------Program code: DO-080903-00746 (what's this?)
Source: CCTV.com
09-03-2008 08:36
100 years ago, a drama club founded by Chinese students in Japan, performed two plays in Tokyo: The Lady of the Camellias and Uncle Tom’s Cabin. The productions were totally different from anything performed by Chinese actors on stage before, in terms of their content and style. As such, they initiated a new artistic form that blended Western drama and Japanese new drama.
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The “Spring Willow Drama Club”, as it was called, is credited with founding modern Chinese drama in 1907. Yet western drama had already appeared in China over half a century before, brought by the western invaders.
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By 1866, the city of Shanghai was showing signs of prosperity, 23 years after first opening its ports. The Lyceum Theatre, built that year by the British in the international settlement, was the first western-style theatre in China. Soon thereafter, a British amateur dramatic society, the Abingdon Drama Club, started putting on drama performances there. Three or four times a year, they would stage productions lasting for three evenings. Run by foreigners and with all its performances in English, the Lyceum Theatre naturally attracted only emigrants, and was almost completely divorced from Chinese society.
But the ADC did have one regular Chinese spectator. He was Xu Banmei, who later became active in the early development of modern Chinese drama. In Memoir of the Early Stage of Drama, he commented: “If people had paid more attention to the Abingdon Club, modern Chinese drama might have emerged 10 years earlier.”
In the 19th Century, a new school of drama based on social criticism, championed by the likes of Ibsen and Bernard Shaw, swept the western world. By this time in Europe, drama was being hailed as the finest form of artistic expression.
Moreover, with the onset of the Industrial Revolution, the latest technological advances could be introduced onto the stage.
In 1846, theatres in Paris were the first to replace their gas lamps with arc lamps. Following the invention of the incandescent lamp in 1876, electric lighting was exclusively used for the stage. Spot lights could focus attention on the actors on stage. In addition, the introduction of three-dimensional sets enhanced the stage effects.
It was around this time that Chinese officials sent to Europe and North America began to be exposed to Western drama. Among them was Dai Hongci, Senior Finance Minister under Emperor Guangxu. In Diary on a Mission to Nine Nations, he wrote: “Western drama has several advantages: the decorative effects of the lights and stage art; the deep auditorium; and the quickly-changing scenery that reveals subtle mood changes. The amazing effects serve to draw the audience into the action on stage.” (Caption: “Western drama has several advantages: the decorative effects of the lights and stage art; the deep auditorium; and the quickly-changing scenery that reveals subtle mood changes. The amazing effects serve to draw the audience into the action on stage.”)
In 1896, Cai Erkang, who had previously accompanied the statesman Li Hongzhang on a visit to Europe and North America, presented a comparison between Western drama and Chinese opera.
Within the Qing government, there was a group of officials who belonged to the Westernization School. In 1860, Yi Xin, Zeng Guofan and Li Hongzhang initiated the Westernization Movement, which advocated “Chinese learning as the fundamental structure, and western learning for practical use”. They studied western science and technology and industry, but paid little attention to the theatre.
In 1886, an electric lamp and a boiler were installed in Yiluan Hall at Zhongnanhai. One day, Empress Dowager Cixi visited the hall. When she saw the first electric light in the palace, she was heard to exclaim about its brightness. She was so impressed that she lived in the hall for the next ten years.
During that period, electric light companies were set up in the trading ports of Guangzhou and Shanghai. Before long, electric lighting became a feature of the streets at night.
Slowly, the technology advances of the Industrial Revolution in Europe were making their way into China.
In 1894, the Sino-Japanese War broke out. The war completely destroyed one of the proudest achievements of the Westernization Movement – the Beiyang Fleet. It was a cruel lesson, one that taught some people that China should also import western thought and culture, besides the technology. Yan Fu, an enlightened thinker from the capitalist class, translated Thomas Henry Huxley’s classic, Evolution and Ethics into Chinese. This pioneering translation of a western academic work was followed by translations of drama, including the works of Shakespeare. Subsequently, the Western drama that was performed exclusively in foreign settlements and church schools, began attracting the attention of Chinese people.
At Christmas 1899, the students of Saint John’s College, Shanghai, staged a series of excerpts from the plays they were studying. They also included in the performance, Ugly Records of the Official World, a political satire they had written themselves. The story centres on a rich man who, after making himself a laughingstock at the house of a wealthy local official, buys himself an official position. However, such is his ineptitude that he is eventually dismissed. This groundbreaking play marked the beginning of western-style drama performances by Chinese people.
Chinese students from other schools were among the audience. Wang Youyou, a student at Shanghai’s Yucai Middle School, commented on the performance: “The actors were dressed in fashionable clothes. This new kind of drama requires no singing or acting skills; there is no need of years of practice or rehearsal.”
From then on, other schools in China began organizing drama performances during holidays. This form of drama, introduced to China from the West, became known as “new drama”.
6 days before Ugly Records of the Official World was performed at Saint John’s College, something strange happened in the Qing capital. December the 19th, 1899, was a cold and miserable day in Beijing. A Frenchman arrived in Yingtai Hall at Zhongnanhai, the palace of Emperor Guangxu, carrying a leather case. He was a doctor, summoned to examine the emperor. That a foreigner should treat the emperor was unheard of in thousands of years of Chinese history. The doctor’s diagnosis was that the emperor’s illness was not physical, but caused by the stress of governing the huge empire.
On August the 14th, 1900, 8 months after Emperor Guangxu had his unprecedented check-up, Beijing was invaded by the Eight Power Allied Armies. The following day, the Forbidden City was occupied. By this time Empress Dowager Cixi and Emperor Guangxu had fled the capital in the rain. The allied force ransacked the city. The great dramatist Lao She was a baby at the time. In his memoirs, he would later write:
