Zhejiang Playwright’s Reminiscences of His Life.docVIP

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 啸 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 啸 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 l