CRI听力: The Village: A Bitter-Sweet Time Capsule

The epic drama by Taiwan-based playwright and director Stan Lai, "the Village", is about lives lived in hundreds of the so-called "military dependent's villages", a page of Taiwan's history that many locals fear will soon be forgotten.

The play, spanning 50 years in the lives of three families living in one of these communities, is currently touring the mainland. It will grace Beijing's Century Theater early next month.

Our reporter Damin talked to Mr. Lai, as well as producer of the play Wang Weizhong, before filing this report.



It all began 60 years ago, when a 4-year civil war ended with defeated Kuomintang forces retreating to Taiwan Island, resulting in a 6-decade-long separation of Taiwan from the mainland.

The military dependents' villages were originally built as make-shift residential communities to house Kuomintang forces and their families.

But to the surprise of these residents, the hastily constructed and poorly furnished constructions became their permanent homes.

Home... until the government began to demolish these old buildings to make way for modern facilities such as skyscrapers.

Wang Weizhong says it was seeing those communities gone to dust, including the one that he grew up in, that prompted him to do such a play.

"There used to be hundreds of such communities in Taiwan. Now almost all of them were removed. A few do remain, but only as heritage parks. I happen to work in the television business, so I told myself, there could not be a better time than now for me to do it."

As little as most Mainland theater goers may know about the history of Modern Taiwan, the director says the play has been surprisingly well received in Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Dongguan and Hangzhou.

"We've had a tremendous response from all our audiences."

"We received standing ovations all the way along. I was moved and really grateful."

Both say it is the human elements that kept audiences investing emotionally in the 3-and-a-half-hour production.

"I think in the end 'The Village' is not about Taiwan per se or military dependents villages in Taiwan per se. It really is just about life. For me it's very basic human longings, of being away from home, being unable to go home, being a refugee. These are the things that become magnified in 'The Village'."

Still, different perspectives on a shared history resulted in contrary responses to certain episodes, for example,

"There was this part in Act 2 that got some mainland audience members laughing. But we did not get any laughter for that part in Taiwan. It was when a bunch of Kuomintang army officers were celebrating their first Spring Festival in Taiwan; they reassured each other that soon they will be eating their dumplings on the Mainland. It was a true wish of Kuomintang forces at that time, so we people from Taiwan would not find that funny; but to those from the mainland, it was clearly irony."

The play will next be staged in Shanghai Grand Theater for three nights in a row, starting today.

Next Friday, it will play for another three nights at Century Theater in downtown Beijing, finishing its 7 stop tour of the mainland in the capital city.

Mr. Wang, whose father was born in Beijing, said he felt he was bringing the play back to where its story began.(www.hxen.net)

"My parents left Beijing, then called Peking, in 1949, when they were both but teenagers. My father only visited his hometown once, before he died. For my family, Beijing is where our family tree started. My father will forever rest in Taiwan, but I will bring his story back to Beijing."

For China Drive, I'm Damin.