scruta

LI

Zhou, do you know what a Scooby Doo is?

ZHOU

I don’t know. Like shit? Like doo-doo?

LI

It looks like it’s some kind of dog.

ZHOU

A dog?

LI

Yeah, a dog. Apparently he goes around with a bunch of teenagers and they solve mysteries. Old men dress up like ghosts and scare people away so they can commit real estate fraud, and then they catch them. It’s a children’s show.

ZHOU

Real estate fraud for children? Strange.

LI

It’s even stranger that many people say that this Scooby Doo likes to smoke marijuana. Gosh, there so many websites on this Scooby Doo and someone called Shaggy.

ZHOU

Shaggy? Is that another dog?

LI

No. It’s a man. This website claims that he is “the most righteous stoner in search of munchies who ever shat on the earth.”

ZHOU

See! Shat on the earth! I told you it was about shit. Scooby Doo.

LI

No, that just means he’s cool.

ZHOU

Shitting on the ground is cool?

LI

I guess. I don’t quite understand it, but I heard that somewhere before.

ZHOU

Okay. So this Shaggy is cool, but what’s that about stoning people? Read it again.

LI

“The most righteous stoner in search of munchies who ever shat on the earth.”

ZHOU

Scooby Doo hangs out with a man who stones people to death and then eats them? Munchies?

LI

I don’t know. I don’t think so. It has something to do with marijuana again.

ZHOU

Why do we care about this Scooby Doo, anyway?

LI

That crazy advertising paper in Shanghai again. [Reads.] It’s right out of a plot from Scooby Doo. Mr Lin, an operator of a fishpond in southwest China worried over the liability of allowing local children to swim in his pond after hearing a neighbor was ordered to pay ¥300,000 in compensation when someone drowned in his reservoir. In order to shy the children away, Mr. Lin began to perpetuate a series of ghost stories by erecting creepy scarecrows and writing “Beware of Ghosts!” on his walls. The scheme has worked, and the children have stopped swimming in his pond.

ZHOU

Ghosts. We don’t do ghosts. Censor it. Plus it makes the farmer look like a man committing insurance fraud and the children like marijuana toaking cannibals.

LI

But he wasn’t committing a crime. He helped protect those children, and maintain order on his property.

ZHOU

Are you saying that China needs ghostmakers?

LI

Maybe a bit. I don’t know. Without the scarecrows and the signs on the wall, the children could drown. Sometimes order requires lies, don’t you think?

ZHOU

True. I mean, that’s sort of our job, right?

LI

Yeah, you and I. The scarecrow men. [A brief pause as they take this in.] It’s funny though.

ZHOU

Eh?

LI

I just don’t know which ones are good lies and which ones are bad.

ZHOU

Well, we try as much as we can. If not, we must accept the Scooby Doo, slobbering along on drugs with that stoning man, looking to upset the order of everything. He reveals the truth to the children.

LI

I worry that sometimes Scooby Doo is right.

ZHOU

The children should drown?

LI

The children should know the truth.