Ying Da's father, Ying Ruocheng, himself a famous actor in China, wanted to introduce his son to the Western film industry, but Tiananmen Square upset his plans. (By Hilary Smith for The Washington Post)

Once out of jail in 1972, Ying Ruocheng, set about getting his rebellious son back to books and studying. He bought a gramophone and played Beethoven. The elder Ying also found a friend who had been released from jail who took him to a Beijing bookstore's secret warehouse for banned books and got a copy of Chekhov's plays and short stories.

Ying Da, then 12, was hooked. By 1979, when university exams were held and universities reopened, the younger Ying tested into prestigious Beijing University.

Having learned English at home and at Beijing University, at the end of 1984 Ying went to work for four months at the Eugene O'Neill repertory theater in New London, Conn. Then he attended the University of Missouri at Kansas City, where his father had directed two plays. That was followed by half a year working for American movie director Alan Pakula, who was making the 1989 film "See You in the Morning."

But watching "The Cosby Show" was perhaps the most important influence on Ying. "I thought I should do something like that," he says.

He returned to China in 1988, well-prepared and well-connected. His father, who played the emperor in the 1987 Bernardo Bertolucci film "The Last Emperor," had become vice minister of culture.

The younger Ying landed a job with one of the country's leading mainstream filmmakers in Shanghai, then returned to the United States to work on a joint film production, "The Last Aristocrats."

Back in China, Ying played the theater manager in director Chen Kaige's internationally famous "Farewell My Concubine" in 1993, and he played a maladjusted Chinese student just returning from overseas in the hit Chinese miniseries "Fortress Besieged."

Tiananmen Disruption

After the government ordered army troops to break up the protests and hundreds of civilians were killed in the crackdown, foreign companies stayed far away from China.

Ying Da was bitter. "I didn't like the government then, but on the other hand, I didn't like the students. They rushed too much and they didn't know what they were doing. If they hadn't done that, the whole government would have changed by evolution. But they wanted a revolution."

He said he was left "sitting here with all my English ability wasted." Nevertheless, he has produced and directed four sitcoms, two with live audiences and two with laugh tracks. He prefers live audiences because it makes the sitcoms more true to the stage tradition, though he believes the theater in China is dying.

"If Shakespeare were alive now, he would write sitcoms," Ying said.

Of course, if Shakespeare were writing sitcoms in China, he wouldn't be able to simply do them as he liked without causing much ado from the propaganda department. He'd find quite a few subjects off-limits. Poking fun at teachers is taboo. Making light of the police is also frowned upon.

A Sitcom Pushing Limits

Moreover, with the spread of cable TV, the number of stations has mushroomed to more than 2,000 and the demand for programming has grown. Ying's current project has been pre-sold to the country's biggest group of cable stations.

It is technically a soap opera. As such, it falls under a different set of rules, enabling him to deal with psychological problems that would be off-limits for comedy. In the 20-part series, a parade of people exhibit many of China's most common but least talked about neuroses and hang-ups.

In one scene, a well-to-do, middle-aged woman sits down in the clinic office. Her husband has been unfaithful, she says. She starts to recount his dalliances.

So he has been unfaithful three times?, the clinician asks her. Three? the woman shouts, crossing over to pound the desk. Three? Eight! "When you get to be my age," she tells the much younger woman, "you'll realize that all men are wolves."

But in the previous scene, the audience met the husband. He's a small, mousy old man, not exactly Don Juan. His wife has scratched his face in her jealous rages. Beware the green-eyed monster, the bard might have said.

"We are just going to have more than a hundred weird people walk in and out of that clinic," said Ying. "Some will just be normal people." In the process, China will see a cross section of itself. When he isn't filming, Ying teaches a course in drama at Beijing University. There he teaches the things he learned in the United States: textual analysis, body language, movement. The class has read the works of Moliere, George Bernard Shaw, Samuel Beckett and other classics of Western drama. Missing from the list: Chinese plays. "The youngsters don't like them," Ying said. "We haven't found anything suitable from Chinese tradition."

The Show Must Go On

His students also have role models. "Now the students are crazy about certain things around them. They think what I'm doing is great. In my time, I don't remember wanting to be like anyone around me."

Now the question is, does Ying Da want to be Ying Da, or would he rather be someone else? His next sitcom will be called "Chinese Restaurant," about a Los Angeles takeout joint. Backed financially by Sony Corp., Ying will re-create an L.A. restaurant in his Beijing studio.

But he aspires to take on bigger subjects – and bigger budgets. When "Titanic" was released, he saw it five times, three times in English and twice in Chinese. Ying Ruocheng, for his part, said he wishes his son would get back to the theater. What China needs, he said, is a Chinese version of Neil Simon.

Ying Da, however, said: "What I want to do could be politically dangerous. So I want to wait."

Meanwhile, there's a TV show that must go on. After a dinner break, he's back at the studio, where filming runs from 1 p.m. until 1 a.m. Luckily, he jokes, there is no union. A composer discusses the show's theme song. Ying wants it to be less pretty and more hummable. Then he rallies the cast members to take their places. Soon his voice echoes through the studio.

"Yubei. Kaishi," he calls. Ready. Begin.