The tide of history

Playwright and theater director Stan Lai is about to take his magnum opus, The Village, a story about migration and love, on a tour around the country, telling the real experiences of a particular group affected by the tides of history.

After the War of Liberation (1946-49), a group of people from across the Chinese mainland relocated to Taiwan, settling in temporarily built villages, with the hope of returning to their hometowns soon, yet ended up spending the next four decades there.

TV producer Wang Wei-chung grew up in such a village, collectively called juancun (military dependents' villages). In 2005, when these cantonments were about to be demolished, Wang contacted Stan Lai, whose father went to Taiwan from Jiangxi province's Huichang.

Together, the two collected and compiled more than 100 real-life experiences of 25 families who had lived in these villages. These stories were then condensed into three fictional families in the play.

Premiered in Taiwan in 2008, The Village was first performed on the Chinese mainland two years later. As Lai and the cast members recall, despite their uncertainty, the performance in Guangdong province's Guangzhou received a six-minute standing ovation.

A news conference for the 2024 tour of The Village was held at the Beijing Tianqiao Performing Arts Center on May 20, releasing the tour's schedule and marking the launch of ticket sales.