The Troubleshooters,' by Wang Shuo

30 CHINESE EDUCATION AND SOCIETY
MA QING giggles and jumps of of the desk He paces around the room with
great excitement, impatiently waiting for YU GUAN to clean up his desk
Yu GUAN: You are a Xerox copy of one of Freud’s worst patients. I won’t let
you get the chance to show off, though.
21 UPSCALE BAR / INTERIOR / DAY
LIU MEIPING is talking with great passion and eloquence with a radiant
intensity in her face.
LIU MEIPING: Freud said, “All sons want to marry their mothers,” isn’t that
right?
Confronted with LIU MEIPING’S high spirits YANG ZHONG seems, in comparison,
dull and lifeless.
YANG ZHONG: Oh, no. It was my father who married my mother; 1 couldn’t
possibly marry my mother before my father did. The schedule isn’t correct.
LIU MEPING: I didn’t mean that you want to marry your mother. That would be
improper; no one can marry his own mother; that’s incest. What I mean is, you
want to marry your own mother, but you can’t because of your father and
morality. Therefore, you’ll feel pained. You won’t like many different girls the
way you like your mother, but you can’t do anything because of your father.
Wait. Why did I go in a circle? Well, anyway, I don’t exactly know why, but the
foreign literature said you have your mother as the object of your affection.
YANG ZHONG: But my mother is a one-eyed dragon.
Yu GUAN and h.IA QING rush into the bar. YANG ZHONG is magically reborn.
He introduces hh QING, who is immediately attracted to LIU MEIPING, and YU
GUAN, who takes the seat that YANG ZHONG offers him, nexl to LIU MEIPING.
YANG ZHONG: This is my colleague, Ma Qing, and this is our manager,
Yu GUAN. They are both my teachers and are gifted students from the Raving
Lunatics University Department of Communications. They are also members of
the Central Shit-Shooting Committee.
LIU MEIPING: What? I don’t have enough time to talk about life with three guys
at once.