The article looks into the way in which Stan Lai challenges the concept "China" as the nation-state by examining the style of his "xiangsheng" plays. In an attempt to shed light on Chiu Kuei-fen's notion of the "translation drive," the article starts with an investigation of the cultural production of so-called "tradition" and "native soil" ("xiang-tu"), which has supported the cultural imagination of the nation-state in post-war Taiwan. It goes on to analyze Lai's "xiangsheng" plays in relation to these two concepts. Finally, inspired by Naoki Sakai's notion of translation, it argues that the "China" in Lai's "xiangsheng" plays presents an alternative to the nation-state by their articulation of the discontinuity of history and the deconstruction of the national subject.