Chinese Drama Research Articles

Politics and Theatre in the PRC: Fifty Years of Teahouse on the Chinese Stage

Ever since its introduction to China in the early twentieth century, spoken drama (huaju) has been at the forefront of social and political changes. Its realistic portrayal of life and use of spoken dialogue made it an ideal vehicle to promote social reforms and to serve politics. This study investigates the relationship between politics and theatre in the People's Republic of China by focusing on a masterpiece of modern Chinese drama: Lao She's play Chaguan (Teahouse, 1957), which chronicles fifty years of modern Chinese history from the demise of the Qing dynasty to the eve of the communist victory. This essay examines how historical events are portrayed, how history served as a commentary on political conditions of the 1950s, and how changing political climates have affected the productions and reception of this play. It asks whether the new critical opinions of the past few years that question the earlier politically correct interpretation might invite new ways to stage the script.

Alexander C. Y. Huang, Chinese Shakespeares: Two Centuries of Cultural ExchangeChinese Shakespeares: Two Centuries of Cultural Exchange. Alexander C. Y. Huang. New York: Columbia University Press, 2009. Pp. xi+350.

<i>Alexander C. Y. Huang</i>, Chinese Shakespeares: Two Centuries of Cultural Exchange<i>Chinese Shakespeares: Two Centuries of Cultural Exchange</i>. Alexander C. Y. Huang. New York: Columbia University Press, 2009. Pp. xi+350.

From Page to Stage: Exploring Some Mysteries of Kunqu Music and its Melodic Characteristics

FROM PAGE TO STAGE: EXPLORING SOME MYSTERIES OF KUNQU MUSIC AND ITS MELODIC CHARACTERISTICS LINDY LI MARK California State University, East Bay1 Before 1907, spoken drama was basically non-existent in China. Certainly all the written dramatic genres dating from the Song dynasty (960±1279) contained both spoken and singing parts. Indeed, but for music, what we now think of as traditional Chinese theater would just not exist. Yet, throughout Chinese history, the music in Chinese drama has typically been seen as subservient to the poetic script, and not appreciated for itself, despite the fact that it is music that informs and organizes almost everything that takes place on the traditional Chinese stage. Kunqu ò is generally regarded as the performance mode in traditional Chinese drama that most perfectly united words and music, and it is also arguably the performance mode that has been most studied and written about. But even in the case of Kunqu music there remain many mysteries and imperfectly understood elements. In this paper I will point out some of the former and try to improve our understanding of some of the latter. The libretti written or adapted for Kunqu performance can be said to be the most literary of all Chinese drama genres and many have been read as works of literature. But I believe that it is the music of Kunqu that has sustained these libretti over the centuries since they were written and that is also behind their renaissance on the stage in recent years. Because music is perhaps the most abstract and intangible of the performing arts, and thus less amenable to verbal description, and also because the music of Kunqu is more complex than in most traditional Chinese dramatic performance modes, scholarship on Kunqu in English has tended to concentrate on the libretti to the neglect of the music.2 In this essay I hope to try, to some extent, to redress this imbalance. We will see that in Kunqu the melody of the arias is much more than a mere ampli®cation of the poetic language of the libretti, or an attempt to make the text more comprehensible for the audience. In fact, the twists and turns of Kunqu music actually make the text even more dif®cult to understand. 1 I wish to express my thanks to the editor and the reviewers for their suggestions and help with this article. 2``Technical'' discussion of the relationship between music and words in Kunqu can be found in unpublished work such as Marjory Bong-Ray Liu's 1976 UCLA doctoral thesis, ``Tradition and Change in Kunqu Opera'' or Catherine Crutchfield Swatek's 1990 Columbia University doctoral thesis, ``Feng Menglong's Romantic Dream: Strategies of Containment in His Revision of The Peony Pavilion.'' CHINOPERL: Journal of Chinese Oral and Performing Literature 32.1 (July 2013): 1±29 # The Permanent Conference on Chinese Oral and Performing Literature, Inc. 2013 DOI: 10.1179/0193777413Z.0000000007 To provide context and to explain the traditional notion that music is subordinate to the words in Kunqu, I will begin by citing some orthodox historical pronouncements concerning the relationship of music to words that inform this kind of devaluation of music in Chinese culture both in terms of song in general and then speci®cally with regard to Kunqu. I will then show how this general subordination of music to words was intensi®ed by the gentri®cation of Kunqu during the sixteenth century by the musicians Wei Liangfu Oo (c. 1522±1572) and Liang Chenyu °Z (c. 1519?±1591). Then I will discuss the speci®c prosodic/musical form that the arias in Kunqu take: qupai òL (tune matrices), and from there move on to describe the intrinsic musical characteristics and aesthetics of Kunqu music and ®nally illustrate them with an analysis of what is surely the most famous aria in all of Kunqu. WORDS AND MUSIC: SOME ORTHODOX HISTORICAL VIEWS Chinese historical writings on music are replete with remarks extolling the human voice over the sound of musical instruments. Such remarks are found as early as the Jin dynasty (265±420). For example, in the biography of Meng Jia _ (296± 349) in the Jinshu Iø (History...

Reassessment of the Place of Shamanism in the Origins of Chinese Theater

&#x0D; &#x0D; &#x0D; This paper examines the scholarship, evidence, and assumptions that place the origins of Chinese drama in shamanic ritual. The paper is roughly divided in two parts: the first contextualizes the use of shamanism within the theories of art and literature of one of the first scholars to link the origins of Chinese theatre to shamanism, Wang Guowei, to show that Wang’s view of the relationship between shamanism and drama differs from mainstream interpretations. The second part assesses the views of modern ethnographers and historians of China on the role of shamanism in theater, with a focus on the work of the scholar Piet van der Loon.&#x0D; &#x0D; &#x0D;

Introduction

Introduction

When Marco Leaves the Building: Intercultural Performances and Other Audiences

During Peking opera star Mei Lanfang’s visit to New York City in 1930, expectant crowds packed the Broadway theaters where he performed for a firsthand look at the dramatic skills that were eliciting resounding acclaim. The praise lavished on Mei did not extend, however, to the other productions of Chinese opera available in New York at the time: in various theaters downtown, Cantonese opera had been staged on and off since the nineteenth century for Chinese immigrants and Chinatown tourists. Contemplating the differences between these performances, a New York Times article published soon after Mei’s visit describes in detail the experience of attending the Chinatown theater1 and bemoans that its productions are far less refined than Mei’s exhibition. The title hints at the objections elaborated in the article: “Mr. Mei and the Local Chinese Drama, His Engagement Has Had Little Effect on the Troupe Downtown, Which Is Indifferent to Occidental Patronage.”2 The writer, Grace Lynn, explains,

Women in chinese TV drama Woju

Women in chinese TV drama Woju

The Soul of Beijing Opera: Theatrical Creativity and Continuity in the Changing World. By Li Ruru, foreword by Eugenio Barba. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2010; 352 pp.; illustrations. $50.00 cloth, $25.00 paper. The Columbia Anthology of Modern Chinese Drama. Edited by Xiaomei Chen. New York: Columbia University Press, 2010; 1120 pp. $95.00 cloth

<i>The Soul of Beijing Opera: Theatrical Creativity and Continuity in the Changing World.</i> By Li Ruru, foreword by Eugenio Barba. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2010; 352 pp.; illustrations. $50.00 cloth, $25.00 paper. <i>The Columbia Anthology of Modern Chinese Drama.</i> Edited by Xiaomei Chen. New York: Columbia University Press, 2010; 1120 pp. $95.00 cloth

Translating eroticism in traditional Chinese drama: Three English versions of The Peony Pavilion

This paper compares and contrasts three English versions of The Peony Pavilion, with a view to exploring the strategies adopted in the three translations in respect to their treatment of erotic passages in the Chinese dramatic masterpiece Mudan Ting. It is found that while all three translators generally respect the integrity of the Chinese source text, they demonstrate different trajectories in terms of their translational dispositions. Specifically, while Zhang Guangqian shows evidence of attenuating sexually sensitive material in his translation, Wang Rongpei demonstrates a tendency to translate in a register that is closer to contemporary English vernacular than to the highly poetic register that characterizes the original Chinese play. Cyril Birch differs from his two Chinese counterparts by faithfully preserving the poetic flavor of the erotic passages, to the extent that a foreign feel is often evident in his translation. The study also locates its findings against the background of previous studies, concluding that the general norm exhibited by the three translators in respect to the treatment of erotic passages in The Peony Pavilion, which is that of retention, departs from the norm of deletion/mitigation found in Chinese translations of English literature with sexual content. The paper hypothesizes that euphemism is not the universal norm adopted by translators in the treatment of sexually sensitive material in literature. Rather, the strategy used in translating eroticism is a function of the assumed acceptability of such material by the target readership.

Ranking Plays and Playwrights in Traditional Chinese Drama Criticism

A striking feature of traditional Chinese drama criticism is the desire by some critics to produce comprehensive systems that evaluate and comparatively rank large numbers of plays and their playwrights. Two basic ranking systems were used. One, which had its origins in the evaluation of historical figures, candidates for office, and officials in the Later Han and Six Dynasties period (25–588), was used to divide people into nine ranks (pin 品), produced by doubling up the categories of “higher“ (shang 上), “middle” (zhong 中), and “lower” (xia 下): “higher of the higher” (shangshang 上上), “middle of the higher” (shangzhong 上中), “lower of the higher” (shangxia 上下), “higher of the middle” (zhongshang 中上), etc. The way the categories are labeled and distinguished from each other pays attention primarily to hierarchy. The other system, first developed in calligraphy and painting criticism, used a smaller number of categories (pin 品) that could vary in their number and hierarchical sequence from critic to critic, although the general hierarchy was pretty consistent. Each of these categories had a name that stressed particular aesthetic qualities or goals such as shenpin 神品 (divine class),

Younghusband Redux: Chinese Dramatisations of the British Invasion of Tibet

AbstractA film, a television series, four plays and an opera have been produced in China since 1997 dramatising the invasion of Tibet by the British in 1903 04. These works were part of an official effort to enhance patriotic spirit among Chinese and Tibetan people through historical example, as well as an attempt to represent Tibetans as participants in a broader Chinese resistance to Western aggression and humiliation. They coincided with an official call for film-makers to make propaganda more appealing and a decisive turn in Chinese cinema towards commercialised films and Hollywood-style narrative. The paper contextualises these dramatisations and their ideological features within the history of Tibetan representations in Chinese film and television dramas, and discusses foreign critiques of the most influential of the dramatisations of the Younghusband expedition, Feng Xiaonings 1997 film Honghegu (Red River Valley). It notes difficulties with criticisms about the lack of accuracy in these Chinese films, discusses several ways in which they match the historical record, and compares them with the little-known television series Jiangzi 1904.

The Columbia Anthology of Modern Chinese Drama. Edited by Xiaomei Chen. New York: Columbia University Press, 2010. x, 1120 pp. $95.00 (cloth).

The Columbia Anthology of Modern Chinese Drama. Edited by Xiaomei Chen. New York: Columbia University Press, 2010. x, 1120 pp. $95.00 (cloth).

The Introduction of Chinese Drama into Ryukyu

The Introduction of Chinese Drama into Ryukyu

Addendum to Modern Chinese Drama in English: A Selective Bibliography

Addendum to Modern Chinese Drama in English: A Selective Bibliography

A Study of the Subjectivity of Chinese Viewers' Hanryu Drama Adoption

A Study of the Subjectivity of Chinese Viewers' Hanryu Drama Adoption

In the name of Shakespeare

, also known as classical Chinese opera or sung drama, had been the major entertainment in the traditional Chinese society. In Taiwan, Beijing opera as ‘National Drama’ had long enjoyed resources far more than other xiqu genres. However, with the rapid transformation of socioeconomic structure, xiqu experienced drastic decline in audience in the face of Western culture. The call for a “modernized” xiqu became imperative. Under such circumstances, the Contemporary Legend Theater company (CLT) came to the fore. It was founded by a Beijing opera practitioner Wu and his wife Lin, a modern dancer. The debut Kingdom of Desire in 1986, adapted from Macbeth, stirred great excitement in Taipei, and later the play toured around the world. While displaying the legacy of xiqu performance, the couple aimed to go beyond the boundary of Beijing opera and search for a new genre that can reach a wider audience. Their subsequent productions are also adaptations of Western canonical plays, such as Medea, the Oresteia and King Lear. While the marketing strategy of the CLT often stresses jingles such as “When the East meets the West,” intercultural performance as such reveals a double consciousness of the performers, who see themselves through the eyes of the (Western) others. The paper attempts to discuss the meaning of Shakespeare in the CLT’s intercultural adaptations and further examine the politics hidden behind this phenomenon of intercultural adaptation in Taiwan. I explore if such seemingly self-orientalizing adaptation contains resistance to globalization.

The State and the Market: Chinese TV Serials and the Case of Woju (Dwelling Narrowness)

The production, consumption, and state control of Chinese TV serial drama can be seen as an instrument of power and profit maximization as well as a medium for mass education and homogenization in the form of popular culture. The serial drama Woju 蜗居 (Dwelling narrowness) (2009) exemplifies the ways in which a prime-time TV serial in twenty-first-century China is a politically, socially, and commercially significant enterprise. Since the 1980s, prime-time serials have emerged as a distinctly successful medium with and through which the Chinese party-state exercises ideological control by entertainment rather than oppression. Indeed, not only did Woju enjoy huge audience popularity, it also benefited from considerable tolerance of the State Administration of Radio, Film, and Television (SARFT), which, according to the website Danwai, allowed the drama to “slip” through its guidelines.

The Columbia anthology of modern Chinese drama

The Columbia anthology of modern Chinese drama

Dwelling Narrowness: Chinese media and their disingenuous neoliberal logic

This article uses a Chinese television drama Dwelling Narrowness to illustrate the inherent tensions and pitfalls of Chinese neoliberal developmentalism. It examines its production, circulation and popular consumption in order to illuminate the interplay of the Chinese state, capital and popular aspirations in the restructuring of Chinese media and communication industries. In such interplay, neoliberal strategies are enwrapped in socialist legacies, traditional values, post-socialist dilemmas, and prosumer desires. Neoliberal techniques and practices, which are sometimes sincerely and sometimes disingenuously applied in the Chinese case, create a hybrid political-economic structure that is non-liberal, anti-liberal and neoliberal, all in one. To affix a‘post-’ to neoliberalism would both overestimate the neoliberal logic and underestimate its continued agency in China's transformations.

Monks, Bandits, Lovers, and Immortals. Eleven Early Chinese Plays (review)

Reviewed by: Monks, Bandits, Lovers, and Immortals. Eleven Early Chinese Plays Kim Moonkyong 金文京 Monks, Bandits, Lovers, and Immortals. Eleven Early Chinese Plays, edited and translated, with an Introduction, by Stephen H. West and Wilt L. Idema. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 2010. Pp. 522. $48.00 (hardcover); $16.95 (paper). ISBN 978-1-60384-201-3 (hardcover); 978-1-60384-200-6 (paper). This book is the third published book that documents the results obtained from years of collaborative research relating to Chinese plays conducted by Professors West and Idema. It consists of English translations and annotations of eleven works in total; including eight zaju 雜劇 plays from the Yuan Dynasty, one from the xiwen 戲文 from the southern part of this same dynasty, and two zaju plays from the early Ming Dynasty. Before embarking upon my review of this book, I would like to clarify the position from which I will approach my task. First, I am engaged in research on early Chinese plays in Japan; thus, the following review is based on research and ideas on early Chinese plays that originate from Japan. Second, this book serves as a publication aimed at a general readership in English-speaking countries. This is not to suggest that the book does not reflect the results of specialist research. Rather, a characteristic of the book is that it conveys the results of specialist research conducted over many years by these two professors. In their capacity as translators they render this research accessible to a general readership in a way that is easy to understand. [End Page 414] Viewed from the perspective of someone from an East Asian country, early Chinese plays in the West are quite a unique tradition. From a historical perspective, as East Asian countries neighbouring China such as Japan, Korea, and Vietnam have been the recipients of Chinese culture over a long period of time, they have accumulated a very sophisticated knowledge of all aspects of Chinese culture. Consequently, Chinese culture has also had a huge impact on the formation of cultures in the above countries. In literature, too, people in these countries have become well versed in all genres of classical Chinese literature, not only reading works of literature created by Chinese authors but also producing many of their own original works. In the fields of classical poetry and prose, in particular, these are in no way inferior to works created in China, both quantitatively and qualitatively, and they form an important part of the native literature of these countries. However, there is one exception to this in the form of Chinese plays from the early modern period onwards. For example, although Zang Maoxun’s 臧懋循 Yuanqu xuan 元曲選 (A Selection of Yuan Plays), which is also introduced in this book, is known to have been imported to Japan in the Edo period, there were very few people who read it. Also, while The Story of the West Wing, which is a major early Chinese play, attracted a number of readers in Japan and Korea, very few other works were known to people in these countries. Furthermore, other than a handful of exceptions, there were no translations or pastiches of Chinese plays. All-in-all, early Chinese plays have had an extremely limited influence on these countries. This is in stark contrast with other genres of Chinese literature, particularly novels, which, along with plays, were a major form of popular literature. Novels attracted many readers and lots of translations were made. They thus had a major impact on the contemporaneous native literature of these countries. However, Chinese plays had already been translated and adapted by famous literary figures such as Voltaire in Europe by the eighteenth century (Appendix 1: A Note on the Translation and Study of Early Chinese Drama in Europe and the United States). This must come as a huge shock to those in East Asian countries who fancy themselves to be well-versed in classical Chinese literature. One reason why Chinese plays did not make much of an impact on surrounding countries is that their style of writing—particularly, the idiosyncratic style of writing employed in the arias section—proved an obstacle to their reception abroad. That these Chinese plays...