“A Fabian socialist in socialist China” (Publication, 2003)
Year
2003
Text
Chen, Wendi. A Fabian socialist in socialist China. In : Shaw : the annual of Bernard Shaw studies ; vol. 23 (2003). [Betr. George Bernard Shaw]. (Shaw8)
Type
Publication
Mentioned People (1)
Shaw, George Bernard
(Dublin 1856-1950 Ayot Saint Lawrence, Hertford) : Dramatiker, Schriftsteller ; Literatur-Nobelpreisträger 1925
Subjects
Literature : Occident : Ireland
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References / Sources
Chronology Entries (7)
| # | Year | Text | Linked Data |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1918-1950 |
George Bernard Shaw in China : Allgemein. Wendi Chen : To many Chinese intellectuals, the public face of George Bernard Shaw corresponded to their elevated image of a socially responsible scholar ; they unconsciously transformed him into a culturally more familiar type of scholar and found in him what modern China needed – a public spokesperson with all the necessary attributes : moral conscience, courage, a sense of justice, and great talent. He was regarded first and foremost as a moralist, whose principal purpose in writing was to serve social causes. Shaw was already widely known in China as an expert in humor by the time of his visit, as is clear from Chinese journalistic and literary writings produced during that time. Shaw's witticisms and jokes were told and retold in print ; essays exploiting the public craze for 'humor' were numerous. Since the majority of Chinese writers and artists of the time still came from bourgeois families, they were continually pressured to remold their thinking, - that is, to change their political outlooks and adopt proletarian attitudes – in order to serve the proletariat. The Party urged that they adopt two principles : 1) to go among the broad mass of the people in order to understand and learn from them, and 2) to conscientiously study Marxism-Leninism. Shaw was seen as a bourgeois intellectual who had already experiences ideological remolding by actively participating in various revolutionary activities and seriously studying Marx's Das Kapital. In this respect, Shaw was an exemplary figure for Chinese bourgeois intellectuals. Armed with Mao's thought, critics first of all assessed Shaw's political outlook. In this respect, Shaw passed the Maoist test. Mao Zedong's theory of the source of literary creation also strongly influenced Chinese critics' discussions of Shaw, whose advocacy of working-class causes was viewed as the determining condition for his dramatic success. Kay Li : When Shaw's works were first introduced in to China, he was regarded as a mentor showing the Chinese how to modernize Chinese drama and social life, how to enable China to join an imaginary world civilization or global culture, an integrative single entity that encompassed the world and included all nations and cultures. While Shaw's texts were regard4ed as authoritative, the Chinese intellectuals introducing Shaw's works had no intention of debasing China and elevating the West. His translators made use of the cultural gap between East and West less to widen the geographical distance between the two poles than to draw analogies and create assumed similarities between Shaw's Western world and China. The young Chinese intellectuals hailed Shaw as a naturalist and a realist who presented 'real life'. Shaw did not present real Chinese life, but the intellectuals felt that he presented real life in a general sense, thus showing their assumption of a global homogeneity. The call for social reforms made Shaw's realism and didacticism especially attractive. The young Chinese intellectuals were attracted to the idea of exposing unpleasant social facts and to the form of the problem play, but the kind of social facts exposed had to be social facts relevant to Chinese rather than to English society. The reception of Shaw's plays in China was in part responsible for a reaction against the importation of Western literature generally. Some intellectuals opposed the importation of Western-style-drama, especially the problem plays, because the problems presented in those plays were not completely relevant to the Chinese situation. Shaw's plays helped to globalize rather than Westernize modern Chinese drama because the underlying concerns surrounding the introduction of Western drama were to centrifugally enable China to join world drama and to centripetally make use of world drama to develop a Chinese theater that could realistically address the country's social problems. The young Chinese intellectuals were attracted to Shavian methods such as the discussion play and the problem play and to certain concepts Shaw advocated such as individual will and freedom from family control that echoed the ideology promoted in the Chinese Intellectual Revolution. However, the Chinese found some Shavian issues irrelevant or unimportant, the most notable of these being Shaw's intense advocacy of the Life Force and Creative Evolution, and the Chinese responded to these ideas with little att4ention or understanding. So the Chinese were faced with the dilemma of giving Shaw the power of interpretation, of interpreting Shaw themselves, or of rewriting Shaw. |
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| 2 | 1956 |
100jähriges Jubiläum zum Geburtstag von George Bernard Shaw in China. The apple cart (act II), Mrs. Warren's profession (acts II-III) were performed by students from the Beijing Cinema Actors's Troupe and the Central Academy of Dramatic Art. Wendi Chen : The cultural bureaucracy orchestrated a variety of activities : conferences, performances, special exhibitions and publication of his translated work. It was not so much Shaw the Western dramatist, but Shaw the socialist who was being feted. Shaw was conveniently employed by the Chinese cultural authorities to serve several related purposes : 1) to propagandize the superiority of socialism over capitalism during the Cold War ; 2) to promote the Hundred flower campaign ; 3) to provide an example for Chinese writers with bourgeois backgrounds ; 4) to assist Chinese cultural authorities in creating a favorable international image of China by extending China's literary repertoire beyond Soviet literature. The major official event took place on the evening of 26 July 1956 in the ballroom at the Beijing Hotel, where more than one thousand people assembled for official speeches and performances. Many distinguished political leaders, as well as writers, artists, and foreign diplomats, were present. Other activities included a conference sponsored by the Beijing Library and the Beijing Working People's Cultural Palace. The Beijing Library also staged a special exhibition, displaying photos, books, and essays written by and about Shaw and Ibsen. A number of literary magazines, journals and newspapers published essays on Shaw and his works. In Shanghai, Tianjin and Shenyang similar activities took place. Guest speakers were Lennox Robinson, director of the Irish National Theatre, Rubeigh James Minney, British author and Gerda Ring, director of the National Theatre Oslo. The group included the Chinese writers Mao Dun, Chen Zhenduo, Tian Han, Xia Yan, Ouyang Yuqian and Mei Lanfang. After the celebrations, the Chinese People's Association for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries prepared items for sale, as advertised in the Shavian : Selected works of George Bernard Shaw in Chinese translation (Mrs. Warren's profession, The apple cart, Major Barbara) ; Program of the 1956 commemoration of ibsen and Shaw in Chinese, English and Russian, including the speeches by Lennox Robinson and Rubeigh J. Minney ; Postcards commemorating world cultural figures, including Shaw, Mozart, Ibsen, Franklin. Rubeigh J. Minney : The scene from The apple cart in which the American ambassador tells King Magnus of England, that his country wished to return to the English fold. The thought delighted them. The play had not yet been translated into Chinese, but although they had less than a week for making the translation and for rehearsals, it was adopted and the members of the Peking Cinema Actors Troupe were word perfect on the night of the performance. The preparation of these scenes involved us in many discussions. As early as eight o'clock in the morning our rooms were invaded by actors, actresses or producers. We were asked innumerable questions about the meaning of words, the sort of action most suited to the characters, the subtlety of Western gestures, and so on. They took infinite pains. They were striving for perfection, and for the most part they attained it. The Chinese girl who played the Queen was young and pretty and in her Western clothes and make-up could have passed for English. Her role did not demand much of her ; in that scene she had just to sit and listen, but she used her feather fan most expressively, opening it and shutting it to indicate her reactions to what was being said by the King and the Ambassador. [The Chinese's acquaintance with Shaw's plays] was confined almost entirely to Mrs. Warren's profession. We tried to veer them off this. I said : "There are a great many other plays which you ought to look at – if you have Chinese translations of them. Mrs. Warren's profession is about a woman who owned a number of brothels. You have, we understand, abolished all brothels. That is a closed chapter now in the life of the people of China." But, no matter what arguments we advanced, back they came to Mrs. Warren. We learned at last that their attachments to this play was because of the struggle in it of Mrs. Warren's daughter Vivie to win her freedom from social and domestic domination. This play was being acted by various groups of amateurs and others all over China and it had accordingly the advantage that the artists already knew it. |
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| 3 | 1956 |
Mao, Dun. "Opening speech". In : Xin hua she xin wen gao ; no 2243 (July 1956). [Zum 100jähriges Jubiläum zum Geburtstag von George Bernard Shaw in China]. Mao Dun delivered the opening address. He praised Shaw's plays and emphasized Shaw's personal contacts with China. "Shaw expressed his sympathy toward socialist countries many times. All his life he supported peace and democracy most vehemently. In His satirical comedies, he employs satire to expose and ridicule warmongers and arms manufacturers. He attacks the aggressive policies of the imperialists against oppressed people. In his plays, he repeatedly protests against the aggression of the colonialists, and shows great sympathy toward the people in their fight for freedom and independence." "The Chinese people deeply love Shaw's comedies, so full of intelligent political discussion and bitter satire. During his lifetime this playwright also had some personal contact with the Chinese people". |
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| 4 | 1956 |
Yang, Xianyi. Xiao Bona : zhi can jie ji de jie pu jia. In : Ren min ri bao (26 July 1956). [Shaw – dissector of boureois society]. Wendi Chen : Yang hailed Shaw as a "dissector of bourgeois society" who "relentlessly tore off the masks of bourgeois gentlemen and ridiculed bourgeois society". Yang admiringly commented on Shaw's superb performance : "As composed and unmoved as a surgeon, Shaw performed an autopsy on the corpse of bourgeois society". Yang then proceeded to catalogue Shaw's individual surgical cases. Widowers' houses, according to Yang, "ruthlessly exposes the rotten corruption of a capitalist Society" ; Mrs. Warren's profession "even more boldly exposes the shameless degradation caused by the oppression of the capitalist system" ; Major Barbara reveals how "capitalism reduces human relationships to mere monetary ones" ; "Heartbreak House symbolizes the whole of bourgeois society", which finally "gets blown up" ; "On the rocks depicts the unemployed workers' struggle to overthrow the government". |
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| 5 | 1956 |
Zheng, Zhenduo. Ji nian Yiao Bona dan shen yi bai zhou nian. In : Guang ming ri bao (27 July 1956). [In commemoration of Shaw's one hundredth anniversary of birth]. "His first play Widowers' houses takes as its subject matter the sharp class struggle during the 1880s in England. Though no working class people appear in the play, their miserable living conditions as well as the capitalist's ruthless exploitation of the workers' few pennies of hard-earned money are presented in the figure of the rent collector. In 1894 he wrote Mrs. Warren's profession, a social problem play, which exposes the basest and dirtiest deed of the capitalist class. It tears off the decent mask of 'civilization' and exposes the rotten, stinking inner reality of the capitalist society". |
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| 6 | 1956 |
Gu, Shouchang. Wei da de xi ju jia Xiao Bona : ji nian Xiao Bona dan shen yi bai zhou nian. In : Zuo pin ; vol. 18 (Sept. 1956). [Great dramatist Bernard Shaw]. Wendi Chen : Gu analysis of Mrs. Warren's profession pointed out that Shaw made a serious mistake in depicting Mrs. Warren as both a working-class woman and a capitalist, thus confusing the antagonistic relationship between workers and capitalists, and denying the legitimacy of class struggle. Vivie's relationship with her mother was also viewed by Gu in terms of class. Her ambivalent attitude toward her mother was understood in terms of Mrs. Warren's dual class identity – the exploited and the exploiter. According to Gu, Vivie sympathizes with the mother, who comes from a poor family background but hates the mother who is an exploiter of other women. Unable to resolve the conflict, she withdraws helplessly into her own world, pitting herself against society. Like other Maoist critics, Gu found the ending of the play unsatisfactory because it did not offer a solution. |
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| 7 | 1980 |
Wang, Zuoliang. Lun Xiao Bona de xi ju yi shu. In : Wang, Zuoliang. Yingguo wen xue lun wen ji [ID D27920]. [On Shaw's dramatic art]. Wendi Chen : Wang distinguished Shaw from many other bourgeois writers who had not participated in actual working-class activities by stressing Shaw's active social participation. "The difference is to be found here", he wrote. "Other playwrights usually make their first literary attempts in theaters or in their studies, whereas Shaw experienced the evils of capitalist society first-hand during those years when he was unemployed, and he developed his argumentative skills while speaking in the streets and debating at various social meetings". |
Cited by (1)
| # | Year | Bibliographical Data | Type / Abbreviation | Linked Data |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2000- | Asien-Orient-Institut Universität Zürich | Organisation / AOI |
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