If I Were for Real (play)

In 1979, playwright Sha Yexin and actors Li Shoucheng and Yao Mingde (all from Shanghai People's Art Theatre), went to the preliminary hearing of impostor Zhang Quanlong held in Jing'an District, Shanghai. Zhang Quanlong, a secondary school graduate assigned to a rural farm in Chongming Island One time, frustrated that he could not get a ticket to the restricted play Much Ado About Nothing, he decided to impersonate the son of Li Da, deputy of the People's Liberation Army General Staff Department. Immediately doors opened up for him, and "by the Spring Festival of 1979 Zhang had been accepted by the upper crust of Shanghai society and had the run of the city". and briefly toured a few major cities. ==English translations==

• • (translated by Edward M. Gunn) • (translated by Daniel Kane) ==Plot summary==

Li Xiaozhang (李小璋), a 26-year-old sent-down youth at a state farm, is frustrated he cannot receive a transfer to the city. His pregnant girlfriend Zhou Minghua (周明华) has already returned to the city, and without securing his transfer her father would not let them marry. He witnesses how tickets to a popular play (Nikolai Gogol's The Government Inspector, about an impostor) are unavailable to commoners but reserved for cadre members and their families, and decides to play a trick on the theatre director. Posing as the son of a high-level cadre, he immediately gains entrance to the play. Soon many cadres, including the theatre director, a Culture Bureau chief and an Organization Department Political Division head, all fawn over him in the belief that he will in return use his connections for their selfish gains. With their assistance, Li Xiaozhang enjoys a privileged life for more than 2 weeks and even succeeds in receiving his transfer, but is in the end exposed and brought to trial. He admits his guilt but reminds the audience that if he were really the son of a high-level cadre, everything would have been completely legal and accepted. ==Adaptations==

The play was adapted into a 1981 Taiwanese film of the same name directed by Wang Toon, which won 3 awards at the 18th Golden Horse Awards: Best Film, Best Adapted Screenplay (Chang Yung-hsiang) and Best Actor (Alan Tam). In 1986, Pan Asian Repertory Theatre in New York City staged the play under director Ron Nakahara. Richard Hornby praised the acting and wrote that "the picture one gets of Chinese society in this play is positive." ==References==