Cao Yu
Encyclopedia
Cao Yu born as Wan Jiabao (T: 萬家寶, S: 万家宝, P: Wàn Jiābǎo), was a renowned Chinese
playwright
, often regarded as China
's most important of the 20th century. His most well-known works are Thunderstorm
(1933), Sunrise (1936) and Peking Man (1940). It is largely through the efforts of Cao Yu that the modern Chinese "spoken theater" took root in 20th-century Chinese literature
.
Xiaomei Chen, author of The Columbia Anthology of Modern Chinese Drama, said that Cao was "[e]nthroned as China's Ibsen
,[...]"
in the province of Hubei
. When he was still an infant, his family's business interests necessitated a move to Tianjin where his father worked for a time as secretary to China's President, Li Yuanhong
. Tianjin was a cosmopolitan city with a strong western influence, and during his childhood, Yu's mother would often take him to see western style plays, which were gaining in popularity at the time, as well as productions of Chinese traditional opera
.
Such western style theater (called "huàjù" in Chinese
; 話劇 / 话剧) made inroads in China under the influence of noted intellectuals such as Chen Duxiu
and Hu Shih
, who were proponents of a wider cultural renewal campaign of the era, marked by anti-imperialism, and a re-evaluation of Chinese cultural institutions, such as Confucianism. The enterprise crystallized in 1919, in the so-called May Fourth Movement
.
Between 1920 and 1924, Cao Yu attended Tianjin Nankai High School, which offered a western style study program. The school maintained a society of dramatic arts in which the students were able to produce various western works, notably those of Henrik Ibsen
and Eugene O'Neill
, who were well-known authors in China thanks to translations published by Hu Shih. Cao Yu took acting roles in a number of the society's dramatic productions, even going so far as to assume the female role of Nora in Ibsen's A Doll's House
. He is also known to have assisted in the translation of Englishman John Galsworthy
's 1909 work, Strife.
After finishing his studies at Nankai secondary school, Cao Yu was first matriculated at Nankai University
's Department of Political Science but transferred the next year to Tsinghua University
, where he would study until graduating in 1934 with a degree in Western Languages and Literature. During his university studies, Cao Yu improved his abilities in both Russian and English. His course of studies required reading the works of such western authors as Bernard Shaw
and Eugene O'Neill
, and of Russian authors such as Anton Chekhov
and Maxim Gorky
, as well as translated works of classic Greek writers, Euripides
and Aeschylus
. This immersion in western literature would mark Yu's style in all writing genres including the "spoken theater" (as opposed to sung Chinese opera
), which had had little tradition in China prior to Yu's influence. During the course of his last year at the university, Cao Yu completed his first work, Thunderstorm, which would mark a milestone in Chinese theater of the 20th century.
While works of Chinese playwrights previous to Cao Yu are of fundamentally historical interest and were famed in China, they garnered little critical success or popularity on the international stage. By contrast, the works of Cao Yu were marked by a whirlwind of worldwide interest, turning Cao Yu into the first Chinese playwright of international renown.
Thunderstorm
Thunderstorm
is undoubtedly one of the most popular dramatic Chinese works of the period prior to the Japanese invasion
of China in 1937. It was first published in the literary magazine, Four Months of Literature, which was founded in 1934 by Chinese intellectuals, Zheng Zhenduo
and Jin Yi
. Shortly after its publication, a production of the play was mounted in Jinan
, and later, in 1935, in Shanghai
and in Tokyo
, both of which were well received. In 1936, Thunderstorm debuted in Nanjing
, with Cao Yu himself acting in the lead role. In 1938, following its theatrical triumphs, the play was made into two separate movies productions, one in Shanghai
and another in Hong Kong
, that were almost coincidental versions of one another. The latter production, made in 1957, co-starred a young Bruce Lee
in one of his few non-fighting roles.
The plot of Thunderstorm centers on one family's psychological and physical destruction as a result of incest
, as perpetrated at the hands of its morally depraved and corrupt patriarch
, Zhou Puyuan. Although it is undisputed that the prodigious reputation achieved by Thunderstorm was due in large part to its scandalous public airing of the topic of incest, and many people have pointed out not inconsiderable technical imperfections in its structure, Thunderstorm is nevertheless considered to be a milestone in China's modern theatrical ascendancy. Even those who have questioned the literary prowess of Cao Yu, for instance, the noted critic C. T. Hsia, admit that the popularization and consolidation of China's theatrical genre is fundamentally owed to the first works of Cao Yu.
Thunderstorm was first published in a literary magazine in 1934, and staged in numerous cities over the next few years. Several film adaptations have been made.
treatment respecting individuals' progressive moral degradation in the face of a hostile society. In it, the history of several Shanghai
women are narrated, and whose stories show their lives disintegrating in response to lack of affection and of acknowledgment by the society surrounding them, leading them down a tragic path from which they cannot escape. In 1937, Cao Yu's third play, The Wilderness (the Chinese name of which can also be translated as The Field), was released but which enjoyed less success than his previous works. The Wilderness, which was influenced by O'Neill's expressionist
works, relates a succession of murders and stories of revenge set in a forest. At the time the play was published, social realism
was the rage in China, and critics were not pleased with the work's supernatural
and fantastical elements. There was a resurgence of interest in The Wilderness in 1980, however, and Cao Yu, then 70-years-old, collaborated in staging a production of his play. The play was made into a movie in 1987.
in 1937, Cao Yu took shelter in the central city of Chongqing
, along with the government of Chiang Kai-shek
. There he wrote his fourth work, The Metamorphosis, which greatly departed from his previous works, concerning itself with patriotic exaltation. Produced for the first time in 1939, the play is set in a military hospital that is bombed by the Japanese army. Although a change for Cao Yu, he was in good company as concentrating on war themes and settings was favored by most of the prominent Chinese writers active during the Second Sino-Japanese war in areas controlled by the government of Chongqing. By contrast, in northern China
, as controlled by Mao Zedong
's communists, an altogether different type of literature was developing, dedicated to exalting the communist movement.
In 1940, Cao Yu completed the writing of his fifth play, Peking Man, considered his most profound and successful work. Set in Peking (today Beijing) as its name implies, and in the then present, surprisingly the work does not allude to the war with Japan at all, but chronicles the history of a well-heeled family that is incapable of surviving and adapting to social change
s which are destroying the traditional world and culture in which they live. The title of the work is an allusion
to the so-called Peking Man
, the proto-human who inhabited the north of China several hundred thousand years ago. Cao Yu's recurrent themes are present, emphasizing the inability of traditional families to adapt themselves to modern society and its customs and ways.
In 1941, while still in Chongqing, Cao Yu completed a theatrical adaptation of the famous work, The Family, by novelist, Ba Jin
. His last written work during the Japanese occupation was The Bridge, published in 1945 but not produced as a play until 1947, after the end of the war when Japanese troops in China formally surrendered on September 9, 1945.
During his tenure in Chongqing, Cao Yu taught classes in the city's School of Dramatic Art and completed a translation into Chinese of William Shakespeare
's Romeo and Juliet
.
with another celebrated Chinese writer Lao She
. Together, the pair spent a full year touring the U.S. After returning to China, Yu was hired by a movie studio based in Shanghai to write the screenplay and to direct the 1946 released movie, Day of the Radiant Sun (艷陽天 / 艳阳天; Yànyángtiān).
in 1949, Cao Yu took on the role of director of Peking's Popular Theater Art League — A role he would remain in for the rest of his life. Although in his youth Yu had been critical of communist ideology, because his first works, with their portrait of decline and cruelty brought on by bourgeois society, were admitting of a Marxist interpretation, they became very popular in 1960s Chinese society; an epoch in which the ideology of Mao Zedong
demanded that all literary creation be in service to the communist cause.
In addition to supervising successive production of his earliest plays, Cao Yu kept on writing, and in 1956, published Bright Skies. Thereafter, in 1961, the decade of his major public recognition, he published Courage and the Sword, his first historical drama. This work, although set at the end of the Zhou Dynasty
during the Warring States Period
, contains pronounced allusions to the defeat of Mao Zedong's political ideology clothed in his Great Leap Forward
. His and others' critiques of Mao, and the struggle for power in the halls of government, ultimately ended in the Cultural Revolution
; a campaign enforced by Mao to reaffirm his power and to fight against the bourgeois and capitalist elements surfacing in both the political and cultural spheres. The attacks against intellectuals during the Cultural Revolution affected Cao Yu, causing him distress and alienation. However, he was able to rehabilitate himself after Mao's death and Deng Xiaoping
subsequent rise to power as de facto
ruler of China.
Cao Yu's last work was Wang Zhaojun, released in 1979. On December 13, 1996, at 86 years of age, Cao Yu died in Beijing.
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...
playwright
Playwright
A playwright, also called a dramatist, is a person who writes plays.The term is not a variant spelling of "playwrite", but something quite distinct: the word wright is an archaic English term for a craftsman or builder...
, often regarded as China
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...
's most important of the 20th century. His most well-known works are Thunderstorm
Thunderstorm (play)
Thunderstorm , is a play by the Chinese dramatist Cao Yu. It is one of the most popular dramatic Chinese works of the period prior to the Japanese invasion of China in 1937.-History:...
(1933), Sunrise (1936) and Peking Man (1940). It is largely through the efforts of Cao Yu that the modern Chinese "spoken theater" took root in 20th-century Chinese literature
Chinese literature
Chinese literature extends thousands of years, from the earliest recorded dynastic court archives to the mature fictional novels that arose during the Ming Dynasty to entertain the masses of literate Chinese...
.
Xiaomei Chen, author of The Columbia Anthology of Modern Chinese Drama, said that Cao was "[e]nthroned as China's Ibsen
Henrik Ibsen
Henrik Ibsen was a major 19th-century Norwegian playwright, theatre director, and poet. He is often referred to as "the father of prose drama" and is one of the founders of Modernism in the theatre...
,[...]"
Childhood
Cao Yu was born into a poor family in QianjiangQianjiang, Hubei
Qianjiang is a sub-prefecture-level city of south-central Hubei province, Central China.-Geography and climate:Qianjiang is located in south-central Hubei province in the Jiang-Han plain. Its area...
in the province of Hubei
Hubei
' Hupeh) is a province in Central China. The name of the province means "north of the lake", referring to its position north of Lake Dongting...
. When he was still an infant, his family's business interests necessitated a move to Tianjin where his father worked for a time as secretary to China's President, Li Yuanhong
Li Yuanhong
Li Yuanhong was a Chinese general and political figure during the Qing dynasty and the republican era. He was twice president of the Republic of China.- Early history :...
. Tianjin was a cosmopolitan city with a strong western influence, and during his childhood, Yu's mother would often take him to see western style plays, which were gaining in popularity at the time, as well as productions of Chinese traditional opera
Chinese opera
Chinese opera is a popular form of drama and musical theatre in China with roots going back as far as the third century CE...
.
Such western style theater (called "huàjù" in Chinese
Chinese language
The Chinese language is a language or language family consisting of varieties which are mutually intelligible to varying degrees. Originally the indigenous languages spoken by the Han Chinese in China, it forms one of the branches of Sino-Tibetan family of languages...
; 話劇 / 话剧) made inroads in China under the influence of noted intellectuals such as Chen Duxiu
Chen Duxiu
Chen Duxiu played many different roles in Chinese history. He was a leading figure in the anti-imperial Xinhai Revolution and the May Fourth Movement for Science and Democracy. Along with Li Dazhao, Chen was a co-founder of the Chinese Communist Party in 1921. He was its first General Secretary....
and Hu Shih
Hu Shih
Hu Shih , born Hu Hung-hsing , was a Chinese philosopher, essayist and diplomat. His courtesy name was Shih-chih . Hu is widely recognized today as a key contributor to Chinese liberalism and language reform in his advocacy for the use of written vernacular Chinese...
, who were proponents of a wider cultural renewal campaign of the era, marked by anti-imperialism, and a re-evaluation of Chinese cultural institutions, such as Confucianism. The enterprise crystallized in 1919, in the so-called May Fourth Movement
May Fourth Movement
The May Fourth Movement was an anti-imperialist, cultural, and political movement growing out of student demonstrations in Beijing on May 4, 1919, protesting the Chinese government's weak response to the Treaty of Versailles, especially the Shandong Problem...
.
Literary beginnings
Henrik Ibsen
Henrik Ibsen was a major 19th-century Norwegian playwright, theatre director, and poet. He is often referred to as "the father of prose drama" and is one of the founders of Modernism in the theatre...
and Eugene O'Neill
Eugene O'Neill
Eugene Gladstone O'Neill was an American playwright and Nobel laureate in Literature. His poetically titled plays were among the first to introduce into American drama techniques of realism earlier associated with Russian playwright Anton Chekhov, Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen, and Swedish...
, who were well-known authors in China thanks to translations published by Hu Shih. Cao Yu took acting roles in a number of the society's dramatic productions, even going so far as to assume the female role of Nora in Ibsen's A Doll's House
A Doll's House
A Doll's House is a three-act play in prose by the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. It premièred at the Royal Theatre in Copenhagen, Denmark, on 21 December 1879, having been published earlier that month....
. He is also known to have assisted in the translation of Englishman John Galsworthy
John Galsworthy
John Galsworthy OM was an English novelist and playwright. Notable works include The Forsyte Saga and its sequels, A Modern Comedy and End of the Chapter...
's 1909 work, Strife.
After finishing his studies at Nankai secondary school, Cao Yu was first matriculated at Nankai University
Nankai University
Nankai University , commonly known as Nankai, is a public research university based in Tianjin on mainland China. Founded in 1919 by educators Zhang Boling and Yan Fansun , Nankai University is a member of the Nankai serial schools. It is the alma mater of former Chinese Premier and key historical...
's Department of Political Science but transferred the next year to Tsinghua University
Tsinghua University
Tsinghua University , colloquially known in Chinese as Qinghua, is a university in Beijing, China. The school is one of the nine universities of the C9 League. It was established in 1911 under the name "Tsinghua Xuetang" or "Tsinghua College" and was renamed the "Tsinghua School" one year later...
, where he would study until graduating in 1934 with a degree in Western Languages and Literature. During his university studies, Cao Yu improved his abilities in both Russian and English. His course of studies required reading the works of such western authors as Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60...
and Eugene O'Neill
Eugene O'Neill
Eugene Gladstone O'Neill was an American playwright and Nobel laureate in Literature. His poetically titled plays were among the first to introduce into American drama techniques of realism earlier associated with Russian playwright Anton Chekhov, Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen, and Swedish...
, and of Russian authors such as Anton Chekhov
Anton Chekhov
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov was a Russian physician, dramatist and author who is considered to be among the greatest writers of short stories in history. His career as a dramatist produced four classics and his best short stories are held in high esteem by writers and critics...
and Maxim Gorky
Maxim Gorky
Alexei Maximovich Peshkov , primarily known as Maxim Gorky , was a Russian and Soviet author, a founder of the Socialist Realism literary method and a political activist.-Early years:...
, as well as translated works of classic Greek writers, Euripides
Euripides
Euripides was one of the three great tragedians of classical Athens, the other two being Aeschylus and Sophocles. Some ancient scholars attributed ninety-five plays to him but according to the Suda it was ninety-two at most...
and Aeschylus
Aeschylus
Aeschylus was the first of the three ancient Greek tragedians whose work has survived, the others being Sophocles and Euripides, and is often described as the father of tragedy. His name derives from the Greek word aiskhos , meaning "shame"...
. This immersion in western literature would mark Yu's style in all writing genres including the "spoken theater" (as opposed to sung Chinese opera
Chinese opera
Chinese opera is a popular form of drama and musical theatre in China with roots going back as far as the third century CE...
), which had had little tradition in China prior to Yu's influence. During the course of his last year at the university, Cao Yu completed his first work, Thunderstorm, which would mark a milestone in Chinese theater of the 20th century.
While works of Chinese playwrights previous to Cao Yu are of fundamentally historical interest and were famed in China, they garnered little critical success or popularity on the international stage. By contrast, the works of Cao Yu were marked by a whirlwind of worldwide interest, turning Cao Yu into the first Chinese playwright of international renown.
ThunderstormThunderstorm (play)Thunderstorm , is a play by the Chinese dramatist Cao Yu. It is one of the most popular dramatic Chinese works of the period prior to the Japanese invasion of China in 1937.-History:...
ThunderstormThunderstorm (play)
Thunderstorm , is a play by the Chinese dramatist Cao Yu. It is one of the most popular dramatic Chinese works of the period prior to the Japanese invasion of China in 1937.-History:...
is undoubtedly one of the most popular dramatic Chinese works of the period prior to the Japanese invasion
Second Sino-Japanese War
The Second Sino-Japanese War was a military conflict fought primarily between the Republic of China and the Empire of Japan. From 1937 to 1941, China fought Japan with some economic help from Germany , the Soviet Union and the United States...
of China in 1937. It was first published in the literary magazine, Four Months of Literature, which was founded in 1934 by Chinese intellectuals, Zheng Zhenduo
Zheng Zhenduo
Zheng Zhenduo , Chinese courtesy name Xidì , was a journalist, a modern writer, an archeologist and a literature scholar. His pen names were Baofun , Guo Yuanxin and CT....
and Jin Yi
Jin Yi
Jin Yi , style name Dewei , was the son of the minor warlord Jin Xuan, who lived during the late Han Dynasty period of Chinese history. Jin Yi detested Cao Cao and plotted a rebellion with Geng Ji. However, when the plot was leaked out, he was attacked by Cao Cao and his entire family was killed....
. Shortly after its publication, a production of the play was mounted in Jinan
Jinan
Jinan is the capital of Shandong province in Eastern China. The area of present-day Jinan has played an important role in the history of the region from the earliest beginnings of civilisation and has evolved into a major national administrative, economic, and transportation hub...
, and later, in 1935, in Shanghai
Shanghai
Shanghai is the largest city by population in China and the largest city proper in the world. It is one of the four province-level municipalities in the People's Republic of China, with a total population of over 23 million as of 2010...
and in Tokyo
Tokyo
, ; officially , is one of the 47 prefectures of Japan. Tokyo is the capital of Japan, the center of the Greater Tokyo Area, and the largest metropolitan area of Japan. It is the seat of the Japanese government and the Imperial Palace, and the home of the Japanese Imperial Family...
, both of which were well received. In 1936, Thunderstorm debuted in Nanjing
Nanjing
' is the capital of Jiangsu province in China and has a prominent place in Chinese history and culture, having been the capital of China on several occasions...
, with Cao Yu himself acting in the lead role. In 1938, following its theatrical triumphs, the play was made into two separate movies productions, one in Shanghai
Shanghai
Shanghai is the largest city by population in China and the largest city proper in the world. It is one of the four province-level municipalities in the People's Republic of China, with a total population of over 23 million as of 2010...
and another in Hong Kong
Hong Kong
Hong Kong is one of two Special Administrative Regions of the People's Republic of China , the other being Macau. A city-state situated on China's south coast and enclosed by the Pearl River Delta and South China Sea, it is renowned for its expansive skyline and deep natural harbour...
, that were almost coincidental versions of one another. The latter production, made in 1957, co-starred a young Bruce Lee
Bruce Lee
Bruce Lee was a Chinese American, Hong Kong actor, martial arts instructor, philosopher, film director, film producer, screenwriter, and founder of the Jeet Kune Do martial arts movement...
in one of his few non-fighting roles.
The plot of Thunderstorm centers on one family's psychological and physical destruction as a result of incest
Incest
Incest is sexual intercourse between close relatives that is usually illegal in the jurisdiction where it takes place and/or is conventionally considered a taboo. The term may apply to sexual activities between: individuals of close "blood relationship"; members of the same household; step...
, as perpetrated at the hands of its morally depraved and corrupt patriarch
Patriarch
Originally a patriarch was a man who exercised autocratic authority as a pater familias over an extended family. The system of such rule of families by senior males is called patriarchy. This is a Greek word, a compound of πατριά , "lineage, descent", esp...
, Zhou Puyuan. Although it is undisputed that the prodigious reputation achieved by Thunderstorm was due in large part to its scandalous public airing of the topic of incest, and many people have pointed out not inconsiderable technical imperfections in its structure, Thunderstorm is nevertheless considered to be a milestone in China's modern theatrical ascendancy. Even those who have questioned the literary prowess of Cao Yu, for instance, the noted critic C. T. Hsia, admit that the popularization and consolidation of China's theatrical genre is fundamentally owed to the first works of Cao Yu.
Thunderstorm was first published in a literary magazine in 1934, and staged in numerous cities over the next few years. Several film adaptations have been made.
Sunrise and The Wilderness
In Cao Yu's second play, Sunrise, published in 1936, he continues his thematicTheme (literature)
A theme is a broad, message, or moral of a story. The message may be about life, society, or human nature. Themes often explore timeless and universal ideas and are almost always implied rather than stated explicitly. Along with plot, character,...
treatment respecting individuals' progressive moral degradation in the face of a hostile society. In it, the history of several Shanghai
Shanghai
Shanghai is the largest city by population in China and the largest city proper in the world. It is one of the four province-level municipalities in the People's Republic of China, with a total population of over 23 million as of 2010...
women are narrated, and whose stories show their lives disintegrating in response to lack of affection and of acknowledgment by the society surrounding them, leading them down a tragic path from which they cannot escape. In 1937, Cao Yu's third play, The Wilderness (the Chinese name of which can also be translated as The Field), was released but which enjoyed less success than his previous works. The Wilderness, which was influenced by O'Neill's expressionist
Expressionism
Expressionism was a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it radically for emotional effect in order to evoke moods or ideas...
works, relates a succession of murders and stories of revenge set in a forest. At the time the play was published, social realism
Social realism
Social Realism, also known as Socio-Realism, is an artistic movement, expressed in the visual and other realist arts, which depicts social and racial injustice, economic hardship, through unvarnished pictures of life's struggles; often depicting working class activities as heroic...
was the rage in China, and critics were not pleased with the work's supernatural
Supernatural
The supernatural or is that which is not subject to the laws of nature, or more figuratively, that which is said to exist above and beyond nature...
and fantastical elements. There was a resurgence of interest in The Wilderness in 1980, however, and Cao Yu, then 70-years-old, collaborated in staging a production of his play. The play was made into a movie in 1987.
Writings during the Japanese occupation
After the Japanese invasion of ChinaSecond Sino-Japanese War
The Second Sino-Japanese War was a military conflict fought primarily between the Republic of China and the Empire of Japan. From 1937 to 1941, China fought Japan with some economic help from Germany , the Soviet Union and the United States...
in 1937, Cao Yu took shelter in the central city of Chongqing
Chongqing
Chongqing is a major city in Southwest China and one of the five national central cities of China. Administratively, it is one of the PRC's four direct-controlled municipalities , and the only such municipality in inland China.The municipality was created on 14 March 1997, succeeding the...
, along with the government of Chiang Kai-shek
Chiang Kai-shek
Chiang Kai-shek was a political and military leader of 20th century China. He is known as Jiǎng Jièshí or Jiǎng Zhōngzhèng in Mandarin....
. There he wrote his fourth work, The Metamorphosis, which greatly departed from his previous works, concerning itself with patriotic exaltation. Produced for the first time in 1939, the play is set in a military hospital that is bombed by the Japanese army. Although a change for Cao Yu, he was in good company as concentrating on war themes and settings was favored by most of the prominent Chinese writers active during the Second Sino-Japanese war in areas controlled by the government of Chongqing. By contrast, in northern China
Northern and southern China
Northern China and southern China are two approximate regions within China. The exact boundary between these two regions has never been precisely defined...
, as controlled by Mao Zedong
Mao Zedong
Mao Zedong, also transliterated as Mao Tse-tung , and commonly referred to as Chairman Mao , was a Chinese Communist revolutionary, guerrilla warfare strategist, Marxist political philosopher, and leader of the Chinese Revolution...
's communists, an altogether different type of literature was developing, dedicated to exalting the communist movement.
In 1940, Cao Yu completed the writing of his fifth play, Peking Man, considered his most profound and successful work. Set in Peking (today Beijing) as its name implies, and in the then present, surprisingly the work does not allude to the war with Japan at all, but chronicles the history of a well-heeled family that is incapable of surviving and adapting to social change
Social change
Social change refers to an alteration in the social order of a society. It may refer to the notion of social progress or sociocultural evolution, the philosophical idea that society moves forward by dialectical or evolutionary means. It may refer to a paradigmatic change in the socio-economic...
s which are destroying the traditional world and culture in which they live. The title of the work is an allusion
Allusion
An allusion is a figure of speech that makes a reference to, or representation of, people, places, events, literary work, myths, or works of art, either directly or by implication. M. H...
to the so-called Peking Man
Peking Man
Peking Man , Homo erectus pekinensis, is an example of Homo erectus. A group of fossil specimens was discovered in 1923-27 during excavations at Zhoukoudian near Beijing , China...
, the proto-human who inhabited the north of China several hundred thousand years ago. Cao Yu's recurrent themes are present, emphasizing the inability of traditional families to adapt themselves to modern society and its customs and ways.
In 1941, while still in Chongqing, Cao Yu completed a theatrical adaptation of the famous work, The Family, by novelist, Ba Jin
Ba Jin
Li Yaotang , courtesy name Feigan , is considered to be one of the most important and widely-read Chinese writers of the 20th century. He wrote under the pen name of Ba Jin , Pa Chin, Li Fei-Kan, Li Pei-Kan, Pa Kin, allegedly taking his pseudonym from Russian anarchists Bakunin and Kropotkin...
. His last written work during the Japanese occupation was The Bridge, published in 1945 but not produced as a play until 1947, after the end of the war when Japanese troops in China formally surrendered on September 9, 1945.
During his tenure in Chongqing, Cao Yu taught classes in the city's School of Dramatic Art and completed a translation into Chinese of William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...
's Romeo and Juliet
Romeo and Juliet
Romeo and Juliet is a tragedy written early in the career of playwright William Shakespeare about two young star-crossed lovers whose deaths ultimately unite their feuding families. It was among Shakespeare's most popular archetypal stories of young, teenage lovers.Romeo and Juliet belongs to a...
.
Travel to the United States and return to China
Following the end of the war, Cao Yu traveled to the United StatesUnited States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
with another celebrated Chinese writer Lao She
Lao She
Shu Qingchun , better known by his pen name Lao She was a notable Chinese writer. A novelist and dramatist, he was one of the most significant figures of 20th century Chinese literature, and is perhaps best known for his novel Rickshaw Boy and the play Teahouse . He was of Manchu ethnicity...
. Together, the pair spent a full year touring the U.S. After returning to China, Yu was hired by a movie studio based in Shanghai to write the screenplay and to direct the 1946 released movie, Day of the Radiant Sun (艷陽天 / 艳阳天; Yànyángtiān).
Writings after the founding of the People's Republic of China
After the founding of the People's Republic of ChinaHistory of the People's Republic of China (1949-1976)
This part of the history of the People's Republic of China is often divided distinctly by historians into the "Mao era" and the "post-Mao era". The Mao era lasted from the founding of the People's Republic on October 1, 1949 to Deng Xiaoping's grip onto power and policy reversal at the Third Plenum...
in 1949, Cao Yu took on the role of director of Peking's Popular Theater Art League — A role he would remain in for the rest of his life. Although in his youth Yu had been critical of communist ideology, because his first works, with their portrait of decline and cruelty brought on by bourgeois society, were admitting of a Marxist interpretation, they became very popular in 1960s Chinese society; an epoch in which the ideology of Mao Zedong
Mao Zedong
Mao Zedong, also transliterated as Mao Tse-tung , and commonly referred to as Chairman Mao , was a Chinese Communist revolutionary, guerrilla warfare strategist, Marxist political philosopher, and leader of the Chinese Revolution...
demanded that all literary creation be in service to the communist cause.
In addition to supervising successive production of his earliest plays, Cao Yu kept on writing, and in 1956, published Bright Skies. Thereafter, in 1961, the decade of his major public recognition, he published Courage and the Sword, his first historical drama. This work, although set at the end of the Zhou Dynasty
Zhou Dynasty
The Zhou Dynasty was a Chinese dynasty that followed the Shang Dynasty and preceded the Qin Dynasty. Although the Zhou Dynasty lasted longer than any other dynasty in Chinese history, the actual political and military control of China by the Ji family lasted only until 771 BC, a period known as...
during the Warring States Period
Warring States Period
The Warring States Period , also known as the Era of Warring States, or the Warring Kingdoms period, covers the Iron Age period from about 475 BC to the reunification of China under the Qin Dynasty in 221 BC...
, contains pronounced allusions to the defeat of Mao Zedong's political ideology clothed in his Great Leap Forward
Great Leap Forward
The Great Leap Forward of the People's Republic of China was an economic and social campaign of the Communist Party of China , reflected in planning decisions from 1958 to 1961, which aimed to use China's vast population to rapidly transform the country from an agrarian economy into a modern...
. His and others' critiques of Mao, and the struggle for power in the halls of government, ultimately ended in the Cultural Revolution
Cultural Revolution
The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, commonly known as the Cultural Revolution , was a socio-political movement that took place in the People's Republic of China from 1966 through 1976...
; a campaign enforced by Mao to reaffirm his power and to fight against the bourgeois and capitalist elements surfacing in both the political and cultural spheres. The attacks against intellectuals during the Cultural Revolution affected Cao Yu, causing him distress and alienation. However, he was able to rehabilitate himself after Mao's death and Deng Xiaoping
Deng Xiaoping
Deng Xiaoping was a Chinese politician, statesman, and diplomat. As leader of the Communist Party of China, Deng was a reformer who led China towards a market economy...
subsequent rise to power as de facto
De facto
De facto is a Latin expression that means "concerning fact." In law, it often means "in practice but not necessarily ordained by law" or "in practice or actuality, but not officially established." It is commonly used in contrast to de jure when referring to matters of law, governance, or...
ruler of China.
Cao Yu's last work was Wang Zhaojun, released in 1979. On December 13, 1996, at 86 years of age, Cao Yu died in Beijing.