Source: CCTV.com

09-07-2008 17:41

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In the spring of 1914, Minguo Road, built on top of the ruins of city walls to the south of the Huangpu River in Shanghai, was becoming increasingly full of life. One day in April, something new appeared outside the abandoned Moudeli Theatre. It was a signboard for a new theatre company, the Spring Willow Theatre. Two names appeared prominently on the signboard; Ouyang Yuqian and Lu Jingruo, both of them members of the Spring Willow Society. They were presenting the Chinese premiere of A Doll’s House.

That month, Lu Jingruo and a dozen other members of the New Drama Fellowship had moved into a cheap house in Yuanchang Li. To protect his voice and save money, Ouyang Yuqian, who was an alcoholic, gave up drinking. He, like the other members of the fellowship, was delighted just to have a place where they could perform.

For the first performance of A Doll’s House, the Spring Willow Theatre was packed. Despite knowing little or nothing about the Norwegian playwright and author, Henrik Ibsen, audiences flocked to see the play, persuaded by the society’s reputation.

A Doll’s House was Ibsen’s second problem play. It was premiered in the Royal Theatre in Copenhagen in 1879. The heroine, Nora, experiences a family misfortune that convinces her that her husband is unworthy and that she herself is held in low esteem in the family. Having solemnly stated her right to be an individual, she leaves the family. Her dramatic departure made Nora a classic figure in Western theatre.

However, Chinese people in 1914 were not receptive to such an explosive plot. The idea of a woman leaving her family put a lot of people off. Just a month before A Doll’s House was staged at the Spring Willow Theatre, Yuan Shih-k’ai, having just dissolved parliament, enacted the Citation Act, which was designed to defend social morals. The act prescribed that: (Caption: original text) Women who do not remarry over 6 years after their younger-than-50-year-old husband’s death and who are willing to die together with their husband should be cited.

Attendances for A Doll’s House were so poor that the Spring Willow Theatre eventually had to cancel it. Less than a year later, the theatre announced it was bankrupt, and admitted that its productions were too highbrow to appeal to popular tastes. Another blow was the death from illness at the age of just 30, of Lu Jingruo, an organizer of the New Drama Fellowship. Meanwhile, Ouyang Yuqian left to take up Peking Opera, in which he became famous for playing female roles. He, in south China, and Mei Lanfang, in the north, were celebrated as the finest Peking Opera performers of their day.

In March 1915, visitors to the Panama Pacific International Exposition were captivated by one of the exhibits; a pair of delicate three-inch golden lotuses presented by the Beiyang government. However, in Japan, Sun Yat-sen, who was preparing for his marriage, was upset by the news. 13 years before, Empress Dowager Cixi, having overcome the nightmare of the Eight Power Allied Force’s invasion, announced that women of the Han Nationality were banned from binding their feet. After the Republic of China was founded, Sun Yat-sen, as interim president, called for the prohibition of smoking, braid cutting and foot binding as a way of correcting social morals. Around the same time, a play called No More Foot Binding was being shown all over China. The play, as an advocate of women’s liberation, was a new style of drama, called civilized drama, which had just been introduced to China from the West.

Since the end of the Qing Dynasty, Chinese women, having been released from the obligation to bind their feet, became fascinated with western garments. Empress Dowager Cixi was the first Chinese woman to wear a bra. Some newspapers took a rather satirical tone: One article read: “Chinese women are fond of western garments. But with their breasts drooping after years of binding, they use balls, bowls or even small pots to support them and make them look bigger.”

At the same time as western fashions were catching on, traditional clothes were being improved. During that period, a new term also appeared on the stage: “new fashion drama”.

The June the 15th, 1918, edition of New Youth, the most popular youth magazine at the time, was an “Ibsen Special”. It contained a complete translation of A Doll’s House. Professor Hu Shi from Peking University, who had just returned from overseas, wrote an article for the magazine, under the headline, Ibsenism. In it he advocated the spirit of pursuing self-liberation, as reflected in Ibsen’s drama.

A Doll’s House quickly became a vehicle for promoting “women’s liberation”, and was soon being performed on stage again. However, that same year, the head of Songjiang County in JIangsu reported the Chen Wanzhen incident to the provincial governor. He called for Chen, a 17-year-old from Shanghai, to be granted official recognition, having committed suicide 3 hours after her fiancé’s death. Hu Shi, when he heard the news, published an article in the July the 14th issue of New Youth, under the headline: The Problem of Chastity. In the article, he rejected the Citation Act issued by the Beiyang government. He said: “Persuading women to be chaste is like pre-meditated murder”. Soon afterwards, a wave of protests against arranged marriages swept China. The number of girl students who left their families in order to escape arranged marriages increased sharply. Many newspapers even praised their actions, calling the women “Chinese Noras”.

Soon afterwards, Hu Shi wrote The Greatest Event in Life, which was based on A Doll’s House. It’s the story of Miss Tian who, unhappy with her parents’ interference in her marriage, runs away from home. She leaves behind a note, which reads: “Marriage is a decision for life that people should decide for themselves.” However, Hu Shi’s own marriage had not been based on free will. In 1917, he had married Jiang Dongxiu, the girl he had been betrothed to when they were both children. However, on his wedding day, he had been attracted by a girl standing beside his bride. The girl was Cao Peisheng. In 1923, Hu Shi asked Jiang Dongxiu for a divorce. She, however, responded by threatening to kill their son, and Hu Shi never dared mention the matter again. So, he himself was never true to what he wrote in his play: Marriage is a decision for life that people should decide for themselves.

The Greatest Event in Life was first performed in the autumn of 1923. It was directed by Hong Shen, a playwright who had just returned from studying in the U.S. In September, 1923, Ouyang Yuqian invited Hong Shen to join the Shanghai Drama Society. By that time, Ouyang had resumed his drama career. For The Greatest Event in Life, Hong Shen broke the taboo on using women actors.

In order to change the long-established tradition, Hong Shen came up with an idea. He later recalled his thinking in Has My Drum-Playing Period Gone:

I was sick of males playing female roles… So I worked out a clever stratagem; presenting Shrew and The Greatest Event in Life on the same day; the former featured both actors and actresses, and the latter only actors. Sure enough, after the audience saw the former, they found the latter false and awkward, and laughed. Their laughter put an end to men playing female roles.

On March the 8th, 1924, He Xiangning organized women from Guangzhou to celebrate International Women’s Day for the first time in China. This effectively launched the Women’s Liberation Movement.

On December the 17th, 1927, Ouyang Yuqian presented his six-act adaptation of Pan Jinlian at the Shanghai Academy of Arts. The project was a collaboration with his old friend Zhou Xinfang, a famous Peking opera actor who also went by the name, Kylin Boy.

The drama is the story of Pan Jinlian, a servant girl in the Zhang Family, whose punishment for protesting against her master’s despotism, is to be forced to marry the stupid and ugly Wu Dalang. She is secretly in love with the handsome tiger-fighting hero Wusong, and bravely she confesses her feelings to him.