The Blossoming of the Transnational Peony: Performing Alternative China in California

Abstract

This surprising remark, a bit like the complaint of a spoiled child, was heard from a young member of the audience of the one hundredth performance of The Young Lovers’ Edition of The Peony Pavilion in Beijing on May 11, 2007. Throughout the performance she had been texting on her cell phone, talking to her friend, and occasionally snapping photos of the dramatic action, and yet she felt absorbed in the story and wanted even more, after the three-hour performance. This sort of remark would have been unthinkable a decade ago, when traditional Chinese opera seemed to have lived out its life. The Peony Pavilion (Mudanting, 1598), mistakenly nicknamed “the Chinese Romeo and Juliet,” has enjoyed a striking popularity since its 2004 marvelous rebirth in a unique production known as The Young Lovers’ Edition (Qingchun ban).1 Now viewed as the most representative play from the whole history of kunqu (kun opera), The Peony Pavilion has survived dynastic change and political calamity and has been challenged and refined by different schools of training and performance interpretation, but it has always been recognized as kunqu’s most magnificent artistic achievement and most stable anchor. The recent international recognition granted kunqu may have contributed to the success of the production: in 1998, the celebrated kunqu diva Hua Wenyi (1942-) was designated a National Heritage Fellow by the National Endowment for the Arts, and the kunqu genre was recognized by UNESCO as a “Masterpiece of Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity.”2