Frog

CHEN BI: Get out of my face, you shameless piece of shit. Do you really think you can shut me up with some stinking seafood? That’s not going to happen. Today is a big day in my grandson’s life, and I’m not going anywhere. I’m staying here to have a celebratory drink. (sits down and spots Gugu) Gugu, your mind is like a spotless mirror. You took care of all our Northeast Gaomi Township babies. You knew whose seeds would not sprout and whose soil would not grow grass, so you borrowed seeds and soil, you replaced beams with rotten timbers, you used Chencang as a decoy, you deceived the heavens to cross the ocean, you sacrificed the plum to preserve the peach, you let someone get away in order to capture, you killed with a borrowed knife… you have used all the thirty-six stratagems from The Art of War.

GUGU: You used only two — you made a sound in the east and attacked from the west, and you escaped like a cicada sloughing off its skin. I nearly fell for your tricks back then. Half the foetid blood on my hands (holds them to her nose to smell) you put there.

LI SHOU: (pours a glass for Chen) Have a drink, old Chen. Drink up.

CHEN BI: (tosses down the glassful) Young classmate, you’re a fair man. Come reason this out for us —

LI SHOU: (doesn’t let Chen finish; refills his glass) Only the heavens know about fairness. Drink up. Here, use a bigger glass.

CHEN BI: Are you trying to get me drunk? You’re wrong if you think liquor will shut me up.

LI SHOU: Of course I’m wrong. No one can outdrink you. We’re drinking real Maotai today, and you don’t want to waste the opportunity, right? Down the hatch!

CHEN BI: (tips his head and drains the glass, breathes heavily as tears begin to fall) Gugu, Tadpole, Little Lion, Yuan Sai, Jin Xiu — I, Chen Bi, have fallen as low as a man can fall. Is there a single person among the fifty thousand residents of the eighteen villages in Northeast Gaomi Township as pitiful as me? I ask you, is there? No, there isn’t, no one is as pitiful as me. But you, all of you, have ganged up to bully me, a cripple. I guess that’s all right, since I’m not a good person and never have been. Bullying me is like heavenly retribution. But you shouldn’t take advantage of my daughter. Chen Mei, a girl you have all watched grow up, the prettiest girl in all of Northeast Gaomi Township, she and her sister, Chen Er, who together could have married into the imperial family as queens or royal consorts, but… it’s all my fault… retribution… my daughter carried your child (angrily points at Tadpole) to earn enough to pay off my debts. But you, my old classmates, all you uncles and elders, all you playwrights, all you big bosses, conspired to fabricate a story that her baby was stillborn. You cheated her out of her forty-thousand-yuan fee. The heavens are only three feet above your head. Why doesn’t God open his eyes to see how these terrible people are riding roughshod over us… turn on your camera, TV people, shine a light on us all — me, her, them — for all your viewers…

LIU: Everyone says nobody holds his drink as well as you, old Chen. So why are you spouting all this nonsense after only two glasses?

CHEN BI: You’re a shrewd woman, Liu Guifang. When the guesthouse went private, you became a big boss overnight. You’re now worth millions. I begged you to find a job for my daughter, even if it was tending a fire in your kitchen, but you chose not to be generous, saying you were in the process of downsizing and that the door to charity was hard to open. But…

LIU: I was wrong, old friend, and I’ll take care of Chen Mei. It’s only one more mouth to feed, isn’t it? I’ll take her under my wing, how’s that?

Yuan Sai, Jin Xiu, and others try to ‘escort’ Chen Bi out of the yard.

CHEN BI: (struggles) I still haven’t seen my grandson. (takes out a red envelope) Grandson, your granddad may be poor, but ethical codes must be followed. I have prepared a red envelope for you…

While Yuan Sai and the others manhandle Chen off the stage, Chen Mei, all in black, enters to the astonishment of everyone present. There is total silence.