China and the West

Aufführung von Shalemei nach Wilde, Oscar. Salomé : drame en un acte. (Paris : Librairie de l'art indépendant, 1893). = Salome : a tragedy in one act. (London : E. Mathews & John Lane ; Boston : Copeland & Day, 1894). [Uraufführung Théâtre de l'oeuvre, Paris, 1896] in der Übersetzung von Tian Han in Nanjing und Shanghai.
Tian Han schreibt : "My translation of Salomé was successful when it was published in 1921. It has been seven or eight years now and it hasn't yet performed. And now we just have found very good actors playing the roles of Iokanaan, Salomé and Herodias. Rebelling against the standard social attitude is most obvious in this play. This is why we have chosen to perform this play."
Tian Han added social significance to the play in order to defend his aim of staging it, which was to him an artistic way to unite different classes together for a noble and national purpose. Even though he thought Salomé was not about individualism, his interpretation was indeed individualistic and questionable. Paradoxically, he was not so much politicizing the play as romanticizing it further. His choice of Salomé betrayed a strong sentiment undercurrent, albeit his claims of social interests. When the play was performed, the power of the socially-minded intellectuals was already quite strong.

Shi Jihan described the first night of the performance : "There are only three hundred seats in the theatre, yet the people who came to see the play numbered more than four hundred.” Salomé was acclaimed by the audience, who were fascinated by the emotional qualities of the female protagonist. The play left such an impression that it was soon imitated by several Chinese playwrights."

Xu, Zhimo. Guan yu nü zi. In : Xin yue yue kan ; vol. 2, no 8 (Oct. 1929).
Salomé incontestably presented a different, daring and outspoken image of woman for many Chinese intellectuals. Xi Zhimo expressed the tension between personal, artistic expression and social boundary as he recalled his impression on Yu Shan, the lady who played Salomé.
One night, during the performance, when Yu Shan was about to say, 'I will kiss thy mouth, Iokanaan', she caught a glimpse of her mother sitting in the front row and staring angrily at her. Instead of saying the line with might and passion, she was lowering her voice and slurring over the line. Xu commented that though in reality there were many objective obstacles preventing a 'new' or 'modern' woman to realize herself, the psychological barrier was less visible yet more destructive. The talented actress could have played her role more powerfully and dramatically but for the angry gaze of her mother, which represented a tacit censorship. That was the moment when the actress yielded to traditions at the expense of artistic expression. Salomé was then not so much a theatrical challenge as a psychological one since she embodied anti-traditional feminine qualities. To be a 'new' women, in the view of Xu, she needed to behave with psychological abandonment and be thoroughly courageous and persistent.

Linda Pui-ling Wang : In the interest of reading Salomé in the Chinese context, the Chinese writers were looking for a psychological outlet and model which spoke to their personal needs but not the genuine moral and humanitarian aspects. The Chinese writers who were more romantic and sentimental even saw Salomé as an essential resolution to the class problems in society. Salomé undeniably excited and inspired the young Chinese people who had personal and emotional dreams, albeit a small and 'selected' group. The play provided a romantic appeal to bourgeois intellectuals such as Tian Han, Xu Zhimo and Ye Lingfeng, who could afford to see the play and greatly praised the play, but mainly its aesthetic aspects. The Chinese writers were generally fascinated with Salomé who certainly looked radical, nonconformist, modern and exemplified a new mode of thinking and behavior. As such, there was more revision than imitation in terms of meaning and goal. The femme fatale was then turned into a super heroine.
The Chinese writers did not only discuss the play's literariness but also its social redefinitions affirms its significance to be a special product of that age. Salomé was a medium through which the Chinese writers voiced their romantic outcry and accumulated for themselves discourses in accordance to their desires and causes. Tian Han presented a more social and political defence for it.
In the discursive labyrinth of Salomé, there were decadence, entertainment and fascination for an exotic femme fatale and a modern city as a surrogate oryal court in which the Chinese intellectuals indulged in their own pursuit of romantic dreams.