However, Wu Song, concerned about observing the social proprieties, rejects her. So Pan turns her affections to Xi Menqing, who resembles Song. She poisons her husband Wu Dalang, and when Wu Song comes to her seeking to avenge him, she tears open her clothes and says calmly:

“My heart is passionate, hot and loyal. Take it away. I will always love you, even if you kill me.”

Pan Jinlian could have become known for her loose morals. But Ouyang Yuqian made her a figure that bravely pursued the freedom of love and protested against feudal power. After watching the drama, the famous painter Xu Beihong wrote in a letter to Ouyang, (Caption: original text) “You’ve looked through the original novel and revealed the beautiful woman’s true emotions; It’s fair and reasonable. A true masterpiece!”

A year after Pan Jinlian premiered, Bai Wei, a female playwright who had returned after studying in Japan, produced the multi-act drama, Fighting out of the Ghost Tower. Bai Wei had fled to Japan in 1917 to escape an arranged marriage. Following her return to China in 1925, she wrote a number of dramas and literary works. Soon afterwards, Yuan Changying, another female playwright, who had returned from France, published a three-act drama, The Peacock Flies Southeast. This, like her other plays, appealed to audiences because of the subtlety of emotional expression in revealing the reality of arranged marriages from a woman’s point of view.

In April 1931, A Doll’s House, the most frequently-performed play in China since 1918, was presented at Tsinghua University. This time, Nora was played by a Tianjin native named Wan Jiabao, a student of Western Literature. 2 years later, at the age of 23, Wan, under his pen name Cao Yu, wrote Thunderstorm. The play established his reputation. After the performance of A Doll’s House, Cao Yu met Zheng Xiu, who would become his first wife.

During the summer holidays the following year, Cao Yu traveled to Wutai Mountain, where he witnessed the miserable life of low-class prostitutes. “In Taiyuan, I saw prostitutes who were confined to a house. They only revealed their faces to attract clients… It was the worst brothel in Taiyuan. The prostitutes had to serve clients all day long. They could die within just a few months.”

His experience in Taiyuan inspired Cao Yu to write a drama about the life of prostitutes.

Since the introduction of International Women’s Day in China in 1924, the campaign to abolish legal prostitution had been gaining momentum. However, the number of prostitutes had actually increased. 6 years before, the British sociologist S.D. Gamble had conducted a survey in 8 large cities worldwide, to determine the number of legal prostitutes as a proportion of the population. Shanghai took first place, with 1 prostitute for every 137 people. Beijing was second. China as a whole had more prostitutes than any other country in the world at the time.

One night in the winter of 1935, two young men came to a third-class brothel in Fugui Hutong, Tianjin. A prostitute named Cuixi welcomed them. The two men started talking to Cuixi. One of them had a special interest in her life. That man was Cao Yu. He had planned the visit in order to gather materials for a play called Sunrise.

Sunrise deals with the different types of misery experienced by 3 prostitutes. The theme running throughout the play is the romantic life of social butterfly Chen Bailu. Cuixi, from a low-class brothel, appears in the third act.

At the time, dramas that featured prostitutes attracted considerable attention. On December the 19th, 1936, 45 days before the premiere of Sunrise, a huge billboard was erected at the entrance of Jincheng Grand Theatre, on the corner of Beijing Road and Guizhou Road in Shanghai. The billboard read: “Hatred from 37 years before; the life story of prostitute Sai Jinhua.”

Sai Jinhua had been a famous prostitute in the latter years of the Qing Dynasty. She was able to speak some German, which brought her into contact with Alfred Graf Von Waldersee, commander-in-chief of the Eight Power Allied Force during the invasion of Beijing. The Qing authorities tried to use Sai Jinhua to negotiate with Waldersee. But she was a kind and simple girl, and she used her influence to save the lives of some Beijing people and preserve some cultural relics before the invaders arrived.

In 1935, a man from Hangzhou named Xia Yan wrote his first multi-act drama. It was the true story of Sai Jinhua. The drama mocked the appeasement policy of the government of the Republic of China. The Shanghai Amateur Dramatists Association decided to perform the play. Wang Ying, an outstanding young actress, would play Sai Jinhua, while Jin Shan would play the role of Qing official Li Hongzhang. However, Lan Ping, a recently-married member of the association, also wanted to play the heroine.

To quell the unrest, Xia Yan proposed that two alternative casts rehearse the play. He suggested that Lan Ping should appear alongside Zhao Dan. But when the final cast list was announced and Lan Ping discovered she was not on it, she stormed out in a fury.

By this time, Wang Ying and Jin Shan had fallen in love with each other. They decided to start their own troupe to perform Sai Jinhua. On December the 19th, 1936, the 1940s Troupe formed by the lovers premiered the drama at Jincheng Grand Theatre. Wang Ying played the heroine. All 1780 seats in the theatre were taken. The show caused a sensation in Shanghai. Box office receipts for every show exceeded 1,500 yuan.

14 days before 21-year-old Wang Ying gave her debut performance as Sai Jinhua, the real Sai died from illness in Peking at the age of 62.

Four decades later, on March the 3rd, 1974, Wang Ying died in jail, having been imprisoned on charges of being an American spy. By that time, her great rival Lan Ping was better known as Jiang Qing.

In 1935, Lan Ping made her own mark on the Bund, when she played the role of Nora in A Doll’s House. She would later write, in Myself and Nora: “Nora has become my idol. I adore her.”

In China, 1935 became known as “The Year of Nora”. A group of theatre and film actresses became popular, as members of Shanghai’s “Mingxing” “Lianhua” and “Tianyi” Film Companies.

Meanwhile, other women were also making their presence felt in other professional fields.

As their status rose, women became more interested in individuality and fashion.

While women in the cities were enjoying the fruits of Women’s Liberation, their counterparts in the countryside were seeing little change in their lives. Poverty continued to condemn them to a life of servitude. As for drama, it still progressed, hand-in-hand with the liberation movement.

Editor:Liu Fang