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For over two hundred years, Chinese opera has been the essential and supreme expression of Chinese culture. Audiences all over the world have enjoyed its lavish concoction of colorful costumes, painterly visages, melodious music, and titillating acrobatics. Yet in the face of such worldwide appreciation and reception, it is losing its audience at home, particularly among the young. The influx of popular culture from McDonald's to Madonna has changed the attitudes and tastes of a new generation, who now consider Chinese opera to be too slow and out of touch with reality when compared with the dazzling products of Western film and television. The Chinese government has tried to revitalize the genre by devising creative approaches to audience development--by slashing the length of each production, by adding spiffy special effects, even by subsidizing the cost of tickets. (1) Despite these efforts at innovation and reform, however, the Los Angeles Times (23 May 1997) has reported that "Ravaged by the 1966-1976 Cultural Revolution and largely ignored by today's youth, Peking opera is fast disappearing from the stages it once ruled throughout China. Its audience is dropping by as much as 5% a year by one estimate. If the trend continues, experts fear, one of the world's great art forms for two centuries is in danger of vanishing within a generation." (2) In what may be perceived as a desperate or at least ironic maneuver, in December 2002 the Chinese government sent a delegate to New York City to study how Broadway musicals could succeed in attracting such large audiences. (3)
In view of the Chinese government's interest in American musical theater one might think that Chinese opera would have found a collaborative partner in the Broadway theater community or in the American music scene at large, but that is not precisely the case. What is the case is that Chinese opera is slowly gaining interest and building momentum in America despite what some scholars regard as a prohibitively strong racial identity. Nancy Yunhwa Rao claims that the marginalization of Chinese opera in the United States was "framed by ... a pre-constructed concept of Chineseness" deeply ingrained in American culture. But, I would argue that Rao's assumptions about what it is "to be Chinese" and "not American" are no longer true. (4) Chinese opera has arrived on the American cultural scene, not through music, as one might have expected, but rather through film and theater.
In this study, I examine how Chinese opera in the United States has evolved from a recreational entertainment provided by touring Chinese artists and intended primarily for Chinese immigrants to a vocation engaged in by Chinese-American immigrants and directed more specifically toward a diverse American audience. This development coincides with the sociological evolution of Chinese ethnic/immigrant identity; while the first wave of immigrants often maintained an attachment to the motherland and the second wave tended toward acclimatization and assimilation, the third wave appears to be spawning a new kind of hybridity that combines both the old and the new worlds. Likewise, the germinal Chinese opera artists discussed in this essay have worked hard to create additional diversity in the mosaic culture of contemporary America with their art form while simultaneously living their own versions of the American dream.
There are four major phases in the history of Chinese opera in the United States. The first was initiated by the arrival of the Hong Took Tong, who, as cultural nurturers, provided entertainment for the Chinese immigrants far away from home in the 1850s. Second was the visit of Mei Lanfang, who acted as a cultural ambassador and introduced Chinese opera to the American audience in the 1930s. Third was the influx of Hong Kong kung fu stars such as Jackie Chan and Yuen Wo Ping, who penetrated the American screen in the 1980s and 1990s with their hybrid cultural acts. Last is the rise of the Qi Shu Fang Peking Opera Company, which has been steadily carving a niche and contributing to the diverse culture of America in the twenty-first century.
Most discourses on Chinese theater refer specifically to "Peking/ Beijing opera" the premiere national opera form studied in China and in Taiwan. All the books written on this subject also use Peking opera as the reference point, when in actuality there are over one hundred different types of opera in China, separated by region and by dialect. The term Chinese opera, as it has been used in previous discussions of the genre, refers to an all-encompassing theatrical entertainment that incorporates various diverse performance elements, including acting, recitation, martial arts, acrobatics, mime, poetry, prose, instrumental music, song, and dance. While the basic conventions of music composition, character types, and sources for the librettos remain the same, there are variations of repertoire, spectacle, and style to be taken into consideration. In order to serve the masses of the various regions of China, operas use regional vernacular dialects, which are not interchangeable. Among these different styles and variations in language, Peking opera is touted as the most sophisticated model, while in terms of its popularity and melodious music Cantonese opera runs a close second.
[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]
I. Hong Took Tong: Bridging Cultures
Cantonese opera was the first form of Chinese theater introduced to the United States and became the representative "Chinese theater" in America in the nineteenth century. The local dramatic form from the Canton region, sung and spoken in Cantonese dialect, followed the first wave of Chinese immigrants, who were mostly from Southern China and hence speakers of Cantonese, shortly after the discovery of gold in California. On 18 October 1852, three years after that discovery, the Hong Took Tong, a company of 123 performers, arrived from Canton to perform the first Chinese opera in San Francisco. Brought to America by Chinese impresarios, the production was initially financed by a group of merchants in Canton, with some members of the company acting as shareholders in the venture. (5) Why did they do it? The reason is twofold: First, China was experiencing civil strife and unrest with the Opium War and the Boxer Rebellion. According to H. M. Lai in his foreword to Ronald Riddle's Flying Dragons Flowing Streams, "In 1854, Li Wenmo, a Cantonese opera actor, led an uprising against the Chinese imperial government; consequently, performances of Cantonese opera were banned until 1868. Thus, for more than a decade, the repertoire could only be staged publicly abroad, and the west coast of North America, with its large concentration of Cantonese, was one of these refuges." (6) Meanwhile, the Gold Rush in San Francisco had enticed tens of thousands of immigrants from China who came in search of gold. Known as the sojourners, or Gaam Sam Haak (Gold Mountain Guests), these workers did not want to stay in the United States permanently. Rather, nearly all of the Chinese migrants had hoped to return home after accumulating the fortune promised implicitly in the so-called Gold Mountain Dream. They came in growing numbers, to an estimated twenty-five thousand in 1852.
The early Chinese in America never struck it rich, and the work kept them too busy to return home. Other than working in the mines, they were also imported to help build the railroad, drain the swamplands, work on plantations, and provide cheap labor in canneries, factories, and farms. To complicate their lives, their work ethic provoked jealousy from non-Chinese laborers. Confronted by ethnic antagonism from the white laborers and burdened by legislation that levied taxes exclusively on Chinese residents, the Chinese migrants bonded and formed a "nation." Like all other immigrant groups, the Chinese retained their traditional customs and mode of life, including habit, language, and food. And as they transformed from workers to store owners over time, they built a tightly knit, dynamic community, later called Chinatown, which included not only legitimate merchandise stores, restaurants, and herbal shops, but less legitimate opium parlors, brothels, and gambling establishments. Despite the bustle of the Chinese community, entertainment was scarce and in great demand; and the most popular entertainment among Chinese people was opera. The arrival of Hong Took Tong was therefore most welcome.
Hong Took Tong even brought a prefabricated framework that the troupe erected on site after their first week's run at the American Theater. The makeshift theater was "a curious pagoda-looking edifice ... painted, outside and in, in an extraordinary manner" and could seat at least a thousand. (7) It was filled with vendors selling melon seeds, candles, and oranges in the aisle during the performance. The orchestra was in full view of the audience, with the musicians placed in the center of the stage behind the actors. The opening-night bill included various dramatizations of early Chinese history and folklore, presented in a variety of forms, including romances and comedies--all standard fare to the Chinese immigrants in the audience, but unfamiliar territory to novice Western spectators.
To the connoisseur of Chinese opera, the brilliance of an operatic production lies in how each performer customizes the familiar tunes to his distinctive singing style. Among the uninitiated, admiration and awe are more often elicited by the extravagance of the actors' costumes and their extraordinary action. The American reviewer on this particular occasion found the Hong Took Tong's performance exotic and exquisite, noting the spectacular costumes and the agile acrobatics. He did not understand that the costuming of the actor is what helps distinguish the various roles in Chinese opera: the higher the character's station in life, the fancier the costume. But he was nonetheless astounded by the array of ornate flowing gowns embroidered with beads, gilt, sequins, and spangles, topped with dazzling headpieces.
Visually, the American reviewer considered the opera a theatrical banquet and was particularly awed by the jaw-dropping acrobatics feats. He was also charmed by the artistry of the female impersonators, whose mere presence was a much treasured sight in the mostly bachelor society. The reporter was nonetheless confounded by the members of the orchestra, who openly smoked their pipes and cigars during intermissions, and he considered the percussive music they made with gongs and kettledrums "discordant" and "deafening." He was baffled by the conduct of the Chinese audience, who not only never applauded, but chattered without restraint throughout the performance. Furthermore, he found the plots totally incomprehensible. On the whole, the reviewer found the performance to be "a great novelty" and "well worth seeing." (8)
Despite such mixed reviews, the visit of Hong Took Tong was a huge success within the Chinese community, and the company enjoyed a five-month run. Hong Took Tong and its successors also started touring in different cities, bringing Chinese culture to immigrants scattered in small places. For communities too small to maintain a cultural life of their own, the opera was "a school of social ethics inculcating the ancient lessons of right living and honorable behavior, a living course in literature and a school for music, singing, martial and acrobatic arts" (9) The Chinese audience cultivated such a love for the music through singing and playing instruments that they began to form amateur music clubs that still exist today. Cantonese opera became a staple of San Francisco Chinatown life--at its peak, there was a performance every night--and a tourist attraction for westerners. Soon no visit to Chinatown could be considered complete without taking in a performance at the Chinese theater.
But the Chinese opera aesthetic as a concept was too exotic for uninitiated American eyes and ears, accustomed to homegrown narratives. At the time, the staging of...
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