‘The Greatest Success’

Abstract

This chapter considers how the Hsiungs’ story challenges discourses of the Chinese in Britain as invisible and insular. Describing their rise to fame on the success of Hsiung's play Lady Precious Stream, it locates the Hsiungs within the history of elite Chinese artists courted by Europeans over centuries. Running for three years in London, Lady Precious Stream became thesociety event, attended by the rich and powerful, including the Queen and successive Prime Ministers. Critically acclaimed by figures such J.B. Priestley, H.G. Wells and George Bernard Shaw, it was even adopted as a school text. Subsequently translated into several European languages, the play toured Europe, US and Asia. As a result, the Hsiungs became part of a transnational network of elite literary, political, social and cultural figures in the 1930s spanning Britain, the US and China. In analysing Hsiung's success, this chapter also highlights the key role played by Dymia in his public life, in the context of racialised fears around immigrant men and miscegenation, and normative ideals of the nuclear family.