"A Dream Like a Dream" Author: Lai Shengchuan Publisher: CITIC Press Top 10 Chinese Drama Books

The story begins with Patient No. 5, who is dying in a Taipei ward in 2000. He has a strange disease, keeps having a fever, and is about to die. This feeling of "consumption" that cannot be avoided from fate prompts him to travel from Taipei to Paris, and from Paris to Shanghai to question his past and present lives. The story unfolds from here, and Patient No. 5 is surprised to find that he is closely related to a Shanghai prostitute named Gu Xianglan in the 1930s. Patient No. 5, Gu Xianglan, Earl, Jiang Hong... The lives of these people are entangled, like a dream, one after another.

In this story, "dreams" become a part of reality. People can fall asleep for a long time, go to the world constructed in dreams, and live a completely different life. This setting makes people think carefully and frightened - do we really exist, or are we just living in someone's dream? If a person comes and goes freely in your life, suddenly appears and disappears carelessly, is it because you are only in his dream?

Lai Shengchuan

Born in Washington, D.C. in 1954, his native place is Huichang, Jiangxi Province. He grew up in the United States and Taiwan. He holds a Ph.D. in Drama from the University of California, Berkeley, and was a professor and dean of the School of Drama at Taipei University of the Arts. He is one of the most famous Chinese dramatists in the world, and is known as "the best Chinese playwright today" (BBC) and "the leader of Asian theater directors" (Asia Weekly). More than 30 original drama works have had a profound impact on contemporary Chinese theater art and cultural and creative industries. He is the founder and artistic director of Taiwan Performance Workshop, the artistic director of Shanghai Shang Theater, the initiator and permanent director of Wuzhen Theater Festival, a creative theory scholar (Shengchuan Lai's Creativity Studies), and has taught at Stanford University and the University of California, Berkeley.