------Program code: DO-080908-00894 (what's this?)
Source: CCTV.com
09-08-2008 08:47
It was January the 14th, 1925. In Changsha County, Hunan Province, a light rain started at dawn. 27-year-old playwright Tian Han, describing the weather in his diary, wrote: “A mild breeze and fine rain”. He added: “Heaven is showing many ill omens, but I don’t believe in fate.”
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4 years before, Tian Han had married his cousin Yi Shuyu in Tokyo. Soon after the couple returned to China, Yi gave birth to their first child, who was given a nickname, “Hainan”.
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Back in China, Tian Han became an editor with the Zhonghua Publishing House, earning a monthly salary of 100 silver dollars. In 1923, he and his wife Yi Shuyu founded the Southern China literary magazine, a bi-weekly that was sold through Shanghai’s Taidong Book Company. In the first issue, Tian Han published Nostalgia.
In late August of the same year, Yi Shuyu fell ill. She asked Tian to take her back home, but it took him 3 months to arrange for her to travel to her grandparents’ house in Huaguoyuan Village, Changsha. Over the next two months, her condition worsened, and on January the 14th, 1925, Tian Han was informed that his wife was critically ill.
Several months after Yi Shuyu’s death, Tian Han returned to Shanghai with his brother, Tian Hong. On May the 14th, 1925, a conflict broke out between the Japanese investors and the workers at the Shanghai Seventh Joint Venture Cotton Company. Workers’ representative Gu Zhenghong was shot dead. The event touched off the May the Fourth Movement. To commemorate the event, six years later Tian Han wrote The Death of Gu Zhenghong.
In the early 1920s, the number of workers in Shanghai had reached 520,000. 36% of them worked in industry, 23% in transport and communications and 41% in handicrafts. Under the influence of the communists, the labour movement developed rapidly in the city.
In February 1923, the Beiyang government acted to suppress the Jinghan railway workers’ strike. Meanwhile, Sun Yat-sen, in his efforts to defeat the warlords and unite the country, turned abroad for help. The newly-established Soviet Union responded, and on January the 26th, Sun Yat-sen and Soviet envoy Joffe released a Joint Declaration in Shanghai. Soon afterwards, the Kuomingtang and Communist Party of China entered into cooperation. A number of communists joined the Kuomingtang, and worker, revolution and proletariat became catchwords in newspapers and magazines.
The leftist trend spread widely in society during the 1920s and 1930s. Lower class people were encouraged to protest about the gap between rich and poor and advocate freedom and revolution. The theatre seemed like a good vehicle for the workers to express their views, an idea that was supported by head of domestic literature at the Zhonghua Publishing House, Li Jinhui.
In 1927, Tian Han, who had been back in Shanghai for 2 years, founded the Southern China Film Society, together with Tang Huaiqiu. Tian Han’s house, at No.409, Minhoubei Li, Hatong Road, became the venue for the society’s activities. It was around this time that a girl named Huang Dalin appeared on the scene. Tian Han’s wife, Yi Shuyu, before she died, had told him: “I have a classmate named Huang Dalin. You should marry her after I die. She will take good care of our children.” Tian Han began courting Huang Dalin. However, in a letter to his Japanese friend Muramatsu Shofu, he wrote: “I have a new girlfriend now, but she just cannot replace my wife. I feel that a man can only have one spring all his life.”
In 1927, Shanghai’s Gonghe Theatre screened the Chinese premiere of The Battleship Potemkin, a famous film by Soviet director Sergei Eisenstein. The screening was sponsored by the Southern China Film Society. Tian Han later recalled: “After we watched the film that night, we all believed that Russia benefited not only politically and economically from the revolution, but also in the realm of film. We were very excited.”
(Tian Han, “Film” magazine, 1st issue)
2 years after Yi Shuyu’s death, Tian Han officially married Huang Dalin. Their wedding in Shanghai was a simple affair, because of the second workers’ armed revolt that was taking place at the time. The revolt failed 3 days after their wedding. A month later, Shanghai workers launched their third armed revolt. However, it was soon suppressed. Before long, the Kuomingtang had reorganized, and many communist party members were killed.
During that period, many works about the lives of workers were being staged. Zheng Boqi, an editor at Shanghai’s Liangyou Book Company, wrote in The Drama Movement in China published in the 1st issue of the magazine, Art: “Just like other forms of art, drama can never develop unless it adopts the stance of the progressive class… Otherwise, it is bound to become reactionary some day.”
Tian Han, Ouyang Yuqian and Xu Beihong eventually established the Southern China Academy of Art. Their recruitment advertisement read: “We don’t mind your educational background. We only care about your talent.” The academy’s aim was to cultivate talented artists among proletarian youngsters.
The Southern China Society made clear its objective in its general regulations: to unite all young people concerned about society to promote revolution in art. His involvement with the Society made Tian Han a public figure.
In May 1930, the 47th issue of The Companion Pictorial published caricatures of 10 famous people. Among them was dramatist Tian Han.
That year, All Quiet on the Western Front won the Academy Award for Best Picture. In April, a stage adaptation of the film was performed in the Shanghai Performance Hall, which had been set up by the Japanese. Xia Yan was in charge of lighting. As a trained mechanic, he experimented with producing the effect of shade by slowly introducing an iron sheet into salt water. The American journalist Agnes Smedley was so impressed by the stage effects and realistic gunfire that she filmed the play from the auditorium, using magnesium light.
The film and play were adapted from the novel of the same title by German writer Erich Remarque. It was one of the first left-wing plays ever staged in China.
Just one month before the premiere of All Quiet on the Western Front, the League of Chinese Left-wing Writers and Drama Movement Union were established in Shanghai. The Shanghai Drama Movement Union brought together the Shanghai Art and Drama Society, Art Society, Southern China Society and Xinyou Drama Society. It was later reorganized into the League of Chinese Left-wing Troupes. The league guidelines read: “Join the urban proletariat and take the lead in producing proletarian drama in the form of joint performances with fellow workers.”
(Caption: Join the urban proletariat and take the lead in producing proletarian drama in the form of joint performances with fellow workers.)
In 1930, the 56th issue of The Companion Pictorial published stills from Roar, China!, a left-wing play staged on Broadway. Meanwhile, Ouyang Yuqian, to commemorate the Shaji Massacre of 1925, directed and acted in the same play. However, it was immediately banned. Around this time, the Southern China Society made frequent appearances in Shanghai, Nanjing and Hangzhou, performing dramas such as The Sound of the Old Pool, Evening Talk in Suzhou, Tragedy on the Lake, Back to the South and Shivering.
During one performance in Nanjing, Tian Han received a note. It was from a member of the audience, who signed it, “Second-class Batman”.
