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.