Introduction
China’s remoteness and completeness made it impossible for Europeans to resist gleefully lying to one another about it for centuries. Like a silvered screen: the perfect surface for projection. Here was an entire object, the East, self-contained and automatic, the source of specific, well-known luxuries; luxuries which were mostly “exotic” by way of the class requisites for contact with them.
I can’t even separate my critique of this fantasy from the fantasy. Replace the mystique of the Orient with the explanatory power of Said’s Orientalism and you’re still dealing with a difference – a whole set of differences & othernesses, some of which are obvious; related to things like geography, accidents of location, and all the elements of a plausible path down a kind of technological, teleological Plinko board of civilization. A bit extra with the castration maybe, but, upon examination of global norms? Within an allowable range.
Other, less transparent mysteries remain, but it’s the shock of recognition that really fascinates. The things that are the same, or similar, suggest the kind of universality that made Enlightenment Europeans salivate, piqued to their tiptoes. The silly fellows.
Once I realized what you’d given me with your suggestion of The Orphan of Zhao, what drew my interest most about the play was the use of such a stark allegory by a Song loyalist in mourning, so close to the recent Mongol conquest in time and sentiment. The next most attractive element was the role of the play as an early point of cultural contact between Chinese and European drama traditions.
After further learning of the various versions that exist in Chinese, primarily the Yuan printing and the Ming redaction from the Yuanqu xuan. I confess an initial disinclination to put much focus on the latter version, as it was newer, and therefore less “authentic.” This in spite of the fact that the Yuan printing is very brief, containing no stage direction or action whatsoever.
What is behind the attraction to originality or authenticity? Why am I drawn to an inferior or fragmented account as long as it can claim a longer pedigree, a more perilous & mysterious career, or some other stigmata of legitimacy? It seems to express a deep and basic anxiety; one that is, thankfully, waning over time. Anyway, I bucked my prejudice and engaged with the version from the Yuanqu xuan, still credited to Ji Junxiang, though it has been heavily edited.1
Ji’s choice of subject, the Zhao massacre and the vengeance of their last, orphaned heir, was the first filter his play passed through on its way to my hands. Even as the literati were pursuing more commercial ends with their dramatic arts in the Yuan period, they continued to use stories preferred by their former lords. Correctness and morality are so tied up in hierarchies, class loyalty dressed in humble filial pageantry, and bound to the imperial court by the most basic implication concievable, that allusions to the One Man, the Autarch, were unavoidable. Heaven must still function as a trope, and as a social lodestar.
Beyond that I was drawn to the story as a meeting place where an arbitrary piece of Chinese drama made it through a whole series of historical and aesthetic filters to encounter and influence post-Renaissance European culture.
The Play
Like all human-made things, the various iterations of a play called The Orphan of Zhao are all part of a cultural lineage both preceding and following them in the world. In this case, from 6th century BCE China, to 21st century London. The earliest full version of the story told in the play comes from the Great Historian, Sima Qian, and can be found in his Records of the Historian under the title of The Hereditary House of Zhao.2 The main elements of his narrative were taken from fragments found in Zuozhuan, an addendum to the Spring and Autumn Annals.
In the early Yuan period, a playwright called Ji Junxiang wrote a zaju musical drama based on Qian’s telling in The Hereditary House of Zhao. Ji’s version, The Orphan of Zhao is the most vital node on the route by which the story was later transmitted to Europe via an 18th century French Jesuit priest.
Put simply, the story tells of the unjust extermination of the Zhao clan by corrupt minister Tu’an Gu, in the kingdom of Jin prior to its partition and the start of the Warring States Era.
Commonly, Tu’an Gu is told to have had three-hundred members of the household killed/decapitated, leaving only one secret survivor: the infant son of the Zhao prince. This orphan only survives thanks to the bitter self-sacrifice of several, sometimes unlikely, Zhao clan servants and sympathizers. After being raised to adulthood in the very household of Tu’an Gu, the orphan’s true origin is revealed to him and he decides to take brutal revenge on those who betrayed and destroyed his family.
Though it was written to be performed for commercial theaters in the city of Dadu, there is reason to believe Ji was, at least in part, expressing loyalty to the former Song dynasty, recently conquered by Mongol forces. The Song share the Zhao name, and, during their reign, had honored figures from the story. The Song were also, notably, reduced to a single infant heir, lost under ambiguous circumstances during a naval battle. Understanding this context reveals a longing for justice and redemption in Ji’s play. By choosing it, he is connecting cultural interpretations of the ancient fate of the Zhao with the conditions of 13th century China under the Mongol Yuan. This makes The Orphan of Zhao, in its own time, something also like a promise or a threat.
The text of this original zaju form of the Orphan that survives from the Yuan period includes no dialog or stage directions. It was likely a lead actor’s working songbook, and contains only titles, lyrics, and a few transitional phrases or padding words.3
The Orphan of Zhao remained somewhat popular following the short-lived Yuan dynasty and into the Ming. So much so that a version was produced (heavily edited, with a new ending “wedge” section and several themes muted) specifically for exhibition at the imperial court. This version was preserved by the editor, Zang Maoxun, and is included in his Yuanqu xuan.4
Though it is a later redaction, the Ming version does contain much more of the story, including details of events preceding the main action of the tale, and spoken dialog in addition to song lyrics. The tale itself is fleshed out vividly with scenes emphasizing the inspirational power that the Zhao name, reputation, and actions had over everyday people, including assassins sent to kill them, and even the mad.
Whereas the lyrics in the Yuan printing make it clear that the orphan is, initially, willing to support his adopted patriarch, Tu’an Gu, in overthrowing the ruler of Jin, the Yuanqu xuan version makes this treachery part of the orphan’s impetus for destroying Gu. The Ming court experienced a version of the play wherein justice manifested, not in a burning act of vengeance, but as a cold-blooded execution for treason.5
It is an interesting, exciting, colorful, and “tragic” story, and the text of both versions evokes it well. The main themes in both are of inspired loyalty, self-sacrifice, and the realization of hindered justice (in the sense of talion law, anyway). Another important takeaway is the author’s capacity to draw from two-thousand years of literature to construct an emotionally relevant allegory for an audience of his contemporaries. The play was written for particular, historical reasons. It was reproduced for the Ming court for particular historical, and aesthetic reasons, and it was translated into French for particular, historical reasons.
Translation
The first person to translate Chinese drama into a European language, Jesuit priest Joseph Henri Marie de Prémare, chose the Yuanqu xuan version of Ji Junxiang’s Orphan of Zhao, and finished his translation in 1731. He had been commissioned by a wealthy patron to translate a text that could function as an example of vernacular Chinese, and The Orphan of Zhao was sufficient to that task, but it is also likely that aspects of the story appealed to him as a Catholic priest; these including a marked lack of sexuality or erotic romance in the tale, as well as the strong and recurring theme of self-sacrifice.6
Fr. de Prémare, and the arbitrary historical circumstances around his encounter with The Orphan of Zhao, largely set the path the play took to non-Chinese audiences. That is, through the Jesuit-dominated scholarship of the time, and into the hands of French playwrights.
Born in Cherbourg in 1666, de Prémare was accepted into the Society of Jesus in 1683. In 1698, his career took him on mission to China. Notably, he is responsible for the first major book of Chinese grammar for European readers, the Notitia linguae sinicae, which received high praise from contemporaries for its grasp of the “beauty” of the Chinese language.7
A few years after translating the Orphan, de Prémare died in Macau, where he had been expelled with other Christian proselytizers by the emperor. By accounts he was supportive of Joachim Bouvet, whose concept of “figurism” had some Jesuit sinologists searching for allusions to Christian mysteries in written Chinese characters.8 This suggests that de Prémare himself was open to, or even searching for, some kind of synthesis between, ugh, again, sorry, “East & West” – though, to him, it may have simply been a way to affirm Catholic dogma.
A Jesuit can only endorse or publish the kinds of things a Jesuit can endorse or publish. The Society of Jesus likes to keep its focus on Jesus-type material. Obviously, Our Lord and Savior doesn’t appear in this 14th century Chinese play. There is, however, language in the Ming version of Orphan that very much seems to allude to Dante; when Chen Ying recites to himself, “I just want to get you outside these nine-deep concentric circles of the marshal’s office.” This, along with other stylistic and thematic elements such as self-sacrifice, likely made the Catholic de Prémare feel relatively a home in the story.9
Some mysterious underlying curiosity, or spiritual yearning, for something else – something both other and whole – wasn’t the only thing behind the European fascination with China, which waxed cyclically, and was in full swing during de Prémare’s day.10 Both the visual and dramatic arts of China, as delivered to Europe by variously motivated intermediaries, were seen as sources for new ideas. New generations of European philosophers and thinkers, such as Voltaire (see below), combed through available translations of Chinese literature, seeking grist for their wheels. Seeking, too, for things to reject outright.
Although de Prémare’s translation kept only stage direction and prose dialog from the Yuanqu xuan text, it was faithful and direct, and, importantly, thanks to its drama, and the interest around the play as a genuine glimpse at Chinese culture, it gained wide influence.
When that influence reached Voltaire in the 1750s, he made full use of it in writing his own version of the story, to support his own aesthetic agenda. Under his pen, the story becomes moral comedy. While Voltaire praised Confucianism, he rejected the long time span covered by Ji Junxiang’s narrative (over twenty years), and instead, in his version, insisted on the aesthetics of ancient Greek drama – namely, the “three unities” outlined in Aristotle’s Poetics.11
Further European adaptations that followed began to narrow the temporal scope of the play, focusing on the revenge. But it was Voltaire’s version, entitled L'Orphelin de la Chine, which popularized the story of the Zhao clan and informed future comparisons with Western drama, tragedy in particular.
The Royal Shakespeare Company
Comparisons to European tragedy are common in sources both due to Voltaire’s treatment, and to some superficial similarities between The Orphan of Zhao and Shakespeare’s Danish prince.12 “Sometimes referred to as the Chinese Hamlet,” one of the most recent appearances The Orphan has made on the international stage was in a production by the Royal Shakespeare Company in 2012.13 That is, of course, an institution with plenty of experience bringing Western tragedies like Hamlet to the stage.
The RSC production sprang forth in part from a set of variously charming misunderstandings. The concept began with the idea of taking a look at “a world elsewhere,” that is, whatever might have been happening around the globe (pun irrelevant) during Shakespeare’s lifetime.14 Artistic director Gregory Doran was already curious about Chinese theater, and the date of the Yuanqu xuan printing coincided with the year of Shakespeare’s death, so the Ming version was chosen for adaptation to the contemporary stage in Britain.15
The coincidence that brought The Orphan and the RSC together was followed by the play’s reputation. Doran was led to believe that this particular play was some kind of central pillar of Chinese culture.16 He tells an anecdote about traveling in China and coming across numerous versions of the story and references to it. But this was during a pre-production design trip, with a planned itinerary, and as far as I can tell, you’re likely to find Chinese scholars in China who have never heard of Ji Junxiang, or his play.17 One way or another, Gregory Doran was left with the feeling that The Orphan of Zhao was “more popular in China than Romeo and Juliet is in the UK.”18 This view is not supported by anything I’ve read – though my investigation has by no means been comprehensive.
James Fenton was tasked with adapting the script. He had as his primary source the Yuanqu xuan text, but he also did a lot of homework, studying “the history of the development of the story” to flesh out his understanding of the core narrative that I’ve largely ignored.19
Fenton’s adaptation is very good. It is faithful to the themes present in the original Chinese story as told by Ji Junxiang. Fenton’s writing captures the scale of the story. Formally unbound by arbitrary formal traditions of Western drama, the RSC version of The Orphan is free to take full advantage of putatively “Eastern” elements (like allowing for the passage of time, unequivocal justice, accepting a relatively happy end, etc) long muted by Voltaire’s treatment and the focus on one aspect of the orphan’s revenge that dominated continental adaptations in French and Italian.
Still, Western tradition and criteria exert a great influence on Fenton’s adaptation. A zaju drama has four acts and a wedge scene; the Ming redaction of The Orphan adds a fifth act. Fenton simplifies that into a two-act structure, and flavors his dialog with an unmistakable Shakespearean spice.20
In my view, even the very significant-seeming filter of “Western theatrical tradition” is just one twist among many on the play’s journey through publishing and distribution channels into popular consciousness. All else being equal, it need not represent a sinister/bigoted revision or a coarse, mercenary appropriation, when Chinese cultural artifacts are transformed by contact with Western criteria. It can, perhaps, result in a kind of “hybrid vigor.”
Connections
Is it crude to say that “cultural differences” explain changes made by Western translators and others to works attributed to “the Chinese?” Might not opportunism or laziness or individual imagination and agency come into play? A touch of desire, or spitefulness maybe? A joke, even.
All those influences and filters might come into play when translating, just as they do when producing. However, theater traditions are perhaps more emblematic of “cultural differences” than most art forms. A consensus seems to exist among Chinese scholars that European theater categories, such as tragedy, are not sufficient or appropriate for comparison to Chinese forms.21 Some go further, broadly rejecting the relative naturalism that is common in most European popular theater.22 Others, however, such as Qian Zhongshu, have come to the opposite conclusion: that whatever the value of Yuan drama as poetry, or when performed by talented singers, they are not as rich or well-developed as Western drama.23 To me, this suggests a potential for mutual benefit in synthesis. Cultural units (people) from both traditions stand to gain something by good-faith attempts at union, or connection.
When putting on a play, one must, certainly, consider the audience. Translating drama is, in part, a task of producing a kind of equivalence between source material and translation, “conducted mostly to deal with cultural issues that might affect [audience] reception or understanding of the source text.”24 There is at least as much value in leaving visible to an audience even elements that are completely baffling, or misleading, without cultural literacy. This because it provides an alien structure to explore – a strange new trellis to climb. It is good to want to know about others outside of oneself and one’s in-group.
Fascination with the other, by itself, isn’t harmful or unethical. In the public arena of our somewhat international contemporary “pop culture,” the theme of encounters between the “East & West” comes up again and again, especially when it’s from “Westerners” attempting to address nearly any topic under the umbrella of “Chinese Civilization.” It’s as though some comparison is needed, first, to orient (pun accidental) oneself. Perhaps I’m revealing my own biases!
I often look to YouTube for examples of what we might call “pop education.” Many YouTube historians, or, perhaps, rather, many historians on YouTube have reached hundreds of thousands of people with self-produced mini-documentaries on various historical events or subjects.
Here’s a list of the titles of a few video essays, published by popular history-focused channels on YouTube, all of which treat the topic of encounters between China and the Classical West. I’ve included the name of the YouTube channel and each title’s view and like counts:
- “Did Rome and China Know Each Other?” Fire of Learning, 509,442 views, 14k likes.
- “Roman Scholar Describes Ancient China // 1st century AD // Pliny the Elder on the "Seres"” Voices of the Past, 364,965 views, 11k likes.
- “Roman Empire vs Han China: Who would have won that "alternate history" war?” Binkov's Battlegrounds, 227,698 views, 8k likes.
- “Ancient China and Rome: 1000 Years of Contact // DOCUMENTARY,” Voices of the Past, 1,089,225 views, 21k likes.
- “Roman-Chinese Relations and Contacts,” Kings and Generals, 455,769 views, 12k like.
- “The Greco-Chinese War Over the Heavenly Horses,” 1,301,208 views, 39k likes.25
For what it’s worth, millions of people are viewing these videos; millions of people are interested in the particular points of contact between (especially, ancient) China and the “West” as represented by classical Greece and Rome. Taken together, all the speculations put forward by these vaguely educational YouTube channels on the possible contacts between ancient empires of the “East” and “West” indicate a widespread hunger for tales of encounter, exchange, a kind of cultural hybridization even. They indicate a basic human interest in mixing and combining knowledge across those accidental barriers of geography and time.
The relationships between things in the human-made landscape are arbitrary and magical. Using the best evidence one has, trying to reconstruct the relationships between, for example, the cars parked on a city street with one another, the labor that produced them, the journeys they took by sea from the factory to the dealership to the street – relationships between buildings and time and the labor that produced them, all the chance encounters, choices, mistakes: accidents, that brought this world together – it is maddening, surreal, psychedelic. Being "educated," that is, learning to understand the implied connections between material things in the human-made world, becoming literate within a culture and competent to communicate cross-culturally, is consciousness-altering. The way an “education” enriches one’s sensory experience, simply by adding information to it, is far more like the effects of certain drugs than agents of our traditional educational system are often prepared to acknowledge.
With enough background context in the bank, so to speak, reading about The Orphan of Zhao’s own “journey to the west” is quite exciting. Getting into a more granular examination of the choices informing each connection between the nodes of this “journey” reveals all the arbitrariness in the contours of the World we receive when we’re born at a given time.
If Ji Junxiang had been less loyal to the memory of the Song, if the Ming court hadn’t required a bowdlerized version of the story from Zang Maoxun to avoid impropriety, if Joseph Henri Marie de Prémare hadn’t been a Jesuit, if all of Europe wasn’t primed in some way to receive inspiration, if Voltaire hadn’t discovered de Prémare’s translation – without all these accidents, some agent of an alternate history, roughly equivalent to James Fenton, would have produced some other ancient Chinese story for performance by the Royal Shakespeare company.
That you suggested, and I read, The Orphan of Zhao, is a lovely accident of history. It is the (a) culmination of centuries of accidents, mingled with curiosity.
Conclusions
Contemporary Relevance
Ji Junxiang chose to retell an ancient story in his play because it reminded him of the Song Dynasty he mourned. Zang Maoxun chose to alter the play to make it align better with the sensibilities of the Ming court. Father Joseph Henri Marie de Prémare chose to translate and publish the play in French because it appealed to him as a Catholic priest and lover of the Chinese language. Voltaire chose to alter the story for his own play, asserting his preference for Greek ideals in drama, while acknowledging his respect for the source material. James Fenton and the Royal Shakespeare company wanted to adapt a Chinese story from Shakespeare’s era for the enjoyment of audiences in the UK.
The two main points I had hoped to explore and support with this essay are, one, that the contours of our world have emerged from a perfectly unique series of accidents; and, two, that underlying and implicated in those accidents is a basic human interest, manifesting in Europeans/Westerners as an apparent curiosity regarding China. It is a basic interest in joining two or more discrete things (including perhaps one’s self, or one’s culture) into a synthesis possessing a kind of conceptual “hybrid vigor.” Contemporary pop manifestations of curiosity about China as a cultural other throughout history, and the special interest in points of direct contact between very different, independently well-developed cultures, shows that we are still digging in these traces for hints, clues, or instructions to help us join, or at least meet on equal terms, with some Other – culturally or individually – in significant, fruitful, or beautiful ways.