast you put together. He said, “That’s precisely what Her Ladyship wants to see.” Is this not a case of “there is no story without happy coincidences”? All you have to do is pay Superintendent He a visit and treat his heart trouble. Then it’ll be smooth sailing from there on out. Do you think you can manage it? guan hanqing: Why not? wang heqing: I’m not so certain. Quite a few men of letters have taken up the medical practice. They may write fairly well, but their medical knowledge leaves much to be desired. Take you, for example. From morning to night you think about dramatic characters, the sheng, dan, jing, mo, and the chou. I can’t help wondering if you can still remember the different parts of the human body as well, such as the heart, liver, lungs, and kidneys. guan hanqing: More or less.

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wang heqing: You see? “More or less,” he says. Sounds doubtful! Careful not to kill the man, otherwise Dou E will never see the light of day. guan hanqing: Don’t worry. (sai lianxiu rushes in to see her teacher, zhu lianxiu.) sai lianxiu: Teacher! zhu lianxiu: What have you come here for? sai lianxiu: They want to know whether we’re still going to rehearse Wang Kui Cheats Guiying.43 Everybody’s at home waiting. zhu lianxiu: Didn’t I tell you to prepare to rehearse Dou E? sai lianxiu: Yes, but Master Ye came by just now and told us we’re not allowed to perform Dou E. zhu lianxiu: Says who? Go and have everyone wait for me. I’ll be back at once to tell them all about Dou E. (Lights out.)

S CE NE 6 (Backstage at the Yuxianlou Playhouse. guan hanqing, together with ma er, yan shanxiu, and sai lianxiu, who have all removed their makeup, are peering anxiously through the embroidered curtains, intently watching the per for mance onstage and its effect upon the audience. Every once in a while they whisper back and forth. The attendants and the Mongolian guards keep moving about. The final scene of act 4 of dou e is proceeding.)44 female spirit (singing): With the golden tally and the sword of authority bestowed upon you by imperial decree, Put an end to those vile officials and dishonest clerks. You’ll do the emperor a great ser vice by ridding the people of a scourge. (The spectators exclaim “Bravo!” One shouts out, “Rid the people of a scourge!”) (Speaking) Father, my mother-in-law is old and has no one to support and serve her. dou tianzhang: What an obedient and filial child you are. female spirit (singing): Father, I beg you to have my grandmother reburied and to take care of my mother-in-law out of compassion for her old age, then reopen my case and clear the unjust charges. (The audience shouts approval: “Bravo! Bravo!”) dou tianzhang: Dawn is breaking. Go and arrest the officials of Yangzhou prefecture who presided over the case of Dou E. zhang qian: As you wish . . .

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(The final act is still going on. zhu lianxiu, having finished her part as the spirit of dou e , exits the stage. guan hanqing, moved, helps her backstage. All her pupils gather around her. xianggui brings her some tea.) guan hanqing: Sit down and rest, Fourth Sister. You performed magnificently. The power of the play surprises even me. zhu lianxiu (removing the tassels from her costume as the spirit): Did I hear people shouting? guan hanqing: Yes, someone cried out, “Rid the people of a scourge.” (wang heqing and superintendent he enter excitedly.) wang heqing: Lianxiu, you were simply marvelous. Such a splendid performance with so few days’ rehearsal! (To guan hanqing) You’re quite the writer of tragedy, I must say. Of course, you mustn’t forget that, if we hadn’t taken advantage of this opportunity, there’s no way the play ever would have been staged. guan hanqing: I must thank you for that. wang heqing: You needn’t. However, it would be quite all right if you didn’t order my deportation next time I visit. (They all laugh.) guan hanqing: Fourth Sister, you must be exhausted. You’d better get out of your costume. superintendent he: Please don’t, or rather change back into the costume you wore in the first act. I’ll present you to Her Ladyship. You have no idea what a marvelous evening she’s had. She went through one yellow silk handkerchief after another, and said, “I’ve never seen such a good play in all my life. I must meet that poor little daughter-in-law. Give her something. She deserves a reward.” When Madame Bayan saw Her Ladyship so exuberant, she chimed in, “The play was excellent.” Well, it looks as though I’ll keep my job as program director. (A bodyguard in Mongolian uniform rushes in.) bodyguard: Quickly now. Her Ladyship anxiously awaits you. superintendent he: Coming right away. (To zhu lianxiu) Now, stick a couple more flowers in your hair and put on a bit more powder and rouge. Her Ladyship, you know, wouldn’t be pleased to see a young woman looking so plain. (zhu lianxiu’s pupils help her apply fresh makeup. Enter an attendant.) attendant (to superintendent he): Sir, Commander Wang has requested to see Zhu Lianxiu and Master Guan. superintendent he: Do you mean Commander Wang Zhu, of Yizhou? Show him in. (To guan hanqing after the attendant has withdrawn) You’ll find this commander to be a warm, openhearted man. He was the one in the audience who cried out, “Rid the people of a scourge!” I suggest you receive him. guan hanqing: Why certainly. (wang zhu, a stoutly built military officer, is ushered in by an attendant.) wang zhu (to superintendent he): Who performed the role of Dou E? superintendent he (turning his eyes to zhu lianxiu, who is dabbing her nose with a powder puff ): That’s her.

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wang zhu (to zhu lianxiu): Your performance was spectacular. You took the words right out of our mouths: “The officials have no heart to uphold the law and the people have mouths but dare not speak out.” zhu lianxiu: Thank you, but it is Scholar Guan who should be credited with those words. (She directs his attention to guan hanqing.) wang zhu: Just the same, it was the way you sang, with such emotion and power in your voice, that made every word hit home. bodyguard (to zhu lianxiu): Hurry up. Her Ladyship is waiting. zhu lianxiu (to wang zhu): I hope to have another opportunity to hear your comments. I must go and see Her Ladyship immediately. Please excuse me. (Straightens up her clothes in front of the mirror, turns to her pupils) Go on ahead without me. (zhu lianxiu retires, flanked by superintendent he and the bodyguard. Her pupils start collecting their things; some leave.) wang zhu (to guan hanqing): Master Guan, I have seen many of your plays, but this one moves me the most. Many in the audience this evening were moved. If I may be so bold as to inquire, was the plot inspired by the Zhu Xiaolan case? guan hanqing (embarrassed): Eh, no, it wasn’t. It’s a historical drama. wang zhu: I see. Then you should write more historical dramas. (hao zhen, an assistant to the prime minister, an attendant, and ye hefu enter.) hao zhen: Where is Zhu Lianxiu? attendant: Your Excellency, Superintendent He took her to see Her Ladyship just now. hao zhen: Then which one is Guan Hanqing? (Silence.) ye hefu (pointing at guan hanqing): This gentleman here. hao zhen (sizing him up): So you’re the playwright Guan Hanqing. Don’t you know who I am? (Again silence.) ye hefu: This is His Excellency, Lord Hao Zhen. guan hanqing: Oh . . . hao zhen: I thought you were a royal physician. So you write plays, too, eh? guan hanqing: Not very good ones. hao zhen: You needn’t be so modest. You write quite well. All the old ladies were moved to tears. Ha, ha, ha! Even our Lord Akham saw part of the play. Tomorrow we’ll have to trouble you to put on the same performance again. We’ve decided to put Dou E on the program instead of The Riverside Pavilion. Do I make myself clear? (guan hanqing says nothing.) So that’s settled. But the script will have to be changed in a number of places by your esteemed self. (To ye hefu) Did you note down the lines pointed out by His Lordship? ye hefu: I did, Your Excellency. hao zhen: Where is the list? ye hefu: Here it is.

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hao zhen (taking the list from ye hefu and handing it to guan hanqing): Make these changes, all right? guan hanqing (taking the list and glancing it over): I’m afraid that’s impossible. If all this were changed, it wouldn’t be the same play. (wang zhu takes the list from guan hanqing to read.) hao zhen: It wasn’t a play in the first place. Not only we officials, but heaven, earth, and the gods all come under fire. You call that a play? I’m telling you, but for the presence of Her Ladyship, Lord Akham would have flown into a complete rage. It was I who . . . ye hefu: It was Lord Hao Zhen who kept explaining and apologizing for you until Lord Akham finally agreed, “All right, tell Guan Hanqing to change it and we’ll watch the play again tomorrow.” guan hanqing: But I can’t do that. hao zhen: You can’t do it? Is that all you have to say? But Lord Akham has ordered the play banned unless you fix it. wang heqing: Hanqing, just make the changes. guan hanqing: No, I would rather see it banned than change it. hao zhen: You seem to be quite proud of your obstinacy. Didn’t your great sage Confucius say, “Know your wrongs and do not fear to abandon them”? guan hanqing: He meant wrongs . . . hao zhen: And you aren’t in the wrong? (zhu lianxiu, carrying an armful of gifts, returns with superintendent he.) superintendent he: My, my, Her Ladyship is in high spirits today. Look at all these lavish gifts—she has never done such a thing in her life. hao zhen (to superintendent he): Listen, Lao He. superintendent he (sensing something is not right): Yes, my lord. hao zhen: Same time tomorrow evening. superintendent he: Yes, sir. hao zhen: And this same theater. superintendent he: Yes, sir. hao zhen: And the same play. Lord Akham wants to watch it once more. Understood? superintendent he: Very well, sir. hao zhen: But the play has to be fixed and performed accordingly. Guan Hanqing has been given the list of changes. guan hanqing (with determination): Lord Hao, may I ask you to report back to Lord Akham that I would prefer to have the play banned. If all those changes were made, it would be completely ruined and no longer recognizable as the original Dou E. hao zhen: Ha, ha! You’re very, very foolish indeed, Guan Hanqing. Do you suppose Lord Akham is actually interested in seeing your original Dou E? Well, I think I’ve made myself clear: the play is to be changed and performed accordingly, otherwise you will all lose your heads. (hao zhen, followed by his bodyguards, storms off. ye hefu stays behind.)

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ye hefu: Hanqing, didn’t I warn you that this play would bring you trouble? Look here, a wise man never fights at a disadvantage. Just change it. Just now Lord Khoshin expressed dissatisfaction to his father Akham about the way your play ridiculed him. Some of your words stung the old man himself. How could he not get mad? Those of us in this trade know too well that we’re only playing a game. Fix a few lines, cut a few lines, and the storm will blow over. I’m telling you, Hanqing, listen to the advice of an old friend. guan hanqing (forced to draw the line): You . . . an old friend? Bah! A spy—that’s what you are! wang heqing (fearing guan hanqing might make an indiscreet remark): Hanqing! ye hefu: Look here! I’m only trying to help, but you’re being just as stubborn as ever. wang heqing: Lao Ye, say no more. Can’t you see Hanqing has lost his temper? ye hefu: And so has Lord Akham. Let’s just see whose temper counts. Good night and goodbye! (He walks away haughtily, revealing his true form.) wang heqing (watches ye hefu leave): I never would have guessed he was such a jerk! (wang heqing brings himself face-to-face with guan hanqing and grasps his hand in a warm clasp.) wang zhu: Master Guan, I consider it a great fortune this evening not only to have seen your fine play but also to come to know you as a man. You value your work so dearly that you are prepared to answer for it with your life. And for that I am even more deeply moved. You are absolutely right—let them kill the play, but not a word shall be changed. On the other hand, such an excellent piece of work deserves to be performed far and wide. If it can’t be put onstage in Cambaluc, then go elsewhere. If it can’t be shown in the north, go south. After all, China is a big country. Anytime you come to Yizhou, you can count on my hospitality. When I watched your play this evening, I couldn’t help shouting out. I’m sure when you take it to the people, you’ll hear many more do the same. Yes, indeed, we must rid the people of a scourge and cease putting up with vile officials and dishonest clerks. Well, I bid you all farewell. Do take good care of yourselves. (He salutes, then strides off with a determined gait.) wang heqing: Compare the two: that is a man, whereas Ye Hefu is at the very best a mouse. zhu lianxiu: Hanqing, what shall we do? As soon as I heard the audience start to shout, I knew there would be trouble. Besides, Sai Lianxiu got carried away and seems to have appended a few extra lines. My heart was literally in my mouth. superintendent he: Master Guan, after all is said and done, I’m afraid it simply means more work for you. You’ll have to make all the changes listed on that slip tonight. Tomorrow morning Lianxiu and the others will have to rehearse again so they don’t make a mess of their performance in the evening, don’t you think? I am inclined to agree with Lao Ye. You needn’t rewrite the whole thing. Just leave certain parts out. Phrases like “the officials have no heart to uphold the law,” for instance,

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might as well be deleted. As for your reproach of heaven and earth, well, keep it in if you can’t do without it. You won’t get anyone killed by singing those things. To tell you the truth, the big shots are extremely sensitive about any ridicule cast on officialdom. They don’t mind your grievances against heaven and earth so much, for they feel it’s none of their business. wang heqing: You’re quite right. superintendent he: Well, it’s time everybody went home now. (Looking at zhu lian xiu) Lianxiu, you must have worn yourself out these last few days to produce this magnificent show. You’d better turn in early and restore your energy for tomorrow’s performance. Apart from the storm cloud, I should think you’ve every reason to be satisfied, since Her Ladyship presented you with such fine gifts. She’s taken a real liking to you—why she even mentioned the idea of taking you as an adopted daughter. So, good evening, everybody. See you all tomorrow. (He turns to leave.) everybody: Good night. superintendent he (looking over his shoulder): Master Guan, don’t forget: “A real man is he who knows when to eat humble pie and when to hold his head high.” Just make the changes, won’t you? (Exit superintendent he, followed by the attendants. Left on the stage are guan hanqing, wang heqing, and zhu lianxiu, who has removed her costume and makeup.) zhu lianxiu: Well, Hanqing and Heqing, we’d better figure out immediately what we’re going to do. wang heqing (after a momentary pause): The performance this evening was a sensation. Even some of the officials were moved. Take Commander Wang, for example. But it’s obvious that the more moving a performance is, the more irksome it becomes to those with guilty consciences. Akham wields more power in the court than all the rest. Many of his own colleagues have fallen at his hands. Obviously he won’t let us get away with it. Luckily, being a celebrity, Hanqing can’t be so easily disposed of. On top of that, Bayan’s mother liked the play so much that she sent for Lianxiu. Otherwise, I shudder to think what would have happened to us. The resolute stand Hanqing has taken is admirable. But the play won’t be allowed back onstage without the changes. On the other hand, it has to be shown, for they’ve already booked the theater for that very purpose. So, whether we shall live or die, whether fortune will smile or frown upon us, depends entirely on us. guan hanqing: My mind is made up. Let them ban the play; I won’t change a word. wang heqing: But didn’t they say that the play couldn’t not be performed? zhu lianxiu (resolutely): Then we’ll perform it as is. There won’t be any changes. wang heqing: But you can’t fool these cunning old foxes. Didn’t you hear what Hao Zhen said? “The play is to be changed and performed accordingly, otherwise you will all lose your heads.” zhu lianxiu (after a moment’s thought): I have an idea, Heqing. Help smuggle Hanqing out of town tonight, please. (To guan hanqing) Hanqing, you must go. Leave

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the rest to me. They may chop my head off, but I’ll see to it that your play doesn’t receive so much as a scratch. guan hanqing: No, that won’t do. If you’re prepared to give up your head, so am I. (Lights out.)

S CE NE 7 (In the hall of the Yuxianlou Playhouse. Deputy Prime Minister akham, in the company of High Minister horikhoson, is watching the per for mance. Because zhu lianxiu’s per for mance adheres to the original version of the play, of which not a single word has been changed, hao zhen and other responsible officials have tried several times to find the opportunity to explain to akham and to request further instructions but have found it inexpedient to do so in the presence of horikhoson. akham is livid, his eyes wide open; nevertheless, he feels obliged to humor his guest.) horikhoson: This play isn’t bad at all, Lord Akham. No wonder Bayan’s mother enjoyed it. The playwright has something to say. I understand he is among the leading writers of the day, isn’t that so? akham: That’s right. Lord Horikhoson, have you ever seen any of his plays? horikhoson: Not many. You know, I’m not much of a theatergoer. That’s why I didn’t attend the performance yesterday. But when you requested my company this evening, I couldn’t possibly decline the honor. akham: The honor is mine, of course. You’re quite right—the author of this play is something of a celebrity. Apparently he has written fifty or sixty plays. You know, under our dynasty, these Hans who have read a few books are no longer able to compete for glory in the civil ser vice examinations, so they’ve turned to this. But that’s quite all right with us. After all, didn’t His Majesty instruct us to find them an outlet for their creativity? That’s why I often take time out to see their shows. For one thing, it’s entertaining and I can also find out for myself what they’re really thinking about. horikhoson: Lord Akham, you’re very wise indeed. Next time there is an excellent performance of this kind, allow me to attend. I shall be only too pleased to keep you company. akham: Hm, but these monkey bastards, you know, can be darn difficult to control. They never stay where they belong. If they’re not using the past to depict the present or pointing to the mulberry to berate the ash, they’re doing exactly what we’ve told them not to do. Didn’t you hear the way this one just now criticized us officials? horikhoson: Yes, I did. Very forceful, I must say, the way he criticizes corrupt bureaucrats. But what’s that got to do with us? akham: Lord Horikhoson, you’re far too fair-minded, I’m afraid. If he can revile them, then certainly he can revile us, too.

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horikhoson: Let them revile away. Strengthening the social order has its advantages. akham: No, they can’t be allowed to speak. Once we let the lid off, there’ll be no end to their rebellion against the authorities and the havoc they’ll wreak. How outrageous would that be! (horikhoson, momentarily unable to think of an appropriate comment within the bounds of politeness in response to akham’s haughty remarks, remains silent. Their attention once again shifts to the stage. zhu lianxiu, in the role of dou e , sings.) dou e: This is not me, Dou E, making absurd wishes; The injustice I suffer is not insignificant. If no divine sign is manifest to the world, Then a clear, blue heaven cannot be known. I want my warm blood to stain the white silk hanging from the eight-foot flagpole. And not a single drop to redden the earth; When it is visible from every direction, It will be just like the blood of Zhang Hong Turning to green jade, Or Wang Di becoming a crying cuckoo. executioner: Have you anything else to say? Speak now in the presence of His Honor, the execution supervisor, for you won’t have another chance. dou e: Your Honor, it’s now the middle of summer. But if I have truly been condemned unjustly, following my death heaven will send down three feet of snow to cover my corpse. execution supervisor: At the height of summer, even if your grievances did reach all the way up to heaven, not a single flake of snow would be at its command. Enough of this nonsense! dou e (singing): You say that snow cannot fall in the summertime. Have you never heard of the June frost on account of Zou Yan?45 If I am bursting with grievances that seethe like fire, Snow will tumble down like cotton, And shield my corpse from exposure. What need have I for white horses and a white cart, To escort my funeral down the ancient highways? (Kowtows) Your Honor, I, Dou E, truly die unjustly. From this day forth, Chuzhou district is to suffer from drought lasting three years. execution supervisor: Slap her face! What nonsense!

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dou e (singing): You say expect nothing from heaven, For it pities not the human heart; But heaven is just. Otherwise, why did the rain not fall for three years? It was all because of the injustice suffered by the filial woman of Donghai. Now the time has come for Shanyang district! Because you officials have no heart to uphold the law And the common people have mouths but dare not speak out. akham (roars): Stop! Stop the play! bodyguards: Stop the play! akham: This is outrageous! (To hao zhen) What have you done? hao zhen: I told them last night to make the changes you ordered. Even today before the per formance began I was assured by Zhu Lianxiu herself that your instruction had been followed. But apparently, not a single word has been fixed. akham (laughing scornfully): I thought you’d been doing a decent job. How could you have turned into such an ass all of a sudden? Bring that filthy slut Zhu Lianxiu here at once! hao zhen (to the bodyguards): Bring Zhu Lianxiu! (The bodyguards rush off and return with zhu lianxiu, in her costume as a condemned convict.) zhu lianxiu (to akham): Allow me to kowtow to you, Your Lordship. akham: So you’re Zhu Lianxiu. zhu lianxiu: Yes, I am. akham: You have some nerve, I must say. (To hao zhen) What did you tell them yesterday? hao zhen: Your humble servant instructed them that the play had to be changed and performed accordingly, or else their heads would roll. akham: And the playwright, Guan Hanqing? Is he present this evening? zhu lianxiu: No, he didn’t come. akham: Where is he? zhu lianxiu: I don’t know. His mother is sick; perhaps he has returned to the countryside. akham: You people were told to make changes, but you deliberately refused. Just what do you think you’re doing, anyway? zhu lianxiu: Guan Hanqing did make the changes. But there was only half a day left for rehearsal. I wasn’t able to learn all the new lines on such short notice, so I had no choice but to sing the original. I deserve a thousand deaths. I beg you, Your Lordship, have mercy on me. akham: Couldn’t learn the new lines on such short notice? Aren’t you a famously quick study? Clearly you’re no coward. To save the neck of Guan Hanqing, just like Dou E

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trying to save her mother-in-law, you would take the whole load on your own shoulders. (To horikhoson) A fine tale she has told, don’t you think? (He turns to zhu lianxiu) Very well, your good intentions will be rewarded. Guards! bodyguards: Yes, sir. akham: Take her away and cut off her head! (As the bodyguards tie up zhu lianxiu, guan hanqing rushes in.) guan hanqing: Stop! (To akham) Lord Akham, it is I who has forbidden any changes to the play. It has nothing to do with Zhu Lianxiu. akham (to hao zhen): Who is this man? hao zhen: It is Guan Hanqing himself. akham: He steps forward so his whore won’t have to take all the blame. I can see he’s no coward, either. Now, Guan Hanqing, you’ve written quite a few plays; surely you’re aware that under the laws of our dynasty it’s a crime to write inflammatory literature against the authorities. This latest work of yours is not only inflammatory but full of personal slander and satire. That alone ought to have cost you your head. But, considering the fact that you’ve made something of a name for yourself as a playwright, I gave you a chance to amend the play and present it again. But you defied my orders and even had that wench of yours perform the original script. Is that not tantamount to rebellion? I may as well grant both of you your wish to be martyrs. Guards! bodyguards: Yes, sir. akham: Take them away and behead them both. (The bodyguards grab guan hanqing and tie him up mercilessly. Greatly disturbed and unable to hold his peace, horikhoson rises from his seat next to akham’s.) horikhoson: Lord Akham, if I were to plead for mercy on someone’s behalf, would you indulge me? akham: Why of course, Lord Horikhoson. Please do not stand on ceremony. May I know your wish? horikhoson: I am not acquainted with the woman, but I have had the privilege of meeting Guan Hanqing before. He’s a heart specialist and the remedy he prescribed for me worked wonders. Quite a few of our colleagues suffer from heart trouble. If there should be inquiries about what has become of the doctor, it might be somewhat awkward. I understand your mother also suffers from the same ailment, is it not so? akham: Very well, then, on the strength of Lord Horikhoson’s recommendation, have Guan Hanqing locked up for the time being. (The bodyguards take guan hanqing away.) hao zhen: What about Zhu Lianxiu? akham: Behead that whore! bodyguards: Yes, sir. (The bodyguards are about to take her away when superintendent he rushes up.) superintendent he: Lord Akham, Zhu Lianxiu can’t be beheaded, either. akham: Why not?

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superintendent he: Yesterday Prime Minister Bayan’s mother received her in person and showered her with all sorts of fancy gifts. Her Ladyship even said something about taking her as a goddaughter. Now if she should ask about her again, what would we say? akham: What? Have all the eighth or ninth grade scum of society managed to find themselves patrons? All right, lock her up, too, I’ll sentence them after my next audience with His Majesty. (The bodyguards lead zhu lianxiu away.) akham (to hao zhen): The one who played Mistress Cai, what was her name? hao zhen: Sai Lianxiu. akham: These monkey bastards are an unruly lot. One’s as bad as the next. What they need is a little discipline. Bring in Sai Lianxiu! (Presently sai lianxiu appears, led in by the bodyguards. She is still in her stage costume.) sai lianxiu: Allow me to kowtow to you, Your Lordship. akham: Tell me, Sai Lianxiu, can you read? sai lianxiu: A bit, Your Lordship. I can read scripts. akham: The line you delivered just now onstage, “The day shall arrive when heaven will open its eyes and have these cruel officials skinned alive.” Was that in the script, I wonder? sai lianxiu: No, it wasn’t. akham: If it wasn’t in the script, then what possessed you to say such a thing? sai lianxiu: I borrowed the line from another script. Couplets like “Flowers may blossom anew, but youth never returns” are often freely borrowed in singing. akham: There’re plenty of good quotations to choose from. Why did you happen to pick that one in particular? So, what is your situation? sai lianxiu: Do you mean the kind of family I come from? Well, I am the daughter of a peasant from a village west of the capital. We had a few mou of land, but they were seized by one of Your Lordship’s servants. My father, unable to eke out a living, finally had to sell me to the entertainment house to train as a singer. akham: You have no patron? sai lianxiu: No, I have none. akham: Very well. You wish heaven could open its eyes and avenge your wrongs, don’t you? sai lianxiu: How could a girl like me dare dream of such a thing? akham: Guards! bodyguards: Yes, sir. akham: Gouge out her eyes! (The bodyguards seize sai lianxiu and skillfully carry out the order.) sai lianxiu (shrieking): Help! Help! akham: Now, Sai Lianxiu, do you still thirst for revenge? sai lianxiu: How could a girl like me ever get revenge? I only beg Your Lordship to have my eyeballs strung up the walls of Cambaluc.

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akham: On the city walls? What for? sai lianxiu (bursting with indignation): To see Your Lordship’s demise! akham (roaring): Throw her into the cell for condemned prisoners! horikhoson (springing to his feet, thoroughly disgusted): Pardon me, Lord Akham. I must take my leave. (Lights out.)

S CE NE 8 (In a prison at Cambaluc at the end of March in 1282. Late at night. The warden presides over an interrogation. Intimidating prison guards are lined up on either side. Though it is late spring, the air is bitterly cold. The warden glances over the dossier, and then looks over at the two prison officers.) warden: Has Guan Hanqing been calm the past few days? prison officer: Fairly calm. warden: Any visitors? prison officer: His servant, Guan Zhong. warden: Nobody else? prison officer: Yang Xianzhi and Liang Jinzhi visited, and Wang Shifu sent over some food and other items. A certain Mistress Liu and her daughter brought him some things and wanted to visit, but they weren’t admitted. warden: Did Guan Hanqing receive it all? prison officer: Yes, he did, as you instructed, sir. warden: From now on, no more visitors are to be admitted, and nothing else brought to him. (He looks at the female prison officer) And that goes for Zhu Lianxiu, too. Understood? prison officer and female prison officer: Yes, sir. warden: Any visitors for Zhu Lianxiu? female prison officer: Her pupil, Yan Shanxiu, came and Superintendent He had some things delivered to her. warden: Who else? female prison officer: That’s all. warden: From now on, keep a close watch on her. female prison officer: Yes, sir. warden: How about that Sai Lianxiu? Is she still ranting and raving? female prison officer: Yes, though on the whole she has calmed down a bit. But her eyes continue bleeding. Shall we send for a doctor? warden: They may summon her any day now, you never can tell. I wouldn’t want her to die here. Get a doctor to prescribe her something. Has she had any visitors? female prison officer: An actor by the name of Qian Shuaqiao comes to see her every two days or so.

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warden: From now on, she’s not allowed visitors, either. Now, bring in Guan Hanqing! (The prison officer exits, and almost immediately one hears chains and fetters clanking. Enter guan hanqing.) prison officer: On your knees! (guan hanqing stoutly refuses to kneel down. The prison officer is about to strike his legs with a heavy club.) warden (stopping the prison officer): Don’t be too hard on him. (To guan hanqing) You may sit down. (To the prison guard) Bring him a stool. (The prison guard brings over a stool for guan hanqing to sit on.) Well, how do you find yourself these days? guan hanqing: The sun and moon warm my heart though my eyebrows and temples are frosted over. I’m not dead yet. warden: I certainly don’t want to see you die. Your literary works are beyond me, but I do know for a fact that you are a fine doctor. My mother has felt so much better ever since she took the medicine you prescribed. She suffered from rheumatism for years; we never expected such a speedy recovery. She’s already able to walk again with a cane. guan hanqing: A short stroll will do her good. But she mustn’t push herself at her age. warden: I understand perfectly. I am truly grateful. Now, Guan Hanqing, your case is getting more and more serious. Frankly, I’m afraid no one can help you. I don’t know what can be done! (Some of the prison guards whisper to one another.) guan hanqing (baffled): More and more serious? warden: Terribly serious. Are you acquainted with a certain Wang Zhu? guan hanqing: Wang Zhu? warden: Yes, Commander Wang Zhu, of Yizhou, do you remember? What is your relationship with him? guan hanqing: Oh, now I remember. The night Dou E was performed at the Yuxianlou Playhouse, he came backstage to meet us. warden: He was deeply moved by your play, wasn’t he? guan hanqing: So he said. He got so excited during the performance that he even yelled out, “Rid the common people of a scourge.” We met him just that once, so it’s not exactly a relationship. warden: Well, he is a man of action, all right. And he’s wreaked quite a bit of havoc. Do you have an old friend by the name of Ye Hefu? guan hanqing: Well, there exists such a person, but I would hardly call him an old friend. warden: He wants to have a talk with you. guan hanqing: I have nothing to say to him! warden: See him anyway. It might help. (Turns his head) Master Ye, please. (ye hefu enters from a back room.) ye hefu (in a voice of exaggerated concern): My dear old friend! To think we should meet in a place like this! You didn’t listen to me then, but I knew all along it would

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come to this and that’s why I urged you not to write Dou E. I told you it would bring you nothing but trouble. Alas, my prediction has come true. guan hanqing (with great disdain): Just say what you have to say. ye hefu: Well, look at you, as hotheaded as ever. Isn’t it about time you learned to control that temper of yours? guan hanqing (annoyed): If you have something to say, just say it. (ye hefu whispers in the warden’s ear.) warden (to the prison guards and the prison officers): Everyone out. (They exit.) ye hefu (in a low voice): Now, Hanqing, I’m afraid I must first break some terrible news. That friend of yours, Wang Zhu, in cahoots with the wizard-monk Gao, assassinated Lord Akham and Lord Hao Zhen last month on the night of the tenth in Xanadu.46 guan hanqing: Oh is that so? ye hefu: It’s absolutely true. The incident has got the whole imperial court, high and low, shaking in its boots. What a great misfortune for the nation, don’t you think! guan hanqing: What else did you want to say to me? ye hefu: I want you to realize that this terrible calamity has come to pass because you wouldn’t heed my advice! That rebel Wang Zhu, you know, hatched his plan only after seeing your play. guan hanqing (angered): What makes you think that? ye hefu: Lots of people heard him cry out, “Rid the common people of a scourge” during the performance of Dou E at the Yuxianlou. And later, when he was brought to justice at Xanadu, he again cried out, “I, Wang Zhu, have rid the common people of a scourge.” And then in your play there is actually a line that reads, “Put an end to those vile officials and dishonest clerks”. . . guan hanqing (with restraint): You don’t think that vile officials and dishonest clerks ought to be done away with? ye hefu: Well . . . yes, of course. guan hanqing: And should we or should we not rid the common people of a scourge? ye hefu: Of course we should. But Wang Zhu was wrong to think his assassination of Lord Akham would be a ser vice to the people. guan hanqing: Whether the assassination of Akham serves the interests of the people or not is for the people themselves to judge. But, if, as you claim, Wang Zhu conspired to take Akham’s life under the sway of my play, then how do you explain why the monk Gao, who never even saw the play, also wanted to assassinate Akham? ye hefu: Well . . . guan hanqing: Playwrights can’t avoid making judgments. Take, for example, historical figures. We sing the praises of Yue Fei but we condemn Qin Gui.47 If it so happens that a spectator kills the same type of man as Qin Gui out of righteous indignation, can you honestly charge the playwright with aiding and abetting? ye hefu: Hanqing, what you’re saying makes certain sense, of course. But at the present moment, with feelings running so high, do you expect His Majesty and his ministers

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to listen to you? In any case, I’m not here tonight to argue with you about the impact of your play Dou E. (With bated breath again) I’m here on personal instructions from Lord Khoshin to discuss with you a matter of paramount importance. You know, your case is quite serious, but if you promise to cooperate, it could be mitigated, even to the point of securing your release. guan hanqing: I’ve got nothing to discuss with Khoshin. ye hefu: Come, my dear friend, calm down; you’ve got nothing to lose. Wang Zhu is dead, so he can’t be called as a witness. All you have to do is testify at your hearing that Wang Zhu assassinated Lord Akham with the intention of disposing of a minister loyal to the Yuan dynasty and of plotting against the court in collusion with the riffraff elements of the Jin and Han people throughout the country. Assuming you testify in this way, your sentence will be reduced and Lord Khoshin will give you a cash reward of one million in paper currency. Quite a handsome sum, old chap. guan hanqing (beside himself with anger): Have you finished? ye hefu: Yes, this important matter was all I came here for tonight. guan hanqing: Come closer and let me tell you something. ye hefu (stepping over): Do you agree? guan hanqing: Do I? (He slaps ye hefu on the face, delivering a blow so hard that he is thrown off balance.) ye hefu (staggering to his feet): Hanqing, I was talking with you in earnest. How can you be so rude? guan hanqing: You dog, you have two slits for eyes yet you see nothing. You don’t know who you’re dealing with. I, Guan Hanqing, am known to the people as a ringing copper pea that can withstand steaming, boiling, mashing, and frying. You try to bribe me at the bidding of the vile bureaucrat, Khoshin. To think that a shameless creature like you was bred within our own midst! I would give anything to devour your flesh! ye hefu (grimly): You won’t agree to it, eh? Fine, then await your execution. guan hanqing: For the life of me I will never speak another word to such a wretched scoundrel. Warden, take me back to my cell. warden: Very well. (To ye hefu) Master Ye, you’d better take your leave. (ye hefu slinks off. The prison guards file back in and resume their formation.) Guan Hanqing, you’re right. If you ever consented to testify as he suggested, it would be disastrous for us Han. But that guy Ye will inevitably report back to Khoshin and Khoshin will inevitably pursue the case against you. You’re a good man, and moreover I’m personally indebted to you for having cured my mother. Unfortunately, I’m merely a lowly official and my powers are limited. There isn’t much I can do for you, except to provide this bit of information: you have only a day or two to live. Now, if you have any personal affairs that need to be attended to, or any message that needs to be delivered, so long as it is within my power, I am at your disposal. Is there anything you feel like eating? I can buy it for you, you know.

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guan hanqing (trying to collect himself ): Thank you. But I’ve no appetite for anything in particular, nor is there any business that awaits my attention. But seeing that you are so devoted to your mother, I have here a letter for my own, and I wonder if I may trouble you to have it delivered after it’s all over. Please take care not to frighten her. This little request of mine is just like Dou E’s when she asked not to be taken by the main street so as to avoid being seen by her mother-in-law. warden (taking the letter): All right, I assure you I’ll have it delivered according to your wishes. Don’t worry. guan hanqing: Would it be possible for Guan Zhong to pay me one last visit? warden: I’m afraid not. I’m sorry. guan hanqing: It’s quite all right. warden: Is there anything you wish to tell anyone? guan hanqing: Plenty, but I wouldn’t know where to begin or whom to tell. (Suddenly occurring to him) Would you allow me to see Zhu Lianxiu? warden: Well . . . I suppose so. I can take the responsibility for that. But what good will it do? She’s in the same boat as you. guan hanqing: We’re like two fish swapping spit in a drying pond, as the saying goes. If you think you can manage it, I would be much obliged. warden (to the female prison officer): Bring Zhu Lianxiu! female prison officer: Yes, sir. (She withdraws and a short while later brings in zhu lianxiu, still dressed as the convicted Dou E, her chains and fetters clanking as she enters.) zhu lianxiu (falls to her knees): Allow me to pay my respects to Your Lordship. warden: You may rise. Guan Hanqing wants to have a word with you. I’ll give you a few moments. (To the prison officers) When they’re done, take them back to their cells. Mind your duty. (To the prison guards) Let us retire. (Exit all except guan hanqing and zhu lianxiu.) zhu lianxiu: Well, Hanqing, we finally see each other again. guan hanqing (in a grave tone): I’m afraid this is the last time. zhu lianxiu (in a tremulous voice): Really? guan hanqing: Do you remember that Commander Wang? zhu lianxiu: You mean Wang Zhu whom we met backstage at the Yuxianlou Playhouse? guan hanqing: Yes, that’s the one. zhu lianxiu: I spoke but a few words with him, but somehow he struck me as an honest and upright man. But I must say I never imagined he would embark upon such an earthshaking enterprise. For that we have every reason to be proud of him as a patron of our stirring play The Injustice Done to Dou E, Which Moved Heaven and Shook the Earth. guan hanqing: You sound quite pleased. You’re aware that he assassinated Akham? zhu lianxiu: Of course I am. Yesterday a new inmate arrived—Commander Wang’s aunt, from Cambaluc. She told me that Commander Wang kept shouting in protest up to the very last moment, “I rid the common people of a scourge. Now I’m going to

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die, but in the future someone will bear testimony to my deed in his writing.” A remarkable man! guan hanqing: Well, there are some people who have forced a connection between what he did and the line in our script “You’ll do the emperor a great ser vice by ridding the people of a scourge.” They charge that we encouraged Wang Zhu to assassinate ministers of the court, and this has made our case even worse. zhu lianxiu: But he did assassinate a scourge of the common people, didn’t he? That ruthless Akham was so cruel he even gouged out the eyes of my pupil. guan hanqing: Wang Zhu has vindicated her, and us as well—I really would like to write something about him, but alas there’s no time left. zhu lianxiu: No time? guan hanqing: The warden just informed me. In a day or two it’ll all be over for me. And I’m afraid you’re next. He advised us to tell him of any personal affairs or messages we may have for friends or relatives in good time so that he can see to them for us. I wonder, is there any note you’d like him to deliver? Oh, and also, if there is anything you’d like to eat, he can get it for you. (Seeing her look of alarm) Oh, Fourth Sister, you’re not afraid, are you? zhu lianxiu (turning pale but pulling herself together): No, I’m not afraid. guan hanqing: Fourth Sister, I’m truly sorry. It’s all because of my play that you have to suffer all this. zhu lianxiu: What nonsense! Didn’t I give my word that if you dared to write the play, I would dare to perform in it? When I said that, I was prepared for such a day. guan hanqing: But you didn’t expect it to come so soon. zhu lianxiu: What difference does it make—sooner or later? As a matter of fact, I’ve never found life so rich and meaningful as it has been these past days. I feel all the more keenly that I am one among many. Don’t you see? The people despise Akham; so do we. We dared to stand up against him and his like. Wang Zhu rid the people of a scourge and gave his life for it, and again we find ourselves on his side, battling the wicked to the end. Isn’t Dou E just such a woman, who wouldn’t yield to the forces of evil even on pain of death? I admire women like her and am willing to die as she did. Look at this costume I’m wearing, the same as Dou E wore, and before long I’ll fall just as she did. And I won’t go meekly. Like Dou E, I’ll cry out before I collapse. Perhaps I’ll even cry out like Wang Zhu, “Rid the people of a scourge!” What do you think, Hanqing? Right now I’m not even sure if I’m living life or performing onstage, for I feel as though I’m facing thousands of spectators with perfect confidence. Truth be told, just now when you broke the news that the time had come, I did feel somewhat distressed, but I’m all right now. Set your mind at rest: I’ll remain as firm and unflinching as Dou E. guan hanqing: You can set your mind at rest as well, Fourth Sister. My family name is Guan, and although I now reside in Cambaluc, my hometown is Xieliang, in Puzhou.48 I’ll lay down my life as fearlessly as my great heroic ancestor. “Jade may be crushed, but its color remains immaculately white; bamboo may be scorched, but its joints are indestructible.” These words express the feeling in my heart.

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zhu lianxiu: But there is one thing that I will always regret. That evening at the Yuxianlou Playhouse, I asked Heqing to help you get away. Why didn’t you leave? Instead you came back to watch the play the following night. Are you that fond of theater? guan hanqing: How could I leave? How could I let you bear such a heavy burden alone? zhu lianxiu: But who am I? A mere entertainer who sings in zaju plays. How can I be compared with you? You are one of the great writers of our age at the forefront of contemporary drama. Theatergoers will be miserable without your plays. You must continue writing for the people. You must continue speaking out for the common people, who dare not speak for themselves. You must carry on seeking justice on behalf of women who have been wronged and oppressed. But . . . but now they’ll kill you and me alike just like that! No, they can’t do this to you! Let them take my life, but they must spare you . . . (She bursts into a convulsive sob.) guan hanqing: Fourth Sister, I appreciate your concern. But won’t our deaths speak for the people? It’s said that what is written in blood is more precious than what is written in ink. Perhaps our deaths will make our voices resonate even more strongly. However, there is a difference between us: I’m nearly fifty, while you’re still so young and talented; already you’ve made a name for yourself. I’m afraid people will blame me for your untimely death. Doesn’t Prime Minister Bayan’s elderly mother adore you and even want you to be her goddaughter? Why don’t you write to her and implore her for help? I’m sure it would help. If you entrust the letter to Superintendent He, she’s sure to get it. Write it right now, won’t you? Or, if you like, I’ll do it for you. zhu lianxiu: What about you? You could seek her help as well. guan hanqing: How could I? zhu lianxiu: Then why should I? After all, isn’t she the mother of that Prime Minister Bayan, who murders people in cold blood? She only liked me because my performance amused her. I don’t think she truly understood the play. Crying over a tragedy is nothing but an act to make the public think she has a soft heart. But does she shed a single tear when her son massacres the whole population of a city one day or slaughters those who had surrendered to him the next? I despise that kind of woman. Implore her? No, not for the life of me! guan hanqing: If you don’t, you’ll . . . zhu lianxiu: Die? But what more can I hope for than to die together with you? If fate won’t allow me to enjoy your companionship in life, then may we rest in peace together, Hanqing! (She holds guan hanqing’s hands in a warm clasp.) guan hanqing: Fourth Sister, I feel our hearts are closer to each other at this moment than ever before. When we were first imprisoned, I prepared myself for this hour. The night before last, I wrote a melody called “A Pair of Butterflies.” 49 I wanted to show you, but nobody dared to take it to you. I didn’t insist, of course. Now I present it to you in person. How wonderful it would be if you sang it.

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zhu lianxiu: Let me see. (She takes it from his hand.) guan hanqing: It’s practically illegible. Can you read it? zhu lianxiu: Certainly. (Alternately reading and singing) We shall lay down our lives like the martyrs of old, Whose spirit keeps haunting the wicked. And our blood shall flow Eternally like the Yellow River, Like the Yangtze mingling with the souls of heroes Of times bygone. This is more noble than writing of maidens Embroidering in their chambers, Or scholars in their silks Visiting the royal court, Or philanderers romancing by brightly painted windows. These embellished lines may give the country Something to read and think about, But to survive the rigors of a snowstorm Takes the strength of a pine. I studied thousands of volumes of the classics; I wrote more than fifty plays. And all these years the nation has been crushed, People have suffered untold misery everywhere. We saw, and we fought, Till Dou E sped us to our deaths. The moon wanes by itself, The single wick flickers out alone, But we shall die together. Resting, we share The same glimpse of the clouds Through our barred windows. Walking, our chains clank in unison. But like the rainbow, Our hearts are bright with faith and strength. Who would waste tears? If there is no place for martyrs In the nether world, Are there not green vales reserved In which the pure and great may rest? Years divide us, but our hearts are one. Unwedded, we shall lie in the same grave. Behold! When the fields again

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Are red with azalea blossoms, How two butterflies, you and I, Will flutter in the breeze, loving each other, Never to part! (zhu lianxiu is very touched.) zhu lianxiu: Oh, Hanqing! (She embraces him. Enter the prison officers.) prison officer: Your time’s up. Back to your cells. (He separates them.) female prison officer (to zhu lianxiu): Hearing you two talk I do feel really sorry for you. You probably won’t see each other again, so I’ll let you say your final goodbyes. zhu lianxiu: That won’t be necessary. guan hanqing: There is no need for us to say farewell, for we shall never part. female prison officer: Then back to your wards. (They are both led away, their chains and fetters rattling in unison.) (Lights out.)

S CE NE 9 (erniu’s home. mistress liu has come to visit her daughter, who is now the wife of zhou fuxiang.) mistress liu: Is Fuxiang home? erniu: Yes, he just got back. But he says he has to go back to work again. He’s on duty tonight. Mother, did you go yesterday and did you get to see Uncle Guan? mistress liu: I did go. But it was even worse this time. They wouldn’t even take my package. Things must be coming to a head. Oh dear, what shall we do? (zhou fuxiang, a young man, partly dressed in Mongolian fashion, walks in briskly.) zhou fuxiang: Ah, here you are, Mother! mistress liu: At last I’ve caught you at home. erniu: Mother went again to see Uncle Guan yesterday. Not only was she denied entry, she wasn’t even allowed to leave anything for him. What’s the news? zhou fuxiang: Actually, the news isn’t all that bad. mistress liu (her face brightening with a smile): What? Is Master Guan going to be okay? erniu: Speak up. You had me worried to death not saying anything just now. zhou fuxiang: But the news isn’t directly connected with Master Guan’s case. That’s why I didn’t say anything. erniu: Then what’s so good about it? zhou fuxiang: Well, His Majesty sent Lord Bor, Lord Horikhoson, and Counselor Ari to Xanadu to investigate the case of Wang Zhu and Monk Gao. At first, you know,

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His Majesty was furious and ordered summary arrests and executions. But when Lord Bor briefed His Majesty on Akham’s twenty- odd-year record of gross misdeeds, he said, “Then Wang Zhu’s assassination of Akham was correct.” Thereupon, Akham’s coffin was unsealed at Tongxuan Gate in Xanadu and his corpse decapitated. Today Khoshin and the rest of Akham’s sons were placed under arrest. Isn’t this good news? erniu: It certainly is. mistress liu: If Khoshin has been arrested, then no one will press charges in Master Guan’s case. How wonderful! zhou fuxiang: Lord Horikhoson will be transferred to the cabinet as deputy prime minister. He’ll take over all of Akham’s cases. mistress liu: Really? Do you think he’ll release Master Guan then? zhou fuxiang (shaking his head): That’s why I said none of this has direct relevance to Master Guan’s case. mistress liu: Why not? zhou fuxiang: Well, under the present law, to rebel against the authorities is a most grave crime. To their thinking, Master Guan has committed such a crime and the punishment is beheading. And quite a few ministers maintain that Master Guan should be dealt with severely. Lord Horikhoson once intervened on Master Guan’s behalf and asked Akham to spare his life, but as the situation stands today, he is likely to go whichever way the wind blows. mistress liu: Then you must have a word with Lord Horikhoson. Think of the great kindness Master Guan bestowed upon you two; how can you turn your back on him and let him die? zhou fuxiang: Of course I would do anything to save him. But what can I say? Besides, we’re forbidden by His Lordship as a rule to talk about public matters. erniu: Haven’t you told me that you’re working in His Lordship’s office? You’re bound to have a chance to say something. mistress liu: Oh, that reminds me, Master Xie Xiaoshan arrived early this morning. He says members of the literary society and other friends have signed a petition seeking the release of Master Guan and Zhu Lianxiu on their guarantee, and he wants to ask you to submit it to His Lordship. (Looking out through the window) Master Xie, please come in. (xie xiaoshan steps in and greets zhou fuxiang.) xie xiaoshan: How do you do? zhou fuxiang: How do you do, Master Xie. Please sit down. mistress liu: Did you bring along the petition, Master Xie? xie xiaoshan: Yes, here it is. I’m sure your son-in-law will oblige us. zhou fuxiang (visibly troubled): But . . . xie xiaoshan: Say no more. I understand perfectly well the position you’re in. I’m a nobody. But this is a people’s petition. Night and day for three days straight, members of the society and I have been tracking down anyone who has ever seen one of Guan Hanqing’s plays or who knows what kind of man he is, as well as those who

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sympathize with Zhu Lianxiu and have seen her performances. We’ve collected over ten thousand signatures. Those who couldn’t write their names have affixed their fingerprints . . . mistress liu (grabs the document briskly and points out her own name): See? Here’s my fingerprint. Never mind whether it’ll do any good or not; the thing is we have done our bit, and no one can say we weren’t grateful. (To zhou fuxiang) Aren’t you going to sign your name, too? xie xiaoshan: If he is to present the petition, it would be better if he didn’t. erniu: Then let me. (To her husband) Will you write down Autumn Swallow for me? (zhou fuxiang puts down her name, and erniu firmly affixes her fingerprint. zhou fuxiang unrolls the petition and is moved to tears upon seeing that it is several feet long and filled with small, densely written signatures.) xie xiaoshan: Young man, don’t forget this document represents the will of more than ten thousand people, including your mother-in-law and your wife. erniu: You must do whatever it takes to present it; otherwise, don’t bother coming back home! mistress liu: Not only did Master Guan help you two get married, but he gave Erniu two hundred thousand in cash for a dowry. If you don’t find some way to put it through, I’ll say there’s something wrong with your heart. zhou fuxiang (after a thought): Mother, Master Xie, you needn’t worry. His Lordship has a private secretary named Tselbukhe, whom he has taken into his confidence. Even though he’s a Mongol, the man is warmhearted and likes helping people out. He’s also a fan of Master Guan’s plays. I’ll approach him. Perhaps he can present the document. xie xiaoshan: Splendid. And so, young man, we’ll leave the matter in your hands. (Lights out.)

S CE NE 10 (The patter of chilly autumn rain. In a prison cell, an inmate sits huddled in a corner, silent as the grave. Two prison guards are leading guan hanqing to this cell. They unlock the door and shove him to the ground with a loud rattling of his handcuffs and fetters. The prison guards lock the door again and march away. guan hanqing staggers to his feet, rubbing his legs and arms.) guan hanqing (thinking aloud with a deep sigh): They are mine no longer. But (gnashing his teeth) they will not make my heart waver nor ever claim it. (Exhausted, he heads for the corner, where the other inmate is huddled. The inmate utters a sound.) guan hanqing (staring): What? You’re human? long- life liu (in a tone of self-mockery): Well, for the time being I am. guan hanqing (sweeping the cell with a listless glance): It’s just you? long- life liu: There was someone else last night.

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guan hanqing: Where’s he gone? long- life liu: They dragged him off this morning and skinned him alive. guan hanqing (with utter disgust): Hm, they either gouge out your eyes or break your bones or skin you alive—it’s the daily routine. But how did you find out what they did to him? long- life liu: They told me. guan hanqing: How did you wind up in here? long- life liu: Because I’m a Han. guan hanqing: For no other reason? long- life liu: They demanded my wife. I refused. They beat me and I struck back. guan hanqing: That was all? long- life liu: That was all. guan hanqing: You’re a man, you had to fight back. long- life liu: And what brought you here? guan hanqing: I was accused of “propagating inflammatory literature against the authorities.” On top of that . . . long- life liu: So you must be Guan Hanqing? guan hanqing: How did you know? long- life liu: Well, among playwrights nowadays there aren’t that many who would dare defy the authorities. Besides, when you first got here, the whole prison heard about it. Isn’t there a certain Zhu Lianxiu with you? guan hanqing: That’s right. long- life liu: You’re good people. You had the courage to speak out for us. Too bad I didn’t get to see your new play. Isn’t it called Dou  . . . something or other? guan hanqing: It’s entitled Dou E. I hope you’ll have a chance to see it someday. long- life liu (with a sardonic laugh): In my next life, you mean. (His voice expressing sympathy and deep concern) But how come you’ve been moved into this cell, too? You shouldn’t be here! guan hanqing: Why’s that? long- life liu: Nobody in this cell has ever lasted more than three days. guan hanqing: How many days have you been in here? long- life liu: I was moved here the day before yesterday. guan hanqing: Oh dear! What’s your name? long- life liu: Long-Life Liu. A joke of a name now. guan hanqing (his voice earnest with conviction): I don’t think so. You’re one of the brave who dared fight back, and for that you’ll have eternal glory. long- life liu: Thanks. With such words I can die happily. guan hanqing: Is there anything I can do for you? I’m at your ser vice. long- life liu: But you have only a day or two left to live yourself. guan hanqing: Then I shall do whatever I can with those two days. long- life liu: Well then, will you please tell people that if they all had the courage to fight back, better times would come?

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guan hanqing: I couldn’t agree more. (Enter the warden and prison guards on inspection duty, lanterns in hand.) warden (calling the roll): Long-Life Liu. long- life liu: Present. warden: This way. long- life liu: Farewell, Guan Hanqing. guan hanqing: I’ll be coming soon. (long- life liu goes out.) warden: Tie him up. (As the prison guards come to bind up his hands, long- life liu strikes one with his fist and sends him reeling. But more prison guards rush up and eventually manage to tie him up.) Take him away. (The prison guards withdraw with long- life liu.) (Shining the lantern on guan hanqing) Guan Hanqing! guan hanqing (perfectly calm): Present. warden (passes a slip of paper to guan hanqing and speaks under his breath): It’s from Zhu Lianxiu. (He locks the door and retires forthwith.) guan hanqing (unfolds the slip and reads it in the dim lantern light): In fetters bound I sat and listened to the autumnal rain Till I fell asleep. I dreamed I was set free, Acting Dou E again. I awoke with a start Upon hearing the drum tower sound. We may go any minute, But our hearts shall shine Through all eternity. —Dedicated to Hanqing in prison. Adapted to the tune “Jishengcao.” guan hanqing: Put your mind at ease, Fourth Sister, I’ll be brave! (Lights out.)

S CE NE 11 (horikhoson’s office. Although horikhoson is a civil official, the wall is decorated with a Mongolian saber, bow, and arrow—obviously reminders of a not-too- distant nomadic life. On another wall is an altar with a portrait of Guan Yu, testimony to the immense

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popularity of this historical figure—the “handsome bearded general”—among the heroworshippers in the north. zhou fuxiang unlocks the door and enters quietly. He leafs through the papers on the desk. When he discovers that the ten-thousand-signature petition is buried in the files to be shelved, he hastens to pull it out and file it with cases pending review. Hearing footsteps in the distance, he quickly withdraws from the room and locks the door again. Enter horikhoson and his confidential secretary, tselbukhe.) tselbukhe: Your Lordship, you must be exhausted from your journey back from Xanadu. You ought to get some rest. Will Your Lordship allow us to see to these matters? horikhoson: But His Majesty has ordered me to clear up the mess caused by Akham’s death. I must devote my full attention to it, lest I make matters worse and therefore fail in my duty. tselbukhe: Yes, yes. This time the audacity of Wang Zhu and Monk Gao truly knew no bounds. Handling such a major case as this, Your Lordship is rendering His Majesty a great ser vice. horikhoson: For over twenty years, you know, Akham enjoyed the emperor’s confidence. Naturally His Majesty was utterly enraged by the assassination. But when Akham’s countless crimes were duly reported, even His Majesty had to concede that Wang Zhu had done the right thing. It must be admitted that Wang Zhu’s deed gave us all great satisfaction. I myself attended the execution, but in my heart I was grateful for what they had done. tselbukhe: Grateful, Your Lordship? horikhoson: Some ten years ago I learned that Akham had spoken ill of me before the emperor. Thanks to my own prudence and circumspection, I did not fall for his trap. Thereafter, I was constantly on my guard. Now that Wang Zhu and Monk Gao have carried out such a fine deed, I can live in peace. I may as well tell you that I was personally acquainted with both of them. Three years ago I journeyed to the north with the monk, and last year I attended a play with Wang Zhu. Wang Zhu was a man of great conviction, who never ran from trouble. He was truly a great soul. It may sound ridiculous, and perhaps it’s because my physical and mental strength has diminished in my old age and I can no longer withstand stress, but ever since I came back from Xanadu, I’ve been having nightmares. The moment I shut my eyes, I see Wang Zhu and the monk again. tselbukhe: Then, Your Lordship, we’d better do something to drive away the bad spirits. horikhoson: That won’t be necessary. All my life I’ve been a devoted worshipper. (Points to the image of Guan Yu) I think offering a prayer will do. tselbukhe: Yes, yes, Your Lordship. horikhoson (turning his head): Zhou Fuxiang! (zhou fuxiang walks in with a brisk step.) zhou fuxiang (respectfully): Your Lordship summoned?

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horikhoson: From now on increase the daily offerings of incense, wine, and fruit. (Points to the image of Guan Yu) Do you hear? zhou fuxiang: Certainly, Your Lordship. (He performs his duty accordingly.) horikhoson (to tselbukhe): Now, in the documents you brought me yesterday, wasn’t there a ten-thousand-signature petition? tselbukhe: Yes, it was a petition on behalf of Guan Hanqing. I reviewed it and it does indeed contain more than ten thousand names. The appeal was written in sincere and moving language; that’s why I ventured to bring it to Your Lordship’s attention. horikhoson: Yes, a fine piece of writing, all right, but the signatories are a bunch of insignificant townspeople and country bumpkins. If the ministry started taking petitions from the common people seriously, there would be no end to it. tselbukhe: According to my review, the petitioners aren’t just common city folk and peasants. They include such celebrities as Wang Shifu, Yang Xianzhi, Wang Heqing, and others. You are to be congratulated on the fact that these gentlemen would endorse a ten-thousand- signature petition addressed to Your Lordship. (Rises and bows with his hands clasped together) For twenty-two years, Akham savagely tyrannized the people, and they, though enraged, dared not air their grievances. Now that Akham has seen his demise and his position is occupied by Your Lordship, the first thing to materialize is a ten-thousand-signature petition. It’s obvious that the people revere Your Lordship. Moreover, the petitioners don’t ask for much. It’s only the release of a script writer and two actresses. Your Lordship could magnanimously grant their request and use it as an opportunity to win over the public while letting Akham take the blame for all the rest. His Majesty would be pleased with this approach, too. horikhoson: There is truth to your words. I must say that I know about all three of them, too—Guan Hanqing, Zhu Lianxiu, and Sai Lianxiu. Guan Hanqing once prescribed medicine for me, and I have seen his plays as well. And when Akham threatened to have him put to death, I even personally intervened. However, Lord Bor feels that the rebellious tendencies of men like Wang Zhu, who were so reckless as to conspire to slay a state minister, must be nipped in the bud. He maintains that Guan Hanqing, whose crime is the propagation of inflammatory literature against the authorities, must be dealt with severely. Seeing how adamant he is, I feel I have no choice but to yield to his views. tselbukhe: But Wang Zhu’s case was a military matter, whereas Guan Hanqing’s offense is civilian in nature and hence strictly within the jurisdiction of the chancellery. horikhoson: I am not about to get into a dispute with Bor and the rest over something like this. That’s why I rejected that ten-thousand-signature petition. But then the most peculiar thing happened. tselbukhe: What happened, Your Lordship? horikhoson (in a low voice): I rejected that petition twice and twice it reappeared on my desk. Isn’t that strange?

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tselbukhe: I should say so! But such incidents are known to have happened to good judges in the past, too, such as Judge Bao. Where was the petition before Your Lordship last left the office? horikhoson: I put it right here—I’m positive. (Glances through the files in the tray) What! Gone! (Hastens to search his desk, greatly astonished) Good heavens! Here it is again! tselbukhe: Aha! That reminds me; the petition refers to Guan Hanqing as a native son of Puzhou. horikhoson: Then, could it be? . . . (He looks up at the portrait of Guan Yu shrouded in smoke rising from the incense burner.) (Lights out.)

S CE NE 12 (At Lugou Bridge, not far from Cambaluc. It is also called Marco Polo Bridge by some people, because the Italian, Marco Polo, who served under Kublai Khan, mentioned the structure in his writings. Actually the bridge was built some eighty-eight years before the arrival of Marco Polo at Kublai Khan’s court and represents the monumental craftsmanship of Chinese working people. It had nothing to do with Marco Polo. The stone railings on each side are decorated with exquisitely carved lions, more than a hundred of them in various poses. At the head of the bridge is a pavilion and a row of willow trees. Under the bridge, the river is swollen with spring floods. This is where the southbound highway begins and where the people of Cambaluc come to bid travelers farewell. Two old peasants, one carrying a hoe over his shoulder, the other with a plow, come across the bridge from one end and are greeted by a young peasant, who, plow in hand, is heading the other direction.) young peasant: Uncle Zhou, Uncle Liu, are you done for the day? peasant zhou: Pretty much. young peasant: Old folks shouldn’t work too hard, Uncle. peasant zhou: What else can I do? Thank heaven for my boy’s help. I only just managed to get my small plot back. So I have to work it. And you, young fellow, are you off to the fields? young peasant: No, I’m going to take a look at the flooding. (He crosses the bridge.) peasant liu (heaving a sigh): Last year a great drought and this year too much rain. One more flood and we’ll be done for. peasant zhou: You ought to be glad you keep a small tavern in town, and that you have so capable a wife. peasant liu: But I constantly worry with her in the city. You saw what happened!

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peasant zhou: You think that sort of thing doesn’t happen in the countryside, too, these days? Why, over there in Cui Village the other day, wasn’t old man Hu’s daughter abducted by a tuluhun?50 peasant liu: Tell me about it. It makes no difference—town or country. Heaven alone knows when we people will enjoy a few days of peace again. peasant zhou (putting his hoe on the ground): I’m beat. How about stopping here for a smoke? peasant liu (laying down his plow): Sure, let’s have a rest. (They strike a flint to light their pipes.) young peasant (suddenly returning): I forgot, Uncle Zhou, your new daughter-in-law has returned and her mother is with her. Auntie Zhou wanted me to tell you. I forgot to tell you just now. (Having delivered the message, he goes on his way.) peasant zhou: Much obliged. (To peasant liu) Your daughter is back. Let’s go. peasant liu: What’s the big hurry? She’s your daughter-in-law now. Let’s finish our pipes. peasant zhou: All right. (They sit down face-to-face, smoking. Enter wang heqing and his servants. They start to unpack a case they have brought with them, putting cups, saucers, bowls, and chopsticks on the stone table in the pavilion. Around the table are seven or eight stone chairs. There are also stone stools between the stone pillars. The servants are tidying up the place. yang xianzhi enters and greets wang heqing.) yang xianzhi: Good day, Heqing! wang heqing: Why, it’s you, Xianzhi. Have you just arrived? yang xianzhi: No, I got here a while ago. I went to Wanping to see a friend. Are you here to see Hanqing off, too? Didn’t you used to argue with him all the time? Ha, ha! wang heqing: I certainly did. But it looks like I’ll have to carry on our arguments alone, now that Guan Hanqing is going away. Heaven knows what will happen next. (When he hears the name guan hanqing, peasant liu rushes over anxiously.) peasant liu: Excuse me, sir. Has something happened to Guan Hanqing? wang heqing: Well, old man! Even you know who Guan Hanqing is? peasant liu: Who doesn’t? Everybody in Cambaluc has seen his plays. peasant zhou: In his play Lord Guan Goes to the Feast, Guan Hanqing depicts the hero in a way worthy of his illustrious ancestor. I even saw him act onstage himself. In his younger days, he used to come to our village to perform quite often. I knew then that this young fellow would one day be the best around. Well, isn’t he the best playwright today? peasant liu (to wang heqing): Sir, has anything happened to Guan Hanqing? I heard he’d been sentenced to death, is it true? Good men like him in Cambaluc are few and far between. Why can’t they just let him live a bit longer and write great plays? I must say the ways of the world are mighty strange. Damn it! “Good men die young while bad guys live on and on.”

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wang heqing: You needn’t worry anymore, my friend. Guan Hanqing’s death sentence has been commuted to exile. We are waiting here to bid him farewell. peasant liu: What’s that? Guan Hanqing is coming this way? He’s still alive? He’s about to leave us? wang heqing: Indeed. peasant liu (picking up his plow and turning to peasant zhou): Hey, let’s get going. (They set out at once.) wang heqing (moved): Well, I concede defeat! yang xianzhi: What for, Heqing? wang heqing: Well, in arguments and banter, I could always outtalk Hanqing. But today I’ve found out that in befriending the common people and winning public opinion, I trail far behind, so I concede I am the loser. (Enter liang jinzhi, a great composer and physician, and wang shifu, a noted dramatist. wang heqing and yang xianzhi go up to greet them.) liang jinzhi: Xianzhi and Heqing, you two must have arrived here quite early. yang xianzhi: No, we just got here. wang heqing (to wang shifu): I hear you haven’t been well. Are you sure you can take this wind coming off the river? wang shifu: Coming out for a stroll is not a problem; it’s writing that makes my head ache. Yesterday I received a letter from my son and learned that Hanqing was leaving for the south. I set out in the dead of night to make sure I’d get here in time to see him off. But my donkey was in no hurry and I didn’t think I’d make it. Fortunately everything has turned out all right. wang heqing: I can’t help reciting those brilliant lines of yours: “Up in the blue sky the clouds travel high, and the earth is littered with yellowed flowers. The westerly wind sharpens, and the wild geese hurry south.” 51 Although the present season is one of greening willows and blue rippling waters, the spring is at the mercy of autumn, and the northern wild geese have begun migrating south. wang shifu: A most unexpected turn of events. Cases of writers being persecuted are not unprecedented, to be sure. And I must say in our own time it has been Hanqing who has been victimized in the worst conceivable way. The second time I sent my son over to take him some things, the prison refused to accept them. At the time I feared I would never see him again. Then, all of a sudden, the case was relaxed. Why? Could it have been because they overturned the Wang Zhu case? wang heqing: I think so. Thanks to something His Majesty said, all cases in which Akham had a hand were relaxed. The imperial censor, Lord Bai Dong, has been released. Hanqing and Zhu Lianxiu, who very nearly lost their heads, also had their sentences reduced. Otherwise, we’d be seeing them off at the execution ground. wang shifu: Xie Xiaoshan came by soliciting my endorsement of a ten-thousandsignature petition. I signed my name. But I wonder if it was ever presented. yang xianzhi: Yes, that’s right. We all signed, and helped draft the petition. If it was submitted, it ought to have had some effect, I’m sure.

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liang jinzhi: What I can’t understand is this. If it’s true that Akham deserved to be put to death, that Wang Zhu did the right thing, and that the denunciations in Dou E are all justified, then why hasn’t Hanqing been acquitted and released? Why does he have to be banished? yang xianzhi: Don’t forget the laws of the present dynasty. Admittedly, Wang Zhu was justified in assassinating Akham, but it’s still a crime for a Han to kill a Mongolian or a Semu. By the same token, Hanqing was justified in denouncing Akham and his son. But a verbal attack against the authorities itself is an offense. I’ve heard that Hanqing’s sentence was commuted to exile only because of his fame as a scholar. wang shifu: Now I see. (guan hanqing arrives in travel attire under the escort of two prison guards, wang neng and li wu. guan zhong, carrying the baggage across his shoulders, follows in the rear.) wang neng: We’ve reached Lugou Bridge. Let’s rest. Brother Li, keep an eye out. I’m going to make a trip into town. li wu: All right. Go ahead. Nothing can go wrong here. (Exit wang neng.) li wu (glancing at the pavilion): Guan Hanqing, go ahead and relax. Your friends are here to see you off. (wang heqing and the party hurry up to extend their greetings.) wang heqing: Hanqing, come over here and sit with us. (To the escort) You certainly need a break, too, after such a tiring journey. li wu: I’m quite all right, thank you. (He steps aside and stands watch from a distance.) liang jinzhi (to guan hanqing): Big Brother, in this package are some new clothes and an ample supply of brushes and paper so that you can write letters or compose poetry on your journey. yang xianzhi (to guan hanqing): We have also procured two fine horses for you. guan hanqing: Thank you very much. (Notices wang shifu) Look who’s here! Shifu, you shouldn’t have gone to such trouble. wang shifu: What a thing to say to an old friend! You have suffered bitterly. I hope your health hasn’t been ruined. guan hanqing: Well, I’m still alive. But I very nearly never saw any of you people again. wang shifu: It certainly was a stroke of good luck that the Wang Zhu case was overturned so quickly. wang heqing: I was just saying how we much prefer seeing you off here than at the execution ground. guan hanqing (smiling): Well, I didn’t think I would come out alive myself. I even wrote a farewell letter to my mother. Jinzhi, it would still be best to keep the news from her until I’ve arrived safely in the south. Then I’ll write to her again myself.

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liang jinzhi: Fine. As far as your household affairs are concerned, you may set your mind at ease. Xianzhi and I will take care of everything. yang xianzhi: My home is near yours. I promise to look after your mother. guan hanqing: Please do. I am immensely grateful (Takes out a letter and hands it to wang shifu) I wrote you this note in prison. I thought it was to be my last. wang shifu (takes the letter and reads it eagerly): So, even in prison you were fretting over my Tale of the Western Chamber. Your suggestions are excellent. I’ll make the changes accordingly. As a matter of fact, I wanted to work on the play but had to put it off because I’ve been in such poor health. But I couldn’t agree more that one’s writings are of greater consequence than life itself. A man’s life is only so long, but his writing carries on into perpetuity . . . So I’ll get to work on the revisions without delay, you can be sure. I understand the play is now being staged in the south, too. Do let me know what you think once you’ve seen it. wang heqing (looking into the distance): Hey! It’ll be performed right here at Lugou Bridge today, too. wang shifu (doesn’t follow): Where? wang heqing: Look, isn’t that caravan over there coming to stage act 4 of The Tale of the Western Chamber?52 (Recites) “My eyes are fastened on the pavilion post ten li out, and I grow thinner with each passing day, but who knows of this agony and gnawing pang?” Now aren’t these lines perfect for the present scene? (Some distance away zhu lianxiu and sai lianxiu can be seen approaching. sai lianxiu, her empty eye sockets covered up by a white silk band, is being led by qian shuaqiao and the maidservant, xianggui. The entertainment house procuress brings up the rear.) liang jinzhi: Aha. Our very own “Yingying!” has arrived (There is a peal of laughter.) guan hanqing (in a deeply sympathetic voice): Good heavens! Sai Lianxiu has come along, too! The poor child! (zhu lianxiu, in new clothes, looks more beautiful than ever. She greets everybody, then goes straight up to guan hanqing.) zhu lianxiu (with a certain measure of anger): Why didn’t you tell me you were leaving? guan hanqing: The warden delivered my sentence and bade me leave without delay. I requested that you be notified only to find out that you had been released the previous day. But I wrote you a note and had Guan Zhong deliver it to your residence. Didn’t you receive it? zhu lianxiu: I did not. No doubt the house manager thought I’d run away. (After a moment’s thought, in a determined tone as though having reached some decision) But never mind. (Hands a parcel to guan hanqing) This is from Sai Lianxiu. guan hanqing (taking the parcel in a solemn manner, to sai lianxiu): Thank you ever so much, Little Second Sister. I’m flattered that you should come such a long way to see me off. Do your eyes still hurt? sai lianxiu: Yes, but there’s been some improvement.

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guan hanqing: What can I say to comfort you? You are a brave woman. As long as I live, you may count on my help. The same goes for my friends. wang shifu: That’s right, Sai Lianxiu, although you’ve lost your sight, you’ve gained many new friends. wang heqing: Shifu is absolutely right. We are all your friends and you can count on our help. Don’t despair. sai lianxiu: Thank you all for your concern. I don’t feel bad. I asked them to hang my eyeballs on the city wall so that I could see Akham’s demise, and it came to pass a lot sooner than I’d expected. guan hanqing: Yes, and his punishment was immensely gratifying to us all. (To qian shuaqiao) Qian Shuaqiao, you take very good care of Little Second Sister now. You mustn’t drink like you used to. qian shuaqiao: Master Guan, don’t worry. I gave up drinking after she was imprisoned. Soon we’ll be married, and I promise to be a good husband and take very good care of her. guan hanqing: Wonderful! I know you’re a man with a good heart and you deserve Little Second Sister’s love. zhu lianxiu: Sai Lianxiu has considerable ambitions. She wants you to write more plays like Dou E and says she can perform in them even without her sight. She wouldn’t be the first to make a name for herself as a blind actress, would she? wang heqing: Of course not. No disability can stop an ambitious artist. Besides, she was a fine actress to begin with. guan hanqing: Little Second Sister, I promise to continue writing, in spite of the fact that, when I was released, the warden warned me to steer clear of traitors and slanderers in my future plays. zhu lianxiu: And what did you say to that? guan hanqing: I told him that the day China was free of traitors and slanderers, I would cease to write about them. Then he said, “Isn’t Akham dead already?” “Well,” I replied, “Akham may be dead, but can you be sure that there won’t be a second or third Akham?” zhu lianxiu: Good for you, Hanqing. wang heqing: You’re right, Hanqing. guan hanqing: The warden went on, “In view of your stubbornness,” he said, “I wouldn’t be surprised if you were back here again tomorrow. To tell you the truth, quite a few of the imperial laws and ordinances were designed for men like you. Mark my word, sooner or later your head will roll.” I said, “Who’s to say? But I hope you won’t mind my bothering you again, when the time comes.” The warden was quite amused. (Everybody bursts into laughter.) wang heqing: Someone once discovered these lines on a prison wall: “You’re not a real man if you’ve never been here before, and those who are back for a second time are true heroes.” I propose that we present Hanqing with these words as our farewell message.

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(Everybody laughs. mistress liu, peasant liu, and erniu, in her best clothes, rush upon the scene.) mistress liu: Master Guan, Master Guan, at last I see you again. guan hanqing: Who’s this? Why, it’s you, Mistress Liu! How are you? (Turns his eyes to erniu) And this young lady? erniu: Uncle Guan, once again you don’t recognize me? Can’t you see I’m the same Erniu whom you rescued? mistress liu: As soon as Erniu came back to us, I made arrangements for her wedding. We all owe you a huge debt of gratitude. (To her daughter) Erniu, aren’t you going to pay your respects to Uncle Guan? (erniu sinks to her knees and starts to kowtow immediately.) guan hanqing (hastening to make erniu rise to her feet): Please, Erniu. I didn’t recognize you because of your new clothes. You folks make me feel exceedingly guilty, coming all this way just to see me off. mistress liu: Stop! We’d have come no matter how great the distance. I told you before—remember?—my son-in-law’s family lives right here in Wanping Village, and my old man works his land here, too. Well, Erniu came down today from Cambaluc to visit her father and her husband’s parents, and I tagged along. Erniu’s mother-inlaw and I were chitchatting about housekeeping when the old man came by to tell me there were some folks at the bridge waiting to see Master Guan off and he wanted me to go over and have a look. And lo and behold here you are! Erniu and I went to the prison quite a few times, but we were never allowed in to see you. It had us worried to death. My old man kept saying never in our whole lives could we forget the great kindness you did us. peasant liu (cups his hands together as a gesture of respect): Allow me, Master Guan. I’m just an old peasant, and I really don’t know how to thank you properly . . . Erniu is my life. But for you, I would have lost her. mistress liu: Later it was rumored that you and Fourth Sister Zhu had been sentenced to death. I would run out to the street every time I heard a prisoner’s cart passing by and would only relax again after seeing that none of the condemned looked like either of you. But then someone told me that a lot of prisoners are tortured to death right there in jail. I had Erniu’s husband make inquiries from time to time. I’m sure if he hears the news of your departure today, he’ll be over in a flash. erniu: Master Xie came to us with a ten-thousand-signature petition the other day. My mother and I both put our fingerprints on it. He told me later that it was finally presented by a Mongol secretary. guan hanqing: Many thanks to all of you. Without your help, we never would have been released. mistress liu: All’s well that ends well . . . It will do you good, Master Guan, to go down south for a rest. But now that Madame Guan has passed away, who is going to take care of you so far from home? I can’t help worrying about you, really. (Turns to zhu lianxiu) Fourth Sister Zhu, you have my greatest admiration. Your spirit is rare

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even among men. Pardon me for speaking my mind so bluntly, but I honestly believe that you and Master Guan would make an ideal couple. Why aren’t you going with him? guan hanqing: Now, Mistress Liu. I’m afraid you don’t know what you’re talking about. wang heqing: Ha, ha, ha! I should say Mistress Liu is absolutely right. Why, it would be perfect, if it could be arranged. liang jinzhi: It so happens we have two horses here. (zhu lianxiu is speechless.) wang heqing: Fourth Sister is usually so self- confident. Why so bashful all of a sudden? (There is a peal of laughter.) zhu lianxiu: How I wish I could go with Master Guan. But would they allow me? yang xianzhi: True. Lianxiu has a point. Under the laws of the present dynasty, actresses can only be wedded to musicians or actors; they’re forbidden to marry scholars or sons of good families. wang heqing (rubbing his hands as a gesture of resignation): There’s the difficulty. wang shifu: Hanqing is known in the drama world far and wide and he’s well versed in music. Quite often he performs onstage himself; he sings, he dances—there’s nothing he can’t do. He’s what you would call a multitalented entertainer and actor; actually he has every qualification to marry Fourth Sister. But there’s still the fact that entertainers and actresses are forbidden to ride horses. Violators are punished by law; their horses turned over to whoever apprehended them. Now, in order to be able to travel by horse with Hanqing, Lianxiu would first have to renounce her status as an actress. But there’s no time for that. liang jinzhi: Heavens! So many restrictions! guan hanqing: Fourth Sister, haven’t you gained your freedom? zhu lianxiu: You call that freedom? I’m under strict supervision at the brothel. guan hanqing: Strict? zhu lianxiu (nodding): Yes, strict. It’s nothing new. I’ve been under strict supervision from the day I was first taken there. The time will come when, like that butterfly you wrote about, I shall fly, fly, fly away to wherever you are. (Her voice chokes with emotion.) guan hanqing: Now that I think about it, in prison we could still see each other and we could still have our heart-to-heart talks. But once we part ways today, heaven knows when we shall meet again. zhu lianxiu: Come, come, Hanqing. (To yang xianzhi and wang heqing) Master Yang and Master Wang, can’t you talk them (pointing at the escort) into letting Hanqing stay another half day? yang xianzhi: What for? zhu lianxiu: Well, right before we were supposed to be executed, Hanqing urged me to write to Prime Minister Bayan’s mother to plead for clemency, but I didn’t. This

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time, however, when I learned of Hanqing’s departure, I did send her a letter through Superintendent He. I instructed Yan Shanxiu and her husband to stay home to await her reply. (yang xianzhi walks over to the escort, li wu.) yang xianzhi: What do you say? Would it be all right to let Guan Hanqing stay a half day longer? li wu: It’s fine by me, sir. But by imperial orders, we are to proceed without delay and make no stops. We ought to be leaving right away, sir. (wang heqing walks over, grabs li wu’s hand, and presses a silver piece into the hollow of his palm.) wang heqing: Look here, can’t you do us all a favor? You don’t have to report everything, you know. li wu: Very well, sir. Let me go and have a talk with my partner. He went into town and hasn’t come back yet. (He sets out in the direction of the town.) wang heqing: We’ve prepared wine and food. Let’s have a farewell party for Hanqing. yang xianzhi (raising his wine cup): Brother Hanqing, parting here on this bridge is indeed a sad occasion. But given all that has transpired, your departure is certainly better than what might have been. Your destination, Hangzhou, is a scenic spot, famous for its lake and hills. People refer to it as a paradise on earth. Moreover, it was the last stretch of the Song empire to be taken over by the Yuan dynasty. I’m sure the place will arouse all sorts of emotions that will inspire your poetry. Allow me, therefore, to toast to your health and your literary success! guan hanqing (raising his cup): Thank you, Xianzhi. wang heqing (filling a cup and passing it to wang shifu): Please, Shifu. wang shifu (raising his cup with a heavy heart): What is there to say, Hanqing? Old acquaintances, one after another, are seen no more. Do take care of yourself. (His eyes are already filled with tears.) guan hanqing (downs his drink in one gulp): Shifu, take good care of yourself, too. liang jinzhi (raising his cup): Big Brother, good luck. Xianzhi and I will take care of your family. guan hanqing (drinking another cup): I’m counting on you. Please visit my mother as often as possible and do send word to my son. yang xianzhi: You can be sure we will, my friend. guan hanqing: In the future, I’ll no longer be able to seek your advice on my writing. yang xianzhi: You flatter me. Besides, I’ll come south to visit you. wang heqing (raising his cup): My dear old friend, once you leave, I shall have one less with whom to argue. I don’t know how I’ll fill the void. Think often of your hometown and of the Western Hills, of this day at Lugou Bridge, and of pals like us. Write us often. If you can’t, then at least curse us, so we can feel our ears burn. (Everybody laughs.)

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guan hanqing (drinking another cup): I promise. I hope you’ll write me, too. yang xianzhi: Of course, and I’ll definitely keep you informed about your mother. sai lianxiu (pulling qian shuaqiao by the sleeve): Fill me a cup, please. qian shuaqiao (handing her some wine): That’s right. Let us drink a toast to Master Guan, too. sai lianxiu: Master Guan, no matter where you end up, don’t abandon the voiceless common people or us women who feel wronged. I lost my eyes at the hands of a vicious, corrupt bureaucrat because I performed in your play. But did I give up after that? I can still sing, and I will still sing. As long as I have even a single spark of fire left in my singing, I will sleep in peace. Master Guan, the people want plays like Dou E, so please write more of them. Now, bottom’s up, please. guan hanqing (in one gulp, spiritedly): Little Second Sister, I will indeed. No matter where I go, you will never be far from my heart. You were maimed for denouncing vicious, corrupt bureaucrats. The people will never forget you. Your friends will hold you dear and Qian Shuaqiao will take good care of you. To your health, Little Second Sister. sai lianxiu: Take good care of yourself, Master Guan. qian shuaqiao: To your health, Master Guan. wang heqing: With all this speechmaking, we’ve forgotten the star of our Tale of the Western Chamber. I say it’s an outrage. Lianxiu, you’re up. zhu lianxiu: I’m sorry I don’t drink, and I don’t think we ought to make Hanqing drink too much either. I’ll sing Hanqing’s “The Intoxicating East Wind.” everyone: Splendid! (Takes the pipa xianggui hands to her and plays as she sings.) North and south, So near, yet so far, The moon wanes, The flowers fade All in a fleeting moment. I raise my cup, I hold my tears. But it’s hard to say “To your health!” Without a tremor in my heart. Adieu, nevertheless, A long future before you! (Before she can finish she breaks down.) guan hanqing: I wrote that on the spur of the moment and never imagined it would describe this day. Fourth Sister, do not despair. I haven’t forgotten the night you recited “A Pair of Butterflies.” zhu lianxiu: We will never say goodbye, we will be together always!

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(zhu lianxiu and guan hanqing embrace, weeping. wang neng, li wu, and a petty official rush in.) petty official: By imperial orders, Guan Hanqing shall leave the capital and be banished to Hangzhou without delay. (To everybody) Those who’ve come to see him off, please be on your way. wang heqing: Wait a moment. Zhu Lianxiu has sent a letter to Prime Minister Bayan’s mother. We would like to await Her Ladyship’s reply. petty official: That won’t change the situation. Guan Hanqing must leave the capital immediately. (To the entertainment house procuress) Take Zhu Lianxiu back. procuress: Yes, sir. (wang neng and li wu try to separate guan hanqing and zhu lianxiu. The entertainment house procuress joins forces by pulling zhu lianxiu away.) zhu lianxiu: No, I can’t leave him. procuress: What’s the matter with you? Didn’t you promise to behave? Come home with me at once! zhu lianxiu: I made no such promise. For the life of me, I won’t go back! (The brothel manager, accompanied by a subordinate, arrives and confers with the petty official in whispers.) petty official: Well, Zhu Lianxiu, the manager is here. brothel manager: Listen, Zhu Lianxiu, you go back right now. There’s a show this evening. They’ve requested that you perform The Cunning Maid. Now, hurry back and rehearse, do you hear? zhu lianxiu: I won’t go. brothel manager: Lianxiu, you listen to me. I knew there would be trouble, so I rushed all the way out here myself. Yan Shanxiu and her husband would have come, but I didn’t let them because they would have bungled the matter. Now go back. zhu lianxiu: I asked Yan Shanxiu to wait for a reply to my letter. Why didn’t you let them come? brothel manager: A reply? Ha, ha, ha! You mean a reply from Madame Bayan? Superintendent He wanted me to inform you: Her Ladyship has left for Xanadu and finds it inconvenient to write back. zhu lianxiu (with disappointment): She went to Xanadu? brothel manager: There, there, Number Four, don’t be foolish. Even if she were in Cambaluc, she wouldn’t have been able to write back. You’re on parole, and by imperial orders you have been placed under our strict supervision. How can we possibly allow you to run off with some man? I tell you, it’s only because the powerful have taken a fancy to your performances that we’ve treated you differently. Don’t be so stubborn. zhu lianxiu: You heard what I said. I won’t go back for the life of me! brothel manager: You won’t, eh? And just where do you think you’ll go? The great empire of the Yuan has unified the realm. Dare you violate the laws of the state? (Puts on a stern face) Now, go back at once! zhu lianxiu: No! brothel manager: Since you refuse to listen, well—come, just put her on the wagon!

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(His subordinate comes to drag her away. She makes a dash for the bridge, but her attempt to jump over is thwarted by wang heqing and others.) guan hanqing (shouting): Fourth Sister! sai lianxiu: Teacher! wang heqing (furiously): Are you people trying to force her to take her life? procuress: She’s on parole. Think you could take responsibility for her? (While they argue the sound of hooves can be heard and a horse comes racing up. zhou fuxiang dismounts.) zhou fuxiang: Are there a Scholar Guan and a Fourth Sister Zhu present? mistress liu: Son-in-law, this is Master Guan and Fourth Sister Zhu. zhou fuxiang: I present Prime Minister Horikhoson’s proclamation: Guan Hanqing is a first-rate writer who dared stand up against powerful traitors. Even though he is to be exiled from Cambaluc in accordance with the law, he is still recognized as the leader of the literary world. Zhu Lianxiu is an outstanding actress, but I grant her permission to give up her classification as a performer and accompany Guan Hanqing to the south. She is not to be detained en route. (After reading the document, he hands it to zhu lianxiu.) zhu lianxiu: My goodness! Thank you, Prime Minister. zhou fuxiang (approaches guan hanqing): Master Guan, I finally caught up with you. My wife and I will never forget your tremendous kindness to us. Well, I must hurry back to report to the prime minister. Bon voyage! erniu: Will you be home tomorrow night? zhou fuxiang: Yes! Goodbye, Father and Mother-in-Law. Master Guan, Fourth Sister, farewell. (zhou fuxiang mounts his horse and gallops off.) wang heqing (to the brothel manager): Well, looks like you should head back. You’ll have to get someone else for tonight’s show. brothel manager (to the entertainment house procuress): Let’s be on our way! procuress: Yes, yes. Sai Lianxiu, Xianggui, come on! xianggui: Fourth Sister, bon voyage! sai lianxiu: Teacher, your departure fills me with joy as well as sorrow. Have you any final words of advice for us? zhu lianxiu: Leaving you all makes me sad, too. Take good care of yourself. Second Sister, we will write often. Please send my regards to Yan Shanxiu and her husband, as well as to the children there. Tell them to be good and to study hard. sai lianxiu: I will, but I can’t bear to part with you, Teacher, and I can’t bear to part with Master Guan. I don’t know if I’ll ever hear your voices again. Let me too sing from “The Intoxicating East Wind” as a farewell song. (qian shuaqiao hands her a pipa.) The horse and cart are so far away, Teacher and disciples wane like the moon

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And fade like the flowers. How can we talk about a farewell banquet, When all I have are blood and tears? Only when dark clouds gather do We know how precious the brightness is. We must sing to the end, so please send us more plays! zhu lianxiu: You’re right, Second Sister, we must sing to the end, fight to the end, and brighter days will come. guan hanqing (calmly): I will continue to write plays and I will send them to you, you have my word, Second Sister. yang xianzhi (to wang heqing, liang jinzhi, and the others): In my view, this scene here today does not resemble The Tale of the Western Chamber so much as “Bidding Farewell to Lord Jing on the Banks of the Yishu.” wang heqing: Our contentious friend has no place for his talents. yang xianzhi (to wang shifu): Come on, Mr. Shifu, let’s do one. (They whisper. The petty official comes over.) petty official: Guan Hanqing, it’s time you were on your way (The escorts and guan hanqing all pick up their luggage.) yang xianzhi: I suppose Lianxiu can now go by horse as well. wang heqing: That’s right. Your messenger did his job well. (Gives both escorts some money) Please take good care of them both on the journey. wang neng and li wu: We will. (To guan hanqing and zhu lianxiu) Please mount your horses. (From a distance, xie xiaoshan and yumei come rushing forward. The pouch of flutes yumei carries swings back and forth.) xie xiaoshan: Slow down, wait for us. Our cart broke down halfway and so we had to run on foot. guan hanqing (runs over): Aiya, Xiaoshan, Yumei, I am truly grateful. Xiaoshan is not a young man anymore, how could you make him run all this way? xie xiaoshan: The members of the literary society had a letter for you but didn’t have time to get it to you, so they entrusted it to me. guan hanqing: Please convey my gratitude. We will always be together in our work. Yumei, you must be exhausted lugging all those flutes. yumei: You know the saying, “The warrior never leaves his sword, the writer never leaves his pen, the beauty never leaves her flowers, and the musician never leaves his flute.” guan hanqing: You couldn’t have put it better. But having run all this way, what if you can’t play? yumei: Being unable to play is not as bad as having nothing to play on. Be sure to write a lot of good work for us. wang shifu: Hanqing, Fourth Sister Zhu, we just talked it over; we’d like to invite our Flute King to accompany us as we sing yet another verse of “The Intoxicating East Wind.”

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everyone (singing in unison): Why lament that the distance is so great, Why mourn the waning of the moon And the fading of flowers? Clear up the goodbye cups, Dry the farewell tears And have our blessings as you fly away together as one. (During this, wang neng and li wu have helped guan hanqing and zhu lianxiu mount their horses.) everyone (singing in unison): As you fly toward the enchanting scenery in Jiangnan We hope you won’t forget the desolate gates you have left behind. (Riding slowly across Lugou Bridge they turn back to wave reluctantly to the send-off party. The escorts and guan zhong follow. sai lianxiu, facing their direction, raises her arm and shouts, “Teacher, Master Guan, farewell!” Suddenly she is overwhelmed by sorrow and tears stream from her hollowed- out eyes. qian shuaqiao quickly takes hold of her arm, “You mustn’t.”) (Curtain.)

Not es

1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

This is the first complete English translation of Tian Han’s play according to the 1958 edition (reprinted in Tian Han quan ji [The Complete Works of Tian Han] [Shijiazhuang: Huashan wenyi, 2000]). An earlier English translation, published in 1961 by Foreign Languages Press, was based on the 1960 version of the play, which contains an alternative ending in the final act. Tian Han reportedly rewrote the ending as a tragedy as a result of political pressure at the time. The translation in this anthology was done with reference to the original translation but restores omitted lines and reflects an overall more idiomatic style. The majority of original endnotes from the 1961 translation have been retained but revised. Lord Alihaiya was a Uighur general who served under Kublai Khan. Lin’an, present- day Hangzhou, was the capital of the Southern Song dynasty. Lord Khoshin was Akham’s eldest son. With his father’s influence, he became governor of Dadu province (in modern Hebei) and prefect of Daxing (near Beijing). Umbrellas bearing the names of ten thousand subscribers were presented to popular officials. Semu (Colored Eyes) refers to the national minorities in China’s northwest, who had been conquered by the Mongols. They included the Hui, the Uighur, and the Tanguts. Khoshin was a Uighur. During the Yuan dynasty, the population was divided into four grades; at the top were the Mongols, who held official positions; next came the Semu;

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6. 7. 8.

9.

10.

11.

12.

13. 14. 15.

16. 17.

T i a n Ha n

the Han people inhabiting the northern part of China occupied earlier by the Mongols came third; the last were the Hans in southern China, who came under Mongol rule after the Song dynasty fell. This is a derogatory term for the Hans and “southerners.” “Lao” (literally, old) is a familiar form of address. In Yuan drama, melodies followed rigid rules. Typically a play would be divided into four acts, each having a melody belonging to one gong or diao denoting the musical pitch. The different gong and diao and the way they are sung express different ideas and emotions. Nan lu gong expresses lamentation and sorrow; zheng gong, melancholy but prowess; ban she diao, mixed feelings or subdued sadness. Entitled “Yi zhi hua” (A Flower), the ballad contains a verse describing the rolling up of the screen. Guan Hanqing dedicates this ballad to Zhu Lianxiu, whose name translates literally as Pearl-Screen Elegance. Tradition has it that, in the Yuan dynasty, the Hans and the “southerners” were graded into ten social classes: (1) high officials, (2) lower officials, (3) Buddhist priests, (4) Taoist priests, (5) physicians, (6) manual workers, (7) artisans, (8) courtesans, (9) Confucian scholars, and (10) beggars. In this tragicomedy by Guan Hanqing, Mrs. Wang’s husband is killed by a vicious nobleman, Ge Biao, and her three sons avenge their father by killing the murderer. When the case comes to court, Judge Bao (999–1062), known in Chinese history as a fair and honest judge, pronounces that the youngest and cleverest boy, Wang Shihe, should die. Secretly, however, he arranges to have another criminal who has been sentenced to death take the boy’s place, thus bringing about the happy reunion of mother and children (Yang Hsien-yi and Gladys Yang, trans., Selected Plays of Guan Hanqing [Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1958], 79–105). Li Kui is one of the 108 heroes of Liangshanbo in the traditional novel Shui hu zhuan (The Water Margin, or All Men Are Brothers), which describes the peasant uprising against the Song dynasty rulers. Before the uprising, Song Jiang, the leader, is arrested and sentenced to death in Jiangzhou. Li Kui and the other heroes storm the execution ground and rescue him. “Black Whirlwind” is the nickname given to Li Kui to indicate his uncouth ways and brave character. The villains are in three of Guan Hanqing’s plays: The Riverside Pavilion, The Butterfly Dream, and The Wife-Snatcher, respectively. Lord Xu Heng, a Han Chinese, served the Yuan court as an adviser. During Kublai Khan’s reign, he and Akham had political differences. Zhao Mengfu (1251–1322), a descendant of the Song imperial family, became an imperial academician after surrendering to the Yuan rulers. A well-known scholar, painter, and calligrapher, he is said to have been responsible for the statement falsely ascribed to Guan. These are the female leads in four plays by Guan Hanqing: Rescued by a Coquette, The Riverside Pavilion, The Prayer to the Moon, and The Cunning Maid. This is an incident from the Shui hu zhuan in which Li Kui hears the malicious rumor that Song Jiang, his leader, has forcibly abducted a woman. Furious, he denounces Song. Upon discovering his mistake he goes to apologize to Song, carrying a stick on his back to indicate that he is prepared to be flogged.

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18. In Lord Guan Goes to the Feast, Guan Yu, loyal general and sworn brother of King Liu Bei during the time of the Three Kingdoms (220–280), shows his magnificent courage and heroic stature when he attends a feast in the enemy’s camp and returns unscathed, having overawed his foes. 19. In this play, the character Wenqiao (288–329), an academician of the Jin dynasty, invites his widowed aunt and her eighteen-year- old daughter to live with him in the capital. When he falls in love with his beautiful cousin, he cannot ask for her hand openly, as he is so much older than she. In the name of another, younger man, he proposes marriage and presents a jade mirror stand as a betrothal gift. Only on the wedding day does the bride discover who the bridegroom is and protest. Eventually, he wins her over with his literary talent. 20. In this play, a lawless scoundrel named Lu Zhailang abducts other men’s wives by force. He first snatches a silversmith’s wife, then the wife of a petty official, thus breaking up two happy homes. Judge Bao has the villain executed and the families reunited. 21. Having recognized Guan Hanqing, Autumn Swallow is actually uttering his surname. Since guan can also mean “to close” in Chinese, Spring Cuckoo mishears her. 22. The term used here, zhongtongchao, refers to the paper currency of the Yuan dynasty. 23. This is a fictitious Mongol aristocrat and ruler. 24. Bianjing is present- day Kaifeng, in Henan province. 25. In this play, General Li Ziyuan, of the Later Tang dynasty (923– 936), adopts a boy on a hunting trip. Eighteen years later the boy is reunited with his mother. The story is an intricate one and in content similar to Baitu ji (The White Rabbit), a popular opera of southern China during the Yuan dynasty 26. In the play Dou E, Doctor Lu tries to strangle the old woman when she presses him to repay her loan. 27. Wen Tianxiang (1236–1282) commanded troops resisting the Mongol invasion of southern China. After he was captured by the enemy, he refused to swear his allegiance to the new regime and was finally executed in the capital. The quotation cited above is from “Zheng qi ge” (Song of Righteousness Prevailing), which he wrote in prison. 28. Bayan (1236–1294) served under Kublai Khan as a military commander and as prime minister. 29. Bor was Kublai Khan’s right-hand man, in charge of military affairs. After Akham was assassinated, he and Horikhoson were ordered to suppress the rebellion. 30. Also known as Xu Shilong (1204–1283), Xu Weiqing was a Han Chinese. In the early Yuan dynasty he was an expositor at the Hanlin Academy. He was responsible for drafting many imperial edicts and documents. He also wrote many volumes of literary and poetic works. 31. In this play by Yang Xianzhi, the scholar Cui Tong goes to the capital to sit for the imperial examination, marries the examiner’s daughter, and forsakes his first wife, Zhang Cuiluan. When Cuiluan goes in search of her husband, he refuses to recognize her, brutally beats her, and has her exiled to a border region. After many hardships she meets her father at the Riverside Inn. The father, then a high official, has Cui Tong brought to court for a trial. The son-in-law admits his guilt and husband and wife are reconciled.

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32. This play by Yang Xianzhi examines the breaking up of a home as a result of a marriage between a petty official and a courtesan. 33. The story of the filial daughter, Zhou Jing, of Donghai, is told in the biography of Yu Dingguo (Yu Gong’s son) in the Han shu (History of the Former Han), and also in the Soushen ji (In Search of the Supernatural), written by Gan Bao sometime in the fourth century. 34. In this play by Guan Hanqing, Song Yinzhang, a singsong girl, is tricked into marrying a profligate. When he ill treats her, she seeks the help of Zhao Pan’er, another singsong girl. Indignant at the injustice done to her friend, Pan’er feigns love for the villain and uses her beauty to lure him into divorcing Song Yinzhang. When the persecuted wife is free, Pan’er marries a scholar, leaving the profligate in the lurch (Yang and Yang, Selected Plays of Guan Hanqing, 106–29). 35. In this play by Guan Hanqing, the singsong girl Du Ruiniang falls in love with a scholar but is nearly prevented from marrying him as a result of the machinations of the house guardian, Mistress Du. The resulting misunderstanding between the lovers is eventually cleared by a friend, and the couple is reconciled. 36. In this play by Guan Hanqing, the villainous Lord Yang wants to take as his concubine Tan Ji’er, a beautiful widow who has recently married the official Bai Shizhong. Lord Yang attempts to ruin Bai by bringing false charges against him. Tan Ji’er disguises herself and steals the gold tally and sword of authority with which the heartless official means to kill her husband. She saves Bai’s life and teaches the villain a lesson (Yang and Yang, Selected Plays of Guan Hanqing, 130–52). 37. Zhuo Wenjun, the daughter of a rich man, eloped with the famous Han- dynasty scholar Sima Xiangru. Since they were poor, they ran a small tavern in Chengdu. 38. Meng Guang was the wife of Liang Hong, of the Later Han dynasty. She and her husband were known for their deep love and respect for each other. 39. Thousands of the men conscripted by Qin Shihuang, the first emperor of the Qin dynasty, died while building the Great Wall. According to legend Meng Jiangnü, the wife of one of those conscripts, wept so bitterly at the wall that part of it crumbled. 40. During the Spring and Autumn Period (770–476 b.c.), Wu Zixu fled from the state of Zhu to Wu. A woman washing by a river took pity on him and fed him. Upon leaving, he asked her not to tell his pursuers which way he had gone. To set his mind at rest she drowned herself. 41. This legendary woman, whose husband left to fight a great flood, climbed a hill every day to watch for his return, till at last she was transformed into a boulder. 42. This type of simple, impromptu performance usually took place in the open air, with a cast consisting of a hero, a heroine, and a clown. 43. In this famous play of the Song and Yuan dynasties, Wang Kui, a poor scholar, marries a kind singsong girl, Guiying. When he goes to the capital to sit for the imperial examination and succeeds in obtaining the first place, he marries the prime minister’s daughter and writes home to divorce his wife. Guiying is persecuted to death. Her spirit comes to take vengeance, and Wang Kui meets his deserved end. 44. For a complete English translation of the original Yuan play, see Chung-wen Shih, Injustice to Tou O (Tou O Yuan): A Study and Translation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972).

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45. Zou Yan, a loyal subject of the prince of Yan during the Warring States period (475–221 b.c.), was imprisoned after a sham trial. According to legend, a frost occurred in the summer. 46. Shangdu, or Xanadu, is near present- day Dolun county, Xilingol League, Inner Mongolian Autonomous Region. 47. Yue Fei (1103–1142) was a famous patriotic general of the Southern Song dynasty (1127– 1279) who resisted the Jurchen invaders. Qin Gui, then prime minister, collaborated with the enemy and advocated a truce. He plotted Yue Fei’s death. 48. Xieliang, Puzhou, is now Xiexian county, Shanxi province. According to the chronicles of the Yuan dynasty, Guan Hanqing was a native of Xieliang. By “my great heroic ancestor,” Guan Hanqing means Guan Yu, the famous patriotic general of the Three Kingdoms period, who was also born in Xieliang. In the traditional novel Sanguo yanyi (Romance of the Three Kingdoms), Guan Yu utters the lines cited here. Yu. 49. This song was written in classical style by the author of this play, Tian Han, in Guan Hanqing’s name. 50. Tuluhun, a Mongolian term, refers to a steward who serves a commander of one to ten thousand men. 51. This quotation is from The Tale of the Western Chamber, a drama attributed to Wang Shifu, Guan Hanqing’s contemporary. It portrays a love affair between Zhang Junrui, an impoverished young scholar, and Cui Yingying, daughter of the prime minister. Yingying’s mother separates the lovers by sending Junrui to sit for the imperial examinations. 52. Act 4 is the climax of The Tale of the Western Chamber, from which the quotation is taken.

The Young Generation (1965) Chen Yun T ransla ted by Consta ntine T u ng and K e v i n A. O’C onnor

C ha r a c t e rs xiao jiye 㨒⭢㮟 male, twenty-seven, graduate of the Geology College, member of a prospecting team grandma xiao 㨒ㅒㅒ, about seventy, retired factory worker, xiao jiye’s grandmother lin yusheng ⼢㲥㔶 male, twenty-four, graduate of the Geology College lin jian ⼢⭷, over fifty, lin yusheng’s foster father xia shujuan 㥴㗡⳼, over forty, lin jian’s wife and lin yusheng’s foster mother lin lan ⼢䚼, seventeen, soon to graduate from senior high school, lin jian and xia shujuan’s daughter xia qianru 㥴䃗㑥, twenty-three, xia shujuan’s niece, soon to graduate from the Geology College, has been living with the Lins li rongsheng ⹼ᔦ㔶, male, sixteen, an unemployed youth yao xiangming 㮐㦢タ, female, twenty-three, classmate of xia qianru’s zhou jie 㺾䩾, female, twenty-five, classmate of xia qianru’s students a, b, and various common people

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A CT 1 (Summer, just the time when graduating high school students are going to college or to work, and when college graduates are about to begin their careers. It is the time when young people are full of hope, passion, worries, and anxieties. It is a Saturday afternoon, in the small living room of the lins’ home in the suburbs of Shanghai. A staircase ascends to the upstairs; there is a window through which the audience can see the scenery of suburban Shanghai, with factories in the distant background. A large door opens to the outside, one door to the kitchen, and another to lin lan and xia qianru’s room. In the living room there are a sofa, dining table, and other things. The whole setting projects a feeling of simplicity and cleanliness. xiao jiye enters, carrying a backpack.) xiao jiye: Lin Yusheng! Lin Yusheng! (xia shujuan comes down the stairs.) xia shujuan: Who is it? xiao jiye: Hello, Auntie! xia shujuan: Xiao Jiye! What are you doing back? Are you on business? xiao jiye: Yes, I am, Auntie. Where’s Yusheng? xia shujuan: He went out. xiao jiye: How is he? xia shujuan: He’s been back for almost a year now, but his arthritis still gives him trouble quite often. Well, sit down! You young people! I hear that you’re doing a remarkable job. Have you turned up anything, looking for that ore? xiao jiye (smiling): Yes, there is a possibility that we have. xia shujuan: Well, that’s good. I really hope that you all can accomplish something, and do it soon, too. When your Uncle Lin came back this time, he asked after you. xiao jiye: Uncle Lin came back? xia shujuan: He came to Shanghai for a meeting. We Chinese have to stand up for ourselves; we can’t always be letting others insult us like before. You are all truly good models. (She gets a glass of water.) xiao jiye: No thank you, Auntie! xia shujuan: Oh, you haven’t been home yet, have you? Well, hurry up. You don’t know how happy your grandmother will be to see you! xiao jiye: When’s Yusheng coming back? xia shujuan: He’ll probably be back pretty soon. xiao jiye: I have something to see him about in a while. (He exits, xia shujuan following.) xia shujuan: Grandma Xiao! Grandma Xiao! Look who’s come back! (She exits. Presently lin yusheng enters, pushing a bicycle from which there hang two net bags and other things that he unties and removes.)

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lin yusheng (toward the outside): Bye-bye. (Shouts) Qianru! Qianru! (xia shujuan enters.) xia shujuan: She hasn’t come back yet. lin yusheng: Mom, are you back from work already? xia shujuan: I asked to leave early. lin yusheng: You’re not feeling well again. Mom, I’ve said before, don’t be so anxious about working. Your health is your capital. If you lose it, then what’ll you do? xia shujuan: If I don’t do work right, I just don’t feel right. What are these? lin yusheng: Two bottles of wine and some candy. Don’t you remember? I made a date with some schoolmates to come over and celebrate Qianru’s birthday today. xia shujuan: Look at you, sweating like that! Your leg isn’t better yet and you’re running around all day! Yusheng, you probably haven’t had lunch yet. lin yusheng: Yes I did. I had lunch with Little Wu. xia shujuan (opening a box): A dress? lin yusheng: To give to Qianru. xia shujuan: Is there any news about Qianru’s assignment after graduation? lin yusheng: None yet. I’ve already written a letter to the school’s party committee. I hope they’ll keep her in Shanghai. xia shujuan: Do you think the school will agree? lin yusheng: If they give us special consideration as fiancés, I think they’ll agree. xia shujuan: I’ve talked this over with Qianru. The primary thing is to obey the assignment. Of course, I just have this one niece, and she has been with me all these years. If they can give you special consideration and keep her in Shanghai, that would be wonderful; but, Yusheng, you still had better be prepared. Oh, I forgot to tell you, Xiao Jiye’s back. lin yusheng: He’s back? xia shujuan: He’s just gotten back and says he has something to see you about. lin yusheng (starts): Oh. xia shujuan: He’s all tanned, and he’s gotten more muscular. Why don’t you invite him over for supper tonight? You’re classmates and you worked on the same prospecting team. lin yusheng (reluctantly): Okay. xia shujuan: Have you taken your medicine yet? lin yusheng: I am, now. (He takes the medicine.) xia shujuan: It would be wonderful if you were healthy like Xiao Jiye. lin yusheng: Yeah, Mom. Where’d Lanlan go? xia shujuan: She went to take the exam for the Cinema School. She didn’t even come back for lunch. lin yusheng: I just ran into Teacher Yang from the Cinema School, and she said that Lanlan didn’t even take the test. xia shujuan (surprised): Didn’t take the test? That can’t be!

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lin yusheng: No, it’s quite possible. All along, she wouldn’t go register for the exam, so I took her there and made her register. xia shujuan: That child! lin yusheng: Teacher Yang said that she’d try to give her another chance to take the exam. She said she’d discuss it with the directors of the school. (He goes into his room.) xia shujuan: Ah! Who knows what she’s up to! You’re probably hungry. I’ll get you something to eat. lin yusheng (from his room): No thanks. (He starts humming a tune.) xia shujuan: Again, “No thanks.” (She goes to the kitchen. xiao jiye enters, hears the humming, and goes toward lin yusheng’s room.) xiao jiye (excitedly): Lin Yusheng! (lin yusheng comes out.) lin yusheng: Hey, Xiao Jiye! xiao jiye: How are you? Hah! You’ve put on some weight! lin yusheng: Why are you back? xiao jiye: I came back because of the research report for Mineral Region 205. lin yusheng: What’d you conclude? Is there any ore? xiao jiye: Yes. There are really good signs. lin yusheng (surprised): Oh, is that right? xiao jiye: You probably didn’t think there’d be any. How’s your leg? Any better yet? lin yusheng: Same as before; sometimes okay, sometimes not. I’m afraid it would be a lot of trouble. xiao jiye: Oh? lin yusheng: How are the other comrades on the team? xiao jiye: They’re all fine, but everybody wanted me to come and give you hell . . . lin yusheng: Give me hell? xiao jiye: You lazy slug, it’s almost a year now, and you haven’t written one word, and you don’t even answer our letters. What do you say? Don’t you deserve to catch a little hell? lin yusheng: I’ve been sick, you know. If I’m not resting, then I’m taking medicine. What’s there to write about? Oh, right, how’s Little Yang’s playing on the huqin? Still screeching away on it like he’s killing chickens all day! xiao jiye: He plays it pretty well now. When we get together with the local people, quite a few of them ask him to play music for them. lin yusheng: Looks like you’re all coming along pretty well in your work. How are you? Still write a lot of poems? xiao jiye: It’s poetry just living out there with the soaring mountains, dense forests, deserts, and rivers. There’re “battles” everywhere; there’s poetry everywhere! The more work we do, the more I believe that there is just too much treasure under the ground. It’s a pity that there aren’t enough people available. The province has

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decided to start a geology training class now to train a group. The comrades responsible for this have told me to tell you that they’d like to have you come back to be an instructor. lin yusheng (starts): Me? The reason I came back was that I have rheumatoid arthritis in my leg, remember? xiao jiye: I know. They don’t want you to come back to the prospecting team. They want you to be an instructor. This is a letter for you from the head of the team. Oh, yes, I brought your pay, too. lin yusheng: This . . . this wouldn’t work. The climate there isn’t right. As soon as I get there, my leg’ll get bad again. xiao jiye: Did the doctor say so? lin yusheng: Yes. He’s the head of surgery I told you about. He’s the one who wrote the medical certificate that I used when I applied to come home to recuperate. xiao jiye: Oh. (Disappointedly) Look, the people in charge thought that this work would really be quite suitable for you. lin yusheng: This leg of mine, you know. It’s really bad. xiao jiye (after thinking it over): Okay, let’s wait a while and discuss it again. If you really don’t want to go, then you’ll just have to say so. lin yusheng (relieved): I guess that’s all I can do. xiao jiye: Let’s discuss it again later. I have to go to the hospital. lin yusheng: What’s wrong? Are you sick? xiao jiye: It’s nothing, really. I wasn’t careful and tripped and fell and hurt my leg, so I’m going to have it checked. If I don’t go today, I’ll have to wait till Monday. lin yusheng: Oh, right! Today’s Qianru’s birthday. I’ve invited a few of her schoolmates over to get together. So you come, too, later on. xiao jiye: I’ll be sure to come later on. I want to tell her some good news. (He exits. xia shujuan enters.) xia shujuan: Was that Xiao Jiye? Why’d he go? lin yusheng: He’ll be back soon. xia shujuan: Was there something he had to see you about? lin yusheng: No. (The happy sound of lin lan’s singing can be heard.) xia shujuan: Lanlan’s back. (lin lan enters.) xia shujuan: Where have you been? lin lan: I was at Volunteer Labor. xia shujuan: You didn’t go take the exam for the Cinema School? lin lan: Uh . . . right. lin yusheng: Great, just great! lin lan: What’s wrong with you? lin yusheng: Why didn’t you take the exam? lin lan: I never intended to. lin yusheng: So you don’t plan to go to college, then?

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lin lan: Who says so? I want to go to an agricultural college. xia shujuan: I’d agree to let you go to an agricultural college, but can you guarantee that you’d get in? Wouldn’t taking the exam for the Cinema School give you one chance more? Teacher Yang has said that you have a good potential as an actress. lin lan: Right now our nation is making great efforts in agriculture. Many educated young people are answering the party’s call to help on the battle lines of agriculture. And I’m one of them . . . (lin yusheng is about to start arguing with lin lan.) xia shujuan: All right, wait till your father gets home and let him decide. lin yusheng: Mom, is Dad coming home today? xia shujuan: He’ll probably be back. If he doesn’t have a meeting this afternoon, he’ll come back. lin yusheng: So, when my friends come, we’ll eat in my room, then. (lin lan works on her agricultural experiment; lin yusheng agitatedly paces over to the doorway, waiting for xia qianru.) xia shujuan: Why isn’t Qianru back yet? lin yusheng: I’ve already called her. lin lan: So you called her again! You go telling her to come home for no reason. Shame on you! lin yusheng: You’ll understand when the time comes. lin lan: What’ll I understand? That you’re an empty-headed idiot? lin yusheng (counterattacking): And your head is so full of wisdom, you doctrinaire little brat! lin lan: Even when she’s studying for the graduation exam, you call her. If she fails and doesn’t graduate, then what’ll you do? lin yusheng: You don’t have to worry about that. She’s the top student at our school. Last year during practical training she submitted a proposal to the directors of Mineral Region 508, and right now they’re considering adopting her advice. Won’t be able to graduate! That’s a laugh. lin lan: If she goes on like you did, even if she does graduate, she won’t amount to much. xia shujuan (stops lin lan): Lanlan, that’s enough. (To lin yusheng) What Lanlan says is right. You shouldn’t interfere with Qianru’s studying. lin yusheng: Mom, where’s the dress I bought for Qianru? xia shujuan (takes out the paper box): It’s here. Why do you always buy these exotic foreign things? lin yusheng: What do you mean? That’s an export item. Little Wu helped me pick it out. lin lan: Yusheng, I’d advise you not to hang around with Little Wu. Why do you always make friends with that kind of guy? lin yusheng: What’s wrong with him? lin lan: He didn’t obey his assignment, he uses his family’s money to show off their wealth, and he doesn’t earn his own living. He’s a parasite!

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lin yusheng: Don’t preach. If we don’t go help politically backward people, then who will help them? lin lan: Help him! If you hang around with him a little longer, pretty soon you’ll be just like him. xia shujuan: Lanlan, why do you have such an attitude toward your brother? If you have an opinion, can you offer it in a more pleasant manner? lin yusheng: No matter who she looks at, no one looks right to her. She’s the only one who’s okay. Actually, you know, Little Wu has his good points. lin lan: Anyway, he praises whoever flatters him; all you have to do is say a few words to flatter him, and then he wouldn’t know what he is. lin yusheng: What do you mean? (The phone rings.) lin yusheng (answering the phone): Lanlan, Teacher Yang’s calling. The school has agreed to let you take a makeup exam. lin lan: I won’t take it! xia shujuan: Look at this child! lin yusheng: Don’t be foolish. If you miss this chance, it’ll be too late to cry. lin lan (determined): I will not take the exam. lin yusheng: I can’t get through to you. I’m telling Teacher Yang that you’ll take the exam tomorrow morning. (Picks up the phone) Hello? Teacher Yang? lin lan: What are you doing? (She grabs the phone, hangs up.) lin yusheng: Mom, please talk to her! xia shujuan: Lanlan, you’ve got to stop being so stubborn. lin lan: I have said that I will not take the exam. (There is the sound of a car.) lin yusheng: Dad’s home. lin lan: Daddy’s home! (lin lan exits. She enters with lin jian.) lin yusheng: Dad, Lanlan’s being ridiculous. We tell her to take the exam for the Cinema School, and then she doesn’t take it. When other people like Teacher Yang call up to tell her to take a makeup exam, she hangs up on them. lin jian: Lanlan, why won’t you take the exam? lin lan: Didn’t I already write you a letter about this before? I want to take the exam for the Agriculture College. lin jian: Oh, so we have a disagreement in the family? lin lan: Dad, studying to be an actress would be fine, of course; but the party and Chairman Mao are calling on us to aid on the front lines of agriculture. As a member of the Communist Youth League, I ought to answer the call. I intend to take the exam for the Agriculture College, to master more techniques of agriculture, and to strive for the modernization of agriculture of the motherland. xia shujuan: What you plan to do is good, but what’ll you do if you don’t pass the exam?

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(The telephone begins to ring again.) (Answering the phone) Hello . . . Oh, Teacher Yang. So sorry to make you call again. Oh, all right, all right. Hold on, please. (To lin jian) Old Lin, the Cinema School has agreed to let Lanlan take the makeup exam. What do you think? lin jian: Lanlan, why don’t you take the call yourself ? lin lan: What should I say? lin jian: That’s your business. Say whatever you feel you should. xia shujuan: Old Lin! You . . . lin jian: Look, Shujuan, in this kind of problem, we can only offer advice. lin lan: All right, I’ll take it. (Excitedly takes the receiver) Hello, Teacher Yang? Thank you for your concern, but I don’t plan to take the exam . . . That’s right, I’m planning to take the exam for the Agriculture College. Goodbye. (She hangs up.) Thank you, Dad. From now on I can review all I’ve learned. lin jian: Right, and do a good job of reviewing. Make up your mind to do your best, to go to the front lines of the construction of socialism, to study, to train, and to reform yourself! That’s the idea, right? (To lin yusheng and xia shujuan) Lanlan’s ambitions are in agriculture, and she’s done the right thing by being able to relate her individual ambitions with the needs of the motherland. There are some young people who aren’t willing to work in agriculture even if you tell them to. So it’s very good that she intends to work in agriculture. We should encourage her. (He goes upstairs, talking with xia shujuan.) xia shujuan (turns to lin yusheng, lin lan): Your father’s back now. Tidy up the downstairs. (lin lan and lin yusheng clean the table.) lin lan: Brother, take your books away. (lin yusheng takes his books offstage. lin lan takes a large inkstone from the wall chest. Then, as she dusts, she looks at the pictures on the wall.) Brother, why don’t you hang these pictures of yours in your own room? (lin lan puts the big inkstone on the table and takes out Lin Jian’s photograph with his friends, The Four Comrades-in-Arms. lin yusheng comes out, takes down the pictures on the wall, puts up the photograph, and exits. When lin lan rolls up the bamboo curtains and sees the garden tools in the yard, she shouts upstairs.) Hey, Dad, I’ve planted a lot of pumpkins, tomatoes, and some other things in the garden. They’ve gotten pretty big now. Do you want to go see them? lin jian (upstairs): Okay, I’m coming. (lin jian and xia shujuan come downstairs talking.) xia shujuan: Xiao Jiye has come back. lin jian: Oh, well ask him over tonight to chat. lin lan: Come on, Dad, let’s go look at the big pumpkins. lin jian: Okay. Can I help you with anything? lin lan: Could you water them? lin jian: All right.

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xia shujuan: Let your father rest a little right now. lin jian: Ah, laboring is better than any kind of rest. (To lin lan) Shall we go? lin lan: Okay. Oh no! Our bucket’s broken. I’ll go over to Grandma Xiao’s and borrow theirs. (She exits.) lin jian: Yusheng. (lin yusheng comes out.) Well, how are things? Leg any better? lin yusheng: It’s all right now, but it hurts whenever the weather changes. lin jian: What do you do all the time you’re home? lin yusheng: I read technical books, study some problems in my field. I’m afraid that I’ll get out of practice if I leave it alone too long. lin jian: I think you’d better do some reading in Chairman Mao’s works, rearm your mind. I hear that you’re looking for a job in Shanghai? lin yusheng: Yes. lin jian: Did you find one? lin yusheng: Over the past few days I’ve heard that my alma mater’s prospecting department needs an administrative person, so I thought I’d go talk it over with Director Yan. lin jian: Oh, and what do you think? lin yusheng: I think that I’d better look for work in my own field, so I’m still considering. Dad, could you find a job for me in the Geology Research Institute? You know Director Liu, don’t you? lin jian: You ought to go through proper channels when you’re looking for a job. Aren’t you still connected with Qinghai? At the very beginning, when you and Xiao Jiye signed up for the exam for the Geology College, you were really dedicated. Didn’t you once say: “The wide open ocean allows the fish to leap / The boundless sky allows the birds to soar?” I think that was well put. When the leadership assigned you to Qinghai, it was just the place for all of you on the prospecting team to show your talents. How could you be willing to leave so easily? lin yusheng: I didn’t want to leave, but the doctor said that my leg wasn’t suitable for the work out there. xia shujuan: His leg isn’t very good. lin jian: If something’s wrong with your leg, then take care of it. When it’s better, you still should go back to Qinghai. Young people with ambition ought to go out and see the world. With the world so huge, why’s everybody crowding into Shanghai? Didn’t I used to tell you the story of your uncle Shaobai and the others? When they were your age, they’d been all around most of China. This is revolution, how can you be nesting away at home all day? (The telephone rings.) lin jian (answers the phone): Hello, this is Lin Jian . . . Well, that doesn’t have to wait until Monday. I’ll come right now. xia shujuan: What is it? Do you have to go again?

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lin jian: There’s important business. (To lin yusheng) Yusheng, go upstairs and bring down my briefcase. (lin yusheng exits. lin jian puts on his coat.) xia shajuan: Old Lin, I’m really worried about that boy Yusheng. He’s been back for almost a year now; how can he go on like this? Would you give more thought to the problem of his getting a job? lin jian: We can’t accommodate him. I think something is wrong with the kid’s way of thinking. We’ve got to be strict with him; otherwise we wouldn’t be able to face his real parents. I’m wondering whether we should . . . (lin yusheng enters, gives the briefcase to lin jian. lin lan enters.) lin lan: Daddy, you’re going away again? lin jian: Yes, I am! I can’t help you now. (To xia shujuan) Today I probably won’t be back. What we were just discussing . . . we’ll talk about it later. Yusheng take care of your leg and when you get better, go back to Qinghai! lin yusheng: Mm . . . lin jian: Shujuan, I’m off. (He exits.) xia shujuan: If you can’t come back, give a call. (There is distant shouting, “Lanlan, come help me.”) lin lan: Oh. Brother, you help Auntie, okay? She’s so busy she can’t manage by herself alone. lin yusheng: What could I help with? lin lan: Wash the vegetables and the rice. That’s all. xia shujuan: Never mind. Your brother isn’t well. Let him rest. You go. lin lan: I still have a lot of things to do. He doesn’t have anything to do. xia shujuan: All right, all right. You get busy with your work. I’ll go. lin lan: Mom, don’t go. I can’t stand the sight of that lazy brother of mine. xia shujuan: Ah, at it again. (She is about to exit.) lin lan: Brother, you’re having guests today. lin yusheng: Mom, you rest a while. I’ll go. xia shujuan: I better go. You, the more you help, the worse it gets. (She exits. lin yusheng exits. At the door, li rongsheng appears, pushing a bicycle.) li rongsheng: Hi, Lanlan. lin lan: How come you didn’t go? li rongsheng: Where? lin lan: To Volunteer Labor. li rongsheng: So you went? lin lan: Of course I did. I waited a long time for you this morning. li rongsheng: I didn’t want to go. lin lan: You don’t feel like doing anything. It’s almost time for the exam, and you still spend all day outside wandering around.

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li rongsheng: There’s no hope for me anyway. Last year I didn’t pass the exam. So this year, with the standards even higher for high school students, how can I pass? lin lan: How can you pass if you just keep on wandering around! Did you finish the algebra problems I gave you? li rongsheng: No. I don’t know what’s wrong; I can’t ever seem to concentrate. Has your father come back yet? lin lan: He came back, but he left again. li rongsheng: He left again? Why didn’t you call me? It’s been several months since we moved into Workers’ New Village, and I haven’t seen your father even once. lin lan: My father’s away most of the year. This time he came back for a meeting. li rongsheng: I heard that he used to be in the Liberation Army and was really brave in the war. Oh, I’d really like to see what he’s like. Does he have a beard? lin lan: What would he do with a beard? li rongsheng: He certainly must be tall. lin lan: He’s not so tall. Ah! (Points to the photograph) he’s the first one, there. li rongsheng (looks at the photograph taken when lin jian participated in the workers’ movement as a youth): So young?! lin lan: It’s from thirty years ago. li rongsheng: Who are the other ones? lin lan: My father’s comrades-in-arms. li rongsheng: I’d really like to meet him. Anyway, when he comes back, you let me know. lin lan: No problem. li rongsheng: Then it’s settled. (He is about to leave.) lin lan: Uh-uh. li rongsheng: What? lin lan: The algebra problems. (When she turns around, li rongsheng starts to slip away.) Little Li! Little Li! li rongsheng: Bye. lin lan: Stop! (She exits, chasing him. lin yusheng enters. After a moment xia qianru enters.) lin yusheng (walking toward xia qianru): You’re back! Did the college get in touch with you to talk? I wrote them a letter. xia qianru: They called me to talk about it this morning. lin yusheng: How’d it go? xia qianru: They won’t go along with it. lin yusheng (disappointedly): They won’t? xia qianru (annoyed): I told you so before. I told you not to write to the party committee, but you . . . lin yusheng: What did they say?

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xia qianru: They told me to tell you that they couldn’t give special consideration in a case like ours. lin yusheng: Why not? xia qianru: I think it’s because you don’t have a job in Shanghai and might try to transfer later on to where I am. lin yusheng: Didn’t you tell them, my leg . . . ? xia qianru: I didn’t have the gall to tell them. I was embarrassed enough as it was. (Pause.) lin yusheng (decisively): All right, then. Originally I was hesitant about becoming an administrative staff member, but now, since this is the way things are, I’m going to fight for it. xia qianru: You will? Because of me . . . ? lin yusheng: It’s not just because of you. I also need a job. I can’t stand staying at home all day doing nothing. xia qianru: Didn’t you say you were going to ask your father to look for a job for you at the Geology Research Institute? lin yusheng: He wouldn’t do it. He said that . . . Never mind. So, for the time being, I’ll be an administrative staff person, I guess. I’m going to see Director Yan, of the college. (He is about to go.) xia qianru: No, Yusheng. We better think this over. lin yusheng: What’s there to think over? If we think it over any longer, the list for the assignments will have been decided and it’ll be too late. xia qianru: But won’t this mean giving up your own profession? lin yusheng: That’s not important. I can do administrative work and still find time to do research in my field. If I can just get out a few substantial scientific papers, I probably won’t have any trouble later applying for a transfer to a teaching position. (xia qianru is silent.) Why are you putting on such a sad face? Oh, that’s right! I got a present for you. (Brings out the paper box) Guess what it is. xia qianru: A blouse? lin yusheng: Wrong. xia qianru: A scarf ? lin yusheng: No. (Opens the box) Look! Do you like it? xia qianru: Oh! (She laughs.) lin yusheng: What’s wrong? xia qianru: If I wore this dress and then put on a geology backpack, that’d look ridiculous! lin yusheng: This dress isn’t supposed to be worn with a geology backpack. It’s for you to wear in the research laboratory or when you’re in our own little home in the future. xia qianru: Come on, stop dreaming! I still don’t know where I’m going to be sent.

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lin yusheng: There’s no problem. If I can just get a job as an administrative staff person, I think the party will give us special consideration. Just think how great it’d be if they kept you in Shanghai! During the day we’d go to work together, and at night we’d come home, listen to some music like Carmen and La Traviata, read novels or poetry, or see movies. On Sundays we’d go to the park or find some friends to chat with . . . Of course, we’d have to do a good job, and we’d have to make some contributions to our field. (Sighs) I dreamed about this kind of life when I was in Qinghai, and now soon it’ll come true! Okay, I’m going to the college now. Put on the dress. xia qianru: I won’t go out in it. It’s too gaudy. lin yusheng: What do you mean? Little Wu says it’s the latest style. xia qianru: Little Wu, again. Didn’t I tell you not to hang out with Little Wu all the time? You . . . lin yusheng: He’s not such a bad guy, you know. xia qianru: I’ve never liked the looks of him. lin yusheng: That’s your prejudice. Actually, Little Wu is quite straightforward. (Walking toward door) That’s right! I’ve borrowed a few of your favorite records, La Traviata and Carmen, and also some solos by Vishnevskaya.1 When we finish dinner tonight, we’ll play records for our friends. Oh, right! Xiao Jiye’s also going to come. xia qianru: Xiao Jiye’s come back? (xiao jiye enters.) lin yusheng: Xiao Jiye, Qianru’s back. xia qianru: Xiao Jiye, hello! (Advances, shakes hands) How are you? lin yusheng: All right, you two talk. xiao jiye: Where’re you going? lin yusheng: I . . . have something to do. (He exits.) xiao jiye: Uh, you . . . Why’d he leave? I was just about to tell you some good news. xia qianru: Come on, sit here. xiao jiye (excitedly): You know that proposal you gave to Mineral Region 508? They’ve decided to use it! xia qianru (happy and excited): Really? How do you know? xiao jiye: When I was in Beijing, I ran into the comrades in charge of that mineral region, and they told me. xia qianru (excitedly): Really? When do they begin test drilling? xiao jiye: They’re going to begin right away. xia qianru (excitedly): Oh! It’d be so wonderful if I were able to go see for myself. xiao jiye: They intend to ask the college to assign you to them. Just this year they’re assigned to get a few new people to them. xia qianru: Oh? xiao jiye (earnestly): You probably didn’t expect it, huh? I remember when you were there for practical training, you wrote and said that, after you graduated, you’d definitely try and get to go there. Now it’s happened. Soon you’re going to get your wish.

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I’m really happy for you. They also told me to tell you that, if the college asks for your opinion, the mineral region hopes that you’ll let them know what you think. xia qianru: Oh? But . . . xiao jiye: What’s the matter? xia qianru: This is too sudden. xiao jiye: Hadn’t you planned on it being this way long before? xia qianru: Last year, I did. xiao jiye: What about now? xia qianru: Now . . . Look, Yusheng is in Shanghai, and if I get sent someplace else . . . xiao jiye: Yusheng is back for recuperation; and besides, he doesn’t have a job here. xia qianru: He will soon. xiao jiye: He will? xia qianru: He plans to become an administrative staff member at the college. xiao jiye: When did he decide on this? xia qianru: Just now. xiao jiye: Just now? Is the college likely to agree? xia qianru: There probably won’t be any trouble. Yusheng has gone to see Director Yan. xiao jiye: Oh! (The telephone rings.) xia qianru (answering the telephone): Hello, who do you want? . . . All right; hold on please. (To xiao jiye) It’s for your grandmother. (Goes to the door, shouts) Grandma Xiao, the factory’s on the phone for you. (xia shujuan’s voice: “Qianru, come and help me.”) I’m coming. (To xiao jiye) I’m going out for a second. (She exits. grandma xiao enters.) xiao jiye: Hi, Grandma. grandma xiao: You’re here? Did you get your leg examined? (Picks up the telephone) Old Liu? Yes . . . I know. Ridiculous, it is just ridiculous. When I heard about it yesterday, I was so mad I couldn’t get a good sleep. Look, Old Liu, I want to go see them myself and talk with them, just ask them if that’s the way workers should act. What? Take a rest? Hah! A person can retire, but can her mind retire, too? I think we should do it this way: you tell them to wait for me at the factory tomorrow, and I’ll come early in the morning. Uh-huh. That’s right. Okay, see you tomorrow. (She hangs up.) What did the doctor say? xiao jiye: The doctor said that he couldn’t figure it out all at one time, so he told me to go there Monday for an X-ray. What’s going on at the factory? grandma xiao: Ahh. It’s really got me in a bad mood. There’re some young workers at the factory who aren’t doing their work right. They just float along doing enough to get by. But they don’t lag behind when it comes to claiming their fringe benefits. They’ve only been there a few days now, and they’re eager to look for girlfriends

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and boyfriends and can’t wait to get free housing. The comrade on the factory party committee told me to stay home and write my memoirs and rest up. But how can I go on resting up? These young people, if you don’t give them a good talkingto, they’ll still think that the good life today just fell from the sky. (Noticing that xiao jiye is not listening attentively, asks sharply) Jiye! What are you thinking about? xiao jiye: I’m just thinking, Grandma, about what brought Lin Yusheng back home. grandma xiao: Didn’t he say that he’s sick and came back to recuperate? xiao jiye: Yes. He also sent a doctor’s note. But when I just went to see the doctor, I happened to run into that chief of surgery who examined Lin Yusheng, so I asked him whether Lin Yusheng’s leg would stop him from teaching in Qinghai. He said that Lin Yusheng’s arthritis isn’t serious at all and wouldn’t even stop him from working on the prospecting team. He also said that he never wrote a doctor’s note for Yusheng. grandma xiao: You mean the doctor’s note is a fake? xiao jiye: From what I saw of Yusheng’s performance in Qinghai, that could be possible. grandma xiao (weighed down by the news): How could he change so? xiao jiye: Right after we’d gotten to Qinghai, he did quite well. Only he couldn’t take the hardship and got more and more dissatisfied with the work. Grandma, I’m going to write a letter back to the prospecting team and tell them to send the doctor’s note to me for verification. You think that’s right? grandma xiao: Yes. You ought to help the truth come to light. Oh, I’m afraid to hear about this kind of thing, but I want to hear about it, too. What I’m afraid is that the young people aren’t doing the right thing. But I think that it’s all right if I do hear about it so that I can help them in time. Where is Yusheng now? xiao jiye: He went to the college to see Director Yan. He wants to be an administrative staff person at the college. grandma xiao: He does? Is the college going to agree to that? xiao jiye: I think that unless they receive approval from Qinghai, the college won’t give him the job. grandma xiao: Shouldn’t you let the college know about it? When Yusheng comes back, you two better have a good talk. I’ll also go discuss this with Old Lin. You’re a party member, and the branch headquarters would want you to persuade him to go back, so you better do your duty. (The two of them exit, talking. Voice of yao xiangming: “Qianru, Qianru.” zhou jie, yao xiangming enter. xia qianru comes out of the kitchen.) yao xiangming: What’s the matter with you? As soon as you heard the lecture, you left. xia qianru: I had something to do at home. Where are the others? yao xiangming: They’re still at the discussion meeting. zhou jie: They probably won’t be able to come. xia qianru: Guess what, Xiao Jiye has come back!

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yao xiangming: Xiao Jiye, the one who was chairman of the student association for the class of 1960? zhou jie: Doesn’t he live right here? xia qianru: Yes. He was here just a moment ago. yao xiangming (calling out): Xiao Jiye! (xiao jiye enters.) xiao jiye: Hi, Yao Xiangming (shaking hands), how are you? zhou jie: How are you! Did you come back for vacation? xiao jiye: No, I came back on business for Mineral Region 205. xia qianru: Have you finished writing the detailed investigative report? xiao jiye: Yes, we’ve finished it. yao xiangming: What about the research design? Did you finish that, too? xiao jiye: Yeah, that too. zhou jie: And the conclusion is . . . xiao jiye: There’s ore. zhou jie and yao xiangming (together): It’s . . . that ore! xiao jiye: That’s right!’ According to our estimate, the deposit is very large. The quality is very high, too! (Everyone is happy, and singing.) xia qianru: And that foreign expert still says that there isn’t any ore there! (Everyone laughs.) zhou jie: If there really is ore, you’ll have made quite a contribution! It’ll make us Chinese all feel proud, and let people see that we do have that kind of ore, and quite a lot of it, too. xia qianru: Has the ministry approved the report yet? xiao jiye: Not yet. The technical conference on our type of ore is in Shanghai this time, right? At the meeting, the Ministry of Geology instructed the conference to set up an experts’ panel to evaluate our report. That’s why I came back from Qinghai. xia qianru: If they can approve it, that’d be wonderful! yao xiangming: Ah, you’ve been working so hard! No wonder you’re all tanned! I daresay it was because you were laboring so selflessly! xiao jiye: Ah, you haven’t changed! zhou jie: No, she’s more vivacious than she used to be. The older she gets, the more lively she gets! yao xiangming: That’s because as we get closer to going out to real life, whenever I think that soon I’ll be able to fly, I get a feeling that I just can’t quite describe. xiao jiye: Where are you trying to fly away to? yao xiangming: Guess. xiao jiye: You, eh? Tibet. yao xiangming (surprised, shouts): Oh my! How did you know? Somebody must’ve told you. zhou jie: Forget it. You don’t need other people to tell him. As soon as you entered college, you started shouting it everywhere. Everybody knows!

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xiao jiye: Has your family agreed? yao xiangming: No problem. My mother said, “Don’t worry. Just go, and don’t worry about us.” My father said, “If you’re going to go, then you have to make up your mind to spend your whole life there. If you retreat halfway, you better not plan to enter our home again.” zhou jie: Very tough! xiao jiye: But what if they don’t send you to Tibet? yao xiangming: You’re testing me! Humph. Here’s my letter of determination. I haven’t had time to hand it in yet. xiao jiye (reads): “Place: wherever the motherland most needs me. Goal: revolution. I have only one request: give me the hardest work.” yao xiangming: Well? Is that good enough? xiao jiye: Very much so! Try and get to go to our place in Qinghai. Out there where we are, not only is everything under the ground a treasure, but so is everything above the ground. One time when I was in a thick forest, I discovered a whole grove of apple trees where apples must have fallen, and trees grown up, and apples fallen again, and more trees grown up. There were just no people to pick them! You like shrimp, right? At the foot of the Kunlun Mountains, I’ve seen a lake that’s filled with shrimp . You just reach into the water, and you get a huge handful of them. If you go out there, I guarantee that you’ll have plenty to eat. yao xiangming: Not me. If they could let me choose for myself, I’d still have the same idea of going to Tibet. I’m going to stand on the peaks of the Himalayas and look out over the whole world! (xia qianru has been slowly drawing apart, as though she were not one of the graduates-to-be.) xiao jiye: What about you, Zhou Jie? zhou jie: I’ll go wherever the party sends me. xiao jiye: Does your mother agree to that? I remember that you’re the only daughter in your family. zhou jie: I had to try very hard to convince her! It’s all right now. My mother finally agreed to it. No matter where the party sends me, I’ll pack my bags and go. Of course, at the start there’ll be a lot of difficulties, and perhaps it’ll be very hard. But recently Party Secretary He put it quite well: “The people of this generation weren’t born to take it easy. If there weren’t any difficulties, then what use to have us?” xiao jiye: That’s right. And there were difficulties blocking our progress as members of the prospecting team. For those of us who had lived a long time in the city, it took a while to get used to life in the wilderness; but when we overcame the difficulties, we felt an incomparable joy. On the way back this time I looked in on Mineral Region 508. Three years ago our class went there for practical training. Originally that place was just a vast, uninhabited wild plain, and now it’s already become a modem industrial city. I thought since our labor can bring so many advantages to people, it doesn’t matter if we have it a little hard! In his poem “Ode to Loushan Guan,” Chairman Mao wrote:

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The majestic pass and the endless road Are as hard as iron; Today we will take broad strides Marching over the pass. We should have that kind of spirit! zhou jie: Yes, that’s right. I’ve come to love our profession exactly because it’s like that. yao xiangming: Geologists are the guerrillas of this period of construction. That says it all: hardship, but glory! xiao jiye: Yes! Some people only know about the hard side of our lives as a prospecting team, but actually, even in the hardest times, we’re still happy. Because we didn’t hold back our strength, we were able to live up to the party’s and the people’s expectations for us. The wind and the snow of the Kunlun Mountains know whether we are cowards or heroes. The fierce sun of the Gobi Desert understands whether we are mud or pure gold. It was just this kind of pride in the team members that brought us inexhaustible happiness and strength, because we were fighting for the happiness of hundreds of millions of people. xia qianru: Yao Xiangming, give me your letter of determination. yao xiangming: What are you going to do with it? xia qianru: I’m just going to look at it. yao xiangming: Okay. (She hands her the paper. zhou jie and xiao jiye note xia qianru’s actions. lin lan enters.) lin lan (very happily): You’re all here! Brother Jiye, why, you’re back? xiao jiye: Lin Lan! How are you? Hah! Your hands are all muddy, so you’re still doing your agriculture experiment? (lin lan smiles.) What major are you going to take the exam for? The Agriculture College? lin lan: Yes. xiao jiye: Well, good. Give support to the front line in agriculture. Hey, I haven’t seen you for two years. You’ve grown into a young woman. lin lan: That’s a law of nature. Later I’ll grow into an old lady. (Everybody laughs.) xiao jiye: Do you remember? When I left Shanghai, you were only this tall, and you were always asking me to tell you stories! Now . . . lin lan: How could I forget? You told me about how, when you were a child laborer, you got back at the foreman with the flat nose, and just before the liberation how you used to be a messenger for the factory’s defense squad; also about how you put up pamphlets at Kuomintang police checkpoints. Right? yao xiangming: Heeey . . . So our former president of the student association also had a great past! You weren’t frank with us when we elected you president. xiao jiye: You voted carelessly, without getting things straight! zhou jie (just thinking of it): Hey! Where’s Yusheng?

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xia qianru: He . . . He went out. yao xiangming: The host isn’t back, and the guests are a bit hungry! zhou jie: Shame on you! xia qianru: Well, let’s start. zhou jie: Let’s wait a little while for Yusheng. xia qianru: Let’s not wait. He’ll be back right away. Lanlan, you show everybody where the food is. lin lan: Follow me. (Except for xia qianru, the others all follow lin lan offstage. From the kitchen there immediately comes the sound of the song “The Song of the Geologists.” xia qianru sets the table, then takes out the letter of determination, engaged in an intellectual struggle. lin yusheng enters.) xia qianru: How did things go? lin yusheng: Not well. xia qianru: What about the business with the college? (lin yusheng is silent.) Well, what happened after all? Say something! lin yusheng: It’s no good! xia qianru: Why not? lin yusheng: Just now, when I went to see Director Yan, he said that the opinion of those at the college was that if they don’t have Qinghai’s approval, they won’t be able to arrange a job for me . . . What was Xiao Jiye talking to you about just now? xia qianru: What do you mean? lin yusheng: He was just telling me that he hoped I’d go back to Qinghai. (The stage is momentarily silent.) xia qianru: That’d be all right. I was just planning to discuss something with you. I don’t plan to request special consideration. lin yusheng (surprised): Why not? xia qianru: Xiao Jiye said that the people in charge of Mineral Region 508 have decided to adopt the prospecting approach that I proposed. They’d like to have me try to go there. lin yusheng: They want you to go there? Well, do you want to? xia qianru: I think that I ought to go. They need me there. lin yusheng: So this is how it’s going to be. xia qianru: No, Yusheng. The past few days I’ve been awfully troubled. I’ve felt a head shorter than other people . . . My classmates are all writing their letters of determination, writing applications, but I . . . It’s as though I had done something to be ashamed of. lin yusheng: Is this because Xiao Jiye said something to you? xia qianru: No. It’s just that I’ve been criticizing myself. Look, this is Xiangming’s letter of determination. I’m a young person, too. Why don’t I . . . I want to write one, too.

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lin yusheng (taking the letter of determination): What kind of crazy things are you thinking of ? Don’t listen to Xiao Jiye and that bunch of . . . (Everyone enters carrying cups, bottles, and food.) yao xiangming: Hey, Yusheng’s back. We were just waiting for you. lin yusheng: Thank you. zhou jie: Why did you buy all this food? If we’d known earlier that you were going to throw your money away like this, we wouldn’t have dared to come. xia qianru: It isn’t often that we can all get together. Please sit down, everybody. xiao jiye (walks over to lin yusheng): Yusheng, I’d like to talk with you in a while. (xia shujuan enters.) lin yusheng: What about? xia qianru: Xiao Jiye, Yusheng, sit down. zhou jie: Auntie, please join us. xia shujuan: You all go ahead. Lanlan, come on. (xia shujuan and lin lan exit.) zhou jie: Lanlan, don’t work too hard. (lin lan’s voice: “I’m coming.”) yao xiangming: Since today is Xia Qianru’s birthday, we should congratulate the couple. (To zhou jie) Come on, say a few words. zhou jie: That’s right. Xiao Jiye, you’re the one from far away, so you represent us. xiao jiye: Okay, I’ll do it. On behalf of everyone, I wish you both— lin yusheng: Not so fast. You’re the guest of honor. We better not let you drink your wine just any old way like this; but so that we can recall our past, Qianru, please go get those two ox-horn cups that Xiao Jiye gave me. (xia qianru exits.) Before you speak on behalf of everybody, how about the two of us making a toast first? xiao jiye: Great! lin yusheng: Well, what do you say? xiao jiye: To our friendship. lin yusheng: Then I’d like to ask you to promise me something, for the sake of our friendship. xiao jiye: As long as I can do it, I’ll definitely promise. lin yusheng: You can do it. You know about Qianru and me. xiao jiye: Yes, I know. lin yusheng: And you know about the trouble I have with my leg, too. xiao jiye: Uh . . . I know about that, too . . . (lin lan enters.) lin yusheng: So, in the name of our friendship, I’d like to ask you to consider my present situation. As far as these problems go, I hope that you won’t purposely cause any difficulties for us. xiao jiye: I don’t understand what you mean.

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lin yusheng: In my problem of getting a job, and in Qianru’s problem of getting her assignment, I hope that you can do something a bit more realistic. You don’t consider this request too unreasonable, I hope? xiao jiye (puts down his cup): This is a toast I can’t make. (xia qianru enters bringing the ox-horn wine cups.) lin yusheng: What? Weren’t you just talking grandly about friendship? Since we’re good friends, we should be honest with each other. xiao jiye: What do you mean by that? lin yusheng: I think that deep down you understand. (He angrily lowers his glass, exits.) xia qianru: Yusheng . . . lin lan: Brother! yao xiangming: What’s with that guy? (lin lan exits to the kitchen, comes right back, entering with xia shujuan, and with her exits through the main door.) xia qianru: Xiao Jiye, don’t mind him. You know what his temper is like. Don’t . . . xiao jiye (smiles): It’s not important, doesn’t matter. xia qianru: Come on, let’s go ahead and eat. (Short pause. xiao jiye picks up the two ox-horn cups that xia qianru has set up on the table, thinks deeply.)

A CT 2 (A morning a week later. In front of the door to lin jian’s house there are trees, a trellis covered with melon creepers. It is a place where people can work, rest, and sit in the shade. Stage left is the corner of lin jian’s house; stage right connects with grandma xiao’s house. Under a tree there are a stone bench and some paraphernalia. The tireless cicadas sing as a gentle breeze rocks the tree branches. Music for physical exercises is heard from the public address system of the nearby school. xiao jiye is exercising his leg. When it can support him no longer, he limps over to the stone bench, sits down, and starts to rub his leg. grandma xiao enters and gives xiao jiye a small package.) xiao jiye: Oh, spiced beans. grandma xiao: What’s wrong, child? xiao jiye (evasively): Nothing, Grandma. grandma xiao: Why haven’t they come up with a diagnosis after all these days? xiao jiye: The doctor said that it’s not just an external injury. He also found some other symptoms and wants me to stay in the hospital. grandma xiao (starts): Stay in the hospital! xiao jiye (comfortingly): It’s nothing serious; they just want to run some tests.

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grandma xiao (feels the matter is not so simple): Oh! This afternoon I’m going to see the doctor and talk about this. You should rest, too. Look at you, all sweaty. You said you came back to rest and recuperate, but these past few days that you’ve been back, when have you stayed home? xiao jiye: Grandma, it’s not easy to get to come back. I have some problems that I  haven’t been able to solve out in the field. So after all the trouble of coming back here, I better use this opportunity to ask my teachers for some advice. The geological report hasn’t been approved yet . . . grandma xiao: What does the chief engineer say? xiao jiye: I just went to see him, but he wasn’t in. I’m going to go back there again later on. grandma xiao (fondly): You’ve been like this ever since you were a child. Once you start something, you just won’t spare yourself. Oh, there’s a letter here for you from Qinghai. (Gives him the letter) Is Yusheng still refusing to go back to Qinghai? xiao jiye (reads the letter): The prospecting team has sent Yusheng’s medical certificate. grandma xiao: I think that you’d better go to the hospital this afternoon and verify it. If there’s any news, tell me. I want to see old Lin and discuss this, but I just haven’t run into him. All right, off with you, now. Today I’m going to make dumplings for you. xiao jiye: Dumplings? Grandma! Still just like when I was little. You’d make dumplings and they’d smell so good. I’d help you make the dumpling skin and you’d tell me stories. grandma xiao: Yes, while we were making dumplings, I’d tell you stories. I had bushels of them. xiao jiye: On about beating the foreign devils and old Chiang Kai-shek. You could go on all day and night and not run out of stories. (The two exit together. zhou jie and xia qianru enter through the main gate and cross the stage as they talk.) zhou jie: So come on over this afternoon. xia qianru: All right. zhou jie: I think you ought to move in at the school and stay there. xia qianru: I want to see how things go. Please tell my schoolmates that I’m very grateful to them for their offer. (The two exit together. lin yusheng enters through the main gate. xia qianru enters again.) lin yusheng: Has Zhou Jie gone? xia qianru: Yes. lin yusheng: Did she come again to work on changing your mind? (xia qianru does not speak for a moment.) xia qianru: Yusheng, at a time like this you should be helping me, giving me strength, and letting me go to my work station without having to worry! But you . . .

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lin yusheng: The past few days I’ve been wasting my breath. I really don’t understand what’s wrong with staying in Shanghai. Speaking of the needs of the country, you ought to put up a real fight to stay in Shanghai. Look, as the best student in our school, you have all the qualifications. You also have the duty to make a greater contribution to geology than others do. Not only does Shanghai have a lot of literature and bibliographical resources, but you can go to an expert for guidance at any time. Is that possible out on the frontier? xia qianru: I know all that. The problem is that out in the frontier region they need people more than they do in Shanghai. If we just work hard and create the necessary conditions ourselves, we can make a contribution no matter where we are. Yusheng, we are members of the Communist Youth League. Can I just think of myself and ignore the needs of the nation? lin yusheng: Sure, you ought to think of them, but you’ve got to consider reality, too, you know. Just think about this: if you really get sent out to the frontier, you’d better not get any ideas about coming back again later. Then—who knows?—maybe they’ll send me out there, too, later on. I don’t really mind the hardships of life out there, but what will we do if my arthritis gets bad again? xia qianru: Well, what should we do, then? lin yusheng: I think you should fight to stay in Shanghai. In fact, can’t we serve the people no matter where we live? When the good of the individual and the collective can be united, why do we have to create artificial contradictions? Both from the logical standpoint and from the standpoint of my own feelings about it, I see nothing wrong with requesting special consideration in our case. xia qianru: If we’re eligible for special consideration, then the party will arrange it; so we don’t need to go looking for it ourselves. lin yusheng: This year there are a thousand–some students graduating from colleges. Can the people in charge consider every case so thoroughly? Look at my case. When I was on the prospecting team, if I hadn’t come back to see the family and then sent back a certificate from a Shanghai hospital, would they have let me stay in Shanghai? When you run into this kind of situation, if you don’t express your opinion and don’t make an active effort to get what you want, well, strictly speaking, it’s a failure to do your duty to the nation. xia qianru: If all those students in the colleges tried to get what they wanted, wouldn’t that be a mess! It would affect the national job assignment program, you know. Besides, the leadership has already said they can’t give especial consideration in our case. lin yusheng: Okay, as long as you don’t try to go out on the frontier, I’ll think of a way to take care of the other problems. xia qianru: How can you? I can’t disobey the state’s job assignment! lin yusheng: We’ll get married tomorrow. Once we’re married, the college’ll have to think about giving us special consideration. xia qianru: Ridiculous! Get married all of a sudden, just to stay in Shanghai? I’m sorry you thought of it.

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lin yusheng: I think it’s all the same whatever means you use to achieve an end, as long as you don’t have a bad motive. xia qianru: It simply isn’t the right way to do things! And how can you say that you don’t have a bad motive? I’ve just graduated, there isn’t a sign of a job yet, and you’re busy getting . . . I won’t agree to it. lin yusheng: Okay, then let’s not get married! If you’re too scared to do anything like this, I think that you won’t be able to manage much of anything. Let’s do this: I’ll have Mother see Secretary He and tell him that working in Qinghai wouldn’t be good for me. What do you think? Say something. xia qianru: Let me think it over. (She exits.) lin yusheng (sighs): Ahh. (xia shujuan enters from the street.) xia shujuan: What’s got you sighing like that? Is it Qianru’s job assignment? lin yusheng: Mom, could you see Secretary He and talk it over with him? Tell him that I’ll go back to Qinghai again after two years and ask him to let me work at the college. That way, Qianru can stay, too. xia shujuan: Ask him for a favor? lin yusheng: It’s not asking for a favor. Isn’t it quite common for parents to offer their opinions to the college? xia shujuan: How can I offer that kind of opinion? lin yusheng: What’s wrong with it? xia shujuan: It’s not right to do things that way. lin yusheng: Then what’ll I do? This has got me worried to death. Tomorrow the list of names and job assignments will be announced . . . I really don’t mind going to Qinghai. But if my arthritis gets bad again, this leg is finished. (He puts on a painful expression.) xia shujuan (ponders): Did you take your medicine today? lin yusheng: Do you think I feel like taking it? I’m worried to death. xia shujuan (pondering): Will Qinghai agree if you’re transferred to Shanghai? lin yusheng: My health problem is evident, right? I’ve already written them a letter. xia shujuan (thinks it over): All right, then. I’ll inform the college of your situation. You’ll still have to let the college decide whether they’ll give you an assignment and whether Qianru ought to remain in Shanghai. lin yusheng: Mom, could you go right away, then? xia shujuan: All right, I’m going. (She goes into the house.) lin yusheng: Could you hurry up, Mom? (After a pause, xia qianru enters the house.) xia qianru: Yusheng, how could you tell your mother to go see Secretary He? And you didn’t even discuss it with me. lin yusheng: If we had discussed it anymore, it would have been too late. xia qianru: I’ve always felt that it’s not too good to do things this way.

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(lin lan enters.) lin yusheng: What’s wrong about it? Since doing things this way can solve my problem of getting an assignment, it can also solve your problem and allow you to stay in Shanghai. If you don’t like it, what do you think we should do then? (xia qianru does not speak.) Don’t worry. Mom wouldn’t have agreed to go if it weren’t right. xia qianru: What did she say? lin yusheng: She said that she’d inform them of our situation and ask them to reconsider. So don’t worry. I’ll go in again and hurry her up. (He exits.) lin lan: Hi, Cousin. xia qianru (turns): Did you take the exam for the Agriculture College? Did you do well? lin lan: Cousin, have you really agreed to my brother’s idea to have my mother go to the college? xia qianru: She’s just going to inform the authorities of our problem. I don’t think it’s improper. lin lan: Oh, you! (She starts to leave.) xia qianru: What’s wrong with it? lin lan: I want to find a place where I can think about whether I should ever look for a husband. xia qianru: What do you mean? lin lan: I’m afraid that if I have a husband, I’ll have to throw away my career. xia qianru: You little brat! You’re getting sassier every day. lin lan (walks over to xia qianru): Cousin, I’m really sad for you. You were never like this before. You used to be idealistic. You were willing to throw yourself into your studies. You said that you wanted to make some contributions to geology. But now . . . After thinking about this a little, I’m really worried about you, letting my brother drag you down with him like this. You do whatever he wants. xia qianru: I’m also very confused about it. But . . . Oh! You don’t understand. lin lan: No, I don’t understand why you yield to his every wish. xia qianru: Wait’ll you fall in love with someone, and you’ll understand. lin lan: If love is like this, then I don’t ever want a husband. Really, I don’t! (She exits toward the home of grandma xiao. After a slight pause, xiao jiye enters.) xiao jiye: From what Lanlan said, it sounds like you plan to stay in Shanghai? xia qianru: It’s not that I want to stay in Shanghai, but Yusheng . . . xiao jiye: What do you want to do? xia qianru (thinks a while): I’m willing to obey my job assignment; but if there really is some problem, then I’ll stay in Shanghai and do my best working here. xiao jiye: Is it really for the sake of work that Yusheng wants you to stay? xia qianru: What do you mean?

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xiao jiye: Perhaps what I’m going to say will make you unhappy, but I’m still going to say it. xia qianru: Oh, you probably think it’s because I’m looking for an easy life, right? But you’re wrong. I’m not really so eager to stay in Shanghai, or to continue the lifestyle I have now. It’s on account of Yusheng. He . . . xiao jiye: So you’re going to do whatever he wants you to do? xia qianru: I really don’t want to. Every day now, I’m losing what I’ve learned and can’t put my ideals into practice. Sometimes I . . . I’m so miserable. xiao jiye: Then why don’t you just snap out of it? To put it bluntly, there are certainly some unhealthy elements in Yusheng’s thought. As his closest comrade, you ought to help him. If you accommodate him in this unprincipled way, there’s no advantage in it for you or for him. (Emphasizing) There can be no peaceful coexistence with incorrect thought! You feel miserable now. Well, if you go on like this, I’m afraid that, in the end, you won’t be the least upset over even this. You’ll just gradually get used to it, and become insensitive. xia qianru: I am struggling, but . . . xiao jiye: But you always end up accommodating him. The love you get in exchange for sacrificing your principles isn’t the kind that will bring you happiness . . . I often wonder, since life certainly is so complicated, how can a person choose the right road and avoid the wrong road? xia qianru (gives a weak smile): Well, how then? xiao jiye: In our society, it’s not at all hard to tell the correct way. The party has already shown us the right road, and our comrades can remind us in time, too. The important thing is your own determination to do the right thing. There are still a lot of obstacles and difficulties in the path of the revolution; and not everyone has enough courage and strength of will to go this way even if they want to. (Both are silent.) xia qianru: You’re right. But there are some practical problems that I have to consider. xiao jiye: We don’t have any right to consider only ourselves. Besides, who else doesn’t have real problems? For example, some have problems with their families, some have problems because of their spouses, some have poor health, some are afraid of the cold, some are afraid of hot weather, and there are a lot more. What do you think things would be like if everyone harped on his own difficulties? (xiao qianru does not answer.) Furthermore, Yusheng won’t be in Shanghai later on. I’m persuading him to go back to Qinghai, don’t you know? xia qianru: He’s got a bad leg. You know that. xiao jiye: It’s not all that serious. It’s all a— (He suddenly stops.) xia qianru (attentively): What is it? You were saying . . . xiao jiye: I was saying that his leg will probably get better. You ought to use this chance to pull him out of that narrow, individualistic world of his. If you go on this way, not only will you destroy him, but you’ll destroy yourself.

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(lin yusheng enters.) xia qianru: Yusheng, tell your mother not to go to the college. lin yusheng: What’s the matter? xia qianru: I’ve thought it over, and it’s not too good to do it this way. lin yusheng: Is this again somebody else’s idea? xia qianru: No. It’s my own idea. lin yusheng: No, it’s not your own idea. xia qianru: Yes it is my own idea. I’ve just been talking about it with you for half the morning. lin yusheng (annoyed): So what are we going to do then? It was hard enough to talk my mother into it. Now you go and do this! How can I talk to her about it again? xia qianru: I’ll go talk with her myself, then. (She goes into the house.) lin yusheng: Qianru! Ahh. (He turns, sees xiao jiye. xiao jiye walks forward. xia shujuan enters.) xia shujuan: Yusheng, now Qianru tells me not to go. What’s going on? lin yusheng: Mom, just go like you were going to before. Don’t pay attention to her. xiao jiye: Hello, Auntie. xia shujuan: Ah, Jiye! I’ve heard that you’re having trouble with your leg, too. How is it? xiao jiye: It’s nothing, Auntie. xia shujuan: Watch out now, son. If your leg gets bad . . . lin yusheng: Mom, could you go now? xia shujuan (thinks a moment): All right . . . (To lin yusheng) You talk with Xiao Jiye; you’ve been good friends since you two were little. Jiye, Yusheng has something to talk over with you. xiao jiye: Good. (xia shujuan exits.) Yusheng, do you still intend to ask your mother to go request special consideration for you? lin yusheng: What of it? xiao jiye: Have you thought about whether it’s good to do things this way? lin yusheng: What’s so bad about it if the family elders are just doing their part, informing the school about the matter? xiao jiye: You know yourself that this will get your parents in trouble. lin yusheng: What does this have to do with my parents? If there’s some problem, I’ll bear the responsibility. xiao jiye: Yusheng . . . I just received a letter from our prospecting team. They hope you’ve gotten better, and will come back to Qinghai soon . . . lin yusheng: You might concern yourself a bit less with my affairs. (He exits.) xiao jiye: Yusheng . . . (Disturbed, he watches lin yusheng leave. grandma xiao enters.)

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grandma xiao: Jiye, the chief engineer’s here. xiao jiye: What, the chief engineer himself ? (He can’t put out of his mind the trouble with lin yusheng.) grandma xiao: What’s the matter? xiao jiye: Yusheng actually told his mother to go see Secretary He and request special consideration. grandma xiao: And what did his mother do? xiao jiye: She agreed to go. It’s terrible . . . grandma xiao: The chief engineer is waiting for you. You go on ahead. (xiao jiye exits. Disturbed by this news, grandma xiao plans to go find xia shujuan. lin jian enters.) lin jian: Grandma Xiao, hello. grandma xiao: Hello, Old Lin. My, you certainly are a busy man. I heard that you’d come back, but I never ran into you. lin jian: How are you, Grandma Xiao? grandma xiao: I’m fine. Old Lin, do you have time? I’d like to talk something over with you. I’m the kind of person that gets worried when I find out about this kind of thing . . . lin jian (sensing what it is): Oh yeah, has my boy Yusheng been behaving himself in the past year? Have you heard something about him? grandma xiao: That boy Yusheng worries me. How was it he came back? Do you know? lin jian: For the past few days I’ve heard that Xiao Jiye’s come back, and I meant to see him and talk about this, to try to understand what the situation was when Yusheng was in Qinghai. grandma xiao: Yusheng says that he came back to recuperate, but he’s always riding his bicycle all over the place. He also associates with rather unsuitable people. lin jian: And his mother hasn’t had any concern over him? grandma xiao: Speaking of Shujuan, I can’t understand her either. I see that she’s very strict in what she expects from Lanlan, but why does she always accommodate Yusheng? Of course, Yusheng’s not well, and Shujuan is very fond of him, I know. But there should be a right way to be fond of someone! Just now I heard that Shujuan had agreed to see Secretary He about having Yusheng stay in Shanghai. lin jian: That’s simply . . . Ah. I don’t know about all this. grandma xiao: You’re usually away from home, Old Lin, so Shujuan has quite a burden! I think that you ought to share a little responsibility with her in bringing up the children. lin jian: You’re right. “In adversity one flourishes, in tranquillity one perishes.” In peaceful times young people particularly need discipline. How to bring up our revolutionary successors is a vital issue. We should put it on our agenda. (xia shujuan enters.) xia shujuan (surprised): You’re back? lin jian: I came back to pick up some papers.

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xia shujuan: And you’re here, too, Grandma Xiao? grandma xiao: I’ve been talking about you with Old Lin. xia shujuan (laughing): What’ve you been saying about me? grandma xiao: I was saying that you weren’t bringing up your son properly. Are you angry with me? xia shujuan: What do you mean? Of course not. grandma xiao: Well, it’s good that you aren’t angry. All right, you two talk about it. I have company right now! (She exits.) lin jian: You’re going to go to the school? xia shujuan: Yes, Yusheng’s health . . . lin jian: You know what effects that will have! xia shujuan: I’m just going to talk it over with the people at the college, tell them that Yusheng has poor health and that it would be hard for him to go to Qinghai to work . . . lin jian: Enough! That’s enough! It would be hard—so what of it? You’ve worked at schools; you know better than I do how much resources the country uses to educate one student. The laboring people sacrifice and live with little to support themselves while they’re studying, and what’s it all for, in the end? What’s going on  here? As soon as some people run into a problem, they throw away their principles. xia shujuan: Who’s throwing away their principles? If you’re going to maintain your principles, you also have to consider reality. He has a bad leg; the college will give him a little consideration. I don’t think there’s anything you can say against that. lin jian: So he has a bad leg, but it’s not at all serious. And he certainly can’t use it as an excuse. I think he’s just not willing to leave Shanghai. You still don’t see it? I began to see it just a few days after he came back. He just hasn’t got the right attitude. Everybody’s out there working their tails off to build socialism. What about him? All day long he hides in his little nest, seeing only the petty advantages right under his own nose, caring nothing about the great things going on in the world! He just mopes around the house all day; no one knows what he’s thinking about! He doesn’t have the slightest notion of responsibility toward the party or the people. He has no ambition, no ambition! When we were his age, we had already begun to fight for the liberation. But he just takes it easy. Hopeless! xia shujuan: You’re being too harsh on him. Yusheng does have a bad leg. And he wants to stay in Shanghai just for the time being. Wait until he’s better, then he’ll go back to Qinghai again. Didn’t you say so yourself ? lin jian: That’s right, I said so, but don’t get mixed up about what I meant. (xia shujuan does not speak.) I just heard from Grandma Xiao that Yusheng is getting worse and worse, and he even has bad friends. And all along you never told me. xia shujuan: He’s graduated from college. Can I still be watching him all day long?

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lin jian: Do you mean that we should quit caring and let him do what he wants? Comrade, whether our sons and daughters are brought up the right way is a question that is relevant to the revolution! We must not be insensitive to this problem! xia shujuan: I know that. But Shaobai and Yufen gave their lives for the revolution, and so every time I see that boy even the least bit sick, I just feel so sad and imagine the scene twenty-four years ago when Yufen was in jail and gave the baby to me. If he doesn’t turn out right, how could we face his real parents? lin jian: But it’s just because his parents died for the revolution that it’s all the worse to be lax with him. I understand your feelings, but if you really love him, then you ought to be strict with him, to enable him to carry on what his parents were trying to do when they died. But you, ever since he was a child, you’ve pampered him; you’ve never made strict demands on his thought, you’ve given him too loose a rein, and now you’ve completely spoiled him. Just look at what he’s like now. He can’t endure hardship, can’t stand discipline. If it goes on any longer, that boy will become a captive of capitalist ideology. Think about it—if the boy doesn’t make some progress, how can we face his real parents? Shujuan, what do you think of this: I’m going to take this opportunity to tell him about his real parents, get it out into the open, let him know who he is, and let him know the weight of his responsibility. xia shujuan: Why tell him after so many years of not letting him know that we aren’t his real parents? lin jian: Well, should we go on like this, never telling him? xia shujuan: No. Wait until he joins the party and then tell him. By then he’ll be able to deal with the problem correctly. lin jian: Then we better tell him now, to get him moving. Judging by the way he is now, he’ll never get into the party. Think it over. (He goes into the house. After a brief pause, lin jian enters again.) So don’t go to the college. And tell Yusheng to wait for me at home tonight. Tomorrow we’ll have a family meeting and everybody can discuss . . . to let Yusheng and Qianru express their own opinions. I’m leaving now. (He exits. lin yusheng enters, pushing his bicycle.) lin yusheng: Mom, why haven’t you gone yet? xia shujuan: I’m not going. Your father’s right. You need to do what is right. lin yusheng: Dad’s back? How did he find out? xia shujuan: Isn’t it better that he has? He wants you to wait at home for him tonight. (She exits. lin yusheng thinks about this, looking at xiao jiye’s house. li rongsheng enters, listlessly searching for amusement. Seeing lin yusheng’s bicycle, he comes over and rings the bell.) lin yusheng (annoyed): Cut it out, will you! (He takes his bicycle offstage.) li rongsheng (mystified): What a grouch. (lin lan enters.) lin lan: What’re you doing here? li rongsheng: Nothing. Ahh, I’m so bored!

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lin lan: Why don’t you go downtown and see what’s going on? li rongsheng: My bicycle got smashed up. lin lan: Who did it? li rongsheng: A car. lin lan: A car? li rongsheng: No. I smashed into the car. I almost had to go to the police station. Hah! (Pulls out a ticket) I got a ticket. lin lan: And you’re proud of it! What about the exam for senior high? li rongsheng: No hope! lin lan: Hey, what do you think about both of us going to Jinggang Mountain Farm in Jiangxi? li rongsheng: Weren’t you going to take the exam for the Agriculture College? lin lan (sadly): I won’t pass. li rongsheng: What do you mean? Usually you do really well in school, right? lin lan: But something happened today. li rongsheng: What? lin lan: Nothing much, really. Anyway, I won’t be able to pass. li rongsheng: You’re still beating around the bush. I’m all confused. lin lan: What’s there to be confused about? I didn’t make it, that’s all. li rongsheng: So, you really want to go to Jiangxi? lin lan: What’s so strange about that? Quite a few people have gone there already. A hardy seed sprouts anywhere it falls. The closer it is to reality, the deeper the roots go. I definitely want to spend the rest of my life there. I want to be “red and expert” 2 at Jinggang Mountain. li rongsheng: I’m not going. lin lan: You’re just going to keep on wandering around like this, huh? li rongsheng: I’ll study by myself at home for two years and take the exam for the Cinema School and be an actor. lin lan: What made you think of going to the Cinema School? li rongsheng: What else do you think I can pass the exam for? I get a headache as soon as I see anything about math or physics or chemistry. You know that. lin lan: Oh, so you think it’ll be both easy and fun at the Cinema School, because they don’t have math or physics or chemistry? li rongsheng: At least there won’t be as many things to give me headache. I’ll just give it a try. And if I really make it, it’ll be great! I’ll be a movie actor! lin lan: You want me to teach you a little now, Mr. Future Actor? li rongsheng: You know about acting? lin lan: You’ve forgotten! I’m a member of the drama troupe at the Palace of Youth, and teachers from the Cinema School have taught us there. li rongsheng: Well, let’s try and see, then. lin lan: Okay, first you can practice some elementary things. li rongsheng: Like what? lin lan: Think you can take it?

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li rongsheng: Yes, I can. What’s so tough about it? lin lan: You won’t complain? li rongsheng: Don’t try to scare me! lin lan: Okay, then, come over here. First we’ll do leg stretching. (Takes li rongsheng over to the railing) Put your foot up here. (li rongsheng puts his foot on the railing.) lin lan: Too low. (Gets a few bricks from the ground) I’ll put a brick in. (Puts a brick between li rongsheng’s left leg and the railing, inspects the arrangement) Not enough. (Adds another brick) How is it? li rongsheng: It’s . . . It’s okay. Go ahead and put in some more bricks. lin lan (gets vicious): I’ll put them all in. Lift your foot up. li rongsheng: I can’t lift it up! lin lan: I’ll help you. (She lifts up li rongsheng’s foot, sticks in two bricks. li rongsheng bends his leg, so lin lan presses it back down.) Keep it straight! li rongsheng: Ow! Oww! lin lan: You’re yelling about this? You still have to lower the rest of your body. li rongsheng (propping himself up by main force): That’s okay. lin lan: Okay, just hold it like that. li rongsheng (face covered with sweat, haltingly): Lanlan, how much longer? lin lan: Twenty minutes. li rongsheng: Twenty minutes? (No alternative but to beg mercy) Lanlan, this’s about enough, huh? I think this is about enough. lin lan: Still think it’s easy to be a movie actor? li rongsheng: No, it’s not so easy. lin lan (helps li rongsheng to take his leg down): But you think it’s so easy to pass the exam for the Cinema School! li rongsheng (holding his leg and rubbing it): Oh, mother! It’s all tight and sore. Do you have to do this to get into the Cinema School? lin lan: You have to do more than that! Come on, the second one is . . . li rongsheng (shaking his head): I won’t do it. lin lan: You just want to find something easy, but it’s just the same being an actor— you have to put in a lot of work! li rongsheng (sighing dejectedly): Oh! lin lan: Come to Jiangxi with me! li rongsheng: I don’t want to go! lin lan: What do you plan to do, then? li rongsheng: I don’t know. Anyway, I’ll stay at home and wait for a good opportunity. lin lan: How long are you going to wait? li rongsheng: What’s the rush? I’m only sixteen this year! (The phone rings in the house.)

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lin lan: How many times will you be sixteen? li rongsheng (interrupting her): Your telephone! lin lan: You’re wasting your youth this way— li rongsheng: The telephone! lin lan: —frittering away the best years of your life! (li rongsheng does not speak.) You stay here and think about that. (She exits.) li rongsheng: Oh, it would be so good if I could just find a job that I could do and that I’d like, too. (lin lan enters, carrying books and magazines.) lin lan: Grandma Xiao! (grandma xiao answers from inside her house: “What is it?”) The hospital wants you on the phone. (grandma xiao answers: “Coming.”) Hey, weren’t you bored? Here’s A Story of the Pioneers; here’s Red Cliff. They’re all yours to keep. (grandma xiao enters.) li rongsheng: Telephone, Grandma. grandma xiao: Okay. (She goes into the lins’ home.) lin lan: Here’s the China Youth that just came. I haven’t looked at it yet. You go ahead and read it. li rongsheng: It’s so thick, how can I finish it? lin lan: It’ll do you good to read a lot. Your brain’s gotten rusty. (She goes into the house.) li rongsheng (paging through the magazine): Oh, a difficult assignment. (li rongsheng stands up, exits. grandma xiao, despondent, enters. lin lan enters with her.) lin lan (anxiously): What is it, Grandma Xiao? Do they really want to amputate Jiye’s leg? grandma xiao: There’s a bone tumor in the leg and it’s quite possible that it’s malignant. lin lan: Are they sure? grandma xiao: That’s what the doctor said. (An excited xiao jiye enters.) xiao jiye: Grandma, just now the chief engineer said that the evaluation group has gone over our report several times, and that from the various materials in it, it seems that there is scientific evidence for our conclusion. It looks like there really is ore! Grandma, it’s the kind of ore that I was talking about. grandma xiao: I see, I see . . . xiao jiye: According to the estimates, the deposit is quite large. Lanlan, do you understand? There’s ore! There’s ore! Hooray! Our group worked so hard to find evidence

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that Region 205 really does have ore. Every morning when we put on our packs and went out into the sun, I always said to myself: “There are going to be new discoveries today for sure.” That was the hope that nourished us as we traveled over mountains and through valleys, drank springwater when we were thirsty, ate dry rations when we were hungry. In the winter, we endured the piercing wind; in the summer, we withstood the fiery heat of the sun. Life was difficult, but it was also so engrossing, so attractive, because there was our hope encouraging us that we’d find the ore, we’d find it, for sure. We even sensed that there was a kind of voice underground calling out, “Let me come out and give heat and light for socialism!” I could even sense how it breathed and moved. And now this is about to come true right before my eyes! Grandma, this afternoon when they held the last evaluation session, they wanted me to do a presentation. As soon as they approve it, I’m going to put on my backpack and go right back to the prospecting team in Qinghai. Later on, I want to see for myself how they take the ore out of the earth. I want everyone to know that we have the ore! Hooray! Grandma, we have our own ore! (grandma xiao has tried several times to interrupt xiao jiye’s speech.) grandma xiao: I see you’re happy . . . (Straining to hide the pain in her heart, she exits.) xiao jiye (suspecting something): What’s wrong with my grandmother? (When he turns to look at lin lan, she avoids his gaze.) Lanlan, what’s wrong? lin lan: Oh, nothing. xiao jiye: No, it doesn’t seem that way. What’s happened? lin lan: Nothing. Nothing’s happened. xiao jiye: No, there’s something you’re both hiding from me. lin lan (anxiously): There’s nothing. Really, there’s nothing. xiao jiye (suddenly becomes worried): Was that telephone call just now from the hospital? Was it? lin lan: No. No, it wasn’t! xiao jiye: But that’s exactly what you said when you called my grandmother! Why are you evading my questions? (He seizes lin lan when she tries to exit. grandma xiao quietly enters.) Lanlan, is it my leg? (lin lan shakes her head.) Lanlan, don’t worry. I can take it. There’s some serious trouble, isn’t there? (lin lan does not speak.) Well, isn’t it true? grandma xiao: Yes, my child. xiao jiye: What did the doctor say? grandma xiao (calmly): They may have to amputate. (Weighed down by this news, xiao jiye sits. Silence.) lin lan (walks over to xiao jiye): Brother Jiye, don’t be sad. They don’t know for sure. Go talk to the doctor again. Maybe there’s still hope. And if there really isn’t any

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hope, that doesn’t matter either. Really, it doesn’t matter. There’s a teacher in our school who got his hand seriously burned when he saved our country’s property during the big fire. We respect and admire him even more now. My father has an old friend from the army who was injured during the Korean War and had his leg amputated, but he’s made many, many contributions to the nation, just like he used to before. You could be like them. Don’t be sad. Really, it’s no use to be sad. I . . . (Can’t think what she ought to do for him) I’ll get you a bowl of water. (She exits. grandma xiao quietly sits beside xiao jiye, rubs his shoulder. Silence.) xiao jiye (suddenly lifting his head, emotionally): Grandma, you’ve encountered a lot of trouble in your life. How did you get through the roughest time? grandma xiao (thinks a while): I can’t really keep straight the troubles I’ve been through in my life, but I’d have to say the worst time was in 1936, when our underground organization was almost wiped out. I left the factory, but then, at the very worst time, your father was murdered in jail by the Kuomintang. He was my last son. Out of the whole family, only you and I were left. And you were just one year old . . . I couldn’t make contact with the party, I couldn’t get work, and friends and relatives didn’t dare to let me stay with them . . . Oh, it was hard, it was really hard. But I also thought of how I had gotten into this trouble. It was all for the revolution! When there were so many good comrades in jail sacrificing their lives for the revolution, how could I complain, if I had it a little tough? So that’s the way it was. I just gritted my teeth and managed to get through. Jiye, working to build socialism is also working for the revolution. (lin lan brings in the water.) xiao jiye (to himself ): The revolution! (Rubbing his leg) I’m a prospector, and I can’t give up my leg! (Suddenly he stands up.) grandma xiao: Where are you going? xiao jiye: I’m going to see the doctor. (He exits with large strides.) lin lan: Don’t run away like that! Don’t run! (Turns around) Grandma Xiao, why did you tell him? grandma xiao: It’s always better to let people know the truth. It has been twenty-six years. A whole twenty-six years. During these twenty-six years I’ve taken him along through many situations; but no matter when it was, as long as he showed a little progress, I’d feel so happy. But if he did something wrong, I wouldn’t be able to sleep for the whole, long night. It wasn’t easy! It’s been hard bringing him up, and now that he’s just learned to fly, he’s broken his wings . . . lin lan: Grandma! (li rongsheng enters, carrying a magazine.) li rongsheng: Hey, Lanlan, guess what! Xiao Jiye has been named one of the “nation’s model workers for the building of socialism.” lin lan: Really? li rongsheng: He came back from a meeting in Beijing, and he didn’t tell us about it. He didn’t even mention it!

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lin lan: How do you know about it? li rongsbeng: There’s an article in China Youth about him. You know how his leg got hurt? It was because he saved another worker from being crushed to death. Hey, there’s a paragraph here I’ll read to you: “One time he and his comrades were collecting material in a three-meter-deep exploratory shaft. Since it had just rained, the earth was not very firm. Xiao Jiye suddenly noticed that some large rocks were shaking and would soon fall. He also saw that a comrade was working right under the boulders and was in danger of being crushed. Without regard for his own safety, Xiao Jiye rushed forward and saved his comrade’s life; but his own leg was injured . . . Yet he persevered and completed his task despite the injury. It was in this shaft that they collected valuable material and found important evidence for determining whether or not that area contains ore.” lin lan: Grandma! grandma xiao (smoothing lin lan’s hair): Don’t be sad, child! There’s an old saying, “It takes one hundred refinings to make steel.” If somebody never experiences hardship, he’ll never become a good person. Being a good person is like walking: it’s hard to avoid falling down or suffering setbacks once in a while. (Forcefully) But as long as you obey the party and are a revolutionary, then even in the face of tremendous difficulties, you can still go forward. (lin lan slowly raises her head, resolutely looks forward. li rongsheng stands marveling at this scene. The curtain slowly closes.)

A CT 3 (Following closely on the preceding act, with the setting as in the first act. A breathlessly hot afternoon, the sun glares down upon the earth. Even the chirping of the cicadas sounds heavy and dull. From the window of the lin home’s living room dark clouds can be seen floating in the deep-blue sky. Deep rumbles of far-off thunder can be heard. A storm is approaching. lin lan is in the small living room repairing a wooden bucket. Her concern for xiao jiye makes her uneasy. She goes out to look toward the road. lin yusheng is sitting on the sofa reading a magazine. xia qianru enters.) xia qianru (toward the inner room): Auntie, I’m going to the college. (She exits. Just as lin yusheng is about to go into an inner room, the telephone rings.) lin yusheng (answering the phone): Hello! Hi! . . . It’s me . . . Go swimming? So you still feel like going swimming. I don’t want to go . . . Look, things are really screwed up. Sure, I got my mother to go along, but my father found out . . . Yes . . . I simply don’t have any alternative now . . . What? Write a letter to the school and use my father’s seal?

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No, that’s no good . . . No, anyway, I can’t do that . . . Go to the college myself ? . . . Yeah. Anyway, it’s not against the law to express my opinion. Okay, I’ll go try and see . . . Bye. (He hangs up and, pushing his bicycle, is about to exit.) lin lan: Brother, who was that on the phone? . . . Little Wu again. Where’re you going? lin yusheng: There are some things I have to do. (He exits.) lin lan: Dad’s coming—he wants to see you! (She chases after her brother, shouting. lin jian enters, sees the broken bucket, and starts to repair it. li rongsheng enters.) li rongsheng: Lanlan! Lanlan! She’s not home! (Sees lin jian) Oh, good. Just in time, a bucket repairman. We have a broken bucket, too. If you come over to our place in a while and fix it, we’ll pay you. lin jian (looks at li rongsheng, laughs): Fine. Which house do you live in? li rongsheng: Number 2 in Workers’ New Village. I’ll take you there in a while. I ran into you just in time. Otherwise I’d have gotten yelled at. lin jian: What do you mean? li rongsheng: My father would have come home and said, “All day long you do nothing. I tell you to fix the bucket and you won’t. The only thing you know how to do is open your mouth to eat.” lin jian: What? Don’t you go to school? li rongsheng: Last year I didn’t pass the exam for senior high, so now I just hang around the house. lin jian: Why don’t you find some work to do? li rongsheng: What is there good to do? Last year the neighborhood committee sponsored me to be a clerk, but I didn’t want to be one. Now they’re after me to go to work on a farm, but I don’t want to. lin jian: Why don’t you go? I would if I were you. li rongsheng: It’s okay if you want to go. You’re a manual laborer, but I’m an intellectual. lin jian (laughs): Hah! What a big intellectual! li rongsheng: Well, I’ve been through nine years of school, and they want me to do farmwork! And they keep on saying how happy I ought to be to have grown up under socialism. What a pain! lin jian: Why aren’t you happy? Isn’t it good to go to the countryside to build socialism and new farm villages and use your own hands to create a beautiful new life? li rongsheng: Why should I be so happy about wallowing around in the mud all day and getting all stinky and sweaty? lin jian: Well, what do you think you would be happy doing? li rongsheng: A lot of things. Ha, like Lin Lan’s father—a great leader. That must be impressive, and interesting! lin jian: No. It’s no fun being a great leader.

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li rongsheng: Come on, what’s so hard about being a great leader? lin jian: Suppose I don’t mention the past when we used to fight as guerrillas against the Kuomintang, but just stick to the present. If you’re a factory head, you have to take part in the labor; you have to learn new skills and also get the work done fast and efficiently. There are quite a few things to worry about. And if you have a free moment, you still have to take care of other things, like fixing this wooden bucket. li rongsheng: Oh, come on, a big leader fixing a bucket? lin jian: Why not? Leaders are just ordinary people. li rongsheng: From what you say, it isn’t so much fun to be a leader. lin jian: The way you look at things, you wouldn’t be satisfied no matter what you did. li rongsheng: Ohh. You seem to know quite a bit. How come? Did you go to school, too? lin jian: Did I ever go to school? I was an apprentice when I was quite young, but my education is only what I was able to piece together for myself later on. How can I compare with you intellectuals? Back in the old days . . . li rongsheng: Ohh, you too! As soon as you open your mouth, you start with “Back in the old days . . .” just like my father. We aren’t in the old days anymore. I’m sick of hearing about them! lin jian: If you don’t know how bitter it was back in the old days, then you don’t know how sweet it is today. Unless we talk about those times, you’ll all think that the good life we have today just fell from the sky. li rongsheng: Boy, you’re a good talker. Why don’t you get another job? You only fix buckets! lin jian: If nobody wanted to be a bucket repairman, then you’d have to fix your bucket yourself. And if you don’t fix it, your father will yell at you, right? li rongsheng: Then let somebody else fix it. Don’t you have some education? It is really too bad for you to be doing this. lin jian: Is it? What do you think would be appropriate for me? li rongsheng: Let me think. (Thinking seriously) That’s it! You could be a store clerk. lin jian: But you didn’t want to do that yourself, right? li rongsheng: I’ve gone through nine years of school, but you’ve only . . . lin jian: I only have a little bit of education, right? li rongsheng (satisfied): Yep. (lin lan enters.) lin lan: Dad! You’re back? li rongsheng (surprised): “Dad”? He’s your father, the one who’s a big leader? lin lan: I only have one father. (Sees that li rongsheng wants to run off ) What are you running away for? Come here, come here. Dad, this is Little Li. lin jian: We’ve met. li rongsheng: So you’re the one who won all those battles . . . the . . . great leader. lin jian: Great leaders still fix buckets, right? li rongsheng (to lin lan): Is it true that your father wants to go down to the countryside?

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lin lan: Why shouldn’t it be true? Too bad his superiors won’t let him go. (li rongsheng stares at lin jian.) lin jian (to lin lan): Well, how about you? Did you do well on the exam for the Agriculture College? lin lan: Dad, I didn’t take the exam. li rongsheng (amazed): Didn’t take it? lin jian (surprised): Oh? What happened, you . . . lin lan (hurriedly explaining): No. Dad, I ran into something unexpected. lin jian: An accident? lin lan: Well, yes. This morning on the way to the exam, I thought I’d go meet Wang Xiu and go to the exam together with her; but when I got to her house, she had already left, and I found her mother having a relapse of her heart trouble. What could I do? There was nobody else at home. If I didn’t help her, it’d be too late, so I took her right to the hospital. After the doctors saved her and felt that the crisis had passed, I waited until they put her in a hospital room before I left. By that time, everybody had finished the exam. lin jian: So that’s what happened. lin lan: Just now Wang Xiu told me that she wanted to go explain the reason to the entrance examination committee and request them to give me a makeup examination, but I wouldn’t agree to it. Dad, I didn’t plan to tell you, but I was afraid you’d be sad, so now . . . lin jian: You did the right thing! In order to help a person, you gave up a chance to advance your own education. That kind of spirit is commendable. But what do you plan to do later on? lin lan: I plan to go to Jinggang Mountain Farm in Jiangxi. lin jian: Ah, good. You can learn by real work. Whether it’s self- cultivation or agricultural knowledge, in both you can learn something. But once you’re there you may run into a lot of difficulties. Have you considered that? lin lan: Yes, I have. I think that no matter how big the difficulties are now, they can’t compare with the ones you had when you were working for the revolution. (As though to herself ) Since the people in our parents’ generation are all courageous, we better not be cowards! lin jian: Well said! lin lan: Mom’ll not agree to this. lin jian: Is she home? lin lan: She’s probably upstairs. lin jian: Your mother’ll agree. She’ll agree. lin lan (happily): Little Li! Let’s go there together! li rongsheng (hesitantly): I . . . I don’t want to go. lin jian: What? Oh, you can’t find happiness as a peasant, right? (li rongsheng does not speak.) That’s right, that’s right. Young people always like to talk about happiness. As long as things are going along the way they want, they say, “I’m so happy.” But when they run

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into the least thing that doesn’t go their way, they say, “I’m not happy at all.” But what is this happiness? They haven’t even figured it out themselves. lin lan: Dad, what do you say happiness is? lin jian: Happiness is just an attractive word. (To li rongsheng) Hey, come on, Little Li, sit down. Different people, different classes have different understandings of this word. Some people feel that happiness is just eating and playing without having to do any work. There are also people who feel that happiness is having fame and power. These views are both wrong. They do not correspond to the proletariat’s view of happiness. We say that for a true revolutionary, happiness and struggle are inseparable. Before the liberation, countless revolutionaries struggled heroically to overthrow the reactionary system. In their view, there was no greater happiness than that. Today, since liberation, we don’t suffer oppression and exploitation, but the struggle has not stopped at all. There is no greater happiness than for a young person to be able to take part in today’s class struggle and socialist construction, to contribute his or her share to the work for the party and for the people. (Pointedly) The kind of person who does not put out his or her best efforts can never achieve happiness. Right, my intellectual? (li rongsheng does not speak.) You’re not a child anymore! You have to use your brains. It’ll be just terrible if you keep on muddling along like this! (li rongsheng lowers his head and does not speak.) lin lan (to li rongsheng): Well, how about it? You’d better come with me to Jinggang Mountain. li rongsheng: I . . . I’ll think it over. lin jian: Good. You have to consider it. If you aren’t busy, come over often; and if there’s time, we’ll talk about it. How’s that? (li rongsheng nods.) You little imp. li rongsheng (to lin lan): I’m going now. Here’s your China Youth (Bows to lin jian) Goodbye! (He exits.) lin jian (about to exit, turns to lin lan): Where’s your brother? lin lan: He went to the college about Qianru’s job assignment. lin jian (severely): What, he went himself ? lin lan: Yes. Just now, that Little Wu called again, and after Yusheng took the call, he left. (Silence.) lin jian: When he comes back, tell him to see me upstairs. (He exits. After a brief pause, xiao jiye enters, walking with difficulty.) lin lan: Jiye! You’re back! xiao jiye: Where’s your brother? lin lan: How’s your leg? xiao jiye: Isn’t he home?

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lin lan: What’d the doctor say? xiao jiye: He wants me to go to the hospital right away . . . to have a biopsy. lin lan: There’s hope, isn’t there? (xiao jiye does not speak.) xiao jiye (after a pause): Where’d Yusheng go? lin lan: He went to the college. xiao jiye: He went himself! lin lan: Oh, my brother wants to stay in Shanghai himself, and he’s also trying to keep our cousin here, too . . . How could you have agreed to let him come back? Is his leg really that bad? That hospital must be crazy. They even gave him a medical excuse. xiao jiye: That’s just what I came to see him about. lin lan: What for? Is . . . xiao jiye: I want to ask him about . . . ask him whether he can go back to Qinghai a little earlier. lin lan: Yeah. That’ll be good if you make him go back early. (After a brief pause, lin yusheng enters through the front door.) lin lan: Xiao Jiye, my brother’s back. lin yusheng: Oh, you’re here. I was just thinking of looking for you. xiao jiye: I’ve been thinking of coming to see you, too. (To lin lan) I’d like to talk to your brother alone. (Exit lin lan.) lin yusheng: Good. I hope you can give me an explanation. xiao jiye: An explanation of what? lin yusheng: Of why you want to make trouble between Qianru and me, of why you’re always trying to encourage her to leave Shanghai. Why? xiao jiye: Because the job requires you to leave this place. As a former classmate, I couldn’t bear to see you going on like this. lin yusheng: Thank you for your concern. xiao jiye (sincerely): Yusheng, we were schoolmates for many years . . . If I go too far, please don’t get mad. We’ve been apart for almost a year now, and I really didn’t expect you to turn out like this. lin yusheng: May I ask how I’ve turned out? xiao jiye: Just think, now. What have you done for the whole year? All day long you just stay hidden away in your petty, individualist world, satisfied with your mediocre, trivial existence, hankering after the easy, the only thing in your immediate view. lin yusheng: Since you’re so concerned about my life, I’ll speak frankly with you. We do intend to make our lives better, more comfortable, to make our lives richer and more varied. Why is everybody working so hard? Isn’t it just to make life better and happier? xiao jiye: To make whose life happier? Is it just to make your individual life happier, or is it to give more happiness through your and everyone’s labor to the lives of hundreds of millions of people? You want your life richer and more colorful. That’s all

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right. Our lives today are the richest, most varied in history. Yet, it certainly is not in your little room, but in the ardent struggle of the broad masses! lin yusheng: Don’t talk to me about your high principles. I ask you, do you still admit the existence of individual happiness? xiao jiye: In a socialist society, no worker is oppressed, and no worker is exploited while working in the collective. One can develop one’s intelligence and abilities to the fullest, and create a more beautiful future. Isn’t this the greatest happiness for an individual? Yusheng, the key to this question is just this: what kind of happiness is it that you’re pursuing? If the whole country hadn’t been liberated, then for sons of workers like you and me, it would be hard even to survive, not to mention graduating from college. And how could you even begin to discuss this kind of happiness that you’re thinking of ? When we think of happiness today, we must never, never just pursue individual pleasure, or forget the responsibility that we young people bear toward the party and the people. We must not forget to commit ourselves wholeheartedly to the magnificent work of building socialism. lin yusheng: I haven’t forgotten, and I can’t possibly forget! If we do feel some interest in our own happiness, well, so what? We work and we labor like anybody else. We neither go around robbing and plundering, nor do we exploit or interfere with others; we just spend our days according to our own wishes and our own ideals. May I ask, what is illegal about that? xiao jiye: There it is; over and over again “ourselves” and “ourselves.” You start with yourself, and finish with legality, so where do you put the interests of the nation and the collective? Our country works according to plans, so when you put the interests of the individual before those of the collective, beyond the scope of national planning, how can that not interfere with others? How can you say it’s legal not to respond to the needs of the country, not to obey your job assignment?! Why shouldn’t you be criticized for it? lin yusheng: Do you mean that the only thing in the interest of the nation is to go to some border area? Everyone has his own needs. Surely you wouldn’t go so far as to have everybody live the life of those in the mountain gulches! xiao jiye: I’m sad for you when you talk that way. In the mountain gulches, you say? If it hadn’t been for the members of the older generation of the revolution struggling in the wild mountains, then there wouldn’t have been any victory for the Chinese revolution. If it weren’t for the support from the mountain gullies and farming villages all over the country, our great cities and industries would have lost their lifeline. How can we achieve socialism, how can we gain happiness for the people, unless we arduously build up the country? Besides, the battle post for us geologists is right in the mountains! Yusheng, what’s happened to that great ambition you had just after we graduated? You’re on a very dangerous road! lin yusheng (sneers): Dangerous road? What’s the danger? xiao jiye: The danger is that you aren’t thinking of the revolution anymore. The danger is that individualistic thought can corrupt your spirit without your being aware of

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it! It can destroy your ideals, erode your resolve, and make you fall deeper and deeper into the capitalist quagmire. lin yusheng (contemptuously): Don’t try to scare me. I did not come from a family of the capitalist class. xiao jiye: As the postrevolution generation, we have to be even more careful. If we aren’t, then, despite the fact that we may have been born into the right family, capitalist thought can still bore its way into our minds. (Emphatically) It’s up to you what path you take, but you’re responsible for your behavior. lin yusheng (counterattacking): What about you, then? It doesn’t look like you’ve done any earthshaking deeds! xiao jiye: That’s right. Earthshaking deeds are done by the masses, not by any individual. I recall Chairman Mao’s saying something like “Abilities of individuals vary. As long as one is not selfish, then one is a noble person, a pure person, a virtuous person, a person who has abandoned vulgarity, a person who is useful to the people.” My abilities are very limited, but I’m willing to use all my strength to work in accord with the needs of the party, and to be a simple, solid screw in the machine of revolution. lin yusheng: Ah, what lofty ideals! xiao jiye: No! It’s just the standard behavior for the busy lives of the young people in the era of Mao Zedong. All of us ought to be like that. Yusheng, don’t go on like this! Come back to Qinghai! lin yusheng: I have a bad leg. Don’t you know? xiao jiye: Is it really that bad? lin yusheng (pretending to be tough but actually afraid): What do you mean by that? The doctor gave me a medical excuse. You’ve seen it. xiao jiye: Yes, I’ve seen it; it’s in my pocket right now. lin yusheng: What? xiao jiye: But the doctor’s added a few words. lin yusheng: You . . . xiao jiye: See for yourself. (He hands the certificate to lin yusheng. lin yusheng looks at the certificate, and his face immediately goes pale. He reaches out to take the slip of paper and, with shaking hands, looks at the doctor’s repudiation, then collapses onto a chair. Thunder rumbles. lin lan enters, sees the certificate on the table.) lin lan (reads aloud): “This hospital never issued this certificate. It is a forgery.” (lin yusheng exits hurriedly.) So this is how it is! (She is about to go upstairs.) xiao jiye (hurries to stop her): Lanlan! Don’t tell your father about this for a while. We should try to help your brother. (xia qianru enters through the front door. xiao jiye takes the certificate from lin lan’s hands and hides it.) lin lan: Cousin—

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(She is stopped by xiao jiye.) xia qianru (senses something amiss): What’s going on? xiao jiye: Nothing. xia qianru (to xiao jiye): What’re you holding? lin lan: It’s . . . xiao jiye (immediately): A letter. xia qianru: No. It looks like you’re trying to hide something from me, Xiao Jiye. Let me see it. xiao jiye: I can’t let you see it. xia qianru: Why? xiao jiye: It has nothing to do with you. (xia qianru looks at them suspecting something and suddenly becomes worried. lin yusheng enters, unnoticed.) xia qianru: Did he do something wrong? Why don’t you say something? Give me the letter. (No one speaks.) Ahh. Don’t torture me! lin yusheng (to xiao jiye): Give me the certificate. (After receiving the certificate, resolutely hands it to xia qianru) Qianru, I’ve done something very wrong. (xia qianru tensely looks at the certificate and then, downcast, walks toward the window. Outside, it begins to pour.) xia qianru (softly): It’s really pouring! . . . (For a long time she stands with her back to the audience. li rongsheng enters, fleeing the rain, and takes in the scene with great amazement. There is unbearable silence.) lin yusheng: Well, what do you all say? What should I do? xiao jiye: Go back to the prospecting team. If you’ve fallen down at some place, then you just get back up right there. lin yusheng: No. I’ve got a bad leg. Even if I did exaggerate the trouble, it really is true that there is trouble. lin lan: Your trouble isn’t in you leg; it’s in your head! xiao jiye (sincerely): Yusheng, just think of how many people are struggling day and night for the success of the revolution. For the past thirty years, your father has been risking his life for the revolution. And now he’s still at the front line of socialist construction. My grandmother’s almost seventy, but has she ever stopped working for the revolution? If the older generation is still at the front line today, then what reason do we young people have to hide away in a little corner of individualism? lin yusheng: It’s easy to talk, but if your leg were like mine, then you’d . . . lin lan: Brother! xiao jiye: Then I’d sneak away from the prospecting team? No, I never would. lin yusheng: Sure, it’s easy to talk, but if it were really that way . . . lin lan (sharply): Brother! Do you know that they’re going to amputate Xiao Jiye’s leg? xiao jiye (trying to stop her): Lanlan!

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lin yusheng (at the same time): What? (Everyone is shocked into silence by this sudden news.) xiao jiye: It doesn’t matter. If they do amputate, I’ll go back to the prospecting team on crutches. If I can’t climb mountains, then I’ll just stay on the ground; if I can’t go out into the field, then I’ll just stay in the tent. But I’m going to work my whole life on the prospecting team, no matter what! . . . (Looks at his watch) I have to go to a meeting. xia qianru: Oh, don’t go. xiao jiye: Yes, I have to go; they’re going to evaluate our geological report today. They’re all waiting for me! (lin lan brings out an umbrella.) lin yusheng: I’ll go with you. xiao jiye (warmly seizing lin yusheng’s hand): No. You stay at home and think about this. li rongsheng (takes the umbrella from lin lan): I’ll go with you. xiao jiye: Okay, I’ll let you come with me. (To lin yusheng) We’ll talk again in a little while. (xiao jiye and li rongsheng exit, lin lan following. lin yusheng and xia qianru are left onstage. There is embarrassed silence.) lin yusheng: Why don’t you say something? Well . . . let me have it. You have the right to. xia qianru: No, I don’t have any right to yell at you. I can see in you now what I’d have been like later on. It’s only after all this that I’ve been able to understand clearly what I’ve actually been doing for the past year . . . But you—I never would’ve thought . . . (lin lan enters, turns, and starts upstairs.) lin yusheng: You think that I didn’t intend to do a good job? At the beginning I worked really hard, but later . . . There were the hardships of the life there, the difficulties in the work, and then my leg started up on me . . . The only thing I could do was . . . xia qianru: The only thing you could do was sneak away and come back here? And you even forged a medical certificate! lin yusheng: How else could I have managed it? You know what my family is like. If I came back the way the others do, could they have forgiven me? Then Little Wu gave me the idea. xia qianru: Little Wu again! Do you mean that you’re not responsible for this? lin yusheng: No, of course not. I’m not trying to hide what my idea was at that time. At the time I thought that, since I wasn’t well, couldn’t it be just the same to go back to Shanghai and work? Anyway, I wouldn’t be able to come up with any great accomplishments out there. xia qianru: You were fooling yourself! Why was Xiao Jiye able to accomplish something out there? I never thought that you’d turn out like this! (Painfully) I’m really ashamed of you . . . (She turns, about to exit.)

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lin yusheng: Qianru, you . . . (lin jian enters, xia shujuan, lin lan following.) xia qianru: Hello, Uncle! lin jian: Don’t go. Everybody sit down. (Silence.) Where’s the certificate? (lin yusheng takes out the certificate.) Put it up on the wall. lin yusheng (pleading): Dad! lin jian: Put it up. Let everybody take a good look at it again and again. This is a lesson for you and for the whole family. How could our family produce a gutless loser like you? (lin yusheng hesitantly looks at his mother.) lin jian (firmly): Put it up! Put it up yourself. xia shujuan: Do what he says. (With no alternative, lin yusheng reluctantly walks over to the wall.) lin jian: Afraid our family will lose face, are you? You already made the whole working class lose face. (Pained) Doing what you did—a deserter! You’ve betrayed the party that trained you, you’ve betrayed the teachers who taught you; but worst of all, you’ve let down your own departed parents. (Everyone starts.) Shujuan, it’s time to tell him. (He turns and goes upstairs.) lin yusheng: My departed parents? Mom, you . . . xia shujuan (pained): No, we aren’t your real parents. Your real parents died in a Kuomintang prison twenty-four years ago. lin yusheng: Really? xia shujuan: Your real parents worked in a factory with your father, joined the labor movement together, and were also comrades-in-arms. During one strike, they were captured and put in jail. The enemy sentenced your real parents to death. Three days after you were born, they were killed. (lin jian comes downstairs carrying a box.) lin jian (takes a letter out of the box): This is the letter your mother wrote for you just before she died. lin yusheng: A letter from my mother. (He takes the letter.) lin jian (pained): Read it out loud; look at the hopes your parents had for you. lin yusheng (reads aloud): “My dear child: The executioner has already lifted his ax. All our comrades are singing heroically. We’ll have to go up to the execution ground soon. You will never see your own parents again. My child, I’m writing this letter to remind you that your parents are workers and have sacrificed their lives for the revolution of the proletariat. You can forget your father and you can forget your mother, but you must never forget the world that still harbors our class enemies! You must struggle for the sacred ideals of communism.

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My child, hold the red flag high! Always advancing, always working for the revolution, always loyal to the party, always for the people! It is time now. The prison doors are clanging. The executioner is coming. Farewell forever, my beloved child! We are going. Remember your debt. Don’t forget your roots. Don’t forget your roots . . .” (Toward the letter) My mother! My own mother! (He hunches over on the table, crying.) lin jian: That’s right, that’s right. Don’t forget your roots! Don’t forget that you’re the son of workers. Even more important, don’t forget that throughout the world there are still a great many . . . Oh, my old comrades-in-arms! You gave everything for the revolution. Our life today is what we got with your blood, with your heads. But what can I say? . . . I’ve let you down. I haven’t brought him up to be the kind of person that you wanted. (Painfully) But I, I never imagined that he could . . . Ohh. (Strikes the table with his fist and, after an emotion- choked pause, sadly) Yusheng, it wasn’t easy for the proletariat to obtain power! The imperialists and reactionaries are just dreaming of a chance to get their wish to oppose the revolution and restore the old order by using you young people. Son, you’ve got to be careful! lin yusheng: Don’t say any more, Dad. Please don’t say any more! (He runs off, crying.) xia shujuan: Yusheng! lin jian: It’s all right; let him go run for a while in the rain and the wind. (To xia shujuan) You see? You can’t be lax! (xia shujuan does not speak.) Of course, I’m responsible, too. The past few years, I’ve been rather insensitive to the problems of rearing our children. I always thought that in our society young people couldn’t go too far astray. (Forcefully) No. The influence of the capitalist class is still extremely strong. Not every young person can correctly choose his or her own path! (xia qianru suddenly stands up, walks toward the door.) lin lan: Where are you going? xia qianru: I’m going to see Secretary He. (She exits.) lin jian: She ought to go. (Silence. lin lan is quietly looking at her father.) After every kind of hardship, our generation finally seized political power and established the regime of the proletariat; but Chairman Mao has repeatedly warned us that we have just taken the first step in our Long March! The way we are going is a road full of difficulties, but it is the road to victory! But what about the next generation? Will they be able to follow our path after all? lin lan (resolutely): Yes, Dad. Don’t worry. We can follow your path to the end! lin jian (looking at his daughter, emotionally): Good! You’ve got to be determined to obey the party. Always keep to the revolutionary road! (Severely) There are people who want to make our next generation corrupt and degenerate . . . They can’t! We’ll never let them! (Curtain.)`

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A CT 4 (A morning ten days later. The scenery is the same as in act 2. The cicadas drone continuously. A truck passes nearby, allowing the sound of graduates’ singing to be heard. lin lan and xiao jiye have already been speaking for some time.) lin lan: It looks like he’s struggling pretty hard with his thought. xiao jiye: That’s good for him. Ah, why hasn’t Qianru gotten here yet? lin lan: She should be back. Everybody promised to meet here today and leave together. Xiao Jiye, you go back to the hospital. All those doctors studying your case might want to see you. xiao jiye: Before starting their discussion, they had already come to my room to do the diagnosis. How else could I have gotten out? lin lan: If they turn up something, then . . . xiao jiye: My grandmother will come and tell me. Hurry up with your packing. lin lan: Right, there isn’t much time left. (xia qianru enters.) Hi, Cousin. xia qianru: Xiao Jiye! xiao jiye: You’re back? lin lan: I’ll go look for my brother for you. (She goes into the house.) xiao jiye: You leave today? xia qianru: Yes. Everybody’ll be here to leave together in a while. I hear they made a prognosis today. What’s the conclusion? xiao jiye: They’re going to announce the verdict anytime now! xia qianru: Oh . . . Did you have something important to call me back here for? xiao jiye: I heard that you moved in at the college and wouldn’t come back. Who have you turned Yusheng’s problem over to? xia qianru: I didn’t know what to do about it. Before I moved in at the college, I talked it over with him, but he wouldn’t go back. xiao jiye: A problem in one’s thinking can’t be solved just by a few conversations. Uncle Lin has worked a lot with him, but I could never help. He wouldn’t come to the hospital; when I came back to see him, he’d avoid me. There was just no way. The only thing I could do was to ask you to come back and let you help him. Before you go, talk with him again. As long as everyone patiently helps him, he’ll rise to the challenge. xia qianru: I’ve already talked with him, but he wouldn’t listen to me. Do you think I can defer to him like before? xiao jiye: Of course you don’t have to defer to him, but you do need patience. With things developing this way, don’t you think we have some responsibility? xia qianru: I don’t intend to evade my responsibility. I used to accommodate him as though I had no principles, and now I can’t go back to being like that again. Since it

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was useless for us to stay together, I thought that we had better break up for the time being. xiao jiye: Oh, no wonder he’s been so touchy about you. Doing something like that now can only cause him unnecessary anguish, and add to the weight of his mental burden. I understand him. He just doesn’t have the face to go back and see his comrades. We should trust him. After all, he has received a revolutionary education, and he’s not the unambitious type. xia qianru: All right, I’ll go see him and talk to him again . . . (lin lan enters pulling lin yusheng along.) lin lan: Cousin, my brother’s here. xiao jiye: Hello, Yusheng. lin yusheng: You’re back? How’s your leg? xiao jiye: There won’t be any news for a while. lin yusheng: Oh . . . (For a time he can’t think of anything else to say.) xiao jiye: Qianru’s leaving today. lin yusheug: I know. xiao jiye: Then you two talk. (He is about to exit.) lin yusheng: No, you . . . lin lan: I have to pack. (She goes into the house.) xiao jiye (in a low voice, to xia qianru): Try to explain it to him. (He exits.) xia qianru: Yusheng. lin yusheng: You’re back. xia qianru: Yes. (There is a brief pause.) lin yusheng: Leaving today? xia qianru: Yes. I haven’t been back for quite a few days. How are you? lin yusheng: Oh, all right. xia qianru: Yusheng, what are you planning to do? lin yusheng: Leave here, and go somewhere far away . . . xia qianru: Then why don’t you go back to the prospecting team? lin yusheng: I can go anywhere except back there. I’m afraid . . . xia qianru: Actually, you’re just being overanxious. As long as you’re willing to go back, your comrades will welcome you back. Xiao Jiye was right when he said, “In our society, if a person falls down, there will be a lot of comrades around to give him a hand and to help him up.” (Silence.) It seems that you have something against me. Is that right? lin yusheng: No, nothing. I can only blame myself.

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xia qianru: Do you think I did this for myself, that I left you because you did something wrong? lin yusheng: I don’t think that. I’ve fallen down, but I can get up again. xia qianru: I really hope you can. The past few days I’ve been examining myself over and over again! For the past year it was as though I had fallen into thick, gooey mud, and as I struggled to get out, I’d sink even deeper, and soon the mud would be over my head . . . Once my comrades pulled me out of this filthy mud, I had to do a thorough job of washing off the slime. I thought that, since it was useless to either of us to be together, it would be best to break up for the time being, so that we both could think over some of the problems. I never imagined that, quite the contrary, this would make you misunderstand the situation. (Silence.) (Warmly) Go back, Yusheng. It’s time for you to make up your mind! lin yusheng: I want to forget the past completely, to make a fresh start. I’ve already written a letter to the team, requesting the boss to send me to work in the hardest area. xia qianru: If you don’t solve the problems with your thought, it’ll be the same no matter where they send you. lin yusheng (emotionally): The past few days, as my father’s been talking to me, I’ve gradually begun to understand what kind of road it is that I’ve been traveling for the past year, and what a dangerous road it is! At first I still adopted lofty disinterest and the ideal of legality to fool myself; but actually, capitalist thought had already led me onto the wrong path. A few days ago, Dad took me to see the grave of my parents. After I came back, I couldn’t sleep all night. As soon as I closed my eyes, I could see my parents . . . When I think of it, I can’t wait to throw myself into my work to make up for my error. But it’s just because this is the way it is that I feel even more strongly that I don’t have the face to go back and see my comrades on the team. It’s not the disciplinary action that I’m afraid of; it’s just that I cannot face them. xia qianru (with affection): Why do you feel that way? You shouldn’t feel that way. It’s very good that you can recognize your mistakes. Since you’ve made up your mind to correct your mistakes, you ought to have the courage to face reality. The past few days I’ve got a sort of new understanding. If a person has taken the wrong path, coming back always takes even greater resolve, even greater perseverance! The key to whether one can reform oneself is whether one can withstand this kind of test, even if the cost is sometimes very high. (lin yusheng does not speak.) Yusheng, go back to the team! If you don’t even have the courage to face reality, then how can you talk about reforming yourself and making a fresh start? (li rongsheng’s voice: “Lanlan!” lin yusheng walks toward the path along the river. xia qianru follows him off. li rongsheng enters carrying his luggage; lin lan enters.) li rongsheng: Lanlan! When’re we going?

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lin lan: Are you really planning to go? li rongsheng: Of course! lin lan: Think it over one last time. It’s a lot harder out there than it is in Shanghai. If you want to go, you have to make up your mind that you won’t run away like a deserter after you’re there. li rongsheng: What do you mean? Don’t be prejudiced against me! When I listened to your father that day and also saw Xiao Jiye and your brother, I went home and thought about it for several days. And I came to a conclusion. I can’t go on muddling along like I used to. I just have to be a person like Xiao Jiye, but I can’t be like your brother. What do you think? Am I right? lin lan: I guess so. Have your mother and father agreed? li rongsheng: They agreed a long time ago. When they get off work, they’re even coming to the station to see me off! lin lan: Well good for you. But I . . . li rongsheng: What is it? Haven’t you told your mother yet? lin lan: Look, my cousin’s leaving today, and now my brother won’t be staying in Shanghai, and I’m leaving soon, so my mother . . . li rongsheng: What’re you going to do? lin lan: I’ve had it figured out for a long time. I wait until my mother isn’t home and get the luggage to the station, and then, a little later, I say that I’m going to see off Qianru and the others, and as soon as we get to the station . . . li rongsheng: We’ll just disappear. Hurry up and get your bags. (lin lan exits. li rongsheng opens his trunk, inspects the contents.) Sweater’s here, cotton jacket, pants, toothpaste . . . (lin lan enters carrying her bags.) lin lan: Why’d you buy so much toothpaste? li rongsheng: This isn’t too much. A dozen tubes of toothpaste, half a dozen toothbrushes. I’m prepared not to come down from that mountain for three years. lin lan: What’d you bring spiked shoes for? li rongsheng: To climb the mountain. The slopes there won’t be so slippery with these shoes. lin lan: You’ve really thought of everything. li rongsheng: You’re bringing so few things? lin lan: They’re enough. Going there to work isn’t quite the same as going there to fool around. Okay, let’s get this stuff to the station. And then at night—goodbye Shanghai, goodbye families. We’ll leave and go to Jinggang Mountain. (Longingly) In the place where Chairman Mao once lived, on the earth that was splattered with the blood of the martyrs of the revolution, we’ll work for a different revolution, we’ll make the wild mountain yield its treasure, and demand grain from the earth. li rongsheng: I didn’t know you were a poet until now. lin lan: Too bad you discovered so late. Come on. (They pick up their bags and are about to exit.) li rongsheng: Oh, no! Your mother’s coming back.

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lin lan: Quick! Hide the bags! (In the confusion, li rongsheng’s suitcase falls to the ground, and its contents scatter all around.) Oh! Hurry and pick them up. li rongsheng: Help me. (Just as they are busily repacking the suitcase, xia shujuan enters. lin lan quickly hides her bags.) xia shujuan: What are you doing? li rongsheng: Auntie, how are you! lin lan: Mom, Little Li is . . . sunning his things . . . xia shujuan: He came over here to sun his things? Is our yard so big? li rongsheng: Yes. It’s much . . . much bigger than ours. (Thoroughly flustered, he takes out things to sun them.) xia shujuan: You have to sun your toothbrushes, too? li rongsheng (realizing that’s not quite right): Uh, I’m afraid that they’ve gotten moldy. xia shujuan: What about the toothpaste? Afraid that’s gotten moldy, too? li rongsheng (unable to speak at first): No harm in sunning that, too, while I’m at it. Anyway, the sun doesn’t cost anything. xia shujuan (deliberately searching, finds lin lan’s backpack): Isn’t this our pack? (lin lan has nothing to say.) I think that you two are trying to keep me from finding out that you’re going away somewhere, right? lin lan: Uh, Mom, I’ll tell you everything— li rongsheng (anxiously butts in): No, nothing like that. What would we be doing running away somewhere? It’s so good to stay at home. It’s warm and comfortable, a lot better than Jiangxi. I hear that there’s nothing but huge mountains down there. (lin lan hurriedly stops li rongsheng.) xia shujuan: Are you going to Jiangxi? li rongsheng: No, not at all. I was just giving an example. We wouldn’t go to Jiangxi! xia shujuan: So, you don’t intend to go to Jiangxi? li rongsheng: That’s right. Why should we go there? (To lin lan) Isn’t that right? xia shujuan: Oh, I guess I wasted my time going shopping then. lin lan: What do you mean? xia shujuan: At first I thought that you were going to Jinggang Mountain Farm, so I went shopping to buy you a few things. lin lan: What? xia shujuan: Look. lin lan: Mom. li rongsheng (looks): Sweater, sneakers, notebooks . . . lin lan: Really? Mom! xia shujuan: Yes. Now that you’re not going, I’ll just take these things and . . .

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lin lan: No, Mom, since you’ve bought so many things for me, I’d be embarrassed not to go. Going to Jiangxi is the only way I can prevent you from having shopped in vain. xia shujuan (laughing): Lanlan, you’re still trying to keep me in the dark. lin lan (hugging her mother): Mom! Dad told me to tell you myself today, but I was afraid . . . xia shujuan: Afraid I’d hold you back, huh? lin lan: No. I was afraid you’d be sad. xia shujuan: Oh, the business with your brother has given me a big lesson. When I was young, I worked for the revolution together with your father and never once complained. After the liberation, I thought to myself that no matter what, we had to let you children have a better life, especially your brother. I never thought that, on the contrary, that would actually have a bad effect on him. Your father was right when he said that, if you really love your children, then you’ve got to be strict with their thought, supervise them, and bring them up as people who are useful to the nation and to the people. lin lan (affectionately): Mom! (Silence.) xia shujuan (returning from her reverie): All right, it’s late. I’ll cook something for you to eat before you start out. Little Li, my little plum!3 The sun’s gone down behind the mountains. You’d better not sun your things now. (She enters the house.) lin lan (happily): Hah! Why didn’t I think of it! li rongsheng: That’s some good luck you didn’t expect! lin lan: Come on, let’s eat. li rongsheng: The bags . . . lin lan: What are you worried about? Now we can openly march out. (Pulling li rongsheng along, both exit. yao xiangming enters, her voice reaching the stage before her person.) yao xiangming: Qianru! We’re here! (As zhou jie and some other college students enter, everyone chattering noisily, the stage immediately becomes brisk and lively. xia qianru enters.) xia qianru: You’re all here? (To yao xiangming) I heard your voice miles away. yao xiangming: Good. I can get a job as a loudspeaker! student a: Is Uncle Lin at home? xia qianru: No, he isn’t . . . student b: Didn’t he promise to talk with us? xia qianru: He’ll be back in a little while. It’s still early, so everybody just rest here for a while. yao xiangming: It sure is cool here. This is one place that we’ve come to quite often over the past five years, and now we’re going to say goodbye to it. zhou jie: Yeah. For five years we’ve lived together, studied together, worked together . . . yao xiangming: We’ve also quarreled together, argued together . . .

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xia qianru: No. We fought together . . . yao xiangming: We’ve quarreled together. But when we go to the station in a little while, you’ll go to your Xinjiang, I’ll go to my Tibet, and she’ll go to her Qinghai. If I want to have a quarrel, I’ll have to go look for someone to fight with. Pretty soon I’ll be standing on the peaks of the Himalayas . . . student a (taking it up): . . . looking out over the whole world. (As some trucks full of young people who are going to join frontier-area construction drive by, the sound of their songs floats in. The young people onstage enthusiastically wave to them.) student b: Yes! Let’s sing our song! (Everyone starts to sing enthusiastically “Song of the Geologists.” xiao jiye enters. lin lan and li rongsheng enter.) xiao jiye: You’re all here! zhou jie: Xiao Jiye, how’s your leg now? xiao jiye: The specialists are discussing it now. When my grandmother comes back, I’ll know. student a: Didn’t Secretary He also go to participate? xiao jiye: Yes. The comrades in the Shanghai Geological Bureau are also concerned. An official at the Geological Bureau in Shanghai has also gone to meet with the party committee in the hospital, to ask them to try to think of a way to save my leg. zhou jie: Does it look like there’s any hope? xiao jiye: Who knows? But I’ve already prepared myself ideologically. (Walks over to xia qianru) Everybody’s going to leave. How was your talk with Yusheng? xia qianru: He recognizes his error, all right; it’s just that he’s too embarrassed to go back to the team. yao xiangming: You mean he still hasn’t made up his mind? lin lan: Look, Grandma Xiao’s coming. (Restraining his anxiety, xiao jiye goes to the stone bench and sits down. The singing stops. lin lan runs over toward the main road, and all the people watch the place where grandma xiao will come onstage. Silence. lin yusheng and grandma xiao enter; lin lan follows behind her.) (Anxiously) Grandma Xiao, what did they say finally? Hurry up and tell us! (grandma xiao walks over to xiao jiye.) xiao jiye (suppressing his anxiety): What did they say, Grandma? grandma xiao: Son, don’t get too excited when I tell you. xiao jiye: I won’t, Grandma! I’ve prepared myself for this. I’m not afraid of any bad news! grandma xiao: No, child! . . . After the specialists studied your case, they said that it’s not necessary to amputate your leg! xiao jiye: What? It’s true! Grandma! It’s true! grandma xiao: It’s true, child. xiao jiye (emotionally): I simply can’t believe it. grandma xiao: There’s something else. The prospecting team sent a letter. (She gives the letter to xiao jiye.)

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lin lan: They can save it! They can save it! (The crowd surrounds xiao jiye.) grandma xiao: The doctors said that the people of the whole nation are progressing, and so medical workers also must make progress . . . xiao jiye (finishes reading the letter): Hey, everybody! The first drilling in Region 205 has already hit ore! all: What? Hit ore? (xiao jiye gives the letter to zhou jie. A few future team members excitedly crowd around to read the letter. lin yusheng stands hesitantly to one side.) xiao jiye: Yusheng, the director of the team wrote to say that they’ve received your request to be transferred, and he feels that it’s not necessary. The comrades of the whole team warmly welcome you back. Here’s a letter for you from the director and all the comrades. lin yusheng (surprised): Really? (He reads the letter. xia qianru watches lin yusheng closely.) What? You’ve advised the team to let me go back and take over your work? xiao jiye: And the team’s agreed to it. (lin yusheng is so affected that he doesn’t know what to say.) Yusheng, this shows the hope and trust that the team leader has in you. zhou jie: Xiao Jiye! (Shaking hands with xiao jiye, she congratulates him.) yao xiangming: This is wonderful! (The students throng to congratulate xiao jiye.) zhou jie (excitedly): I never imagined that we’d hear so much good news just as we were about to go. We better go now. yao xiangming: Didn’t Uncle Lin say that he’d see us off ? lin lan: My father had a lot of things to do. I’m afraid he won’t make it back in time. zhou jie: Well, it is getting late. We better go. lin lan (to inside the house): Mom, we’re leaving. (xia shujuan enters.) xia shujuan: What? You’re leaving right now? (xia shujuan rushes to help lin lan carry her bags. Everyone gets ready to leave. xia qianru goes over to lin yusheng, who is engaged in an intense inner struggle.) yao xiangming: Qianru, let’s go! (xia qianru turns, picks up her luggage.) lin yusheng (suddenly): Wait. (He rushes off.) xia shujuan: What is it? (xia qianru follows him off. Everyone is talking. xia qianru shouts from inside, “Auntie, come here a second.” xia shujuan exits. lin yusheng enters carrying his bags. xia qianru and xia shujuan follow him onstage.) lin yusheng: I’m going with you. lin lan (happily surprised): Brother!

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xiao jiye: Yusheng! lin yusheng (walks over to xiao jiye, firmly grasps his hand): I don’t know what to say. Just one thing: I . . . I’ve been terribly confused. I let down the party that trained me all these years, let down the teachers that instructed me, and also let down my parents, who sacrificed their lives . . . The past few days I kept wanting to see you and discuss this, but . . . I didn’t have the face to see you! (He hangs his head.) xiao jiye: Don’t say that! lin yusheng (emotionally): Our society really is a warm family. If a person falls down, countless comrades on all sides offer their hands. Now that the comrades have already offered me their hands, I want . . . Hah. I won’t say it. You all see what I’m doing. xia qianru (with emotion): Auntie! (She hugs xia shujuan.) xia shujuan (squeezing xia qianru): My girl, I guess we didn’t waste our love on him. (The song of job-bound graduates floats in from the distance.) xiao jiye: Yusheng, tell the comrades that I’ll be back soon. lin yusheng: We’ll be waiting for you! See you with the team! xiao jiye: See you there! lin yusheng (walks over to grandma xiao): Grandma Xiao, I’m leaving. grandma xiao: It’s good that you’ve corrected your error. lin yusheng: Mom, I’m going. xia shujuan: You’re doing the right thing, son. Do a good job. (lin yusheng walks over to xia qianru.) xia qianru (unable to say any of the thousand things she’d like to, emotionally): Hey everybody, let’s go! (They are all about to exit.) xiao jiye: Hey everyone, Uncle Lin’s coming! (lin jian rushes onstage.) all: Hello, Uncle Lin. lin jian: Hello, all. You’re all going to leave now? I guess I’m in time. (He notes his son’s carrying bags.) lin yusheng (walks over close to lin jian): Dad, I’m going, too! lin jian: Where are you going? lin yusheng: Back to the team. lin jian: Good! I’ve been waiting a long time to hear you say that! But remember, the others aren’t going to be wild to welcome you back. There are new trials waiting for you. You’ve got to have the perseverance to stick it out to the end. If you’re prepared, you should decide to spend the rest of your life working there. Otherwise, you’ll land on your can again. lin yusheng: I’ve already prepared to accept my trials, and I’ve made up my mind to work there the rest of my life. lin jian: That’s good. Do you have the letter from your parents?

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lin yusheng: I put it in my bag. lin jian: You should keep it deep in your heart! lin yusheng (resolutely): Dad, don’t worry. I won’t forget my own parents, and I’ll be even less likely to forget that there are still class enemies today. I’ll always keep that in my heart. Always, always . . . lin lan: Dad, the hospital says that Xiao Jiye can keep his leg. lin jian: Really? Good for you, Jiye. xiao jiye: Thank you, Uncle Lin. lin jian: Grandma Xiao, you must have been very worried the past few days. grandma xiao: How could I not be worried for him? Old Lin, we’re old now, and we’ve passed on our hopes to these young ones. We haven’t lived in vain. I hope they can do even better! lin jian: Everyone! You heard. Grandma Xiao just told you what we older people have on our minds. You should remember what she said. li rongsheng: We will, Leader. lin jian (takes out a book, gives it to li rongsheng): This is for you. li rongsheng (reads aloud): Memoirs on the Workers’ Revolution in Shanghai. Is this for me? lin jian (humorously): Yes, my great intellectual! li rongsheng: No. I’ll be a physical laborer soon, Comrade Leader. lin jian: As I watch you all leaving now, I recall how it was in the old days when we went to the liberated region: I left alone, in a great blizzard, fighting all the dangers along the way. Look at you all! It’s really different now. You’re all singing, leaving in a big group. But, children, the road of the revolution is very long. Before you all now is an even more difficult, more glorious responsibility. That is, to continue the revolution; to spread the revolution far and wide. We must pursue the revolution to the utmost, for the people of the whole nation, and also for the people of the whole world! Children, throw yourselves into the raging torrent of the revolution, and strengthen yourselves. all: We’ll remember! lin jian: Then goodbye! (One after another, trucks carrying job-bound young people pass by. One can hear the sound of ardent singing. Everyone warmly says goodbye.) lin lan (with greatest warmth): Mom, Dad, goodbye! Grandma Xiao, Jiye, goodbye! (Walks to the front of the stage, facing the audience) Goodbye teachers, friends, comrades! We’re going. Soon we’ll be leaving you, going to our different posts, and like seeds scattered over the ground, we’ll grow roots in those places, send up sprouts, blossom, ripen. Goodbye! My dear comrades, we’re leaving, with your hopes and your wishes, to create a beautiful, beautiful future. (The young people wave goodbye to the audience. Trucks keep driving past. The volume of the singing rises. In the distance, a train races toward some far- off place. The curtain slowly closes.)

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Not es

1.

2.

3.

From Constantine Tung: The Young Generation was translated some thirty years ago, and a portion of it was included in Kai-Yu Hsü, ed., Literature of the People’s Republic of China (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980). Unfortunately, I have not been able to locate my cotranslator of the play, Kevin A. O’Conner. Kevin, who had a good command of the Chinese language, was a graduate student in computer science at SUNY at Buffalo at the time. I hereby express my thanks to him for his contribution to the translation of The Young Generation. This translation is based on the 1964 edition of the play. Xiaomei Chen and I discussed whether the play’s 1962 version should be adopted. After comparison, we agreed that the 1964 version was appropriate for its more polished style and ideologically more reflective of the political climate, the anxiety of the revolutionary generation of old, that foreshadowed the eruption of the Cultural Revolution two years later. The 1962 edition has Chen Yun as the sole author. In the 1964 version, Zhang Lihui and Xu Jingxian, two party functionaries in Shanghai, were added to the play’s authorship. I asked Chen Yun when I met with him in Shanghai in 1986 about the play’s authorship. He told me that he was the author of the play, and that the addition of Zhang and Xu as coauthors was a political necessity of that time. I wish to thank Anna Ma, a research assistant and a student of Professor Chen’s, for scanning the text and transcribing the names of the characters from the Wade- Giles system to pinyin. My gratitude also to Professor Chen for her decision to include the play in her anthology—and to Edward M. Gunn, who, miraculously, retained a copy of the translation of the play and lent it to us, as I had misplaced my own copy. The Chinese transliteration here is Lai-mi-xie-fu, which may represent something like Raimishev, Laintishev, or Rajmishev. Since it was not clear what name is represented by this transliteration, we have substituted the name of the Russian soprano Galina Vishnevskaya. You hong you zhuan in Chinese, this was a popular slogan in the PRC especially in the late 1950s and early 1960s; it expressed the party’s expectation that young people would be both ideologically correct and professionally well trained in their fields. The surname Li can be associated with the word for plum. Xia Shujuan capitalizes on this coincidence by adding to the surname the character for zi, creating a more familiar form of address and thus turning “Little Li” into “little plum.”

Commemorating the Twenty- eighth Anniversary of the “Talks at the Yan’an Forum on Literature and Art” A Quotation from Chairman Mao: Thousands upon thousands of martyrs have heroically laid down their lives for the masses; let us hold aloft their flag and forge ahead over the blood of the fallen!

The Red Lantern (1970) Weng Ouhong and A Jia, Revised by the China Peking Opera Troupe T ransla ted by Brenda A u st i n and J ohn B . We i ns t e i n

C ha r a c t e rs li yuhe ⹼㲙⧧, railway switchman, member of the Chinese Communist Party tiemei 㝰み, li yuhe’s daughter grandmother li ⹼ㅒㅒ, li yuhe’s mother messenger Ⰿ㟜㴗, messenger for the Eighth Route Army’s Pine Mountain base of operations knife maker ㄫ☚㑉, guerrilla platoon leader of the Eighth Route Army in the Cypress Mountains huilian ⪳⻷, li yuhe’s neighbor aunt tian 㝥▙㔰, huilian’s mother-in-law eighth route army cypress mountain guerrilla captain ≹⿁ⴎ⊆㓹 㱶⫏⛵⛵⒌ various guerrilla soldiers 㱶⫏⛵㴗㑲⡧㑉 woman selling rice porridge ⿾㻂▙㓥 girl selling cigarettes ⿾㫸ㇲ⦼ workers a, b, c, d ⧢㻂☨⹛⛑㐸㺼⭭, 㮼, ⍧, ⛃, customers at the rice porridge stall hatoyama 凝㓹, captain of the military police squadron of the Japanese enemy wang lianju 㠩⻸Ⳬ, originally served as a double agent for the Chinese Communist Party but later defected to the enemy auxiliary hou ⨈㦌⏣, reserve soldier for the Japanese military police squadron

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sergeant 㣛⒌, Japanese military police chief spy messenger ⭯Ⰿ㟜㴗, special agent for the Japanese military police squadron shoemaker ㊦Ⰷ, special agent for the Japanese military police squadron various japa nese military police officers and spies 㑓ⶬ㦌⍤, 㝎㣣㑲 ⡧㑉

S CE NE 1 Contacting the Messenger (The era of the War of Resistance Against Japan. A night early in winter. An area near the Longtan railway station, in northern China. The railroad tracks are clearly visible. Mountain ranges rise and fall in the distance. As the curtain rises, the north wind howls. Four japa nese military police officers march past on patrol. Full of youthful vitality, yet calm and composed, li yuhe enters with vigorous strides, holding a red railway signal lantern in his hand.) li yuhe (singing xipi sanban1): Red lantern in hand, I look everywhere . . . The leaders have sent a man here to Longtan, The time has been set for half past seven, He should arrive on the very next train. (The wind blows. Enter tiemei, carrying a basket, walking into the wind.) tiemei: Dad! li yuhe: Oh, Tiemei! (Concerned that the child might be cold, he removes his scarf and wraps it around her neck.) How was business today? tiemei: Humph! The military police and their henchmen were searching and harassing everybody. People were so terrified—who could buy anything? li yuhe: Those criminals! tiemei: Dad, you’ve got to be more careful. li yuhe: All right. Tiemei, go and tell your grandmother that your uncle is coming. tiemei: My uncle? li yuhe: That’s right. tiemei: What will the uncle be like this time, Dad? li yuhe: Child, don’t keep asking such questions. tiemei: I’ll go ask Grandma, then. li yuhe: What a child!

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(Exit tiemei.) (Watches tiemei depart, very pleased) Good girl! (Singing xipi yuanban) She sells the goods and scrounges for coal, She carries the water and chops firewood. With skill and ease, the poor man’s child, Must quickly learn how to manage the house, From different trees grow different fruits, From different seeds bloom different flowers. (Enter wang lianju.) wang lianju: Old Li, I’ve been looking for you all day . . . (li yuhe signals wang lianju not to speak, vigilantly surveying the area.) Old Li, the Japanese devils tightened security today. From the looks of it, they must be up to something. li yuhe: I know. Old Wang, from now on we should meet as little as possible. In the meantime, I’ll contact you if necessary. wang lianju: All right. (Exit wang lianju. A train whistle sounds in the distance. Exit li yuhe. Lights fade. A train roars past. Gunfire. Lights brighten. A messenger tumbles down the embankment and lands, unconscious. li yuhe rushes in.) li yuhe (to himself ): A glove on the left hand . . . (Gunfire. wang lianju returns.) wang lianju: Who is this? li yuhe: One of ours. I’ll carry him. Cover me! wang lianju: Okay. (Exit li yuhe, carrying the messenger on his back. Shouts of pursuing japa nese military police officers. Gunfire. wang lianju, moving in the opposite direction from li yuhe, fires two shots. The japa nese military police officers approach. Trembling, wang lianju shoots himself in the arm to save his own life and collapses to the ground. Enter the sergeant with several japa nese military police officers.) sergeant (to wang lianju): Hey! Did somebody jump off the train? wang lianju: Huh? sergeant: Did somebody jump off the train? wang lianju: Oh! (Points in the opposite direction) Over there. sergeant (alarmed): Hit the ground! (All the japa nese military police officers throw themselves down. Lights fade.) (Curtain.)

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S CE NE 2 Accepting the Mission (Immediately following the last scene. Both the interior and exterior of li yuhe’s house are visible. The door opens onto a small alley. The furniture is arranged in the center of the room, and a red paper butterfly is pasted onto the windowpane. At the far right, there is an inner room with a curtain hanging over the doorway. As the curtain rises, the north wind whistles and the room is dim; grandmother li adjusts the lamp and the room brightens.) grandmother li (singing xipi sanban): Fishermen must brave the fierce wind and waves, Hunters (changing to yuanban) never fear ferocious beasts. The darkest of nights still cannot withstand The brilliant blaze of the Revolution. (Enter tiemei, carrying a basket.) tiemei: Grandma! grandmother li: Tiemei! tiemei: Grandma, my dad said that my uncle is coming right away. (She puts down the basket.) grandmother li (to herself, expectantly): An uncle is coming! tiemei: How come I have so many uncles, Grandma? grandmother li: Well, our family has many aunts, so you have many uncles. (grandmother li is mending some clothing.) tiemei: Which one is coming today, Grandma? grandmother li: There’s no need to ask. You’ll know when he comes. tiemei: Hm. Grandma, even though you won’t tell me, I already know. grandmother li: You do? What do you know? tiemei: Grandma, listen to me! (Singing xipi liushui) I have more uncles than I can count, They come only when it’s something important. Although, although we call them family, we have never met, Yet they are closer to us than our actual family. Daddy and Grandmother call them our own, I think I know part of the reason why: They are all just like my father, Each has a heart bright and red.

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(Enter li yuhe, anxiously carrying the messenger on his back. He pushes the door open and walks in, signaling tiemei to close the door and keep watch. He gently helps the messenger to sit down and hands him a drink of water.) messenger (regaining consciousness): Can you please tell me if there is a railway switchman here named Master Li? li yuhe: That’s me. (li yuhe and the messenger exchange the secret password.) messenger: I have wooden combs for sale. li yuhe: Any made of peach wood? messenger: Yes, but for cash only. li yuhe: All right, wait a minute. (li yuhe signals grandmother li to give him the lantern test.) grandmother li (lifts up a kerosene lamp to look at the messenger): Fellow villager . . . messenger (realizing that the secret signal is incorrect): Thank you for saving me. I’ll be leaving now. li yuhe (holding up the red lantern): Comrade! messenger (excitedly): I’ve found you at last! (tiemei takes the red lantern, suddenly realizing its significance. grandmother li signals tiemei to take her basket and go out to keep watch.) messenger: Old Li, I am the messenger from the Pine Mountain base. (Takes a secret cipher code out of the sole of his shoe) This is the secret code. (With seriousness, li yuhe accepts it.) Transfer it to the Cypress Mountain guerrilla force. A knife maker will contact you tomorrow afternoon at the old rice porridge stall in the flea market. Use the same password as before. li yuhe: Same password as before. messenger: Old Li, this mission is difficult! li yuhe: Don’t worry. I will complete the mission! messenger: All right. Old Li, time is running out. I must return immediately. li yuhe: Comrade, are you hurt . . . ? messenger: I was just knocked out by the fall. I can walk now. li yuhe: All right. Wait a second, I’ll get you a change of clothes. (li yuhe gives the messenger a change of clothes.) li yuhe (with serious concern): The enemy is searching everywhere. It’s a very tight situation. Be extra careful on the road! messenger: Don’t worry, Old Li! li yuhe: Comrade . . . (Singing erhuang kuaisanyan) Take care of yourself on the road—the mountains are high, the rivers dangerous.

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Follow narrow alleys and shorter bridges for seclusion and safety. Together, we give the Revolution our heartfelt devotion. (He sees the messenger off. Enter tiemei. He continues singing.) I welcome any test, and bear any burden, within the raging inferno. I never fail to meet the Party’s expectations, my strength is infinite. Nothing on earth can ever daunt a communist! (A police siren wails. Quick-witted and decisive, li yuhe motions to grandmother li to blow out the lamp. Grasping the secret code, li yuhe strikes a dramatic pose. Lights fade.) (Curtain.)

S CE NE 3 Narrow Escape at the Rice Porridge Stall (The next afternoon at the rice porridge stall in the flea market. As the curtain rises, worker c sits sipping rice porridge. workers a and b enter, sit down, and sip rice porridge. The girl selling cigarettes sits near the stall. li yuhe enters calmly and vigilantly with his red lantern in one hand and a lunch box in the other.) li yuhe (singing xipi yaoban): Going to the flea market, I seek my relative, Hidden in my lunch box, the secret code. Millions of obstacles cannot stop me, I must deliver it to the Cypress Mountains. worker c (stands up): Master Li! li yuhe (with concern): Oh, Old Zhang, has your wound healed? worker c: It’s much better. li yuhe: Ah. Be more careful in the future! worker c (sighs; talking to himself ): At the beginning of the year I ran into Japanese devils who wanted to ride for free, and then they went and beat me up. What kind of world is this! (Exit worker c. li yuhe walks to the porridge stall and hangs the red lantern on a pillar.) workers a and b: Master Li, you’re here! Come sit with us.

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li yuhe (warmly): Let’s all sit down. woman selling rice porridge: Master Li, would you like a bowl of porridge? li yuhe: Yes, please. Sister, how is business going? woman selling rice porridge: Ah, we’re still scraping by. (She ladles porridge for li yuhe. Enter worker d.) worker d: Shopkeeper, get me a bowl of porridge. (Takes the bowl, about to eat) What’s wrong with it? It’s all moldy! worker a: Hey! This is that rationed flour mixture! woman selling rice porridge: There’s nothing I can do! worker b: Ouch! (Crunches bits of stone, spitting them out) Almost broke a tooth! worker a: It’s full of stones! worker b: Humph! They really treat us like animals. worker a: Be quiet, don’t start any trouble! worker b: How are we supposed to eat this? This is no way to live! li yuhe (sharing their feelings, singing xipi liushui): So many of my countrymen fume with discontent, Struggling under oppression, their hatred won’t subside. Spring thunder waits for an opportunity to erupt, The heroic Chinese people will never bow their heads before the butcher’s knife! May our comrades arrive soon from the Cypress Mountains— (Enter the knife maker.) knife maker (singing xipi yaoban): Searching for my relative, I look in all directions. The red lantern hangs high to greet me, I call out: “Get your scissors and kitchen knives sharpened!” li yuhe (singing xipi yaoban): The knife maker fixes his gaze upon my red lantern, He lifts his left hand toward me, in search of conversation. As we talk things over, I will slip in the password— (Before he can speak to the knife maker, a siren wails and japa nese military police officers charge in. The knife maker deliberately tips over his bench to draw the enemy’s attention away from li yuhe and toward himself.) li yuhe (continues singing): He draws the wolves to himself to let me slip away.

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(As he sings, he calmly empties his porridge into his lunch box.) Sister, another helping, please. (li yuhe lets the woman selling rice porridge ladle porridge into his lunch box. The japa nese military police officers finish searching the knife maker, angrily dismissing him and turning to inspect li yuhe. li yuhe seizes the opportunity to consent to an inspection of his lunch box. The japa nese military police officers smell the rancid porridge and push it away. After searching him, they wave him off. li yuhe picks up his lunch box and his red lantern and walks calmly to the center of the stage. He smiles faintly, for he has deceived the enemy. He turns around and marches off victoriously with his head held high. Lights fade.) (Curtain.)

S CE NE 4 Wang Lianju’s Betrayal (Afternoon. hatoyama’s office. As the curtain rises, hatoyama is answering the telephone.) hatoyama: Oh, oh! . . . What, they threw us off the trail? . . . Oh, don’t worry, I will definitely get the code . . . The case must be solved before the deadline! Yes! Yes! (Hangs up the telephone; talking to himself ) Those communists are something else! Just when headquarters gets on their trail, they throw us off. Those communists are tough! (The sergeant and auxiliary hou enter.) sergeant: Reporting! We searched everywhere, but there was no sign of the man who jumped off the train. We arrested a few suspects. hatoyama: Humph! What’s the use of arresting suspects? The jumper is a messenger for the Communist Party, and he’s carrying an extremely important secret code. If this code falls into the hands of the Cypress Mountain guerrilla force, it will be a tremendous blow to our empire! sergeant: Yes, sir! hatoyama: Where is Inspector Wang? auxiliary hou: He’s here, sir. hatoyama: Call him in. auxiliary hou: Yes, sir! (Calling offstage) Inspector Wang! (Enter wang lianju with his wounded arm in a sling. Exit auxiliary hou.) wang lianju: Captain! (He salutes.) hatoyama: Oh, you brave young man, you’ve been through so much! On behalf of headquarters, I present you with this third grade medal of honor.

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(He affixes the medal to wang lianju.) wang lianju: Thank you, Captain. hatoyama (singing xipi sanban): So long as your loyal heart spares no effort for the empire, Your political star will have the chance to rise. As the saying goes: Boundless is the sea of bitterness, yet a repentant man can reach the shore nearby. Now it all just depends on whether you are interested . . . (laughs coldly) or not! wang lianju: Captain, I don’t understand what you’re saying. hatoyama: Humph! You ought to understand! Tell me, how could the man who jumped off the train shoot you from a distance of only three centimeters away? wang lianju: Captain . . . hatoyama: Out with it, young man. Who was your accomplice? wang lianju (blurts out): Accomplice?! hatoyama: Precisely! It’s perfectly clear. If the jumper didn’t have one accomplice to assist him and another to cover him, then perhaps he just sprouted wings and flew away? wang lianju: Captain, by that time I’d been shot and was lying on the ground. How am I supposed to know how he escaped? hatoyama: Of course you know. If you didn’t know, then why would you have shot yourself ? (wang lianju is taken aback.) (Presses harder) Young man, you tell me the truth right now. Who’s in the underground Communist Party? Who was your accomplice? Where is the messenger hiding? Who’s holding on to the secret code? Tell me everything. I have plenty of medals and reward money waiting for you. wang lianju: Captain, the more you talk, the more confused I get. hatoyama: Well! If that’s the case, then we’ll help you think more clearly! Sergeant! sergeant: Yes, sir. hatoyama: Take him away and help him think more clearly. sergeant: Yes, sir. Guards! (Enter two japa nese military police officers.) Take him away! wang lianju (begging for mercy): Captain . . . sergeant (fiercely): Hey! (He kicks wang lianju. The two japa nese military police officers press wang lianju to the ground.) wang lianju: I’m . . . innocent! hatoyama: Beat him! sergeant: Take him away! Take him away!

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wang lianju is dragged out by the japa nese military police officers, all the while screaming, “I’m innocent!” The sergeant follows.) hatoyama: Humph! Torture will make him talk! He will surely reveal his accomplice! (Enter the sergeant.) sergeant: Reporting, sir. He has confessed! hatoyama: Who was his accomplice? sergeant: The railway switchman Li Yuhe. hatoyama (in recollection): Li Yuhe?! (Lights fade.) (Curtain.)

S CE NE 5 The Family’s Painful Revolutionary History (Dusk. li yuhe’s house; both the interior and exterior are visible. As the curtain rises, grandmother li is inside waiting anxiously for li yuhe.) grandmother li (singing xipi yaoban): It is already dusk, but my son Yuhe has still not returned. (tiemei emerges from the inner room. A police siren wails.) tiemei (continues the singing): There is chaos in the streets, and my heart is anxious for my daddy. (Enter li yuhe, carrying his lunch box and the red lantern. He knocks at the door.) li yuhe: Tiemei. tiemei: My dad is back! grandmother li: Quick, open the door! tiemei (opens the door): Dad! grandmother li: Yuhe. li yuhe: Ma! grandmother li: You’ve returned at last! Did you meet with him? (She takes the red lantern and lunch box from him.) li yuhe: Not yet. (He takes off his overcoat.) grandmother li: What’s happened? li yuhe: Ma! (Singing xipi liushui)

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I went to the porridge stall to make contact with the knife maker, But then a police car came and those devils started a frantic search. The knife maker threw himself to the wolves to save me, And I seized the chance to hide the secret code in my lunch box. They couldn’t find the secret code hidden under the porridge— tiemei: Uncle Knife Maker is such a good man! grandmother li: Yuhe, where is the code? li yuhe: Ma! (Continues singing softly and secretly) I’ve found a safe place to protect it from harm. tiemei: Dad, you’ve really found a way! li yuhe: Now you know everything, Tiemei. This is more important than our own  lives. We’ve got to keep it a secret even if we lose our heads because of it. Understand? tiemei: Yes! li yuhe: Aha, you understand! What a smart girl! tiemei: Dad . . . li yuhe: Ah . . . (It is gradually getting dark outside. grandmother li brings a kerosene lamp.) grandmother li: Ah . . . Just look at you two, father and daughter . . . li yuhe: Ma, I need to go take care of something. grandmother li: Be careful. And don’t be out too late! li yuhe: I won’t, don’t worry. tiemei: Dad, take my scarf. (Wraps the scarf around his neck) Dad, don’t be out too late! li yuhe (affectionately): I won’t, don’t worry. (He walks out the door. Exit li yuhe. tiemei closes the door. grandmother li carefully polishes the red lantern. tiemei watches attentively.) grandmother li: Come here, Tiemei. I’ll tell you the story of the red lantern. tiemei: Okay. (She happily walks over to the table and sits down next to it.) grandmother li (with seriousness): For many years, this red lantern has lit the path for us poor people, for us workers. Years ago your grandfather carried this lantern, and now your father carries it. Child, you know what happened last night. We can’t do without it at important moments like this. Remember, this red lantern is our family’s special treasure! tiemei: Oh. The red lantern is our family’s special treasure? (Brimming with confidence, grandmother li looks at tiemei and goes into the inner room. tiemei picks up the lantern, examining it thoughtfully.) (Singing xipi sanban)

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I have heard Grandmother speak of the red lantern; While the words are few, the meaning is deep. Why do Daddy and my uncles (changing to yuanban) not fear danger? To save China, to save the poor, to defeat the Devil Army. Now I know: I want to do those same things, And to become that same kind of person. Tiemei! You are seventeen, a child no more, Why should you not share Daddy’s worries? It’s like this: if Daddy carries a thousand pound load, Tiemei, you ought to carry eight hundred. (grandmother li emerges from the inner room.) grandmother li: Tiemei, Tiemei! tiemei: Grandma! grandmother li: What are you thinking about, child? tiemei: Nothing. (There is the sound of a baby crying next door.) grandmother li: That’s Long’er crying, isn’t it? tiemei: It sure is. grandmother li: Oh, they have nothing to eat again! We still have some cornmeal left. Quick, go take it to them. tiemei: Okay. (She gets the cornmeal. Enter huilian, knocking at the door.) huilian: Grandmother Li! tiemei: It’s Sister Huilian. grandmother li: Quick, open the door for her! tiemei: Okay! (She opens the door; huilian enters.) Sister Huilian. grandmother li (with concern): Huilian! Is your baby doing any better? huilian: Oh! How can I afford to take him to the doctor? Fewer and fewer people have been paying me to mend and wash clothes for them this year. We never know where our next meal is coming from, and now we’ve got nothing to eat. tiemei: Sister Huilian, take this. (She hands her the cornmeal. huilian is deeply moved.) grandmother li: Take it. Tiemei was just going to take it over to you. huilian (accepts the cornmeal): You’re too good to me! grandmother li: Don’t mention it. With the wall between us, we’re two families. If we tore it down, we’d be one. tiemei: Grandma, we are one family even with the wall between us. grandmother li: Tiemei is right. (The baby’s cries grow louder.) aunt tian (offstage): Huilian! Huilian!

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(Enter aunt tian.) tiemei: Auntie. grandmother li: Please have a seat. aunt tian: No, thank you. The baby’s crying again, Huilian. You need to come home and take care of him. (She sees the cornmeal in huilian’s hand and is moved.) grandmother li: First, make some food for the baby. aunt tian: But your family isn’t rich! grandmother li: Ah. (Warmly) Our two families shouldn’t speak of what’s yours and what’s mine. Don’t talk that way. aunt tian: We must be going now. grandmother li: Don’t worry. Watch your step. (Exit aunt tian and huilian.) tiemei (closes the door): Grandma, Huilian’s family is having such a hard time right now. grandmother li: Yes, they are. Huilian’s father-in-law was a railway porter, and he was run over by a train. The Japanese devils refused to give them any compensation, and they forced her husband to work as a coolie. Tiemei, our two worker families have endured the same suffering, and we share a common enemy. We’ve got to do our best to take care of them. (Enter the spy messenger. He knocks at the door.) tiemei: Who is it? spy messenger: Does Master Li live here? tiemei: It’s somebody looking for Dad. grandmother li: Open the door. tiemei: Okay. (She opens the door. The spy messenger enters and quickly closes the door.) grandmother li: And you are . . . spy messenger: I have wooden combs for sale. grandmother li: Any made of peach wood? spy messenger: Yes, but for cash only. tiemei: Okay, just a minute! (The spy messenger turns around and puts down his saddlebag. tiemei reaches for the red lantern, but grandmother li quickly stops her and takes up the kerosene lamp to test him. tiemei suddenly understands.) spy messenger (turns around and sees the lamp): Oh, I’ve finally found you! Thank heaven! It wasn’t easy. (tiemei’s surprise turns to anger. She seethes with an uncontrollable rage.) grandmother li (seeing through his ruse, calmly): Shopkeeper, please show us the combs so we can pick one. spy messenger: Huh? I’m here for the secret code, ma’am. grandmother li: What’s he talking about, girl? spy messenger: Hey! Don’t play dumb! The code is a very important Communist Party document, ma’am. The future of the Revolution depends on it. Give it to me!

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tiemei (angrily): What are you talking about? Get out of here! spy messenger: Hey, don’t, don’t, don’t . . . tiemei: Get out! (She pushes the spy messenger out the door, forcefully throws his saddlebag at him, and slams the door.) Grandma! (grandmother li hurriedly stops tiemei from speaking. The spy messenger signals two plainclothes spies to monitor the house. They split up.) tiemei: Grandma, he almost tricked me! grandmother li: Child, there is definitely a traitor in our midst. Our secret has been leaked. tiemei: Grandma, what do we do? grandmother li (whispers): Quick, take down the signal. tiemei: What signal? grandmother li: The red butterfly on the window! tiemei (surprised): Oh! (She goes to tear it down.) grandmother li: Tiemei! Open the door to block the window. You tear down the signal, and I’ll sweep the floor to cover you. Quickly, quickly! (tiemei opens the door. li yuhe strides in, closing the door behind him. tiemei is startled. The broom that grandmother li is holding drops to the floor.) li yuhe (realizing that something is wrong): Ma, what happened? grandmother li: There are dogs outside! (Showing no fear, li yuhe makes a quick appraisal of the enemy intelligence.) Son! Son! . . . li yuhe: Ma, I’m probably going to be arrested! (Urging, with seriousness) I’ve hidden the secret code under the stone monument beside the old locust tree on the west bank of the river. You’ve got to do everything in your power to get it to the knife maker! Use the same password as before! grandmother li: Same password as before! li yuhe: Yes. You’ve got to be extremely careful! grandmother li: Don’t worry, son. tiemei: Dad . . . (Enter auxiliary hou. He knocks at the door.) auxiliary hou: Is Master Li in? li yuhe: Ma, they’re here. tiemei: Dad! You . . . li yuhe: Tiemei, go open the door. tiemei: Okay! auxiliary hou: Open up! (tiemei opens the door, seizing the opportunity to tear down the red butterfly.) (Entering the house) Oh, are you Master Li? li yuhe: Yes.

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auxiliary hou: Captain Hatoyama would like to invite you to have a drink with him. (He hands him a written invitation.) li yuhe: Oh! So Captain Hatoyama is inviting me to a banquet? auxiliary hou: Yes! li yuhe: Wow! What an honor! (He throws the invitation onto the table in disgust.) auxiliary hou: He just wants to be your friend. Come along, please, Master Li! li yuhe: After you! (To grandmother li, firmly and gravely) Ma, you take care. I’m leaving! grandmother li: Hold on a minute! Tiemei, go get some wine. tiemei: Okay! (She goes into the inner room to get the wine.) auxiliary hou: Oh! Ma’am, there will be plenty of wine for him to drink at the banquet. grandmother li: Ha! . . . We poor people are used to our own wine. Each drop touches the heart. (Takes the wine from tiemei and, gravely, bids li yuhe a deeply emotional farewell) Son, this bowl of wine . . . you, you must drink it down! li yuhe (accepts the wine solemnly): Ma, after this bowl of wine, I can stomach whatever kind of wine they give me. (Drinks the wine in one gulp) Thanks, Ma! (Singing xipi erliu with grandeur) Before I leave, I drink the wine my mother gives me, My entire body is filled with courage and valiance. Hatoyama is throwing a banquet to make me his “friend,” I can stomach a thousand or even ten thousand cups. This is a bad time of year, with sudden wind and snow, Mother must prepare for changes in the weather. tiemei: Dad! (She rushes toward li yuhe, sobbing.) li yuhe (continues singing, kindly and with deep significance): Little Tiemei, when you go out to sell your goods, keep an eye on the weather, And keep track of all of the “accounts” that come and go. When you are weary, beware of wild dogs, When you are worried, wait for the magpie to sing on the branch. You must manage the family’s affairs, And you must share your grandmother’s burdens. tiemei: Dad! (She throws herself into li yuhe’s arms and sobs.)

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auxiliary hou: Master Li, let’s go! li yuhe: Don’t cry, child. From now on, you must do as your grandma says. tiemei: I will! grandmother li: Tiemei, open the door so your father can go to the “banquet.” li yuhe: I’m leaving now, Ma. (li yuhe and grandmother li clasp each other’s hands tightly, encouraging each other to remain committed to the fight. tiemei opens the door. A gust of wind blows in. li yuhe strides proudly forward into the wind. auxiliary hou follows. tiemei runs after him with a scarf, crying, “Dad!” spies a, b, and c rush forward to block her way.) spy a: Stop! Go back! (He forces tiemei back. Enter the group of spies.) tiemei: Grandma! . . . spy a: Search them! Don’t move! (The spies ransack the house in their search. One of them emerges from the inner room with an almanac, looks through it, and tosses it aside.) Let’s go! (Exit spies.) tiemei (closes the door, draws the curtain, and looks around the room): Grandma! (She throws herself into grandmother li’s arms and sobs; a short time passes.) Grandma, my dad . . . will he ever come back? grandmother li: Your dad . . . tiemei: Dad . . . grandmother li: Tiemei, tears can’t save your father! Don’t cry. It’s time I told you the truth about our family. tiemei: Grandma, what is it? grandmother li: Sit down, and Grandma will tell you! (grandmother li eyes the scarf. Revolutionary memories flash before her eyes; hatred for the enemy, both past and present, wells up in her heart. tiemei gets a small stool and sits by her grandmother’s side.) Child, is your father a good man? tiemei: Of course he is! grandmother li: But he’s not your real father. tiemei (shocked): Ah! What are you talking about, Grandma? grandmother li: And I’m not your real grandmother. tiemei: Ah! Grandma! Grandma, have you gone crazy? grandmother li: No, child. Our three generations are not from the same family. (Stands up) Your last name is Chen, mine is Li, and your dad’s is Zhang. (Singing erhuang sanban) For seventeen stormy years I’ve been afraid to tell you, I was afraid you were too young to hear the truth, Several times I tried to tell you but the words wouldn’t come.

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tiemei: Tell me, Grandma. I won’t cry. grandmother li (singing erhuang mansanyan): It looks as though your father is gone, never to return, I, your grandmother, will inevitably be arrested and imprisoned. Before our eyes, Revolution’s heavy burden will fall upon your shoulders, I’ve told you the truth, Tiemei, Don’t cry, don’t be sad, be brave and strong, learn from your father’s Revolutionary courage and lofty goals! tiemei: Grandma, sit down and tell me everything. (tiemei helps grandmother li to a seat.) grandmother li: Ah! It’s a long story! Long ago, your grandfather was a maintenance worker in Jiang’an, near Hankou. He had two apprentices. One was your real father, Chen Zhixing. tiemei: My real father, Chen Zhixing? grandmother li: The other was your current father, Zhang Yuhe. tiemei: Oh! Zhang Yuhe? grandmother li: At that time, the country was being torn apart by feuding warlords. It was total chaos! Then, Chairman Mao’s Communist Party led the Chinese people to Revolution! In February of 1923, the Beijing–Hankou Railway workers established a labor union in Zhengzhou. Wu Peifu, an accomplice of the foreign devils, tried to stop them. At the call of the union, all of the workers on the line went on strike. More than ten thousand workers in Jiang’an took to the streets to march. It was such a cold, dark night. I was so worried about your grandfather that I couldn’t sit still and I couldn’t sleep, so I was mending some clothes by the lamp. After a while, I suddenly heard someone knocking at the door, calling, “Auntie, open the door. Quick, open up!” I hurried to open the door, and a man rushed inside! tiemei: Who was it? grandmother li: It was your father! tiemei: My father? grandmother li: Uh-huh, it was the father you have now. He was badly wounded, and he was holding this very lantern in his left hand . . . tiemei: The red lantern? grandmother li: And he was holding a baby with his right. tiemei: A baby . . . grandmother li: A baby less than a year old. tiemei: That baby . . . grandmother li: It was none other! tiemei: Than who? grandmother li: Than you. tiemei: Me?

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grandmother li: Hugging you tightly to his chest, with tears in his eyes, your father stood before me shouting, “Auntie! Auntie!” For a long time he just stared at me, unable to speak. I was terribly worried, and I urged him to tell me what had happened. He . . . he said, “My master and Brother Chen were both . . . sacrificed! This is Brother Chen’s child, an heir to the Revolution. I must raise her to carry on the Revolution.” Then he said, “Auntie! Auntie! From this moment forward, I shall be your son and this child shall be your granddaughter.” Then I . . . I took you and I held you close in my arms. tiemei: Grandma! (She throws herself into grandmother li’s arms.) grandmother li: Be strong! Listen to Grandma! (Singing erhuang yuanban) At the strike, your real father and mother died a tragic death at the devils’ hands, But Li Yuhe threw his heart and soul into building the Revolution. He pledged his life in the martyrs’ footsteps, keeping the red lantern bright, He wiped away the blood, buried the dead, and went on with the fight. Now the Japanese invaders have come to burn, kill, and plunder, Before our eyes your father was arrested and thrown in prison. You must remember this debt of blood and tears, You must start with great ambition, cultivate your will, and settle scores with the enemy; a debt of blood must be repaid with blood! tiemei (singing erhuang yuanban): I have heard my grandmother tell the heroic and moving story of the Revolution, I have been in the wind and been in the rain since birth, Grandma! Your kindness in raising me for seventeen years is as deep as the ocean. Today, with rising will, I clearly see, A debt of blood must be repaid with blood. The next generation must carry forth the cause of our ancestors! Now I raise the red lantern to let its brilliance shine—Dad! (Changing to erhuang kuaiban) My daddy’s will is as strong as the pine tree, A heroic communist fearing nothing under the sun, Following in his footsteps I shall never falter.

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Lifting the red lantern high, the light flickering, Shining upon my daddy fighting those ferocious beasts. Generation after generation, we will carry on the fight, Never leaving the battlefield until all of the wolves are slaughtered! (tiemei and grandmother li lift up the red lantern, striking a dramatic pose. It casts a brilliant red light. Lights fade.) (Curtain.)

S CE NE 6 Battling Hatoyama at the Banquet (Immediately following the previous scene. hatoyama’s reception room. A banquet is laid out on the table. As the curtain rises, auxiliary hou enters.) auxiliary hou: Please come in, Master Li. (li yuhe enters calmly with firm steps. Exit auxiliary hou.) li yuhe (singing erhuang yuanban): A poisoned arrow is hidden in the invitation, A sudden change in the winds and clouds means traitors lurk within. I laugh at his banquet laid out among swords and axes, Focused upon the integrity of the Revolution, I will face the enemy with composure, majestic as a mountain. (Enter hatoyama.) hatoyama: Oh, hello, old friend. li yuhe: Oh, Mr. Hatoyama, how are you? (hatoyama attempts to shake li yuhe’s hand, but li yuhe ignores the gesture. hatoyama awkwardly withdraws his outstretched hand.) hatoyama: Well! It’s been so difficult to reach you! Do you remember that year when I treated you in the railway hospital? li yuhe: Oh, in those days you were a rich Japanese doctor, and I was a poor Chinese worker. We were like two trains running on different tracks, traveling in different directions. hatoyama: Ah, no matter how you put it, we’re not strangers, are we! li yuhe (feigning politeness): Well, then, I expect that you’ll take care of everything! hatoyama: That’s why I’ve invited you for a good chat. Come here, sit down, sit down. This is a private banquet, old friend. We’ll discuss friendship and nothing else, all right?

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li yuhe (calmly surveying the enemy): I am a poor worker, and I prefer to be direct. Tell me what’s on your mind. hatoyama: Well, well! Come on, old friend, have a drink. li yuhe: It’s very kind of you, Mr. Hatoyama. But unfortunately, I don’t drink wine. (He pushes the cup away, takes out his pipe, and lights it.) hatoyama: You don’t drink? No! There’s an old Chinese saying, “Life is like a dream.” A hundred years go by in the blink of an eye. It’s like the saying “Here before us, wine and song, for man does not live long.” li yuhe (blowing out his match with disgust): Yes, listening to songs and drinking the best wine is the life of the immortals. May you always live this way, Mr. Hatoyama, and may you have a “long life”! (Blowing out his match with disgust.) hatoyama: Ha . . . (Forcing a smile) Old friend, I am a Buddhist. There is a line in a Buddhist sutra that says, “Boundless is the sea of bitterness, yet a man who will repent can reach the shore nearby.” li yuhe (countering): I’m not a Buddhist. But I’ve also heard the saying, “The law is strong, but the outlaws are even stronger.” 2 hatoyama: Yes! Well said! However, old friend, this represents only one belief system. As a matter of fact, the highest form of belief can be condensed into only two words. li yuhe: Two words? hatoyama: That’s right. li yuhe: What are they? hatoyama: “For myself.” li yuhe: Oh, for yourself ? hatoyama: No, every man for himself. li yuhe (feigning ignorance): “Every man for himself”? hatoyama: That’s right. Old friend, “Unless a man lives only for himself, heaven and earth will destroy him.” li yuhe: What? Heaven and earth destroy those who don’t live only for themselves? hatoyama: That’s the secret to success in life. li yuhe: So there’s a secret to success in life? hatoyama: There’s a secret to everything. li yuhe: Oh no, Mr. Hatoyama, to me your secret is more like trying to flatten fire with a rolling pin. It just doesn’t work! (hatoyama is taken aback.) hatoyama: This is no time for jokes, old friend! I’d like to ask for your help. li yuhe: I’m just a poor worker, what could I possibly help you with? hatoyama: All right, there’s no need to keep going back and forth about it. Hand it over! li yuhe: Hand what over? hatoyama: The secret code! li yuhe: Ha . . . secret colt or secret donkey or whatever it is you’re talking about, I’m just a railway switchman. I don’t know anything about it.

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hatoyama (threateningly): If you propose a toast but don’t drink, you’ll have to drink as a punishment, old friend. Don’t blame me for misunderstanding our friendship! li yuhe (calmly): As you wish, then! (Enter wang lianju at hatoyama’s signal.) hatoyama: Look who it is, old friend! (wang lianju trembles in li yuhe’s piercing gaze. hatoyama gives the signal for wang lianju to persuade li yuhe.) wang lianju: Old Li, you shouldn’t . . . li yuhe: Shut up! wang lianju: Old Li, you shouldn’t be so stubborn . . . li yuhe (pounds the table, stands up, and points angrily): Shameless traitor! (Singing xipi kuaiban) Only a true coward would bend his knee to surrender, A pitiful creature clinging to life and fearing death. I constantly sounded the alarm to warn you About the enemy’s threats and bribes! You swore that you would “die for the Revolution,” So how could you betray us and become their accomplice? The enemy is treating you like a dog, Yet you view disgrace as an honor! In the end, the people will put you on trial, Your betrayal is an unforgivable crime! (Terrified by li yuhe’s revolutionary integrity, the trembling traitor hides behind hatoyama.) hatoyama (pleased with himself ): Eh! Don’t be angry, old friend. Ah . . . (Waves wang lianju away) I wasn’t going to pull out my trump card, old friend, but you leave me no choice! And so, I must do it. li yuhe (confronting him directly): Humph! I expected as much! This trump card of yours is nothing but a dog with a broken back. You’ll get no satisfaction out of me, Hatoyama! hatoyama (realizing that he has been outsmarted, reveals his true self ): How can you not know what my job is, Li Yuhe? I’m the man who issues passes to hell! li yuhe (in direct opposition): Humph! And how can you not know what my job is? I’m the man who’s going to tear your hell apart! hatoyama: You must know that my torture instruments have never been vegetarians. li yuhe (contemptuously): Humph! I’ve always had an appreciation for those sorts of objects. hatoyama (trying to be threatening): Li Yuhe, I suggest you reconsider before your bones end up broken. li yuhe (overpowering the enemy): I’d rather have my bones broken than reconsider. hatoyama: Our military police squadron is ruthless. You’ll never get out alive!

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li yuhe (with determination and courage): Communists have iron wills. Death is nothing to us, Hatoyama! (Singing xipi yuanban to denounce the Japanese invaders) You Japanese warlords are wolves, Your merciless nature hidden beneath a smile. You kill my people and invade my country, (Changing to kuaiban) That so-called East Asia Co-prosperity is not co-prosperity! The Communist Party and Chairman Mao are leading the People’s Revolution, Hundreds of millions of heroes are fighting against Japan to save our nation. You seem to think that relying on traitors is effective, But it is of no more use than fishing for the moon in the water! hatoyama: Enter! (The sergeant and two japa nese military police officers enter.) (Singing xipi sanban) My Five Punishments are ready for you to enjoy. (Ready to fight, li yuhe dramatically throws open his coat, striking a dramatic pose.) li yuhe (smiles coldly): Humph . . . sergeant: Move! li yuhe (singing xipi sanban): All you’ll do is loosen up my joints a little! sergeant: Get him out of here! (The two japa nese military police officers seize li yuhe.) li yuhe: I don’t need your help! (As li yuhe flings his arms, the two japa nese military police officers stagger backward. li yuhe calmly buttons his coat, picks up his hat, dusts it off, turns around, and holds it behind his back. He strides away, overwhelming the enemy. The sergeant and the two japa nese military police officers follow.) hatoyama (utterly defeated, with no way out): He’s so fierce! (Reciting pu deng e) What makes a communist tougher than steel? My bribery and threats are of no use. I can only hope that he will confess under torture— (Enter the sergeant.)

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sergeant: Reporting! Li Yuhe would rather die than confess. hatoyama: He’d rather die than confess? sergeant: Let me take some men to search his house, Captain. hatoyama: Forget it. Communists are very vigilant. I’m afraid that he must have hidden the code some time ago. sergeant: Yes, sir! hatoyama: Bring him in! sergeant: Bring in Li Yuhe! (Two japa nese military police officers drag li yuhe in. Badly wounded and stained with blood, li yuhe heroically closes in on hatoyama. Turning around, he stands up, supporting himself on a chair.) li yuhe (singing xipi daoban): You have a wolf’s heart, Hatoyama, you thief! hatoyama: The secret code! Hand it over! li yuhe: Hatoyama! (Continues singing, changing to xipi kuaiban) No matter how devastating your cruel torture, Pure gold fears not melting in the raging fire, Nothing can make me bow my head! Ha . . . (His heroic spirit shatters the enemy’s courage. li yuhe strikes a dramatic pose. Lights fade.) (Curtain.)

S CE NE 7 Help from the Masses (Several days later. Morning. The interior and exterior of li yuhe’s house are visible. As the curtain rises, the shoemaker, a spy in disguise, is sitting close to the door, monitoring the Li home. The knife maker calls out offstage: “Any knives or scissors to sharpen?” Enter the knife maker, still yelling while vigilantly surveying the area. He sees that the signal has been taken down and notices the spy. He decides to wait for a better opportunity to make contact. At the same time, grandmother li and tiemei hear him calling and emerge from the inner room to look out the window. Exit the knife maker, nonchalantly continuing his call. The spy sees him but notices nothing out of the ordinary.)

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grandmother li: Perhaps that knife maker came to contact us, Tiemei. tiemei: Grandma, I’ll run after him with the red lantern and ask him the secret question to find out if he’s one of us. grandmother li: That won’t work. You can’t leave the house with that spy outside! tiemei: Oh no! That’s right. Then how am I supposed to go out? (Pondering) Grandma, I’ve got an idea! I’ll leave through Sister Huilian’s house! grandmother li: How can you do that, child? tiemei: The other day near the bed in the next room, a stone at the base of the wall near the bed came loose. When I was helping my dad fix it, I pulled it out and crawled through the hole for fun! grandmother li: What, you crawled through the hole? tiemei: Sister Huilian’s house is right on the other side. grandmother li: Good! Let’s ask the Tians for help. You can leave from there! Tiemei, do you remember the password your father gave you? tiemei: Yes, I do. grandmother li: All right. If you catch up with the knife maker and he gives you the right password, then take him to the west bank of the river and get the code from underneath the stone monument next to the old locust tree. tiemei: Underneath the stone monument next to the old locust tree? grandmother li: Child! Didn’t you hear your father mention it? You can’t afford to make the slightest mistake! tiemei: Don’t worry, Grandma! grandmother li: Be careful! tiemei: I will. (tiemei takes the red lantern into the inner room and exits. The shoemaker throws away an empty matchbox and knocks on the door.) shoemaker: Open up! grandmother li: Who’s there? shoemaker: It’s the shoemaker. grandmother li: Hold on a minute! (She opens the door.) shoemaker (enters): Ma’am. grandmother li: What do you want? shoemaker: I need a match. grandmother li: There are some in the cupboard. shoemaker: Ah. Where’s the girl, ma’am? (He lights a cigarette.) grandmother li: She’s not feeling well. shoemaker: Not feeling well? Where is she? grandmother li: She’s in bed in the next room. shoemaker: Oh! All right, thank you. (He exits.) grandmother li: Scoundrel!

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(At the shoemaker’s signal, two spies appear, whispering. As grandmother li closes the door, they force their way into the house.) grandmother li: What are you doing? spy b: We’re searching the premises. spy a: Where’s your granddaughter? grandmother li: She’s sick. spy b: She’s sick? Where is she? grandmother li: Lying down in the next room. spy b: Tell her to get up! grandmother li: The child is sick. Let her rest. spy b: Out of my way! (He pushes grandmother li aside and reaches for the door curtain. Voice from behind the curtain: “Grandma, who’s here?”) grandmother li: It’s a police inspection! (Staring at each other helplessly, the spies exit. grandmother li closes the door, turns around, looking surprised. huilian emerges from the inner room.) grandmother li: Ah! Huilian, how did you get in here? huilian: Grandmother Li! (Singing xipi liushui) Tiemei has already left through my house, My mother-in-law sent me here to tell you not to worry. When I arrived, I heard the spies interrogating you, To deceive the enemy, I pretended to be Tiemei lying in bed. When Tiemei comes back, she can return through my house, With me covering for you, you don’t need to worry. grandmother li (with gratitude): You’ve helped us so much! (tiemei emerges from the inner room.) tiemei: Grandma! Sister Huilian! huilian: Tiemei, you’re back! grandmother li: If it hadn’t been for Huilian, we’d be in serious trouble. huilian: I’m glad you’re back. I should head back, too, and see if everything’s okay. tiemei: Thank you! (huilian exits into the inner room.) grandmother li: Quick, go tidy up in there, Tiemei! (tiemei goes into the inner room. grandmother li hangs up the red lantern. tiemei returns.) Child, did you catch up with the knife maker? tiemei: Oh! I looked for him on several streets, but I couldn’t find him. I was worried that I was taking too long and might get caught by the spies, so I hurried home. grandmother li: Oh! (Enter auxiliary hou. He sends the shoemaker away and knocks at the door.)

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tiemei: Who is it? auxiliary hou: Captain Hatoyama is here to see you. tiemei: Grandma! grandmother li: Tiemei, if I get arrested, you’ve got to do everything you can to get the secret code to the Cypress Mountains! tiemei: Don’t worry! auxiliary hou: Open up! grandmother li: Go open the door! tiemei: Okay! (She opens the door. hatoyama enters the house. auxiliary hou follows and stands guard.) hatoyama: Oh, hello, ma’am! grandmother li: You are Mr. Hatoyama? hatoyama: Yes, I’m Hatoyama. grandmother li: Just a moment, please. I’ll just tidy up a bit and go with you! hatoyama: Oh, that’s not why I’m here. Li Yuhe said that he left something here with you, ma’am. grandmother li: Left what? hatoyama: The secret code! grandmother li: What is he talking about, girl? hatoyama: It’s a book. grandmother li: A book? hatoyama: That’s right. grandmother li: Mr. Hatoyama. (Singing xipi yuanban) My family has always suffered hunger and cold, In three generations none of us learned to read; why would we have a book hidden in our house? hatoyama (continues the singing): Li Yuhe has told me that the book is here, so why try to hide it from me? tiemei (continues the singing): Let my dad come and find it himself; why should you go to such trouble? hatoyama: All right, all right. If you give me the book, then Li Yuhe can come home immediately, and I’ll make him a deputy section chief. I’ll guarantee you all wealth and glory. grandmother li: Humph! (Continues the singing)

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I look upon wealth and glory as filth, Impoverished people find coarse food to be delicious. Since you have taken so much trouble to seek it— (To tiemei) Go take a look for him. (tiemei goes into the inner room and gets an almanac, which she hands to grandmother li.) grandmother li (continues singing, to hatoyama): This is so you won’t have to leave empty-handed. (She hands the “book” to hatoyama.) hatoyama: Excellent! That’s it! That’s it! An almanac? (Flipping through it) I’ll take it back with me and study it. Are you coming to see your son, ma’am? grandmother li: All right! Tiemei, look after the house! hatoyama: No! The little girl has to come, too! tiemei: Let’s go, Grandma! (Singing xipi sanban) I’ve learned to be courageous like Daddy, so I have nothing to fear— (grandmother li and tiemei leave the house. hatoyama follows. auxiliary hou orders the spies to seal the door.) grandmother li (continues the singing): People of the Revolution can withstand the collapse of heaven and earth! (Grandmother and granddaughter go forward, striking a dramatic pose. Lights fade.) (Curtain.)

S CE NE 8 Battle on the Execution Field (The middle of the night. A corner of the Japanese military police squadron prison. As the curtain rises, the sergeant and auxiliary hou are waiting. Enter hatoyama.) hatoyama: It seems as though a public interrogation won’t get us the secret code! Is the bug in place? auxiliary hou: Already installed.

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hatoyama: Good. We’ll see what he says when he sees his mother. Maybe we’ll find some clues. Bring in the old woman! auxiliary hou: Yes, sir! (Offstage) Let’s go! (Enter grandmother li.) hatoyama: Do you know where we are, ma’am? grandmother li: It’s the military police headquarters! hatoyama: This is where your son will ascend to heaven! Ma’am, when a man commits a crime and his mother refuses to save his life even though it’s within her power, wouldn’t you consider that kind of mother cruel? grandmother li (speaking righteously and sternly, putting him on trial): What are you talking about? You arrested my son for no reason and now you want to kill him. You’re the criminal! You’re the one who’s cruel! You kill the Chinese people, and yet you blame them for it. Now you want to go and blame an old woman like me? hatoyama: Fine! Go see your son! (grandmother li goes without hesitation. hatoyama signals auxiliary hou to follow her.) hatoyama: Take Li Yuhe over there! sergeant: Bring in Li . . . Yu . . . he! (The lighting changes. A corner of the execution field: an enclosure, a steep slope, and a sturdy pine tree towering overhead. In the distance, a tall mountain reaches into the clouds.) li yuhe (offstage, singing erhuang daoban): At the prison guard’s wolflike howl, I move forward— (Enters the field and strikes a dramatic pose) leaving the prison. (Two japa nese military police officers push him. With a strong sense of righteousness, li yuhe is persistent and undaunted. li yuhe performs Peking opera dance steps: he moves quickly to the side using both legs, backs up a few steps on one leg, pauses, turns around on one leg, and swings the other leg in a dramatic pose. He boldly advances, forcing the two japa nese military police officers to retreat. li yuhe strokes his wounded chest, then places one foot on a rock and rubs his knee. He looks down at his chains with contempt, his noble spirit soaring.) (Singing huilong) Look at me, wearing iron shackles, wrapped in iron chains, with my hands and feet locked together; still, they cannot lock down my lofty aspirations rising to the clouds! (A sharp pain in his wounded leg causes li yuhe to back up a few steps on one leg, rub his leg, and stand on one leg in a dramatic pose.)

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li yuhe (singing yuanban): That thief Hatoyama used every means of torture to obtain the secret code, My bones are broken, my flesh is ripped to shreds, but my will is even stronger. Walking boldly onto the execution field, I raise my head and look upward, I see the red flag of the Revolution raised high, The flames of resistance against Japan are spreading. Japanese invaders, we’ll see how much longer your rampage can last! When the storm has passed (changing to mansanyan), a hundred flowers will burst with color, A new China will shine upon the world as brilliant as the morning sun. And when that time comes, red flags will fly throughout the nation, This thought bolsters my confidence and strengthens my will to fight! (Changing to yuanban) I haven’t done enough to serve the Party, The code, I fear, will never reach the Cypress Mountains. As I alone had contact with Wang Lianju, I do not fear that he can cause any more damage. My mother and daughter are just as courageous as I am, Thief Hatoyama, you want the secret code, but no matter where you search, no matter where you look, even if you search all of heaven and earth, you will never get your hands on it; the Revolutionaries’ indomitable spirit courageously marches on! (Enter grandmother li.) grandmother li: Yuhe! li yuhe (looks back): Ma! grandmother li (rushes over to support li yuhe, singing erhuang sanban): That scene seventeen years ago flashes before my eyes! And hatred for the enemy of my class and my nation fills my heart. These, these, these Japanese invaders, so brutal and dangerous, Have beaten you half to death . . . my son! My son! li yuhe: Mother, don’t grieve for me! grandmother li (continues singing): With such a fine son . . . a mother should not grieve!

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li yuhe: My good mother! (Singing erhuang erliu) Raised by the Party to be a man of steel, I fight the enemy and never waver. I am not afraid of torture, to have every bone in my body broken, I am not afraid to be locked up until I wear a hole through the prison cell floor. My heart breaks to see our nation torn apart, I burn with rage for the suffering of my people! However hard and dangerous the road to Revolution, We must press forward in the steps of the fallen! Although your child dies without regret, There is still the “account” (indicates the secret code) that has not yet been settled; for that, your son cannot rest in peace. I long to soar through the air, To dance on the wind over the mountains, So that I might free millions of my compatriots from suffering. How gladly would I die then for the Revolution! (Enter auxiliary hou, followed by two japa nese military police officers.) auxiliary hou: Old woman, Captain Hatoyama wishes to speak with you. grandmother li (to li yuhe): Son, I already know what he is going to say. auxiliary hou: Come on! (Exit grandmother li, fearlessly. Exit the two japa nese military police officers.) Bring in Li Tiemei! (Enter tiemei, hurriedly.) tiemei: Dad . . . (Exit auxiliary hou.) (Singing erhuang sanban) Day and night I’ve been longing to see Daddy again, And now . . . your whole body is bloody, and your entire face is battered . . . Oh, Daddy! li yuhe: Child, don’t cry! (Lovingly caressing tiemei’s hair, resolutely) Be brave, my child! (Helping tiemei to her feet, with emotion) My child! (Continues singing) There is something I’ve wanted to tell you so many times, but I couldn’t find the words, It has been hidden in my heart for seventeen years. I...

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tiemei (quickly interrupting): Dad! Don’t say it. You are my real father! (She kneels.) (Singing erhuang kuaiban) Don’t say it, Dad; don’t discuss it, Dad. I know the bitter story of the past seventeen years . . . (li yuhe helps tiemei to her feet, with a surge of emotion.) li yuhe (singing erhuang yuanban): People say that love for one’s flesh and blood is the most important thing in this world, But the way I see it, love for one’s social class is as weighty as Mount Tai. A proletarian fights courageously throughout his life for the people’s liberation, Making a home wherever I am, I have lived in poverty for decades. The red lantern is my sole possession, You must keep it safely by your side. tiemei (singing erhuang kuaisanyan): Daddy has given me a priceless treasure, It will light my path forever. Daddy has passed on to me his character, So that I may stand firm as a rock. Daddy has passed on to me his wisdom, So that I may be clear in my heart, never to be deceived. Daddy has passed on to me his courage, So that I might dare to fight the ravenous beasts. The red lantern has been passed down the family line. Oh, Daddy! If your wealth could be carried by a car or loaded on a ship, a thousand cars wouldn’t be enough to carry it and ten thousand ships wouldn’t be enough to load it. I, Tiemei, will keep it safely by my side. li yuhe (singing erhuang sanban): For ten thousand miles the Yangtze River’s waves swell! Our family’s red lantern will always have someone to pass it on. (To tiemei) If you are able to return home,

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Stay with family through hunger and cold, and “settle the account” (gestures to indicate the secret code), then of worries I shall be free. (Enter a group of japa nese military police officers, pushing grandmother li forward. Enter the sergeant.) sergeant: Captain Hatoyama is giving you a final five minutes to reconsider. If you don’t hand over the secret code, you will all be executed by firing squad! (Pulls tiemei near) Little girl, these are your final moments. Hand over the secret code, and your family survives! Understand? Speak! (tiemei unflinchingly returns to her family’s side.) sergeant: The secret code! tiemei: I. Don’t. Know! sergeant: Execute them all! japa nese military police officers: Hai! li yuhe: Don’t you threaten us! Tiemei, let’s get your grandma and all leave together! (The music of the “Internationale” begins to play. Courageous and steadfast, the three of them link their arms and face forward. Holding their heads high, they ascend the high slope.) (Enter hatoyama.) hatoyama: Not so fast! I’ll give you one last chance. Please do reconsider! li yuhe (stirred with a spirit that startles the heavens): Hatoyama! The Chinese People— the people of the Chinese Communist Party—can never be annihilated! You must carefully consider your fate! hatoyama: Well, how frightening! (To the sergeant) Carry out the execution according to plan. (Exit hatoyama.) sergeant: Fire! (Amid the majestic music of the “Internationale,” the three generations of the li family heroically face death. With their heads held high, they exit the stage. Exit the sergeant and japa nese military police officers. The field is quiet. li yuhe screams offstage: “Down with Japanese imperialism!” and “Long live the Chinese Communist Party!” All three generations cry out, “Long live Chairman Mao!” Sound of gunfire. Two japa nese military police officers pull tiemei onstage and push her over.) tiemei (stands up and turns around to shout): Dad! Grandma! (Enter hatoyama, auxiliary hou, and the sergeant.) hatoyama: Li Tiemei, hand over the secret code! auxiliary hou and sergeant: Speak! (tiemei glares at hatoyama furiously.) hatoyama: Let her go! auxiliary hou: Yes, sir! Move! (The sergeant pushes tiemei away; the japa nese military police officers follow.)

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Captain, why did you let her go? hatoyama: This is what they call casting a longer line to catch a bigger fish. auxiliary hou: Yes, sir! (Lights dim.) (Curtain.)

S CE NE 9 Advancing Wave upon Wave (Early morning, immediately following the previous scene. Interior and exterior views of li yuhe’s house. As the curtain rises, tiemei enters the house, leaning on the door. Looking around the room, she is filled with grief and indignation at the thought of her martyred father and grandmother.) tiemei: Dad! Grandma! (She throws herself on the table and sobs; after a moment, she slowly raises her head and looks at the red lantern, rushes toward it, and holds it aloft.) Grandma! Dad! I understand why you had to die. I will carry out your dying wish and be the heir to the red lantern! I must deliver the secret code to the Cypress Mountains. The debt of the deep sea of blood must be repaid with blood. Hatoyama, oh Hatoyama! Whether you capture me or set me free, you’ll never get your hands on the secret code! (Singing xipi daoban) I explode with rage at the thought of the enemy! (Changing to kuaisanyan) I grind my teeth to suppress my hatred. That thief Hatoyama will stop at nothing to get the secret code, Even gunning down Grandma and Daddy! (Changing to erliu) Biting my resentment, biting my hatred, I chew them up and choke them down, My hatred and resentment will take root in my heart! I will not bow my head; I will not retreat,

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(Changing to kuaiban) No tears shall fall upon my cheeks, They shall flow into my heart to ignite the spark. Flames of rage rise ten thousand feet high, They will incinerate the forces of evil! I, Tiemei, am prepared: I fear neither capture nor exile; I fear neither the crack of the whip nor the confines of prison! You can break my bones and I will never hand over the secret code. Thief Hatoyama, just you wait— This is Tiemei’s answer to you! Onward! (She takes the red lantern and prepares to leave. huilian emerges from the inner room.) huilian: Tiemei! tiemei: Sister Huilian! (She puts down the red lantern and bolts the door.) huilian: My mother is here to see you! (aunt tian emerges from the inner room.) aunt tian: Tiemei! tiemei: Auntie . . . (She throws herself into aunt tian’s arms.) aunt tian: Child, we all know what happened to your dad and grandma. We’ll just see how long these man-eating savages can run wild! Tiemei, at this moment there are spies out there looking for you. You can’t leave through this door, so you’d better go through our house! Quickly, switch clothes with Huilian! tiemei: No! Auntie, I can’t get you into trouble. aunt tian: Child! (Singing xipi sanban while helping the two girls switch their clothing) If the poor do not help each other, no one else will, We are two bitter gourds on the same vine. We must help you to escape from danger, To free you from the tiger’s jaws so that you may forge ahead. tiemei: Auntie, what if something happens to you? aunt tian: We come from working-class families and share a common enemy. No matter what the risk, I must see you off safely. tiemei (with gratitude): Auntie . . . aunt tian: Hurry, child!

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huilian: Tiemei, hurry! tiemei: Sister, Auntie, I will never forget you! aunt tian: Hurry! (tiemei picks up the red lantern and exits into the inner room.) Huilian, be very careful! (aunt tian exits into the inner room. huilian wraps tiemei’s scarf around her head, obscuring the lower half of her face. Carrying a basket, she leaves the house, closing the door behind her, exits. spies b and c emerge from behind a telephone pole and follow her. Lights fade.) (Curtain.)

S CE NE 10 Ambushing and Annihilating the Enemy (Immediately following the previous scene. On the road leading to the Cypress Mountains. As the curtain rises, the knife maker enters with two guerrilla soldiers dressed as peasants. Enter tiemei. They meet.) tiemei: Uncle Knife Maker! (She takes the red lantern from the basket and holds it up.) knife maker: Tiemei! (Turning to the two guerrilla soldiers) Stand guard! tiemei: Uncle, I’ve found you at last! My dad and my grandma . . . knife maker: We know everything. Don’t be sad, Tiemei. Turn your sorrow into strength. We will be avenged! And the secret code? tiemei: I’ve got it! knife maker: Excellent. tiemei: Uncle, thanks to my neighbor Sister Tian Huilian disguising herself as me and distracting the spies, I was able to safely bring the secret code here. knife maker: Tian Huilian’s family will definitely attract the spies’ attention. (To guerrilla a) Old Feng, find a way to relocate the Tian family as quickly as possible. guerrilla a: Right away! (He exits. A police siren sounds.) guerrilla b: Old Zhao, the enemy is coming! knife maker: You take Tiemei up the mountain. We’ll deal with them. (guerrilla b leads tiemei away. wang lianju, offstage, shouts “Halt!” Enter japa nese military police officers, led by hatoyama and wang lianju; the knife maker blocks their way. hatoyama shouts, “Get him!” The knife maker grabs wang lianju’s pistol, killing a japa nese military police officer. He hits wang lianju with his workbench.

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Numerous guerrillas leap from a grove, striking a dramatic pose. On a cliff, a guerrilla kills a japa nese military police officer. hatoyama and wang lianju flee, pursued by the knife maker and the guerrillas. The guerrillas dash down from the cliff in pursuit of the enemy. A guerrilla with a red-tasseled rifle bravely fights two japa nese military police officers. They flee, pursued by the guerrilla. The knife maker pursues wang lianju. They wrestle. Enter hatoyama and numerous japa nese military police officers. Hand-to-hand combat ensues. The guerrilla force annihilates the Japanese invaders. They execute the traitor and eviscerate hatoyama with a knife. The ambush is a great success. The guerrilla force strikes a dramatic pose. Lights fade.) (Curtain.)

S CE NE 11 Forging Ahead in Victory (Immediately following the previous scene. The Cypress Mountains. As the curtain rises, red flags wave across the clear blue sky. The guerrilla captain walks down the hillside. Enter the knife maker with tiemei. Enter numerous guerrillas. tiemei solemnly gives the secret code to the guerrilla captain. Brandishing their swords and rifles, the crowd joyfully celebrates their victory. tiemei holds aloft the red lantern; brilliant rays of light emanate from it.) (The curtain slowly falls.)

Not es

1.

2.

This translation is based on the text in Zhongguo Jingjutuan (China Peking Opera Troupe), “Hongdeng ji” (The Red Lantern), Hongqi zazhi, May 1970, 23–46. Xipi sanban refers to the mode (in this case, xipi) and the metrical type (in this case, sanban) of the aria sung here by Li Yuhe. Jingju, also known as Peking opera, has two modal systems, xipi and erhuang, each taking its name from the principal mode within each system. There are ten standard metrical types in jingju: yuanban, manban, kuaiban, kuaisanyan, erliuban, liushuiban, sanban, daoban, yaoban, and huilong. (The final ban can be dropped from longer terms like erliuban and liushuiban, as is the case in this text.) Model revolutionary jingju like The Red Lantern can also include combined metrical types and entirely new ones, as well as music from sources beyond jingju. For detailed explanations of these various modal and metrical terms, see Elizabeth Wichmann, Listening to Theatre: The Aural Dimension of Beijing Opera (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1991), 53–130. The 1970 edition of the play has a footnote at this point. The footnote reads: “The law is strong, but the outlaws are even stronger: a fixed expression [chengyu]. Here, ‘law’

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refers to the reactionary ruling class, and ‘outlaw’ refers to the rebellious spirit of the proletariat and the people of the Revolution in their struggle against the reactionaries. Li Yuhe uses this expression to strike back at Hatoyama, expressing that the Japanese invaders may temporarily have the upper hand, but the truly great strength belongs to the people of the Revolution. The Japanese invaders face certain defeat, and China, certain victory.”

The Bus Stop (1983) Gao Xingjian Tra nsla ted by S hi ao- L i ng Y u

C ha r a c t e rs silent man ⒩ㄲ☨㑉, a middle-aged man old man ▙㮙, in his sixties girl ⤟ㅵ, twenty-eight years old hothead 䠾㨏㽳, nineteen years old glasses ▝㬇ⳇ☨, thirty years old mother ㄾ㎗, forty years old carpenter 㖠⡓, forty-five years old director ma ⿷㻙㑌, fifty years old (The ages listed represent each character’s age at his or her first appearance.) Place: A bus stop in the suburb of a city (A bus- stop sign stands in the middle of the stage. The words on the sign are no longer legible due to years of exposure to the elements. Beside the bus- stop sign are two rows of iron railings where the passengers line up. The railings are shaped like a cross, with each of the four posts a different length. This shape is symbolic of a crossroads, or a fork in the road on the journey of life, or a way station in the lives of the characters. The actors can come onto the stage from all directions. The silent man comes onto the stage carrying a bag. He stops under the sign to wait for the bus. The old man comes on empty-handed.)

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old man: Did the bus just pass? (The silent man nods.) Are you going to town? (The silent man nods.) When you go to town on Saturday afternoon, you have to start out early. If you wait till you get off work to catch the bus, you won’t make it. (The silent man smiles.) (Turning his head to look) Not a bus in sight. Wouldn’t you know there would be fewer buses on a Saturday afternoon, when everybody wants to go to town? If you leave one minute too late, you’ll hit the “rush hour”—what a weird expression! The moment everybody gets off work, the rush begins. They all hurry to squeeze in, but you have to be strong to push your way through the crowd. At my age I just can’t do it. It’s a good thing I got an early start, before those who knock off early even get started on their way. I didn’t even dare to take a nap. (Feels relieved and yawns) If I didn’t have important business in town, I wouldn’t come now. (Taking out a cigarette) Do you smoke? (The silent man shakes his head.) It’s better not to smoke. Why waste your money to get bronchitis? Besides, it’s hard to get good cigarettes. The minute the Big Front Door cigarettes1 arrive in the stores, people start lining up in the street; the line goes all the way around the corner. Each customer is limited to two packs. When your turn finally comes, the sales clerk turns his head and walks away. If you ask him a question, he doesn’t bother answering you. Is this “serving the customers”? It’s only lip ser vice! All those Big Front Door cigarettes have gone out the back door! It’s just like waiting for the bus. When you stand in line according to the rules, there are always some who don’t go by the rules. They push to the front, wave to the driver, and the door opens for them. They’re the “preferred passengers with connections.” God! How I hate that term! By the time you try to get on, the door is slammed shut again. That’s how they “serve the passengers”! What can you do but stare at them in frustration? Everybody knows this happens, but nothing is ever done about it. (Looking at the side of the stage) Hey, someone is coming. You stand at the head of the line, and I’ll stand behind you. In a little while when the bus comes, all hell will break loose. Whoever is strongest will get a seat. That’s how people behave nowadays. (The silent man smiles. The girl comes onstage holding a small handbag. She stops at a little distance from them. The hothead enters, and with one leap sits down on the iron railing. He then takes out a cigarette with a filter tip and lights it with a lighter.) (To the silent man) See, that’s the fad nowadays. (The silent man taps the iron railing to show his agreement.) hothead: How long have you been waiting? (The old man pretends not to hear.) How long does it take for a bus to come? old man (peevishly): Go ask the bus company.

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hothead: That’s a funny answer. I’m asking you. (The silent man takes out a book from his bag and starts to read.) old man: Asking me? I’m not the dispatcher. hothead: I’m asking you how long you’ve been waiting. old man: Young man, that’s not how you ask a question. hothead (realizing his mistake): Grandpa. old man: I’m not your grandpa. hothead (sarcastically): Then Your Honor . . . old man: There’s no need for that. (The hothead, feeling rejected, starts to whistle while glancing at the old man and swinging his legs.) This railing is for people to rest their hands on while standing in line. It is not a seat. hothead: You can’t hurt it by sitting on it. It’s not made of straw. old man: Don’t you see it is tilted? hothead: Did I make it tilt? old man: If everybody sits on it and rocks it, how can it not tilt? hothead: Is it your private property? old man: I make it my business to protect public property. hothead: Don’t argue with me! Why don’t you go home and argue with your old woman? (He shakes the railing even more.) old man (trying his best to control his anger, turns to the silent man): You see . . . (The silent man has been reading; he has paid no attention to the conversation. glasses comes running.) (To the girl): Get in line. In a little while there’ll be total chaos. (The hothead jumps down from the railing and pushes forward. He stands in front of the girl. The mother arrives, hurriedly lugging a big bag.) Let’s observe the rule of first come, first served. girl (to the old man in an almost inaudible voice): It doesn’t matter. I’ll just stand here. (The sound of a bus is heard. The carpenter arrives with big, vigorous strides, carrying a tool bag. He stands at the end of the line. The sound of the bus gets nearer; everyone looks in the direction of the bus. The silent man puts his book away. The line slowly moves forward.) (Turning back to look at glasses) Don’t push. old man: Get in line, everybody get in line. (The sound of the bus moves past them. The hothead suddenly gets in front of the old man and the silent man and runs to the head of the line.) others (to the hothead): Hey! Hey . . . hey . . . (The bus does not stop.) all: Stop! Why didn’t it stop? Hello . . . (The hothead runs a few steps after the bus. The sound of the bus fades away.) hothead: Damn it! old man (angrily): The bus is not going to stop if we all act like this.

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mother: Hey, you people in front—please get in line! glasses (to the hothead): Get in line, get in line! Can’t you hear? hothead: What’s the matter with you? After all, I’m in front of you. mother: There are not that many of us. Wouldn’t it be better if we got on the bus in an orderly fashion? glasses (to the hothead): You were behind her. old man (to the silent man): Ill-bred. hothead: You’re well-bred? mother: Do you think you don’t have to stand in line? old man (enunciating every syllable very slowly): You jump the queue when you’re supposed to stand in line. That’s what I call ill-bred. hothead: If your feet itch, tell your old woman to scratch them for you. Why are you taking it out on me? mother: Young man, don’t be so rude. glasses: We all tell you to line up. Why are you so insensitive? hothead: Who says I didn’t line up? The bus didn’t stop. Why are you all yelling at me? glasses: You were behind someone else. hothead: I’m in front of you anyway. old man (trembling with rage): Get in line! hothead: Why do you keep stirring up trouble? You think I’m afraid of you? old man: Are you looking for a fight? (The silent man walks over to them. Seeing that he is quite strong, the hothead backs up a step but continues leaning against the railing so as not to appear weak.) hothead: If you’re so powerful, why didn’t you make the bus stop? (He leans against the railing and shakes it some more.) old man: Young man, didn’t you learn anything in school? hothead: It’s none of your business. If you’re so learned, why aren’t you riding in a limousine? old man: Waiting for a bus is nothing to be ashamed of; it’s social morality. Didn’t your teachers teach you that? hothead: We never had such a lesson. old man: Your parents didn’t teach you either? hothead: Your mother taught you, how come you didn’t get on the bus either? (The old man falls silent, not knowing what to say. He glances at the silent man, who has resumed reading.) (Smugly) If you’ve never gotten on a bus before, you’ve lived all these years in vain. glasses: We’re all waiting for the bus; please be a little considerate of the others. hothead: Am I not standing in line? I’m right in front of you. glasses (pointing at the girl): You were behind her. hothead: She can get on ahead of me. But when the bus comes, she must be able to squeeze in. girl (turning her back to him): How disgusting!

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hothead (to the old man): If you can get on, just go ahead. If you can’t, don’t blame me. And don’t block the way either. If you’re such an educated and sensible person, you must know how to get on a bus. I haven’t had much schooling, but I sure can get on a bus. (The sound of a bus is heard.) mother: The bus is coming. Everybody get in line. hothead (still leaning on the railing, to the girl): I’m after you. If you can’t get on later, don’t blame me for pushing you. girl (frowning): You go ahead. (The sound of the bus is getting closer. The silent man puts his book away. The carpenter, who has been squatting all this time, stands up. Everybody pushes forward along the railing.) glasses (to the girl): Try to get on the bus from the side. Hold on to the door handle. (The girl looks at glasses but says nothing. Everybody moves forward in the direction of the bus. The hothead stands outside the railing, following right behind the girl.) old man: Stop! Stop! glasses: Hello . . . stop! mother: We’ve been waiting a long time! girl: The one before this one didn’t stop. hothead: That son of a bitch . . . carpenter: Hey! (They all run after the bus and crowd to one corner of the stage. The hothead suddenly dashes forward; glasses grabs him. The hothead swings his arm; glasses seizes him by his sleeve. The hothead turns around and slaps glasses. The sound of the bus becomes faint.) glasses: How dare you hit me? hothead: So what if I hit you? (The two fight.) old man: They’re fighting! They’re fighting! mother: Young people nowadays. girl (to glasses): Why don’t you get out of his way? glasses: That troublemaker! hothead (rushing forward): I’ll slap you again! (The silent man and the carpenter separate them.) carpenter: You both stop! Stop! You guys have nothing better to do? glasses: Stinking asshole! hothead: You son of a bitch! mother: Oh, how awful. Don’t you people have any shame? hothead: Why did he pull my sleeve? glasses: All I did was give him a little tug. Why didn’t you stay in line? hothead: Don’t try to be a hero in front of the womenfolk. If you’re really somebody, let’s take a little walk.

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glasses: Do you think I’m scared of you? You idiot! (The hothead lunges at glasses again, but the carpenter grabs his wrist, making him unable to move.) carpenter: Don’t make any trouble. Go stand in the back. hothead: It’s none of your business. carpenter: Go to the back! (He grabs him by the wrist and drags him to the rear of the line.) old man: That’s right. Don’t let him create any more trouble. Otherwise, none of us can get on the bus. (To the silent man) He has it coming. (The silent man did not hear what was said. He has started reading again.) hothead: I was at the front of the line. Do you think only you people can go to town, but I can’t? mother: Nobody said you can’t go. old man (to the mother): We all go to town for some purpose, but he only wants to make trouble. There are those “three-handed” people2 on the bus; we’d better watch out for them. (Everyone feels his wallet except the silent man and the carpenter.) hothead: What makes you think you’re so important? Old turtle! (The girl and the mother smile at each other. The old man glances at them disapprovingly.) mother (quickly changing the subject, to glasses): There’s no need for you to get into a fight with him. You’re no match for him. glasses (heroically): Has anyone seen such a troublemaker? No one will be able to get on the bus because of him. Are you going to town? mother: My husband and child live in the city. It’s such a headache trying to catch a bus on Saturdays. You have to fight your way on. glasses: Why don’t you ask to be transferred to the city? mother: Who doesn’t want to be transferred to the city? But you’ve got to have connections. What can we do? girl: Two buses have passed without stopping. glasses: They’re already full before they leave the starting point. Are you going to town for some business? (The girl nods.) You’d do better to get on at the starting point. Where do you live? (The girl looks at him with a guarded expression and does not answer his question. glasses, feeling put out, adjusts his glasses. The silent man closes his book and turns to look in the direction from which the bus had come. He appears a little anxious and buries himself in his book again.) old man: I’m really worried. I have to be at the Cultural Palace in the city by seven o’clock. mother: You really have a zest for life. Going to town to watch a show? old man: No such luck. Let the townspeople watch the shows; I’m going to a chess game.

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mother: What? old man: A chess game. Chariot, horse, cannon—do you understand? Checkmate! girl: Oh, to play chess. You must be crazy about it. old man: My young lady, I’ve played chess all my life! glasses: Everyone has his interest. If people didn’t have a passion for something, life would be very dull. old man: Well said! I’ve studied all kinds of chess manuals. From Patriarch Zhang’s Secret Methods for Chess Playing to the recently published Solutions to One Hundred Unfinished Chess Games—I can show you all the moves without missing a single one! Do you play chess too? glasses: I play occasionally. old man: It’s not enough just to play it occasionally; there’s a lot to chess. It’s a specialized learning. glasses: Yes, it’s not easy to play it well. old man: Have you heard of Li Mosheng? mother (seeing that the carpenter’s bag is next to hers, she moves her bag closer to herself ): Do you do carpentry work? carpenter: Mm— glasses: Which Li Mosheng? mother: You work on Saturdays? carpenter (too lazy to respond): Uh. old man: You say you play chess but you don’t even know Li Mosheng? glasses (apologetically): I have no recollection . . . mother: Do you fix chair legs? Our— carpenter (interrupting her): I make fine furniture. old man: Don’t you read the evening news? glasses: I’ve been busy preparing for the college entrance exam. old man (losing interest): Then you don’t even know the ABCs of chess. mother (turning to the girl): Does your family also live in the city? girl: No, I have to do something there. mother (looking her up and down): To meet a friend? (The girl nods with embarrassment.) He must be a good young man. What work does he do? (The girl shuffles her foot, her head bent.) Is the wedding date near? girl: What are you saying! (Taking a handkerchief from her handbag and fanning herself ) How come the bus isn’t here yet? glasses: The dispatcher must be chatting with someone and has forgotten the time. mother: Is this how they “serve the passengers”? old man: It’s the passengers who serve them. If there are no people waiting at the bus stop, how can they prove their importance? You might as well be patient and wait. mother: In the time we’ve been waiting here I could have washed a big tub of dirty clothes.

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girl: You rush home on Saturday to wash clothes? mother: This is what married life is like: that husband of mine only reads his books; he doesn’t know how to do anything else—can’t even wash a small handkerchief ! When you look for a husband, don’t get a bookworm like that. A more resourceful person would have moved his family to the city long ago. old man: But you asked for it. Why don’t you have him transferred to the country? Every week you wait for the bus, push and shove to get on the bus. How can you stand it? mother: I have a child and I must think about his future. As you well know, rural schools are not up to standard. How many of their graduates get into college? (Nodding toward the hothead) I wouldn’t want my Peipei to end up like that and ruin his future. (The sound of a bus is heard.) girl: The bus is coming! glasses: It’s really coming. It’s empty too. mother (lifting her big bag): Don’t push. We can all get on and everybody will have a seat. hothead (to the old man): You’d better watch your step. If you trip and lose your wallet and can’t pay for your ticket, you’ll really make a fool of yourself. old man: Young man, don’t be so sure of yourself. Sooner or later it will be your turn to weep. (To the others) No need to rush. Everybody line up to get on the bus. (They pull themselves together and form a neat line. The sound of the bus gets closer. director ma arrives just in time, his jacket unbuttoned, his hands swinging. He walks straight toward the bus.) others: Hey, get in line! What’s the matter? Don’t you know the rules? Go stand in the back! director ma (disagreeably): I just want to take a look. You people line up all you want. glasses: Have you never seen a bus before? director ma: I’ve never seen anyone like you before. (Staring at him) I’m looking for someone. (The sound of a bus passes by them; again the bus does not stop. director ma anxiously runs to the front of the bus stop.) (Waving repeatedly) Hey! Hey! Old Wang! Driver Wang! I’m Old Ma of the general supplies store! (The group breaks up and they all run after the bus.) glasses: Why didn’t it stop? girl: Several buses have come and gone. Stop this one quickly! mother: There were only a few passengers on the bus. Why didn’t it stop? director ma (chases the bus, running and shouting): Let me on! Open your front door! I’m Old Ma of the general supplies store! Just take me along . . . old man (cursing at the driver): How can you act like this? Don’t you have any concern for the passengers? carpenter: That son of a bitch!

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hothead (picking up a stone and throwing it at the bus): I’m going to smash you to pieces! (The sound of the bus becomes fainter and fainter. The silent man gazes in the direction of the bus.) director ma: Okay. From now on don’t you bus companies expect any favors from me. old man: Are you Director Ma of the general supplies store? director ma (putting on airs): What about it? old man: You know the driver? director ma: They’ve changed drivers. Those goddamned ingrates! old man: Oh, that’s why they don’t appreciate what you’ve done for them. director ma: Don’t talk about it anymore. My friendly relationship with them is over. Next time those bus company people come to me, I’ll treat them just like everybody else. (Taking out a cigarette) Do you smoke? old man (glancing at the brand of the cigarette): No, thanks. I forgot to bring my glasses with me. director ma: It’s the Big Front Door brand. old man: That brand is hard to get. director ma: That’s for sure. Day before yesterday, the bus company people came to me, and I let them have twenty cartons. I had no idea they’re so mean. old man: How about letting me have a carton? director ma: That’d be tough; they’re in short supply. old man: The Big Front Door has gone out the back door. No wonder these buses don’t stop at their stops either. director ma: What do you mean by that? old man: Nothing. director ma: What does “nothing” mean? old man: It doesn’t have any meaning. director ma: What is the meaning of “it doesn’t have any meaning”? old man: It doesn’t have any meaning means it doesn’t have any meaning. director ma: “It doesn’t have any meaning means it doesn’t have any meaning” does have meaning. old man: Then what do you think it means? director ma: It’s very clear. You’re saying that, as a director, I’m leading the way to open back doors. Isn’t that right? old man: You said it yourself. (The silent man paces back and forth in agitation.) glasses (reading his flash cards): Book, pig, desk, dog, pig, dog, desk, book . . .3 carpenter: Which country’s English are you reading? glasses: English is English. There’s no which country. Well, I’m reading American English. The British and American people both speak English, but their pronunciations are different. It’s just like the word “I” in Chinese; you say “an,” they say “zan.” In order to take the college entrance examination, we also have to take a test in foreign

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languages. I’ve never studied English before. I have to start from scratch now. I can’t just stand here waiting for the bus and wasting my time. carpenter: Go ahead and study. Study. mother (murmurs to the audience at the same time as the girl): My Peipei is waiting for me to make sweet dumplings for him. He doesn’t like those made with sugar, bean paste, or five-kinds- of-nuts fillings . . . He only likes sesame seed filling . . . girl (in unison with the mother): We’re supposed to meet at seven fifteen in front of the park entrance, across the street, under the third streetlamp. I’m to carry a purplish red handbag, and he’ll be leaning against a Flying Dove bicycle . . . (The silent man walks up to them and looks at them with a melancholy expression. They stop talking.) director ma (addressing the old man): Do you know what’s meant by “commodities in short supply”? old man: Things you can’t buy. director ma: For consumers, it’s things they can’t buy. For us in the commercial departments, it’s insufficient supply. Insufficient supply creates a contradiction between supply and demand. How do you solve this contradiction? old man: I’m not the director. director ma: But you’re a consumer! Can you give up smoking? old man: I’ve tried several times. director ma: Do you know smoking is bad for your health? old man: I know. director ma: You know, so why do you still smoke? You know very well that we say one thing and do another. Don’t we publicize family planning every year? But there’s no reduction in the number of births, and our population continues to grow. Before grown-ups give up smoking, youngsters still wet behind the ears take up the habit. The number of smokers grows faster than tobacco leaves. Tell me, how can we solve this contradiction between supply and demand? (The silent man flings his bag onto his shoulder. He is about to leave, but halts.) glasses (reciting in a loud voice): Open your books! Open your pigs—not right; open your dogs—not right, not right! old man: Can’t you produce more? director ma: You ask the right question! But that’s the problem with the production department. How can we in the commercial department solve it? You blame me for opening the back door, but our back door can only take care of our old customers. Can we open our front door wide to the public? No way! It’s always been like this: some people can get what they want, some can’t. If everyone could buy whatever he wanted, there wouldn’t be any contradictions, would there? girl: What’s all this yammering? How annoying! mother: You have no idea of what’s annoying. Wait till you become a mother; then you’ll know what’s annoying. (The silent man turns around. The girl’s eyes meet with his and she immediately lowers hers. The silent man does not notice her and walks off with long strides, not

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even turning his head. The sound of soft music can be heard. The music expresses a painful yet determined search. The girl looks in the direction he has gone, lost in thought.) carpenter: Excuse me for interrupting. (director ma and the old man turn their heads.) I’m not talking to you. You two just go on with your “comic dialogue.” 4 director ma: You think I’m wasting my breath with comic dialogue? I’m working on the ideology of my customer. (Continues to persuade the old man) You don’t understand the situation in our commercial department. You’re unhappy, right? Do you think it’s easy being a director? You just try doing my job. old man: I can’t do your job. director ma: Just try. old man: I give in. You win. director ma (to the carpenter): Did you see that? Did you see that? carpenter: See what? You mean that teacher with glasses? glasses (making sentences): Do you speak English? I speak a litter . . .5 hothead (imitating him, in a strange voice): Ai—si—pi—ke—ai—li—tu—er— glasses (angrily): Are you a pig? hothead: Look who’s shitting! girl: Stop it, will you? I can’t stand it anymore! carpenter: Excuse me, mister, what time do you have? glasses (looks at his watch, shocked): What’s happened? What . . . carpenter: It stopped? glasses: I wish it had stopped . . . Why, a year has passed! girl: You’re fooling us. glasses (looks at his watch again): It’s true. We’ve been waiting a whole year at this bus stop. (hothead puts his index finger into his mouth and whistles with all his strength.) old man (glares at them): Rubbish! glasses: What do you mean, rubbish? If you don’t believe me, look at your watch. carpenter: No need to get excited. It’s nothing serious. mother: How come it’s only two forty on my watch? hothead (moves over to take a look): It has stopped! carpenter: What are you yelling about? (To the old man) Let’s look at yours. old man (after much fumbling, takes out his pocket watch with a shaking hand): How come it doesn’t look right? hothead: You’re looking at it upside down. old man: Ten past . . . one. It’s stopped. hothead (gloatingly): See, your watch is worse than hers. Your watch is just like you— too old. director ma (shaking his wrist, listens): Mine has stopped too. mother: Look at the date. Doesn’t yours come with a calendar? director ma: It says “thirteenth month, forty-eight”—strange, my watch is an imported Omega! hothead: Maybe it’s only a plastic imitation.

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director ma: Go away! glasses: Mine is a digital watch; it can’t go wrong. Look, it’s still ticking. I bought it last year and it’s never stopped. It has six functions—it tells the year, month, day, hour, minute, and second. Look, hasn’t a whole year passed? carpenter: You really scare us. So what if it’s a digital watch? That doesn’t mean it keeps good time. old man: My friend, we must believe in science. Electronics is science, and science shouldn’t scare people. We’re living in an electronic age. Something must have gone wrong with us. mother: You mean we really have been waiting a whole year at this bus stop? glasses: It’s true. It’s really been a year—one year and three minutes, one second, two seconds, four seconds, five seconds, six seconds . . . Look, it’s ticking away. hothead: Hey, it’s true, you guys. A goddamned year has really gone by! (The girl runs away from the crowd, her hands covering her face. The others all look very grim.) mother (muttering to herself ): They must be out of a clean change of clothes by now. He doesn’t know how to do anything; can’t even mend his torn pants. Peipei must be crying his heart out for Mommy. Oh, my poor Peipei . . . (The girl squats down. The others slowly crowd around her.) glasses (softly): What’s the matter? carpenter: Are you hungry? I have a piece of pancake in my bag. old man: Stomachache? director ma (speaking loudly, to the audience): Is there a doctor among you? Someone please come and take a look at her. (The mother, keeping her own emotions under control, walks over to the girl and bends over her.) mother (stroking the girl’s hair): Are you not feeling well? Tell me. (The girl buries her head in the mother’s arms and bursts out sobbing.) We gals need to have a talk. You people please leave us alone. (The others disperse.) Miss, tell me, what’s bothering you? girl: Elder Sister 6 . . . I feel so sad . . . mother (caressing her): Lean against me. (She sits on the ground and lets the girl lean against her, whispering to her.) old man (obviously aged): Ah, this chess game has fallen through . . . director ma: You go to town to play chess? old man: For this chess game, I’ve waited and waited. I’ve waited all my life. girl: No! No! He’s not going to wait for me any longer . . . mother: Foolish girl, he will. girl: He won’t, he won’t. You don’t understand. mother: How long have you known each other? girl: This is our first meeting, at seven fifteen, in front of the park entrance, across the street, under the third streetlight . . .

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mother: You’ve never met before? girl: A friend of mine who works in the city, she introduced us. mother: Don’t feel bad. You can always find somebody else. There are plenty of young men out there. girl: Never again. No one will ever wait for me again! director ma (facing the audience, muttering to himself ): I must be going now. I was only going to be wined and dined at the Tongqing restaurant. Someone is giving a party, an old customer. But I don’t have to wait a whole year just to have a drink in town. I have plenty of booze at home. Even that world famous Maotai, packaged in white porcelain bottles and tied with red ribbons—I only have to drop a hint, without even lifting a finger, and someone will bring it to me. I’m not boasting. I don’t have to go to town. (Loudly) I don’t have to! old man (excitedly): I must play this game of chess! director ma (to the audience): There are all kinds of weirdos in this world. They would even wait a whole year at the bus stop for a game of chess. (To the old man, with kindness and pity) I’ve played plenty of chess in my life, but I’ve never become so attached to it as you are. You must be getting very anxious to play by now. Come to my house, we can have a drink together and I’ll play a game with you. We’ll just drink and play, play and drink. Sir, you’re advanced in years, why waste the rest of your life away at this bus stop? Come with me. old man (with contempt): Come with you? director ma: Sir, there are about one hundred employees in my general supplies store and no fewer than a dozen section heads and department heads, but none of them is my match. If you don’t believe me, just go and ask them. glasses (reading): pig, book, desk, dog . . . k . . . g . . . k . . . old man (trembling with excitement): You . . . do you read the evening news? director ma: Never miss it for a day. I only subscribe to the evening news. The evening news from the city is delivered to the post office in my township by noontime and distributed to our general supplies store in the afternoon. I always keep the paper to read after supper. Then the next day I know all the news from the city. old man: Do you know Li Mosheng? director ma: Sure, that newly famous opera singer. He’s marvelous! old man: How can you say you play chess? I’m talking about our national chess champion! director ma: Oh, you mean that Li somebody who took first place in the chess competition? He has the same family name as my wife. old man: So what if he’s the chess champion? His chess playing is just so-so. director ma: My old friend, you mean you could be a champion too? old man: The game he played to win the championship was published in the evening newspaper. I’ve . . . I’ve studied it. It’s only because he lives in the city; if I also lived in the city . . . director ma (laughing): Then you would be the champion.

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old man: I wouldn’t say that. Anyway, I wrote him a letter and we agreed to play a game in the Cultural Palace in the city. It was for tonight . . . , a year ago tonight. When you play chess, you’re not supposed to change your move. I shouldn’t go back on my word either. director ma: That’s very true. glasses (trying to memorize with great difficulty): Bik, pook, Desgdokpikboog—this really sounds awful! hothead: It sounds like you’re farting foreign farts. glasses (exasperated): I’m not like you. You can goof off and do nothing, but I must take the college entrance examination! This is my last chance. If the bus doesn’t come soon, I’ll be too old to take it. Wait and wait—I’ve wasted my youth waiting. But you can’t understand that. Please leave me alone. hothead: I’m not bothering you. glasses (pleading): Will you please leave me alone and let me have some peace and quiet? Can’t you go somewhere else? hothead: I can’t go to the city! (He walks away, feeling bored.) (Suddenly explodes) Why is it that only city folks get to walk on city streets? Am I not a human being like anyone else? Why can’t I go to the city and look around? I’m going no matter what. carpenter (irritated): What are you shouting for? Can’t you sit still? (He squats down, tears a piece of old newspaper from his tool bag, takes out a tobacco leaf, crushes it, and rolls it into a cigarette. Silence. The lights dim and the sound of cars can be heard in the distance. A barely discernible music is heard; the signature tune of the silent man becomes audible again. They all listen. It sounds like the wind and soon dies down.) director ma (to the audience): They’ve all been hit by some strange disease. (To the others) Hey, haven’t you people given up yet? Are you leaving or not? hothead: Where to? director ma: Go back. hothead: I thought you were going to the city. director ma: I’m not crazy. Go all the way to the city just to have a lousy drink? I’m not that desperate. hothead (sadly): But I just have to go to the city to have a taste of yogurt. director ma: I’m not talking to you. Why are you butting in? (To the old man) You want to stay but I have to go. (They all look at one another, almost moved to action.) old man: Oh. (He looks at director ma, not knowing what to say.) mother (looks at the old man): You . . . girl (looks at the mother): Elder Sister . . . glasses (looks at the girl with worried concern): You . . . carpenter (watches glasses’ action): Hey!

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(director ma walks up to the carpenter, motioning for him to follow. The carpenter keeps looking at glasses. director ma glances down at the carpenter’s tool bag and kicks it. The group stops looking back and forth at one another.) hothead: Hey, where’s that guy? Did he sneak away? old man: Who sneaked away? hothead: You’re so old and confused. That guy who was standing right in front of you—he’s gone without saying a word and left us all behind. others (all become very excited, except the girl): Who? Who? Who are you talking about? Who’s left? old man (slapping his thigh, suddenly remembers): That’s right. I said hello to him just a while ago. He’s left without uttering a word. mother: Who? Who’s left? glasses (recalling): He was carrying a bag over his shoulder, stood at the head of the line, was reading all the time . . . mother: Oh, when you people started fighting, he was the one who broke up the fight. carpenter: That’s right. How come I didn’t see him leave? glasses: Could it be that he got on the bus? director ma: They opened the front door for him? girl (at a loss): The bus didn’t stop at all. He went to town on his own. director ma (pointing in two opposite directions): Did he go this way or that way? girl: He was following the highway. director ma: You saw him leave? girl (sadly): He glanced at me, then walked off without even turning his head. glasses: He must be in the city by now. hothead: He must be. old man (to the girl): Why didn’t you say something earlier? girl (feeling uneasy): Weren’t we all waiting for the bus? . . . old man: He’s really a conniving sort. girl: When he looks at you, his eyes don’t even blink, as if he were looking right through you . . . director ma (a little ner vously): I hope he’s not some official from the city who was here to investigate something. Was he listening to us when I was discussing ideologies with that old gentleman? girl: I don’t think he was at that time. He was pacing back and forth as if something was troubling him . . . director ma: Did he collect . . . for example, information about the supply of cigarettes, or the selling of the Big Front Door brand through the back door? girl: I didn’t hear him say a single word. director ma: Why didn’t you tell him about the problems with the bus companies? The public is really unhappy with them. old man: Nowadays, it’s really hard to go anywhere. (Striking the iron railing while spinning around and pondering) This traffic, it’s so confusing. Are you sure we’re waiting at the right stop?

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carpenter (uneasily): Old man, what are you saying? This stop is not for going to the city? old man: Maybe we should wait for the bus on the other side of the street. glasses (looks at the other side): That stop is for going back. carpenter (relieved): Oh, sir, you scared me. (He squats down.) old man (trembling and facing the audience): Y’all waiting for the bus? (Talking to himself ) Can’t hear anything. (Louder) Are you waiting for a bus to go back to the countryside? (Talking to himself ) Still can’t hear anything. (To glasses) Young man, I’m hard of hearing. Please ask them if they’re going back to the countryside. If they’re going back, I don’t want to put myself through so much trouble to go into the city. director ma (shaking his head, sighs): The city is not paradise. I’d better go back. My son is getting married. (To the carpenter) Do you do carpentry work? carpenter: Mm. director ma: What about making some furniture for my son? It’s better than wasting time here waiting. I’ll treat you right. carpenter: I’m not interested. director ma: I’ll give you wages and meals. You’ll also get two packs of Big Front Door brand cigarettes, wrapped in tin foil, a day. (Talking to himself ) Better not mention Big Front Door anymore. If the management of the commercial department hears this, I’ll be in big trouble. Hey! I still don’t know how your workmanship is. carpenter: I make fine, hardwood furniture—those carved rosewood armchairs, black sandalwood screens for the living room. Can you afford them? It’s a craft that’s been handed down by my ancestors. director ma (to the audience): He’s really putting on airs. (To the carpenter) Let me tell you, city folks like to sit on sofas. Who wants to sit on your hard armchairs that hurt their butts? carpenter: My furniture is for people to look at, not to sit on. director ma: Huh, this is news to me. So, you only make ornaments? carpenter: You can’t find workmanship like mine anywhere. That’s why the foreign trade company in the city wants me to teach my trade to a class of apprentices. director ma: Wait here if you want to, but I’m going back. Anyone want to come with me? (Silence. The lights become dimmer and the sound of a bus can be heard in the distance. The signature tune of the silent man becomes audible again, soft yet distinct. The searching beat of the music becomes clearer.) glasses: Listen, can you hear it? It . . . (The music fades.) How come you all didn’t hear it? That fellow must have gotten to the city long ago. We can’t wait any longer. It’s no use to keep waiting. This is sheer torture . . . old man (at the same time as the mother and the girl): You’re so right. I’ve been waiting all my life. Just wait and wait. I’m getting old . . .

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mother (at the same time as the girl and the old man): Had I known it was going to be so much trouble, I wouldn’t have brought such a big bag with me. It would be a waste to throw all these red dates and sesame seeds away. girl (at the same time as the mother and the old man): I’m exhausted, and I probably look a wreck. I don’t want anything now; I just wish I could take a nap . . . hothead: Stop that chattering. We could have crawled into town by now if you people hadn’t wasted time arguing. carpenter: Why don’t you start crawling? hothead: If you crawl, I’ll crawl with you. carpenter: My hands are for doing work. I don’t crawl around like a maggot in a cesspool! glasses (facing the audience): Hello, hello, are you still waiting? That’s strange, no one answers. (Louder) Anybody over there still waiting for the bus? girl: I can’t see a thing in this pitch- darkness. It’s night now; there won’t be any more buses. carpenter: We’ll wait till dawn. The bus-stop sign is here. It can’t be just a trick. director ma: If the bus still doesn’t come (to the carpenter), are you going to wait here for the rest of your life like a fool? carpenter: I have my trade—they need people like me in the city. What would anybody want you for? director ma (feeling hurt): I’m invited to a dinner, but I don’t particularly want to go. carpenter: Why don’t you go back then? director ma: I’ve been thinking about it for quite a while now. (Worried) I’ll have to go through the open field; no villages or houses for miles. What if a dog attacks me in the darkness? Hey, which one of you wants to go back with me? old man: I’d like to go. But going back is even harder—walking all that way in the dead of night. hothead (getting up, slapping his thighs): Aren’t you going? director ma: Okay. The two of us will keep each other company. hothead: Who’s going with you? I’m going to the city to taste yogurt. carpenter: To make perfectly good milk sour, how can that taste good? There’s also that beer you find in the city; it tastes like horse urine. Not everything in the city is good, mind you! hothead: I’m gonna have a taste of yogurt if it’s the last thing I do. I’ll drink five bottles of it in one go.7 (To glasses) Don’t waste any more time with them. Let’s the two of us get going. glasses: What if the bus comes right after we leave? (Facing the audience, muttering to himself ) And if it comes but still doesn’t stop? My head tells me I should start walking, but I’m not one hundred percent sure. What if it’s the wrong decision? But I must make a decision! Desk, dog, pig, book. Go or wait? Wait or go? That is the question of our existence. Perhaps fate has decreed that we should wait here for the rest of our lives, until we grow old, until we die. Why don’t people take their futures in their own

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hands instead of submitting to the dictates of fate? Then again, what is fate anyway? (Addressing the girl) Do you believe in fate? girl (softly): Yes. glasses: Fate is like a coin. (Taking out a coin from his pocket) You believe in this? (Tosses the coin in the air, then catches it) Heads or tails? Pig, book, desk, dog, that decides it! Are you teachers? No. Are you a pig? No. I’m none of these. I am I. I am who I am. You don’t believe in yourself, but you believe in this? (Self-mockingly he tosses the coin again and catches it.) girl: What do you think we should do? I don’t have any strength left to make a decision. glasses: Let’s gamble with fate: tails we wait, heads we go. It all depends on this toss. (He tosses the coin in the air. It falls to the ground and he covers it with the palm of his hand.) Go or wait? Wait or go? Let’s see what our fate says. girl (hurriedly pressing her hand over his): I’m scared. (Realizing that she is touching his hand, she quickly withdraws hers.) glasses: Scared of your own fate? girl: I don’t know. I don’t know anything anymore. hothead: These two are really weird. Hey, are you going or not? carpenter: Haven’t you carried on enough already? Whoever wants to leave, just get moving. The bus stop is here, and people are waiting here. How come there’s no bus? How can they pay their drivers if they don’t take on any passengers? (Silence. The sound of a bus and the tune of the silent man can be heard, gradually becoming more distinct.) director ma (waving his hands as if to disperse the disturbing sounds): Hey, any of you want to leave? (The sounds stop. The old man, who has been leaning against the bus-stop sign napping, lets out a snort.) old man (without opening his eyes): The bus is here? (No one answers.) hothead: We’re all glued to this wooden post. How stupid! (He does a handstand, then flops down on the ground listlessly. The others variously squat or sit on the ground. The sound of a bus is heard again. No one makes a move, but they all listen intently. The sound gets louder as the lights on the stage become brighter.) (Still sitting on the ground) Hey, it’s here. mother: It’s about time. Wake up, Grandpa, it’s already daybreak and a bus is coming. old man: A bus? (Getting up hurriedly) A bus! girl: This time it won’t drive by without stopping? Will it? glasses: If it doesn’t stop, we’ll block the road. girl: It’s not going to stop. old man: They wouldn’t dare; it’s their job. mother: What if it doesn’t stop?

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hothead (suddenly jumps to his feet): Hey, Carpenter, do you have any big nails in your bag? carpenter: What for? hothead: If it doesn’t stop, we’ll blow its tires. Then no one will go to town. girl: You can’t do that—it’s against the law to disrupt traffic. glasses: I say let’s block its path. Let’s all line up to block the road. carpenter: Good idea! hothead (picking up a stick): Hurry up, it’s coming. (They all stand up at the sound of the approaching bus.) girl (shouting): Stop! mother: We’ve been waiting a whole year. old man: Hey you—stop! director ma: Hey . . . (They all push to the front of the stage and try to block the road. A horn sounds.) glasses (directing everyone): One, two . . . all (together): Stop! Stop! Stop! glasses: We’ve waited a whole year. all (together, waving and shouting): We can’t wait any longer. Stop! stop! stop! . . . (There is the sound of a horn blaring wildly.) old man: Get out of the way! Get out of the way, quick! (They all get out of the way of the bus, then run after it yelling and shouting.) hothead (rushing forward and waving his stick): I’ll smash it! glasses (holding him back): You’ll be run over. girl (closes her eyes in horror): Oh, dear . . . carpenter (rushes forward and pulls the hothead back): You want to get yourself killed? hothead (breaking free and running after the bus, throws the stick after it): You son of a bitch! Go flip into a river and let the turtles eat you. (The sound of the bus fades away. Silence.) carpenter (at a loss): It was full of foreigners. mother: It’s a tourist bus for foreigners. glasses: Thinks he’s a big shot because he’s driving foreigners. old man (grumbling): It wasn’t even full. carpenter (feeling hurt): Couldn’t they even let us stand in that bus? It’s not that we won’t buy tickets. director ma: Do you have foreign currency?8 You need foreign currency to get on that bus. old man (stamping his feet): But we’re not in a foreign country. girl: I knew they wouldn’t stop for us. (At this moment, a number of vehicles speed past them—cars of different makes and sounds and moving in opposite directions.) director ma: This is . . . this is just too much. They’re playing tricks on us! If they don’t want to stop here, then they shouldn’t put up a bus- stop sign here! Let me

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tell you something: if this bus company is not shaken up, our transportation service will never improve. Why don’t you all write a letter of complaint and I’ll take it to the Transportation Department personally. (Pointing at glasses) You can write it. glasses: How do I write it? director ma: How to write it? Well, you just say this and that. What kind of intellectual are you? You don’t even know how to write a letter of complaint? glasses: What good would it do anyway? We’d still have to wait. director ma: You can keep on waiting if you want to, what do I care? I didn’t want to go to that dinner in town in the first place. I’m concerned for your sakes. Go ahead and wait, it’ll serve you right. (They all remain silent. The signature tune of the silent man starts up again and changes into a fast and taunting melody in triple time.) glasses (looking at his watch, shocked): Oh, no! (The girl goes over to look at his watch. They count the numbers indicated on the face of the watch in time with the music.) glasses (continuously pressing the indicator button on his watch): Five months, six months, seven months, eight months, nine months, ten months, eleven months, twelve months, thirteen months . . . girl: One month, two months, three, four . . . glasses: Five months, six months, seven months, eight months . . . girl: One year and eight months altogether. glasses: Another year has just gone by. girl: That makes two years and eight months . . . glasses: Two years and eight months . . . No, it’s three years and eight months. No, wrong again, it’s five years and six . . . No, seven months, eight months, nine months, ten months . . . (They all look at one another in astonishment.) hothead: This is crazy. glasses: I’m quite sane. hothead: I don’t mean you. I said that the watch is crazy. glasses: Mechanical devices cannot become crazy—they don’t have any nerves. A watch is just a device that measures time, and it isn’t influenced by the psychological state of man. girl: Don’t say any more, I beg of you. glasses: Don’t stop me, please. This is not up to me. You can’t stop the passage of time. Look, you all come and take a look at this watch. (They all crowd around glasses and peer at his watch.) Six years, seven years, eight years, nine years. Ten years have passed just as we were talking. carpenter: Could it be wrong? (Grabs glasses’ wrist, shakes it, listens to it, then looks at the face of the watch.)

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hothead (coming forward to press the button on the watch): See, no more numbers, just a blank dial. (Raising glasses’ arm for all to see) Just one touch of that knob and it stops. (Smugly) Almost got fooled by this gadget. glasses (solemnly): What do you know? Just because you switched off my watch, it doesn’t mean that time has stopped. Time is an objective reality; it can be proven by 2 a mathematical formula—T = a + β +∑ , or something . . . It’s all in Einstein’s theory of relativity. girl (hysterically): I can’t take it anymore, I can’t take it anymore! old man: This is outrageous (coughing) making passengers stand around and wait till their hair turns gray. (Suddenly becoming very old and decrepit): Absurd . . . really absurd. carpenter (feeling very sad): The bus company must be trying to get even with us for something. But we haven’t offended them, have we? mother (exhausted): Peipei, my poor Peipei and his dad, what’s going to happen to them now? They not only don’t have a change of clothes, their clothes must be in rags by now . . . He doesn’t even know how to hold a needle. (The hothead walks to one side and kicks a stone along the road. He then flops down on the ground, spreads his legs out, and stares ahead in a daze.) girl (numbly): I feel like crying. mother: Yes, dear, have a good cry. It’s nothing to be ashamed of. girl: But Elder Sister, I can’t . . . mother: It’s all because we were born women. We’re doomed by our fate to endless waiting. First we wait for the right man to come along, and then we wait to get married. Then we wait for a child, after which we wait till the child grows up. By then we’ve already grown old . . . girl (leaning on the mother’s shoulder): I’m old already, old already . . . mother: Go ahead and cry if you want; you’ll feel better afterwards. I wish I could bury myself in his arms and have a good cry . . . I don’t know why I feel this way . . . It’s hard to explain. director ma (turns to the old man, sadly): I’m telling you it’s not worth it, old man. Why not grow old in the peace and quiet of your home? The playing of the zither, chess, calligraphy, and painting 9 are for whiling away time. You can enjoy these in the comfort of your home. Why do you have to go to the city to compete with others? Is it worth throwing your last years away on the road for a few chess pieces? old man: You don’t understand. All you know is wheeling and dealing in business. But we chess players value the feeling of exhilaration we get from playing; it’s all a matter of the spirit. The matter of the spirit, that’s what life is all about. (The hothead, feeling very bored, walks up behind glasses and slaps him hard on the shoulder, which snaps him out of his reverie.) glasses (angrily): You don’t know what pain is—that’s why you’re so numb. We’ve been cast aside by life and forgotten by the world. Life is flowing away right past you. Do you understand? You don’t understand. You might be happy muddling along like this, but not me . . .

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carpenter (saddened): I can’t go back. I make fine, hardwood furniture. I’m not going into the city just to make money; I’ve got my craft to think about. Back home I make a good living with my skills—putting a bed together, making a dining table or cabinet. My family and I have enough to eat. But I can’t let the craft that’s been handed down to me by my ancestors die out like this. You may be a director, but you don’t understand how I feel. glasses (pushing aside the hothead): Go away. Leave me alone. (In a sudden fury) I need some peace and quiet. Do you understand? Peace and quiet. (The hothead walks away obligingly, starts to whistle but then takes his fingers out of his mouth.) girl (facing the audience while muttering to herself ): I’ve had many dreams in the past, some of them quite beautiful . . . mother (facing the audience and talking to herself ): Sometimes, I really wanted to dream . . . (From here on, the girl’s and the mother’s speeches are spoken simultaneously and weave together as they address the audience without interacting with each other.) girl: I dreamt that the moon laughed out loud . . . mother: But then I always collapsed on the bed, dead tired. I could never get enough sleep . . . girl: I dreamt that he was holding my hand and whispering in my ear. I really wanted to get close to him . . . mother: The moment I opened my eyes I saw Peipei’s toes sticking out of his socks . . . girl: I don’t have any dreams now . . . mother: The hem on his daddy’s sweater sleeve was also undone . . . girl: No more black bears jumping at me . . . mother: Peipei wants a little battery- driven car . . . girl: or anyone chasing after me ferociously . . . mother: Tomatoes cost twenty cents a pound . . . girl: I won’t have any more dreams . . . mother: That’s how mothers are. (Turning to the girl) I wasn’t a bit like you when I was your age. (The following is a dialogue between the girl and the mother.) girl: You have no idea how much I’ve changed. I’ve become so petty—I can’t stand to see girls dressed nicely. I know it’s not right to feel this way, but whenever I see city girls wearing those high-heeled shoes, I feel like they’re walking all over me and flaunting themselves to humiliate me. Elder Sister, I know I shouldn’t have these feelings. mother: I understand. I don’t blame you . . . girl: You can’t imagine how jealous I am, how very jealous I am . . . mother: Come on, don’t be silly. Don’t be so hard on yourself . . . girl: I’ve always wanted to wear one of those one-piece floral dresses, the kind with a little zipper at the waist. But I don’t even dare to make one. If I lived in the city, it would be different. You see girls wearing those dresses all over the place. How could I wear something like that here?

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mother (stroking the girl’s hair): Wear whatever you want to wear; don’t wait until you’re my age. You’re still young—some young man will surely be interested in you. You’ll fall in love, then you’ll bear his child, and he’ll love you even more . . . girl: Go on, please go on . . . You noticed I have some gray hair? mother (inspecting her hair): No, I haven’t found any. girl: Don’t lie to me. mother: Well, just one or two strands . . . girl: Pull them out. mother: They don’t show. Better not pull them out. You’ll only get more if I pull them out. girl: Please, I beg of you. (The mother pulls out a gray hair. Suddenly hugging the girl to her, she starts to cry.) girl: Elder Sister, what’s wrong? mother: I’ve got a lot of gray hair. Is my hair almost white? girl: No, it isn’t. (She hugs her and they cry in each other’s arms.) hothead (sitting on the ground, slaps a banknote down, takes three playing cards from his pocket, and throws them on the ground too): Who wants to play? I’ll bet this five bucks against any of you. (The old man feels his pocket.) Don’t worry. I made this by doing odd jobs. The lucky person will win it. I’m not going to hang around here any longer. (The old man and director ma move closer.) Which one of you is putting up the stake? Three dollars in the left hand, two in the right—I’ll be the five bucks banker in this game. My round-trip ticket and yogurt money are all in here. director ma: How’s a young fellow like you fallen to such bad ways? hothead: Cut it out. Save your lecture for your own kids. How about it, old man? Want to try your luck? You can bet on both hands. If you pick the right card, then luck is with you; if you lose, well, what’s a few bucks to a big shot like you? If they sell drinks here, I’ll buy everyone a drink. (The carpenter walks over to join them.) Gate of Heaven, Gate of Earth, Blue Dragon, White Tiger.10 Which one you want to bet on? (The carpenter slaps him.) What if I don’t want to go to town anymore? What if I don’t want to eat yogurt anymore? (Bursts into tears) Let those goddamned city dudes strut on their city streets. old man: Pick ’em up. My boy, pick ’em up. (The hothead rubs his eyes with his dirty hands, blows his nose, then picks up the money and cards. He continues to sob with lowered head. Silence. The sound of traffic in the distance mingles intermittently with the tune of the silent man. The tempo of the music speeds up and it turns into a lively melody.)

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glasses: There’s not going to be any bus. (With great determination) Let’s start walking, like that man. While we were wasting our time at this bus stop, he’s already gotten into town and gotten something done. There’s nothing for us to wait for anymore. old man: You’re right. Young lady, don’t cry anymore. If you had left with that man, you’d have been married long ago, and your child would be walking by now. But we stayed here waiting and getting more and more bent with age. (With difficulty) Let’s go . . . (He staggers forward. glasses hurries over to give him a hand.) I’m afraid I won’t be able to make it . . . (To the mother) Are you coming with us? girl: Elder Sister, should I still go to the city? mother (smoothing down the girl’s hair): How unfair. Don’t tell me that no one wants a nice girl like you. Let me introduce you to someone. (Picks up her traveling bag) I wish I hadn’t brought such a heavy bag. girl: Let me carry it for you. director ma: Are you on a purchasing assignment for your unit? old man: Are you coming or not? director ma (pondering): If it’s quality of life you’re after, it’s nice and peaceful in a small country town. We don’t need to mention other things—just take crossing a street in the city for an example. I tell you, what with those confusing red and green lights, before you know what’s happening you’ll get yourself run over. carpenter: I’m going. hothead (having regained his composure): Do you want us to carry you in a sedan chair? director ma: What are you making such a fuss about? I’ve got high blood pressure and hardening of the arteries. (Angrily) I don’t have to make it hard for myself. (He exits, then looks back.) I forgot to take my medicine. It’s made of wolfberry soaked in wine and formalin sedative with nutritive additives. (All watch director ma exit.) old man: He’s gone back? mother (muttering): He’s gone back. girl (feebly): Don’t go. hothead: Let him go. We’ll go our way. carpenter (to glasses): Are you coming? glasses: I want to take one last look to see if a bus is coming. (He wipes his glasses, then puts them back on. They all split up and pace up and down the stage. Some of them start to move; some remain motionless; still others collide with one another.) old man: Don’t block my way! hothead: Go on then! mother: What chaos.

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glasses: Ah, life . . . girl: You call this living? glasses: Sure it is. Despite everything, we’re still alive. girl: We’d be better off dead. glasses: Why don’t you die, then? girl: If I die now, I’ve gotten nothing out of life. glasses: There should be some meaning to life. girl: But to live like this, how boring! (They all walk in place and then turn around in circles as if possessed.) carpenter: Let’s go. girl: No— glasses: No? hothead: Come on. mother: Yes, coming. old man: Coming— (Silence. There is the sound of falling rain.) old man: It’s raining? hothead: Old man, if you go on dawdling like this, the raindrops will turn into hail. carpenter (looking at the sky): It’s so unpredictable, this weather. mother: It’s really raining. (There is the sound of rapidly falling rain.) old man (mumbling): We’ve got to take shelter from the rain . . . girl (taking the mother’s hand): Let’s go. So what if we get wet? hothead (taking off his shirt): We’ll get wet for nothing if we stand around here. Oh, mighty heaven, you can send down knives on us if you wish. glasses (to the girl): Don’t go. You’ll catch cold if you get wet. carpenter: It’s just a shower, nothing to worry about. When the clouds pass over, the rain will stop. (He takes out a sheet of plastic from his tool bag and puts it on the heads of the old man and the mother.) mother: You think of everything. carpenter: I’m on the road a lot, I’m used to all this wind and rain. (To the others) Everyone come here and get out of the rain. (It’s raining very hard. glasses and the girl both come to stand under the plastic sheet in silence.) (To the hothead) You’re acting foolishly again. (The hothead also gets under the plastic sheet. The light turns dim.) old man: This autumn wind and cold rain is nothing to the young people. But when you get old and suffer from rheumatism, it’s really hard on you. glasses (to the girl): Do you feel cold? girl (shivering): A little. glasses: You don’t have enough clothes on. Here, put on my jacket.

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girl: What about you? glasses (his teeth clattering): I’m fine. hothead (pointing at glasses’ watch): Is that thing still ticking? What time could it be now, I wonder. girl: Don’t look at the watch! Don’t look at the watch! mother: I have no idea what time it is now. girl: It’s better not to know. (There is the sound of wind and rain. The following speeches are spoken against the background of the wind and rain. Several voices are heard simultaneously.) hothead: The water level has risen in the river . . . girl: Just sit here like this . . . glasses: I like it this way . . . hothead: I should be able to catch a few fish now . . . girl: Let it rain! Let it rain! The wind is so cold . . . glasses: Everything is fogged up, the field, the little hill over there . . . hothead: Grandpa . . . girl: But I feel warm in my heart . . . glasses: The future road of life, everything is misty . . . hothead: You want to bet? girl: To lean against him, to sit together like this . . . glasses: She is so gentle . . . so kind . . . so good . . . old man: Young man, you’re not so young anymore. If you muddle along like this . . . girl: Your glasses are frosted up . . . glasses: . . . so beautiful . . . How come I didn’t notice it before? . . . old man: . . . how are you going to have a family? girl: . . . by water vapor . . . glasses: Ah, water vapor—don’t wipe it, just let it be foggy and misty . . . (The following speeches are divided into three groups. They are spoken simultaneously, and sometimes they overlap. The dialogues and monologues in the three groups are sometimes loud, sometimes soft, as emphasis is shifted from one group to another during the course of the conversation.) old man (loudly): It’s about time that you learned a trade; otherwise, no girl would want to marry you. glasses (less loudly): I’m past the age for taking college entrance examinations. Why am I going into the city? mother (softly): Once I was walking at night. It was also raining, raining without stopping. hothead (loudly): What’s the use? No one wants to teach me. old man (loudly, hinting with his eyes): That master carpenter is right in front of you. glasses: Without my knowing it, my youth has slipped away. girl (less loudly, nudging glasses with her shoulder): Can’t you take the examination for evening school? There’re also correspondence schools. You’ll pass the examinations, surely.

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mother: I felt like someone was following me. I glanced back but couldn’t see clearly because of the rain. I only knew there was a person, carrying an umbrella and following me at a distance. hothead (loudly, gathering all his courage): Sir, do you still take apprentices? carpenter (less loudly): It depends on what kind of apprentice. glasses (loudly): Do you think so? girl (loudly): I do. (glasses quietly holds her hand.) mother: When I walked faster, he also sped up; when I slowed down, he did the same. hothead (loudly): What kind do you want? carpenter (less loudly): Learning a trade is not like going to school. You must be nimble and hardworking. girl (loudly): Please don’t. This doesn’t look good. mother: I was so scared, my heart was jumping wildly! hothead (loudly): What do you think of me? (Quickly withdrawing her hand, the girl turns to clasp the mother’s arm. glasses listens to their conversation with his hands clasped around his knees.) girl (less loudly): What happened then? mother (less loudly): I finally reached home . . . carpenter (loudly): A little too glib. (A lively conversation ensues, with everybody joining it.) mother: I stopped; the person came closer. In the streetlight I could see it was a woman. She was also afraid—afraid that she was alone and she might run into some bad people. carpenter: There are still more good people than bad people in this world, but you still have to be on your guard. Even if you don’t take advantage of others, others may take advantage of you. old man: It’s this wanting to take advantage of other people that’s so bad. You push me, I step on you. If we could be more considerate of others, we would all have an easier time. mother: If we could be close to one another and care for one another, wouldn’t it be great? (Silence. There is the sound of rustling wind.) carpenter: Move inside a little more. old man: Move closer together. glasses: Lean against one another’s backs. mother: We’ll keep warm that way. girl: I’m ticklish. hothead: Who’s tickling whom? (They press together even more. In the roaring of cold wind, director ma’s voice can be heard: “Wait for me—don’t go!”) carpenter (to hothead): Who’s calling over there? Go take a look. hothead (sticking his head out from under the plastic sheet): It’s Director Ma of the general supplies store.

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(director ma comes running, shivering from cold. He quickly ducks under the plastic sheet.) mother: You’ll get sick from those wet clothes. Take them off quickly! director ma: I hadn’t gone very far, then . . . then . . . Achoo! (He sneezes repeatedly.) old man: You insisted on going back by yourself. If you had stayed with us, you wouldn’t have become such a drenched chicken. director ma: Ah, His Honor is still alive? old man: I couldn’t expire on the road, could I? You’re still going to that dinner given by your connections in town? director ma: You’re still waiting for that long-ago-finished chess game? old man: Can’t I go to visit my chess-player friends? mother: You two, stop arguing. director ma: It’s that stinking mouth of his. old man: You don’t know how disgusting you are. mother: We’re all under the same sheet together . . . director ma: He made fun of me—(his sneeze not quite coming out) ach— mother: We’ll feel better when the sun comes out. director ma: Oh, this rain. old man: It isn’t rain, it’s snow! (They all stretch out their hands and feet from under the plastic sheet to find out.) girl: It’s rain. glasses (stretching out his foot to step on the ground): It’s snowing. hothead (rushes out, leaping and jumping): It’s goddamned hail! carpenter: You’re acting crazy again. Hold up the sheet! (The hothead comes back obediently to hold up the plastic sheet. The sound of wind and rain mixes with other sounds—the sounds of vehicles starting and braking, the tune of the silent man, at first faint then becoming more lively.) mother: We won’t be going anywhere after all. (Picking up her bag) Who knows how long we have to wait . . . This rain and snow, when will it ever stop? . . . glasses (bending over a stack of flash cards and memorizing them): It is rain, that is snow. old man (drawing a chessboard on the ground): The cannon moves horizontally from position 7 to 8; the horse moves horizontally from position 9 to 5.11 (The girl, deep in thought, walks out from under the plastic sheet and from her character. An obvious change is taking place in her with every step, and she becomes a different person by the time she walks to where the audience sits. Light on the stage gradually dims until it is totally dark.) girl: Who cares whether it’s rain or snow, three years, five years, or ten years? How many ten years do you have in your lifetime? (In the following dialogues, three voices speak at the same time.) Your whole life is wasted in this way. glasses (softly): It rain, it rained.

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old man (even more softly): The horse advances from position 9 to 8; the cannon moves back from position 4 to 3. girl: You just keep on waiting and waiting forever? glasses: It is raining; it will rain? old man: The soldier moves horizontally from position 6 to 5; the chariot advances from position 5 to 1. girl: Will you always have regrets, always suffer like this? glasses: It snow; it snowed. old man: The minister moves back from position 5 to 6; the cannon moves horizontally from position 4 to 7. girl: Will we go on waiting endlessly, painfully, and never see the light at the end of the tunnel? glasses: It is snowing and it will snow. old man: The chariot advances from position 3 to 5; the minister moves back from position 5 to 6. girl: The old have already become old; the newborn will be born soon. glasses: Rain is rain, snow is snow. old man: The chariot advances from position 3 to 2; the cannon moves back from position 4 to 1. girl: After today there’ll be another today. And there’ll always be a future. glasses: Rain is not snow, snow is not rain. old man: The general moves back from position 5 to 3; the cannon moves horizontally from position 4 to 7. girl: You just keep on waiting like this, and have regrets all your life? glasses: Rain isn’t snow and snow isn’t rain! old man: The general moves back from position 7 to 5; the chariot advances from position 3 to 7. Check! (The stage becomes bright. The girl has already returned to the stage and to her character. The sound of wind and rain has also stopped.) carpenter (looking at the sky): I said this rain wouldn’t last long. See, the sun’s coming out. (To the hothead) Fold up the plastic sheet. hothead: Yes. (He quickly folds up the sheet.) mother: Shall we start off ? girl (looking at glasses): Are we going? old man: Where are you going? hothead: Into the city. Right, master? carpenter: You just follow me. old man: Still going into the city? Will I ever get there at my age? glasses: Wouldn’t you have to walk if you go back? old man: That’s true too. mother: But my bag is too heavy. glasses: Lady, I’ll carry it for you.

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(He picks up her bag.) mother: Oh, thank you so much. Grandpa, watch your step, don’t step in the water. girl: Be careful. (She supports the old man.) old man: You people go ahead; don’t let this old fellow slow you down. If I drop dead somewhere along the way, may I trouble you all to dig a hole for me? And don’t forget to put up a sign and write a few words on it, which should say something like this: Buried here is an unrepentant chess fan, who has no other talents except having played chess all his life. He always yearned for an opportunity to go to the Cultural Palace in the city to show off a little. He waited and waited, grew old and decrepit, and finally collapsed on the road to the city. girl: Oh, please don’t talk like that! old man: You’re a nice young lady. (He looks at glasses. Feeling uneasy, glasses keeps pushing his glasses up on his nose.) Director Ma, are you going or not? director ma: Yes, I must go to the city to lodge a complaint with the bus company. I’ll find their manager and ask him whom their buses are for—for their own convenience or to serve the passengers? They should take full responsibility for abusing the passengers. I’m going to bring a lawsuit against them and ask them to pay for our lost years and health. girl: You’re a funny one. I’ve never heard of a lawsuit like that. director ma (to glasses): Please take a look at the bus-stop sign. What stop is this? What time is it now on your digital watch? Write all that down. We’re going to settle accounts with the bus company! glasses (looking at the bus-stop sign): What? There’s no name on it. old man: That’s strange. director ma: Why did they put up a bus-stop sign without a name? Look again. girl: There’s no name. hothead: Master, I understand now—we’ve been fooled by the bus company. old man: Look again. How can there be a bus stop without a name? hothead (runs to the other side of the bus-stop sign, to glasses): Come take a look. It looks like a paper was pasted here before, but now all that’s left is a few marks. glasses (examining it carefully): It was probably a notice of some sort. director ma: Where’s the notice? Look for it. girl (looking everywhere on the ground): With all this wind and rain, it’s vanished without a trace. hothead (standing on the railing and looking at the bus-stop sign): The paste marks have turned gray. My God, it must have been ages ago. mother: What? This stop has been canceled? But last Saturday I still . . . girl: Which last Saturday? mother: Wasn’t it the last, last, last . . . glasses: You mean which Saturday of which year, which month?

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(He peers at his watch with his glasses almost touching the watch.) hothead: Don’t look anymore. It’s just a blank dial. Should’ve put in a new battery long ago. carpenter: No wonder the buses don’t stop here. old man: We’ve waited for nothing? glasses: Yeah, exactly. old man (sadly): Why is this sign still here? They just use it to fool people? girl: Let’s go, let’s go. director ma: No, I want to sue them. glasses: You want to sue whom? director ma: The bus company. How can they fool people like this? I’ll sue them even if I lose my director’s job. glasses: You’d better sue yourself. Whose fault is it that we didn’t look carefully? Who told us to wait and wait? Let’s go. There’s nothing to wait for anymore. carpenter: Let’s go. all (together, mumbling): Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go . . . old man: Can we still get there? mother: Could it be that a bridge on the road was washed away by floodwater and the road was blocked? glasses (impatiently): How could it be blocked? So many cars have passed through. (The sound of cars can again be heard in the distance. They all look in that direction in silence. As the sounds begin to come from all directions, they are at a loss as to what to do. The sound of approaching vehicles becomes louder and louder, and the music of the silent man, like a sound from outer space, floats above the roars and rumbles of traffic. They all gaze ahead, some walking toward the audience, some remaining on the stage. They all come out from their respective characters. Light in the theater changes continuously while spotlighting the actors with varying degrees of brightness. The light on the stage disappears completely. In the following dialogues, all seven persons speak at the same time. The speeches by a, f, and g string together from utterance to utterance.)12 actress a, who plays the girl: Why are they not going? actor b, who plays director ma: Sometimes you actor c, who plays the carpenter actress d, who plays the mother actor e, who plays the old man: They all say it’s more difficult to perform a comedy actor f, who plays the hothead: I don’t understand. actor g, who plays glasses actress a, who plays the girl: Haven’t they’ve said everything that can be said? actor b, who plays director ma: just have to wait. Have you ever stood in line to buy fish? Oh, you actor c, who plays the carpenter: I don’t mind waiting. When people wait, it’s because they hope actress d, who plays the mother: Mother says to her son, “Walk,

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actor e, who plays the old man: than a tragedy. When staging a tragedy, if the people in the audience don’t cry, actor f, who plays the hothead: It seems actor g, who plays glasses: I really don’t understand. actress a, who plays the girl: Then why are they still not moving? actor b, who plays director ma: don’t cook. But you must have lined up to wait for buses. To stand in line is actor c, who plays the carpenter: for something. If they don’t have hope, that’s really tragic. actress d, who plays the mother: my baby, walk!” The child can’t walk. actor e, who plays the old man: the actors can cry. But this won’t work for comedy. actor f, who plays the hothead: they’re actor g, who plays glasses: Perhaps actress a, who plays the girl: But time is slipping away! actor b, who plays director ma: to wait. If you waited a long time and then discovered what they sold was not hairtail13 actor c, who plays the carpenter: In the language of this young man in glasses, it’s called despair. Despair is like drinking actress d, who plays the mother: You just have to let him crawl by himself. Of course, you can give him a hand from time to time, actor e, who plays the old man: If the people in the audience don’t laugh, how can the actors actor f, who plays the hothead: waiting. actor g, who plays glasses: they’re waiting. actress a, who plays the girl: I really don’t understand, don’t understand at all. actor b, who plays director ma: but washboards—they make very good washboards in the city, actor c, who plays the carpenter: Didiwei.14 Didiwei is for killing flies and mosquitoes; why do people actress d, who plays the mother: then let him hold on to the wall actor e, who plays the old man: act merry on stage? . . . Besides, actor f, who plays the hothead: Of course it’s not a bus stop, actor g, who plays glasses: Time is not a bus stop. actress a, who plays the girl: They’re not going. actor b, who plays director ma: the kind that’s gentle on the clothes—but if you already have a washing machine, actor c, who plays the carpenter: take it and make themselves suffer? Even if they don’t die from it, they still have to be taken to the hospital actress d, who plays the mother: and grope his way from one corner to the next and then to the door. actor e, who plays the old man: if the audience doesn’t feel like laughing, you can’t tickle them to make them laugh—they won’t let you!

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actor f, who plays the hothead: not a terminal. actor g, who plays glasses: Life is not a bus stop either. actress a, who plays the girl: Can we really go if we actor b, who plays director ma: then you have waited for nothing. How can that not make you mad? That’s why I think actor c, who plays the carpenter: to have their stomachs pumped—that’s worse than death. actress d, who plays the mother: Perhaps you should allow him to fall down, then help him get up. actor e, who plays the old man: That’s why it’s more difficult to perform comedy than tragedy. actor f, who plays the hothead: They want to leave. actor g, who plays glasses: They don’t really want to leave. actress a, who plays the girl: want to? Then tell them actor b, who plays director ma: it’s all right to wait, but you must know actor c, who plays the carpenter: Say, have you ever traveled at night? You’re walking through a wild country on a cloudy day. actress d, who plays the mother: If a child never falls down, he’ll never learn to walk. A mother actor e, who plays the old man: Even if it’s a comedy, you still have to put on a straight face actor f, who plays the hothead: It’s about time. actor g, who plays glasses: Let’s go. actress a, who plays the girl: to go quickly. actor b, who plays director ma: what you’re waiting for. If you just stand in line actor c, who plays the carpenter: When it gets dark, you have no idea where you’re headed. actress d, who plays the mother: must have patience; otherwise she is not fit actor e, who plays the old man: and act out those ridiculous and laughable incidents in life actor f, who plays the hothead: They’ve finished talking. actor g, who plays glasses: We’ve said everything that can be said. actress a, who plays the girl: How come they’re not going? actor b, who plays director ma: and spend half your lifetime—maybe even all of your lifetime—waiting, actor c, who plays the carpenter: You just have to wait till daybreak. If it’s already daytime and you still actress d, who plays the mother: to be a mother. That’s why it’s really hard to be a mother. actor e, who plays the old man: for the audience. It is therefore much more difficult to be an actor of comedy actor f, who plays the hothead: We’re waiting for them. actor g, who plays glasses: We’re waiting for them to go.

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actress a, who plays the girl: Let’s all go at once. actor b, who plays director ma: aren’t you making fun of yourself ? actor c, who plays the carpenter: hang around and don’t get on your way, you must be a fool! actress d, who plays the mother: But to be a human being isn’t very easy either. actor e, who plays the old man: than an actor of tragedy. actor f, who plays the hothead: Ah, let’s go . . . actor g, who plays glasses: Let’s go! (The sound of zooming vehicles from all sides gets closer and closer, mixed with the honking of all kinds of cars. Light on the center stage becomes brighter. The actors and actresses have all returned to their respective characters. The music of the silent man changes into a humorous grand march.) glasses (gazing at the girl, tenderly): Let’s go. girl (nodding): Yes. mother: Oh, where’s my bag? hothead (happily): I’m carrying it. mother (to the old man): Watch your step. (She goes over to support him.) old man: Thank you very much. (Helping and supporting one another, they are about to start their journey together.) director ma: Hey, wait, wait for me! I have to tie my shoelace.

Au t ho r ’ s Sugges ti ons for the Per for m anc e of The Bus Stop The following suggestions are for reference only. •

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This play experiments with the use of “polyphonic dialogue.” At times there are two or three, and even as many as seven, characters speaking at once. Due to the conventions of the printed page, it is difficult to show the use of this device effectively. This may cause the reader some inconvenience. But then, a play is meant to be performed on the stage, where this “inconvenience” may contribute to the enrichment of dramatic expression. Just as one does not expect every instrument in an orchestra be played at the same pitch, the polyphonic dialogues need not be delivered at the same volume. The main theme should be complemented by various harmonies and accompaniment, but not overwhelmed by them. The director may handle this matter in various ways based on his interpretation of the play. Since drama, like music, is an art governed by time, various musical forms can be applied to it. In this play, I have borrowed the sonata and rondo forms to replace the conventional Ibsenesque dramatic structure. The director, like the conductor, should concentrate on the changing moods of the play. Sound effects, including music itself, should not be merely expository. In this play, sound effects and dramatic situations work as a whole, and the former often

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acts as a counterpoint to the latter. Harmonious combinations and disharmonious contrasts are used to give music an independent role, allowing it to carry on a dialogue with both the characters and the audience. When conditions permit the composition of original music for the entire play, the music of the silent man should be treated as a leitmotif with various musical variations. In traditional Chinese opera, drama and poetry are inseparable. This play is an attempt to meld modern drama and modern poetry. I hope the actors who perform this play will pay special attention to expressing the poetic quality of the work. In performing this play, greater emphasis should be put on artistic abstraction, or “essential likeness,” rather than on realistic details. Examples of this approach can be found in traditional opera, such as in the vivid and subtle performance of Mei Lanfang in Guifei zuijiu (The Consort Gets Tipsy) and Zhou Xinfang in Xu Ce pao ma (Xu Ce Rushes to the City). Care must be taken to present characters as real people in contemporary society, and exaggeration should be avoided. This play aims to combine dramatic action and inaction. When action is called for, clarity of physical movement should be stressed; when moments of inaction are indicated, characters should maintain a state of stillness while language replaces action. The dialogue is at times clear and direct, and at other times vague or even devoid of meaning, or is uttered simply for the sake of talking—like waiting for the bus without knowing why. This use of the dialogue can express the comic aspect of the characters. In delivering this kind of dialogue, there is no need to strive for clarity. This play is best suited to performance in theaters-in-the-round, assembly halls, and open-air theaters. If it is performed on the conventional stage, the performing area ideally should be extended in length but not in depth.

Not es

1. 2. 3. 4.

This translation is based on the text in Gao Xingjian xiju ji (Gao Xingjian’s Collected Dramatic Works) (Beijing: Qunzhong, 1985), 84–235. The Bus Stop was first published in the magazine Shiyue 3 (October 1983). This translation was first published in Chinese Drama After the Cultural Revolution, 1979–1989, ed. Shiao-Ling S. Yu, 423– 84 (Lewiston, N.Y.: Mellen, 1996). The editor of this anthology wishes to thank Professor Yu and Mellen Press for their permission to include this translation here. The brand-name Big Front Door, well known in China, serves as an ironic contrast to the practice of “backdoorism.” “Three-handed people” refers to pickpockets. Glasses mumbles English words and phrases while waiting for the bus. The words and sentences in italics in this translation were in English in the original text. “Comic dialogue,” or xiangsheng, is a popular form of entertainment in which two performers engage in swift and witty conversation.

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5. This line by Glasses is in English in the original; the misspelling of “litter” for “little” is intended. 6. “Elder Sister” is a polite form of address for a woman about one’s own age. 7. In the early 1980s, when this play was written, yogurt had just become fashionable in China, hence Hothead’s desire to try this latest taste sensation. It was usually packaged in small porcelain jars and eaten with a spoon; it was also sold in bottles as a beverage and drunk through a straw. 8. Reference is to foreign currency exchange certificates (waihuiquan), which have the same face value as Chinese currency but are for use only by foreigners. 9. Qin, qi, shu, hua were the elegant pastimes of cultivated men in former days. 10. These names indicate the position of the cards in relation to the “banker.” 11. The Chinese chessboard, like the Western chessboard, has eight squares by nine. A “river,” a wide band, divides the playing area into two halves. On the baseline of each side there is a king’s palace marked by two diagonals. The sixteen pieces do not stand on the squares but are placed where the lines cross, thus allowing for nine men to be set up on the starting line. The rules for the movements of the various pieces are as follows: The commander in chief (jiang) is not allowed to leave the palace and may move only forward, backward, or to the side in each case. The minister (shi) may move only diagonally within the palace. The general (xiang), also called elephant, moves two diagonal steps at a time and is limited to the land he serves. The chariot (ju), which is equivalent to the castle or rook, may cross the river. The cannon (pao) moves like the chariot but can take a piece only by jumping over another piece. The horse’s (ma) move is a leap like the knight’s move, but when another piece is standing next to it, its legs are hobbled in that direction. The soldier (bing) moves forward and, after crossing the river, sideways as well. 12. In this section of the play, all seven actors (they are out of character in this section) speak at the same time in an actual performance—in what Gao calls “polyphonic dialogue.” The reader may wish to consult Gao’s suggestions for the performance of the play at the end of this translation for a better understanding. Or the reader may want to read, say, all Actor B’s lines together; for example, “Sometimes you just have to wait. Have you ever stood in line to buy fish? Oh, you don’t cook. But you must have lined up to wait for buses. To stand in line is to wait . . .” Though there are breaks in the lines as presented in the play here, each character’s lines are spoken simultaneous to those of the other characters and without interruption. 13. Hairtail refers to a kind of fish. 14. Didiwei is a pesticide.

Wilderness and Man (1988) Li Longyun Tra nsla ted by Ba i Di and Ni c k K al di s

Time: The space between two faiths Place: The Kingdom of Luoma Lake, an illusory kingdom of the mind, situated on a virgin plain of wilderness

C ha r a c t e rs big man yu 㲂▙⢔㽳 forty-something, 1.59 meters tall. Nicknamed big man yu, né Yu Changshun 㲂⒋㙫. The king of the Kingdom of Luoma Lake heizi ⧴㽳 one of big man yu’s dogs li changhe ⹼⒌⧭ in his fifties. Formerly the “big teakettle” 1 at a brothel in a little seaside town. Crafty, with a twisted, sadistic attitude toward life ma zhaoxin ⿷㷻㨰 a young fellow, crude and impetuous, labeled a traitor ma zhaoxin fifteen years later 㖨㣗ㅰ⨍☨⿷㷻㨰 a drifter who has seen it all, still searching for a place to call home maomao びび six years old. Illegitimate daughter of the wilderness maomao fifteen years later 㖨㣗ㅰ⨍☨びび a deeply introspective young woman su jiaqi 㚍⭨䭷 a coward by nature, looks to the world of books for sustenance li tiantian ⹼㝢㝦 ma zhaoxin’s mentor, su jiaqi’s lover. A weakling who lives in an idealistic paradise woven from the fictional stories she reads. She eventually vanishes into a moonlit Luoma Lake

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ning shanshan ㆄ䩫䩫 su jiaqi’s first lover. Killed in combat during one of the border conflicts. A third party in spirit between su jiaqi and li tiantian xicao 㥨␇ ma zhaoxin’s ardent lover. She first belonged to big man yu, then she endured the torment of ma zhaoxin’s jealousy. Tempered by tribulations, she eventually becomes a stalwart xing fulin 㨽⡁⼢ in his forties, of mixed race—part yellow, part white— kindhearted, cowardly sichuan woman 㙼╎ㇲ㑉 maomao’s mother, surnamed Shi. A woman deceived into leaving Sichuan by xing fulin. Given to debauchery director of the border surveillance and monitoring station ⍋ⳅ ♋㗍⯶㟛㷢㷢⒌ in his forties, male five rus sian female soldiers on tele vi sion ♋㗍㺲☨㣗⢔✏⥖ㇲ⍤ big man yu’s father 㲂▙⢔㽳☨⡖㎗ big man yu’s younger sister 㲂▙⢔㽳☨るる the spitting image of maomao. The two roles are played by the same actress big man yu as an adolescent 㔕ㅰ㖫㋜☨㲂▙⢔㽳 big man yu of nineteen years 㖨ⳗ㚢☨㲂▙⢔㽳 big man yu’s ugly first wife 㲂▙⢔㽳☨ⓛ⾴☨ⰵ➂㋠㽳 big man yu’s stepmother 㲂▙⢔㽳☨⨍ㅵ pockmark yu 㲂⿳㽳 mayor of Yu Family Village lao han, a simpleton from big elm commune’s “propaganda team” ▙ 㲄㗱⤇㔣“㩩║⛵”☨⹝⧃ women thatch plaiters a, b, and c ▘㓷␇☨⹝ㅵ✛わ⭭ᱨ㮼ᱨ⍧ director of the security division ⌏㢲⤥⤥⒌ responsible for arresting ma zhaoxin two policemen ⼉ッⳁ␖ li tiantian’s father ⹼㝢㝦☨⡖㎗ a scholar with a slightly crippled leg tagore 㜟⢈✝ an Indian poet hezhe 2 groom’s betrothal caravan (in boats) ⧯㸀㑉㐠㎗☨╒⛵ ma zhaoxin’s grandmother ⿷㷻㨰☨ㅒㅒ ma zhaoxin’s younger brother ⿷㷻㨰☨♀♀ ma zhaoxin’s mother ⿷㷻㨰☨ㄾ㎗ three young men from the armed platoon 㣖㽐㈉☨㑻⢔㨏⫇㽳 horse- cart driver from diyao hamlet ☻㮎㨏㠁⹂☨⿷⒝⟒ bridal escort of several young men from diyao hamlet ☻㮎 ⹂ⰵ㎗ ☨⭎⢔㨏⫇㽳 ascetic monk ⶰ㨾㓪 tajik groom’s betrothal caravan 㚶⭀⶛㑉㐠㎗☨⿷⛵ two younger sisters of xing fulin of rus sian descent 㨽⡁⼢☨⼉⢔ ✏ ⥖㫖㟧☨るる master liu ⽄㖠⡓ coppersmith of Magpie Lane. In his fifties

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(In the memories of those lucky enough to have survived the opening up of the wasteland, the wilderness here is forever blanketed in the rosy glow of the setting sun . . . This is Luoma Lake. Call it a lake, but it’s little more than a stretch of dense marshland. Two miles toward the west is that river of no fixed course, the Bielahong. A short distance to the east is the turquoise Wusuli River. Standing in the wilderness, in the hush of dawn, one can hear the morning prayer bell from a Russian church across the river. When the moon rises, the wild plain of Luoma Lake melts into the soft moonlight. The Wilderness Reclamation Team’s sleigh garage, covered in silvery white birch bark, sparkles in the clear moonlight. Clouds, moon, and stars waft along the Bielahong River; its zigzagging waters seem to converge with the Milky Way suspended in the azure vault of heaven, and the stars on the lake no longer seem to be the projection of constellations, but the remote Milky Way itself, trickling back down to the world, filling up the lake. The tiny sleigh garage on the bank looks like a lone star splashed up on the lakeshore . . . The most alluring sight here has to be the dusk: in the deepest recesses of the ancient wilderness, the sun sets like a wheel rolling along the long river. Two lines of clear sleigh tracks wind out of sight. Dead leaves fill the tracks, making them look like two deep yellow ribbons floating and dancing over the marshland. The moist breeze carries the crisp, slightly bitter scent of cattails, rushes, and plantains to one’s nostrils. Nestled in the big sleigh, people look at the setting sun through the patterned screen of mosquito fabric, their minds weaving dreams of an ideal paradise . . . It all seems to have started that autumn! Life came pounding like a merciless hammer on the temple of their hearts. At first it only chipped away a little piece at a time. But once that autumn arrived, it was as if a great wind had swept away everything in that temple, dust and all, without leaving a trace. People felt deprived of a place to call home; human nature was thrown out of balance. Stunned and in a state of shock, people embarked on a frenzied search for themselves. The stage backdrop is a collapsed horse barn. The bare seats of a large sleigh resemble a deserted shrine where people’s ideas once congregated. From the dimensions of the seats, it’s not hard to imagine the splendid devotions they once held. In the middle of the stage, a new sleigh garage is under construction. Hastily put together, it still has only three walls and no roof; the wall that should be facing the audience is missing. It thoroughly embodies the desperation and confusion of its builders. Under such conditions, a person’s ruminations appear ridiculous and absurd. Before us lies an embankment, formed where the edges of an exaggerated, towering oval mound of snow meets an expansive wilderness stretching as far as the eye can see. But it towers too high! It’s almost like a vast white wall, no—it’s more like a white mountain! Rising from the depths of this ancient wilderness, it resembles some sort of primitive tribal totem! Its barbaric, mysterious, and oppressive might both convey nature’s desire to embrace humanity and clearly presages nature’s oppression of mankind, recalling bloodcurdling drumbeats emanating from deep within the African interior. People’s absurd deliberations have proceeded unchecked to such a point that they allow a mound of winter snow to share the stage with a summer plain.3

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On one side of the stage hangs a bell, the type of bell unique to this wilderness—two thick oak poles between which dangles the discarded tine of a large iron rake. The “clapper” is part of an axle that hangs straight down from one pole. When the play begins, people can’t conceive of the horror that this bell represents, but, as the plot unfolds, they will gradually become aware that this is not a bell but the symbol of imperial power in the Luoma Lake Kingdom! It’s a gallows! Over the course of one’s lifetime, one will be caught up in one “that autumn” after another, but when an autumn of this type comes around, one will always hear the toll of a bell that sounds like the cracking of a whip.)

A CT 1 (Curtain up: In the wilderness. Bright rays of sun cover a sea of snow. A solitary horse- drawn sleigh moves across the stage. A burly man sits on the side of the sleigh seat. His gigantic frame continuously sways with the rhythm of the sleigh. His mouth droops at the edges; from one corner hangs a haphazardly rolled cigarette. A puff of dry and bitter-smelling Guangdong tobacco wafts out in all directions. His eyes are narrowed. His throat appears to be humming some out- of-tune melody, but his voice is hoarse and dreary. The sleigh moves to stage center. This brawny man—ma zhaoxin fifteen years later—raises his head. A beam of light lands on his face. This is the face of a man weathered from exposure to all the sufferings of the world: mouth loosened at the corners, eyes cold; behind the coldness hides a deep melancholy and listlessness.) ma zhaoxin fifteen years later: In the last fifteen years, I’ve treaded all over the world, every grassland, every mountain, river, desert, and lake . . . Many people have asked me: what are you looking for? (The edges of his mouth form a bitter smile) No idea, even I don’t know what I’m looking for . . . I once met an ascetic monk at the foot of the Kalakunlun Mountains . . . (In the background, a vast desert dyed pale orange by the setting sun. An ascetic monk kneels on the road, moving forward one kowtow at a time. His hand is gently spinning a falun 4 as he walks into the stage light. From afar, the sounds of a temple bell and stone drum float in slowly. The ascetic raises his head. His legs and elbows are wrapped in strips of worn- out wild cow’s hide. A hard black sarcoma the size of a walnut protrudes from the center of his forehead, it is covered with layer upon layer of cracked calluses.) Where are you from? ascetic monk: Qinghai . . . ma zhaoxin fifteen years later: Where are you going? ascetic monk: To Gangdisi Mountain. (Smiles benevolently) On a pilgrimage to the sacred mountains and lakes . . .

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ma zhaoxin fifteen years later: How long have you been on the road? ascetic monk: Not sure . . . (Raises his head, gazing at the sky) It’s probably been about four years? ma zhaoxin fifteen years later: Oh . . . ascetic monk: If I don’t go there I’ll always feel soulless . . . (Suddenly, his eyes flash with an unusual radiance) Have you heard? There’s an ancient Indian poem called Skanda Purana. (Recites softly) Who hath tread the shores of Mafamucuo Lake, And in her undulating crystal waters bathed, Shall one day enter Bolama Paradise . . . (His eyes are ablaze with longing. Then he lowers his head and departs, one kowtow at a time.) ma zhaoxin fifteen years later: I once met a Tajik groom’s betrothal caravan at the foot of Tianshan Mountain . . . (A cluster of graceful, transparent glacial mountain peaks appears in the background. A tajik groom’s betrothal caravan slowly approaches. A sanxian,5 imbued with a lover’s affection, and a yeyang zither in accompaniment, strike a few notes, followed by eagle flutes and hand drums, as the faint sound of a Tajik folk melody fills the air. The groom and the bride share a horse. The bride’s hands are wrapped around the groom’s waist, her face pressed against his strong back, profound happiness in her eyes.) the bride (throwing a string of flower petals onto ma zhaoxin fifteen years later): Hey young fella, what are you looking for? the groom: Bless us! We’re now a family . . . (The eagle flutes and hand drums strike up the melody with increased fervor. Gradually, all this disappears like a mirage.) ma zhaoxin fifteen years later (at a loss for words, murmurs): A family, you have a family . . . But where is my family? Where is my family? I have a wife, a son, but . . . (Abruptly starts fiercely whipping the horses) Answer me! Where is my family? Where? Where am I now . . . :+(5($0,"! . . . (He chokes on his tears.) (maomao fifteen years later enters from one side of the stage.) maomao fifteen years later: You really must come to our Luoma Lake! Perhaps Luoma Lake has what you’re looking for . . . ma zhaoxin fifteen years later (as if lashed by a whip): No! I’m not going! I walked out on Luoma Lake, I can never, ever go back there again . . . maomao fifteen years later (walks toward the audience): This is Luoma Lake. I am an illegitimate child. Fifteen years ago, I was six . . . (Singing in the clear, crisp voice of a child, maomao, aged six, walks onto the stage, her cupped hands full of fiery red dazixiang 6 flower petals.)

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maomao (singing): I’m a little blade of grass, A little blade of grass in the wilderness. Spring winds blow past, my home is everywhere in the wilderness, Autumn winds blows past, I have no home in the wilderness . . . (Her voice is deeply moving. She slowly walks offstage.) ma zhaoxin fifteen years later: Oh, Luoma Lake! I’ve said it before, I’m not coming back. But, I’m here after all . . . maomao fifteen years later I know who you’re thinking of. You’re thinking of Xicao. You want to see her and are afraid of seeing her . . . (Dreamlike music starts. xicao enters, as she looked back then, the xicao from ma zhaoxin’s memory. Her cupped hands are also full of fiery red dazixiang flower petals.) ma zhaoxin fifteen years later: Ah! Xicao! Are you Xicao? You’re still here? (xicao greets ma zhaoxin with a smile and a nod, but teardrops are flowing from the corners of her eyes. Walking slowly, she gently scatters the petals on the surface of the lake.) Xicao, it’s me, Little Ma! Ma Zhaoxin from the Wilderness Reclamation Team . . . I let you down. (His voice fading) I came to see you . . . What are you spreading there? xicao: Dazixiang, dazixiang flower petals. Fifteen years ago, on a bright, moonlit night, Big Sister Li Tiantian disappeared into this lake. She once said that she loved the dazixiang . . . ma zhaoxin fifteen years later: Xicao, it’s really me, Little Ma! Don’t ignore me. Are you all right? How is your . . . your child? (He rushes over to embrace xicao, but he grasps at emptiness—xicao has disappeared.) maomao fifteen years later (lowering her head sympathetically): Xicao of the past no longer exists. I know you want to get back to that time! You’d like life to give you another chance, to figure out just exactly where you lost your way . . . (ma zhaoxin stands there, terrified. The drum! That primitive kind of drum unique to the wilderness pounds out its first sonorous note. From even further in the distance comes the sound of a trumpet, playing a mournful melody.) ma zhaoxin fifteen years later: It’s true! I miss Xicao, I miss Big Sister Li Tiantian, I miss our Wilderness Reclamation Team, and I miss the Ma Zhaoxin of those days. I want to know what happened between us back then. (The Wilderness Reclamation Team of that long-gone era actually appears! The drum beats even louder! Big sister li tiantian, xicao, ning shanshan, su jiaqi, mixedblood xing fulin, the sichuan woman, as well as the young ma zhaoxin walk toward ma zhaoxin fifteen years later, in a group tableau. The stage begins to rotate. The Wilderness Reclamation Team encircles ma zhaoxin fifteen years later; one by one, they step out of his way, smiling at him lovingly. The drum beats on. The trumpet tune becomes more lyrical and moving.) (Lights out.)

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A CT 2 ma zhaoxin fifteen years later: It all started that autumn, when a terrifying emptiness appeared in the midst of life . . . (Suddenly, the “clang clang” of the bell emanates from the stage. King of the Luoma Lake Kingdom—Company Commander big man yu—appears at one side of the stage. Clasping the axle shaft in his fist, he bangs against the discarded-rake bell. The sound is brash and rapacious.) At that time, the sound we most feared was this bell. xicao: This bell wanted to strip us of our last shred of humanity . . . ma zhaoxin fifteen years later: It was abominable, like the dreadful hand of fate pounding on your door . . . (The bell tolls incessantly. Interspersed between the tolling are “toot toot” whistle sounds and the sound of a harmonious but savage choir singing. Amid these sounds, an unfathomable melody glides in from the embankment at the far rear of the stage. It’s that trumpet again! Its sound is like a ray of sunshine guiding people to another world. The melody, in a major scale punctuated by mournful notes, evokes a lively human world that stubbornly challenges and fights against the tolling of the bell. Ah, the trumpet music is a variation on the Russian folk song “A Small Road.” 7 A brass trumpet in his hands, su jiaqi walks toward the audience from the depths of the stage.) su jiaqi (walking up the embankment): See how beautiful dusk on the Bielahong River is this fall. The setting sun looks like a big cart wheel, splashing oxblood red evening rays across the wilderness. The earth has been painted so expansively and contentedly, as far as the eye can see . . . ning shanshan: Look at those sleigh tracks, like two pieces of orange ribbon fluttering into the distant horizon . . . xicao: Even the autumn wind in the wilderness is unlike the indifferent and gloomy descriptions one normally hears. Look, it fans the distant mountains and nearby trees bright red; it wafts yellow the grass and grains; it wrinkles the smooth blue surface of Luoma Lake . . . li tiantian: Scarlet oak 8 leaves seem to blaze up like camellias in May. Camellia flowers are strung into garlands, covering the landscape like shimmering skirts whisking about the vast mountaintops, strung around the necks and waists of the ranges. Whereupon, these silent peaks are transformed into rows of graceful young women . . . (Young girls and boys sink deep into poetic reverie.) ma zhaoxin fifteen years later (all along watching them painfully): In those years, there was no real peace at the border. (He walks over, hugs the shoulders of su jiaqi and li tiantian.) At that time, we couldn’t see these things. For some reason, we all wanted to join the fighting . . . (Far in the distance the roar of guns can be heard. A tractor pulling a huge sleigh approaches. The roar of its rolling treads reminds one of a tank unit on the move. A huge

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but wordless red cloth banner over the sleigh flutters in the wind. Spirited singing resonates from afar. It is one of those rousing, powerful songs specifically composed for a certain era. ma zhaoxin, xicao, li tiantian, and ning shanshan fall into a straight line beside the sleigh, each shouldering a semiautomatic rifle. They report loudly: “One, two, three, four,” breathing strenuously. su jiaqi lies on a straw bed in the sleigh garage, alone. big man yu, roster in hand and a satchel of files under one arm, walks over and faces the cadets.) big man yu: Who’s missing? Su Jiaqi? (Turns toward the garage) Su Jiaqi! ning shanshan: Yesterday he was bitten on the ankle by a black rat 9 out on the marshland . . . big man yu (not so sternly): One bite from a rat and you’re ready to throw in the towel? Didn’t you sign a blood oath pledging to go? ning shanshan: He’s running a fever—he might have caught the plague . . . (big man yu flips open the roster.) ma zhaoxin fifteen years later: The black plague had spread through that area. Last fall, four strapping young men in Diyao Hamlet dropped dead overnight, like bundles of sorghum . . . su jiaqi (to ma zhaoxin fifteen years later): No! I didn’t have the plague. In addition to a fever, the plague gives you swollen eyes, sore knees—I didn’t have any of those symptoms . . . Xiaoma,10 don’t laugh at me, I was afraid to die . . . (ning shanshan walks up to him.) ning shanshan: Big Brother!11 su jiaqi: Shanshan, don’t . . . don’t call me big brother anymore . . . ning shanshan: Didn’t we already settle this? Until the day you marry me, I’m going to keep calling you big brother . . . (Pulls a small key chain out of her pocket) This key chain is for you! There’s a little ox on it—your zodiac sign . . . (su jiaqi accepts the key chain, with a growing sense of guilt.) I’m leaving, wait for me . . . wait for me . . . (She backs offstage. su jiaqi gets up on his knees. ning shanshan suddenly rushes back in, grabs his disheveled hair, and kisses him on the mouth forcefully. But her lips pull away after the initial contact. She covers her mouth with her hands, staring at su jiaqi in fear.) No! Don’t blame me! I didn’t kiss you, did I? . . . We, we’ve been in love so long, but this was the first time, and . . . the last time. Please forgive me . . . su jiaqi (watching ning shanshan back away, suddenly starts to shout): Shanshan! I don’t . . . it’s not the plague! I’m afraid, afraid of dying . . . ning shanshan: No, don’t talk like that. I’ll come back alive. If you came along, it would add to my worries; I’d be afraid that you wouldn’t come back, that I’d be left alone . . . Even though you’re cowardly, I still love you . . . Wait for me, I . . . I’m leaving . . . (big man yu crosses out a name on the roster. xing fulin, who has been standing near the cadets all along, comes up, with the sichuan woman in tow.) xing fulin: Since Little Su can’t go, how about letting me go?

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big man yu: You? With a personnel file like yours?! xing fulin: What’s wrong with my file? I joined the army at sixteen, and I came to this reclamation region in fifty-six. I drove horse carts on Reclamation Farm 852, tractors on Farm 851; when Farm 597 was established, I was the farm supervisor’s personal horse-cart driver . . . big man yu: Don’t try to whitewash things. You hoodwinked a Sichuan woman into coming with you, letting on that you were the director of a farm tools factory . . . xing fulin: But I was the director of a farm tools factory! big man yu: Yeah right! A farm tools factory with only one fucking worker. sichuan woman: I’m with him of my own will! How come you won’t grant me a residential permit? big man yu: A residential permit? Who do you think you are? An unmarried woman raising a kid . . . sichuan woman: You can’t use my personal faults for political reasons! I think I know what you’re up to . . . (maomao’s singing drifts in: “I’m a little blade of grass, a little blade of grass in the wilderness . . .” maomao fifteen years later appears on one side of the stage.) maomao fifteen years later: Even at that young age, I knew I was an illegitimate child. A child’s mind should be a dazzling kingdom. But mine was not . . . big man yu: If I say you can’t go, then you can’t go! Oh, and don’t forget that your dad was just a cobbler and your mom a “big nose” (Russian) refugee. Your two little sisters are still on the other side of the river—a pair of mongrels,12 just like you! (He takes a photo out from a file envelope and waves it in front of xing fulin’s face. The trumpet starts up again with its variation of the Russian folk song “A Small Road.” Two Russian girls leisurely stroll out from the recesses of the stage. Tall and slender, they walk up to xing fulin smiling . . . ) (Closes the roster) Let’s move! (The tractor engine starts up with a loud roar. The spirited singing grows louder. The big wordless red cloth banner flutters audibly in the wind. The tractor rumbles. ma zhaoxin forcefully yanks down on the tractor whistle. The tractor treads gouge up the dry grass and mud, flinging them into the air, forming a huge pinwheel. The big sleigh lurches off toward the deep wilderness. Suddenly, su jiaqi gets up from the straw bed. As the big sleigh flies off, su jiaqi chases after it. He shouts something, running toward the audience. On the backdrop, ning shanshan stands up, her hand holding an aqua scarf that waves in the wind. At last the sleigh climbs up the embankment, gradually becomes a tiny red dot, then disappears. To the left side of su jiaqi, ma zhaoxin appears, a gun in his hand.) ma zhaoxin: You fucking recreant! ma zhaoxin fifteen years later: Master Little Su, don’t reproach yourself. We were all so young back then. I was making my own calculations: Xicao and I had decided that we would be together no matter where we had to go . . .

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(maomao’s song floats in. Lights out. Lights on; su jiaqi sits on the embankment alone. Dusk on the Bielahong River in autumn. The trumpet playing “A Small Road” can be faintly heard off in the distance, in people’s hearts. It’s as if ning shanshan is singing: “A small road, narrow and long, Zigzags into the misty distance.”) su jiaqi: Shanshan left. She left the Luoma Lake wilderness and never came back . . . li tiantian (appears on the other side of the stage): On the backdrop, an empty sleigh pulled by a tractor slowly passes over the stage . . . su jiaqi: She left me only this key chain for companionship . . . (The trumpet seems to sob.) li tiantian: No, you still have me. I secretly fell for you long ago. But when I found out about you and Shanshan, I decided to just be your friend, not to love you anymore . . . (Lights out.)

A CT 3 (Company Commander big man yu walks onto the stage carrying an exquisite sled. As always, his Type 5413 pistol is tucked into his waistband. He looks somewhat sad, walking along and playfully calling his dog: “Heizi! Heizi!”) ma zhaoxin fifteen years later: He’s barely five foot two, but everyone calls him “Big Man Yu”; he’s the king of the Luoma Lake Kingdom. big man yu (seems to have overheard, halts): I am not. ma zhaoxin fifteen years later: You are! When I call you king, you act as if you didn’t like it but deep down find it quite flattering. (Enter li tiantian, xicao, and the sichuan woman, on their way to bathe in the river, basins in hand, towels over their shoulders.) li tiantian: In our eyes, Big Man Yu is like a patch of unpredictable fog . . . xicao: His eyes are the creepiest; when they draw a bead on a woman, they’re like a pair of awls shredding her clothes to pieces . . . sichuan woman: But if Maomao’s around, he’s so sweet and gentle. maomao fifteen years later: In those days, I called him Uncle Yu. The grown-ups all said he wasn’t a nice person, but I liked him. He would come to see me on the sixth of every month, without fail . . . (maomao walks in. big man yu walks up to greet her.) big man yu: Look, Maomao! Guess what Uncle has brought you? (Opens his palm, a nylon elastic mosquito mask unfolds) A mosquito mask! When you scrunch it up in your hand, it’s only as big as an egg; open up your hand and it expands to the size of a space helmet. What do you think?

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maomao: It’s neat. big man yu: Uncle got it for you from the army border guards. (He gazes at the child affectionately, tears clouding his eyes.) maomao: Uncle, are you crying again? big man yu (hugging the child tightly): No, Uncle isn’t crying, he’s just so happy to see you . . . (He lays his head on her shoulder, tears welling up in the corners of his eyes.) maomao (confused): What are you thinking about? big man yu: Maomao (his voice full of fear), don’t ask me what I’m thinking about, please don’t ask me . . . (Toward the audience) There’s a restricted zone in everyone’s memory. Don’t try to enter; it’s best kept forever sealed off. (Sweat begins rolling down his face) However, the gate in the wall around it can’t stay shut forever! Sooner or later bitter memories come streaming through the gate . . . (The desolate sound of a distant banhu14 can suddenly be heard playing a traditional Manchurian folk tune. It grows louder and louder, forcing people to recall memories.) (Starts to tremble) Maomao! I can’t close the gate . . . (His voice getting mournful and hoarse, starts to narrate) I grew up in Yu Family Village, a remote and isolated old town in the mountains . . . (Yu Family Village. An ancient simple crossroads; a small “five-four” 15 farmhouse courtyard.) We had a custom: at the beginning of the first month of the lunar year, every household would stand a pole in the middle of the yard and hang a paper lantern on it. In the house to our west lived the village mayor, who had a pockmarked face. Pockmark Yu and his clan controlled every square foot of the town. During the Chinese New Year festival, my dad, an ingenuous good-for-nothing, would constantly fret that our lantern hung higher than that of Pockmark Yu . . . (On the right side of the stage stands a lantern pole. Not far away hangs the large red lantern of pockmark yu.) My little sister was six years old, about Maomao’s age . . . (In the past. big man yu as an adolescent climbs the pole, a lantern in his hand.) big man yu’s younger sister: Big Brother! Climb a little higher! Higher! big man yu as an adolescent: Little Sis, that’s it! If I climb any further, our lamp will hang higher than the neighbor’s, and Dad’ll clobber me. big man yu’s younger sister: Why can’t ours be higher than theirs? We’ve made such a pretty lamp this year . . . Can’t we at least hang it as high as theirs? (big man yu’s father enters the courtyard.) big man yu’s father: Changshun! Didn’t I tell you? Check out the neighbor’s yard first, then hang our lantern. Lower it a bit . . . big man yu: I took a look at the neighbor’s yard. Pockmark Yu’s lantern looks like a big red-faced drunken savage, swinging like he owns the wind. big man yu’s father: Did you hear me? Lower it! big man yu’s younger sister (nearly in tears): Big Brother, I won’t let you lower it! People on the street can’t see it . . .

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big man yu as an adolescent: Every year ours is lower than theirs. Besides, they’ve never complained that ours was too high. And, according to the Yu clan hierarchy, he should be calling you “Elder Uncle” . . . big man yu’s father: Sure, we could have him call me “Uncle,” but he’s a local bigwig—one word from him could reduce our grain ration by several jin.16 big man yu: I was born with a stubborn streak. I could tell from my little sister’s eyes how miserable she felt . . . She’d been anticipating the hanging of our lantern for a month . . . big man yu as an adolescent: Hang it yourself! (He scrambles a bit higher.) big man yu’s father: Little bastard, you’re nothing but trouble. (He grabs his son by the ankles and yanks him down. The paper lantern falls to the ground; big man yu’s father impulsively crushes it under both feet.) (Mumbling) That’ll teach you to hang it! That’ll teach you to hang it! (The flattened lantern crinkles. The banhu music grows more somber. big man yu’s younger sister quietly sobs. big man yu as an adolescent holds his sister, glaring defiantly at his father.) big man yu: It was as if Dad’s feet had trampled my heart. But I didn’t shed so much as a tear. This incident was like a knife splitting open my heart, but it left a seed there—I had learned the ultimate truth, nothing is more valuable than power! Having power is life’s greatest pleasure! I was twelve that year . . . The most humiliating thing in my life was knowing that my dad was a spineless cuckold, and that my stepmother slept around. Whenever Pockmark Yu swaggered through our door, Dad would immediately drive us out of the house . . . (pockmark yu, his face flushed from drinking, shirt draped over his shoulder, strolls into the courtyard with only slippers on, picking his teeth with a matchstick.) pockmark yu: Second Uncle, had dinner yet? big man yu’s father: Nephew, do come in, have a seat. Changshun! Fetch half a jin of wine from the shop across town. Get a move on! (big man yu’s stepmother comes to the doorway, leans against it with her arms folded in front of her. big man yu’s father leaves, a paper turtle17 can be seen pasted on his back.) big man yu: That was a very rainy summer; the manhole covers had all been removed. I was driven out of the house, into the rain. big man yu as an adolescent (walking down the street holding an empty wine bottle): I, Yu Changshun, am a man! I’m a grown-up! (Tears of humiliation flow down his face.) big man yu: Suddenly, I heard someone behind me shouting my name! Ah, it was my little sister! They even drove her out of the house into the pouring rain! The water on the street formed eddies, whirling into the sewers . . . big man yu’s younger sister (chasing him and shouting): Big Brother! Wait up! Big Brother! big man yu as an adolescent: Little Sis, be careful! The sewers don’t have lids!

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big man yu: I turned around and rushed over to walk her back home. But I was too late. Big waves of rainwater rolled over her; Little Sister screamed and then was sucked into the sewer . . . (The sound of the banhu grows even louder and more mournful.) When she was alive, Little Sis always wanted a sled . . . (As if being startled suddenly from a dream, he grabs his head shouting) Stop thinking! Don’t think anymore, damn it! (He wipes the sweat from his face, looks around fearfully for a place to hide. The stage is rotating. The face of pockmark yu, flushed with liquor, big man yu’s stepmother’s licentious face, big man yu’s father’s back with the paper turtle, the expectant eyes of big man yu’s younger sister, the silhouette of big man yu as an adolescent holding a wine bottle—the shadows of these five people surround big man yu, like a big net ensnaring him.) (Shouts, tries to disentangle himself ) Fuck! Fuck! (In the midst of the confusion, he draws out a pistol and fires into the net of memories. The sound of gunfire. Everything onstage disappears. big man yu collapses on the ground, bathed in sweat. A deathly silence falls.) ma zhaoxin fifteen years later: Big Man Yu, you’ve really changed! (big man yu straightens up slowly. In his imagination, an army unit suddenly appears in the distance. The trumpet sounds an emergency muster. Loud voices can be heard counting off. The troops seem to be getting nearer as leather boots pound out the “clomp clomp” of a marching rhythm. Their resonant marching is interspersed with commands, “One, two, three, four.” Slowly, big man yu raises his head, stiffens to attention. The “clomp clomp” of pounding boots grows louder. One pair of boots can be heard dropping out of line and running up to big man yu: “Reporting to the company commander, sir. The platoon has fallen in and await your orders!”) big man yu (waves his hand, commands with authority): Forward, 0$5&+! (The awesome sound of marching feet once again resounds; the troops seem to march through the audience. big man yu unconsciously stands at attention, his eyes beaming with extraordinary radiance. He turns 180 degrees, facing his troops as they fan out and march past the stage, imagining he’s inspecting them as they pass. At the same time, “Reporting to the company commander, sir!” “Reporting to the company commander, sir!” can be heard echoing all around the theater.) big man yu (to ma zhaoxin fifteen years later): Of course I’ve changed! Naturally, I’m a different person now! (Stamps his feet a little, the whole theater shakes) This is Luoma Lake, not Yu Family Village! (The marching grows louder as the boot thuds of additional troops enter the ranks.) At the moment, you won’t find Luoma Lake on the map. It covers a considerable area, but it’s not well known. (Pulls a dictionary from his pocket) But if you have a free moment, leaf through this dictionary. On the last two pages are the names and population figures for all the nations of the world. There’s even a tiny country in Europe with only one motherfucking cop! But my Luoma Lake has a fully armed platoon! (From far in the distance, the Russian church bell tolls.)

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Across the river not far from here is Russia. Luoma Lake is no small kingdom to be the neighbor of such a country. Russians have guns and artillery. That makes my armed platoon Luoma Lake’s national guard! In the city of Beijing, you can’t throw a rock without hitting a high-ranking official, but they still have to squeeze onto a crowded city bus to get to work. I, Yu Changshun, am not a high-ranking official; but all I have to do is clear my throat and all the tractors and horse carts in Luoma Lake will be waiting outside my office door . . . (The laughter and joyous cries of girls bathing can be heard.) (Can’t keep himself from turning around to have a look) These are the fine young ladies of Luoma Lake, their hair so black, their figures so slender. My old lady can’t hold a candle to them! (A gong, drum, and suona horn begin playing traditional Manchurian wedding music. A woman wearing a veil walks toward the audience.) I married a bitch from a tiny village. The village is nicknamed “Cuckold Village.” Folks say if you assume there’s a cuckold in every house, you might be slandering the good names of a few villagers. But then again, if you only assume every other house harbors a cuckold, you’re bound to overlook a few. What can you expect of a woman from a place like this? (On the stage, a nineteen-year- old Yu Changshun [big man yu of nineteen years] with a red paper flower on his chest pleads with his father.) big man yu of nineteen years: But Dad, people say she already has a child . . . big man yu’s father (stubbornly): So? What’s wrong with being able to bear children? If she couldn’t raise children, we wouldn’t want her in the first place. (pockmark yu and big man yu ’ s stepmother help the groom’s family raise the bridal veil. People cry out in surprise when they see her hideous face, then break into hysterical laughter. The ugly woman walks toward the audience.) big man yu: I was nineteen that year, in a fit of anger I ran off and joined the army . . . (The laughter of the bathing girls grows louder.) Look at that Xicao, with her pouty little mouth, she’s so stuck-up. But no matter how arrogant she is, she still takes her orders from me. (Pulls a chop from his chest pocket) It only cost fifteen cents to get this stamp engraved at the Qingjiang county seat. But as long as it has “Yu, Chang, Shun,” these three characters on it, then it’s the imperial seal of Luoma Lake. (Raises his head, calls out in a hoarse voice) Xicao, Xicao! xicao: Here . . . big man yu (solemnly announces): Based on the recommendation of Party Branch Secretary Comrade Yu Changshun, Comrade Xicao is appointed to be vice director of the Wilderness Reclamation Team. (xicao stands motionless, scared and confused. big man yu raises the chop to his mouth, blows warm air on it, then solemnly putting his whole body into it, rocks the stamp onto the appointment letter.) (Lights out.)

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A CT 4 (Morning at Bielahong River. big man yu and xicao are walking together into the remote wilderness. ma zhaoxin stares after the two of them as they walk away, burning with jealousy.) ma zhaoxin fifteen years later: From then on, Big Man Yu always had Xicao by his side when going out to check the fields, rain or shine, an army raincoat draped over his shoulders . . . (The old man guarding the melons, li changhe, appears onstage.) li changhe (an obscene sneer at the corner of his mouth): Surprised? You half-wit! You’re too late! What did I tell you? I knew it from the start! A divorced man alone with a young gal in the wilds all day long, how could it not happen? He’s only Big Man Yu . . . Even if he were a buddha from the Western Paradise, he’d still have worldly desires. (Trembling in anticipation) Check it out, the fireworks are coming! Ha-ha . . . ma zhaoxin fifteen years later: Who are you? li changhe: Me, how could you not remember me? I’m Old Li who guards the melons! Old Li who was a “big teakettle” in a brothel back in the day. You guys got the story wrong before: your old Uncle Li wasn’t the owner of the brothel, not even a pimp. I was there doing odd jobs, I was a “lower official” . . . (He is amused by his own joke.) Folks say Old Li looks like a cuckold—let me have a look at myself. (Furtively takes a dirty shard of an old broken mirror out from inside the melon trellis,18 looks at himself ) Whaddya think, bro?! Narrow eyes, tiny pupils. But they’re like two burning sticks of incense. They can bore into your soul and tell you exactly what’s going on beneath all the clutter. I see what you covet, Big Man Yu, you can’t hide it from me. Old Uncle Li’s like a patch of ringworm on your elbow, flaring up again just when you’ve forgotten about me: Bro, you’ve been looking pretty haggard recently. I gather you’ve gotten yourself into a mess! (In his giddiness, he senses that the usually proud big man yu is crestfallen. big man yu stands in front of li changhe, recoiling in fear.) What’s got you so spooked? No need to worry! Would Old Uncle Li use this incident to topple you? Not a chance. Truth be told, I was getting worried about you because you hadn’t used my trellis for a month. That raincoat of yours was gettin’ to be a second canopy. Now if you don’t have any more use for the trellis, what about Old Uncle Li? Think you can throw me back in the barn like a worn- out blanket? No way, bro! Old Uncle Li’s pushin’ seventy—you can’t yank him around anymore! You’ve made that gal big in the belly, haven’t you? If this gets out to your superiors, you’re gonna lose everything! (big man yu’s eyes are filled with fear.) Scared, aren’t you! Yeah, you’re scared, but Old Uncle Li can’t let you off the hook just yet. Old Uncle Li has to enjoy watching you squirm a bit. Old Uncle Li’s gonna

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watch till you squirm the wind out of yourself, then throw you a lifeline and bail you out. Can you forget someone who saves you from the brink of death? Never! (big man yu lets out a deep breath.) It’s time! Let me draw a line for him. This is called “the immortal pointing out the way.” Company Commander! big man yu: What?! li changhe: I hear that there’s something fishy about the relationship between the head of storage facility number 9 and a certain female petty officer of the kitchen staff. One thing’s led to another, next thing you know the female petty officer’s pregnant. What to do? Seeing there’s some seriously nasty folks here at Luoma Lake, shouldn’t we take up the class struggle? That storage head knew the female petty officer already had a man, so he connived and schemed and came up with a way to make sure the young fella spent his nights guarding the grain; then he connived and schemed and had a mattress put in the long-term granary storage facility where he worked. Then he connived and schemed to make sure that the young lass would bring late-night meals to the young man. Then he connived and schemed to make sure a little dog kidney 19 got slipped into the young man’s soup . . . Well didn’t that young fella just up and get trapped?! And then, at a public rally to expose and criticize the poor boy, the storage head led the crowd! He should be buried alive! big man yu (laughs): You old bastard! Your tongue is as twisted and nimble as a pig’s tail. Have you forgotten who I am? (li changhe lowers his head, regretting what he’s said.) Take a gander at my ears, old man—they’re like a pair of fine sieves. Your pant load of a story doesn’t stand a chance of passing through these sieves. After two siftings, there’ll be nothing left but a couple of nuggets for me to use as evidence. You got that? Now listen up, Li Changhe,20 you good-for-nothing, you helped me come up with quite the scheme! Thank you for your filial assistance. (Face-to-face with li changhe) Xicao also has a lover, Ma Zhaoxin of the Fifth Brigade! Is Big Man Yu an ignorant ass? No, Big Man Yu is like Pegasus, the horse that flies through the sky! (big man yu leaves. Just at this moment, a rifle shot is heard from the melon field. Then a dog’s piercing cry resonates across the prairie.) li changhe (comes to his senses, cries happily): A gun! A gunshot! (He disappears behind the trellis and comes back out with a three-foot-long horsewhip and a flat-sided liquor flask.) ma zhaoxin fifteen years later: What other damage are you looking to wreak? li changhe (stops, coldly): What are you talking about? I raised a bitch. It’s getting warmer and she’s in heat. Randy male dogs from near and far all come to have their way with her . . . You still don’t understand? I put a gun behind the trellis. Any dog coming to take advantage of my girl . . . (li changhe puts the gun between the branches of a tree, continues talking to ma zhaoxin fifteen years later while he works. ma zhaoxin fifteen years later gradually disappears.)

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Oh happy day, Big Man Yu and that girl got themselves into trouble! Makes me feel tingly all over! (He slips behind the trellis, then returns, like a breeze, holding a thin cord bound around the front paws of a male dog. li changhe pulls the cord forcefully with both hands. The dog’s body lifts off the ground. li changhe takes a swig of liquor, then throws his cotton vest on the ground, revealing a filthy undershirt. Before starting, he hides the whip behind his back and talks to the male dog with a cold smile.) What’s the story? You were fucking my dog on the sly? Felt good, didn’t it? But even a rabbit’s smart enough not to eat the grass around its den. Now let’s see here, how should I deal with you? (With a sudden ferociousness, hisses through his teeth) You came to take advantage of me? When I’m through with you, you won’t be able to use that thing! (He shouts, whirling the whip in the air. His beard hairs stand on end and the muscles in his cheeks twitch. He wields the three-foot-long whip expertly, viciously striking with precision. The tip of the whip seems to have eyes; it only hits the lower half of the dog’s body. Before long, the skin has been stripped from the dog’s hind legs and the poor creature has stopped yelping. li changhe clearly derives great pleasure from his mad revenge. The dreadful tolling of the bell strikes up in the distance, mingling with the sound of the whip, evoking a world of horror.) (Lights out.)

A CT 5 (A deep blue sky stretches across the vast expanse between heaven and earth. xicao stands at the center of the stage alone, the boundless clear sky and empty open country of the vast wilderness surround her. Humans are but specks here. An unusual, illusory tune is heard.) xicao (gazing all around): Life is like a kaleidoscope . . . (On the backdrop, variegated glass fragments converge to form clusters of lovely glass flowers . . . As the kaleidoscope turns, the glass flowers fragment, then converge into different shapes.) It makes so many kinds of flowerscapes: peony gardens, drifting snowflakes, ornate antique window frames . . . When I was a child, out of curiosity, I broke the tube and discovered that inside was a prism made of three pieces of glass stuck together with a fourth at the bottom . . . But Luoma Lake isn’t a kaleidoscope! This is an unfathomable world. (Shivers) Is it life that changed or my way of looking at it? That evening, Big Man Yu pushed me to the ground on the bank of the Bielahong River. His eyes were like blazing red coals; those horrifying eyes . . . From that day on, I was afraid to look anyone in the eye and afraid of other people looking into my eyes. It was like I was thrown into a disorienting vast ocean. I struggled to get to the surface, searching for a lifeline to grab! Something floated toward me, but it turned out to be Big

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Man Yu! I pushed it away, turned to grab another piece of floating debris. But again it was Big Man Yu. No! I don’t want you! (Shouts) I wish that it were Xiaoma floating toward me! But Xiaoma, Xiaoma, where are you? (From deep in the wilderness, maomao’s faint song starts again. At the same time, ma zhaoxin can be heard shouting: “What do you want from me? What? I, Ma Zhaoxin, don’t have money or power, I’m a worthless tractor driver! But Ma Zhaoxin’s a man who stands proud and tall, a man who deserves a chaste and unspoiled girl!”) Alas, Xiaoma despises me . . . There’s no second lifeline I can reach for. I have to survive, don’t I? Will I have to reach out to Big Man Yu? . . . No! (Fear and loneliness overwhelm her. Overcome with disgust, she feels nauseated, rushes to the roadside, and starts vomiting. The sichuan woman rushes over.) sichuan woman: What’s the matter, Xicao? Why did you have to stuff your knapsack full of crab apples? This year’s crab apples aren’t ripe enough to eat yet! (Suddenly clamps her hands around xicao’s arms) Xicao! Tell me, are you, are you . . . pregnant? Are you? Don’t try to hide it from me, Big Sis has been there. Tell me, whose is it? It’s Xiaoma’s, isn’t it, or . . . ? Come on girl, say something! If it is Xiaoma’s, Big Sis will help you figure out what to do . . . xicao (raises her head, her eyes glistening with tears): No, it’s not Xiaoma . . . sichuan woman (frightened): What? You mean . . . it’s Big Man Yu? xicao (suddenly snapping out of her trance): No! It’s not! (Waving her hands in front of her face) It doesn’t belong to anybody! It’s not anything! What am I saying? I haven’t said a thing . . . sichuan woman (hugging xicao): We women don’t have an easy time of it on this earth! Our Maomao doesn’t have a father, I was deceived by a cute guy from my hometown. Giving birth is woman’s great burden, and giving birth to a child who doesn’t dare call out “Daddy” in public—well, that’s a living hell. People will call the child “contraband” and “bastard”! They’ll say the nastiest things to you . . . Even though that’s how it is, I still don’t feel hatred when I think about him . . . But Big Man Yu is scum! When I wanted to settle down here, he took away all my documents . . . xicao: Big Sister Shi, please stop. Stop talking, please! I want to take a walk by myself, calm down a bit . . . sichuan woman: If your heart’s really set on Xiaoma, then go live with him. Saving face isn’t much different from saving a veil of paper; once it’s torn, it doesn’t matter anymore . . . (Looks at xicao’s belly) That stubborn Xiaoma isn’t going to like somebody else’s kid. In fact, who cares whose kid it is? Isn’t a woman’s heart more important than her body? (Fades out. Muffled thunder can be heard in the distance.) xicao: Ah, it’s raining. The rain seeps through my coat, soaking my back. It feels nice! (Raises her head) Rain, a little heavier! A little heavier! Flush clean Luoma Lake, flush me away . . . Ah, the heavy rain turns into smoke, marvelous . . . (The rumbling of a tractor is heard from afar.) Oh, it’ll soon be dark. That tractor’s coming for me . . . (The tractor comes onto the stage, stops at xicao’s side.)

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Ah, it’s Xiaoma . . . (The rain grows heavier. With an iron face, xiaoma stares into the distance, opens the door forcefully. The two of them sit abreast in the vehicle. The door is closed, shutting out the waves of pouring rain. Inside the cab, it is so quiet that you can hear their hearts pounding. The stage begins to rotate, turning the tractor about ninety degrees, until the two are sitting facing the audience. Each starts his/her own monologue.) The cab is so cramped, we’re so close to each other. ma zhaoxin: But our eyes stare off into the distance, like we don’t know each other . . . xicao: The tractor’s engine feels so weak, like a little beetle writhing in the wilderness . . . ma zhaoxin: Surrounded by silence, not a soul in sight . . . The earth is so vast . . . xicao: But today this world is ours alone. From the reflection in the windshield, I see tears in Xiaoma’s eyes. Xiaoma, I have no idea what you’re thinking. ma zhaoxin: Ma Zhaoxin, what are you waiting for? Grab her by the arm and ask her: “Tell me, do you love me or not?” xicao (seems to have heard xiaoma’s thoughts, her eyes suddenly sparkle): Ask me, then. Hurry up! ma zhaoxin: No! I’m a man, so I should wait for her to ask me . . . xicao (slouching in disappointment): I don’t dare, I’m afraid to stare into those eyes . . . ma zhaoxin (angrily): She won’t even look at me . . . xicao: Xiaoma, don’t you know? Even though I’m looking out the window, I long to throw myself into your embrace, pouring out my heart to you, letting you know about all the suffering that I’ve bottled up inside for so many days. Even if I knew I’d die after telling you, it would be worth it . . . ma zhaoxin: I just want to hear her say, “I love you! Nothing happened between me and Big Man Yu! It’s all in your suspicious mind, Ma Zhaoxin!” Even if she’s lying, I need this kind of deceit . . . xicao: I won’t lie to him, I’ll tell him exactly what happened. After that, let fate decide . . . Ah, no! No . . . ma zhaoxin: When she first got to Luoma Lake, she was sincere and outspoken. She seemed to have a lot of backbone. xicao: Yes, I had backbone, but it was taken from me. That evening on the bank of the Bielahong River, oh, that horrifying evening! If Xiaoma had been around then, everything would have been okay! (She intuitively reaches toward xiaoma, but quickly withdraws her arm.) ma zhaoxin (cannot control himself anymore): I’ll be the first to speak! However, I can’t say what I most want to say!—Xicao! You . . . why didn’t you get in the tractor just now? xicao: . . . ma zhaoxin: It was my fault that day. I shouldn’t have yelled at you and bad-mouthed you . . . xicao: . . .

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ma zhaoxin: Lately, I keep imagining things. I keep sensing that Big Man Yu has designs on you . . . xicao: . . . ma zhaoxin: I know I’m not good enough for you. I tried to persuade myself: “Ma Zhaoxin, give it up!” I want to forget about you, but I can’t . . . (As he speaks, he starts to cry, then breaks down sobbing inconsolably. Outside, the rain is pouring.) xicao (the door to her long- suppressed feelings cannot be held shut anymore; suddenly raises her fists and starts beating on his back like a drum, pounding and crying): Xiaoma! Xiaoma, you cruel man! Xiaoma, you don’t understand the first thing about people . . . (Throws herself into his arms, bawling; after a short while, clasps her arms around his neck, murmuring) Ah, Xiaoma’s chest is so comforting, so safe . . . ma zhaoxin (holds xicao firmly, looking ahead): Her arms are wrapped so tightly around my neck, her palms so soft and enticing. Her fingertips tremble so slightly, as if confessing to me, confessing that they shouldn’t have hit me . . . xicao (softly cries out): Xiaoma, hold me. Love me! Trust me—nothing has happened . . . No . . . really, my, my heart is pure . . . (ma zhaoxin holds her even tighter.) (Intoxicated in the arms of ma zhaoxin) Ah, Xiaoma is shedding tears! His teardrops are scalding. They flow down my shoulders and seep into my blood, into the bitter sea of my heart . . . (Suddenly shouts out the window excitedly) Wilderness of Luoma Lake, ancient, tender wilderness! Only you know how much pain and hatred lie buried in the depths of a young girl’s heart! Bielahong River, impartial Bielahong River! You should bear witness to the wild prairie, testify that the girl by the side of Ma Zhaoxin is innocent! Life’s been unfair to her . . . Oh, his heart’s racing wildly, his big rough hands stroke my back . . . ma zhaoxin: I hate myself for not being a smooth talker; I hate that I can’t put into words the feelings raging like a fire in my heart; I hate that my words can hurt a girl’s heart . . . Xiaoma, don’t let your mind play tricks on you—this girl is pure and innocent . . . (Lights out.)

A CT 6 (Sunday morning. A high-spirited ma zhaoxin leads the uncouth northeasterner lao han in to meet the Wilderness Reclamation Team.) ma zhaoxin (glows with vigor): Brothers, don’t just lie there. Come out and have a look! Look at the gnome I’ve brought for everyone’s enjoyment! (Turns around and beckons to lao han) Come on, come on, come on! Let’s go out in front of the dining hall where there’s plenty of space.

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(lao han is dressed tackily. A black padded long gown is draped over his back. A brass gong hangs at his waist. On his feet are a pair of rubber sneakers without shoestrings. He wears a wrinkled green army hat. Gangly, cross- eyed, and missing a front tooth, he appears dim-witted. With him are a monkey and a large dog, on leashes. Around the dog’s neck hangs a small yellow horse bell. The monkey is dressed in a filthy green shirt. lao han walks to the dining-hall entrance and stops.) lao han (looking very somber, surveys the scene; speaks with a Shandong accent): Aiya, this jernt ain’t too spaysheeous. (Reclamation Team members come filing out of the barracks.) ma zhaoxin (grabs several of his buddies): Brothers, please assist me in maintaining order here. (Toward lao han) If everything appears to be in order, shall we begin? Mm? lao han (seeing that almost everyone has arrived): Okay! (Tucks the edge of his coat into his pants. Strikes the gong to clear a space in the closely packed crowd, then snaps to attention, striking his heels together, and begins shouting in his Shandong accent) The Reveelushunary Model Parpaganda Team of Dayushu Commyune enners combat! (As he finishes shouting, he waves the gong drumstick at the dog, commanding) Fellers, forrerrrrrd . . . MARCH! (Prompted by the shouting and gonging, the dog dashes around his master, straining at the leash. He runs around faster and faster, the horse bell on his neck clanging away. Suddenly, lao han stamps at the monkey and yells.) Feller nummer 2, it’s yer turn! ma zhaoxin: Bros, look! Get a load of that monkey—he jumped right into the act too! (Toward the barracks) Zhou San’er, get your lazy ass up here and see this! The monkey’s catching up with the dog. He grabbed the dog’s collar with his front paws and mounted his back. This is bound to get even wackier! lao han (singing slightly offbeat with his broken gong of a voice): “Marchin’ thru a sea o’ trees—stridin’ ’cross the snewy playn—” (Laughter is erupting from the onlookers. ma zhaoxin is giddy with excitement and satisfaction.) (Thoroughly absorbed in his per for mance, grasps the dog leash and continues singing seriously) “. . . ㋺Ⓧ㦦⧔ㅊ— . . . speerits soarin.’ ” 21 ma zhaoxin: This is going to get even better! lao han (sings): “—倪⬋㨵們㔋▝ . . . A red star on ar army caps.” ma zhaoxin: Check out that monkey! He’s whipped out a little green cap with a red star on it from inside his green shirt. He’s marvelous! He dusted off his hat a little, then slapped it on his head . . . (lao han continues singing.) Hurry up and look at this monkey. He took two pieces of red paper out of his pocket, then the little bastard stuck them onto his collar . . . (He is nearly out of breath from laughing. The crowd is bent over from laughter. ma zhaoxin and several young men link hands to encircle the crowd, to keep things orderly.)

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Brothers! Hold tight, don’t let go! (Attracted by the commotion, more and more people come to rubberneck. The sounds of the gong, the singing, the laughter, and the cheering merge into a vortex of pandemonium. big man yu appears on one side of the stage with his eyebrows knit. Following him are two young men from the armed platoon with machine guns in their hands. The three of them rush at the crowd. The two young men stop the dog, which is dashing about wildly; one of them kicks the monkey off the dog’s back. big man yu walks up to lao han with his hands behind his back.) (In a soft but authoritative voice, says) Stop singing, stop singing. Yes, you! (lao han swallows hard, takes a pack of cigarettes from his coat.) Where are you from? lao han: Dayushu Commune. (Puts a cigarette into his mouth) My hometown’s in Shandong. I come here in fifty-nine, which pretty much makes me a “edjoocated yoof”—22 big man yu (interrupting): What do you do? lao han: This here’s a reveelushunary model parpaganda team, what you locals’d call a “singin’ group”—same differnce . . . big man yu: Model propaganda team? (Loudly) How dare you! lao han (a little worried, stammers in his Shandong accent): We shur are—you think this here’s fake? I gots a letter o’ innerdukshun! (Takes out a piece of yellowish paper) “This is to confirm that Comrade Zhou Guang-an of our commune’s Revolutionary Model Propaganda Team will visit your facilities to perform. We expect that the necessary assistance will be provided. Signed: The Revolutionary Committee of Dayushu Commune.” See here on the bottom, an affishul stamp big as a teacup . . . big man yu (seizes the paper and tears it up): Nonsense! “Propaganda Team”? More like “Antirevolutionary Propaganda Team”! Take him away! (The young men from the armed platoon grab lao han’s arms. ma zhaoxin walks up calmly.) ma zhaoxin: Let go! Let him go! What is this? Bullying the weak? He was invited by me. I’m responsible here! lao han (only the whites of his eyes can be seen): Yeah, whatter you ’restin’ me fer? Fer what? Y’all invited me! I been givin’ four shows a day, couple o’ days runnin’. After seein’ our ’formance, Comrade Ma here really loved it! When we heared there wern’t much “cult’rul activity” in yer lifes here, I set my mind on volunteerin’! I ain’t ask’d fer so much as a sip o’ yur tea, an’ I ain’t even dipped my chopsticks in yur food. Whaddo I ask fer? All’s I ask fer is that the young folk here can see some reveelushunary model plays. Look at yew! Yew don’t look like no company co-mander! Truth be told, your “d’gree of ’light’nmint” ain’t no better ’an a common soljer! If it were yew invited me, woudna come here in the ferssplace!—even if yew ’scorted me in a eightman see- dan! Even if yew put out fancy food and booze, I wouldna set at yer table . . . (He stands amid the crowd, legs astride, making his speech as if he were Wu Song.23 The onlookers are laughing to tears.)

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big man yu (ashamed and angry): Stop listening to this nonsense! Take him away! (Points at ma zhaoxin, grinding his teeth) Ma Zhaoxin, you instigator! Seems like you’ve got a whole bag of tricks and a knack for getting me into trouble—now the authorities have even sent a team here to investigate. I’m placing you under confinement! (He turns and walks toward the company office.)

A CT 7 (The bell of the Kingdom of Luoma Lake rings irregularly again. Everyone onstage is extraordinarily frightened.) ma zhaoxin fifteen years later: The “propaganda team” incident was like a magic wand put right into Big Man Yu’s hands. With it, he sauntered up the mountain and began to summon the wind and rain. big man yu (walks up to the small desk on the platform; like a Daoist monk preaching as he fingers the rosary, begins holding forth): This is no minor affair. The Party Branch Committee has decided: First, Comrade Ma Zhaoxin will remain in the Fifth Brigade and write a self- criticism. Second, the Fifth Brigade’s tractor is to be transferred to the company to assist with the autumn plowing. Third, it being inappropriate that Xiaoma and the Sichuan Woman live alone together in the sleigh garage, the company has decided to dispatch Comrade Xicao back to the Fifth Brigade. There, she’ll be able to contribute to the political reeducation of Xiaoma and assist the Sichuan Woman with kitchen work. The kitchen of the Fifth Brigade will be cooking lunch for eleven more people starting tomorrow. I myself will lead the women of the Family Unit Team to gather thatch out on the Luoma Lake grasslands . . . (Walks before xicao) Please tell Xiaoma it’s merely a self-criticism. He mustn’t let this affect his health. Here’s a sack of beef rations from the company office—give it to Xiaoma . . . xicao: Beef ? (A light goes on, stage right. Enter Big Teakettle li changhe, carrying a crock of tea as big as a human head.) li changhe (gently blowing the tea leaves floating on the surface, unable to restrain a giggle): What fucking beef ?! You cretin! That’s spiced horse pecker. (Looks at the people leaving) Big Man Yu, you’re a real smooth operator. You stirred things up without even trying. The Party Branch Committee came down with their decisions— one, two, three!—and suddenly the sleigh garage is a cozy love nest with just a stud and bitch inside. Oh, Ma Zhaoxin, Ma Zhaoxin, if Big Man Yu didn’t arrange all this, then Old Uncle Li’s sixty- odd years have been lived in vain! (Lights out. Twilight on the Bielahong River. The sleigh garage of the Fifth Brigade. Just a wooden board distinguishes the men’s from the women’s “barracks.” In the men’s barracks, ma zhaoxin is lying on a straw bed. On the other side of the board in the women’s

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barracks, xicao is sitting at her bedside mending clothes. The sichuan woman stands outside the window, about to hoist a load of provisions onto her shoulder.) xicao (hurriedly sits upright): Oh, she’d best not leave, don’t go . . . If only the two of us are left in this room, I’ll lose control and tell Xiaoma everything . .  (The sichuan woman puts down the food. xicao lets out a sigh of relief.) ma zhaoxin (looks out the window): What’s gotten into that Sichuan Woman today? sichuan woman: Big Man Yu said something very ambiguous. He asked me to help him out. Help with what? Perhaps the meat he gave us isn’t fresh? This kid Xiaoma is carrying on like a newlywed; not a worry in his head . . . ma zhaoxin: The propaganda team incident counts as an “incident”?! You gotta be kidding! Ma Zhaoxin’s been through a lot worse than this! How could having Xicao for my wife trouble Ma Zhaoxin? I fear nothing—NOTHING! That’s the power of love! xicao (at sixes and sevens): The incident is in my body. It can’t be hidden any longer. sichuan woman: Nothing’s more unbearable for a man than this. (xicao’s head drops like grain in an early frost.) How will the two of you ever build a life together if you keep on covering this up? ma zhaoxin: I don’t mind being stuck my whole life in this wilderness, as long as I have Xicao. Ma Zhaoxin has strength to burn! Making bricks, gathering firewood, building a house . . . These don’t even count as work! With a few buddies giving me a hand, in three days I can build a house . . . xicao (seems to have heard ma zhaoxin’s thoughts, extremely grateful): Xiaoma, you’re such a good person! (The old pain surfaces) But, what if we couldn’t get married? ma zhaoxin: If we couldn’t get married, then let it be. Since we love each other, marriage isn’t necessary! xicao (can’t help speaking out): Then if . . . if I had been married to someone else, would you still want me? ma zhaoxin: Yes! Of Course! Xicao, I love you, and I really care for you. I’m not just your husband; I’ll protect you like a big brother. With me by your side nobody will dare bully you anymore . . . xicao (moved to tears): Xiaoma! I really don’t know how to thank you! (She throws herself toward the board.) ma zhaoxin (seeming to have a sixth sense, opens his arms toward the board): Xicao! sichuan woman (tremendously sympathetic): But, girl, you’re carrying someone else’s baby . . . (Inside the house, xicao feels like lightning has struck her down, tumbles onto the straw bed.) ma zhaoxin (dropping his arms in disappointment): Oh, I shouldn’t behave like this. I should act like a proper big brother, I shouldn’t touch her . . . sichuan woman (shakes her head): What a sweet pair of kids! Xiaoma is a real man. Big Man Yu’s tricks can’t fool Xiaoma! (She shoulders the load and leaves.)

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ma zhaoxin (watches the sichuan woman walk away and stands up): No! No! This past couple of days I’ve been feeling really confused. My body seems to have limitless energy, and it’s like my heart’s on fire . . . (Touches his nostrils) Damn, my nose is bleeding again! xicao (confused): Xiaoma had a nosebleed yesterday too. He seems to have too much yang . . . ma zhaoxin: What’s happening to me? All these mixed-up thoughts banging around in my skull. (Shamefully) I’ve got goddamn sex on the brain. xicao: It’s like he’s struggling with some kind of mixed feelings. ma zhaoxin (sounds ner vous): Yesterday afternoon, it nearly got me into trouble. When Big Sis from Sichuan helped me stop my nosebleed, I was this close to groping her. Wearing that blue cotton shirt of hers—I didn’t see a person anymore; she was just a thing. Goddamn it, Ma Zhaoxin, a dignified man like yourself and you nearly did something so shameless! (Helplessly walks around the room, panic in his voice) What’s happened to me? Too much spare time? Yeah, that’s gotta be the reason! Not working for a spell can make a man do all kinds of crazy things. Have to think of a remedy . . . (He spots an ax at the side of the gate. He picks it up and walks out, starts chopping a fallen birch.) xicao: It took him less than two hours to chop a four-meter-long birch into a pile of firewood. (ma zhaoxin takes off his padded coat. He breathes heavily for a few moments, then picks up a shovel and walks to the back of the house.) ma zhaoxin Hell yeah! I’ll sweat to my heart’s content! xicao: Oh, what is he doing? He chopped up those huge dirt clods that look like boulders into little brick-size pieces. Stripped down to his undershirt, he piled those bricks into a waist-high wall! (ma zhaoxin, shovel in hand, is catching his breath by the side of the wall.) Oh, see where the Bielahong River runs into the horizon—the setting sun looks like a flaming orange cart wheel. Along the golden river the dirt clods flare up with beams of light like bolts of black satin suddenly caught in the sun’s rays. Xiaoma stands there holding his shovel, so tall and strong. ma zhaoxin: Who is that? Xicao. Xicao is on her way over, carrying my padded coat. She moves so gracefully, so alluring, tripping across the dirt clods with her head lowered like she’s walking right out of the setting sun. (The two of them walk toward each other.) xicao (hands him the padded coat, scolding a bit but clearly out of love and care): Put it on, the sun is setting, it’s getting cold out . . . (Touches the wall) Why did you build this wall? You always take up these useless chores . . . ma zhaoxin (stares at xicao): Her eyes glow so brightly, her pouty little irises dancing merrily even as she scolds me, and the breeze toys with her hair, making that white butterfly ribbon shimmer like a pair of cicada wings.

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xicao (raises her head, startled): A wild instinctive urge seems to be welling up inside him, burning like a ball of fire in his chest. He’s thrown down his shovel . . . ma zhaoxin: My hands are out of control. (Approaching xicao) But I’m doing my best to restrain myself. No, I can’t! Absolutely not! (Suddenly, grits his teeth, shoves xicao away, shouts) Go! Get away from me! Hurry! Away from me! xicao (nearly tripping, sounding forlorn, aggrieved): What’s happening to you? What’s wrong? What’s come over you? (Tears fill her eyes; she lowers her head. Filled with remorse, ma zhaoxin takes hold of xicao’s arms, then embraces her. His mouth trembles with desire. He holds her upright, his eyes caressing her with tongues of fire.) ma zhaoxin: Please, please, don’t think badly of me. Nothing’s come over me. I don’t know what’s happening to me either. Dammit, something’s coming over me. I can’t control my hands and feet anymore . . . (Before he can finish, with great effort, he pushes xicao to the ground, turns, and runs toward the prairie.) (While running wildly, opens his arms and shouts with all his might) I’m about to make a mistake! I’m about to make a mistake! (His voice echoes across the wilderness. After about a hundred meters, he suddenly drops to the ground.) (Beating the ground with his fists, out of breath, shouts) Xiaoma! Ma Zhaoxin! You’re an idiot! You’re making a big mistake! (He cries aloud, crawls toward the audience.) xicao (still on the ground, totally shocked): Ah, Xiaoma’s arms are so powerful. Those arms shine with his musky sweat, and they’re trembling. Now Xiaoma’s shouting! He’s fallen down! Xiaoma’s crying! (Picks up ma zhaoxin’s clothes and runs toward him) Xiaoma has always had a temper, but he’s never been this rude to me. Those eyes of his, they’re so frightening today; I’ve seen eyes like that somewhere before. Oh, I remember! On the grassy bank of the Bielahong River, when Big Man Yu forced me down—his eyes had the same terrifying look! No, don’t even think of comparing them! Big Man Yu is a pig, a wild animal. Xiaoma is a decent, honest young man, the man I love . . . Maybe all men have the same needs? No, that’s not right, they’re not alike at all. Oh, poor Xiaoma is still in pain; his shoulders are shuddering. His shirt has ripped open because it can’t accommodate his broad shoulders . . . Xiaoma is jealous, yes, I’m the one who’s caused him all this pain . . . (She walks toward ma zhaoxin, kneels down next to him, massages his back with her hands. Her tears run over his body, across his neck and ears.) Xiaoma, I’m sorry . . . (She grasps him firmly. After helping him sit up, she rests herself on his chest, listless. She closes her eyes, unable to sit up again.) Ah, Xiaoma’s chest is so wide. I hear it. I hear the thumping of your heart, it’s a deep sea of affection. I could stay here, just melt into this sea. I’d give up everything to stay here . . . Don’t let your thoughts stray, don’t think of anything! I’m not afraid of any-

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thing anymore. As long as you don’t reject me, I’ll do whatever you want! I’ll give you everything! I’m more than willing to . . . (The trumpet can be heard, playing a graceful, romantic melody. The wilderness is so still. The world is so beautiful. The setting sun is so muted. The wilderness is so pliant. The waters of the Bielahong River meander along, meander along . . . ) (Lights out.)

A CT 8 (The clangor of a bell sounds from the depths of the wilderness. It comes from that iron rake tine being struck by the axle. The sounds of a group of women gossiping and giggling drift in. The stage lights are on. ma zhaoxin and xicao sit up in a panic. The women thatch plaiters form a loose half circle around ma zhaoxin and xicao, gossiping and giggling at the sight. big man yu shows up, a sickle in hand.) big man yu (lips tightly pursed, face darkened with anger, suddenly bellows with animosity): Ma Zhaoxin! (He turns and walks away. The giggling of the women thatch plaiters fades. A peaceful silence returns to the stage. The trumpet begins to play again.) xicao (drops her hands from her face): Are they all gone? ma zhaoxin: They’re all gone. xicao (seemingly to herself ): The giggling of those women and such a scolding from Big Man Yu were like an icy breeze blowing out the burning desires of youth, leaving us in fear and confusion . . . ma zhaoxin: Tranquillity and benevolence have been restored to the wild plains of Luoma Lake . . . (Sits in the grass with xicao, suddenly raises his fists and pounds his chest) It’s all because of me! It’s my fault; what’s come over me? xicao (hurriedly grabs ma zhaoxin’s arm): Xiaoma, please don’t, don’t behave like this. I don’t blame you, honestly, not at all . . . ma zhaoxin (raises his head slowly): Oh, her eyes gaze at me with such brightness. But it’s a complicated light, sincere and stubborn, yet seeming to conceal deep contrition at the same time . . . (The murmuring of the river can be heard nearby.) xicao (her eyes growing even brighter, appears to be immersed in a mythical world): Listen! The Bielahong River is gently meandering. It flows so delicately and peacefully. One can also distinguish the faint sound of sorrow and sympathy. It seems to carry fragments of fabulous dreams past our hearts and into the distance . . . ma zhaoxin (looks at xicao with surprise): Xicao, what’s wrong with you? The river flows like this all the time, doesn’t it? (At last shows his fear, a man’s fear) It’s so quiet around here, frighteningly quiet . . .

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xicao (engulfed in total happiness, revealing that lyrical sentiment unique to women under very special circumstances): Ah, where does the “ding- dong” of that bell come from? The ringing is like a wisp of smoke. It’s both nonexistent and indistinct . . . Is it a mirage? No, we can definitely hear its “ding- dong” . . . ma zhaoxin: That comes from the foreign church on the other side of the river. xicao: Ah, it’s the bell for vespers. ma zhaoxin (seems to be shocked by the sound of the bell): It’s as if I’d never heard it before. How come it’s so clear today? xicao (consumed in her own world): The wilderness today is unlike any other day, so tender and kind . . . Look, Xiaoma, the wagon wheel of the setting sun has finally sunk, carrying with it those strands of orange satin from the surface of the lake as well as those gold coins scattered across the river. It has painted the river with its last rays of boundless, dusky light . . . The moon is up! The night sky is like a deep blue sea full of twinkling stars—there’s the Weaver Girl and the Cowherd.24 A flock of magpies are flying over the river . . . ma zhaoxin (even more scared, stares at xicao, grabbing her shoulders and shaking her forcefully): Xicao, Xicao! What’s wrong with you? What’s wrong?! xicao (tears flowing down her face): The wilderness is covered with the light of the moon and the stars. So tender, tranquil, and vast. If I could fly to the Moon Palace,25 how wonderful that would be! Even though I can’t, it would be great if life could stay exactly as it is right now—the wilderness strewn with moonlight forever, the night eternally tranquil. I don’t want daylight to come. As soon as daylight arrives, the wilderness fills with people and erupts in commotion. As long as there are no other people around, there’s nothing to fear . . . (As if just returned to the world of men, she shudders and anxiously leans onto ma zhaoxin’s chest.) ma zhaoxin: Are you cold? xicao: No, not cold. In your arms, I can forget about everything. Your wonderfully warm and sweat-soaked chest exudes a rugged manliness. (Tears roll down her face.) ma zhaoxin: Xicao, you’re crying . . . xicao: No, I’m not crying. I feel happy. I really do . . . ma zhaoxin: Are you afraid? xicao: No. (A faint smile crosses her face) Where love is concerned, girls are braver than boys. Do you believe me? (A diaphanous cerulean light suffuses the east, making the night seem even deeper. The young woman and man stand facing each other in the wilderness. The moonlight projects their extended shadows across the wild plain. High above, an occasional wild goose can be heard.) ma zhaoxin (raises his head): A pair of geese that strayed from the flock . . . xicao: They must be searching for a home they can return to . . .26 (From across the river, the church bell rings again.) Do you believe in fate?

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ma zhaoxin: You mean, does it exist or not? xicao: No; before I didn’t believe in fate myself. But since . . . over the past few months, I’ve begun to. I always feel that the sound of that bell is dragging me there . . . When I was a child, there was a church at the end of our street. There was a cross on its wall with a man nailed to it. The church was different from Buddhist temples—they didn’t chant sutras, they only told stories. The priest, who wore a long gown, was really good at telling stories. He would often say that people are born into this world to gain redemption . . . How many years ago was that? I still have my cross, look! (In xicao’s palm is a brass crucifix.) ma zhaoxin: It’s so small, like my pinkie. xicao: See how his head is lowered—his eyes are trying to hide an unnameable suffering and grief. Lately, it’s as if I had a scale in my heart and it’s off-kilter, making me want to grab something for balance. This cross is what I grab. I often think of those stories they told in church . . . (Weighing the crucifix in her upturned palm, she smiles bitterly. The church bell rings.) I’m a girl. We girls are different from you boys. There are certain things that a girl cannot share, not with anyone . . . ma zhaoxin: Even me? xicao: You? (Shakes her head sadly) Especially not with you! Do you understand? (Stroking ma zhaoxin’s cheek) You have no idea what it feels like for a girl not to be able to tell what’s in her heart . . . (Sobs) When things get really hard to bear, I remember I have it. (Looks at the crucifix gratefully) Whatever I tell it, it will listen attentively; it never bothers me and has never gotten angry at me . . . With someone to listen to me, I’m content. Look at the anguish in its eyes! It knows everything. It understands me, it sympathizes with me . . . ma zhaoxin: Xicao, you’ve been treated so unfairly . . . (Takes the crucifix from her) Can such a little thing really have so much power? That we come into this world to seek redemption—could that be true? (The church bell rings again across the river. The sound suddenly has a mysterious allure for ma zhaoxin. Like a magnet, it tugs at ma zhaoxin’s eyes and heart.) Lately it’s as if we’d abandoned ourselves, as if we were dangling in midair. Listen to that bell! (Startled) It sounds much different from usual! Like a girl’s hand gently stroking and embracing my heart. (Terrified) No! This thing called religion, we can’t fall for it! (His voice quivering) Xicao, how can my heart feel so empty that I’m panicked and afraid. (Grips xicao’s hands) I need to find some people, my friends . . . xicao (echoing his feeling): I’m scared too. I miss the Fifth Brigade. I miss Big Sister Tian, and Maomao. I need to see someone, anyone . . . (In the distance shouting can be heard.) ma zhaoxin: Did you hear that? Somebody’s calling us! Yes, they’re really calling us! (The two of them frantically begin looking around. li tiantian, su jiaqi, the sichuan woman, xing fulin, and maomao are searching and shouting.) ma zhaoxin fifteen years later (appearing at the side of the stage): What a vast and mystical wilderness! Our friends from the Fifth Brigade crying out our names

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and searching the whole prairie for us, like looking for a needle in a haystack. They dashed all over the place, the night wind tearing at their clothes. “Xiaoma—Xicao—” Their hoarse and anxious cries like a warm breeze blowing across the icy grasslands and into our hearts . . . ma zhaoxin fifteen years later: When Lao Xing’s flashlight appeared on the boundless arid grassland, it was as if Xicao and I had spotted a lighthouse from a vast sea. Ah, it’s better to be around others, to have friends . . . We need friends . . . xicao: Those idyllic moments we just shared were fleeting and illusory; soon we found ourselves amid a lonely sea . . . But now our friends from the Fifth Brigade have come! ma zhaoxin: They’re here! ma zhaoxin fifteen years later: In fact, we were just a couple of kids . . . (ma zhaoxin, xicao dash into the embrace of li tiantian and the sichuan woman. They burst into tears.) maomao (tightly hugging the legs of xicao and ma zhaoxin, shouts): Uncle, Auntie! ma zhaoxin (wiping the corners of his eyes): The company of others is so warm . . . Only among other people can one be this warm. ma zhaoxin fifteen years later: I can see the tears welling up in each friend’s eyes. Xicao, they understood us, cared for us. Luoma Lake wilderness, this beautiful wilderness strewn with moonlight, you should have been theirs, and ours . . .

A CT 9 (In the sleigh garage on the left side of the stage, li tiantian writes a letter under a lamp. On the right side of the stage, su jiaqi is reading a letter; he sits facing the setting sun under a willow tree on the bank of the Bielahong River. We see both the sleigh garage at night and sunset on the riverbank as part of the same world.) su jiaqi (reading the letter aloud): “. . . I’ve said it before—in the midst of nowhere, I found something I could commit myself to, that is books. Exquisite works of literature are a sacred kingdom of the emotions. I grew up in this heavenly kingdom . . .” (Music. Dreamlike, beautiful, and enchanting music begins to play.) li tiantian: When I was fourteen, I was allowed into my father’s study. (A young girl, to the strains of a crystalline, resonant melody, enters a fairy tale maze. li tiantian’s father looks at her lovingly.) li tiantian’s father: Child, you’ve grown up now, you know what your needs are. (Points at the shelves of books in his study) This is a heavenly kingdom, a sacred kingdom of the emotions. Go ahead! li tiantian: One day, Daddy brought back a ten-volume set of hardcover books. li tiantian’s father (madly excited): This is The Selected Works of Tagore. It’s a must-read! (He’s so excited that his glasses fall on the books.)

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li tiantian: Just when I had nearly finished the poetry of Tagore and was about to read his Red Oleanders, a great storm blew in. It was one of those “that autumn”s. (A great fire appears on the stage. The background turns red.) The tranquillity of this “little harbor” was obliterated; the little skiff of “sentiment and emotion” was capsized. Father’s study was reduced to ashes overnight. While no one was looking, I dug out from the ashes a copy of The Selected Works of Tagore that had not been completely burned. There was only one story left in it. The title of the story was “Mahamaya”;27 too bad I only read half of it—the latter part was burned . . . Mahamaya was about to be immolated on the funeral pyre of an old Brahman. The fire burns—will this girl die a terrible death as a suttee? Can it be? I felt so sad for Mahamaya, and sadder yet for Mahamaya’s lover, the steadfast young Rajib . . . (Once again feeling worried and full of desire, stands up and walks toward su jiaqi) Who can help me find a copy of “Mahamaya”? Little Su, didn’t you say that in the reclamation district theater troupe’s storage room there were lots of books? Can they be borrowed? Maybe the ending of the story can shed some light on our relationship. I just hope it’s a comedy, not a tragedy . . . su jiaqi (carries a large manila envelope, walks up to li tiantian): Tiantian, since today is your birthday, I’ve got a present for you . . . li tiantian (opens the envelope, her hands shaking and her eyes beaming with surprise): Oh! The Selected Works of Tagore! su jiaqi (painfully): I stole it . . . li tiantian: You stole it? su jiaqi: At Luoma Lake, books like this have been banned since that autumn. I broke into the storage room. I desperately want to know what happens to Mahamaya too. li tiantian (stares at tagore’s portrait): Tagore, you sentimental poet. You’ve come at last. Hurry and tell me the fate of Mahamaya . . . (Music. The kind of music that can only be heard in Bengal—the sound of ripples in a water jar being carried by a young woman, a lullaby sung by a mother, the tinkling anklet on a young girl—all these images flash by in the music. On the stage there emerges a poetic picture: fire-red oleanders, tall palm trees. An old man stands on the soil of ancient India. His eyes are full of kindness and sparkle with a profound wisdom. He wears a loose white gown. His outstretched arms embrace the verdant mountains and rivers, the shining moon and running water.) tagore (calmly): My song alights in your pupils, brings you into the souls of all living things . . . Mahamaya is a young noblewoman from a very famous family. She and Rajib had a tryst in an abandoned temple by the river. She stares at Rajib . . . li tiantian (walks to su jiaqi slowly): Rajib, why do you put me at such risk, asking me to come here? su jiaqi (ner vously rubbing his hands together): I don’t know either—we . . . let’s run away together! tagore: While Mahamaya does not have many lines in the novel, she does love this commoner with all her heart. Her brother discovered their rendezvous in the temple.

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He is a coldhearted man with a strong belief in the caste system. He left without uttering a word. (From the depths of the stage, big man yu walks into the distance, his back to the audience.) The next day, he ordered his young sister to put on a red sari. In order to punish her, he decided to marry her to an eighty-year old Brahman. (li tiantian puts on a red sari.) At the riverbank, Mahamaya is married to the dying Brahman. The wedding and the funeral are held at the same time. Firewood is piled high beside the river; the dead Brahman’s body arrives; the bonfire will transport him to heaven . . . Mahamaya must be burned with him as a sacrifice . . . The fire is lit . . . (A great fire appears on the stage. li tiantian stands in the midst of fire.) A sudden thunderstorm has saved Mahamaya’s life. But her lovely red oleander of a face has been disfigured. She covers herself with a black veil and runs to the house of Rajib. li tiantian (covered with a black veil): I agree to elope with you; I will follow you wherever you lead me. However, you must never lift my veil, otherwise I will leave you . . . (su jiaqi, weeping, nods in assent and takes his lover by the hand.) tagore: One moonlit night, Rajib is driven by an impulse . . . su jiaqi (walks quietly to where his lover lies sleeping lifts her veil, lets out a muted cry): Ohh! (li tiantian wakes up at the sound. She covers her face again. She walks away saying nothing. su jiaqi rubs his hands together and drops his head. li tiantian takes off the veil. She and su jiaqi look at tagore in fear.) Mahamaya has left? tagore: Yes, she’s gone forever. She will never come back again . . . li tiantian: Is this really Mahamaya’s fate? Does the story just end here? (tagore slowly disappears into the depths of the stage. su jiaqi walks back over to the bank of the river, to the strains of the melancholy trumpet tune.) Mahamaya’s gone. She left with such resolve, such unremitting tenacity . . . But why did she want to leave? su jiaqi: It is precisely in her leaving that she becomes even more beautiful. Beauty is always flawed, except in people’s minds . . . li tiantian: Every girl wishes that she had both inner beauty and outer beauty. When Rajib saw her face, both her beauties were destroyed. So she left . . . su jiaqi: She hoped to use something from her past as a memento, to leave Rajib with a happy memory to enjoy, something to ponder. She was willing to go to great lengths to withstand the pain of leaving Rajib . . . li tiantian: Girls always wish to give more to others . . . Little Su, have you ever noticed that? My heart is pure as crystal and others envy my beauty, especially my lustrous black hair . . . su jiaqi: I have noticed, of course I’ve noticed. You hair is a glistening waterfall . . . li tiantian: I love you, I wish to give you everything. But every time I do so, you invariably reject me.

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su jiaqi: No, it’s not rejection . . . (The dreamlike music begins. ning shanshan appears in the middle of the stage. She smiles peacefully, not a trace of jealousy in her smile.) li tiantian: I always sense that something bad is going to happen. Perhaps it’s because, whenever I return to the ordinary world from the heavenly kingdom fabricated in a book, and you are about to accept me, my combined beauty no longer exists . . . (She shivers from uneasiness.) su jiaqi: No, Tiantian, stop talking like that! When you do, it terrifies me . . . li tiantian (seemingly under the control of a mysterious power): I have a premonition that Mahamaya’s destiny will be mine as well. If I wanted to leave, where could I go? Don’t I resemble that Dazixiang Maiden who walked into a placid Luoma Lake in the moonlight and turned into a sentimental crane?28 su jiaqi: Tiantian! Please stop. Don’t get such ideas in your head, I love you . . . li tiantian: Oh, Little Su, don’t be afraid. (Smiles) I’m not leaving. It seems that my father got it right: artists are destined to suffer because their heads are in the clouds while their feet are planted on the earth. Every one of us is an artist . . . Just a copy of Tagore’s book can bring me such joy. (Sinks back into a heavenly reverie) Little Su, how can I thank you? I can’t thank you enough . . . What about giving this to you? (Draws a small cupid trinket from a breast pocket, blushes) My mother gave me this on my tenth birthday. su jiaqi: Hm, a naked little boy holding a jeweled mirror. He’s spreading a pair of powerful wings as if about to fly from heaven to earth . . . It’s Cupid, the god of love! li tiantian (looks at the cupid in the last rays of the setting sun): What an adorable little cherub! Will I have one too someday? Who will he look like? Like Little Su? Hey! What are you thinking about! (She covers her face. After a moment, she takes her hands away. she winks at the moonlight at the foot of her bed.) If you want to look at me, fine, then look at me! No veil. I’m no Mahamaya after all . . . (She bites her lower lip, quietly laughs to herself. su jiaqi walks over and picks up the cupid with care. Suddenly the “ding- dong” of the bell tolls from the depths of the wilderness.) su jiaqi (dropping the cupid on the ground): Ah! This is still Luoma Lake . . . li tiantian: This is after that autumn . . . (The tolling grows gloomier. Mingled in with it is the sound of big man yu’s coughing.)

A CT 10 (After supper, ma zhaoxin, carrying two tins of canned anchovies, walks out of the Fifth Brigade sleigh garage. Upon reaching the sleigh ruts, he stops with some hesitation. xicao comes over.)

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xicao: . . I know that you hate to go . . . I know what you’re thinking—you’re thinking about Grandma . . . ma zhaoxin (his thoughts revealed, lowers his head in sadness): Grandma hates the spineless most . . . xicao (lowers her head in shame): Otherwise, you needn’t . . . ma zhaoxin: No, I’m going . . . (xicao leaves.) (Walks to the stage front) This is the company office. The plywood gate in the fence is open. Ma, like a crop thief, was caught red-handed. Now, tail between his legs, he comes fawning for an early release. This little gate’s like a portal to hell! Standing on the outside, Ma Zhaoxin’s five feet of strapping man; standing on the inside, he’s a rotten bum. Check out those two glaring stars in the west corner of the sky; those are Grandma’s eyes . . . Grandma would say: “Ma Zhaoxin, you’re so spineless, there’s no way you’re a Ma!” (Feels the blood rushing to his head; suddenly covers his left cheek unconsciously, cowers . . . ) My cheek feels like it’s been slapped—hot, stinging . . . (Stamps his foot, turns, and walks toward the Fifth Brigade . . . gently rubbing his chest) The Luoma Lake breeze is so soft. (Throws down the tins, which clatter across the icy surface of the lake) Go fuck yourself Big Man Yu! Here’s a good hundred pounds of ol’ Uncle Ma—slay it, flay it, see if I care! Damn what others might say, who are they to talk?! Xicao and I think and feel as one, and one’s enough! You could banish us from Luoma Lake, banish us to Xinjiang, to Tibet, to the ends of the earth! Ol’ Uncle Ma doesn’t give a damn! Xicao is my little refuge. No matter how cold it is outside, when Ma Zhaoxin enters his refuge, he’s in heaven . . . What a great gal, but life with me is rough. I’ve gotten us into all this trouble . . . Yet Xicao doesn’t blame me. She even helped me draft a self- criticism in order to get me out of this. (Takes the draft from his inner pocket and reads, suddenly suspicious) But, why does this say that “something happened” between us “two months ago”? Why? Have to ask her . . . (Abruptly gripped by another idea) Could it be that . . . ? Nah. (He sweats and shivers. He is abruptly seized by a stifling panic. He wants to vomit. He runs crazily toward the Fifth Brigade. On the sleigh tracks, xicao greets ma zhaoxin, who runs toward her.) (Grabs xicao’s arms) Tell me, honestly! Why is it that this draft says we had sex two months ago? What does that mean? Tell me. Don’t lie to me! xicao: What’s gotten into you, Xiaoma? ma zhaoxin: Two months ago, you were patrolling the fields with Big Man Yu! Speak up! Tell me the truth! xicao: Let me go and I’ll tell you, I’ll tell you everything . . . (Backs off in fear) I . . . I’m already pregnant . . . ma zhaoxin (thunderstruck): What? xicao: I’m already two or three months along . . . Yesterday Big Man Yu had a talk with me and said that only if I wrote that you were the father would he let us go . . . Xiaoma, it’s all my fault, my fault . . .

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(She looks at ma zhaoxin, pleading. ma zhaoxin’s face changes color from red to purple. Huge beads of sweat flow down his face.) What’s wrong with you? Look at the way your head’s sweating . . . ma zhaoxin (staring at xicao maliciously, tears the self- criticism into pieces; his hands quaking, all of a sudden throws the pieces into xicao’s face, screaming): The two of you fucking teamed up to dupe me! Ma Zhaoxin, you idiot, you were played by them! Where’s that little refuge? Where? Nowhere! There’s nothing! Kicked out of the Youth League,29 paraded in humiliation, publicly criticized . . . The world outside is icy cold. But when I turn back, where’s my refuge? It was nothing but an illusion! (Struggling to breathe, he suddenly retches on something glutinous that seems to have welled up from both throat and eyes. Spitting it out, pushing aside xicao, he stumbles back to the sleigh garage.) xicao (looks at ma zhaoxin’s chest and cries out): Oh, blood! Xiaoma, blood . . . (xing fulin rushes onstage.) xing fulin: I heard that Big Man Yu’s sent an armed platoon over to search our Fifth Brigade! ma zhaoxin: Search for what? xing fulin: Search our luggage, especially the luggage of Li Tiantian and Su Jiaqi! ma zhaoxin: Ha, ha, ha . . .! Fuck it! What does Ma Zhaoxin have worth searching? (Looks like a drunkard) Ma Zhaoxin’s got nothing! Nothing! The letters Ma Zhaoxin wrote—half the characters are wrong! How could Ma Zhaoxin have written any love letters? Fucking nonsense! (Seeing li tiantian’s luggage) But, Ma Zhaoxin has friends, like Big Sister Tiantian and Young Master Su! They’re the greatest pair in the world! (Scanning around like a wolf, spies a big ax behind the door, rushes over and picks it up, eyes red, lips muttering) I’ll let you search! Come and search! (He swings the ax down, cutting open the luggage of both li tiantian and su jiaqi. xicao, xing fulin, and the sichuan woman gape at the crazy ma zhaoxin, shocked. Nobody dares stop him. He drags out a dirty work uniform from under the bed and spreads it out on the ground. He wraps the diaries, books, and letters from the two suitcases, as well as the little cupid amulet, in the uniform. He ties the two sleeves together to form a bag.) (Putting on his padded overcoat, shouts) Where’s the gas can? Where’s the gas can? (He kicks open the door. He dips the bag into an old gas can used for cleaning engine parts. He runs toward the prairie. When he reaches center stage, his hands and lips are trembling with rage.) Come and search! I’ll let you search! (He takes some matches from his pocket and sets fire to the bag. Sitting on the dry grass, he stares at the burning bag like a fool. His hair is soaked with sweat and sticks to his head. The wet shirt on his back feels very cold. Staring at the rising flames, he ponders the situation and seems to think of nothing. After a while, he squats.) It’s starting to get windy!

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(The wind fans the flames; flames climb to about fifteen meters. The entire stage is suddenly engulfed in firelight. The flames writhe in the wind, roaring and leaping about, getting closer and closer to the haystacks! Those mounds of dry grass shaped like upturned horses’ haunches bore into ma zhaoxin’s eyes.) The haystacks! Damn it! Prairie fire! (Instinctively jumps up, attempts to use his overcoat to stamp out the flames, shouting) Prairie fire! Help! Prairie fire! Someone help! (The sichuan woman, xing fulin, and xicao run out from the sleigh garage. They join in putting out the fire, using tree branches and sheets of burlap. Alas, it’s too late! Dry grass in late autumn is like kindling spread across the ground. The flames gain momentum like a great, insatiable python; wherever it flicks its tongue is soon engulfed in flames. He watches the scene in front of him in shock. His charred coat, like a torn fishnet, hangs from his hands, smoking. The prairie fire is like a surging tidal wave.) (Looking at it, murmurs) The grassland’s burning; the willow woods are burning; the haystacks are burning. Ah!—the fire’s about to cross the national border . . . (The Luoma Lake wilderness stands in deathlike silence. Only the sound of the distant wildfire can be heard.) It’s over . . . (Lights out. Day is about to break. ma zhaoxin emerges from the sleigh garage wearing his tattered overcoat. Far off, the wildfire burns. Five scorched mounds of hay stand smoking, like five graves. ma zhaoxin pins a letter to the door of the garage. From afar, in the direction of the pioneering team, the angry sound of barking dogs can be heard. Then, flashlights and torches, accompanied by people yelling and the whinnying of horses, charge toward the Fifth Brigade.) (His heart beating rapidly) They’re here to search Big Sister Tiantian’s suitcase. No, they’re coming for me! (From across the river, the church bell for morning prayer rings.) Oh, the tolling of the bell! So gentle and soft. (That strange allure once again consuming his heart) Facing the sleigh garage I bow deeply. (A stream of tears pouring from his eyes) Grandma, Big Sister Tiantian, Master Little Su, my friends from Luoma Lake—I, Ma Zhaoxin, am leaving . . . Xiaoma’s inconsiderate, he’s not going to say goodbye . . . (He stands up, tightens his overcoat, turns around, and walks toward the riverbank. ma zhaoxin crosses the river.)

A CT 11 (A great river, the boundless Wusuli, flows eastward. ma zhaoxin fifteen years later appears on the riverbank driving a horse sleigh.) ma zhaoxin fifteen years later: In that early winter fifteen years ago, I was here. Snowflakes filled the air that morning . . .

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(ma zhaoxin walks up slowly, stands at the riverbank confused. The river in the early morning is still as a stagnant pond. In his hand is the fur overcoat burned by the wildfire. From afar, the occasional faint strains of a song can be heard. It is maomao singing: “I’m a little blade of grass, a little blade of grass in the wilderness . . .”) ma zhaoxin: Oh, Maomao’s song. “I’m a little blade of grass”—Maomao’s song is really catchy. (Looks westward along the riverbank) What’s that place? ma zhaoxin fifteen years later: It’s the crossroads of an ancient town, home to the Hezhe people and their unique customs. The Hezhe raise sled dogs; the Hezhe have an oral epic called the Yimakan;30 a traditional Hezhe delicacy is raw fish; Hezhe weddings . . . ma zhaoxin: Oh, now I remember. One summer I passed through here. As the sun rose, a Hezhe groom’s betrothal caravan appeared on the river. I was lucky enough to run into a legendary Hezhe wedding. (An orderly row of flutes—the kind that only the Hezhe people play, with their intoxicating sound—faces the audience and plays.) That solitary rumbling drum! ma zhaoxin fifteen years later: The hand that ecstatically beats the drum! ma zhaoxin: The river seemed to be a floating tapestry, the colors of the rising sun. ma zhaoxin fifteen years later: The Hezhe’s groom’s betrothal caravan floats past, down the river. ma zhaoxin: A pair of flower boats. ma zhaoxin fifteen years later: A pair of wedding boats. ma zhaoxin: Another pair of flower boats. ma zhaoxin fifteen years later: The newlyweds are dressed in red, wearing flowers. They smile at each other affectionately. ma zhaoxin: Bringing up the rear is a fishing punt carrying several birch-bark barrels. Surrounded by elder Hezhe men toasting him with birch-bark cups is one old man, singing the Yimakan. ma zhaoxin fifteen years later: The old man wears a dome-shaped fish-skin hat with a curly brim. A snow-white swan feather is stuck in the hat. He also wears a fishskin cape. The old man holds up a bowl of wine as an offering, then carefully sprinkles it onto the river. ma zhaoxin: The characters for “double happiness” are pasted on the wedding boats, on which a banquet is spread: salmon caviar like pearls, lightly browned fish fins, birch-bark cups overflowing with grain alcohol. A large hand dusts raw fish with red chili powder . . . ma zhaoxin fifteen years later: The hospitable Hezhe people hoist their wine cups over their heads, loudly beckoning us to join them as their guests . . . (Gradually the noise disappears. The Hezhe fleet flows down the river through the audience. A frigid silence returns to the stage.) ma zhaoxin (suddenly realizing): Ah, it’s all over. Yesterday I was an honored guest among the Hezhe. Today I’m about to become a prisoner and traitor to my country . . .

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ma zhaoxin fifteen years later: I recall that this is a tributary. It snowed the previous night, snowflakes blowing about in the air. “The air is warmer after the wind subsides, colder after it snows,” as they say. The northeast wind having blown all night, the tributary froze into a solid ice-road. (ma zhaoxin steps onto the river. The thin ice creaks. He carefully treads forward several steps, then stops. The church bell across the river rings again, but maomao’s ghost can also be heard singing.) ma zhaoxin (suddenly feeling aggrieved): Why should I cross over to that side of the river? Who do I carry a grudge against? Who? Big Man Yu? Xicao? Or myself ? All of them, and none of them. I know crossing the river means surrendering as a traitor. However, we all deserve some dignity. Sometimes it’s very clear that you’re doing something wrong, but you just have to find your own way out. If someone tried to block the way, then maybe I could return with some dignity. But Ma Zhaoxin’s gotten this far and nobody’s come to stop me . . . Nobody’s run onto the river to blame me? I’m only twenty-three . . . (ma zhaoxin feels deeply aggrieved and forlorn, his eyes blur with tears. maomao’s singing continues throughout.) Xiaoma has crossed the river. Do you feel any distress as you watch Ma Zhaoxin turn into a traitor? Will there be any remorse as you watch them tie up Ma Zhaoxin and put him in the paddy wagon like a common criminal? By that time it will be too late for you to say, “Xiaoma, such a fine young lad, but we failed to mentor you. We apologize to you and your parents.” That’s the gist of it . . . Stop fantasizing! No one’s coming to block my way. Go! Go across! (Takes several steps, then raises his head and looks toward the west) What’s that on the river? Oh. A long, triangle- shaped opening. It’s huge, like a pair of conjoined hooks drawn with a red pen, forming a red X like the one they always draw on the wooden placards hung around the necks of those sentenced to death by firing squad! The shaved heads of the condemned always droop down over the placard, in the lower left corner of which there’s a big red X about a foot high. (ma zhaoxin’s illusion appears. Under a distant gauze curtain, two armed policemen with guns walk out from the stage depths. Above their heads, they hold a huge placard with a single large red X written on it. They walk past ma zhaoxin on either side, but then they turn around and walk toward ma zhaoxin again. They walk past ma zhaoxin on either side a second time, then disappear.) (Shouting) You can’t treat me like this! I’m not a traitor! It’s because of what happened between me and Xicao, because I burned my mentors’ books and caused a prairie fire, because I have a grudge against Luoma Lake, that son of a bitch. (All is suddenly silent once more. Besides maomao’s singing, the crunching of a person’s footsteps on the ice can be heard. The sound grows louder and louder, as if trampling on a person’s heart. Without knowing it, ma zhaoxin has reached the center of the river. He stops.) This is the exact middle of the river! One step more and Ma Zhaoxin becomes a criminal for eternity. That invisible meridian rises up before me like a shapeless

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divider wall. Xiaoma never dreamt he’d be facing such a moment in his adult life. Ah, let me turn around and have a last look! Let me rest my eyes one last time on Luoma Lake, on our Fifth Brigade, on this piece of land that gave birth to me, that nurtured me . . . (The trumpet takes up that moving melody.) Fifth Brigade’s sleigh garage, where are you? Where are those wisps of kitchen smoke, wafting over your birch-bark roof ridge strewn with starlight? It’s always said that land reclamation is bitter work—was it bitter? Actually, now I feel as if everything in the past was quite sweet. Master Little Su, Big Sister Tiantian, Maomao— where are you? And Xicao . . . Xicao, I shouldn’t have flung my shredded selfconfession in your face. I regret it, I truly regret it . . . (A flock of egrets fly by, squawking.) (Looking up) Oh, that cry is so familiar and tender. It echoes above the prairie, hovers between heaven and earth, lingering, lingering. Is that the long wail of the egrets? No, it’s Grandma. Grandma’s tremulous and hoarse voice cries out . . . (ma zhaoxin’s grandmother’s actual voice is heard: “Xiaoma, my good child, come back!”) Ah. Grandma is calling! Look everyone! (Faces the audience) The walking stick in her right hand strikes the ground while Grandma’s left hand strains toward me . . . (ma zhaoxin’s grandmother’s voice, “Xiaoma! Good boy! Listen to Grandma. You can’t go forward! Come back!” maomao is singing her song. ma zhaoxin’s grandmother is crying out. Their voices grow louder and louder, higher and higher in pitch. The earth and firmament resound with a great echo.) Listen! Big Sister Tiantian is crying out! Master Little Su is crying out! (li tiantian’s voice: “Xiaoma, be a good little brother and listen to Big Sister, come back!”) Listen! The whole of Luoma Lake and the entire wilderness are crying out! (Very loud voice: “Xiaoma, Ma Zhaoxin, be a good boy and come back!”) (Tears pouring from his eyes) Listen! Another sound is drifting in from even farther away. Ah. What is it—it’s the sound of childhood! (Elementary school loudspeakers broadcast a children’s choir chanting “Communism Is Our Inheritance.”) Childhood! Wonderful childhood! The brass drums and trumpets of the Young Pioneers. Our light-yellow tassels, the team banner with its torch and stars . . . (The silhouettes of the Young Pioneers pass behind a transparent curtain, holding aloft their team banner; loud marching music is playing: “Dadadee, dadadee, dada da da da . . .” From not too far away one can hear a broadcast of Meng Guibin31 singing “My Hometown Is on the Qinghai Plateau”: “The waters of Qinghai Lake are clear as a mirror, The Yellow River flows beneath my feet . . .”

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Meng’s deep, rich baritone and the treble of the children’s choir combine with the moving cries of ma zhaoxin’s grandmother, Big Sister tiantian, and xicao, creating a warm wave that laps against the skies over the Wusuli River.) (Suddenly crying aloud) Xiaoma! Ma Zhaoxin! Grandma is calling you! Your friends are calling you! (He suddenly turns around and runs madly back toward the riverbank. The river wind musses his hair.) (Stumbles up the bank, runs up the high levee embankment, cries out) Grandma, I’ve come back! Big Sister Tiantian, Xicao, Maomao, I’ve come back! (Suddenly falls onto the ground of Luoma Lake) Ah, the earth of Luoma Lake is so warm, so tender, like the embrace of Big Sister Tiantian, like a hug from Grandma! Grandma . . . (He cuddles in the embrace of the wilderness, while crying bitterly and crawling toward the audience with outstretched arms. Hot tears from the torment of his memories of the past flood the eyes of ma zhaoxin fifteen years later. He wipes his tears and whips his horse angrily. The horse- drawn sleigh recedes into the distance as the sound of horse bells gradually fades, then disappears . . . )

A CT 12 (The office of the Wilderness Reclamation Team. The lights have been on the whole night. big man yu sits on the edge of the kang,32 looking anxiously at the unpainted, filthy work desk. su jiaqi’s diaries, which survived the fire, are spread across the desk. Also on the desk are the cupid amulet, blackened with smoke, and the letter xiaoma wrote before crossing the river. Suddenly the telephone on the desk rings out, shattering the silence.) big man yu (picks up the phone): This is Yu Changshun . . . (On the other end of the line a heavy Hunan-accented voice can be heard, cursing: “You’re the one I’m looking for! You’re calling a lot of attention to Luoma Lake! Now you listen here: the prairie fire crossed the national border and the foreigners’ border control station has raised the signal flag, calling for a conference. Pack up your belongings—you’re getting transferred!” Panting from his anger: “Is there any news of Ma Zhaoxin?”) It’s believed that he crossed the river— (The caller interrupting: “It’s ‘believed’?! What the hell have you been doing since the fire?”) We’ve obtained Su Jiaqi’s diaries and a little metallic naked boy . . . (Caller: “That’s not a fucking ‘naked boy,’ you ignoramus! It’s a cupid, a keepsake of love exchanged between boys and girls! You’ll be held responsible if Ma Zhaoxin has indeed crossed the river. I’ll claim it was you who drove him away! Things seem to be rather busy at your Luoma Lake: some of your people stole books from the theater troupe’s storage room, and others snuck into the monitoring station to illegally watch television on the foreign broadcast monitors! Observing foreign television surveillance

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is as serious a violation as listening to enemy radio broadcasts! Let me ask you: what measures have you taken? Eh?”) I’ve established two special investigation teams: one is responsible for Ma Zhaoxin’s case, another is responsible for Su Jiaqi’s case . . . (Caller: “Don’t give me that crap! If I were Ma Zhaoxin, I’d destroy your armory!” He slams the receiver. The shouting is so loud that saliva seems to spray from the telephone receiver as if from a tea spout. big man yu tries to dodge the saliva, wipes his cheek subconsciously. Dead silence in the room.) (Sinking into fear) Oh. This is as good as a suicide note from Xiaoma. Check out his vicious signature at the right bottom corner of this letter. While writing this, the rascal must have been gritting his teeth, eyebrows on end, his eyes bloodshot . . . (He shudders, begins to hallucinate: The paper before him seems to rise up and turn into the face of ma zhaoxin. ma zhaoxin stands there like a ferocious temple guard, his left hand hefting a shovel, his right finger hooked into big man yu’s nostril. Screaming obscenities, he bears down on big man yu, followed by: xicao, the sichuan woman, su jiaqi, and li tiantian . . . They form a half circle closing ranks on big man yu.) (Chills running down his spine, suddenly stands upright, backs up to confront the illusion) What do you think you’re doing? What are you all up to? (He suddenly jumps onto the kang, grabs a machine gun, yanks off the safety, and violently shakes his head. The illusion disappears. big man yu abruptly throws the gun back on the bed. He wipes the sweat from his forehead and stares at the machine gun. Suddenly feeling as if his heart had been stung by a bee, he sits down.) Did Ma Zhaoxin really cross the river? Would he really return to the team? Would he destroy my armory? (He frantically locks the door and windows, sits back down. Just at this moment, someone knocks on the door. It’s not knocking, it’s clawing! big man yu picks up the gun, backs into the corner. The door opens! big man yu’s big black dog runs in.) It’s you? Motherfucker! (Almost collapses on the bed but immediately stands up) Heizi! Heizi! (Suddenly runs over and hugs the dog) You’ve come back? It’s so scary being all alone! You’ve finally come back! (His face presses against the dog’s, tears of gratitude pour from his eyes) Heizi, this could be the end of us, it’s a major disaster . . . If I don’t handle it the right way, I’ll be shackled and locked away in Dedu.33 I’ve been there before—it’s surrounded by an electric fence and a towering wall; outside that there’s a trench two men deep . . . (Looks at the dog as if begging for his life) Heizi, if that day really comes, I . . . can I bring you along? (Eyes full of hope) I don’t have any loved ones in Luoma Lake. If you’re willing to go with me, then bark three times . . . Bark . . . Why don’t you bark?! (heizi seems to understand, barks three times.) (With unspeakable gratitude, suddenly clasps the dog in his arms, presses his face against the dog’s) Heizi, dear Heizi. I, Yu Changshun, will never in my life forget you . . . But how can a prisoner keep a dog?

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(heizi barks another three times.) I know you’re not afraid. But I can’t bring you along. Heizi, if that day really comes, don’t attack them or bite them. Do you hear me? They’ll beat you to death. Don’t worry about me. I won’t blame you . . . (He hugs the dog and cries. The dog continues to display his grasp of the situation, jumps up enthusiastically and circles big man yu, whimpering.) Going to Dedu is like returning home to Yu Family Village. (Shivers) Yu Family Village is hell, Luoma Lake is heaven, it’s the Kingdom of Yu Changshun! It wasn’t an easy job creating this kingdom! From the time of the spring planting, I was like a top spun onto an ice rink—competitive, ambitious. My desire to expand Luoma Lake Kingdom twisted itself into a whip, whipping me into a constant spinning frenzy. In March, my legs covered in Vaseline, I stood in the bottom of the well, adjusting the beams. In May, I took the lead, jumping into the lake to mash the hemp. When autumn came, I had to harvest thatch with mosquitoes circling overhead . . . (Suddenly bends down and holds the dog’s head) Heizi, look at this face of mine, like an old straw mat. What happened between me and Xicao was the result of my acting like a crop thief who snatches an armful and runs . . . If I had my own sweet little wife, pretty as a pixie, all this toiling wouldn’t be worth my time! No, I’ll never give up a precious piece of real estate like Luoma Lake. (He raises his head slowly. Far away, the army that earlier paraded around in big man yu’s imagination shows up again. They march in unison, causing the theater to quake as they seemingly pass through the audience. Along with loud commands, cries of “Reporting to the company commander, sir!” “Reporting to the company commander, sir!” rise one after another.) (Full of tears) The Kingdom of Luoma Lake cannot be overthrown! (He paces around like a wolf searching for food, spies the telephone on the table. The shouting and cursing from the previous caller once again flow into his ear: “Those who snuck into the monitoring station to illegally watch tele vision on the foreign broadcast monitors were from your Luoma Lake! Observing foreign tele vision surveillance is as serious a violation as listening to enemy radio broadcasts!”) (Eyes sparkling) Who might have snuck into the monitoring station? Could it be Su Jiaqi? (He grabs the burned diary, leafs through the pages, reading greedily. The office becomes quiet.) (Finds a certain page and reads) August 14, Sunday . . . (The trumpet sounds a moving tune. su jiaqi appears on the stage. Behind a distant curtain, ning shanshan’s silhouette carrying a machine gun is disappearing from su jiaqi’s sight. The sound of the diary pages being turned is heard.) su jiaqi: People search for relief when they’re in pain. This afternoon that bastard Xing Fulin said to me and Xiaoma . . . xing fulin (takes out an official document): A transfer order came from above. A TV monitoring station was set up at the bank of the river. I understand a foreign language, they want me to be an interpreter . . .

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su jiaqi: The station has two twenty-inch color TVs; they can receive clear pictures of TV programs from across the river. (xing fulin leads su jiaqi and ma zhaoxin into the station. Both of them look at the station director apprehensively.) big man yu (leafs through the diary, ecstatically): Xiaoma went too! (Enter the station director, who went to college in the fifties, a pair of glasses perched on his nose.) station director (sternly): Keep this in mind, fellas: You are only permitted to watch this one time, for a short while, then you have to leave immediately. If the higher-ups found out about this, I’d lose my post as station director. Understand? (The diary pages flip; big man yu can be heard coughing.) su jiaqi: That was during the Very Quiet craze in the Soviet Union. The novel and the TV series won awards one after another. On that particular day, the stage drama The Daybreak Here Is Very Quiet was on. (su jiaqi, ma zhaoxin, xing fulin, and the station director are all sitting on a little bench to one side of the stage. All curtains up, revealing a solid-black sky. Only a small rectangular area at the center of the stage is lit—it appears to be the rear door panel of a military transport truck. Accompanied by music, the lighted area starts to slowly expand upward and downward, gradually revealing the trunks and heads of five girls above the panel door and their calves below. The barefoot girls raise their heads. Their hair is down, as if they were bathing, and they giggle and holler. They make such a lovely sight, so vivacious, like the very breath of youth caressing the audience! Gradually, the truck door separates into five sections. Accompanied by dreamlike music from offstage, the girls start spinning in circles . . . Whirling to the music, together with the five door panels they disappear one after another.) This is the prologue. Beauty was destroyed, but it didn’t vanish altogether . . . (Suddenly, two of the disappearing girls turn and walk back. su jiaqi, xing fuliin, and ma zhaoxiin get up and gaze at them with delight. The two girls are xing fulin’s sisters, whom we saw previously in a photograph. Submachine guns slung across their chests, they approach the audience as if sleepwalking. No sooner do they pass by than they begin to disappear . . . From among the three others behind them, the girl in the center walks forward. Ah, it’s ning shanshan! Slinging her submachine gun, smiling serenely at everyone, she walks past . . . A pair of girls arrives—it’s xicao and li tiantian. Slinging submachine guns, smiling benignly at everyone, they walk past . . . ning shanshan stops, turns; looking at the girls in front of and behind her, she smiles sorrowfully at su jiaqi.) ning shanshan: They all have companions; only I remain alone. I am the loneliest . . . (ning shanshan disappears. The trumpet begins to play. maomao’s song starts up again. We again hear the sound of diary pages turning, accompanied by big man yu’s coughing.) su jiaqi: I didn’t sleep much last night. I had an incredibly long dream . . . Where was it? In a maze of mountains. Xiaoma and I were soldiers . . . ma zhaoxin: We’re guarding two female POWs; they look familiar, sickly . . .

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su jiaqi: Xiaoma seems to be waxing compassionate . . . ma zhaoxin: And slowly, his heart softens . . . su jiaqi: Then, just as we are nearing the camp, the two girls, in a frenzy, snatch the gun from Xiaoma’s hands! Xiaoma, what are you waiting for? ma zhaoxin: I can’t murder them! I just can’t! I can’t do it! su jiaqi: So I shoot . . . And I can’t forgive Xiaoma . . . ma zhaoxin: What about you? Your heart is weeping as well . . . su jiaqi: Yes, I cried in my heart . . . Then, when Tiantian and the others came to pick me up, I was too ashamed to face her, so I turned and ran. She chased me like crazy. We ran. Under our feet was that little zigzagging trail along the Bielahong riverbank. Just as I was about to enter the marsh, my right shoulder was grabbed by a large hand. Li Tiantian shouted angrily at me: Su Jiaqi! Give back my cupid! GIVE BACK MY CUPID! (Another area of the stage is suddenly lit.) big man yu (slaps his hand down on the table): Ma Zhaoxin crossed the river, and Su Jiaqi dreamed up the whole scheme by himself! This time I’ve got you—I’ll catch the fish or ruin the net trying! I’m gonna make you and Li Tiantian read your love poems out loud at the meeting hall. (Clinging tightly to the diary on the table and the cupid figurine, his confidence and lust for revenge fully restored) Heizi! C’mon boy!

A CT 13 (Inside the sleigh garage. The moonlight casts silver spots around the room. li tiantian, xicao, and maomao are lying on straw mattresses. It’s late at night.) li tiantian (her head on her arms, talks to herself ): Oh, Xicao’s fallen asleep . . . From far away, Luoma Lake under the moonlight is so radiant and still. I wonder if Bangladesh looks like this? Mahamaya, a girl of few words, is leaving. She wears a maroon veil. Like the Dazixiang Maiden, she melts into Luoma Lake in the moonlight . . . xicao: How many days has it been? Four days. This is the fourth straight night that Big Sister Tiantian has stayed up all night. li tiantian: Yes, another sleepless night. Cupid, lost; the poems that Little Su wrote me, lost too. Rumors, all kinds of mental anguish . . . When I passed the horse barn this morning, somebody threw a worn- out shoe34 at me . . . Worse yet, I’ve contracted some sort of disease! A disease that’s fatal for a girl! (She sits up suddenly.) xicao: I know about it, Big Sister Tiantian, I know, but I’m not letting on. This disease is known as “bald patch,” the locals call it “devil’s butch.” li tiantian: At first, it was just a tiny patch of bare skin above my ears, barely the size of a fingernail. The last couple of days, the hair on the top of my head has started falling out. (Stands up and shows the audience a light-yellow pillowcase) Look! Look

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at my pillowcase—it looks like someone scribbled all over it. This is my hair, Li Tiantian’s hair! xicao: That small lock of hair looks like a shiny black exclamation point! li tiantian: When you shave your head, your hair grows back. But when you get a devil’s butch, your hair’s not coming back. Will this bald patch spread? Will it? (A wildfire suddenly appears on the backdrop. The fire spreads quickly; burning tree branches blister and crackle.) xicao: Yes! Yes, Big Sister Tiantian. A bald patch is like an autumn wildfire; at first it’s just a sliver the size of a fingernail. Then it grows to the size of a coin. In the final stages, all the copper coins link together, and your scalp looks like the scorched wilderness after a big wildfire—all that remains are clumps of dried grass . . . This disease first appeared at Luoma Lake after that autumn . . . Big Sister Tiantian, I feel like crying . . . li tiantian (grabbing her head): My hair! All the other kids used to admire my hair, it was so thick, dark, and lustrous, like black silk . . . (The axle clapper strikes the iron rake bell once, “Dong.”) (Clasping her heart in a panic) Ah, the tolling of that bell! Tomorrow night Big Man Yu’s going to have me and Little Su brought in and forced onto the dining hall stage, where they’ll shove us under those glaring gaslights. They’ll stop at nothing, forcing me to take off my hat. Those gaslights are so bright, like a giant, merciless hand ripping the veil off my head and revealing a girl’s most shameful flaw . . . Ah, the bell sounds again, again! xicao: Big Sister Tiantian, it’s just your imagination . . . li tiantian: No! They’re dragging me into the assembly! (She enters the lighted area. li tiantian is in the middle of the stage, under a blazing white light. big man yu stands outside the gathering, showing no emotions. A group of rude young men and women encircle li tiantian, shouting, “Make her take her hat off, take her hat off !” “Have her read the poem, the pornographic one!” Someone knocks off her hat, which rolls across the ground. A white bandana covers li tiantian’s head. She scrambles after her hat. Someone kicks her hat. Someone else pulls out an old-fashioned Chinese shirt and blocks her: “Put it on, put it on!” People jeer at her bald spots. su jiaqi appears. He walks over to li tiantian, gapes in surprise at her hair, then lowers his head in agony. ning shanshan walks over, carrying her machine gun. She rubs li tiantian’s shoulder sympathetically.) (Stands alone center stage, clutching her hat; breathless, screams madly) Give it back! Give me back my hat! GIVE ME MY HAT ! (xicao and maomao enter the lighted area.) xicao: Big Sister Tiantian, what’s wrong? Isn’t that your hat that you’re holding? maomao: Auntie Tiantian, what’s the matter? li tiantian (embraces maomao, calms down): Indifference and cruelty reign over Luoma Lake. It’s as if each person had a towering invisible wall around himself. xicao: I know the feeling of being surrounded by that wall. It’s a huge wall, a giant silkworm cocoon woven from the finest threads of gossip, slander, lies, and intimidation;

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they overlap and crisscross into a net that binds you so tightly you can’t even budge . . . li tiantian: Even if someone wants to squeeze through your wall and have a heart-toheart talk with you, he’ll constantly be looking over his shoulder. The only exception is Maomao. Maomao’s not the least bit paranoid when she squeezes through this high wall around me . . . (maomao’s song can be heard. Enter maomao fifteen years later.) maomao fifteen years later: That’s because I was a child. Children are always more pure than grown-ups. This is the eternal tragedy of humanity, and its greatest hope. In my eyes, Auntie Tiantian had a unique maternal allure. Wouldn’t it be great if I were your daughter! You’re such a good storyteller. A child’s desire to learn is an endlessly flowing clear spring, and in front of Maomao’s spring, Auntie Tiantian was an ocean. Listening to you tell stories was like climbing into a tiny boat that floats down the narrow stream from a little spring into a vast ocean. Out on that ocean, I could cast my net in any direction and haul in treasures . . . maomao: Auntie, I heard a riddle: “Eyes with no pupils on a shiny body, wearing red, green, and yellow. Among the lazy it sleeps, among the diligent it toils.” The radio said it’s a kind of tool . . . Auntie, you’re getting pale and thin lately, and your eyes are bigger and brighter . . . li tiantian (kisses maomao on both cheeks): Maomao, you try to solve it yourself first. After three days, if you still can’t figure it out, I’ll tell you the answer, okay? (maomao goes back to her straw bed.) xicao: Big Sister Tiantian, if you’re well rested, devil’s butch can be controlled . . . Get some sleep . . . li tiantian: Oh . . . (Lies down) Let’s sleep. My father used to say if you imagine a wooden fence with little sheep jumping over it one by one, then you can fall asleep. Let me try it! One, two, three . . . blurry little sheep in front of my eyes, changing into white woolly balls. The fuzzy balls have stopped jumping; they’re rolling, rolling into a very long chain . . . I’ve . . . fallen asleep . . . (Dreamlike music begins, a trumpet playing a beautiful tune. Another area of the stage is lit. li tiantian walks into her own dream.) It’s an early morning with a warm breeze and gentle sunlight. Who built such a cute little theater out here in the wilderness overnight? Theater lights the shape of sunflowers pour pale reddish light across the stage, like a strip of gauze thin as a cicada’s wings. The backdrop looks like a stretch of blue sea. The crescent-shaped stage arches out into the theater, like a lip kissing the audience’s forehead. (Celebratory music combined with bells and drums can be heard. Enter li tiantian and su jiaqi, wreathed in red osmanthus flowers, attended by a small crowd of people.) Society feels shame in the presence of exquisite vitality. Even those who once laughed at us now bow their heads in shame. (People pour onto the stage like the rising tide. A forest of arms extend in warm embrace. Young men and women throw their arms over their heads, colored confetti floats

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through the air like snowflakes . . . The crowd parts, making a narrow path for someone— it’s maomao! Something sparkles in her hands. She treads so lightly, as if clutching a tiny life. Oh, it’s a cupid!) maomao (into li tiantian’s ear): Auntie, the cupid is yours now; you and Uncle Su are going to have a little baby. However, in presenting him to you, I give up my own life . . . li tiantian (startled): How can that be? Why does it have to be like this? maomao (smiles): There is no why. I don’t know why either. (After speaking, she tunnels through the crowd and exits the wedding party.) li tiantian: Maomao is running through the grass; her red jacket bounces up and down like a fiery little weed. People chase after her, shouting her name. But she runs so fast that they can only watch as she runs into the marsh, then into Luoma Lake . . . Maomao disappears . . . In June, in the heat of summer, it suddenly starts to snow heavy snowflakes, big as goose feathers. Luoma Lake freezes over, forming a huge ice saucer. In the middle of the saucer, a single graceful dazixiang flower suddenly shoots up. In the midst of this glistening white world, the flower grows taller and taller, turning into a towering tree that reaches up to the sky, a huge tree of flame, blazing in the wilderness. (The backdrop is bathed in red light; the crackling of the tree of flame can be heard.) One can hear Maomao murmuring from the center of the tree of flame. (maomao’s voice: “I’m so happy things could turn out this way. Auntie Tiantian, treat the cupid as if it were me!”) The tree of flame burns fiercely in the wind. (Crazed, throws herself against the burning tree) Maomao! Maomao! You can’t do this! Auntie wants you, not the cupid! Maomao! Maomao! (The bell of Luoma Lake tolls! It sounds vulgar, arrogant, and unbridled. li tiantian, startled by the sound, stands frozen. All other sounds immediately cease. big man yu appears.) big man yu (walking over to face li tiantian): You’re fucking daydreaming! This is Luoma Lake! (The dream disappears. The bell sounds grow insistent and greedy. At the same time, a harmonious but boorish choir can be heard inside the meeting hall. The song is suffused with aggression.) (To li tiantian) You stand outside. Su Jiaqi’s the one being criticized today. (On the other side of the stage, carrying rifles, four young men from the armed platoon “invite” su jiaqi into the meeting hall. Anger and shame turn su jiaqi into a raging bull. He snatches a shovel and wards them off, backing up . . . The two sides square off. Several people manage to drag su jiaqi under the bell scaffold. Bell scaffold!? The audience realizes for the first time that the bell scaffold looks like a gallows! The sounds of the choir, people scuffling, and the bell all fade away.) su jiaqi: Tiantian, where are you? Without you by my side, I feel twice as lonely . . . li tiantian: I’m here, Little Su, I’m coming . . .

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su jiaqi: Oh, you’ve come to see me under such difficult conditions—how can I thank you? . . . li tiantian: Please, don’t say things like that. su jiaqi: Are you afraid? No? If you’re not afraid, then there’s nothing for me to be afraid of. li tiantian: Are you suffering? Suffering can be a kind of contentment. Whenever I’m with you, I feel that life is wonderful. Lately I often feel remorse; I regret not having given you more of a girl’s love. In fact, I haven’t given you anything . . . But I’m going to! In the future I’ll give you everything . . . (Suddenly remembering the hat on her head) But . . . su jiaqi: No, I’m already completely satisfied. Whenever I remind myself that someone as wonderful as you is in love with me, then nothing can trouble me . . . li tiantian: Me too. If you love me, then I can die without regret . . . (Seems not to care about where they are anymore, strokes su jiaqi’s hair with deep affection) Yesterday, I dreamt of Maomao, and I dreamt of you, and I dreamt of our wedding. Maomao was clasping something in her hands. Guess what it was? The cupid . . . (From all corners of the meeting hall, the sounds of shouting and the choir erupt. They mingle with the tolling of the bell into cacophony. “Spit it out! What’s going on between you and su jiaqi?” “We’ll bring your shamelessness to light!” Above the discord, the remote strains of a flute can be heard. At first, it is delicate; but as the din from the stage tries to smother and drive it away, it starts struggling fiercely, stubbornly, fighting for its existence.) (Her eyes blazing) Listen! It’s a flute! su jiaqi: Oh, this flute—it’s like a spring breeze blowing the depths of this ancient wasteland crimson. (The flute grows louder and more poignant.) What’s that big tree, red as a torch, in the distance? (The backdrop is bathed in red light.) li tiantian: That’s a giant dazixiang. Maomao exchanged her life for it. It’s our very own cupid from Maomao. The cupid’s here! (Just at this moment, the loud “waahh!” of a newborn rings out. The cry is so stubborn and virile that it sends shivers down one’s spine.) It’s true! The cupid’s here. (su jiaqi and li tiantian both lower their heads and bend over, as if there were an infant learning to speak faltering toward them.) li tiantian: Tell me, child, where are you from? From heaven? From earth? From beneath the pagoda tree that looks like liquid moonbeams, Or from both banks of the Milky Way where silver magpies soar?

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su jiaqi: You laugh, shake your head. Oh, I understand, You say you’re from your mother’s heart. She’s standing right behind you at this moment, Bashful tears dripping from the corners of her eyes, Her pupils overflowing with love and reveries. li tiantian: Tell me child, where are you from? You say you’re from heaven, And that you’re going to walk the entire world over. su jiaqi: You say you’re a sentimental little boat, Your cheeks are covered with the fingerprints of your mother’s dreams; Life stores infinite riches in poems and stories . . . (su jiaqi and li tiantian narrate from the stage while chasing their cupid mirage. The infant’s cry becomes the enchanting laughter of a child. The flute’s melody morphs into a majestic symphony resonating between heaven and earth. The human world seems to expand. A light shines on one side of the stage. A young man from the armed platoon runs up to yu jiaqi.) young man: Reporting to the company commander, sir! Ma Zhaoxin didn’t cross the river. He went back to Beijing. (Lights out.)

A CT 14 (An enamel sign displaying “Magpie Hutong” 35 stands on the stage. ma zhaoxin appears in his tattered overcoat, which resembles a fishing net.) ma zhaoxin (strolls down the little hutong): Is this the little hutong where I grew up? Oh, it is! Ma Zhaoxin was born and raised in this very hutong . . . (The hutong is awash in moonlight; ma zhaoxin casts a long shadow down the little asphalt lane. All is quiet.) A year ago, Ma Zhaoxin came home to visit, his head held high. Today, just a year later, Ma Zhaoxin has become an unfilial son. He can only creep into his hutong like

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a thief in the dead of night, bidding a silent farewell to his hometown . . . How old is this old mahogany36 tree? Seeing it reminds me of Grandma. Under this tree, Grandma told me so many stories and recited so many folk ditties . . . (Recites in a low voice) Little red children, in little red hats, And a bridal sedan shouldered by rats. (ma zhaoxin’s grandmother’s voice mingles in) Yellow cat holds the lantern, Yellow dog clears the way . . . (These childhood memories are like a spring flood bursting through a levee, pouring into his brain, resonating with a variety of events from throughout his past that suddenly appear. They float in from afar, gathering together, retrieving a lost world for ma zhaoxin. The giggling and shouting of children float in from the recesses of the stage; fragments of a naive children’s song. Children clap their hands to the beat of an ancient folk tune: “Fine fine soil, fine fine flour, Children gobble them up and out grows their hair . . .” The crisp, mellifluous cries of a vendor selling cherries and mulberries, the sound of the Young Pioneers’ drums and trumpets—these echoes of history weave together, forming a lucid and lovely but oh so distant cradle of precious memories. ma zhaoxin’s eyes blur with tears, gradually the sounds recede, the hutong grows even quieter than before.) (Wipes away his tears and continues walking) Here, there used to be a coppersmith right on this spot. When I was five, I was playing marbles here one day. Master Liu, the coppersmith, came out of the shop with a cigarette dangling from his mouth . . . (master liu appears, wearing his apron. He has gold teeth; his face is red, as if he has just had a drink or two.) master liu (gives xiaoma’s rear end a pat, smiling): Hey kiddo! Whaddya say Big Uncle pulls up a turnip for ya? Pulling up a turnip makes you taller . . . ma zhaoxin: Who doesn’t want to get taller? Master Liu suddenly squeezed my head between his hands and yanked me right off the ground . . . master liu (laughing, leads ma zhaoxin to the wall): Come on, stand over here! Let Big Uncle mark your height. Come back in a couple days and just see how much you’ll have grown. ma zhaoxin: Then Master Liu pulled something shiny out of his pocket. (master liu uses the glossy object to score a deep groove in the dark brick wall behind ma zhaoxin’s head.) I begged him to give me that shiny copper thing.

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master liu (raises his hand over his head, cigarette in his mouth): You can’t play with this. I was commissioned to guild this for the district court . . . ma zhaoxin: He finally gave in to my persistence. He was a jolly old bachelor . . . master liu (his voice affectionately scolding): Dammit, you win. All right, you can have a look at this. Okay kiddo, now put both your hands out, side by side . . . (ma zhaoxin obediently raises both hands. master liu clasps the polished gadget around ma zhaoxin’s wrists and “click,” locks it with ease.) ma zhaoxin (scared): What is it? master liu (smiling, takes a key from his pocket): These are called handcuffs. When a bad guy breaks the law, our government puts a pair of these on his hands. Xiaoma, always remember, be a good guy when you grow up. Don’t go around getting in trouble . . . (He disappears.) ma zhaoxin: Wow, after fifteen years Master Liu’s prophecy has come to pass; Ma Zhaoxin has become a bad guy . . . (The faint “ding- dong” of the Beijing Railway Station bell can be heard.) The next house is number 10 Magpie Hutong! (His heart starts pounding madly) That’s Ma Zhaoxin’s house . . . (A man’s coughing can be heard from the courtyard.) That’s my dad’s coughing! How are you, Dad? Are you well? It’s Xiaoma, I’m back. But I can’t step through our door. I’m sure there’s already a warrant out for my arrest. If I came in, it would put you in a tight spot: would you turn me in? You couldn’t do it; but if you didn’t, that would make our whole family accomplices . . . Just let me stand out here for a few minutes, just a couple of minutes . . . (The coughing in the yard grows louder. The streetlights switch off with a “click.” From the deep recesses of the stage, the first bus of the day can be heard honking. Far away, a door creaks open, followed by the sound of someone sweeping the hutong.) Hey, it’s Big Head Qi’s wife! Big Head Qi used to be a KMT army officer 37—that makes her a counterrevolutionary’s wife. (Suddenly thinks about himself ) I’m a counterrevolutionary too, ain’t I? So, will my mother be forced to sweep the streets like her, wearing a black label too? (The “swish” of the large broom sounds like it’s sweeping across people’s hearts, and it simultaneously invokes the sound of the Luoma Lake bell, which makes people tremble in fear.) No! I can’t let that to happen to my mother. It was Luoma Lake that corrupted me. I didn’t come home, I was never here, my family members aren’t abettors. Ma Zhaoxin, why are you still standing here, hesitating? Leave! Hurry! (Hesitates) Then why did I come back? I can’t just leave like this! I’ve gotta find a way to secretly have a look at my family. Then, even if I die, I can close my eyes in peace . . . (Walks to one side of the stage and stops) Here’s a good spot, a three-way crossroad with huge cement drainage cylinders lying by the road, tall enough for me to stand in. From inside I’ll be able to see everybody who passes by, but they won’t be able to see me . . .

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(He tightens his overcoat and climbs in, lights a cigarette and leans against the wall. The Beijing Railway Station bell strikes again; more and more cars fill the streets. Suddenly ma zhaoxin’s eyes light up.) (Grinds out the rest of his cigarette) Two bicycles are coasting out of the hutong—ah, it looks like Dad and Sis! No mistake about it, that’s Dad. From his face, you can’t tell if anything’s bothering him. He’s had a healthy sense of humor for sixty years . . . Here they come! Dad still rides that same old Yongjiu brand. He’s looking a little older, a lot more gray hair . . . They’re getting close, really close, I can even see the wrinkles around Dad’s eyes! (Unable to restrain himself, ma zhaoxin stands up and scurries through several cylinders. He impulsively opens his mouth. Suddenly, the tolling of the Luoma Lake bell sounds from the deep recesses of the stage, carrying with it the “swish swish” of the large broom.) (Sticks his right index finger into his mouth, then slowly removes his hand) Oh, their bikes have passed! The lunch box on the back of Dad’s bike glistens in the morning sunlight, then fades to a tiny white gleam in the distance . . . (Collapses in the cement cylinder) Is this any way to meet one’s family? Ma Zhaoxin, you’re a man who’s always walked proud, but when you have a chance to say something meaningful to your father, mother, and brothers, you clam up! Are you going to leave things this way, never to see them again? No, I’m going to flag down my younger brother and tell him everything. Third Brother knows how to keep a secret, telling him won’t get anyone else into trouble . . . (Here he comes! Another bicycle comes flying out of the distance.) It’s Younger Brother! (Stands up) He’s not even wearing a hat in this frigid weather, and his head’s wet; I’ll bet he just finished showering after the night shift at the factory . . . (Cannot help but walk up and call out in a trembling voice) Third Bro! (His eyes fill with tears.) ma zhaoxin’s younger brother (looks at him with surprise): Big Brother? What are you doing back? How come you’re in here? ma zhaoxin: Keep quiet! (He hugs his brother. The trumpet starts playing. Those echoes from the world of ma zhaoxin’s childhood emerge from the depths of the stage.) (Facing the audience) In that cement cylinder, the two of us brothers sat on my old tattered overcoat. I told him everything. Of course, I was very vague about what happened between me and Xicao; my kid brother was too young for that grown-up stuff. ma zhaoxin’s younger brother: When he’d finished his story, Big Brother dropped his head. ma zhaoxin: Younger Brother’s head dropped too. I didn’t dare look him in the eye. We both just sat there, not saying a word . . . (Raises his head slowly) My eyes felt blurry. (Reaches out, touches ma zhaoxin’s younger brother’s hair, cheek, and shoulder) Younger Brother still doesn’t say anything, but his hand reaches out and the tips of his fingers pick at the buttons on my shirt . . . (The “click click” sound of fingernails touching his buttons is heard.)

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Third Bro, do you hate me? (ma zhaoxin’s younger brother stands up and shakes his head.) (As if talking to himself ) I notice the tears glistening in the corners of Younger Brother’s eyes. Is everything okay at home? ma zhaoxin’s younger brother: Yeah . . . ma zhaoxin: What about Mom? Does she still take on extra jobs after hours? ma zhaoxin’s younger brother: Yeah. Big Sis and I help her out sometimes after we get off work. ma zhaoxin: Tell Mom to stop doing that—our family doesn’t have to struggle to survive anymore . . . ma zhaoxin’s younger brother: I’ve told her, but she won’t listen. She says that you and Big Sis are of marrying age, so she wants to save up a little extra for you . . . (ma zhaoxin looks like he’s about to cry; tears start rolling down the sides of his cheeks.) ma zhaoxin’s younger brother (his head still lowered): Mom misses you a lot. Not too long ago, she’d wake me up in the middle of the night claiming there was someone knocking on the door, that you’d come home. When I looked outside, there was nobody there . . . (Raises his head, grabs ma zhaoxin’s arm, shouts) Big Brother! Come home with me! You can’t just leave like this! When will you get another chance to come back? If Dad and Mom knew about this, it would break their hearts . . . (He sobs. Brotherly love suddenly gushes forth like a tidal wave.) ma zhaoxin (head resting on his brother’s shoulder, his heart stirred by this outpouring of affection, addresses the audience): I wanted to say: “Third Bro, let’s go home! I don’t care anymore. Let’s go home” . . . But I couldn’t say it. Third Bro, Third Bro! Stop it! The more you go on like this, the worse I feel . . . Remember what I’m telling you: After work, don’t go running around till all hours, be content at home. Don’t take after me, I’m not a filial son. From now on, you’re responsible for taking care of Dad and Mom. Promise me—promise Big Brother and I’ll be grateful to you the rest of my life . . . (After saying this, he pushes his brother away. Standing in front of his younger brother, he bows deeply in respect.) ma zhaoxin’s younger brother (hugs him very tightly, in an extremely moving voice): Big Brother, don’t talk like that. Mom always says that you’re a sensible guy, that you have a bad temper but your heart’s in the right place. Mom calls you the Ma family’s little prince . . . ma zhaoxin (his head resting on his brother’s shoulder): I want you to go home and get me some money and grain coupons.38 I’m leaving tonight . . . Now promise me you won’t tell Mom . . . (ma zhaoxin’s younger brother pushes his bike from the shoulder onto the road. Bike wheels squeaking, he pedals out of sight.) I never expected that, an hour later, my little brother would come walking back with an old lady behind him. Oh, it’s Mom. Mom’s come!

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(He tries to hide inside the cement cylinder. ma zhaoxin’s mother runs toward him, with ma zhaoxin’s younger brother’s help.) ma zhaoxin’s mother (shouts): Xiaoma! Xiaoma! Where are you? Mom’s here . . . ma zhaoxin’s younger brother: Ma, stop shouting! Big Brother’s afraid of getting us all into trouble, that’s why he didn’t want me to let you know . . . ma zhaoxin’s mother (ignoring his pleas, pushes away ma zhaoxin’s younger brother’s hands, shouts): Junior, my fine son, where are you? Don’t be afraid if you’ve done something wrong! Own up to it, make things right again, and you can soon put it all behind you! ma zhaoxin: Mom sounds so miserable and anxious. The icy wind has blown her gray hair loose. Mother, I can see you . . . Are, are you well? ma zhaoxin’s mother: Oh, that’s my son’s voice! He might not have said a thing, but I can still hear him calling me. Junior, do you miss me? ma zhaoxin: Terribly . . . ma zhaoxin’s mother: You didn’t have to tell me, I already knew . . . ma zhaoxin: Mom is finally by my side. How long has it been? The icy wind is picking up. (He shivers.) ma zhaoxin’s mother: Junior, are you cold? ma zhaoxin: Mother, are you cold? Why aren’t you wearing a winter coat on such a bitterly cold day? ma zhaoxin’s younger brother: Since you left, Mom’s stopped wearing winter clothes . . . ma zhaoxin: Why? ma zhaoxin’s mother: With her son stuck in such a frigid place as Luoma Lake, how could any mother justify the indulgence of wearing warm clothes? . . . ma zhaoxin (tears welling up in his eyes): Ma, thank you . . . (The echoes from the world of childhood abruptly start up again.) ma zhaoxin’s younger brother: Ma, I think Big Brother might have already gone. ma zhaoxin’s mother: Gone? Where? Doesn’t he have to go to the Beijing Railway Station? Let’s go there and look for him . . . ma zhaoxin: Right before my eyes, I watched as the silhouettes of my mom and little brother walked down the roadside and receded into the distance . . . (Kneels down in the direction of his mother) Ma, please take good care of yourself. Your son has to go now . . . (The sound of the Beijing Railway Station bell and the “huff huff ” of trains bear down from above. The grating of the train wheels and piercing steam whistles threaten to tear the world to shreds.) (Lights out.)

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A CT 15 (ma zhaoxin has been arrested.) ma zhaoxin fifteen years later: Like a gust of wind, the news of my coming back from Beijing swept through every corner of Luoma Lake . . . (Members of the Wilderness Reclamation Team gather at center stage. Somebody puts handcuffs on ma zhaoxin. Large clusters of stars still hang in the deep-blue sky. Somebody drapes a winter coat over ma zhaoxin’s back. xicao elbows herself through the crowd and stands in front of ma zhaoxin.) ma zhaoxin (his lips trembling): Xicao, I’m so sorry . . . xicao: No, let’s not talk about it . . . about who owes who an apology . . . (Staring at ma zhaoxin) I’ve been waiting for you but, do you want me? ma zhaoxin: Yes! (But unconsciously shaking his head.) xicao (perplexed and disappointed): Xiaoma, is there anything else you want to say to me? ma zhaoxin (lowers his head, looking at his cuffed hands): You, you . . . how about lighting me a cigarette!? (xing fulin puts a cigarette into ma zhaoxin’s mouth. xicao gets a match and lights it, the tip dancing around like a little red ball, then raises it over her head. ma zhaoxin’s younger brother, supporting their mother by the arm, appears at one side stage.) ma zhaoxin’s mother (to ma zhaoxin’s younger brother, calmly): Son, your big brother’s been arrested. ma zhaoxin (from the other side of the stage): Mom, with thousands of miles between us, how could you possibly know that? ma zhaoxin’s mother: Because, I’m your mother . . . ma zhaoxin: Oh, Mom, you’ve been so good to me! (Looks at the flame in xicao’s hands) Look how this fire burns, so bright, so warm! It seems to be lighting up this whole corner of the wilderness, lighting up the dawn over Luoma Lake . . .

A CT 16 (ma zhaoxin fifteen years later walks onstage.) ma zhaoxin fifteen years later: Below me lies Luoma Lake. One autumn night fifteen years ago, Big Sister Li Tiantian walked into the lake from this spot . . . (li tiantian walks out from the depths of the stage, shouldering a pair of empty rice buckets hanging from a pole; approaches the audience.) Not much more than fifty meters from here is the lake, covered by a thin layer of ice. The moon sheds its light across the surface, giving the lake such a deep and

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mysterious aura . . . Big Sister Tiantian, just a twenty-four-year- old girl, will step onto that thin ice and disappear into the lustrous moonlight . . . (li tiantian continues walking, hauling the two buckets. Gradually, the “scrunch scrunch” of her rubber shoes stepping across the wet ground becomes audible.) li tiantian: Is this my burial ground? The frozen lake surface looks like a big disk that the moonlight has painted on the wilderness—it’s a period! Yes, a period, marking this place as the end point of a life . . . I’ll turn around and have one last look! I’ve grown so accustomed to night in the wilderness! It brings to mind that song we sang when we first arrived . . . (The flute starts to play. Distant music and singing can be heard, a youth choir singing a lively and stirring melody.) Oh, when was that? Red flags, military drums, the faces of young men and women like camellia flowers in May . . . So far away, yet I can see it like it just happened yesterday . . . ma zhaoxin fifteen years later: Far away, tractors and trucks rumble incessantly, the sound floating past from time to time, then drifting off into the distance. Even further away, the whole eastern horizon glows red from the wildfire . . . li tiantian: The truck lights and dancing flames are round; they all look like periods! They also look like a hat rolling across the field . . . (A breeze blows her hat off; it rolls across the field. She chases after the hat, glancing around ner vously . . . ) Whew! No one’s around, nobody saw my balding head . . . (She relaxes and puts on her hat again. Dreamlike music can be heard. maomao walks up to her.) Maomao! maomao (smiles): I’m not Maomao, I’m Cupid. li tiantian: How did you get here? (She picks up maomao.) maomao: You were missing me, so I came. I miss you too, you’re so beautiful. (Takes a little mirror from her pocket) Look! li tiantian (alarmed): No, no, no! I’ve stopped looking at mirrors lately. maomao (stands there like an adult): I know, that really scary thing happened. li tiantian: Tender white bald spots spread like an autumn wildfire . . . maomao (in a trembling voice): That thick head of jet-black hair doesn’t exist anymore. A few sparse hairs barely manage to conceal the bald spots . . . li tiantian (scared): Maomao, what can I do? (The wildfire crackles more loudly; the sky grows redder.) maomao: The wildfire is barreling across the eastern horizon. Withered camphor,39 willow, and hazelnuts turn to ashes in the crackling flames. The blazing horizon has coated the surface of Luoma Lake with a veneer of orange like the glow of sunrise . . . (While speaking, she floats like a fairy into the recesses of the stage, merging with the backdrop.)

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li tiantian: Oh Maomao (gazing after the vanished maomao, talking to herself ), it’s not such a bad thing to be consumed by a wildfire, your life snuffed out, leaving nothing to the world but a few wispy streaks of dawn light . . . Mahamaya was thrown into the sea, bound to a rigid corpse. What about Li Tiantian? The day after tomorrow, they’re going to hold a public rally to criticize me! Their goal is to humiliate me. Li Tiantian, a sweet and pretty girl by birth, will leave that graceful image behind when she leaves this world . . . Go! Exit this earth and enter Luoma Lake . . . this Luoma Lake in autumn, where love is like the tender shoots of grass beneath a boulder that still manage to grow into the light. But just as they emerge, my hair starts to drop . . . Xiaosu, please don’t lift my veil, let me go . . . ma zhaoxin fifteen years later: People who commit suicide are stubborn weaklings. Some hope to punish others with their death, others seek perfection through their death . . . li tiantian: Ah, let’s not talk about this. Look at this wilderness, so quiet, so affectionate . . . So long, wilderness; so long my buddies in the Fifth Brigade . . . (Unconsciously she picks up the load and walks toward the center of the lake. First, maomao’s song: “I’m a little blade of grass, a blade of grass in the wilderness . . .” then a flute playing a variation of “A Small Road.” Immediately following these, we hear the echoes of li tiantian’s life thundering in from the four corners of the wilderness: the songs she learned when she first set foot in the wilderness; joyful wedding bells; the sound of Cupid crying as he entered the world . . . The echoes combine to create an irresistibly alluring impression of life. li tiantian is suddenly gripped by a fear of death like nothing she has ever felt before. At this moment, all the friends she’s gotten to know at Luoma Lake appear on the stage like a group sculpture: su jiaqi, xing fulin, ma zhaoxin, the sichuan woman, xicao, ning shanshan, maomao, even the two younger sisters of xing fulin come. They form a single-file tableau against the backdrop.) (Runs madly back and forth in front of her friends, stricken senseless by the fear of death) Is this really how one says goodbye to life? Death—what on earth do I think I’m doing? I’m only twenty-four! No! There’s no way I’m gonna die! My friends in the Fifth Brigade, I can’t abandon you! I have to go back! Where do I begin? Where is the way out! (An instinctual desire to live seizes her entire being. Terror in her eyes, she searches for the way out. Fear strikes her heart like a whip. She drops the load, turns, and runs. Her friends onstage call her name in unison. But it appears to be too late. Her legs have sunk into the mud and it takes great strength to extract them.) Ah, it’s so quiet out here, dreadfully quiet. (Shouts into the vast empty wilderness) Xiaosu! Su Jiaqi! Xiaoma! Where are you? I’m frightened! Hurry up and save me . . . (The people onstage look at her uneasily, stretching their arms toward her. Only ma zhaoxin fifteen years later sits silent and motionless. But his eyes are full of tears.)

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(Sobbing and screaming out, struggling to find a way back, her outstretched arms clutching at the air) Ah (her feet finally touch some solid ground), a mound of solid earth, I’m so lucky . . . (Sore all over, she collapses onto the ground. The comrades on the stage disappear. The night breeze is quite frigid. li tiantian sits on the mound. Her pants are soaked to the knees; the lower edges of her coat are heavy with mud.) (Takes off the coat, starts to wring out the water, then hears something crinkling in the pocket.) Oh, here’s the suicide note I wrote. A few hours ago, when I went to give Xiaosu this letter, I was determined to end it all . . . (On the bank of the Bielahong River, su jiaqi sits under a willow.) After crossing the levee, I stopped. Only I know that this is the last time I’ll see Xiaosu. I’d better freshen up a bit. (Takes out a little mirror, adjusts the long beige scarf wrapped around her head and chin) Okay, now I can go over . . . su jiaqi (walks toward the audience): There are very few lovers like us: even when we’re alone together, she always puts a small army satchel between us. That pale little army satchel reminds me of an expressionless face . . . li tiantian: I know you’re confused. In fact, each time we part, I have to reassure myself: it’s okay, no regrets, there’s always tomorrow and the day after tomorrow! Sooner or later I’ll surrender to you . . . But will there be a tomorrow this time? No, there won’t! Today we part forever! Oh, I’m so scared . . . (Rushes madly into su jiaqi’s embrace) Hold me . . . I’m frightened . . . Just hold me like this; but don’t touch my scarf! Swear to me that you’ll never touch my scarf . . . (A soft evening breeze gently wafts off the Bielahong River. li tiantian trembles.) su jiaqi: What’s wrong with you? li tiantian: Nothing, nothing’s wrong . . . I feel so content—hold me tight, don’t you dare let go. Only two people have ever touched my face . . . (su jiaqi’s hands relax.) (Her head on su jiaqi’s shoulder) Honestly, only two people: my mom . . . and you . . . (su jiaqi hugs her even more tightly. The night deepens. The rumbling of the trucks recedes even further into the distance. The wilderness grows quieter, the moon brighter. su jiaqi disappears like an apparition.) li tiantian: Suicide note? What was I thinking! (Unfolds the letter) Gosh, this letter has so many last requests . . . Tell Maomao the answer to that riddle is “a sewing needle.” “Eyes with no pupils on a shiny body, wearing red, green, and yellow . . .” Doesn’t that perfectly describe a needle? I promised Maomao that if she can’t get it in seven days, I’ll tell her the answer . . . I’m going away, don’t feel sorry for me, and, above all, don’t laugh at me. There will come a day when the sun shines down upon the Luoma Lake wilderness. When that day finally comes, a magnificent auditorium should be built on the banks of the Bielahong River, and the most solemn of all weddings should be held there for the countless young men and women in love. How I long for that day! On that day we must tell our children: Once there was a group of pioneers who came here. They didn’t have the right to love . . . After I’m gone, every

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year, when the dazixiang blossoms, you should make a wreath of petals and throw them into the lake, as a tribute to the Dazixiang Maiden, and as a tribute to me . . . Don’t forget me; I will always love you deeply. Will you miss me? You will. I love the moonlight—whenever you’re thinking of me, all you need to do is visit Luoma Lake and you’ll see me there, under the moonlight . . . (Cries while reading her own letter) Leaving behind a letter like this will make Xiaosu so sad and break the hearts of my friends in the Fifth Brigade. No, I can’t go through with it! (Puts the letter back in her pocket) I’m going to lead a much better life than before . . . Oh, what a dreamlike silent wilderness and enigmatic night wind—death is too frightening! (Fear of death and passion for life simultaneously engulf her heart. Like a raging fire, they rekindle her will to live.) I can’t die, I absolutely refuse to die! (Rises, calling out) Hey everyone in the Fifth Brigade! Maomao, Xiaoma! I’m back! Xiaosu, Su Jiaqi, wait for me, I’ve come back! I’m coming straight over to spill my heart out to you! Love me! I know that you love me even more than before, I’m coming . . . (Shouting wildly, she runs across the marsh. Suddenly, she feels everything going soft under her feet! She understands now that she’s still in Luoma Lake! Shouting xiaosu’s name, she sinks, disappears into Luoma Lake. On the stage, all sounds stop abruptly, as if life itself had ceased. On the backdrop, moonbeams undulate across the water’s surface, as if the great lake were convulsing in tears. The very earth seems to rumble and shudder, the Bielahong River, the mountains, the marshes—all seem to weep. It’s as if the entire wilderness were crying out: “Li Tiantian is dead! Li Tiantian has vanished!”—a chilling cry that resounds from every corner of the theater. As this sound subsides, maomao’s song gently wafts in from the stage depths. The wilderness is shrouded in moonlight. li tiantian’s tattered army coat sits alone, draped across the upraised mound of earth. A corner of the suicide note shows from one of the pockets.)

A CT 17 (Drum beats! That huge type of drum unique to the wilderness pounds out its terrifying rhythms. li tiantian is dead! Luoma Lake is going crazy! Enter su jiaqi and xing fulin, their faces livid with rage. Shouldering a pair of hydraulic jacks, they kick open the gate of the agricultural equipment storage shed, then proceed to jack up a bulldozer. Members of the Wilderness Reclamation Team gather in front of the dining hall, both saddened by li tiantian’s death and eager to witness su jiaqi’s impending revenge. ma zhaoxin fifteen years later stands a few meters away from the crowd. From one side of the stage comes the sound of the bulldozer’s engine starting. It is so loud that the earth shakes.) ma zhaoxin fifteen years later: The engine’s started! This here’s an old-style Stalin-100 bulldozer.40 Its treads are nearly a meter tall; it’s like a little tank.

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(The deafening sound of the engine. Those onstage discuss the situation among themselves.) people: The 100 rumbles along like a hurricane . . . Its treads suck up dry leaves and mud and sling them into the air as if it had two big wind turbines attached to it! . . . It grinds over the sleigh trail, onto the little road through the fields, past the threshing ground, then bounds in the direction of the armory! (Seeing the bulldozer in the distance madly approaching, big man yu rushes to the right side of the stage. He picks up the axle and strikes the bell hurriedly.) ma zhaoxin fifteen years later: Listen! The bell tolls again! (People are in shock. Before their eyes, the bell scaffold turns into a gallows. big man yu waves the axle hysterically, as if waving an invisible whip! Along with the tolling of the bell, a horrific flogging sound can be heard. The tolling grows more urgent, the whipping louder. Soon one can barely distinguish the frantically flailing big man yu from the bell, and big man yu appears to be turning into a whip. The 100 seems to have eyes of its own. The throttle opens and it suddenly lurches toward big man yu instead of the armory.) big man yu (stands under the bell scaffold, bellowing at the 100, the axle in his hand): What are you up to?! What do you think you’re doing?! (The bulldozer pushes ahead with all its might. Its engine’s roar overwhelms big man yu’s voice. It treads over the bumpy field, front end jerking up and down. It looks like a hunter bounding toward big man yu. The bulldozer comes onto the stage. big man yu throws the axle aside and sprints for the company office. Scraping the earth, the bulldozer lunges after him. It seems to hesitate for a moment, then realigns itself, and springs off in the direction of the bell scaffold that looks like a gallows. big man yu has fled to the company office, but the tolling of the bell and flogging can still be heard. The sound of the lashing whip retains the power to compel people onto the stage one after the other, like cattle. They are driven mad by that shapeless whip, whirling in pain. The stage starts to turn. su jiaqi and xing fulin sit next to each other on a pair of tall, high-backed chairs, a beam of light on their upper bodies. The bulldozer rumbles toward the bell scaffold. The scaffold seems to be cowering.) su jiaqi (gritting his teeth): Evil bell! How many of our comrades were forced up onto that slope as it ruthlessly rang?! xing fulin: It sounds more like a death knell or a dirge than a bell! su jiaqi: It braids humiliation, oppression, betrayal, and other cruelties into a whip, to flay us of our last shred of humanity . . . xing fulin: It’s the whip that drove Xiaoma out of the Fifth Brigade and made him into a “traitor to the nation”; the same whip that drove Li Tiantian out of our lives and beneath the waters of Luoma Lake . . . (su jiaqi’s eyes are red. People are discussing the situation and arguing.) people: That old 100’s like a roaring lion—the shovel’s ramming into the bell scaffold with such ferocity! . . . The bell has broken in half with a mighty “crash,” great broken fragments scattering about the frozen field, landing with pathetic “thuds.” (A deathly silence falls upon the stage. After a moment, the bulldozer starts up again.)

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people: The bulldozer treads have ground over the toppled beams of the bell scaffold and are heading toward the company office. (Inside the office on the other side of the stage, big man yu is frantically shouting into the phone; he looks at the incoming bulldozer through the window with great trepidation.) big man yu: Hello! Hello! The 100’s approaching! It’s coming toward the company office! The shovel’s like a gigantic cleaver . . . Oh, god, it’s trampled over the fence and it’s barreling across the yard right toward the office! (The sound of the fence being crushed and the roaring engine can be heard.) The shovel’s coming at the windows! (There is the sound of broken glass.) It’s smashed through the windows! (Tries to escape from the shovel) It’s in the room! (The sound of the bulldozer is even louder.) It’s over! The building’s completely collapsed! (He runs out of the office ruins. su jiaqi jumps from the tractor, snatches up the submachine gun big man yu just dropped, and climbs back into the tractor. The 100 gathers momentum, its huge body hurtling toward big man yu. With a deafening sound, it drives offstage, chasing big man yu into the boundless wilderness. big man yu runs across an empty field. Far off, the 100 can be heard.) (Looks at the bulldozer in the distance with fear) Oh, the prairie, so bare and level. A 100 takes to these fields like a fish to water; out here it’s like a wild horse that’s broken out of the corral. The edge of its shovel’s like a saber coming to slice through the neck of Yu Changshun . . . (The bulldozer enters the wilderness. Its massive, hulking body is pitted against the puny-looking, unarmed figure of big man yu, who loses his hat while fleeing the mechanical beast. Sweat streams from his forehead, neck, and back. Panting, he exerts all his remaining energy in a last- ditch effort to escape . . . But it gradually hits him that he’s both mentally and physically expended. His pace slackens, it’s no longer even a jog, just a brisk walk, then a trudge, and finally, unable to lift his legs, he simply collapses to the ground. su jiaqi opens the door and raises the gun.) xing fulin (grasps the gun): Xiaosu, you can’t do this! (su jiaqi shrugs xing fulin off, levels the gun at big man yu again, then raises his head and gazes far off into the wilderness.) (Murmuring) Tiantian . . . Xiaoma . . . (From the depths of the stage, li tiantian dashes frantically across the marsh in fear.) su jiaqi: Oh, Luoma Lake, when Li Tiantian walked into your embrace, how terrified she must have been . . . (Looking down at big man yu) Big Man Yu has to taste the suffering that Li Tiantian endured! (Lowers the gun) I’m going to drive you into Luoma Lake, so you can drown there too! (The engine revs again. Lying on the ground, big man yu gapes at the bulldozer bearing down on him like a mountain, then he suddenly leaps up like a coiled spring and starts running again. The bulldozer is in hot pursuit, breathing down his neck, driving him to the brink of death.)

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big man yu (stops again): I’m already in the marsh, I can feel the ground under my feet getting softer. My number’s really up this time . . . Heizi, where are you? I miss you . . . (Hot tears welling up in his eyes, his voice hoarse and wretched) Heizi, where are you? (In the distance, the barking of a dog can be heard.) (His eyes lighting up, giddy with anticipation) Oh, it’s Heizi! Heizi! Heizi, c’mere, boy! (Stretching his neck to see) Heizi, Heizi! (heizi howls, comes dashing madly toward big man yu, leaps onto him.) (Hugging heizi) Heizi, you’ve come to my side, even though I’m about to die? (His faced pressed against the dog’s) Good boy, Heizi . . . (Tears of gratitude flowing) Go on back now! Go away! You heard me, now go! (heizi turns and snarls at big man yu’s aggressors.) Stop it, boy, get away from here! Heel boy, don’t attack them, they’ll kill you! (Suddenly, heizi makes a mad dash toward the 100.) Heizi! (su jiaqi fires, heizi falls to the snowy ground with a pitiful yelp.) (No longer concerned about the situation, springs toward heizi) Heizi! Heizi. They shot you through the spine, but you can still crawl towards me . . . You’re not gonna die, right? (With a final puff of black smoke, the bulldozer’s engine stops. Silence envelops the wilderness.) (Lays the dog down, stands up, screaming hysterically) So you wanna drive me into Luoma Lake, huh?! Ha! Your engine’s broken down! (Suddenly starts pounding on his own chest) C’mon and shoot! Shoot me! Luoma Lake is an ocean—none of us will ever get out of here. Shoot! Shoot! (su jiaqi raises his gun a second time. Just as he pulls the trigger, xing fulin pushes the gun down. It fires, striking big man yu in the right leg, bullets spraying into the mud all around him. Gazing off into the middle of the lake, su jiaqi murmurs “Li Tiantian.” Suddenly, he emits a wild cry. He points the submachine gun at the sky and shoots, then continues shooting, fanning across a wide swath of the boundless empty wilderness. The gun rattles, su jiaqi is shaking, all of Luoma Lake shudders . . . heizi’s yelping suddenly gets louder, then he slowly breathes his last. big man yu crawls over to heizi’s lifeless body, shakes it hard.) Heizi! Heizi! Are you all right? I’m here, boy! Open your eyes, open your eyes, boy! Oh Heizi, you’re gone. Heizi! (He picks up the dog and stands up. At one side of the stage, su jiaqi picks up li tiantian’s coat. A string of deep-red dried dazixiang petals falls from the suicide note. The petals, red as azaleas, scatter over the wilderness, spread across the lake, like bloody tears. Across the stage, big man yu holds heizi, tears covering his face. He calls his dog’s name, limping toward the audience.) (Lights out.)

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A CT 18 (The Fifth Brigade. Winter in the Luoma Lake wilderness. All is glistening white, the snow undulating to the horizon. Horse bells break the silence. ma zhaoxin fifteen years later drives a horse- drawn sleigh onto the stage.) ma zhaoxin fifteen years later: Fifteen years ago, on a morning just like this, through a sea of snow bathed in warm sunlight, Xicao and I drove out of the Fifth Brigade on a horse- drawn sleigh. I turned her over to a half-wit horse- cart driver from a small village called Diyao . . . (The sound of wedding drums and music wafts in from the distance. xicao walks onto the stage. Pregnant, she moves uncomfortably.) What’s that sound? Is that a suona? It sounds like wedding music . . . xicao (emotionless): It’s a wedding procession in the Manchurian countryside. ma zhaoxin fifteen years later: I can see two middle-aged ladies sitting on a horse- drawn cart, waiting to greet the bride. The Manchurian moonshine in their stomachs burns red on their faces. The cart’s wrapped in decorative quilts of red and green—it looks like gaudy makeup on the face of a backwater whore . . . xicao (stubbornly repeats): It’s a wedding procession in the Manchurian countryside. ma zhaoxin fifteen years later: There’s a guy on foot, in black quilted drawstring pants, leading the cart, with an idiotic smile on his face . . . xicao (vengefully): He’s here to marry me! That’s my future husband . . . ma zhaoxin fifteen years later: Even to this day, I still can’t figure out why Xicao wanted so desperately to leave the Fifth Brigade and marry this . . . xicao (facing the audience): It’s been almost two months since Big Sister Tiantian disappeared beneath the waters of Luoma Lake. Every day I look at my growing stomach, and it fills me with misery and dread. How many days has it been since Xiaoma left? Fifty- one. I’ve drawn fifty- one circles on the calendar at the head of my bed; fifty- one days that have passed even slower than fifty-one years . . . Xiaoma, I miss you, I long for you to come back! But I’m also afraid of your coming back. I’m afraid that when you see me like this . . . Then, in the midst of my torment, I hear that you’re coming back! What can I do? What can I do? Will you still want me? No, of course not. Even if you did, all I would bring you is pain, and nothing more. I can’t stand the fury of your jealousy. For your sake and for mine, it’s best I leave this place. I’m going to disappear from your life forever, Xiaoma. Just like Big Sister Tiantian walked into Luoma Lake, I’m about to enter a total stranger’s family in Diyao Hamlet . . . (There is the sound of wedding drums and music in the distance. Accompanied by the hurried sound of horse bells, ma zhaoxin shows up at one side of the stage. Fifty- one days in jail have left his clothes in tatters but brought a sense of calmness to his face.) (Discovers ma zhaoxin in the distance) Oh, he’s really come back! Run to him! Rush into his embrace . . . No, no, wait, I need to wait and see—see how he treats me. He looks more mature than before. He’s not excited to tears, nor overjoyed; he simply looks like his life should’ve been this way from the beginning . . .

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(She slowly walks toward ma zhaoxin.) ma zhaoxin: She’s, she’s not rushing towards me. Her heavy body looks so voluptuous! (Burning with jealousy, to himself ) Don’t think negatively; she’s innocent. She really loves me, Xiaoma’s the only man she’s ever loved . . . (He walks to her slowly.) xicao: He looks hurt; his eyes are moist; his right hand is shaking and he’s trying to hide it by clasping his hands together, cracking his knuckles . . . (She lowers her head.) ma zhaoxin: What’s wrong with me? I don’t feel like saying anything! She’s raised her head. There’s so much pain in her eyes, a pain that begs for my understanding . . . xicao: Xiaoma’s giving me the cold shoulder, like a wet blanket smothering the last embers of my passion and whatever was left of my dreams . . . I’m a human being, I don’t need to beg for his forgiveness! ma zhaoxin: She’s holding her head high! That’s the pride and self-respect of a woman. Her eyes are shining with courage; no more nervousness, no more wheezing . . . (The sound of wedding drums and music returns, from far off in the distance.) xicao (calmly): I’m leaving. I’m going to marry someone from Diyao Hamlet. ma zhaoxin (with a coldness full of anger): I know . . . xicao (with vengeful cruelty): He’s nothing but a horse-cart driver, not nearly the man you are! ma zhaoxin (his anger growing): So I heard . . . xicao: I had planned on leaving before you got back . . . The cart’ll be here any second . . . ma zhaoxin (with a fierce glow of determination in his eyes): You waited for me to come back so I could watch you leave. (Almost shouts) You can’t leave now! (He exits.) xicao (her voice trembling): Oh, what’s he going to do? I’m afraid to see him again. How come the horse cart from Diyao still isn’t here yet? I’m afraid of those wedding drums and gongs, but I need them too. Hurry up, horse cart, please! Get me out of here! Just get me away from here, away from Xiaoma—I’ll go anywhere you take me . . . (Fate seems to be toying with her: the wedding music grows fainter and more distant. The sound of urgent horse bells, the crack of a whip, and vulgar shouts flood the stage. ma zhaoxin rushes up on a horse sleigh.) ma zhaoxin (walks directly to xicao): Xicao, I’d like to personally escort you to your wedding . . . (A cruel smile is at the corner of his mouth. xicao raises her head, terrified.) Ah, I’ve sent shivers through her heart! (Getting some kind of inner satisfaction, his body trembles.) xicao: His gaze is horrifying. There’s some sort of macho lust for vengeance behind this calmness. This the cruelest kind of revenge one could imagine! Well, if he wants it to be like this, then so be it! I’ll consent to his revenge and go along with whatever

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he says. (To ma zhaoxin) Of course you may escort me. But the moment I get on this sleigh, you better start driving, I don’t have any more time to waste. ma zhaoxin (as if cheerfully exchanging mutual courtesies): You got it! (It’s a small sleigh covered with soft yellow hay, from a distance resembling a double bed. People from the Fifth Brigade load the sleigh with xicao’s belongings and their wedding gifts to her. xicao walks over. She turns to have a last look at Luoma Lake, at her comrades of so many years. Biting down hard on her lower lip, she shakes hands with them and gets on the sleigh.) xicao (even before settling down in the sleigh bed, calls out in a hoarse voice): Xiaoma! Let’s go! Hurry up! (ma zhaoxin is already on the driver’s seat. He whips the horse’s hind quarters, the black steed leaps, the cart lunges forward . . . Gradually the Fifth Brigade recedes into the distance until only the sound of horse bells can be heard. At this moment there are only two people in the whole world. Flute music can be heard! The tune is full of anguish.) (Sitting in the back of the sleigh, stares into the distance) What is that flickering in the distance? Are those colored ice crystals? No, it’s the frozen snow crust acting like a prism in the sunlight, glinting brilliantly, like a little girl’s tears. Xiaoma’s broad powerful back is like a big mountain, and a warm harbor. Just a few months ago, Xicao was basking in that wide expanse of chest. Oh, it was so warm. Xiaoma’s hands are so powerful, nearly brutish . . . ma zhaoxin (sits in front of xicao wearing a sheepskin coat): Warm sunbeams shine down on one’s face and chest, like the hand of a young girl stroking you, tugging at the corners of your clothes . . . The fresh snow kicked up by the horse’s hooves gently dusts my face and lips, moist and ephemeral, like a young girl’s tentative kiss— pulling away the moment it touches your lips. The powdery snow melts on my forehead and brow, then flows into my mouth. How come it’s so salty? Is it snow or tears? . . . xicao: The jangling of the horse bells shatters the serenity of the wilderness, and of my heart. The powdery snow swirls like a light fog, as memories of the past gently graze by like ink paintings in the faint mist, so exquisite and mysterious . . . ma zhaoxin: Oh, the silence of the Bielahong River, the sleigh garage like a wedding chamber, the tender fragrance of that girl in my tractor . . . xicao: Can one relive one’s past? Never! Xiaoma has changed! He changed the moment he found out I was pregnant. But I was victimized . . . ma zhaoxin: That’s all in the past, gone! Xicao was never mine to begin with, and now, after all is said and done, she’s going to marry someone else. It turns out that I, Ma Zhaoxin, was nothing but an interlude . . . Two summers ago, it was me who drove her and her friends from the Fifth Brigade in my tractor to Luoma Lake; now, two winters later, it’s still me escorting her from the Fifth Brigade to her wedding celebration in Diyao . . . A young man giving away the woman he so passionately loved, to be another man’s wife! No, not loved, I still love her to this day. Otherwise, it

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wouldn’t hurt so much. Then, why, why don’t I stop her? She’s not a virgin; she’s pregnant with the child of a scoundrel. But is it her fault? She was like me, we were both young and naive . . . Considering the circumstances . . . But Ma Zhaoxin is a man, a man! (He whips at the horse even more ferociously.) xicao: All men are prideful. But aren’t girls human beings too? Oh, you can’t blame him! I know he would have forgiven me if I had gone straight to him the day he came back and told him everything. Xiaoma isn’t unreasonable. But, not only did I not tell him, I also arranged to marry someone else, undoubtedly adding fuel to the fire. Why do I do things like this? Could it be that I’m more selfish than I know? Was I trying to deepen Xiaoma’s love for me? Is that what I was aiming for, or not? In any case, why didn’t he stop me? Ma Zhaoxin, all you need to say is, “Xicao, you’re mine! You can’t leave me!” and I’m yours. But you haven’t said a word, you’re obviously trying to punish me! If I lay down and take your vengeance, will that make things easier on you? Do all young men have such hard hearts? ma zhaoxin: Giving her away to another man’s only going to make things worse! But that’s exactly what I’m doing. Yeah, this is a kind of vengeance, retaliation for everything that’s happened in the past, and the future! It’s retaliation against her, against myself, against life! The very sound of these of horse bells feels like a knife gouging out my heart! (Tugs at his collar) I feel like I’m suffocating, I want to shout, to bellow out loud, challenge the heavens! Challenge the wilderness! Challenge the impartial Bielahong River! Answer me! Answer me! Who has ever suffered as much as Xiaoma?! (It’s as if a fire were consuming him from within. Tears cascade down his cheeks. He appears to have gone mad. He flails hysterically about him with the whip, lashing out at the horse.) xicao (looks at ma zhaoxin with surprise): Ah! He can’t stand it anymore, the muscles in his face are convulsing! People say that the most ruthless battles are those between men and women. No! It’s not true! The most pitiless battle is the one within, the struggle with oneself . . . Why can’t I marry Xiaoma? Is it fate? No! I stopped bearing that cross long ago; no god will ever con me again. It was my own decision to go to Diyao . . . Now stop it, stop thinking; don’t think about anything, especially about trying to change Xiaoma’s mind, about pleading with him. When in the presence of the man she loves, a young lady must maintain her dignity . . . (There is the sound of horse bells. In the distance, the faint sound of wedding drums and gongs can be heard.) (As if stuck by a needle, lifts her head, her voice trembling) What is that clanging noise in the distance? Oh, it’s the horse-cart wedding procession from Diyao! (Terrified) Oh no, they’re finally coming! It feels like my heart has filled with lead. My life’s over! Here they come! The wedding music is more like my funeral dirge. (An irrepressible terror overwhelms her) No! I won’t go! Xiaoma, stop the cart! Stop . . . ma zhaoxin: I see them, I can see them! Ma Zhaoxin is looking at the wedding procession coming to take away the woman he loves! I can see the groom now! Why are

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my eyes clouding up? Huh, I thought I heard someone calling out my name?! Oh, it’s Xicao! Xicao is calling out to me! xicao (kneeling down in the back of the sleigh): Xiaoma! Xiaoma! ma zhaoxin: Oh, I hear her, I hear her! Xicao is crying out, begging me . . . xicao: Xiaoma, stop! No one’s to blame for the past, not me . . . not you . . . Xiaoma, stop the sleigh, I’m so scared . . . I’m begging you, take me back . . . ma zhaoxin (doesn’t turn around, ignores his burning tears): Ma Zhaoxin, you can’t stop now, no stopping! There’s no turning back! Ma Zhaoxin’s five feet of strapping man. Hya! (Madly) Hya! Hya! (He whips the horse even harder. Scene: The meeting grounds where the bride exchanges hands. xicao has stopped weeping. She steps down from the sleigh before a crowd of strangers. ma zhaoxin yanks the horse’s head around frantically, waves the whip over his head, and drives the horse and sleigh along the road back to the Fifth Brigade.) Oh, there’s someone crying out behind me. It’s Xicao! Xicao’s calling out my name and chasing after me . . . xicao (shouting): Xiaoma! Xiaoma! Wait for me! ma zhaoxin (ordering himself ): Don’t turn your head, you can’t stop! If you stop your heart will soften . . . But, can I really leave things like this? No, after all, we used to love each other. Let me turn and have one last look at her! (He grits his teeth and turns. As soon as he turns around, he feels the blood boiling in his veins.) Ohh, Xicao is running across the snowy ground, her hair disheveled. Three or four young men are chasing her, swearing at her. (Remorse grips his heart like an iron vice. His whole body burning, he whips the cart around and rushes to xicao’s side.) ma zhaoxin (howls): I can’t stand this anymore! Xicao, I’m coming! Ma Zhaoxin’s coming! (Like lightning, the sleigh springs to xicao’s side. ma zhaoxin stands on the sleigh, starring daggers. The whip in his hand strikes indiscriminately at the men chasing xicao. He channels all his anger and regret, all the pain and torment in his heart, into the tip of the whip, which snaps about with vicious precision . . . ) (Shouting as he whips) Ma Zhaoxin’s here. I’m here! I can’t take any more of this! xicao (grabs ma zhaoxin’s legs): Xiaoma, stop, stop beating them. It’s not their fault! ma zhaoxin (grits his teeth): Yeah, I know! I know! It’s not their fault, I know! (But the whip in his hand continues lashing out, even more ferociously. The wedding party is shocked speechless. They stare at this crazed man towering over them, utter a collective whimper, then scatter. ma zhaoxin helps xicao onto the sleigh. The horse bells ring again. Gradually, the wedding music fades; the shouting and cursing fade; the sound of horse bells fades. The sleigh stops. ma zhaoxin turns to face xicao. xicao throws herself into his embrace. The flute plays. Enchanting sunlight shines across Luoma Lake and its exquisite wilderness. The flute melody is cheerful and lyrical but contains a latent apprehension . . . )

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A CT 19 (An empty stage. ma zhaoxin fifteen years later drives a horse- drawn sleigh up to the audience.) ma zhaoxin fifteen years later: Life is like an unfathomable fog. In the winter of this year, a great blizzard raged through every corner of the Luoma Lake wilderness. The snow blanketed the ground all the way up to the clouds, as if trying to swallow up the whole world. The new kingdom people had built in their minds had to endure the oppressive blizzard . . . (Indistinct sounds can be heard from the Fifth Brigade sleigh garage. Suddenly, a newborn baby’s bawl resounds from inside the sleigh garage! The cry is sonorous and virile, like a rooster announcing the sunrise. This child is an irreplaceable comfort to the deeply scarred hearts of his parents’ generation. On the backdrop, a large pair of hands appears to be lifting a naked boy toward the sky; the baby is kicking and crying.) (His eyes shining with excitement) Oh, he’s here! He may have a vile father and cowardly mother, but he’s a son of the wilderness! (Celebratory music and the clinking of wineglasses can be heard, though faint and distant. The door of the sleigh garage opens. A sullen ma zhaoxin emerges, a down jacket draped over his shoulders and a shoulder bag tucked under his arm. ma zhaoxin fifteen years later walks up to meet him. The screen separating them parts, and the two ma zhaoxins confront each other for the first time.) ma zhaoxin fifteen years later (excitedly): Has Xicao given birth . . . ? ma zhaoxin: Yeah . . . ma zhaoxin fifteen years later: What do you think you’re doing? ma zhaoxin: I’m leaving . . . (From inside the sleigh garage the baby’s cry grows even more sonorous and virile.) (Erupts) That’s not my son! It’s not! I can’t stand the sight of him! I’m a man! I’m a young man in my prime! ma zhaoxin fifteen years later: You’re not a man. You’re a far cry from a real man. You’re nothing but a weakling. ma zhaoxin (confused): A weakling? ma zhaoxin fifteen years later: Yes, you are a weakling, running off like this, refusing to take responsibility. Xicao loves you with all her heart. Walking out on a woman when she needs you most, that’s totally irresponsible. Men come into this world to get things done, to take on responsibilities. But girls are different. Every woman is a book from heaven. Their entry into this world is already tainted by tragedy, that’s why they’re so beautiful. Beauty always makes people despondent . . . ma zhaoxin (lowers his head): I don’t understand, my heart’s filled with pain . . . ma zhaoxin fifteen years later: You’re so obsessed with your own pain that you never stop to consider your responsibilities. Can’t you see? Pain fades away, happiness fades away too . . . Of course there are flaws in your relationship with Xicao. But our lives derive their meaning from trying to mend the flaws of the world, from the

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pursuit of perfection. That’s why the flaws are so essential. Actually, so-called perfection doesn’t even exist, but people keep chasing after that mirage, building utopian kingdoms of perfection in their minds, one upon the ruins of another. No sooner has one kingdom toppled then they’re off in search of the next. To be human is to be part of this epic tragedy. You’re just a bit player . . . You’re not walking out now, are you? ma zhaoxin: No! I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about. All I know is I can’t stay in Luoma Lake . . . ma zhaoxin fifteen years later: Where will you go? ma zhaoxin: I’ll go where I must . . . ma zhaoxin fifteen years later: And where would that be? ma zhaoxin: Where? (Tongue-tied) I don’t know! But I’ll find it! I’ll go out and find it! ma zhaoxin fifteen years later: You won’t find the place where you belong! I’ve searched for fifteen years, and somehow I’ve ended up back at Luoma Lake again . . . Revisiting my old haunts, I’ve come to understand that wherever you are is the place you ought to be. Do you still remember Maomao’s song? “I’m a little blade of grass, a little blade of grass in the wilderness . . .” (maomao’s song can be heard.) ma zhaoxin: I don’t need to listen to this, I’ve heard enough of your prattling! (He leaps onto the sleigh, fiercely lashes the horse’s hindquarters twice, then disappears into the blizzard. The groaning of a woman who just gave birth can be heard from the sleigh garage, followed by a mother’s lullaby, then a woman’s sobbing. Suddenly, the whole sleigh garage starts to move.) ma zhaoxin fifteen years later: Look! The sleigh garage has sprung to life. (Startled) It’s moving in the direction that Xiaoma just went! (His heart palpitating) Oh, when a girl loves a man, such miraculous forces are unleashed . . . (He lowers his head in excruciating shame. The sleigh garage begins to fly away. From the opposite direction, a disheveled big man yu comes onto the stage. He drags a game leg, chasing after the distant flying sleigh garage. Like a wounded dog, he howls his son’s name in a gravelly voice . . . Suddenly he stands still, lost in a daydream. Being a father, a man—a human being—big man yu still retains some of the timeless attributes of our species. These more noble elements merge into his hallucination: First, we see a naked boy wearing a bib; he teeters toward his father’s outstretched arms. The child coos and laughs. From offstage, there is the mellifluous sound of a child exclaiming “Papa.” A jubilant big man yu stands motionless, arms outstretched . . . But in the blink of an eye the child disappears. Then, two little girls—his younger sister and young maomao—both bound into his open arms, calling out, “Big Brother, Big Brother!” heizi, murdered by su jiaqi, follows along behind the girls. His spine broken, heizi yelps as he stubbornly crawls toward big man yu.) big man yu (tears welling up in his eyes, cries out affectionately): Heizi, Heizi! (Across the stage, another man appears—Big Teakettle li changhe. Covered in filth, his liquor flask in hand, he walks to the front of the stage. Cringing, he looks over his shoulder, terrified.)

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ma zhaoxin fifteen years later: A person who has learned to destroy nature is bound to pay a price: on the one hand, he has to give up what is most human in himself; on the other hand, he has to endure nature’s revenge. Li Changhe will never find peace, even in his dreams . . . (The ferocious snarling and barking of dogs can be heard from every corner of the stage! A vicious pack of hounds encircles li changhe. They give chase, snapping and tearing at him. li changhe cowers in terror, bawling hysterically. But the dogs continue to close in on him.) li changhe (giving up his futile struggle, in desperation): Bite me, go ahead and bite! I  knew this day would come. I tormented you. To tell you the truth, when I was younger, I tormented a lot of people as well. I let whores with syphilis sleep with the Johns . . . Bite me! Go ahead and fucking bite me to death! But know this: I was tormented too! I’m a fucking gelding! (The rampant pack of dogs ignore his wailing and pounce on him; their howling and snarling drown out li changhe’s screams. big man yu walks onstage with a wooden tombstone on his shoulder. He kneels down and begins carving on it with a mallet and chisel.) ma zhaoxin fifteen years later: Whose tombstone is that? big man yu: All of yours. It’s the headstone you put up yourselves . . . ma zhaoxin fifteen years later (reciting): “Here lie the blood, sweat, lives, and souls of a band of Young Pioneers. They came here in search of themselves and gave their last to the Bielahong River . . .” big man yu: All your names are carved on it: Ning Shanshan, Li Tiantian, Xicao . . . Yours too. ma zhaoxin fifteen years later: What are you doing? big man yu (without looking up or stopping): I’m carving my name on it too! The name Yu Changshun deserves to be on it. My name! (The blizzard gains strength. The distant soughing of the sleigh garage grows louder.) ma zhaoxin fifteen years later: This blizzard lasted a long time. The sleigh garage collapsed and Luoma Lake was blown away! The blizzard blasted all human traces from the wilderness: angels, fiends, winners, losers—all gone, willy-nilly! There’s not a soul left . . . Nature seems to prefer its original state of tranquillity and simplicity. The vacant Kingdom of Luoma Lake is like a disfigured, desolate battlefield. Winter snow, summer sun, autumn wind, and spring rain will eventually heal the scars on this mutilated landscape. Peace has been restored . . . (The melodious chime of a bell can be heard from the depths of the stage.) I can’t remember too clearly. Perhaps there was a day like this sometime after I left: Around the time when the dazixiang blossoms, the spring breeze rolls over the wilderness like a giant emerald ink roller. It rolls green the fields, mountains, ponds, and prairies; it rolls green the moonlight rippling on the surface of Luoma Lake. Amid all this mystery, a bell tinkles like the trickling of springwater from a snowy plain, like the sound of the wilderness dreaming . . .

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(On the stage, the Fifth Brigade holds a solemn wedding ceremony in front of the sleigh garage. Four people are being wed: ma zhaoxin, xicao, xing fulin, and the sichuan woman. They stand abreast, red corsages on their chests, their eyes moist with tears.) Nobody came to bless them, but they didn’t need anybody’s blessing! Following the advice of Big Sister Tiantian, Maomao acted as their witness. (Deeply moved, su jiaqi picks up maomao.) su jiaqi: Maomao! Say it! With the Luoma Lake wilderness as our witness, the grooms and brides bow to the wilderness once, twice, thrice . . . (The four newlyweds bow deeply in the direction of the wilderness. It sounds again, that graceful trumpet tune! Amid this dreamlike music, Big Sister li tiantian shows up! The smile on her face radiates benevolence and serenity; her hands are filled with dazixiang petals. Draped in a white cape with a wide red hood, she recalls the legendary Dazixiang Maiden. She walks toward the newlyweds, scattering the large red petals in the air. The dazixiang petals fill the air and become a deluge of flowers.) su jiaqi: Oh, Tiantian, you’ve come? li tiantian: No, Xiaosu, it’s only a dream . . . (Simultaneously, that primitive kind of drum unique to the wilderness pounds out its first sonorous note. Smiling peacefully, ning shanshan walks up behind li tiantian. She’s still wearing the same old faded army uniform, her submachine gun slung across her chest.) (Surprised) Xiaosu, look, Shanshan’s here! su jiaqi: No, Tiantian, it’s only a dream . . . li tiantian: Oh, a dream . . . (That something eternal that only women possess emerges—li tiantian, weeping, scatters dazixiang petals over su jiaqi and ning shanshan. The music grows more elegant and stirring. The big drum is pounding. ning shanshan and li tiantian disappear; everything onstage disappears. The vast barren wilderness extends as far as the eye can see. The sun adorns the world in an extraordinarily warm glow. Horse bells ring. ma zhaoxin fifteen years later enters stage left, driving a sleigh. From stage right comes the sound of a woman humming a melody. A middle-aged woman, standing upright, drives a large wagon full of hay onto the stage. Whipping the animals along, she is the very picture of a worldly woman in her prime. Though no longer weak or naive, she is obviously xicao, xicao fifteen years later. It begins snowing. The snowflakes form halos in the sunbeams.) ma zhaoxin fifteen years later: There’s nothing else upon the snow-covered prairie but this translucent pair of sleigh tracks. (The hay wagon and sleigh pass alongside each other.) These sleigh tracks don’t have a starting point or final destination. Snow, this snow would like to cover over the sleigh tracks we leave behind us, but they never vanish . . . (The hay wagon and sleigh pass alongside each other again.)

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These pairs of tracks travel forever alongside each other, but they’ll never cross paths . . . (The trumpet emits a solemn, glorious chord: “Oh, wilderness, the dazixiang blossoms paint red your dawn . . .” The hay wagon and sleigh pass alongside each other repeatedly. The sun grows ever brighter. Snowflakes whirl in the wind . . . ) (Curtain.)

Not es 1. Da chahu (big teakettle) is a slang term for a manager-pimp in a brothel. 2. Also spelled Hezhen or Hoche, this is the name of a national minority tribe residing primarily in the Manchurian borderlands of Heilongjiang province. 3. Caoye (plain) is also a traditional literary term for “the common people,” but the meaning of the double entendre—if intended—is unclear. 4. The Dharmachakra (Wheel of Law) symbolizes the essential teachings of the Buddha; falun here refers to a small-scale version sometimes carried by monks. 5. A sanxian is a three-string, plucked instrument. 6. The flower is Folium rhododendri daurici, or Dahurian rhododendron. 7. This Russian song (known in Chinese as “Xiaolu”) was popular in China at the time. 8. Xylosma congesta is a thorny evergreen tree; the Chinese word can also refer to an oak tree. 9. Heixianshu (literally, black gland rat), is probably a local name for a rat specific to the area. 10. “Xiao” (literally, little) is a familiar form of address used for a younger close friend or colleague. 11. “Big Brother” is a familiar form of address sometimes used by young women for lovers or a close male friend. 12. Big Man Yu uses the pejorative er maozi to refer to Westernized Chinese (including any Chinese who had dealings with Westerners), Christian Chinese (aka “secondary foreigners”), Russians, or people of mixed Chinese and Russian parentage. 13. In Chinese wusishi shouqiang, also known as a “black-star pistol” (heixing shouqiang), the Type 54, based on the Soviet Tokarev TT-33, is a heavy, 9-mm handgun produced in Manchuria and other areas for the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). 14. The banhu is a curved, two-string instrument with a thin, wooden soundboard. 15. The original text uses the slang description sipowu, referring to a four-room house that has been divided into five rooms, probably to cheaply accommodate a growing family. 16. One jin equals 1.10 pounds, 0.50 kilogram. 17. The word for turtle used here, wangba, is common slang for a cuckold. 18. The reference seems to be to a section of the melon trellis that acts as a lean-to or tent/ shed, in which Li Changhe lives during the growing season. 19. Dog kidney is a traditional aphrodisiac. 20. The name Yu Changshun is given here in the original, but it appears to be an error and ought to read Li Changhe. 21. These are well-known lyrics from the Cultural Revolution opera Zhiqu wei Hushan (Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy).

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22. “Educated youth” (zhishi qingnian) is a term referring to educated young people sent to the countryside during the Cultural Revolution, as a means of breaking up the Red Guard factions, with the stated goal of reeducating these (mostly urban) youth under the tutelage of the venerated peasant masses. Lao Han misapplies it to himself, to embellish his sociopolitical status. 23. Wu Song is a famous macho character in the novel Shui hu zuan (Outlaws of the Marsh, or All Men Are Brothers, or The Water Margin), from around the fourteenth century. 24. In Chinese astrology, Vega (Alpha Lyrae, the brightest star in the constellation Lyra) represents the immortal Weaver Girl and Altair (Alpha Aquilae, the main star in the constellation Aquila) the Cowherd. This famous pair of star- crossed lovers are forcibly separated for eternity, reunited only one day each year (the seventh day of the seventh lunar month). 25. This is the place where the mythical Chang’e lives for eternity, after having secretly eaten her husband’s magic longevity medicine. 26. Guisu, the term used, also carries the meaning of “marriage” when referring to a woman. 27. “Mahamaya” (The Great Illusion) is a short story by Tagore containing numerous possible allegorical references to this play. Tagore’s story is about the eponymous Mahamaya, a beautiful young woman whose family, ashamed of her secret love for a young man (Rajib), marry her off to an old man on the brink of death. Mahamaya is widowed the day after her wedding. She is bound to her husband’s funeral pyre, to be cremated with him as a suttee, but a huge storm suddenly douses the fire, freeing Mahamaya but leaving her face horribly scarred. She is reunited with Rajib but remains gloomy and refuses to ever remove her veil, which casts a pall over their relationship. The story appears, among other places, in Tagore’s Galpaguccha (Collected Stories) (Calcutta: Visva-Bharati Granthayan Bibhag, 1926), 148–53. Li Longyun uses the transliteration Mokemoye, although the Chinese title of the story is usually written Mohemoye or Mohamoye. To avoid confusion, we have used the common English transliteration. 28. It is unclear why Li Tiantian refers here to the rare Japanese crane (Grus japonensis, aka the red- crowned crane or Manchurian crane), a symbol of longevity in traditional Chinese mythology. 29. The Communist Youth League of China admits members up to the age of twentyeight. Commonly recognized as an essential prerequisite for a young person without family connections to establish political connections and advance career prospects. 30. Yimakan is a type of chanted and sung oral performance, accompanied by dancing, of the Hezhe nationality of northeast China. The songs, of which there are dozens, are derived from ancient poems, passed along orally. Topics include, among others, Hezhe legends, folklore and history, descriptions of nature, hunting, and love stories. The stories are sung at night and accompany any significant group or tribal occasion, especially the hunt. Yimakan singers hold a place of prestige in Hezhe culture. 31. Meng Guibin was a former PLA soldier and famous singer of the Mao era. 32. A kang is a traditional northern Chinese brick bed that can be heated from below, using a small, built-in wood or coal stove. 33. The reference is to a “labor reform” (laogai) prison in Dedu county, Heilongjiang province, established in 1955; it is no longer operational.

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34. Poxie (worn- out shoe) is a slang term for “slut.” 35. A hutong is a small, residential lane in a city or town, home to a traditional Chinese neighborhood community. 36. There is some probable symbolism here, as the character for mahogany, chun, is also used in compounds referring to one’s parents (chunxuan), one’s father (chunting), and to long life (chunling, or chunshou). 37. KMT stands for Kuomintang, Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist Party. After losing the civil war to the Chinese communists in the late 1940s, KMT members (including their immediate and extended families) who did not flee the PRC were frequently subjected to severe political persecution, imprisonment, hard labor, execution, or other forms of retribution. 38. The coupons were part of a national per capita household food rationing system used at the time. 39. The specific Chinese flora named are xiaoyezhang, liumaozi, and bangchaikezi. Xiaoyezhang, Cinnamomum brevipedunculatum, a type of camphor, apparently has no common English name (a separate source identifies xiaoyezhang as Deyeuxia angustifolia). Liumaozi is a type of Salix, member of the willow family. Bangchaikezi, Corylus mandshurica, is a type of hazel. 40. Reference is probably to a Stalinets-100 (S-100) or T-100, a Soviet tractor produced in the Chelyabinsk Tractor Plant. The 100s ran on tank treads and were capable of being fitted with a number of hydraulic attachments, converting them into bulldozers and other agricultural and engineering vehicles.

Geologists (1995) yang limin tra nsla ted by ti mot hy c . w ong

Time: 1961 to 1994 Place: An apartment in Building 38, across the broad thoroughfare that runs in front of the train station in Beijing1

C ha r a c t e rs luo ming ⿯タ, male, nicknamed “Camel” 2 luo dasheng ⿨▙㔶, male lu jing ⾵Ⳇ, female qu dan ㎺☈, female liu ren ⽁㑈, male tie ying 㝰㱊, female letter carrier 㚅㨳㑉, female

A CT 1 (Late afternoon, 4:10 p.m., September 4, 1961. Inside an apartment, the residence of a former geologist, in a building on the wide thoroughfare that runs in front of the Beijing train station. Plainly visible from the fourthfloor window is the face of the large clock over the station, the gongs from which are also audible from hour to hour. The furnishings of the living room are very plain, with the

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important exception of a large photograph hung in a conspicuous place—of an older person, a camel in tow, facing a large, desolate desert. On an old-style flowerpot rack in one corner is a piece of rock core, along with other articles such as a small cactus plant. There are four doors to the room: the main entrance is on the left, and the exit to the kitchen on the right. The two doors in the middle lead to the bedroom and the bathroom. In view through the bedroom door are a bed and bookshelves. As the curtain opens, lu jing has just washed her long hair and is emerging from the kitchen with it dripping wet. She is wearing the kind of white blouse and blue workers’ overalls popular at the time. She also sports a badge showing that she is a student of the Beijing Petroleum Institute. At the moment, she is in the process of shaking her hair dry, before braiding it into a queue. luo ming quietly pushes open the entrance door, leaning half his body into the room. He is tall and slim, with a somewhat hunched- over posture. He has on a faded student’s uniform, with a couple of fountain pens clipped on a front pocket. He is holding a bag of crackers in one hand. Overall, he’s the picture of honesty and sincerity.) lu jing (with surprise and delight): Luo Ming? Camel! luo ming (smiling): None other than yours truly. lu jing: Why are you just standing out there? Come on in! Come on in and sit yourself down. Let me get my hair done. How did you find the way to my house anyway? luo ming: You’ve forgotten? When we were working at the Ming Tombs Reservoir three years ago, you told me yourself where you lived. lu jing: Then what’s taken you so long to get here? luo ming (after pausing): I was thinking . . . Next week we’ll be getting our different work assignments after graduation. So perhaps after this, we’ll all be swept along by our own currents in the vast sea of life. From now on, we could be forever far apart. lu jing (can’t help laughing): I never thought you would be such a sentimentalist. luo ming: I just thought I ought to come see where you live. You’re the woman in our class who’s from Beijing. If we should return here in the future, it would be nice to have a place to visit. lu jing: Stop this nonsense! You and I are not just classmates, but good friends. You, me, and also Luo Dasheng, we three are the representatives for our class. Why are you just standing there? Please sit down. I’ll get you some tea. Where’s the picture the three of us took together in Tiananmen Square last week? Haven’t you gone to get it? luo ming: Dasheng said he’d get it. (Handing over the crackers) This . . . lu jing: You shouldn’t be buying me anything. Listen, Camel. The picture the three of us took together, we ought to write something on it. luo ming: We ought to write—“When we were together!” lu jing: That’s perfect! That’ll be great! (Pause.) luo ming: I wanted to get you a little more, but the ration ticket I had was for a half catty.

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lu jing: This is fine. Classmates from other provinces tell me that many parts of the country are suffering from natural calamities and people are going hungry. luo ming: After all, we are so blessed to live in Beijing. lu jing: This is the capital, you know, and the whole nation has to see to its welfare. luo ming: How’s your mom? lu jing: She’s working the night shift. luo ming (going over to the window): The location of your home is most remarkable. lu jing: Why? luo ming: From here you can see the large clock over the train station. lu jing: When things are quiet, you can even hear it striking. luo ming (looking out): Hear it striking . . . lu jing: What are you looking at now? luo ming: The crowd of people in front of the station. Makes me think of a couple of lines in some poem: “How many hours have we to witness life’s vicissitudes? / Oh, you vast sea of humanity, where is your destiny?” Indeed, how many people begin journeys from here, and how many return from afar . . . ? How many achieve glory and success, and how many are sent to exile elsewhere . . . ? lu jing: What’s gotten into you today? In five years as your classmate, I’ve never heard you go on and on like that, even waxing poetic. Why don’t you drink some water? luo ming: Perhaps it’s because we’re about to go our separate ways . . . (He goes to stand in front of that photograph of the geologist and the camel and stares at it intently for a long while. Even from his back, it is evident he is deeply moved.) lu jing: What? Why are you over there again? . . . luo ming: It’s nothing, really. I’m just so touched by this photograph. lu jing: The man with the camel is my father. luo ming (to himself ): That’s just too beautiful. A camel is a boat in a desert, a mast that has life . . . Lu Jing, your father is a great man. lu jing (with grief ): A couple of years ago, in September of 1959, during the season when the maple leaves in the Fragrant Hills outside the city turn red, my dad disappeared forever in the Taklamakan Desert.3 He was the first to go in there to look for petroleum, taking along a single camel. As he was leaving us, he was saying to my mom that, in the first Five-Year Plan, only oil production fell short of national projections, and that this fact is a shameful blot on those who work in oil exploration. Then he went off, never to return. luo ming: He can come back . . . lu jing: In my dreams I frequently see my dad come back, with a bag of geological specimens on his back, burnt to a darkish sheen by the desert sun. Then I lean on the windowsill to stare at the big clock over there, watching the hands, waiting as the trains head up north or go down south. (Covering her eyes with one hand, lu jing cannot go on. luo ming goes over to her, lifting up a shaky hand to comfort her by stroking her hair, but finally does not dare do so.) (Looking up at his raised hand) You, you were going to . . .

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luo ming (flustered): I was just thinking of giving you a bit of solace. lu jing: Then why didn’t you do it? luo ming: I . . . (There is an awkward pause.) lu jing: Everybody in our class thinks you are really mysterious, and sometimes a little weird. You’re always off reading by yourself, and no one’s ever heard you talk about your family or your relatives. luo ming: What’s there to talk about? I’m an orphan. lu jing (taken aback): An orphan? I surely had no idea. luo ming: The time you praised me to the class committee, saying that I’d get up at the crack of dawn to read on the athletic field? Well, it was because I used to get so hungry I couldn’t stay asleep. Besides . . . lu jing: Besides what? luo ming: I could then watch you combing your hair in the little grove. lu jing (laughing): You would do something like that. luo ming: Anyway, since we’re about to graduate and be assigned to different jobs, I might as well come clean with you about everything. Do you know why, each time you were in line in the cafeteria, I was always the one standing right behind you? I was . . . lu jing: You’d like to be a big rotten egg, but you’re just too straight! If the teachers had learned of it, they would certainly have deducted a bunch from your good-conduct scores. luo ming: I wouldn’t have cared. lu jing: But, really, it’s time we should be saying goodbye to each other. Where are you figuring you’ll be going to? luo ming: Just anywhere I’m assigned. lu jing: I heard that we might be sent to Songliao Plain in the great northeast. It’ll be extremely cold once you go beyond Harbin. At the extreme, it can get to over forty degrees below zero. luo ming: Doesn’t matter to me. lu jing: I heard from your dorm mates that you don’t even have a proper pair of cotton trousers, and the quilt you have is too thin. luo ming (laughing): Never mind! I’m a camel. Do you know about camels? Other than being able to withstand hunger and thirst, they live through droughts and have enduring strength; a camel has another special quality: after it dies, there’s a bag of water in its insides. Take that out, and someone’s life can be saved with it . . . Lu Jing, I want to go to some faraway place, someplace beyond the edge of the sky,  where I can get right down into the earth, get inside it, into one layer after another . . . lu jing (moved): Camel . . . luo ming (with feeling): I like you, Lu Jing! I really like you. (lu jing says nothing.) I didn’t have the courage to say it out loud. Lu Jing, I really . . .

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(He starts to plant a kiss on her cheek. Flustered, lu jing tries to slip away, causing luo ming to stumble and fall to the floor. The two then look at each other in embarrassment just as there is a sudden knock on the door.) lu jing: Look at the spectacle you’ve made of yourself! Quick! Get up! luo ming: No. I want you to pull me up. lu jing (helping him up): You rotten egg! (Opening the door) Come in. (luo dasheng enters in a huff.) luo dasheng: What took you all this time to open up? (Seeing luo ming) Oh, you’re here. luo ming: Did I startle you in some way? luo dasheng: Not at all. You and her together—I’d say it’s pretty safe. luo ming (angered): I’m not a safe person! luo dasheng: And I don’t enjoy competing to be first. luo ming: But a person still has to make the best use of his time. lu jing: That’s enough, you boys. Don’t argue anymore. (They stop.) luo dasheng: Look, old friends. This should be a most happy time, the three of us together. What’s been happening today, to make things so tense all of a sudden? luo ming: I’d better take off. luo dasheng: Fortunately, I can stay a while. luo ming: It is getting late. luo dasheng: Don’t you want to see the picture of the three of us? (He takes it out.) lu jing (grabbing it away): Let me see it! (She looks at it with luo ming and luo dasheng standing on one side and the other—exactly as they appear in the photograph.) luo dasheng: I let the photographer put in a caption: “Future Geologists.” What do you think? lu jing: Terrific. That’s our common dream. luo dasheng: Come. Extend your hands so that we can grasp them together and lift them up high. To go to challenging places, places our nation needs us the most, to offer up our entire lives for the nation’s petroleum industry—that is our dream! (With hands raised, the three together shout, “Hurrah!”) Hurry and get over to the Student Ser vices Center, Luo Ming. I’ve arranged everything for you. You are to receive ration tickets for twenty feet of cotton cloth and three catties of cotton, as well as fifteen dollars. Get over there right away. Secretary Ma will be waiting for you. luo ming: I’ll go on ahead, then. (He exits. There is a brief silence.) luo dasheng: I have a piece of important news for you, Lu Jing. lu jing: What important news? luo dasheng (eager to see her reaction): Songliao Petroleum’s great battle for oil has already begun in the frozen tundra of the northeast.

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lu jing: Well, our friends at school all know something about that. Some of those who graduated last year have already been sent there, including someone I consider a pretty good friend. luo dasheng: What is certain is that, after their historic success with their discovery, the Songji Sanjing4 people abandoned their original site and moved their forces farther north to drill a couple of exploratory wells in Xingnan and Sa’ertu, both of which gushed out huge amounts of high-grade crude. So they have set our course of action. On the twenty-fifth of February this year, the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party approved the report of the Oil Ministry regarding the organization of Songliao Petroleum’s great battle. lu jing: If only my dad were still alive! Our country’s oil-poor days are about to end! luo dasheng: This is a great opportunity, Lu Jing. You understand? It’s a great chance to show what we can do and to temper ourselves in the process! In anyone’s lifetime, there are only a few critical moments. Think about it. The continental deposits of oil have blown away the traditional theory that only marine deposits can accumulate it. This brings on a brand-new area of investigation for the world at large. Whatever answers we can come up with, once verified, will all become world- class, don’t you see? lu jing: We’ll have to follow orders, so who’s to know where any one of us will wind up? Will it be Yumen, or Qinghai, or Xinjiang? Who’s to know? luo dasheng: I was just going to tell you about that. I’ve gotten a news leak from the school’s administrators. Our entire class, the whole kit and caboodle, could be sent to the same place! lu jing: Everybody’s going to the northeast? No exceptions? luo dasheng (grabbing her hand): That’s right! We’ll continue to be together, Lu Jing. We’ll be working together, living together, studying together, never to be apart. We’ll be classmates and fellow warriors. How fabulous that will be! lu jing (also excited): Yes. Our class all together, helping one another out, supporting one another, dedicating our youth and our lives to our country’s oil industry. Whether we squabble or get along with one another, it’s clear to me that we’ll continue to make progress. luo dasheng: Come the day we become old, we’ll be able to say to those after us that our generation . . . (Greatly moved, he embraces lu jing, but in a properly friendly manner. luo ming quietly enters.) luo ming: Sorry, Lu Jing, but it might be a bit unsafe for you to be with him. luo dasheng (surprised): Huh? Why are you back? luo ming: The old watchman locked up the front gate, so I couldn’t get out of the building. Nothing I could do. I couldn’t very well just linger there on the stairway. luo dasheng: That’s just great. Looks like we’ll have to spend the night here. luo ming: I was just feeling a bit dizzy. lu jing: What? luo dasheng: Otherwise, we three could just talk all night.

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luo ming: We’ll never run out of topics. (luo dasheng and luo ming both sit down. Her eyes wide open, lu jing looks from one to the other.) luo dasheng: Before we have our graduation, the school will be putting on a social gathering for us. Let’s get the class together there and sing the “Geologists’ Song.” luo ming (sings): “What makes our red flag flutter? / The breezes from the vales.” (Suddenly switching to a higher key) “What makes our white tents sparkle? . . .” luo dasheng: That’s good, that’s good. lu jing (with anger): That’s enough! Both of you can just climb out of here! luo dasheng: Climb out? luo ming: Hey, that’s not right. We’re classmates. lu jing: How would I explain to my mom about a couple of overgrown children in the house when she gets back? Get going. I’ll take you two to the wall outside, and you can just climb over it. luo ming (reluctantly): Oh, all right. luo dasheng: But I’m still an officer of our class. lu jing (laughing): Quit throwing your status around. Just get going. (Lights dim. 9:30 a.m., three days later. Bright sunlight, flooding in from the window, illuminates the room. The general atmosphere is extremely serene. Wearing thick glasses for her nearsightedness, a plump young woman, qu dan, along with lu jing, is in the process of sewing buttons on a new pair of cotton trousers.) qu dan: Your mother’s really something, spending the whole night to sew a new pair of cotton pants, and then rushing right off in the morning to her job in the hospital. lu jing: Let me do that. Looks like you’re putting yourself out over nothing. qu dan: Can’t believe I’m not able to thread this needle. lu jing: I probably shouldn’t have told my mom that one of my classmates doesn’t have a pair of cotton pants. qu dan: But it’s so much trouble for us just to sew on some buttons. Your mother, Lu Jing, is always busy doing this and doing that, spending her whole life taking care of others. I bumped into her on the street and saw her carrying a small lunch box. She told me that some child had suffered burns and couldn’t chew anything hard, and so she was making him some soft noodles. She’s really a wonderful person. lu jing: But Mom often cries when she’s by herself. qu dan: Why’s that? lu jing: She misses my dad. When he used to go away year after year, she never once saw him off. Later, though, I discovered that each time Dad left, she’d invariably get over to the window, to watch his back until he disappeared from the entryway with the ticket inspectors. qu dan: That’s what I call true love. lu jing: And when Dad came back each time, he would always look for our lighted window as soon as he got off the train. qu dan (breaking into snivels): Don’t go on about that anymore. I can’t bear it.

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lu jing: What’s the matter with you? qu dan: Last night I . . . I had something happen to me. lu jing: Don’t you try to frighten me. qu dan: It’s true. You know Liu Ren, I suppose. He’s the transportation major, the one known all over school as “The Big Talker.” He’s always telling people that his grandfather once gave a haircut to Lin Biao.5 lu jing: I know, I know. Didn’t he once write you a love letter? qu dan: Don’t bring that up. Last night he told me in the little grove that he wanted me to be his real girlfriend. Then he hugged me and kissed me . . . lu jing: You didn’t resist? qu dan: No. The point is that I never wanted to resist! I felt as if an electric current were passing through my body. My heart was beating furiously, and I felt extremely blessed. Lu Jing, am I a fallen woman, desiring a capitalistic way of life? He was so earnest, though, shaking all over, shedding tears. He said that he’d never let me suffer from anything for the rest of my life. lu jing: Isn’t all this a bit too quick? qu dan: He said that love is like the way we in Beijing boil pig tripe. We need to control the time: too short, and it’ll be raw; too long, and it’ll turn tough. You have to strain it as soon as you’re done cooking it. You think a theory like that can stand up to scientific analysis? lu jing (laughing out loud): I don’t rightly know. qu dan: Your dad and mom were so good together! They were quietly, deeply, perpetually . . . lu jing: My parents were not exactly like pig tripe. They were more like a couple of old pickles that taste better the longer they’re together in brine. Hey, let’s get these buttons sewn on. Camel will be here for his pants very soon. (They finish the work.) qu dan: Hey, what about you? lu jing: What about me? qu dan: Which one do you prefer? Dasheng or Camel? lu jing: I like them both. qu dan: But you can’t very well take both of them. lu jing: What are you talking about? qu dan: You’ve got to make a choice, Lu Jing. Whichever one you think is best, you should devote yourself to him. Don’t you understand? lu jing: The two of us are best. qu dan: Oh, c’mon. This is serious. lu jing: Which one would be your choice? qu dan: Of course it would be Luo Dasheng. He’s the prince on a white horse in our school, with the looks to match. Camel, now, with his unkempt appearance, his weird ways, his constant huffing and puffing, his wretched posture—he’s the very image of an effete scholar. If you married him, it’d be like sticking a flower into cow dung.

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lu jing (with hesitation): But I do like Camel more. qu dan: Oh, heavens! Love is demonic. lu jing: Liking is liking, and loving is loving. I’m thinking that I’ll just work for a few years and see what happens. (There is a knock on the door. luo ming and luo dasheng enter, the latter looking glum.) qu dan: Does it take two whole people to pick up one pair of pants? luo ming: What can I do? He’s the class president, and he says he needs to speak to Lu Jing on behalf of the school. luo dasheng (holding up a fist): I don’t want to say anything today, but I can’t help it if my fist wants to do some talking. qu dan: Have you gone mad? You want to get violent? Is the fact that Lu Jing is having this pair of trousers made for Camel so hard for you to take? Tsk, tsk, tsk. How petty of you. That’s right: jealousy is just love, just being violent. Let me tell you, this pair of pants is something Lu Jing’s mom spent an entire night putting together. luo ming (picking up the trousers): Thank you, Mom! lu jing: Why don’t you try them on and see if they fit? luo ming: Better do that when I’m back in the dorm. lu jing: If there’s some problem, we can fix it right here. luo dasheng (with irritation): Just hurry up and get your pants off. After you try the new pair on, we’ll be able to get out of here. lu jing (wanting him to stop): Dasheng! (luo ming is embarrassed as he removes his trousers, revealing worn cotton underwear that is full of patches and holes large and small. He appears rather ludicrous as he gingerly pulls on the new pair, obviously grateful for the warming kindness he is receiving. luo dasheng looks on impatiently.) luo ming (going over to him): Look at this, class leader. A good fit, and so warm. qu dan: Don’t say any more, Camel. lu jing: What were you going to tell me, Dasheng? luo dasheng: Uh, how should I put it . . . ? (He pauses. liu ren appears at the door carrying a stack of face masks.) liu ren: Can I come in? qu dan: How did you find your way here? lu jing: Come right in. Sit down. Please sit down. liu ren (entering the room): My name’s Liu Ren. We’re not in the same department, but we’ve bumped into each other regularly. I’ll also be going to the northeast, and we’ll be traveling together. I don’t know whether I’ll succeed or fail there, but I’ll need to put forth my utmost effort. Please be unstinting in your instruction. qu dan: Just go sit down over there! liu ren (looking around at everyone): Okay. qu dan: Why did you buy all those masks?

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liu ren: To give to each of our schoolmates. Do you realize that when my grandfather was fighting the Japs in the plains of the northeast, he lost half his teeth because they became frozen? luo ming (now back in his old trousers): Why his teeth, and not something else? liu ren: As a matter of fact, if a person stays out in the freezing cold for too long and then tries to drink boiling hot water right away after going indoors, his teeth will immediately blow up—bang! (Everyone is stunned.) liu ren: I was born in the far north. During the winters there, the fierce wind would roll up bits of the snow, which looked like little flopped- over silvery snakes stuck on the cracked and frozen ground, whizzing and buzzing. The locals called the phenomenon “big puffs of smoke.” (Everyone shudders.) That’s why you’ll have to put on these face masks until—let’s hope—doing so becomes a habit. A fellow soldier of my grandfather’s stayed outside in the snow for three days and three nights. When he finally got back indoors, he touched his face once and lost his nose. Then he felt around again and knocked his ears off as well. That’s why you can’t bump any part of yourself that’s been frozen. You first need to rub it with powdered snow to revive it bit by bit. qu dan: That’s really too frightening. liu ren: But it would be worth it if we can wipe away the “oil-poor” label that has stuck to our nation. Are you aware that in the first period after the People’s Republic was established, petroleum production amounted to only a hundred and twenty thousand tons, while the daily production in America was a million, eight hundred thousand barrels—that one day’s production there was equal to what was produced here in two years? During the sixties in the United States, the Rockefeller oil barons were able to put their monstrous stamp from Wall Street to Washington, D.C., from politics to economics. It’s only because of oil that they could have remained so high-handed. qu dan: Go ahead and shoot your mouth off. You’ll get yourself in trouble sooner or later. liu ren: I still haven’t said anything. I come from strong stock, from ancestors who’ve gone through a lot. My grandpa once gave Lin Biao a haircut. qu dan: There you go again. (Everyone chuckles.) liu ren: Yesterday I decided to write a poem down in my book. lu jing: Let’s hear it. liu ren: “Pushed by the east wind, the petroleum keeps flowing, / As generations of youth are redder growing. / Moving ever upward, socialism’s inspiring, / While imperialism, a backward scallion, is earthward miring.” (Silence.) Not bad, huh? (Laughter breaks out.) qu dan: Let’s get out of here so you won’t go on making a fool of yourself. liu ren: See you all in the northeast!

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(qu dan pulls him away and they exit together.) lu jing: Hey, let’s just sit back. He’s really a lot of fun. luo ming: He and Qu Dan are becoming quite fond of each other. I saw them in the grove last night. lu jing: Why are you telling me this? luo dasheng: He can’t live without love. luo ming: A man can go on without it. lu jing: Please stop your jawing! You can go or sit here a while longer. But what’s gotten into the two of you? Normally, you’re really such close buddies, but the last few days you’ve been going at it as soon as you see each other. luo ming (picking up the cotton trousers): I guess it’s best that I leave. luo dasheng: Come back here! lu jing: You seem to be out of sorts today, Dasheng. (Pause.) luo dasheng: You probably won’t be going to the northeast, Lu Jing. lu jing (startled): Why’s that? luo dasheng: The dean’s office has allowed me to pass the news to you, so that you can prepare yourself mentally. lu jing: Prepare myself for what? luo dasheng: Prepare to remain in this school, to be . . . a teacher! lu jing (incredulously): No, no no! This can’t be true. Why can everyone else go, and I alone have to stay? It’s not fair! Not fair! (She plops on the table and starts to sob.) luo dasheng (not knowing what to do): Look, to be a teacher is also a marvelous thing. It’s a job someone will always be glad to take. Because our nation’s petroleum industry is developing so fast, it’s also important to nurture upcoming talent to work in it. Wouldn’t you agree, Luo Ming? luo ming: That’s right, that’s right. You’ll be in Beijing, and we’ll come visit you. luo dasheng: The institute means well. People feel that you have fine character, and your academic record is outstanding. Not just anybody can become a teacher. Also, your mother is here by herself, and she has nobody else. lu jing: No, I’m not some wimpy academic. I don’t care at all about staying in a metropolis. I don’t hanker after material comforts. I can endure any hardship. I’m not afraid of dying. (luo ming goes over to her, wanting to comfort her.) Take your hand away! I don’t want sympathy from either of you. You both just get out of here! (luo dasheng and luo ming stand there speechless. From the station comes the whistle of a departing passenger train. Lights dim. 4:30 p.m., three days later. Some candy and melon seeds are on the small table in the room. There are also a few apples and a pot of tea. The atmosphere is one of great excitement. luo dasheng, luo ming, liu ren, lu jing, and qu dan are all there, with cups in hand and cracking melon seeds. The conversation is abuzz about the immediate future.)

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luo dasheng: Hey, quiet down, will you? Quiet down. Lu Jing the teacher has a few words for us. lu jing: I still don’t dare call myself a teacher in front of you all. Three days ago, I bawled because I was not going to go with you to the northeast, and I’m truly sorry about that. I’ve thought everything over now and feel that any objection I make would undermine the principle of following orders. liu ren: You’re our general on the home front. qu dan: Don’t interrupt her! lu jing: Tomorrow, when the clock over the station strikes six times, you, my dear classmates, will be leaving our alma mater, leaving Beijing to go to a faraway place. At this time, I also want to say that I cannot bear to be apart from you, and that I love you all. (Voice thickening with emotion) You are now all packed and ready to go. But I want everyone of you to remember that you still have an old classmate in Beijing, and that this is your home! No matter where you go, even to the ends of the earth, our friendship is for always! (Tears begin to flow.) I won’t be seeing you off tomorrow. I’m uncomfortable with jostling crowds and don’t want to have to bid you goodbye. Come. My mom has allowed me to invite you to this gathering to say our farewells. Let our tea be a substitute for wine, and let’s drain our cups! (They clink their teacups, drink down their tea, and then fall silent. No one has anything to add. Then a knock at the door, and lu jing goes to answer it. Standing outside is the letter carrier, an eighteen-year- old girl.) letter carrier: Number 401? Here’re your newspaper and mail. lu jing: Thank you. Why . . . letter carrier: My mother has retired, and I’m taking over her job. lu jing: You’re so young and pretty. letter carrier: This is my first day, and I’m still learning. I’m sorry if I’m late with anything. See you. (She exits.) lu jing (pleasantly surprised): Come over here. It’s a letter from the northeast! (qu dan grabs it to stare at the return address. The others crowd around.) qu dan: What’s “Farm No. 302, Agricultural Reclamation District, Anda County”? liu ren: The Songliao oil fields are still considered confidential, in order to prevent foreign operatives from learning anything about them. According to my grandpa, Anda County is located in the heart of Songliao Plain. qu dan (ready to tear it open): Hurry up and let’s see what the letter says. luo dasheng: Take it easy. We need to know whether that’s all right with Lu Jing. The letter could be confidential. lu jing: Don’t be such a killjoy. What do you mean “confidential”? It’s from Ah Nan, who graduated from the institute last year. Quick, open it up. Everybody needs to know what’s going on in the northeast. Liu Ren, why don’t you read it out loud to us?

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liu ren (becoming emotional as he reads): “How are you, Lu Jing? We’ve been apart for a long time, but I’m somewhat late answering your letter. You would certainly not be upset with me if you could imagine the kind of difficult environment I have to live and work in.” (Skipping a beat) “Last winter, after the long train whistle sounded, I felt I was saying goodbye to Beijing forever. The train went past field after field, river after river, village after village, taking us to a large wasteland without borders or connections. The very first night, a snowstorm ripped open our tent and blew away our maps.” (Skipping several lines) Look at this! “Even young people who had never been through the baptism of the revolutionary battles and the trials of the bad years all say that now they understand better what the word ‘revolution’ means. Veterans who have gone through a hundred battles are praising the oil workers here as ‘a branch of the liberation army in blue uniforms.’ ” luo dasheng: Read on, read on. liu ren (continuing): “You know, Lu Jing, that there is a petroleum worker here named Wang Jinxi, from Yumen. Everybody calls him ‘Iron Man.’ He has within himself the great national spirit of overcoming difficulty, as well as the strength of character to practice universal love toward others. He is the leader of the 1205 Roughneck Team. In March of last year, the drilling rig arrived without any arrangements for raising it. So what were we to do? He got the workers together and, tugging and lifting with their own shoulders and arms, they moved those sixty- odd tons to their proper place, some ten kilometres away. Ropes were snapped and crowbars were bent; shoulders and hands bled. But not a single soul complained. ‘I’d rather live twenty years fewer,’ said Iron Man Wang, ‘but we’ve got to do all we can to set up the big oil field!’ ” (Pause. Everyone is wordless. Wiping away tears, liu ren hands the letter over to lu jing.) luo dasheng: That’s just magnificent! We intellectuals should take care to learn from Iron Man and work hard to reform our worldview so that we never stop moving upward day after day. luo ming: In my opinion, it’s best for those of us who work in geology to move downward day after day. lu jing: All right. Whether upward or downward, all of us have one aim! What will another twenty or thirty years bring? I can think of what Pavel6 says, that “when the time comes to look back on our own past, let us neither be ashamed that we have labored in vain, nor be regretful that we have let the time pass for naught.” I propose, as we are about to leave each other, that we sing the “Geologists’ Song” together. Qu Dan, you take the lead. qu dan (sings): “What makes our red flag flutter?” . . . Hey, sing out!

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(Everyone begins singing, injecting strong emotion into the song. Eyes are brimming with tears.) What makes our red flag flutter? The breezes from the vales. What makes our white tents sparkle? The raindrops in the gales. Hot as fire our passions . . . (The clock over the train station begins to strike. Lights dim.) (Curtain.)

A CT 2 (January 6, 1964. 3:00 p.m. The location is as before, but there are changes, as almost three years have gone by. Snow swirls in the sky as the station’s clock strikes three times. lu jing has matured in appearance, with her hair now cut pageboy-style. She carries herself with gentle dignity and she is composed and lovely. At the moment, she is correcting her students’ homework papers, with textbooks and notebooks stacked up by her side. The letter carrier enters.) letter carrier: 401, your newspaper and mail. lu jing (opening the door): Thank you. letter carrier: There’s good news in today’s paper. (Takes out some pieces of candy) Here, have some celebration candy. lu jing: What for? letter carrier: I got married yesterday. lu jing: Oh, I wish you both great happiness. Why aren’t you taking a few days off for an occasion like that? letter carrier: Can’t do it. Each turnip makes its own hole. In other words, nobody else knows the addresses well enough. See you tomorrow. (She exits. lu jing sits down and opens up the newspaper. The lead article startles her and brings her immense joy. Unconsciously, she begins reading it out loud.) “china now basically self- sufficient in petroleum. According to a news release from the fourth meeting of the Second Annual Conference of National Representatives, our nation, which relied on imports to supply the greater portion of what it needed in the past, has now become basically self-sufficient in petroleum. The time of the Chinese people’s usage of foreign oil is gone forever.” (Jumping up) That’s just fabulous! (The phone rings.)

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(Picking up the receiver) It’s me, it’s me . . . Why aren’t you speaking up? Don’t just be silent. Say something! (Letting out a screech) What? It’s you? Oh, heavens! Is it really you? At least you’ve gotten back. Where are you now? Downstairs?! Then why don’t you just come right up, rather than let me babble to you on the phone?! Come up here quick. I’m waiting for you! Of course I’m still single. (She puts down the receiver, feeling a bit flustered. Then suddenly her face breaks into a smile, followed by a somewhat glum expression. She gives herself a once- over in front of the mirror before hurrying to pick up the room. There is a knock at the door. lu jing takes a few quick steps toward it, but then stops, retreats to her original place, and calms herself down.) Please come in. (luo dasheng pushes open the door. He has on an old army overcoat, with a scarf around his neck, his shoulders covered with snowflakes. He is darker and appears to be cultivating a beard. He stands there silently, carrying a travel bag in one hand.) Why are you just standing out there? Come in here! luo dasheng: I . . . I really want to give you a hug. lu jing: We should probably just shake hands . . . you warrior. (She goes over to him on her own.) luo dasheng: I’ve dreamed about this day, when we would see each other again. lu jing: Me too . . . (They grasp each other’s hands tightly. lu jing then helps luo dasheng out of his overcoat and hangs it up.) luo dasheng (excitedly): Have you seen what’s in the paper? lu jing: I’ve seen it. The time of dependence on foreign oil is gone forever! It’s a great achievement. luo dasheng (with evident pride): Our annual petroleum production rose to ten million tons in one stroke, over a hundred times more than when our government began. lu jing: Is it snowing outside?7 luo dasheng: Yes, it’s snowing. When I walked out of the station this afternoon, I felt I was dreaming when I saw the broad space in front and the snowflakes flying everywhere. I lifted up my eyes to look at the sky over Beijing, which is unique in all the world. Am I really back? (Smiles) Could I have gotten back just like that? lu jing (joining his smile): You’re back—really. luo dasheng: I was afraid you’d be disturbed if I just showed my face, so I gave you a phone call first. lu jing: You’ve gotten darker and thinner. And you’re sprouting whiskers. You people must have gone through a lot. (They stop talking while lu jing pours him a cup of tea.) luo dasheng: How can I describe it? That kind of hardship is beyond imagination, and even beyond what a person can bear. (Proudly) But we’re men, real men! Would you believe me if I told you that once I didn’t take off my clothes to go to

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bed for three whole months? I had fleas all over my body, and my hair was so long I looked like a prisoner. In the winters, both my hands and my feet were frostbitten. During the rainy season in the summers I had to duck under an umbrella inside my tent in order to draw my geological maps. My face looked like steamed bread from all the mosquito bites . . . Have you ever eaten daylilies? lu jing: Isn’t that the dried stuff we call “lily buds,” the stuff that can be stir-fried with meat? luo dasheng: Meat? (Laughing) When they just put in a bit of salt and let you eat the stuff like rice, you felt like you were some animal munching on grass. Some people became deserters and some got sick and died, but I made it through. Three years in a row I was designated a Warrior of the Red Flag. lu jing: It does seem like you went to war! luo dasheng (taking out a package from inside his jacket): When I went through Harbin, I bought you a scarf. lu jing (unwrapping it and putting it on): How does it look? luo dasheng: You’re really pretty, just like Lin Daojing.8 lu jing: You! You’re somebody who really knows how to sweet-talk a woman! Having gone through all that, you still haven’t forgotten to pick something up for an old female comrade. You’re hungry, aren’t you? luo dasheng: A bit. (Still wanting to talk) As soon as I got there, I became the de facto person in charge. I had to figure out what needed to be done, and put out plans of action— lu jing (cutting him off ): Just hold it. I’m going to cook us a meal. luo dasheng: Where’s your mom? lu jing: She’s become the assistant director of the hospital, and is even busier than before. luo dasheng: That’s right. Your letter said that you’ve put in a telephone in your house. lu jing: I told you that because I didn’t want us to lose contact. Hey, your coming to Beijing this time, is it for some kind of meeting, or are you on your way somewhere else? luo dasheng: It’s not for a meeting, and I’m not passing through. I’m being transferred back here, and I’ll have to report for duty in three days. lu jing (happily surprised): Really? luo dasheng: When I first got the news about being sent back here to help develop a research program, I didn’t believe it myself. lu jing: We really ought to celebrate. luo dasheng: My superior there really thought a lot of me. (Noticing the strange look on lu jing’s face) How have you been these last years? Any changes? lu jing: I’m in the Geology Department at the institute, teaching first-year students. luo dasheng: So things are going great? lu jing: We can’t have everything we want in life. For one thing, I never had the chance to put myself in a truly soul-stirring situation, the way all of you have had. luo dasheng (moved): Don’t think like that. I’m back now . . . and I haven’t made a mistake. If . . . if we can be together . . . You know that I love you . . .

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(He caresses her hand, in a way that is less restrained and more prolonged than usual.) lu jing (taking her hand away): I’ve got to go and cook. luo dasheng: Fine. lu jing: What’s so fine? luo dasheng: You’re picking a fine time to go cook. (The two look at each other, suddenly wordless.) lu jing: Where are you staying? luo dasheng (somewhat irritably): I’ve yet to report my arrival, so how would I know where I’ll be staying? I’m just a dummy, barging in here before I could even comb my hair or wash my face. lu jing (apologetically): Don’t talk like that. luo dasheng (with anger): All right. If you want to hear about Camel, just say so straight out. lu jing: At least you should have mentioned him to me. Also, what about Qu Dan and Liu Ren? luo dasheng: Then why haven’t you asked? lu jing: Do I have to? Three years ago, in the fall—you and Camel, as well as Qu Dan, Liu Ren, and I—we were together in this room, singing and saying farewell to one another. We can never forget that, right? luo dasheng: Hasn’t he written to you? lu jing: No. That darn guy. When I see him again, I’ll be giving him a couple of good swift kicks! luo dasheng: When we first got to the oil field, Camel and I were assigned to work together in the director’s office. We both participated in the project to open up the oil field, which achieved huge gains in two years. It was only when we were preparing the general report for the symposium on the technology of oil field development that he had an unexpected problem. lu jing: What kind of problem? luo dasheng: They found out during the Four Cleanups campaign9 that his father had run off to Hong Kong in 1947, and to Indonesia after that. lu jing: What does that have to do with him? luo dasheng: You need to go and ask the work team for the Four Cleanups. At the symposium, the reaction to the report we presented was sensational. Immediately afterwards, the Geological Director’s Office was elevated to be the Oil Field Research Institute and was moved into new quarters. I was promoted to be chief of the Development Office, but he was sent down to the grass roots—to the Eastern Experimental Station, up north . . . Don’t get angry with me. It’s not my fault that I’ve been sent back here from the front lines of the war for oil and he hasn’t. Honestly, Camel and I are the best of friends. You know that. lu jing (after a pause): So you’re thinking there’s no chance he’d be coming back, right? (luo dasheng does not answer her.) Why do you think that? What would you have Camel do? luo dasheng: What are you thinking?

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lu jing: You know in your heart. luo dasheng (shouting out): Don’t you say it! lu jing (flopping herself down on a chair): Look here. What’s this coming to? luo dasheng (walking slowly over to the coatrack to take down his overcoat and pick up his travel bag): I . . . I better get going. I’ll be at the Petroleum Guesthouse. lu jing (suddenly hugging him from behind): Don’t leave, you hear me? If you go off like this, I’ll feel terrible. luo dasheng: You need me here? lu jing: . . . Today, had I not seen you, I would have just about put him out of my mind. luo dasheng: I really want to have a stiff drink—and a good cry. (The station clock strikes four times. Lights dim. 9:20 p.m., three days later. The room is empty, and completely silent. There is a knock on the door. After some time, tie ying slowly pushes it open and enters. She is wearing a leather hat and the coarse cotton clothing of a worker. She carries a couple of bags with her, one in front and the other on her back.) tie ying: Anybody home? The door’s not locked. (Clutching several thick volumes, lu jing enters without even looking up.) lu jing (staggering back): You are— tie ying: Is this the residence of Lu Jing, the teacher? lu jing: Yes, that’s me. tie ying: I’m a worker from the Petroleum Experiment Station, in the northeast. My name is Tie Ying. (She puts down her backpack.) lu jing (setting her books aside): Please have a seat. tie ying: These are things the geologist Luo Ming sent along to you. Nothing fancy, just stuff from the northeast: yellow beans, melon seeds, and canned milk powder produced in Anda. lu jing: It must have been hard on you to carry all that on your back all this way. tie ying: It was no trouble at all. lu jing: You’re here in Beijing to . . . ? tie ying: I came to attend the conference for model workers. lu jing: Oh, congratulations! (Each one looks the other over.) tie ying: It’s a cinch to find you, so close to the train station. Actually, even if Geologist Luo hadn’t given me the address, I would still have found the place. lu jing: How so? tie ying (smiling good-naturedly): One time, as I was about to wash his bedding, I found a pile of letters under his pillow, all addressed to Lu Jing at Building 38, Jianguomennei Avenue. That’s the right address, isn’t it? lu jing: Yes, indeed. Come, have some water. tie ying (picking up the glass): I was puzzled about why he wouldn’t send them out after writing them. I also wondered what this sister named Lu Jing looks like. lu jing (smiling): Oh, just like this.

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tie ying: You’re really such a cultured lady. I could see at once that you’re an educated person. lu jing: How has he been? tie ying (brashly): Don’t ask me such a question. The man is really hopeless. In doing the laundry for him, I’ve never found a single pair of socks of the same color. He stuffs all his dirty clothes under his bed. He’s good-natured, though. Never wants to fight about anything. So many of the technological advances in the experiment station have been the result of his initiatives, even though others have claimed credit for them—things like water flooding to get at the oil, or opening up oil fields a stratum at a time, all in accordance with international standards. lu jing: How can that be? tie ying: Because he has relations overseas, he can never get ahead. It was quite laughable what happened one time. A person who was sent to make a report didn’t know his job. So the man just squirreled Luo Ming away in the next room, where he could send someone to him to ask about anything he didn’t understand. Luo Ming just went along without making any fuss. What can you say about somebody like that? lu jing: Well, he’s actually an orphan . . . tie ying: All of us workers treat him very well, and the field director has also praised him. lu jing: What all did he say? tie ying: That the man is dependable. lu jing: Was that all? tie ying: Aiya! You didn’t see it, but that little compliment made him so happy. He said that if he could be trusted to do things, that’s good enough. To hear someone say he is dependable—what more would he want? lu jing (suddenly tearing up): Yes, what more would he want? tie ying: You—what’s the matter? Did I say something wrong? lu jing: No, you didn’t. Why doesn’t he come to Beijing? tie ying: Come to Beijing? He doesn’t even take off on holidays. He’s always in a rush, even to go to the toilet. This last lunar New Year, our cafeteria gave each person half a catty of flour and six ounces of ground meat. Guess what the guy did? He made everything into two large dumplings, and then boiled them in a pot until they became a stew. (Laughing out loud) The man’s really too much! (Then pausing) But I like him. I just look up to well-educated people. Don’t they say that roughnecks can get the oil to flow by just letting out a roar? But it really happens from science. Without people of learning, how can any oil field work out? The talk about roughnecks roaring is only to acknowledge our spirit and determination. lu jing: What are the conditions like at the experiment station? tie ying (standing up to leave): It goes without saying that the conditions remain hard, even as all other research organizations have been relocated into new quarters. But don’t you look down on the station. If the oil fields are to maintain a consistently high rate of production in the future, the station has to point the way. Luo Ming is

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the leader inside those 2.6 square kilometres, carrying out all sorts of experiments, such as on extracting oil differently from different strata, on acidification, and on breaking up rock formations. He’s been saying that he wants us to overtake the United States. lu jing (momentarily forgetting herself ): Oh, Camel . . . tie ying (looking over the photograph on the wall): That’s right. We also call him “Camel.” Okay, I’ve got to report in now. lu jing: Just a minute. Can you come here one more time before you leave? I’ll have some things for you to take to him. tie ying: No problem, now that we can say we know each other. You’re a friend. lu jing: Then . . . I’ll be seeing you. (Lights dim. Evening, five days later, 5:10 p.m. lu jing is hurriedly picking up the room, as if getting ready to welcome an important visitor. From the window, the lights from the Beijing train station are visible. The “Geologists’ Song” is being played on the radio: “What makes our red flag flutter? / The breezes from the vales . . .”) (Turning down the radio to make a phone call) Dasheng? You’ve got to get right over here . . . Call your supervisor some other time! I’ve got this telegram from Qu Dan; she and Liu Ren will be here in Beijing today! Says they are on a “travel wedding” and are taking the occasion to visit the alma mater and to meet up with their old teachers and classmates . . . Yes, that’s good. Go ahead and pick up a bottle on your way. (She continues to put the room in order, moving a vase to the center of the table. Various sounds of footsteps are heard from the stairway. lu jing hurriedly runs a comb a few times over her hair, just as there are three knocks on the door. She rushes over to open it, but is shocked at what she sees. liu ren enters in a wheelchair, pushed by qu dan.) liu ren: Sorry, but as a student, I can’t stand up to give Professor Lu a proper greeting. lu jing (not knowing what to do): What’s . . . this is . . . (Helping to push the wheelchair) Over here, over here. What’s this all about? What were you saying to me just now? liu ren: I’m just a bothersome student, making all this trouble for you. qu dan: Don’t pay him any attention! That’s just the way he is, not giving a darn even when the sky’s falling. lu jing (helping qu dan maneuver the wheelchair to a proper spot before letting out a huge breath and clutching her hand in heartfelt sympathy): I’ve been thinking a lot about you two. qu dan: This is so like a dream. liu ren: Don’t get so soppy. Just get me some water to drink. (lu jing immediately goes off to get him the water. qu dan takes out a damp towel from her travel bag to wipe his face.) liu ren: I’ve explained over and over again to Qu Dan that, since I’ve become a handicapped person, I can’t be a burden on her for life. If a man can’t bring a woman some measure of happiness, he ought to just leave her alone.

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qu dan: There you go again. liu ren: All that I have from now on is my own self. The most pathetic people in the world are those who wallow in the sympathy and the pity of others. lu jing: You’re really a man of character. liu ren: Pierre Bayle has said that to gain the whole world but to lose one’s independence would be equivalent to having a crown placed on a corpse with a wry smile on its face.10 qu dan (fuming): Enough! Don’t just go on shooting off your mouth! (Pause.) lu jing: What really happened to you? qu dan: You remember, when we were first being sent to the northeast, that he bought a bunch of face masks for our classmates? lu jing: Of course I do. qu dan: Well, it was all talk! Nobody lost a nose, but he went and had his own feet frozen off. liu ren (correcting her): Not frozen off, just damaged by the cold temperatures. qu dan: To have them so damaged that they had to be amputated—isn’t that just like having them frozen off ? liu ren: Of course not. After amputation, I can still get artificial limbs and walk again. qu dan: Do you know how he sustained the damage? liu ren: Don’t talk about it! It was just a bit of carelessness. lu jing: I want to know. (luo dasheng enters with a bottle of liquor.) luo dasheng: Let me tell you about it. qu dan: Dasheng? liu ren: He ought to be made a top-level leader! luo dasheng: You probably don’t know about it, Lu Jing, but Liu Ren is a well-known hero in the oil fields. liu ren: Don’t turn me into some kind of hors d’oeuvre to help you get your liquor down. luo dasheng: In the winter of 1961, when production in the oil fields was moving up swiftly, a key issue was the way to transport the crude. American intelligence was reporting that “the Red Chinese have discovered vast quantities of petroleum in its frigid northeast territories. But because of the unsolved problem of the heat coefficient while transporting the oil over long distances, they are in an utter quandary about how to take the next step.” liu ren: And so . . . luo dasheng: That’s right. And so Liu Ren took on the challenge. With a couple of comrades, he set out when the temperature was at its lowest extreme—forty-five degrees below zero. He stationed himself in the back of an oil tanker, holding on to a thermometer in order to continuously monitor the changes of temperature, which he noted down from hour to hour. Like some sentry, he stayed at his post while battered by wind and snow. At the end of the long journey, he finally found the solution to the formidable problem.

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liu ren: You seem to have memorized the entire report. Let’s talk about something else now. I’m a little embarrassed myself. (Smiling wryly) As a sentry, I ought to have just kept my mouth shut. But I was so cold at the time I nearly jumped off the tanker and killed myself. lu jing: Qu Dan, I want to speak with my mom, to see if we can let Liu Ren get his artificial limbs here in Beijing. qu dan: That would be terrific. Thank you . . . lu jing: Why don’t the two of you just stay here tonight? Help me get Liu Ren into the bedroom so that he can get some rest. Sitting around like this must tire him out. (They go into the bedroom, pushing liu ren in his wheelchair.) luo dasheng: I’ll go wash the vegetables. (He exits to the kitchen as lu jing and qu dan reemerge.) lu jing: You’re very fortunate . . . qu dan: With that one deed, he made it worthwhile for me to love him for the rest of my life. I don’t care what happens from now on. I will never leave him. I’m working in the library now and don’t go out to actual sites. Any extra time I have, I devote to taking care of him. (From the bedroom comes liu ren’s loud voice, asking: “What’s been happening with the two of you, Dasheng? When are you going to be moving yourself in here?” luo dasheng, holding some celery, comes out of the kitchen.) luo dasheng: Anything concerning this matter will have to await input from Lu Jing. lu jing: That’s not funny at all. luo dasheng (turning pale): Oh, sorry. All right, all right, I’ll go do some more cooking. (He hurries back into the kitchen.) lu jing: The hot dishes are all ready. qu dan: Please keep things simple. lu jing: What’s happened to that person called Ah Nan from our school, Qu Dan? He stopped writing to me. qu dan: He deserted. I heard he eventually went from Guangzhou to Hong Kong. lu jing: The letter he wrote to us that time really touched me. I can’t imagine him deserting. (She sits qu dan down on a chair.) qu dan: I have lots to tell you, Lu Jing. When you go into the real world, there’s a huge difference from school. lu jing: Tonight, let’s talk till the sun comes up! qu dan: I can tell you what’s happened with Camel. lu jing: Camel . . . (Pause. Lights dim. Two months later, at 5:30 on a Saturday evening. The room is full of the feeling of springtime. Visible through the window are willow branches with budding green leaves. luo dasheng, appearing to be right at home, is leaning comfortably against the windowsill, flipping the pages of a book.)

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901

(Entering and putting down her lecture notes) Hey, you’re here really early. luo dasheng: You call this early? You’re a total of twenty minutes late. lu jing: We had a faculty meeting. (Wondering, but not unhappily) How did you get in here? luo dasheng: These last couple of months I’ve been such a regular visitor that I’ve become friendly with the old watchman. He’s given me the key to your place. lu jing: I’m the one who told him to do that. luo dasheng: The man has even asked me when the two of us will be getting married. lu jing (looking up abruptly at him): And how did you answer him? luo dasheng: I said that we can’t joke about matters of this sort. lu jing: This time, you get a passing grade for your answer. (Pause.) luo dasheng (looking at her imploringly): The weather’s really fine today: “In the sunny warmth of springtime / Greening willows harbor feelings / And young peaches are on fire . . .” lu jing: “The evening breeze blows gently / Spreading contentment to one and all.” luo dasheng: I have an idea. Let’s get ourselves over to Beihai Park and sit around a bit. Then we can go by the bridge behind the palace and treat ourselves to some fried munchies along with a couple of beers. lu jing: That sounds excellent. It’s just that once you get some alcohol into you, you always become too aggressive. luo dasheng: So you think that I have to rely on alcohol to buck up my courage? Well, you can’t be more wrong. lu jing: There you go again. luo dasheng (after some hesitation): Am I an annoying fellow? lu jing: A bit. But I like . . . luo dasheng (with determination): You ought to make up your mind, then! lu jing: I’m here. I can’t very well just fly off. luo dasheng: You’ve so affected my normal work existence. My mind’s distracted all the time. lu jing: Huh? Am I as formidable as all that? Well, let’s get going. Maybe we can still take in a movie. luo dasheng: Hold it a minute. You’ve got to give me an answer this very day! (There is the sound of knocking.) lu jing: Someone’s at the door. luo dasheng: I don’t care. We’ve just got to talk things out today in order to go on with some kind of breakthrough in our relationship. (lu jing goes over and opens the door, but the person has disappeared. She finds a slip of paper on the floor.) (Grabbing the slip and tossing it aside) To hell with it! Don’t bother about looking at it now. lu jing (picking it up): It’s from him!

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luo dasheng: From whom? lu jing: Camel. luo dasheng (grabbing the slip from her to look): That son of a gun. Did he just show up out of thin air? lu jing (almost holding her breath): What’s it say? luo dasheng (reading it out loud): “I’m passing through and really want to see the two of you. Because I might be barging in on you at an inopportune time, I’m writing you this note. I’ll be coming up presently. Your old classmate, Camel.” lu jing (as if paralyzed): He’s come back . . . luo dasheng (with mock exuberance): And such timing! lu jing (anxiously): Why hasn’t he come up? No, we should go downstairs to greet him . . . (Voicing her concern out loud) He couldn’t have just run off, could he? (She rushes out of the room.) luo dasheng (smiling): . . . Camel! (He turns to the mirror to run his fingers several times through his hair.) lu jing (returning): Get me a flashlight, will you? The corridor’s so dark. luo dasheng: Why are you so worked up? lu jing (bracing herself against him): You’re right. It’s no big deal. He should be coming to visit us. luo dasheng: What’s going on with you? lu jing: I feel a bit light-headed. (Heading toward the door) I’ll go welcome him. luo dasheng: Throw on a jacket or something. (The door opens. luo ming is there wearing a worker’s thick cotton outfit, with roundtoed shoes on his feet. He has a leather cap in one hand and carries a travel bag in the other. He enters the room with his head dripping with sweat. With his unkempt appearance, he appears aged. The three look at one another before luo dasheng and luo ming embrace on impulse.) (With genuine delight) Camel . . . (He sheds tears.) lu jing: Aren’t you going to shake my hand? luo ming (tightly grasping lu jing’s hand): How have you been? lu jing: Why are you still wearing thick cotton clothing? Looks like it’s getting you overheated. luo ming: When I was setting out, there was a blizzard in the northeast. The oil fields were an endless white, while the sky was so blue it could make you drunk. (Suddenly saddened) That’s right. I’ve almost forgotten about the warmer climes of Beijing. When I was walking on the street, people stared at me as if I were some kind of weirdo. lu jing: The tree branches here are sprouting green leaves. Nobody here’s like you anymore, still wearing a cotton coat. Take it off now, since it’s not something you’re renting. (She helps him out of his coat while luo dasheng watches. As is his habit, luo ming goes over to the photograph of the man and the camel. Notes from someone playing a long flute wafts down from upstairs.)

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903

luo ming: Who’s playing the long flute? lu jing: A musician who plays it for the Central Philharmonic Society just moved in upstairs. (The three of them seat themselves but do not say anything for a while.) luo dasheng (with concern): What’s the situation in the oil fields? luo ming: It’s constantly changing. To quote a poet’s words, “While the refinery’s towers warm the stars at night / Passing geese bump derricks in their flight.” Things are happening everywhere you go. There are many individuals whose heroism should be celebrated in song. Still, important problems remain. luo dasheng: What kind of problems? luo ming: Such as the water content in the oil going up. luo dasheng: How have you been doing yourself ? luo ming: Me? Not much to report. I’ve been really happy. lu jing: That’s all? luo ming: Yes, that’s really all. To be able to do what one loves, that’s good fortune. We will be fulfilling the dreams of so many generations if we who work in petroleum geology can somehow make our oil fields world-class. Oh, by the way, have you two gotten married yet? luo dasheng: To put it in diplomatic terms, there’s nothing to report. lu jing: I hear that you’re still without a care in the world. luo ming (standing up assertively): Where did you get that? It depends on whom you’re referring to. It’s simply human instinct to seek happiness. For love, I’m willing to offer up my life. luo dasheng: It seems you’re not safe. (Laughing) You’re a most dangerous rival. luo ming: To lose a rival is even sadder than to lose a friend. But wait. Has she ever said she loves you? luo dasheng: No, she hasn’t. lu jing (angrily): But I have not said that to you either. luo dasheng (disputing her): There are many meanings to the word “happiness,” but, ahead of everything else, it means doing things for others. luo ming: But the self cannot be denied. luo dasheng: But to focus on oneself means to be selfish. luo ming: “Others” is a concept that is indeterminate. lu jing (in a loud voice): All right, already! Are you two recalling what happened three years ago, when you both had to climb out of here? (All three fall silent. The sound of the flute becomes dominant.) luo ming: I’m sorry, Dasheng . . . luo dasheng: You’ve just gotten back, and I . . . I’ve really crossed the line with you. lu jing (loosening up): All right, you warriors. As I’ve said before, whether we fight or get along, we’ll clearly be moving ahead. Tonight, we’ve got to have ourselves a good drink or two together, and talk until the morning. luo ming (taking out a bottle from his travel bag): I’ve brought along some stuff here! lu jing: I’ll go warm it up and fix us a couple of dishes to go with it.

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luo ming: Good. Cold liquor is bad for the intestines. luo dasheng: Warm liquor hurts the lungs. luo ming: But no liquor will leave the heart aching . . . (The clock over the train station strikes six times. Lights dim. Same scene later, at 12:10 a.m. The room has become very quiet. Indeed, the entire city has about fallen asleep. The only sound is that of a whistle coming over from the open space in front of the train station, alerting passengers about to go off to distant places. There are still bits of leftover food on the dining table, but the liquor bottle has long since been emptied. luo ming and luo dasheng are both worn out. It is evident that their conversation has gone on for a very long time.) luo dasheng: There’s something that’s been bothering me quite a bit, Camel. That report on petroleum that caused such a stir, it was principally your— luo ming: Now hold it! Just hold it. Why don’t you simply forget about whether it was my doing or your doing. We worked on it together. luo dasheng: But life has been so unfair to you. I want to tell Lu Jing the truth. luo ming (becoming agitated): If you’re going to do that, I’ll never see either of you anymore. I’ve never held anything against you. At the time, I was in such a situation that, had you not brought out the report, who else could have? luo dasheng: But in my heart . . . luo ming (closing his eyes and leaning back in his chair): Out in those vast plains, everything appears so tiny—tiny houses, tiny rows of trees, crowds of people like ants. Ah, Dasheng. Do you remember the No. 3214 Drilling Crew? luo dasheng: Of course I do. You and I worked with those people for three months. One time they broke the world record by drilling out a rock core that was ninety meters long. luo ming (energized): This spring, they had an incident. luo dasheng: What kind of incident? luo ming: Part of the rock core they had obtained accidentally dropped to the bottom of the drilling hole. To get it back, the entire crew worked on the rig for three days and three nights, everyone making it clear that, before getting to the heart, no one would celebrate the lunar New Year. The cooks and the old section chief were waiting on the side, with rice bowls in their hands and tears in their eyes. Good results from technology don’t just come from a single person’s effort. Human passions have to be there. luo dasheng: Of course. luo ming: I might have been talking too much today. How have you been? Have things gone smoothly for you these months back in Beijing? lu jing (coming out of the kitchen, drying her hands): He’s been moving up the administrative ladder step-by-step. He’ll be a section chief soon. luo ming: That’s great! He’s moving up again. lu jing: He’s been all over the place, making reports, giving talks about his experiences, speaking with leaders. These last few days have been especially demanding on him. luo dasheng: Oh, I was only talking.

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lu jing: Only talking? I think you’ve become all wrapped up in what’s going on. (To luo ming) When he saw that the list for promotion at the supervisor’s had different marks on it, he started agonizing over whether promotions would be given to those names with a circle next to them or those with a check mark. luo ming: To become a leader, you’ve got to deal with the little details. luo dasheng: It’s Camel who really understands what it’s all about. (Sighing) It’s so hard just to be a little leader for a research unit. If you’re not going to mind everybody else’s business, then everybody will be unhappy with you. Or if you don’t turn out something of your own, then you won’t get any respect. So in doing what I do, I’m just sacrificing myself. (Pause.) lu jing (picking up the teapot): I’ll brew another pot of strong tea. (She exits.) luo dasheng (looking at her back): You’re going to be leaving soon. Is there anything you want to tell me straight from your heart? luo ming: You want the truth from me? luo dasheng: Yes, of course. Tell me the truth. luo ming: She doesn’t love you. luo dasheng: That’s perhaps the case. But, without her, I can’t set my mind on anything and everything goes topsy-turvy. luo ming: It’s not as bad as all that, is it? luo dasheng: Maybe the fewer things a person owns, the more afraid he becomes that somebody could take them away. luo ming: I see what you mean, Dasheng. But aren’t you going to write your own book on “The Continental Deposits of Oil”? luo dasheng: I don’t even get to sit down nowadays. When I can find the time, I will definitely be doing it. luo ming: A lifetime seems to be so long but actually lasts just a number of days. In a short while . . . What happened three years ago, doesn’t it seem to be just yesterday? luo dasheng (moved): I really like you, Camel. luo ming: And I really like you. (lu jing brings out the tea.) lu jing (looking at the clock on the wall): Heavens! It’s almost one in the morning! Hurry and go get your train ticket, Dasheng. Your departure time is just two hours away. luo dasheng: That’s right. I’ve got to leave a little time for you two to be by yourselves. luo ming (upset): I’m sick and tired of your jokes. luo dasheng: Aren’t you going to be able to stay in Beijing for a few more days? luo ming: I’ve got to get right back to the oil fields. luo dasheng: Fine, then. I’m going to have to climb over the wall to get out, and then climb back in a bit later, all for the sake of the little train ticket. luo ming: That’s what it takes to serve those under you. (After luo dasheng exits, luo ming and lu jing look at each other.)

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luo ming (standing up): I’ll clear the dining table for you. lu jing (pressing his hand down): You leave everything alone. Don’t make a move. (Pause.) Let me ask you, why didn’t you ever send out all those letters you wrote to me? luo ming: . . . I just couldn’t make up my mind. lu jing: Why’s that? luo ming: I was afraid you’d have hard times if you came with me. lu jing: How did you know I would have gone with you? luo ming: Don’t you be dishonest with yourself. You love me and I can see everything in your eyes. lu jing (with a laugh): You egotistical man! (Then, distressingly) Yes . . . I was always indecisive, always wavering back and forth, never knowing what to do. Maybe I’m really in love with you. (Weeping) Camel, you make me think of my father . . . I’m always standing by the window, looking out at that clock over the station, waiting for you to come back to me. luo ming: In another couple of hours, I’ll be returning to the oil fields. Can’t discover any petroleum on bustling city streets. My life is to be spent far away, looking beneath the earth’s crust. lu jing: Don’t you forget me, Camel. (She breaks into sobs.) luo ming: Do you know, Lu Jing, why I came to Beijing? The father I have not seen has sent a private lawyer from Indonesia to get me to go there and claim his property— which includes a private island, a rubber plantation of two hundred hectares, and an estate worth hundreds of millions. But none of this means anything to me. I came here to see you! I love you so much, Lu Jing. It’s just that . . . lu jing: I want to go with you to the oil fields. luo ming: Don’t be foolish. Dasheng is not a bad person, and he cannot live without you . . . really. He can make you happy, and I cannot. lu jing: Why can’t you? luo ming: I’m a fool who manages to survive without love. Maybe, when I get old, I’ll reproach myself for what I’m now doing. lu jing: Looks like you’ve made up your mind. luo ming: What else can I do? I’ve said that I want to be somebody like your father, always pressing on in spite of hardships, so that I can reappear in your dreams. Goodbye, Lu Jing. lu jing: Camel . . . (She hugs him with great emotion as the clock in the distance strikes twice. luo dasheng enters, train ticket in hand.) luo dasheng: I’ve got the ticket; it’s even for a lower berth. lu jing: There’s still over an hour. Let’s all get some sleep. luo ming: I should go on ahead to the station. lu jing: Don’t. There’s a bed in my study where both of you can lie down. I’ll get into the bedroom for a quick nap and will get you up when it’s time.

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luo dasheng (yawning): I’m really a bit sleepy. luo ming: I’ll just lie down on the couch for a bit. I’m used to doing that. You go to the study, Dasheng. luo dasheng: Suit yourself. I’ve got to get some shut-eye. luo ming: Anyway, you two don’t have to see me off. luo dasheng (going into the study): It’s better if we do. Who’s to say when you’ll be coming around again. (As lu jing walks to the bedroom, she turns her head abruptly to look back. The row of doors are left open as the three lie down in separate places. On the couch, luo ming throws his cotton coat over himself. lu jing turns off the large lamp, but the room remains bright. In short order, luo dasheng and lu jing appear to be fast asleep. A whistle from the train yard is followed by the sound of the man blowing on the long flute. luo ming quietly picks up his travel bag, tiptoes to the door, and pauses briefly before exiting. From offstage: “Goodbye, Beijing. Goodbye, old friends. I wish you happiness. I love you forever.”—Camel. The clock begins to strike again. lu jing has not fallen asleep at all. She seems to be aware that things would conclude this way. Neither calling out to luo ming nor disturbing luo dasheng, she walks over to the window by herself, to lean against the windowsill and gaze out at the clock over the station. All lights go off.) (Curtain.)

A CT 3 (November 6, 1977, 3:40 p.m. The room appears to be in great disorder but full of life at the same time. The reason is that a small living being has been added among its inhabitants. Infant paraphernalia are everywhere: a baby carriage, feeding bottles, colorful balloons. The sunlight is mild and subdued. A rousing song bursts forth from the radio: “Melodies flow from our fragrant wine. / Join us, friends, and dry your cups. / The October victory, oh memory divine! / Our joy, our tears, they intertwine.” luo dasheng is reading the newspaper with his glasses on. lu jing is surrounded by her books as she works intently.) luo dasheng (reading out loud from the newspaper): “Price of winter cabbage in Beijing now lowered, ser vice improved. Positive preparations for national meeting on science and technology next March.” “Intellectual liberation: seek truth from facts.” “China Youth Theater presents ‘In the Land of Silence.’ ” “Groceries at the Gate of Earthly Peace no longer require ration tickets.” lu jing: Now we can just go and do our shopping. You ought to write your book for the national meeting on technology, Dasheng. luo dasheng: Me? It’s better to wait a while first. I’ve been a section chief for twelve years now. No matter what, I can’t very well step down to the functionary level, can I? (Going back to the newspaper) “Seven o’clock, News; seven thirty-five, Weather Forecast; eight- oh-five, TV Drama . . .”

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lu jing: When we started out, you and me and Camel, didn’t the three of us dream of becoming geologists? luo dasheng: After all that’s happened over the last decade, I’ve seen through everything. Becoming a geologist? That was only a pipe dream. lu jing: A writer has said that no matter how low a state we descend to, we have to hang on to some kind of dream, some kind of ultimate dream. Has the milk cooled off ? (The sound of an infant crying emerges from the bedroom.) Go check on the baby. luo dasheng: Can’t you do that? lu jing: They’re putting in college entrance examinations again next year. I’ve got to get these materials ready. luo dasheng (going to the bedroom): I just don’t get it. What’s the difference between having a wife and not having one? lu jing (giving him a quick kiss): I owe you one. luo dasheng (carrying the baby in from the bedroom): I’ve treated one and all with warmth and friendship, but I was branded as someone on the dark side during the Cultural Revolution,11 when everybody became insane. What would have happened, Lu Jing, had we had this child a decade ago? lu jing: I might have become a widow, and the baby an orphan. luo dasheng: That bad? (To the baby) You must be hungry. Come, have something to eat. (He feeds her from a bottle.) lu jing: My mother was such a good soul, but life did her in. The result was that I then became a big orphan. luo dasheng: You still had me. lu jing: Yeah . . . Now that the people have prevailed, celebrations are everywhere. Beijing has become the happiest city on earth. (She stands up and goes over to luo dasheng. They look happily at their little daughter.) luo dasheng: It’s actually rather sad when I think about it. I’m over forty, and my daughter is not yet a hundred days old. (Looking at her) It’s really your mother’s fault. lu jing: My fault? luo dasheng: If you hadn’t dragged things out, we wouldn’t have waited until just before the Cultural Revolution to get married. lu jing: All right. Let’s not talk about what might have been. luo dasheng: The little thing has fallen asleep again. (He retreats into the bedroom. There’s a knock on the door and lu jing goes to open it. The letter carrier is standing there.) letter carrier: Your letter has been marked “Return to sender” because the addressee is unknown. lu jing: How can that be? luo dasheng (back from the bedroom): The letter was sent to whom?

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lu jing: Camel. luo dasheng: They’re implementing the new policy for intellectuals now. It’s possible he’s been promoted. lu jing: All you ever know about are promotions. letter carrier: Someone downstairs has been asking about your household. lu jing: Who? What’s the person like? letter carrier: Seems to be from out of town. He went away right afterward. lu jing: Thanks for letting us know. letter carrier: See you tomorrow. (She exits.) lu jing: From out of town. Who could it have been? Could it have been Camel? luo dasheng: You must miss Camel something crazy! lu jing (irritated): I won’t tolerate such facetiousness from you. luo dasheng: Couldn’t have been him. If Camel did come here without looking us up, I’d have to give him a piece of my mind! lu jing: That weird guy. He wouldn’t even write us a single letter. luo dasheng: You . . . you could never get over . . . lu jing (angrily): I was only worried about him. (Pause.) luo dasheng: Perhaps I offended him. lu jing: Don’t go into any wild nonsense. I’ll go get dinner. (She clears the dining table.) luo dasheng: On June 3 of 1974, Camel sent me a report regarding the situation in the oil fields. He asked me to pass it on to the Petroleum Board or to the State Council. lu jing: What was it about? luo dasheng: It said that the oil fields suffered serious damage during the Cultural Revolution, that the situation under the ground has worsened, that the entire administrative structure was in chaos, and that the fate of the oil fields . . . lu jing: Were you afraid to pass it on? luo dasheng (becoming incensed): I was not afraid! I couldn’t even save my own hide then! The old ministers were all removed and incarcerated everywhere. The State Council was so big, and who should I talk to? Had the report fallen into the wrong hands, Camel could have been killed! lu jing: Don’t get yourself all worked up. Nobody is saying it’s your fault. luo dasheng: At the time, I was truly concerned about not getting him into trouble. But Camel could very well have thought I was at fault. He could have considered me cowardly, or selfish, or lacking any sense of righteousness. lu jing: Camel is not that kind of person. (She brings out a dish of cold hors d’oeuvres, and luo dasheng reaches for some.) (Slapping his hand away) Wait until you get yourself a drink to settle down. luo dasheng: Now that’s what I call a good wife. (There is a knock at the door. luo dasheng goes to open it. liu ren is there, wearing new clothes that are nevertheless out of style. He has a yellow book bag on his back,

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with a teacup dangling on one side. His walk is awkward on account of his new prostheses.) luo dasheng (surprised): Liu Ren? liu ren (timidly): There’s no one else visiting here, is there? lu jing: How is it that you’ve come here to Beijing by yourself ? Where’s Qu Dan? liu ren (with delight): I . . . was rehabilitated! I just got these artificial legs . . . Look, you guys . . . I . . . I’m standing up and I can walk . . . I snuck out and got here. It’s been more than ten years since I’ve been to Beijing . . . I wanted to look around, look all around . . . to go in a circle around Beijing! lu jing: Quick. Sit down. For you to be sneaking away like this, Qu Dan will be so worried. liu ren: I’ve sent her a telegram, telling her I’ll be back in a couple of days. luo dasheng: How have you been these past few years? liu ren: I got in trouble. Originally, I was supposed to go to labor reform. But later, because, they said, I was handicapped, I stayed home to write self-criticism reports. These now fill half a burlap bag. luo dasheng: Why did you get in trouble? liu ren: I said that my grandfather had once cut Lin Biao’s hair, and that brought calamity down on my head. They said that I was slandering the vice commander. Then Lin Biao died and they investigated any relationship he might have had with the past three generations of my family. lu jing: That’s truly absurd. liu ren (starting to weep): I wanted to kill myself, so I jumped in front of a car. But it only ran over one of my false legs. (Then laughing) The driver was beside himself, screaming as he hugged the leg to himself. I told him to stop, that it wasn’t real . . . and that everything was all right. lu jing: How has it been with you and Qu Dan? liu ren (starting to weep again): Without . . . without Qu Dan, I wouldn’t be alive today. She’s been too good to me. Because of me, she’s given up her own career. lu jing: Take off your overcoat. I’m going to fix us something to eat. You have a drink with Dasheng. liu ren: Yes, we ought to have a drink. How good it is to be here in Beijing. There’s Tiananmen Square, Beihai Park, the Summer Palace, our institute: I’ve been visiting them all. (Taking out materials from his book bag) Look, these books are being published again. They’re going to fix the pipeline to the harbor next spring, and I’ll be in charge of the development project for high-grade flowmeters. Lu Jing, can you help me get my hands on some materials? lu jing: Absolutely! luo dasheng (giving lu jing a quick glance): What’s Camel doing? How has he been? liu ren: He supervises the operations at the experiment station, and has been doing that for twelve years. I heard his bones and his joints have become so arthritic that he’s disabled. Some time ago, Tie Ying took him to a hot spring, but that didn’t help. She had to carry him back.

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luo dasheng (anxiously): Why doesn’t he come to Beijing for treatment? liu ren: I don’t know. luo dasheng (with great enthusiasm): I can get him the best doctors in Beijing! I will definitely have him back on his feet. Do you know Tie Ying’s address? liu ren: It’s “The Experiment Corps at the Petroleum Extraction Plant.” luo dasheng (putting on his coat): You sit here, Liu Ren. I’m going out. lu jing: Where are you going? luo dasheng: To the post office to send Tie Ying a telegram. I’m telling her to have Camel come to Beijing immediately for treatment. lu jing (touched): We’ll be waiting for you to get back for dinner, Dasheng. liu ren: We’re . . . we’re old classmates, after all. (Lights dim. Seven days later, thirty minutes after midnight. The room is very dimly lit, with just the lights from the city outside coming in through the window. Everything in the room looks like it belongs in an oil painting. luo dasheng and lu jing are both asleep in the bedroom; there is no one visible onstage. Shortly, there are sudden sounds of knocking, each one louder than the last. luo dasheng, in his pajamas, enters from the bedroom and turns on the light.) luo dasheng: Who is it? (tie ying’s voice: “It’s me! I’m here from the northeast.”) Lu Jing! Lu Jing! Get up quick! Camel’s probably here! (lu jing comes out, somewhat disheveled, still putting on her clothing.) (Toward the door) Just a second, we’ll let you in. (To lu jing) Aiya! You needn’t get all dressed up. We’re not welcoming the president. lu jing: Look at my hair (hurriedly brushing it back with her hand) . . . my shoes . . . (luo dasheng goes over and opens the door. tie ying enters, supporting luo ming’s rigid body. She is carrying a multitude of things over her shoulder. luo dasheng and lu jing rush up to welcome them, helping luo ming to a rattan chair. luo ming is greatly emaciated, and his eyes seem to have a dull look to them.) Quick, sit down! Sit down! luo ming (sitting): Uh . . . uh . . . Dasheng, Lu Jing . . . How are you? lu jing: Camel, you . . . luo dasheng (to tie ying): Did you get him here by yourself ? tie ying: There are two others from the unit; they were with us until we got downstairs. I let them go to look for a hotel. lu jing: Why don’t they just come up and have something to eat before going off ? tie ying: It’s enough trouble for you. Can we start the process of getting him to a hospital right away? luo dasheng: Let’s do that tomorrow. He’s not an emergency case. tie ying: But then . . . lu jing: I’ve gotten the bedroom ready. I’ll go cook us some hot noodle soup. (She exits.) tie ying (choking down sobs): I really don’t know how to thank you two.

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luo dasheng: Weren’t you coming on the 8:00 p.m. train? Lu Jing and I were going to meet you! tie ying: We couldn’t get tickets for the express. (luo ming looks dully all around the room before turning his gaze back to the camel photograph on the wall. luo dasheng keeps looking at him.) luo ming (in a quavering voice): Dasheng . . . I’ve really missed you two . . . luo dasheng (feeling bad): Camel . . . how did you get like this? (Looking for slippers) Take off your overcoat and get some slippers on. It’s so cold outside. (tie ying takes the slippers and, getting down to the floor on her knees, helps luo ming put them on. She also helps him get into more comfortable clothing and wipes his face with a towel. lu jing, coming out of the kitchen, is quite moved at seeing this.) luo ming (smiling with effort): You’re still as pretty as ever, Lu Jing. lu jing (not letting any tears fall): You should have come to Beijing a long time ago to take care of your health. You’ve gone and let your body deteriorate to this state . . . luo ming: There’s just too much to do . . . and I couldn’t get away. luo dasheng: How are you feeling? luo ming (moving his fingers): My joints are stiff and sore . . . When I lie down, I can’t get back up. When I’m up, I can’t lie down . . . It’s really bad. lu jing: How did things get this way? tie ying: You ask him! (Shedding tears) Once he got to the front lines of the experiment station, he stayed for over ten years. He ran around all day collecting materials, skipping meals, working late, living in wooden shacks with toads in the weeds under his bed. In winter, the big winds would howl outside while the little winds swirled inside. What kind of body could have stood up to such punishment? luo dasheng: The water’s boiling. Time to put the noodles in. (lu jing exits.) You needn’t say any more, Tie Ying. I’ve lived through such conditions. tie ying: When the Cultural Revolution began, he was pursued everywhere by those troublemakers. Once he hid inside my place next to an oil well. I told him not to be afraid, that I would make anyone who would ruffle a single hair on his head straighten it again while on his knees! I screamed at them, holding up a pair of huge pliers. I told them that, were it not for my consideration for Chairman Mao, I would beat them up until they would have to look for their teeth all over the ground, that they should just get the hell out of there. (On hearing this as she comes in and out of the room, lu jing is amused.) luo dasheng: You’re really formidable! You’ve found yourself a good woman, Camel. luo ming: She’s . . . crazy. tie ying: And you’re not? One time, during a huge rainstorm, he went to an exploratory well to collect material and fell into a muddy ditch. I didn’t know who or what was in there when I happened to pass by and looked. A dog? No! A person? Didn’t seem to be. When I finally looked closely, I saw that it was him, quite like a muddy monkey still trying to clamber his way out! He’d get a ways up, and then would slide right back down, over and over. If it weren’t for me, he’d have died in that ditch.

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lu jing: How fortunate for Camel to have met you. As trying as it might have been, you both must be very happy. tie ying: Happy . . . I was nine months pregnant and he was holed up in his shack writing geological reports. I ended up giving birth to our baby on the way home. lu jing (turning to leave): The noodles are done. You two have something to eat. (tie ying moves luo ming’s chair a little closer to the dining table.) tie ying: Come, move forward a bit. (As if he were a baby, she puts a bib on him. lu jing brings on the noodles.) luo dasheng: Here’re some chopsticks for you. tie ying: He can’t hold on to chopsticks. lu jing: Let’s eat. After you get better, we can have a drink together. (tie ying feeds luo ming.) luo ming: It’s too hot. Wait a bit. luo dasheng: What’s the food like at the experiment station? luo ming: It’s tolerable. luo dasheng: And the kind of support you get? luo ming: It’s all right. luo dasheng: You can get the news there, right? luo ming: We can. (luo dasheng and lu jing trade glances.) luo dasheng: What’s the situation in the oil fields? luo ming: We’ve been having some trouble. (Suddenly spirited) The stratigraphic pressure went down and the crude oil came out mixed with water. Don’t worry about it, though. We’ll be able to solve the problem, and we’ll definitely be sustaining the high production! luo dasheng (smiling): You son of a gun. Your mind has remained as sharp as ever! lu jing (letting out a breath): You’ve given me such a scare, Camel. I thought you might have become dopey. Hurry and eat. Then you can take a nap. luo ming (grabbing the chopsticks from tie ying’s hand): I . . . I’ll feed myself. (Taking a bite) Dasheng, Lu Jing, I should have gotten myself here when you got married. luo dasheng: Didn’t you send us a congratulatory card? You even wrote some kind of nonsense on it—“Don’t forget me as I tether the camel toward the sun!” luo ming: Is your mother well, Lu Jing? (Pause.) lu jing: She passed away, couldn’t quite get over the troubles. luo ming (putting down the chopsticks): Help me go and lie down for a bit. I’m too tired. That pair of pants from your mother, Lu Jing, helped me get through the coldest winters. How . . . how could she have . . . (tie ying and lu jing help luo ming into another room. luo dasheng sits motionless.) lu jing: You take a nap, too, Tie Ying. Tomorrow we’ve got to do the paperwork to get him into a hospital.

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(luo dasheng turns off the ceiling light in the room and turns on the floor lamp, pouring himself a drink. lu jing enters from the bedroom.) lu jing: Get to bed, Dasheng. luo dasheng: I don’t want to. lu jing: Why are you beginning to drink? luo dasheng: Sit down, Lu Jing. Let me ask you: if, in January of 1964, the person who was transferred back here was not me but Camel, what would have happened? lu jing: There are no ifs in life. You are you, and he is he. Life is like a painting—no! A painting can be changed, but life just happens once, without any opportunity to alter it. luo dasheng: Isn’t that so . . . lu jing: What makes you ask a question like that? luo dasheng (mumbling to himself ): That winter, it was so cold . . . We geologists went to the “great battle” in a truck, to repair a pipeline. Sparks flew and then turned into a white spot where the pickaxes hit. It was so cold we couldn’t even button up our pants after we pissed. (Stopping) People forget so easily. After a few years, who would believe it? Nobody! lu jing: You were lucky . . . luo dasheng: I owe Camel. lu jing: Why do you think that? luo dasheng (agitatedly): Don’t ask me! Is everything my fault? (Pause.) lu jing: Forgive me, Dasheng. (She kisses his hair. In the dim light, luo ming walks out with difficulty, holding on to the wall.) luo ming: Can I . . . Can I sit down for a while? lu jing: Heavens! How did you get yourself up? (Helping him) Sit down right here. luo ming: I . . . I was only thinking that I’d sit with you for a while, without saying anything at all . . . luo dasheng: Yes, what’s there to say? . . . (Pause. luo dasheng pours out a drink for luo ming. The latter suddenly puts his hands over his face and sobs. Even though he makes no sound, his whole body is trembling. The clock over the Beijing station strikes. Lights dim gradually.) (Curtain.)

A CT 4 (7:15 a.m., October 9, 1994. The same locale, but seventeen years have passed. During the intervening time, everything seemed to have quietly changed, and certain things that used to be there have been replaced, some more than once. Every kind of up-to- date furnishing or appliance—a large-screen color television, a refrigerator, fancy furniture, leather sofas— is now a part of the scene. Even the walls seem to have undergone renovation. With vari-

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ous flowering plants, including budding lotuses, distributed in proper places, the room looks extremely warm, inviting, and serene. It has just stopped raining that morning, and the air in Beijing is exceptionally clean and fresh. Visible through the window are the many tall buildings that have since been added to the area around the train station, but the large clock is still visible where it has been. luo dasheng returns from his morning exercises as the half-muted sounds of disco continue to waft over from a distance. He holds a double- edged sword in one hand and takes a couple of swipes with it after entering the room. He has aged well physically and has put on some weight. Still, he has gotten older, and his hair has whitened. He starts to water the flowers, taking great care as he does so. lu jing enters with a glass of warm milk, which she places on the table.) lu jing: Drink the milk. I’ve added a calcium tablet to it. They say it helps prevent osteoporosis. luo dasheng: Thank you, my good wife. Say, old lady, why don’t you get up a little earlier every day and go with me to do some tai chi exercises? lu jing: It should be evident to you that I make up my lesson plans on my computer every night. luo dasheng: You’re going to be retiring in a few days. Why continue to exhaust yourself like that? lu jing (looking in the mirror and blinking her eyes): But I can’t neglect my obligations to someone’s son or daughter, can I? luo dasheng: Say, when Lanlan came home from school last night, what was she going on and on about? lu jing: She said she wants to try for a top-tier university, and also wants to go on for a graduate degree. (Heaving a big sigh) Ai, in the twinkling of an eye, Lanlan has now turned eighteen. luo dasheng: Eighteen? Humph. Had we not gotten married so late, we’d be carrying around a grandchild by now. lu jing: I’m suddenly thinking of what Camel said a long time ago: that a lifetime seems to be so long, but it’s also so short, actually lasting only a number of days—or even just one moment. luo dasheng: That lousy son of a gun. Since he came to Beijing for treatment in 1977, he has never again shown his face around here! I do miss him a little. lu jing (combing her hair in front of the mirror): You came back so late last night. What was it? Another banquet? luo dasheng: In your wildest dreams, you’d never guess who I ran into? lu jing (taken aback): Who was it? luo dasheng: The schoolmate from the class before ours—Ah Nan! lu jing: Him? Didn’t he become a deserter? luo dasheng: You’d better not mention that. He’s now a financial tycoon in Hong Kong and Macau and he’s back this time to make investments. I hear that he even wants to make a nostalgic visit to the oil fields and start some kind of commercial venture there.

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lu jing: That’s really incredible. luo dasheng: That’s right. He even asked about you yesterday, and wants to come see you. lu jing: You should have conveyed my regrets to him. luo dasheng: Why be like that? You’re too conservative. At the morning exercises today, I met a former ballet dancer . . . lu jing: You’re not looking for a lover, are you? (She goes into the bathroom.) luo dasheng: I can’t joke with you, old lady, anymore. (Looking at his watch) Aiya! It’s time for the East Asia Report. (He turns on the television. A commercial is on: “A thousand miles, ten thousand miles, I still have to get myself back—The Family Brew of Confucius makes everyone miss home.” Then the theme music for the East Asia Report, followed immediately by the heading “Child of the East.” moderator: “Good morning, everyone. Today, the ‘Child of the East’ segment of our program will be introducing you to the well-known oil field geological expert Luo Ming, the deputy chief geologist.” luo dasheng is stunned standing there. moderator: “Yesterday, we finally had to catch up with this geologist in the oil fields, since he has never consented to be interviewed by anyone.” luo ming appears on the screen, with an oil rig kowtowing behind him. moderator: “Hello, Chief Luo.” luo ming: “Hello.” moderator: “I heard that you have been working for fourteen years here at the Petroleum Experiment Station.” luo ming: “That’s right. This has been my job . . .”) lu jing (coming out of the bathroom): Who are they featuring for “Child of the East” today? luo dasheng (with sudden excitement): Get over here and take a look, Lu Jing! Come look! See who it is? lu jing (putting on her glasses): How come the person looks so familiar? (Surprised and delighted) It’s Camel! (She turns up the volume. moderator: “I understand that you have written over twenty books and have been cited forty- eight times for your technological achievements. Two of your projects have been awarded the national prize for technological advancement, and one of them received a prize from the World Petroleum Congress.” luo ming: “This is not because of me alone, but because of a whole generation of people!” moderator: “You’re so modest.” luo ming, becoming somewhat annoyed: “It’s not modesty! The other year, some thirty thousand university students came over here. Hua Luogeng’s disciples were using the concept of optimization to feed our pigs.” 12

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moderator: “The people of this whole nation are very concerned about this oil-field complex. How many years more can it remain steadily and highly productive? Would it ever become like the Baku oil field in the former Soviet Union, which turned into a ghost town?” luo ming: “This will depend on our work. But I think that that will definitely not happen here!” moderator: “According to your record, you are doing research on the development of underground storage, which has been successfully implemented for nineteen wells. From this project alone, oil storage capacity has increased by 1.1 billion tons.” luo ming: “That’s right. It was something we worked on together.” moderator: “Somebody said that the reason you have not become a giant of science is because you are too orthodox.” luo ming: “I was nurtured in the People’s Republic, so perhaps I couldn’t change.” moderator: “You have received invitations to conferences in Beijing and in foreign countries. Why haven’t you accepted? We’ve also heard that your wife is a common worker . . .” lu jing turns down the volume, because she notices that luo dasheng seems to have suddenly gotten older and more frail.) luo dasheng (forcing a smile): Camel, the guy . . . without hurrying or slowing down, has ultimately gotten where he wanted to go . . . lu jing: You still want to have a little something to eat? luo dasheng: I don’t need anything. I’ve got to get to work. When should we invite your admirer over for a get-together, Lu Jing? lu jing: Do you feel he’s safe? luo dasheng: That guy, he’s really not safe. (Stopping for a second) I can’t compete with him. He’s kind of like old Chinese liquor, which gets you at the end. lu jing (sincerely): Don’t think like that . . . (She answers a knock at the door. The letter carrier has become an older woman, but she still earnestly puts every letter into someone’s hand.) letter carrier: Your mail, Professor Lu. lu jing: Thank you. Hey, have you solved the problem of your child’s employment? letter carrier: It’s solved. She’ll be taking over my job. lu jing: That’s fine, of course. But, this is . . . letter carrier (eyes tearing up): This is my last time delivering the mail. Tomorrow, I’ll be retired. I want the people I’ve delivered to to give me their signatures, so that whenever I think of you all, I’ll be able to take them out and look at them. lu jing (signing a small notebook): You’ve earnestly and deliberately done a job in your life, and that is extraordinary. It’s also great. letter carrier: Great? Well, thank you . . . (She turns to go as luo dasheng stands silently there, seemingly lost in thought. Lights dim. 12:40 a.m., early the next day. The neon lights on the tall buildings far off are visible from the window. The sounds of jazz music can also be faintly heard. luo dasheng wants to

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do some writing, to finish his book on “The Continental Deposits of Oil,” but is unable to set down a single word. He is in great agony, going from the study to the living room, flipping over this, and looking over that. He lights up a cigarette for the first time and begins to smoke. lu jing comes out of the bedroom, with a bathrobe over her shoulders.) lu jing: What’s going on? You’re still not coming to bed? It’s past midnight. luo dasheng: Don’t bother me. lu jing: Why are you starting to smoke? luo dasheng: I’ve been thinking . . . lu jing (tenderly): C’mon, get rid of the cigarette. I’ll fix you a cup of strong coffee. luo dasheng: Go get yourself to bed. Let me be by myself . . . (lu jing heads toward the kitchen. luo dasheng walks to the window to look at the faraway lights. He turns, picks up a liquor bottle to pour out a half glass, and begins to drink by himself. lu jing comes out of the kitchen with a cup of hot coffee.) lu jing (upset): Why are you beginning to drink now? luo dasheng (standing up abruptly): Please go away and let me be! (He accidentally knocks the coffee cup to the floor.) lu jing (hurriedly mopping up the coffee): Look at this. Look at this. luo dasheng: It’s all my fault, so just let it go. lu jing: I know what you’re thinking. luo dasheng: It’s good that you know. Now get to bed, and don’t bother me. Leave me by myself for a while. lu jing: You’re thinking of writing that book about “Continental Deposits of Oil,” right? luo dasheng: I can never escape your perception. lu jing: But that’s not something you can do in a day. luo dasheng (loudly): But I still have to get started, don’t I? lu jing (in despair): You can just forget it . . . You’ve always been like this . . . living in some hot emotional bubble. luo dasheng: Tonight, you’ve finally said it. That’s right, from afar, Camel has . . . lu jing (furiously): Don’t you bring him up! (She falls onto the sofa. A long pause follows.) luo dasheng (going over to her, and, like a child, puts his head into her bosom as his tears begin to flow): It’s you who’ve spoiled me. You’re so understanding, and so afraid of hurting me that you just went along with me as if I were a baby, to the extent of never bringing up the fact that I studied to make geology my profession. But I could see that, in your heart, you have not been happy with me . . . lu jing: We’re both almost sixty. What’s there to do about that? luo dasheng (almost in despair): It’s over for me, Lu Jing. Today, I wanted to write something but couldn’t produce a single word. I flipped over this, and looked over that, but they were all someone else’s publications, from which I couldn’t rewrite a single word. (Weeping) I can’t stop what I’m doing anymore; I can’t use my own brain to figure out anything anymore. I don’t know when death will descend upon me, but feel that it’s quietly getting nearer. But when I look back, I still feel . . . lu jing: No, no, no. Don’t be saying all that!

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luo dasheng (agitatedly): I have to say it. Otherwise, if I miss this chance, I will not have the courage to do so in the future. lu jing: Don’t be so darn hard on yourself. luo dasheng: Every night I would think that I’d begin a new life tomorrow, that I’d tear away the false mask I’ve put on, and do things with honesty. But then by the next day, my life would go on as before. I could always find an excuse: there was this meeting I had to go to, or that leader I had to see. In the evenings, I’d have to watch the news programs—could never miss Exploring the Point at Issue—and then I’d be all worn out. My life, perhaps it’s too privileged . . . But I’m also scared to have the time go by like this, from one day to the next. Sometimes I really want to let death come a bit sooner, so that things wouldn’t drag on for too long. lu jing (in tears): None of this is your fault . . . luo dasheng: Don’t interrupt me! There’s something even more important. You remember that, years and years ago, I had a report on oil field development that caused a sensation? Well, it wasn’t something I did by myself; the principal person behind it was Camel. Moreover, the one who should have been transferred back here was him and not me. But fate has ordained our two lives this way. Lu Jing, go ahead and punish me! lu jing (suddenly embracing him): I’ve been waiting for you to say all that for many years, Dasheng . . . I love you, Dasheng. And after this, I’ll love you all the more. luo dasheng: But it’s too late . . . lu jing: No, it isn’t! It’s not too late to begin a new way of living even one day before we die . . . (The station clock strikes a morning hour. Lights dim. Six days after that, at 3:20 on a continuously rainy autumn afternoon. The lighting in the room is dim. The seasonal rains have made the air humid and cool. The stereo is just then sending out the sonorous and sweetly mournful notes of Kenny G’s saxophone solo “Going Home.”13 No one is in the room, but somebody is knocking on the door, waiting a short while, and knocking again. The door quietly opens—and luo ming walks in, goes toward the window, then stops in front of that photograph. He looks older than his age, is extremely slender, and also somewhat stooped over. lu jing comes out of the bedroom. She is headed toward the kitchen but suddenly realizes that someone is in the room.) (Turning around) Who are you? How can you just barge into someone else’s home? (luo ming continues to stand there with his back to her.) Please get out now if you’re in the wrong apartment. You’re truly a strange sort, to still be standing over there. (With a slight pause) Who on earth are you? luo ming (turning himself around): Who do you see that I am? lu jing (squinting her eyes to look more closely): Oh, heavens! It’s Camel! luo ming (with embarrassment): None other than yours truly. (Pause. That piercing tune, “Going Home,” suddenly becomes louder and more resonant.) lu jing: You’ve come to see us after all. luo ming: I’ve been here before. Each time I came to Beijing, I’d always look up at this window . . . and imagine what you two were doing.

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lu jing: Then why didn’t you come up, to visit us? luo ming: I was afraid of bothering you. So many years have gone by. So much has changed in our lives! (Starts to walk toward her) When we were at the institute . . . lu jing: Don’t come over! luo ming: Why? lu jing: Don’t move. Just stand still over there by the window . . . for a while more. (With appreciation) You still look like yourself years ago. Just a bit older . . . I really would like to have a good cry. (Goes over to help luo ming take off his outerwear) Here, get out of your overcoat. Is it raining hard outside? luo ming: I really like the autumn rain in Beijing. Makes me think of many things in the past, which still . . . which still bring on a bit of pain. lu jing: What would you like to drink? luo ming: That’s something more current for you. Before, you’d always say, “I’ll go brew some tea.” lu jing: That’s right. Now we have everything—bottled beverages, coffee, Great Wall dry white wine. We also have . . . luo ming: But I’ve had every kind of drink, and, in the end, nothing compares to a cup of green tea. lu jing (continuing the conversation as she brews the tea): Dasheng saw you on TV last week. Our Camel is now a “Child of the East.” luo ming: I would have been more suited to be on Personal Stories of the People. lu jing: How is your wife? Is Tie Ying well? luo ming: It’s been almost eight years since she retired. lu jing: Why so early? luo ming: Women workers retire at fifty. lu jing: You’re not looking for someone new, are you? luo ming: When we’re at this age, who can leave someone to go on alone? During the Cultural Revolution, she protected me and did not mind that I was a “stinking intellectual.” We need to admit what we owe and try to pay our debts, don’t we? lu jing: From what I can see, you love her very much . . . luo ming: Hey, we just go from one day to the next. (Pause. The melody for “Going Home” keeps rising and falling.) lu jing: What kind of big award brings you to Beijing this time? luo ming: You’re being sarcastic with me. lu jing: Then you’ve come to see me? luo ming: To put it accurately, it’s to see you both. (lu jing suddenly turns away.) You . . . what’s the matter with you? lu jing: You’re treating Dasheng as if . . . luo ming: Me? How can I? He’s a strong person. He was my class president at the institute, and I still consider him my leader now. Hey, all of us were subordinates of the Beijing office.

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lu jing: Camel, I beg you, don’t show off your achievements in front of Dasheng, and don’t bring up the geological profession either. luo ming (standing up): Looks like I’d better be on my way . . . lu jing: Go ahead and leave if you don’t care about being bawled out. luo ming: Who’s going to bawl me out? lu jing: Dasheng’s going to . . . Dasheng has been upset with you all along, saying that you just went off for years and years and never sent us a solitary word. He said that you’ve really forgotten about us . . . Dasheng misses you very much, Camel. He’s somebody with a lot of heart. luo ming (tearing up): How can I forget? In the winter of seventy-seven, I became very badly arthritic at the experiment station and had to be carried to Beijing. So many people felt that I could never get on my feet again. It was Dasheng who ran all over the place to set me up with a hospital, who looked for authoritative doctors of native medicine to write me prescriptions . . . Also your mom . . . (Raising his voice) Is it possible, when a person accomplishes a little something, he will then forget everyone else? (With sadness) I’ve always felt that you’re somebody who understands me, Lu Jing . . . lu jing (giving him an affectionate pat): Yes, I do understand you . . . I do. luo ming: To tell you the truth, I’ve come to Beijing this time . . . (The door opens and luo dasheng enters.) luo dasheng (staring at luo ming): Camel! (They hug each other tightly.) luo ming: Are you going to bawl me out? luo dasheng (happily): Forget it! Soon as I saw you, my anger went down by half. I’ve really missed you, man. I just wanted us to have casual conversations together, like before . . . Lu Jing, shouldn’t we break out a bottle? Bring us something strong. lu jing: Just have some beer. That way, you won’t be drinking too much and talking a lot of nonsense. luo dasheng: Look at this, look at this. The old lady is tyrannizing me, but is doing so lovingly . . . It’s been many years . . . and we’ve all become old. But I still feel like you’ve never gone away! luo ming: We’ve left a lot of ourselves in this very house. luo dasheng (replacing the teacups with wine cups): How can we still be drinking tea at a time like this? (Opens a can of beer and pours it into three cups) Come, let the three of us chug one down. luo ming: What’s the occasion? luo dasheng: To celebrate your success, you “Child of the East.” luo ming: Let’s forget that. Let’s just sip it. (Pause.) (Somewhat distressed, staring at the beer in his cup) That’s right, I’ve become famous and established now. Lots of people have been congratulating me. I’ve been surrounded by reporters wanting interviews. I’ve had to go to conferences, big and small, which always mention one or another of my obsolete achievements. There are

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also those ostentatious big shots—this association’s director, that institute’s president. I’ve really been feeling like I’ve been lifted up and am floating in the air. (With feeling) But I am a geologist! I need to go down to the bowels of the earth, to look downward, to remain looking downward . . . to get into a world that is heavily weighed down. lu jing (stopping him): Camel! luo ming: Lu Jing doesn’t want me to go on, but I only know how to tell the truth. (With a wry smile) Success? Who can I speak to about it? My wife? My son? Maybe when anyone has even a little bit of success, he pays the price of time and years. (Tearfully) I only have the two of you, and I am asking you to help me. luo dasheng: Us? Help you? luo ming: Exactly! Didn’t the three of us dream of being geologists together? I am asking you to work with me! luo dasheng: Work together? luo ming: I’ve received the advance list of important breakthrough tasks for 1995, which includes a second round of exploration of major oil fields, and a third round of oil extraction.14 These are projects that will go beyond the current century. How can you not want to be involved? lu jing: But we’re . . . luo ming: Both of you are highly talented members of our class. Moreover, you’re in Beijing, where access to information is quick and news comes on time. luo dasheng: Ai, it would be great if we were a bit younger. luo ming: You’re still not old right now. lu jing: That’s right! It’s not too late if we start living just one day before we die. luo dasheng: I definitely will finish my book. lu jing: Let’s get Tie Ying to stay here. Lanlan’s no longer home—(abruptly changing the subject) that’s right. Qu Dan called in the morning, saying that she’s accompanying Liu Ren to Guilin and they’ll be passing through Beijing. luo dasheng: Let’s all get together. Are you coming? luo ming: Of course. (Lights dim. 7:40 p.m., two days later. With former classmates getting together, there is much excitement in the room. All of them have become elderly, nearing sixty years of age. Dinner began over an hour ago and is still continuing. By now, the interest is no longer in food. They are engaged in lively conversation, recalling the past. Three couples are present: luo dasheng and lu jing, luo ming and tie ying, qu dan and liu ren. The latter, though, is again wheelchair-bound. After the sound of a burst of laughter, the lights brighten.) tie ying: Don’t laugh anymore. At the time, Camel was so scrawny he looked like a chicken. I just grabbed him and shoved him into the oil cabin. I said, let’s get married . . . (Another burst of laughter.) luo dasheng: Tie Ying, is the cellar we used to stay in still there?

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tie ying: It’s long gone! They built a play area for kids there that’s quite attractive. We’ve got tall buildings, dance halls and bars, high speed freeways that go everywhere. The population of the whole oil town is over two million. lu jing: It’s developed so quickly! luo ming: How many people after all give a damn about what happens in the oil field? tie ying: Just you, with your head full of bureaucratic babble. You’re concerned with things like steady prosperity over the long term, doing well in the next enterprise, being responsible to our posterity. Don’t you get tired? Without you, would the world still be turning? luo ming: Don’t you be talking about how I feel. You’re no different. qu dan: Yeah. On the train, someone said that the oil supply is about to be exhausted. So Tie Ying started a fight with him, even yelling at him, “You don’t know shit!” (Laughter from everyone.) tie ying: Who would have thought that I’d be the wife of a geologist. (More laughter from everyone.) luo ming: All right, all right. (Lighting up a cigarette) Let’s help Lu Jing clean up. lu jing: Don’t anyone move. tie ying (rather roughly grabbing away the cigarette from luo ming’s hand): Who said you could smoke? With your eight different kinds of health problems, do you want to continue living? luo ming: I’m ready to kick the bucket anyway, so what the heck. (He picks up a wine cup.) tie ying (grabbing it away): Don’t drink any more! Go get yourself something to eat now. (Pause. Eyes turn to luo ming, who can only smile helplessly.) luo dasheng: Our lives as a whole have so changed we hardly dare try to figure everything out. tie ying: One year . . . (Suddenly not wanting to go on) I’ll stop talking. I better go get some shopping done. Have to pick up a bunch of things for friends. It’s really a big pain. luo ming: I’ll go with you. tie ying: You? You stay right here. (Flashing a smile) All right. You all just remain seated. Nobody move. I’m going off. (She exits. Everyone watches her back as she leaves, quite at a loss for words. An awkward silence follows. Since he suffered his stroke, liu ren drools from one side of his mouth. qu dan is constantly wiping it for him.) luo dasheng: You were such a big talker, Liu Ren. Why haven’t you said a thing today? liu ren (smiling uncomfortably): I, I, I . . . I’ve been talking half my life, and it’s been too much. qu dan: After he began wearing his prostheses that year, Liu Ren continued to do his work. He worked out the method for precision flowmetering and even wrote several books before he had the stroke last year. (Pause.)

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lu jing: How has your career gone, Qu Dan? qu dan: They say that since I had not written a thesis, I cannot claim to have achieved anything. luo ming (with indignation): What kind of achievement do they want? For nearly thirty years you were a nurse and a wife to a hero of the oil fields. The materials under your care are complete and accurate, without a single error in a million entries. Yours is the best of all theses! qu dan: It doesn’t matter to me. Everything I did, I did voluntarily. Even if the doctors say that Liu Ren doesn’t have much time left, I still want to be with him to the end, to see that he gets to enjoy the beautiful scenery of our homeland. luo dasheng: Tomorrow, I’ll be heading out together with you. I managed to get a job working for a year in Xinjiang’s Talimu oil field.15 (Walks toward the window to look at that camel photograph) Life is like a hand of a clock. Each moment that goes by will never be repeated again. We can only seize this hour and this moment, seize the next day! Somebody has said that it’s not too late to begin a new life the day before we die. (Looks over at lu jing) Perhaps that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but it’s reasonable! (The striking of the clock over the Beijing train station resounds in the quiet night. These old classmates of thirty years are silent, lost in thought.) lu jing: We’re about to leave one another again . . . and we don’t know the year or the month we can again get together. I can only wish our separation will be temporary. (Pausing) Come! Let’s sing once more that “Geologists’ Song.” Qu Dan, you lead the way. (qu dan begins crooning softly. luo dasheng is the first to join her, followed by lu jing and then luo ming. liu ren joins in last, weeping as he does so. As one person is too overcome with emotion to go on, another takes up the singing. Others who are unfamiliar with some of the lyrics just hum the melody.) What makes our red flag flutter? The breezes from the vales. What makes our white tents sparkle? The raindrops in the gales. Hot as fire our passions . . . (Lights gradually dim.) (Curtain.)

Not es

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This four-act play, Dizhishi in Chinese, is in Li Moran et al., eds., Zhongguo huaju wushi nian juzuo xuan (Selections from Modern Chinese Drama in the Last Fifty Years) (Beijing: Zhongguo xiju, 2000), 8:93–159. Beijing, now with six train stations in the city, is the railway hub of China. At the time of the play, the Main Station, in the center of the city, handled the bulk of the

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7. 8.

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train traffic, now greatly diverted to the West Station. The large clock over the entrance repeatedly referred to in the play has since been replaced with a pair of clock towers. The nickname “Camel” (Luotuo, in Chinese) is a pun involving his surname (Luo) and his hunched posture (tuo). It also refers to Luo Ming’s hardworking spirit and his endurance in overcoming difficulties, as seen in the image of a camel. The Taklamakan Desert, with an area of 270,000 square kilometers, is the largest sandonly desert in the world. It is located in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, in far western China. Unexplored since ancient times, it has now been verified as containing vast amounts of petroleum and other mineral deposits. Songji Sanjing was the most outstandingly productive part of the celebrated Daqing Oil Field, in north China’s Heilongjiang province. When it was drilled in September 1959, it reportedly turned a new page in the history of the nation’s petroleum production. Lin Biao (1907–1971) was a prominent military and political leader in the early years of the People’s Republic of China. Once considered a comrade-in-arms and a possible successor to Chairman Mao Zedong, he was later condemned as a traitor and died in a plane crash while supposedly trying to flee the country. Pavel Korchagin is the main character in the novel How the Steel Was Tempered, by the Russian author Nikolai Alexeevich Ostrovsky (1904–1936). The Chinese translation of the novel, in 1955, became very popular in spite of the souring of Sino-Soviet relations soon thereafter. The sentence preceding this one is a non sequitur and has been left out of the translation. Lin Daojing is the beautiful heroine of the novel Qingchun zhige (Song of Youth), by the woman writer Yang Mo (1914–1996). The novel was published in 1958 and made into a highly popular movie the following year. The campaign was launched in 1963 by Liu Shaoqi (1898–1969), then the president of the People’s Republic of China and a rival to Chairman Mao Zedong. The campaign called for cleaning up politics, thought, organizations, and economics. Pierre Bayle (1647–1706) was a French philosopher who tried to turn people against the application of reason to matters of faith but who argued so well against the reasonableness of religion that he is now considered a precursor of the French Enlightenment. His best-known work is the Dictionnaire historique et critique. The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution lasted officially from October 1966 to October 1976. It was a period of national upheaval and suffering, fueled by Chairman Mao Zedong’s xenophobic and antitraditional injunction to China’s youth to clean out from society all remnants of what he considered the country’s feudalistic past. Hua Luogeng (1910–1985) was an eminent mathematician who left a comfortable academic position in the United States to return to China in 1949. The founder of many fields of mathematical research, he wrote more than two hundred theses and monographs, many of which have become classic documents. He was the chairman of the Department of Mathematics and a vice president at the University of Science and Technology of China, an institution founded to foster high-level personnel necessary for the country’s economic development. “Kenny G” is the stage name of Kenneth Gorelick (b. 1956), a popular American jazz saxophonist whose music has become well known and well liked in China.

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14. The reference here is to the “Decision of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council on the Acceleration of Progress in Science and Technology,” which was eventually issued on May 6, 1995. The “Decision” boosted the overall effort to advance science and technology to meet the needs of the socialist market economy. 15. Situated in the Taklamakan Desert (see n. 3), Talimu is China’s second largest inland oil field. It contains rich reserves of oil and natural gas.

Che Guevara (2000) huang jisu, zhang guangtian, and shen lin 1 tra nsla ted by jonat han  s . nob l e

Dedication Please believe in this person, forever impassioned by the kindness of the poor; Please believe in this person, inspired to ceaseless travails by the blessings of the poor; Please believe in this person, who bid farewell to the past and gave his life to the future of the poor.

C ha r a c t e rs 2 (The characters within the play are largely symbols of concepts and do not have a fixed relationship to specific roles. A particular role, for example, can be assumed by character I just as well as by character III, et al. This is especially true for a number of the longer recited passages, including “Set Sail” and “You May Exit the Theater,” because in such sections the actors function solely as loudspeakers. This drama is motivated by concepts, and the characters and the roles they perform should not be understood in terms of a naturalistic view of theater. However, when it’s possible to capture onstage a type of social category or trait, the characters and roles are nonetheless linked together in an appropriate way. Most of the people onstage are divided into two types—the pros and the cons. The pros act as

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pros throughout the entire play, and likewise, the cons always play the part of cons. Each type, the same in essence, has different manifestations, similar to the way the reflections of the moon differ in different bodies of water. Guevara is represented onstage only by an offstage voice.)

Prologue Th e m e So n g : “ C h e G ue va r a” Who lit the dawn’s reddish glow on the horizon? A millennium of dark nights shall today be no more. Perhaps the light will arrive early; We can hear you calling out to us—Che Guevara. Who pointed out to me the sky’s shining star? Heart and soul conquered the excess of vanity. When at the crossroads searching for our home, We spot the outline of your figure—Che Guevara. Who led me to set forth once again? Belief in justice shall once again be emboldened. The road ahead needs new footsteps,3 Rank and file we follow you—Che Guevara. Who stands up never to be overthrown? Blossoms fill the land behind you. Devotion to revolution turns to steel, We are as determined as you—Che Guevara. C h o r us Red flags wave forth from my firm devotion; Receiving your gun, I rush toward the battlefield. Singing my song summons strength; By walking along your path, we find a new direction.

A CT 1: T H E G RA NM A SETS SAI L (This act primarily addresses the following questions: Given the past forty years, what is the road humanity should now take? Should the Granma have even bothered setting forth on its journey?

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Accompanied by the sound of perilous waves, a silhouette of a boat bobs up and down against the backdrop. Stage center, a soldier marches in darkness. The sprinkling of stars, the singing of a sullen song, and the shimmering footprints in the darkness of night symbolize the remote, strenuous, and harsh path for the cause of justice. The actors take turns reciting the parts below.) One evening, forty years ago, amid pouring rain and crashing waves, the small yacht Granma was anchored at a small fishing pier in Mexico. The Granma was a small boat. Under normal conditions, the boat could hold only a dozen or so beach bums on vacation. But on this day, more than eighty young soldiers were packed on board. Their leader’s name was Castro. He had just led an uprising in Cuba against its corrupt government. After the uprising’s failure, Castro went into exile in Mexico. A young Argentine doctor named Guevara was also among the soldiers on board. He had just participated in a battle to defend the progressive government of Guatemala, which was ultimately defeated by the artillery of American jets.4 When he heard that Castro was preparing for a second uprising, Guevara said to his wife, whom he had just married: “Since these people have the courage to rush into a blazing fire, I shall go with them!” (Music plays.) This play, from beginning to end, lacks any sense of suspense. After embarking in the dead of night, the Granma sailed into storms and drifted at sea for seven days and seven nights. Guevara suffered from asthma attacks, and the other soldiers vomited from seasickness. Still, they sang the “July 26 Elegy” 5 and recited the poetry of José Martí: “Light from a lamp is no longer enough; the stove’s flame must be ignited!” When the Granma eventually reached land, the Cuban government’s military had already prepared an ambush. The attack scattered Guevara and the soldiers into the Sierra Maestra Mountains, where they then managed to finally establish a foothold. The fighting gradually turned in their favor, and in just a few years, red flags covered the entire island. Forty years have gone by . . . During these past forty years, how many dreams have come and gone? How many mountains and rivers have turned a different color? How many people have new hearts and new minds? (The following is spoken to the audience.) In those days you always loved to sing, “We’ll sing our own song.” In those days you always loved to sing, “Bravely march ahead without fear.” 6 Nowadays you just love to praise your daughter for earning U.S. dollars and for marrying a Japanese businessman. Nowadays you just love to shout out how fucking awesome their fighters’ guided missiles are! The Granma should never have even bothered setting off in the first place. That’s what all the “pundits” are saying these days. Any idea to the contrary would be just making a fuss over nothing. That’s what the “visionaries” are thinking these days.

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Should or shouldn’t the Granma have pushed off on its journey that year? Do we still even care about Guevara’s courage? This evening, amid the intoxicating breeze and soothing moonlight, let us once again reflect upon such questions. (All exit. The cons enter the stage. They represent disillusionment, regret, and condemnation of the revolution. Sounds, poses, and musical accompaniment, for example, should be adopted to help achieve this signification and characterization. An overall atmosphere of oppressive sadness should also be maintained.) con i (the five greats 7): Forty years, four hundred years, gone by are four thousand years. Some people are higher, yet some are lower. There’s just no way to change gears. all cons: 8 This is humanity, this is the world, don’t expect a new day. This is the law, this is the rule, the order we must all obey. con ii: How stupid! How stupid! The utopian nonsense those asses spout is just a bubble of idealistic crap. con iii: A bummer! A bummer! Only now waking up from the revolutionary dream, you’ve already missed the first bus to Prosperity. all cons: This is humanity, this is the world, don’t expect a new day. This is the law, this is the rule, the order we must all obey. con iv: Why bother? Why bother? Who banks checks from the new world? Who guarantees the new world’s solvency? Can’t you see that the new world has crashed!9 con ii: Move on! Move on! Hurry and dig up a return boat ticket. Hurry and sell off stocks in the bullish market. Hurry and apply for a visa to the old world! all cons: This is humanity, this is the world, don’t expect a new day. This is the law, this is the rule, the order we must all obey. con iii: Don’t daydream or space out again. Life is a big match. Either advance to the next round or be eliminated. You have to be damn wicked, wicked to a tee! all cons: If you don’t look out for yourself, you’ll be crushed! Don’t waste your breath! This is humanity, this is the world, don’t expect a new day. This is the law, this is the rule, the order we must all obey. five greats: Workers must practice kneeling like before. The penniless shell out to get back on track. WE the rich buy out the voices of YOU the poor! (To con ii) I’m going to exploit you! con ii (pausing for a while): I simply can’t wait for the day! (con iii joins him.) five greats (to con iii): Do I oppress you? con iii (with teeth clenched): The sooner the better! The sooner I can start flying high! five greats (to con iv): You want another guided missile? (con iv—nodding her head like a lovesick girl—tightly grasps the hand of the five greats. The shrill pitch of an antiaircraft alarm is heard. The lights dim. All exit the stage. The postbombing ruins of Iraq and Yugoslavia are projected onto the curtain.10 Residents of Belgrade—with targets on their chests—appear at a concert in a plaza and on top of a bridge holding one another’s hands. [It may also be appropriate to project an image of Chinese students protesting in front of the U.S. embassy.] The curtain gradually turns to a burning blood- colored red. A number of small, white concen-

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tric circles—bull’s-eyes—are projected on the curtain as the audience hears the sound of airplanes whizzing by. The voice of a pilot comes from offstage: “I’ve locked in on the target. Prepare to launch the missile.” A loud boom is heard and all the lights in the theater turn a snowy white. Heaps of U.S. dollars [in large denominations] flitter down from the theater’s ceiling onto the stage and the audience. Accompanied by baroque music, images of the following scenes are seen on the screen: International Monetary Fund representatives wining and dining with government leaders of member nations at a lively banquet, a long line in front of the U.S. embassy’s visa office, tourists from Third World countries making a pilgrimage to Disney World, Westernized youth with blondedyed hair strutting about town, and glamour boys and girls in the television program Let’s Be Happy Together.11 The night watchman’s clapper is heard several times.) all cons: Oh—how—this—terrible—life—never ends! con ii: Such a dark night! Such a strong wind! Such high waves! Such a small boat! So few people! Such worthless guns! (Accompanied by the rhythm of “This is humanity, this is the world,” an image of the cruiser Aurora firing on the Winter Palace is projected onto the screen.) con iii: So you launched an attack on that beach. So you made it to those mountains. So you took control of that island. Still you will never reach the other shore.12 (Accompanied by the rhythm of “This is humanity, this is the world,” images of Lenin giving a speech, a mass street protest, and a sea of red flags are projected onto the screen.) con iv: The outer skin may change, but what of the flesh inside? The brew may change, but what about the medicine? If dogs can’t learn new tricks—then why would people? Even if you blow up billions of red balloons, you can never blow red into these filthy people, filthy hearts, filthy land, and filthy heavens! (Accompanied by the rhythm of “This is humanity, this is the world,” an image of the collapse of the Berlin Wall is projected onto the screen.) con ii: Don’t provoke humanity; don’t provoke selfishness; don’t provoke history; don’t provoke the inevitable; don’t provoke the status quo—every bit and piece of the total sum. Don’t provoke the way things will have to be for ages to come. (Images of the Aurora being auctioned off as a cruise ship, beggars on the street, and hookers soliciting customers are projected onto the screen.) con iii: Might as well save your dreams for your pillows. Might as well keep your feet planted on the ground. Might as well follow tradition and be safe and sound. Might as well send the Granma back to floating as a yacht all around. all cons: Hey!—the shore—is—behind us!13 (A gong forlornly resounds once. the five greats leads the cons off the stage. The lights are dimmed. A follow spot illuminates the pros entering the stage.) all pros (in the direction of the audience): Guevara, just now, after mentioning the lessons learned during the past forty years and the experiences of the past four hundred years, four thousand years, they advised us not to dream of a new day and not to strive after the impossible. Don’t go to Cuba and the Congo again. Don’t go to Bolivia again. That’s right. Right here is the Boulevard of Peace14 that leads to all places. It

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has both solid and broken lines; red and green traffic lights. Motor vehicles drive fast, while the motorless move at a crawl. But over there . . . con ii: I know you’re not afraid of a world filled with pain and suffering or to put your life on the line! con iii: It has been only forty years—but how many boats now head for New York? Count them! How many roads now lead to Paris? Just add them up! con iv: Tell me the truth, don’t you feel discouraged? con i: Given a choice today, would the Granma still have set sail?! (The actors exit. A follow spot shines on the soldiers, who are spread out at the back of the stage. Guevara’s voice resounds from offstage behind the audience.) offstage voice: Indeed, this is a long voyage and the horizon is still not in view. It is a clash between two unequal powers—a fight against the almighty. pro i: Just like the foolish old man who was determined to move mountains.15 pro ii: Just like the bird that was set on filling up an ocean one stone at a time.16 pro iii: Just like a lone island up against the vast sea. pro i: Just like a newborn up against four thousand years of history. pro ii: Just like devotion up against History. pro iii: Just like hope up against Reality. pro i: Just like seeds adrift in the wind up against the dunes of a great desert. all pros: Perhaps, even in a thousand years, it can’t escape from the dark eve! offstage voice: There’s a chance just as long as it heads for the East! all soldiers: It perhaps may not find the other shore in ten thousand years— offstage voice: There is hope only if we keep looking! (Music begins. The drumbeat of “This is humanity, this is the world” is heard from the distance.) (Spoken with resolve) Don’t ask if we should light a fire, but rather, first ask whether or not the cold darkness still exists. Don’t ask if we should load a bullet, but rather, first ask whether or not oppression and exploitation still exist. Don’t ask if there is a future for the cause of justice, but rather, first ask whether or not inequality still exists in this world. (The drumbeat of “This is humanity, this is the world” is heard from the distance.) In the face of a violent storm, pro i: Birds can fly away. offstage voice: In the face of flooding waters, pro ii: Beasts can run away. offstage voice: In the face of great evil, all soldiers: People—have nowhere to hide! (The revolutionary “July 26 Elegy” resounds. All soldiers shoulder their rifles.) offstage voice: Wherever there are bullies and tyrants, pro i: Our blood shall boil for the cause of justice. offstage voice: Wherever there are those who bring ruin upon one’s country and people, pro ii: We shall bristle with anger for the cause of justice. offstage voice: Wherever wine and meat are left to spoil behind vermilion gates,

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pro iii: We shall unsheathe our weapons for the cause of justice. offstage voice: Wherever people freeze to death on the roadside, all pros: Shall the Granma set sail thither! (Silhouettes of the guerrillas setting off are projected. We hear sounds of the boat’s foghorn, engine humming, the murmuring of mothers and crying of babies, the westerly wind and winter thunder, the honking of wild swans in flight, banging and crashing, and the singing of the revolutionary “July 26 Elegy.”) offstage voice: Set sail! all pros: Set sail! Set sail! pro i: Head toward the peasant rebellion led by Chen Sheng and Wu Guang in Daze Village!17 pro ii: Head toward Spartacus at the Coliseum! pro iii: Head toward the Three Stone Bridge of today and yesteryear.18 (The individual actors take turns reciting the following lines.) Head toward the cruel rent collectors.19 Head toward the place where Negro slaves were kidnapped and detained. Head toward the place where indigenous peoples were banished and murdered. Head toward the place where weak nations fought against the British and Japanese. Head toward the place where poor villagers fought against taxes and levies. Head toward the place where the Jews were forced into a blind alley. Head toward the place where the Palestinians are homeless. Head toward the place where the Paris Commune fighters were finally defeated. Head toward the place where President Allende20 is forever memorialized. Head toward the place where in the former Yugoslavia mothers silently shed their tears. Head toward the place where Tomahawk cruise missiles filled the air. Head toward the place where despots and tyrants have sex day and night. Head toward the place where ordinary people are mercilessly trampled upon. Head toward the place where rich ladies throw money around like dirt. Head toward the place where the wretched suffer through days as if they were years. Head toward the place where a single official seal makes one rich. Head toward the place where a lifetime of grueling toil amounts to nothing. Head toward the place where a moral conscience is smothered and extinguished. Head toward the place where darkness and evil are staging a comeback. offstage voice: Head toward the place that needs fire, needs light, and needs my voice! all pros: Head toward the place that needs daggers, needs swords, and needs my fighting blows!

A CT 2: T HE L O N G ROAD OF LI FE (This act recounts the reasons why Che Guevara became a revolutionary. It combines narration with discussion to provide an account of his distant journeys as a student, his contact with people suffering from hardship and poverty, and his sincere feelings and convictions

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that convinced him to “stand by the side of the people.” Returning from the past to reality prompts a public debate regarding the wealth gap. The stage, placed at a forty-five-degree angle to the audience, forms a street that divides the world into two sides—north and south.) S o n g : “ Th e Lo n g R oa d o f Li f e” There is a street, Called the Long Road of Life. It is four thousand years long, And is exactly as wide as the world. On the north side of the street Live a few rich people. On the south side of the street Live countless poor. The poor and the rich; The south and the north. Oppression and exploitation; Struggle and resistance. Just like this, time and time again. Just like this, we have lived for thousands of years. all pros: Che Guevara was born in Argentina in 1928. He was a descendant of immigrants from Europe. His aristocratic family was heir to a viceroy who had owned a ranch and tea plantation.21 (All pros retreat to one side of the stage. A woman’s voice saying “Sorry, bye” 22comes from offstage by the northern side of the street and is followed by the sound of a door closing. “A child of the East,” with a blonde- dyed wisp of hair—played by con ii— frantically walks over holding a mirror in her hand. She can’t help becoming enraged by what the speaker is saying, and she comes onstage in a tizzy.) con ii: What kind of hereditarianism are you preaching? Don’t try to impress me with talk of your family being the “last imperial princes” and “The Last Daughters of Privilege”!23 After all, I’m a Francophile! As for moi, I should have been born (pointing at the north side) in the Champs-Élysées. In a waning aristocratic or nouveau bourgeoisie family—whatever! In any case, everyone in the family would have golden-blonde hair and aqua-blue eyes. The family has two Chinese, both of whom are servants! (Pounding on her chest and stomping) But why on earth did I have to be born as a pure East Asian mongoloid in Beijing’s Drum Tower Alley24 so close to Zhoukoudian!25 During the Tang dynasty, it was possible to interbreed with the non-Han. But, since China at the time was so prosperous, it was just as easy not to. The Eight-Power Allied Forces

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was an opportunity that couldn’t be missed!26 Other than the Japanese, the rest of the gang was from the West. That, though, was a real “clash of civilizations”—just the right moment for a “liberatory struggle” to support the cause of eugenics!27 Haven’t you heard about those children in South Vietnam who were left behind by American soldiers, and after a blood test were then reunited to end up earning American dollars! Why didn’t one of my great-grandmothers hiding out down a well think of this? Now it drives me crazy to look in the mirror! No matter whether you hum the “Marseillaise,” sing the “Star-Spangled Banner,” or say from memory the Declaration of Independence backwards as fluently as you recite the line “So bright is the moonlight at the foot of my bed” 28 (pointing at the mirror), your face is still the same! Even if you live in a narrow Beijing alley but your heart is in Buckingham—and you’re impressed by the sight of the Eight-Allied Forces and think F-4 Phantoms are so cool looking—your face is still the same! No matter how you try NOT to be yourself while you’re still clearly yourself, and no matter how you become more like them THAN EVEN they are, though you are definitely NOT them (looking perplexed in the mirror), that face is still the same! No matter how much you curse China, blaspheme China, offend China, dupe China, disgrace China, shame China, kick China, bite China, shred China, fuck over China (smashing the mirror), you—still—have—that—same—fucking—face! (con ii exits wailing.) And THEY still dare suspect you of intending to emigrate . . . pro a: Guevara was born on this side of the street, yet he adopted a new type of family and chose different types of relatives. Anyone in the world who suffered and was exploited—regardless of whether in Argentina, Cuba, Venezuela, India, China, or the Republic of Equatorial Guinea—was part of his family. A European with the last name of Guevara once asked him: “Are we related?” Guevara responded: “Probably not. But if you shake from anger whenever you hear of an injustice in the world, then I think we must be.” (Music plays.) What made him like this? Where did he get such strong beliefs? While still a student, Guevara twice crossed the South American continent as a “penniless traveler” and witnessed the suffering of a different world. (The stage darkens and music begins.) pro b: Once during your travels you spent the night with a poor person in a cement pipe. The poor person mocked you for not going back home while bemoaning not having any home to go back to himself. You gazed at a new kind of moonlight in the cold wind. You contemplated a new type of world under that cold moon. pro c: You had once visited a copper mine in Chile and stayed in a party member’s mine worker’s shanty. You heard from him about how much copper flowed to the wallets of American capitalists and how many workers were buried in the barren hillsides. The night was too dark, and he built a fire for you. The weather was too cold, and you draped your clothing over his shoulders. You were so frozen that you

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couldn’t stop shivering. But you felt the fire of the underclass world burning in your chest, and the blood of the underclass flowing through your body. pro a: You once stood on the roadside in Bolivia and saw how the minister greeted the peasants’ representative. The world’s filthiest parasites were dressed to the nines, yet the most innocent laborers in the world were disinfected and sprayed with pesticides. Then you thought . . . this society has turned everything upside down. Then you realized . . . the only thing that can change everything is gunfire. pro b: You arrived at the leper village in Peru to treat the sick. Among those lonely and desperate souls, you saw friendship, camaraderie, and compassion, so rarely seen among piles of money. pro c: When you left, the rain had poured for many days, and the wooden raft built by the lepers carried you away. The hands waving to you from the bank were not just bidding you farewell but also beckoning to you. Midstream your solitary image reflected both an old and new person. pro a: You said that since the world is divided into two parts, you’d choose to share the same fate as the people. You said that since the struggle would require a fight, from here on out you would become a fighter. offstage voice: Farewell, days of leisure. Farewell, days of wealth. Farewell, days of refinement. Farewell, days of self-indulgence. all pros: Farewell, Mom and Dad. Farewell, my high school sweetheart. Farewell, my homeland, Argentina. Farewell, my pitiable Latin America. Farewell, last four thousand years. Farewell, old world. S o n g : “ Act ua l l y i n Th i s Wo r ld We A re A ll O ne” Actually in this life, We are all just one person. Actually in this world, We are all just of one heart. If there is just one person in poverty, Then this life is hell. If there is just one evil person, Then this world can’t be heaven. S o n g : “ Yo u Wa l k e d Li f e ’ s Lo ng Roa d” You walked life’s long road, Life inspired you. You walked life’s long road, Life permeated you. You walked life’s long road, Life shaped you.

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You walked life’s long road, Life possessed you . . . (Lights dim. Lights come on. The sound of a clapper is heard from the street. the five greats [con i] and all the cons—who are now playing the role of bootlicking scholars—enter along the north in a tizzy. The drama returns to today’s debate on the inequality between the rich and poor.) all cons: All’s at peace! con i: Peace? Why does my left eyelid always twitch? con ii: It means you’ll be rich!29 Take a look! All our stocks on the Dow Jones are bullish—like the new colonialism stock, the old hegemony stock, new libertarian stock, old guard conservatism stock, “all belongs to me in peaceful years” stock, “offer you some during turbulent times” stock, “rich whites and rich blacks join hands” stock, “poor house cats and poor street cats are different” stock, in addition to the “long ago became worthless” stock and the “just bought fluctuating up and down” stock. All of them are really hot, which completely proves my theory that “history ends here.” con i: Then why is my right arm numb? con iii: Is it a tingling sensation like ants crawling? Your qi must be flowing!30 all cons: Capitalism has entered the transcendent realm! (A few modern- day youth appear on the south side. They are wearing simple clothing and look like work-study students and dreamy poets.) con i: You should know better to keep up your guard during times of peace! (Instructing everyone) These silly fools are only good enough to be sent to teach in a socialist country. (con i notices that the youth are using a measuring tape to measure the distance between the north side and south side. The youth proceed to first measure the closer distance, then go on to measure the more distant area.) What happened! What are they doing? con ii: Youngsters, it looks like you’re interns who have graduated from the Civil Engineering Academy with a major in road construction, right? youth a: You could say that. We’re thinking about how the world should be built and how this road should go. (the five greats is shocked.) con iii: What are you measuring? youth b: The wealth gap. con i: What’s wrong with the gap? youth a: The gap keeps getting larger and more and more outrageous. con i (asking another youth): What book are you looking at? youth b: The Biography of Guevara. con a: That’s great. People who love to read and think are few and far between. They’re the future pillars of society. youth c: You don’t mean the pillars of this society?

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(the five greats summons the bootlicking scholars to come over.) con i: It’s too dangerous! A group of potential Guevaras! con ii: This is a “case for the emergency funding of thousands of bombs to eliminate ‘eyesores,’ ‘body aches,’ and ‘spoiled food.’ ” Approve it! After all, this time we don’t need to sugarcoat it!31 con i: Better to work on the mind first! Here’s a project fund for “exploitation and oppression are good.” I’ll see who can wash their brains to the color of the star-spangled banner. (con i tosses out a handful of paper money. Accompanied by elegant chamber music, the scholars scramble about the floor after the bills. They exit following the five greats. All the scholars finish the project, and they process from the grand door in turn to present their “research results.” “There is a chance sooner or later” and “Everyone has a share,” etc. are written in big letters on white paper. “person ≠ person,” the first to come on stage, enters into a debate—resembling a prologue—with youth a. In reading the lines below it is important to pay attention to the relationship of the lines on both the vertical and horizontal axes.)

person ≠ person: You’re not me— And I’m not him— Black is just not as good as yellow— A pity that yellow is not as good as white— Thin arms can’t wrestle thick arms; The dull-witted just have to follow the clever-minded. Do your parents own what my parents own? You fuckin’ want to have what I already fuckin’ have!

youth a: Yet all are homo sapiens just the same. Yet all are omnivorous pack animals just the same. Yet all are quadrupeds and have five senses just the same. Yet all have seven feelings and six desires just the same. Yet all take care of the young and elderly just the same. Yet all are men or women who will get married just the same.32 Yet all will live and die just the same. Yet all come and go just the same!

(youth a grabs the hand of person ≠ person. The following exchange, which talks about body parts—hands, feet, eyes, mouths, and ears—also takes the form of a dialogue.) youth a (angrily): All are hands just the same! Some hands spend millions and make billions. Money rains down at a twist of the wrist! person ≠ person (mockingly): That’s right. Hands are just hands! Some start out groping for quarters but end up with only pennies. What’s that called? Lousy hands!

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youth b (with melancholy): All are feet just the same! Some prefer to let one’s feet blister to prevent one’s shoes from scuffing. The road of life is merciless! person ≠ person (proudly): Exactly, all are feet! I just want Australian leather and Italian shoemakers. Different feet have different fates! youth c (helplessly): All are eyes just the same! You till the yellow earth your entire life. You mine sooty coal your entire life. You can stand your backbreaking life, but you can’t bear to let your children suffer too. The earlier you can shut your eyes and rest in peace the better. person ≠ person (worriedly): Of course all are eyes! A moon above the Pyramids exudes a feeling of elegance. Nothing’s more idyllic than a glistening snow-covered Mount Fuji. You’ve seen the Alps in the autumn but not yet in the spring. What if someday you suddenly keel over or become blind? youth a: All are mouths just the same! For some, breakfast and dinner are tubers. The steamed dishes are tubers; the boiled dishes are also tubers. Year after year and decade after decade of tubers. That’s the only way to deal with the hungry mouths. person ≠ person: Of course all are mouths! Today we can have Tan Family cuisine, and next time we’ll have Mao Family cuisine.33 Prefer Shanghai or Japanese cuisine? Just have Russian cuisine when you want a richer flavor and Indian cuisine when you want more spice. Food is a culinary art! youth b: All are ears just the same! Here the police are cursing, the neighbors are arguing, the wives are complaining, the children are wailing, the sick are moaning, and the penniless are begging. (Upset) How come it’s hell here while it’s heaven over there! person ≠ person: All are ears just the same! There’s the Sichuan opera Turandot, the opera Turandot, the Imperial Ancestral Temple’s Turandot, the Venetian Turandot, the light opera Turandot, and the musical Turandot. These Turandots are each unique in a different way!34 (With a sense of gratification, a battle of words follows.) difference = nature = should: Here on top is the head, the feet down below. Do the head and feet belong to the same class? Can an ice lolly vendor make the same amount of money as a computer whiz? youth ii: Of course the head is not the feet and the feet are not the head. But without the feet, the head can hardly move and is no better than a flat ball. Your brains have arteries and veins. And our feet have blood and flesh as well. Your face needs powder, and our shoes need polish. Why should the wealth of three thousand of the well heeled equal the total household income of three billion poor soles? Don’t tell me such a gap is natural when in reality it is a man-made chasm! everyone has a share: Hey, hey, hey, no one said to only let the Smiths get rich and not the Joneses. How many CEOs and tycoons started out as penniless paupers? (Takes out a deck of cards and shuffles them) Everyone has an equal opportunity (dealing out cards to each person), just like everyone has an equal chance to buy lottery tickets. Didn’t that kiddo Bill Gates pick the card to be the world’s wealthiest person? (Turning over one of the cards) Whoa, a black joker!

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youth c (tearing up the card): In the end only a few people end up making money, while millions of people lose money. Why should we turn life into a casino, where everyone is a gambler? there is a chance sooner or later: Don’t be so anxious. The sooner we, at the head, move into a garden villa, the sooner you, at the rear, can enjoy coal-burning stoves. Isn’t that better than building a fire with wood? Leftovers are quite nutritious. Just heat up Laozi and Zhuangzi for a meal! Real healthy! the pros enthusiastically clap and drag there is a chance sooner or later to their side and ask him to repeat himself.) “We, at the head—” all youth “They, at the head!” there is a chance sooner or later: “You, at the rear—” all youth “We, at the rear!” there is a chance sooner or later: “Leftovers— (sooner or later has a worried and sad expression.) will just have to do.” rich and poor dialectics: The rich and poor should be looked at dialectically: The rich have certain problems of the rich, while the poor have certain benefits of the poor. The rich have many headaches, while the poor have fewer irritations. The jewel shopkeeper is always on edge, while rarely do you hear of a theft at a junkyard. Superstars stand on a lonely pedestal afraid of tumbling down and breaking into a million pieces. How can they feel as secure as ordinary people, who, upon falling, only get a scratch? The king and the minister are sent to the guillotine when ousted from power. When coal is replaced by gas, those who had rolled charcoal can still roll sticky-rice balls. there is a chance sooner or later: Shut up! Dialectics require that you view things dialectically! You-us eat garlic and kiss—(all cons: “Sweet!”) but not cool. Eight of us in one room—(all cons: “Cozy!”) but crowded. We-they eat the eight delicacies35 and a Manchu-Han banquet36 until their stomachs burst—(all pros: “Looking to die!”) but it’s bursting with flavor. They have their stomachs pumped until their kidneys are pumped out too—(all pros: “Lost out!”) it’s worth it! Why do they risk everything in the name of pleasure? Why are they attracted to sin like a moth darting into a flame? There must be something awesome about it! Excuse me, I have to return to my team. (sooner or later runs off. ) the beginning of man: Equality is certainly not the original nature of humankind. Inequality is the fundamental quality of society. It seems as if the iron rice bowl37 contained sleeping pills. Anyone who ate from it only wanted to sleep and not work. Then you eat a meal specially catered for you, and you feel like you took Chinese turtle essence and heroine. You wish your nose and ears could turn into feet so that you could dash toward golden cups and silver bowls as if there were no tomorrow! youth a: Equality is certainly not the nature of this type of person. Inequality is precisely the characteristic of this type of society. This type of person is shaped by soci-

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ety. This type of society is what you need. Fortunately it has only been four thousand years, and humanity still has a chance to grow melons, apples, pears, and peaches instead of marijuana and opium. It is yet too early to talk about the laws of nature and humanity. How many thousand-year- old stone memorials are still standing? Not a single one of the emperors ordained to rule forever is still alive. The sky and earth are vast. Let’s keep on going! The white light stops and listens carefully so as to determine from which direction the noise is coming, then moves toward it, searching intently. poor and rich aesthetics: You stand up for the poor but find the wealthy disagreeable? Then let me ask you, who picks locks to rob homes, the poor or the rich? Who lifts cucumbers from the market? Who darts through red lights on bicycles and jaywalks? Who, with their naked torsos and filthy swearing, is a blemish to society? Who pees outside on the ground whenever they feel like it? Who, after all, wants knowledge but has no knowledge, wants culture but has no culture, wants ideals but has no ideals, wants refinement but lacks refinement, wants taste but lacks taste, wants opportunities but fails at everything? Who is nearsighted like rats and just as tight as chickens’ innards with money? Who is useless but gets angry, eyes turning red from jealousy, and picks fights with friends who are getting ahead in this world? Let me ask one more time: Who is more civilized and polite, the rich or the poor? Who has greater respect for rules and is more law-abiding? Whose heart is more generous and vision more forward-looking? Whose temperament is kinder and disposition more refined? Who better understands Kant, Wittgenstein, and Derrida? Who is better able to appreciate Monet, Debussy, and Shakespeare? Who more enthusiastically participates in charitable events and donates funds to build hospitals, libraries, schools, and laboratories? youth a: You have squeezed the poor dry. What do they have left to let them be philanthropists? The poor want to understand and analyze philosophy, but they can’t afford to pay tuition. They also want to enjoy Italian opera, but they can’t afford to buy the tickets. They also know that wearing tuxedos and evening gowns looks good and that arguing with neighbors over the outhouse is silly. They also know that it’s better to be altruistic and donate money, while it’s bad to steal and pick pockets. The poor are unsightly in thousands of different ways, but in the end it’s all just because they don’t have any money. It’s all due to your endless craving for more money! It’s all because of the exploitative and oppressive way of the world! history acknowledges only the real heroes: If Meng Jiangnü’s husband had never been exploited, how could you stroll about the Great Wall on your honeymoon today?38 If Egyptian pharaohs hadn’t oppressed their people, how could one go sightseeing today at the Pyramids? History acknowledges only the real heroes! Just let Lei Feng’s mother cry.39 Just let Yang Bailao lament.40 The sun has risen, the wind has stopped, and the tears and grieving have been wiped away by time. Don’t be so sentimental! youth b: That theory is as poisonous as centipedes and scorpions! You say it with such literary grace! Let me tell you, Lei Feng’s mother cried and it wasn’t for naught. Yang

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Bailao cried out, and it wasn’t for naught. Do you still remember the fate of Huang Shiren? 41 Haven’t you heard how Louis XVII was dethroned? Just wait until the laments turn to condemnation and tears turn to flames. Don’t think they’ll be soft on you! the ideology of “since”: Since the whip can’t be avoided, you should think about not being the one who is whipped but the one who uses the whip. Since the saddle cannot be avoided, you should think about how to ride on top of the saddle rather than being ridden on. Since there is such a huge difference between the north side and the south side, you had best think about how to cut ties with the south side and hurry and emigrate to the north side. I’ve already made a path for you . . . all youth Then what are we waiting for? Let’s go! five greats: You’re all techies! Welcome! all youth There are four billion of us. Can you take us all? five greats Make a checkpoint. The dirty clothes and old pants can come through, but don’t let any riffraff or other slackers by.42 con b (hanging on the wall of the wealthy on the north side): If I can’t be rich, then I’ll become their mistress. If I can’t run a bank, then I’ll rob a bank. If I’m not born rich, then I’ll move into a wealthy area. If you don’t let me move in, then I’ll sneak in! If I can’t get in above ground, than I’ll make a tunnel! I’ll speak of equality only when I’ve got nothing left! If one’s got what it takes, then who the fuck would settle for being left behind as just some Joe Blow! (con b is knocked down by con iii but is still looking for an opening in the wall to crawl through.) five greats (giving orders to everyone): This kiddo’s not of great value, but he’s a great representative. Let him in! progress: Wring him! Hold him! How can a proletariat represent advanced productivity! They are the only ones who are backwards! They are all rubbish! If they keep their jobs, then technology will never progress and business revenues will never increase. Don’t bother sympathizing with them! Who is the most advanced? Those capitalists—“knowledge capitalists”—in this era of the knowledge-based economy— that are headed by him! (progress points to the five greats.) youth c: Since you play the stock market, of course you should buy those stocks that bring you wealth and power. Since you have to bum rides, might as well pick Lincolns, Benzes, and Cadillacs. The proletariat may not represent so- called advanced productivity. But I just want to ask: have they received a fair return for what they put in? I just want to say: even if you do business, you should still keep ethics in mind! five greats: Hey, there’s the smell of rebels and hooligans in the air. Are you planning on taking a share of our stuff! Get the guns! (Gunshots ring out and the stage darkens.)

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ACT 3: BUIL D IN G THE NEW SOCI ETY (The set, a “construction site,” is highly symbolic—symbolizing not just the construction of a building but also of society itself. The front and middle parts of the stage form two distinct spaces: the front part is the narrative space of the fifties and sixties and the middle part is a space of reflection in the eighties and nineties. The gunshots heard at the end of the last act gradually change into the triumphant beating of gongs and drums. The colors on the stage are bright and lively.) pro a: The Cuban Revolution has won! The Cuban people can now stand up! The reactionaries have been toppled and the imperialists have all run away!43 (Then, a series of piercing gunshots ring out from the left side. pro b runs in that direction. The gunshot sounds gradually disappear. pro b bolts back over from the left.) pro b: The hopes of the imperialists and all reactionaries are still alive. There’s no way they will simply retreat from the stage of history. They want to strangle Soviet power while in its infancy; they want to contain the new China; they want to overthrow the Cuban Revolution. Their calculations are all wrong! (A series of piercing gunshots ring out from the right side. pro c runs in that direction. The gunshot sounds gradually disappear. pro c bolts back from stage right.) pro c: Turbulence and then failure, repeated by more turbulence and failure again, until finally extinction. That is exactly how all imperialist and reactionary cliques will be forced to exit from the stage of history. (The sound of gunshots rings out again, followed by a prolonged echo. pro a appears to have been hit. The stage lights start to change to cold colors.) pro a: One Liu Qingshan.44 Just one! (Another gunshot rings out. pro a’s steps are heavy.) Two Liu Qingshans. Only two? (Another gunshot rings out and is then followed by a continuous stream of gunshots. A feeling of gloom envelops the stage.) Liu Qingshan again . . . (The beat of “This is humanity, this is the world” is heard from a distance. An image of Chen Xitong and his coterie in court is projected.)45 pro b: After the rebel army attacked Havana, one of the soldiers asked Guevara for leave to visit his family. Guevara refused to give him permission. pro c: Hadn’t the revolution already been victorious? offstage voice: Political power had been won but the revolution had just started. pro a (illuminated by a fixed spotlight): Building the new society is an uphill battle. Thousands of years of exploitation and oppression have become a structure as firmly and deeply rooted as Mount Tai.46 It hides behind the rhetoric of “humanity” and uses the authority of tradition. Within every nook and cranny, within each one of our past and present thoughts, within everything that remains hidden away far and wide, it stages a vengeful counterattack against the new society. The old society is not

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simply on the other side of the mountains or across the ocean. It is not simply in your gun’s range or on your radar screen. Rather, it hides within the air you breathe and permeates the blood that circulates through your mind. When the time comes for you to assail the “enemies,” most likely you will have already become one of them. When you remove the veil of the “new,” perhaps we will only see that old face of yours! (Four people imitate a children’s game of a horse-riding mime. Three people, who are dressed in riding outfits, play the body of the horse, while the other person wears a horse’s mask. The three “riders” have golden saddles and silver stirrups hanging from their bodies. The “horse” on top keeps on kicking the “riders” down below and sometimes motions to the east or points to the west. The “riders” cannot avoid going in the wrong direction, and when they do, they are then kicked and beaten by the “horse.” Moreover, the horse’s head bullies its side, which then bullies its backside, thereby forming a system that is not so different from the old world’s class system. In a nutshell, this scene depicts the bureaucratic new bourgeoisie’s betrayal of the socialists’ idealism and the alienation of the mass’s interests.)47 pro b: Amid the containment, acquisition, appeasement, and revolution of the old society, the stockholders—naturally attaining status and wealth, private homes and automobiles, servants and masseurs—quickly gained advantages from the return on their investments. How is the way they manage themselves different from that of the old world? Hasn’t just the author changed and the cover become new? They are, more precisely, just a “bootlegged” copy of the old world.48 (A magician garbed in red and waving a red magic wand hops onto the stage. Behind him two apprentices push a large cabinet, rotating it onto the stage. “Yours, mine, all of ours” is written in big letters on the face of the cabinet. After moving into position, they remove the cabinet’s front, rear, left, and right panels in front of the audience. After showing that it has nothing inside, the cabinet is reassembled. The two apprentices carry a plate to collect money from the audience. The audience checks their pockets and takes out whatever cash they have. The money is placed inside the cabinet. They place three or four locks and seven or eight seals on the cabinet’s doors. Then the magician covers the cabinet with a red cloth. He holds the magic wand and points to himself, points to the audience, and then points to the sky and the ground. An orchestral cadence sounds, and the magician lifts the red cloth off the cabinet, and the apprentices tear off the seals, opening the locks one by one. The cabinet’s doors are opened and there is nothing inside. The magician and apprentices look all about in confusion. Then, the charlatans exit the stage. Shortly thereafter, they are tied up with their hands behind their backs and pushed across the stage. Following their exit, three bullet shots ring out. The actors during these two acts should act with intensity and not allow their acting to turn into slapstick. The feeling should be akin to that of Animal Farm. In addition, since the actors used in these two acts are those who also play the five greats, one should make sure there is enough time between the two acts.) all pros: But the true revolutionaries are deep in thought about what to do.

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mass criticism: What the hell can be done! Power becomes useless if it isn’t used. Even midlevel officials know this now. He’s embezzling money, so you had better embezzle too. Only stupid a-holes don’t embezzle. (These are all everyday discussions that take place at the dinner table and in front of the television. Some could be recorded and played back in the theater. Ideally, they will include the voices of men and women and people of all ages speaking in a variety of accents and accompanied by the sounds of daily activities, such as stir-frying and babies crying.) pro c: Actually nothing better can be done. The revolution in the twentieth century was really half-baked and naive. (Several soldiers are carrying logs on their backs at the construction site. As the earth spins, day turns into night and night into day. This cycle is repeated many times.) pro a: Guevara and his comrades in Cuba’s leadership organized cadres to take part in physical labor as a way for them to be among the people. Every season Guevara would voluntarily do physical labor for two hundred forty hours. He spent ten days each month for eight hours a day toiling in the construction sites, factories, or sugarcane fields. That’s quite unbelievable considering that he had asthma and was a major government official obligated to affairs of the state. He often had to roll down his pants to conceal his mud- covered boots and brush dirt off his clothing before rushing off from construction sites to meet entourages of foreign dignitaries. (The sound of brushing off clothing is amplified.) all pros (sitting on top of a pile of logs and bricks): Actually all that we possess is a type of apprehension. We are afraid of leaving the sides of the people. We are afraid of representing the people to only end up neglecting them and betraying the ideal of the revolution. (Music plays.) pro b: Guevara and his comrades were hardworking and down-to-earth. They put the public above their private needs. He strictly forbade his family from enjoying any special treatment. His family could only buy what the government rationed. He said that a revolutionary must understand sacrifice. When he led government representatives to attend international meetings, each person would be given only a few U.S. dollars. (The sound of metal coins falling into a terra- cotta urn is amplified. The sound is repeated several times.) mass criticism: He wants to be upright and honestly serve the public. What if he doesn’t want to? How many people can be like Guevara! The great pandas have a preserve, but does Kong Fansen have one also?!49 Studying Lei Feng’s example just lands one in an insane asylum. (This is also a recording.) all pros: Actually all that we possess is a type of apprehension. (All pros exit. The beat of “This is humanity, this is the world” is heard from a distance. A group of good- for- nothings, led by the five greats, enter the construction site.) five greats: We’ll be waiting for hell to freeze over before the new house will be built. (Pulling out a plank from the structure) Tear it down!50

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good- for- nothing a (picking up an armful of bricks): I’ll first use these to pave over the old road. good- for- nothing b: I want to build a villa in the same style as those in the foreign concessions. good- for- nothing c: I’ll fucking build a mansion like Prince Gong’s!51 (The good- for- nothings tear down the new society like there’s no tomorrow, once in a while quarreling with one another. Gunshots resound and the good- for- nothings run offstage.) all soldiers: Actually what we really have is just a type of melancholy. (The lights dim. The sound of gunshots rings out again. The following fabular poem is recited.) Before, a group of slaves destroyed their fetters. They took over the palace and moved inside. They locked the old king and his men in prison. Later, another group of slaves destroyed their fetters. They took over the palace and moved inside. They locked the new king and his men in prison. Later, another group of slaves destroyed their fetters . . . Finally one day a voice of virtue spoke: From this day on, the king and slaves would be no different. From this day on, no one was higher or lower than anyone else. The slaves all said that this was the best. And thus they joined in heart and might, Tearing down at once the prisons and palaces. They sought to build a new house. The new house would be neither a palace nor a prison. But no one knew what it would be in the end. The slaves have only seen the palace and lived in the prison. They have only been stepped on and only know how to step on others. Their feet tread the old road; their mouths sing the old tune. Building followed by demolition results in nothing at all. Amid the drenching rain and gusts of wind, billowing yellow leaves fill the sky. The earth and heavens keep spinning and there is no stopping time.

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Finally one day a voice of wisdom spoke: Whether or not the house is new actually is not important. The key is whether or not the house is any good. The key of the key is: To live in comfort and security. Who is high and who is low is really of no consequence. The key of the key is: To no longer believe in dreams or follow one’s heart’s desires. The needs of the heart and mind have always been dubious. The slaves heard this and thought: There are millions of houses in the world, Why not first take a look at them all? The slaves traversed the seven seas, There were indeed millions of houses in the world. But in the end they ended up being nothing but prisons and palaces. Thus only two roads can take you from here to there. Some of the slaves persevere, while others retreat; Some keep wavering indecisively back and forth. Over there, towers that look both modern and ancient quickly rise under the sunlight. The ten floors above and below ground are occupied by exactly ten classes of people. The structure can never be changed, but it is said that the number of floors can be adjusted at will. Here within the darkness, the entrance to the new houses still can’t be found. But the stars in the distance shimmer in the eyes of the slaves like before. They build, rebuild, and tear them down, one by one, again and again . . .

A CT 4: FA RE WELL TO CUBA (This act builds on the previous act’s line of thought regarding “how not to build the new society into the old society.” It tells of Guevara and the other central government officials’ bidding farewell to Cuba and saying goodbye to family members as they head off to the

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jungles of Bolivia. Guevara is returning to his life as a guerrilla, once and for all bidding farewell to his “old self ” and heading toward the “new person.”) pro b: After Guevara resigned from his position as an official of Cuba—leaving the highest military position in the Cuban government—he headed for the Congo and Bolivia to return to the jungles. Within the world’s darkest corner, he once again fought the incredibly grueling guerrilla warfare in the jungles. (The good- for- nothings debate among themselves within the darkness.) five greats: Did he take a fall?! Tumble to the very bottom? good-for-nothing: He’s smart! The next in line have only limited patience. good-for-nothing: He’s crazy! He’s got to be after something! pro c: What can you see through the crack of the door of the old society? What can you think of when you’re blindfolded by individualism? Fame is what makes you feel proud. Personal gain is what you quibble over. Your self is what you love to death. Selfishness is what you tirelessly seek. And that’s why you oppose the revolution. That’s why you use revolution. That’s why you distort the revolution. That’s why you trample upon the revolution. Guevara was striving for a different type of dignity. How heroic it is to unconditionally give one’s life to mankind in the pursuit of the cause of equality! His departure signals the alarm for revolution, restores the true color of idealism, and marks off the boundary of the new world—all hypocrites, opportunists, and wheeler- dealer types must keep out! (Music plays. Several people who look like students and are dressed up in different period clothing are passing around letters. This symbolizes how Che Guevara’s revolutionary spirit inspires generation after generation of young adults.) all youth: Guevara wrote a farewell letter to his fellow comrades-in-arms. (An image of Fidel Castro is projected. Music and drumbeats accompany an offstage voice of a mature-sounding man:) fidel: At this time I am reminded of many things, of when we met at María Antonia’s house, of when you proposed that I should come along, of all the tension of the preparations. One day they came by, asking who was to be informed in case of death, and the real possibility of that hit home to all of us. Later we knew that it was true—in a revolution you either triumph or die (if it is a real one). Many comrades were left behind on the road to victory. Today everything has a less- dramatic tone, because we are more mature, but the event repeats itself. I feel that I have fulfilled that part of my duty that tied me to the Cuban Revolution in its territory, and I say my farewells to you, to the comrades, and to your people, that is now mine too. I formally resign my positions within the leadership of the party, of my post as minister, my rank of commander, my status as a Cuban citizen. Nothing legal binds me to Cuba, only ties of another kind that cannot be broken as official appointments can.

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Recalling my past life, I believe that I have labored with enough honor and dedication to consolidate the revolutionary triumph . . . I have lived magnificent days and felt at your side the pride of belonging to our people. Other lands call for my modest efforts . . . and the time for us to separate has arrived. Let it be known that I undertake this with a mixture of joy and sorrow; I am leaving behind the purest of my hopes as a builder and the dearest among those I love . . . and I leave behind a people that took me in as a son. That wounds a part of my spirit. I carry to new battlefields the faith that you instilled in me, the revolutionary spirit of my people, the feeling of fulfilling the most sacred of duties: to fight against imperialism wherever it may be. This comforts and heals the deepest wounds. I will just say that I free Cuba of any responsibility except that which stems from its example. If my hour of reckoning comes beneath other skies, my last thought will be of this people and of you. To my wife and children I leave nothing material, and that does not sadden me. I am happy for it to be so. I would have so much to say to you and our people, but I feel they are unnecessary, words cannot express what I would want them to, and it isn’t worth filling more sheets of paper. Forever onwards to victory! Fatherland or death!52 (Project the images of Guevara’s parents on the screen. Offstage voices of elderly men and elderly women recite the following [in unison or as a chorus, such as a round]:) Dear Viejos: Once again I feel under my heels the ribs of Rocinante; I return to the trail with my shield on my arm . . . Many will call me an adventurer, and I am, but of a different type, of those who put their lives on the line to demonstrate their truths. It could be that this will be the definitive one. I don’t go looking for it, but it is within the logical calculation of probabilities. If it is to be, then this is my final embrace. . . . For you, a big hug from your obstinate and prodigal son.53 (Project the image of Guevara’s children on the screen. Offstage a chorus of children recites:) Dear Hildita, Aleidita, Camilo, Celia, and Ernesto, Your father is this type of person: he acts upon what he thinks and is faithful to his convictions. I hope that you become outstanding revolutionaries. Don’t forget that revolution is the most important thing. Each one of us, as only individuals, cannot amount to much.54 . . . Above all, always be capable of feeling deeply any injustice committed against anyone, anywhere in the world. This is the most beautiful quality in a revolutionary . . . 55 all youth: There were seventeen more Cuban revolutionaries who volunteered to go with Guevara to Bolivia, including four Communist Party leaders from Cuba. Not one was over thirty-five years old. They all had wives and children, and when they

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departed, they all left farewell letters for them. Other than three who barely survived, they all sacrificed their lives. (The above is read by the youth in turns. Music plays.) offstage child: My dear son, this year you are four years old. offstage wife: My dear wife, it hurts to leave you . . . offstage el der ly: Dear Mom and Dad, if in battle I . . . (The music starts to play suddenly and loudly. The youth toss letters into the air. The image on the screen shows a white bird with its wings spread soaring against a blue, red, and black sky.) S o n g : “ Soa r i n g ” If the land is flooded over, Above the ocean shall you soar. If the ocean dries up, In the sky shall you soar. If lightning crashes, In the fire shall you soar. If the flames are extinguished, Among the suffering shall you soar. If the past is forsaken, Then into the future shall you soar. If the future retreats, Then in the present shall you soar. If the present flounders, Then within our hearts shall you soar. If our spirits are despondent, Then within creation shall you soar. Soaring, soaring! Forever soaring! Soaring, soaring! Soaring for all eternity!

A CT 5: T HE BAT T L E I N THE J UNGLE (Defeat is almost guaranteed for an outfit with less than one hundred guerrillas that is up against the world’s most powerful imperialist fighting machine. But within the Bolivian jungle, Guevara and his fellow comrades-in-arms shone with the glory of their idealism and embodied the spirit of humanity. They revealed the true importance of their mission: it was not simply some chance military operation or political movement conducted by a random

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political party or clique. Rather, it was a missionary-like expedition to awaken the world by spreading morality through bloodshed, promoting principles through self-sacrifice, inspiring peoples throughout the world, and paving the way for future generations. The set’s background is a huge balance. The narrator comes to the front of the stage.) pro a (in a calm voice): In November 1966, Guevara landed in Bolivia. In October 1967, he was captured and executed. He had been pitted up against the government’s army, which had been trained by and placed under the command of the U.S. military for nearly one year. (The beat of “This is humanity, this is the world” is heard faintly from the distance.) pro b: What really were pitted up against one another? What in the end means success or failure? (pro b exits. Two separate spotlights illuminate two people. On the left is a guerrilla in ragged clothes, and on the right is the five greats, armed from head to toe.) pro a (pounding the butt of a gun on the ground): We should attack all the way into the enemy’s homes . . . including their dining tables and bedrooms. We should beat them senseless until they beg to die! con i (clenching his teeth): We can’t lose another country, like we lost Cuba, for not keeping a lookout. Keep your eyes peeled! Keep your ears attuned! Keep your noses ready to sniff them out! Keep your minds on alert! Bomb them to death! Starve them to death! Tire them out! Wear them out! Choke them to death! (The lights dim.) pro b: On one side is the guerrilla outfit with fewer than one hundred soldiers. On the other side is almighty imperialism. (The spotlight shines on a peasant squatting between two people.) con i (kicking the peasant): Hey, listen up! Recently a gang of bandits was spotted in this area. Half of them were child-eating foreigners. If you see anything, report it at once! peasant: Yes, sir. (Pointing to the guerrillas) Why have these people come out to the sticks? pro c (kindly): We’ve come to help people escape from the bitter sea of suffering.56 peasant: Come again? What are you talking about? Who’s “suffering”? (Looking all around) My daddy and granddaddy before him all lived like this. Why do you say then that I am “suffering”? (The bootlicking scholars, led by the five greats, run up clucking like hens laying eggs.) scholar The people I detest the most are those who act like messianic saviors and tell others how to live. If people don’t mind being poor, then whose business is it anyway! pro b: Your life will be better if the future revolution is victorious. peasant: When’s that gonna be? (The above should be a conversation between two voices rather than between two characters. Therefore, it is not necessary for the peasant to face the guerrilla as if

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involved in a conversation, but rather, they can recite the lines as if mindlessly reading Red Army slogans.) con i (taking out a bunch of money): The “future”? How can the “future” beat out cash! Take it. First find a wife and then buy a coffin. (The peasant accepts the cash and bows repeatedly.) pro c: Wait for the revolution— (pro c is interrupted by ghoulish laughter filling the theater and the drumbeat of “This is humanity.” Inserted below is a brainwashing “living newspaper” vignette in which the narrative on the past turns into a debate on reality.) con i: You’ve never heard of the nine-star alignment? con ii: You’ve never heard of the great cross in the universe? con iii: You’ve never heard of the National Earthquake Bureau making a forecast? con i: How could there possibly still be people talking about “revolution”? con ii: How could there possibly still be people writing about “revolution”? all cons: How could there possibly still be people dressing up to act out “revolution” onstage? con iv: Fortunately no one is actually making a revolution. (All cons take out large brushes.) con i (scrubbing the head of pro a): I’ve been washing for so many years. How could I have missed one? con iii (scrubbing the head of pro b): Then add thirty more Hollywood blockbusters each year! con iv (scrubbing the head of pro c): You look like an emaciated monkey rather than someone who had too much to eat. con ii (tossing away the brushes): It’s got to be that they have gone fucking nuts from being poor. One shouldn’t worry about being poor! We can play around with the stock market, play around with futures, play around with real estate, and play around with the Internet! We can play around with female empowerment, feminism, women’s solidarity, and women’s ideology! We can play around with postmodernism, premodernism, pre-post-pre-premodernism, post-pre-post-postmodernism! If that’s not enough, we can play around with rock ’n’ roll, experimentalism, and the avant- garde. We can strip naked in front of our foreign friends and play at streaking! There are thousands upon thousands of diversions in this world. Why must you insist upon playing around with revolution! Today the most powerful mantra is— all cons: WWW.COM! con ii: Today the least powerful voice is— all cons: Stupid fucking—revolution! con iii: Isn’t revolution just reciting Buddhist sutras? I love Worldly Pleasures.57 pro a: Revolution allows the hungry to eat their fill! con i: Isn’t revolution just destruction? We just finished decorating our home.58 pro c: Revolution makes every family a true family and each person a true person! con ii: Isn’t revolution just a pack of dimwits following one demagogue!

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pro i: Revolution opposes all oppression. con iv: Better just not to bring up revolution. con i: Better just not to bring up resistance. all cons: Isn’t this all for the best? pro a: Will exploitation decrease without opposition? con i: Maybe, if you happen to catch me in a good mood. pro b: Will oppression stop without a battle? con ii: The more you fucking fight against me, the more I’ll oppress you. I dare you to resist! pro c: Are they willing to reform without revolution? con iii: Are we willing? pro a: Without peasant uprisings time and time again, would dynastic rulers have made appeasements? all cons (pushing the heads of the pros): Huh? pro b: Without the persistent rise of labor protests and the founding of socialist camps, would welfare states have appeared after the war? all cons (pushing the heads of the pros): Huh? pro C: If the Cuban people had not stood up for themselves, would the United States have given Latin America economic aid and assistance? con i: Did that really happen? pro a: If the Chinese people had not stood up for themselves, would Chiang Kai-shek and company have implemented land reform in Taiwan? all cons (swinging their hips): Huh? all pros: If the oppressed had not clenched their fists, would the oppressors have loosened their money belts? all cons: I suppose—not! (The narration continues. A follow spot illuminates a peasant who is holding money and bowing over and over again to the five greats.) pro a: These people, who have been smashed down to the lowest rungs of society and stripped of everything, even the opportunity to meet their basic needs, by the old world, would rather inform on Guevara to the government’s military than support Guevara’s guerrilla operative. The rear guard was led by a campesino into an encirclement of government troops. (The sound of running water is heard.) Nineteen of their troops, including the young German woman Communist Party member, were ambushed while crossing over a stream. They fearlessly faced their deaths, taking up their guns to fight back. They all ended up sacrificing their lives within that river. The guerrillas fought their last battle. (Violent gunshots are heard followed by the forlorn cries of birds.) pro b: The French author and intellectual Régis Debray had lived and struggled with Guevara’s guerrilla team. He wrote the book Revolution in the Revolution? which was widely read by youth in the West. In the book he tells us about Guevara’s team of guerrillas.

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pro c: I am Régis Debray. Guevara unrolled and rolled up his hammock by himself, not letting others help him. He strictly abided by the rules, never eating more than anyone else and carrying the same weight on his back. One time when he was crossing a river, his rations fell into the water. He refused to tell anyone else about what had happened, and he didn’t eat for an entire day. He stuck by his principles of equality and perseverance, which he used as a way to test the integrity of others. Guevara is pure at heart and resilient in strength. (While Régis Debray narrates, the three cons sit on rungs of different heights on a ladder that leans on the other side of the stage. The cons sitting on the lower rungs are tying the shoes for those sitting above—or some similar arrangement. Lights dim. Spotlight. the five greats orders a young cadet [played by a child]: “Get on stage!” At the same time the music stops. The young cadet cautiously enters the stage. The guerrilla troops raise their rifles and take aim for an extended period of time. While the soldiers are aiming, the young cadet exits the stage. Passages from Guevara’s diary are heard from offstage.) offstage voice: Today we were ambushed the whole morning. The enemy’s army vehicles pass by on the road and the enemy soldiers in the vehicles are all too young. I haven’t the courage to open fire on them. (Lights dim. A local boy [played by the same boy as above, which should be made known to the audience], wearing pants made out of burlap sacks, runs up to the guerrillas, saying: “Uncle, I want to join the guerrillas and be your guide.” The guerrilla says: “You are still too young. You should go to school.” The boy says: “I don’t have any money. I only have a hen. I’m going to sell it to buy books.” The guerrilla takes out some money, saying: “Young brother, take this and buy books for school.” The boy takes the money and leaves the guerrilla, and the five greats restrains him by the collar: “Hey, you little communist spook! Execute him!” The enemy lifts the boy up and exits the stage. A gunshot resounds, followed by the faint sound of the boy falling to the ground. Sounds of a skirmish are heard—“Bam bam, bang bang”—and a spotlight shines on con ii, who has been captured by the guerrillas. pro ii is also injured and has fallen into the hands of the five greats. the five greats boxes pro ii to the ground, and the entire stage darkens, with sounds of hell filling the air: a beast of prey snarling and slashing and the hideous wailing and whining of an electric drill, electric planer, lathe, and a milling machine. Then, the sound of a helicopter’s rotating propellers is heard. the five greats ferociously laughs: “Shark brothers, time for supper. Get down there!” The sound of a guitar is heard. A spotlight shines on the other side of the stage, where con ii is holding a cup of coffee and reminiscing about the past: “I am Major Sánchez. The night we were captured, we were on a mountaintop, and it was very cold. I talked a long time with the guerrilla Márquez. He had someone make a cup of coffee, and I really wanted to drink it. But I thought that they were making it for themselves, since everyone was shivering from the cold. I was surprised that he politely offered the coffee to me. It gave me the feeling of a more noble humanity. I didn’t want

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to accept the coffee, but he insisted and told me it was made especially for me. I am very appreciative of this, and my heart will never be able to forget it.”) offstage voice: Major Sánchez later became a key left-wing activist. (On one side of the stage, the five greats is yelling: “Who’ll do it for ten pesos?!” Two government troops think it’s too low and step away. “Ten dollars! Eight pesos a dollar!” The two still hesitate to move forward. the five greats: “Twenty dollars! Eliminate Guevara!” The soldiers advance: “Eliminate Guevara, twenty times eight!” On the other side of the stage, guerrilla iii falls down after being hit by a bullet. guerrilla iv pulls him up. guerrilla iii says: “Forget about me, hurry up and get out of here!” guerrilla ii carries guerrilla i on his back and says: “This is not simply a military operation.” The lights dim and music begins.) pro b: Guevara’s troops, no matter whether we look at them from the perspective of today or from back then, we were fated to lose. But we should look at Guevara’s spirit from a different perspective and weigh it with a different balance. This is the contest between two types of lives and value systems. Its success or failure does not depend on the amount of weapons or U.S. dollars, or how many lives are slaughtered and souls bought. Rather, it depends on whether or not his spirit can ignite our heart’s passion and be passed down in song, shining light on history. (The stage is lit. A “living newspaper” per for mance begins. The performer runs onstage waving a Beijing Youth Daily newspaper, shouting: “Someone drowned!” He opens the newspaper and reads: “One day this month someone drowned in the Yongding River . . .” pro i takes off his clothes and tries to jump into the river to save the person, but he is blocked by the group of cons waving small abacuses. con i >the five greats@ asks pro i:) con i: Who drowned? pro i: A girl. all cons: Add two!59 con i: How old? pro i: Five or six. all: Add three! Move the large beads down and move the two small beads up. con i: How about her IQ? Can’t be too high, otherwise she wouldn’t have let herself fall into the river instead of pushing someone else into the river. all cons: Subtract three. con i: What’d she look like? pro i: Large eyes and a round face. all cons: Add five! con i: She’d get a higher score if her face were shaped like a pumpkin seed. con i: What did her parents do? pro i: They were peasants. all cons: Subtract eight! She gets a total score of seven! con i (stopping pro a): Stop, I have to give you a score! Your age? Eighteen. Did you go to college? Peking University! Your major? Biology! Did you take the TOEFL? That’s strange. You didn’t attend New Oriental’s English language preparatory school? 60

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How about the occupations of your parents? Work for private enterprise. Plus striking looks . . . exceptional speaking skills . . . and afraid of nothing! A total score of one hundred and eighty! Hurry up and put your clothes back on. Go back and be especially careful when you cross the street. Why throw away one hundred and eighty points only to get seven points! Such a huge loss is simply an economic crime! Now it’s a market economy and profits are number one! (To another youth) You’ll also suffer a loss . . . (To another) It’s even less worth it for this one. (Then finding an elderly person—this elderly person need not appear on stage) How old are you? Eightyfour. That’s the ideal age for jumping into the water. Do you have an illness like cancer? You say it’s in an advanced stage! You can’t manage climbing over the wall? A loss can be turned into a profit only if you can. Just jump in, our gang will take care of your clothes. When you’ve finished, we’ll send your clothes to your family together with a “medal for courage and heroism.” (All cons exit while singing, “Goose, goose, goose, arching its neck and singing to the sky.” 61 the pros face the audience standing in one row.) pro a: Whoever in the audience only knows how to stingily count pennies may now leave. pro b: Whoever in the audience thinks he or she is watching a free performance when encountering an injustice in the street may now leave. pro c: Whoever in the audience is captivated by reading mediocre philosophy to the point of thumping the table while shouting “Bravo!” may now leave. pro a: Whoever in the audience thinks that the powerful should exploit the weak and the lives of the ordinary people are simply expendable may now leave. pro b: Whoever in the audience feels special and privileged by smugly playing music and honking the horn when driving a Honda or Lexus and passing by those in tattered clothing may now leave. pro c: Whoever in the audience is the dog and horse of the rich when awake, the sibling of the rich when dreaming, and composes songs and writes plays for the rich when half dreaming and half awake may now leave. pro a: Whoever in the audience counts one dime and three pennies as three dimes and one penny, and still remains after negating oneself, existing with nothing else other than oneself, may now leave. pro b: Whoever in the audience thinks that exploitation and oppression have the experience and ability to provide a high return with low risk, and, with its track record of four thousand years, is the most ideal investment for human life may also leave! all pros: Because we are speaking of Guevara, we are speaking of justice! (The stage darkens.) S o n g : “ G o s p e l” You are salt yet do not taste salty; you are a light yet not bright; You cannot see anyone. You are blood yet don’t look red; you are a dagger yet not sharp;

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You don’t care about anyone. You are a tree without blossoms; you are a flower without fruit; You don’t care for anyone. You are human but do not love one another; you have love but don’t cherish it; You don’t trust anyone. Just like that thousands of years have passed without a sound; Just like that people come and go without any real change. Among you those who are humble are fortunate; That is because the sacred kingdom belongs to them. Among you those who are in deep sorrow are fortunate; That is because they will receive the largest consolation. Among you those who long for love are fortunate; That is because they will achieve eternal life. Night is already upon us; The prophetic hand quavers on the wall, Leaving behind an eternal maxim. (A candle is lit and glows amid the darkness of the stage.) storyteller: When the workers in the tin mines in Bolivia heard the news about the guerrillas, they immediately went on strike. After the failure of the guerrillas, workers each year light a candle at the bottom of a well to pay tribute to the guerrillas’ heroic spirit. From Rome to London and Bombay to Mexico City, Guevara raised a sword for the powerless and devoted himself to the cause of justice. All throughout the world he lit people’s hearts and spirit. The long eve of exploitative and oppressive societies is rousing the next revolution. A spark will cause a great fire! This fire will bring dawn!

E PIL O G UE : T O DI E AS A M ARTY R (This part talks about Guevara’s detainment at the elementary school in La Higuera after being injured and captured. In just a few hours the enemy would shoot him to death. Let us remember and listen to what people said before and after his death through his ears, and see what has happened and what will happen in the world through his eyes. The stage is the classroom in which Guevara is being detained, and the backdrop should not be realistic, because the stage should rather express the atmosphere and the feelings. The door of this classroom opens from the back of the stage, and the wall opposite the door does not exist, or that is to say, the wall is behind the entire audience, and Guevara, who is sitting against the wall, seems like he’s sitting on every single seat in the audience. As in previous acts, Guevara is still presented to the audience through his voice rather than by any direct visual representation.)

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pro a: The guerrillas lost their last provisions, and their connection and communication with the external world were cut off. The enemy fighters tightened their encirclement, and they fought their last battle in the Yuro Ravine. In order to help his comrades break out of the encirclement, Guevara took a major hit and fell into enemy hands. He was then detained in this classroom in an elementary school in the town of La Higuera. (the five greats enters and faces Guevara and the audience.) five greats: You won’t surrender? I’ll kill whoever makes a move! offstage voice: It’s too early to be happy. If one of us falls, another will follow! five greats: Your utopian dream won’t last long! Soon, in the 1970s, your socialist comrade Allende will win power in Chile, but he will be quickly overthrown and meet a death even more horrible than yours! In the 1980s your Sandanista friends also will come to power in Nicaragua, but they will be toppled in the same way they took power. The 1990s is even less worth mentioning. Stepping down one after the next, your big brothers spare us any need to make an effort. Isn’t China your favorite? Let me tell you, at the end of the century, the minds of China’s elite intellectuals will be filled only with American ideas. (Pulling a piece of paper out from a pocket) Here is a grant application for a conference—do you want to know the topic of the conference? “Bidding Farewell to Revolution!” Now there are no more troubles. This is the way the world has to be! (the five greats exits.) offstage voice: If the world can only be like this, then your troubles are not yet over! (the rats, ideally played by one person, stretches its head out from the entrance. If one considers the basic nature of this role, it would be similar to opportunists who today issue official documents, tomorrow run a bookstore, and the following day run an immigration ser vice, in addition to scholarly poseurs, who think they are so smart.) rat i: Guevara, give me that half of your cigar. It will help me to make an advertisement for marijuana and heroine. You are my business opportunity. (rat i exits.) rat ii: Guevara, give me the rights to your image. I want to print your image on T-shirts and sell them to all the clueless teenagers with acne and also hang your image in a bedroom for adoring femmes. You are capital. (rat ii exits.) rat iii: I’ll manage your autobiography. You’re the romantic knight of the twentieth century and the classic wandering knight-errant of modern society. A woman lies at the center of it. It seems that you may have had something with that German woman guerrilla even if you didn’t. (rat iii exits.) rat iv: I’ve seen through your actions! Asthma! When you were only two years old you had asthma. When you had asthma attacks, of course you couldn’t breathe. When you couldn’t breathe, of course nothing appeared good to you. Since nothing appeared good to you, of course you wanted to make trouble. I’ve observed rabbits for seven years and researched mice for eight years. My eyes are dead on!

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(rat iv exits.) offstage voice: The vile of the dark society, in defaming people as vermin, define “people” as those who have become accustomed to and skilled at viciously luring others into ratholes. (guerrilla i—played by pro i—who was captured with Guevara, enters.) guerrilla i: Guevara, to battle with you was a great honor, to be executed with you for a just cause is my pride. (guerrilla i exits; a series of chaotic gunshots is heard.) offstage voice: When this Bolivian comrade first came, his courage was weak. While fighting I always took him by my side, and the revolution created him and made him indomitable. guerrilla ii—acted by pro i—who was captured with Guevara, enters, searching.) guerrilla ii: Guevara, I’ve lost my glasses, I can’t see anything, but I can see your excellent example. (guerrilla ii exits; a series of chaotic gunshots is heard.) offstage voice: Our job is to clear up people’s sight. guerrilla iii: Guevara, I think our deaths were all worth it. (A series of chaotic gunshots is heard.) offstage voice: Our bloodshed is our contribution to the future world. the five greats exits. The song “Granma” is heard, inspiring Guevara’s heartfelt monologue, the tone of which is poised yet filled with deep emotion.) offstage voice: Fidel, it’s time to say goodbye forever. I’m thinking of you, thinking of our people and our mission, and I’m thinking about the Granma. (Lights dim. The images and sounds of act 1 are seen and heard.) I’m thinking that the road ahead is actually still very long. We are still very far away from reaching the other bank of the new people and new world. Indeed, just like a flying insect attracted to light, we are miniscule and limited. Sometimes when you see a beam of light you think it’s the dawn. Sometimes when you come upon a single spark you think you’ve come upon a burning prairie. We will still lose our way and our boats will still capsize over and over again. But in the end there are just two choices, and in the end we chose brightness. Perhaps we will be neglected by the twentieth century. Perhaps we’ll be forgotten by the twenty-first century. But this is all not important. The mission of justice is always filled with twists and turns. The Granma will still set sail again and again. (Drumbeats start. The recording, with sounds of lightning and gusts of wind, varies in volume. It is mixed with electric noise and apocalyptic sounds, like the song “Cover You All Over with Kisses.”) Wherever there are cheaters and bullies, Wherever there is calamity caused by despotism, Wherever the rich squander food and wine, Wherever people have frozen to death on the road—

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That is where the blood of justice pumps through our veins! That is where justice flares up inside us from head to toe! That is where the knife of justice is unsheathed! That is where the Granma will sail! Set sail! Set sail! Set sail! Head toward the peasant rebellion led by Chen Sheng and Wu Guang in Daze Village! Head toward Spartacus at the Coliseum! Head toward the Three Stone Bridge of today and yesterday. Head toward the cruel rent collectors. Head toward the place where Negro slaves were kidnapped and detained. Head toward the place where indigenous peoples were banished and murdered. Head toward the place where weak nations fought against the British and Japanese. Head toward the place where poor villagers fought against taxes and levies. Head toward the place where the Jews were forced into a blind alley. Head toward the place where the Palestinians are homeless. Head toward the place where the Paris Commune fighters were finally defeated. Head toward the place where President Allende is forever memorialized. Head toward the place where in the former Yugoslavia mothers silently shed their tears. Head toward the place where Tomahawk cruise missiles filled the air. Head toward the place where despots and tyrants have sex day and night. Head toward the place where ordinary people are mercilessly trampled upon. Head toward the place where rich ladies throw money around like dirt. Head toward the place where the wretched suffer through days as if they were years. Head toward the place where a single official seal makes one rich. Head toward the place where a lifetime of grueling toil amounts to nothing. Head toward the place where a moral conscience is smothered and extinguished. Head toward the place where darkness and evil are staging a comeback. Head toward the place that needs fire, needs light, and needs my voice! all guerrillas: Head toward the place that needs daggers, needs swords, and needs my fighting blows!

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(The stage lights up. The executioners enter carrying a gun, kneeling down in a row, wobbling.) offstage voice: You cowards! You’ve come to kill us. Then open fire (A young male teacher—played by pro iv—from La Higuera’s elementary school enters and stands behind the executioners. At this moment an image of countless children’s eyes is projected.) teacher: Guevara, I’m a teacher here at this school. Please tell the children, tell the future, what you’re thinking right now at this moment. offstage voice: I’m thinking revolution can never perish! (The gunshots ring out and the color of the stage changes. When this world becomes empty, voices of children singing the “Internationale” ascend like the rising sun.) Arise ye prisoners of starvation, Arise ye toilers of the earth—

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This translation is based on the text in Liu Zhifeng, ed., Qie Gewala: Fanxiang yu zhengming (Che Guevara: Reception and Debate) (Beijing: Zhongguo shehui kexue 2001), 13– 69. The play was first performed at the Beijing People’s Art Theatre’s Small Theatre Box. The play was performed thirty-seven times in thirty-four days beginning on April 12, 2000. It is estimated that nearly ten thousand people watched the play during its first run in Beijing. The play was performed at Henan University in November 2000 to an audience of more than three thousand and then again in Guangzhou in the middle of December. The play was restaged at the theater (capacity of approximately a thousand) of Beijing’s Central Academy of Drama for fifteen performances starting on December 26, 2000. In March 2001, the drama embarked on a tour to Shanghai, including a sold- out performance at Shanghai’s Lanxin Theatre. All notes are from the translator unless otherwise indicated. Shen Lin is usually credited with the play’s production concept. Huang Jisu was primarily responsible for the play’s script, and Zhang Guangtian was the director and composer of the music. However, the overall production of the play emphasized collaboration rather than specialization. I am extremely grateful to Shen Lin for facilitating this translation. I am grateful to Huang Jisu for reviewing the translation. I would also like to thank Nan Zhang for checking the English translation against the original Chinese and for her untiring enthusiasm. Howard Goldblatt provided translational advice and generous encouragement. I would also like to acknowledge Xiaomei Chen, Kirk Denton, Lionel Jensen, and Ruru Li for their kind intellectual support of this translation project. A conventional list of characters did not appear in the Chinese script. None has been added to the English translation because such an addition would contradict the playwrights’ intention of creating conceptual characters rather than characters in the theatrical tradition of realism.

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3. “Footsteps” may be a reference to the famous last line of Lu Xun’s short story “Guxiang” (My Old Home): “The road did not exist at first, but as more people used it, it became the road.” Zhang Guangtian, director of Che Guevara, attaches significance to this line in the play Lu Xun xiansheng (Mr. Lu Xun), which he wrote and directed in 2001. 4. Jacobo Arbenz had been elected president of Guatemala in March 1951. His government attempted to reduce the power of the influential U.S. United Fruit Company by expropriating 84,000 of the company’s 234,000 hectares of land. This prompted the CIA’s plan to overthrow his government. On May 15, 1954, Colonel Carlos Castillo Armas began leading a small army of mercenaries from the Honduran border in a planned coup d’état of Arbenz, which, through the financing of the CIA and aerial support from Nicaragua, was consummated on June 27, 1954. During the coup, Che Guevara, then called Ernesto, was living in Guatemala City, and he supported the resistance before taking refuge in the Argentine embassy (Hilda Barrio and Gareth Jenkins, The Che Handbook [New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2003], 57; Paco Ignacio Tabio II, Guevara: Also Known as Che [New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997], 38–39). 5. On July 26, 1953, Castro led a group of young Cuban revolutionaries in an uprising. The attack on the reactionary government at the Moncada Barracks quickly failed. 6. The lyrics are from “Zhiyuanjun junge” (Military Song of the Volunteer Army), which was commonly sung in China during the Korean War (1950–1953), known in China as the War to Resist U.S. Aggression and Aid Korea. 7. [From the playwrights:] “In those past years we glorified the ‘Four Greats’ of Chairman Mao. As expressed in the saying ‘Volcanoes erupting one by one and crowns dropping to the ground one by one,’ the liberation efforts were at their height then. After several decades of changes and the creation of a new world, the capitalistic ‘New Roman Empire,’ headed by the United States, has routed everything in its path. Its all-pervading arrogance can only be described as the ‘Five Greats’ ” Mao Zedong was first referred to as the “Four Greats” by Chen Boda, on August 18, 1966, during a review of Red Guards at Tiananmen Square. It refers to Mao Zedong as the “great teacher,” “great leader,” “great commander,” and “great helmsman.” 8. In the performance, the Cons, who are all played by women, sing these lines to musical accompaniment. The acting style by the Cons is exaggerated and farcical. Many of the lines should convey a strong sense of sarcasm. 9. The Chinese term used here, beng pan, specifically refers to the collapse of stock markets. 10. The multimedia projections, though in the script, were not part of the performance, due primarily to technical and financial constraints. In a personal communication (January 6, 2005), Shen Lin expressed dismay at this and emphasized that the projected images should be included in future performances of the play. The student protest outside the U.S. embassy refers to the protest that occurred in Beijing following the “accidental” bombing by NATO of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade in 1998. 11. This weekly ninety-minute program, produced in part by Beijing Television (BTV), includes performances by celebrity guests. Audience members also have the opportunity to interact with celebrities by playing various games. The show is broadcast in over a hundred cities in China, and its audience coverage is estimated at 132 million. 12. This phrase possibly refers to Gao Xingjian’s play Bi an (The Other Shore), which was banned in China in 1986. Mou Sen, another influential experimental theater director

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in China, directed a performance work entitled The Other Shore in 1995, which was based on Gao Xingjian’s script. This line is a proverb based on the concept of suffering and repentance in Buddhism. According to Buddhist scripture, “the bitter ocean is endless” for those who have committed a sin, and only through repentance can one “climb back on shore” to be reborn. “Boulevard of Peace” is a reference to Ping’an Dadao, a major east-west thoroughfare in Beijing. This proverb comes from a story in which a ninety-year- old man desires to move two mountains because they blocked his path. His children and neighbors worked so diligently to move the mountains that the gods were compelled to help him and carried the mountains away on their backs. This proverb comes from a story in the Shan hai jing, “Beishan jing,” in which Emperor Yan Di’s daughter, Nu Wa, drowns and is reincarnated as a bird. The bird persistently tries to fill up the sea one stone at a time. According to common historical record in China, it was the first large-scale peasant rebellion in China. In 209 b.c., during the reign of Emperor Qin, soldiers were dispatched from Yuyang (today, Beijing’s Miyun) to Daze (present- day Su county, in Anhui). Because the soldiers arrived late, their punishment, in accordance with the severe Qin law, was execution. Two commanders, Chen Sheng and Wu Guang, organized a revolt, and, after successfully capturing Qin territory, established a new government. They lay siege on the Qin capital, Xianyang, but, after six months, the revolt was crushed. Mobilization of peasant resistance, however, helped realize the ultimate overthrow of the Qin in 206 b.c. [From the playwrights:] “Located in Tianjin, Santiao Shi [Three Stone Bridge] is the name of a place renowned for the capitalist exploitation of workers. After liberation, the area was turned into an exhibition center for class education.” [From the playwrights:] “In the 1960s an artist created an exhibition of clay sculptures based on the cruel exploitation of the local peasants by the warlord and landlord Liu Wencai, in Sichuan province. In recent years a number of scholars have relied on photo-realism to examine the art’s resemblance to reality and have claimed that Liu Wencai’s reputation was unfair. We think even if Liu Wencai’s ‘halfway house’ is to some degree fictitious, the world’s exploitation and oppression are not simple artistic fabrications.” Salvador Allende Gossens (July 26, 1908—September 11, 1973) was president of Chile from 1970 until 1973. As an advocate of Marxism and critic of the capitalist system, Allende’s socialist policies and close ties with Cuba caused high-ranking members of the U.S. government to be concerned that Chile would become a “communist state” and join the Soviet sphere of influence. On September 11, 1973, Allende was overthrown by a military coup led by General Augusto Pinochet, during which he died. The involvement of the CIA in the coup remains a controversial question. One of Guevara’s ancestors, Don Pedro de Castro y Figueroa, was a viceroy of New Spain for a little over a year in the mid- eighteenth century. “Sorry, bye” is in English in the original script. This is the title of a book, Zuihou de guixiu, written by Zhang Yunhe and published in 1999.

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24. The Drum Tower, built in 1272 during the Yuan dynasty, was used to announce the time, much like a clock tower, during the Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynasties (1271–1911). The Drum Tower neighborhood was built in the twelfth century as part of the inner city north of the Imperial Palace. 25. Zhoukoudian is the excavation site of Peking Man. It is located forty- eight kilometers southwest of Beijing. The site includes fossils of Peking Man and their cave dwellings. Peking Man is believed to have lived about 690,000 years ago, during the mid Pleistocene. 26. After the failure of the Boxer Rebellion, the Eight-Power Allied Forces, including Great Britain, the United States, France, Germany, Japan, Russia, Austria, and Italy, seized Beijing and forced the Qing government to sign the Xinchou Treaty on September 7, 1901. According to this treaty, the Qing government was required to pay a war indemnity totaling 1 billion taels of silver, which was then equal to China’s entire income over ten years. 27. The term liberatory struggle (fanshen zhang) is being used facetiously, since it is usually used in the context of China’s revolutionary history to refer to the “liberatory struggle” of the peasants against oppressive landlords. 28. This is a famous line from Li Bai’s (701–762) five- character quatrain “Jing ye si” (Reflections on a Quiet Night). 29. According to popular belief in China, a twitching left eyelid means one will become wealthy. 30. This line refers to one of the goals of qigong, which is to achieve a high level of energy circulation within the body. The line may also be a mocking reference to Falun Gong, since this principle and objective of circulation is important in the practice of Falun Gong. 31. Tang yi pao dan (sugarcoated bullet) is a common revolutionary phrase. It refers to the offering of bribes or other incentives to officials (hence the sugarcoating), but, in the end, the bribes are likened to bullets, since they destroy the career of the officials. 32. It is stated in the “Liyun” chapter of the Liji (Record of Rites): “What are people’s feelings? Happiness, anger, sadness, fear, love, hate, and desire are the seven that come without having to study.” According to Han Gaoxiu’s annotation of the Chunqiu (Spring and Autumn Annals), the six desires are life, death, hearing, seeing, tasting, and smelling. 33. Tan Zongjun and his son, Tan Zhuanqing, who were both members of Qing court officialdom, first opened their restaurant in Beijing at the end of the Qing dynasty. Their dishes, which were popular among officials for their use of delicacies, such as shark’s fin and abalone, and light, natural flavors, are still served in Tan family restaurants in Beijing today. “Mao Family cuisine” refers to cuisine from Mao Zedong’s home province of Hunan, with particular emphasis on dishes enjoyed by Mao Zedong. 34. The Sichuan opera version of Turandot was written by Wei Minglun and performed in Beijing in 1998 at the same time the Turandot directed by Zhang Yimou was performed in the Forbidden City. 35. The eight delicacies are: bird’s nest, duck, sliced smoked meats, pork leg, cabbage, chicken wings, pig stomach, and mushrooms. 36. The Manchu-Han banquet was given its name by Emperor Kangxi (r. 1661–1722) and it subsequently became famous in the palace and gained popularity among aristocrats

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and rich businessmen. The banquet included a diverse range of delicacies and traditionally included hundreds of hot and cold dishes. The “iron rice bowl” refers to the system of social guarantees, such as employment and housing, promoted in China after 1949 before starting to be gradually dismantled after 1978. The Temple of Jiangnü is located at the foot of the Great Wall on Mount Fenghuangshan, about six kilometers east of Shanhaiguan. According to legend, during the reign (221–207 b.c.) of Emperor Qin Shihuang, Meng Jiangnü’s husband, Fan Qiliang, was forced into conscripted labor to build the Great Wall. Meng Jiangnü severely missed her husband and set off from Shanxi to Shanhaiguan to find him. Hearing that he had died of exhaustion, Meng Jiangnü’s wailing, over several days and nights, caused a 248mile stretch of the wall to collapse. Emperor Qin planned to punish her, but when he set eyes on her, he was captivated by her beauty and decided to marry her. Before he could take her back to his palace, Meng Jiangnü jumped into the Bohai Sea. Lei Feng (1940–1962), born into a poor peasant’s family in China’s Hunan province in 1940, became an orphan in his childhood and had to beg in the streets to survive. After 1949, the local government sent him to school, and Lei Feng joined the People’s Liberation Army when he was sixteen. In 1961, Lei Feng was killed by being accidentally run over by an army truck. In his honor, the army published his voluminous diary, and, on March 5, 1962, Mao Zedong wrote an inscription and called on the entire nation to “Learn from Comrade Lei Feng.” Liu Shaoqi, president of China at the time, also wrote an inscription: “Learn from Lei Feng, his ordinary but great spirit of serving the people.” The campaigns characterized Lei Feng as selflessly devoted to China and to the cause of communism. Yang Bailao is a character in the revolutionary opera Bao mao nü (The White-Haired Girl), written in 1946 by the Lu Xun Collective of the College for Art and Literature (Lu Xun Yishu Wenxueyuan Jiti) under the direction of He Jingzhi, Ding Yi, and Ma Ke, in Yan’an. It is loosely based on a local tale in which a cruel landowner, Huang Shiren, kills Yang Bailao, whose daughter, Xi’er, flees from Huang’s tyranny and hides in a cave, living off of the offerings in a temple. Her hair supposedly turns white as the result of living in the cave for several years. See note 40. “Dirty clothes and old pants” is metonymic for students and intellectuals. These lines are taken from the widely known lyrics of the revolutionary song “Shehui zhuyi hao” (Socialism Is Good). Liu Qingshan, the former party secretary of Tianjin, was the first official to be executed on charges of corruption after 1949. He was sentenced by the provisional court of the People’s Court of Hebei Province in February 1952. Chen Xitong was a former politburo member, Beijing party secretary, and mayor of Beijing for twelve years. In April 1995 he was forced to resign from these posts due to allegations of corruption. The Beijing Higher People’s Court sentenced him, in 1998, to sixteen years of imprisonment on charges of corruption and dereliction of duty. Mount Tai, located in Shandong province, is regarded as the first of China’s five sacred mountains. It has been the place of imperial worship and pilgrimage since the Qin dynasty. This mime was excluded in staged performances of the play.

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48. Piracy and bootlegging are major socioeconomic issues in present- day China. These lines scoff China’s adoption of market capitalism. 49. Kong Fansen, former secretary of the Ngari Prefecture Party Committee, is applauded by the Chinese government for his selfless devotion to the development of Tibet. He worked for the communist party in Tibet for a total of ten years. He died in a traffic accident while on his way to inspect border trade in Tacheng, Xinjiang, on November 29, 1994. 50. Demolition of old housing has been a major socioeconomic trend in Beijing, especially in the years leading up to the 2008 Beijing Olympics. 51. Prince Gong, the younger brother of Emperor Xianfeng (r. 1850–1861), had originally lived in the mansion located next to Hou Hai. However, the mansion is better known for its association with He Shen, a minister under Emperor Qianlong. After Qianlong’s death in 1799, Emperor Jiaqing charged He Shen with twenty crimes, one of which was that the mansion he had built was too elaborate and too closely resembled the palaces in the Forbidden City, and he was ordered to commit suicide. 52. I have used the translation of the letter as published in Hilda Barrio and Gareth Jenkins, The Che Handbook (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2003), 314–16. The translation of the letter published in Tabio, Guevara, 411–12, was also consulted. The ellipses indicate that parts of the letter have been elided. It should also be pointed out that the last line in the Chinese version of the letter is “Defend socialism or death!” while in the English translation of the letter the same line is rendered as “Fatherland or death!” 53. The English translation of the letter is from Barrio and Jenkins, Che Handbook, 312. 54. These first two paragraphs do not appear in the English translation in Barrio and Jenkins, Che Handbook, 360. 55. The last paragraph is from the translation of the letter in Barrio and Jenkins, Che Handbook, 360. 56. See note 13. 57. This was originally a Ming- dynasty kunqu opera about a Buddhist nun. (A scene from this opera is featured in Chen Kaige’s Farewell My Concubine.) Here, however, its mention is most likely a reference to the dramatic version of the opera adapted by the playwright and director Meng Jinghui and performed in Beijing in 1992, 1993, and 1998. The play is considered to be an example of “experimental” theater, but its status as such seems to be mocked here. 58. With the enormous surge in private home ownership in China since the 1990s, decorating one’s newly bought home has become a major socioeconomic trend in China. 59. The following are terms used in calculating figures on an abacus. 60. New Oriental (Xin Dongfang) is one of the top private English training schools in China specializing in preparing students to take English-language college entrance exams. 61. This is a line from the standard first grade elementary school textbook.

Secret Love in Peach Blossom Land (1986) stan lai (lai sheng- chuan), in collaboration with the cast tra nsla ted by s tan l ai

C ha r a c t e rs In the play Secret Love ᮶≣⼁᮷ jiang binliu Ⰱ⍡⽄, a young man in Shanghai, 1948, also seen as an old man in Taipei, late 1980s yun zhifan 㴬㺐➒, jiang binliu’s first love in Shanghai, 1948, also seen as an old woman in Taipei, late 1980s mrs. jiang Ⰱ㜡㜡, wife of jiang binliu, native Taiwanese, fifteen years younger than him nurse ⩼㖹 in the Taipei hospital where jiang binliu is bedridden director ☠㬉 of the play Secret Love assistant 㻜⹻ to the director, devoted to him stage manager 㣚㜞⭶⛟ for Secret Love; heard only as an offstage voice In the play Peach Blossom Land ᮶㝈⪀㴚᮷ tao ⹝㝋, a fisherman, referred to in Tao Yuanming’s (ca. 365–427) “A Chronicle of the Peach Blossom Spring” blossom ╠⪀, tao’s vivacious wife, not referred to in the classic text master yuan 㴒⹝⊓, a fish merchant, having an affair with blossom

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woman in white ⊅㈟ㇲ㽳, occupant of Peach Blossom Land, played by the same actress as for blossom man in white ⊅㈟ㅖ㽳, companion of the woman in white, played by the same actor as for master yuan flow 㙫㽳, stage assistant for Peach Blossom Land scenic paint er ⪾Ⳃ㖠, who finishes painting the scenic drop during the show stagehands 㣚㜞⤀㾗㑉㴗 Others mysterious woman ㄶ㔶ㇲ㽳 theater manager ⳹⒉⤸⹻㴗 The characters in the two plays within the play are also seen outside their roles, as actors playing the roles. Setting A theater. The play Secret Love is set in Shanghai, 1948, and in Taipei, late 1980s. The play Peach Blossom Land is set in Wuling, a fictional fishing village in fifth- century China, and in an unknown village upstream, known as Peach Blossom Land. The location of the theater can be changed to wherever the play is being produced, with appropriate adjustments made to the script. For instance, various versions directed by the playwright have been set in Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong, Beijing, Shanghai, and California.

S CE NE 1 (In the darkness, the sound of jiang binliu humming a tune from the 1940s.) jiang binliu (singing): You are a cloud adrift in the clear sky, The meteor that lights the dark night . . . 1 (Lights in. A handsome pair of lovers, jiang binliu and yun zhifan, sit on a park swing. yun zhifan is dressed in a simple cotton cheongsam and wears her hair in two long pigtails. jiang binliu wears a Western-style suit and tie. It is an autumn evening in Shanghai, 1948. The lovers sway gently, enjoying the magic of the night. The lights of the Bund glow around them. In the distance, a row of art deco streetlamps. Shanghai is enjoying a peace and prosperity that it has not known since the Japanese occupation. The acting style is huaju, refined, realistic, literary “spoken drama” from the twenties and thirties. yun zhifan looks around at the city lights.)

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yun zhifan: How still. Never has Shanghai been so still. We are the only people in Shanghai tonight. The rain was so fresh. There is an indescribable scent in the air. (Pointing ahead) Binliu, look at the lights in the water. They look like . . . jiang binliu: Like images from a dream. yun zhifan: Like everything is frozen. jiang binliu: Everything is frozen. (Poetically) The night is frozen, the moon is frozen, the streetlamp, the swing, you and I, everything is frozen. (jiang binliu continues his song. yun zhifan feels a cool breeze.) yun zhifan: The weather’s changing. (jiang binliu takes off his jacket and wraps it gently around yun zhifan.) I’ve been so happy this summer. During the war, I never imagined there would ever be such good times. Look around us, Binliu, new hope is everywhere. (jiang binliu finishes his song.) Binliu, after I go back to Kunming, will you write to me? jiang binliu: I’ve already written to you. yun zhifan: Really? jiang binliu: I’ve timed it so that you receive one letter a day. Tomorrow you get on the inland boat. Ten days later you’ll walk into your house in Kunming and receive my first letter. Thereafter, Zhifan, every day you’ll receive a letter of mine. yun zhifan: I don’t believe you. jiang binliu: That’s why I haven’t mailed them. yun zhifan: I knew it! (jiang binliu takes a short stack of letters from his pocket and hands them to yun zhifan.) jiang binliu: Now I’m sure they’re in your hands. yun zhifan (holding the letters, introspectively): How amazing it is! You went to the university in Kunming. My house is right nearby—how strange that we never met. Perhaps we passed each other on the street, but we never met in Kunming, only in Shanghai! How vast is Shanghai! How can two people meet in such a boundless city? What if we hadn’t met in Shanghai? jiang binliu (confidently): Impossible! We would’ve surely met in Shanghai. yun zhifan: So sure? jiang binliu: Let’s say we hadn’t met in Shanghai. Then ten years later, we would’ve met in . . . say in Hankou! So let’s say we didn’t meet in Hankou, then twenty, or thirty, maybe even forty years later, we would’ve met . . . say some place overseas! We would surely have met. yun zhifan: But then we’d be old. What fun would that be? jiang binliu: That would be divine too. (The lovers gaze at each other. Suddenly, yun zhifan looks at her watch.) yun zhifan: It’s late. I must be going. (yun zhifan turns to a department store shopping bag next to the swing.) Binliu, close your eyes. jiang binliu: What for?

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yun zhifan: Don’t ask. And don’t peek! (jiang binliu closes his eyes while yun zhifan pulls a scarf out of the bag and drapes it onto jiang binliu.) jiang binliu (opening his eyes): What . . . ? yun zhifan: I knitted this for you. jiang binliu: Zhifan, where did you find the time? yun zhifan: Don’t worry about time. Look. It’s perfect. It’ll soon grow cold here. You must wear this often. (Getting other things from the bag) I went to the Bund today. Bought a pair of silk stockings for my sister, and this gorgeous fabric for my mother. This coming New Year’s is our first family reunion since the war! Even my brother and sister-in-law will come from Chongqing to join us. Binliu, do you know that during New Year’s in Kunming, each family lays a bed of fresh pine needles on the floor? That fragrance—now that’s what I call New Year’s! (As yun zhifan glows with excitement, jiang binliu grows melancholy.) jiang binliu: How nice to go home. yun zhifan: What’s wrong? Thinking of home again? Binliu, there’ll come the day when you can go home to Manchuria. Things won’t always be like this. You must believe it! jiang binliu: Manchuria isn’t a stop where you can just hop on a train and go to. yun zhifan: One day you’ll go home to Manchuria for New Year’s. The war is over, Binliu. The situation in Manchuria will soon be resolved. We’re blessed to even be alive! There are some things you can’t just keep thinking back on. jiang binliu: There are some things you can’t just forget. yun zhifan: But you must forget. Look around you. Is there anyone who’s not been scarred with a thousand wounds? jiang binliu: There are sights, there are sounds that one can never forget. yun zhifan: But you must forget! You must learn to forget! jiang binliu (taking yun zhifan by the hand): Are you asking me to forget the time that we’ve had together? yun zhifan: I’m not asking you to forget about us! I’m talking about the painful things— the bombing, the chaos, the death . . . You must forget to be able to start anew! Binliu, we’ve endured enough these years. A new order is coming, a new China is on its way! (jiang binliu slowly cheers up.) Binliu, if you had anywhere in the world to choose, where would you live? jiang binliu: Isn’t Shanghai grand enough? yun zhifan: I tell you, one day in 1939, word came that a hundred Japanese planes were coming to bomb Kunming. The city became a ghost town overnight. We fled with my mother, across Dian Lake, to Gaoqiao, and from there we walked for two days, to a very special place. The whole mountain was in full bloom! There were millions of flowers! We couldn’t understand the language of the locals there, but they were so kind to us. We went as evacuees but wound up having the time of our lives! We stayed for a whole month, then word came that that day, the enemy never showed. And so we went back home. To this day, I still think of that place.

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jiang binliu: Is there really such a place? yun zhifan: I’ll take you there someday. (Checks her watch again) I really must go! The landlord will lock the door. (jiang binliu offers his hand to yun zhifan.) jiang binliu: Zhifan . . . one more look. (yun zhifan takes jiang binliu’s hand, and together they gaze at the lights before them.) yun zhifan: Binliu, what will you do after I leave? jiang binliu: Await your return. yun zhifan: What else? jiang binliu: Await your return. yun zhifan: And then? (yun zhifan looks at jiang binliu. He looks at the lights.) (Lights out.)

S CE NE 2 (Lights in. Work lights, exposing the setting to be a theater stage. Three streetlamps, looking so convincing in the dark, look ridiculously toylike for their varying heights that have created a forced perspective. The actors playing jiang binliu and yun zhifan sit casually at their places on the swing. Between them stands an old man, the director. He is immersed in memory, his gaze far away. His assistant, a rather prudish woman, stands attentively at his side, with a clipboard in hand, waiting to take notes.) director: It just doesn’t feel right. It’s not the way I recall it. (The actresses playing mrs. jiang and the nurse come onstage from the wings, puzzled. The actress playing the nurse pushes a medical IV stand.) actor playing jiang binliu: Can you be a little more specific? (Pause.) assistant: Professor means that . . . director (suddenly sharp, to the actor playing jiang binliu): Jiang Binliu, you must have a deeper understanding of the relationship between Jiang Binliu’s fate and the historical backdrop. It’s late 1948, do you get it? 1949 is right around the corner! actor playing jiang binliu: I get it. director: Obviously not. Forty-nine changes everything forever. Two million people cross the Taiwan Strait in the largest exodus in human history! All communication between China and Taiwan is cut off for forty years. Not one airplane, not one boat, not one letter, not one phone call! Get it? The Berlin Wall was nothing compared to this! actress playing yun zhifan: Excuse me, but in my opinion . . . director: This scene is the key to the whole play! Soon you’ll be orphaned by the times, do you understand? You are the orphan of the century! (Grasping the hand of

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the Actress playing yun zhifan) Thus when your hands touch, it has to be the sweetest, yet most bitter feeling. actor playing jiang binliu: So you want me to feel something that hasn’t happened yet? (The painted Shanghai drop rises, revealing the theater masking, and a glamorously appointed mysterious woman, who seems misplaced by the rising scenery.) director: What’s going on? I didn’t ask for anything to move! assistant (shouting at the stage crew): Stop! Rigging! Stop! I’ll take care of it, sir. (The assistant exits. The director continues. At the same time, the actresses playing mrs. jiang and the nurse start to play with the positioning of the three prop streetlamps, moving them with ease, to try to get the right perspective.) actress playing yun zhifan: Actually I felt quite good about the scene. The problem is, you’re the only one who actually experienced Shanghai in those days, as well as the ensuing chaos and anarchy. We’re doing our best to visualize what you’ve given us—over there, the luxuriant, decadent metropolis of the East; over here, the serenity of the park. In front of us, the Huangpu River . . . director: The Huangpu? I thought you were looking at the Danshui River!2 (Pause.) actor playing jiang binliu: Look. Can we talk about specific beats and motivations? director: Jiang Binliu, if you don’t get it now, in the next scene, when you’re old and sick in bed, you won’t have any memories. Understand? actor playing jiang binliu: So what now? director: Let’s take it again. actress playing yun zhifan: From . . . ? director: “New Year’s.” Lights! (The director exits; the actors take their places as the lights fade out and the scenic drop comes back in place.)

S CE NE 3 (Lights in. Same as scene 1, but the streetlamps have been repositioned in a rather haphazard fashion.) jiang binliu: How nice to go home. yun zhifan: What’s wrong? Thinking of home again? Binliu, there’ll come the day when you can go home to Manchuria. Things won’t always be like this. You must believe it! jiang binliu: Manchuria isn’t a stop where you can just hop on a train and go to. yun zhifan: One day you’ll go home to Manchuria for New Year’s. The war is over, Binliu. The situation in Manchuria will soon be resolved. We’re blessed to even be alive! There are some things you can’t just keep thinking back on.

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(Upstage, among the shadows, a group of people enter in street clothes. On seeing the actors and the setting, they stop, seemingly surprised, and converse softly among themselves.) jiang binliu: There are some things you can’t just forget. yun zhifan: But you must forget. Look around you. Is there anyone who’s not been scarred with a thousand wounds? director (offstage): What’s going on back there?! (The intruders recoil and look around from the upstage shadows, seeking the source of the voice shouting at them.) jiang binliu (persevering): There are sights, there are sounds that one can never forget. yun zhifan: But you must forget! You must learn to forget! (The intruders get bolder, directly approaching the swing area to speak to the actors.) jiang binliu (taking yun zhifan by the hand): Are you asking me to forget the time that we’ve had together? (A stagehand, flow, carries a long boat oar across the stage, inadvertently menacing the actors. The Secret Love actors try to persevere.) yun zhifan: I’m not asking you to forget about us! I’m talking about the painful things—the bombing, the chaos, the death . . . You must forget to be able to start anew! Binliu, we’ve endured enough these years. A new order is coming, a new China is on the way! director (screaming offstage): WHAT THE HELL?! (Work lights. The actors crumple in frustration, while the intruders look around them in surprise.) actor playing jiang binliu: What the . . . ?! actress playing yun zhifan: Shit! (The director rushes on to the stage.) director: Excuse me, but what do you think you’re doing? actor playing master yuan: Are you talking to me? director: You bet I am. actor playing master yuan: Excuse ME, but I’d like to ask what YOU think you’re doing! Can we please clear all of this? We have a dress rehearsal! (The assistant returns onstage.) assistant: Sir, I’ve figured out the problem with the rigging . . . director: Shut up. (To the actor playing master yuan) This space is ours. We’ve booked it. actor playing master yuan: No way! We’re going up tomorrow night, so tonight this stage is ours. Didn’t you see the big poster out there? Peach Blossom Land. actress playing the nurse (admiring them): Oh, so you guys are Peach Blossom Land? director: I don’t care who they are. This theater is ours. We’ve booked it. assistant: I made the booking. actor playing master yuan: Well, I’m sure you’ve made a mistake somewhere. (To his own group) Can we get some help? Let’s move this stuff! Flow . . . Flow . . .

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(flow comes on to move the swing. The Secret Love group protests.) actor playing jiang binliu: Wait, we’re in the process of . . . actor playing tao: Look. I’m sure this is some sort of misunderstanding, but please, just leave. director: Is this some kind of a joke? This theater is mine tonight! actor playing tao: Do we look like we’re here to joke? (The actress playing blossom completes a exaggerated kung fu warm-up.) actress playing blossom (miming poking her eyes while doing a cartwheel and shouting): I die! I die! I die!! (As if triggered, the Peach Blossom Land actors shout back while doing a physical routine.) actor playing tao, actor playing master yuan (in unison, shouting): I die! I die! I die!! (Pause. The Secret Love group is stunned. The Peach Blossom Land group starts moving things on and off.) actor playing jiang binliu: Are you sure you’re booked for tonight? actor playing master yuan: Positive. actor playing jiang binliu: How can that be? We’ve booked this space. actor playing tao: Excuse me. May I ask what play you’re rehearsing? actress playing yun zhifan: Secret Love. actor playing tao (striking a pose in an attempt to hit on the actress playing yun zhifan): Secret Love. What’s it about? actress playing yun zhifan: It’s about two lovers separated between China and Taiwan, and . . . actor playing master yuan (slapping the actor playing tao in the back): Stop it! Focus! actor playing jiang binliu: Look, we’re opening Friday. That’s why we have to have our dress tonight. actor playing master yuan: Okay. Now I see where you got mixed up. You’re going up Friday, right? Well, we’re going up tomorrow. So who has priority tonight? actor playing tao, actress playing blossom (in unison): We do! actor playing master yuan (shouting to his group): Let’s get moving! (The Peach Blossom Land’s props are moved onstage. The director looks at the assistant.) assistant: Sir, I did as you said. I put down the deposit . . . director: Then why the problem? (The assistant fidgets ner vously.) It’s simple. I’ll just get the theater manager, and everything will be clear. (Moves toward backstage) What a time for something like this! assistant: Sir . . . actor playing master yuan: Right! Just ask the theater manager and you’ll get things straight.

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director (going off ): You bet! Just wait and see! (The director and the assistant exit.) actor playing master yuan: Let’s get things moving! Flow! (flow trots in. The actor playing master yuan points at the swing.) Let’s clear this stuff. actor playing jiang binliu (attempting to stop them): Wait, we’re still rehearsing. We’re . . . actor playing tao: Your director just left, how can you rehearse? (To his group) Let’s go! (flow and other crew members wheel the swing off and start to set up the Wuling scene from Peach Blossom Land.) actress playing yun zhifan (to the actor playing jiang binliu): I can’t believe this. actor playing jiang binliu: Maybe there’s a mix-up in the office. They’ll figure it out. actress playing blossom (politely): Excuse me, can we clear the stage please? (Changing to a rude shout) All unauthorized personnel, OUT! (The Secret Love personnel leave the stage reluctantly. The actor playing tao has changed into his stage costume and approaches the actor playing master yuan. In the meantime, the mysterious woman walks around the stage, apparently looking for someone.) actor playing master yuan: This theater, man, every time they find a way to screw things up. actor playing tao: I warn you, I won’t stand for interruptions. actor playing master yuan: Don’t worry. I guarantee we’re okay. actor playing tao: You guarantee? Every time you guarantee, something happens. Just now, I almost wound up moving that . . . that . . . actor playing master yuan: That was a swing. actor playing tao: Right. That was a swing. Last time I almost wound up moving that . . . that . . . actor playing master yuan: That was an ark. actor playing tao: Right. That ark almost killed me. actor playing master yuan: What are you talking about “that ark almost killed you”? I was the one who moved the ark! You were backstage trying to hit on this stagehand. Look, don’t worry. I guarantee, tonight, this stage is ours! actor playing tao: I won’t stand for interruptions. actor playing master yuan: I understand, you won’t stand for . . . (The actress playing blossom leaps off the Wuling table and pats him.) actress playing blossom: Hey! actor playing master yuan (sudden outburst): I won’t stand for interruptions! (Mildly) What is it, my dear? actress playing blossom: Where do we start from? actor playing master yuan: “Hanky-Panky in Wuling.” actress playing blossom: “Hanky-Panky”? My specialty.

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(The actress playing blossom exits. The actor playing master yuan notices that a streetlamp belonging to Secret Love is still onstage. The mysterious woman stands next to it.) actor playing master yuan: What the . . . ? (Shouting) Flow! Flow! (flow enters. The actor playing master yuan points at the streetlamp.) May I ask: What is this? flow (referring to the mysterious woman): I’d say that’s a pretty hot chick. actor playing master yuan: I’m not talking about the pretty hot chick! I’m asking you (pointing at the lamp), what the hell is this? (The mysterious woman is startled and walks away, sitting down at the Wuling table.) flow: I believe that’s a period streetlamp from the thirties, art deco, made in forced perspective, with cast-iron molding . . . actor playing master yuan (pointing at the lamp): I didn’t ask you, what the hell is this! flow: But Boss, I heard you ask me, what the hell is this. actor playing master yuan: I’m asking you, why the hell is it still standing here? flow: Why the hell is it still standing here? I believe that’s because those guys neglected to . . . actor playing master yuan: I’m not asking you why the hell it’s still standing here! flow: Pardon me, Boss, but I heard you say clearly . . . actor playing master yuan: CAN YOU MOVE IT OFF, PLEASE?! (flow takes the streetlamp offstage.) flow (while exiting): Speak the speech, man, don’t talk in riddles. actor playing master yuan (pounding the table): What a start! (The mysterious woman is startled. They look at each other for a moment. The mysterious woman stands and exits. Pause.) actor playing master yuan (to the lighting booth): Alright! Lights! (Music from Peach Blossom Land plays.) I said “lights”! Did you hear me say “sound”? What a start! Let’s get going! From “Hanky-Panky in Wuling”! (Lights out.)

S CE NE 4 (Sounds of Peking opera percussion. Lights in. Interior of tao and blossom’s house in the fictional town of Wuling, fifth-century China. A simple rustic table with three stools. A cabinet. A large piece of cloth split down the middle is hung upstage to designate the entrance. Otherwise bare stage. The acting style is physical and animated, a cross between Peking opera and Italian commedia antics, accompanied by Peking opera gongs and percussion. tao’s back is to the audience, struggling with his hands like he is masturbating. He gasps while violently twisting something with his hands. He turns, revealing that it is a bottle of Chinese wine he has been trying to pry open. His clothes are ragged and patched.)

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tao: You call this booze? I struggle all day and can’t open it. (He takes up a large butcher knife and tries to pry open the bottle, with no success.) You call this home? She goes out to pick up some herbal medicine and doesn’t come back all day! Who needs booze? I’ll have myself some bread! (He picks up a round piece of Chinese bread from the table.) You call this a town? This town, Wuling, is nothing but “Barren mountains and torrid waters. Birds don’t sing, flowers don’t smell!” I, Tao, the fisherman, go out to fish, but it seems as if all the fish have conspired not to swim into my net! Wives roam wild on the streets—you call this a town?! (He tries to eat the bread but cannot bite into it because it’s too hard.) You call this bread? (He tries to cut the bread with his knife, to no avail. He blames the knife.) You call this a knife? This is no knife! (He throws the knife behind him, grabs a piece of bread, throws it onto the ground before him, and stamps on it.) This is no bread! (He grabs another piece of bread and does the same.) Neither is this! (And another) Or this! (He attacks the bread pieces with his feet, stamping on them to different frenetic rhythms.) I’ll trample you to death! (He talks to the bread pieces as if they were people, first to the piece he hasn’t trampled.) Don’t be scared. You’re innocent. (To the two pieces under his feet) Freeze! Don’t smirk! Where’ve you been all day, buying herbs? Answer me! (He attacks the bread with renewed fervor, crushing it with his hands and feet like a gymnast doing a floor routine, even standing upside down, using his head to crush the bread.) This is for you! And you! Both of you! Now I’ve got you! . . . (blossom enters through the doorway, dressed in festive red. She smiles dreamily, holding flowers in one hand and a package of herbal medicines in the other. Starry- eyed, she hums a Chinese folk love song, oblivious of tao.) blossom (singing): My heart is one big piece, Split it left, split it right, Can’t split it up . . . (On hearing blossom’s voice, tao immediately uses the bread as a cleaning cloth, wiping the floor with it. He sings along with blossom, then realizes the absurdity of his action, and stands up.) tao (meekly): Where have you been all day, buying herbal medicines? (blossom is oblivious of tao’s words. She places the flowers into a vase on the cabinet, takes the Chinese wine bottle into her hand, and, with one fluid pull, opens the cork, to a

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succulent sound effect. She drinks, then slaps the cork back, to another loud sound effect. tao watches in amazement and frustration. blossom stands back to admire the flowers. tao takes up the bottle and tries to open it, with no success.) Answer me! blossom: Why are you always so loud? Can’t you be more gentle? (tao assumes an impossibly gentle posture through Peking opera movement.) tao: Gentle? Blossom, where have you been all day, buying herbal medicines? blossom (gestures back gently): Medicine? All of your medicine is . . . HERE! (blossom tosses the medicine package to tao, hitting him in his crotch. As the package drops to the ground, tao stamps at it with his foot.) Everything you ordered—dried penis of sea horse, penis of sea dragon, and penis of seal. They came in strips, now they’re powder. tao: What about dried penis of toad, penis of snake, and penis of mouse? blossom: Got them all. Spent all the money you got from those teeny-weeny fish you caught. tao: Don’t worry. It’ll be worth it. So take it to the back and put it on a slow boil, simmer until three bowls condense into one, then you drink it. blossom (surprised): Me? I thought it was for you! tao: Is it my problem or your problem? blossom: The doctor said I have no problem, so of course it’s your problem. tao (furiously): Me? A problem? Do I look like someone with a problem? How could I . . . when could I . . . where could I . . . have a problem? (tao points at himself, but his finger has a mind of its own and keeps moving down to point at his crotch. blossom watches impatiently.) blossom: What’s wrong with you? You can’t catch any big fish. I buy medicine for you and you don’t want it! You’re the one who wants children; I’m in no hurry! Do as you please! (tao studies the medicine package.) tao: You call this medicine? (Throwing the package down) This isn’t medicine. blossom (picking up the package): What do you mean, “This isn’t medicine”? Master Yuan told me I got the best stuff! tao (his suspicions confirmed): Master Yuan?! (Pointing) How does he know about this? Huh? Huh? blossom (trying to explain): He was . . . um, passing by and offered his kind advice. tao (furiously): Who are you fooling? (Pointing) How does Master Yuan know that we can’t bear children? Huh? Huh? blossom: Do you want it or not? tao: How does he know? blossom: Do you want it or not? tao: Tell me! (They grab the medicine together while arguing, fight for it, and throw it to the ground. They stamp on it to the accompaniment of Peking opera percussion; irrationally tao climbs onto the table.)

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tao: Clear out!! (tao leaps onto the medicine package and grinds it with his feet. blossom climbs onto the table and is ready to leap onto the medicine.) blossom: Clear out!! (Before she can leap, master yuan enters, singing the same Chinese folk tune that blossom had been singing. He is affluently dressed and exudes the confidence of an accomplished businessman. He holds an expensive embroidered Chinese blanket in hand.) master yuan (singing): My heart is one big piece, Split it left, split it right, Can’t split it up . . . (blossom stops in her tracks and concentrates on the sound. master yuan sees blossom standing on the table and freezes, after which they exchange flirting glances.) tao: Master Yuan! (master yuan suddenly notices that tao is there.) master yuan: Oh, Tao, you’re home. (To himself ) Damn, looks like I’ll have a tough time getting some tonight. tao: What? master yuan (shifting smoothly): I say how are you today, my friend? tao (sarcastically): Fine, no thanks to you. master yuan: How nice! (blossom and master yuan continue to flirt behind tao’s back.) blossom: Master Yuan . . . master yuan: Blossom . . . blossom: Why don’t you come up and play? master yuan: I think maybe you should come down . . . and have a look at what I bought for you— tao: What? master yuan (realizing he’s said the wrong thing, to tao): Two. YOU TWO. (master yuan unfolds the blanket.) blossom: What a beautiful new blanket! master yuan: Isn’t it exquisite? tao: Never heard of anyone giving a blanket as a present. master yuan: Come on, Tao, your old blanket is so torn and tattered, you’d catch your death covering yourself with it. blossom: He’s right. tao: And how do you know that our blanket is torn and tattered, Master Yuan? master yuan (realizing he has slipped): I . . . Hey, come on, Tao, don’t let your imagination run wild here! (Suddenly, master yuan and blossom sneeze.) master yuan, blossom (in unison): Achoo!!

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(master yuan and blossom exchange a furtive glance and move away from each other. tao looks on suspiciously. master yuan unfolds the blanket before tao. tao, master yuan, and blossom line up behind the blanket, in that order.) master yuan: Come on, Tao, have a look. I had this specially shipped in from Suzhou! (Behind the blanket, master yuan and blossom start to fool around, unseen by tao.) tao (looking at the embroidery on the blanket): People have trouble putting food on the table. Who needs a fancy blanket? master yuan (pointing at the embroidery): Look for yourself, Tao! It goes without saying that the fabric is of the finest quality, but the real deal is the handiwork . . . (Slowing down) the handiwork . . . (blossom’s hand boldly caresses master yuan’s right cheek. master yuan is in euphoria.) . . . I say, the handiwork is just out of this world! tao (looking at the hand, puzzled): What’s that? (blossom’s hand quickly points down at the blanket. master yuan’s lines coordinate with the movements of her hand.) master yuan: What do you mean “What’s that”? Don’t look at me, look at the blanket! Look what’s embroidered down there. A dragon and a phoenix . . . (tao looks down. blossom’s hand is right in front of master yuan’s face.) . . . And just you look at the phoenix’s claw!3 It’s so tender and sensuous . . . Mmm . . . (master yuan kisses blossom’s hand. It looks like he is kissing his own hand.) tao: What the . . . ? (master yuan yawns with his mouth wide open. blossom’s hand coordinates.) master yuan: Ahh . . . (blossom’s hand scratches master yuan’s face. He feigns being itchy.) Ooh! . . . (blossom’s finger points back to the blanket.) Hey, what’re you looking at me for? Look at the blanket! tao: Blankets are for sleeping. They’re not important. (blossom’s finger gestures vigorously.) master yuan: No, no, no. You don’t get it. Sleeping is VERY important. (blossom gestures thumbs up, then slaps tao in the face.) Don’t look at me! Look at the blanket! (blossom’s finger points at the blanket.) Look at how expertly the dragon’s eyes are crafted with such powerful masculinity . . . (Gestures above tao) Then note the phoenix’s delightful figure . . . perfectly proportioned . . . (master yuan is caressing blossom behind the blanket.) tao: Well I don’t like it. (tao tosses the blanket onto the ground and walks away, exposing master yuan caressing blossom.)

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master yuan, blossom ( in unison): We like it. (They suddenly realize that they are exposed and cover their private parts instinctively, as if they were naked. They sneeze.) master yuan, blossom (in unison): Achoo!! (They quickly walk away from each other.) blossom (picking up the blanket, to tao): Take the blanket into the room, Tao. tao: We shouldn’t accept such a gift. blossom: Just take it in!! (tao exits, taking the blanket off right. master yuan examines the medicine package.) master yuan: To think that babies can be produced through this shit! (master yuan kicks the package offstage. blossom and master yuan gaze at each other romantically.) blossom (wistfully): Master Yuan! master yuan (likewise): Blossom! (blossom and master yuan approach each other, using elaborate Peking opera movement hand and eye gestures. They meet and embrace.) blossom: But why are you here? Didn’t we just meet? master yuan: Blossom, whereforth art the blossoms that I sent you? blossom (pointing at the vase on the cabinet): Thereforth! (They look at the flowers dreamily and sigh. blossom is suddenly ner vous.) You have to leave now! He suspects something! master yuan (heroically): I refuse to wait any longer! blossom: But we can only wait. (master yuan gathers blossom in his arms.) master yuan: No! I want to take you away from here now, this very moment, away from this (emphasizing the p’s) pitiful house, this putrid life! blossom (wiping the saliva from her face): That’s (emphasizing the p) im—possible. Where could we go? (master yuan gestures grandly as blossom falls out of his arms and crashes to the ground.) master yuan (heroically): Wherever, that’s not the issue! (blossom attempts to get up but is struck by master yuan’s gesticulating hands.) As long as you and I believe, we can go to the (emphasizing the p’s) pits of the planet and call it our own paradise! (Blossom finally gets up. They gaze at the distance. blossom sighs.) blossom: But . . . but . . . master yuan: No more “buts.” I have a grand vision! (Pointing) There, in that faraway place, I can already see our unceasing line of descendants, hand in hand, shoulder to shoulder, each one of them only (gesturing with his finger and thumb) this big. blossom (originally intoxicated, suddenly sober): Why only (gesturing) this big? master yuan (matter- of-factly): Because they’re far. (They gaze dreamily at the distance.)

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blossom: Oh! Is there really such a place? master yuan (emphatically): As long as we believe! blossom, master yuan (wrapped up in their dreams, in unison): Oh! (They embrace. The sound of tao shouting from offstage.) tao (offstage): Caught you now! Aha! (The two lovers instinctively shift positions. master yuan leaps into blossom’s arms and immediately falls to the ground. blossom grasps at him to get up but instead falls onto him, sitting on top of him in a sexual position.) tao (offstage): Caught you in the act, you shameful creatures! blossom, master yuan (shouting in unison): Ahh!! (They scramble away from each other, but blossom falls on her back. master yuan falls sloppily on top of her, and they again wind up entangled in a sexual pose.) tao (offstage): I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you with my bare hands!! blossom, master yuan (shouting in unison): Ahh!! (blossom and master yuan disentangle from each other sloppily. tao enters, crawling on the ground.) tao (swatting the ground): I’ll kill you, you miserable cockroaches! master yuan, blossom (off the hook, in unison): Cockroaches? Right . . . cockroaches . . .! (blossom and master yuan walk around the room searching for “cockroaches.” blossom bends over, and master yuan unsuspectingly bumps into her from behind, forming a sexual pose. tao turns and sees them. All three are caught by surprise.) all three (shouting together): Ahh!! (master yuan moves away from blossom but bumps into tao’s rear end by accident, forming a sexual pose. An embarrassing pause. They disengage silently. blossom and master yuan walk around the room pretending nothing happened. tao watches them.) tao: Master Yuan . . . master yuan (unnaturally loud): What?! tao: “One doesn’t enter the palace unless he has business to tend to.” So if there’s anything else besides giving us a blanket, then spit it out. master yuan: Fine. blossom: Let’s sit down and have a drink! (They all sit at the table. blossom brings ceramic wine cups to the table.) tao: Now if it’s the rent you want to talk about . . . master yuan: Don’t mention your rent. We can’t let anyone know how little I charge you. Let’s talk about your fishing. tao: What about my fishing? master yuan: Look. Tao, the fish you catch are getting smaller and smaller . . . (blossom opens the Chinese wine bottle with ease, accompanied by a sound effect. tao is surprised. blossom pours wine for master yuan and herself, neglecting tao. blossom pushes the cork back into the bottle, with a sound effect.) master yuan: But let’s not talk about such trivial matters. Bottoms up!

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(master yuan and blossom drink voraciously. tao can only watch.) tao (holding out his cup): Here . . . here . . . blossom: Wow! That hits the spot! master yuan (with gusto): That really hits the spot! tao (meekly): That really hurts a lot. master yuan: I don’t get it, Tao, why is it that others bring in such huge fish, and yours are so tiny? Dozens of fishermen bring their catches to me to sell. I must eliminate the fish that are too puny. Why should I grant you special privileges? (blossom grabs the wine bottle and opens it again, surprising tao. She pours wine for master yuan and herself, neglecting tao.) tao (while eyeing the bottle in anticipation): Master Yuan, we’re grateful for your kindness over the years, but fishing is not solely a matter of skill. There is the luck factor as well, wouldn’t you SAY?! . . . (Just as blossom is going to push the cork back in, tao covers the bottle desperately with his hand. He is now in possession of the open bottle, which he holds up while continuing to talk.) . . . You say my fish are small. Well, it wasn’t ME who made them small . . . (Just as tao is to pour himself wine, blossom and master yuan down their wine and gesture for more. tao complies, pouring wine for each of them in turn while he talks.) . . . I want to catch big fish too. Who doesn’t? Everyone wants to catch big fish! I want to catch big fish as much as anyone . . . (tao leaves the bottle on the table for a second while he gestures. blossom corks it immediately, to a big sound effect. tao shouts in despair.) . . . BUT I JUST CAN’T!! master yuan (oblivious of tao’s plight): There are many ways to catch big fish, Tao. But let’s not waste our breath talking. blossom: Bottoms up! (master yuan and blossom drink voraciously. tao can only watch.) tao (pointing to his empty cup, desperately): Here . . . here . . . blossom: Oh! Ecstasy! master yuan: Oh! Rhapsody! tao: Oh! Misery! master yuan: Listen to me, Tao. A man must strive for his ideals! You must define your goal (graphically gesturing toward blossom), then just force your way inside and grab what you desire! You understand what I’m saying? tao (meekly): But . . . master yuan (pointing offstage): Upstream lie the big fish! Why don’t you go upstream? blossom (whimsically): Upstream . . . tao (frustrated): Master Yuan, everyone knows there are big fish upstream. Everyone knows there are rapids up there too. My boat is the size of a piece of tofu. If I go, fine, I’ll never come back. blossom: If you were man enough, you’d give it a try. (Silence. tao stands up.)

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tao: So I’ll go then, okay? So I’ll go upstream and never come back. That would be perfect for you, right? blossom: What the hell are you saying? master yuan: Come on, Tao! tao: Master Yuan, let’s stop fooling around. “Lanterns don’t glow unless they’re lit; drums don’t sound unless they’re hit!” (Striking the table for emphasis) Just the three of us under this roof! blossom (likewise striking the table): Just the three of us! tao (likewise striking the table): Nothing to hide! master yuan (likewise striking the table): Nothing to hide! tao (likewise striking the table): Let’s get it all out! blossom (likewise striking the table): Clean and clear! all three: Right!! (Striking the table in unison) So . . . master yuan, blossom (in unison, pointing at tao): You start! tao (meekly): Why me . . . ? (Heroically) Fine! I start! master yuan, blossom (in unison): Say it loud and clear! tao (forcefully): To start with I want to make it clear . . . master yuan, blossom (in unison): Yeah? tao (meekly): . . . I’m not good at words. (master yuan and blossom heave a sigh of despair.) So I want to say that what I’m experiencing . . . it’s like . . . it’s like . . . blossom: Just spit it out! tao (trying hard to create the correct metaphor): It’s like . . . like . . . on the darkest evening, on the deepest night . . . master yuan (suddenly interrupting): “Darkest evening” is “deepest night”! Don’t be redundant, man! blossom: He’s so long-winded. tao: Sorry. (Continuing his struggle to express himself ) It’s like . . . in the dusk, at twilight, the sunset has gone beyond the mountains . . . blossom: “Dusk” is “twilight” is “sunset.” Give us a break! tao (struggling on): The moon . . . finds itself covered by dark black clouds. master yuan: Dark clouds are inherently black! tao (meekly): And so the moon . . . master yuan, blossom (in unison): What about it?! tao: Has no choice but to sit down. (tao sits. Silence. A rapid-fire exchange ensues.) blossom: What the hell are you saying? You didn’t say anything! tao: What do you mean I didn’t say anything? master yuan: Tao, I suggest you get straight to the point! tao: You mean what I’ve said isn’t clear enough? blossom: No way. master yuan: Look Tao, just tell it like it is. tao: If I tell it like it is it will be too . . . (Fumbling for words) too . . .

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blossom: If you don’t, it’ll be even more . . . (Fumbling for words) more . . . master yuan: Look, you’re too inarticulate. Let me articulate things. tao: You? blossom: Let him articulate. (What follows is a rigorous attempt to define the situation, full of gesture and physicality, but degenerating into cavemanlike utterances and gestures.) master yuan (pointing): I say you . . . you . . . you . . . tao (pointing): Me? Me? master yuan (pointing): We . . . we . . . tao: What? What? master yuan (pointing): Her . . . her . . . tao: What? . . . What? . . . master yuan: . . . you . . . you . . . you . . . tao: What? . . . What? . . . What? . . . master yuan (pointing at blossom): . . . toward her! . . . her! tao: Okay, so let’s say I haven’t been that . . . that . . . master yuan: What . . . what . . . ? tao: Toward her . . . master yuan: Right . . . right . . . tao: But . . . (pointing) you! You! . . . master yuan: Me? Me? tao: . . . you . . . you . . . you . . . master yuan: What? . . . what? . . . what? . . . tao: Who the hell are you?! (Pause.) master yuan: Okay. Me, I’m nobody, okay? tao: You the hell right! master yuan: I the hell right, because who the hell were you . . . ? tao: Who the hell when? master yuan: You the hell when . . . tao: When the hell who? master yuan: . . . then, then, then . . . tao: When? When? When? . . . master yuan: . . . in the beginning, in the beginning, in the beginning . . . tao: . . . What beginning? What beginning? What beginning? . . . master yuan: In the very beginning! Where were you in the very beginning?! tao: In the very beginning?! blossom: In the very beginning! tao: In the very beginning . . . (pauses, matter- of-factly) we were all nothing. (They all sigh and sit down. Long pause.) Let’s make things simple. I’ll just die, okay? (master yuan burps. It sounds like hao—“okay” in Chinese.) (Pause.)

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I’m afraid you didn’t understand what I just said. I said, “I’ll just die, okay?” (master yuan burps again. Pause.) So I die. (tao stands and walks away from the table quietly. Suddenly, he assumes a ridiculous suicide posture, grasping his throat wildly in an attempt to strangle himself to death.) I die! . . . I die! . . . I die! . . . blossom: What are you doing? What are you trying to prove? I get it! You want me to die, right? You’re trying to play the guilt card on me, right? Okay, then I die! (blossom assumes a ridiculous suicide posture, pinching her nose and holding her breath to asphyxiate herself while she bounds around the stage like a ballerina.) I die! . . . I die! . . . I die! . . . tao (to blossom, while continuing to strangle himself ): You die? No way! You’d never be able to leave that sugar daddy behind. master yuan (playing the role of reconciler): Come on, let’s be rational . . . let’s approach this in a calm, reflective, mature state of . . . (Suddenly hearing tao’s words) Oh! So I’M the problem! Fine! I DIE! (master yuan assumes a ridiculous suicide posture, miming using a sword to tear out his guts as he prances around the stage.) I die! . . . I die! . . . I die! . . . all three (in unison): I die! . . . I die! . . . I die! . . . (Total chaos and irrationality rule. The three romp around the stage shouting, “I die!” while miming various imaginative suicidal poses. They leap from cliffs, writhe on the ground, hang themselves, poke their eyes out. They even play rock-paper-scissors while shouting violently. No matter what the outcome, each always loses, regressing into suicidal gestures.) (In unison) I die—!! I die—!! I die—!! (The realistic miming degenerates into the abstract: They cartwheel and somersault all over the stage, shouting all the time. They do gymnastic and kung fu routines while shouting. Finally, in unison, they do a complex martial arts routine from Peking opera, the “thirteen sounds,” using their bodies as percussion instruments, leaping in the air, spinning three hundred sixty degrees and ending facing the audience in a final formal pose.) (Shouting in unison) I DIE! (Lights black out.)

S CE NE 5 (In the darkness, the sound of tao singing a Chinese fisherman’s rowing ditty.) tao (singing): Hey . . . hey . . . yo . . . ! (Lights in. A river scene on a miniature “picture box” that has been wheeled onto the stage. The picture box contains several backdrops staggered together in a curtainlike

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configuration, something that looks like it would work as portable scenery for an outdoor street per for mance. tao mimes rowing a boat before the backdrop. He uses a long bamboo oar, but his feet are “floating” across the stage, left to right, in Peking- opera fashion. Four stagehands on both sides of the stage create the image of a river by manipulating two long shiny blue cloth strips up and down in undulating waves, between which tao rows.) (Singing) Hey . . . hey . . . yo . . . ! (tao stops in the center, bobbing up and down, and begins a solemn recitation of Tao Yuanming’s classical text “A Chronicle of the Peach Blossom Spring.”) “A Chronicle of the Peach Blossom Spring,” by Tao Yuanming. “In the Jing dynasty, under the reign of Taiyuan, there lived a fisherman from the town of Wuling . . .” (Breaking down into personal feelings) His wife was having an affair with his boss! He went totally crazy and rowed up the stream like a madman! (Losing control, singing) Hey . . . hey . . . yo . . . (tao rows to the right of the picture box and circles behind it to come back to the left side. A curtain is drawn within the box by a stagehand, changing the scenery in rustic fashion. The next drop reveals a different, wilder river scene. tao continues to row, stopping again in the center.) “Following the stream, the fisherman lost track of time and forgot his way . . .” (Shifting to the personal) Forget it all! Forget about Blossom! Forget about Master Yuan! (Looking in the distance) Wait. Shouldn’t there be rapids ahead? Who cares? On! . . . (tao continues to row, just at the same time the Secret Love group enters the stage and approaches him head- on.) WHOA!! . . . HERE THEY COME AGAIN, BOSS! (Work lights. The scene breaks down.) director (holding a contract in his hand): This is our contract. actor playing tao: They have a contract! director: This space is ours tonight. (The actor playing master yuan enters, talking on a mobile phone.) actor playing tao (to the actor playing master yuan): I told you I won’t stand for interruptions. actor playing master yuan (to the director): Who doesn’t have a contract? Did you talk to the theater manager? director: We couldn’t find him. actor playing master yuan: So there you have it. Excuse me, I have pressing matters to attend to. Flow! . . . director: This play is my life’s work. We’re dealing with serious matters here! actor playing master yuan: Flow, can you come here, please? actor playing tao (to the director): Pardon me, but I believe the quest for Peach Blossom Land is also a very serious matter. actor playing master yuan: Flow! Can we have you onstage, please? (flow enters from the opposite side, surprising the actor playing master yuan.) Flow, may I ask what happened to our Peach Blossom backdrop?

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flow: You mean the drop filled with peach blossoms? actor playing master yuan: Obviously. flow: I loaded it onto the truck. actor playing master yuan: Good. Why hasn’t it arrived? flow: You mean . . . here? actor playing master yuan: Where else should it go? flow: Kaohsiung.4 actor playing master yuan (trying to restrain his anger): May I ask why the drop filled with peach blossoms should go to Kaohsiung? flow: Boss, didn’t you say we had a show in Kaohsiung day after tomorrow? director: You have a problem? actor playing master yuan (to the director): I don’t have a problem. (Restraining himself, to flow) Flow, I’m pleased that you are so cognizant about day after tomorrow in Kaohsiung. But may I ask you: In your opinion, shouldn’t we perform tomorrow in Taipei first? flow (thinking it over): Sounds cool to me. actor playing master yuan: Sounds cool to you. director: I’m getting to work. Props! assistant: Professor said “Props”! (The Secret Love group starts moving their furniture and props on for the hospital scene.) actor playing master yuan (patiently, to flow): So in your opinion, do you think someone should go to intercept the truck? (flow burps. It sounds like hao, “okay” in Chinese.) Where’d you get that? (flow points at master yuan.) Okay, so I’ll go intercept the truck, okay? Are you saying that I should charge onto the freeway and physically stop an eighteen-wheel container truck? flow: But Boss, then what do you need me for? actor playing master yuan: Right! Like hell I need you! (The actor playing master yuan rushes off.) flow: Boss . . . Boss . . . (flow is puzzled and wanders off. In the commotion, the Secret Love group has transformed the stage into a hospital room.) director: Are the projections ready? assistant (calling to the wings): Projection! Projection! (A series of black-and-white street scenes from Taipei in the fifties are projected onto the backdrop images of a country in transition. All look at the projections, including the mysterious woman, who has wandered back onstage.) director: Stop! This is all superfluous! We start straight from the advertisement! (The projections stop.) assistant: But sir, I thought that the audience might share a deeper emotional empathy for the script if they first saw some images from that era.

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director: Whose emotions? Your emotions? When you tell a story, learn to tell it straight. Don’t waste your time with visual gimmicks! This is theater! Do you understand? Theater! It is a living entity! assistant (upbeat, but fighting back tears): Thank you, sir! I’ll remember that! (The assistant exits.) director: Let’s go straight to the advertisement! (The image of a middle-aged jiang binliu is projected onto the screen, with his wife and son. It is the 1970s, in a Taipei photo studio. jiang binliu is roughly fifty, mrs. jiang thirty-five, and their son eight or so.) No! Not this one! We start straight from the advertisement. stage manager (offstage): Isn’t it this one? director: This one is Mr. Jiang’s family portrait. (Another photo takes the place of the family portrait. It is a young jiang binliu with yun zhifan taken in a Shanghai photo studio, 1948.) Wrong again. stage manager (offstage): Isn’t this his wife? director: This is the woman that Jiang Binliu met in Shanghai. stage manager (offstage): Didn’t they get married? director: If they’d gotten married, we wouldn’t have had to write this play! Excuse me, but would it be too much to ask you to have a look at my script, please? stage manager (offstage): We’re professionals. All we need is accurate numbering. director (in a frenzy): Numbering? Fine! Let’s throw away our scripts! Literature is dead! Just project anything you want onto the screen! Anything! (An advertisement related to a search for yun zhifan on the front page of a newspaper is projected onto the screen. yun zhifan’s head shot is in the advertisement.) That’s it! Places! (The director moves to exit but is intercepted by the mysterious woman, who has been watching everything closely.) mysterious woman: Excuse me. Have you seen Liu Ziji? director: Who? mysterious woman: Liu Ziji. He promised to meet me here. stage manager (offstage): You’re sure we start from this one? Don’t keep changing, okay? director: Positive! Let’s go! (He moves off. ) mysterious woman (intercepting the director): I have something very important to tell him. Can you please ask him to come out here? director: What? Who? Liu who? mysterious woman: Liu Ziji. I really need to talk with him! He promised he’d come here and set things straight! (The director is at a loss. flow walks dejectedly across the stage. The director calls to him.)

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director: Hey . . . young man, I believe this lady’s looking for you. flow: For me? (flow continues to walk offstage. The mysterious woman follows him.) mysterious woman: I’m looking for Liu Ziji. flow: Who? mysterious woman: Liu Ziji. flow: Oh, Liu Ziji! . . . (Walking off ) What’s his last name? (flow exits, followed by the mysterious woman.) director: Alright, places everyone! The Taipei hospital room! (Lights out.)

S CE NE 6 (Lights in. A Taipei hospital room, late 1980s. A hospital bed with an end cabinet next to it, on which are placed everyday things—a teacup, a telephone, a cassette player, a vase. Next to the bed is an IV stand and a wheelchair. Opposite from the bed is a sofa bed. On and around it are various things belonging to Mrs. Jiang—magazines, knitting, etc. A freestanding door is upstage, next to which is a coat-tree. A long venetian blind hangs from above, as does an old clock, which is motionless at 8:18. The newspaper ad is projected on the screen behind, with a picture of the young yun zhifan. jiang binliu lies on the bed reading a newspaper. He is old now, with makeup indicating his age on his face and white hair. He wears hospital pajamas and the scarf that yun zhifan gave him in the Shanghai scene. The nurse enters. She is young and animated, fresh out of nursing school. She holds a copy of a Chinese newspaper in her hand.) nurse: Good morning, Mr. Jiang! How did you sleep? (Approaches the bed and sees the newspaper in jiang binliu’s hand) Oh, you already have a newspaper! (The nurse takes jiang binliu’s newspaper and gives him medication.) It’s time. jiang binliu (weakly): Those red pills again? nurse (pulling the wheelchair over): What a beautiful day. Let’s sit up for a while. (jiang binliu takes his medicine. The nurse helps him onto the wheelchair.) jiang binliu: Every time I take these red pills, my urine becomes red. (The nurse wheels jiang binliu to a spot by the window.) nurse: They’re good for you. Look what a nice day it is! jiang binliu: Nice sun today. nurse (not able to hold back her excitement): Mr. Jiang, did you really place a personal ad on the front page of the newspaper? (jiang binliu looks silently out the window.) Wow! I can’t believe it! You’re the first person I know who’s really done something like this! (Reading the ad) “To Yun Zhifan: It’s been forty years since we parted in

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Shanghai. Recently my health has deteriorated . . .” (To jiang binliu) What a stupid thing to say in the newspaper! (Reading) “Have learned from a friend that you have long been in Taiwan. Please contact me immediately on seeing this ad. Jiang Binliu, room 1120, Taipei Veterans’ Hospital.” (Excited) Who is she? Tell me! (Pause.) jiang binliu (slowly): See this scarf ? She knitted it for me in the fall of 1948. nurse: Wow. An antique! I mean, you must have had something special going on with her, right? Tell me, please. jiang binliu: How old are you? nurse: Eighteen. jiang binliu: Forget it. nurse: Come on, tell me! Please! jiang binliu (recollecting solemnly): Summer, 1948. We met in Shanghai. It was the happiest summer of my life. Later, she returned to her hometown of Kunming for the New Year. We parted in a Shanghai park. We thought it would be a brief separation. I never saw her again. nurse: Come on, I thought you guys were real tight! How’d you let her get away? jiang binliu (scoffing): “Get away”? You have no idea. The world was so immense then. A man was so small against that vast backdrop. These days, the times keep getting smaller and smaller. And so do we. nurse: So you’ve been thinking of her all these years? jiang binliu: There are some things you can’t just forget. nurse: No way! Remember my boyfriend, Chen? jiang binliu: What about him? nurse: We split up last week, and you know, these few days I’ve been trying real hard to think of what he looks like . . . but I just can’t picture his face! (Pause. jiang binliu grows melancholy.) So why did you wait till now to look for her? jiang binliu: After the communists took over China in 1949, I assumed that she was stuck there all the time. All these years, there was no way to communicate. Now finally they’ve lifted the ban. But I can’t travel, so I asked an old friend, Mr. Han, to go to her hometown and find her whereabouts. nurse: Oh, you mean that man who comes to visit you sometimes? jiang binliu: Turns out that she, too, fled the mainland in forty-nine! I never knew. Perhaps she’s been here all these years. nurse: What? You mean she’s been in Taiwan all this time? jiang binliu: I have no idea. I only know that she came out in forty-nine. To where, whether or not she’s even alive, I have no idea. nurse: Wait. Does Mrs. Jiang know about this? (jiang binliu is silent.) Right! So you go out and put this giant ad on the front page! (Softening her tone) How much did it cost you?

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jiang binliu (looking at the newspaper): What do you think of this photo? Isn’t she pretty? nurse: Yeah, but it’s—faded. jiang binliu: If she sees the ad, do you think she’ll come? nurse: Come on, man, no way . . . (Seeing jiang binliu’s dejection) Hey Mr. Jiang, you know if it were me, I’d certainly come! Because that would be the right thing to do! (mrs. jiang enters the room. She is a modestly dressed middle-aged housewife. She brings flowers and other household things in a large bag. She speaks with a Taiwanese accent. The nurse hides the newspaper behind her back.) nurse: Oh, good morning, Mrs. Jiang! mrs. jiang: Good morning. nurse: Fresh flowers again? (The nurse takes the flowers and desperately stashes the newspaper on the sofa under mrs. jiang’s things.) mrs. jiang (to jiang binliu): How did you sleep? (jiang binliu is silent.) nurse: Well. mrs. jiang (to jiang binliu): Let me pull you back to bed. jiang binliu: I was just getting some sun. mrs. jiang: Too much sun, and you start complaining of headaches. (mrs. jiang pulls jiang binliu back to the bed and helps him out of the wheelchair, onto the bed, with great difficulty. The nurse starts going about her chores. She brings out some warm water for mrs. jiang to use. mrs. jiang starts wiping jiang binliu’s body with a wet towel.) mrs. jiang (while wiping jiang binliu’s body): I just went home and listened to messages. Your old office colleague Mr. Wu called and said he wanted to come see you. jiang binliu: What for? Tell him not to. mrs. jiang: It’s a nice gesture. You’ll enjoy it. jiang binliu: Enjoy what? He comes, we just sit here and engage in awkward conversation, avoiding the essential. Everyone knows we’re just waiting for the inevitable. mrs. jiang: Can you hear yourself ? I guess you enjoy talking like that! Fine! Say more, if you like! Say more! (Progressing to jiang binliu’s hands) What do you want for lunch? I got those noodles that mainland lady makes by hand. I can fix up some zhajiang sauce, the type you like. (jiang binliu’s eyes are closed. He is asleep, or doesn’t wish to converse.) Our son called last night. Said he wanted to come straight back, but I told him that you wanted him to finish his studies. I mean, America is so far, and above all you want him to get his degree. Did I say the right thing? (Pause.) I hear . . . that Old Han came back from China. (Silence. jiang binliu’s eyes remain closed.) nurse (breaking the silence): Right. He’s been over a few times.

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mrs. jiang: So you know him? Seems he goes to China a lot these days. And for what? He says to eat! Come on, you can get those dajia crabs in Taiwan too. I guess since they didn’t let him go back for forty years, he’s getting some payback, right? (The nurse takes the water and towel offstage.) I wonder what . . . Shanghai used to be like. (Pause. mrs. jiang realizes that jiang binliu is asleep. She turns and beckons to the nurse, who has returned.) Miss Wang, I just wanted to thank you. nurse: For what? mrs. jiang: Mr. Jiang’s illness isn’t easy to cope with. And he’s so . . . so . . . (in Taiwanese dialect) “quaint.” You understand Taiwanese? nurse (in Taiwanese): Yes. mrs. jiang: To be honest, I don’t know where I’d be without you. nurse: Come on! I’m just doing my job! And you know, it’s not often that I get such a nice patient as Mr. Jiang. Some of them like to ring the bell all the time, and some of them like to shout, and some of them even try to fool around. mrs. jiang: Yes . . . yes, I know . . . Miss Wang, have you noticed lately that Mr. Jiang has a lot on his mind? nurse: It seems so . . . But all patients are like that. mrs. jiang: Miss Wang . . . nurse: What? mrs. jiang: Have you seen today’s China Times? nurse: What?! (mrs. jiang clears the sofa to sit, inadvertently revealing the newspaper that the nurse had stashed there. Silence.) Mrs. Jiang . . . Mr. Jiang is a good man. mrs. jiang: I know . . . I know . . . It’s just . . . he’s always so far away. At home, he would make his own cup of tea. He only drank the tea that he made, he’d never let me make tea for him—and then he’d sit by the window, in his room, and just . . . sit. When he was sitting there like that, no one could approach him, not even our son. All these years I’ve always wondered: how could anyone have so much on his mind? (She finds a new cassette tape on the table.) I didn’t see this yesterday. Did Mr. Han bring it? nurse: Oh, Mr. Jiang asked me to buy those old songs for him. (mrs. jiang plays the tape. The sound of Zhou Xuan, Shanghai’s most famous singer from the forties, comes on, singing a ballad. The nurse continues with her chores, and mrs. jiang sits on the chair to read a magazine. Time seems to be frozen. From the wings, the young yun zhifan appears, in her Shanghai cheongsam, beautiful and sparkling, just as before. She passes behind the venetian blind. jiang binliu opens his eyes, looks up, and sees her. yun zhifan stops at the doorway, and they exchange a long look. yun zhifan exits the room, into a mysterious light.

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jiang binliu gets out of bed, opens the drawer to get a large manila envelope, and goes to the coat-tree, where he takes his Shanghai jacket off the coat-tree and puts it on. The nurse and mrs. jiang converse as if jiang binliu were still asleep in bed.) Mrs. Jiang, when were you married? mrs. jiang: A long time ago. 1965. That was when I moved from Pingtung to Taipei. (The old Taipei photos appear in the projection. The Shanghai swing and streetlamps appear stage left, juxtaposed with the hospital furniture. yun zhifan appears in the Shanghai park, where she sits on the swing, soon joined by the old jiang binliu.) Taipei wasn’t like this in those days. Not so many cars, not so many people . . . It changes so quickly, like a blink of the eye. We don’t get a chance to see clearly, and suddenly we’re old. nurse: How did you meet? mrs. jiang: Through a matchmaker. nurse: What? mrs. jiang: Real old-fashioned, right? nurse: No, that’s cool. What was that like? mrs. jiang: Nothing like now. nurse: Tell me. I want to know. mrs. jiang: We met in an ice shop. nurse: “Ice shop”? mrs. jiang: I tell you, ice shops were the fashion in those days! nurse: Really? (Stage left, jiang binliu hums the old tune that he hummed in Shanghai and approaches the swing, where the young yun zhifan is waiting for him.) jiang binliu (singing): “You are a cloud adrift in the clear sky . . .” mrs. jiang: Really. Everyone from my family came, all my relatives. My uncles, aunts, cousins, and you know, he was all by himself. Everyone started a conversation and I sort of stood there looking at him and thinking, “This man came alone from the mainland to Taiwan. He has no family. What a poor guy.” nurse: You mean Mr. Jiang went to the matchmaking all by himself ? mrs. jiang: In those days no one had ever had ice cream. nurse: Really? mrs. jiang: And he treated us all to ice cream! Everybody was saying, “This man is a good man, this man is a generous man,” and the match was made while everyone was laughing and having ice cream! (The dialogue becomes juxtaposed on both sides of the stage.) yun zhifan: How still. Never has Shanghai been so still. mrs. jiang (in the hospital room): When we lived in Jingmei, there was a tree outside our window. yun zhifan: We are the only people in Shanghai tonight. mrs. jiang: All these years, he’s been good to me. And he was always good to our son. I never had much to complain about . . . yun zhifan: The rain was so fresh. There is an indescribable scent in the air . . .

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mrs. jiang: . . . Our backgrounds were just too different. yun zhifan (pointing ahead): Binliu, look at the lights in the water. They look like . . . mrs. jiang: He didn’t like the food I cooked, and I couldn’t cook what he liked . . . jiang binliu: Like images from a dream. mrs. jiang: He never spoke to my friends. yun zhifan: Like everything is frozen. mrs. jiang: So what could we do? The years passed, and our son grew up . . . jiang binliu: Everything . . . is frozen. (The phone rings. jiang binliu is startled.) mrs. jiang: I’ll get it. (She answers the phone.) Hello . . . (Changing to Taiwanese dialect) Oh, it’s you. How did you know I was here? . . . yun zhifan: The weather’s changing. mrs. jiang: . . . Sometimes he feels better, but still, he’s often in pain . . . yun zhifan: I’ve been so happy this summer. During the war, I never imagined there would ever be such good times. mrs. jiang: Yes, we’ve tried Chinese medicine. And the latest Western medicine . . . yun zhifan: Look around us, Binliu, new hope is everywhere. mrs. jiang: Please don’t come, it’s too far . . . (jiang binliu gazes at mrs. jiang on the phone.) yun zhifan: What’s wrong with you? mrs. jiang: I talked to the doctor . . . yun zhifan: I’m talking to you. mrs. jiang (emotionally): He said . . . we can expect at most three months. yun zhifan: What’s on your mind? mrs. jiang: Don’t worry, I can handle it. I’ll be fine . . . Thank you . . . goodbye. (mrs. jiang hangs up. The nurse comes over to comfort her. jiang binliu turns to face yun zhifan at the swing.) jiang binliu (taking a stack of letters from the manila envelope): Zhifan, I’ve written a whole stack of letters to you. Years of letters . . . years and years . . . yun zhifan (suddenly stern): What’s wrong with you? How come you didn’t send them? I can’t accept these. jiang binliu: Zhifan, that was all beyond my control. In these letters are so many of our ideals, so many of our goals. I’m handing them directly to you. yun zhifan: Ideals? If you had any ideals, you’d go out and accomplish them! Binliu, the New China has stagnated due to people like you! I can’t accept these . . . (yun zhifan throws the stack of letters into the air and walks away from the swing.) jiang binliu: Zhifan . . . ! (yun zhifan disappears far upstage.) (Lights fade out.)

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S CE NE 7 (Work lights. The actors in Secret Love sit dejectedly around the stage. The mysterious woman is also present. The director sits on yun zhifan’s swing, staring out into space. He points his finger at the actor playing jiang binliu.) director: Jiang Binliu (gesturing throwing letters into the air), you can’t let her do that to you! actor playing jiang binliu (exasperatedly): Maybe not, but that’s what’s written in your script! assistant: What Professor means is . . . director: Jiang Binliu—you simply aren’t Jiang Binliu. actor playing jiang binliu: That I admit! I’m not even . . . assistant: Quiet! Professor is coaching you. director (pointing to the actress playing yun zhifan): And you! You aren’t Yun Zhifan! (Tenderly) Yun Zhifan is a white camellia, blossoming in the evening air. Even when stern, she would still be the most tender white camellia, blossoming in the evening air. actress playing yun zhifan: Professor, I keep hearing you say “white camellia.” With due respect, that’s real hard to play. actor playing jiang binliu: “Orphan of the century” is pretty tough too. director (to the actress playing mrs. jiang): And you! Mrs. Jiang, your Taiwanese accent is just dreadful! actress playing mrs. jiang: Excuse me. My “Taiwanese accent”? director: It’s not right! actress playing mrs. jiang: You’re the one who taught me. director: It’s wrong! You’re wrong! actress playing mrs. jiang: So tell me, where am I wrong? director: You’re totally wrong! actress playing mrs. jiang: Where am I totally wrong? director: You’re too tall! You’re obviously not a Taiwanese lady! (Pause. The actress playing mrs. jiang leaves.) I don’t think you’ll ever get it right. (Despairingly) No one ever will. (The director falls back into dejection.) actress playing yun zhifan: Professor, we understand that this is your story. director: Part of it. actress playing yun zhifan: Most of it. actor playing jiang binliu: Most all of it. (The actress playing yun zhifan gestures to the actor playing jiang binliu to cool it.) actress playing yun zhifan (to the director): Look, you must differentiate between Yun Zhifan and me. I am I, she is she. I can never become the real Yun

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Zhifan, and it’s just not possible that the real Yun Zhifan will ever appear on this stage. (The actress playing blossom walks across the stage with a mobile phone.) actress playing blossom (into her mobile phone): Totally possible . . . sure . . . I’ll be there right after we finish . . . actress playing yun zhifan (to the director): Every time we get to this part, we get stuck. We have to find a way out. (The actor playing master yuan comes onstage, along with others from the Peach Blossom Land group.) actor playing master yuan: Excuse me, but our scenery has arrived. We’d like to continue. assistant: We’re in the midst of notes. (Pause. The actor playing master yuan looks at the dejected director, who stares blankly ahead.) actor playing master yuan: Does he look like he can give notes? actress playing yun zhifan: Let’s take a break. actor playing jiang binliu: Again? actress playing yun zhifan: Look at him . . . assistant: Sir, let me take you to the dressing room . . . actress playing yun zhifan: Let me get you some coffee, and you can rest for a minute. actor playing master yuan: Right, coffee is a good idea! (The actress playing yun zhifan leads the director off, followed by the assistant. The actor playing master yuan starts to shake the hands of the remaining Secret Love actors, who are stupefied.) actor playing master yuan: Thanks, old man . . . Thanks, Nurse . . . Okay, let’s hang the drop! actor playing tao: Bring it up! Bring it up! actor playing master yuan: Hurry! Hang it! (A flurry of activity. A large backdrop is brought in by the Peach Blossom Land crew, unfolded, and hung to a pipe that has descended from above. In the commotion, the mysterious woman walks around. The actress playing blossom sits down on the Secret Love hospital sofa and reads one of the prop magazines there.) actor playing master yuan: Man, that was close. I stopped the truck in the nick of time. Otherwise Flow would’ve sent this drop to Kaohsiung. actor playing tao: Do you think their director’s okay? actor playing master yuan: Don’t worry about them, okay? We don’t have time. (To the actress playing blossom) Hey! I’m talking to you too! Step on it! (The actress playing blossom walks away with the magazine. The actress playing the nurse chases after her, gesturing for the magazine.) actress playing blossom: Alright! I heard you already!! (Realizing that she’s reading the other group’s prop) Oh. Sorry.

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(The actress playing the nurse takes the magazine. In the meantime, the mysterious woman has moved the small streetlamp center stage and stands next to it.) mysterious woman (poetically): That evening . . . on Nanyang Street . . . under a streetlamp . . . in the rain . . . (The actress playing the nurse plucks the streetlamp away from the mysterious woman while the Peach Blossom Land crew pushes the swing off.) actor playing jiang binliu (protesting): Hey, careful, you’ll break it. actor playing master yuan: That’s it! Lend a hand over there, please! mysterious woman (undistractedly): . . . We shared a bowl of hot and sour noodles. I’ll never forget the hotness and the sourness . . . (The actor playing jiang binliu follows the swing off. The actor playing master yuan watches, bemused, and nudges the person next to him, whom he thinks is the actress playing blossom, but she has drifted somewhere else onstage, and he actually nudges the mysterious woman.) actor playing master yuan: Hey, get a load of that. They actually brought a playground swing onstage! mysterious woman (seriously): I’m looking for Liu Ziji. actor playing master yuan (pauses, startled): Yeah? Good for you. mysterious woman: I warn you, I’m in a hurry. actor playing master yuan: I warn you, I’m in a hurry too. mysterious woman (suddenly loud): So you mean he’s determined not to see me? actor playing master yuan (cautiously): Who? mysterious woman: Liu Ziji! actor playing master yuan (buying time): Is that what he said to you? mysterious woman: How could he be so irresponsible? He said that we would leave together forever today! (The actress playing blossom wanders over.) actor playing master yuan (to the actress playing blossom): Where’d this woman come from? actress playing blossom: She’s from the other group. actor playing master yuan: Wow, those guys sure have everybody! mysterious woman (forcefully, to the actor playing master yuan): I demand that you produce him. We have accounts to settle! (The actor playing jiang binliu comes on to clear the wheelchair.) actor playing master yuan (to the actor playing jiang binliu): Hey, old man. This woman is looking for you. (To the mysterious woman) Just ask him. (The actor playing master yuan retreats with the actress playing blossom.) mysterious woman (to the actor playing jiang binliu): Why are you hiding him? Why are you all on his side? What about me? actor playing jiang binliu: Slow down, miss. Who are you talking about?

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mysterious woman (embracing the actor playing jiang binliu in despair): Liu Ziji . . . !! (flow walks onstage at this exact moment.) flow (to the actor playing jiang binliu): Oh, so you’re Liu Ziji! I’ve heard a lot about you, man. (The actor playing jiang binliu gives flow a puzzled look.) By the way, Mr. Liu, there was this real hot chick looking for you. Sure you can handle it? (flow exits. The mysterious woman remains hugging the actor playing jiang binliu.) actor playing jiang binliu: It’s been a weird day. Let’s discuss this backstage . . . (The actor playing jiang binliu leads the mysterious woman off, arm around her waist. The actor playing master yuan and the actress playing blossom come back out and watch.) actress playing blossom (shaking her head): Never thought that old guy was such a womanizer. actor playing master yuan: That’s their problem. (To his crew) Bring up the drop! (The stage crew raises the Peach Blossom Land backdrop slowly.) actor playing master yuan: Higher . . . higher . . . What do you think? actress playing blossom: Beautiful. actor playing master yuan: From a distance, it looks like embroidery! actress playing blossom: Up close, it looks likes shit. actor playing master yuan: That’s life. (To the crew) Hey, don’t stop! Keep going . . . keep going! (As the drop rises) You see what I’m saying? There’s this mystique, this exoticism that emanates from this landscape. If you follow the fine line of brushstrokes from that misty mountain over to these clouds, your eye will travel over to . . . (The drop rises to full height, revealing a large unpainted area near the bottom, stage right. They stare in disbelief.) Go and get what’s her name . . . actress playing blossom: Ling. actor playing master yuan: Right, Ling. actress playing blossom: Ling! . . . Ling . . . (The actress playing blossom exits, then brings ling, the scenic paint er, onstage.) actor playing master yuan: Ling, what happened here? scenic paint er: Isn’t this what you wanted, Boss? actor playing master yuan: When did I say such a thing? scenic paint er: The other day, when I was painting this drop, Flow said that you yearned for this kind of a “taste.” actor playing master yuan: I yearned for what kind of a “taste”? scenic paint er: The taste of emptiness. (Pause.)

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He said that empty space was a big part of your directorial style. actor playing master yuan (restraining himself ): Listen, Ling, what I say doesn’t count, okay? What Flow says, just leave it, alright? (Pointing at the drop) Just tell me: does that look good to you? scenic paint er: But . . . actor playing master yuan (exploding): No more “buts”!! I’ve got a performance tomorrow, and you produce this giant piece of . . . actress playing blossom: Just fill it up, Ling, fill it up. (The actress playing blossom pulls the scenic paint er offstage. The actor playing tao enters, disgruntled.) actor playing tao: I told you I won’t stand for interruptions! actor playing master yuan (trying to appease him): What interruption? There’s no interruption. (The actor playing tao points to the empty space on the drop.) That’s called “The taste of emptiness.” (The actor playing tao exits in grumpy silence.) Look, I guarantee you, everything is okay. Don’t worry. (flow pushes a three- dimensional peach tree, on rollers, onto the stage. The size and outline of the tree are exactly the same irregular pattern as the unpainted empty area on the drop. flow exits. The actor playing master yuan turns and sees the tree. Pause.) Oh my god . . . what the . . . ?! Ling! . . . (The scenic paint er hurries back with the actress playing blossom, to find the actor playing master yuan pointing at the peach tree.) Ling, can you explain this . . . this glob? scenic paint er: Boss, isn’t this also what you ordered? actor playing master yuan: I ordered this too? scenic paint er: Flow said you would appreciate this aesthetic relationship. actor playing master yuan: I would appreciate what aesthetic relationship? scenic paint er: The relationship between the peach tree and the canvas from which it has escaped. (Pause. The actress playing blossom leads the scenic paint er off. ) actress playing blossom: Just go fix it, Ling, okay? scenic paint er: But . . . actress playing blossom: Escape! Escape! (They exit running.) actor playing master yuan (losing it, shouting wildly): WHY WOULD A PEACH TREE WANT TO ESCAPE FROM THE CANVAS?! WHY?! Flow!! . . . (flow enters. The actor playing master yuan points alternately at the empty spot and the tree.) What’s this? And this? What is all this?! flow: Boss, it’s called “Montage.” (Pause.)

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Boss, you don’t know Montage? That’s okay. I’ll explain. Montage was a French guy. He invented film. actor playing master yuan (dumbfounded): Who told you that crap? flow: My sister. actor playing master yuan: Your sister is a damn idiot! (Pause.) flow: C’mon, Brother-in-Law, that’s not a nice thing to say. (Pause. The actor playing master yuan is wheeled off by flow.) actor playing master yuan (shouting): Why would a peach tree want to escape from the canvas? Someone please tell me!! Why? . . . (Lights fade out as they exit and the picture box is brought back on.)

S CE NE 8 (In the darkness, the sound of tao singing the rowing song again.) tao (singing): Hey . . . hey . . . yo . . . ! (Lights in. tao is miming rowing again before the picture box. stagehands continue to manipulate fake waves. He picks up from where he left off last time, reciting from the classical text.) “Following the stream, the fisherman lost track of time and forgot his way . . .” (Commenting on his lines) That’s fine with me. Forget about Master Yuan. Forget about Blossom. Wait. Shouldn’t there be rapids ahead? Who cares? Forward! . . . Look out! Here come the rapids! (The river scene on the picture box is suddenly pulled aside to reveal the next scene: rapids. Wild Peking opera percussion. The onstage wave strips rise and grow violent. tao mimes navigating precariously through the rapids. The rapids scene on the picture box is suddenly pulled aside to reveal the next scene: a whirlpool. tao stops in his tracks.) Wow! There’s a whirlpool too!! (tao twists and turns, weaving through the rising waves, then circles behind the picture box. The whirlpool scene is pulled open to reveal the next scene: a peach tree forest. tao circles the picture box and comes into frame again. He has hit placid waters.) Whew, that was close! (Looks around in amazement and recites from the classical text) “Suddenly he came upon a peach tree forest. Peach trees lined the stream in an unbroken file for hundreds of yards . . .” (Commenting) Who are they kidding? Wait a minute . . . (tao mimes pulling some grass from the bank. Pink blossoms begin to fall gently from above, descending slowly all over the stage. He mimes smelling the grass.) Wow (reciting), “. . . Fragrant was the grass . . .” (Looking up) Gee, “. . . dazzling were the falling petals . . . On he went!”

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(tao circles behind the picture box. The picture box scenery is pulled open to reveal the next scene, farther upstream with mountains. tao comes back into frame. He peers into the distance and recites from the classical text.) “At forest’s end, at the water’s source, was a mountain . . .” (One of the blue wave strips suddenly flies onto the stage. flow rushes onstage and chases it down. tao stops in his tracks.) flow: Continue, man. (Shouting to the opposite side) Hey, get it together! He can’t stand for interruptions. (flow gathers the blue cloth and exits. tao collects himself and continues.) tao: “At forest’s end, at the water’s source, was a mountain, with a small opening that seemed to shed light.” (Commenting) Why “seemed”? It obviously shed light. “Thus he forsook his boat . . .” Right. Forsake the boat. (tao tosses his oar away, mimes jumping onto land, and struggles through a narrow opening, reciting from the classical text. The waves recede.) “Narrow at first, after great difficulty, he struggled to . . .” (tao circles behind the picture box, which is pulled open to reveal the next scene, a pastoral land scene. tao somersaults onto the stage, arriving in the center of the picture box. He recites from the classical text.) “. . . a sudden sense of openness!” (tao starts to moonwalk as the picture box scene starts to move like the background in an animated cartoon. His feet move, but his body doesn’t, while the scene moves. tao takes in the sights.) So what’s the big deal? (Reciting) “The land was flat, the houses neat . . . Paths intersected in the fields amid the sound of chickens and dogs. The men and women tending the fields seemed the same as those outside.” (tao stops in his tracks at the same time that the scene stops. He exits.) (Lights fade out.)

S CE NE 9 (The sounds of a bamboo flute playing a distant melody. Lights in. Peach Blossom Land—a misty place, two large boulders left and right, a stone well center. Cutout clouds in the sky. Peach blossoms fall silently. tao enters and is in awe at the strange beauty of the place. His emotions vacillate between sudden serenity and habitual anger.) tao (to himself ): What is this place? What a huge peach forest! (Listening to the flute) What is that sound? The wind? The water? Distant, yet familiar . . . I wonder what Blossom is doing all by herself back home. (Thinking about it) No way is she by herself! Let’s forget about Blossom! Lets check out these peach blossoms. (He walks around.) I feel as if I’d been here before. No way! There’s no such place in Wuling!

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(tao sees the source of the music—a woman in white seated on the stage left boulder, her back to him, playing a bamboo flute. tao is startled, then approaches slowly.) Excuse me, miss, you play the flute so nicely. The sound is so pure, and so beautiful . . . (The woman in white turns. She looks exactly like blossom. tao is shocked.) . . . and so horrifying! Blossom! What the hell are you doing here? woman in white (very gently): Excuse me, sir, but you’re mistaken. My name isn’t “Blossom.” tao: Blossom, I’d recognize you anywhere! Don’t try to fool me by calling me “sir.” woman in white: I don’t believe we’ve ever met, sir. You look tired. Come, have some water. (The woman in white leads tao to the well. She offers him water in a ladle.) woman in white (to the water): Thank you, water. (tao is puzzled but takes the ladle and drinks. He becomes calmer. The scenic paint er brings a ladder and paints on and quietly starts to fill in the empty spot on the drop upstage. She continues to paint throughout the ensuing scenes until she finishes.) tao: What is this place? woman in white: Peach Blossom Land. tao (trying different pronunciations): Peach Blossom LAND . . . Peach BLOSSOM Land . . . PEACH Blossom Land . . . Never heard of it. woman in white: What have you come here for, sir? tao: I’ve come to fish. (Irrational anger) I’ve come to catch big fish! Big fish!! woman in white: I heard you say the name “Blossom.” tao: Don’t mention Blossom. woman in white: Can I help you find her? tao (pointing back and forth): YOU help ME find HER? Give me a break. woman in white: May I ask who she is? tao: She’s my wife. woman in white: What’s the problem with your wife? tao: Don’t mention my wife. woman in white: What’s wrong with your wife? tao: Don’t mention my wife! woman in white: Why can’t I mention your wife? tao: Because she’s screwing some guy behind my back. (Realizing what he has said) Aahh!! (tao screams and runs around the stage in a fit of crazy despair. The woman in white watches with a puzzled look. tao slows down.) woman in white: Sir, what does “screwing” mean? tao: Aahh . . . !! (tao runs crazily again, then sits on a boulder and stomps the ground before him.) woman in white: Careful! (Pointing) The grass will hurt! (tao stops his stomping in midstride and raises his hand in fury to smash a boulder. He halts in midair.)

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Boulders are okay. tao (smashing the boulder): Aahh . . . !! woman in white: Thank you, boulder! (To tao) Where are you from, sir? tao: Wuling. (tao finds no place to put his feet as he sits on the boulder.) woman in white (not comprehending): Wu . . . ling? . . . tao: Don’t tell me you never heard of Wuling?! woman in white: I was born here. I’ve never been outside. tao: You must have heard someone mention Wuling before. woman in white: None of us have been outside. tao: Are you trying to tell me that none of you have ever left this place? woman in white: What for? tao: To go to Wuling! woman in white: For what? tao: What do you mean “What for,” “For what”? woman in white: Sir, what kind of a place is Wuling? tao (exasperatedly): Wuling is the place! Wuling is the deal! Wuling is the everything! Wuling is . . . I die! I die! I die! . . . (tao mimes all the suicidal poses from scene 4. The woman in white watches him with curiosity.) woman in white: Are the people there all like you? tao: Like me? What a joke! How could they compare with me! woman in white: Sir, you say your wife . . . (tao waves his finger to tell the woman in white to stop asking.) I only wanted to know . . . (tao waves his finger to tell the woman in white to stop asking.) Sorry. I just wanted to know what kind of guy your wife is “screwing.” tao (shouting in agony): Aahh!! (He runs around like crazy, then stops to explain.) I tell you, that guy, he’s too much! He goes around giving blankets as a present . . . You wouldn’t believe what he looks like. He looks like . . . like . . . (The man in white strides onto the stage. He looks exactly like master yuan, but he is very peaceful and gentle. He carries two butterfly nets.) Like that. Right, he looks like that. (tao sees the man in white and is startled.) Ahh!! Master Yuan!! What are you doing here? man in white (puzzled, gently): So sorry. My name isn’t “Master Yuan.” tao: Master Yuan, don’t play games with me! woman in white: I’m sorry, you’re mistaken. tao: Again? . . . (tao tries to figure things out.) man in white: What’s with him?

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woman in white: I think he’s tired. man in white: Tired? Come, have some water. (The man in white leads tao to the well and offers him water in a ladle.) man and woman in white (to the water, in unison): Thank you, water. (tao is puzzled but takes the ladle and drinks.) man in white: What’s wrong with him? tao (more calmly, to the ladle): Thank you, wat— . . . (Angry, pointing in condemnation) Master Yuan . . . Blossom . . . One of you looking like them, I can take, but both?! (The two gentle people are startled.) Did you plan this tryst here?! man and woman in white (puzzled at the question, in unison): Yes, we did. We came here to catch butterflies together. tao: How low can you get?! man in white: Actually, pretty low, if the butterflies are on the ground. tao: How did you get here? man and woman in white (in unison): We walked. tao (going crazy): Don’t tell me that walking is faster than rowing?! woman in white: Sorry, I arrived early. man in white: I was late, because there was some business to take care of at our home. tao: So you live together? man and woman in white (in unison): Yes, of course! tao: Then I die! (Animated suicidal gestures) I die! I die! (The man and woman in white comfort tao, using the butterfly nets to pacify him. Peach blossoms fall gently to soothing music.) man and woman in white (in unison): Take it easy . . . easy . . . easy . . . (As they wave their butterfly nets over him, tao calms down. His frenzied suicidal gestures morph into tai- chi boxing as the peach blossoms fall.) man in white: What’s wrong with him? woman in white: I think he’s very sad over his wife. man in white (to tao): What happened to your wife? tao: I warn you: don’t mention my wife. man in white: What’s the problem with his wife? woman in white: He said his wife is “screwing” some guy. tao (going crazy): I die!! I die . . . I die . . . man and woman in white (in unison): Take it easy . . . easy . . . easy . . . (As before, petals and music. tao’s frenzied suicidal gestures morph into a graceful ballet as the peach blossoms fall. tao stops and points at the butterfly nets.) tao: Don’t give me that crap! Catching butterflies is cruel business! woman in white: We’re catching injured butterflies. man in white: We’re sending them home, so they can be reunited with their families.

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woman in white: And enjoy the warmth of family life. tao (going crazy): I die!! I die . . . I die . . . man and woman in white (in unison): Take it easy . . . easy . . . easy . . . (As before, petals and music. tao’s frenzied suicidal gestures morph into yoga as the peach blossoms fall.) tao (more calmly): How long have you people lived here? man in white: As long as we’ve known. tao: How did you come here? woman in white: Our ancestors brought us here. tao: Ancestors? woman in white: Yes. man in white (grandly): Our ancestors had a grand vision. It was they who brought us to this faraway land, so that this unending line of descendants could walk hand in hand, shoulder to shoulder. Sometimes it’s as if we could see them, each one of them only (gesturing) this big. tao: Why only (gesturing) this big? man in white: Because they’re far. (Pause.) I didn’t think that was funny either. But let us not speak of these tasteless issues. We must give you welcome. She will prepare some nice dishes for you. (To the woman in white) Do we still have any of those teeny-weeny dried fish left? tao: How cruel! I’m not hungry! woman in white: Come . . . You can stay here as long as you like. man in white: If you have any troubles, just stay at our house for as long as you like and take it easy. tao: Master Yuan . . . Blossom . . . How could I take it easy if I stayed at YOUR house? man and woman in white (in unison): Come . . . tao: Master Yuan . . . man in white: Forget about Master Yuan. tao: Blossom . . . woman in white: Forget about Blossom. tao: What is this place? man and woman in white (in unison): Peach Blossom Land. tao (in a frenzied craze): Peach Blossom Land?! (They take tao off.) (Lights fade out.)

S CE NE 10 (Music of Peach Blossom Land. Lights in. The woman and man in white dance idyllically around the stage with their butterfly nets as peach blossoms fall everywhere to soothing music. flow runs around with a banner, “Time passed happily by,” and runs off.

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tao appears from behind the well, now dressed in white and holding a small butterfly net. He runs around ecstatically, smiling like a baby. Lights out. Lights in. flow manipulates butterflies on a stick, Kabuki-style. flow runs off with the butterflies. The woman and man in white and tao wave goodbye and continue to prance around. Lights out. Lights back in. The three are blindfolded, searching for one another, smiling, laughing in a simple game of hide-and-seek. They are childlike in their laughter and movements. The difference is: behind them stand the actress playing yun zhifan and the actor playing jiang binliu. Lights out. Lights back in. The blindfolded trio continue their play, but this time the actresses playing the nurse and mrs. jiang are also standing on one side of the stage watching. Lights out. Lights back in. The Secret Love group, including the director, the assistant, and the mysterious woman, stand in a line behind the blindfolded trio. The trio move in slow motion and take off their blindfolds in joy. Then they turn, seeing the intruders behind them. They are totally exasperated in surprise as the music suddenly churns to a stop. Work lights bump in.) director (to the actor playing master yuan): We have to settle things. actor playing master yuan: How? This is ridiculous! actress playing blossom: Scared the hell out of me. actress playing yun zhifan: Please, this play is so important for our director. actress playing blossom: You think this isn’t important for us? actress playing yun zhifan: We’ve been working all day, and we keep getting interrupted. actor playing master yuan: That’s not our problem. You have to talk to the theater manager! (To the actress playing blossom) Did anyone go look for the theater manager? actress playing blossom: Yes. actor playing master yuan: Who? actress playing blossom: Flow. actor playing master yuan: Shit. actress playing yun zhifan: Let’s find a way to settle things, okay? actor playing master yuan: How? You have no idea of my predicament. My comedy has been totally mucked up by you! director: I was going to keep my mouth shut, but since you brought it up, I must say that your comedy is simply tragic. How could you destroy this classic text? Where is your respect for Tao Yuanming? Have you even read any of his poems? actress playing blossom: Who? actor playing jiang binliu (restraining the director): Take it easy . . . actor playing master yuan: Fine, since YOU brought it up, let me say that your tragedy is absolutely laughable! director: What?

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actor playing master yuan: A dying patient climbs out of bed, hums a song, and goes to play with a swing! If that’s not enough, tell me how to portray a white camellia. Play a white camellia for me! Come on! You can do it! director: Has he seen the play? actress playing yun zhifan: Stop arguing. Let’s think of a solution. actor playing master yuan: Solution? I’m out of time. actress playing yun zhifan: Well, we’re out of time too! mysterious woman (suddenly): Everyone is out of time! actor playing master yuan: Well that’s tough luck. mysterious woman: You have to find a way! actor playing master yuan: There is no way! mysterious woman: You have to find a way for me! For me! (The actor playing master yuan discovers that he is standing next to the mysterious woman. He moves away swiftly.) actor playing master yuan: Don’t get excited, okay? (To all) How about this: Let’s split the stage in half: we’ll work on this side, and you guys do whatever you want with the other half. director: Half and half ? I never . . . actor playing master yuan: Take it or leave it. actress playing yun zhifan: Let’s do it. director: Where the hell is the theater manager? (The two groups quickly reset their respective stages. flow appears with duct tape. He tapes a line right down through the center of the stage.) actor playing master yuan: What the . . . ? actress playing blossom: Where do we start from? actor playing master yuan: From “Peach Blossom Land Riverside.” (The stage is in a state of chaos. The well sits on the center line. The mysterious woman peers down the well. She attempts to jump in.) mysterious woman (mournfully): Liu Ziji . . . Liu Ziji . . . (The actress playing mrs. jiang spots the mysterious woman, comes over, and pushes the well away with little effort.) actress playing mrs. jiang: Hey, you crossed the line! (The actress playing mrs. jiang exits. The mysterious woman is left with her leg hanging in midair.) (Lights out.)

S CE NE 11 (Music: Zhou Xuan from the Shanghai forties. Lights fade slowly in with the Secret Love ad projection, which is now grotesquely projected onto the Peach Blossom Land backdrop, which is still being painted by the scenic painter. The two groups have arranged their props on either side of the center line, Secret Love stage right, Peach Blos-

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som Land stage left; but there are still some discrepancies: a boulder from Peach Blossom Land has been left in front of the Secret Love hospital bed. A streetlamp from Secret Love has inexplicably been placed stage left and become part of the Peach Blossom Land set. The old jiang binliu lies on his hospital bed. The nurse fights her way upstage through Peach Blossom Land boulders, to arrive at the hospital entrance. She enters the room and spends a moment orienting herself to the compressed circumstances.) nurse: You’re awake. Why are you listening to that song again? I told you not to. Every time you do, you get into a lousy mood. Let’s turn it off. (The nurse turns off the tape recorder.) jiang binliu (protesting): It’s such a nice song. nurse: “Nice”? I can’t even understand what she’s singing. Every time you hear this song, you get this way. jiang binliu: I can’t help it. nurse: You can’t just keep thinking of that one thing! Look, from the day you put out the ad it’s been . . . (She counts on her fingers. The Peach Blossom Land boulder is in her way. She kicks it. It tumbles over to stage left, revealing its Styrofoam makeup.) . . . five days. And you’re still waiting for her? Forget it! The first day Miss Yun didn’t come, I knew for sure she wouldn’t come. Plus, you don’t even know if she’s alive or not—why get all worked up like this? (She notices jiang binliu’s spirits are down.) Sorry! That’s not what I meant. I meant that if Miss Yun really did come, things might be even worse, because that would make you even sadder, right? So why not take things as they are and live your life quietly? (The actress playing mrs. jiang stumbles into the room. At the same time, the actor playing tao and the actress playing blossom [woman in white] enter their side and start putting things in place in preparation for rehearsal.) mrs. jiang (in her strong Taiwanese accent): What a strange hospital this is. Every day they’re after me to pay our bills. The patient is lying here, right? So I go to pay the bill, and the lady says she’s getting off work, I should come back tomorrow. actress playing blossom: Let’s go. mrs. jiang (continuing): So every day all I’m doing is running back and forth, back and forth in this hospital. Miss Wang, I’m not trying to be critical, I’m just saying that this hospital is the weirdest thing! tao (from stage left, gently): What a lovely place. (jiang binliu attempts to corral the wheelchair, which is near the bed. He is finally seen by mrs. jiang and the nurse. Stage left, the woman in white sits on the rock, which she has placed downstage next to the center line.) mrs. jiang: If you want to come down, just say so. (mrs. jiang and the nurse help jiang binliu into the wheelchair.) jiang binliu: There’s nothing for you to do here, so go home.

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tao (from stage left, reciting from the classical text, with grand gestures): “Fragrant is the grass . . .” (Peach blossoms suddenly start to fall everywhere on cue.) mrs. jiang: Why? I want to keep you company here . . . (mrs. jiang pushes jiang binliu’s wheelchair downstage while saying her lines but gets distracted by the falling petals.) jiang binliu: Whoa . . . ! (mrs. jiang crosses the line and rams the wheelchair into the rock, sending the woman in white sprawling to the ground.) actor playing jiang binliu (reprimanding the actress playing mrs. jiang): What are you doing? actress playing mrs. jiang: Sorry. (The woman in white stands up, collects herself, and they continue their scene, stage left.) tao (reciting with gestures): “. . . Dazzling are the falling petals.” Ah! actor playing jiang binliu (in frustration): Ah! actress playing mrs. jiang (ditto): Ah! actress playing the nurse (fanning the petals around her): Ahh! woman in white (in the gentle manner of Peach Blossom Land): Why the sigh? Is something wrong? tao: No, but my heart is heavy, because I still haven’t gotten what my heart desires. actress playing the nurse (shouting in the director’s direction): Where do we start from? director: (offstage): From turning off the tape recorder. woman in white: What’s wrong? I’ve never seen you unhappy here. nurse (from stage right, turning off tape recorder): Every time you hear this song, you get this way. jiang binliu: I can’t help it. tao: I’m thinking of home. nurse: You can’t just keep thinking of that one thing. woman in white: You’ve been here so long, why go back? nurse: Look, from the day you put out the ad it’s been . . . (She counts on her fingers.) tao: How long? nurse: . . . five days. woman in white: So long. (The nurse and woman in white glance at each other.) nurse: And you’re still waiting for her? Forget it! tao: She might be waiting for me. I want to see if she’s willing to come with me. woman in white: She may not want to come. nurse: The first day Miss Yun didn’t come, I knew for sure she wouldn’t come. tao: She’ll come. (The nurse and tao glance at each other.)

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woman in white: She may have forgotten all about you. (tao grimaces and shakes his head at the thought.) nurse: Plus, you don’t even know if she’s alive or not—why get all worked up like this? tao: How could you say such a thing? nurse and woman in white (coincidentally in unison): Sorry! That’s not what I meant! (All glare at one another. tao doesn’t know who to listen to anymore. The fog machines spurt out thick fog on both sides upstage, straight at the Secret Love hospital bed, stage right. The Secret Love group scatters in surprise. From out of the mist, stage left, the man in white appears holding two large and one small butterfly nets. He passes out the nets to the woman in white and tao. Meanwhile the Secret Love group regroups.) man in white (from stage left): So what DID you mean, may I ask? tao: My brother . . . man in white (gently): What are you conversing about? woman in white: He still holds stray thoughts about . . . (tao starts pacing but is too wrapped up in his role to remember the center line, which he crosses.) man in white (comprehending, gently): I understand. Don’t go. (Seeing that tao has crossed the line) If you go over there (increasingly stressed), you’ll create a disruption in their lives! (tao realizes his mistake and bows to the Secret Love group, which is staring at him. Secret Love gets started again, stage right.) nurse: I meant that if Miss Yun really did come, things might be even worse, right? tao: And why is that? nurse: Because that would make you even sadder. tao (answering the wrong line): No way! (Pause. The man in white slaps tao.) man in white: Which play are you in, man? (The actor playing tao helplessly points at stage right in his futility.) nurse: So why not take things as they are and live your life quietly? (The Peach Blossom Land group breaks down. They try an exercise to concentrate.) man in white: Focus!! all three (shouting and miming poking their eyes): I die! I die! I die . . .!! (mrs. jiang enters again, stage right, and is promptly jolted by the Peach Blossom Land actors, who start pacing around to warm up and reset.) mrs. jiang: What a strange hospital this is. Every day they’re after me to pay our bills. The patient is lying here, right? So I go to pay the bill, and the lady says she’s getting off work, I should come back tomorrow . . . (Visibly distracted by the other group pacing stage left) So every day all I’m doing is running back and forth, back and forth in this hospital. (Losing her concentration and speaking in perfect Mandarin) Miss Wang, I’m not trying to be critical, I’m just saying that this hospital . . . (realizing in horror that she is speaking the wrong dialect and reverting back to a Taiwanese accent) . . . is the weirdest thing!

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(The Peach Blossom Land group is ready to restart. In the meantime, jiang binliu, on the bed, tries to corral his wheelchair, without success. It is too far from him.) tao: All I want is go back and take a look. man in white: What do you expect to gain? I don’t think that you can . . . (noticing jiang binliu struggling) you can . . . (Matter- of-factly, to jiang binliu) You can’t reach it. (The man in white hits himself in the face for his mistake. mrs. jiang and the nurse realize that they have missed their cue and rush over to help jiang binliu.) mrs. jiang: If you want to come down, just say so. tao: What is there left to say? (mrs. jiang helps jiang binliu into the wheelchair and pushes him downstage.) man in white: There’s nothing for you there, so don’t go. jiang binliu: There’s nothing for you to do here, so go home. mrs. jiang: Why? tao (from stage left): I’ll just take one look, then I’ll be satisfied. jiang binliu: There’s nothing for you to do here, so go home. man in white: Don’t go back. You’ll cause trouble. mrs. jiang: I want to keep you company here. jiang binliu: Just go. man in white (threateningly): I forbid you to go. (The wheelchair has been wheeled downstage, cutting between tao, who has crossed the line again, and the man in white.) jiang binliu: Just get out. man in white: I warn you not to go. jiang binliu (to the man in white): I order you to get the hell out of here! man in white (to jiang binliu): I’m not moving a damn inch! (The actor playing jiang binliu kicks the boulder in anger, knocking the actor playing master yuan over.) director (from the audience): CUT!! CUT!! actor playing master yuan: This is theater!! No one says “CUT!” (Work lights. Everyone is exasperated. The director comes onstage with the assistant. Pause.) director: Master Yuan . . . actor playing master yuan: My name isn’t Master Yuan. director: Okay, Boss, so how many more scenes do you have left? actor playing master yuan: There’s just one more scene: he returns to his Wuling home from Peach Blossom Land. director: Just one? Go ahead. We’ll wait. assistant: But sir . . . actress playing the nurse: Why is it always us? director: You have any better ideas? actor playing master yuan (ecstatically): Everybody hurry! Flow! Set props . . .

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actor playing tao (lying on the hospital bed, to the actress playing the nurse): Actually, miss, after that scene there’s one more scene: I have to go back to Peach Blossom Land, but I lose my way, and I can’t find the markers I left, so . . . actor playing master yuan: Shut up and hurry. (General commotion as the scene is set up. The mysterious woman weaves through the scene change, distraught.) (Lights fade out.)

S CE NE 12 (Lights in. tao’s house in Wuling, set up the same way as scene 4, but it has visibly aged and is disorderly. There is a makeshift altar with incense on the cabinet. blossom stands at the table folding diapers. She is disheveled and looks extremely unhappy. Her anger grows as she folds diapers.) blossom (to herself ): Day in and day out, it’s nothing but diapers. He’s out all night, sleeps all day. You call him a man? You call this a home? What about that unending line of descendants, that beautiful land . . . ?! (She takes a diaper and throws it to the ground, in the same way tao threw the bread down in scene 4.) This isn’t a diaper. Nor is this! I’ll squash you to death . . .! (blossom stomps all over the diapers in an irrational frenzy, using gymnastic Peking opera movements, to the frenetic sound of Peking opera percussion. She throws the diapers in the air and shouts out the Chinese folk love song that she sang in scene 4, with lyrics twisted.) blossom (singing): “My heart is one big ball of angry fire . . .” (master yuan comes out from his room with a Chinese wine bottle in one hand. His clothes are all worn and old, and he is wrapped in a dirty old blanket—the same one he had presented as a present in scene 4. He is dreary- eyed and continues the love song while unsuccessfully trying to open the bottle.) master yuan (singing): “Pull it left, pull it right, I just can’t open it!” (They stop and glare angrily at each other.) blossom: Where did you go last night? master yuan: Lousy luck, don’t ask. blossom: So you went to fool around again. master yuan: None of your business. blossom: None of my business? Then why the hell are we together? master yuan: I have my plan. blossom: Plan? You better plan on getting a job! master yuan: Me? A man like me? A man with my capabilities work for someone else? How many times have I told you? . . .

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(He attempts to deliver the grandiose lines from scene 4 but wobbles.) I . . . have a grand vision . . . (blossom blasts him with a diaper to the head.) blossom: That’s so old. master yuan: Every time when I’m just warming up, just when it’s going to get good, you always find a way to put me down. blossom: Look at you. If it wasn’t for you, we’d have never gotten so . . . so . . . master yuan: So it’s all me, huh? What the hell did I do? It’s you! You keep thinking of that other . . . that other . . . blossom: What other? Oh, him? Didn’t you say he already croaked? master yuan: It’s true, he croaked, so why do you still burn that stupid paper money to him? You sure he can use it all? blossom: What the hell are you talking about? master yuan: I’m talking about . . . hell . . . what the hell! blossom: Fine, if that’s what you think, then I’ll take all of that stupid paper money and . . . (She throws sacrificial paper money all around the house.) Does that satisfy you? Huh? master yuan (wailing): No use! It’s no use! There’s no way you can wipe his shadow from this house . . . (tao enters, unseen by them, neither does he see them. He is dressed in his Peach Blossom Land white, holds a long bamboo oar, and totes a simple monklike carry bag along with his little butterfly net. His demeanor is peaceful. He puts down the oar and walks around the room in wonder, looking at his house, not quite believing he is really home.) . . . I know that in your heart he’s there somewhere . . . strolling back and forth, back and forth . . . Sometimes it’s as if I could even feel his spirit standing right in this room (Seeing tao and pointing at him) . . . Yeah, just like that . . . (Pause. master yuan and blossom finally see tao, who sees them. Pause.) tao (tenderly): Blossom . . . Master Yuan . . . I’ve come back. (blossom and master yuan hold tight to each other in terror.) master yuan and blossom (in unison): He’s come back—!! tao: Yes, I’ve come back. blossom (shuddering): What did you come back for? tao (peacefully): The reason I’ve come back, Blossom, is to take you away with me. master yuan (to blossom): You’re dead! (blossom faints. master yuan grabs her, and she stands up again.) tao: Excuse me; I believe I should clarify things. Let’s start from the beginning. Remember last week when I went upstream? blossom: Last week? master yuan (aside, to blossom, explaining): They say one day in hell equals one year on earth. (master yuan and blossom listen intently.)

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tao: I lost my way. There were these rapids, and a whirlpool . . . master yuan (aside, to blossom): That’s where he got it. tao: Then I came upon a great peach forest. Everything went pink! master yuan (authoritatively, to blossom): It’s said that most people first experience colors . . . tao: At that point I had to forsake my boat . . . (blossom and master yuan continue to retreat on each line, until they are offstage completely.) master yuan: No kidding. You can’t take nothing! tao: Then I struggled into a small, dark hole . . . master yuan: Right, darkness . . . tao: When I came out, there was this great sense of openness. master yuan: He’d been released. tao: I felt no more troubles! master yuan and blossom (offstage, in unison): No more troubles! (Pause. tao looks at the emptied stage.) tao: Master Yuan . . . you’re totally offstage. (blossom pushes master yuan back onstage.) master yuan: You went to . . . another world! tao (thinking): You could say so, yes. master yuan: And now you must take her there? tao: That’s my intent. What’s wrong, Master Yuan? Do you want to go too? master yuan (knees crumpling, in fear): Shit! I knew he wouldn’t let me off. tao: No, really, we can go together. There’s plenty of room there. master yuan: Right on! There are eighteen stories! Ladders made of swords, cauldrons full of hot oil! tao: What? You thought that I was . . . ?? No, no, you’re mistaken! (master yuan and blossom grab paper money and start throwing it at tao.) blossom: Go! Go! master yuan (feverishly chanting a spell): “By the powers above me, I order you to vacate the premises immediately . . .” (Looking up) Shit! It doesn’t work! (tao touches them. They immediately fall to the ground, as if dead.) master yuan and blossom: Ahh—!! (Pause. tao looks at the two immobile bodies.) tao: What happened? master yuan (looking up): We’ve died. tao: Get up! Come on! Feel it! It’s flesh and blood! Look! (tao grabs them and helps them up. They try to flee but realize that tao has a physical body. They start feeling him. blossom slaps tao, then bites him.) blossom: Tao, you aren’t a . . . tao: Of course not! That hurts! blossom: So where’ve you been all these years?

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tao: Years? Wasn’t I away just for . . . (tao looks at master yuan’s distressed blanket. Then he looks around the room and realizes it has been years. He examines his own altar.) My altar? I . . . (Chuckling to himself ) How amazing! How inconceivable! Ha ha ha! Like a dream! A dream! Ha-ha! (master yuan nudges blossom; they laugh in unison with tao.) blossom: So where exactly have you been? tao: I’ve been in a serene, beautiful place where “Fragrant is the grass, dazzling are the falling petals . . .” So many nice people have been locked in there all these years, and they’re so happy, so happy . . . (master yuan and blossom glance at each other.) master yuan (confirming his suspicions): They’re—“locked”—inside! blossom: Look what you did to him. master yuan: What do you mean what I did to him? What YOU did to him! blossom: You were so mean to him. master yuan: It was you who totally screwed him up! tao (innocently): Excuse me? (master yuan and blossom stop arguing immediately.) master yuan and blossom (flashing smiles, in unison): Nothing . . . continue! master yuan (appeasing him): So it was a nice place, huh? tao: Perfect! Oh, by the way, there was a couple in there, and they looked exactly like you two! (Imagining) Brother! Sister! (blossom and master yuan gesture to each other that tao has lost his mind.) blossom: The poor guy . . . (To tao) Where did you get that outfit? tao: Oh. They put me into this gown as soon as I got there. master yuan: It’s their uniform! It’s their uniform! blossom: Shut up! (To tao) So . . . everyone in there is like you? tao: Right. master yuan: Right! tao: Wrong! They’re at a far higher level than I. master yuan (to blossom): Shit! They consider him a mild case! blossom: Shut up! (To tao) What was the name of that place? tao: Peach Blossom Land. master yuan: Whoever named that institution has a sick mind. tao: Do you know that the people in there all (quoting from the classical text) “exuded an air of natural happiness”? master yuan (appeasing him): Great! Don’t worry, be happy! tao: “They went in to escape from great calamity, chaos, and disaster! Ask them about the outside world, they know nothing.” master yuan (appeasing him): Right! Shh! Don’t tell them! tao: “Ask them what dynasty it is, they have no clue! These people can be described by the quote (reciting from the classical text): ‘What year be this year? They knew naught of the Han, much less the Wei and the Jin’ ” . . .

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master yuan (to blossom): He’s far gone. tao: So I’ve made myself clear? master yuan and blossom (in unison): Clean and clear! tao: There’s no misunderstanding? master yuan and blossom (in unison): Not in the least! tao: Great! (tao applauds. master yuan and blossom join in.) Let’s sit down! master yuan: Whatever you say, sir! (Aside, to blossom) Careful, he may be armed. (tao sits upstage. blossom and master yuan take their stools and sit three paces away from the table.) tao (patting the table): Here! (They move their chairs back immediately, close to the table.) How nice it is to be home. Master Yuan, do you come to our house . . . often? master yuan: I’ve been in every nook and cranny in this joint. (blossom beans him with a diaper to the head.) I mean I’m just passing by. (blossom beans him with another diaper to the head.) (Whimsically) I mean I’m just a passerby on the road of life! blossom: So you take this place to be an inn stop? (tao is taken aback at this sudden outburst.) master yuan: What are you talking about? blossom: What am I talking about? What are YOU talking about? You sleep all day, you’re out all night . . . master yuan: Why do you always embarrass me in front of outsiders? blossom: What outsiders? Whose an outsider? master yuan (pointing at tao): Him . . . (tao waves his little butterfly net at them.) tao: Take it easy . . . easy . . . blossom (slapping tao’s net aside): DON’T MESS WITH ME! (master yuan gestures in desperation to blossom, warning her that it’s a madman they are dealing with. They look at tao, who has suddenly grown silent and sad.) tao: I guess it’s been a long time. I understand now—the two of you are already . . . (tao cannot utter the proper words, and he gestures with his hands, attempting to express “together.”) master yuan and blossom (like answering a quiz show question, in unison): Kneading dough! tao: No . . . I mean the two of you are already . . . (He changes the gesture, which looks sexual.) master yuan and blossom: Making dumpling wrappers! tao: No . . . I mean the two of you are already . . . (He makes a more explicit gesture.) master yuan and blossom: Wrapping dumplings!

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tao: No . . . I mean the two of you are already . . . (He makes a gesture of sleeping.) master yuan and blossom: Thinking of dumplings! tao: Very good. I had no idea that while you were (gestures sleeping), you could think of dumplings! Remarkable! master yuan (answering randomly): It can be done with practice. (Silence. tao is visibly disturbed, no longer at peace.) tao: I want to make it clear that I’m not one for words. master yuan: Here he goes again! tao: During this long stretch of time and tide . . . master yuan: Time is tide! tao: During this long stretch of time and tide . . . I’ve been happy . . . content . . . (master yuan turns to correct tao but is stopped by a threatening blossom.) . . . joyful . . . carefree . . . (master yuan and blossom are as before.) Yet in my heart, I’ve always thought of you, Blossom. Yes, you, Blossom. This time I’ve come back because I long to bring you, Blossom, with me back to that place . . . master yuan (unable to contain his rage): Alright already! We know that SHE is BLOSSOM! No need to keep saying “YOU, BLOSSOM!” (blossom chops at the table with the knife. The table collapses in two. Silence. blossom sits back in her seat.) tao: It’s okay, we can all go together. We three, me, Tao, you, Blossom, he, Master Yuan . . . master yuan (unable to contain his rage): Alright already! WE ARE WE! No need to say me, you . . . (blossom tosses the altar incense holder’s powder in master yuan’s face. Silence.) tao: Really, let’s go. Me, Tao, you, Blossom, he, Master Yuan . . . Because that place is so beautiful. Everyone there is so peaceful, serene, tranquil, placid . . . (master yuan puts the blanket over his head and has a spasm on every redundant word. He falls and rolls around on the floor in agony.) Every sight, every image there is like a lovely, charming, delightful, bewitching, beguiling painting. Every sound is like music coming from afar, from the distance, that is so exquisite, so divine, so celestial, so angelic, so seraphic . . . (Sound of a baby crying offstage. blossom jumps up.) blossom: The baby’s crying. (blossom rushes offstage. tao and master yuan share an awkward moment.) master yuan: Okay! We heard you! One “Wa” is enough! Why is it always “Wawawawawa wawawawawawawawa”? Is that it? Is life nothing but a continual repetition? You “wa” and then I “wa,” I “wa” and then he . . . (blossom brings in her baby, who continues to cry. Pause.) What the hell did you bring him out for? blossom: He’s crying. master yuan: Why are babies such a pain? Slap him or feed him!

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blossom: He doesn’t sound hungry. master yuan: It’s either food or shit! There’s nothing else! blossom: What do you know about babies? master yuan: What do I know about babies? I grew up from a baby! blossom: You don’t know shit! You are a piece of shit! master yuan: So now I’m a piece of shit. blossom: You always were a piece of shit. master yuan: So I always was a piece of shit. Did you hear that, Tao? My wife called me “a piece of shit.” (Weakly, as tao tries to comfort him) So now I’m nothing but shit . . . (Pushes tao aside, strongly) Get the hell off of me! (To blossom) I told you not to have the baby, but you insisted. Now the two of you have me locked down here, I can’t move, I can’t breathe, I’m suffocating . . . !! (master yuan wails in agony. tao watches in growing horror.) blossom: So now it was ME who wanted the baby? If that’s the way you feel, I’ll toss him out the window! master yuan: You wouldn’t dare toss MY son out the window! blossom: No? You watch! all three: Ahh—!! (blossom tosses the baby high into the air as the three do frenetic Peking opera movements. The baby falls into tao’s hands and stops crying. Pause. blossom and master yuan look at tao as if he were a bandit who had kidnapped their child.) blossom (grabbing the knife): Tao . . . Give me the baby . . . (tao offers blossom the baby, but in her frenzy, she retreats instead of moving forward to take the baby. TAO continues to offer them the baby.) master yuan: Give her the baby! (tao offers master yuan the baby, but in his frenzy, he retreats instead of moving forward to take the baby.) blossom: It’s my only child! master yuan: Do you hear her? It’s her only child! blossom: I beg you . . . master yuan: Are you deaf, man? blossom: Give me the baby! Give me the baby! master yuan: Don’t harm an innocent life, Tao. blossom: I beg of you, Tao, if there’s any decency left in you . . . master yuan: Show some human decency, man! Don’t do anything you’ll regret, Tao! HELP! A madman has abducted our baby! blossom: Gods above!! Have pity!! . . . master yuan: Heavens above!! Help us in our need!! . . . (blossom and master yuan are totally wrapped up in their delusions. tao puts the baby on the floor next to them and goes to get the bottle of Chinese wine, which he still cannot open.) (The baby starts crying again. The two notice.) master yuan: What the hell are you waiting for?! Grab the baby!

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(blossom grabs the baby.) blossom: Mommy’s here, don’t cry . . . master yuan: Daddy’s here to protect you from the bad guy . . . ! (master yuan sees tao from behind struggling with the bottle and takes him to be masturbating, like at the start of scene 4.) SICK! (To tao) Pervert! Out! blossom: Scum! Out! master yuan: Out! Madman! blossom: Madman! OUT! master yuan: Scum of society! blossom: It’s because of scum like you that society is so full of disorder! master yuan: Out! Madman! blossom: Madman! OUT! master yuan (to blossom): I told you not to bring the baby out! Now look what you’ve done! (They immediately start arguing again while moving toward the offstage room.) blossom: So now you say that I wanted the baby, right? Okay, I’ll go throw him away. master yuan: Don’t you dare! If anyone throws away my son, it’s me! blossom: You can’t toss him half as far as I can! master yuan: You can’t toss him half as high as I can! blossom: If you had that much strength you’d go fishing! master yuan: I’ll go and catch big fish! blossom: Try upstream! master yuan: Upstream! So you want me to die!! . . . (tao watches with great sorrow as blossom and master yuan exit right. He looks around the room and slowly picks up his oar. He realizes he can never return. He stands at the doorway, ready to leave. He sings his fisherman’s song one last time.) tao (mournfully): Hey . . . hey . . . yo . . .! (tao exits. Lights fade with the sounds of arguing and the baby crying.)

S CE NE 13 (Lights fade in. The scene is being shifted by all to the Secret Love hospital room. tao, still in his white robes, “rows” around the stage, searching for the markers to lead him back to Peach Blossom Land.) tao: Where are my markers? My markers? I can’t find my buoys . . . (flow enters, pointing to the theater manager, who has finally appeared. The theater manager enters, holding an imposing ring of keys.) flow: Brother-in-Law, the theater manager is here. theater manager: Time’s up, let’s wrap it up. director: But we haven’t finished.

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theater manager: That’s your problem. Do you know how late it is? director: Wait a minute! How could you possibly double book this space for tonight? theater manager: No one double booked anything. director: Just look! (The director points to the Peach Blossom Land group.) theater manager: What are you guys doing here? actor playing master yuan: You let us come here to rehearse tonight. Do you know how we’ve rehearsed? theater manager: I must say, I don’t care how you’ve rehearsed. assistant: How can you talk like that? theater manager: Look, I’ve worked here all these years—how could I possibly have booked two theater groups into the same space? director: Can’t you see that that’s exactly what’s happened? (Pause.) theater manager: Look, if there’s any problem, you can talk to Miss Yang in the office in the morning. actor playing jiang binliu: What do we want to talk to Miss Yang in the office in the morning for? theater manager: That’s your problem. Let’s wrap it up! actress playing mrs. jiang: Excuse me, this show is so important for our director . . . theater manager (showing his watch): Yeah, well THIS is real important to me too. actress playing mrs. jiang: We’ve been interrupted so many times, we’re so close. actor playing jiang binliu: One more scene. director: Ten more minutes is all we need to finish. (Pause.) theater manager: How long did you say? director: Ten more minutes, really. That’s all we need. actor playing master yuan: What’s ten more minutes to you? theater manager: I’ve got to lock up. actor playing master yuan: So lock up afterwards! (Pause.) theater manager (walking off ): Ten minutes, ten minutes—it’s the story of my life, waiting for ten more minutes. director: Thank you, thank you! (The theater manager moves to exit. Suddenly, the mysterious woman calls out to him.) mysterious woman: Freeze! (Pointing at the theater manager): Liu Ziji! theater manager (turning to the mysterious woman): What? mysterious woman: Liu Ziji, you’ve changed a lot. But I’d recognize you anywhere! Remember? You said we would meet here and you would take me there. theater manager: Which group is she from? (The two groups point at each other.)

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mysterious woman: That’s okay, Liu Ziji. You can pretend that you don’t know me, but you can’t keep pretending that you don’t know yourself! theater manager: Miss, I don’t know what your thing is, but if there’s any problem you can talk to Miss Yang in the office in the morning. (The theater manager exits. The scenic paint er approaches the actor playing master yuan.) scenic paint er (pointing to the finished drop): Done. actor playing master yuan: So are we. (Lights fade.)

S CE NE 14 (Lights in. The hospital room. Action picks up from the last time we saw this scene. mrs. jiang is trying to push jiang binliu’s wheelchair back to the bed so he can rest. The nurse is present, observing the action but trying to stay out of the way, feigning chores. The mysterious woman has sat down in the corner of the stage, next to the stage left proscenium opening. She goes basically unnoticed, as does the director and the assistant, who watch from downstage next to the proscenium.) jiang binliu: There’s nothing for you to do here, so go home. mrs. jiang: Why? I want to keep you company here. Look, I brought some pineapple cakes for you. jiang binliu: The drawer. Open it. There’s an envelope for you. (mrs. jiang goes to the drawer by the bed and takes out a large manila envelope. She gives it to jiang binliu. jiang binliu puts on his reading glasses and takes out various items from the envelope. jiang binliu refers to a slip of paper.) It’s all written here. Call this number and this attorney Chen will help you transfer the real estate to your name. (Referring to a document) This is . . . mrs. jiang (trying to collect the envelope): Why talk about this now? jiang binliu (stopping her): You don’t know about this one. This is a fifteen-year insurance policy of mine. It matures in two. When the time comes, don’t forget to collect the money with this form. (mrs. jiang stands helplessly at the side of the wheelchair while jiang binliu continues, pulling out a small envelope.) This is the old address of my home in Manchuria. Here are two plane tickets. After I’m gone, you can take our son back to have a look. mrs. jiang (collecting all the slips and documents): Don’t talk about these things. Just rest. You think too much. Just rest. Keep your mind off these things . . . (The actor playing tao comes on in street clothes to exit. He is mesmerized by the action and sits down in the upstage right corner to watch the conclusion.) jiang binliu (protesting): Meiru . . .

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mrs. jiang (pulling the wheelchair): Let’s go outside for a walk. jiang binliu (resisting): Meiru, just go and take care of this business. I want to be alone. mrs. jiang (pulling the wheelchair): Don’t be so stubborn. You’re like a child. Let me take you outside for a walk. jiang binliu: Meiru, take care of your own business. I don’t want to be with anybody. I want to be alone, by myself! Can I please be alone?! mrs. jiang: Listen to me! Why can’t you listen to me? Let me take you outside for a walk! jiang binliu (suddenly loud and determined): Meiru, I want to be alone! Can you just please go?! (A knock on the door of the hospital room. Pause. The nurse goes to open the door. An elderly lady stands at the door. It is yun zhifan. She is properly dressed, with a refined stature. She carries a purse and a basket of flowers.) yun zhifan (to the nurse, slowly): Excuse me. Is there a Mr. Jiang Binliu here? (Pause. The nurse is at a loss for words. jiang binliu turns slowly toward the door. yun zhifan now sees jiang binliu, in the wheelchair, and mrs. jiang standing by.) nurse: Uh, Mrs. Jiang, I can go with you to help with that medicine bill. mrs. jiang: I can do that tomorrow. I can . . . (Pause. mrs. jiang nods, goes to the chair, gets her purse, and follows the nurse out of the room. The nurse closes the door. jiang binliu and yun zhifan are face-toface. Silence.) yun zhifan: I saw the newspaper. jiang binliu (pointing to the chair): Please have a seat. (yun zhifan crosses to the chair, which is cluttered with mrs. jiang’s things. She sits and puts the flowers on the floor next to her.) yun zhifan: I brought you some flowers. (Silence.) Your health. It’s . . . ? jiang binliu: I didn’t know you were in Taipei. yun zhifan: I didn’t know . . . either. (Silence. She sees jiang binliu’s scarf. ) That scarf . . . jiang binliu: These years I keep it on me when it gets cold. yun zhifan: You’ve lived in Taipei all these years? jiang binliu: I came in early 1949. I wrote many letters to your home in Kunming. No reply. (Pause.) yun zhifan (slowly): 1949. My brother in Chongqing decided to bring us all out. We fled China through the Burma Road and arrived in Bangkok. Then, via Hanoi, we moved to Hong Kong. Two years later, we came to Taiwan . . . And here we stayed. (Silence.) jiang binliu: When did you see the ad?

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yun zhifan: What? jiang binliu: When did you see the ad? yun zhifan: To—(about to say “today,” correcting herself ) the day it came out. (Silence.) jiang binliu: How is your health? yun zhifan: Good. Had a small procedure done last year. It’s nothing. Getting old. I became a grandmother the year before last. jiang binliu: I still remember those long braids of yours. yun zhifan: I cut them the year after I got married. What a long time ago. (Silence.) Where do you live in Taipei? jiang binliu: I used to live in Jingmei. yun zhifan: When we first came, we lived in Yungho. Then we moved to Tienmu. jiang binliu: A few years ago we moved to the Mingsheng district. (Long silence.) How hard to imagine. How hard to imagine. In such a vast city as Shanghai, we could be together. In such a small town as Taipei, we were lost. (Silence. yun zhifan looks at her watch.) yun zhifan: I must be going. My son is waiting for me outside. (yun zhifan stands and walks slowly to the door. As she turns the door handle, jiang binliu stops her.) jiang binliu: Zhifan . . . (Slowly) All these years . . . Have you ever thought of me? (Long silence. yun zhifan finally turns from the door to face jiang binliu.) yun zhifan: I wrote so many letters to Shanghai. So many letters. Then one day my brother said, “You can’t keep waiting. If you keep waiting, you’ll grow old.” (Silence.) My husband is a good man. He really is. (jiang binliu offers his hand to yun zhifan. yun zhifan approaches the wheelchair and takes his hand. Their hands clasp together for a long moment. Then yun zhifan lets go.) yun zhifan: I really must be going. (jiang binliu nods. yun zhifan stands and leaves the room. jiang binliu is alone. mrs. jiang returns. She approaches jiang binliu to comfort him, but he rejects her. mrs. jiang steps aside, forlorn. In his sorrow, jiang binliu holds out his hand, like a swimmer who is drowning. mrs. jiang grabs the hand and brings jiang binliu into her embrace. The nurse stands at the open doorway, watching this little scene from life.) (Lights fade out.)

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S CE NE 15 (Lights in. Work lights. Most things onstage have been cleared for the evening. The theater manager enters and oversees the final props being taken off. The director still stands where he was in the previous scene, as if frozen. The assistant stands next to him. The mysterious woman stands and walks toward center stage.) theater manager: What’s the deal? Let’s get moving! I’m going to cut the work lights! (The actor playing tao comes over to assist the director to leave. The mysterious woman scatters peach blossoms all over.) theater manager: I’m locking up! If there’s any problem, go see Miss Yang in the office in the morning. (All exit but the mysterious woman, who continues to scatter peach blossoms. The Peach Blossom Land backdrop glows in a mysterious way, then rises, as do all other hanging scenery, revealing the cold back wall of the theater. The vast theater space is empty.) (Lights out.)

Not es

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2. 3. 4.

Performance of Secret Love in Peach Blossom Land is subject to royalty. All rights, including professional and amateur performances, and all other forms of mechanical or electronic reproduction, and the rights of translation into foreign languages are strictly reserved. This translation is based on recent versions of the play, in particular the Stanford University performance, in English, in 2007, directed by the playwright-translator. As such, it includes passages and phrasings that have been tailored for a non- Chinese audience that has little or no knowledge of the events of 1949 or of Tao Yuanming’s “A Chronicle of the Peach Blossom Spring.” It has sacrificed literal accuracy for practical performability and does not attempt to literally translate nuances in the original Chinese language that would not make cultural sense to a non- Chinese audience. These lines are from the 1938 song “Zhuixun” (Searching), with lyrics by Xu Jianwu, music by Liu Xuean. The “cloud” in the song is a reference to Yun, whose name is written with the Chinese character for “cloud.” In performance, the name of the river can be changed to that of any unattractive local body of water. The reference here is to chicken feet, a common dish in dim sum restaurants. Likewise, in performance, the name of the city can be changed to that of any nearby town.

Metamorphosis Under the Star (1986) anthony chan tra nsla ted by gra ce l i u and j u l i a wan

C ha r a c t e rs vincent cabbage 㠲✝㔶, a cabbage lives and moves just within the framework of his “base” when he finds himself most relaxed charlotte caterpillar 㓫⿯㕊 (Darkness is everywhere. Softly, a spark of light brightens up the dark velarium. Then, a musical note can be heard. After that, another spark of light appears in the velarium, followed by some ringing sound made by the piano. More and more sparks of light appear, accompanied by rhythmic piano notes. It is a clear evening, and all the stars are twinkling disorderedly in the dark velarium. The sparks seem to turn on and off with the melody. There is a sense of emptiness on the stage. Only a lonely shadow appears. This is vincent cabbage. He is standing there alone, staring at the far end of the sky, counting the uncountable stars. vincent is a young and handsome-looking man, smartly dressed in simple white clothes. Next to him is a “base,” where he finds himself most relaxed. He is going to move just within the framework of this base throughout the play, never to leave it. From this base, layers of some dark or light green circles spread out on the ground like ripples, covering a large portion of the stage. These are the “leaves” of the cabbage.) vincent (as if talking to the stars): Actually, I shouldn’t feel lonely, because you have always kept me company. I should not feel this way. Every evening all I need to do is raise my head to the world of stars. (Appreciatively) Mm, what more could I ask for?

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(In the opposite corner of the stage, a “young, cheerful, and beautiful” maiden quietly appears. She watches vincent from the far corner. She is charlotte caterpillar. She is tightly clad in a pale gray dress with a pastel- colored comfortable cardigan. One can easily tell she is very sportive. After the initial observation, she makes up her mind and carefully steps into the “green” territory of leaves. vincent is unaware of her presence, being totally immersed in the starlight.) Oh, here comes Ursa Major, whose seven bright stars hover over me all year round. You go round and round Ursa Minor’s Polaris—and I can lie in comfort upon this moist ground, in this clear night air, bathed in the rays of your glamour—what more can I ask for? (Seemingly resigned) It’s as though the whole galaxy revolves around me. And I seem to have become the center of the universe. The stars circle, circle, circle round me. (Assuming the position of a conductor) Venus, move over to Aquarius! Rise, Jupiter! Move down, Saturn! (Quite pleased with the results) Mm, that’s good. Month after month, year after year, I, from this same old spot, act as the cruise director for my dream universe. At the fling of my baton, stars fall, and the moon rises—it should have been so exciting! (Lowers head) There should be so much fun—yet, somehow, I . . . I am not satisfied . . . What is missing? . . . What else? . . . (charlotte gently clears her throat.) vincent (immediately turns around): Oh? charlotte (nods her head to greet him): Eh. vincent (taken aback): You . . . ? charlotte (courteously): Excuse me, may I watch the stars with you from here? vincent (surprised): Of course . . . charlotte: Thank you. (She sits down excitedly, stretches herself, and imitates his star-watching posture. vincent stares at her, stupefied.) Eh, why aren’t you watching the stars? (vincent looks at the stars, but he still watches her restlessly from the corners of his eyes.) Is that smoke, or are those stars clustering over there? vincent: Oh . . . that’s the galaxy. charlotte: It’s like a strip of . . . scattered stars. (Pointing with her finger) And what about that one? vincent: It’s Vega. charlotte: Ah! Then that one must be Altair! vincent (correcting her): No, Vega’s on the other side. That’s Altair. charlotte: Oh! But that’s not true, these two stars shouldn’t be so far away from each other! vincent: The distance between Altair and Vega is eleven light years. They are forever that far apart. charlotte: Are you sure? vincent: Yes, according to the laws of the universe. charlotte (pointing to the sky): You seem to be very experienced in these things.

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vincent: Thanks. charlotte: Have you always watched the stars from here? vincent (teasing himself ): Always from the same spot! Perhaps you think this is a waste of time . . . charlotte: No, I think this is a lovely thing to do! vincent (interest aroused): Do you enjoy watching the stars too? charlotte: Yes. (Looking at vincent) I enjoy watching everything that is good to watch! vincent: I . . . I too like to take in beautiful things, and yet, I am only a plant. charlotte: What? vincent: Plants can never move. They are tied to their roots. That’s the law. charlotte (shouts): Bang! (She jumps up.) vincent: What’s the matter? charlotte: A big explosion blows up all the laws of the universe into stardust, just like the beginning of heaven and earth, with no laws of the universe except a magnificent explosion! What do you think, if a great explosion produces a new magnetic field, it could even join Altair and Vega together! vincent: That’s impossible! That can never happen, never in a million years. charlotte: But there was such an explosion several hundred thousand years ago. I believe that explosion was not by law but a coincidence. (vincent stares at her, speechless.) If Altair and Vega become two revolving comets, do you think they can ever meet in several hundred thousand years’ time? vincent: They will be regulated by time and space. Even if they tried with all their might to orbit, it would take a coincidence in time and space for them to meet. charlotte: And this kind of coincidence is destined! vincent: I see. charlotte: Then, is it a matter of destiny that makes two lives meet on earth? vincent: Definitely—living things are regulated by time, space, and the will to live. charlotte: Then . . . destiny is really here! vincent: How true! charlotte: What’s your name? vincent: Vincent Cabbage, and yours? charlotte: Charlotte Caterpillar! (They stare at each other in silence. The clear notes from the piano music start again. The stage lighting grows dim. When the light of the stars returns, it is another evening with vincent and charlotte watching the stars together.) vincent (explaining): Whenever Polaris is facing east, it should be spring. charlotte: Isn’t it spring already? vincent: You know, spring comes as a rule, and nobody can stop it. (Noting charlotte’s response) Rules are rules. For example, it’s destined that you, caterpillar, the minute you’re born, grow on leaves.

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charlotte: Oh, are you having second thoughts? If you want me to stay, I need to feed on you. I’ve already told you, if you don’t like it, I can leave! (She stands up.) vincent: Wait, let’s look at it from another point of view. Perhaps the cabbage is created for the sake of caterpillars. There are a number of ways to look at this— charlotte (interrupts): You’d better consider well before you make up your mind! vincent: Since the cabbage has always been “passive,” what choice do I have? (Ponders) Here I am, absorbing moisture from the soil, maintaining myself also with oxygen from the air, warmth from the sun—these are natural—in return, I should feel responsible towards the universe. By a process of deduction, it’s only natural that caterpillars eat cabbage leaves. charlotte: So you’re talking about privilege and obligation, right? vincent: Perhaps that’s the reason why we have cabbages. charlotte: Since I have the privilege to eat your leaves, what am I obliged to do for you? vincent: I’ve never thought of that. charlotte: You can start thinking about it now. vincent: Didn’t I say that it’s only natural that caterpillars feed on cabbage leaves. That’s— charlotte (butts in): Universal law? vincent: Or perhaps it’s . . . charlotte: Since I was born, I knew that if I ever need a plant for shelter, I would choose an ivy. vincent: Then why did you choose me, I’m not— charlotte (covering his mouth): Listen, the reason I like creeping plants is because I can cling to them, grow with them in all directions. I can also climb to the highest and farthest point, forever venturing, but forever discovering something new. vincent: Then, I must have disappointed you. I’m just a plain old cabbage. charlotte: No, you’re extremely uncommon. vincent: Really? charlotte: You’re the one who told me how high the sky is, how distant the stars are. If it wasn’t for you, I’d never be able to find it out myself! vincent: Then you made the right choice. charlotte: Yes, and you? vincent: The same. (After a little while, vincent offers his hand, charlotte takes it.) charlotte (gently gives out an explosive sound): Bang! (They smile at each other. The piano music begins to roll. The light dims again. When the stage light comes back on, the two are already leaning against each other, watching the sparkling stars in the sky.) vincent: This is where I grew up. This is where I learned to gaze up at the heavenly bodies. charlotte: Tell me more about . . . vincent: About what?

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charlotte: It doesn’t matter what, I just love to hear you talk beside me. vincent: You know, from what I see, all galaxies spring from the Milky Way. They fly to all directions. Virgo flies twelve hundred kilometers per second. Corona Borealis runs two hundred and ten thousand kilometers per second. charlotte: Why can’t I see them moving? vincent: They’re too far away from us. The naked eye can’t see things that are sixtyfive million light years away. charlotte: Wow! . . . How did you feel when you realized how gigantic this universe is? vincent: The more we know the less significant we become. charlotte (pouts her lips): If you say less significant, am I even less? I don’t want to be an insignificant thing! (vincent gives her a hug.) vincent: This universe stretches too far—it’s enormous . . . What have things that happen so far away to do with us? (A false smile) What can we do? We can only watch from the same spot, just watch . . . What else can I do? (Begins to fantasize) I thought of plunging into the galaxy, steering through the universe, the Milky Way, rushing past Jupiter—the rings of blinding colors; overtaking the shooting stars, grabbing the brightest meteorite! But no, I did not budge an inch. The minute I tried to take off with my aesthetic thoughts, to fly away . . . I could feel my body tighten up, my toes ache . . . my roots pull me back. The strain was too much, as if I were ready to break. I cannot fly away with the stars. charlotte (comforts him): Don’t say that! vincent: A useless plant, that’s what I am! charlotte: No! You’re the silliest and yet the most lovable cabbage I have ever seen! vincent: You think so? (He calms down.) charlotte: Of all the cabbages I’ve ever seen, you’re really the si-i-i-lliest and the moo-o-st lovable cabbage . . . But, I must add, I have only seen one cabbage! (He starts to laugh.) vincent: Thanks. (He embraces her.) charlotte: Perhaps I can help you. Yes, I’ll help you! vincent: Help me? charlotte: To fly! vincent: To fly? charlotte: Come, let me tell you a secret! (They stare at each other. Again, the piano music begins softly. The light changes. charlotte stands at a corner of the rim made by the spotlight. vincent listens carefully from his base.) charlotte: I am not content to be a common caterpillar. I have set a standard for beauty in my life, and this is my pursuit: I want to become a butterfly. Apparently, under the so- called universal law, I am capable of doing it. I have a definite goal in

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my life. I will be a large butterfly, with a pair of wings that can stretch out very far, and a body that can reflect the colors of the rainbow. The only thing is . . . I’m not sure how I can achieve it. Therefore, whenever I come across dewdrops, I will pause, take a look at my reflection in them to see if I have become more beautiful; if I have actually turned into a butterfly? . . . Not yet, but I am very sure that one day, when I wake up, I will be a butterfly. I have seen butterflies fly past. I once envied them. Then I tell myself that I may be even prettier and bigger; I envy no more. I’m not sure what sort of butterfly I will be. I only know that I’ll be special, different from others! I . . . I can feel that I am different, that I may even overthrow the universal law! (The light mellows. charlotte realizes that vincent is smiling at her.) What are you doing? . . . Don’t laugh! vincent: I didn’t. charlotte (peevishly): You tease me! You’re teasing me! (She hits him gently.) vincent: Ha, really, I’m not teasing you. (Giggles) Don’t! (Struggles) Don’t! (They embrace each other.) charlotte (suddenly stops): Wait! vincent: Now what? charlotte: Sorry, I’m hungry again! (She lowers her head.) vincent: Oh. (Piano music is heard. The lighting becomes dim. The starlight grows dim. When the stage lights become brighter, the horizon turns light grayish blue. vincent is seen sleeping with his face down. charlotte snuggles beside him. She has on another, more colorful dress.) charlotte (dreaming): No . . . Don’t force me to eat your leaves. I don’t want to . . . (vincent awakes. Seeing charlotte’s dress, he immediately wakes her up.) vincent: Hey, Charlotte, wake up, wake up! charlotte (drowsily): What is it? . . . vincent: Look at your old clothes . . . charlotte notices that her clothes have been put aside. She screams and immediately covers herself.) charlotte: You’re vulgar and despicable! vincent: No, I didn’t do anything to you. Look at yourself. (charlotte peeps at herself. She’s overjoyed, but she instantly closes her eyes.) charlotte (anxiously): Tell me, tell me, have I . . . have I become a butterfly? vincent: See for yourself. charlotte: I don’t want to! I’m afraid! If I’ve become an ugly butterfly, I’ll never ever open my eyes again! vincent: You’re beautiful—but you’re still not a butterfly. charlotte (disappointed, opens her eyes): Oh! vincent: Your new clothes look much better than your old ones.

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charlotte (examines at once): Really? (Brightens up) Is it true? Oh! That’s great . . . ! Love this color! (Sees that vincent is smiling at her) Ah! You’re teasing me again!? This time I won’t forgive you! (She thrusts at him.) vincent (covers his head with his hands): Help. (charlotte kisses vincent’s face.) Ah, what a treat! Why? charlotte: To thank you! vincent: For what? charlotte (moving her body): Thanks for granting me a new dress. vincent: You did it yourself. All I contributed was a handful of plain leaves. charlotte (looks around at vincent’s “leaves”): Leaves? vincent: That was all I could do. charlotte (dashes into vincent’s bosom all of a sudden): I’m afraid! vincent: Afraid of what? charlotte: I fear that my nightmare will come true! Nightmares usually come true. vincent: Don’t be silly. Tell me, what was your dream? charlotte: Mm, if I tell it, the dream will become true! vincent: All right, whatever you prefer. charlotte: I want you to pledge in front of that star! vincent: Fine, I promise (He raises his hands.) What should I promise? charlotte: I want you to promise me that if I eat so many leaves that I hinder your growth, you’ll send me away! vincent: No, I won’t— charlotte: I want you to send me away! Say it! Say it! vincent (raises right hand to pledge): I, Vincent Cabbage, pledge to help Caterpillar become a butterfly. I will offer you more tender leaves, my dear, adorable caterpillar. charlotte: That’s not what I want to hear! vincent (continues with his solemn pledge): I promise that I’ll remain healthy, I’ll take in sunshine and water to grow, to become a tall, green, strong cabbage. (She can’t help hugging him. The piano rhythm becomes exciting and beautiful.) charlotte: You are so nice! vincent: Now, it’s your turn to pledge. charlotte: What should I say? vincent: That you’ll work towards metamorphosis, that you’ll take in leaves for nutrients. charlotte: But . . . I still don’t know how long it will take to . . . vincent (pointing): Just look at Venus over there. When it reaches Gemini, the west wind will come. Our planet is governed by time, and life has to be bound by these limits. Time is running out. You must hurry up and feed on my leaves.

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charlotte: I . . . I can’t go on eating your leaves! I’m really worried that I will harm you! vincent: Didn’t I tell you that leaves will grow again! charlotte: I don’t believe you! There are so few new leaves! vincent: Once the sun comes out, I’ll . . . charlotte: That’s what I’m worrying about! No . . . I’m leaving, I must leave! Let me go! vincent (pulling her back): Charlotte! charlotte: I know I must leave at once, or I will harm you sooner or later! Let go of me! vincent: But you have done me no harm! (He holds on to her.) charlotte: I don’t want to see you wither away. (She tries to free herself.) vincent: I will not wither. charlotte: Yes, you will; I’m harmful to you, and I’ll injure you if I stay! vincent: I won’t regret it. charlotte: But I will! I’m already regretting it! I’m a worm, I shouldn’t be here! The . . . the sooner I leave the better. (She departs in pain.) vincent (shouting): NO! (He tries to fling himself at charlotte, but falls to his own base. charlotte stops.) I . . . (trying to rise) please stay! I can’t bear to see you go. I need you . . . right here . . . charlotte (turns her face, which is filled with tears): I can’t believe that I’ve already hurt you to this extent. vincent (with open arms): Charlotte! (She quietly returns to his side.) Yes, it hurts when you chew on my leaves, but I can take it. In a little while, the pain will go away. But this time you’re biting too close to the heart! (She puts her head on his shoulder and sobs.) charlotte: Is there no other way? vincent: It’s supposed to be so. If it wasn’t for you, who would share the stars with me? Come, no more crying. (Looks up) Look, Charlotte, here comes the meteor shower! You’ll have to dry your tears to see clearly. Look, it’s over by the zodiac . . . Can you see it? It falls like Virgo’s tears. The heavens are crying with you! (The two huddle under the stars. Romantic piano music is heard in the breeze. The lighting becomes dim. The sound of the wind grows louder. There are only a couple of bright stars in the sky. When the lights are back on, vincent, coiled up, rests on the ground, looking as pale as a sheet. charlotte, lying on her back, has closed her eyes.) charlotte: Please protect him, don’t let him wither away. If my wings grow out, I’ll fly with him on my back and take him to wherever he wants to go. I want to take him—as far as the moon—so please take good care of him . . . because . . . I have already hurt him all over! But . . . vincent (wakes up): What are you doing?

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charlotte (her back toward him): Nothing . . . oh . . . I’m gazing at that star in the northwest, isn’t it bright! vincent (with slit eyes): That . . . is Hydra . . . I’m worried that spring will come soon. (Shows concern) How are you feeling? Are you hungry? charlotte (sustaining her ruse): No, I’m not! Just tired! vincent (reprimanding): You should be more positive. Eat up! It’s time for metamorphosis. What are you waiting for? Winter? charlotte: I’m just very tired! I feel very weak . . . vincent: Charlotte! You . . . (Angrily) Hey, you mustn’t give up. You must eat so you have strength to make the cocoon. charlotte (evasively): I . . . Actually, I don’t know how to make a cocoon, or how to turn into a butterfly . . . I don’t want to transform anymore! vincent: What are you saying—that you don’t want metamorphosis? charlotte: I don’t know. vincent (disappointedly): To have such thoughts at this stage. charlotte (walks to his side and pats his cheeks): Vincent! My silly cabbage! I know how much you’ve done for me, and I’ll certainly return the favor. vincent: Have I ever asked for rewards? (He pushes her away.) charlotte: Listen— vincent (irritated): What a waste! All my love and concern for you—wasted. To think that I want you to repay me . . . charlotte: That’s not what I mean! I want to do it! I should! vincent: Fine, do what you like. I just want you to eat and to realize your wish to become a butterfly. charlotte: But I don’t want to anymore! vincent: You must. charlotte: No! Don’t push me! I . . . I fear . . . I’ll hurt you! You’re already turning brown! vincent: What’s hurting me is that you’re not trying, you’re giving up! charlotte: Why must I turn into a butterfly? vincent: Because it’s your own wish, and it’s nature’s prescribed law. charlotte: Tell me, is that what you want? vincent: Yes, of course! charlotte: So that’s the condition. vincent (bewildered): What is it? charlotte: I—(supports herself ) I’m very tired . . . vincent: How do you feel? charlotte: I . . . I want to take a rest! Can I sleep now? vincent: Come . . . let me hold you in my arms. (The wind grows stronger.) charlotte (reclines into his bosom): Oh! Isn’t that comfortable! I feel so weak . . . vincent: Perhaps this signifies the coming of the cocoon.

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charlotte: Does it really? (vincent nods his head.) Oh! Then . . . vincent: Go to sleep! charlotte: Mm. (Closes her eyes, then opens them) What color should my wings be? vincent: Whatever color you like! charlotte: What color do you like? I want to wear your favorite color! vincent: But they’re your wings. Just think hard and you’ll have the colors you want. charlotte: I need your help! vincent: It’s windy, go to sleep! charlotte: You must help me! I . . . I’m scared! vincent: All right! All right! I’ll help you! I will! charlotte: I’ve disappointed you, haven’t I? vincent: Don’t be silly. charlotte: Are you sorry to have chosen me? vincent (smiles): You know, you’re the most adorable caterpillar this cabbage has ever met. You’re my best choice. (charlotte closes her eyes, relieved.) (Looking up at the sky) It’s not the choosing but the faith after the choosing that’s important. I’ll never regret it. (The sound of the wind gets louder. vincent enfolds charlotte. He closes his eyes, bites his teeth, braving the strong wind. The piano music rolls on solemnly. vincent tries to endure the pain in his body. The light dims. The piano music softens, twirling like a whirlpool. Some colorful and mysterious starlight lights up the velarium. vincent has fainted. charlotte is seen standing up. She faces the solemn and starry sky with her head up. A ray of light showers upon her. Slowly, she raises her hands, and slowly, a pair of beautiful and transparent wings stretches out. The music, grand and beautiful, sounds like an angels’ chorus. She stretches her wings to the limit, straightens her body, and takes a deep breath. As the piano music changes to a dancing rhythm, she stretches her legs and dances slowly, showing the elegant wings. As the stage lights up, vincent comes back to consciousness, feeling refreshed. He is both happy and surprised when he sees a butterfly dancing gracefully beside him.) Charlotte! (rises) Charlotte! You’re now a butterfly! (Jumps up and down in his base) You . . . you look wonderful! Charlotte! Come to me, Charlotte! (He wants to chase after her but remains still. charlotte stops in front of him.) charlotte: Are you pleased? vincent: The work of the universe is amazing! charlotte: The universe didn’t do it, we did! vincent: It’s unbelievable! charlotte: Look! (Shakes her wings, showing she can fly) I can fly now!

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vincent: Fly then, fly! (Looks up) Look, I . . . I’ve never seen so many different colors . . . so many bright stars! charlotte: I have actually achieved metamorphosis under these stars! vincent (counting the stars): There’s Aquarius, Orion, wow! The twelve signs of the zodiac all at once! And there’s Andromeda, Corona Borealis . . . It’s unbelievable. I never dreamt that the sky could be mounted with so many gems. charlotte: If you want, I can fly up and pluck one for you at once! vincent: No, let them be. charlotte: Don’t you want to own a few? vincent: I don’t want to own stars. I just like to watch their rays; I have seen them all. Well, from now on, I’ll direct my attention to you instead. charlotte: From now on? What will we do from now on? vincent: As it often happens in stories . . . We’ll live happily ever after. You and I . . . forever. charlotte: Is that your condition? vincent: What condition? charlotte: Is forever being together your condition? vincent: Why do you always make up conditions for me? charlotte: Vincent, now that I’m a butterfly, I can fly off. Will you let me fly off right now and never return? vincent: How can you leave me? charlotte: So that is your condition! You’ve given out everything you have to get what you want! vincent: No, it’s not true. charlotte: At least, I’m required to keep on accompanying you. Believe me, one cannot give out love and concern without asking for something in return. Since you love me, you haven’t thought about returns, but deep down, you would still ask for my concern towards you. This, of course, is not a transaction, but at least I cannot be unkind to you! So this is your minimum requirement. Well, I must think of a good way to return your favor before I depart. vincent: You’re leaving? You’re so unkind! charlotte: I don’t live on earth any longer, I’m a butterfly. I must fly, I must follow the scent of the flowers and fly on. A butterfly must fly! vincent: Do you really think you can leave me? charlotte (lowers her head): No! vincent: Then, don’t leave. charlotte: Fine, if that’s your condition. vincent: This is what I want! charlotte: Vincent, I have pledged under the stars that I will return your favor, and this is the right time for it. In order to fulfill your dream that you can fly across the universe, and in order to show you that I respect your condition, which is never to leave, I . . . (All of a sudden) I have decided to give you my pair of wings! vincent: Don’t—

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(charlotte tears violently at her wings. She coils up in pain.) Charlotte! (He rushes to embrace her.) charlotte (raises her wings): I . . . I’m serious. I mean it, and it’s out of my own free will. vincent (wailing): Charlotte! Even if I had wings, I can’t fly, silly you! That’s the universal law! charlotte: I . . . I don’t believe in the universal law! I have never . . . Ouch . . . vincent: When will you ever learn! charlotte: I’ve told you that I believe in beauty, and a beautiful butterfly can fly freely. vincent: Fly away if you want! charlotte: Can you give me up? With no regrets? Your love for me will constrain me so much that I won’t be able to fly anymore . . . Therefore, it’s my will not to be a butterfly now. It’s my wish to forever stay by your side, so you can hold me, rock me, love me. vincent: Charlotte! charlotte: But you also wish to fly . . . and you have really worked for this pair of wings . . . Therefore, they ought to be yours. This is really a combination of purity, truth, and beauty! (Gazing at the farthest end of the dappled sky) Why . . . why can’t I see anything . . . not even one star . . . Vincent, hold me! Hold me tight! Even without the stars shining, I’m still warm! (She faints.) vincent (wildly hugging her): Charlotte! (The beat gets hysterical, the piano music keeps rolling. Total darkness on stage; the starlight vanishes. The sound of the wind can be heard. The piano music gets gentler. It’s another bright, starry night. One can still hear vincent crying “Charlotte.” vincent is alone on the stage in his usual base.) Charlotte! Charlotte! (As if suddenly awakened from a nightmare) Charlotte!! (Looks around) Charlotte? How come . . . ? (He feels himself to find out if he’s in a dream.) Why . . . Why am I all alone? Where are you, Charlotte? (Yells) Charlotte! Come back! Come back! But if you have become a butterfly, then fly away, fly away! Charlotte, don’t leave, come back. I need you. You’ve promised to stay with me forever so I can go on caring for you. I don’t want your wings, you silly girl. Fly away at will. You need not miss me—yet how can you forget me, how can you leave me here all alone? The stars can only give out light, not heat. Charlotte, come back, I’m cold! (vincent bends down, holding himself tight. charlotte drags her tired body back.) charlotte (weakly): Vincent! (She looks just the same as before she turned into a butterfly.) vincent (overjoyed): Charlotte! (Charlotte runs into his embrace.) vincent: I thought . . . Well, it was just a bad dream.

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charlotte: I thought I’d never be able to see you again! (She starts crying.) vincent: What is it? Don’t worry. What’s wrong? charlotte: At first . . . I . . . decided to leave you . . . I didn’t want to cling to you like a parasite . . . I couldn’t stand being so cruel . . . But, you’re the only one on my mind, I . . . I can’t live without you! Ah . . . so I returned at once . . . vincent: I can’t live without you either. (He wipes her tears.) charlotte: I’d rather be a tiny caterpillar than a butterfly so I can hide in your bosom forever! Is it fine if I don’t transform anymore? (vincent can’t give an answer to this.) Is it all right if I don’t transform into a butterfly? (vincent touches her nose and smiles.) Why don’t you answer me? vincent: Have you forgotten? You can’t fight against nature— charlotte (softly): There you go again. vincent: Promise me that you will not steal away, unless, unless you really become a butterfly. charlotte: I won’t leave you again. Believe me! vincent: Then let nature takes its course! Look, it’s a bright, starry night. charlotte: Why are you so fond of stars? vincent: Because they bring us light in the dark. They freely bring beauty. Their gift is most pure, true, and wonderful. (charlotte wriggles in vincent’s arms.) Look, once we’re directed by Polaris, we’ll never lose our way. charlotte: Can I close my eyes? (vincent nods his head.) But I fear that if I go to sleep, I might have nightmares, and dream that I’ve eaten up all your leaves, that you’re withering. vincent: Then dream that you have been transformed into a butterfly. charlotte (obediently): Mm! (She closes her eyes. He lulls her like a baby. The piano music starts again lightly. She looks as if she is dreaming.) vincent (after gazing at the stars): Thank you stars, for staying with me. Thank you for brightening the dark horizons. Thank you for freely giving out light, for shining upon me, for giving direction. (Glances at charlotte in his arms) As for myself, I dare not say I am giving without asking for any return . . . But this feeling has transcended all terms and conditions. Because I have experienced this, I can see the stars more clearly. They are extra bright and beautiful. May I call this a sense of transcendence? (Looks up again, smiles) Thank you. (Piano music envelops them. The lights slowly fade out. As the starlight flickers, it is transformed into the shape of a butterfly. Even the stars are muted.)

In Hong Kong’s transformation from a refugee center to an international city, what has been lost? What has been gained?

Crown Ourselves with Roses (1988) written and translated by joanna chan

Yes, our days are the passing of a shadow, from our death there is no turning back, the seal is set: no one returns. Come then, let us enjoy what good things there are, use this creation with the zest of youth: take our fill of the dearest wines and perfumes, let not one flower of springtime pass us by, before they wither crown ourselves with roses. Let none of us forgo his part in our orgy, let us leave the signs of our revelry everywhere, this is our portion, this the lot assigned us. Book of Wisdom 2:5– 9

C ha r a c t e rs ( I n O rder of App ea ranc e) blind woman / auntie liang ⼈㔰, a fortune-teller jiang ziliu Ⰱ㽳⽀, a neighborhood sea goods seller ding feng ⛃⟁, a businessman song shuwen 㚆㗡㢶, daughter of song dinghui jiang meilan Ⰱよ⹊, wife of ding feng auntie jiang Ⰱ▙㔰, mother of jiang ziliu

1955

1972

1987

55 19 19 15 18 51

73 37 37

87 51 51

36

50

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jiang jinyuan Ⰱⱉ㴐, father of jiang meilan, a sea goods seller auntie yuan 㴐㔰, mother of jiang meilan ding wang ⛃㠮, father of ding feng, a sea goods seller uncle / jiang bingliang Ⰱ⍪⼈, uncle of jiang ziliu auntie wang, mother 㠮㔰 of ding feng auntie qi ㋶㔰, wife of ding qiyuan ding jie ⛃ⰴ, younger sister of ding feng ding yaocai ⛃㮕⏰, son of ding qiyuan, a taxi driver ding qiyuan ⛃㋶㴚, father of ding yaocai, a sea goods seller song dawen 㚆▕㢶, son of song dinghui song dinghui 㚆⛈⪬, a rich businessman ding baoheng ⛃⌒⧽, son of ding feng zhang 㷩㥸㔶, a businessman ding baoyi ⛃⌒䟃, daughter of ding feng liao ⼚⤿㬛, a real estate agent Seven to eight fishermen and neighborhood people

47 36 44 57 43 40 14

75

32

20

38

40 20 50

38 17 38 13 30

52

31 27

Ti m e Act 1: The August Moon Festival in 1955, with Chinese refugees flooding into the colony Act 2: The August Moon Festival in 1972, when the colony begins to transform itself into an international metropolis Act 3: The August Moon Festival in 1987, when the city is dealing with the prospect of being returned to China

Place The waterfront of Hong Kong Island. The entire play takes place at the same location on the eastern waterfront of Hong Kong Island. Downstage across is the sea, part of the harbor, stretching toward the audience. Midstage across are lodgings of the local people. In act 1, the buildings are old- style stone and mud houses separated by narrow alleys shaded by ancient trees. In act 2, some of the small houses have been taken over by modern two- and three- story buildings, with a broad street running across upstage, separating them from another row of tall tenement houses further upstage. By act 3, the trees are gone. All the old structures have been taken over by high-rises so tall that the sky is no longer visible—except for the small stone house of the lead character, jiang ziliu.

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The set should be semiabstract, without actual walls, but denoting living spaces of local people. There should be a sense of open air and sea and sky in act 1, which is slowly taken over by concrete buildings that shield off the entire sky by act 3.

A CT 1 (On the waterfront. A wood structure runs across the entire front part of the stage for fi shing boats to unload their goods. Two parallel wooden planks run toward the audience over the water. All across the stage are fishnets, bamboo baskets of various sizes, sea goods being dried in shallow baskets, gas lamps, and so forth amid some tall, lush trees. The stone houses along the waterfront have been here for over a hundred years. While uneven and unkempt, they give a sense of peace and tranquillity. Wooden structures have been added on top of some of them, allowing more living space. What the audience can see is actually the backs of the houses, which open up to the sea, while their front doors face the main street running across upstage. Most of the residents in this neighborhood belong to the ding and jiang clans, who have been here for generations. While the waterfront is very much part of the vibrant city, the neighborhood has the semblance of a fishing village, where everyone is known to everybody else. Across the main street that runs across upstage are neighborhood stores: a barbershop, a convenience store, a shop selling firewood, a hardware store, a store of dried goods, and so on. Amid the small shops stand several ancient trees, whose branches stretch toward the open sky.)

At Rise (Dawn is slowly breaking under a cloudy sky. Heavy fog hangs over the water. The blind woman, the fortune-teller, sits alone upstage right, a broom lying next to her. Over the pounding waves can be heard her prayers to the divine General Guan. jiang ziliu sits on a dry spot at the foot of a large tree, putting together the bamboo frame of a rabbit lantern. Up on the balcony of the stone house in the middle of the stage, ding feng awakes, roughly goes through his morning routine, comes downstairs, and sees jiang ziliu. The two young men, both nineteen, have grown up together and are dearer to each other than brothers. They have just finished high school and are continuing training at trade schools. With their education, they are a bit more refined than their neighbors but nonetheless retain the simplicity of people who live by their labor. After watching jiang ziliu at work on the lantern for a moment, ding feng goes near the water and looks at the sky.) jiang ziliu: The sky’s heavy. Won’t be seeing any moon tonight. ding feng: No moon for the Moon Festival. What a disappointment. jiang ziliu: Look at the size of the waves around the shrine. ding feng (shaking his head and laughing): The goddess’s going to have another bath.

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jiang ziliu: This would be a perfect night to take the girls out on a boat. So unnerved, they’d be all over us. (They both laugh.) ding feng: Not Shuwen, unfortunately. She’s not afraid of anything. jiang ziliu: She attends modern English-speaking schools. A few waves are not going to stop her. ding feng: We also went to school. But there are still unknowns one must bow to. jiang ziliu: She’s exceptional. Remember everyone was saying there was a sea monster haunting the shrine, smoky white and slippery? It used to wait for the dark. As soon as the moon came up, it would sneak up on young maidens. All the girls believed the tale, except Shuwen. She said someone made up the story in order to steal fish from us. She was right. He made off with our entire catch! (They laugh and shake their heads, looking out to sea.) The sea’s really rough. Wonder whether the boats will make it back on time. ding feng: There may be no moon, but we’ve a festival to celebrate. Would be awful if they couldn’t make the market. jiang ziliu: We’ll soon find out. ding feng: Auntie Liang is making enough noise to wake up the neighborhood. Hey, Auntie, it’s a holiday. Give us a break. jiang ziliu: No holiday in our trade. (He approaches the blind woman.) Auntie Liang, the festival comes only once a year. Let the divine General Guan take a rest. (Without so much as a pause, the blind woman picks up a broom and gives him a sweep, hitting jiang ziliu, then returns to her prayers. The two young men burst out laughing. Remembering they are making more noise than the old woman, they make faces at each other. Turning around, they see song shuwen entering. song shuwen is almost fifteen. She is soft and tender when quiet, obviously pampered and cherished. She is also exceedingly bright and cheerful. When spirited, her joyous laughter fills the neighborhood with delight. Even though the people in the neighborhood look upon her parents with hostility, except for a couple of girls everyone is fond of her. The songs have come from a much higher class than the local people and never hesitate to remind them of the fact. mrs. song dresses her daughter according to Western fashion magazines. song shuwen is now properly dressed in a Western dress, with white baby socks and black patent shoes, looking very out of place in the surroundings. She, however, never seems to be bothered by the contrast. She is walking toward the two young men, two rice buns in her hand.) jiang ziliu and ding feng (delighted with the surprise visit): Shuwen, so early . . . song shuwen: No school today, so I came to learn about taking stock. ding feng: What is there to learn about taking stock of sea goods? song shuwen: I’ve never seen fish traders at work. Thought I’d learn something. ding feng: You’ll get yourself into a lot of trouble if your parents catch you here. song shuwen: They won’t. They’re not up yet.

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jiang ziliu: That is if Auntie Liang doesn’t wake them. ding feng (laughing and raising his voice): Hear that, Auntie? (The blind woman turns a deaf ear.) song shuwen: They’ve become used to her chanting. It’s the smell of the fish and pigsty they can’t get used to even after two years. (Handing over the buns) Still warm. jiang ziliu: And you? song shuwen: I’ve already eaten. jiang ziliu: Let’s give one to Auntie. (Nodding, ding feng goes over to the blind woman and gives her a bun.) Come, Shuwen, I’ve something to show you. (He takes her over to the lantern at the foot of the tree.) It’s a bunny lantern. For you. Not done yet. Ears still missing. (song shuwen holds on to the frame and laughs happily.) I’ll get it done after taking stock. (Looking at the back view of ding feng) I know that Feng has bought you a beautiful lantern. I can’t afford to buy one, so I’m making one myself. (song shuwen sits next to him and watches him working on the lantern.) ding feng (putting the bun into the blind woman’s hand): Have a bun, Auntie. Eat while it’s still warm. Give General Guan a break; he’s going out of his mind with your badgering. (The blind woman reaches for her broom. ding feng stops her in time. They both laugh. The blind woman touches his face lovingly.) blind woman: I pray for our neighborhood, especially for you young folks, that you’ll all prosper and have lots of children. ding feng (half seriously, in a low voice): I’ve always shared my food with you, Auntie. Next time you tell my fortune in front of a girl, be sure to say that I’m destined to be rich and famous. (The blind woman reaches for her broom. ding feng laughs and jumps away. jiang ziliu splits his bun with him.) song shuwen: Do you always share everything? (The two young men look at each other with affection. Without hesitation, jiang ziliu nods with great pride.) jiang ziliu: We were born on the same day, grew up together. We even used to be the same weight and height. Running away from the Japanese in China, our mothers used to put us in two baskets and took turns carrying us on a bamboo pole, one in the front, the other at the back. ding feng: We used to run to the fish market to weigh ourselves after school. We’d pile fish on one side of the scale and stand on the other. Whoever used more fish had to eat less for supper to get his weight down. jiang ziliu: I’m bigger now by thirty sea basses. ding feng (pointing to jiang ziliu’s dwelling): For years we squeezed into the same cot for the night.

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jiang ziliu: We even tried to get the same grade in school. If I got better marks than he, I’d try to do a little worse the next time. If we didn’t come out even, we’d both get mad at the teacher. song shuwen: My brother doesn’t share anything with me. (The two young men look at her, surprised.) He loves me to pieces; he gives me everything. (Laughing, they give her a big push.) ding feng: We’re now taking courses at a business school. Soon we’ll be making big money and get rich together. song shuwen: Will you be marrying the same wife? (The two young men are a bit surprised at her forwardness.) jiang ziliu (after a bit of thought): I would say so. ding feng: I’ll have to think about that one. I mean, I’ve heard of a man having many women . . . song shuwen: Why not the other way ’round? (The two young men are left speechless.) jiang ziliu: Do you always insist on knowing “why”? song shuwen: Only when I don’t understand. (She goes slowly to the edge of the water.) There are lots of things I don’t understand. Father says we should tear down all these houses to build high-rises. But I think it’s just wonderful that you live by the sea, rise with the sun, and go to rest with the moon. I don’t understand why my mother has to dress me up in clothes she copies from the American magazines. She wants to be sure that I’m brighter and prettier than everyone else . . . Why is it so important to have others’ approval? Why can’t we think and decide things for ourselves? . . . If the Butterfly Lovers had thought for themselves, they’d not have died. Right? jiang ziliu and ding feng: What are you talking about? (They move down the plank stretching out to the sea, looking across the water at song shuwen on the opposite plank.) song shuwen: The stories we created, they make no sense. Like the Cowherd and the Spinning Maid, separated the entire year by the Milky Way, dying to be together. They’re not allowed to see each other, so they just sit around pining for each other. Why can’t we have stories like Romeo and Juliet in the West? If the Butterfly Lovers had come to each other with the truth, they wouldn’t have had to die. Right? ding feng: But Romeo and Juliet died all the same. song shuwen: They did, after doing what they decided to do for themselves. They didn’t allow anyone to have any say over them. (Stretching her arms in great excitement) Someday I’ll write stories like that. jiang ziliu: Be careful. Don’t fall in. You can’t swim. song shuwen (trotting back and forth deliberately): You’ll save me, yes? You’re a champion swimmer. (Looking at ding feng) Did Feng also get a swimming award? jiang ziliu: He can’t outswim me. But he got a trophy in basketball. song shuwen (nodding, pausing): Didn’t you say you’d take me fishing?

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ding feng: You have to get your parents’ okay. They’d never allow you to stay out all night with fishermen. jiang ziliu: Besides, with you along, we’ll never catch any fish. All your babbling will chase them away. (song shuwen bursts out laughing, almost falling into the water. Their happy chatter is contagious. Smiling, the blind woman comes over to the young people. The neighborhood begins to wake up. Inside her house, jiang meilan notices the people chatting outside.) ding feng: Perhaps we can take you clamming. song shuwen (even more excitedly): Great! Clams are my favorite. jiang ziliu: You just said the other day chestnuts were your favorite. song shuwen: And squid, and bok choy, and frog . . . Ha ha ha . . . If I promise not to make noise, and if I can sneak out, will you take me fishing? ding feng: Are you always this willful? song shuwen: I’m just trying to use my head. That’s not being willful. blind woman (very interested in the girl): Feng, didn’t you say you wanted your fortune told? ding feng: Eh? (Catching on) Oh, yes. Yes. jiang ziliu (at the same time): So early in the morning? ding feng (to song shuwen): Auntie Liang is really good at this. (He squats in front of the blind woman, who feels his face. Curious, song shuwen also comes close and squats in between.) blind woman: The bearing of someone outstanding, you are going to be exceedingly rich. song shuwen: Can you really feel the future? Let me try. (She touches ding feng’s face seriously, returns him to the blind woman, and turns to feel jiang ziliu’s face. She then returns to ding feng and the blind woman.) blind woman: No doubt about it, Feng. You’ll be the richest man in the neighborhood. song shuwen: Will he be happy? blind woman: How could he not be happy? He would be rich. song shuwen: My father is richer than all of you, but he doesn’t seem as happy. My mother—well, her father was rich, too, on the mainland, before the communists came. She was always worried about being inferior to others. She was unhappy. blind woman: Does this young lady always ask questions that have no answers? (song shuwen giggles.) She’s delightful. Let me tell your fortune. (The blind woman touches song shuwen’s face. Suddenly the former seems to go into shock, her breath frozen, her trembling hands stopping in midair.) song shuwen: What is it, Auntie? (Her curiosity turns into surprise.) jiang ziliu (alarmed): What did you find? ding feng (giving jiang ziliu a push): Hey, the boats are coming in.

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jiang ziliu: Let me get the others. (He goes to his house to wake his mother and his uncle, then the others at various places.) ding feng (to song shuwen, happily): I’ll fetch you your lantern. (He goes up to the balcony. song shuwen is left standing alone on the plank. The people in the houses are slowly getting up, going through their morning routines, warming up breakfast, and so forth. Some relieve themselves over the water. ding feng comes down with a large lantern for song shuwen. jiang meilan comes down and greets everyone.) Pretty? song shuwen (receiving the lantern with great delight): For me? (ding feng nods. jiang ziliu comes out of his house with an old shirt.) jiang ziliu: Don’t get it wet. It would be ruined. (Looking around) Let’s hang it on the tree. Take it when you leave. (ding feng hangs the lantern on the tree, also the frame of the rabbit lantern.) Come cover yourself with this old shirt so you won’t dirty your clothes. (He wraps the shirt around her.) song shuwen (greeting jiang meilan happily): Hello, Mei. jiang meilan: How can she be of any help? jiang ziliu: Let her be. (People begin to come down to the waterfront. It is still very early, and the day is gloomy. But everyone is a bit excited with the festival: jiang ziliu’s mother and uncle; ding feng’s younger sister, ding jie, and their parents, ding wang and his wife; jiang meilan’s parents, jiang jinyuan and his wife; ding qiyuan and his wife and their son, ding yaocai; and other neighborhood people. After morning greetings, they prepare to receive the returning fishing boats. The dings and the jiangs have been neighbors by the seaside for generations. They left for the interior during the Japanese occupation. Unable to make a living on land, they returned to resume their trade, this time with the Japanese. jiang ziliu’s father was an only son and was well educated. When Hong Kong first fell to the Japanese, the fishing boats stopped coming into the harbor. He first worked for the Japanese. After a short while, unwilling to be seen as a traitor, he took his family back to the mainland but died on the road. jiang ziliu was only six. His widowed mother, auntie jiang, brought him back to the ancestral home here by the seaside and resumed the family trade. She gave her all in raising her only son and saw him through school. He is her hope and joy. Like all the womenfolk in the neighborhood, she works harder than the men. She is also brave and outspoken. uncle is an adopted son of the jiang family, an older brother to jiang ziliu’s father. His entire family of five was killed during an air raid. Left all alone in the world, he finds his contentment in the bottle. The family of ding wang, ding feng’s father, is better off than most of their neighbors, very clever in business. The children are encouraged to look beyond their neighborhood. Their daughter, fourteen-year- old ding jie, is independent and progressive. She often dresses like a boy.

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Out of their several children, jiang meilan is the only surviving offspring of jiang jinyuan and his wife, auntie yuan. They are content with their lot, quite sure that either ding feng or jiang ziliu will become their son-in-law. jiang meilan is clever and very practical-minded. She thinks she knows what’s best for her. ding qiyuan and his wife, auntie qi, are humble and simple. They have been poor all their lives and have learned to ask for nothing. They do not harbor any fantasy for their only son, ding yaocai, who runs errands for a newspaper. jiang ziliu teaches song shuwen how to light a gas lamp. song shuwen greets everyone as each appears.) auntie jiang: You’re up early, Shuwen. Who dressed you like that? Your ma’ll be sore at us. jiang ziliu: She wants to watch us work. jiang jinyuan: What’s there to watch unloading fish? Such a nuisance. auntie jiang: She’s just a child. Let her be. (The young people get together. ding yaocai has a bag of chestnuts. A few have been strung together. He gives it to jiang meilan, who gives it to ding jie.) jiang jinyuan: The kid is all right. Her parents are something else. auntie jiang: Not poor folks like us, that’s all. auntie yuan: Then why come to the neighborhood at all if they’re particular about smelly fish and a dirty pigsty? jiang jinyuan: You think they want to be our neighbors? They’re here for the low rent. Just you wait. As soon as their business takes off, they’ll knock down their house and build an apartment building and become big-time landlords. ding wang: I’ve heard that, too. Any truth to it? jiang jinyuan: Predictions of a fortune-teller may have you fooled for years. This, we’ll find out in a few months. auntie yuan: Bet they already paid for the house. Just not ready to tear it down. uncle: It’s not that easy. You got to pay a lot of money to get the tenants to move out first. Then you need more money to put up the new building. auntie wang: They came loaded from the mainland. (To auntie jiang) Didn’t that girl’s father tell you to get rid of the pigs? uncle: It’s not him. The Health Department is after us. auntie yuan: And how did the Health Department find out, if he didn’t tell on us? ding wang: He’s got connections even with the Health Department? jiang jinyuan: They’re all connected; they cover one another’s asses. auntie jiang: Cut this rubbish. Not all officials are corrupt. jiang jinyuan: Have you ever met an honest one? uncle: That’s why we Jiangs’d rather be poor than to work for any government. auntie qi: Look at the kid of the old bum in the back alley. He was caught taking bribes as soon as he became an official. uncle: That’s why Ziliu’s father had rather starve than be an official. auntie wang: That was different. Working for the government meant working for the Japanese. That made him a traitor.

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auntie jiang: So he quit and took us back to China, starving all the way. Got himself killed by a bomb before we got to the village. uncle: So we crawled our way back, and I lost my entire family along the way. auntie yuan: Hey, no more sob stories on the festival. Bad joss. auntie qi: A fine son like Ziliu makes up for all the losses. auntie jiang: Right you are. He is grown now, and well educated. I can’t ask him to tend pigs. They say Hong Kong is getting very modern. Just a matter of time before the pigs will have to go. jiang jinyuan: Don’t get it into your head that the Songs want to be your friend, just because they let their kid come play with yours. auntie jiang: Leave the kids out of it. jiang jinyuan: His kids will be sent to America. Don’t get your hopes up. auntie jiang (bursts out laughing because she has never entertained such a fantasy): You scoundrel! What are you talking about? uncle: Hey, if Song is really set on tearing down houses, you think he’s got his eye on ours, too? auntie jiang: We won’t allow it. We Jiangs and Dings have been here for generations. You think we’ll sell our ancestral homes? Only outsiders on the main street would do something like that. jiang jinyuan: I say don’t trust them. Don’t let their kid get familiar with you . . . auntie jiang: O hush, you old grouch. (The boats begin to dock. Everyone greets everyone in high spirits.) auntie yuan: Come, husband. Shut your mouth. uncle: I bet he lost in the mahjong game last night. That put him in a foul mood. ding wang: I’ll let you win a little tonight, okay? In honor of the festival. jiang jinyuan: Need no favor from you! (The fishermen begin to unload their catch. The young people gather to receive the goods, separating them in different bushels and moving them offstage. The conversations can be spontaneous and overlapping. The women work harder than the men. uncle helps with a couple of rounds, then squats on the side for a break.) auntie jiang: We thought you wouldn’t make it, the sea so rough. fisherman no. 1: It wasn’t that bad till we got near shore. ding wang: All those clouds and no rain. fisherman no. 2: Looks like no moon tonight. fisherman no. 1: Yeah, but we got a great catch. auntie qi: I got the chicken for you. fisherman no. 2: Oh, thanks. jiang jinyuan (to another fisherman): The shrimps look good. fisherman no. 3: You got lots of help today. auntie jiang: No school today. jiang meilan: Ma, don’t forget to get roasted sparrows for dinner. auntie yuan: Yesterday you asked for frog legs; now you want sparrows. You think your old man won a lottery?

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auntie jiang: I promised Ziliu frog legs tonight. Come over at dinnertime. auntie yuan: Don’t listen to her. She is forever asking for this and that. Children, don’t forget this is water day. auntie qi: It’s early yet. jiang meilan: Ziliu said he’d get in line for me. uncle (handing a dime to ding yaocai): Hey, kid. Go buy me a couple of cigarettes. ding yaocai: It’s too early, Uncle. auntie jiang: Come on. Get the work done first. (jiang jinyuan takes out a pack of cigarettes. uncle takes and lights one.) Ziliu, Feng, Cai, go get the groceries to the boats. (The young people go into the house, collect the rice, cooking oil, firewood, various food items and decorations for the festival, and move them onto the boats. auntie jiang subtracts the expenses from the money she earned for the fishermen, wraps the balance in a piece of old newspaper, and gives it to fisherman no. 1.) I got you the groceries and you still have $234.50 leftover. Keep this up and you’ll be getting a new boat before the year is out. auntie qi: We’ll get you a good price for the shrimp. auntie jiang: Then you’ll be able to give this up and buy yourself a store on land! fisherman no. 1: Easier said than done. You’ll make it before we do. ding feng: You know, it wouldn’t be hard to cheat on you. I mean, there’s no written account. We could hold back a few dollars each time and you wouldn’t even know it. auntie jiang (giving him a whack): Where did you get such an idea? ding feng: Just kidding . . . just kidding. auntie jiang: Kid about something else, not about cheating people. ding feng: It’s no big deal. In business, we call it taking a commission. auntie jiang: You were not talking about a commission. What I heard was cheating. We don’t do business that way. fisherman no. 3: He’s only a kid. Never mind. auntie jiang: We’ve been dealing with fishermen for generations. We trust each other; that’s why we don’t have to write anything down. I’d rather lose a little than take advantage of others. And we don’t keep one red cent of what we don’t deserve. ding feng: That’s why we’re poor. auntie jiang: Better poor than getting rich on dishonest money. ding feng: Times are different, Auntie Jiang. auntie jiang: So we’re supposed to cheat to fit in with the times? Is that what they teach you in your business school? ding feng (in jest): One must think of oneself first. aunite jiang (laughs, knowing that ding feng is trying to provoke her): You little villain. You’re trying to get me mad, aren’t you? Hey, Auntie Wang, your boy needs to be taught some lessons in honesty. auntie wang: He listens to you more than his ma. (With some boats leaving shore, other boats come near. Everybody goes through another round of exchanges.)

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auntie jiang: Where would we all be if we’d thought only of ourselves all these years? auntie qi: He’s too young to remember those war years. uncle: Oh God . . . God, those horrible times. auntie wang (to auntie jiang): We took turns carrying Ziliu and Feng on a pole, one in a basket. Come to think of it, they were no longer babies. How did we manage? uncle: No food anywhere. They were just skin and bones. auntie jiang: When we finally got back, didn’t we find a cousin dead of starvation? jiang meilan (together with the other young people): Upstairs, here! (The grown-ups continue their stories for the young people.) auntie yuan: By then all the houses on the other side of the street were deserted; the looters had picked them clean. But no one dared cause trouble on our side because we watched out for each other. ding wang: The Japs liked fish. We traded fish for rice and sugar to scrape by. jiang jinyuan: Squid was worth a whole lot in those days. auntie jiang: We carried on our business as before. The fishermen would leave their catch with us and go right back to sea, sometimes gone for a whole week. They trusted us with their ration certificates. We would buy rice and oil and sugar and keep them in the house for their return. Always faithful and trustworthy. ding wang: Except once in a while old Jiang here would be caught with a mouthful of dried shrimp. (Everyone laughs.) auntie jiang: You old rascal, I’m doing you a favor, giving your son a lesson. jiang jinyuan: So he thinks for himself. jiang ziliu: Good, let’s all have a feast of dried shrimp. (jiang ziliu puts some dried shrimps into song shuwen’s hand. After a bit of hesitation, song shuwen puts them in her mouth.) jiang meilan (pointing at song shuwen): Ugh, they’ve got bugs. (All scream and laugh. The boats begin to leave. Before the grown-ups leave for the fish market, they give the young people last reminders.) all: Don’t forget to queue up for water. auntie jiang: Get enough for the feast tonight. jiang meilan: Ma, get me a five-nuts moon cake. I like nuts. auntie yuan: This daughter of mine is hopeless. I’ll need to find her a demanding husband to keep her in line. auntie qi: Cai, almost time to deliver papers. Have some porridge and be on your way. auntie wang: Feng, turn off the lamp when it gets bright enough. Can’t afford to waste the kerosene. auntie jiang: Get Auntie Jiang a bowl of porridge. auntie wang: Jie, don’t forget to change the water for the snails. (The grown-ups depart, leaving behind the blind woman and uncle. The young people tidy up the place, bring up water with buckets, wash down the planks, and sweep them with bamboo brooms.)

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jiang ziliu (to song shuwen): Your dress smells of fish. How are you going to present yourself to your mother? (song shuwen sticks out her tongue and laughs.) ding jie (to everyone): Time to shoot the rats! (All the young people respond instantly. They run along the planks, trying to hit the rats with pebbles. They cheer when one hits a target, pushing, shuffling, and threatening to push one another into the water.) ding feng: Watch out! song shuwen: Ziliu is a good enough swimmer to save us all! ding jie: I got one! Big Brother, your turn . . . ding feng: Watch me! jiang ziliu: Cai, isn’t it time to go to work? ding yaocai: Not yet. The boats got in early today. I . . . (a bit bashfully) I got something for you, Mei. (He goes to his house and brings back a small packet wrapped in brown paper. It turns out to be a moon cake, already cut into sections.) A five-nuts moon cake. One piece for each. (Everyone is delighted. ding yaocai offers it to jiang meilan first.) You like nuts. ding feng: Wait. Tell us what the occasion is. jiang ziliu: Did you get a raise? (ding yaocai nods. Everyone is happy for him. They stop chasing the rats and begin enjoying the moon cake. jiang ziliu goes back to working on the lantern. jiang meilan strings the water chestnuts together while ding jie and song shuwen fish.) ding feng: You’re moving up the ladder! ding yaocai: Ah, stop kidding me. After seven years delivering papers, they finally made me an office boy. I dropped out of school. With so little education, what can I expect? jiang meilan: You’ll no longer get to see your boss every day. ding yaocai: Either way I’m just an errand boy. I only bring his papers to his residence. Delivering papers to the advertisers was tough, running up and down the hills. Once in a while a ferocious dog’d come out and scare me half to death. It only got better after I got my bike. song shuwen: Someday you’ll deliver in a car. jiang ziliu: Silly girl. If he’s rich enough to own a car, what would he be doing delivering papers? ding yaocai: No, honestly, I’ve been thinking of taking driving lessons. Perhaps I can be the boss’s chauffeur. ding feng: That’s right. You’re old enough to get a license. ding yaocai: But that takes several hundred dollars. jiang ziliu: Ask your boss for a loan. He loves to do good. Look at his pictures in the papers. He always has a raised fist.

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ding yaocai: Oh yes . . . (A bit bashfully, excitedly) I’ve never been in a private car. Don’t know what it feels like . . . I’d be able to give Ma a ride once in a while . . . (To jiang meilan) You . . . you can come along . . . jiang meilan (muttering): It wouldn’t be your car. Wait till you get your own. ding yaocai: By then you’ll be married to some rich guy. jiang meilan: Why would a rich man want to marry someone like me? I’d be better off marrying someone with real ambition. We’d work hard and become rich together. ding jie: Dream all you like. Hong Kong is not our own place. The most you can hope for here is to become a government official. Then you could dress up in a dumb uniform and march around the pier on special occasions, looking like an idiot. ding yaocai: Only foreign devils from England get to do that. ding jie: You do see a few Chinese big shots strutting along. ding yaocai: The rest of us only strut to the church to collect free flour and cheese. ding feng: Until we all start to smell like the foreign devils, ha-ha . . . ding yaocai: You know what they smell like? ding feng: No. Go find out yourself. ding jie (shaking her head in seriousness): We can’t achieve anything important here. ding yaocai: Poor folks like ourselves, achieving something? ding jie (firmly and emphatically): We could if we were on the mainland. uncle (intervening with a loud voice): Jie, no more stupid talk. You could be arrested as a troublemaker and deported. jiang meilan (in a low voice): I hear that the police take your picture if you walk by the China Products Store and put you on a blacklist. ding jie: They won’t have to deport me! Things are getting better on the mainland. I’d be glad to go back and help build our country. I have no need to stay in a colony. uncle (sharply): Shut your mouth, Jie. (Everyone turns serious.) If the mainland is all that good, why are people risking their lives to get out? blind woman (joining in with a loud voice): No worry, Uncle. I’ve read her fortune. She is the kind of person who’ll never have to worry about making a living. jiang meilan: You also said that Feng would be rich and prosperous, didn’t you? ding feng (not waiting for an answer from the blind woman): You can bet on it. If outsiders like Song know you can make big money by tearing down the old houses and building new ones, why can’t we do the same? We could build a whole lot of them, and rent out the ones we don’t need. uncle: You two are ridiculous. These houses belonged to our ancestors. How dare you even think of tearing them down? jiang ziliu: No worry, Uncle. They’re just shooting off their mouths. blind woman: Your life, Ziliu, will be the most unusual. jiang ziliu (half in jest): That’s right. I think I’ll do something special with my life. I don’t know what. (Turning to ding feng, laughing) One thing for sure, Feng will take care of the money.

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ding feng: We’ll split everything down the middle. song shuwen: I know what it is. He’ll get a gold medal at the Olympics. jiang ziliu: Yes, Auntie Liang, what did you see just now in Shuwen’s future? (They all turn to the blind woman, when suddenly ding jie lets out a scream.) ding jie: I got one! I got one! (They all rush forward. ding jie pulls up her catch.) ding feng (upon more careful examination): You’re dead, Jie! You just caught Father’s prize sea bass. Put it back, hurry! (Everyone laughs as she hurriedly lets the fish go.) ding yaocai: Aiya! I nearly forgot about work. (He rushes off. ) jiang ziliu: Shuwen, you really believe I’ll become somebody? song shuwen: Yes . . . Auntie Liang has always said that you’re special. jiang ziliu: By then you’ll be long gone, nowhere to be found. song shuwen: I’ll be picking apples in America. jiang ziliu: What? song shuwen: People say that in America, students can get work picking apples. It’s great fun and afterwards you can take home as many apples as you can carry, for free. jiang ziliu: When are you leaving? song shuwen: Not right away. My brother’ll go first. ding feng: Then we’ll never see you again. song shuwen: Impossible. Even the Cowherd gets to see the Spinning Maid. ding feng: Yeah, but only once a year . . . song shuwen: They can decide to see each other more often. jiang ziliu: But they’re separated by the Milky Way. song shuwen: They just have to figure out a way to get across. ding feng: The birds do come once a year to form a bridge. song shuwen: Why must they sit around waiting for the birds? Why can’t they show some initiative? ding feng: That’s why they don’t deserve to see each other more than once a year. jiang ziliu: Perhaps that’s all that they want. song shuwen: That doesn’t make sense. I won’t write such a stupid story. jiang ziliu: I can imagine the kind of story you’ll write. (The two young men nod to each other. They start running around, teasing her. Clapping her hands, song shuwen laughs happily.) ding feng and jiang ziliu (stumbling over each other’s lines): Well, now. So there’s a river. But no river is going to stop me. I’m going to swim across . . . But, no, I can’t swim. I’ll find a boat . . . No boat? I’ll get a basket . . . Mm, no good . . . Where are those stupid birds? I’ll build a bridge . . . (They grab some poles) Too short . . . Need a longer piece . . . I’ll go cut down a tree . . . (They bring over a plank and put it across the water.) It’s heavy. All this hard labor has made a coolie out of me. The Cowherd won’t recognize his beloved Spinning Maid . . .

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(song shuwen steps on the plank and begins to come across.) song shuwen: Here I come, Cowherd. (ding feng tries to stop her. jiang ziliu stops him.) Where are you, Cowherd? I’ve built a bridge. (She reaches their side.) Cowherd! jiang ziliu: Is that you, Spinning Maid? But you’re not due for another three hundred sixty-four days. I’m busy at the moment. (song shuwen feigns annoyance. The two young men laugh. She turns and retraces her steps on the plank. Her brother, song dawen, comes out from the alley. On seeing her standing unsteadily over the water, he stops short.) song shuwen (very happily): Big Brother, we’ve solved the problem for the Cowherd ... song dawen: Father’s on his way. He’s raving mad. (song shuwen freezes in the middle of the plank as song dinghui rushes in. On seeing where she is, he stops.) song dinghui (sharply): What are you doing there, Shuwen? song dawen (stopping his father): Father, Shuwen doesn’t know how to swim. Let’s get her back in first. (The three young men, jiang ziliu and ding feng on one side, song dawen on the other, watch her intensely. She moves slowly toward her brother. song dawen helps her off the plank and tries to leave with her and their father.) song dinghui: How many times have I told you never to mix up with people in the street? song shuwen: Why not? song dinghui (furiously): What did you just say? song dawen (trying to stop them): Father, we all go to the same school. song dinghui: No doubt that’s where you learn to behave badly. song shuwen (trying to free herself ): They’re my friends . . . song dinghui: You can have any friend you want. But these are wild kids from the streets. They’re not fit for you. (The remark brings the smoldering hostility to the fore. song dawen, ding feng, and jiang ziliu are schoolmates, who try to prevent an open confrontation.) jiang meilan (to song shuwen): Go your way. We’re not fit for your company. uncle: You, Song, who are you calling street people?! song dinghui: I’m addressing my daughter. It’s no concern of yours. uncle: How you address your daughter is no concern of mine, but insulting our boys is! And I won’t have you talking about them that way! (auntie jiang, jiang jinyuan, ding wang, and company are just returning.) song dinghui: Those boys have been a bad influence on my daughter. jiang jinyuan: She’s the one who comes over causing us all kinds of trouble . . . song dawen: Let’s go, Father . . .

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uncle: Don’t think because you have a bit of money, you can push us around! Even the Japs didn’t dare walk down our side of the street! ding wang: We’ve had about all we can take from you! (Getting ready for a real fight) Stay on your side, where you can act like a big shot. Over here you’re out of your element. So watch what you say. auntie jiang: Never mind. Never mind. We’re neighbors after all. ding qiyuan: Just keep your precious daughter on your own side . . . uncle: In fact, keep your entire family over there. This neighborhood has no need of people like you . . . song dinghui: Tough talk from an old man. Your days are numbered . . . (The whole neighborhood rises in fury. Some begin to grab poles and brooms for a fight, while others try to restrain both sides.) uncle and ding wang: How dare you curse us! uncle: It served you right that the communists ran you out. Just because you think you have a bit of money . . . auntie yuan: You should be on the Peak instead of in this kind of neighborhood . . . song dinghui: We’ll see how long you can last. When I’m done with the main street, your precious ancestral homes will come down next! jiang jinyuan and ding wang: Let’s club him to death . . . (The young people try to stop their parents. With jiang ziliu’s help, song dawen drags his father out of the neighborhood. The neighbors, finally having a chance to let off steam, are thrilled and excited.) ding wang (angrily, to his son): I was ready to crack open his skull! uncle: He’d never dare to sneer at us again. ding jie: Wait till the communists come; they know how to deal with people like him. auntie wang (angrily, to her daughter): No more nonsense from a girl like you. Time to go line up for the water. (The reminder sends the young people scurrying for buckets. Everyone is still excited from the fight. The lights slowly change. Evening has arrived. Each family has hung up the festive lanterns and prepared a dinner marking the feast. The lanterns sway in the strong wind, as if announcing an impending storm. jiang jinyuan and his family are at stage left; ding qiyuan’s, stage right. auntie jiang, uncle, the blind woman, and jiang ziliu are on the right of jiang jinyuan, while the wangs occupy the larger house in the middle. The young people go from feast to feast. The wine adds to the excitement with what happened with the songs. Nobody pays attention to the radio playing inside the wang household.) uncle (to jiang ziliu): I’d have killed him if you hadn’t stopped me. jiang jinyuan: You didn’t have the guts. Ziliu was only pretending to restrain you. uncle: I’ve no need to pretend. Been through much worse than that. Remember the big strike at the dock? I was barely twenty. Me and my wife had to walk all the way back to China, carrying the kids on our back. blind woman: No food, no work. Everyone tried to get out of the city.

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uncle: Even the garbagemen were gone. The government had to send its civil servants to collect the night buckets door to door. ding wang: Hey, change the topic; we’re having dinner. uncle: Less than three years after we got back came another strike—the “antiimperialist movement.” Another hundred thousand made it up to Canton. The French and English soldiers fired on the crowds, killing hundreds. Ziliu’s father was in school then; he was very patriotic, used to cross the border back and forth. blind woman: No need of an ID card at that time. auntie jiang: Uncle, more snails? I’ll send them next door before they get cold. jiang jinyuan: I’m coming over. (He squats next to jiang ziliu. jiang meilan joins her father. auntie yuan finishes the dinner and puts things away.) By the time the Japs came, going back to the old country became dangerous. I was over thirty and well aware of the risk. But I was hungry. What was I to do? auntie wang: The Japs had just crossed the Marco Polo Bridge up north. Hong Kong was still safe. Lots of refugees poured into the city; then malaria killed off a lot of them. ding wang: A fierce typhoon hit just before the Moon Festival; more folks died, over ten thousand. auntie jiang: Until the Japs began bombing Guangzhou, no one thought of leaving Hong Kong. It really was not so bad then. Ziliu’s father had an education, so he went to work for a foreign company. They gave him extra money to go up to Guangzhou on weekends. He thought that a wise choice, earning real good commissions. uncle: Until he found out he was in the arms trade business. Death by firing squad if caught. auntie jiang: We would have stayed in Hong Kong. But the Japs were on the way. No fishing boats could get in the harbor. And he sure didn’t want to work for the Japs. So we left, as it was meant to be. blind woman: When we met . . . Oh God, what horrible times. auntie jiang: I didn’t even know where we were, wandering somewhere between Hong Kong and Guangzhou. I’d just lost my husband; Uncle lost his entire family; and you, your whole family gone and you just lost your sight. blind woman: Together for nearly twenty years since. You raised a fine boy and gave him a good education, too. auntie jiang: But he still doesn’t have a bed of his own—just an old cot he puts away every morning. jiang ziliu: It’s quite all right, Ma. Look at the refugees around us, sleeping in hallways and on rooftops, a family of eight sharing one bed. (auntie yuan comes over with some fruit and pastries and asks jiang meilan to serve everyone.) jiang meilan: In a moment. auntie jiang: We still have frog legs. Ziliu, bring some over to Mei. jiang jinyuan: There was war. What is there to say? We were scared out of our wits. One night we were so scared listening to the bombing, we didn’t even know our son

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had suffocated in his basket during the night. If only our boy had lived, we wouldn’t be left with just a worthless daughter. auntie jiang: That’s no way to talk about Mei, old man. jiang jinyuan: She’s worthless. You can have her anytime you want. auntie jiang: Are you sure now? This daughter of yours will do well. She knows how to take care of herself. jiang meilan: Auntie Liang said Feng would be a great success. ding feng: Not as big as Cai, of course. He’ll be driving a car soon. (ding yaocai is a bit embarrassed. His mother asks him to bring over some fruit.) ding yaocai: It will be a while yet. auntie qi: My son’s been promoted to office boy. ding yaocai (to ding feng): No need of free rides on the tram. (jiang ziliu and jiang meilan come over to join the wangs. The three young men have had a bit to drink and become livelier than usual.) jiang ziliu: We’re getting too old to steal rides. There were no gates on the tram when we were small. We would jump on one, wait till the attendant came near, and jump off for another one. Never paid a dime crossing town. ding feng: Never paid for the ferry either. We’d wait at the third-class gate for a coolie with a big load of goods. We’d hide behind it and walk in free. We’d stand at the rail looking up at the sky and congratulate ourselves on how clever we were. ding yaocai (unusually talkative): We used to hang around movie houses. Perfect strangers would take pity on us and take us in. Got to see all my favorite movie stars that way. But then I grew too big to get in for free, so I thought about getting a job and earning my own ticket money. I was too old for the first grade by the time the war ended. Other kids used to laugh at me, and the teachers had to hide me when the education inspector came. I figured it was better for me to leave school and look for a job. I felt very grown-up making that decision. jiang ziliu: Remember the first time we rode on a double- decker bus? jiang jinyuan: Number 1 bus in Kowloon was the only one then, twenty cents for adults and half price for kids. Took us a long time to decide to spend all that money. ding feng: When Ma found out the Number 1 went through a rich neighborhood, she made us dress up in new clothes like it was lunar New Year. jiang ziliu: Mei wanted to go to the Dairy Farm for ice cream. But when we got there, all we did was stand outside the big gate and stare. We were too embarrassed to go in. jiang jinyuan: No place for poor folks like us. uncle: Not me. If I want to see rich people, all I have to do is to stretch my neck and look across the harbor. jiang meilan: Someday we’ll be richer than them. auntie qi: That’s right. Marry a rich man and share with us your good fortune. ding wang: It’s easier said than done. Remember right before the liberation, gold flew from the mainland into Hong Kong by the pound? You get any of that? jiang jinyuan: That’s what being poor means, standing at the open door, too afraid to enter. We had more guts during the war. We would do anything just to stay alive.

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uncle: One would either die from starvation or get killed by a bomb. So when the planes came over, we just stood there looking up at them in the sky. auntie jiang: Don’t give us that story! You weren’t brave, just stupid. That day the Japs were bombing Kai Tak Airport, you thought that was just an exercise. (During the following exchanges, everyone begins to gather around auntie jiang’s place to exchange wartime stories with great relish.) auntie qi: No newspapers, no radio. The Japanese army was in the New Territories, and we didn’t even know it. jiang jinyuan: What really scared the crap out of me was when the Japs started shelling us from across the harbor. auntie wang: Someone told us not to stay together, or one bomb would kill the whole clan. So we ran off in different directions. Wang and I grabbed our three children and went to our cousin’s in the Western District. We had an awful time with Feng; he wouldn’t leave without Ziliu. ding jie: How old was I then, Ma? auntie wang: O hush. You weren’t born yet. ding wang: The Japs were shelling the naval base in Wanchai. Bombs were falling everywhere. By the time we got to the Western District, it was pitch- dark. We hid in an old building that shook like crazy from the bombs. When the next street took a direct hit, the entire building came tumbling down, crushing two of our sons. auntie wang: It was all meant to be, right? We came stumbling back, numb with fear. Just by going from one district to another, Feng was the only one left of our three boys. auntie jiang: When Ziliu’s pa got his bonus, we decided to go into business, figuring others would join us and make a change in the neighborhood. jiang jinyuan: The money was enough to open a sidewalk stand in Wanchai, selling cakes and other desserts to passersby. ding wang: On opening day, we put up a big red banner. Things looked really good. Lots of hustle-bustle . . . uncle: Sure there was lots of hustle-bustle. The Japs started bombing at seven in the morning and didn’t stop till seven at night. Only an idiot would stop to eat cakes in the middle of the falling shells. auntie jiang: Well, that was the end of our money. So we went begging in the old country. uncle: Not yet. There were a few dollars left. Ziliu’s father took them to the bank. auntie jiang: That’s right. The Shanghai Bank. You entered from the main street and left at the back. You followed the queue, turned the corner, and raised your arms to the Jap standing guard there. The guy behind Ziliu’s father picked his pocket. He could see his money being taken but didn’t dare make a sound. There went our last dollars! uncle: We should not have taken on something we knew nothing about. They say the textile business is going to take off. I’ll say it’s not for us.

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jiang jinyuan: We gonna play mahjong or not? (The four men respond.) ding wang: Might as well. No moon watching tonight. auntie jiang: Go play in your house. Looks like it’s going to rain. (They begin to scatter. The four men go up to the second floor of the wang house for their game. The others go back to their own places, tidying up things. ding feng and jiang ziliu go to the waterfront. jiang meilan stands idly by, watching the backs of ding feng and jiang ziliu, deep in thought. It’s getting late. The radio continues to play, over the sound of the mahjong games from different quarters. The wind and waves have grown stronger. The blind woman walks slowly back to her place, sits in the wind.) ding feng: So dark the waters. So quiet everyone. jiang ziliu: Kind of strange hearing the wartime stories again on a night like this. ding feng: I get ner vous when I think of their high hopes for us. jiang ziliu: All those hardships and sufferings. They did what they had to do, even begging in the street, just to bring us up. They could hold their heads high. But now their children have to make good. If we failed, if we ended up begging in the street, we’d bring shame upon them. Isn’t that strange? ding feng: We’re only in a third-rate school, not Hong Kong U. jiang ziliu: We? Better than they? (Shaking his head) Their courage in surviving against all odds, their generosity in sharing the little they had, their determination to pull together and protect one another against all obstacles—they’re far better people than we. There’s nothing we can do to surpass them. ding feng: You think too much . . . Sometimes I worry that no one will understand you. You could end up unhappy. (jiang meilan comes over with a ruler used in school.) jiang meilan: When people sell land, how do they measure it? With a ruler like this? ding feng (vaguely): Maybe. jiang meilan: Cai said this land on the seashore’s worth a lot of money. One square foot is more than his boss’s whole month’s pay. (Pause.) jiang ziliu: Is having money that important to you? jiang meilan (pausing, then quietly): If I became rich, I’d be able to give my parents a better life. Perhaps then they could forgive me for not dying in place of my little brother during the war. (The blind woman, jiang ziliu, and ding feng all turn to her. jiang meilan returns to her house, trying to figure out how to measure the land.) ding feng (notices that jiang ziliu is looking at him): Look, Ziliu, you know I’ll always be on your side, but it’s getting harder for me to understand you. For me, it’s simple. All I want is to work hard and climb high on the ladder of success. jiang ziliu (half in jest): And leave all of us behind? ding feng: Come along, then.

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(ding feng goes to join jiang meilan. From the narrow alley, song shuwen quietly comes out. The blind woman feels her presence and looks up in surprise. jiang ziliu, squatting near the water, looks up and smiles as if expecting her.) song shuwen I forgot my bunny lantern. (jiang ziliu goes over to the tree and takes down the lantern. He has added a bit more paper, but the lantern remains unfinished. He hands it to song shuwen.) jiang ziliu (a bit apologetically): It’s still unfinished. song shuwen: It’s good enough, that you made it just for me. (Smiles at him, then turns toward the sea) The sea is so dark tonight . . . I used to dream of diving down to the bottom of the sea to take a look at a world without walls and without doors. Now I want to fly above the clouds so I can see the moonlight. jiang ziliu (looking at her carefully): Have you ever thought of climbing the ladder of success, like everybody else? song shuwen: I’m not a caterpillar, why should I want to climb? Besides, the ladder would be so crowded I’d end up stepping on everybody else. But . . . come to think of it, I could be a caterpillar, not for climbing, though, but for becoming a butterfly. Then I could fly wherever I wanted to. jiang ziliu: Good for you! Let’s make a solemn pledge: we’ll always find our own path and become what we want to become, not dictated by others. Let them climb; we’ll fly! song shuwen (laughing happily, shakes hands with jiang ziliu): Is that the Shrine in the Middle of the Sea? jiang ziliu (nodding): Look how high the waves. song shuwen: It’s so small. Does it really answer prayers? jiang ziliu (shaking his head): I don’t know. But the fishermen believe that if you burn incense and offer a prayer there, the Goddess of the Sea will bless you and always bring you safely back. song shuwen: Can we go there and offer some incense? jiang ziliu: Now? song shuwen (pausing, then quietly): My parents are sending me off to my aunt’s across the harbor. I leave early tomorrow morning. I don’t think I’ll ever come back. jiang ziliu (shocked): It means I’ll never see you again. (He walks away, trying to catch his breath, then comes back and looks at her. ding feng sees song shuwen, a bit surprised. He goes over to the tree and reaches for his lantern but stops when he sees how emotional jiang ziliu is.) I . . . I don’t know how . . . (Reaches out and holds her hands in his) I want you to promise me, no matter where you go, no matter what happens, you’ll always stay the way you are . . . I . . . I want you to know, no matter where you may be, with mountains and oceans separating us, as long as I can look up at the moon and out at the sea, I’ll think of you. I’ll take courage and see things clearly . . . (He is unable to go on. song shuwen waits.) song shuwen: I’m only moving across the harbor. (jiang ziliu bursts out laughing, a bit embarrassed.)

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But I want to say a prayer at the shrine before I go. ding feng (coming over): Good. We’ll take you there. jiang ziliu: The shrine’s too small . . . hardly room for one worshipper at a time. ding feng: We shall offer some incense to make sure that Shuwen comes back. (All three become excited. jiang meilan comes over. ding feng grabs a few pieces of incense burning by the door.) jiang meilan (to song shuwen): Why are you here again? song shuwen: We’re going to the shrine. Coming? jiang meilan: It’s too dark, and the waves too high. song shuwen: It’s more fun that way. ding feng: We’ll offer a little incense and come right back. song shuwen (to the blind woman, joyously): Auntie Liang, we’re going out to the shrine! (The blind woman tries to hold on to her. But she runs off the stage with jiang ziliu and ding feng, all laughing happily. The wind and the waves become stronger. The blind woman begins to pray in a loud voice. jiang meilan stands watching, slowly becoming alarmed. She also runs off the stage. The blind woman listens intensely, her prayers becoming a whisper. Offstage, jiang meilan lets out a loud scream. The blind woman springs to her feet and begins to yell for help in a trembling voice. Their screams arouse the neighborhood.) jiang meilan (offstage): Oh God, oh God. Ziliu! Feng! Oh God, the boat’s turned over . . . (People are heard offstage. jiang meilan runs back in.) Ma, Pa, Ziliu’s boat has capsized. Help! Auntie Jiang! Uncle Wang . . . help! Please help! (In shock, everyone runs off. There is commotion offstage: “Phone the police!” “Send for an ambulance!” song dinghui comes running in.) song dinghui: Where? Where’s the boat with Shuwen? (Following the noise, he also runs off the stage. An ambulance is heard arriving. In the midst of screaming and weeping, the blind woman stands alone onstage, trembling. The light changes. Above the wind and waves, the ambulance can be heard leaving. People begin to come back, shocked and speechless. jiang ziliu and ding feng come in, still wet from the ordeal, wrapped in some old clothes. They go squat in the corner.) jiang meilan: How was it, Ma? auntie yuan (in a low voice): Don’t know whether she can be saved. It took a long time to find her. Shuwen didn’t know how to swim. jiang ziliu (in the dead silence, half to himself, half to ding feng): She mustn’t die. Someone like us, it means nothing whether we live on. She’s got stories to write, apples to pick, clams to dig. The whole world out there is waiting for her. Someone so brave, so different, with so many questions to ask. She must not be allowed to die. What god do I pray to now? If someone must die, let it be me.

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ding feng (coming to after listening to jiang ziliu): Perhaps I can take her place. (Goes up and grabs the blind woman) Auntie Liang, you pray to your god every day. Now go ask for a favor. If Shuwen can be saved, I’ll die in her place . . . (jiang ziliu looks up in surprise. ding feng goes to him. The two cling on to each other and weep bitterly.)

A CT 2 (The same location as in act 1, in the early 1970s. Hong Kong is getting very prosperous; all its citizens are expecting a better tomorrow. It is the Moon Festival. The day is bright and cheery. The row of houses upstage has disappeared. In their places are relatively new five- and six-story apartment buildings. The street across upstage has been paved for motor traffic. The trees have disappeared. Through the buildings the sky is still visible. There are fewer old stone houses on the waterfront, left between the tall buildings. The original lodgings of the blind woman and uncle on stage left have been replaced by a tall building. A dirt road has been added along the shore. The wooden planks are still there, but they are old and worn, as if they could collapse anytime. The blind woman and uncle have moved in with jiang ziliu. ding yaocai and his mother, auntie qi, still live in the same small house. Some new tenants, who have put up some makeshift partitions, have moved into the neighborhood. The area is unkempt and crowded. As the action unfolds, people can be seen going about their daily lives, with very little to do with jiang ziliu and the old neighbors. jiang ziliu’s home has remained much the same as when his mother was alive, still very simply furnished except for his collection of paintings and calligraphy. In the corners are beds for the blind woman and uncle. jiang ziliu is using his mother’s former double- decker bed. The upper part is filled with stuff. A skeleton of a lantern hangs at the head of the bed. It looks very much like the gift he gave song shuwen a long time ago. A poem by the famed poet Wang Anshi hangs on the wall. At the other corner are goods he stores for others.)

At Rise (It is dawn. The weather is clear and cool. The fishermen have just finished unloading their goods. When the lights come on, the waterfront is filled with happy chatter. The last boat has just departed, and people are pushing the last few bushels off the stage. Everyone is in a good mood, anticipating the festival. The blind woman, now seventy-three, sits in front of her lodging. She is still swift and determined with her broom, protecting herself from anyone giving her trouble. uncle is seventy-five, very weak and frail. He is standing in front of the house, exchanging banter with the crowd. auntie qi is busy working as before. jiang ziliu is now thirty-seven, looking pretty much the same but with greater maturity. Life outdoors has kept him healthy and strong. Squatting nearby with his constant cigarette, he oversees the last details and listens to the excitement over the wild stock market.)

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man no. 1: The stocks of New World have gone up by thirty dollars. They’ve been on the market only for a few weeks. man no. 2: The investors are having shark’s fin for their meals, and we’re still hauling fish. uncle: Who wants anything to do with people like us? man no. 1: There’s no need of anyone wanting us. All you need is money. man no. 3: Auntie Qi, your son’s newspaper has gone public. Did you get some stocks? auntie qi: Of course. The company gave Cai two thousand free shares for his years of ser vice. Cai said if they went up a dollar, he’d sell them. man no. 1: That’s dumb. He could use them on margins. He’d soon be rich and wouldn’t have to drive his boss around anymore. man no. 2: Even schoolteachers are quitting their jobs to play the market. man no. 1: Mortgaging their houses, selling their shops—everybody’s into it. man no. 3: Let’s pool our money and buy a few shares. We’ll count you in, Auntie Liang. blind woman: I saved up enough to buy me a coffin. Don’t need the temptation. man no. 2: Let’s buy in now. By the next Moon Festival, we’ll be sitting here doing nothing, watching somebody else sweating away with the fish. man no. 1: Isn’t Hong Kong wonderful? Even little guys like us are not left behind. man no. 3: Hey, Jiang Ziliu, why do you still act like all this has nothing to do with you? (jiang ziliu smiles at them, smoking his cigarette. auntie qi leaves with everyone.) uncle (half in jest): I’ve been waiting for thirty years for some action from him. blind woman: Old man, don’t be so mean. uncle: Am I wrong? Look at our neighbors, Yuan and Wang, all living in those nice new apartments now. blind woman: If you moved away, you wouldn’t have this nice place with the open sky and cool breeze, and nobody listening to all your crap. uncle: Bad enough he’s got no money—he ain’t got a wife either. How can his poor dead mother rest in peace? jiang ziliu (smiling): What would you like for the feast tonight, Uncle? uncle: Didn’t you say Dawen’s back from America, and we’re having dinner with him? jiang ziliu: I thought you said you hadn’t seen him for so long, and you weren’t friends. You’d be too embarrassed. Besides, we’re only having lunch. blind woman: Pay him no heed, Ziliu. He changes his mind from one minute to the next. jiang ziliu: If you don’t want to join us, I’ll get something for you and Auntie Liang for tonight. uncle: I want a wife of yours to serve me. jiang ziliu: What if we get you a wife? (uncle grumbles as usual. jiang ziliu is still laughing when ding baoheng enters. ding baoheng is seventeen, the eldest son of jiang meilan and ding feng. He is tall and very good-looking, also bright and with a mind of his own.)

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ding baoheng: Granduncle, Granny, Uncle Ziliu . . . blind woman: Why so early? Another fight with your parents last night? uncle (shaking his head): Not giving them a break even on a holiday. What did Feng and Mei do in their previous lives to deserve a troublemaker like you for a son? Why can’t you be like your little sister? jiang ziliu: So no more talk of having children, Uncle. Mei said she should have laid an egg instead. (ding baoheng goes up and wrestles jiang ziliu to the ground, dropping a bag he carries.) ding baoheng: The buns! (Picks up the bag) Here, Granny, Granduncle. This one is with chicken; the other with roasted pork. (All four begin eating.) jiang ziliu: So what was it this time? ding baoheng: Father was at a dinner last night. All his friends bragged about their children. When he came home, he told me he was the only one with nothing to brag about. I made him lose face. Got me real mad. jiang ziliu: Well, it’s not like he was wrong. You did get kicked out of two good schools before you reached eighth grade . . . ding baoheng: I’m doing well now. jiang ziliu: . . . and the next school closed down before they could kick you out. How can your father tell his friends all that? blind woman: Didn’t you say the boy’s English is good? jiang ziliu: He learned it from reading Playboy. uncle: What boy? jiang ziliu: A magazine where people don’t have clothes on. uncle: The boy’s bad because of your influence. You never take anything seriously. jiang ziliu: But he’s not bad at all: no drinking, no gambling, no fooling around. And on holidays he brings you hot buns. uncle: That’s not enough. jiang ziliu (after a slight pause): Who decides what’s enough? You? Me? His parents? Or the boy himself ? ding baoheng (jumps up with joy): Well said! I got the answer for my father. uncle: Feng may not blame you for his son, being your old friend and all that. But Mei—I’m sure deep down she holds you responsible for the boy’s ways. jiang ziliu: Mei . . . (Shaking his head) Her son would be different if she’d spent less time playing the stock market . . . (Watching ding baoheng throwing pebbles into the water, he goes over, squats next to the boy, smoking his cigarette, and speaks quietly.) To be your own man, you’ve got to work hard and learn some skills. ding baoheng: I am working hard! I came first last year! (jiang ziliu watches him in silence.) Remember that time when Father asked me to pawn his watch? We were poor then. Father couldn’t pay back the loan and was about to lose his store. He was so ashamed

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that he had to ask me to pawn the watch for him. . . . I think the watch was the most expensive thing he owned. I can still see the look on his face when he gave me the watch . . . I learned then what being poor could do to a person . . . It was New Year’s Eve. I went looking for a pawn shop. I walked all the way to Wanchai but couldn’t find any still open for business. I cried all the way home. Such a little thing and I failed him. I promised myself then I’d work really hard to become a useful person. jiang ziliu: I still have the watch. You can have it back anytime. ding baoheng: I know. But I want to earn it back, pay the debt I owe you. (Laughing, begins throwing pebbles again) Father said it was the smartest thing I ever did, getting such a great price for it, much more than it was worth. jiang ziliu: He can afford ten Rolexes now. ding baoheng: But he and Mother, they still seem to feel poor. That holiday they had a huge fight. Mother told him he was useless, that she’d have to make money herself. Mother’s more into stocks than he is. jiang ziliu: Such a big change of heart for both of you, just because of the little watch. ding baoheng (shaking his head): I’m not like her. I don’t want to become a moneymaking machine, just a useful person, free and independent . . . like you. jiang ziliu (startled, looks at the boy and shakes his head): What would your father say to that? ding baoheng: I thought you were the best of friends. jiang ziliu (nodding his head with a sigh): We were born on the same day, grew up together right here on the waterfront. Here . . . it was here a very good friend of ours fell into the sea . . . The waves were high . . . she couldn’t swim . . . It took a long time to find her . . . We waited here, not knowing whether she could be saved. That night your father was willing to die in her place, for me . . . But now . . . these days . . . sometimes I don’t understand the way he thinks anymore. ding baoheng: He still trusts you. jiang ziliu (nodding): There’s nothing I won’t do for him. ding baoheng (after a bit of hesitation): Would you talk to him about me taking a job at the newspaper? jiang ziliu (surprised): You? Work for a newspaper? ding baoheng (nodding): I’ve been accepted by the English paper as a cub reporter. I can start as soon as I pass the school cert. exam. jiang ziliu (looking at the boy carefully): Without breathing a word to anyone? (ding baoheng doesn’t answer.) Quitting school just like that, what would your parents say? They have high hopes you’ll go on to Hong Kong University. ding baoheng: Father beat the hell out of me last night. jiang ziliu (still carefully): Working at an English paper, the foreign devils aren’t going to give you much of a break. ding baoheng: But I’ll learn a lot. Someday I’ll surpass all of them. jiang ziliu (hesitantly): Well, maybe a little rough treatment would be good for you . . . At least you’ll be out of your parents’ hair for a while.

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ding baoheng (wrestling with jiang ziliu): I knew you’d help me. jiang ziliu: Only if you promise to behave yourself at lunch today. We’ve got important guests. ding baoheng (promptly): I promise . . . Is this Mr. Song the brother of the girl you just mentioned? jiang ziliu: Yes. ding baoheng: How old were you when she drowned? jiang ziliu (pausing, overwhelmed by emotions): Nineteen. ding baoheng: Is it because of her you never got married? jiang ziliu (recovering): I didn’t marry because I was afraid I’d have a son who’d drive me crazy like you do your parents. (Laughing, ding baoheng is about to jump on jiang ziliu again when he sees a man coming in looking around and checking the address.) jiang ziliu: You looking for someone? zhang: Yes. Jiang Ziliu. jiang ziliu: That’s me. (zhang nods, waiting.) Heng, go ask Granny what special dishes I can get her for tonight. (ding baoheng goes to the blind woman.) (To the stranger) Yes? zhang: My name is Zhang. jiang ziliu: Mr. Zhang. zhang (nodding and looking around): You’ve been living here a long time. (jiang ziliu nods.) Didn’t there used to be lots of houses like yours around here? jiang ziliu: Some were torn down to make way for the high-rises. zhang: And your neighbors, they’ve also been here long? jiang ziliu (shaking his head): Most have moved away. Others moved in from the mainland in the sixties. zhang (nodding): I hear you’re in charge here. (jiang ziliu is surprised.) All the seafood vendors along the back street listen to you. jiang ziliu: I just deliver goods. zhang (casually): They wouldn’t have any goods if you didn’t deliver them . . . Of course they listen to you. jiang ziliu (displeased with zhang’s tone of voice): Who are you, Mr. Zhang? If you’re from the police or the Health Department, just say so. We’ve nothing to hide. zhang (laughing): We’re going to open a large seafood store a few blocks away. Big investments . . . We’re strangers to this area; I came for some advice. jiang ziliu: What would you like to know? zhang: We already know just about all that we need to know. . . . Frankly, we want to talk business. jiang ziliu: I don’t have all the say; I have a partner.

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zhang: Ding Feng, right? (jiang ziliu is a bit taken aback. He says nothing.) They say he trusts you with everything . . . But he doesn’t have to know about our discussion. jiang ziliu: Are you suggesting I lie to him? zhang: Wait, wait. I didn’t ask you to lie to him. I only said you didn’t have to tell him. jiang ziliu: I don’t keep secrets from him. zhang: And you’re sure he keeps no secrets from you? (jiang ziliu stares at him.) He’s making a lot of money for himself. I doubt if he’s sharing any with you. jiang ziliu: That’s his business. zhang: You’re going to take care of the goods and hired help for him for the rest of your life? jiang ziliu (politely): Mr. Zhang, I don’t see how any of this concerns you. zhang: You will if you let me go on. (He walks around surveying everything.) You’re in a position to make a lot of money . . . for your friend. jiang ziliu: He doesn’t need my help. zhang: You mean you’re not interested in helping your friend. jiang ziliu (after a pause): Exactly what do you want me to do for you? zhang (waving his hand, shaking his head): You got it wrong, my friend. I’m here to do you a favor. I’m not talking small potatoes, but huge amounts of money that keep on coming . . . If you don’t want to bring in Ding Feng, it’s quite all right. He won’t miss anything. He’ll get the same commission as before. But if you really want to be noble about it, you can split your share with him. jiang ziliu: We don’t break the law. zhang (with indignation): Who’s talking about breaking the law? What kind of man do you think I am? . . . All I’m asking is that you sell your sea goods to us. That’s all. jiang ziliu: We sell to the stores in the back street. We’ve been doing business with them for generations. zhang: So it’s time for a change. jiang ziliu: You can deal directly with the fishermen. zhang: You know damn well that they don’t trust outsiders. The only agents they know around here are Jiang Ziliu and Ding Feng. They save the best for you. jiang ziliu: All the stores will go out of business if we stop selling to them. Ding Feng would never stand for it. zhang: He will when he hears we’re offering five times the current commission. jiang ziliu: What? zhang: You deal with us, and we’ll give you five times what you’re getting. jiang ziliu (suppressing his anger): I think you’d better leave and never come back. zhang: I could have gone to Ding Feng directly. He’d jump at the offer. But you’re poorer than your friend; I thought I’d do you a favor. jiang ziliu: Ding would never agree to it.

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zhang: That’s how much you know about your friend. I bet he’d take it for half of what we’re offering you. jiang ziliu (exploding): Are you leaving or not? (ding baoheng comes out to see the commotion.) zhang (leisurely): All right, take it easy. We’ll talk again . . . (Turning back before leaving) You’ll sell. (jiang ziliu is in a rage. ding baoheng looks at him, a bit afraid and a bit curious.) jiang ziliu (seeing ding baoheng, gets hold of himself ): Can’t believe a few words from a stranger could so upset me. Haven’t lost my temper like that in a long time. When did this place change? Folks think you can buy anything with money. ding baoheng: He wants to buy your house? You know you have buyers lining up for it. jiang ziliu (shaking his head): No, something more important than that. ding baoheng: Just don’t give it to him. You refuse to sell the house and you refuse to play the markets, just to drive everyone crazy. jiang ziliu: Silly kid, I don’t do things to drive people crazy. ding baoheng: I know. You’re your own man. No one can order you around. (jiang ziliu looks at him, surprised.) You promised to give me one of your calligraphy scrolls. I want “Ode to the Plum Blossoms.” jiang ziliu (going into the house, followed by ding baoheng): The poem by Wang Anshi? Do you know what it means? ding baoheng: “A few plum branches in the corner of the yard / Bloom alone at dawn in the icy air. / Even from a distance one can tell it’s not snow / On account of the subtle fragrance fair.” It’s about a guy full of himself, right? jiang ziliu: I won’t give it to you if that’s what you think. ding baoheng: Please, Uncle Ziliu. It takes you just a few minutes to do another one. (jiang ziliu takes the scroll down for ding baoheng, who picks up the lantern skeleton. Outside the house, jiang meilan comes looking for her son.) Ever since I was a little kid, I’ve seen this by your bed. What was it? jiang ziliu (pausing): A kite. ding baoheng: A round kite? jiang ziliu: Round ones fly higher. (ding baoheng looks at jiang ziliu half with disbelief. jiang meilan greets the blind woman and uncle. jiang ziliu and ding baoheng come out of the house. jiang meilan, at thirty-six, seems older than her age. She’s very sure what she wants from life, so is not interested in things not serving her purpose, and is not curious about anything deviating from her goal. She verbalizes every thought that comes to her and speaks rapidly with little pause.) jiang meilan (to her son): You, how is it? (ding baoheng is a bit embarrassed. jiang meilan examines his limp; ding baoheng tries to get away.)

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Hasn’t taken such a beating from his old man for a long time. Still hurt? jiang ziliu: He’s all right. Came early and ate several buns. jiang meilan: He ate?! And I brought you a whole bag. jiang ziliu (takes the bag and hands it over to ding baoheng): Have some more. (ding baoheng bites into another one.) uncle (to jiang meilan): Hurry up and get your son away from bad influence. jiang meilan: I suppose he told you he’s quitting school . . . Did you say anything? What’s with him anyway? Both he and his sister came from the same belly. She never gives me any trouble. He has been unteachable since the day he was born. Asks questions no one knows how to answer. Booted out of one school after another. And now this . . . Can you blame his old man for blowing his top? uncle: Right! Beat him till he’s good. Works all the time. jiang meilan: Do you really think we wanted to? This time he went too far. We’ve worked so hard all these years. Whatever for? With all the stocks this past year, we can buy him into any school. He needs tutoring? We can hire a tutor, for as long as he wants . . . Does it still hurt, son? ding baoheng: Ah, Mom. jiang meilan: More buns here. Eat. ding baoheng: I’m stuffed. jiang meilan: You turning down food? Don’t you know people are starving on the mainland? Ask Uncle Ziliu. When we were your age, we all had to make do with only one moon cake. We looked forward for a whole month to getting a festive dinner. You’re a growing boy. People look at how skinny you are and say his parents don’t have the money to feed him, or else they’re too stingy to buy him a meal. jiang ziliu: He looks fine . . . great physique. jiang meilan: You’re no help! You never say anything serious to him, and he takes everything you say seriously. He said, “What’s wrong with Uncle Ziliu wanting to stay put?” As if money smells like rotting fish. jiang ziliu: Hey, I never said there was anything wrong with having money. It’s making it that takes up too much time and energy. jiang meilan: You think time and energy are guarantees? We were all poor fish traders. Fortunately now we have a chance to become prosperous like Hong Kong. But you’re right. Being rich doesn’t mean people will respect you. Now if you became a doctor or a lawyer, then they’d stop and take notice. (Turning to ding baoheng) Forget the buns if you can’t eat any more. Go home and change. Your sister’s waiting to go shopping with you. ding baoheng: Ah, Mom. I don’t want to buy new clothes just to meet someone. They’re uncomfortable. jiang ziliu: You’re taking them to buy new clothes just to meet Dawen for lunch? jiang meilan: He’s back from America. He used to look down on us. I’m not going to let that happen again. jiang ziliu: Mei, Dawen’s just back for a look around the old neighborhood and a chance to see old friends.

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jiang meilan: What’s there to see? It’s been eighteen years since his sister died, and it’s all changed. He’s here to show off what a big success he’s been in America. jiang ziliu: He just wanted to stop by to say hello. You and Feng insisted on lunch. jiang meilan: You want him to think we’re still poor or something? Even lunch is on the cheap side. We should have invited him to dinner. jiang ziliu: It’s the festival. He’ll eat with his family. jiang meilan: I bet his two sons speak English all the time, growing up in America and all that. My son never had that chance, but someday he’ll be a doctor. ding baoheng: Mom, I already said I would not be a doctor. jiang meilan: Well, study law, then. ding baoheng: Mom . . . jiang ziliu (to ding baoheng): We’ll talk about it after tonight. jiang meilan (getting heated): Why is it after all this time you still behave like I’ve said nothing? You think I’d send you to a third-rate college when I can afford the best university for you! ding baoheng: Mom, I told you I got a job at the newspaper. jiang meilan (so furious that she starts hitting him): I’m going to kill you right here. Do you want to see your father and me die of a heart attack? Why have we worked so hard? You quitting school to work for foreign devils? They’ll just make you sweep the floor. We’ll die of shame. ding baoheng: My mind is made up, Mom. jiang meilan (turning to jiang ziliu): What did you say to him? He wouldn’t dare unless he’s talked to you. (Seeing that she’s getting serious, everyone becomes silent. uncle clears his throat and moves away.) jiang ziliu: Heng, better go home and change. You’ve got some shopping to do. (ding baoheng turns to go. jiang meilan is not letting up.) jiang meilan: I don’t understand you at all, Ziliu. You are his father’s best friend; you’d do what’s best for him. Ever since he was a little boy, he loved hanging around you. We never once interfered. But to tell him to quit school—what do have against us? jiang ziliu: Mei, you know I’d never tell him to quit school . . . jiang meilan: I thought you really cared what happened to him. Do you want him to grow up like us? Hungry all the time . . . ashamed to tell people where we lived. I’ll not have my children feeling inferior like I did. jiang ziliu: Mei, your children are many times better off than we were . . . jiang meilan: But Hong Kong is different now. In our time, everyone was poor. Now everybody eats well and dresses well. To be better than they are, just having money is not enough. jiang ziliu: Mei, you’re so afraid of what people think. Exactly who are these people? Why are they so important? jiang meilan: What do you mean? People, all those people. They don’t look out for you. If you don’t look out for yourself, no one else will. Just like Hong Kong. You

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remember what it was like. Refugees crawling all over the place—who gave us any help? No one, not China, not England, that’s who. But we made it, didn’t we? We went through hell to get where we are today. Remember Yu, the grocer on the main street. He went into plastic flowers and now owns two limos and a yacht over twenty feet long. Okay, it took us a little longer to get where we can hold our heads up in public. You think I’m going to let my son throw it all away? jiang ziliu: Mei, have you ever thought that you made it possible for your children to be free from worrying about what other people think? Clothes, food, money . . . these are no longer problems for them. Now they can be what they want to be. jiang meilan: You mean I should let him mess up his own life, be a two-bit reporter. (Overwhelmed by anxiety, begins to weep) I told Feng so many times not to let his son get so close to you. Of all the great examples in Hong Kong to pick from, he picks you. Why do you want to cause us so much grief ? If only I had two sons, I’d give one for yourself; you could do whatever you wanted with him. But Heng is all I have . . . (The blind woman comes over.) blind woman: Mei, Heng’s bright. He knows what he’s doing. You can’t blame it all on Ziliu. jiang meilan: But this good-for-thing is the only person he trusts. If only we’d made our money sooner, we could’ve sent him abroad. But I didn’t have the heart to part with him; he’s my only son . . . (She cries inconsolably. She is just about to open her mouth again when somebody walks in. When it dawns on her who the person is, she becomes confused and embarrassed.) Oh my God . . . it’s you . . . I thought you said eleven o’clock . . . (She tries to pull herself together.) jiang ziliu: Is it Dawen? (song dawen hesitates. jiang ziliu offers his hand.) I’m Jiang Ziliu. Remember me? song dawen (shaking hands with jiang ziliu): Of course . . . Ziliu . . . of course. jiang ziliu: Remember Auntie Liang? song dawen: Of course, the lady with the loud chants. blind woman: You’ve a good memory. Hong Kong is different now. There is a public ordinance against disturbing people. jiang ziliu: And Mei. jiang meilan: Er . . . I didn’t know you’d be here this early . . . I haven’t changed yet. song dawen: Change? jiang ziliu: Thought you wouldn’t be here till eleven. song dawen: My wife took the kids shopping. I thought I’d come early and look around a bit. If it’s too much trouble . . . jiang ziliu: Oh no trouble at all . . . Just now Mei . . . blind woman: Mei was mugged this morning . . . jiang ziliu: Oh, that’s right.

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song dawen: How terrible! I’ve heard there’s a lot of crime now in Hong Kong. Did you go to the police? Did you lose much money? jiang meilan: It’s all right now . . . blind woman: Aren’t your children waiting for you to go shopping for clothes? jiang meilan: Oh, yes . . . let me go now and I’ll be back in a bit. We’ll go to the Jade Garden together. (She turns to go and notices that song dawen is dressed casually.) jiang ziliu: The Jade Garden? jiang meilan: Yes, the one in the new Connaught Centre. I’ve made reservations. (To song dawen) They just finished it last year, the tallest in Asia. By the way, have you been through the Cross-Harbour Tunnel yet? It just opened. So much more convenient. Remember in the old days people on the island hardly went to Kowloon? jiang ziliu (to song dawen): Would you like a cup of tea? song dawen: No, thanks. Just finished breakfast. Don’t worry about me; I’ll look around on my own. blind woman: I’ll get the tea . . . (She goes into the house to tell uncle of song dawen’s arrival. uncle sees that he’s having a conversation with jiang ziliu and decides to stay put. song dawen is nearly forty, much like most Chinese emigrants who have been in the United States for long years, simple, hardworking, looking quite colorless and ordinary. He looks out to the sea.) song dawen: I’ve wanted so long to come back to take a look at Hong Kong. But even the shrine has disappeared. jiang ziliu: It’s still there. You just can’t see it because of the squatter huts. When the refugees came in the sixties, they built their lodgings everywhere, even over the water. Now the shrine is connected to the land. song dawen (sighing): No need of a boat to go to the shrine. jiang ziliu: The goddess has been moved away; no one prays there anymore. song dawen (trying to brighten up): Some things are still the same . . . Even the stairs are still there. Only the big tree is gone. (The blind woman comes out with a cup of tea. song dawen quickly goes up and takes it from her.) Auntie Liang has remained the same. blind woman (going back to her corner): That’s what’s good about being blind; I don’t notice the change. jiang ziliu: There is no avoiding change. Remember the big argument we had with your father about selling the old houses to build new ones? We almost came to blows over it. No sooner had you left than another group came in, bought most of the people out for a few hundred dollars—big money in those days—and up went the high-rises. It was only in 1969 when land was selling in Central for two thousand dollars a square foot that we realized we were sitting on a gold mine. song dawen: That’s what’s great about Hong Kong. What it took other big cities in the world hundreds of years, Hong Kong did in twenty years! When I first went to Amer-

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ica and told people I was from Hong Kong, “Where’s that?” they’d ask. Now it’s become an international city. jiang ziliu: Very proud of it, the people here. song dawen: But it takes people like us coming back from abroad some getting used to. The way people in Hong Kong dash about to eat and shop, you’d think it was all free. Hong Kong is incredible. jiang ziliu: Yeah, like a cocky upstart street kid. song dawen: The good times came from hard work. They deserve to enjoy the fruits of their labor. jiang ziliu: It’s only been like this for the past two to three years. The sixties were bad. First the refugees started arriving. At first it wasn’t noticeable, just groups of them in rags and hungry for food. We had no idea things were that bad on the mainland. Revolutions are supposed to aim at the rich and powerful. But those were just ordinary folks . . . Then they really started to pour in. They could stay once they reached the city, but would be sent back if caught halfway. We went to the border to throw food and clothes over the fence. We knew what hard times were like. We wanted them to make it to the city. They thought Hong Kong was paradise. And we did, too. song dawen: But then came the sixty-seven riots . . . jiang ziliu: Oh no, not so fast. Lots of hard times yet . . . In sixty-three, the city ran out of water; got a few hours of fresh water every four days. The following year the banks took turns collapsing from runs; people were in a panic. Then a huge typhoon tore away the squatter huts and buried people alive under mud slides. Afterwards came the riots. song dawen: Was it as bad as we heard? jiang ziliu: Yeah. Not just because of the street fighting and the bombs, but because we suddenly realized all we’d worked so hard for could be taken from us in a flash. We might wake up one morning and find the Red Flag flying all over the city. Across the border all hell had broken loose. They called it the Cultural Revolution. Over here, huge posters began to appear on the walls; people demonstrating in the street, waving Mao’s Red Book and chanting slogans, aping the mainland and making our own mess. song dawen: Many left the city for good. jiang ziliu: But most had no choice but to stay. So we pretended it wasn’t happening to us and went about our daily lives as best we could. That was the one time we were most supportive of our colonial government. Isn’t that ironic? song dawen: Five years later and it’s like they never happened. jiang ziliu (shaking his head): They happened and Hong Kong is not the same since. We used to think that Hong Kong was the heaven providing our little patch of peace. Overnight we learned no matter what we did or how hard we tried, it made no difference. In a crisis, who spoke up for us? Not China, not Great Britain, no one! So with no tomorrow to speak of, we threw ourselves into today. Gradually and without really thinking much about it, we turned away from others to concentrate on ourselves. So

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we prospered, in just a few years. We’ve changed . . . but beneath it all maybe we’re not all that proud of what we’ve become . . . You were lucky; you got away. song dawen (after a pause): Remember Shuwen used to talk about going to America to pick apples? jiang ziliu: Ah, Shuwen . . . song dawen: We were so innocent, full of romantic ideas. Well, we did get to pick apples our first autumn there. And she was right; they did let you take home all you could carry after work. From October to January, we cooked them, we fried them, we baked them, and we drank the juice. We had apples coming out of our ears. . . . You may not approve Hong Kong’s way, of not thinking much of the future. But the future never turns out the way one imagines. jiang ziliu: Of all of us, you’ve been the most successful. You went abroad and graduated from university. song dawen: Yes, as a civil engineer. But the family depended on me and needed more than an engineer’s pay, so I opened a Chinese restaurant . . . You know how it is . . . to provide jobs for my parents and cousins and my wife’s parents and cousins—to give them a start in the new country till they can survive on their own. I’m forty now, too late to go back to engineering. Instead I’m thinking of adding an ice cream parlor . . . specializing in yogurt. That’s the extent of my achievements in the Promised Land . . . How many things turn out the way we plan? jiang ziliu: None. What must change will change; what must happen will happen . . . Your father would never have gotten into a fight with us if he’d known it would lead to Shuwen’s death. After that, you all went far away. Someone took his place in no time and had the houses torn down. song dawen: But you don’t seem to have changed. At least I don’t think Hong Kong has changed you. jiang ziliu: Some things must not be changed. Otherwise, besides things we can dispose of, like taking down houses and building new ones, we’ll have nothing to pass on to our children. song dawen: Is that why you won’t sell your house? jiang ziliu (laughing): Oh no. I just haven’t had a good reason to. Are you interested? song dawen (laughing): You even have the same job. jiang ziliu: The fishermen trust us, so do the shop owners. We just carry on as before. song dawen: Shuwen also trusted you. jiang ziliu (after a long pause): Yes, she did . . . You know, all these years, you never once asked me how that accident happened. song dawen: Because I know you and Feng loved Shuwen. You would have taken care of her if you could have, especially you. jiang ziliu: You trusted me, too. song dawen: Still, for a very long time, I couldn’t bring myself to forgive you, to look at you again and to speak with you, until I finally realized that Shuwen was gone; we were

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left to live on . . . You trade fish; I run a restaurant. Soon I’ll open my new shop, selling ice cream to make people fat, and yogurt to slim them down again. jiang ziliu: I suppose if I put my mind to it, I can play around a bit with my money, too, like Feng. (The two men smile at each other.) ding feng (offstage): Have been waiting for you to say just that! (ding feng enters in high spirits, followed by his wife, son, daughter, and his sister, ding jie. Behind him are ding yaocai and his mother, auntie qi. They are all dressed nicely, especially the two children. Thirteen-year- old ding baoyi is a bit chubby, also quick and bright. She minds coming to the old neighborhood and is not a bit interested in the gathering. ding feng looks older than his age, smoking nonstop and anxious about many things. He feels both proud and anxious about his station in life. While he has become part of the city’s success story, he continues to feel inadequate and unsure. ding jie has just returned to Hong Kong. Her youth has been wasted on the mainland during the tumultuous years. While she doesn’t look upon her past with regret, she does get a bit anxious trying to make up for lost time. ding yaocai is still a chauffeur and taking care of his mother. He has never harbored any high hopes so is quite content with his lot. With life experience, his shyness is gone. The group exchanges warm greetings. uncle and the blind woman come out of the house to join them. song dawen does not recognize any of them but is moved by their warm welcome.) Heard you’d arrived, so came early for a visit. You’ve met my wife, Mei. This is my sister, Jie. Recognize her? (Vaguely, song dawen greets her.) jiang meilan: Come, children. This is Uncle Song, a big businessman in America. song dawen (shaking hands with the children): They’re all grown. jiang meilan: Just started form six. Will get into Hong Kong University in two years. ding feng: This is Baoyi, my youngest. ding yaocai: Very smart girl, attending a famous school. song dawen (shakes hands with ding yaocai): You haven’t changed a bit. ding yaocai: With everything in Hong Kong changing, I figure I should stay the same to remind people of the old times. uncle: Oh, he’s changed all right. Remember how shy and quiet he was? Now you can’t shut him up. jiang ziliu: My uncle. ding yaocai: Pay him no heed. Do you remember my mother? uncle: Back from the Gold Mountain, eh? Good for you. ding yaocai (to the children): Let’s get some chairs. (ding baoyi doesn’t move. ding baoheng goes into the house. ding yaocai also goes to his place to fetch some stools.) auntie qi: I’ll get some tea.

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song dawen: Don’t trouble yourself. uncle: How was it? Life good in America? (song dawen smiles.) jiang meilan: Of course. You must have a wonderful life in America, after all these years. Here we’re still struggling. (Chairs are brought out. Everyone sits down except ding baoyi, looking at the chairs with disdain. She remains standing next to her mother.) uncle: How long has it been? jiang ziliu: Eighteen years . . . ding yaocai: Did you make a point of returning after eighteen years, just like in the movies. song dawen: Movies last but a couple of hours; real life has to be lived one day at a time. jiang meilan: Don’t be modest. You can’t imagine how we envy you. song dawen: You and Feng seem to be doing very well. You’ve got two fine children. jiang meilan: Not really. Times have been difficult for us. (ding baoheng and auntie qi come out with tea for everyone.) Auntie Liang once told Feng’s fortune. She said he’d be a very rich man. I’m still waiting. uncle: Auntie’s pretty accurate at some things. She said Ziliu would not be like everybody. Just take a look at him now. blind woman: My prediction of Cai was also correct. I said when he grew up he would be getting around in a car. And he’s been driving one for over ten years now, except, of course, that it’s not his own car! ding yaocai: She was right about Jie, too. You told her she’d never have to worry about making a living. She went off to the mainland to serve her country. There she wore the same rag each day and ate in the commune, not in the least worried about making a living. ding jie: All those idle hours in a car made a mean man out of you. uncle: You would have been spared years of suffering if you’d married him. ding yaocai: It’s not too late . . . ding jie: Give me your newspaper stocks to play the margin, and I’ll marry you. ding baoheng: Mom, even Auntie Jie thinks the paper is doing well. ding yaocai: I’ll sell my stocks when they go up one dollar. I don’t take risks and I don’t gamble. That’s why Ma and I still have to rent such a shack. It’s her misfortune to have me as a son. auntie qi: I say Feng is the smartest. He leans on no one but himself. See how well he and Mei are doing, and they started out with nothing. uncle: Ziliu could be the same if he’d move his ass off that chair. jiang meilan: He’s actually shrewd. We couldn’t wait to sell our house. His is worth many times more now on the market. ding feng: Ziliu’s sitting on a gold mine. The longer he waits, the higher the price. In the meantime, after dinner, he drinks a little wine, does a little painting, and waits to make the next move. Now that’s being real smart.

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ding baoyi: Mom, when’s lunch? jiang meilan: As soon as Auntie Song and the children get here. song dawen: I told them I’d meet them at the hotel after they’d done with shopping. jiang meilan: We’d better be off then. The Jade Garden’s a much better place. ding feng: Let’s go to the hotel to pick them up. That way the children can get to know each other. song dawen: I’m afraid my children don’t speak much Cantonese. jiang ziliu: That’s okay. In Hong Kong, one only needs to know how to talk about money and food. The rest is not important. jiang meilan: This man is a bad influence on the children. jiang ziliu: Are you coming, Uncle? uncle: No sir! They don’t let you talk loud in those restaurants. Not for the likes of me. ding yaocai: Hey, as long as you got money to pay the bill, you can talk as loud as you like. (To song dawen) That’s the new equality in Hong Kong. jiang meilan: Leave him be if he doesn’t want to go. (Everyone is about to leave when zhang comes in. He approaches ding feng.) zhang: Mr. Ding. ding feng: Didn’t I tell you over the phone I had guests this morning? I’ll talk to you later. zhang: Yes, but since you were going to be with Mr. Jiang, I thought we could settle everything here . . . together. (jiang ziliu is surprised at how quickly zhang moves on his scheme. He is annoyed but says nothing. He leaves with everyone.) ding feng: Ziliu, this is Mr. Zhang. He says he has business to discuss with us. jiang ziliu: We’re on our way to lunch. song dawen: It’s early yet. You talk business; we’ll just go ahead. ding feng: Yes, go ahead. Ziliu and I will see you in a little while. ding baoheng (remembering what happened between jiang ziliu and zhang): Mom, I’ll stay and wait for Pa. (uncle and the blind woman return to the house. The others leave.) jiang ziliu (to ding feng): Do you have any idea what he wants? ding feng (excitedly): He didn’t go into any details on the phone. But we have everything to gain. zhang: Mr. Ding’s right. If you’re willing to do business with us, it will mean a great deal of money for you, and a sizable advance if you so wish. jiang ziliu (furiously): I’ve told you never to come back. ding feng (surprised at jiang ziliu’s strong reaction): Ziliu, we can at least talk. jiang ziliu: I have nothing to say to this man. (He goes into his house but can hear the conversation between zhang and ding feng. He lights up a cigarette and pours himself a drink. The blind woman squats next to him.) zhang: I thought you two were old friends. Why is he so uncooperative? ding baoheng: Uncle Ziliu doesn’t cooperate with just anybody.

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ding feng: Heng, it’s none of your business. (To zhang) He’s used to being his own man. Maybe he thought he had to work under you. zhang: It’s not that at all. We’re in the seafood business. All we want is for him to sell his fish to us and we’ll give him . . . er . . . three times his present commission. ding baoheng: The stores in the back street will be left with no goods. zhang: Hey, son, we’re talking business, not charity. ding baoheng: Those people depend on us, Pa. ding feng: You don’t know what you’re talking about. Just keep quiet! ding baoheng: Pa, this guy is offering you money to sell out the back street storekeepers! zhang: Mr. Ding, I really don’t appreciate the way your son puts things. Selling out? You make it sound like we’re up to something illegal here. ding feng: No nonsense from you, Heng. Even now, we auction the fish off to the  highest bidder. We’re not obligated to anybody. In business you go where the money is. zhang: Your father’s right, son. We could outbid them every day. Eventually they’d go out of business. But it would take too much time and trouble that way. And your father would miss a fortune. It would be stupid of your father not to accept our offer. ding baoheng: Uncle Ziliu would never agree to it. ding feng: That’s enough, Heng. Mr. Zhang, please forgive my son. Give me some time, and I’ll talk it over with my partner. I’ll let you know in a couple of days . . . zhang: Sure. You call me. I’ll let my boss know. (zhang leaves. ding feng is very angry, but ding baoheng is even more worked up.) ding feng: The beating last night was not enough, eh? Since when this sudden interest in my business? ding baoheng: Pa, this guy is up to no good. Can’t you see that? ding feng: What’s this “good guy” “bad guy” stuff ? You think we’re playing children’s games here? We’re talking business. It’s just a matter of time before the back street stores will have to close when the big companies move in. We’re not stealing from them; we’re not even deceiving them. There’s nothing wrong in it. ding baoheng: If we do it, we’ll lose the storekeepers’ trust. ding feng: We have no need of their trust. If this guy gives me an advance, I can make a million on the stock market with just one or two deals. I’m not talking thousands, Heng, but millions. We never made it big because I didn’t have the first million. We’ve never had a chance like this before. Your uncle Ziliu won’t be against it. ding baoheng: He kicked this guy out this morning. ding feng: That’s because we didn’t get to talk. Heng, Uncle Ziliu is a good man with a big heart. He’s always helping people. Have you ever thought about how much good you can do with a million dollars, son? Only the rich can make a real difference. ding baoheng: Uncle Ziliu doesn’t need money to help people in need.

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ding feng: Stop being a fool. ding baoheng: You’re the fool for thinking Uncle Ziliu would accept such money. ding feng (so furious he almost hits his son): How dare you talk to me that way! You think I won’t hit you because we’re not at home? ding baoheng: Beat me all you want! I don’t even want your money. I can earn my own. ding feng (restraining himself ): Look, Heng. You’re too young to know what you’re talking about. I love Uncle Ziliu just as much as you do. You think I like to see him squatting in front of his broken- down house every day? If he loves this old house so much he can’t sell it to just anybody, well, that’s okay. When I have the money, I’ll buy it off him and build an apartment building there, and give him the finest flat in the building. You do want Uncle Ziliu to enjoy the good life, don’t you? ding baoheng: I don’t like what you’re saying. It sounds good, but there’s something wrong with it. We don’t need the money. I don’t understand . . . (ding feng is about to speak when ding baoheng turns around to look for jiang ziliu and finds him standing at the door and hearing everything.) Uncle Ziliu . . . I . . . jiang ziliu (quietly): Heng, you go along to the restaurant. Your father and I have a few things to talk about. We’ll be there in a bit. ding baoheng (hesitantly): I . . . jiang ziliu (firmly): Go on now . . . go . . . ding baoheng: You . . . you are coming to lunch with us, aren’t you? jiang ziliu (consolingly): Of course, your father and I will both be there. Don’t worry. You go ahead. (The boy exits reluctantly. jiang ziliu comes forward to face ding feng.) ding feng (vaguely): The boy . . . never listens. jiang ziliu: It’s not that he doesn’t listen; he’s just stopped respecting you. ding feng (his temper flaring): I know. Unlike you, I’m not noble. So my son respects you more than his old man. jiang ziliu (shaking his head, hurting): I’m not being noble. I just don’t seem to want what everybody else is trying so hard to get. ding feng: Not having the ability is more like it. jiang ziliu (after a pause): Perhaps you’re right . . . I can forgive you for being rich, why can’t you forgive me for being poor? ding feng: You don’t have to be poor. jiang ziliu: I’m NOT poor. Remember how it was like being poor? There was not enough food. Ma told us to go to bed early. We were so hungry that we couldn’t fall asleep. We wore so many hand-me- down clothes, it was only after we grew up we realized that the sleeves of the shirt should start at the shoulder and not hang down our arms. ding feng: You can do a lot better. jiang ziliu: I’d like to do better, believe me. But there are things I won’t trade for the good life, that’s all.

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ding feng: What things are you talking about that you must not trade? Nobody’s asking you to break the contract; we have no contract with the storekeepers. jiang ziliu: The fishermen trust us; the storekeepers trust us. That’s more important than any contract. ding feng: This guy’s talking about big business, Ziliu! Real money! What need is there to trust you?! jiang ziliu (after a pause): None whatsoever . . . Shuwen trusted us. I believe that right up to the moment she drowned, she trusted we would save her in time. ding feng (after a pause): You’ve always blamed me for her death, haven’t you? jiang ziliu: What are you talking about? ding feng: If it hadn’t been for me, you’d never have let her go out in the boat that night. All these years, you never said anything. But after she died, everything between us changed. jiang ziliu: You don’t understand what I’m talking about. ding feng: No, it’s you who don’t understand. Open your eyes and look around. Hong Kong’s not like it was. When I say “poor,” I don’t mean no food to eat, no clothes to wear. I’m talking about not having a car to take my kids to school; I’m talking about my wife not being able to tour America with her friends; I’m talking about eating lunch in a fancy restaurant in Central and being too embarrassed to tell anyone I live in a shabby old building in Shaukeiwan; I’m talking about having to listen to my wife complaining that our former neighbor has a yacht while she’s still riding buses and trams. I’m sick of it! Hong Kong is full of prosperity, why can’t I have my share of it? Here now I have the chance to put it all behind, to raise my head high with pride, to do all the things I ever dreamed of doing, as long as you help me. What’s stopping you, Ziliu? What are the grand plans that you are not sharing with me? jiang ziliu (bitterly): What have we come to, Feng? Just because you’re richer, I must be jealous. Since I don’t want to sell my house, I must be going behind your back?! ding feng: Go ahead, go ahead, explain to me. Explain it so a worldly person like myself can understand. Didn’t we used to share everything? The same cot, the last piece of bread while we were fainting from hunger. When Shuwen was drowning, I was even willing to take her place for you! jiang ziliu: I’m still willing to die for you. ding feng: Am I asking you to die for me?! All I’m asking is that you sell the fish to someone else! jiang ziliu: Feng, the fishermen and the storekeepers trust us. Before us they trusted our parents, and I hope they go on trusting our children. ding feng: You’re an idiot! You think my children are going to sell fish for a living?! jiang ziliu: I’m not talking about selling fish. There are things one must not sell, because once it’s sold, one will lose everything. ding feng: What it comes to is that you won’t help me. We have been lifelong friends for nothing! (He kicks at a stool in fury and turns away from jiang ziliu.)

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jiang ziliu (after a long pause, in a hoarse voice): If it means all that much to you, I’ll help you . . . If I can get you three times your normal commission, will you agree to let me sell the fish to anyone I want? ding feng (surprised): How . . . ? jiang ziliu: I’ll find a way . . . Now we really should go to the Jade Garden. (Goes up to the blind woman) Auntie Liang, we’re going to lunch now. blind woman (holding on to jiang ziliu): How are you going to do it, Ziliu? (jiang ziliu pats her on her shoulder consolingly. Without saying another word, he turns and exits. ding feng is left panting. The blind woman stares out to the sea. Lights fade. Throughout the intermission, there’s the sound of construction.)

A CT 3 (The same location as in acts 1 and 2, in the late 1980s. It is the Moon Festival. There’s no telling whether it will be bright and sunny or an overcast day, but the artificial lights marking the festival are resplendent. The wooden plank along the waterfront has disappeared; in its place a brand-new cement structure complete with streetlamps and artificial pots of flowers. The place looks modern and romantic. All the original stone houses have been replaced by new high-rises, except for jiang ziliu’s, looking strange and out of place. The inside of the house is less cluttered, rather neat actually, with separate spaces where jiang ziliu and the blind woman spend the nights. Compared with the surroundings, though, the house looks worn and old. Everywhere in the house are books and scrolls. In one corner is the skeleton of the lantern from long ago. On the wall is a calligraphy scroll that says, “In peace and tranquillity everything in the cosmos is cherished.” In front of the house, close to the door, is an old wooden set of table and chairs. Upstage across are layers of new high-rises, one overlapping and higher than the other, shielding the entire sky. While the lights at night are glorious, the sun and the moon are no longer visible. At a distance can be seen a highway.)

At Rise (It is very early in the morning. Fog hangs over the waterfront. Most people are not yet up; there are few cars on the road. The blind woman sits alone in front of the house, trying to hear the sea. She is nearly ninety, still sharp and strong, but no longer able to swing her broom. ding baoyi and liao come in, a bit excited about the festival, but also very serious about the business at hand. Twenty-seven-year- old ding baoyi has shed her baby fat, is very beautiful and sophisticated. liao is a tall and handsome young man in a sharp business suit. Both are capable, accomplished, serious-minded, and successful, also bright and cheery, all their waking hours spent in making more money. The two make a good-looking pair. They speak in a mixture of English and Cantonese.)

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ding baoyi: Good morning, Granny. blind woman (surprised): Is that you, Baoyi? So early? Your uncle Ziliu’s not back yet. ding baoyi: Oh, we’re not looking for him. Pa told us to bring something over. blind woman: Your pa? ding baoyi: He has some legal documents for Uncle Ziliu. blind woman: So early? The sun’s not up yet. ding baoyi: Well, you know how hard it is to get hold of Uncle Ziliu during the day— always out painting and drinking with his friends. blind woman: Help yourself to some tea while you wait. Are you alone? ding baoyi: No, my boyfriend G. Y. is with me. blind woman: Gee Wee, from the real estate company. ding baoyi: Not Gee Wee, Granny. His name’s G. Y.—Liao Guang Yang. blind woman: Oh, I thought you called him Gee Wee. (liao turns to look at the house, shaking his head.) liao: Your uncle Ziliu’s really smart. All the other buildings have gone up and down like yoyos; he holds on to the homestead, simply refuses to sell. ding baoyi: Even my mom thinks he’s brilliant. We used to have a house here, sold it for only two hundred dollars a square foot. It’s worth two thousand dollars now. Mom said if she knew then what she knows now, she would have held on. But Uncle Ziliu still refuses to sell. liao: Well, this time your father’d better convince him. It’s not public yet, but a company’s bought out everybody else for a new apartment complex. Only your Uncle Ziliu stands in the way. blind woman: Uncle Ziliu selling the house? ding baoyi (quickly, not aware that the blind woman has been listening): Oh, no. G. Y.’s company just wants to manage it for him. When the complex is finished, Uncle Ziliu will have the pick of the apartments for himself. Don’t you start worrying now, Granny. Wherever Uncle Ziliu goes, he’ll take you with him. blind woman: Isn’t it the same as selling? He never mentioned a word to me. ding baoyi: Granny, nothing is really final until the papers are signed. blind woman: Your father got papers for him to sign? ding baoyi: Pa only wants to go over them with him and G. Y. It’s better if Pa explains them first, being old friends and all. (She pulls liao to the side.) liao: Can your father get him to sign, Baoyi? We are paying two million for the house and land, but an extra million for your dad. ding baoyi: Oh, he’ll talk him into it all right. All he’s been thinking about these past days is your offer. He’s so happy; he can’t sleep nights. “Baoyi,” he said, “I’m getting a new lease on life.” (Sighing) You know, he’s never had much luck in the stock market. He never recovered from the crash of seventy-three. Last October he hit rock bottom again. (The two lean against the rail, chatting while waiting for jiang ziliu.)

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liao: He seems to be doing quite well. ding baoyi: He’s all right, except he never struck it rich. The crash didn’t bother Uncle Ziliu. He just kept auctioning his fish in the back street market as usual, and made really good commissions. I don’t know how he did it. Even with the big seafood store on the corner trying to force him out, they couldn’t budge him for nearly twenty years. The commissions helped my father weather the storm, pay off his outstanding loans, and open a new shop, too. Still, Pa’s been unhappy. He feels he never got the chance to make it big. liao: That’s one of Hong Kong’s strengths. You lose everything in a business venture, you accept it without complaint and move on. In the States, people would be lining up to sue you. ding baoyi: Why complain when it’s all a matter of fate anyhow? Now that the crash is history and things are looking up again, Mom’s been after him to get right back in there. liao: Not to worry! As soon as we close this deal, he’ll be set for life. ding baoyi: I always wonder what Uncle Ziliu does with his money. He’s had a steady business all these years and never got married. (ding yaocai walks in briskly. He’s aged slightly but looks almost the same.) ding yaocai (on seeing the two young people): You’re early, Baoyi. Not glued to your computer, aren’t you afraid of missing any rising stock? ding baoyi: The exchange isn’t open yet, Uncle Cai. ding yaocai: And this is Old Liao? ding baoyi: Uncle Cai, it’s G. Y. He’s the manager of the real estate company. Stop calling him by that awful name. ding yaocai: Aha, real estate! After Uncle Ziliu’s old house again? blind woman: They say he’s going to sign a contract. (ding baoyi and liao are taken aback.) ding yaocai: That’s funny. He never mentioned it to me. Just told me to come and help him move his paintings. ding baoyi: His paintings? ding yaocai: Yeah, over to your brother Heng’s. Come give me a hand. Isn’t your brother on his way to Australia? ding baoyi: Well, he’s not sure about it yet . . . ding yaocai (sees that liao picks up a painting): The paintings won’t interest you, Mr. Real Estate Man. They’re not worth anything. You’ll have to wait till he dies. ding baoyi: Stop talking like that, Uncle Cai. You think G. Y’s only interested in money? ding yaocai: Seems to be his one topic of conversation. Correct me if I’m wrong. (He waits. The two young people are speechless.) liao: Come on, Uncle. Hong Kong is finance. It’s what we are and what we do. In other places, one can excel in philosophy, in literature, in astrology, in politics. Here, one becomes famous for being rich. What other choice is there?

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ding baoyi: If we were a nation it might be different. We’d encourage people to get involved in what would benefit the nation in the long run. Here the only game in town is finance. Nothing’s long term; everything keeps changing. Nothing lasts. liao: Even businesses don’t last long. ding yaocai: My job did. I’ve been driving for the same newspaper for over twenty years. blind woman: Therefore still at rock bottom, yes? ding baoyi: Change is unavoidable. Look at our own family. In the fish trade for generations. Now there’re fewer fishermen, and the big stores gobble up the little ones. How can you expect Pa and Uncle Ziliu to pass on the family tradition? liao: That’s how it works, Uncle. My father started in wigs. Everybody rushed to get into the same business, as if every person in the world wanted at least four wigs, including men. In the seventies he turned to jeans. Now he’s an electronics wholesaler. ding baoyi: Everyone is after the quick dollar. All rush to get into the same business until it’s no more. liao: You have to be quick. Lost opportunities don’t come back. ding baoyi: And you have to be shrewd, too. I learned that in my very first job in the ad agency. It’s safe enough to have a steady accounting firm as a client, but the small business can ruin you. We took on Central Travel and they ran off in the night. liao: You have to guard your back. There are sharp knives everywhere. I don’t know how many times my dad gets up in the night to check if his retailers are closing their shops and moving the stock away. ding baoyi: It’s safer to play the stock market, or get into real estate. ding yaocai: I hear that you’ve already made your first million, Baoyi. ding baoyi: Not yet . . . maybe after a few more deals. But nowadays a million isn’t much money. ding yaocai: You’re right. In real estate, if you’re smart, you can make a billion before you turn thirty. blind woman: What’s a billion? ding baoyi: Oh . . . that’s a million with many more zeros, Granny. liao: Money in your pocket makes you feel secure. Only money can buy happiness. You got to buy toys before your kid even likes you, and a diamond for your wife before she treats you nice. A good husband and father is one who keeps changing to a bigger car and moving to a fancier neighborhood. blind woman: Sounds to me like a person’s never satisfied. ding baoyi: That’s the way one should be. A fortune-teller told me once that I should spend my life chasing after money and expensive things like a dog chasing a rabbit at the racecourse. Only when you’re chasing something are you moving forward, right? liao: Even fortune-telling is big business these days. Granny, you better get yourself incorporated or you’ll lose the few clients you have left. ding baoyi: Now with 1997 approaching, it’s getting worse. The housewives are in such a panic that they no longer look to their husbands and children to provide them

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security. What money their husbands have given them, they try to buy margins in the stock market. If they make a killing now, it won’t make any difference whether to emigrate when 1997 comes around. liao: Emigrating to another country is only a way of buying insurance. What you should do is put your money in a foreign bank, get yourself a foreign passport, and then you can come back and see what happens. ding yaocai: My, my, you two are a match; you deserve each other. (The two young people look at each other and laugh.) ding baoyi: Everyone can have a share, Uncle Cai. This is Hong Kong. Give me some money and I’ll make you a fortune. ding yaocai: Don’t bother, too much trouble. Driving the car is good enough for me. Keeps my mind occupied. Besides, I’m not yet married and I got my ma to think about. liao: Aren’t you worried about 1997? ding baoyi: Aren’t you afraid? ding yaocai: What will happen will happen; everybody knows that. Yeah, I worry about it sometimes. When Margaret Thatcher fell on her fanny coming out of the Great Hall of the People, I took it as a bad omen. I was right. The market flopped one year later, and then Jardines, our biggest hong, moved off to Bermuda or someplace. Two things left in eighty-four, Jardines and your aunt, that left me heartbroken. Sometimes I wish I had been born a woman. Then when I got fed up with building my country, I could marry a rich guy the way your aunt did and emigrate to a foreign country. ding baoyi: Staying in Hong Kong won’t be so bad. There’re always ways of making money. ding yaocai: You only worry if you got something to lose. What have I got to lose? What do I know about politics or government policy? All the talk about direct elections goes right over my head. What do I care who’s running things after 1997? I’ll stay and be buried here. The mainland’s not for me; besides, they don’t want us there. I can’t afford to emigrate, so forget about it. What to do? Nothing! ding baoyi: You don’t need much to get started in the market. I’ll show you how. ding yaocai: Not me, kid. I was lucky to get rid of my company stocks just before they fell. Aren’t your parents ner vous? They got burned pretty bad the last time. liao: As long as you’re in the game, there’s no telling how it will come out. ding baoyi: But never borrow money! Struggle along on what you have and wait for another chance. Like the battle with Moby Dick! ding yaocai: I’m surrounded by financial geniuses! No wonder Hong Kong prospered. (Taking out the last few paintings) I thought for a while to sell you a couple of Uncle Ziliu’s paintings, at bargain rates, before he dies. But I can see you two have much bigger fish to fry. (Before he finishes, ding feng and his wife, jiang meilan, rush in. jiang meilan is loaded with packages, including two expensive bottles of liquor, such as XO. Both are

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over fifty, with successful grown children and a comfortable life. But they still live with the regret that they never made it big so are still planning and scheming, with a lot of anxiety. Greetings are exchanged.) jiang meilan (surprised to see ding yaocai): Eh . . . why are you here? ding yaocai: Don’t worry. I’m leaving. Won’t stand in your way. Come, Old Liao. Help me load the car. ding feng: We got a lot of food. Have some before you leave. (ding yaocai leaves, waving his hand. ding feng wants his daughter to have some breakfast.) ding baoyi: I’m on a diet. Mom, did you get me black coffee? jiang meilan: In a minute, dear. Here, take this over to Granny. You go keep her company. (To ding feng) Let’s get the table out of here. It’s early, won’t be in anyone’s way. (She goes around rearranging the table and chairs.) ding feng: Stop fussing around, Mei . . . it’s not going to work. blind woman (realizing what’s going on, gets up to leave): I’d better go . . . You have business with Ziliu. (She goes into the far corner of the house. jiang meilan makes ding baoyi take her more food.) jiang meilan: Well, you got everything set? ding baoyi: Yes. We worked through the night. All we have to do is get Uncle Ziliu over to the lawyer’s office to sign the papers. jiang meilan: Where are the papers? ding baoyi: G. Y.’s got them. He has to explain them to Pa first. ding feng: The whole thing’s a mess. jiang meilan: We’ve talked it over for weeks. Gee Wee’s company has it all set. Are you saying now you don’t want to go through with it? ding feng: It’s better I talk to him alone. ding baoyi: Pa, we agreed that both of you would talk to him. Mom grew up with him, too. Besides, when you and Uncle Ziliu get together, you end up talking about everything under the sun except what’s important. ding feng: I feel like I’m deceiving him. jiang meilan: Deceiving him?! We’re on our knees begging him to take the money. ding feng: You know well he’s never that interested in money. jiang meilan: So make it sound like we’re just asking for a favor, will you? Where’s Gee Wee? Ziliu will be back soon. ding feng: Why don’t you just leave the papers with me? If I can’t convince him, then we can think of another way. jiang meilan: No. We’re not changing our plan. ding feng: It’s still dark. And we’ve got ourselves a table full of food and wine here. It looks like we’re inviting the entire neighborhood. jiang meilan: What’s wrong with celebrating the Moon Festival with an old friend? ding feng: Before dawn? I feel like an actor entering on the wrong cue.

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ding baoyi: Mom, why don’t you put those things away for now? jiang meilan: I’m doing this because we’re asking a special favor of him. You think this has been easy? I invited him to celebrate the festival with us at home, but he refused . . . Oh, Gee Wee, there you are. Give the papers to Uncle Ding and go off someplace with Baoyi. Uncle Ziliu will be here any minute. liao (handing the papers over to ding feng, who puts on his reading glasses while jiang meilan and ding baoyi arrange things on the table): This is a simple intent-tosell agreement. He signs it, and when he sees the lawyer tomorrow, the lawyer will explain it to him in detail. ding feng: Such a thick pile, and all in English . . . jiang meilan: Does it say how much is our share? ding baoyi: Mom! The commission comes later. liao: Don’t worry. You’ll be well taken care of. ding feng: Can you get me a Chinese version? ding baoyi: No, Dad. These are legal documents . . . liao: Here . . . simple . . . Uncle Ziliu signs here, the witness there. Wait, no . . . the witness has to sign here . . . and Uncle Ziliu . . . ding feng: You do know what you’re doing, don’t you? liao: I’m not used to working this early. So dark, I can’t even see . . . ding baoyi: Can’t wait till later. In his business, by eight in the morning, Uncle Ziliu considers it a day. liao: Okay, now, he takes these documents along with his ownership certificate and his ID card, first to the lawyers and then to our company office . . . ding feng: So complicated . . . jiang meilan: Do you still want to make it big? liao: Uncle Ding, it’s all to Uncle Ziliu’s advantage. His house is an obstacle to progress. Sooner or later the government will tear it down. ding baoyi: Tell him that if the government takes the land for public use, they won’t compensate him much. He’ll still have no choice but to move out. jiang meilan: If he sells now, everybody profits. ding feng: Then why do I feel like we’re sneaking around doing something wrong? jiang meilan (impatiently, in a very loud voice): Who’s sneaking around? (Suddenly all four can hear jiang ziliu’s voice. He’s entered the house and found the blind woman eating.) jiang ziliu: Hey, Granny, who’s got you food this early? And I’ve got you steamed buns. (All four remain quiet, not knowing what to do.) blind woman: Feng’s here with Mei and Baoyi. They said they’ve come to take you to the lawyers to sign the papers to sell the house. (All four stand there, shocked. jiang ziliu comes out of the house. At fifty- one, he has aged a bit but has not changed much. He is relaxed and cheerful.) jiang ziliu: All together here? So early. And what’s this? A feast at Hongmen, where Xiang Yu plotted against his opponent?

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(After a moment of stunned silence, the four speak all at once.) jiang meilan: It’s the Moon Festival, Ziliu. I told you we’d be coming over . . . ding feng: I planned to come by myself, but Mei said . . . liao: Uncle Ziliu, our company is most interested in speaking with you about your house . . . ding baoyi: Uncle Ziliu, all these years . . . the way you live . . . Pa thought . . . (All four stop short, looking at one another.) jiang ziliu (looking at the feast): Now this is good liquor! (To ding feng) And here I thought you were worried about me drinking too much. (Starts opening a bottle) You are good to me. So early, where did you get all this food? Come, eat before it gets cold. (He begins to eat, pouring the liquor into his glass.) Baoyi, go get some more glasses from the house. ding baoyi: Uncle Ziliu, we’re not staying . . . jiang meilan: They’re too young to drink . . . jiang ziliu: Too young? What would Hong Kong be like without the young such as these? liao: Maybe we should be going now and let you and Uncle Ding chat. jiang ziliu: You sure you’ve explained the documents to Uncle Ding carefully? liao (pausing, overjoyed): You mean you’ll sign them? jiang ziliu (casually): You succeeded in enlisting Uncle Ding. May I ask what your commission might be? (ding feng and jiang meilan don’t seem to have thought of that. They turn to look at liao.) And you, Baoyi? (ding baoyi is taken aback. ding feng and jiang meilan are even more surprised.) What a clever little girl you’ve raised. I’m sure she’s made you very proud. (Turning to the two young people) You don’t have to tell me. Every trade has its secret. I was curious about the current rates is all. Come on now, let’s dig into this mighty feast. (He eats heartily.) ding feng: G. Y., Baoyi . . . I’m sure the two of you have something better to do. I’ll talk to you later. ding baoyi (as if trying to explain herself ): Pa . . . liao (can’t leave fast enough): Oh good. We’ll go ahead . . . (He quickly leaves with ding baoyi. jiang ziliu goes into the house for more glasses. ding feng and his wife stand there, not knowing what to do next.) jiang ziliu: Granny, there’s plenty of food. Do you want some more? blind woman (holding on to jiang ziliu): Are you selling the house? jiang ziliu (in jest): After such a lavish meal, do I have a choice? (He pats her shoulder to comfort her. He comes back and finds ding feng and jiang meilan sitting uncomfortably. He sits down to enjoy the meal again.) Great drink!

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jiang meilan: Ziliu, the real estate company knows we’re good friends so they asked us to have a word with you. We’re not forcing you. jiang ziliu: Of course you’re not. You know it wouldn’t work anyway. But after I drink my fill of this wonderful liquor, ask for the moon and it’s yours. (jiang meilan looks at her husband, not sure how serious jiang ziliu is.) jiang meilan (reacting to ding feng’s silence): We brought along the liquor only because of the holiday . . . jiang ziliu: The very thing I wanted! Thank you very much. (Starts pouring for the two of them) Come, join me. jiang meilan: It’s too early for us. jiang ziliu: I get to drink both bottles then? ding feng: I’ll have a drink with you after we talk. jiang ziliu: Well then, you drink one bottle and I’ll drink the other. When we’ve finished them both, we’ll see the lawyer tomorrow and sign the papers. jiang meilan (seriously): What did you say? ding feng: You know I can’t drink that much liquor, Ziliu. Let’s forget the whole thing, Mei . . . Today’s not the day . . . jiang ziliu: Okay then, I’ll drink the one and you and Mei can drink the other, together. Then I’ll go and sign? How’s that? jiang meilan: You really will? ding feng: He’s not serious, Mei. jiang meilan: Are you or are you not serious, Ziliu? ding feng: Of course he isn’t! If he chooses to sign, he’ll sign; if not, he won’t. The rest is all nonsense. jiang ziliu: What do you mean nonsense? There is nothing under heaven more serious than drinking good liquor! jiang meilan: Okay! I’ll drink with you. ding feng: No, Mei . . . Look, Ziliu, will you stop drinking for a minute so I can talk to you? jiang ziliu: You do the talking; I do the drinking. ding feng: This is no good, Mei. Let’s wait for another day . . . jiang meilan: Shut up and let me handle this! (Doing her best in guzzling down the liquor) I’ll be frank with you, Ziliu. You know we’ve lost most of our money in the stock market . . . ding feng: We’ve gone over that time and— jiang meilan: If we had made it big, we wouldn’t be begging for a favor now. ding feng: We’re not begging . . . jiang meilan: You don’t want me to bring this up because you don’t want people to know how incompetent you are when it comes to making money. But Ziliu is family . . . ding feng: Who’s incompetent? After the seafood stall, I managed to open our own shop. You’re the one who kept saying it wasn’t enough. jiang meilan: If you knew anything about investments, we wouldn’t be in this fix.

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ding feng: It’s your eternal nagging for more that caused us to lose everything. jiang meilan: You know you don’t know how to manage money. You put all our eggs in one basket, and when the basket was smashed, we had to go begging for help. ding feng: That’s a long time ago! jiang meilan: And all these years, when everybody else’s made it all back, what do we have to show for it? One crummy sea goods store! Your own children don’t even respect you anymore. (She downs another glass.) ding feng: Leave the kids out of this! (He also starts to drink.) jiang meilan: Why? When they were just teenagers, we had so many debts that our son had to quit school! And you don’t think he holds it against us? ding feng: You’re talking nonsense! He quit school before we lost our money. If you hadn’t been forcing him to get into this and that, he’d never have left home. jiang meilan: Me?! What about you, beating him all the time? Well, I’m thankful for one thing. He didn’t turn out like you. He’s now a top editor and ready to go abroad. ding feng: Well, you can take great comfort from your daughter. She’s just like her mother! jiang meilan: Damn right she is! She’s already on her way to becoming a wealthy woman. And what were you doing at her age? Hauling fish for a few pennies a day! ding feng: Try asking her where her money came from. Payoffs from buyers wanting to curry her own father’s favor! jiang meilan: At least she’s got a good eye for money! ding feng: Beware, Mei. One day that’s all she’ll have an eye for and she won’t be able to see even you anymore. jiang meilan: It’s a failure like you that she’ll have no eye for! If I had known, I’d never have married you in the first place! ding feng: You seem to forget how you chased me all over the neighborhood and begged your parents to make the match . . . jiang meilan: Only because Auntie Liang predicted you’d be a rich man someday. ding feng: And you believed it! (Laughing out loud, bitterly) I told Granny to say those things to impress Shuwen! (jiang meilan stares at him.) Ask Ziliu! (jiang meilan goes on staring at him.) Granny’s still here; she’ll tell you the truth. (They stare at each other viciously.) You’re afraid to, aren’t you? jiang meilan: You bastard! You’re telling me this now?! ding feng (laughing uncontrollably): I won’t even try to do better anymore, so when I die I have the satisfaction of knowing that you’ll have nothing left but a crummy sea goods store!

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jiang meilan (her face white with rage and hatred): You? You couldn’t do better no matter how hard you tried! You can’t even convince an old friend to sell his rotten house! (She picks up whatever she can find, throws them at him, and storms out. ding feng stops laughing, picks up things on the table, and throws them at her.) ding feng: Thirty-two years! I’ve been married to that woman for thirty-two years, and she never stops saying “It’s not enough . . . ,” not enough to earn money to put food on the table, not enough to buy her nice clothes so she can look good in front of her friends, not enough to give her presents of gold and silver to hoard away in her secret places. It wasn’t like she thought it up all by herself. She heard it first from her friends and the neighbors, then it seemed like everyone was telling her “It’s not enough,” till she began to believe it herself. When we were kids, we’d be afraid to reach out with our chopsticks and take food from the dish, afraid we’d be taking more than our share, and others at the table would go hungry. We knew we were poor because others could eat as much as they wanted. They could buy tickets to get into the cinema and didn’t have to wait until Sunday rolled around to see some meat on the dinner table, brought home like a precious item, wrapped in newspaper and tied with a straw. After we sold our house and moved to a tidy flat, we could send our kids in stiff, new uniforms to better schools, where they wouldn’t have to dodge the education inspectors. We could treat old friends who came back from overseas to the nice restaurants in Central, where pretty waitresses in floor-length qipao flashed their professional smiles when they took our order. We still felt poor. Why? Because others could send their kids abroad for school; after visiting them they went to different countries for their vacation before coming home, and they could go to fancy restaurants whenever it pleased them. Then we left Shaukeiwan and moved up to Taikoo Shing. Now we could pick and choose any items in the supermarket and didn’t have to pay for them till later. Every meal our table overflowed with food. Our children wouldn’t touch it because they were on diets. We went on tours to America, sticking with friends so we wouldn’t get lost, taking snapshots to show off to our friends when we returned. We still felt poor, because others drove around in Mercedeses that they changed each year, and lived in stately houses out in the islands. They had the money to invest in foreign countries, to become emigrants so they could go back and forth any time they wanted. So I’m not a good enough husband, not a good enough father, not a good enough friend, perhaps not even a good enough human being. I get up in the morning and can’t hold my head high. My wife thinks I’m not up to the company she keeps; my daughter thinks I’m stupid; my son refuses anything I offer him. He doesn’t even have the respect to tell me he’s leaving Hong Kong. I walk down the street feeling inferior, somehow less fortunate, less blessed by heaven than others. I’ve got this fear that grabs at me. It’s inside me and won’t let go: “You have to work harder, longer,” it says. “Climb higher, run faster, go further!” It’s not good enough that I do well; my success depends on other people failing. I’ve got to reach a place they can’t reach,

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own something that they can’t have, achieve something they can’t achieve . . . Then and only then will I no longer be afraid. (jiang ziliu looks at him in silence.) So many times I wanted to come and talk to you, but I couldn’t bring myself to . . . because I don’t have to put in any work, not even lifting a finger—you put your name on a piece of paper, I’ll become a rich man. With a few investments, I could reach the top. Yes, I’d have lost my self-respect, but then I’d have gained respect in the eyes of others. Perhaps it’s not such a big price to pay for a little peace. (He looks at jiang ziliu, waiting. jiang ziliu remains silent.) Once I was willing to die for you. Thirty-three years ago tonight, the Moon Festival, Shuwen stood right here looking out at the sea. She made us feel so special. There we were, piss-poor and empty-handed, but we felt we held such treasures: faith and trust and loyalty and an understanding heart. She made us feel big and generous, like I’d do anything for anyone at any cost. But I was young then. I had no idea what it would feel like to be a failure after a whole life’s struggle. Now my life is cluttered with things I’ve accumulated along the way: a wife, children, my apartment . . . and I’m not willing to give up anything, even the car I parked in the back. Maybe someday after I become rich I’ll be unselfish again. For now, I just want to use you. You can despise me all you want, but you must sign those papers for me. After that, I swear I’ll never bother you again for as long as I live. (jiang ziliu never takes his eyes off ding feng. With hands trembling, ding feng gives jiang ziliu the papers and waits. jiang ziliu does not take them from him. ding feng puts the papers on the table and crumbles on a chair.) jiang ziliu: Feng, perhaps it’s not you or your wife, but Hong Kong itself that eats up your hopes and gives you no peace. After all, we’re not a nation, not a people, just a place for doing business. Other countries ignore us; we’re not part of their grand scheme and plans. Our only security comes from being useful . . . useful to England in the past and to China in the future. So we kill ourselves to prove ourselves useful. Is there any other people as sorry as us, that comforts itself with the thought that as long as we remain useful, we’ll have nothing to fear, that we’ll be allowed to carry on with our ordinary little lives? Feng, we’re not your problem. We’re as scared as you are of what might happen in the future. Only twenty-five years ago we were welcoming them when they came swarming across the border. They had nothing . . . no food, no money, no place to live. Yet we admired their discipline and how hard they worked. Together with them we built this great city. But something terrible happened on the other side of that border that changed the people. When we see them on our streets, we recoil. And we worry that maybe it won’t be very long before our own children become like them. What are we afraid of ? We’re afraid the day will come when we’ll no longer decide things for ourselves. We’ll let others decide our lives for us: where to live, how many children to have, what jobs to hold, how we’ll be allowed to worship, what we’ll be allowed to read or write or say out loud. And if that time comes, Feng, we’ll have lost

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all respect for ourselves. But how can we stop it from coming? Surely more than just lining our pockets with dollar bills. (ding feng, in tears, says nothing but offers the papers to jiang ziliu again.) Wait. I’ve got something to return to you. (He goes into the house and comes back with the watch he has been keeping all these years. He gives it to ding feng, who is surprised first, then suddenly recognizes it.) Your watch, remember? You can afford to buy all the watches you want now. Someday ask your son Heng to tell you its story. You’ll remember there’re two people in this world who love you, not for how they can use you but for who you are. (jiang ziliu is half in jest, but ding feng chokes with sobs, as if he hadn’t heard anything.) ding feng: I’ll be here at eleven to pick you up, and we’ll go to the lawyer’s together. (Without so much as turning back, ding feng exits. jiang ziliu tidies up the floor and the table. The blind woman slowly makes her way out of the house.) jiang ziliu: Granny, come on out and fill your lungs with this fresh sea breeze. You won’t get the chance next Moon Festival. blind woman: You really going to sign, Ziliu? jiang ziliu: Didn’t you hear Feng? blind woman: Only half of it. He kept going on and on . . . I fell asleep. When I woke up, he was gone. jiang ziliu: Thirty years in Hong Kong and you still haven’t learned lesson number one: always keep your eyes open. blind woman: How much are they going to give you? jiang ziliu: Are you going to talk money with me, too? blind woman: You’re too kind. You’re an easy mark. Are they cheating you? jiang ziliu: I haven’t even read those papers. blind woman (taken aback): So you’ll just go along with whatever they say? jiang ziliu: It’s bound to happen. (Looking around) Unfortunately you can’t see all the changes around you. blind woman: But I can hear them. The sound of the sea disappeared long time ago; I can’t even hear my own chanting anymore. jiang ziliu: The divine General Guan hears you, Granny; that’s all that matters. If our old neighbors are doing well these days, they can thank your prayers for it. blind woman: I owe my life to the neighborhood, Ziliu. They picked me off the street in Guangzhou and took me with them when they came back here after the war. They themselves were fainting from hunger. jiang ziliu: In hard times, everybody helps everybody. blind woman: And you’ve been taking care of me since. You going to share your riches with me now? (jiang ziliu does not answer. The blind woman waits.) jiang ziliu: Do you remember when we first came back, we had a roof over our heads but no food? We used to go to the church for relief goods. They gave us canned food,

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but we had no can opener. We used to scrape them open on the ground and use the empty ones later for our cups and dishes. blind woman: You’ll have no worry over money from now on—why think of such things now? jiang ziliu: I’m thinking how much fun Feng and Mei had trying to open those damned tins. Wonder if they were happier than they are now. (He picks up a bottle and goes into the house. He sees the skeleton of the lantern and picks it up. Concerned, the blind woman follows him.) blind woman: Perhaps you don’t like the way they went about selling your house, Ziliu, and perhaps you don’t want to move out, but there are things you have no control over. Look how hard your mother worked to keep the family business together. But Hong Kong was moving ahead and the fishermen wanted to move with it. You can’t blame them for leaving their boats and coming ashore. So you fought to keep the big company from eating up the little shopkeepers, and in the end you lost. But those folks also moved on to something else. Now it’s your turn, Ziliu. You got to move on, too. This is Hong Kong. jiang ziliu (looking at the skeleton): Isn’t this horrible? I can’t remember what Shuwen looked like. Even Feng said that she made us feel big and generous, our empty hands holding treasures; faith, trust, loyalty, a heart full of understanding. One does not have to live well, but one must live right. Today, we wait till we’re rich to become generous. We’ve even lost our common decency. We need the Tourist Association to teach us how to be polite, and learn from TV how to smile to one another. No wonder I can’t remember Shuwen’s face. It’s as if she no longer wanted to be here—a city of ladder people, stepping all over one another in the mad scramble to the top. blind woman: What are you talking about . . . ? Ziliu . . . ? Where are you . . . ? (jiang ziliu picks up a bottle, walks down the steps to the water, and disappears from the shore.) blind woman: Ziliu . . . ? (Not getting an answer, the blind woman becomes very anxious. She continues to call for him in a suppressed voice. The wind begins to rise. The blind woman’s call becomes more urgent. The lights change, from day to night. The entire neighborhood is filled with glittering. The blind woman waits with horror at a corner in the house. The night is getting deep. She keeps waiting. ding baoheng rushes in. He’s thirtyone, elegant, mature, and confident, a highly successful professional.) ding baoheng: Granny . . . ? blind woman (holding on to the young man, begins to weep): Heng . . . ding baoheng (shocked): What happened? I just heard that Uncle Ziliu was selling his house. Is he here? blind woman: I don’t know where he went. He got upset after your father talked to him; he’s been gone all day . . . ding baoheng (looks around, finds jiang ziliu lying at the edge of the water): Uncle Ziliu . . .

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(ding baoheng wakes him up and helps him up the stairs. jiang ziliu holds on to the bottle and the lantern skeleton.) Have you been here all this time? Are you drunk? You’re going to be sick getting this wet. You frightened Granny. jiang ziliu: I’m all right. Just had a bit too much to drink when I was saying all my goodbyes. Lots of people to say goodbye to . . . There’s Shuwen, Ma and Pa, and the old neighbors, and my house . . . and you, too, going off to Australia, and myself, my former self . . . The list was so long; I fell asleep. blind woman: I thought you drowned yourself. But then I got to thinking, now who would drown himself the day before becoming a millionaire? jiang ziliu: Me? A millionaire? This house has not been mine for a long time. blind woman and ding baoheng: What?! jiang ziliu: I sold it fifteen years ago. (The two are even more surprised.) ding baoheng: How come the real estate company didn’t find out? jiang ziliu: The deed’s still in my name, but I have no right over it. blind woman: Why did you tell them you’d sign the papers? jiang ziliu: I didn’t. Old Feng just kept at it. By the time I tried to tell him, he’d stormed off. ding baoheng (shaking his head): Let me call Pa. (He leaves quickly.) jiang ziliu: Didn’t we have lots of food leftover this morning? All that sleeping’s made me hungry. (He sits down and eats. The blind woman joins him, not having eaten the whole day. ding baoheng comes back and sees the two. He doesn’t know what to make of them.) ding baoheng: Uncle Ziliu, what game have you been playing all these years? Your house was the only house left. You held out against the high-rises and the developers all alone. The entire city knows about it. People praised you, admired you: what a man of principle and integrity. We even featured you in our newspaper: “Uncle Jiang Holds On to His House Against All Odds.” And now you tell me you’d sold it long ago! jiang ziliu: My entire life is a joke. So what else is new? (He goes on enjoying the food.) ding baoheng: You could at least have told me, and my father. jiang ziliu: I couldn’t, especially your father. (He begins pouring the liquor. ding baoheng stops him, getting very angry.) ding baoheng: You’ve got to explain to me, NOW! All my life, you’ve been my idol. I wrote you up how many times as the legend of Shaukeiwan. . . . jiang ziliu (after looking at ding baoheng carefully): Remember when Uncle Song came back from America years ago for a visit? ding baoheng: The brother of the girl who drowned? You sold it to him? jiang ziliu (nodding): He was doing well in America, opening up a string of restaurants. He’ll be coming back to Hong Kong to further his business. I’ll give him back his house.

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ding baoheng: It’s not under his name. How does he know it’s his? jiang ziliu: Oh, it’s his. That first time he came back, a seafood combine was trying to buy up all the fish to run the back street stores out of business. Your father needed money to buy stocks. He wanted us to sell to the combine, for three times the money. I told him if he allowed me to sell to whomever I wanted, I’d give him the high commission. Uncle Song gave me a large sum of money; I gave it to your father by installments. The house has been Song’s since, though he’d rather not make it public. ding baoheng (finding it hard to believe): That’s how Pa could pay off his loans and open the store . . . jiang ziliu (has stopped eating, but still casually): All my life, except for my ma, no one is as important as your father to me. I would die for him if necessary. So what is a tiny bit of money? (A bit more seriously) Of course, for all my faith I’ve had in people and all I tried to do for our neighborhood, I’ve indeed accomplished nothing. I sat here all day looking at the water and thinking back over my life. I know I’m left with nothing to show for it. But I did do what I thought I had to do, and I did it in the way I wanted to do it. In the end, perhaps that’s all a person can do for himself in life . . . You’ve asked me often enough whether you should go to Australia. That’s the only answer I can give you. ding baoheng: In other words, I should stay even if my staying won’t make a difference. jiang ziliu: No, I’m telling you that if you stay, even if your effort for Hong Kong doesn’t make a difference, you still have to do your best to shoulder your share. ding baoheng: Sometimes I think even though people are leaving by the thousands now, by 1997, we’ll still have five million left in Hong Kong. Doesn’t make much difference if I stay or go. Of course I’m indignant about leaving. Why should I want to leave our homeland? But we’ve been doing it for centuries, fleeing China to take up menial work in foreign lands: scholars opening laundries, engineers running restaurants. Perhaps that’s our lot. So there really isn’t much difference if I work in a newspaper in Hong Kong or in a trading company in Sydney. (Looking at jiang ziliu, sighing) Home is where the heart can find peace. jiang ziliu: That’s why if you stay, Heng, make sure your staying will make a difference. People like your pa and me, whatever we do won’t have much effect. But with your knowledge and talent, you can make a difference. ding baoheng: I’m only a writer. jiang ziliu: I’m not talking about money. Hong Kong will continue to prosper. We Chinese are such a docile lot: During the revolution, we were told to turn against one another, including our parents and our friends. So we did, throughout the land, so much so that until today, ten years later, living in a free land, we are still too frightened to lie down facing the wall lest we wake up thinking we’re still in prison. We go to bed fully clothed, ready for a knock at the door in the middle of the night, to be taken in the dark. After the entire country broke down beyond repair, we were told to spend our energy in getting rich instead. So we all killed ourselves trying to get rich. Our people don’t even know how not to be docile. So Hong Kong will continue to

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get rich. We’ll even have direct elections; we have enough celebrated opportunists ready to take office. We’ll never have the guts to elect someone not approved by the mainland, so we’ll become a showcase for democracy, and everyone is happy. So that’s not what I’m talking about. If you just want to write about the good times, lots of people can do that. ding baoheng: You’re talking about democracy, freedom, and rule by law, things that cannot exist after 1997. jiang ziliu (nodding): Write. Raise your voice. Not that there’s any hope for any of these. But Hong Kong is a good place. Don’t forget when your father and I came back from the mainland after the war, two skinny teenagers, we were swinging these huge sledgehammers, breaking up stones for construction. The sun beat down on our backs all day, and the skin of our hands became raw and torn. In a single generation, Hong Kong is turning out young professionals like you and your sister. That’s because we did have our freedom and the rule of law. What other place in the world has come so far and done so much in such a short space of time? We just can’t stand idly by and watch it all crumble away! ding baoheng: We were never taught these things in school. jiang ziliu (shaking his head): It’s our own affair. Look at people in the rest of the world, who are fighting for their freedom; they don’t sit and wait for others to do it for them. Perhaps we had no such need in the past. But now 1997 is pressing on us, we have to speak up while we still have time. ding baoheng (nodding): Even if our efforts amount to nothing . . . jiang ziliu: At least you can look yourself in the eye and face your forbearers without shame, and tell your own children that when Hong Kong needed you most, you did your part. ding baoheng: I hear what you’re saying. But you forgot Hong Kong belongs to you and Father and Uncle Cai, too. Perhaps if we all work together, there may be hope? (Noises are heard outside. ding feng and jiang meilan rush in looking for jiang ziliu. They are in a rage. ding baoyi, liao, and ding yaocai follow, trying to restrain them.) ding feng (furious at jiang ziliu): You made a fool of me! jiang meilan: You’ve been holding on to the money all these years?! ding feng: Why didn’t you tell me before?! ding yaocai: Hey, what did you do with all that money? jiang meilan: Were you afraid your friends would steal it from you?! ding baoheng (trying to tell his parents the truth): Pa . . . Mom . . . jiang ziliu (stopping him): I lost it all on the stock market . . . ding yaocai: No wonder you didn’t open your mouth . . . jiang meilan: I just knew you had something up your sleeve. It serves you right. ding feng: Why didn’t you say something this morning? You let me go on with that terrific speech; I’ve never been that worked up my entire life. jiang ziliu: You never stopped for breath. By the time I got the chance to put my two cents in, you were off and gone. Isn’t that right, Granny?

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(ding feng turns and storms away from him. jiang ziliu follows, puts his hand on ding feng’s shoulder. ding feng brushes him off. jiang ziliu takes out the watch and gives it to ding feng. ding feng looks at the watch. Finally he takes it. The two men smile at each other.) jiang meilan: Hey, what’s going on? (ding feng sees jiang meilan and is all agitated again. jiang ziliu stops him while the children stop their mother.) So what do we do now? ding feng: You go back to being a store owner’s wife. jiang meilan (her mind working fast): Not necessarily—Heng’s going off to Australia . . . to make his fortune . . . ding baoheng: I’m thinking of staying, Mom. all: What? ding baoheng: If it’s impossible for me to show my love for my country, at least I’ll be allowed to mourn. jiang meilan: I don’t know what you’re talking about. jiang ziliu: If that’s so, here, Heng, I’ll let you mind this for me. (With great care and affection, he hands the skeleton of the lantern to ding baoheng.) jiang meilan: Heng, such a serious matter, we’ll talk further at home. ding feng: Another big dream went up in smoke . . . ding baoyi: Not necessarily. This is Hong Kong. jiang meilan: Then hurry. Think of something else. jiang ziliu: This house is a genuine antique. Take it down brick by brick and put each in a glass case; you could sell them at a nice price at fancy stores . . . ding yaocai: Better yet, Ziliu, you go away somewhere and pretend you’re dead. We can sell your paintings . . . jiang meilan: Gee Wee, if we can convince the owner of this house to sell it, will Uncle Ding still get the million dollar commission? liao: No problem. I’ll take care of it. Let me get the documents . . . (liao picks up the papers from the table. He’s about to put them in his briefcase when jiang ziliu stops him.) jiang ziliu: Wait. (Takes the documents) Let me talk to Dawen about it. ding feng and jiang meilan: It was Dawen who bought the house?! ding baoyi: Long live Uncle Ziliu!! ding feng: So there’s still hope! Come, let us toast to that! jiang meilan: Yes, HOPE! (The lights slowly fade amid loud cheers and laughter.)

G l o s sa r y

Bai chou tu ᮶⊇ⓛ㟰᮷ baihua ju ⊅⪈⳹ Bai Mei ⊅み Bai Wei ⊅䒃 Ba Jin ≻ⱄ baorongxing ⊪㑛㩂 Beidahuang ⌝▙⪜ Beijing ren᮶⌝ⲻ㑉᮷ Beijing Renmin Yishu Juyuan ⌝ⲻ㑉ス㮿 㗯⳹㴠 bentu yishi 〉㟵㯌㖰 bentu zuojia 〉㟵㾗⭨ Boli dongwuyuan ᮶⏍⻳⛑㣡㴖᮷ bu zhong bu xi ⏥㺲⏥㣩

Chaguan ᮶␒⤹᮷ Chahua nü ᮶␒⪀ㇲ᮷ Chan Wanying (Joanna Chan) ⒪㯦㱐 Chen Baichen ⒪⊅⒦ Chen Duxiu ⒪⛢㩑 Chen Ganquan (Anthony Chan) ⒪⡰㐦 Chen Yi ⒪㯍 Chen Yingzhen ⒪㱛㸊 Chen Yong ⒪傻 Chen Yueshan ⒪䳌㓹 Chen Yun ⒪㴫 Chen Zidu ⒪㽳⛪ Chen Zishan ⒪㽳㔂 Chezhan ᮶⒝㷢᮷ Ching-kiu Stephen Chan (Chen Qingqiao) ⒪㎥㎅ chuanqi ║㋨ Chunliu She ╠⽄㔣

Cai Xichang ⏶㣯␧ cai zi jia ren ⏯㽳⭧㑉 Cao Yu ␆䀌

Da chu Youlingta ᮶▘ⓞ㱬⼵㚶᮷ Da hong denglong gaogao gua ᮶▙⨆☪⽉ ⡽⡽⤮᮷

A Jia ≐⭭ An Er ≠✒ An lian Taohua Yuan ᮶≣⼁㝈⪀㴚᮷

1100

Glossary

Daqing Shi Huaju Tuan ▙㎬㗊⪈⳹㟹 da xie shisan nian ▙㨢㖨㑻ㅰ dianxing huanjing zhong de dianxing xingge ♈㨻⪏ⳅ㺲☨♈㨻㩂⢏ Ding Ling ⛃⼭ Ding Xilin ⛃㣩⼢ di wang jiang xiang ☿㠩⯿㦐 Dizhishi ᮶☼㺬㖠᮷ dongbei xiju ⛍⌝㥧⳹ Dong Jian ⛏⯵ Dongya fengyun ᮶⛍㫳⟇㴬᮷ Dou’e yuan ᮶动✒㴏᮷ Du Guowei (Raymond K. W. To) ⛧⥖㠲 Du Jiafu ⛧⭤⟒ Fang Zixun ➝䰵㫗 Fei xiong meng ᮶➧㩊ゖ᮷ Feng Jiao ⟋Ⰻ Fengxue ji ᮶⟇㫕⭅᮷ Fengxue ye gui ren ᮶⟇㫕㮣⥅㑉᮷ Fu Jin ⡔ⱋ Fushi ᮶⡍㖮᮷ gailiang xinju ⡢⼈㨰⳹ Gao Xingjian ⡽㨾⯵ Ge Yihong ⢎㮥⨁ Gou’er Ye niepan ᮶⤓✛㮙ㅿ㈐᮷ Guan Hanqing ᮶⤴⧔㎤᮷ guofang xiju ⥖➠㥧⳹ Guo Fumin ⥕⡙ス Guo Jianguang ⥕⯼⤾ Guoli Xiju Zhuanke Xuexiao ⥖⻮㥧⳹㽈 ⶖ㫓㨑 Guo Moruo ⥕ㄳ㑲 Hai qiao chun ᮶⦽㎈╠᮷ Heinu yu tian lu ᮶⧴㇯㲝㝢⿆᮷ He Jiping ⧨⭓㊿ Hong bizi ᮶⨆⌳㽳᮷ Hong bo qu ᮶⨃⏒㎺᮷ Hongdeng ji ᮶⨆☪⭝᮷ Hongse niangzi jun ⨆㓧ㅵ㽳ⴎ Hong Shen ⨃㔪 Hua jin gao lou ᮶⪀ⱐ⡽⾯᮷ huaju ⪈⳹ Huang Jisu ⪞⭢㚍

Huang Ren ⪞㑈 Huangyuan yu ren ᮶⪜㴓㲓㑉᮷ Huawen xiju ⪂㢶㥧⳹ Huijia yihou ᮶⪰⭨㮾⨍᮷ Hu Jieqing ⨔⮺㎠ Hulan He zhuan ᮶⨎⹊⧭║᮷ Huo hu zhi ye ᮶⫉⩺㺐㮣᮷ Hu Shi ⨔㗄 Jia ᮶⭨᮷ Jiangnan shijia Ⰱㅕ㖺⭨ Jiao Juyin Ⰽ⳧㯨 Jinhua Tuan ⱌ⪇㟹 Jin zhai ge rou ᮶ⱄ㷒⢌㑠᮷ jiuju ⳛ⳹ jiuqi qingjie ⳗ㋡㎩ⰵ Kuangbiao ᮶ⷁ代᮷ Lai Sheng- chuan (Stan Lai) ⹃㔵╎ langsong ⹘㚄 Lao She ⹝㔝 Lei Feng ⹥⟆ Leiyu ᮶⹥㲒᮷ Liang Qichao ⼆㋶⒔ Li Huiying ⹼⪬㱊 Li Jianwu ⹼⯵㣓 Li Longyun ⹼⽆㴬 Li Mangui ⹼〆⥁ Lingnan wenhua ⼷ㅕ㢶⪇ Li ren xing ᮶⺄㑉㨾᮷ Li Rui ⹼㑯 liudongxing ⽃⛑㩂 Liu Shaoqi ⽁㔕㋨ Liu Shuhe ⽁㗟⧧ Longxu Gou ᮶⽆㩙⤑᮷ Lu Xun ⾽㫤 Mai li ren ᮶⿾⹴㑉᮷ Mao Dun ぱ⛾ Mei Lanfang み⹊➜ Ming you zhi si ᮶ッ㱭㺐㙸᮷ Minnan ゾㅕ Minxing She ス㨹㔣 Mo Yan ㄰㬀 mubiaozhi ㅁ⍙㺨

Glossa ry

Nanguo She ㅕ⥖㔣 nan lai zuojia ㅕ⹂㾗⭨ nan Ou bei Mei ㅕㇻ⌝み Ngo hai Heung Gong yan ᮶㣄㥥㦓⡹㑉᮷ Nianqing de yidai ᮶ㅰ㎠☨㮥■᮷ Niulang Zhinü ᮶㇧⹗㺑ㇲ᮷ Ouyang Shan ㇻ㬠㓹 Ouyang Yuqian ㇻ㬠㲐䃗 Pan Jinlian ᮶㈏ⱄ⻷᮷ Pinmin canju ᮶㊸ス⏼⳹᮷ Qie Gewala (Che Guevara)᮶㎐ᮤ⢏㠓⸻᮷ Qiu Jin ㎯䯨 Qi xi Baihutuan ᮶㋨㥞⊅⩺㟹᮷ Qun mo luan wu ᮶㐸ㄭ⿜㣚᮷ Renjian you qing ᮶㑉⭺㱸㎩᮷ Renmin gongdi ᮶㑉ス⤇☴᮷ renqing 㑉㎩ Ren Tianzhi 㑌㝢㺌 Richu ᮶㑓ⓞ᮷ Sai Jinhua ᮶㑺ⱄ⪀᮷ Sangshuping jishi ᮶㓟㗱㊼⭣㖼᮷ Shajiabang ᮶㓯⭨䤀᮷ Shandong hong gaoliang 㓹⛍⨆⡽⼆ Shanghai Lingjie Xiehui 㔋⦽⼲ⰻ㨛⪹ Shanghai wuyan xia ᮶㔋⦽㣏䳘㥲᮷ shanghen wenxue 㔇⧵㢶㫓 shehui caifu 㔣⪹⏰⡙ Shen Lin 㔮⼢ shinpa (xin pai ju) 㨰㈍⳹ Shi Wanshun 㖩㠥㙬 Song Dizhi 㚆☼㺐 Su Tong 㚍㟣 Taiping Hu ᮶㜡㊿⨘᮷ Taiwan minbao ᮶㜞㠙ス⌔᮷ Taiwan xiangtu 㜞㠙㦗㟵 Taiyu xiju 㜞㲗㥧⳹ Taohua shan ᮶㝈⪀㔄᮷ “Taohuayuan ji” ᮶㝈⪀㴚⭝᮷ Tao Yuanming 㝋㴎タ Tian Han 㝥⧔

Tianxia di yi lou ᮶㝢㥲☾㮥⾯᮷ tongzhong 㟠㺸 Tuixiaoyuan zhi si ᮶㟺㦪㴗㺐㙸᮷ Wang Xiaonong 㠨㨔䃋 Weng Ouhong 㢾㈀⨁ wenming xi 㢶タ㥧 wenren 㢶㑉 wenti ju 㢼㝘⳹ Wenxue jikan ᮶㢶㫓⭔⵿᮷ wen yi zai dao 㢶㮾㴾☤ Wuling chun ᮶㣖⼶╠᮷ Wu Qinghua 㣔㎥⪂ Wu Song 㣖㚁 Wu Zuguang 㣔㾆⤾ xian qi liang mu 㥽㋠⼈ㄾ Xiao cheng fengguang ᮶㨏⒯⟇⤾᮷ Xiao Hong 呗⨆ xiao shimen de da juben 㨏㗊ス☨▙⳹〉 Xia Yan 㥴㬈 xibei huang tudi 㣩⌝⪞㟵☼ xiju zai dao 㥧⳹㴾☤ xingge xiju 㩂⢏㥧⳹ Xingguang xia de tuibian ᮶㨵⤾㥲☨㟽⍐᮷ xinju 㨰⳹ xinju yundong 㨰⳹㴱⛑ xinmin 㨰ス Xinmin congbao ᮶㨰ス╺⌔᮷ xin ren xin shi 㨰㑉㨰㖼 xin wenxue yundong 㨰㢶㫓㴱⛑ Xin Wutai 㨰㣚㜞 Xin Zhongguo Jushe 㨰㺲⥖⳹㔣 xiqu gailiang 㥧㎺⡢⼈ Xuanting yuan ᮶㩧㟘㴏᮷ Xue suoyi ᮶㫖㚪㮬᮷ Xu Jingxian 㩚Ⳃ㥽 Yang Hansheng 㬠⧌吷 Yang Limin 㬚⺉ス Yang Zirong 㬚㽳㑗 yansu xiju 㫻㚘㥧⳹ Yan Weicai 㫻㢢⏯ Yao Ke 㮐⶛

1101

1102

Glossary

Yao Yiwei 㮐㮥㢟 Yapo ᮶㫥㋊᮷ Ying Ruocheng 㱊㑲Ⓑ yiren 㮿㑉 Yizhi mafeng ᮶㮥㺝⿷⟄᮷ yi zhong yi xi 㯊㺲㯊㣩 youxi de xiju 㱶㥧☨㥧⳹ Yuan Shikai 㴒㖺⵽ Yuanye ᮶㴓㮚᮷ Yueju 㴧⳹ zaju 㴹⳹ Zhang Geng 㷩⢛ Zhang Guangtian 㷩⤿㝢 Zhang Lihui 㷦⻲⪫ Zhang Weixian 㷩㢞㥽

Zhang Wojun 㷩㣄ⴎ Zhao Yanwang ᮶㷸㬂㠩᮷ Zhe bu guo shi chuntian ᮶㸆⏥⥙㗁╠㝢᮷ Zhengyi zai renjian ᮶㸡㯏㵀㑉⭺᮷ zhenxi 㸊㥧 zhiqing wenxue 㺌㎠㢶㫓 Zhi qu Weihushan ᮶㺩㐟㠲⩺㓹᮷ Zhongguo Luxing Jutuan 㺲⥖⿍㨾⳹㟹 Zhongguo Qingnian Yishu Juyuan 㺲⥖㎠ ㅰ㮿㗯⳹㴠 Zhonghua Quanguo Wenyijie Kangdi Xiehui 㺲⪂㐩⥖㢶㮿ⰻⶉ☴㨛⪹ Zhongshen da shi ᮶㺷㔩▙㖼᮷ Zhuanggong shi qi ᮶㽏⤇㗎㋠᮷

C o n t r ib u t o r s

Bre nda Au stin has master’s degrees from the University of New England and the University of Minnesota and is a graduate student at Syracuse University. She has taught Chinese language courses at the high school and college levels. Bai Di is associate professor of Chinese and Asian studies at Drew University. She teaches Chinese literature, film, and gender studies. C aroly n T. Brown directs the Office of Scholarly Programs and the John W. Kluge Center at the Library of Congress. She holds a Ph.D. in literature from the American University. Prior to joining the Library of Congress, she was actively engaged in the field of Chinese literature. Anthony C han is artistic director of Hong Kong Repertory Theatre and drama assessor for the Hong Kong Arts Development Council, as well as head adjudicator for the Hong Kong School Drama Festival. J oanna C han, who holds a doctorate from Columbia University, has been a playwright and stage director in North America, Hong Kong, and China for four decades. She is cofounder and artistic director of the Yangtze Repertory Theatre of America, in New York. Her 1985 drama, Before the Dawn-Wind Rises, was included in An Oxford Anthology of Contemporary Chinese Drama (Oxford University Press, 1997).

1104

C o n t ri b u t o r s

Xiaomei Chen is professor of Chinese literature at the University of California, Davis. She is the author of Occidentalism: A Theory of Counter-Discourse in Post-Mao China (Oxford University Press, 1995) and Acting the Right Part: Political Theater and Popular Drama in Contemporary China (University of Hawai‘i Press, 2002). C lai re C onceison is professor of theater studies at Duke University. She is the author of Significant Other: Staging the American in China (University of Hawai‘i Press, 2004) and Voices Carry: Behind Bars and Backstage During China’s Revolution and Reform (Rowman and Littlefield, 2008), the autobiography of Ying Ruocheng. Amy Dooli ng is associate professor of Chinese literature at Connecticut College. She is the author of Women’s Literary Feminism in Twentieth- Century China (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005) and editor of Writing Women in Modern China: The Revolutionary Years, 1936–1976 (Columbia University Press, 2005). Pau l B. Fos ter is associate professor of Chinese at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He is the author of Ah Q Archaeology: Lu Xun, Ah Q, Ah Q Progeny and the National Character Discourse in Twentieth Century China (Lexington Books, 2006). He is completing a manuscript on kung fu fiction, film, and popular culture. E dward M . Gunn is professor of Chinese literature at Cornell University. His most recently published book-length study is Rendering the Regional: Local Language in Contemporary Chinese Media (University of Hawai‘i Press, 2005). Ge orge Hayd en has been teaching Chinese language, literature, and culture at the University of Southern California since 1973. His research interests are Chinese traditional drama and dramatic music and the history of the Chinese language. Tony Hy de r is former librarian of the Oriental Institute, University of Oxford. He continues to work on aspects of twentieth- century Chinese drama. Ni c k Kaldi s is associate professor of Chinese studies at Binghamton University (SUNY). He has recently completed a manuscript on Lu Xun’s Yecao and is cotranslating a collection of nature-writing essays by Taiwanese author Liu Kexiang. S tan Lai (Lai Sheng- chuan), one of the most influential playwrights in the Chinese theater world, is also known for his award-winning films. He is former professor and founding dean of the College of Theatre Arts, at the Taipei National University of the Arts. He was inducted into the Chinese theater Hall of Fame in 2007. Thomas M oran is professor of Chinese and director of East Asian studies at Middlebury College and the editor and coauthor of Dictionary of Literary Biography: Chinese Fiction Writers, 1900–1949 (Gale, 2006). He has published translations of fiction by Han Shaogong and Shi Tiesheng and the play WM, by Wang Peigong.

Contri butors

1105

J onathan S . N o ble has taught contemporary Chinese literature and culture at the University of Notre Dame since 2003. His essays on contemporary Chinese film, theater, and society have been widely published. He is the translator of thirty Chinese plays and screenplays. C ons tanti ne Tung is associate professor emeritus at the University at Buffalo (SUNY) and research member of the Three Kingdom Culture Institute, Chengdu, China. He is coeditor of Drama in the People’s Republic of China (SUNY Press, 1987) and Three Kingdoms and Chinese Culture (SUNY Press, 2008). He is completing a book in Chinese on Romance of the Three Kingdoms. J ohn B. We i n stein is associate professor of Chinese and Asian studies at Bard College at Simon’s Rock. His most recent publication, “Ding Xilin and Chen Baichen: Building a Modern Theater through Comedy,” appears in Modern Chinese Literature and Culture 20, no. 2 (fall 2008). He was elected president of the Association for Asian Performance in 2006. Ti m othy C . Won g taught Chinese language and literature at Arizona State University from 1974 to 1984, and again since 1995. While his research interests center on the tradition of fictional narratives in premodern China, he has also published a number of translations of twentieth- century literary works, including two anthologies of short stories and another play by Yang Limin. C harle s Qi anzh i Wu is professor emeritus of Chinese and humanities at Reed College. He has a Ph.D. in English literature from Columbia University. C ars e y Y e e is a Ph.D. candidate in modern Chinese history at Harvard University and has a particular interest in the local history of Taishan, Guangdong, and in Chinese migration overseas in general. He lives in Toronto and has collaborated frequently with John B. Weinstein on theatrical productions and translation. Y i ng Ru oc heng (1929–2003), a founding member of the Beijing People’s Art Theatre, is the translator of numerous plays from English into Chinese and vice versa, including works by Shakespeare, Arthur Miller, Shaw, Ba Jin, and Lao She. A renowned actor and director, he was China’s vice minister of culture from 1986 until 1990. He is best known for his portrayals of Pockmark Liu, in Teahouse (1958, 1979), Willy Loman, in Death of a Salesman (1983), and for his roles in Bernardo Bertolucci’s films The Last Emperor (1987) and Little Buddha (1993). S hi ao- Li ng Yu is associate professor of Chinese at Oregon State University. Her research interests are Chinese drama (both classical and modern), modern Chinese literature, and Chinese women writers. She is the translator and editor of the anthology Chinese Drama After the Cultural Revolution, 1979–1989 (Mellen, 1996), for which she received a National Endowment for the Arts translation fellowship.