A Cross-cultural Study Of Chinoiserie By Chinese American Playwright Ping Chong

Chinese American drama is a component part of American drama. StudyingChinese American drama will surely help to understand American ethnic drama,and eventually get an overall view of American drama.Chinese American drama shows a lot of cross-cultural characteristics. Toapproach Chinese American drama from cross-cultural perspective, we can easilyfind the impacts of Chinese culture, and Chinese classic literature on ChineseAmerican drama. Imitation and appropriation of Peking Opera and Cantoneseopera as well as a lot of Chinese cultural elements are found in the works ofChinese American playwrights. Being a Diaspora group, Chinese Americanplaywrights show their double perspectives about some issues in their works.Ping Chong is an excellent playwright who has gain international popularity.Chinoiserie is one of his important works. In Chinoiserie, cultural conflicts arefound, Chinese theatrical techniques are adopted, Chinese cultural elements areused, and Ping Chong’s different opinion compared with Chinese and American isshowed. So Chinoiserie is a cross-cultural work in all sense.This thesis consists of six chapters. Chapter one is introduction to both thehistorical background of Chinese American drama and the playwright Ping Chongas well as his works. The chapter starts with some explanation about the origin andthe development of Chinese American drama. Then it introduces some majorChinese American playwrights who have made great contributions to thedevelopment. Last part is a brief introduction to Ping Chong and Chinoiserie.Chapter two introduces cross-culture study, which is the perspective fromwhich Chinoiserie is studied. First, this term is defined and then the methods forcross-cultural study are introduced. Finally, the significance of studyingChinoiserie is explained, which aims at showing that a cross-cultural study isnecessary to study Chinoiserie.Chapter three and the following chapters are all text analysis of Chinoiserie.This chapter shows that the simple stage setting of Chinoiserie as described in theplay by Ping Chong can be taken as imitation of Peking Opera and Cantoneseopera; and the Chinese theatrical performing techniques such assinging-speaking-acting-fighting patterns (chang, nian, zuo, da) are adopted byPing Chong, which give Ping Chong’s play a big touch of cross-culture. There arealso descriptions of using Chinese musical instruments to make diverse soundingeffects, and all these show the influence of Chinese theatre to Chinese Americanplaywright Ping Chong.Chapter four shows Ping Chong’s alternative interpretation of the history of tea, a very important symbolic stuff of Chinese culture. And by telling the historyof the Opium War by way of bricolage, Ping Chong is constructing Chinese historyin a “counter-history” way. This Chapter also analyzes the reasons why thisphenomenon has happened.Chapter five is an interpretation of Ping Chong’s cross-cultural ideas,including his opinion about conflicts between Western and Eastern culture. And italso shows his unique identity of “world citizen” by analyzing this cross-culturalplay. Chapter six is the concluding part. It makes a conclusion about the meaningof cross-cultural study of Chinese Americans drama, of Chinese culture and ofChina. It also points out the limitations of this thesis and what should be done infuture research.