A live-streamed Chinese language lesson under the sky—the ancients were taken aback.

Shen Moyan had just finished writing "order" on the blackboard when the bell rang to signal the end of get out of class.

Originally, we planned to finish teaching "Thunderstorm" in this lesson, but after covering some extracurricular content, we ran out of time.

She looked at her blackboard full of notes, determined not to let her teaching flow break down.

Shen Moyan glanced at the students who were still engrossed in the story.

"Class, we'll have Chinese next period. I'm going to borrow your math teacher's class. The students on duty today, please remember not to erase the blackboard during this period."

"Yay!"

The sky darkened.

The old farmer gripped the palm-leaf fan tightly in his hand. His son stood beside him, opened his mouth, and then closed it again.

They attended a class, but didn't understand most of the content.

When Shen Moyan uttered these words—ancient Greece, the Aegean Sea, tragic fate—the old farmer's expression remained unchanged. His brows were furrowed, his lips were pursed, and his eyes were fixed on the sky.

The young man sitting next to him couldn't help but speak up.

"Master Shen said that 'Thunderstorm' is about fate, not people causing death, but fate itself." He scratched his head. "In ancient Greece, when people went out to sea to fish, a storm came, the ship capsized, and people died. That's fate. But what happened to Zhou Puyuan's family? Wasn't it Zhou Puyuan's own doing? How can that be called fate?"

After he finished speaking, he glanced at the old farmer, as if waiting for an answer.

"You're asking me? Who am I supposed to ask?" he muttered. "I've never been to school."

There was a moment of silence.

A woman holding a child whispered, "The Master said that those rules are like a storm at sea; there's no logic to them, and whoever gets caught in one is doomed."

"But..." the young man said anxiously, "Master said those rules were made by people. How can rules made by people become a storm? Can't people change the rules they make?"

The old farmer looked up and glanced at him.

"Show me a revised version."

The young man was speechless.

"Have you ever met someone like Zhou Puyuan?" The old farmer looked at him. "Who's sitting in that ancestral hall at the east end? The clan chief. He sets the rules, and he's the one who calls the shots. You want to change his rules? You try it. If he doesn't break your legs, you're lucky."

The child in the woman's arms was frightened by his voice and began to cry. She quickly bent down to comfort him, and after a few soothing words, she whispered, "But... but we can't drive our daughter-in-law to her death, can we? We can't let our own siblings..."

She couldn't continue.

"That settles it then." The old farmer tucked his pipe into his waistband. "Rules are made by people, but if you can't touch them, what's the difference between something you can't touch and a storm? When a storm comes, you say, 'I'll go and reason with God,' but will God listen to you?"

No one spoke.

The old farmer didn't look at them. He looked up, and the sky was covered with only a very faint white light, like a cloud obscuring the moon.

"The fate that Master Shen talks about is not the same as the fate we talk about," he suddenly said, his voice much lower than before. "When we talk about fate, we're talking about poverty and wealth, life and death, which is indeed fate. But the fate she talks about is not this."

He paused.

"She's saying that you clearly know who harmed you, you stand in front of him, you know everything, he knows everything, but you just can't do anything to him. That's not a storm, that's you standing in front of a storm, and the storm doesn't admit that it's a storm, and tells you that this is the way of the world."

His voice wasn't loud, but everyone fell silent, so quiet that only the sound of the wind and the croaking of frogs in the distant pond could be heard.

"Heavenly justice." The old farmer repeated these two words, as if he were tasting their true flavor for the first time: astringent, bitter, and cutting to the tongue.

"Then is there any justice left in this world?"

-

After the sky darkened, Guan Hanqing was still sitting on the rock outside the brothel.

Shen Moyan's words, "the powerlessness of fate," were still echoing in his mind.

He looked at the name Zhou Puyuan over and over in his mind several times, and suddenly realized something: he had been writing plays for half his life, but he had never written about a person like Zhou Puyuan.

He has written about many villains. Zhang Luer in "The Injustice to Dou E" is a prime example. He falsely accuses Dou E and forces her to confess. He is utterly evil.

In "Saving the Prostitute," Zhou She, relying on his wealth and power, bullies prostitutes with blatant wickedness.

In "Wangjiang Pavilion", Yang Yanei, relying on his power, seizes another man's wife and is wicked and unscrupulous.

But Zhou Puyuan was different from them all. Zhang Luer wouldn't keep his ex-lover's furniture at home; he was wicked openly and honestly. Zhou She wouldn't force his wife to take medicine and say it was for her own good; he was wicked without any burden. Yang Yanei wouldn't make his son kneel down to persuade his mother to take medicine; he was wicked simply and directly.

Zhou Puyuan is something else entirely.

He didn't feel like he was doing anything wrong; he even felt like a victim, that his wife was disobedient, his son was useless, his ex-wife was haunting him, and the miners were ungrateful.

Everyone has wronged him; he was just fulfilling his duties as a parent.

Those who do evil are unaware that they are doing evil.

Guan Hanqing never wrote about this kind of bad person.

Almost no one in Chinese drama has written about this.

No, Guan Hanqing searched through his memory and remembered a play, "The Orphan of Zhao".

According to Ji Junxiang, Tu Anjia killed the entire Zhao family, but raised the Zhao orphan as his adopted son, teaching him to read, ride, and shoot, treating him like his own child.

He didn't know he was raising the child of his enemy; he thought he was the child's benefactor.

But even Tu Anjia was eventually killed by the orphan of the Zhao family.

The audience felt a sense of satisfaction and catharsis when they saw Tu Anjia die.

No one went to kill Zhou Puyuan. He sat in the living room, while the person who deserved to die the most had survived.

The difference is huge.

Guan Hanqing paced slowly in the open space outside the brothel.

The autumn nights in Dadu were cool, but his palms were sweating.

If the villains in Chinese dramas are ultimately punished, it's not because reality is like that; quite the opposite, it's because reality is not like that.

Because most real-life "Zhou Puyuan" are living well.

They sit in ancestral halls, in government offices, and in living rooms. They set the rules and maintain the dignity. No one dares to question them or punish them.

Therefore, playwrights must uphold justice in their plays.

Corrupt officials were beheaded, tyrants were executed, and unfaithful men were struck by lightning. The audience applauded and cheered because they could not applaud or cheer in real life, so they could only make up for it in the play.

But Cao Yu doesn't make amends for you. He doesn't allow Zhou Puyuan to be struck by lightning, he doesn't allow anyone to kill Zhou Puyuan, and he doesn't even allow Zhou Puyuan to repent.

Even in the final scene, Zhou Puyuan remains Zhou Puyuan, a dignified Zhou Puyuan.

That's why "Thunderstorm" makes people uncomfortable.

Happy endings and great satisfaction are both a kind of anesthetic; they tell you, don't worry, God is watching, and the wicked will be punished by Heaven.

But Cao Yu took away the anesthetic, so he made you feel pain.

Guan Hanqing smiled bitterly as he thought of this.

He recalled that he had done something similar when he wrote "The Injustice to Dou E".

Dou E died, and her three vows came true one by one: her blood stained the white silk, snow fell in June, and a three-year drought struck. He made heaven and earth mourn for Dou E, but Dou E did not come back to life.

In the end, Dou Tianzhang exonerated her, seemingly a happy ending. But he knew in his heart that Dou Tianzhang was able to exonerate her because he happened to pass the imperial examination, happened to become an inspector, and happened to still care about his relationship with his daughter.

If one of the three cases were missing, Dou E would have remained unjustly accused forever.

He didn't write this meaning into the dialogue, but attentive viewers won't feel relieved after watching it; they'll only feel lingering fear.

He did try to remove the anesthetic, but he didn't go as far as Cao Yu did.

Cao Yu was even more ruthless. After Dou E died, the heavens sent snow for her. After Si Feng died, the heavens did nothing but strike Si Feng with lightning. But that lightning was not to avenge her; it was the lightning she herself brought upon herself when she made that poisonous oath.

Cao Yu didn't even leave the audience with "heaven." In "The Injustice to Dou E," heaven and earth still interact, and evil people are still punished.

In "Thunderstorm," heaven and earth have no interaction, the wicked are not punished, and Zhou Puyuan sits in the living room, with no one able to lift the veil on his heart.

In the darkness, he listened to the distant sound of the watchman's drum.

He was waiting for the next class, for his female teacher named Shen Moyan, who still had something to say.

She said that the ending of Thunderstorm is different from that of ancient Greek tragedies, and that difference is the cruelest part of the whole Thunderstorm.