Li Hongzhang Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Multiple layers of historical mediations are at work in Chaoxian fengyun 朝鮮風雲 (Storms over Choson), a thirteen-act play written in 1948 and published in 1950 in Shanghai by the Leftist playwright Tian Han 田漢. Centered on events taken place in the early to mid-1880s leading to the Frist Sino-Japanese War (1894-5), Storms over Choson reads like a detective story written from the perspectives of all involved, instead of only favoring one voice or one perspective. Reading the play today, we are compelled to reflect on the convergences and divergences in sensibilities and visions among the mid 19th (Taiping Rebellion), the late 19th (Frist Sino-Japanese War), the mid 20th (Second Sino-Japanese War, Chinese Civil War, and the Korean War), and the early 21st centuries’ global contexts.

Born in Changsha in the late 1890s and came of age in Post-WWI Tokyo, Tian Han, like others in his generation, had been shaped by the defining wars in the region and throughout the world, among them the First Sino-Japanese War seemed to have had the most profound impact on his generation. Subtitled as “The first in a trilogy on the First Sino-Japanese War,” Storms over Choson featured events taken place in the imperial palace, the Japanese consulate, and the suburbs of Hanseong (漢城, now Seoul), in the official residence of Li Hongzhang in Tianjin, in the imperial court in Beijing, and in a village in the French Indochina (now Vietnam) from the early to mid 1880s at the time of the Sino-French conflict, and was crafted as a prologue to another two future plays on the First Sino-Japanese War fought over Choson Dynasty Korea (now divided into North and South Korea). Intriguingly, in his fictional account written in 1948 on the diplomatic dramas and political intrigues among Qing China, Meiji Japan, Choson Dynasty Korea, Imperial Russia, the French Third Republic, and French Indochina, Tian Han quotes Chen Gonglu’s 陳恭祿 Zhongguo jindaishi 中國近代史, a well-researched and well-written account of Chinese history from the mid-19th century onward, as an important source. Written and published in the mid-1930s, Chen’s history has largely been forgotten in the Marxist historiography of Mainland China throughout the latter half of the 20th century.

Tian Han, in his play written at the founding of the PRC and from inside the Communist Party, quite remarkably echoed Chen’s liberal philosophy, global vision, and extraordinary sensibility towards disparate local conditions. The result is an impressively nuanced, well-balanced, multi-dimensional portrayal of the key players in Korea, China, Japan, Vietnam, France, and Russia, though still from a distinctively Chinese perspective. Such an important historical play, like the historical account that inspired it, has long been forgotten in the historiography of modern Chinese theatre. Its excavation and possible (re)staging in today’s increasingly interconnected world reveal important historical precedents of intra-Asian border-crossing in the “East Asian Cultural Sphere,” and could inspire readers and audiences to further reflect on the multiple and intertwined paths of cultural flows among China, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, and beyond, both historically and in contemporary times.