This monograph is the latest addition to Anglophone studies of Chinese opera's cultural history. Through the cases of Xin wutai 新舞台 (The New Stage) in Shanghai and Yisushe 易俗社 (Society to Transform Customs) in Xi'an, the author associates the modern development of Chinese opera with the changing social and political discourses in early-twentieth-century China. He demonstrates a primary interest in how, in early modern times, Chinese opera served as a medium of social and political critique in some ways not only responsive to western influences, but also comparable to the late Ming and early Qing counterpart. Accordingly, he emphasizes on the enduring significance of jiaohua 教化 (“moral edification”) to those renewed cultural and artistic practices. Unlike his colleagues who have chosen to discuss a specific genre and the respective cultural politics at a particular milieu (see Goldman Reference Goldman2012; Goldstein Reference Goldstein2007; Guy Reference Guy2005; Jiang Reference Jiang2009; Ng Reference Ng2015; Rao Reference Rao2017; Stock Reference Stock2003), the author has committed himself to a comparative study of two genres (i.e., Peking opera and qinqiang 秦腔 opera), so as to bring to light the popularity of reformed plays as once a nationwide cultural phenomenon subject to national as well as regional, provincial, and local circumstances.
Chapter 1 (“Looking Back at Opera in Late Imperial China”) introduces Chinese opera as an embodiment of the changing sociopolitical reality during the Ming and Qing dynasties. The author refers to Tanaka Issei's 田仲一成 (1932–) historical study of Chinese opera and posits that Chinese opera was a cultural means of institutionalization, through which drama and religion reciprocated with each other in ritualistic and ideological terms, thereby promoting moral edification at the service of the ruling class. He pays particular attention not only to the formation of rural and urban audiences of different regions and social strata, but also to the occasions, venues, and popular topics for theatrical performances; this is aimed for establishing his proposition that the politicization of Chinese opera in twentieth-century China was consequential to both the secularization of Chinese opera and the declining importance of religion in the nineteenth century and onward. He also mentions the emergence of shishi ju 時事劇 (“opera on current events”) in the transitional period between the Ming and Qing dynasties and its revival in the final decades of the Qing dynasty; he points out how some members of the Han literati – be they scholar-bureaucrats or not – deployed Chinese opera to generate public opinions on social and political issues such as bribery and overtaxation.
Chapter 2 (“Changing Discourses on China's Popular Drama”) discusses the new and progressive discourses on the development of Chinese opera during the early twentieth century. It begins with a close reading of Chen Duxiu's 陳獨秀 (1879–1942) essay Lun xiqu 論戲曲 (“On Opera”) and continues with the author's contention that Chen was a pioneer who called for a modern reform of Chinese opera by endorsing the adoption of Western dramaturgy and technology while adhering to the tradition of scholar-bureaucrat attacks on popular plays. The author points out the political significance of Chen's championship of new historical plays (lishi ju 歷史劇), before highlighting Chen's influence on the debates surrounding Chinese opera among May Fourth and Chinese communist intellectuals. His inclusion of Yu Shangyuan 余上沅 (1897–1970), Xiong Foxi 熊佛西 (1900–1965), and Zhao Taimou 趙太侔 (1889–1968) in his discussion is intriguing, knowing that the connection between these American-trained dramatists and the modern development of Chinese opera is remote if compare with the case of Qi Rushan 齊如山 (1877–1962), for instance; political progressiveness seems to be foregrounded in his discussion at the expense of artistic progressiveness.
Chapter 3 (“The Reformation of Beijing Opera in Shanghai”) contextualizes the modern development of Chinese opera through a contrast of cultural settings in Shanghai before and after the establishment of Xin wutai in 1908. The author examines three aspects of reform that took place between the 1860s and the 1920s: stage and theater design, the content and performance elements of plays, and the social status of actors. His comparison between teahouses and Xin wutai addresses to various matters such as commercialization, demographic transformation, political intervention, foreign influences, technological advance, and public safety; it alludes to China's subjection to modernity, be it colonial, translated, or otherwise. One may find his explication of the connection between the Xia brothers – who masterminded the birth of Xin wutai – and Ichikawa Sadanji 市川左團次 (1880–1940) more than informative, as it tells of a lesser known but important story about how Xin wutai had drastically mediated the reception, cultural consumption, political appropriation, and artistic creativity of Chinese opera for years to come.
Chapter 4 (“Reformed Opera on the Shanghai Stage”) focuses on the social and political underpinnings of those reformed plays written or arranged for Peking opera productions in early-twentieth-century Shanghai. The author illustrates how Peking opera served the function of mass media with allegorical or sensational narratives of political figures, power struggles, or current events. He also reveals the accessibility and popularity of Peking opera in Shanghai as relevant to both promotion through newspaper advertisements and consumption of printed versions such as song-texts (changben 唱本), short stories, and novels. He touches upon the issues of cultural translation, social awareness, and technical improvement in his account of the Peking opera adaptation of La dame aux camélias and Feng Zihe's 馮子和 (1888–1941) stage experimentation of Peking opera with the use of English language and Western tunes and music instruments. As in the previous chapter, the author explains how Peking opera could align itself with progressive social and political values, although one may still wonder whether there were factors other than commercial interest and the rise of social status that motivated the Xia brothers and their colleagues to make such a tremendous effort to bring Peking opera to such a direction.
Chapter 5 (“Reformed Opera in Xi'an”) is concerned with the history of Yisushe in Xi'an that distinguishes qinqiang opera from those urbanized genres (such as Peking opera, Cantonese opera, and Shaoxing opera) in coastal metropolises (such as Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Hong Kong) since the late nineteenth century. The author's insight into how Sun Renyu 孫仁玉 (1872–1934) transformed from a Confucian scholar into a reform-minded playwright and educator of qinqiang opera is a profound reminder of the pitfall of essentializing or overemphasizing the role of radical politics and technological advancement in modern Chinese cultural or artistic reform. The author's delineation of the connections between Yisushe and warlords, Kuomintang, and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) also complicates the conventional wisdom of propaganda as discursively entrenched and patronage as a vestige of the imperial court and the Han literati.
Chapter 6 (“Politicization and Radicalization”) is an overview of the nationwide influence of Xin wutai and Yisushe to both the development of regional opera genres between the 1900s and the 1930s, and the appropriation of Chinese opera by the CCP for propaganda in different stages before the Cultural Revolution (i.e., the Yan'an period and the postwar periods before and after the establishment of the People's Republic of China). The concluding “Finale” continues with an inquiry into how, as yangbanxi 樣板戲 (“model opera”) lost the appeal of Chinese opera being a cultural form for leisure or entertainment, the Cultural Revolution marked the climax and demise of jiaohua and revolutionary esthetics in the modern development of Chinese opera.
Overall, this monograph is commendable to scholars, students, and general readers who would like to know about or understand better how Chinese opera retained its social and political roles in twentieth-century China. Some may benefit from how, to some extent, this monograph extends the exploration on how Chinese opera fared in the emergence of visual and musical modernity (see Cheung Reference Cheung2008; Pang Reference Pang2007). For those who have a background in Chinese music, they might take issue with a handful of music-related statements (e.g., the commonalities between kunqu opera, Peking opera, and yangbanxi, see pp. 6–7) and the English translation of some musical terms (e.g., shengqiang 聲腔, luantan 亂彈, erhuang 二黃, etc., see pp. 12–14); it is somewhat surprising that this monograph neither references in its main body nor includes in its bibliography any items on Chinese opera written by Anglophone (Chinese and non-Chinese) scholars of Chinese music. Notwithstanding, the author's coverage of qinqiang opera as well as institutions such as Xin wutai and Yisushe and reformers such as Feng Zihe and Sun Renyu manifests the great potential for expanding and enriching Anglophone studies of Chinese opera's cultural history.
