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Book Description
This volume is set in a typical, old Beijing teahouse. Lao She's drama follows the lives of the owner and his customers through three stages in modern Chinese history. The play spans fifty years and has a cast of over sixty characters drawn from all levels of society. Brought together in Yutai Teahouse, they reflect, through the changes that were taking place in Chinese society.
The strength and appeal of the play lie in part in Lao She's masterful recreation of the characters and language of the streets of old Beijing, but the center of its strength is Lao She's vision, his unerring choice of significant detail, and this familiarity with the old society he is describing, with its strengths, weaknesses, and ironies. It is this which carries Teahouse beyond the borders of social criticism and makes it a complex and living work of art. Written in 1957, Teahouse bids an inspired, lingering farewell to old Beijing and the old society, despite their evils and ills, and extends a passionate welcome to the new society with its promise of freedom and equality of the people.
Standing as it does between old and new China, and deeply rooted in both, Teahouse shimmers with a fine since of ambivalence. True to its writer, to China, and to its time, it is a masterpiece of modern theatre. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This is a great modern classic drama and a fascinating read. It gives you a vivid picture of the changing face of China during the first half of the twentieth century. Even the stage directions contain interesting observations on Chinese life. I have been studying Chinese on and off for a few years and I am certainly benefiting from the parallel translation. There are two serious problems though. First is that the translation tries too hard , in my opinion, to be colloquial which makes it less useful as a learning aid. Second is the use of traditional characters which certainly threw me when I first opened the book and is not mentioned in the publisher's review. I this rather puzzling for a parallel text aimed presumably at learners. For me this is a bigger minus for the whole series.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
1 review
A historic Chinese play in bilingual format
23 May 2012
Format:Paperback
This volume provides the full text of Lao She's famous 1957 three-act play, "Teahouse," in Chinese (regular characters) and a fluid English translation by John Howard-Gibbon. The Chinese and English texts are presented on facing pages. The volume includes an excellent review of Lao She's life and works by Kwok-kam Tan of the Chinese University of Hong Kong. His review places the play in its historic and literary contexts, making this an excellent reference volume. There's lively Beijing dialect, satire, meditations on the course of China's modernization from the time of the "Self-Strengthening" movement, and a tragic back story.
"Lao She" was the pen name of Shu Qingchun (1899-1966). Set in China still governed by the Kuomintang after the end of the Second World War, "Teahouse" was written in 1957 during the Hundred Flowers movement. Formally a satire of Chinese political movements before 1949 -- the last years of the Qing dynasty, the warlord years, and the Republic -- it was criticized during the Anti-Rightist Campaign and the Cultural Revolution. In 1966, Lao She was seized and beaten by the Red Guards, and there are different accounts of his death -- that he was killed by the Red Guards, or committed suicide afterwards. One of the characters in "Teahouse" asks the recurring question: "I love China, but who loves me?"
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"Lao She" was the pen name of Shu Qingchun (1899-1966). Set in China still governed by the Kuomintang after the end of the Second World War, "Teahouse" was written in 1957 during the Hundred Flowers movement. Formally a satire of Chinese political movements before 1949 -- the last years of the Qing dynasty, the warlord years, and the Republic -- it was criticized during the Anti-Rightist Campaign and the Cultural Revolution. In 1966, Lao She was seized and beaten by the Red Guards, and there are different accounts of his death -- that he was killed by the Red Guards, or committed suicide afterwards. One of the characters in "Teahouse" asks the recurring question: "I love China, but who loves me?"
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