EVA: Oh. Okay.
THE TRANSLATOR: Dallas, 2015.
JULIE: Now, everyone in this room agrees that there are human rights abuses going on in China. That’s a well-documented fact.
THE TRANSLATOR: There’s actually a great deal of debate about the / extent—okay.
JULIE: But the Defense is going to argue that a single bullet point is insufficient evidence of ONYS’s criminal collusion. After all, this is the only copy we have access to. How can we prove that Mr McLaren and his colleagues actually saw this document?
Well, let’s look at our exhibits.
Exhibit A, this bullet point, was presented to ONYS board members on July 31st, 2006. Now, because we have access to the public minutes of this board meeting, which is our Exhibit B, you can also see clearly, here, that Marshall McLaren, the head of China Operations, is listed as being in attendance. What does this all mean?
It means Mr McLaren not only saw this document, but he saw it before their contract was renewed. Which means he not only helped to build the Golden Shield, but that he did it in the full knowledge that this was one of the Ministry’s central goals. That they specifically and explicitly intended on targeting Zhuangzi activists.
THE TRANSLATOR: Beijing, 2012.
AMANDA: It’s sort of ingenious.
EVA: Well, you spend enough time with lawyers—
AMANDA: Dude, you just made our case. Take the compliment.
EVA: Ha, okay, thanks.
Beat.
AMANDA: So this was a, uh, surprising WeChat request.
EVA: Well, like, I don’t know, it’s our only night in Beijing, there’s all these bars around, you seemed cool, so, I figured, uh, you’d be the sort of person I’d wanna get trashed and go dancing with.
AMANDA: Can I just clarify something here?
EVA: What?
AMANDA: Like, is this a drink, or like, a drink?
EVA: Oh, no, yes, I am definitely trying to fuck you.
AMANDA: Okay, good, I thought so.
EVA: Yeah, there should be no ambiguity about that.
AMANDA: So, okay, I wish people could just—
EVA: Right?
AMANDA: Because it’s like, there’s enough miscommunication in the world, I don’t want to spend all night reading between the lines and like, searching for a sign, or symbol, like, a visual metaphor for whether or not you want to stick your fingers in me, because if you just like say, upfront, what you mean, then like, you don’t need to translate, you know?
THE TRANSLATOR: I guess I should go.
AMANDA: So I take it Julie’s not coming.
EVA: No, she’s, uh, she’d be sort of pissed if she knew I was doing this.
AMANDA: Does she not—
EVA: Oh, no, no. That’s not—no, she thinks I fuck her colleagues to piss her off.
AMANDA: Do you?
EVA: Uh. Kind of … so, her partner—not like her partner in life, her partner in law, Richard—
AMANDA: Oh yeah, Richard, I know Rich. You and Rich, that’s, uh, that’s quite a … I mean, not to cast aspersions, he’s a lovely guy but, uh, you can do better.
EVA: How much better?
AMANDA: A lot better.
Beat.
EVA: So tell me about your exciting and fabulous job.
AMANDA: My job, uh, my job. It’s a lot of advocacy, a lot of … ranting, raving, tweeting. Not a lot of downtime.
EVA: Yeah, I get that vibe.
AMANDA: I work myself to death, it’s pretty unsustainable. Blah, enough me, is this, like, your full-time gig? Being your sister’s translator?
EVA: Oh. Uh. Well I’m, I just graduated so—I’m between—
THE TRANSLATOR: Should I come back?
EVA:—actually, uh, I’m—I’m a sex worker, I work in the sex industry.
THE TRANSLATOR: Oh.
AMANDA: Oh.
THE TRANSLATOR: Guess not.
EVA: Yeah. I mean, informally? I’m not—uh—
AMANDA: If you don’t mind, uh, what exactly …
EVA: I date people.
AMANDA: Oh.
EVA: Uh, specifically, I date these guys, these older guys, rich white guys, and uh, they pay for my rent and my clothes and my food and uh, my everything.
AMANDA: Oh. So you’re like a—
EVA: Yeah. Yep.
AMANDA: Do you … do you fuck them?
EVA: Um, I didn’t really intend to, when I started out, but then one of them offered me a lot of money, so now, yeah, I do.
AMANDA: All of them?
EVA: One of them I just give blow jobs to, because he’s in like his seventies.
AMANDA: Oh.
EVA: Yep. That’s uh, what I do for money.
AMANDA: Well, hey, uh, no judgment.
EVA: Oh, feel free to judge me, I’m a terrible person.
AMANDA: I don’t really know you at all, but you don’t seem like a terrible person.
EVA: I’m sort of like a generally decent person masking like a depraved sociopath.
AMANDA: I feel like this is your way of telling me I shouldn’t date you.
EVA: Yeah, it’s a, uh, tactic.
AMANDA: I guess it’s a good thing you live in D.C.
EVA: Yeah.
AMANDA: And I live in Sydney.
EVA: Yep.
AMANDA: And this is our only night in Beijing.
EVA: Guess so.
AMANDA: Well. (downing her drink) I feel a sudden and overwhelming urge to powder my nose.
THE TRANSLATOR: ‘Meet me in the bathroom.’
THE TRANSLATOR: Dallas, 2015.
JULIE: Mr McLaren, I get the sense you’re not a fan of ambiguities, so the next question I’m going to ask you is going to be a wholly unambiguous question, a question you can answer with a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’, do you think you can do that for me?
MARSHALL: I think I can manage that.
JULIE: Did you see this document at the ONYS board meeting on July 31st, 2006?
Beat.
MARSHALL: I don’t remember.
JULIE: You don’t remember.
MARSHALL: No.
JULIE: I’ll remind you you’re under oath.
MARSHALL: Yeah, I’m aware of that.
JULIE: You can remember the dollar value, per share, of your stocks in 2005, but you can’t remember seeing this document?
MARSHALL: I mean, come on, we’re talking about a bullet point. Can you remember any bullet points you read a decade ago?
JULIE: But you received this document directly from the CCP.
MARSHALL: Not that I recall, not specifically.
Beat.
MARSHALL: Look, the fact is—
JULIE: Mr McLaren, do you / seriously—
MARSHALL: The fact is that this document, it was one of hundreds—probably thousands—of documents that came across my desk while we were negotiating the contract renewal. I mean, to be honest with you, it was probably thrown in the packet by an intern. God knows if I ever read it.
JULIE: Wouldn’t you say that displays corporate negligence on your part?
Beat.
MARSHALL: I guess that’s for the jury to decide.
JULIE: Actually it’s for you to answer.
Beat.
MARSHALL: From where I sit, Ms Chen, I made the internet faster for 1.4 billion people. If that’s corporate negligence, then I guess I’m negligent.
Beat.
JULIE: No further questions.
THE TRANSLATOR: Beijing to Yingcheng, 2012.
JULIE: What’d you get up to last night?
EVA: Nothing. Got trashed.
JULIE: The usual then.
EVA:… yeah.
Beat.
JULIE: I like trains.
EVA: Me too.
JULIE: Calming.
EVA: Mm.
Beat.
JULIE: You know, I thought about it. For college. Moving here. With you and Mom.
EVA: No you didn’t.
JULIE: I did
. (beat) You know, I thought it might be good to … get … culturally reacclimated. So I could have, like, an actual connection to this place. (beat) Thing is, though, you look at what’s going on in this country, it doesn’t exactly inspire stirrings of national pride.
EVA: Right.
Beat.
JULIE: That was good work by the way, with the thing.
EVA: Oh. Thanks.
JULIE: You ever thought about it? Law school?
EVA: Don’t have the grades.
JULIE: Yeah, but I don’t know, there’s … courses, or, something.
EVA: Just because—forget it.
JULIE: No, what?
EVA: You don’t have to give me brownie points for doing a ‘smart thing’, Jules. I’m smart. I just don’t feel the need to, like, broadcast it all the time. (beat) It hasn’t been all fun and games, you know. Being the comparatively stupid sibling, you know.
JULIE:… Eva, you’re not—do you honestly think that?
EVA: You’re a lawyer, I’m a … whatever.
JULIE: Yeah, but, like, emotional intelligence, you’ve got me beat. I’ve got the emotional intelligence of a brick.
EVA: I mean, whatever, that’s just transactional logic. You work out what someone wants from you and what you want from them. Then you make the transaction.
JULIE: Christ, dude. Go to law school. Make that logic billable by the hour.
EVA: Yeah. Maybe. (beat) I’ll look into it.
JULIE: You should. (laughing) Transactional logic. You’re pretty messed up, kid, you know that?
EVA: Pot, meet kettle.
JULIE: Ha, yeah. No shit.
Beat.
EVA: I mean, like, all things considered. Our childhood. We’re pretty well-adjusted.
JULIE: Speak for yourself, man. I’m pretty …
THE TRANSLATOR: Damaged.
EVA: Yeah, well, I’m.
THE TRANSLATOR: Also damaged.
JULIE: But you know, we’re … you know.
EVA: Yeah.
THE TRANSLATOR: Not sure on this one. I think it’s expressing a kind of … solidarity. Or yearning.
Beat.
EVA: So if this guy’s testimony, if it’s compelling, it could make your case, right?
JULIE: Pretty much. Dao wheels his wheelchair to the center.
EVA: So what do you need him to say?
JULIE: That he’s suffering.
END OF ACT 1.
ACT 2
Yi Jin (l) and Josh McConville (r).
THE TRANSLATOR: I admit I wasn’t being totally candid
At the outset
I do have a degree of … professional ego, you see.
The hardest part is actually getting it wrong
The moments where you actually hinder communication
Shut down a dialog
It invalidates your work
Because in those moments, you prove that the very attempt—
Of taking a thought from one place, one culture, one set of given circumstances
And reimagining that thought for another set of circumstances
Well, / in reality, there are only false equivalences
You can approximate, but—
That’s all it ever is
That’s my job, in fact,
Is not really to translate
But to interpret
Not to transmit truth to truth
But to give you informed approximations
THE TRANSLATOR: Beijing, 2006.
The Translator translates Dao’s and Mei’s dialogue into English.
DAO: It has an infrared camera, a spectrograph and a photometer.
这有一台红外线照相机，一台光谱仪和一台光度计。
Zhè yǒu yìtái hóngwàixiàn zhàoxiàngjī, yìtái guāngpǔyí hé yītái guāngdùjì.
MEI: Li.
老李。
Lǎo Lǐ.
DAO: This camera is the most important part.
照相机是最重要的部分。
Zhàoxiàngjī shì zuì zhòngyào de bùfen.
MEI: Li. Eat something.
老李。吃点东西。
Lǎo Lǐ. Chī diǎn dōngxi.
DAO: In ten years, we’ll have photographed parts of the universe we’ve never seen before.
在未来的十年里，我们会拍摄到宇宙里以前从没有看到过的 部分。
Zài wèilái de shíniánlǐ wǒmen huì pāishèdào yužhòulǐ yǐqián cóngméi yǒu kàndàoguò de bùfen.
MEI: It’s not too late for a career change.
现在改行还不晚。
Xiànzài gǎiháng hái bù wǎn.
DAO: You think I’m smart enough for astrophysics?
你认为我有资格成为天体物理学家吗？
Nǐ rènwéi wǒ yǒu zīgé chéngwéi tiāntǐ wùlǐ xuéjiā ma?
MEI: In my opinion, you’d make a terrible astronaut.
依我看，你会是个很糟糕的宇航员。
Yīwǒkàn, nǐ hui shigè heň zāogāo de yǔhángyuán.
DAO: Not an astronaut. (in English, raising his fist like a superhero) An EXOPLANETEER!
不是宇航员,是EXOPLANETEER!
Búshì yǔhángyuán, shì EXOPLANETEER!
MEI: (slapping his hand down) Did you forget you have a four year old?
你忘了你有个四岁的孩子吗？
Nǐ wàng le nǐ yǒu ge sìsuì de háizi ma?
DAO: Let her wake and hear! It’s not harmful to instil a child with an early love of astronomy.
让她醒来听听，早点让孩子对天文学产生兴趣也挺好的。
Ràng tā xǐng lái tīng tīng, zǎodiǎn ràng háizi duì tiānwénxué chǎnshēng xìngqù yě tǐng hǎo de.
Beat.
MEI: Did you get the mail?
你拿到信件了吗？
Nǐ ná dào xìnjiàn le ma?
Dao places the stack of mail on the table.
What did they do?
他们都做了什么?
Tāmen dōu zuò le shénme?
DAO: We drank tea.
我们只是喝茶。
Wǒmen zhǐshì hē chá.
MEI: What did they ask you?
他们问了你什么?
Tāmen wènle nǐ shénme?
DAO: The questions aren’t important. It’s just a ritual. They ask a question, I say no, they ask a question, I say no, they give me the mail.
没什么重要的问题，只是例行公事。他们问一个问题，我说 没有，他们又问另外一个问题，我还说 没有。然后他们就把 信件还给我了。
Méishénme zhòngyào de wèntí, zhǐshì lìxínggōngshì. Tāmen wèn yīgè wèntí, wǒ shuō méiyǒu, tāmen yòu wèn lìngwài yīgè wèntí, wǒ hái shuō méiyǒu. Ránhòu tāmen jiù bǎ xìnjiàn huán gěi wǒle.
MEI: I don’t understand.
我不明白。
wǒ bù míngbái.
DAO: Mei.
梅。
Méi.
MEI: They’re not taking Dr Zhang’s mail, are they?
他们怎么不截取张博士的信件？
Tāmen zeňme bù jiéqǔ zhāng bóshì dì xìnjiàn?
DAO: I’ve explained this to you already.
我以前给你解释过这些了。
wǒ yǐqián gěi nǐ jiešhìguò zhèxiē le.
MEI: So you’re the only networks expert in China?
全国就只有你一个网络专家啊？
Quánguó jiù zhǐyǒu nǐ yīgè wǎngluò zhuānjiā a?
DAO: (murmured) Your phone.
你的手机。
Nǐde shǒujī.
MEI: What?
怎么了?
Zeňmele?
Dao puts a finger to his lips, points to her phone. She reluctantly turns it off.
DAO: Just in case.
就怕万一。
Jiù pà wànyī.
MEI: This is stupid.
太荒谬了。
&nb
sp; Tài huāngmiù le.
DAO: Mei, the government have access to all kinds of information.
梅，政府有办法获取各种信息。
Méi, zhèngfǔ yǒu bànfǎ huòqǔ gè zhoňg xìnxī.
MEI: Don’t talk to me like I’m a child. Everyone knows that. This is 2006, no one bugs phones anymore.
不要把我当小孩。大家都知道这个。现在都二零零六了， 没有人 偷听手机了。
Bùyào bǎ wǒ dāng xiǎohái. Dàjiā dōu zhīdào zhège. Xiànzài dōu èr líng líng liùle, méiyǒu rén tōu tīng shǒujīle.
DAO: I’m trying to explain something to you. Since the announcement about the Olympics, the government is cracking down. They’re afraid of people ‘climbing the wall’.
我想跟你说清楚。自从奥运会宣布以后，政府管得更严了， 怕人门翻墙。
wǒ xiǎng gēn nǐ shuō qīngchu. Zìcóng Aòyùnhuì xuānbù yǐhòu, zhèngfǔ guǎn gèng yán le. Pà rénmén fānqiáng.
MEI: What wall?
什么墙？
Shénme qiáng？
DAO: The firewall. The government is investing billions of yuan in improving our firewalling system.
防火墙。政府要用数十亿元来加强防火墙系统。
Fánghuǒqiáng. Zhèngfǔ yaoyòng shùshíyì yuán lái jiāqiáng xìtoňg.
MEI: What does this—
这跟—
Zhè gēn—
DAO: I teach people to build filtering systems. That’s my area of expertise. If you know how to build them, you know how to break through them. That’s why our mail is being held.
我教学生建过滤系统。我是专门搞这行的。如果你知道怎么 去建，你肯定就知道怎么去攻破。这就是我们的信被扣留的 原因。
wǒ jiāo xuésheng jiàn guòlǜ xìtǒng. wǒshì zhuānmén gǎo zhèhángde. Rúguǒ nǐ zhīdào zěnme qù jiàn, nǐ kěndìng jiù zhīdào zěnme qù gōngpò. Zhè jiù shì wǒmen de xìn bèi kòuliú de yuányīn.
MEI: Li, if you were involved in anything—
老李，你要是和这些事有关系—
Lǎo Lǐ, nǐ yaoshì hé zhèxiē shì yǒuguānxi—
DAO: I am not.
我没有。
wǒ méiyǒu.
MEI: I know. But if you were, you would tell me.
我明白，但如果有，你一定会告诉我的吧。
wǒ míngbai, dàn rúguǒ you, nǐ yídìng huì gàosu wǒde ba.
DAO: Of course.
当然。
Dāngrán.
MEI: Even if it would put me or Xiao in danger.
即使这会给小晓或我带来危险。
Jíshǐ zhè huì gěi xiǎo xiǎo huò wǒ dài lái wéixiǎn.
Golden Shield Page 5