Travelling with Chinese Theatre-Troupes: A "Performative Turn" in Sino-Southeast Asian Interactions
Beiyu Zhang
Abstract:
Since the early twentieth century, countless Chinese theatre-troupes left hometowns in China, conducted itinerant tours to major Southeast Asian port-cities that included Singapore, Penang, Bangkok, and Java. By making use of the transnational networks of these port-cities, theatre-troupes reached out for the Chinese diaspora in Southeast Asia, circulated distinct cultural discourses, heralded changes from China, and prompted overseas Chinese to make contributions to their mother country. The Chaozhou dialect theatre-troupes, the Shanghai Moon Opera Company, and the National Salvation Troupe were set in different temporality and spatiality whereby connections with the Chinese diaspora were rekindled contingently. Zooming into the journeys and tours of these three kinds of theatre-troupes that travelled to Southeast Asia successively from the 1900s to the 1930s, this article aims to unpack their motivations and purposes, agents and mediators, as well as their diverse local encounters. Highlighting a “performative turn,” this article articulates a new way to understand changing patterns of homeland-diaspora interactions.
Beiyu Zhang obtained her PhD degree in the History Department in National University of Singapore. She worked as a Post-doctoral Fellow funded by the Macau Talent Program in the University of Macau since December 2018. Now she is affiliated with Jinan University, Guangzhou. Her research interests include cultural history of Chinese diaspora, Sino-Southeast Asian interactions, global history, and ethnomusicology in Asia. She is currently working on the monograph project titled Chinese Theatre Troupes in Southeast Asia: Touring Diaspora, 1900s–1970s.
Introduction
As early as the 1990s, scholars of world history had already identified a “process of unsettlement,” beginning from the middle of
the nineteenth century, which witnessed an accelerated volume of “mobilization of people, things, ideas, and images and their diffusion in space and time” (Geyer and Bright 1995: 1053). Technological innovations such as the use of steamships and the spread of newspapers greatly speeded up the globalization process. Parallel to this process, there was the circulation of theatre on a global scale; theatrical managers, entrepreneurs, and agents established networks for the dissemination of theatre-troupes globally. However, as theatre historian Christopher B. Balme (2015) poignantly points out, “in comparison to literature and the fine arts, there have been few attempts to theorize and conceptualize a notion such as global, world, or transnational theatre history” (p. 19).1 Further still, anthropologist Appadurai Arjun (1996) had used his famous “scapes” to refer to flows of ideas, media, finance, and people across national boundaries yet without incorporating global circulation of theatre. It is not until recently that theatre historians have reoriented the field of theatre towards globalization, networks, and mobility. Terms such as “theatrescape” have emerged to designate “relational dynamics of a worldwide distribution of theatre as well as the global or transnational cultural mobility of theatrical performers, artists, and managers since the mid nineteenth century” (Leonhardt 2015: 140–155). Such paradigmatic shift provoked engaging scholarship in the study of European theatre companies and their transnational tours that flourished along with the global expansion of colonialism and imperialism (Balme 2015, 2019; Hansen 2018). Scholars also recognize that Asian actors were on the move as well; for instance, Chinese Cantonese theatre ventured to California together with the immigrants flooding into the United States for the Gold Rush (Lei 2006; Ng 2015; Tan and Rao 2016). In writing about the transmission of Hokkien dialect theatre in the Chinese diaspora, both Caroline Chia (2019) and Josh Stenberg (2015, 2016, 2019) trace the influences from multiple sites of production: the Chinese native-place roots (Hokkien), local diasporic practice (Indonesia, Singapore, and Taiwan), and regional circulation (Southeast Asia). These transnational tours not only attested to the influence of global imperialism but also brought about a wave of theatrical movement between mother country and diasporic societies.
The major contribution of this article is that it goes beyond analysis on particular theatrical genres (e.g., Chinese opera/xiqu [traditional theatre]) and situates the theatre inquiry within broader tradition of cultural history. Importantly, Balme and Davis (2015) have identified two significant “turns” that necessitate such theoretical and historiographical reframing of theatre studies. First, the field of New Cultural History progressed with a “performative turn,” with which
rituals, festivals, and political ceremonies are increasingly “read between the lines.”2 On the other hand, there was a “socio-cultural turn” in theatre studies, initially purported by sociologists (e.g., Erving Goffman and E.P. Thompson) to reorient performance as a social entity, reflective of wider social relations, and conditions. This turn was further developed by historical anthropologist (Marshall Sahlins) to privilege the “performative encounters” as a way to balance the analysis of theatrical circulation/exchange/contact and “close reading” of theatrical performances. Notably in this article, the concept of “performative encounters” is well epitomized by the Chinese theatre-troupes threaded through three case studies. Borne in distinct chronotope, theatre-troupes had diverse performative encounters with the disparate and contingent Chinese diaspora, varying from a communally identified Teochew diaspora in Bangkok, to a highly hybrid and cosmopolitan Straits Chinese in Singapore and to a war-evoked patriotic overseas Chinese in Malaya. Their travelling and tours allow me to map different transnational and translocal networks and connections as part of the theatrical circulation on one hand. And on the other hand, the divergent local receptions and responses urge me to weave a cultural analysis in light of theatrical strategies, innovations, and adaptations that were made in the performances.
To recap briefly, by “theatre,” I attempt a theatrical analysis on various forms of performing arts, ranging from the xiqu form of Chaozhou dialect theatre, to electric vaudeville shows of Shanghai, and to patriotic salvation street theatre from wartime Wuhan. By “troupe,” I highlight the all-encompassing activities of a theatre company: itinerary, networks, and agents. As “theatre literarily constitutes and pervades culture” (Balme and Davis 2015: 413), I treat theatre-troupes as cultural institutions in this article, traversing the onstage arena to vast networks of knowledge, production, and circulation that frame its very presence in a culture.
In this article, I focus on the under-represented yet almost ubiquitous phenomenon of Chinese theatre-troupes and their performing tours in the Chinese diaspora in Thailand, Singapore, and Malaya from the 1900s to the 1930s. I start with the Chaozhou theatre-troupes and their tours in the Teochew diaspora of Bangkok. These communal theatrical performances continually to perpetuate a romanticized native homeland through distinct regional music, tunes, and repertoires.3 Second, the Bright Moon Opera Company illustrated a unique cosmopolitanism influenced by cultural and political movements in Republican Shanghai. Infusing traditional Chinese folk culture with western theatricality, the Bright Moon’s performances in Singapore resonated so well with the hybrid identity of the Straits
Chinese that their performative encounters displayed a dialogue of “discrepant cosmopolitanisms,”4 practiced by the nonelite, non-Western modes of travel and travelers (Clifford 1997: 31–40). This performative encounter represented alternative modes of travels and boundary crossings as opposed to the West-and-the-Rest or metropole-colony archetype. The last case presented here is about the theatre- troupes from the war cultural center Wuhan that began to tour Nanyang (Southeast Asia) in 1938 in the name of the National Salvation Movement. The warfare to resist the Japanese occupation marked another significant temporality whereby the Chinese diaspora in British Malaya was asked to act out the high-pitched nationalism and patriotism through monetary donations. Above all, these diasporic tours would shed light on how transnational mobility was embodied, practiced, and circumscribed in the course of troupes’ travelling, sojourning, and interacting with the Chinese diaspora in Southeast Asia—a region that was often referred to by the Chinese as Nanyang.5
In recent debate about the Chinese diaspora, scholars tend to reject the notion of Chineseness, or the Chinese identity, which they believe would impose a Sinocentric view upon the hybridized/localized overseas communities (Chow 1998; Shih 2010; Ang 2011). Shih (2011) goes further to point out that there is an “expiration date” of diaspora (p. 714). However, addressing the Chinese ties through performances, I argue that these travelling theatre-troupes do not necessarily entail a Sinocentric point of view. The process is always fluid and open to interpretations as theatre practitioners and diasporic audiences found ways to alter the meanings in circulation. Hybridizations, localizations, and Chinese cultural roots do not have to be antithesis; they coexist to keep shaping the Chinese identity in diaspora. People on the ground formulated new experiences about being national, diasporic, and transnational.
Native-Place Networks, Affinity, and Diasporic Practices
Chaozhou theatre, also known as Chaoju and sometimes rendered as Teochew opera in diasporic contexts, was one the oldest Chinese xiqu dated in the Ming dynasty. It belonged to the big nanxi (Southern opera) family that integrated yiyang qiang (Yiyang-style opera), bangzi (bangzi opera), Kunqu (Kun opera), pihuang (Beijing opera) with Chaozhou vernacular folk arts—Teochew dialect, music, and gece (15th-century song medleys)—and became a regional theatre with identifiable aria and music tunes. Specifically, the Teochew dialect, sung and conversed in Chaozhou theatre performances, is a key factor that underlies the persistence of the communal identity. Chaozhou theatre performances keep playing an important role to entertain the
communal gods and deities in the ritual celebrations of both domestic and diasporic Teochew communities.
I start with a common narrative that has been told for over two decades: Chaozhou theatre-troupes followed the Teochew emigration to Bangkok, thrived locally, and formed new theatrical practices in Southeast Asia (Lai 1993; Zhou 2007; Zhang 2011). Among the crisscrossed theatrical networks that had been developed, Bangkok was not only an important nodal point but also a transshipping center in the regional circulation of Chaozhou theatre (Lai 2001: 283). How and why did Bangkok obtain such status require attention in the first place. One of the most evident factors was that as early as 1830, a Teochew-dominated demographic pattern had come into being in the urban center of Bangkok (Skinner 1957: 83). Parallel to the migration flow, Chaozhou dialect theatre began to travel to Thailand, performing at the Chinese temples for their communal deities. They could conveniently board on the vessels that departed firstly from inland port of Chaozhou (after 1861, it was replaced by Shantou), sailed all the way across the South China Sea, and arrived in Bangkok after twenty days on the sea (Chen 1999: 13). For most of the Chaozhou theatre-troupes, it became a routine practice to conduct a “Nanyang tour” once a year and to expect a six-month sojourning in the diaspora. It was a practice developed from the knowledge of and the experience with the region of Southeast Asia, in particular, the mastery of monsoon trade winds. Before the arrival of steamships, long-distance travel from the South China Sea to Southeast Asia was constrained by means of transportation. Knowing how to make use of the trade winds was essential to conduct diasporic travelling.6 Every year, troupes would ride the northeast monsoon and set out for Nanyang from November to January. They conducted performing tours in diaspora for six months while expecting the southwest monsoon to return to the homeland from July to September (Chen 1999: 13). The seasonal feature had raised the instability of their itinerant tours. It was very likely that Chaozhou theatre-troupes often missed out the scheduled ships departing from Bangkok; or in other cases, they might get new contracts from a theatre in Singapore, leading to a longer time of sojourning in Nanyang (Wen 1984: 270). Such a travelling pattern as limited by the technological and environmental conditions of Southeast Asia might have contributed to the emerging identity of the diasporic theatre-troupes: one that was highly mobile and lay in- between the native hometowns and diasporic society. To use Chinese theatre historian Chen Hua’s words, it was a life on the road whereby “nowhere was home meant everywhere could be home” (1999: 13–14).
The crucial turn took place with the opening-up of deep-water port Shantou and the beginning of speedy steamers with which different regional routes crisscrossed each other at a grander scale. The arrival of steamships broke down the limitations imposed by the natural environment of Southeast Asia. Theatre practitioners recalled that in the 1930s, after finishing their performances in Bangkok, a Chaozhou theatre-troupe would then travel to Singapore by simply taking a steamship (Chen 1999: 13). Furthermore, thanks to the completion of major northern and southern railways in Siam (old-time Thailand), Chaozhou theatre-troupes could conveniently travel to neighboring states and further cross the borderland to the French Indochina and British Malaya. Therefore, Bangkok, home of the largest Teochew diaspora in Southeast Asia, also became center of Chaozhou theatre tours, radiating multiple lines connecting the theatre-troupes to the hinterlands and other Southeast Asian ports.
For a local culture to travel transnationally, the dialect-based networks that connected Shantou with Teochew diaspora in Bangkok had a pivotal role to play. The story of Zheng Zhiyong (Tae Ti Wong, 1851–1937)—an eminent Teochew tycoon in Siam who was also in charge of Bangkok’s largest secret society—was illustrative about the operation of a Teochew network in the circulation of Chaozhou theatre. During King Rama V (1868–1910) reign, Siamese royal court initiated a policy to open up gambling houses in order to relieve the financial difficulties pressed by frequent colonial penetration at the borders. Zheng reacted to the policy by expanding his gambling houses across Siam. To attract gamblers to the houses, he recruited his hometown theatre-troupes into the houses to entertain the gamblers day and night. The strategy was so successful that Zheng bought two renowned theatre-troupes into his gambling houses in Bangkok (Chen 1999: 19). It contributed to the emergence of a new theatrical practice that thrived at diasporic stages: the gambling theatre.
Noticeably, Zheng’s engagement with the theatre-troupes was facilitated by a major transnational venture: The Chino-Siam Steam Navigation Company Limited. He bought eight steamers to operate multiple regional routes, with half of them (four ships) conducting direct traffic between Shantou and Bangkok. He even set up a local agency at the port of Shantou, claiming that every Teochew-dialect speaker could board on the ship by paying only half of the ticket price (Ma 1985: 60–65). Teochew performers were among the numerous others who were attracted by the promotion and boarded onto Zheng’s ship. Zheng himself was an aficionado of Chaozhou theatre. He recruited theatre-troupes from Shantou, had them boarded on his own ship, and brought them directly into his gambling houses in Bangkok.
The transnational package service that Zheng offered acted as the epitome of the kind of Teochew network channeled by native-place compatriotism across the waters of the South China Seas and the Gulf of Siam.
In addition to the old native-place networks that underwrote a Teochew identity, I argue that diasporic Chinese also searched for the modern and cosmopolitan part of Chineseness from another important node of connection: Shanghai. After the May Fourth Movement, the whole Chinese society was swept along by progressive and enlightened experiments to build a modern nation state. One of these influential experiments was the reform of xiqu (1895–1920), with Shanghai acting as a cardinal center. Iconoclastic nationalists and intellectuals attacked xiqu for perpetuating hazardous feudal values and was incompatible with the pressing needs of social rejuvenation. Students studying in Japan returned and all gathered in Shanghai to advocate the hybrid form of wenmingxi (civilized drama). They formed a dozen of new drama companies and troupes to conduct new wenmingxi plays at Shanghai stages. With wenmingxi, they combined xiqu conventions and Western drama plays to address realistic social problems (Goldstein 2007: 100). What came along with hybrid wenmingxi was the dazzling effects of new stage techniques, which was celebrated together with expressions of Western modernity by use of jiguan bujing (mechanical scenery), such as sound, lightening, and electricity (Qian 2006: 108).
In order for new theatricality to be circulated among various localities, mobile individuals were essential in mediating between nodes of connections. Here, Lin Jingtai was one of the prominent spokespersons of the theatrical mobility between Shanghai and Bangkok. Seeing the huge profits generated from the use of mechanical scenery in Shanghai’s wenmingxi, many Bangkok businessmen grasped the trend by engaging stage designer from Shanghai to the theatres of Bangkok and one of such men was Lin Jingtai. Before coming to Bangkok, Lin worked as a stage technician in Shanghai’s famous Tianchan Dawutai (Heavenly Toad Stage), the forefront of all kinds of theatrical innovations (Lin 1993: 78). While in Shanghai, he received new ideas of modernity, watched the performance of wenmingxi, and was acquainted with the debate of xiqu reform. It was such a first-hand experience with the birth and development of wenmingxi that made them important herald of theatrical innovations to the wider reach, that is, to the Teochew diaspora in Bangkok. He was best remembered in Bangkok for the play Wanli dengji (Emperor Wanli Ascends to the Throne) performed by the Chaozhou theatre-troupe Lao Sai Bao Feng (Old Supreme Treasure Harvest). In the play, there was a scene of the Emperor Wanli being saved by the underwater Dragon King after his
shipwrecked into the sea. In order to reconstruct the underwater palace as dazzling and spectacular as possible, Lin came up with the idea of using real water scene to fit the plot. He also employed electric lightening to decorate the palace as if it was adorned with real peals and jewels (Lin 1993: 79).
Yet it must be highlighted that there was a process of negotiation for new theatrical ideas and practices to adapt to local environment. Chinese theatres in Bangkok, though great in numbers, were in no ways comparable in the scale and facility to the New Stage or the Heavenly Toad Stage in Shanghai. Lacking space and equipment, complicated mechanical scenery turned out to be a source of trouble for small-scale theatres in the diaspora. For example, when Lin Jingtai installed electricity to lighten the palace of the Dragon King, the power went down for three times during the performance. The whole stage was in blackout for a long time and the spectators booed (Lin 1993: 79). There were other pertinent issues, such as language unintelligibility between the Teochew-dialect speakers and the “imported” Shanghai stage technicians. In order to stage a mechanical scenery, diasporic theatres not only invited a Shanghai stage designer but also hired his assistants, including one translator, with a salary of 1,000 Baht for each of them. However, the high expenditure on mechanical scenery did not yield a lucrative business due to the limited number of seating in the relatively small-scale theatres (Lin: 80). The money spent on stage design could hardly be covered from box-office receipts. In the end, mechanical scenery indeed became a luxury for diasporic audiences.
The unique diasporic socio-cultural environment not only required ideas and practices to be modified but also bred new theatrical practices that were to thrive in the diaspora. In its native Chaoshan region, Chaozhou theatre had developed a distinguished style in high-pitched singing by tongling (male child actors), whose visceral voices were believed to be a more artistic way of singing than female falsetto. The prevalence of tongling was underwritten by a widely held perception of “separation of sexes” whereby females were not supposed to go to theatres, not to mention to perform on the public stages. When actresses did appear on the stages in the early Republican era, they were either thought of as inferior by artistic standards or unchaste representations of modern womanhood (Luo 2005: 75–96). Contrastingly, in the diaspora, the old way of employing under-aged tongling from native places to Bangkok was frowned upon by local Thai authorities. The prevailing problem of maltreatment of tongling drew unwanted attention from the Thai police (“Xitong daku” 1927: 7). In 1937, a tongling committed suicide in one of the Chinatown theatres, causing the Thai government to exterminate the practice once and for
all (Wen 1984: 271). As a result, theatre-troupes in the diaspora had to recruit female performers to replace the tongling. It was in the process of interacting with local diasporic society that Chaozhou theatre opened up the practice of nannü tongtai (coed performance). In Shantou, however, it was not until the 1950s that the practice of tongling was abolished by the newly founded People’s Republic of China. In order to persuade the masses to accept the new practice, Communist officials had constantly made references to its precedent in Bangkok where tongling had long been forsaken (Lin 2018: Chapter 5). Therefore, travelling theatre practitioners had long ago found the overseas diaspora a much freer and more accommodating place for innovative theatrical practices.
As the Chaozhou theatre was conducted through their own native language, music instruments, and tunes, it was significant in maintaining the collective memory about their hometown in South China and a shared Teochew identity in the Chinese diaspora. For the second/third-generation Teochew Chinese, many were born and raised in Bangkok’s Chinatown area and had no idea about their origin. The Chaozhou theatre performed in Teochew dialect, thus was essential in the imagination of their migrant pasts. They were sustained, first and foremost, through temple rituals in which Chaozhou theatre-troupes conducted performances for their deities/gods. Xu Xinyi was an eminent female writer in the Thai-Chinese literary circle whose real-life renderings are comparable to China’s Lao She in the 1950s and the 1960s. In her writings, one can often find expressions of nostalgia for the past when her grandmother and mother often took her to Chaozhou theatre performances at temple rituals. Not only so, in her writings, Chaozhou theatre was used as a literary device with which she reconstructed the lifeworld of the migrant Chinese women whose voices were otherwise marginalized in the diaspora: “It became a lively scene every time grandmother visited our house. As a routine, my sister would turn on the old HMV (His Master’s Voice) gramophone machine, from which the familiar Chaozhou theatre music began to resound through the horn. Women in the neighborhood, young and old, all followed the music and gathered at our doorsteps as if they were at a live performance” (Xu 1982:18). What Xu inherited from her mother and grandmother were not only the love for Chaozhou theatre but also her communal Teochew identity in the diaspora. The preeminence of Chaozhou theatre in the memory of diasporic Sinophone writers such as Xu Xinyi rightly rebut the call in Sinophone scholarship for an “expiration date” of diaspora and to cut off ties with ancestral homes. The fact that Chaozhou theatre was and still is a popular and intimate culture in the everyday life of the Bangkok
Chinese proves that prosthetic memory inscribes the existential condition of the diasporic subjects (Chen 2015: 53).
Chinese Nationalism, Transnationalism, and Diasporic Cosmopolitanism
The story that has been told so far concerns the local and subethnic dimension of the Chinese identity emerging in the Sino-Southeast Asian interactions. While the dialect-channeled compatriot ties inform us about the slow-moving and on-going ways of identity making, the year-long (1928–1929) sojourning tours of Shanghai’s Bright Moon Opera Company would articulate distinct meanings of being Chinese. Prompted by the nationalistic call to educate and civilize the Chinese people, the troupe eagerly reached out for the overseas Chinese to perpetuate a modern, enlightened, and nationalistic Chinese identity in the Southeast Asian diaspora. A detailed recount of its tours in Singapore shed light on the ways by which nationalistic discourses were disseminated through performances and most importantly, how it encountered the complex situations in the Chinese diaspora who reacted to their performances in unexpected ways.
Li Jinhui (1891–1967), the founder of the Mingyue Yinyue She (Bright Moon Musical Society), was an ardent supporter of the New Cultural Movement and its affiliated nation-building projects in Republic Shanghai. He was not only the father of children’s song-and-dance musical but also the first person to use such performances to promote Guoyu yundong (National Language Movement). Following the humanist call for meiyu (aesthetic education) advocated by Cai Yuanpei (1868–1940), the president of Peking University, Li developed a strong interest in music education while working as a music instructor in Beijing in 1916. Also influenced by his brother Li Jinxi (1890–1978), a prominent linguist, and educator who studied Chinese baihua (vernacular language), Li also began to develop Mandarin language curriculum on his own; his textbook was soon approved by the Ministry of Education to be used for primary school education across China. In 1921, Li Jinhui moved to Shanghai to work as the principal of the Shanghai Guoyu Zhuanxiu Xuexiao (National Language Institute in Shanghai). During his time in Shanghai, Li developed a new and significant education philosophy: to combine music and language learning in primary education. With this principle, schoolchildren were taught to learn and integrate vernacular national language through Li Jinhui’s new lyric songs and musicals (Jones 2001: 73–104; Sun 2007: 16–35). These activities converged in the emergence of Bright Moon Musical Society and a later version of it, Zhonghua Gewu Zhuanxiu Xuexiao (Chinese Song and Dance School) and lastly Mingyue
Gewutuan (Bright Moon Opera Company) (sometimes referred as Zhonghua Gewutuan) (Chinese Song and Dance Troupe). Young children were first taught to sing and dance in Li’s school, and then conduct performing tours across the country with the aim to promote vernacular language to the pingmin (common people). Together with other luminaries of the enlightened May Fourth era, Li believed music and education should go hand in hand to serve the construction of a modern nation state and inform good citizenry.
In May 1928, the Bright Moon Opera Company, composed of the best girl-performers from Li Jinhui’s musical school, set out a performing tour to Southeast Asia. By the Nanyang tour, Li aimed to propagate nationalistic ideas—Chinese nationhood, national language, and culture—to the Chinese in Southeast Asia, who he believed were culturally ignorant of the modernizing mother country. Nanyang, as Li anticipated, was premised on the exotic imagination of the place as a wonderland for political refugees or people searching for fortunes yet remained culturally barren of enlightened intellectuals (Li 1980: 206–207). However, as it turned out, the one-year performing tour revealed Nanyang and the Nanyang Chinese were to be far more complicated and diverse in a way that they surprised Li Jinhui in unexpected ways.
First, the Nanyang tour would not be possible without the operation of the mobile diasporic businessman Liu Tingmei. Liu was a Singapore-based patriotic Chinese merchant, whose business dealings required a lot of travelling between Singapore and Shanghai. As a frequent visitor to children’s musicals in Shanghai, Liu was immediately attracted to this new and emerging performance (Li 1980: 207). He was obviously savvy enough to spot the potential of a Nanyang tour in gaining huge profits from the pockets of overseas Chinese. With his diasporic connections and resources, Liu helped the troupe to obtain a contract with the Singapore theatre managers in very promising terms. Particularly, with Liu’s negotiation, theatre managers in Singapore promised to cover all the expenditures occurring during the tour and let the theatre-troupe claim fifty to seventy percent of the profits as its share (Li 1980: 208). As the main diasporic contact in full charge of local affairs, it was important for Liu to mobilize all kinds of connections and resources to facilitate the performing tours. For example, he was able to gain endorsement from local Chinese businessmen and community leaders to promote the performances throughout its journeys in Singapore and Malaya. From June to September 1928, news and advertisements featuring their performing tours were widely circulated in all major local Chinese newspapers, including Nanyang Shangbao (Nanyang Siang Pau), Le bao (Lat Pau),
Bincheng xinbao (Penang Sin Poe) as well as the entertainment periodical Nan xun (Nam Fan). Furthermore, “Miss. May May Lee,” referring to the star actress Li Minghui, was constantly mentioned in English newspapers such as The Malaya Tribune, The Straits Times, and The Singapore Free Press and Mercantile Advertiser, all of which were targeted at the English-educated, wealthy-elite Chinese community in Singapore and Malaya. Liu might have also been acquainted with the colonial government as it turned out that the British governor of Malacca arranged a welcome party to meet with the theatre troupe (Li 1980: 214).
However, the situation in Dutch Batavia was quite different in that the journeys were full of twists and turns. During its tours in the Dutch Indies, Liu left the troupe and his role was taken up by an entertainment agency Qingnian Gongsi (Youth Company) (Li 1980: 207). Without resourceful, tactful, and dedicated local contacts such as Liu Tingmei to mediate conflicts and disputes with the native Indies society, the tour was in a mess. For instance, local theatres only agreed to give a fixed amount of salary to the troupe in spite of the actual tickets sold (Li 1980: 209). It meant even if the performances were profitable, the troupe took in very little of the share. To make the situation worse, all daily expenditures—that used to be covered by Singapore theatres—were on their own account. These arrangements had set the tone for its later financial predicament as Li Jinhui lamented, “local people took advantage of me by asking a lot of money. Besides, the daily expenses were so high that our income could hardly make ends meet” (“Li Jinghui” 1930: 20). Different from the tours in Singapore and Malaya, their performances received scant report, for instance, only Xinbao zhoukan (Sin Po Weekly) provided a brief note of its arrival (“Miss May May Lee” 1928: 423). Worse still, many performing pieces that had been successfully staged along the journeys were forbidden by the Dutch government in the Indies. The two comparative journeys illustrated the importance of mediating businessmen whose mobility and resourcefulness were important contributing factors of a successful diasporic tour. As Yang Bin puts it, diasporic businessmen, who made constant travels between Shanghai and the Chinese diaspora in Southeast Asia, transcended conventional ties with the native places in South China and fostered new connections with Shanghai (2016: 458–484).
What the Bright Moon Opera Company brought to the Nanyang Chinese was a syncretic mixture of various kinds of entertainment, incorporating songs, group dances, orchestra, and children’s musicals into the three-hour vaudeville shows. Here, the performing program of Le bao on 24 September 1928 allows for a glimpse of the content of the
show: traditional folk music pieces such as “Gaoshan liushui” (High Mountains and Flowering Water) were played, sentimental lyric songs were performed in solos together with the staging of musical plays such as Xiaoxiao huajia (Young Painter), Chuntian de kuaile (Joyful Spring), and Shenxian meimei (Fairy Sisters). It must be pointed out that one item was given high priority in light of its nationalistic motif. The chorus of “Qingtian bairi” (Blue Sky with A White Sun)—the name of Republic of China’s national flag—was particularly suggestive of its nationalistic overtone (“Zhonghua gewutuan” 1928: 2). Other similar songs such as “Zongli jinian ge” (Memorial Song of Sun Yat-sen) were performed many times throughout the tour (Li 1980: 211). Hence, while also offering commercial popular entertainment, the Bright Moon Opera Company’s performances were underwritten by a strong nationalistic impulse by highlighting symbols such as the national flag and the “Father of Nation” Sun Yat-sen.
The responses from the Chinese diaspora in Singapore were complicated. First and foremost, the theatrical expressions—motifs, styles, and language—as communicated through the performances were too foreign for ordinary migrant Chinese to relate to. During his Shanghai era, Li Jinhui had taken on a dual role of Mandarin educator and music instructor with which he developed a new pedagogy, to teach Mandarin through children’s songs. He emphasized, “In singing, children were more likely to learn and internalize standard phonetics, scripts, and sentences. The songs were rendered in spoken language as opposed to classic Chinese, hence were easy for children to grasp” (Li 1980: 117; Sun 2007: 100). Therefore, the performances were rendered exclusively in Mandarin for the Nanyang Chinese, regardless of disparate local situations. As a result, such adherence made their performances unintelligible to the migrant Chinese who came from diverse speech/linguistic groups. In a children’s novel that Li wrote based on his experiences with the Nanyang Chinese in 1935, he expressed a puzzlement of the southern dialects spoken in the Chinese diaspora, using the Cantonese chongliang, for example, for the Mandarin xizao (take a shower) (Li 2014: 38). Apart from that, he also noticed a common practice of mixing Chinese dialects with native Malay terms. “The Chinese living in Nanyang picked up local Malay language at daily encounters. Their parents did not speak Guoyu (national language) and gradually their children had no idea of their mother tongue” (Li 2014: 42). He further raised a pertinent issue of the correlation between one’s national identity and language. It was by a wholesale national language education that a nationalistic belonging could be fostered among the diasporic Chinese (Li 2014: 43). Therefore, by labeling himself a propagator of the Chinese national
language, what Li aimed to achieve was to promote national belonging and enforce an identification with the Republic of China among the Nanyang Chinese. However, rendered in standard vernacular language, the Mandarin performances failed to speak to the dialect-speaking diasporic audiences, nor were they powerful enough to evoke identification with the Chinese nation state.
Worse still, although Li labeled himself as representing the pingmin yinyue (music for commoners), his Nanyang tour never reached the “commoners,” the poor working-class migrants who worked at colonial plantations in faraway forests and countryside. The itineraries he undertook were in line with the maritime trade routes connected by urban trading ports and administrative centers. The ticket prices, ranging from one to four Strait Dollars, were unaffordable for common migrant Chinese. The prices were almost equivalent to that of watching an Italian opera in the fanciest theatre (Victoria) of Singapore, yet it would only cost one to four cents for a working-class Chinese to go for their hometown dialect opera (“Zhonghua gewutuan” 1928: 2). Coming from the May Fourth intellectual compass, Li’s elite nationalistic project seemed far-fetched to the daily existence of a working-class, illiterate, dialect-spoken immigrant society in Southeast Asia (Lim 2019: 95).
Whereas they might not suit the taste of common migrant populations, their performances did leave important cultural messages to the Straits Chinese in Singapore. Intriguingly, it was the localized, hybridized, and English-speaking Straits Chinese (also known as Peranakans) that responded most enthusiastically to Bright Moon’s musical performances. The Malaya Tribune, an English newspaper in Singapore, whose target readers were Europeans and the Straits Chinese, described that the performances were very well received among not only Asians but also Europeans who seemed to fully enjoy the show (“Chinese Operatic Co.: Big Success” 1928: 10). During the company’s performance in Singapore, one reviewer gave very high appraisal to the dancing program, “the displayed dance was worthy of any theatre in any part of the world” (“The Chinese Opera Company” 1928: 8). Another audience pointed out that there was an “oriental” element embodied in the beautiful movement (“Chinese Operatic Co.: Big Success” 1928: 10). Read together, the choreography of the programs was endowed with a universal language that spoke to the global dancing vocabulary and meanwhile maintained its distinct ethnic characteristics. The dancers were capable of such eclectic performances because they were trained in Li Jinhui’s musical schools in Shanghai. While in Shanghai, Li had invited a Russian dancer for an intensive training to enhance the performers’ dancing skills in
preparation for the Nanyang tours (Li: 209). In addition, the performers also learnt dance movements from jingju, Chinese ethnic dances (red silk dance), and Western ballet as well as a more important genre “interpretive dance,” which used choreographic movement to express emotions so as to facilitate the development of the plot. The latter form was taken from Western musicals performed by Italian opera companies from Milan, Denishawn dancers from America, and Russian light opera companies in the theatres of Shanghai.7 As Li Jinhui recalled in his autobiography, watching Western musicals in Shanghai formed an important part of his musical upbringing (Li 1980: 118–125).
An equally attractive dimension of their performances was the music. It was attractive for both European and Asian audiences mainly because the music was a combination of diverse cultural influences. For instance, musicians were required to learn to play xipi and erhuang (traditional melodies in jingju) with Western violin as the theatre-troupe formed its own music accompaniment consisting of both Chinese and Western musical instruments (Li: 118). At that time, this practice was deemed as bold and its syncretic music received many criticisms from domestic academic professionals. Nevertheless, the intermingling of various musical influences formed the basis of Li Jinhui’s quest for modern Chinese musicals and were greatly welcomed among the hybrid Straits Chinese community.
In addition to hybrid forms of dances and music, the Bright Moon Opera Company was best known by its pioneering exploration of children’s musicals. Different from the old entertainment of Chinese immigrants, for example, xiqu, what the theatre-troupe presented were an embryonic form of Chinese musical developed through an integration of dramatic plays, dances, and songs. The diasporic audience specifically identified one play performed by the star Miss May May Lee (Li Minghui), Sanzhi hudie (Three Butterflies) (“Chinese Opera: Last Performance Tonight” 1928: 7). It was a fairy-tale play about three personified butterflies working together to fight against rainstorms, thunder, and lightning. Like most of Li Jinhui’s musicals, it was performed by children themselves to highlight their pure and delightful characteristics. In addition, the story was “narrated” in a new and original way through lyric songs and a mixture of choreographic movement (Li 1980: 107). The “interpretive dance” was most vividly presented in this performance. Dressed in butterfly costumes, three beautiful young girls began to perform xiaoyao wu (jolly dance), didi wu (raindrop dance), and longlong wu (thunder-rumble dance) to signify three evolving scenes and the development of plots (Feng and Mao 2010: 189–190). In stark contrast to xiqu, which was framed within the
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This article was published in English in 2021.
Zhang, Beiyu. "Travelling with Chinese Theatre-Troupes: A "Performative Turn" in Sino-Southeast Asian Interactions." Asian Theatre Journal 38, no. 1 (2021): 191-217. https://doi.org/10.1353/atj.2021.0010.
Translator: Yichen Zhang
Proofreaders: Chenqing Song, Xi Wang