Chinese Drama and Society by Teresa Chi-Ching Sun

Abstract

Reviewed by: Chinese Drama and Society by Teresa Chi-Ching Sun Man He (bio) Teresa Chi-Ching Sun. Chinese Drama and Society. Lanham, NY: Hamilton Books, 2019. v, 105 pp. Softcover $32.99, isbn 978-0-7618-7131-6. “Why not modern Chinese drama?” Xiaomei Chen, in her seminal “Introduction” of Acting the Right Part: Political Theatre and Popular Drama in Contemporary [End Page 315] China, questioned the dearth of book-length studies in English on yangbanxi 样板戏 (revolutionary model theater), huaju 话剧 (spoken drama), and, in general, all forms of modern Chinese drama from its inception in the early twentieth century onward. Calling modern Chinese drama “a stepchild of an unhappy family romance,” Chen attributed this marginality to its uneasy position within a set of interlinked dualities—tradition and modernity, East and West, didacticism and aestheticism, locality and globalization, and so forth—as well as to the very interdisciplinary complexity that is embedded within the genre (Chen 2002, p. 18). Chen’s frank question—“why not?”—encapsulated all the confusions, curiosities, and hopes that a generation of Chinese drama practitioners, fans, and scholars collectively owned yet, sadly, did not articulate. This at-stake inquiry implied that it was not modern Chinese drama but the discourse, or lack thereof, which rendered Chinese drama’s peripheral position. I still remember the thrill I had when first reading Chen’s “Introduction.” My excitement was not merely for Chen. Rather, it was for the awareness of a generation of scholars’ intellectual endeavors, a revision of the problematic discourse, and more importantly, a foreseen blossoming of scholarly interest in (modern) Chinese drama. Such a thrill surges whenever I encounter a work that strives to unpack the myth and the misfortune that Chinese drama has endured in English scholarship. Appearing nearly two decades after Chen’s “Introduction,” Teresa Chi-Ching Sun’s Chinese Drama and Society continues to address the “why-not” concern Chen raised. Only Sun’s work is far more ambitious, perhaps too much so to offer a solid analysis. Covering more than seven hundred years in just over one hundred pages, Sun examines a variety of Chinese dramas, including Yuan dynasty (1279–1368) plays, vernacular dramas in late imperial China, Kun opera, Beijing opera, wenmingxi 文明戲 (civilized drama), and huaju. Situating “Chinese drama” in both the apertures and the bridges between “Chinese and Western civilizations” (p. 1), Sun aspires to scrutinize the survival, reformation, and ultimate revival of what she calls “classical drama” as well as identify the everlasting Chinese operatic traditions within the modern and contemporary drama cultures that evolved throughout the twentieth century. Among her discussions of Chinese drama in literary, theoretical, and historical senses, Sun predominantly depicts the historical trajectory of classical drama in the modern era via key political and social movements, including the Self-Strengthening Movement in the late Qing dynasty (1644–1911), the 1911 Revolution, the May Fourth Movement (1919), WWII, and so forth. Notwithstanding the sketchy analyses, Sun’s scholarly undertaking of the reemergence of classical drama and theater traditions in the modern era is definitely worth noting. Indeed, it productively complicates the landscape and dynamic of modern Chinese drama culture. Were Chinese Drama and Society to engage more actively with studies on the “reinvention” of Beijing [End Page 316] opera (Goldstein 2007) and Yue opera (Jiang 2009), as well as the hybridity of wenmingxi in the 1910s (Liu 2013), it would have made a welcomed contribution to the field. Unfortunately, Chinese Drama and Society arrives twenty years later than its ideal timing. Given that almost all primary and secondary sources that the author engages were published before 2000,1 the work, unavoidably, shows signs of being outdated. As an academic, I could not help but develop mixed sentiments toward the work as a manuscript that has patiently waited over two decades for publication. While lamenting some of Sun’s problematic claims and ineffective arguments due to her exclusion of current scholarship, I am certainly intrigued to see that the scope, framework, and concerns Sun adopted to evaluate Chinese drama in the early 2000s remain relevant and at times inspiring today. When I closed Sun’s work, my thrill came back, though this time with a new...