Orientalizing the Self: Theatre in China after Tiananmen Square

Abstract

GUIZHOU, YUNNAN, INNER MONGOLIA, SHANXI, MayJuly 1990 From 23 May to 9 July 1990 I traveled in China researching the state of theatre.1 My official research concerned nuoxi (ritual theatre by ethnic minorities) in southwest China; my unofficial research concerned repression by the government since the brutal crushing of the democracy movement of 1989. I went to China with the naive assumption that, like Eastern Europe in recent years, I would find a thriving underground. My own Eurocentrism (despite years of training in Asian theatre and culture) prevented me from viewing the events in China from a Chinese perspective. The repression, fear, and sadness in China was far greater than I had expected. The year prior to the 4 June 1989 massacre at Tiananmen Square had been a year of artistic advances. A breath of freedom was in the air, perhaps most visible in the first public, government-sanctioned exhibit of Chinese paintings of nudes. Displayed in Beijing during the early months of 1989, the exhibition coincided with attempts by China's avant-garde visual artists to imitate what were perceived to be Western styles. For example, one artist blasted her painting with bullets during an exhibit. Neither the nude paintings nor the bullet-spewing performance would have been tolerated-or even attempted-prior to that extraordinary spring thaw. Such events encouraged the optimism of the prodemocracy movement. Thus the brutality of the military reprisals was all the more shocking to Chinese artists. I naturally assumed that arriving in China one year after the massacres, traveling under the auspices and at the invitation of the Chinese Theatre Artists' Association (Zhongguo Xijujia Xiehui), I would be able to meet and discuss theatre with playwrights and directors all over the country. Indeed, I discovered that they were more than eager to share their experiences with me. A priority for theatre artists in China today is to be heard; and since the silencing of protest is extremely efficient, foreign visitors are viewed as emissaries, letter carriers from behind the lines. The fact that I was accompanied by Kuang-Sheng Shih, a doctoral student at UCLA who is a native of Taiwan (and thus was freed from a translator provided by the Chinese government) meant that I was a safe person with whom to speak. The knowledge that comments spoken to me would neither be censored nor reported to Chinese authorities gave me a peculiar power, seeming to draw artists to me. Much of what I will