Chinese Theatre Troupes in Southeast Asia

Touring Diaspora, 1900s–1970s

Beiyu Zhang

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• Topic: History
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000395143
• Subtopic: History of Contemporary Art
• Index: History

A detailed account of the cultural history of the Chinese diaspora, with a focus on the performers and audiences who were involved in the making of Chinese performing cultures in Southeast Asia.

Focusing on five different kinds of theatre troupes from China and their respective travels in Singapore, Bangkok, Malaya and Hong Kong, Zhang examines their different travelling experiences and divergent cultural practices. She thus sheds light on how transnational mobility was embodied, practised and circumscribed in the course of troupes' travelling, sojourning and interacting with diasporic communities. These troupes communicated diverse discourses and ideologies influenced by different social political movements in China, and these meanings were further altered by transmission.

By unpacking multiple ways of performing Chineseness that was determined by changing time-space constructions, this volume provides valuable insight for scholars of the Chinese Diaspora, Transnational History and Performing Arts in Asia.

Part I
Chinese theatre troupes on the Sino-Southeast Asian Corridor, 1900s–1930s

1
Formation of Chinese theatrical spaces

Temples, theatres and amusement parks in the Straits Settlements

Beiyu Zhang

Temple-theatres

Early colonial accounts dated in 1850s reveal that Chinese temple-theatres were among the earliest and most enduring form of theatrical spaces in the Straits Settlements. Throughout the ages, Chinese people of different speech groups celebrated the birthdays of their own communal deities with Chinese wayang (a Malay term for 'street theatre', jiexi/daxi) at the expenses of the guild (Vaughan 1971, 48). As Vaughan noticed, these theatricals were always associated with a Chinese temple. For instance, 'Tay Chews [Teochews] carry their idol in procession from their cemetery at Tanglin to their temple in Philip Street to see the theatricals held there in his honor . . . the Hokiens [Hokkiens] have a similar procession once in every three years' (Vaughan, 49). Importantly, these theatricals were not merely for mundane humans, but specifically performed to entertain the spiritual beings. In sum, parallel to the nineteenth-century Chinese migration flow to Southeast Asia, Chinese theatre travelled to the diaspora as an indispensable part of immigrants' religious practices, among which the temple-theatre had a major role to play in helping the Chinese theatre take root in the diaspora (Zhang 2017, 201).

The emergence of temple-theatres in Singapore cannot be separated from a significant historical process: flows of Chinese immigrants who transplanted Chinese cultural religious practice from native hometowns to the diaspora through the migrant 'corridor'. Philip A. Kuhn (2008) defines the concept of 'corridor' as a two-way interaction and communication from migrants' homeland to the sojourning society and vice versa. Through the migrant 'corridor', people, ideas, practice and goods were in constant exchanges across geographical boundaries (43-52). This process unfolded itself in two ways, firstly, by the practice of fenxiang (split the incense). When the immigrants left their homeland, they carried the incense from the mother temple in homeland to the sojourning society to establish a division of the shrine of in the diaspora. In Singapore, the worship of the Chinese sea goddess, Mazu (Mah Choh Poh) plays an exceptional role for coastal residents whose livelihoods were very much dependent on seafaring. Upon arriving at the port of Singapore, Chinese immigrants started to build a shabby place along the shore to house the altar of Mazu. As the worshippers accumulated more capitals, they began to build a temple dedicated to their patron deity, and thereby they built the earliest Hokkien temple in Singapore: Tian Fu Gong (Han 1941), In April of 1840, the arrival of Mazu in Singapore was recorded with great details by a British colonial officer James Low. He was amazed at the grand and lavish procession being held for the advent of Mazu. He continued to note, 'the granite pillars and much of the stone ornamental work have been brought from China, and the latter is exceedingly grotesque' (Comber 1958, 59). This is confirmed by the Chinese themselves, for instance, they claimed that from the shrine to every stone of the temple, construction materials were all transported from China, across the land and the sea (Lin 2010, 368). The establishment of Tian Fu Gong and the subsequent building of temple-theatre have well illustrated the practice of fenxiang.

Yet, the practice of fenxiang does not simply refer to the unidirectional flow from motherland to diaspora, it also addresses the phenomena of branch temples and their temple-theatres spreading out to other parts of the colony by obtaining incenses from their mother temples in places such as Malacca (Frost 2005, 45). Beginning from the sixteenth century, Malacca had been developed into a major trading centre in the East-West trading route under the successive colonial powers of the Portuguese and the Dutch. The lure of business opportunities had attracted many coastal Chinese merchants, who later settled down locally and formed a particularly wealthy-elite class, known as the Straits Chinese. These Malaccan Straits Chinese were among the earliest pioneers to construct Chinese temples in Southeast Asia. For instance, the Malaccan temple Qing Yun Ting (Cheng Hoon Temple) was built in 1673 under a prominent Straits Chinese in Malacca: Zheng Fangyang. Notably, this man was a Chinese kapitan, namely the headman of the Chinese community appointed by the European rulers. The kapitan system not only made elite Chinese a liaison between the colonists and local community, but also functioned as the centre of Chinese political leadership whose power was affiliated with tingzhu (head of the temple) (Kuhn 2008, 69). Before any formal community organisation appeared, it was in the Chinese temples that important decision-making process took place under the leadership of tingzhu. Therefore, it must be highlighted that instead of being a transplant of the temples from South China, diasporic temples were the fruit of the colonial management of the Chinese community in the Straits Settlements. These diasporic temples functioned as the centre of Chinese political leadership, business conduct, ritual worship as well as social communal welfare (Lin 1986, 41-45).

Having been susceptible to foreign powers, the rise and fall of trading ports in the Malay Archipelago was a common phenomenon in the longue durée history of Southeast Asia (Kwa, Heng, and Tan 2009). When the British Empire took over the control of Malacca from the hands of the Dutch in 1824, Malacca's strategic position had been lost to Penang and Singapore, which arose as two new promising trading centres in the governance of the British Straits Settlements. The Malaccan Straits Chinese acutely followed the shift of economic centres and settled down in Penang and Singapore. What they brought along with them were business practices, cultures, lifestyles as well as religious affiliations. Scholars have argued that the construction of some temples in Singapore and Penang should be attributed to important Malaccan Straits Chinese who modelled the temples after the ones they had in their former settlement in Malacca, instead of the ones in the motherland (Frost 2005, 44; DerBernardi 2002, 304). In addition, some prominent Straits Chinese served as the officials in the board of management of the temples in more than one places. By doing so, 'temples functioned as diasporic spaces connecting them with other Nanyang settlements' (Frost, 44). To sum up, in addition to the 'corridor' that brought homeland and diaspora into meaningful relationship, the multidirectional circulations of the people, ideas and practices in and among Singapore, Penang and Malacca served both as the products and the constituents of the connectedness of the Chinese diaspora in the Straits Settlements.

By far, in the single act of temple building, I have argued for the multidirectional flows of people and capitals, circulating to important trading ports, from Malacca to Penang and Singapore. Hence, the establishment of diasporic temples was more of a product of the connectedness of the Chinese diaspora and the colonial management of the diasporic Chinese communities than a direct transplantation from the homeland. Nevertheless, the 'corridor' did facilitate the flows of temple-theatres from native hometowns to the diasporic communities. Archaeological remains and textual descriptions prove that the temple-theatres found both in native places and Singapore shared identical structural layout. However, it must be emphasised that temple-theatres found in Singapore and Penang also developed distinct characteristics in the process of negotiating with local diasporic conditions.

There were numerous archaeological sites of temple-theatres in the towns and counties across South China. Scholars have used these structural remains to reconstruct the basic shapes of a temple-theatre developed during the Ming-Qing dynasty. Basically, a temple-theatre was constructed as a partially independent attachment to the main temple structure. It means a temple-theatre stage could be torn down or added to the main body of a temple alternatively without impairing the main function of the worshipping alter. The basic form of a temple-theatre was a roofed stage facing the gods' main residence. In between the stage and the main hall of the temple, there was a large vacant space to cater the standing audiences for seasonal theatrical performances (Liao 1997, 114), To give a few examples, the Lord Guan Temple, located in a small town in Jieyang in the eastern part of Guangdong, was constructed in the year 1601. The patron deity Guan Gong (Lord Guan) is worshipped for his bravery and loyalty in safeguarding the peace of the realm. In 1777, the construction of the theatrical stage opposite to the statue of the Lord Guan was completed. To celebrate the birthday of Lord Guan, the temple committees offered spectacular ritual theatre performances day and night (Chaoju zhi 1995, 336-37). Another temple-theatre dedicated to Lord Guan was in Nan'ao, a county located at the border between Guangdong and Fujian provinces. This temple-theatre faced the main residence of Lord Guan with a stage of 6.7 m in width and 8.5 m in depth. It had a roof as well as a back wall of 5.2 m height (Chaoju zhi, 336; Zhongguo xiqu zhi 1987, 13). As the Chaozhou fengsu kao (An Investigation of Teochew Folk Culture and Custom) concisely summaries 'there was a theatre to almost every temple; officials, merchants and residents all staged theatrical performances to flaunt their status; for half of a year time, dances and songs flied wildly; there was no single day that was without theatrical performances' (Zhongguo xiqu zhi, 6).

There was no clear evidence to suggest when the Chinese temple-theatres arrived at Singapore, albeit there are some preliminary observations to make based on the early colonial accounts. Dated around the 1850s, Vaughan's account offered a glimpse of a theatre stage attached to the oldest Chinese temple, Tian Fu Gong. A wealthy Chinese merchant Zhang Fanglin (Cheang Hong Lim 1825-1893)¹ built this theatre opposite the gateway of Tian Fu Gong. There was 'a large flagged square surrounded by a high wall, in which temporary stages are erected for theatrical performances' (Vaughan 1971, 52). So, when theatricals were put up on the stage, they could be fully enjoyed by Mazu and her attendant gods through the gateway (58). In Percy Canpenter's oil painting Singapore from Mount Wallich at Sunrise, the temple-theatre of Tian Fu Gong was depicted as an enclosed space, indicating that it was a marked place reserved for specific ritual purposes (Lü 2010, 226). The roofed structure with an absence of surrounding walls resembled the ones found in native hometowns. The same architectural layout confirmed Kuhn's conceptualisation of 'corridor' whereby diasporic Chinese transplanted their temple-theatres from native hometowns to their overseas settlement.

Whereas colonial accounts dated the earliest formal structure of a temple-theatre in the 1850s, other sources identified that temple-theatres appeared much earlier in Singapore, albeit in a more primitive shape. A close reading of Tian Fu Gong's stone inscription reveals a processual development of its temple-theatres. A theatrical space was originally referred to as 'xipeng' (theatre shed), suggesting a kind of temporary shed with an erected wooden stage (see Figure 1.1). In a second stone inscription, the theatrical space was mentioned as 'xitai' (theatre stage), indicating a permanent shape of a theatre stage (Lü 2010, xxx; Chen and Chen 1975, 67-68). The change of references in the stone stele suggests that temple-theatres had multiple manifestations. It developed from a basic temporary structure to a permanent sacred theatrical space. The former temporary one emerged probably as there was the need of theatrical performances for occasional religious events. The latter permanent one proved the expanding need for ritual theatre performances (see Figure 1.2).

In the stone stele of another temple Guang Fu Gong (Kong Hock Keng),² the description further certifies the processual development of temple-theatres in the Chinese diaspora:

Approaching the eleventh month of the lunar calendar, followers from Guangdong and Zhaoqing origin gathered to conduct a grand ritual procession to welcome the descending of our gods. We invited troupes to stage operas to express their gratitude to the gods. The scene was extremely bustling with great excitement. However, it was such a pity that we don't have a permanent place for the dances and songs to entertain the gods. People simply built a primitive stage with bamboos and woods, which was tore down after the festival. When things returned to stillness, the theatre also went into bleakness. More importantly, when the stage was torn down, passers-by only knew there used to be opera shows without realizing there was a temple of our people. It was out of these considerations that we now embark on the construction of permanent temple-theatre . . . the newly built theatre was grand and spectacular with ornately carved pillars and walls. The men who devoted themselves in the construction of the temple-theatre were marvelous; their actions were very generous and virtuous. From now on, actors should put on their luminous costumes to fully display their refined performing skills so as to make the gods happy

Figure 1.1 Chinese make-shift theatre shed made of woods, dated the 1900s

Source: National Archives of Singapore

(Chen and Chen 1975, 132-33).

Instead of going through an evolutionary development—from the temporary makeshift stages to permanent ones—temple-theatres in different forms coexisted to suit the changing ritual needs of the Chinese temples in the Straits Settlements. A European traveller, Charles Wilkes had once captured the scene of a Chinese temporary theatre stage during his visit of Singapore in the Chinese New Year celebration. He noted that the theatrical exhibitions were going on at the same time in many places. 'Open sheds are erected for this purpose . . . the sheds are closed on three sides but open on that which faces the street. The stage is raised about six feet above the street, the whole is richly decorated with silk hangings and banners with many inscriptions and illuminated with colored lamps' (Wilkes Charles 1984, 16). In another account drawn from a wooden plate from Penang's oldest temple, the description goes that 'the vacant space in front of the temple had long been used to cater ritual theatre during Chinese festivals. Anyone who wish to stage puppet theatre to pay their tribute to the gods in the temple should donate twenty-four Straits Dollars to the temple committees; for the kind of "dapeng" (big shed) theatre, the fees vary' (Tan 1988, 72). Here, the term 'dapeng' has the same connotation with the 'xipeng' found in the stone stele of Tian Fu Gong. The overlapping character 'peng' all allude to a kind of shed being erected for temporary purposes.

Figure 1.2 A permanent temple-theatre stage in Penang, Malaysia

Source: Photo taken by Beiyu Zhang during fieldtrip in Penang, 16 October 2015

There appeared more interesting details revolving around the contentions of Chinese theatrical spaces in Penang's Guang Fu Gong. In 1857, a conflict between the British community and the Chinese community broke out, centring on the question of whether the Chinese could stage their ritual performances on Sunday when the British An...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of figures
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• PART I Chinese theatre troupes on the Sino-Southeast Asian Corridor, 1900s-1930s
• PART II ‘Dangerous’ reaching out via performative linkages in the Cold War
• Conclusion and epilogue
• Index