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Introduction

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Culture, History, and the Reception of Tennessee Williams in China

Part of the book series: Chinese Literature and Culture in the World ((CLCW))

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Abstract

Chapter 1 introduces the subject and scope of this comprehensive book-length study of the reception of Tennessee Williams in China, its historical and cultural context, and the critical perspectives drawing from translation studies, comparative drama and comparative literature, and adaptation studies that inform the research and help frame the discussions.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Tennessee Williams, Tennessee Williams Plays 1937–1955 (New York: The Library of America, 2000), 563. Hereafter, Williams, 1937–1955.

  2. 2.

    This introductory overview of the reception of Tennessee Williams in China draws from Wei Zhang and Shouhua Qi, “The Kindness of Strangers: Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire on the Chinese Stage,” Comparative Drama 54.1 (2021): 97–115, https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/compdr/vol54/iss1/5.

  3. 3.

    Eugene O’Neill visited China in 1927 to search for the “Right Way” and to recharge his battery, so to speak, with wisdom of Chinese philosophy. See Eric Grode, “A Touch of Eugene O’Neill,” The Sun, April 25, 2007, http://www.nysun.com/arts/touch-of-eugene-oneill/53172/. Arthur Miller visited China in 1978 as a tourist and then again in 1983 to direct Death of a Salesman in Beijing. See Arthur Miller, Salesman in Beijing (New York: Viking, 1984).

  4. 4.

    It was not staged again until 2013 as one of the three short plays of The Chorus Girl Plays during the Provincetown Tennessee Williams Theatre Festival. In this burlesque play, two young women, Millie and her friend Aileen, pick up two sailors and bring them home to the Bronx. See “Provincetown Tennessee Williams Theater Festival-2013 Shows,” https://www.twptown.org/archives.

  5. 5.

    John S. Bak, ed., Tennessee Williams and Europe: Intercultural Encounters, Transatlantic Exchanges (Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2014), 1.

  6. 6.

    At least one Chinese scholar interpreted these China/Chinese culture references in Williams plays as indications of the American playwright regarding China as the last spiritual and emotional refuge (see Chap. 4, pp. 119–122), which seems a misreading and hasty overgeneration based more on wishful thinking than on any textual or biographical evidence.

  7. 7.

    Williams, 1937–1955, 492–493.

  8. 8.

    Ibid., 499.

  9. 9.

    Ibid., 515.

  10. 10.

    Ibid., 545.

  11. 11.

    Ibid., 552.

  12. 12.

    Ibid., 554–555.

  13. 13.

    Ibid., 562.

  14. 14.

    Ibid., 505–507.

  15. 15.

    Ibid., 506.

  16. 16.

    Tennessee Williams, Tennessee Williams Plays 1957–1980 (New York: The Library of America, 2000), 333. Hereafter, Williams, 1957–1980.

  17. 17.

    Ibid., 366–367.

  18. 18.

    Ibid., 385.

  19. 19.

    The first notable use of the “digging a hole to China” idea occurred in the middle of the nineteenth century. In 1854, Henry David Thoreau wrote in Walden, “As for your high towers and monuments, there was a crazy fellow in town who undertook to dig through to China, and he got so far that, as he said, he heard the Chinese pots and kettles rattle; but I think that I shall not go out of my way to admire the hole which he made.” There seems not much curiosity or adventurous spirit on the part of the famed transcendentalist about the world so far out of his reach. For more on the possible origins and cultural significance of this saying, see Andy Wright, “The Hole Truth about Why We ‘Dig to China,’” October 19, 2015, https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-hole-truth-about-why-we-dig-to-china.

  20. 20.

    Williams, 1957–1980, 399.

  21. 21.

    Ibid., 405.

  22. 22.

    Ibid., 410.

  23. 23.

    Ibid., 414.

  24. 24.

    Ibid., 391.

  25. 25.

    Ibid., 406.

  26. 26.

    Ibid., 411–412.

  27. 27.

    Here is a quote from the “Foreword” of a 1948 book entitled They Went to China:

    China missionaries of the Disciples of Christ have known privation and danger, distrust and suspicion, indifference and opposition; they have experienced revolutions from within and invasion from without; but they have also known the high joys of suffering alleviated, of ignorance dispelled, of souls illuminated and lives regenerated by the love of God, of fellowship with Chinese Christian friends in soul-testing and in heartwarming experiences, of seeing come into being, and of being a part of a vital, growing church in China.

    See The United Christian Missionary Society, They Went To China: Biographies of Missionaries of the Disciples of Christ (Indianapolis, Indiana: The United Christian Missionary Society, 1948), https://digitalcommons.acu.edu/crs_books/477.

  28. 28.

    See Chap. 3, pp. 119–122.

  29. 29.

    In autumn 1955, per invitation from the Chinese as part of their people’s diplomacy strategy (to eventually establish official relations with the guests’ countries), Jean-Paul Sartre, along with Simone de Beauvoir, made a two-month visit to China, a highly programmed tour to showcase the new People’s Republic. The distinguished French guests had tea with Mao Zedong (1893–1976) although no substantive conversation happened. They also had the honor to join Mao on the Tiananmen podium during the National Day celebration and went on to tour Shenyang, Shanghai, Hangzhou, and Guangzhou. Sartre was probably an exceptional case, being a Communist sympathizer, although he did not join the French Communist Party; moreover, he was actively involved in the French resistance against the Nazis during World War II. See Shouhua Qi, Adapting Western Classics for the Chinese Stage (London and New York: Routledge, 2018), 162.

  30. 30.

    Tennessee Williams, Memoirs (New York: New Directions Publishing, 2006), 235.

  31. 31.

    Eddie Woods, Tennessee Williams in Bangkok (Dixon, CA: Inkblot Books, 2013), 1–6.

  32. 32.

    Williams, Memoirs, 236.

  33. 33.

    John Lahr, Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh (New York: Norton, 2014), 351.

  34. 34.

    See John Stoltenberg, “Tennessee Williams’s Lady from the Village of Falling Flowers Returns,” December 19, 2020, DC Metro, https://dcmetrotheaterarts.com/2020/12/19/natsu-onoda-power-crafts-a-tennessee-williams-puppet-show/; and Christopher Henley, “Review: The Lady from the Village of Falling Flowers,” December 11, 2019, DC Theatre Scene, https://dctheatrescene.com/2019/12/11/review-the-lady-from-the-village-of-falling-flowers/.

  35. 35.

    See “Kamishibai,” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamishibai.

  36. 36.

    See The Embassy of Japan, Japan Report (日本) 6.8, April 15, 1960, 5, https://books.google.com/books?id=7VeHgPX7m1MC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false.

  37. 37.

    See “The Day on Which a Man Dies: An Occidental Noh-Play,” https://www.themorgan.org/literary-historical/184607.

  38. 38.

    See “Gutai group,” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gutai_group.

  39. 39.

    See David Kaplan, “The Day on Which a Man Dies: Chicago 2007, Chicago, East Hampton, Provincetown 2009,” http://davidkaplandirector.com/the-day-on-which-a-man-dies/; and Tom Williams, “The Day On Which A Man Dies: Unique Lost Tennessee Williams One Act is Riveting,” Chicago Critic, https://chicagocritic.com/the-day-on-which-a-man-dies/.

  40. 40.

    See Sarah Elizabeth Johnson, The Influence of Japanese Traditional Performing Arts Tennessee Williams Late Plays, MFA (Master of Fine Arts) thesis, University of Iowa, 2014), https://doi.org/10.17077/etd.92wlztti.

  41. 41.

    Michael Paller, Gentlemen Callers: Tennessee Williams, Homosexuality, and Mid-Twentieth-Century Drama (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 163.

  42. 42.

    See Clive Barnes, “Theater: In the Bar of a Tokyo Hotel,” New York Times, May 12, 1969, https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/00/12/31/specials/williams-tokyo.html; Mark Blankenship, “In the Bar of a Tokyo Hotel,” Variety, February 6, 2007, https://variety.com/2007/legit/reviews/in-the-bar-of-a-tokyo-hotel-1200510564/; and Alexa Criscitiello, “Photo Flash: In The Bar of A Tokyo Hotel Opens Tomorrow at 292 Theatre,” Broadway World, March 14, 2017, https://www.broadwayworld.com/article/Photo-Flash-IN-THE-BAR-OF-A-TOKYO-HOTEL-Opens-Tomorrow-at-202-Theatre-20170314.

  43. 43.

    Paller, 169.

  44. 44.

    Tennessee Williams, In the Bar of a Tokyo Hotel (New York: Dramatist Plays Service, 1969), 40.

  45. 45.

    It is interesting to note that in his Memoirs, Japan gets mentioned only once (236) and Mishima twice (236, 248).

  46. 46.

    Williams, Memoirs, 236–237.

  47. 47.

    “In that velvet dressing-gown you look like the Emperor Tiberius!—In his imperial toga!—Your hair and your eyes are both the color of iron! Iron grey. Invincible looking! People nearby are all somewhat—frightened of you. They feel your force and they admire you for it. They come to you here for opinions on this or that.” Williams, 1937–1955, 869.

  48. 48.

    See Ying Ruocheng and Claire Conceison, Voices Carry: Behind Bars and Backstage during China’s Revolution and Reform (New York: Roman and Littlefield, 2009).

  49. 49.

    Wu Wenquan 吾文泉, “Kua wenhua shixue yanjiu yu wutai biaoshu: Tiannaxi weiliansi zai zhongguo” (跨文化诗学研究与舞台表述:田纳西·威廉斯在中国 Transcultural poetics studies and theatrical expressions: Tennessee Williams in China,” Xiju (Drama) 4 (2004): 68.

  50. 50.

    Qi, Adapting Western Classics, 92.

  51. 51.

    Zhou Peitong 周培桐. “Duju yige de meiguo juzuojia: Jieshao Tiannaxi weiliansi” (独具一格的美国剧作家—介绍田纳西·威廉斯 An idiosyncratic American playwright: an introduction of Tennessee Williams), Xiju bao (Theatre Gazette) 8 (1987): 33–34.

  52. 52.

    Wei Zhang, Chinese Adaptations of Brecht: Appropriation and Intertextuality (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), 15–18.

  53. 53.

    See Wu Wenquan. In 2016, almost 30 years later, the graduating class of acting students at the recently founded Shanghai Institute of Visual Arts mounted a production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. It had a full week run from November 27 to December 3, to packed audiences. See “Biye daxi Re tiepi wuding shang de mao” (Graduation performance Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, December 1, 2016, http://www.siva.edu.cn/site/site1/newsText.aspx?si=16&id=3787.

    In 2012, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof was one of the three Williams plays performed by the Amsterdam Company Urban Aphrodite during the Shanghai Pride celebration to highlight their homosexual themes (the other two plays being The Chalky White Substance and Something Unspoken). See “Shanghai PRIDE 2012 Theater,” http://www.shpride.com/pride2012theater/?lang=en.

  54. 54.

    See Annette Saddik, The Politics of Reputation: The Critical Reception of Tennessee Williams’ Later Plays (Plainsboro, NJ: Associated University Presses, 1999) and David Kaplan, ed., Tenn at One Hundred: The Reputation of Tennessee Williams (East Brunswick, NJ: Hansen Publishing Group, 2011).

  55. 55.

    Gilbert Debusscher, “Creative Rewriting: European and American Influences on the dramas of Tennessee Williams,” in The Cambridge Companion to Tennessee Williams, edited by Matthew C. Roudané (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 172, 183.

  56. 56.

    Dirk Gindt, “Tennessee Williams and the Swedish Academy: Why He Never Won the Nobel Prize,” in Kaplan, Tenn, 157–160.

  57. 57.

    Qtd. in Thomas Keith, “Pulp Williams: Tennessee in the Popular Imagination,” in Kaplan, Tenn, 170.

  58. 58.

    Annette Saddik: “The Grotesque and Too Funny for Laughter,” in Kaplan, Tenn, 263.

  59. 59.

    Annette J. Saddik, Tennessee Williams and The Theatre of Excess: The Strange, The Crazed, The Queer (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 5.

  60. 60.

    Paller, 2.

  61. 61.

    Qtd. in Hung-yok Ip, Intellectuals in Revolutionary China, 1921–1949 (London and New York: Routledge, 2005), 145.

  62. 62.

    Shouhua Qi, Western Literature in China and the Translation of a Nation (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 91–92.

  63. 63.

    Caryl Emerson, The Cambridge Introduction to Russian Literature (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 200.

  64. 64.

    This brief overview of the reception of Tennessee Williams in the Soviet Union draws from Irene Shaland, Tennessee Williams on the Soviet Stage (Lanham, NY and London: University Press of America, 1987).

  65. 65.

    Shaland, 2–5.

  66. 66.

    Damien Chaussende, “Chen Shu 陈书,” in Early Medieval Chinese Texts: A Bibliographical Guide, edited by Cynthia Louise Chennault, et al. (Berkeley, CA: Institute of East Asian Studies University of California, 2018), 44–47.

  67. 67.

    See Bret Hinsch, Passions of the Cut Sleeve: The Male Homosexual Tradition in China (Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 1990).

  68. 68.

    See Hinsch; and Wenqing Kang, Obsession: Male Same-Sex Relations in China, 1900–1950 (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2009).

  69. 69.

    In Confucian teachings, filial piety is regarded as “the foundation of all virtues, and the seed of all education,” and, according to Mencius (372–289 BC or 385–303 or 302 BC), of the three sins against filial piety (disobeying one’s parents; not taking care of one’s parents when they are old; and having no male heir), having no male heir is “the greatest of all.” See The American Ethical Union, The Standard. Vol III (New York: the American Ethical Union, 1916–1917), 194–195. See also Fu Youde and Wang Qiangwei, “A Comparison of Filial Piety in Ancient Judaism and Early Confucianism,” translated by Noah Lipkowitz, Journal of Chinese Humanities 1 (2015), https://brill.com/view/journals/joch/1/2/article-p280_6.xml?language=en.

  70. 70.

    See Nicholas D. Kristof, “China Bans One of Its Own Films; Cannes Festival Gave It Top Prize,” The New York Times, August 4, 1993, https://www.nytimes.com/search?query=Nicholas+D.++Kristof%2C+%22China+Bans+One+of+Its+Own+Films%3B+Cannes+Festival+Gave+It+Top+Prize%22; and Patrick E. Tyler, “China’s Censors Issue a Warning,” The New York Times, September 4, 1993, https://www.nytimes.com/search?query=Patrick+E.+Tyler%2C+%22China%27s+Censors+Issue+a+Warning%22.

  71. 71.

    See “Dong gong xi gong” (东宫西宫), (https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E4%B8%9C%E5%AE%AB%E8%A5%BF%E5%AE%AB/2540476; and Lawrence Van Gelder, “East Palace, West Palace: Powerful Drama and Courageous Politics,” The New York Times, July 24, 1998, https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/library/film/072498palace-film-review.html.

  72. 72.

    See “Li Yinhe,” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li_Yinhe; and “Li Yinhe” (李银河), https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E6%9D%8E%E9%93%B6%E6%B2%B3/648256.

  73. 73.

    Li Yinhe and Wang Xiaobo 李银河 王小波, Their World: A Study of Male Homosexuality in China (Tamen de shijie: Zhongguo nan tongxinglian qunluo toushi 他们的世界—中国男同性恋群落透视) (Hong Kong: Cosmos Press, 1992; Xi’an: Shanxi People’s Press 陕西人民出版社, 1993).

  74. 74.

    Li and Wang, 5–6.

  75. 75.

    “Yangbanxi” (model drama), https://www.britannica.com/art/yangbanxi.

  76. 76.

    “Great Firewall,” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Firewall.

  77. 77.

    See Tom Mountford, China: The Legal Position and Status of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender People in The People’s Republic of China, 2009, https://outrightinternational.org/content/china-legal-position-and-status-lesbian-gay-bisexual-and-transgender-people-people%E2%80%99s; and John Gittings, “China Drops Homosexuality from List of Psychiatric Disorders,” The Guardian, March 7, 2001, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/mar/07/china.johngittings1.

  78. 78.

    See Matthew Biberman, “Tennessee Williams: The American Shakespeare.” Huffington Post, March 26, 2011, https://www.huffpost.com/entry/tennessee-williams-the-am_b_838552.

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  1. Western Connecticut State University, Danbury, CT, USA

    Shouhua Qi

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Qi, S. (2022). Introduction. In: Culture, History, and the Reception of Tennessee Williams in China. Chinese Literature and Culture in the World. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-16934-2_1

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