Inside Chinese Theater

Community and Artistry in Nineteenth-Century California and Beyond

Nancy Yunhwa Rao

• Publisher: University of Illinois Press
• Year: 2025
• Print ISBN: 9780252088636, 9780252046537
• eBook ISBN: 9780252047831
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: North American History

In the mid-nineteenth century, Chinese opera theater arrived as one of the significant performing art forms in California. Nancy Yunhwa Rao excavates and contextualizes the important history of Chinese Opera Theater, bringing to light the ways it became woven into the financial, political, social, and family life in California and beyond.

Chinese opera theater found brick-and-mortar homes with San Francisco theaters like the Hing Chuen Yuen and the Donn Qui Yuen. But troupes had already followed Chinese immigrants to mining and railroad towns, and across the American West. As Chinese theater became part of California and San Francisco culture, popular Chinese actors advocated for their art alongside appeals for civil rights. Rao draws on personal diaries, newspapers and artifacts to place Chinese theater within the everyday lives of San Francisco. She also examines the costumes, singing, staging, and storytelling that impacted mainstream reception and influenced how Chinese communities saw themselves.

Illustrated with seventy photographs, Inside Chinese Theater is an expert and eloquent journey into the early decades of Chinese opera in America.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Note on Chinese Names and Terms
• Prologue
• Introduction
• 1 First Encounters
• 2 Bringing Opera to the Mines and Railroad Chinese
• 3 Performing Chinese Opera in San Francisco
• 4 Cultural Capital: Theaters on Jackson Street
• 5 Prosperity: A New Theater on Washington Street
• 6 Education, Diplomacy Culture, and the Fourth Theater
• 7 Contesting Chinese Exclusion Laws: In re Ho King
• 8 Star Power and the Chinese American Theater
• 9 Picturesque Chinese Theater
• 10 Civil Rights, Owning Glamour, and Sonic Ethnology
• Epilogue
• Appendix A. Chronology of Chinese Theaters in San Francisco
• Appendix B. Stylistic Characteristics of Cantonese Opera and a Transcription of Golden-leaved Chrysanthemum
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• Glossary
• Bibliography
• Index