Zhejiang Playwright’s Reminiscences of His Life

Hu Xiaohai is a preeminent Zhejiang playwright (born in 1930) with a career of more than half a century and more than 100 plays. And it is a name that has created some funny misunderstanding， a lot of anecdotes， and intimate bond with friends and colleagues. It is a name that still evokes curiosity. The two Chinese characters of his given name are 小孩， literally meaning little child. The boy was born with a name with a character 嘯 that pronounces Xiao and refers to making a loud beautiful noise. His father must have failed to foresee how a very literary name was to be simplified.

Sixty years ago， the supply chief of his company thought the word too complicated to write， just in the same way some USA immigration officials thought of some foreign names when large crowds of European people came to the New World. So the supply chief replaced 嘯 with 小 (same pronunciation with a different tone)， without any idea that the changed name would become prestigious and cause its owner and even some other people many inconveniences.

More than once the playwright was ignored by nurses and left waiting endlessly in clinics because they thought the name suggested a baby too young to have a name yet. On one occasion， a nurse thought a little boy in the injection room was Hu Xiaohai. She was stopped before she was unknowingly to commit a possibly fatal mistake. While in Beijing on business once upon a time， Hu was frustrated to find that no booking had been arranged for him by the conference organizers who， over a brief telephone communication， had mistaken the name of the successful playwright for a little child who would come to the conference with a parent. Everybody laughed when the mistake was found and timely corrected. Reminiscing about his ten-year directorship at a culture and art research institute， Hu jokes that he was never able to attain due respect from his colleagues， for he was merely “a little child”. Hu himself likes the name very much， especially when school children call him Grandpa Little Child.

Though known as a little child， he is a giant of a playwright. His first successful play was about land reform and redistribution， which took place nationwide around the time when the New China came into being. He also wrote a play about supporting the Chinese Voluntary Army in Korea in the early 1950s. What first established his national fame were the plays he created in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Many of his writings after the late 1970s were created for films and television dramas. He and his son jointly created a 40-episode television drama entitled “Southern Song Dynasty”， which was housed in Hangzhou， the capital seat of the dynasty (1127-1279).

Most of Hu’s plays are about country life in Zhejiang and most were created on the basis of real people or real events. His ten-plus notebooks testify to the playwright’s endeavors in these decades to get himself acquainted with rural life in the province. In those years， he watched the society closely and read extensively and he made detailed notes on what he had seen and heard. In these notes were seeds of many of his successful plays. After careful digestion of rural dialects and lifestyles and folk ballads， he knew how to translate them back into his plays. Moreover， he put poetry into his lines. After all， he recalls， it is an art that audiences can easily understand and gladly appreciate.

A playwright who has lived through political ups and downs in the past 60 years， Hu knows how to survive and flourish. He recalls that a playwright in China needs to convince three groups of people: one needs to convince leaders， experts and audience. In his eye， a playwright is a god who creates and makes characters.

Though in retirement， Hu Xiaohai is still full of energy and enthusiasm. Writing is his secret to keep fit and live happily. He writes with greater ease. When he was younger， he would be greatly satisfied if it took him a year to write a play. Now he can write five or six plays a year. A lot of plays in his head are waiting to be written.

The “l(fā)ittle child” is now preparing to write a novel. Unlike his plays that cope with specific rights and wrongs， he plans to write a novel that reflects the big right and wrong that humanity confronts and he wishes to produce a masterpiece that can stand the test of time.

Asked how he understands life， he says life should not be like a play， for things on a stage can be very confusing when people are acting.□