Uncle Tom's Cabin and Modern Chinese Drama

Abstract

MODERN DRAMA IN CHINA, according to Chinese drama historians, dates from mid-1907. It was at this time that a group of Chinese students studying in Japan produced a play version of Uncle Tom's Cabin. Six years previously Lin Shu (1852-1924) and Wei Li had translated Mrs. Stowe's novel under the title The Negro Slave Sighs to Heaven. Reacting to the Sino-1apanese War of 1894, the exclusion of Chinese from the American continent, and, indeed, the depressed condition of the Chinese people, the translators saw both a political and a humanitarian purpose in this work. As Lin Shu wrote in an epilogue to the work, "[we] have translated this novel not because we wish to show our gift for relating sad stories and to evoke the reader's tears without justification, but rather because the approaching shadow of slavery over our race has impelled usio sound a note of warning to the public.”