If I Were for Real (play)

If I Were for Real, also translated as The Impostor, If I Were Real, and What If I Really Were?, is a 1979 Chinese satirical play in 6 acts (with an additional prologue and epilogue) written by Shanghai-based playwright Sha Yexin and actors Li Shoucheng (李守成) and Yao Mingde (姚明德). The play is inspired by the March 1979 arrest of Zhang Quanlong (张泉龙), a young man who impersonated the son of Li Da, deputy of the People's Liberation Army General Staff Department.

As the play exposed corruption in the establishment and lampooned the impostor's "victims", there was considerable debate among the literary circles on whether it should be performed publicly. In January 1980, Communist Party of China's propaganda chief Hu Yaobang put an end to the debates by openly criticizing the play as failing "to reflect the true spirit and moral perception of Chinese youth during the New Period", effectively banning its public performances.^[1]