Ruth I. Meserve

The Stage History of Roar China! : Documentary Drama as Propaganda

During the 1920s China was undergoing great political and social change. The Republican government under the leadership of Sun Yat-sen struggled against warlord factions and watched the birth of the Communist Party of China (1921). It was a time of turmoil and unrest, as newspapers headlined frightening incidents of murder, banditry, illegal taxation, military skirmishes and plundering. Added to Chinas problems was the recent appearance on her rivers of boat patrols by foreign governments who vowed to protect their commercial interests at any cost. That presence was an embarrassing, even an insulting situation. Finally, on the eve of 1924, Sun Yat-sen announced that China would look toward Russia for help. China would turn away from the West—particularly Britain, America, France and Germany, all of whom had participated in the division of China into foreign legations and treaty ports after the Opium War (1840–42) and had enjoyed great economic advantages as a consequence.

Hung Shen: Chinese Dramatist Trained in America

Americans are generally ill-prepared to judge modern Chinese plays and playwrights because few have even an elementary knowledge of names or play titles. Obviously, there are some good reasons why this situation prevails, and the best one is that there are only a handful of dramatists whose works are worthy of careful study. And there are reasons for this situation, too. Poorly prepared to enter the modern world after emerging from dynastic rule after a revolution in 1911, the Chinese were immediately thrust into a continuing period of political and social upheaval. As Chinese intellectuals began to travel abroad and return with Western ideas, the cultural climate in China during the decade following the revolution tended toward uncertainty. With the founding of the Communist Party of China in 1921, the uneasy control exercised by Sun Yat-Sen and passed on to Chiang Kai-shek developed further difficulties. The political problems which culminated in the Sino-Japanese War seemed to climax a quarter century of disturbing growth in China which was not conducive to the development of great literature or art.