Literature

posts related to modern and contemporary Chinese Literature

Paper Republic no. 18

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August is Women in Translation Month! #WITMonth, an initiative started by Meytal Radzinski in 2014, which aims to focus the minds of readers (and publishers) on translated books by women authors, and give them the prominence they deserve. Put simply, women writers are less often translated into English than men writers, and win fewer prizes. Chinese is no exception, as we have recorded in all the years that Paper Republic has been compiling its annual Roll Call of Chinese writers published in translation. Last year, Eric Abrahamsen wrote for the 2023 Roll Call: ‘There is an interesting and varied collection of titles, including classics, left-fielders, big names, and small(er) names. The non-fiction in particular is a wonderful spread of current events, political topics, and essays. [But…] There also continues to be a marked gender imbalance: only two female poets in the poetry section; in fiction only 6 women to 16 men. To find out who those women are, follow the link above!

But rather than bandy depressing numbers around here, we thought we’d start with a reminder of interviews of Chinese women writers, put together by Nicky Harman and Natascha Bruce, in which we explore how Chinese women authors from mainland China see themselves and their status. Our aim in translating and publishing these interviews was to bring the opinions of Chinese women writers on this topic, in all their rich variety and complexity, to English-language readers. Our survey was conducted in 2019-2020, but is still well worth looking at again.

Here is a quick round-up of blogs and lists we have found online for the 2024 Women in Translation Month: Continue reading Paper Republic no. 18 →

Suipian no. 2

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碎篇 // Suipian // Fragments
By TABITHA SPEELMAN

Welcome to the 2nd edition of Suipian, my new personal newsletter in which I share thoughts and resources that help me make sense of Chinese society and its relationship to the rest of the world. You’re receiving this because you were previously subscribed to Changpian, my earlier newsletter sharing Chinese nonfiction writing – or if you recently subscribed of course! See here for more introduction to Suipian.

I hope you have been having a good summer. I have been moving between riversides in China (Liangmahe) and Rotterdam (Nieuwe Maas) – and feel lucky to be able to do that. Heading back to Beijing this weekend.

This is a pretty long one. It looks like this newsletter will come out once every 1-2 months (aiming for shorter monthly ones), and you might find I get to things a bit slow – certainly not at news cycle pace. But I hope you enjoy this edition and find something in it to add to your late summer reading.

随笔 // Suibi // Notes
Sharing thoughts or resources related to my work as a correspondent

1.Generations. I recently wrote a brief review of Peter Hessler’s new book Other Rivers: A Chinese Education for our paper. Although the Dutch translation was not great (and somehow came out before the original), I thoroughly enjoyed the tour de force of this book on how members of two generations (or even three, per Yangyang Cheng’s much better review) experience China’s development. As a long-time fan, I was struck this time by Hessler’s ability to articulate concrete cultural characteristics of Chinese society today without essentializing them. I am someone who is wired towards identifying commonalities rather than differences, but for weeks after reading Other Rivers, I’d walk around Beijing with new language and awareness of what I encountered (in the public safety culture, say, or in terms of people’s high – but shifting – tolerance for environmental noise). Continue reading Suipian no. 2 →

Shangyuan Art Museum: A Demolition

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Last week the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung published my text about the demolition of Beijing Shangyuan Art Museum in June. It is available online, maybe for free by the time you read this. I have assembled screenshots with some commentary in English on my blog (https://banianerguotoukeyihe.com/2024/08/20/shangyuan-art-museum-in-the-faz/). What follows is the English version. Please email me if you have any questions. Thank you!

Best,

Martin Winter 维马丁 <dujuan99@gmail.com>

Shangyuan Art Museum. A Demolition.
Martin Winter

How can I write about it? Write down what I know. In detail. How did it start. On June 3rd suddenly there were people measuring buildings. Three or four people. Then one of us artists asked them what they were doing. These houses will be demolished. What? Yes, all of these. Our studios. Why? It’s all illegal. We are just measuring, they sent us. Who? The village committee. And those above. On June 4th too, other people. Where is Cheng Xiaobei? Does she know? She is coming to Beijing. Next week. She is the boss. One of the founders of Shangyuan Art Museum and the only person around willing to take charge, able to negotiate and decide.

I am one of the artists. Every year they invite artists to live and work there. Over thirty, sometimes 40 people. From early April to late October, sometimes late March till early November. Trees bloom in March, some bloom in February. But there’s no heating. Each year water is freezing somewhere in the walls. Doors and windows are not made for winter. The one really solid building, the big exhibition hall, is now gone. Continue reading Shangyuan Art Museum: A Demolition →

Beyond Citizenship review

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MCLC Resource Center is pleased to announce publication of Frederik H. Green’s review of Beyond Citizenship: Literacy and Personhood in Everyday China, 1900-1945, by Di Luo. The review appears below and at its online home: https://u.osu.edu/mclc/book-reviews/green3/. My thanks to Nicholas Kaldis, our literary studies book review editor, for ushering the review to publication.

Kirk Denton, MCLC

Beyond Citizenship: Literacy and
Personhood in Everyday China, 1900-1945

By Di Luo

Reviewed by Frederik H. Green

MCLC Resource Center Publication (Copyright August, 2024)

Di Luo, Beyond Citizenship: Literacy and Personhood in Everyday China, 1900-1945 Leiden: Brill, 2022. Xviii + 282 pp. ISBN 9789004524736 (Hardback) | ISBN 9789004524743 (eBook).

Di Luo’s highly engaging monograph Beyond Citizenship: Literacy and Personhood in Everyday China, 1900-1945, explores the intricate relationship between literacy and the rise of the nation state in Republican-period China. Luo does not focus on the means through which gains in literacy were achieved or the tangible and intangible benefits improved literacy rates presented to the newly educated citizens or the nation state. Rather, Luo’s interest lies in the question of how the practice of literacy training in itself shaped the relationship between the state and the various actors involved in literacy training, including administrators, policy makers, local cadres, teachers, and students. Literacy training remained high on the agenda of both the GMD (KMT) and the CCP throughout the first part of the twentieth century, yet there existed distinct differences in each party’s respective discourse regarding the form and purpose of literacy training as well as in the ways each party named and presented illiteracy. Luo’s intention is not to demonstrate whether the GMD’s or the CCP’s strategies for literacy training were more successful. Instead, she illustrates through a number of fascinating case studies how the various actors involved perceived the role and value of those efforts and what differences existed in the way success was recorded, measured, and presented differently by the GMD and CCP. By putting the training process at the center of her analysis, as the reader is informed in the introduction, Luo highlights the “agentive role of historical actors and their participatory experience in meaning-making, rather than literacy per se” (18). To Luo, literacy training is a social process the importance of which to the making of modern China does not rest on the practice of learning alone, but equally “on the practices of sponsoring, managing, teaching, and representing” (20). In order to document this social process and the multi-dimensional practices the GMD and CCP engaged in, Luo carefully studied government and other official records in over a dozen major libraries and archives in China and the US. The result is an eye-opening study that captivates its reader through both its depths and breath and that spans from the late Qing until the first years of the People’s Republic. Continue reading Beyond Citizenship review →

‘Writing a Letter’ by Ling Shuhua

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Source: The Shanghai Literary Review (July 30, 2024)
“Writing a Letter”
By Ling Shuhua, introduced and translated by Nicky Harman

Introduction and translation by Nicky Harman

Ling Shuhua (1900-1990) was a talented Chinese woman modernist writer, much admired by Chinese luminaries such as the poet Xu Zhimo and the writer and activist Lu Xun. She was also a well-regarded painter. Most of her writing was produced during the 1920s and 1930s, with almost nothing being published thereafter, with the exception of her (English-language) autobiography Ancient Melodies (Hogarth Press, 1953). After the war, she left China and lived in Singapore and the UK and, possibly for that reason, her reputation faded in her home country. Recently, however, her work has been republished there.

Ling Shuhua’s Importance as a Writer

Ling Shuhua grew up in two very different worlds: she was the daughter of the third concubine of a high-ranking Qing (Manchu) official and was taught by one of the imperial court painters; in many ways, the kind of life she lived as a child had not changed for centuries. But Ling had a modern as well as a classical education, studying in Japan and in Yenching University in Beijing. As a writer in the 1920s and 1930s, she was active in contemporary literary and artistic circles. As was the case with others of her contemporaries, she had a cosmopolitan outlook and was influenced by Western writers, in her case Katherine Mansfield and Anton Chekhov. She understood and wrote about the old society, while at the same time she had modern sensibilities. Among Chinese women writers of her time, she was unique in having close connections with the Bloomsbury Group; she was a friend of Virginia Woolf, Vanessa Bell and Vita Sackville-West. Continue reading ‘Writing a Letter’ by Ling Shuhua →

“The Second Mother”

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MCLC Resource Center is pleased to announce publication of Brian Yuhan Wang’s translation of “The Second Mother,” by Ba Jin. A teaser appears below. For the full translation, go to: https://u.osu.edu/mclc/online-series/the-second-mother/.

Kirk Denton, MCLC

The Second Mother 第二的母親
(La dua patrino)

By Ba Jin 巴金 [1]

Translated by Brian Yuhan Wang

MCLC Resource Center Publication (Copyright August 2024)

Ba Jin (1904-2005).

Everyone called me an orphan.

My parents died young; I don’t even remember clearly what they looked like. I was brought up by my uncle. He had no children of his own, so he treated me like a son.

My aunt had passed away, and I led a lonely life. My uncle was often away from home, leaving only a houseboy and an old nanny to look after me. There was also a middle-aged servant, who often accompanied my uncle on his errands. My home was spacious, and there was a small garden where I could play, but I didn’t have any playmates. The world of the houseboy and nanny was quite different from mine. Though only a child, I often felt lonely.

Back then, I had started studying. My uncle hired an old, stern-looking tutor to keep me disciplined. I had to spend four to five hours in the study every day. While the tutor silently pored over his books, I read out the strange words and verses in books like the Thousand Character Classic over and over in a weary voice, with my mind wandering off into unattainable fantasies. The moment the tutor abruptly announced, “All right, class is over!” in his serious tone, I couldn’t resist laughing as I rushed out of that prison-like study.

I often had dreams at night, and they always featured the tutor’s face, which would transform wildly into various guises. I occasionally had more pleasant dreams, but they were always ruined by thoughts of studying—I even found myself studying in my dreams sometimes. Anyway, the only person I feared was that tutor, who always looked so serious; the only thing I dreaded was studying. [click here for the full translation]

Routledge Handbook of Chinese Gender & Sexuality review

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MCLC Resource Center is pleased to announce publication of Chris Berry’s review of Routledge Handbook of Chinese Gender & Sexuality, edited by Jamie J. Zhao and Hongwei Bao. The review appears below and at its online home: https://u.osu.edu/mclc/book-reviews/chris-berry2/. My thanks to Nicholas Kaldis, our literary studies book review editor, for ushering the review to publication.

Kirk Denton, MCLC

Routledge Handbook of Chinese
Gender & Sexuality

Edited by Jamie J. Zhao and Hongwei Bao

Reviewed by Chris Berry

MCLC Resource Center Publication (Copyright July, 2024)

Jamie J. Zhao and Hongwei Bao, eds., Routledge Handbook of Chinese Gender & Sexuality Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2024. Xvii + 379 pp. ISBN: 978-1-032-22729-0 (cloth); 978-1-032-22733-7 (paper); 978-1-003-27394-3 (e-book).

In their introductory essay in the Routledge Handbook of Chinese Gender and Sexuality, Jamie J. Zhao and Hongwei Bao acknowledge that there are already numerous monographs and anthologies in the field. However, they stake a claim for their book as an intervention rather than just a representative round-up of leading work. All the essays are new. Furthermore, although the editors aim for broad coverage, they also have what I see as four corrective interventions. Whereas, they claim, the field has favored the pre-1949 era, they aim to spotlight the contemporary. Whereas the roots of much work in area studies approaches China and Chineseness as a site of difference or even exceptionalism, they highlight work that is transnational in approach, understanding China and Chineseness as constant processes of becoming shaped and responding to transnational flows. In response to the proliferation of work on the peripheral areas of the larger Sinosphere favored by Sinophone scholarship, they center the volume on the People’s Republic of China (PRC). And finally, whereas the balance of existing work has tilted toward the social sciences, they emphasize arts, humanities, and cultural studies approaches, and, in particular, a “queering” approach that moves away from research that assumes fixed gender and sexual identities and toward work that questions them. In this review, I first briefly introduce the contents of this substantial volume of new writing, and then return to address some of the positions staked out by these four interventions. Continue reading Routledge Handbook of Chinese Gender & Sexuality review →

When the Yellow River Floods review

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MCLC Resource Center is pleased to announce publication of Robin L. Visser’s review of When the Yellow River Floods: Water, Technology, and Nation-Building in Early Twentieth-Century Chinese Literature, by Hui-Lin Hsu. The review appears below and at its online home: https://u.osu.edu/mclc/book-reviews/visser/. My thanks to MCLC literary studies book review editor, Nicholas Kaldis, for ushering the review to publication.

Kirk Denton, MCLC

When the Yellow River Floods: Water, Technology, and
Nation-Building in Early Twentieth-Century Chinese Literature

By Hui-Lin Hsu

Reviewed by Robin L. Visser

MCLC Resource Center Publication (Copyright July, 2024)

Hui-Lin Hsu, When the Yellow River Floods: Water, Technology, and Nation-Building in Early Twentieth-Century Chinese Literature Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2024, X + 163 pp. ISBN: 978-988-8842-77-3 (Hardback).

When the Yellow River Floods comprehensively analyzes polymath author Liu E’s (刘鹗, 1857-1909) popular late Qing novel, The Travels of Lao Can (老残游记, 1907), by engaging hydraulics, medicine, occult knowledge, and literary, social, and political history. Published in 2024 by Hong Kong University Press, the hardcover edition of 163 pages is comprised of an introduction, five chapters, and a brief conclusion. In his analysis, Hui-Lin Hsu challenges conventional understandings of late Qing literary history by connecting water management principles to literary nation-building, demonstrating how river engineering techniques inform the novel’s landscape descriptions and its medical, political, and national sentiment discourses. Though Liu E died in infamy after being exiled to Xinjiang on trumped-up charges, Travels was first serialized in 1903 to popular acclaim and retains scholarly relevance into the twenty-first century.[1]

The introduction pairs the frequent flooding of the Yellow River during Liu E’s lifetime to his work as a river engineer from 1888 to 1893 after a catastrophic dike breach in Zhengzhou killed over 930,000 people. Based on his surveys and mapping of the Yellow River in Henan, Zhili, and Shandong, Liu wrote Chart of the Course of the Yellow River (豫,直,鲁三省黄河图) and Five Essays on River Management (治河五说), key sources for Hsu’s analysis of The Travels of Lao Can. In them, Liu proposes a new embankment system of oblique dikes (斜提) that “defend water with water” (以水敌水), inspired by flood control methods attributed to the mythical Da Yu (大禹). Hsu argues that this pliant water management technique directly informs Liu E’s understanding of late Qing politics. Continue reading When the Yellow River Floods review →

Dong Xi in the UK

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For all UK-based colleagues, if you’re free on the following dates we’d love to have you!

Dong Xi 东西 (Pen name of Tian Dailin 田代琳) award-winning author (Mao Dun Prize, Lu Xun Prize) will be touring the UK for the upcoming launch of his newest book in translation Fate Rewritten (篡改的命) (Trans: John Balcom).

London – 26th July – Living A Stolen Life – Dong Xi in Conversation with Susan Trapp
Fri 26 Jul 6:00 PM – 7:30 PM at Charing Cross Library
https://buytickets.at/sinoistbooks/1287210

Edinburgh- 31st July – The Price of Tomorrow – Dong Xi in Conversation with Jenny Niven
Wed 31 Jul 4:00 PM – 6:00 PM at Abden House, University of Edinburgh
https://buytickets.at/sinoistbooks/1294053

ABOUT THE BOOK

Translated from Chinese and due to be published in English on 25th October 2024. It’s a Dickensian novel giving voice to China’s 300 million-strong migrant workforce, Telling a harrowing story about the conditions they live in, what drives them, and how it can go horribly wrong. Continue reading Dong Xi in the UK →

Chinese Theories of Literary Creation

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Dear colleagues and friends,

I am pleased to report that my first monograph on Chinese literary theory has come out at Duke UP. If you are interested in the book, you may place an order at the DUP or Amazon sites for the same price of $16. As Amazon needs to forward the order to DUP, it makes good sense to order directly from DUP unless you have free shipping from Amazon. Below are the DUP and Amazon links.
Thanks, Zong-qi Cai

https://www.dukeupress.edu/chinese-theories-of-literary-creation

https://www.amazon.com/Chinese-Theories-Literary-Creation-Introduction/dp/1478026995/

Description

In this monograph, Zong-qi Cai surveys the long trajectory of Chinese thinking about literary creation, from remote antiquity to the early 20th century. By uncovering the complex connections linking key critical terms, concepts, and assertions, it debunks the common perception of Chinese literary theory as vague and elusive. Instead, Cai approaches Chinese critical pronouncements as engaged in a productive dialogue with each other. Through detailed scrutiny of 184 passages, he shows how critics from different dynasties exploited the polysemy of key terms—drawn from Confucian, Daoist, and Buddhist sources as well as criticism of calligraphy and painting—to arrive at ground-breaking new perspectives on literary creation. The book concludes with a brief comparative look at Chinese and Western literary theory aimed at being mutually illuminating for both traditions. Intended for general readers as well as specialists, this monograph will be followed in the next few years by three similar studies on theories of literature, aesthetics, and interpretation.

Posted by: Prism Editorial Office <prism@ln.edu.hk>

Louis Cha’s epic tale goes global

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Source: China Daily (6/21/24)
Louis Cha’s epic tale goes global
By Xu Fan

[Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

Adapted from one of the best-known works by the renowned martial arts novelist Louis Cha, known as Jin Yong, The Legend of Heroes: Hot Blooded has swiftly gained international acclaim, resonating across diverse overseas markets, as confirmed by its producers.

Set in the Song Dynasty (960-1279), the narrative follows the journey of Guo Jing, a diligent yet unremarkable rural youth who evolves into a legendary swordsman through a series of adventures, intertwined with his romance with Huang Rong, the clever daughter of a daring swordsman.

The 30-episode series, Hot Blooded, premiered online on June 17 and is currently available on various overseas platforms like WeTV, Netflix, YouTube, and Rakuten Viki. The drama is either already released or scheduled for broadcast on numerous prominent local online platforms in nearly 10 countries, including South Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Russia and Cambodia, with plans for further screenings in the United States, France, India, Africa and the Middle East.

Part of The Legend of Heroes franchise, which commenced two years ago with a vision of five stand-alone stories, each adapted from different Jin Yong novels and entrusted to five distinct directors, Hot Blooded is the initial installment based on The Legend of the Condor Heroes. This classic tale, serialized in the Hong Kong Commercial Daily from 1957 to 1959, has seen numerous adaptations over the years, including the popular 1983 version starring Felix Wong Yat-wa and Barbara Yung Mei-ling.

Directed by Yang Lei, acclaimed for the sci-fi drama Three-Body, and featuring actors Ci Sha as Guo Jing and Bao Shang’en as Huang Rong, Hot Blooded employs a dynamic narrative style to engage a broader audience, particularly the younger generation. The script strategically balances pace and depth, aiming to highlight the chivalrous themes and explore the intricate personas of characters like Yang Kang, a pivotal figure with complex loyalties, as noted by critics. Continue reading Louis Cha’s epic tale goes global →

‘Home’ series from Paper Republic

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“Home”, new Paper Republic series of shorts in English translation

A refuge, a recollection, a promised land, a prison; the arms of family, or four concrete walls in the sky… Home means something different to each of us, but it means something to all of us.

Paper Republic’s newest Read Paper Republic series of online short story and poem translations, themed around HOME, will commence publication on June 6, 2024. Read the pieces, completely free, online at https://paper-republic.org/pubs/read/series/home/.

The tenth series since Read Paper Republic was first published in 2015, HOME includes four short stories and two poems, each adopting a different point of view on the all-important question of belonging. At a time when Chinese society is wrestling with generational gaps, real-estate crises, and the outfall of pandemic, these meditations on love and security (or lack thereof) deliver a powerful testament to the variety of human experience.

We’re giving away brand-new novels translated from Chinese completely free to people who help us grow our mailing lists with the most names. What you have to do to win a novel (or collection of short stories or poetry):

  • Send this email to any friends you think would be interested.
  • Ask if they will agree to have their names added to our mailing list. (They’ll get a couple of emails and a couple of free newsletters from Paper Republic per year, no more.)
  • Send us their names and emails by 31 July 2024.
  • Wait to hear from us! We’ll ask you for your mailing address if you’re one of the lucky winners

Continue reading ‘Home’ series from Paper Republic →

Shangyuan Art Museum to be demolished

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They say the mayor’s office of Beijing city has made this decision to demolish the Shangyuan Art Museum. No reason given, no plan, no date. Could be tomorrow. Please tell anyone you can think of, ask anyone and ask people to ask about this. Thank you!

Martin Winter

拆

没心情写诗
反正要拆
拆艺术馆
拆工作室
拆画廊
拆图书馆
拆国际交流
二十年来
所建立的
统统都拆
没说理由
没说日期
没说计划
一直这样
今天通知
非常适合

2024.6.4

DEMOLISH

What is the opposite
of soft power?
Burning bridges?
Beijing Shangyuan Art Museum
has been a bridge
for international relations
in art and culture
for twenty years.
Yesterday and today
here at the museum
people came to measure buildings
slated for demolition.
Everything must go!
Everyone!
This hill is for goats
anyway.
No reason given,
no exact date.
Nothing new in this country.
Today’s date
fits rather well.

MW June 4th, 2024

Theater and Politics in Socialist China: A Review Essay

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MCLC Resource Center is pleased to announce publication of Letizia Fusini’s review essay, “Theater and Politics in Socialist China,” which treats recently published books on modern Chinese drama by Maggie Greene, Siyuan Liu, and Xiaomei Chen. The review appears below and at its online home: https://u.osu.edu/mclc/book-reviews/fusini/. My thanks to Jason McGrath, our soon-to-be-former book review editor for media, film, and drama studies, for ushering the review to publication.

Kirk Denton, MCLC

Theater and Politics in Socialist China:
A Review Essay

Resisting Spirits, by Maggie Greene
Transforming Tradition, by Siyuan Liu
Performing the Socialist State, by Xiaomei Chen

Reviewed by Letizia Fusini
MCLC Resource Center Publication (Copyright May, 2024)

Maggie Greene, Resisting Spirits: Drama Reform and Cultural Transformation in the PRC Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2019. 260pp ISBN: 9780472074303 (hardcover)

Siyuan Liu, Transforming Tradition: The Reform of Chinese Theater in the 1950s and Early 1960s Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2021. 472pp. ISBN: 9780472132478 (hardcover); 9780472128723 (ebook)

Xiaomei Chen, Performing the Socialist State: Modern Chinese Theater and Film Culture New York: Columbia University Press, 2023. 384pp. ISBN: 9780231197762 (hardcover); 9780231552332 (ebook)

Nearly a decade ago, in Autumn 2016, I had the opportunity and the privilege to teach an undergraduate survey course on the history of Chinese theater, the only one of its kind in the UK back then. I was a freshly minted PhD graduate and that was my first teaching post. Aside from developing my lecturing skills, the main challenge was to find creative strategies to make the subject more accessible to students who were majoring in theater studies and knew almost nothing about Chinese culture and history. The task became even more daunting when, due to time constraints, I had to condense the history of the rise of modern drama (huaju 话剧) and the transformations of classical theater (xiqu 戏曲) throughout the late-Qing, Republican and early socialist epochs within the space of a couple of hours. Since I wanted to avoid information overload, I began to look for a unifying thread that could hthelp me connect these three periods and, in my research, I came across an excerpt from a text written by Chen Duxiu 陈独秀 in 1904, where the future founder of the CCP eulogizes theater as the best “vehicle for social reform” (120), tracing the paternity of this idea to Confucius, who once said that “nothing is better than yue [乐, the performing arts lato sensu] at transforming social conventions” (118). These thoughts, written just before the dawn of the Republican period and yet rooted in the Confucian tradition, prefigured the Zeitgeist of the New Culture and May Fourth Movements, which, in turn, would be lauded by Mao Zedong in his essay “On New Democracy” as “having pioneered an unprecedentedly great and thoroughgoing cultural revolution” (361) whose only fault was that it failed to serve the interests of the masses of workers, peasants, and soldiers. Through these connections, I was able to visualize the (r)evolution of Chinese theater in the first half of the twentieth century as a tree growing out of Confucian roots and projecting its branches and foliage in a Marxist direction culminating with the Cultural Revolution of 1966-1976. My goal was to convey to my students the impression I had gotten vis-à-vis that short statement by Chen Duxiu about the power of theater to effect social change. The fact that in China, the attribution of a pedagogic and political function to theater is a traditional concept rather than a twentieth-century novelty, hence not an exclusive prerogative of the Communist period or of the Cultural Revolution, was the unifying thread I was looking for. What was initially a mere perception on my part, found confirmation in Richard Schechner’s foreword to the collection in which I originally found Chen Duxiu’s text, where he notes that “the roots of Mao’s attitude—that theater is an excellent educator and that rulers ought to use it as such—go deep in Chinese history. From an early date, theater was seen as a way of reaching ordinary people who could not read” (x). Continue reading Theater and Politics in Socialist China: A Review Essay →