scruta

Li

Ha!

Zhou

What?

Li

Here’s a good one!

Zhou

What?

Li

Oh, man. This is crazy. I have no idea how they thought they could print this.

Zhou

What the hell is it?

Li

Okay, so there’s a theater guy, a young guy from America. He’s here on a Fulbright.

Zhou

Oh, a Fulbright, he must be very smart.

Li

Yes, very smart. A Fulbright.

Zhou

Wow. A Fulbright! Where did he go to school?

Li

Yale.

Zhou

Yale! Wow!

Li

Yes.

Zhou

Wow. Yale.

Li

Anyway, he’s in China. He studies theater and Chinese. He does a new kind of theater.

Zhou

A new kind of theater?

Li

Yeah. It’s called applied theater. I’ve been reading about it. It’s not so new in the West.

Zhou

What is it?

Li

Basically, you make the audience into actors.

Zhou

Oh. Well, what’s so bad about that?

Li

The idea is that you explore social or political issues by getting the audience involved in particularly difficult situations.

Zhou

Political issues?

Li

Yeah. This guy went to northern Yunnan near Tibet and did a workshop with Tibetan and Han residents.

Zhou

Oh no.

Li

Yes. He presented them with a scene where a Han man got in fight with a Tibetan man and his girlfriend. The audience came in and took the roles and tried to resolve the situation.

Zhou

Well, did they resolve it?

Li

Of course not. A teacher had to make a speech about harmony.

Zhou

Really? He had to give the harmony speech?

Li

Yeah.

Zhou

Wow.

Li

And they wanted to print this story.

Zhou

Ha. Wow.

Li

Yeah.

Zhou

But Li-

Li

Yeah?

Zhou

He has a Fulbright. He went to Yale. Why is he doing this?

Li

I don’t know.

Zhou

Yale.

Li

Yeah, Yale.

Shanghai was an orchard of great trees bearing great fruit, reaching high into the clouds. I walked along the groves for miles, unable to find an end. I made my home in a place where the grovesmen of the orchard made their homes. One grovesman, old and kindly in face, let me live in the storeyard where he gathered fruit. Each night I slept with the sour smell of ripening fruit in my nostrils. Each day the grovesman showed me how to choose the rotten ones from the others, and soon, I became an adept laborer.

One day, while sorting out the rotten fruit, I saw a woman gathering my refuse which I had placed outside the storeyard. I asked her what she was doing, and she said that she was collecting them for her self and that she didn’t mind the rotten ones. Her teeth shone with a strange brightness. Her eyes pierced me strangely. She filled me with suspicion. So I followed her when she left with her basket of rotten fruit.

I arrived at a massive warehouse fashioned from the hollowed trunk of a great tree that had fallen. Following her inside, I saw hundreds of laborers all polishing rotten fruit, making it gleam, readying it for sale, loading it up on trucks to take it far away from the grove. I was shocked. I found her and asked her why she did what she did.

She said it was what she had to do. Everyone else was doing so.

“And the old man?” I said.

“Him? You are living with an old fool, a man who lost his family long ago. He keeps the good fruit for himself.”

I studied her face, reassured with a pride I couldn’t penetrate. She added with her flashing teeth, “That fruit won’t last forever.”

“Why not?”

“Because the trees are dying.”

I was taken aback and full of confusion. She sighed with disdain, then took my hand. She led me in silence out of the warehouse to the nearest tree, stretching high towards the sky. She hit it with her fist and it rung with an eerie hollow. As it reverberated, I could feel my heart falling.

Li

It’s weird.

Zhou

What’s that?

Li

I get this feeling sometimes.

Zhou

Like what?

Li

Like I’m invisible. Like I could stop doing my job and nothing would matter.

Zhou

That’s crazy! Don’t you know how important our job is? We work in the propaganda department! We are the protectors of Chinese culture, don’t you know we’re under attack?

Li

No. I know, I know. But that’s it. The whole idea is that we’re just the people behind the scenes, the one who delete the words so they are never read. I look back at my life and I think, where is my work? It’s invisible.

Zhou

It’s noble.

Li

Is nobility being faceless? Nameless? Lost in the heap? In fact, not even lost at all. Like you were never there to begin with.

Zhou

Hmm.

Li

Do you think it will change?

Zhou

What will change?

Li

Nothing… nevermind.