Frog

Dramatis Personae

GUGU, a retired obstetrician, in her seventies

TADPOLE, playwright, Gugu’s nephew, in his fifties

LITTLE LION, one-time assistant to Gugu, Tadpole’s wife, in her fifties

CHEN MEI, surrogate mother, in her twenties, a fire victim with a disfigured face

CHEN BI, Chen Mei’s father, Tadpole’s elementary schoolmate, a vagrant in his fifties

YUAN SAI, Tadpole’s elementary schoolmate, Bullfrog Company boss, secretly engaged in a ‘surrogate mother company’, in his fifties

COUSIN, Jin Xiu by name, Tadpole’s cousin, Yuan Sai’s subordinate, in his forties

LI SHOU, Tadpole’s elementary schoolmate, restaurant owner, in his fifties

STATION CHIEF, police officer in his forties

WEI YING, policewoman, a recent police academy graduate, in her twenties

HAO DASHOU, a folk artist, Gugu’s husband

QIN HE, a folk artist, Gugu’s admirer

LIU GUIFANG, Tadpole’s elementary schoolmate, manager of the county guesthouse

GAO MENGJIU, Gaomi County Chief during the Republic of China era

YAMEN CLERKS

HOSPITAL SECURITY GUARD and HOSPITAL SECURITY SUPERVISOR

TWO MASKED INDIVIDUALS IN BLACK

TV CAMERAMAN, FEMALE JOURNALIST, and OTHERS

Act I

Sino-American Jiabao Women’s and Children’s Hospital compound. An impressive gateway, suggestive of a government office. The hospital marquee hangs above and to the left of the marble-faced main door.

To the right stands a sign the size of a billboard etched with hundreds of baby pictures.

A security guard in a grey uniform stands stiffly to the left of the gate, welcoming or sending off each luxury automobile that enters or leaves the compound with a crisp salute. His action is comically, laughably exaggerated.

A full moon shines brightly on the backdrop, behind which emerges the sound of exploding firecrackers; an occasional burst of fireworks lights up the backdrop.

SECURITY GUARD: (takes out his cell phone, reads a text message, and laughs) Tee-hee.

The security supervisor slips out through the gate.

SUPERVISOR: (standing unnoticed behind the security guard, says sternly in a low voice) What’s so funny, Li Jiatai? (feels something land on his foot) Where did all these frogs come from at this time of year? What are you laughing at?

SECURITY GUARD: (startled, nervously snaps to attention) Reporting, sir, the earth is getting warmer, the greenhouse effect. What’s funny? Nothing…

SUPERVISOR: If nothing’s funny, what are you laughing at? (shakes the foot on which the frog rests) What’s going on here? Is another earthquake on its way? I asked you what’s so funny.

SECURITY GUARD: (seeing there’s no one around, says with a laugh) Sir, this joke is really funny…

SUPERVISOR: I’ve told you people, no texting!

SECURITY GUARD: Reporting, sir, I’m not texting. I’m just reading a few text messages.

SUPERVISOR: What’s the difference? If Department Head Liu saw you, you could kiss your rice bowl goodbye.

SECURITY GUARD: So what? I’ve been thinking of packing it in anyway. The boss at the bullfrog breeding farm is my uncle. My mother has asked her cousin to get her husband to hire me at the farm…

SUPERVISOR: (impatiently) Okay, that’s enough. All this uncle-cousin-husband talk has me going in circles. You might not care about your rice bowl because you’ve got an uncle you can rely on, but I need mine to survive. So while you’re on duty, no reading text messages and no answering your phone.

SECURITY GUARD: (snaps to attention) Yes, sir!

SUPERVISOR: Be careful.

SECURITY GUARD: (snaps to attention) Yes, sir! (can’t keep from laughing) Tee-hee…

SUPERVISOR: Have you been drinking dog piss, or did you dream you were marrying a rich woman? What the hell are you laughing at?

SECURITY GUARD: I’m not laughing at anything…

SUPERVISOR: (sticks out his right hand) Hand it over!

SECURITY GUARD: What?

SUPERVISOR: Your cell phone, that’s what.

SECURITY GUARD: I promise I won’t use it again, sir. Okay?

SUPERVISOR: Shut up! Are you going to hand it over or aren’t you? If you don’t I’ll report you to the department head.

SECURITY GUARD: I’m involved in a romance, sir, and I need my cell phone.

SUPERVISOR: When your father was involved in a romance, he didn’t even have a telephone and he managed to win over your mother, didn’t he? Make it snappy!

SECURITY GUARD: (reluctantly hands over his cell phone) I didn’t mean to laugh, but the message was just so funny.

SUPERVISOR: (plays with the phone) I want to see just what it was that had you laughing so hard… ‘In an effort to produce a champion sprinter, the National Athletic Commission ordered a marriage between men’s hundred-metre-dash gold medallist Qian Bao and women’s distance gold medallist Jin Lu. When Jin Lu’s pregnancy had reached full term, she delivered a baby in the hospital. Qian Bao asked the doctor: Is it a boy or a girl? The doctor replied, I couldn’t tell. It ran off as soon as it was out.’ You laughed at that old joke? I’ve got a couple of good ones here. (He takes out his cell phone, but before he starts reading, he realises what he’s doing and stuffs both phones into his pocket.) Tonight’s the Mid-Autumn Festival. Department Head Liu said we have to double our vigilance on special holidays.

SECURITY GUARD: (sticks out his hand) My phone!

SUPERVISOR: I’m keeping it for now. You can have it back when you’re off-duty.

SECURITY GUARD: (pleading) This is a holiday, sir. Families are having happy reunions, enjoying moon cakes, setting off firecrackers, gazing at the full moon, falling in love, but not me. I’m stuck here like a pole, and you’re taking even the pleasure of exchanging text messages with my girlfriend from me.

SUPERVISOR: That’s enough. Stand your watch, keep your eyes and ears open, and stop all suspicious individuals at the gate.

SECURITY GUARD: Oh, come on. Don’t pay attention to Big Head’s nonsense. Who wants to come to a hospital on special days? Even crooks celebrate holidays.

SUPERVISOR: Stop clowning around! Is this some kind of game to you? (lowers his voice secretively) On New Year’s a terrorist gang entered the (unintelligible) Maternity Hospital and snatched eight babies as hostages…

SECURITY GUARD: (soberly) Oh…

SUPERVISOR: (mysteriously) Are you aware that a certain someone’s mistress is in the hospital to have a baby?

SECURITY GUARD: (cocks his ear to listen attentively)

SUPERVISOR: (softly, secretively) Get it? Remember, a black Mercedes and a green BMW are his cars. Be sure to give them snappy salutes coming and going. No sloppy behaviour!

SECURITY GUARD: Yes, sir! (reaches out) Now can you give me back my cell phone?

SUPERVISOR: No, absolutely not! This is a special night. Not only is Boss Jin’s wife expecting to deliver, but Party Secretary Song’s daughter-in-law is due as well. A black Audi A-6, licence 08858, keep your eyes open for it.

SECURITY GUARD: (unhappily) Those pricks sure know how to pick the right day! My girlfriend told me that the moon tonight will be the brightest and roundest in the last fifty years. (gazes into the sky) When is the moon full? I ask with a glass in my hand. We toast the heavens with wine…

SUPERVISOR: (in a mocking tone) Oh, please! If you’ve memorised everything from school, what are you doing as a security guard? (suddenly alert) What’s that?

Chen Mei, dressed in black, a black veil covering her face, enters carrying a tiny red sweater.

CHEN MEI: (swaying from side to side, as if drunk) My baby… my baby… where are you? Mummy’s coming for you, where are you hiding?

SECURITY GUARD: Her again. She’s crazy.

SUPERVISOR: Go chase her away.

SECURITY GUARD: (stands up straight) I cannot leave my post.

SUPERVISOR: I’m ordering you to chase her away.

SECURITY GUARD: I am a sentry.

SUPERVISOR: Your duty station extends to fifty metres on either side of the gate.

SECURITY GUARD: If anything suspicious occurs in the vicinity of the gate, the guard on duty is required to man his post and stop suspicious individuals from entering, then report immediately to his superior. (He takes his walkie-talkie from his belt.) Reporting, sir, a suspicious individual to the right of the main gate. Request backup.

SUPERVISOR: Damn you!

Stage lights focus on a spot in front of the signboard.

CHEN MEI: (points to the baby photos) Baby, my baby, Mummy’s calling you. Can you hear me? Are you playing hide-and-seek with Mummy? Not letting her find you? Hurry, you naughty thing, you little angel, come out so Mummy can nurse you. If you don’t, a puppy will take Mummy’s milk from you… (points to one of the photos) You want my milk? No, you can’t have it. You’re not my baby. My baby has double-fold lids and big eyes. You’re squinting… you want my milk too? But you’re not my baby either. My baby has nice, apple red cheeks, but your face is sallow… you definitely aren’t mine, my baby is a boy, a pudgy little boy, but you’re a little girl, and girls aren’t worth anything. (alertly) Fifty thousand to bear a boy, only thirty thousand for a girl. You bastards, with your feudal preference for boys over girls, your mothers were girls, weren’t they? Your grandmothers… If everyone had boys and no girls, the world would end, wouldn’t it? All you high officials, you intellectuals, you great thinkers, how can you not know something as simple as that? What’s that, you say you’re my baby? You little rascal, the smell of my milk has you drooling, hasn’t it? (sniffs) You can’t fool me, you rascal, go dream someplace else. I’m telling all of you, you could cover my face with a blindfold, or you could put my baby in the middle of a thousand babies, and I could find him with my nose alone. Didn’t your mothers tell you that every baby has its own smell? If you’re hungry, go find your mummy. Oh, that’s right, you charmed children don’t call them ‘niang’, you call them ‘mama’ and you don’t say ‘nursing’, you say ‘drinking mother’s milk’. What’s that? Your mama has no milk? How can someone with no milk be a mama? All your talk about moving forward, to me it’s going backward, so far backward that children don’t have to arrive via the birth canal and breasts no longer have to produce milk. You people have turned your job over to cows and goats. Children who grow up on cow’s milk give off a bovine smell, and those who grow up on goat’s milk smell like them. Only children who grow up on mother’s milk have a human smell. If you think you can buy my milk, you have another thing coming, not if you came up with a mountain of gold. My milk is for my baby… hurry, come to Mummy. If you don’t, these children will take my milk from me. See how hungry they are, see all those open mouths? They’re hungry because their mamas sold their milk for cosmetics for their faces and perfume for their bodies. They are not good mamas. All they care about is showing themselves off. Their babies’ health means nothing to them… be a good little baby and come to Mummy…

SUPERVISOR: (stands at attention and salutes) Madam, this is a maternity hospital. The patients and their babies need peace and quiet, so please leave at once and stop creating a scene.

CHEN MEI: Who are you? What are you doing here?

SUPERVISOR: We’re security.

CHEN MEI: What does security do?

SUPERVISOR: We maintain social order and are responsible for the safety of institutions like schools, businesses, post offices, banks, markets, restaurants, bus and train stations, and more.

CHEN MEI: I know you! (mad laughter) I know who you are, you’re Yuan Sai’s bodyguards, the ones people call watchdogs.

SUPERVISOR: I’ll not stand for such insults. Without us, there would be anarchy.

CHEN MEI: You’re the ones who stole my baby! I’d know you even without your surgical gown and mask.

SUPERVISOR: (alarmed) Watch what you’re saying, madam. If you’re not careful I’ll sue you for slander.

CHEN MEI: Did you really think you could hide your identity from me by changing clothes? That putting on a uniform would make you a decent person? You’re one of Yuan Sai’s dogs. Wan Xin, that witch, delivered my baby, let me have one look… (painfully) no, not even a single look… they covered my face with white cloth, I wanted to see my baby, just one look, but they took my baby away without letting me have a look… but I heard my baby cry, crying for me, he wanted to see me too. Is there a child on earth that doesn’t want to see his mother? But they snatched him away from me. I knew he was hungry, he wanted to nurse, you people don’t know how precious the first drops of colostrum are to a baby, you thought I was uncultured, and didn’t know things like that, but I do, I know everything. I sent all the finest elements of my body up to my breasts, including the calcium in my bones, the oil in my marrow, the protein in my blood, and the vitamins in my flesh. My milk would ensure that my baby would not suffer from colds, diarrhoea or fevers, would grow fast and strong, and would be handsome, but you people took my baby away before he had a drop of my milk. (goes up and claws at the supervisor)

SUPERVISOR: (flustered) You’ve got the wrong person, madam, take my word for it. Round-cheeked or square-faced Yuan, it makes no difference, I don’t know who he is.

CHEN MEI: Of course you’d say that. You thieves, you gangsters, you steal children to sell them, a pack of devils. You may not know me, but I know you. Wasn’t it you people who gave me sleeping pills after you stole my baby, and when I woke up told me he was stillborn? Wasn’t it you people who flashed a skinned cat in front of my eyes and told me it was my baby’s dead body? After stealing my baby, you cheated me out of my fee, you said a live birth was worth fifty thousand, but my baby was stillborn, so you only gave me ten thousand, and after taking my baby, you tried to steal my milk. You came with a bowl and a baby bottle to squeeze first milk out of my nipples, saying each gram was worth ten yuan. You bastards, that milk is for my baby. Ten yuan? I wouldn’t sell it for ten thousand!

SUPERVISOR: I’ll ask you one more time to leave, madam. If you don’t, I’ll have to call the police.

CHEN MEI: The police? Good, call them. That’s exactly who I want to see. The people’s police love the people. Can they ignore people who lose children?

SUPERVISOR: No, they can’t. They’ll even help you find a lost dog, let alone a child.

CHEN MEI: That’s good. I’ll go find a policeman.

SUPERVISOR: Good idea, do it now. (points out the way to go) Straight ahead, then right at the traffic light. The Binhe precinct station is next to the dancehall.

A car drives up from the hospital, horn blaring.

CHEN MEI: (briefly dazed, then comes to) My baby, they’re taking my baby away in that car. (rushes towards the car) Give me my baby, you thieves!

The supervisor tries to stop her, but she is uncommonly strong and shoves him away.

SUPERVISOR: (exasperated) Stop her!

The security guard rushes up and wraps his arms around Chen Mei as she tries to block the car’s way. She struggles. The supervisor comes up to help the guard restrain Chen Mei. Her veil is torn loose in the struggle, revealing a horribly disfigured face destroyed by fire. The guard and supervisor recoil in horror.

SECURITY GUARD: My god!

SUPERVISOR: (spots frogs that have been flattened by the car’s tyres and people’s feet) Shit! Where did all these damn things come from?

Curtain

Act II

Green lights turn the stage into a gloomy underwater world. The entrance to a cave at the rear is moss-covered. The croaks of frogs and wails of babies emerge from the cave. A dozen bawling babies hang down from above the stage, limbs flailing.

A pair of workbenches for making clay dolls has been placed at the front of the stage.

Hao Dashou and Qin He sit behind the benches in lotus position creating clay dolls.

Gugu crawls out from the cave. She is wearing a baggy black robe, her hair is uncombed.

GUGU: (as if reciting from memory) My name is Wan Xin, I am seventy-two years old, and have been an obstetrician for fifty years. Though I am retired, I am anything but idle. I have been in attendance at the birth of nine thousand eight hundred and eighty-three babies. (She looks up at the babies hanging above the stage.) You children, I love to hear the sound of your crying. It makes me feel alive and real. Not hearing you cry makes Gugu feel empty inside. There isn’t another sound anywhere to match that of your crying. It is Gugu’s requiem. I only wish there had been tape recorders around back then to record the sounds of your crying as you were born. Gugu would play those sounds every day while she was alive and have them played at her funeral when she died. What wonderfully moving music the sound of nine thousand eight hundred and eighty-three babies crying together would make. (totally carried away) Let your crying move Heaven and Earth, let it deliver Gugu into Paradise…

QIN HE: (gloomy) Be careful their crying doesn’t send you down to Hell!

GUGU: (wanders lightly among the babies hanging above the stage like a fish swimming spryly through the water, lightly spanking their bottoms as she passes among them) Cry, my darlings, cry! Not crying means there’s something wrong with you, crying means you’re healthy.

HAO DASHOU: Crazy!

QIN HE: Who is?

HAO DASHOU: I am.

QIN HE: It’s okay to say you’re crazy, but not me. (self-importantly) Because I am Northeast Gaomi Township’s most famous clay-doll artisan. Though some may disagree, they’re welcome to their opinion. Where making things out of clay is concerned, I am the world’s number one. People have to learn how to promote themselves. If you don’t treat yourself like someone special, who will? The dolls I create are objets d’art, each valued at a hundred US dollars.

HAO DASHOU: Did you all hear that? That’s what you call shameless! When I was making dolls out of clay you were crawling on the ground scrounging for chicken feed. I was designated a master folk artist by the county chief himself. And what are you?

QIN HE: Comrades, friends, did you hear that? Hao Dashou, you’re not shameless, you’re too thickheaded to even feel shame, you’re deranged, you’re obsessive-compulsive. After a lifetime of making clay dolls, there isn’t one that can be called finished. You make one, then destroy it. The next one will be the one, you tell yourself. You’re like the bear in the cornfield picking ears and discarding them. Comrades, friends, take a good look at those hands. Hao Dashou, Big-Hands Hao? Those aren’t hands, they’re frog claws, duck’s feet, webbing and all…

HAO DASHOU: (angrily throws a lump of clay at Qin He) You’re full of shit, you’re deranged. Get the hell out of here!

QIN HE: Make me!

HAO DASHOU: This is my house.

QIN HE: Can you prove that? (points to Gugu and the hanging children) Can she? Can they?

HAO DASHOU: (points to Gugu) Of course she can.

QIN HE: Prove it.

HAO DASHOU: She’s my wife.

QIN HE: Prove it.

HAO DASHOU: We’re married.

QIN HE: Got any proof?

HAO DASHOU: We’ve slept together.

QIN HE: (deeply hurt, holds his head) No — you’re a liar, you’re lying to me. I gave up my youth for you, you promised you wouldn’t marry anyone, not ever!

GUGU: (looks daggers at Hao) Why are you provoking him? We agreed.

HAO DASHOU: I forgot.

GUGU: You forgot? Let me remind you. I told you back then that I’d marry you, but only if you accepted him as my kid brother, and that you’d put up with his outbursts, his foolishness, his crazy talk; and that you’d supply his room, board and clothing.

HAO DASHOU: And let him sleep with you?

GUGU: Deranged, you’re both deranged.

QIN HE: (points angrily at Hao) He’s deranged, not me.

HAO DASHOU: Make as much noise as you want, be as angry from embarrassment as you want, it won’t make any difference. You can raise your fists above the trees, cherries can spray from your eyes, you can grow horns, birds can fly out of your mouth, you can grow pig’s bristles all over your body, and none of those will alter the fact that you’re deranged. That is etched in stone.

GUGU: (mocking) Is that language you learned from Tadpole’s little drama?

HAO DASHOU: (points to Qin He) Every two months you have to check in to the Ma’er Shan Asylum for a three-month stay. They put you in a straitjacket and a sedative regimen; if that doesn’t work, they use electric shock therapy. When they finish with you, you’re skin and bones and glassy-eyed, like an African orphan. Your face is covered with flyspecks, like an old wall. You finally escape, but are never out more than two months. Tomorrow or the day after, you have to go back there again. (deftly imitates the sound of an ambulance siren. Qin He trembles and falls to his knees) When you go in this time, you’ll not come out again. If they let you out with your manic condition, you would introduce an element of disharmony into harmonious society.

GUGU: That’s enough!

HAO DASHOU: If I were a doctor, I’d lock you up for good and use a cow prod till you foamed at the mouth, till your body was racked by spasms, and you went into such deep shock you’d never come out of it. But if somehow you did, you’d have no memory.

Qin He wraps his arms around his head as he rolls on the ground and releases horrifying shrieks.

HAO DASHOU: Braying like a donkey and rolling on the ground are paltry skills. Go on, keep rolling. Look, your face is getting longer. Your ears are getting bigger. Feel them yourself. You’re becoming a donkey. A donkey turns a millstone, round and round and round. (Qin He crawls on the floor, his rump raised, as he mimics a donkey turning a millstone) Right, that’s it, you’re a fine donkey. After you mill two pecks of black beans, mill a bushel of sorghum. A good donkey doesn’t need blinders, because a good donkey doesn’t nibble at the grain on the millstone. Do a good job and your master will treat you well. I’ve got your feed already prepared, just waiting for you.

Gugu goes up to stop Qin He, but he bites her hand.

GUGU: Damn you, you don’t know what’s good for you!

HAO DASHOU: I’ve told you you’ve got no business here. You go take care of the children. Make sure they’re not cold or hungry. But don’t let them eat too much either or get too warm. Like you’ve always said: Children are best comforted by keeping them slightly hungry and a little cold. (turns to Qin He) Why have you stopped? You lazy donkey, do I have to use a whip on you?

GUGU: Stop abusing him, he’s not well.

HAO DASHOU: He’s not well, I think you’re not well!

Qin He collapses on the stage, foaming at the mouth.

HAO DASHOU: Get up, you can stop playing dead. This isn’t the first time you’ve played that game. I’ve seen it many, many times. If you think you can scare me with that, you’re mistaken. Even a stinkbug knows how to play dead. What you need to do is really die. Do it now, don’t wait another minute.

Gugu rushes up to help Qin He. Hao Dashou gets up and stops her.

HAO DASHOU: (painfully) My patience has run out. I’m not going to let you save him like that…

Gugu moves left, Hao follows; Gugu moves right, Hao follows.

GUGU: He’s not well. In the minds of us doctors there are two types of people, healthy and sick. If he’d hit my mother yesterday and was struck by illness today, I’d put aside my hatred and treat him to the best of my ability. If his brother had an epileptic seizure while he was raping me I’d push him off and try to save him.

HAO DASHOU: (abruptly stiffens and lowers his voice to say painfully) You finally admit that you had illicit relations with the two brothers.

GUGU: History is like that, the history of thousands of years of civilised society. Those who acknowledge history are history’s materialists. Those who deny it are history’s idealists.

Gugu sits beside Qin He and wraps him in her arms like a baby. She rocks him and sings an indistinguishable song.

GUGU: My heart breaks when I think of you… I cry but without tears when I think of you… I want to write but cannot find your address… I want to sing but cannot recall the words… I want to kiss you but cannot find your lips… I want to hold you but cannot find your body…

A child in a green stomacher embroidered with a frog, his head as clean as watermelon rind, emerges from the dark cave entrance at the head of an army of frogs (played by children) in wheelchairs, on canes, their front legs wrapped in gauze. The boy shouts Collecting debts! Collecting debts! The frogs behind him produce a guttural chorus.

Gugu lets out a shrill scream, runs away from Qin He and dodges the child and the frogs.

Hao Dashou and the suddenly alert Qin He block the attack of the green boy and frogs; Gugu leaves the stage in their protection. The green boy and frogs take up the chase offstage.

Curtain

Act III

A police station waiting room. One table only, with a telephone. Certificates of merit and citations adorn the wall.

A policewoman named Wei sits behind the table, gesturing to Chen Mei to take the chair on the other side. Chen Mei is still all in black, with her veil.

WEI: (prim and proper, sounds like a student) Have a seat, visiting citizen.

CHEN MEI: (illogically) Why aren’t there two big drums at the entrance to the main hall?

WEI: Drums? What for?

CHEN MEI: That’s what they used to have, so why don’t you? Without drums how are the common people supposed to announce their complaints?

WEI: You’re talking about the yamens of the old, feudal society. In a socialist society those things have been discarded.

CHEN MEI: Not in Kaifeng Prefecture.

WEI: Did you see something like that in a TV series? Magistrate Bao sat in Kaifeng Prefecture.

CHEN MEI: Take me to see Magistrate Bao.

WEI: Citizen, you are in the public waiting room of the Binhe Road police station. I am Duty Officer Wei Ying. Tell me what you’ve come for. I’ll record it and open a case file, then I’ll report to my superior.

CHEN MEI: Only Magistrate Bao can resolve a problem as great as mine.

WEI: Citizen, Magistrate Bao isn’t in today, so tell me what your problem is, and I will be sure to relay it to the magistrate. How’s that?

CHEN MEI: Do I have your word?

WEI: You do. (gestures to the chair) Have a seat.

CHEN MEI: This common woman dares not sit.

WEI: If I say sit, you sit.

CHEN MEI: This common woman thanks you.

WEI: Would you like a glass of water?

CHEN MEI: This common woman dares not.

WEI: Citizen woman, let’s stop the TV drama, all right? What’s your name?

CHEN MEI: This common woman’s name was Chen Mei, but Chen Mei died, or shall we say, she is half dead, half alive. So this common woman does not know her name.

WEI: Are you making fun of me, Citizen? Or are you expecting me to play your games? You are in a police station, where that sort of thing is not allowed.

CHEN MEI: I once had the loveliest eyebrows in all of Northeast Gaomi Township, and that is why my name was Chen Mei, Eyebrows Chen. But they’re gone now… and not just my brows (shrilly) but even my lashes and my hair! So I no longer have the right to be called Chen Mei.

WEI: (a sudden realisation) Citizen woman, if you don’t mind, would you remove your veil?

CHEN MEI: No!

WEI: If I’m not mistaken, you were a victim of the Dongli Stuffed Animal Factory fire.

CHEN MEI: How clever of you.

WEI: I was a student at the police academy at the time, and I saw TV reports of the fire. Those capitalists have hearts of stone. I felt so sorry for what happened to you, but if you are looking for compensation, you need to go to the courts. Either that or go see the city’s Party committee or government. You could even take your case to the media.

CHEN MEI: Didn’t you say you knew Magistrate Bao? He’s the only one who can give me justice.

WEI: (with forced resolve) All right, let’s hear it. I’ll do everything within my power to take your case to my superiors.

CHEN MEI: I want to charge them with the crime of stealing my child.

WEI: Who stole your child? Take your time. Just tell me what happened. I think you need a drink of water. You’re getting hoarse. Water will help. (pours a glass of water and hands it to her.)

CHEN MEI: No water for me. I know that’s just an excuse so you can see my face. I hate my face and hate for others to see it.

WEI: I’m sorry, but that wasn’t my intention.

CHEN MEI: I have only looked in a mirror once since the accident. I hate mirrors, hate anything that gives reflections. I was going to kill myself after I’d paid off my father’s debts, but I’ve changed my mind. If I killed myself, my baby would starve to death. If I killed myself, my baby would be an orphan. I hear my baby crying. Listen… he’s cried himself hoarse. I want to nurse him, my breasts have swelled up like balloons about to pop. But they’ve hidden my baby someplace…

WEI: Who are they?

CHEN MEI: (casts a watchful glance at the door) Frogs, bullfrogs as big as pot lids, always croaking, vicious frogs, frogs that eat children…

WEI: (gets up and shuts the door) Don’t worry, big sister, these walls are soundproof.

CHEN MEI: They know all the tricks, and they conspire with officials.

WEI: They don’t scare Magistrate Bao.

CHEN MEI: (gets out of the chair and kneels) Magistrate Bao, the injustice to this common woman is as deep as the ocean. Please see that justice is done.

WEI: You may speak.

CHEN MEI: Reporting. This commoner is Chen Mei, a resident of Northeast Gaomi Township. Her father, Chen Bi, greatly favours boys over girls. Years ago, when he wanted a son, he forced my mother into an illegal pregnancy, but the secret was exposed. He hid her here and there, until they were chased and caught on the river. My mother had her baby — me — and then died. My father was disappointed to have a second daughter. He abandoned me at first, then took me back, but because I was born illegally, he was fined five thousand eight hundred yuan. From then on he took to drinking, and when he was drunk he beat his daughters. When we could we two went south to work in a Guangdong factory to pay off our father’s debts and hope for a brighter future. My sister, Chen Er, and I were known as great beauties who could make our fortune if we wished to leave the path of virtue. But we refused to give up our chastity and modelled ourselves after the lotus that emerges from the mud and remains pure. But there was a terrible fire that claimed my sister’s life and ruined my face…

Wei dries her eyes with a tissue.

CHEN MEI: My sister died trying to save me… why did you do that, Sister? I’d rather be dead than live a life like someone who is neither human nor demon.

WEI: Those horrid capitalists. They should all be rounded up and shot.

CHEN MEI: They’re not so bad. They gave us twenty thousand for my sister and paid all my hospital bills plus fifteen thousand. I gave it all to Father. Dad, I said, this is for the fine you paid when I was born plus twenty years’ interest. I no longer owe you anything.

WEI: Your dad is not a good man either.

CHEN MEI: Good or bad, he’s still my dad, and you’re out of line saying that.

WEI: What did he spend the money on?

CHEN MEI: What else? Food, drink, cigarettes, till it was all gone.

WEI: A degenerate man, no better than a pig or a dog.

CHEN MEI: I told you not to talk about him like that.

WEI: (self-mocking) I was just following your lead.

CHEN MEI: Eventually, I went to work at the Bullfrog Company.

WEI: I’m aware of that company, it’s quite famous. I hear they’re working on making a high-end skin care product out of frog skins. If they’re successful, they’ll own the global patent.

CHEN MEI: They’re the ones I’m charging.

WEI: Tell me.

CHEN MEI: Raising bullfrogs is just a screen. Their real business is making babies.

WEI: Making babies, how?

CHEN MEI: They’ve hired a bunch of young women to get pregnant for rich men.

WEI: Are you kidding me?

CHEN MEI: There are twenty hidden rooms in their compound, each with a woman, married, engaged, or single, ugly and pretty, some getting pregnant through sexual activity, others not.

WEI: What are you saying? What’s pregnant by sexual activity and what’s not?

CHEN MEI: Please, no false innocence. Do you not know about things like that? Are you a virgin?

WEI: I honestly don’t know.

CHEN MEI: Sexual activity means that men sleep with the women, like any couple, and stay with them till they get pregnant. No sexual activity means they take the man’s sperm, put it in a syringe, and insert it into the woman’s womb. Are you a virgin?

WEI: Are you?

CHEN MEI: Of course I am.

WEI: But you just said you’ve had a baby.

CHEN MEI: I’ve had a baby, but I’m still a virgin. They had their fat nurse squirt a syringe filled with sperm into my womb so I became pregnant and had a baby, but I’ve never slept with a man. I’m a chaste woman, a virgin!

WEI: Just who are the they you’re talking about?

CHEN MEI: I can’t tell you that. If I did they’d kill my baby…

WEI: Was it that fat person at the bullfrog breeding farm? The one called, what’s his name… right, Yuan Sai.

CHEN MEI: Where’s Yuan Sai? He’s the one I’m looking for, you bastard, you cheated me, you all got together to cheat me. You told me my son was stillborn. You showed me the corpse of a skinned cat and said it was my baby, a modern-day re-enactment of the leopard cat and prince story. You used that to cheat me out of some of my fee and to see that I wouldn’t have any thoughts of looking for my baby. I didn’t care about the money, money means nothing to me. When I was in Guangdong, a Taiwanese boss was willing to pay a million to spend three years with me. But I wanted a baby, the finest baby in the world. Magistrate Bao, you must help me seek justice.

WEI: Did you sign a contract with them to be a surrogate mother?

CHEN MEI: Yes. They gave me a third of the fee up front. The rest was to be paid when the baby was born.

WEI: That could be a problem. But let’s not worry about that. Magistrate Bao will sort everything out. Go on.

CHEN MEI: They said the contents of the syringe came from a very important man, with excellent genes, a genius. They said he’d stopped smoking and drinking for half a year, and ate a whole abalone and two sea cucumbers every day, all to guarantee the birth of a healthy baby.

WEI: (sarcastically) What he wanted was an investment.

CHEN MEI: All he wanted was to father a perfect child. They told me he’d seen a photo of me before my face was ruined, and believed that I was a mixed-race beauty.

WEI: If money means nothing to you, why be a surrogate mother?

CHEN MEI: Did I say that money means nothing to me?

WEI: Just a moment ago.

CHEN MEI: (reflects) Now I remember. My father was in the hospital because of a traffic accident and I became a surrogate to earn enough to pay his bills.

WEI: You are a true filial daughter. A father like that would be better off dead.

CHEN MEI: I thought that too, but he was still my father.

WEI: That’s why I say you’re a filial daughter.

CHEN MEI: I knew my baby wasn’t stillborn, because I heard him cry… listen… he’s crying again… my baby has never tasted his mother’s milk… my poor baby…

The station chief opens the door and enters.

STATION CHIEF: All this crying and carrying on. If you’ve got something to say, say it. Don’t cry.

CHEN MEI: (kneels) Magistrate Bao, please seek justice for this common woman…

STATION CHIEF: What’s that all about? Ridiculous.

WEI: (under her breath) Chief, this could be a monumental case. (hands him her notebook; he scans what she’s written) It could involve a prostitution ring and child trafficking!

CHEN MEI: Magistrate, please save my child!

STATION CHIEF: All right, Citizen Chen, I’ll take your case and be sure to pass it on to Magistrate Bao. Go home and wait to hear from us.

Chen Mei leaves.

WEI: Chief.

STATION CHIEF: You’re new here, so you don’t have a handle on what’s going on. That woman was disfigured in the fire at the Dongli Stuffed Animal Factory. She hasn’t been right in the head for years. We all feel sorry for her, but there’s nothing we can do.

WEI: Chief, I saw…

STATION CHIEF: What did you see?

WEI: (embarrassed) She’s lactating.

STATION CHIEF: That must have been perspiration. You’re new to this post, Wei. In this profession we have to remain vigilant and keep from being overly sensitive.

Curtain

Act IV

The stage is set as in Act II.

Hao Dashou and Qin He sit at their benches making dolls.

A middle-aged man in a wrinkled grey suit and red tie, a fountain pen in his pocket and a briefcase under his arm enters quietly.

HAO DASHOU: (head down) What are you doing here again, Tadpole?

TADPOLE: (flatteringly) You’re a wizard, Hao Dashou. You knew it was me just by the sound.

HAO DASHOU: Not the sound, the smell.

QIN HE: A dog’s sense of smell is thousands of times keener than a man’s.

HAO DASHOU: Was that meant for me?

QIN HE: Did I say that? I was only talking about a dog’s sense of smell.

HAO DASHOU: That was meant for me. (quickly twists the clay in his hand into the image of Qin He’s face, shows it to Tadpole and Qin, then flings it to the floor) I’ve just flattened a face that knows no shame!

QIN HE: (taking up the challenge, twists a clay replica of Hao’s face, shows Tadpole, then flings it to the floor) I’ve just flattened an old dog!

TADPOLE: Hold your temper, Uncle Hao, you too, Uncle Qin. Stop it, both of you. The two images you just created were works of art. What a shame to flatten them.

HAO DASHOU: Butt out! Be careful I don’t make you, then flatten you.

TADPOLE: Make one of me, I beg you. But don’t flatten it afterward. When my play is finished, I’ll put that on the cover.

HAO DASHOU: I already told you that your aunt would rather watch ants climb a tree than read your trashy play.

QIN HE: Why are you writing plays instead of working in the field? If you actually manage to write your play, I’ll eat this ball of clay.

TADPOLE: (modestly) Uncle Hao, Uncle Qin, Gugu is getting old and her eyesight is failing. I wouldn’t dare ask her to read it herself. I plan to read it to her and to you at the same time. I’m sure you both know Cao Yu and Lao She. Well, they both went to the theatre to read their plays to actors and directors.

HAO DASHOU: But you’re not Cao Yu, and you’re not Lao She.

QIN HE: And we’re not actors, and we’re definitely not directors.

TADPOLE: But you are characters in my play! I worked hard to enhance your images. You’ll be sorry if you don’t listen, but if you do, and there are parts you’re unhappy with, I can change them. Otherwise, the play will be staged and will be published as a libretto, and then it will be too late for you to do anything about it. (suddenly sad) I’ve worked on this play for ten years and have gone through everything I owned. I even sold off the rafters in my house. (with his hands on his chest, he coughs painfully) For the sake of this play, I smoked cheap tobacco, and when I had none of that, I smoked the leaves of locust trees — countless sleepless nights, deteriorating health, my very life drained, all for what? Fame? Fortune? (shrilly) No, and no! For Gugu’s love, to give permanent recognition to Northeast Gaomi Township’s very own goddess. If you won’t listen to me read, I’ll kill myself in front of you.

HAO DASHOU: Who are you trying to scare? How do you plan to do it? Rope? Poison?

QIN HE: It actually sounds slightly moving. I think I’d like to hear it.

HAO DASHOU: You can read your play if you want to, but not in my house.

TADPOLE: First and foremost, this is Gugu’s house; only after that is it yours.

Gugu crawls out from the cave.

GUGU: (lazily) Who’s talking about me?

TADPOLE: It’s me, Gugu.

GUGU: I know it’s you. What are you doing here?

TADPOLE: (hastily opens his briefcase and takes out a manuscript; reads quickly) Gugu, it’s me, Tadpole from Two Counties Village. (Qin and Hao exchange puzzled looks) Yu Peisheng is my father, Sun Fuxia is my mother, I was one of the ‘sweet potato kids’ and the first child you ever delivered. You also delivered my wife, Tan Yu’er. Her father is Tan Jinhai, her mother is Huang Yueling…

GUGU: Stop there. You’ve changed your name to be a playwright? And your date of birth? Your parents, the name of your village, and your wife?

Gugu wanders among the babies hanging above the stage, stopping from time to time to lower her head in thought or to beat her breast and stomp her feet. Then she stops and whacks the bottom of one of the babies, making him cry. She does the same to all the others, and now they are all crying. Surrounded by all that noise, she begins to jabber nonstop, and the crying gets less intense.

GUGU: Listen to me, you sweet potato kids. I’m the one who brought you all into the world. And not one of you made it easy on me. For fifty years Gugu has delivered babies, and cannot rest even now. During those fifty years, Gugu did not enjoy more than a few hot meals or a few good nights’ sleep. Bloody hands and a sweaty body soiled by babies’ bodily waste, and you probably think that a village obstetrician has an easy life. In the eighteen villages that make up Northeast Gaomi Township, is there even one of the more than five thousand thresholds I’ve not stepped across? Is there one of your mothers or wives whose dusty belly I haven’t seen? And it was me who tied off the tubes of those weasels you call fathers. Some of you are now high-ranking officials; others have gotten rich. You can be willful before the county chief and insolent in the mayor’s office, but around me you have to act like gentlemen. When I think back to those days, the way I see it, I should have castrated every one of you little studs and saved your wives a peck of trouble. Quit smirking and straighten up. Family planning has an impact on the national economy and the people’s livelihood, and it is of the greatest importance. Don’t bare your teeth at me, you’re just wasting your time. Keep them or lose them, it’s not up to me. Men are no damned good. Know who said that? You don’t? You really don’t? Well, neither do I. All I know is, men are no damned good, but we can’t do without you. It’s all part of God’s plan. Tigers and wild hares, sparrow hawks and sparrows, flies and mosquitoes… we need them all in this world. I’ve heard there’s a tribe in the African jungle that lives in the trees. They make their nests in the trees, where the women lay eggs and perch on branches to eat wild fruit. The men cover their backs with leaves and sprawl on top of the eggs for forty-nine days, when the infants break through the shells, jump out, and start climbing the tree. Do you believe that? You don’t? Well, I do. Gugu once delivered an egg as big as a football, placed it at the head of the kang for two weeks, and out jumped a fat little baby, fair-skinned and pudgy. I named him Hatchling. Unfortunately he died of encephalitis. He’d be forty years old today, and would be a great writer. When, as a baby, he was given a choice of things to grab, he chose a writing brush. When there is no tiger on the mountain, the chimp is king. Hatchling died, giving you the chance to be a writer…

TADPOLE: (with great respect) Gugu, your words are like poetry. You are more than a wonderful woman’s doctor; you are also a natural playwright. The words tumble out of your mouth ready-made for the dramatic stage.

GUGU: What do you mean by tumbling out of my mouth? Every word Gugu says is carefully considered. (points to the manuscript in Tadpole’s hand) Is that your play?

TADPOLE: (modestly) Yes.

GUGU: What’s it called?

TADPOLE: Wa.

GUGU: Is that ‘wa’ as in ‘wawa’ for babies or ‘wa’ as in ‘qingwa’ for frogs?

TADPOLE: For now it’s the ‘wa’ in ‘qingwa’, but I can change it later to the ‘wa’ in ‘wawa’ for babies, or in ‘Nüwa’, the goddess who created mankind. After she populated the earth with people, the character for frogs symbolised a profusion of children, and it has become Northeast Gaomi Township’s totem. Frogs appear as creatures of veneration in our clay sculptures and our New Year’s paintings.

GUGU: Is it possible that you are unaware of my fear of frogs?

TADPOLE: Analysing Gugu’s fear of frogs is the central aim of my play. After reading my play, the complexities will be unravelled, and you may find that you no longer fear frogs.

GUGU: (reaches out) Then hand me your manuscript.

Tadpole respectfully hands the manuscript to Gugu.

GUGU: (to Qin He and Hao Dashou) Which of you is going to take this manuscript out and burn it?

TADPOLE: Gugu, that’s ten years of blood, sweat, and tears.

GUGU: (flings the manuscript into the air, pages flying everywhere) I don’t need to read it. One sniff tells me what kind of fart you’ve just laid. With what little knowledge you possess, do you really think you can figure out why Gugu is afraid of frogs?

Tadpole, Qin He, and Hao Dashou scramble across the stage fighting over pages.

GUGU: (caught up in nostalgic thoughts) On the morning you were born, Gugu was down by the river washing her hands, when she saw a tight mass of tadpoles in the water. It was a year of drought, and there were more tadpoles than the water could accommodate. That got me thinking that no more than one out of ten thousand of them would become frogs; the others would become part of the muddy riverbed. Just like a man’s sperm, except for them, only about one in ten million penetrates the egg to make a child. Gugu was reflecting that a mysterious connection exists between tadpoles and humans in the propagation of species. So when your mother asked me to give you a name, Tadpole was the first word out of my mouth. A good name, your mother said, a perfect name. Tadpole. Children with debased names are easy to raise. Tadpole, you could not ask for a better name.

Tadpole, Qin He, and Hao Dashou stand quietly, listening, each with sheets of paper in his hand.

TADPOLE: Thank you, Gugu!

GUGU: Sometime after that, People’s Daily introduced the ‘Tadpole contraceptive method’, urging ovulating women to swallow fourteen tadpoles in the privacy of their own rooms to forestall pregnancy. But not only did it not prevent pregnancy, the women who used the method gave birth to frogs.

HAO DASHOU: Stop there. Say any more and your illness will act up again.

GUGU: Act up? Not me. They’re the ones who were sick, those who ate frogs. They made women go down to the river and cut the heads off frogs, then skin them, like taking off a pair of pants. Their thighs were like a woman’s. That’s when my fear of frogs was born. Their thighs were just like a woman’s.

QIN HE: Those who ate frogs all paid a price for swallowing them, because they carried parasites that travelled up to the women’s brains and turned them into idiots. In the end, their facial expression was the spitting image of a frog.

TADPOLE: This is an important plot. Those who ate frogs all turned into frogs. And Gugu became the heroic protector of frogs.

GUGU: (painfully) No. The blood of frogs is on Gugu’s hands. Without being aware of it, Gugu was tricked into eating meatballs made of chopped frog. Like the story your great-uncle told of King Wen of Zhou, who was unaware that the meatballs he ate were made from the chopped flesh of his son. When King Wen fled from Chaoge, he lowered his head and retched several meatballs, and when they landed, they turned into rabbits, which sounded to him like ‘son’s bits’. When I came home that day, I had an upset stomach that rumbled with a strange guttural sound, nauseating and intolerable. So Gugu went down to the river, lowered her head, and retched a bunch of little green things, and when they landed in the river they turned into frogs.

The boy in the green stomacher crawls out of the cave, followed by an army of crippled frogs. Collecting debts! the boy cries out. Collecting debts! The frogs behind him produce an angry guttural chorus.

Gugu shrieks and passes out.

Hao Dashou catches her and pinches the groove beneath her nose, the philtrum.

Qin He drives off the boy and the procession of frogs.

Tadpole scoops up all the sheets of paper.

TADPOLE: (takes a red invitation out of his pocket) Gugu, I know exactly why you are afraid of frogs. I also know all the ways you’ve tried over the years to atone for what you view as your sins. Truth is, you’ve done nothing wrong. Those chopped-up frogs are illusions you created. Gugu, it was you who made the birth of my son possible. So I have laid out a grand banquet for you (turns to Hao and Qin) and the two of you.

Curtain

Act V

Night. Lamplight shining in from the side turns the stage a golden yellow.

Chen Bi and his dog are curled on the ground beneath a thick column in a corner of the Fertility Goddess Temple. The dog can be played by an actor. A few paper notes and some coins lie in a chipped begging bowl in front of Chen and alongside a pair of crutches.

Chen Mei, all in black and wearing a black gauzy veil, drifts onto the stage.

Two men in black, also wearing black gauzy veils, follow her onto the stage.

CHEN MEI: (howls) Baby… my baby… where are you… my baby… where are you…

The two men in black draw close to her.

CHEN MEI: Who are you? Why are you all in black and why have you covered your faces? Oh, I get it, you are also victims of the terrible fire.

FIRST MAN: Yes, we too are victims.

CHEN MEI: (alert) No. The victims of the fire were all women, and you are unmistakably men.

SECOND MAN: We are victims of another fire.

CHEN MEI: I’m sorry to hear that.

FIRST MAN: Yes, you can be sorry.

CHEN MEI: Are you in pain?

SECOND MAN: Yes, we are.

CHEN MEI: Have you had skin grafts?

FIRST MAN: (puzzled) Skin grafts, what’s that?

CHEN MEI: They take unburned skin from your buttocks, your thighs, and other spots and graft it onto the burned areas. Did you really not have any?

SECOND MAN: Yes, yes, we have. Skin from our buttocks has been grafted onto our faces.

CHEN MEI: Did they graft eyebrows?

FIRST MAN: Yes, yes they did.

CHEN MEI: Did they use hair from your head or pubic hair?

SECOND MAN: What? Pubic hair can become eyebrows?

CHEN MEI: If the scalp has been burned, they have to use pubic hair. It’s better than nothing, but if you don’t even have that, then you must go without, like frogs.

FIRST MAN: Yes, that’s it, we must go without, like frogs.

CHEN MEI: Have you seen yourselves in a mirror?

SECOND MAN: Never.

CHEN MEI: We burn victims fear nothing more than mirrors, and hate nothing more as well.

FIRST MAN: That’s right. We smash every mirror we see.

CHEN MEI: That’s a waste of time. You can smash mirrors, but you can’t smash storefront windows, or marble surfaces, or reflecting pools; most of all, you can’t smash the eyes that see us. Those eyes react with fear and avoidance; children cry, people call us monsters and demons. Their eyes are our mirrors, so you can never smash all the mirrors, and our best strategy is to hide our faces.

SECOND MAN: Right, so right, and that’s why we cover our faces with gauzy veils.

CHEN MEI: Have you ever thought of killing yourselves?

SECOND MAN: We…

CHEN MEI: From what I know, five of the girls who were injured in the fire have committed suicide. They killed themselves after looking in a mirror.

FIRST MAN: Mirrors killed them.

SECOND MAN: That’s why we smash every mirror we see.

CHEN MEI: I considered killing myself, but I changed my mind.

FIRST MAN: Always choose life. A demeaned life is better than the best death.

CHEN MEI: I stopped thinking about dying once I became pregnant, when I felt a new life moving inside me. I considered myself to be an ugly cocoon with a beautiful life growing inside, and that when it emerged, I would become an empty cocoon.

SECOND MAN: Well spoken.

CHEN MEI: But the baby was born, and I did not become an empty cocoon and die. I discovered that I was in love with life. I wasn’t dried up, I wasn’t withering. No, I was fresh and radiant. There seemed to be a moist quality to the tight skin of my face, my breasts filled with milk… the birth of my baby gave me a new life… but then they took my baby from me…

FIRST MAN: Come with us. We know where your baby is.

CHEN MEI: You know where he is?

SECOND MAN: We came looking for you for one reason — to help you go to your baby.

CHEN MEI: (excitedly) Thank the heavens. Take me there now, take me to see my baby.

The men in black try to spirit Chen Mei off the stage.

Like an arrow off the bow, Chen Bi’s dog jumps up and attacks First Man, biting him on the left leg.

Chen Bi also jumps up and moves across the stage on his crutches, stops, supports himself on one crutch and beats Second Man with the other.

The men in black break free of Chen Bi and his dog and flee to the edge of the stage, where they draw daggers. Chen Bi and his dog stand together.

Chen Mei stands downstage, forming a triangle with Chen Bi and his dog.

CHEN BI: (roars) Let my daughter go!

FIRST MAN: You old derelict, you drunk, you scoundrel, you old beggar, how dare you claim her as your daughter!

SECOND MAN: You say she’s your daughter. Call her and see if she responds.

CHEN BI: Mei… my poor, suffering daughter.

CHEN MEI: (coldly) You’ve mistaken me for someone else. I’m not who you think I am.

CHEN BI: (agonising) Mei, I know you hate your dad. I let you down, I let your sister down, and I let your mother down. Your dad caused you all great pain. Your dad is a sinner, a good-for-nothing, a man stranded on the line between life and death.

FIRST MAN: Is that what you call a confession? Is there a church nearby?

SECOND MAN: There’s a newly renovated Catholic church twenty li east of here, following the river.

CHEN BI: Mei, your dad knows they tricked you. Your dad’s old friends have cheated you, and I’m going to help you get justice.

FIRST MAN: Step aside, old man.

SECOND MAN: Come with us, Miss. We promise you’ll get to see your baby.

Chen Mei walks towards the men in black. Chen Bi and his dog block her way.

CHEN MEI: (angrily) Who are you to block my way? I want to go see my baby, don’t you know that? He hasn’t had a drop of milk since the moment he was born, and if he doesn’t eat soon, he’ll starve, you know that, don’t you?

CHEN BI: Mei, you hate me, I understand that. You say you’re not my daughter, I can live with that. But don’t go with them. They sold your baby, and if you go with them, they’ll throw you into the river to drown, then make up a story that you threw yourself in. They’ve done that before, and more than once.

FIRST MAN: I think you’ve lived long enough, old man. You can’t smear us like that.

SECOND MAN: How can you spout such rubbish? Murderous, ugly butchery like that does not exist in our society.

FIRST MAN: You’ve been watching too many videos in roadside shops.

SECOND MAN: You’re delusional.

FIRST MAN: You’ve turned socialism into capitalism.

SECOND MAN: Turned good people into bad ones.

FIRST MAN: Turned good will into donkey’s guts, pure malice.

CHEN BI: You’re the donkey’s guts, cow parts, filth vomited by cats and dogs, the dregs of society.

SECOND MAN: How dare he accuse us of being the dregs of society! You’re a pig that feasts on piles of garbage. Do you know what we do?

CHEN BI: Of course I do. I not only know what you do, but what you’ve done.

FIRST MAN: I think we ought to invite you down to the river for a cold bath.

SECOND MAN: Tomorrow morning, people who come to burn incense and choose dolls will discover that the old beggar that asks for alms in front of the temple is not around. Even his crippled dog will be missing.

FIRST MAN: No one will care.

The men in black attack Chen Bi and his dog. The dog is killed, Chen is knocked down. They are about to stab Chen to death when Chen Mei rips off her veil to expose a hideous face; her shriek terrifies the two men, who leave Chen Bi and run off.

Curtain

Act VI

An enormous round table, set for a meal, sits in the yard of a peasant’s house. At the rear of the stage, a banner proclaims: ‘Celebration of Jin Wa’s first month’.

Tadpole, dressed in a glossy silk Chinese-style jacket embroidered with the words (good luck) and (long life), greets guests at the gate.

Tadpole’s elementary school classmates Li Shou and Yuan Sai, plus Tadpole’s cousin, enter, each intoning pleasantries and the traditional words of congratulations.

Gugu, in a deep red gown, enters in the company of Hao Dashou and Qin He.

TADPOLE: (welcoming) We’re glad you’ve come, Gugu.

GUGU: How could I not come when the Wan family has a new son?

TADPOLE: It is only through the efforts of Gugu that Jin Wa has come to the Wan family.

GUGU: You flatter me. (looks around, smiles) No exceptions. (The others seem puzzled.) Except for these two (points to Hao and Qin), all of you here came into being with my two hands. I can tell you how many warts there are on all your mothers’ bellies. (laughter all around) Why aren’t you people seated?

TADPOLE: Who would dare sit down before you?

GUGU: Where’s your dad? Have him come out and take the seat of honour.

TADPOLE: He’s been a little under the weather the past few days, so he’s gone to my sister’s to get over it. He said to give you the seat of honour.

GUGU: I cannot refuse.

EVERYONE: It’s only right.

GUGU: Tadpole, you and Little Lion are both over fifty, and you have a bouncing baby boy. While that won’t get you into the — it’s Guinness, right? — the Guinness Book of World Records, it’s the first time in my five decades of delivering babies. That makes this a joyous occasion.

The other guests join in, some saying Joyous occasion, others saying A miracle.

TADPOLE: All thanks to Gugu’s medical genius.

GUGU: (emotionally) In her youth, Gugu was a dyed-in-the-wool materialist, but now, an old woman, she’s grown increasingly idealistic.

LI SHOU: There ought to be a place in the history of philosophy for idealism.

GUGU: Hear that? There’s a big difference between the educated and the uneducated.

YUAN SAI: We know nothing about idealists and materialists, we’re all coarse people.

GUGU: There may be no ghosts and spirits in the real world, but divine retribution definitely exists. For Tadpole and Little Lion to be blessed with a son in their fifties proves that the Wan family had built up considerable merits in past lives.

COUSIN: Gugu’s medicine also helped.

GUGU: Sincerity can work miracles. (turns to Tadpole) Your mother lived a miserly life, but things are better for your generation. You have plenty of money, and now this joyous addition. It’s time to change and show some generosity.

TADPOLE: You needn’t worry, Gugu. Though we have no camel’s hump or bear’s paw, there is more than enough meat, fish, and fowl here for everyone.

GUGU: (examines the table) Seven plates and eight bowls, that looks like plenty. But what about liquor? What’s there to drink?

TADPOLE: (reaches under the table and takes out two bottles of Maotai) Maotai.

GUGU: Real or fake?

TADPOLE: I got it from Liu Guifang, manager of the municipal guesthouse. She guarantees it’s real.

LI SHOU: She’s an old classmate.

YUAN SAI: It’s the old classmates you have to watch out for.

GUGU: Her, she’s the second daughter of Liu Baofu in Liu Family Village. Also one of mine.

TADPOLE: I pointed out that relationship to her. With care and respect she took these bottles out of her safe.

GUGU: She’d be embarrassed to give you fake Maotai for me.

Tadpole opens the bottle and offers Gugu the first taste.

GUGU: It’s excellent. The real thing, no doubt about it. Now, pour it for everyone.

Tadpole pours glasses for everyone.

GUGU: Since I’ve been given the seat of honour, I’ll start the ritual. For this first glass, we thank the leadership of our Communist Party, which has freed us all from poverty, led us to wealth, liberated our thoughts and brought us a good life, and that is what guarantees a fine future. What do you say, everyone, did I get it right?

The crowd shouts its agreement.

GUGU: Empty the first glass!

Everyone drinks.

GUGU: For the second glass we thank the Wan family ancestors for accumulating so many merits that their sons and grandsons live comfortable lives.

Everyone drinks.

GUGU: For this third drink we turn to the reason we are here, to celebrate the birth of a son late in life to Tadpole and his wife Little Lion.

They all raise their glasses and shout congratulations.

Liu Guifang and a pair of helpers enter with cardboard boxes, followed by TV journalists and cameramen.

LIU GUIFANG: Congratulations!

TADPOLE: My old classmate, what are you doing here?

LIU: I came for a celebration drink. Am I not welcome? (She shakes hands with the people around the table and exchanges pleasantries, saving Gugu for last.) Gugu, you’ve recaptured your youth.

GUGU: That makes me an old witch.

TADPOLE: We couldn’t get you here with an invitation, but here you are. What is all this stuff? I don’t want you to go broke.

LIU: I’m just a cook, what’s there to go broke? (points to the boxes) I cooked this myself for you. Fried yellow croaker, pork-skin jelly and large steamed buns. Tell me what you think of my cooking skills, everyone. Gugu, I’ve brought a bottle of fifty-year-old Maotai especially for you to show my respect.

GUGU: It’s not every day you drink fifty-year-old Maotai. Last New Year’s, one of the high officials in Pingnan city had his daughter-in-law give me a bottle. When the cork was pulled, the room was suffused with its special aroma.

TADPOLE: (uneasily) And who are these people, old classmate?

LIU: (drags the female reporter up) I forgot to introduce everyone to Miss Gao, who works for the municipal TV station, hosting and producing the program Aspects of Society. Miss Gao, this is Uncle Tadpole, the playwright who has fathered a son late in life, a remarkable feat. And she (the woman in the role of reporter is dragged over to Gugu) is our Northeast Gaomi Township’s sainted Gugu, which is what we call her no matter how old or young we are. She has ushered everyone here, from one generation to the next, into the world.

GUGU: (takes the reporter’s hand) What a charming girl you are. One look at you and I can picture what your father and mother are like. In the past, it was family status that determined whether or not a match was appropriate. Now I’m in favour of looking at genes before family status. Good genes are what guarantee the birth of intelligent, healthy babies. With bad genes nothing works.

REPORTER: (signals the cameraman to film) Gugu is right in step with the times.

GUGU: Hardly. But in my dealings with people in all fields I manage to pick up some modern terms and ideas.

TADPOLE: (softly to Liu Guifang) This isn’t something we should broadcast, is it?

LIU: (softly) Miss Gao is going to marry into my family soon. There is stiff competition among TV stations these days, fighting over information, material and ideas, and I need to help her.

REPORTER: Gugu, why do you think Uncle Tadpole and his wife were able to have a child so late in life? Is it because of their good genes?

GUGU: Most definitely. They both have good genes.

REPORTER: Do you think that one of their genes might be a tad better than the others?

GUGU: You need to have a better understanding of genes before you can ask that question.

REPORTER: Do you think you can explain what genes are in terms that our viewers can easily understand?

GUGU: Genes are life, genes are one’s fate.

REPORTER: Fate?

GUGU: Flies can’t get into an egg that isn’t cracked. Do you understand?

REPORTER: Yes.

GUGU: People with bad genes are like cracked eggs, and their offspring will be born with cracks. Understand?

LIU: (to Gao) Why don’t you let Gugu take a moment to have a drink. You can ask Uncle Tadpole. This is Uncle Yuan Sai, and this is Uncle Li Shou. They were all classmates of mine, and they know everything there is to know about genes. You can interview each of them. (pours a glass for Gugu) Here’s to Gugu’s health and a long life, may you always look after our Northeast Township’s children!

REPORTER: Uncle Tadpole, I know you were born in 1953, which makes you fifty-five this year. At that age, country folk are already grandparents, but you have just fathered a son. Can you tell us how you feel about that?

TADPOLE: Last month, seventy-eight-year-old Professor Li of Qidong University celebrated the one-month anniversary of his son and visited his hundred-and-three-year-old father, elder Professor Li, in the hospital. Did you read that?

REPORTER: Yes.

TADPOLE: A man is at his prime in his fifties. The issue is with women.

REPORTER: Would it be all right to interview your wife?

TADPOLE: She’s resting. She’ll come out to toast our guests in a little while.

REPORTER: (holding the microphone in front of Yuan Sai) Chairman Yuan, now that your friend Tadpole has become a father at his age, are you itching to do the same?

YUAN: What an interesting phrase, itching to do the same. I may be itching, but not to do the same. I doubt that I have particularly good genes. I have two sons, and one’s as big a drain on me as the other. If I had another, I doubt that the results would be any better. Then there’s my wife, whose soil has seriously hardened. If I planted a sapling, in three days it would be a cane.

LI SHOU: Why not let your mistress do it?

YUAN SAI: How can you say things like that at your age, my friend? We’re upright, highly moral individuals who don’t get involved in ugly affairs like that.

LI SHOU: Ugly affairs? It’s all the rage these days, a new wave, gene improvement, aiding the poor and lending a helping hand to the weak, fuelling domestic demand and furthering development.

YUAN SAI: Stop right there. If that gets out, they’ll be coming after you.

LI SHOU: Ask them if they dare broadcast that.

REPORTER: (smiles without answering, turns to Gugu) Gugu, I hear that you have developed a ‘return to spring’ elixir that will restore a post-menopausal woman’s youth.

GUGU: Many people say I have a potion that can change the sex of a foetus. Do you believe that?

REPORTER: I’d rather believe it than not.

GUGU: There’s a god if you believe there is, and if you don’t, it’s just an unpainted clay idol. That’s just how people are.

TADPOLE: Miss Gao, you and your station colleagues are welcome to join us at the table. You can continue interviewing after you’ve had something to drink.

REPORTER: No, you go ahead. Just pretend we’re not here.

LI SHOU: How are we supposed to do that with you people walking around while we’re drinking?

REPORTER: You can — pretend we’re not people, pretend we’re — whatever you want.

YUAN SAI: Guifang, you were my idol during our school days, so I have to raise my glass to you.

LIU: (clinks glasses with Yuan) Here’s to the success of your bullfrog breeding farm and the early arrival of your Jiaowa Skin Care product in the market.

YUAN SAI: Don’t change the subject. I want to tell you how besotted I was with you back then.

LIU: Stop being foolish with your false display of affection. Everybody knows there’s a harem of beautiful women in Chairman Yuan’s bullfrog farm.

REPORTER: (takes advantage of the pause to speak into her microphone) Ladies and gentlemen, today’s Aspects on Society program focuses on a joyous event in Northeast Gaomi Township. On the fifteenth of last month, the famous playwright Tadpole, a recent retiree who has returned home to write, and his wife, Little Lion, both now in their fifties, were blessed with the birth of a healthy, lively, pudgy son…

GUGU: Bring the baby out to show everyone.

Tadpole runs off the stage.

LIU: (glares at Yuan and says under her breath) Enough nonsense. You’ll make Gugu unhappy.

Tadpole enters with Little Lion, a towel around her head, the swaddled baby in her arms.

The cameraman films away.

The guests applaud and shout their congratulations.

TADPOLE: Let Gugu see him.

Little Lion takes the baby up to Gugu, who pulls back the blanket to see him.

GUGU: (with emotion) A fine boy. A truly fine boy, with excellent genes. So good-looking that if he’d been born during feudal times, he’d be the top scholar at the civil service examination.

LI SHOU: Why stop there? He could be Emperor.

GUGU: What is this, a bragging contest?

REPORTER: (puts the microphone in front of Gugu) Did you deliver this baby, too, Gugu?

GUGU: (tucks a red envelope into the swaddling clothes. Tadpole and Little Lion try to refuse the gift, but Gugu waves them off) This is the custom. Your aunt can afford it. (to the reporter) Fortunately, they trusted me. She was past the normal child-bearing age, and she’s under a lot of pressure. I told her to go to the hospital to ‘slice open the melon’, but she said no, and I supported her in her decision. Only a woman who delivers a baby through the birth canal knows what it means to be a woman and how to be a mother.

While Gugu is being interviewed, Little Lion and Tadpole show the baby to all the guests, each of whom tucks a red envelope into the swaddling clothes.

REPORTER: Will he be the last baby you deliver, Gugu?

GUGU: What do you think?

REPORTER: I hear that women in Northeast Gaomi Township aren’t the only ones who revere and trust you, that many pregnant women come to you from Pingdu and Jiaozhou counties.

GUGU: I was born to work hard.

REPORTER: I’ve heard that there’s a magic power in your hands, and that all you have to do is place them on a pregnant woman’s abdomen to greatly lessen their pain. Even their worries and their fears evaporate.

GUGU: That is how myths are born.

REPORTER: Gugu, please show us your hands. We’d like to get a couple of shots of them.

GUGU: (sarcastically) The people need their myths. (turns to the guests) Know who said that?

LI SHOU: A great person, by the sound of it.

GUGU: I said it.

YUAN SAI: Gugu just about qualifies as a great person.

LIU: What do you mean, just about? Gugu is a great person.

REPORTER: (sombrely) These two ordinary hands brought thousands of babies into the world.

GUGU: It was also these two ordinary hands that sent thousands of babies straight to Hell. (empties her glass) Gugu’s hands are stained with two kinds of blood, one fragrant, the other fetid.

LIU: Gugu, you are our Northeast Township’s Living Buddha. The closer we look the more the Goddess in the Fertility Temple looks like you. They made her in your image.

GUGU: (drunkenly) The people need their myths.

REPORTER: (holds the microphone in front of Little Lion) Can we hear some of your thoughts, madam?

LITTLE LION: About what?

REPORTER: Whatever you like. How you felt when you discovered you were pregnant, for instance. Or how it felt to be pregnant, or why you insisted that Gugu be there when it was time…

LITTLE LION: Discovering I was pregnant was like a dream. How could a woman in her fifties, two years past menopause, suddenly become pregnant? As for my feelings during my pregnancy, it was roughly equal between joy and worry. The joy came from the knowledge that I was going to be a mother. I worked as an obstetrics doctor with Gugu for more than a decade, helping her bring many babies into the world, but never having one of my own. A childless woman is less than complete, someone who cannot look her husband in the eye. That has all been resolved now.

REPORTER: What about the worry? What worried you?

LITTLE LION: Mainly thoughts of my age, afraid I might give birth to an unhealthy baby. Next I was worried that I might need to have a surgical birth. Of course, when I went into labour, Gugu laid her hands on my abdomen, and my worries vanished. After that I had only to do what Gugu said to deliver my baby.

GUGU: (drunkenly) Washing the fetid blood away with the fragrant blood…

Chen Bi enters on crutches.

CHEN BI: What kind of people do not invite a grandpa to his grandson’s one-month anniversary?

The guests are astonished.

TADPOLE: (thrown into a panic) I’m sorry, old friend, truly sorry. It completely slipped my mind…

CHEN BI: (mad laughter) Did you just call me old friend? Ha ha. (points to the baby in Little Lion’s arms with a crutch) Normal courtesy demands that you get down on your hands and knees and kowtow to me three times and call me ‘Esteemed Father-in-law’, doesn’t it?

YUAN SAI: (goes up to stop Chen Bi) Come with me, Chen, old fellow, I’ll buy you a good meal at the famous King of Abalone and Shark’s Fin restaurant.

CHEN BI: Get out of my face, you shameless piece of shit. Do you really think you can shut me up with some stinking seafood? That’s not going to happen. Today is a big day in my grandson’s life, and I’m not going anywhere. I’m staying here to have a celebratory drink. (sits down and spots Gugu) Gugu, your mind is like a spotless mirror. You took care of all our Northeast Gaomi Township babies. You knew whose seeds would not sprout and whose soil would not grow grass, so you borrowed seeds and soil, you replaced beams with rotten timbers, you used Chencang as a decoy, you deceived the heavens to cross the ocean, you sacrificed the plum to preserve the peach, you let someone get away in order to capture, you killed with a borrowed knife… you have used all the thirty-six stratagems from The Art of War.

GUGU: You used only two — you made a sound in the east and attacked from the west, and you escaped like a cicada sloughing off its skin. I nearly fell for your tricks back then. Half the foetid blood on my hands (holds them to her nose to smell) you put there.

LI SHOU: (pours a glass for Chen) Have a drink, old Chen. Drink up.

CHEN BI: (tosses down the glassful) Young classmate, you’re a fair man. Come reason this out for us —

LI SHOU: (doesn’t let Chen finish; refills his glass) Only the heavens know about fairness. Drink up. Here, use a bigger glass.

CHEN BI: Are you trying to get me drunk? You’re wrong if you think liquor will shut me up.

LI SHOU: Of course I’m wrong. No one can outdrink you. We’re drinking real Maotai today, and you don’t want to waste the opportunity, right? Down the hatch!

CHEN BI: (tips his head and drains the glass, breathes heavily as tears begin to fall) Gugu, Tadpole, Little Lion, Yuan Sai, Jin Xiu — I, Chen Bi, have fallen as low as a man can fall. Is there a single person among the fifty thousand residents of the eighteen villages in Northeast Gaomi Township as pitiful as me? I ask you, is there? No, there isn’t, no one is as pitiful as me. But you, all of you, have ganged up to bully me, a cripple. I guess that’s all right, since I’m not a good person and never have been. Bullying me is like heavenly retribution. But you shouldn’t take advantage of my daughter. Chen Mei, a girl you have all watched grow up, the prettiest girl in all of Northeast Gaomi Township, she and her sister, Chen Er, who together could have married into the imperial family as queens or royal consorts, but… it’s all my fault… retribution… my daughter carried your child (angrily points at Tadpole) to earn enough to pay off my debts. But you, my old classmates, all you uncles and elders, all you playwrights, all you big bosses, conspired to fabricate a story that her baby was stillborn. You cheated her out of her forty-thousand-yuan fee. The heavens are only three feet above your head. Why doesn’t God open his eyes to see how these terrible people are riding roughshod over us… turn on your camera, TV people, shine a light on us all — me, her, them — for all your viewers…

LIU: Everyone says nobody holds his drink as well as you, old Chen. So why are you spouting all this nonsense after only two glasses?

CHEN BI: You’re a shrewd woman, Liu Guifang. When the guesthouse went private, you became a big boss overnight. You’re now worth millions. I begged you to find a job for my daughter, even if it was tending a fire in your kitchen, but you chose not to be generous, saying you were in the process of downsizing and that the door to charity was hard to open. But…

LIU: I was wrong, old friend, and I’ll take care of Chen Mei. It’s only one more mouth to feed, isn’t it? I’ll take her under my wing, how’s that?

Yuan Sai, Jin Xiu, and others try to ‘escort’ Chen Bi out of the yard.

CHEN BI: (struggles) I still haven’t seen my grandson. (takes out a red envelope) Grandson, your granddad may be poor, but ethical codes must be followed. I have prepared a red envelope for you…

While Yuan Sai and the others manhandle Chen off the stage, Chen Mei, all in black, enters to the astonishment of everyone present. There is total silence.

CHEN MEI: (sniffs the air in exaggerated fashion, softly at first, but builds in intensity) My baby, my darling, I have picked up your sweet-smelling, pungent scent. (feels her way up close to Little Lion, like a blind person, just as loud cries emerge from the swaddling clothes) My baby, my good, little baby, you have never tasted your mother’s milk, you must be starving. (She snatches the baby away from Little Lion and dashes offstage. The guests, stunned by the act, do not know what to do.)

LITTLE LION: (opens her now empty arms) My baby (in real despair), my little Jinwa…

Little Lion runs after Chen Mei, followed by Tadpole and others. Chaos onstage.

Curtain

Act VII

Scenery changes constantly on a large screen at the rear of the stage. A busy street one moment, a crowded marketplace the next, followed by a public park, where people are practising Tai Chi, carrying bird cages and playing the two-stringed erhu. The changing scenery denotes the places she passes in Chen Mei’s getaway.

As Chen Mei runs with the baby, she speaks her heart to him.

CHEN MEI: My little darling, Mummy has finally found you… she’ll never let you go again…

Little Lion, Tadpole, and many others are chasing her.

LITTLE LION: Jinwa… my son…

Some of the time, Chen Mei is alone onstage, running and looking over her shoulder, at other times she shouts to people she passes: Help, save me, save my baby.

Some of the time, she and the people chasing her are on the stage together. Chen Mei shouts to people on the street: Help, save us! Little Lion and the others shout to the people ahead: Stop her. Stop that baby stealer, stop that madwoman!

Chen Mei stumbles, clambers to her feet, stumbles again, gets up again.

The fast, lively, shrill music of an opera fiddle together with a baby’s cries form a background from when the curtain goes up till the curtain falls.

Curtain

Act VIII

The TV drama Gao Mengjiu is being filmed.

The main hall of a county yamen during the Republican era. Though there are signs of reform, it basically follows the old patterns. The words ‘justice’ and ‘integrity’ are carved into a signboard hanging above the hall. One scroll to the side of the signboard proclaims: ‘Wind, then rain, then the blue sky’. Its mate on the other side proclaims: ‘The civil, the martial, and the barbaric’. A large shoe rests on an altar in the centre of the hall.

Gao Mengjiu is in a black tunic and top hat, a watch chain looping out of his breast pocket. Yamen clerks stand straight on both sides of the stage, each holding a long red and black ‘fire and water’ club, but they are dressed in modern black tunics, a comical effect.

The director, cameraman, and sound technician move around busily.

DIRECTOR: Take your places. Ready — action!

GAO MENGJIU: (picks up the shoe and bangs it on the table) Oh my, oh my… What a nuisance! (sings) Magistrate Gao is in his hall to try a case: two families, Zhang and Wang, have a dispute over land. Zhang is in the right, and so is Wang. Both families have a claim, and I must settle the dispute. My name is Gao Mengjiu from Weibaodi county in the Tianjin municipality. I joined the army in my youth under Field Marshal Feng Yuxiang, performing outstanding service in battles north and south. Marshal Feng selected me to be his guard battalion commander. One day, Marshal Feng spotted a soldier under my command parading around town in dark glasses, a prostitute on his arm, and censured me for lax discipline. I was so embarrassed at having fallen short of the marshal’s expectations that I tendered my resignation and returned to my native home. In the nineteenth year of the Republic, 1930, Gao’s fellow townsman Han Fuju, Governor of Shandong, respectfully and repeatedly invited me to take up an official position. I could not refuse the request of a fellow officer, so was sent to Shandong, first as a provincial representative, then as head of Pingyuan, Qufu, and, as of this spring, Gaomi counties. The people here are cunning and stubborn, crime is rampant, gambling is ubiquitous, opium is a scourge, and public order is non-existent. After taking office, I boldly instituted reforms, stamped out criminal activity, promoted filial behaviour, and travelled incognito, resolving difficult cases. (softly) Of course, not everything went smoothly, as is always the case for one who is not a sage. And even sages make mistakes from time to time. The local gentry families presented me with a pair of scrolls, with ‘Wind, then rain, then the blue sky’ on one and ‘The civil, the martial, and the barbaric’ on the other. Well written. Extremely well! They also came up with a nickname for me: Gao the Second with Shoe-soles. The origin of this moniker came from my proclivity to use the soles of shoes across the faces of criminals and harridans. (sings) In troubled times an official must employ severe punishments/Answering brutality with brutality/Use clever schemes to exterminate bandits/A shoe sole is the tool of an upright magistrate. I say, all you clerks —

YAMEN CLERKS: Yes, sir!

GAO MENGJIU: Is all in readiness?

YAMEN CLERKS: It is.

GAO MENGJIU: Call for the plaintiffs and defendants.

Chen Mei, baby in her arms, stumbles onto the stage.

CHEN MEI: Magistrate Bao, please help me gain justice.

Little Lion, Tadpole, and the others enter, one after the other.

The actors playing Zhang and Wang are among the crowd as they enter.

DIRECTOR: (frustrated) Cut! Cut! What’s going on here? This is a mess. Where’s the stage manager?

CHEN MEI: (falls to her knees at the front of the stage) Magistrate Bao, please help me gain justice!

GAO MENGJIU: My name is Gao, not Bao.

CHEN MEI: (amid the sound of the baby’s cries) Magistrate Bao, I lay an odd grievance at your feet for impartial justice.

Yuan Sai and the cousin take the director aside and say something to him that others cannot hear. The director nods his head. Yuan’s comment to the director can barely be heard: Our company will donate a hundred thousand.

The director walks up to Gao Mengjiu and whispers something to him.

The director signals to the cameraman and others to continue filming.

Yuan Sai walks up to Tadpole and Little Lion and speaks to them in hushed tones.

GAO MENGJIU: (picks up the shoe and bangs it on the table) Citizen at the front of this hall, hear me. I will today be extraordinarily generous by deciding an additional case. Tell me your name, your residency, what charges you bring, against whom, all in complete truth. If I hear one false note, do you know how I will deal with it?

CHEN MEI: I do not.

YAMEN CLERKS: (in unison) Woo-wei!

GAO MENGJIU: (takes hold of the shoe and bangs it on the table) If there is one dishonest word, I will use this shoe on your face.

CHEN MEI: Now I know.

GAO MENGJIU: Tell me everything.

CHEN MEI: Hear my report, Your Honour: My name is Chen Mei, I am from Northeast Gaomi Township. I lost my mother when I was a girl and grew up alone with my older sister. We took jobs at a toy factory, where there was a fire that killed my sister and destroyed my face…

GAO MENGJIU: Remove your veil, Chen Mei, and let me see the damage.

CHEN MEI: I cannot remove it, Magistrate Bao.

GAO MENGJIU: Why not?

CHEN MEI: With it on I am human, if I remove it I am a demon.

GAO MENGJIU: When I decide a case, Chen Mei, I follow the letter of the law. With that veil over your face, how am I supposed to know you are who you say you are?

CHEN MEI: Will you tell them all to cover their eyes, Your Honour?

GAO MENGJIU: Cover your eyes, all of you.

CHEN MEI: I will let you see, Magistrate. It is a bitter life I lead!

Chen Mei puts the baby down, removes the veil, and covers her face with both hands.

Gao makes a sign to the front of the hall. Little Lion rushes forward and picks up the baby.

LITTLE LION: (sobs) My darling, Jinwa, my little Jinwa, let Mama take a look at you… Tadpole, come look, what’s wrong with Jinwa… that crazy woman has killed my baby!

CHEN MEI: (screams and madly rushes towards Little Lion) My baby… Your Honour, she has stolen my baby…

The yamen clerks stop her.

Gugu slowly enters.

TADPOLE: Gugu is here.

LITTLE LION: Gugu, tell me what’s wrong with Jinwa.

Gugu pinches and rubs the child in places. The baby cries. Tadpole hands Little Lion a nursing bottle. She puts the nipple in the baby’s mouth. The crying stops.

CHEN MEI: Don’t let her feed my baby, Your Honour. That milk is toxic. I have milk, Your Honour… I’ll squeeze some out for Your Honour if you do not believe me.

Chen Bi and Li Shou enter.

CHEN BI: (pounds a crutch on the floor) Fairness, I demand fairness!

GAO MENGJIU: (sorrowfully) Cover your face, Chen Mei.

CHEN MEI: (terrified, she grabs the veil and covers her face) I have frightened you, Your Honour. I am so sorry.

GAO MENGJIU: Chen Mei, your case has fallen into my hands, so I must get to the bottom of it.

CHEN MEI: Thank you, Your Honour.

Tadpole and Yuan Sai try to bundle Little Lion off the stage.

GAO MENGJIU: (bangs his shoe on the table) Stop right there! No one leaves until I have handed down my judgement. Watch them, yamen clerks.

The director gives a sign to Gao, who pretends not to have seen it.

GAO MENGJIU: Chen Mei, you insist that the baby is yours. Then I ask you, who is the father?

CHEN MEI: He is a high official, a rich man, a powerful man.

GAO MENGJIU: No matter how high, how rich, or how powerful, he must have a name.

CHEN MEI: I do not know his name.

GAO MENGJIU: When were you married?

CHEN MEI: I have never been married.

GAO MENGJIU: Oh, a child out of wedlock. Then when did you and he… in bed?

CHEN MEI: I do not understand, Your Honour.

GAO MENGJIU: Ah! When did you sleep with him? What do they say — make love? Understand?

CHEN MEI: I have never slept with a man, Your Honour, I am a virgin.

GAO MENGJIU: Ah! Now I am confused. How could you be pregnant and have a baby if you have never slept with a man? Are you ignorant of basic biological knowledge?

CHEN MEI: Your Honour, every word of what I say is the truth (points to the group that includes Little Lion) With a syringe they…

GAO MENGJIU: A test tube baby.

CHEN MEI: No, not a test tube baby.

GAO MENGJIU: I understand. It’s the sort of artificial insemination they use for livestock.

CHEN MEI: (on her knees) Please, Your Honour, pass your fair judgement. I wanted to have this baby at first to earn enough to pay my father’s hospital bills, then drown myself in the river. But death stopped being attractive once I became pregnant and felt him moving around inside me. There were other women like me, but who hated the children they were carrying. I loved mine. My disfigured face and scarred body itch and hurt on rainy, overcast days, and on hot dry days, my wounds crack and bleed. It was hard to carry my baby to term, Your Honour. I suffered miserably, but by being careful I was able to have a successful delivery. But those people lied to me, saying my baby was stillborn. I knew he wasn’t dead, so I searched and searched until I found him. I don’t want the surrogate fee, a million, ten million, I don’t care, I just want my baby. Please, Your Honour, make them give me my baby…

GAO MENGJIU: (to Tadpole and Little Lion) Are you legally married?

TADPOLE: For more than thirty years.

GAO MENGJIU: And all that time you had no child?

LITTLE LION: (unhappily) What would you call him, if not a child?

GAO MENGJIU: You look to me to be in your fifties, am I right?

LITTLE LION: I knew you’d ask that. (points to Gugu) This is our Northeast Gaomi Township’s doctor of obstetrics, who has delivered thousands of babies and has cured many women of infertility. Who knows, maybe you yourself were one of her babies. She will testify for me, since she was with me throughout my pregnancy to the birth of my baby.

GAO MENGJIU: I have long been familiar with Gugu’s reputation. You are a local sage, someone who enjoys universal respect and whose words carry great weight.

GUGU: I delivered that child.

GAO MENGJIU: (asks Chen Mei) Did she deliver your baby?

CHEN MEI: They blindfolded me in the delivery room, Your Honour.

GAO MENGJIU: This case is difficult to adjudicate. We will need DNA results.

The director goes up to whisper something to Gao, who has words with him under his breath.

GAO MENGJIU: (sighs, then sings) Strange case, strange case, a very strange case — putting old Gao in a difficult place — to whom does the child belong — an ingenious plan has come to me. (steps down) Hear me, everyone, since your case has fallen into my hands, I must turn make-believe into real life and make my judgement! Yamen clerks!

CLERKS: Yes, sir!

GAO MENGJIU: If anyone disputes my judgement, use a shoe on their face.

CLERKS: Yes!

GAO MENGJIU: Chen Mei, Little Lion, each of you tells a convincing story, and I cannot choose one over the other. Therefore, I must ask Little Lion to give the child to me for now.

LITTLE LION: I won’t…

GAO MENGJIU: Yamen clerks!

CLERKS: (in unison) Woo-wei…

The director whispers to Tadpole, who nudges Little Lion and indicates she should hand the baby to Gao Mengjiu.

GAO MENGJIU: (softly as he looks down at the baby) A fine baby for sure. No wonder the two families are fighting over him. Hear me, Chen Mei, Little Lion, I cannot decide to whom the child belongs, so I must ask you to try to take him from me. Whoever wrests the child from my hands gets him. A messy case deserves a messy resolution. (holds the child over his head) Now!

Both Chen Mei and Little Lion rush up and grab hold of the baby, who begins to cry. Chen Mei wrests him away and holds him to her breast.

GAO MENGJIU: Yamen clerks, take the child away from Chen Mei and arrest her.

The clerks take the baby from Chen Mei and hand him to Gao.

GAO MENGJIU: Audacious Chen Mei, you falsely claimed that the baby was yours, yet you did not hesitate to wrest him out of my hands, something a real mother would not do. When Little Lion heard the baby cry, her motherly instincts would not let her do anything to harm her child, and she let go. Magistrate Bao settled a similar case centuries ago. The one who let go was the true mother. With this precedent, I award the child to Little Lion. For trying to take another’s child and lying in court, I ought to sentence Chen Mei to twenty lashes with a shoe sole. But in view of your disability, I mercifully withhold punishment. Leave this court!

Gao Mengjiu hands the baby to Little Lion.

Chen Mei shouts and struggles, but is stopped by the clerks.

CHEN BI: Gao Mengjiu, you are a muddled judge.

LI SHOU: (nudges Chen) Let it be, old friend. I have already talked with Tadpole and Yuan Sai, who have agreed to give Chen Mei a hundred thousand yuan.

Curtain

Act IX

Gugu’s yard, same scene as Acts II and IV.

Hao Dashou and Qin He are still making clay dolls.

Tadpole, manuscript in hand, stands to the side.

TADPOLE: (intones loudly) If someone were to ask me to name Northeast Gaomi Township’s predominant colour, without hesitation I would respond: Green!

HAO DASHOU: (grumbles) What about red? Red sorghum, radishes, the red sun, red jackets, red peppers, apples…

QIN HE: Yellow earth, droppings, teeth, yellow weasels, everything yellow but gold.

TADPOLE: If someone were to ask me to name Northeast Gaomi Township’s predominant sound, I would proudly respond: the croak of frogs.

HAO DASHOU: What’s there to be proud about?

QIN HE: The cry of a baby is worth being proud about.

TADPOLE: The croak of a frog, like the heavy lowing of a young cow, like the sad bleating of a young goat, like the crisp sound of a hen when she lays an egg, like the loud and mournful sound of a newborn infant…

HAO DASHOU: How about a barking dog, a mewing cat, a braying donkey?

TADPOLE: (angrily) Are you two messing with me?

QIN HE: In my view, your play is messing with you.

GUGU: (coldly) Did I really say the things you just read?

TADPOLE: The Gugu in the play said them.

GUGU: Is the Gugu in the play me? Or isn’t it?

TADPOLE: It is and it isn’t.

GUGU: What does that mean?

TADPOLE: It’s a common principle in art. Like the dolls they make, modelled after real life but enhanced by their imagination and creativity.

GUGU: Are you really planning to stage your play? Aren’t you afraid of the trouble it could cause, since you’ve used people’s real names?

TADPOLE: This is just a draft, Gugu. In the final version I’ll use all foreigners’ names. Gugu will become Aunt Maria, Hao Dashou will be Henry, Qin He will be Allende, Chen Mei will be Tonia, Chen Bi will be Figaro… even Northeast Gaomi Township will become the town of Macondo.

HAO DASHOU: Henry? Interesting name.

QIN HE: I think I should be Rodin or Michelangelo, since their work resembles mine.

GUGU: Tadpole, play-acting is play-acting, reality is reality. I think that you — no, I have to include myself — we all treated Chen Mei badly. My insomnia has returned in recent days. All those crippled frogs that damned little devil brought out come to disturb me at night. Not only can I feel their chilled, slimy skin, but I can even smell their cold stench…

HAO DASHOU: Those are illusions brought on by your nervous condition, nothing but illusions.

TADPOLE: I understand how you feel, Gugu, and the way we dealt with this has weighed heavily on me. But I don’t know how else to deal with it. No matter how you look at it, Chen Mei was insane, a madwoman with a hideous, disfigured face, and giving the baby to her would have violated our responsibility to the child. Not only that, I was the child’s biological father, albeit a reluctant one. If his mother had gone off the tracks emotionally and could not even care for herself, then the father would have had to assume child-raising duties. Even the People’s Supreme Court would have made that determination. Am I right or not?

GUGU: Maybe she would have been fine if we’d given her the baby. Miracles can happen when you put a woman and child together.

TADPOLE: We couldn’t take the chance, not with the child’s wellbeing in the balance. People with mental problems are capable of anything.

GUGU: People with mental problems can still love children.

TADPOLE: But her love could have harmed the child. Gugu, don’t beat yourself up this way. We’ve already done everything compassion and humanity dictate. We gave her twice her original fee and got her admitted into a hospital for treatment. Even Chen Bi was not short-changed. If one day her mental health is restored, and the child is old enough, when the time is right, we’ll reveal all this to him — even if that will be painful for him.

GUGU: I want you all to know that I’ve been thinking about death a lot recently.

TADPOLE: I don’t want to hear such crazy talk, Gugu. You’re barely seventy years old. Though it’s an exaggeration to say you are the noonday sun, it’s not flattery to say that you’re the sun at two or three in the afternoon, a long way from darkness. Besides, the people of Northeast Gaomi Township cannot live without you.

GUGU: I didn’t say I wanted to die, not as long as I’m in good health, have a good appetite, and can sleep at night. Who would? But sleep has become a problem. Everyone else is sound asleep in the middle of the night, everyone but me and that owl in the tree. The owl stays awake to hunt mice. What about me?

TADPOLE: You can take a sleeping pill. Lots of important people are troubled by insomnia, and that’s how they deal with it.

GUGU: Sleeping pills don’t work with me any more.

TADPOLE: Try Chinese herbs.

GUGU: I’m a doctor, and I’m telling you, this isn’t physical. The day of reckoning has arrived. All those avenging ghosts have come to settle accounts. At night, when all around is quiet and the owl begins to hoot in the tree, they come. Coated in blood, they wail and moan, accompanied by those frogs with missing legs and claws. Cries and croaks swirl together and cannot be distinguished, one from the other. They chase me around the yard. I’m not afraid of being bitten, what frightens me is their slimy skin and the cold stench they produce. Tell me, what things have frightened me at any time in my life? Tigers? Panthers? Wolves? Foxes? I have never been afraid of animals that frighten others. But the ghosts of those frogs petrify me.

TADPOLE: (to Hao Dashou) Should we invite a Daoist priest to do an exorcism?

HAO DASHOU: She’s giving you an actor’s lines.

GUGU: When I can’t sleep, I think back over my life, starting with the first child I delivered all the way to the last. They all play in my head, like a movie. I don’t think I’ve done an evil thing ever in my life… but those… was that evil?

TADPOLE: That’s hard to say, Gugu, but even if they were, you were not responsible. Don’t blame yourself, Gugu, and don’t feel guilty. You’re a hero, not a sinner.

GUGU: I’m not? Really?

TADPOLE: If the township residents voted for the best person, you would get the most votes.

GUGU: Are my hands clean?

TADPOLE: Not just clean, but sacred.

GUGU: When I can’t sleep, I think of how Zhang Quan’s wife died, and Wang Renmei, and Wang Dan…

TADPOLE: You didn’t kill them, it wasn’t you.

GUGU: Did you know that Zhang Quan’s wife uttered some last words?

TADPOLE: I didn’t know that.

GUGU: ‘Wan Xin,’ she said, ‘you will die a terrible death.’

TADPOLE: That bitch had no right to say that.

GUGU: Did you know that Renmei uttered last words as well?

TADPOLE: What did she say?

GUGU: She said, ‘I’m cold, Gugu.’

TADPOLE: (agonisingly) I’m cold, too, Renmei.

GUGU: Did you know that Wang Dan said something to me before she died?

TADPOLE: No.

GUGU: Do you want to know?

TADPOLE: Of course… but…

GUGU: (in high spirits) She said, ‘Thank you for saving my baby’s life, Gugu.’ Did I really save her baby’s life?

TADPOLE: Of course you did.

GUGU: Then I can die in peace, right?

TADPOLE: Don’t say that, Gugu. What you should say is you can sleep in peace and keep living well.

GUGU: A sinner cannot and has no right to die. She must live on, to suffer torment, to be like a fish frying in a pan, like medicine boiling in a pot of water, all for the sake of atonement. Only when that is complete, is she free to die.

A large black noose drops from above the stage. Gugu goes up, stands on a stool, sticks her head through the noose, and kicks the stool over.

Hao Dashou and Qin He do not look up from their doll making.

Tadpole picks up a knife, rights the stool, jumps up onto it, and cuts the rope in two.

Gugu drops to the stage floor.

TADPOLE: (props up Gugu) Gugu! Gugu!

GUGU: Am I dead?

TADPOLE: I guess you could say that. But people like you don’t really die.

GUGU: Then I’ve been reborn.

TADPOLE: Yes, you can say that.

GUGU: Are you all okay?

TADPOLE: We’re fine.

GUGU: The baby too?

TADPOLE: He’s doing beautifully.

GUGU: Has Little Lion begun to lactate?

TADPOLE: Yes.

GUGU: Lots of milk?

TADPOLE: Lots and lots of it.

GUGU: What does it look like?

TADPOLE: Like a fountain.

Curtain

(Finis)