by David Hare
Change of pitch. Wen-te is broken, muttering inaudibly. Yu-lai is frozen, a Buddha. The pace is furious.
Tui-chin The opinions of the masses pile up like a mountain.
Cheng-k’uan The list of charges is now five foot long.
Wen-te I can’t remember anything.
Tui-chin He doesn’t understand, he doesn’t even know
what’s going on. (He is delighted.)
Wen-te Criticize me. Please.
Hsin-ai Kick him out of the Party and send him to the County Court.
All Yes.
Hou Do you agree to that, Wen-te?
Wen-te Of course. Yes. Send me to the Court. I deserve it. I have betrayed the masses.
Hsien-e And will you grant me a divorce?
He looks up at her. Then bursts into a fit, banging his head on the ground on each ‘Never’.
Wen-te Never. I will never agree to that until the last minute of my life. Never. Never. Never.
Hsien-e You must.
Wen-te I will never beat you again.
Hsien-e He’s lying.
Wen-te Never.
Hsien-e What if you beat me to death?
Wen-te I take an oath before the people.
Hou (quiet) That’s enough, Hsien-e. He won’t give you a divorce.
Hsien-e But …
Hou We can’t help.
Silence. She sits down.
The case demands … the severest punishment. Party members have a trust which you have betrayed. The people say you must go to the County Court.
Yu-lai gets up, his patience exhausted.
Yu-lai Bonehead. Plank. Donkey’s anus. I coached you for three days and you didn’t get one answer right.
Wen-te begins to cry.
Hou Next before the gate. Wang Yu-lai.
The people look glad. Three tableaux of accusation. Then he is thrown down in the cadres’ office by Little Li. The rest scatter.
4
Little Li You’ll sleep in here. We’ll keep you here until your trial.
Yu-lai I want to die. I want to be left to die. There’s nothing. Going back to prison, there’s nothing.
Little Li You have betrayed the people. And you have failed the gate. There should be nothing.
Yu-lai What can I do?
Little Li You should have told the truth, then you would have had some chance.
Yu-lai If I’d told the truth they would have killed me.
Enter Chang Ch’uer and Ch’i-yun, very up.
Ch’i-yun Where is he?
Chang Ch’uer The people are cheering. The people have just cheered us through the streets.
Ch’i-yun There’s a celebration tonight.
Chang Ch’uer The work we can do.
Comrade Hou comes in with Secretary Liu.
Hou Secretary Liu, this is the man. Members of the work team, this is Secretary Liu. He has come from Taihang to check on the progress of the work.
Little Li Comrade.
Ch’i-yun Comrade.
Liu Why is he crying? (Pause.) Tell me why you are crying.
Yu-lai I want to die.
Liu Why?
Yu-lai There’s nothing.
Liu Nothing?
Yu-lai Nothing for me.
Liu Why?
Yu-lai If I’m sent to the People’s Court, I’ll be shot.
Liu Who told you that?
Yu-lai If I confess everything, I’ll be lynched. Or they’ll throw me out of the Party and that’s as bad as being shot.
Liu Yes.
Yu-lai People hate me, they want me dead.
Liu You can still decide your fate. It’s up to you. I know people who have done much worse than you. They have faced the people honestly and the people have accepted them again as leaders.
Yu-lai I can’t face living in this …
Liu You can. Everyone can face everything.
Yu-lai The people hate me.
Liu No. They hate what you’ve done. (Pause.) The people have voted to send you to the Court. You are not yet in prison. Walk down the street. Try it.
Yu-lai goes.
How did this happen? You let him lose hope. How could you? Never, never let a man lose hope. It’s a waste, to the Party. To the people. It’s easy, it’s so easy to stamp something out. It’s what they do in every country in the world. They cure diseases by killing the patient. But we … are going to save the patient.
Chang Ch’uer You’re going to let him loose?
Liu Why not?
Little Li He and his son terrorized the village …
Liu Ah I see so you thought get them out of the way and everything will be all right …
Little Li The people …
Liu But it won’t, comrade. You can’t smooth trouble over, it will come back at you, always it will appear somewhere else unless you dig out the root.
Ch’i-yun The people wanted rid of him.
Liu Of course …
Little Li And we proved, we proved today we could remove their fears …
Liu Of course you did, that’s the easy part …
Little Li We proved today the Party is ready to purify its own ranks …
Liu No. You proved the Party could be brutal and wasteful. There is a school in Changchih for cadres who cannot pass the gate. A place where they can be reeducated, taken out of their own lives, given a chance to think, to learn, to be objective. He should go there. He should not go to prison. On no account should he be thrown out of the Party. (Pause.) It’s a practical question, you must say what you think.
Chang Ch’uer Send him to the school. We can use him.
Hou Yes. Our thinking was wrong.
Ch’i-yun Yes.
Little Li No. We said purify the Party, we promised that. Now we mustn’t go back. The people need to see him punished.
Liu Or is it you who needs that?
Little Li We worked so hard to organize that meeting.
Liu And you want a reward?
Little Li I want justice.
Liu Well?
Hou The overall feeling of the team is strongly for reforming the man.
Liu Good.
Little Li If men like Yu-lai can remain as Communists then what is the point of the campaign?
Liu There are no breakthroughs in our work. There is no ‘just do this one thing and we will be there’. There is only the patient, daily work of re-making people. Over each hill, another hill. Over that hill, a mountain. The Party needs Yu-lai because he is clever and strong, and reformed will be of more value to the people than if he had never been corrupted. We must save him. We can use him. He can be reformed.
SECTION ELEVEN
1
Secretary Ch’en addresses the delegates from the platform.
Slogan: THE SECOND LUCHENG CONFERENCE
Ch’en Comrades. The twenty-year war is almost over. Chiang Kai-shek’s armies are doomed. A People’s Republic is within our reach. And so we have come to a turning point. And we have called you in today because many wrong ideas have been shared and many wrong actions have been taken.
At our last meeting in Lucheng you were told that land reform was far from complete. We have now discovered, after surveys of the area, that this was wrong, that the feudal system in our County has been fundamentally abolished. The peasants have in the main fanshened. The surveys show that in Lucheng County the poor peasants now farm an average of four-fifths of an acre each, the middle peasants slightly less, the rich peasants one-sixth of an acre each. So there is only one land problem remaining and it is the very opposite of what you imagine: the attack has been overdone.
Think back all of you to the Draft Agrarian Law. Think back to Article 16. ‘In places where the land has already been distributed before the announcement of the law, the land need not be further redistributed.’
Is this not such a place? Had we not already spontaneously and in advance of the Party undertaken land reform at the end of the Japanese occupation, BEFORE the law was announced?
Work teams have been applying land reform policy long after land reform has occurred. Because some people still have less, work teams have continued to hunt for nonexistent wealth. They have continued to blame and persecute old rank-and-file cadres. And they have frightened and alienated many middle peasants, men who were never exploiters but who have always been our allies and should have been treated as such.
Now how did this wrong line come about? It came about through an excess of zeal. It came about through blind utopianism, because so many work teams were ensnared by the idea of equality, of wanting to give everybody in China equal shares. This idea is dangerous. It encourages wrong standards. It has been condemned by Marx, by Engels, by Lenin, by Stalin. It is Leftism.
Equality cannot be established by decree. Even if we could give everyone an equal share, how long would it last? The strong, the ruthless would soon climb to the top; the weak and the sick would sink to the bottom. Only in the future when all land and productive wealth is finally held in common and we produce in great abundance will equality be possible.
So we have been judging fanshen by the wrong principles.
We have taken absolute equality as our banner. We have tried to be charitable. We have tried to give everyone everything they need. We have tried to be god.
Land reform can have only one standard and it is not equality. It is the abolition of the feudal system. And that we have achieved.
Now we know from history that whenever victory draws near it’s easy for cadres to become adventurist, to alienate their allies, to persecute creators of wealth, to make impossible leftist demands. This is counter-revolutionary, because it pits working people against working people and endangers the success of the whole movement.
We must rein ourselves in. Above all in Lucheng County we must begin the work of returning goods and land to those middle peasants from whom we have taken too much.
And we must ensure that landlords are given enough land to make a living.
Little Li gets up and leaves.
How this is to be done we shall discuss in the coming days.
2
Little Li pacing up and down in the square is joined by the rest of the work team.
Little Li It’s insane. It’s totally insane.
Hou Li …
Little Li The policy has changed again.
Slogan: THEY TALKED FOR SIXTEEN HOURS
Little Li We are to go back to the village, we are to tell the people Article 16 has been overlooked, this means the fanshen was finished two years ago, you’ve had all you’re going to get, in fact you’re going to have to give some back.
Ch’i-yun You’re frightened of the people, Little Li. Frightened to admit you made a mistake.
Little Li I didn’t make it. He did.
Ch’i-yun Who?
Little Li Ch’en.
Hou Then tell him.
Little Li They just change the policy whenever it suits them.
Hou I shall go and find Secretary Ch’en and tell him the Long Bow delegation wishes to speak to him.
Little Li Don’t be ridiculous. He won’t even come.
Hou I shall tell him you have a criticism. I’ve no doubt he’ll come. (He goes out.)
Little Li If the Party can make mistakes like that, what is there for us to cling to?
Chang Ch’uer I don’t feel that. I feel as if a great rock has been lifted from my back. These last few months I’d come to feel a fool, thrashing around for wealth, trying to level people out, pushing people about. I felt tired and resentful and angry. And now I see my political thinking was wrong, I took a wrong line, I had the wrong objectives, and far from feeling bitter or betrayed, I just feel … the knot is untied and I can look at the very same village, the very same people, I can look at the very same facts and I feel happy and hopeful.
A silence. Then noiselessly Hou returns with Ch’en.
Ch’en You wanted to see me.
Little Li Yes. (Pause.) I felt … the policy had changed.
Ch’en No.
Little Li You changed the policy.
Ch’en No. (Pause.) The policy has always been the same. ‘Depend on the poor peasants, unite with the middle peasants, destroy the feudal system.’ That has always been the policy, is still the policy, and will be the policy in places where the feudal system has not been uprooted. Here it has been uprooted. That we got wrong.
Little Li We?
Ch’en That we got wrong.
Little Li We? We didn’t get it wrong. You got it wrong.
Silence.
You got it wrong. I want to hear you say ‘I take the blame.’ (Pause.) Last time we were here you criticized us for arresting Yu-lai. But it was you who approved the arrest in the first place. (Pause.) Say the words ‘I take the blame.’
Ch’en Each level of leaders does its best to understand overall policy and apply it locally. If you are given a theory you must test it in practice. If it fails in practice it is up to you to send it back. Everyone must be active. Everyone must think all the time.
Little Li ‘I take the blame.’ Say it.
Pause.
Ch’en Primary responsibility for this last mistake rests with us at County headquarters. I take the blame.
Silence.
Little Li You’re just saying it.
Ch’en raises his hands.
You’re just saying it to get me back to work.
Hou Li, you’re behaving like a child.
Ch’en It’s not relevant.
Little Li I thought it was justice, I thought we were interested in justice.
Ch’en Not as an abstract, as a practical thing. We’ve done what we can. From now on everyone’s improvement must depend on production, on their new land, their new tools. If we’d gone on trying to equalize we’d have destroyed even that. Land reform can’t be a final solution to men’s problems. Land reform is just a step opening the way to socialism. And socialism itself is transitional. All we’ve done these past few years is give as many people as possible land to work. But our political choices have still to be made. Is each man now to work for himself? Is the pistol fired and the race underway, everyone climbing on each other’s back? Or are we to build mutual aid, exchange labour, create property in common, hold the land collectively so we can all prosper together? You see the question has barely been asked. We haven’t begun. (Pause.) You must go back.
Hou Yes.
Ch’en You must explain our mistakes, the people will be perfectly happy to listen. Tell the people the truth and they will trust you. One day, some time, this is the hardest thing, they will tell you the truth in return.
Tell them why China must be bold in concept but gentle in execution. Tell them … they are makers of the revolution every one.
They have lived already through many mistakes, but these are just ripples on the surface of the broad yellow river. Go back. Tell them.
SECTION TWELVE
1
A musical note, low, sustained.
Village life. Dawn. The village at work. The work team return. They look about the village. People hoeing.
They begin to stop people one by one. Simultaneous dialogue based on the following in each different part of the stage.
You’re going to have to give back …
Give back?
Yes, it’s difficult to explain, let me explain, let me try to explain, there are good reasons.
and
I’m afraid there’s been a change of policy. We’ve been to Lucheng.
I see.
It’s best to tell you. I’d like to tell you …
and
We think it’s best if you know exactly what’s happening, there’s been a change of policy.
Yes.
A good change, I think, but it sounds … hard on the surface anyway let me explain.
and
I’d like to explain to you what happened at Lucheng and then you tell me what you think. It’ll need some thinking about.
As they t
alk the musical note turns into a superb massive groundswell of music that consumes the stage. Banners flood down so that the whole stage is surrounded in red. At the centre the cadres mutter on, gesturing, explaining, trying to hold the peasants’ attention, getting a variety of first responses. Just before they are drowned out each cadre gets to the question:
I’d like to know what you think.
What do you think?
Tell me.
Let me know what you think.
What do you think about this?
Then they drown in sound and light.
2
A single peasant. Hoeing in the field, as at the beginning. Hou boxes the compass from the tower: ‘There will be a meeting.’
Peasant
There is no Jade Emperor in heaven
There is no Dragon King on earth
I am the Jade Emperor
I am the Dragon King
Make way for me you hills and
mountains
I’m coming.
He goes to the meeting. The banner round the theatre unfurls the words of the poem.
A MAP OF THE WORLD
For Wallace Shawn and
Deborah Eisenberg
A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing. And when Humanity lands there, it looks out, and, seeing a better country, sets sail.
OSCAR WILDE
‘The Soul of Man Under Socialism’
Characters
Elaine le Fanu
Stephen Andrews
Victor Mehta
Peggy Whitton
Angelis
Martinson
M’Bengue
Waiters, Crew, Assistants, Diplomats, etc.
A Map of the World was first performed in London at the Lyttelton Theatre on 27 January 1983. The cast was as follows:
Elaine le Fanu Sheila Scott-Wilkinson
Stephen Andrews Bill Nighy
Victor Mehta Roshan Seth
Peggy Whitton Diana Quick
Angelis Stefan Gryff
Martinson Ronald Hines