I was once invited by a magazine to write something on the ideological content of my works, but my efforts were returned to me with a diplomatically-worded rejection-slip. I was told, "Your own assessment of your works is not half so penetrating as other people's." That put an end to any ideas I might have had about further attempts at the unrewarding task of analysing my own works,

Yet when all's said and done I've got to say something,, because my publishers are anxious that I should write a preface to Thunderstorm."A preface," they say, "will help readers to understand the play better." These kind gentlemen have lent me some confidence though 1, still have my doubts about the necessity for reading a preface before a play. Bernard Shaw's prefaces are always brilliant, yet 1, for one, always read the play first and his preface afterwards. "The play's the thing," and it is the play itself that captures the imagination in the first place.

The point is: Is Thunderstorm worth reading? I imagine one of the jobs of a preface-writer is to pin-point the highlights in an effort to induce the reader to keep on turning the pages, but I can't for the life of me put my finger on a single point that satisfies me. So far as actual productions of the play in China are concerned, I can only say that it has been staged a fair number of times. For twenty-odd years now it has been a regular theatrical feature in the major cities of China, and has been put on in the most diverse settings: theatres, schools, villages, factories and army camps. In addition to this, it has been used in various kinds of local opera with the addition of music and singing. For Chinese audiences, it is, perhaps, one of the better-known plays.

No melon-vendor will admit that his melons are bitter, but I must confess that the only sweetness I can claim for this 11 melon" that I am supposed to be selling you is the fact that, although the play was written twenty-three years ago, it has (much to my surprise) survived to this day. A friend of mine who first saw the play twenty years ago told me after a recent visit to the latest production, "When I saw Thunderstorm again this time, it suddenly struck me what a sordid society we used to live in. The first time I saw it, I felt I was only too familiar with the way of life it described -in fact, it was just everyday life. But today, that kind of life seems so far removed from us it is quite another world."

As a matter of fact, Thunderstorm is a drama taken from life as it was. Those bitter dark days are gone for ever and the play remains only for its historical realism. Every time I recall this, a wave of gladness lifts my heart because my fondest dream at the time when I wrote Thunderstorm is realized today.

The play is much too long, of course. I have many a time wanted to shorten it. Perhaps because it has been staged so often for such a long time now, every time I tried to do so I was overwhelmed with such differences of opinion that I had to give up the idea. But if anyone outside China wishes to stage Thunderstorm, I am afraid it will have to be shortened for the benefit of the foreign audience. I therefore leave this job to friends abroad who would like to put on this play,

Tsao Yu October 1956