Return to roots
In finding his roots a playwright fulfills a paternal wish and gives a small town the theatrical insight it never had
Playwright’s personal stake opens eyes in small town
My father was a product of this small town, and I always thought there must be something very special about it, because he was a very special man.” Stan Lai Sheng-chuan, playwright
When the US-born Taiwan-based director and playwright Stan Lai Sheng-chuan brought his comedy Menage a 13 to Huichang county, Jiangxi province, two years ago there was one thing that took him aback: not one person in the audience laughed.
“We thought, ‘What’s going on? Is there really that much difference between folk in the city and folk in smaller places?” says Lai, whose works have ranged from theater, opera to film and television over the past 30 years.
The failure of Menage a 13, a love-triangle comedy, to draw a rise out of the Huichang audience was all the more perplexing for Lai given that when it debuted in Taiwan in 1999 it became an instant hit.
He then inquired of one of his friends who worked in the theater.
“We thought we were not allowed to laugh,” the friend said. “Someone said the artists are very serious and you don’t want to distract them while they are performing. So whether it’s funny or not we just kept everything bottled up inside.”
Lai then decided gently to let locals know that if they felt like laughing, they should go ahead and do so, and not force anything. The play soon became phenomenal in the small town, and extra nights were scheduled.
“People really got into it, and they even talked about the play in very profound terms.”
Then last year he took his classic play Secret Love in Peach Blossom Land to Huichang, and tickets sold out fast. The play has been staged hundreds of times since Lai’s Performance Workshop in Taipei first performed it in 1986. On Aug 26 he was in Huichang again to present a play, A Blurry Kind of Love, produced by Performance Workshop, a contemporary theater group he founded in 1984.
On the opening night the 1,000-seat theater, the only one in the county, and which is hidden in an array of narrow, busy streets in the downtown area, was packed.
The play premiered in late 2015, directed by Ismene Ting, Lai’s sister-in-law, and is based on the novel The Game of Love and Chance by the 18th century French playwright Pierre de Marivaux. It is a three-act comedy about a young woman who is engaged to a man she has never met. Hoping to learn more about him, she and her servant trade identities. However, her fiance has the same idea and trades identities with his driver.
Translated by Ting, the play is set in Taiwan in the 1980s. Lai contributed the music to the play, including playing guitar for the theme song.
“Ting hugely rewrote the story and we’ve made it into a very Chinese story, especially the matchmaking, which is still popular among the young generation today,” Lai says.
Huichang has a population of about 520,000, most of them members of the Hakka ethnic group.
It is a place that would never stage the level of theater that can be seen in the likes of Beijing or Shanghai, Lai says, and a touring group going to the small town is barely imaginable.
However, Lai has a very personal stake in Huichang. He has taken plays there three years in a row because it is his father’s hometown, that has always made it attractive to him and he is keen to do something for it, he says.
Lai’s father, Lai Jiaqiu, was born and grew up in Huichang before he went to study at the Central School of Political Affairs in Chongqing, Sichuan province, and studied foreign affairs at university. In 1947 his father went to Taiwan and the next year was
It’s unlikely to be on many people’s list of “Ten places I must seen in China before I die.”
In fact Huichang county in Jiangxi province is so out of the way that it takes two hours to get there from the nearest big airport, in the city of Ganzhou, and its inhabitants are generally perceived to be povertystricken.
However, once you set foot in Huichang you will find yourself surrounded by green mountains and rivers with clear water, breathing pristine air, and getting a profound insight into China’s Taoist culture.
Huichang county, which neighbors Fujian and Guangdong provinces, sits at the confluence of two waterways, which form the Ganjiang River, a major branch of the Yangtze River, in Nanchang, Jiangxi’s capital. In ancient times people from northern China used these rivers to travel and trade.
The county covers about 2,700 square kilometers and has a population of 527,000. It is widely known as one of the old revolutionary bases, one that made a great contribution in the founding of the People’s Republic of China.
In 1934 Mao Zedong lived in Huichang for a month, and he climbed Huichang Mountain, which inspired him to write a poem in which he proclaimed that “the scenery here is uniquely good”.
One of the most well-known scenic spots is Hanxianyan, a mountainous region covering 42-squarekm, which has about 100 tourist attractions.
It was here that Han Zhongli, a Chinese legendary character and one of the Eight Immortals of Taoism, lived, and its steep, rocky and wooden steps are popular with hikers.
One of the locals, Zhou Wenrong, 83, was in the news recently for offering tourists free cups of tea for 24 years.
Apart from its Taoist culture, what makes Huichang unique is its folk culture. About 95 percent of its people are members of the Hakka ethnic group, one of the highest concentrations in the country. Hakka is the Cantonese pronunciation of the Mandarin word kejia.
Since 2015 a big folk culture festival has been held in Huichang to celebrate its folk traditions and this naturally attracts tourists.
On Aug 26 an opening event was held at the Laigong Temple, and thousands of Huichang residents attended. At the temple they worship the local god, Laigong, and pray for health and wealth. The worship of Laigong is a ritual that has been passed down over about 500 years.
After the folk performance and worship rituals there was parade that took in the downtown area of the county.
Cai Weiping, an official of Huichang’s publicity department, said one of the big events during the worship ceremony was ducks being sacrificed outside the temple. However, in 2015 local officials decided it was time to end the custom and ordered the manufacture of paper and plastic ducks to replace real ones.
The change was partially triggered by the US-born and Taiwanbased director and playwright Stan Lai, who for the past two years has been staging his plays in Huichang that have had phenomenal success in the county, his father’s hometown.
“To my amazement, they went ahead and made these plastic ducks and gave them to anyone who would vow not to kill their ducks, and so I saved the lives of about 35,000 ducks last year,” Lai said.
Local officials have also made an effort to reduce the use of fireworks as a way of minimizing air pollution.
In 1934 Mao Zedong lived in Huichang for a month, and he climbed Huichang Mountain, which inspired him to write a poem in which he proclaimed that “the scenery here is uniquely good”.