Cao Yu (1910- 1996) is regarded as the most important Chinese playwright of the 20th century. His best-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" (huaju, vernacular drama, as opposed to traditional drama forms as for example jingju or "Peking Opera") took root in modern Chinese literature.
[Cao Yu]
Cao Yu grew up in the cosmopolitan city of Tianjin and later went to Tsinghua University in Beijing. He graduated in 1934 with a degree in Western Languages and Literature. During his time at university, Cao Yu improved his abilities in both Russian and English. His course of studies required reading the works of such western authors as Henrik Ibsen, Anton Chekhov, Bernard Shaw and Eugene O'Neill, as well as translations of classical Greek writers as Euripides and Aeschylus. In 1945, Cao Yu would also translate Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet into Chinese. This immersion in western literature would greatly influence Yu's style in the "spoken theater," which until then had had little tradition in China.
During his last year at the university, Cao Yu completed his first work, Thunderstorm, which would mark a milestone in Chinese theater history. It formed a trilogy with the two plays mentioned above and these realistic and social-critical dramas ushered in the first "golden age" of modern Chinese drama in the mid 1930s. Other important drama authors were for example Guo Moruo, Hong Shen and Lao She. Huaju represents a shift in the Chinese perception of drama, and the
influence of Western dramatic theory on Chinese playwrights.
The play is set in the summer of 1925 at the mansion of wealthy mine director Zhou Puyuan, aged 55, a man with a decided air of authority. He has two sons in his household, one called Ping, aged 28, by a woman named Shiping whom he drove away with their younger son Dahai 27 years ago and whom he believes drowned. The other, 17, by his second wife Fanyi, is called Chong. Ping is handsome and popular with women, Chong is a romantic dreamer. Dahai works as miner in the coal mines of Zhou; he is a mine workers' representative and has a stubborn character. Shiping is in her late forties and works at a school. Zhou is married to the 20-year younger Fanyi, a refined and physically fragile woman with a passionate and resolute spirit; she has had a love affair with Zhou's son Ping. The Zhou servants Lu Gui and Lu Gui's daughter Sifeng ("Fourth Phoenix") are respectively Shiping's husband and daughter. Lu Gui is a coarse man and a gambler; Sifeng, aged 18, is a healthy, physically well-developed young woman.
None of these people is initially aware of the connection of the two families through Zhou Puyuan and Shiping. In fact, Ping is now having a love affair with Fourth Phoenix, without either of them realizing that she is his half-sister. Ping's (half) brother Chong is also in love with Sifeng, but his love is unrequited.
Then Shiping, whom Zhou Yuanpu has assumed dead for 27 years, shows up at the Zhous' and eventually all become aware of their interrelationships, which leads to high drama. Horrified to discover that the father-to-be of the child she is expecting is none other than her half-brother, Fourth Phoenix rushes out of the house in a raging thunderstorm and is electrocuted by a faulty electrical cable. Chong, chasing after her, is also electrocuted. Ping shoots himself. Both wives, Fanyi and Shiping, go mad from the shock of loosing all their children within only five minutes time. The patriarch, Zhou Puyuan, having set off the whole tragedy, is left to face the consequences of his actions.
So lots and lots of drama in this early play! Thematically, Thunderstorm can be compared to Ibsen's Ghosts, with which it shares elements such as a respected patriarch who has, in fact, impregnated his servant, a romance between his children (who do not know that they are half-siblings), and a climactic revelation of this situation in the play. The staccato, realistic dialogue has been written with great skill, and Cao Yu deftly manages the complexities of his meany-threaded plot. Thunderstorm neatly observes the Aristotelian unities.
Several film adaptations and remake stage productions have been made. The most famous - very loose - movie adaptation is The Curse of the Golden Flower, an epic wuxia film written and directed by Zhang Yimou, with Chow Yun-fat and Gong Li. In this film the story from Thunderstorm has been transferred to one of the imperial courts in the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period (10th c.), with the Emperor in the place of Puyuan.
A History of Chinese Drama, by William Dolby (London, 1976). Thunderstorm is discussed on pp. 208-212.
Thunderstorm is included in The Columbia Anthology of Modern Chinese Drama (Columbia University Press, 2010).
Photo from Wikipedia.
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