The Panda in the Room PD

Chinese Odyssey 76

In a play by a friend

was a Peach Blossom land

where a cuckolded fisherman

discovered first hand

a place with no conflict —

where all lived in peace.

How could he walk away

knowing his calm would cease?

In CO 15, I wrote about a play my friend, Stan Lai (賴聲川 Lài Shēng Chuān) wrote called “Peach Blossom Land” (暗戀桃花源 Ànliàn Táohuāyuán). The English name of the play sometimes only translates the second part of the Chinese title, (桃花源 Táohuāyuán). The first part of the title  (Ànliàn 暗戀) “暗戀” means “unrequited love“ – and that was the story I told in CO 15. The original Peach Blossom Land, by Tao Yuan Ming (陶淵明), was written in the Six Dynasties Period (421 CE) and is one of the earliest “Shangri-la” stories on record. Stan took some wonderful liberties with Tao Yuan Ming’s story. The fisherman in Stan’s play was being cuckolded by his wife who was having an affair with her landlord. As the Peach Blossom story unfolds, it is being constantly interrupted by the “An Lian” story. “An Lian”, the tragedy, weaves its way over and around “Tao Hua Yuan” (which Stan tells as a slapstick comedy). The two plays perform a wild dance on the same stage as each play tries to complete rehearsals for their upcoming performances. A third story is, of course, the story of the two theatre companies preparing to perform. Somehow, although all three stories and even the dialogues overlap and intersect one another, in the end, there is resolution to each of the three stories. Audiences in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and China are all familiar with the loss that came with the KMT moving to Taiwan in 1949. Fathers, sons, brothers, and husbands had no idea when they landed in Taiwan that it would be 30 years before they could reconnect with their loved ones. Like the fisherman who left Peach Blossom Land, the mainlanders who came with the KMT must have yearned to return, but the door was sealed and the majority on both sides had only memories. Parents died. Husbands and wives remarried. Children grew up with no father or sometimes a new family when Dad failed to return. As China gradually reopened, searches were begun, contacts were made, and families began to reconnect. The KMT soldiers were my parents’ age. The generation who never got to know their mainland families were Stan’s age. Secret Love in Peach Blossom Land was performed for the entire summer at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in 2015

Stan Lai was born in Washington D.C. His father was a diplomat at a time when Taiwan was the only “China” recognized by much of the world. Taiwan’s official name in English is still “The Republic of China.” When Stan arrived in Taiwan as an 11 year old, he could barely speak Chinese, but his parents were adamant that he and his brother learn their “mother tongue” and they were enrolled in local schools. By the time Stan graduated from Jianguo High School (臺北市立建國高級中學), his Chinese was almost as good as his English. Now Stan had one foot planted in the west and the other in Taiwan. After Jian Zhong, Stan received his BA in English literature from Taiwan’s Fu Jen Catholic University (輔仁大學). Following two years of mandatory military service in Taiwan, Stan decided to return to America for his graduate work. He earned his PhD. in Dramatic Arts from UC Berkeley in 1983.

Some of Stan’s works are not available in English and would, in fact, be hard to appreciate in languages other than Chinese. An example of this would be a series of plays in which Stan uses a Chinese comedy style called “crosstalk” (xiangsheng 相聲) where there is a straight man and a funny man. Stan’s crosstalk plays involved playing with words, language, and local politics.

Although most of Stan’s plays are written for Chinese audiences, he has opened several doors to western audiences who are truly interested in gaining a more personal understanding of 20^th and 21^st century China, Chinese people, and Chinese culture.  These works create a natural bridge between China and the English speaking west – starting with Secret Love in Peach Blossom Land. That’s the play I’ve already talked about. The DVD with English subtitles is not easily available but one can occasionally find a copy on E-Bay. I actually found a copy (without subtitles) on YouTube.

Another play which can be very much appreciated by people of different cultural backgrounds is The Village (寶島一村 Bǎo Dǎo Yī Cūn.)  First presented in 2008, The Village tells the story of a military dependent village (眷村 juàncūn) where KMT soldiers lived when they first arrived in Taiwan, and which many families continued to live in for generations. There were nearly 900 of these villages of which about 30 still remain. In these villages, former soldiers from all over China were thrown together. At first these villages were put together with whatever materials could be found. There were communal toilets and showers and electrical wires were strung randomly to provide power where needed. Houses were about 6-10 ping and a ping was the size of two regular tatamis (about 6’ square). In the play we peeked into the lives of families whose common language was Mandarin (國語 Guóyǔ) even though  many of the wives were Taiwanese. In the early scenes, the audience is privy to conversations about the soldiers’ own families and villages back home and what they planned to do when they returned. We experience children growing up in the “juancun” and – along with the villagers – mourn the death of Chiang Kai-Shek (蔣介石). The play begins in 1949 and then jumps to the interval from 1968-1975, before finishing up in the period of 1987-2007. At the end of the play, as the audience leaves the theatre, each person in the audience is given a paper bag with one of Grandma Qian’s warm pork buns (包子 bāozi) inside. Bāozi were a staple in the village throughout the generations. “The Village” was warmly received in Taiwan, the People’s Republic of China, Singapore, Hong Kong, and in the United States. I don’t know anyone who has seen The Village without being incredibly moved.

At the heart of Stan Lai’s theatre company is improvisation. I remember sitting in on one of Stan’s classes at Stanford University in Palo Alto as his class was brainstorming ideas for a play (in English) that started out with the name, Stories for the Dead. By the time I got to see the play in Beijing, the play’s name had been changed to Like Shadows (如影隨行 Rú Yǐng Suí Xíng.) Stan told me the most recent name for that same play is Bardo Blues.

In 2000, Stan Lai shook the theatre world with his seven and one-half hour long A Dream Like a Dream (如夢之夢 Rú Mèng Zhī Mèng.) When I first saw the play in 2002 in Hong Kong, I sat in the center of what would have been the stage in a normal show. The theatre was square with two levels of seating on all four sides. But with “Dreams”, each member of the audience was given our own rotating seat in the center of the “stage” and we watched the play performed in 8 spaces where the audience would normally sit.  Small “stages” were created on all four sides and on both levels. At about the 3:30 mark, the audience was given a dinner break, and then returned for the final four hours.  Dream Like a Dream was booked solid for every performance in Hong Kong. When it returned to Hong Kong in 2019, it was every bit as popular when performed at the new Freespace in West Kowloon. This time we watched it over a two day period. In addition to the Lotus Pond seats in the middle with the revolving chairs, there was now a seating area above the play where one can read surtitles in English and Chinese and watch some amazing stage effects on a giant screen while the play is happening.

Stan directed Dream of the Red Chamber for the San Francisco Opera (libretto by David Henry Hwang, music by Bright Sheng) in 2016 and created Nightwalk in the Chinese Garden, in which he wove elements from the 16th century Chinese classic, The Peony Pavilion, with early 20th century California history in a play created specifically for the Huntington Library’s Chinese Garden in 2018.

I haven’t seen the final play I want to mention, but I have read the script more than once. Ago (曾经如是  Céng Jīng Rú Shì) would be more literally translated as “Thus, therefore”, Ago is a journey involving a small community of Tibetans living in Yunnan, talking animals, basic elements, enlightened beings, spirits,  Wall Street tycoons, hookers, drug dealers, musicians, and cooks. Characters transform themselves seamlessly from life on the Tibetan high plateau to doing business on the 88^th floor of the World Trade Center in Manhattan. All kept in check by “Time”, “Chance”, and “Space.”

In the June 2020 issue of the IATC journal/Revue de l’AICT, writer Yu Kuo-Hua said that “Ago is about migration.” He then suggests that in the play, “Lai poses the crucial question: What are people seeking when they undertake the journey of migration?”

Perhaps Stan is reminding us that we’re all migrants in the crazy world in which we inhabit. Whether we migrate physically, spiritually, or merely in our dreams, we all leave the mundane to inhabit worlds which we don’t control. In Stan Lai’s plays we can’t help but migrate through time and space, to take on new identities through his characters and sets. We yearn for that “Shangri-la” we might encounter around the next corner or over the next hill. As we walk through each new door, however, we leave something behind us and like Stan’s fisherman, and like Hilton’s Conway, those doors may have closed behind us.