China and the West

Interview von Zhang Siyang über William Shakespeare mit Mr. Tong der Zhong yang xi ju xue yuan (Central Drama Academy), Beijing.
When Professor Zhang Siyang asked Tong, whether the local residents of Liangshan had any difficulty in understanding Shakespeare's plays.
Tong said : "Not at all! When the play was performed, many of the audience were poorly educated and even illiterate farmers. But it seemed that all of them understood the production very well. After the performance some young men told me that the exotic atmosphere of the play struck them as new. Yet they liked it very much. There were no strange customs or moral doctrines in the play, so they were able to identify with the characters. For them, Shakespeare's plays sometimes were even easier to understand than traditional Chinese drama. For example, a young man told me that when he saw the famous classical Chinese tragedy The Injustice to Don E, he could not understand why Dou E had to be loyal to her dead husband and not remarry although she was only seventeen years old."