[...] we need art and artists for our dark days, too [...] If Shangguan's fighter in Dragon Inn represents a fantasy of supreme physical control, Chen's ticket taker in Goodbye, Dragon Inn recalls us to the ungainliness of fallible boies made of skin, blood, and bone, and to the often onerous reality of having to be a person in the world. Like ourselves, then, it is reasonable to suppose that looking up at the screen, Chen has a glimpse of utopia, of a world without unending ache, in which staircases can be mounted in a single bound rather than a succession of excruciating steps.