Returning home with father

A scene from the comedy A Blurry Kind of Love.[Photo by Zou Hong/China Daily]

The play premiered in late 2015, directed by Ismene Ting, Lai's sister-in-law, and is based on the novel The Game of Love and Chance by the 18th century French playwright Pierre de Marivaux. It is a three-act comedy about a young woman who is engaged to a man she has never met. Hoping to learn more about him, she and her servant trade identities. However, her fiance has the same idea and trades identities with his driver.

Translated by Ting, the play is set in Taiwan in the 1980s. Lai contributed the music to the play, including playing guitar for the theme song.

"Ting hugely rewrote the story and we've made it into a very Chinese story, especially the matchmaking, which is still popular among the young generation today," Lai says.

Huichang has a population of about 520,000, most of them members of the Hakka ethnic group.

It is a place that would never stage the level of theater that can be seen in the likes of Beijing or Shanghai, Lai says, and a touring group going to the small town is barely imaginable.

However, Lai has a very personal stake in Huichang. He has taken plays there three years in a row because it is his father's hometown, that has always made it attractive to him and he is keen to do something for it, he says.

Lai's father, Lai Jiaqiu, was born and grew up in Huichang before he went to study at the Central School of Political Affairs in Chongqing, Sichuan province, and studied foreign affairs at university. In 1947 his father went to Taiwan and the next year was assigned to work as a diplomat in the United States. Lai Sheng-chuan was born in Washington, and his father never returned to his hometown.