Jin Jiang . Women Playing Men: Yue Opera and Social Change in Twentieth‐Century Shanghai . Seattle: University of Washington Press. 2009. Pp. xix, 340. Cloth $70.00, paper $30.00.

Abstract

This book tells the fascinating story of how a fairly obscure subgenre of southern Chinese opera known as Yue became a vital platform for the expression of feminine sentiments in the country's most modern metropolis during a “masculine” age obsessed with themes of war, revolution, and nation-building. Originating in Zhejiang province, Yue was one of many operatic genres that was deeply localized and whose plays focused on the mundane and often tawdry activities of small-town and domestic life rather than the grand stage of national affairs. This style of local opera was bawdy and tended to emphasize sexual encounters and relations in a frank and unadulterated manner. Like other operas of the Qing period, men originally played all roles. Yet by the 1930s, Yue opera had moved to Shanghai, transforming itself from a rural to an urban form of entertainment. Key to this transformation was that Yue opera became a form of operatic culture entirely performed by women.