❀ Main Page
❀ Three Generations
❀ Fan Yusu Decided to Live Off a Rich Man
❀ Chinese Migrant Workers: Staging 1965’s Shanghai in 2017’s Picun
❀ Chinese Queer Feminist Poetic Intimacies: A Translation Play
❀ Daybreak
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“Daybreak” is inspired by The Vagina Monologues and dedicated to the #MeToo movement in China. It is also a response to Ke Qianting’s “The Formation of Chinese Feminist Linguistic Tactics and Discourse: Adapting The Vagina Monologues for Chinese Women” (Chapter 7) from Feminisms with Chinese Characteristics, co-edited by Ping Zhu and Hui Faye Xiao.
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VICTIM: 20s, female. Innocent and full of hope as she starts her adult life as a graduate student in the United States, until that hope crashes.
SURVIVOR: 30s, female. Past experience has hardened her heart but has also made her resilient.
[VICTIM curls in fetal position on stage left. SURVIVOR stands on stage right. When the lights go on, Victim struggles to sit up.]
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VICTIM
What time is it? Is it night or day? Am I awake, or trapped in a nightmare?
SURVIVOR
Days, nights, what does it matter if you can’t sleep? It must be past midnight. People call it the “hour of the wolf”. It’s the hour when people die the most, when ghosts and demons come out to haunt insomniacs like you and me. What keeps you awake? What have you done?
VICTIM
I… I was… I went to his office… to borrow books… I didn’t expect…
SURVIVOR
[cynical]
You had no idea what it MEANT.
VICTIM
What can I do now? I dare not close my eyes. As soon as I close them, countless hands reach out from the dark to grab my arms and strangle me [gesture]. I dare not turn off the light: someone is lurking outside the window, peeping in at my every move, ready to attack at any moment! When the night ends and the sun rises, how can I go out to face the new day?
SURVIVOR
Have you heard of vampires? Once you are bitten, sunlight won’t shine on you anymore. You are doomed to roam the dark nights forever.
VICTIM
[struggles to stand up]
But when I tried to take a shower, I knew this was not a nightmare. I watched the stream of water flowing over my body but felt nothing, only a strange sense of dread. My body doesn’t belong to me anymore. How I wish to cast this body away like taking off a jacket!
SURVIVOR
No, you can’t; it’s much easier to give up your heart. [reminiscent] Twelve years have passed. My heart has long frozen into a lump of ice, but my body remembers everything. Whenever I wake up at this hour of the night, I fear that I will never find love in this world, that I will end this life all alone. But when the sun rises, I walk on the streets with my head low, my shoulders hunched, staring at my toes.
I had a boyfriend once. But one day, when he suddenly hugged me from behind, my whole body stiffened: I forgot how to breathe. The next second, I broke free and locked myself in the bathroom all night long.
VICTIM
What did I do wrong? Did I send him the wrong signal? Do I have an Electra complex? I… My father died when I was six; I grew up only with my mother. I’ve never learned how to deal with men.
SURVIVOR
WHAT did I do wrong? What could I have done differently? Is it my fault after all? Otherwise, why am I paying the price? On a night like this, those questions haunt me. Like daggers they thrust into my heart, twist and turn until no blood comes out. Every time I blame myself, my pain deepens by another layer.
VICTIM
He has talent and style. I take careful notes on every word he says in his lectures. Yesterday, he stopped me after class. He remembered my name! “You did a good job on your last paper.” he told me. “I didn’t expect someone so pretty to be so thoughtful.” He asked me to come to his office, so he could lend me some books for reference. Along the way, we talked about Freud and Foucault, about psychoanalysis and poststructuralism. He was so learned and so easy-going.
SURVIVOR
These men—our professors, mentors, role models—we look up to them, we place our hope in them, but in us, they see only one thing. Sometimes I wonder if that’s the only thing people see when they look at me. And this one thing is always on display, in plain sight. I can’t hide it unless I hide myself from the world.
VICTIM
In wanting that one thing, they take our hope away. In his office, he said: “Do you know that, according to Foucault, sex is a means for state power to control individuals? That’s why in China, sex is suppressed—a taboo.” I started to feel uncomfortable, evading his gaze. I had never discussed the topic of sex with male elders. He seemed to notice my uneasiness. “Look, you feel uncomfortable. It’s the same taboo that makes you ashamed of talking about sex.” He stroked my back, up and down, murmuring “Relax, just relax” and then rested his hand on my waist. “Have you read 1984? The hero and heroine make love as a way to resist totalitarianism,” he continued. “Have you ever made love?” I felt totally embarrassed, but my body froze—no word came out of my mouth.
SURVIVOR
Sure, everything starts with a harmless joke. Then he crosses the line to tempt you. In my first one-on-one meeting with my former boss, he commented out of nowhere, “You are sitting like such a lady, with your legs closed so tightly, because you want to hide your vagina, don’t you?” I pretended not to hear and kept talking about my project, but he inched closer and put his hand on my lap.
VICTIM
He noticed my silence and started to stroke my hair. My whole body began to tremble. Suddenly he grabbed me and started to tear my clothes. I fought back with all my strength, but he was stronger. As he held me down on his desk, I tried to scream: “Professor, I’m still a virgin!” But my voice came out so feeble.
SURVIVOR
[reminiscent]
What was I doing at that moment? Why didn’t I do anything? I forgot what time it was, where I was, or who I was. I forgot how to breathe. I left my body. All I knew was that I didn’t matter anymore. The man above me paid no attention to me, cared nothing about me, my will, my feelings, my tears, my screams! I did try to scream, but no voice came out. I was a living corpse.
VICTIM
He asked me to be his girlfriend. He said he was wasting his talents day after day and felt very lonely; even his wife couldn’t understand him. But he could see a kindred spirit in me at first sight. Only I could understand his aspirations. He said he had been in love with me for a long time. He said, “what happened today is a secret between us”.
SURVIVOR
A dirty secret—a heavy rock that oppresses our hearts for the rest of our lives! He threatened me that, if I exposed his deeds, no one in the industry would dare to hire me again; instead, everyone would see me as a shameless mistress. Afterwards I tried to avoid him as much as I could, but every day I remained with the company I felt suffocated. [Pause]
I quit my job and gave up everything I’d worked for all those years. I buried the dirty secret in my heart.
VICTIM
Did you tell anyone?
SURVIVOR
Who would listen? Who would believe me? He was a well-respected industry leader; he had connections all over the field. Everyone I knew on the job I knew through him. If I exposed him, what would those people think of me? What kind of rumours, what kind of judgments would I face?
VICTIM
[turns to face SURVIVOR and points a finger at her]
Why did you go to his room alone?
SURVIVOR
[turns to face VICTIM and points a finger at her]
Why did he pick you and not anyone else?
VICTIM
Didn’t you try to sleep with him to get ahead?
SURVIVOR
Didn’t he promise you anything in return?
VICTIM
Why didn’t you reject him?
SURVIVOR
Why didn’t you make your rejection clearer?
VICTIM
If you really fought back hard, how could he prevail?
[Both actors return to their original positions.]
SURVIVOR
I applied to grad school and came to America. I wanted to go as far away as I could, to leave everything behind, but the nightmare of that day—the dirty secret—followed me wherever I went.
Here I knew no one and had no one to talk to. Loneliness ate me alive. Mornings were the hardest: I couldn’t drag my stiff body out of bed. During the day, I burst into tears on the street, on the Subway, in the supermarket, in the library, in classes… But my arms were too weak to wipe them away. That was the time when I started roaming the streets at night, because sunlight wouldn’t shine on me anymore…
VICTIM
I remember something: twenty years ago, another girl in our department had suffered a professor’s harassment and assaults for years. When she finally exposed his deeds, the furious professor spread slander everywhere, saying that the girl tried to seduce him and lost her mind, that she was a delusional liar. Maybe she did lose her mind in the end: she killed herself.
Now I understand: that was her only way out… Is this the operational rule of the adult world? Are women always to be fragile, doomed to drink this cup of bitter wine?
SURVIVOR
No! Don’t! At least we have found each other.
VICTIM
Each other? [looks into the eyes of SURVIVOR]
SURVIVOR
[takes a step toward the centre of the stage]
Yes, you and me [looks into the eyes of VICTIM], and hundreds and thousands of others [looks around the audience]. Over the years, from vague bits and pieces of gossip circulating among friends, I’ve realised that I was not his first victim, let alone his only one. Have you thought of—that he may have done this to others, too? That we are not alone?
VICTIM
Others? I thought they must all have said no. They are probably all stronger than me… I’m the weakest. I let him…
SURVIVOR
Stop it! It’s not your fault! We all think we are the only ones, because we all hide in the dark and lick our wounds in silent shame, like lambs to be slaughtered. But the shame shouldn’t be ours. I couldn’t bear this deadly silence anymore. I decided to share my experience on social media.
VICTIM
To speak out, to face ice-cold medical instruments and ruthless interrogations? To tear our wounds open inch by inch under the piercing gaze of the public, to suffer humiliation and trauma once again? People would see us as stained for the rest of our lives. People would ask, “Why didn’t you say anything right away? What took you so long?” Aren’t you afraid?
SURVIVOR
Terrified. It’s been twelve years now but I still have a hard time telling what happened. My hands trembled so much… I could hardly press “send”. But as soon as I did it, the heavy rock was lifted from my heart.
VICTIM
What if no one believes in us? What if they accuse us as liars, flirts, opportunists, gold diggers? What if we shout in the wilderness but no one listens at all?
SURVIVOR
Our voices may be weak, but every voice has an echo. We will find each other and support each other.
Listen: I received so many private messages from strangers. One told me, “I have been waiting for this post for twenty years”. Another said, “They put so much shame in each of us, but we all know it’s not our fault”. Still another said, “He took my voice away on that day. Now I want my voice back”.
[These messages could be read by other actors as they enter the stage one by one, and accompanied by projection of #MeToo testimonies on the back screen.]
VICTIM
[Whisper] To speak out? To be seen? To be supported? [louder] What should I do? [to the audience] What should we do?
SURVIVOR
Whatever you decide to do, we’ll be here for you. We can do this together.
[She steps up to the centre stage and extends her hand to VICTIM.]
VICTIM
[steps up to hold SURVIVOR’s hand]
We will do this together. Tomorrow morning.
SURVIVOR
Today. Look, the sun is rising. A new dawn is here.
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How to cite: Chen, Lux. “Daybreak.” Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, 18 Jul. 2023, chajournal.blog/2023/07/18/lux-chen.
Lux Chen is a bilingual English/Chinese writer, translator, cinephile, and feminist looking for opportunities. As a cross-cultural storyteller, she has published creative nonfiction focusing on women, immigrants, grassroots artists, and mental health, as well as film and book reviews focusing on global women’s cinema and literature. She holds degrees in English from Peking University and in Comparative Literature from the University of Texas at Austin and has guest lectured on Chinese cinema at the New School and Emerson College. With her work, she hopes to tell the stories of Chinese feminism in a global context.
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