China and the West

Sun, Jiaxiu. He Xiao Bona xi ju shou ci shang yan. In : Zhongguo xi ju ; 7 (1995). [On the forst performance of Bernard Shaw's play : watching the spoken Drama Major Barbara].kl
"The ideas of Bernard Shaw expressed in the play were considered advanced at the time when it was written. We should also note his limitation. It is greatly contradictory. The play was written in 1905 before the socialist revolution. Bernard Shaw notes and reveals deeply the innate contradiction in his society. Yet, the view raised in the play were those when he joined the Fabian Society, that is, a slow progressive revolution and the practice of amerliorism. They advocate using production to work for social progress, and improving employer-employee relationship. One has to be fed before one can talk about morality. But Shaw is not critical toward what is produced. Even cannons can be produced. Shaw affirms capitalist production, which means that he also affirms the capitalist system.
Undershaft is the incarnation of Shaw, and a mouthpiece of some of his social ideas. The innermost being of Cusins is very bad, and he hides that by reciting the poems of Euripides. Shaw fails at the depiction of Major Barbara. The play has not given her more lines and action. She is not a very devoted Christian. She is an upper-class lady.
China has published many translations of Shaw's works and recommends him as a world-famous cultural personage. But this is only half the work. It should be followed by performances. If Shaw's works were brought here without any change, the performance would be too long for China's audience. If the translation has foreign flavor, the Chinese audience will have difficulty accepting it. Ying Rucheng has translated the play into an intelligent natural language understandable by the Chinese audience. I think that the Chinese audience likes plays with a strong plot and rich human emotions. Therefore, the performance of Shaw's play in China has a certain degree of difficulty. Before the liberation of China, people had tried but failed. Shaw's play became a hard nut to crack, and nobody dared to bite in many years."