Performing Hybridity in Colonial-Modern China

S. Liu

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781349455041, 9781137306104
• eBook ISBN: 9781137306111
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Art General
• Index: Social Sciences

In Shanghai in the early twentieth century, a hybrid theatrical form, wenmingxi, emerged that was based on Western spoken theatre, classical Chinese theatre, and a Japanese hybrid form known as shinpa. This book places it in the context of its hybridized literary and performance elements, giving it a definitive place in modern Chinese theatre.

1. Emergence of a National Theatrical Discourse

The idea of representing the nation in the theatre, of summoning a representative audience that will in turn recognize itself as nation on stage, offers a compelling if ambiguous image of national unity, less as an indisputable fact than as an object of speculation.

—Loren Kruger¹

The environment for China’s hybrid spoken theatre cycle can necessarily be traced back to the notion of colonial modernity, in the sense that exposure to Euro-American and Japanese success in nationalist theatre generated a backlash against indigenous Chinese theatre’s perceived ideological and performance-related inadequacies and a campaign for a new theatre based on Western and Japanese models. As Brian Stross argued: “The hybrid forms that fill new niches in the environment are usually designed, and certainly selected for or against, on the basis of their exhibited characteristics, which are usually advantageous over, in this sense superior to, characteristics of either ‘parent.’ Otherwise one or the other ‘parent’ would probably have served the purpose.”² In the case of wenmingxi or the spoken theatre in many non-Western nations, the question becomes: What made the speech-based Euro-American theatre an attractive (or, depending on the situation, forced) parent for a new hybrid theatre? Although colonization is no doubt a central answer to many colonized nations, for the semicolonial China toward the end of its imperial reign, the answer is a bit more complicated because we need to recognize a few diverse factors that converged on its theatrical hybridity: (1) a powerful Euro-American coalition that repeatedly defeated China, prompting the search from both within and without the Qing court for a route to modernization and national revitalization on technological, constitutional, and cultural fronts, with the latter eventually leading to a consensus that invested theatre with the power of enlightenment in a highly illiterate nation; (2) the concessions in port cities (especially Shanghai), as a result of military defeats that brought in Western residents who staged theatrical productions, attracted touring shows, and built church schools that put up student theatrical productions, eventually inspiring similar dramatic activities in Chinese schools; and (3) Japan’s faster pace of modernization, including conscripting both hybrid kabuki and spoken theatre for nationalist causes, which in turn inspired Chinese intellectuals about the potential of theatre’s nationalist power and provided them with a concrete model of the new theatre—shinpa.

In the next chapter, I will focus on the last two factors—Shanghai’s Western-oriented theatre and shinpa—and the paths and mechanisms of wenmingxi hybridization. Here, I will concentrate on the first point, that is, the emergence of the discourse for a national theatre, the “environment” for the birth of the hybrid.

CALLS FOR THEATRICAL REFORM IN LATE QING

The Paris Opéra is commonly acknowledged as the greatest theatre in the world. Its grandeur and majesty is second to none. The state provides an annual endowment of eight hundred thousand francs, giving it a solid financial foundation. (Li Shuchang, 1878)³

After the Franco-Prussian War and the ensuing civil disturbance, Parisian palaces were all brought to ruins. Shortly after the chaos, the Opéra House was built with a cost of fifty million francs. (Guo Songtao, 1878)⁴

After their defeat by the Germans, the French started building the grand theatre as soon as the Germans retreated. It was supported through public fundraising with the help of state tax relief, which was aimed at inspiring depressed morale. (Zeng Jize, 1879)⁵

This reporter has heard that when defeated by Germany, France had to negotiate peace, pay indemnities, concede land, and reduce their army . . . They first built a grand theatre in Paris that was devoted to staging the Franco-Prussian War by depicting the misery of the French . . . This paved the way for new policies that, through national unity, easily restored the country’s prestige. (Ou Jujia, 1903)⁶

When France was defeated by Germany, the French built a theatre in Paris where they staged the misery of the German invasion into the capital. As a result, France was revitalized. (Wang Zhonglin, 1908)⁷

These five paragraphs all refer to the construction of the Paris Opéra after France’s defeat in the Franco-Prussian War (1870–1871). The first three are found in the diaries of the earliest Chinese diplomats to Europe in the late 1870s who first discovered the power of theatre in instigating nationalism. The fourth quote was written in 1902 by Ou Jujia (1870–1911), a member of the Chinese political exile group that had fled to Japan after the abortive 1898 Constitutional Reform, one of the most powerful intellectual forces for late-Qing constitutional and cultural reform. The last quote is by Wang Zhonglin, an avid proponent of theatrical reform in Shanghai in 1908, when new theatre was just emerging. I start with these five quotes for several reasons. The most obvious is the central theme of the Paris Opéra as a symbol of national rejuvenation through the power of theatre. Also noticeable is the three-decade span between the first and last entries, signaling the long diachronic process from China’s first encounter with European theatre, through a prolonged intellectual preparation that veered through Japan, to the eventual fervent push for a new theatre. Specifically, there was a two-and-half-decade-long gap between the diplomats’ diaries that first raised the legend of the Paris Opéra and its rediscovery in the late-Qing theatre reform movement. During the two decades following this, China, according to one of the leading reform voices Liang Qichao (1873–1929), went through three stages of Westernization—technological (qiwu), institutional (zhidu), and cultural (wenhua).⁸ After the first two waves to modernize China’s industrial, military, and monarchal systems met with crushing defeat, first in the Sino-Japanese War (1894–1895) and then by Empress Dowager Cixi’s coup in 1898, the Chinese intellectual elite, led by Kang Youwei (1858–1927), Liang Qichao, and their fellow reformers who had fled to Japan after the coup, devoted their efforts to cultural enlightenment, in part through their observations of Japan’s Westernization movement that prominently featured theatre. This final point is especially poignant since the earliest Chinese and Japanese paths to theatrical hybridity crossed at the Paris Opéra, as it was also one of the significant monuments that inspired Japan’s first post-Meiji Reform delegation to the West.

CHINESE REFLECTIONS ON FRENCH THEATRE

The story of Paris as a representative of Western civilization and nationalist theatre necessarily starts with Charles Garnier’s Paris Opéra. As Marvin Carlson points out, “The monumental opera house became the architectural symbol of nineteenth-century high bourgeois culture.”⁹ The Paris Opéra was “the most ambitious manifestation of a general approach to opera-house design found all over Europe during the nineteenth century.”¹⁰ Designed by Charles Garnier (1825–1898), the Paris Opéra, also known as the Palais Garnier, was originally commissioned by Napoleon III in 1857 as part of a grand Parisian reconstruction project. Although the construction started in 1861, it was not completed until 1875 because of the Franco-Prussian War and other delays. When the construction resumed in 1871, the Third Republic initially “expressed its hatred of the imperial monument” but eventually endorsed it as part of the national vindication process.¹¹

France’s defeat in the Franco-Prussian War, culminating in the months-long siege of Paris and the uprising and brutal suppression of the Commune, became a turning point in French nationalism. As part of the postwar self-reflection, influential opinion-makers such as philosopher Charles Renouvier (1815–1903) attributed France’s loss to the forgetting of the ideal of civilization. His advocacy for exporting French civilization in its imperialist expansion was absorbed by the Third Republic, resulting in the vast expansion of the French empire in the name of mission civilisatrice. As such, the Paris Opéra came to be regarded as the crown jewel of the French civilization and the possibility of national rejuvenation. This idea of using cultural production to bounce back from national humiliations was particularly appealing to Chinese and Japanese diplomats visiting Paris in the aftermath of the Franco-Prussian War as their very missions resulted from respective military defeats and/or unequal treaties, thus prompting their wounded egos to seek potential remedy for rebuilding national spirits in the legend of the Paris Opéra.

The earliest Chinese diplomat to arrive in Paris after the war was Guo Songtao (1818–1891), China’s first permanent ambassador to the West, in charge of embassies in Britain and France. Known for his open-mindedness to the West, Guo was greatly impressed by the national support for the Paris Opéra when he was invited to watch an opera there in 1878. Tellingly, though, he somehow believed it was constructed completely after the war: “After the Franco-Prussian War and the ensuing civil disturbance, Parisian palaces were all reduced to rubbles. Shortly after the chaos, the Opéra House was built with a cost of fifty million francs. It still enjoys an annual national endowment of eight hundred thousand francs. Last year, a new and direct boulevard was opened to facilitate more traffic, which was a grand feat indeed.”¹²

One of Guo’s attachés Li Shuchang (1837–1897) correctly noted the starting year for the building construction as 1861 and described the Opéra as “commonly acknowledged as the greatest theatre in the world with its grandeur and majesty second to none. Anyone who visits Paris will be asked if they have seen the Opéra—it is proudly displayed to visitors.”¹³ In the following year, Guo lost his political battle to conservatives back in the Qing court, in part due to his positive assessment of the West in his published diary. However, Guo’s replacement Zeng Jize (1839–1890) also noted that the grandeur of the Opéra “exceeded that of the royal palace. After their defeat by the Germans, the French started building the grand theatre soon after the Germans retreated. It was supported through public fundraising supplemented by state fund, all aimed at boosting morale and fighting against defeatist sentiment.”¹⁴

Here, although Li, the attaché, correctly noted the construction date of the Opéra as preceding the war, the two policy-minded ambassadors conspicuously confused the date to be after the war, thus buying into the Parisian vindication myth of construing the Opéra as a Republican project. What seemed to impress the ambassadors most was its grandeur and the rapidity of its construction made possible by state funding. If France could build such a magnificent monument, one even grander than the royal palace, shortly after such calamitous national humiliation, there certainly was hope for China, which had suffered repeated military humiliations at the hands of European powers, including France, by 1880. Theatre was legitimized here because of what it could offer in terms of uplifting the national spirit and “boosting morale and fighting against defeatist sentiment.”¹⁵

Another important piece of the French national vindication discourse that all three Chinese diplomats recorded was a grand-scale panorama titled The Siege of Paris by Henri Felix Emmanual Philippoteaux (1815–1884) that was installed in a rotunda in the Champs-Élysées near the Arc de Triomphe. The rotunda was originally built in 1839 for a panorama depicting “Napoleon’s victory over the Italians.”¹⁶ The Siege of Paris was put on display in 1872 and quickly became a great hit because of its nationalist theme, realistic depiction, and advanced panorama technology.¹⁷ As such, The Siege of Paris became part of the postwar spiritual Parisian cleansing and rejuvenation. Indeed, all three diplomats discussed both sites in close connection with each other. Zeng, after writing about the panora...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• Note on Translation and Names
• Introduction: Modernity, Interculturalism, and Hybridity
• 1.  Emergence of a National Theatrical Discourse
• 2.  Hybrid Sources: Western, Japanese, and Chinese
• 3.  Hybridization in Shanghai
• 4.  Literary Hybridity: Scripts and Scenarios
• 5.  Translative Hybridity: Acculturation and Foreignization
• 6.  Performance Hybridity: Searching for Conventions
• Epilogue
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index