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, a
nd 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 . . .