P. C. Chang and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Hans Ingvar Roth

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СКАЧАТЬ The reason for restaging the play was to celebrate Ibsen’s one-hundredth birthday.

      Between 1926 and 1929, Chang translated several Western plays with sociopolitical themes that he adapted to the situation in China. In an article written in 1933, Chang mentioned that he had personally collected and read dramas by over forty different authors, including Shakespeare, Molière, Goethe, Schiller, Sheridan, Ibsen, Strindberg, Hauptmann, Wilde, Shaw, Galsworthy, Rostand, Brieux, Tolstoy, Chekov, Andreyev, Lunacharsky, and Pirandello. The names on his list are impressive and attest to Chang’s passion and methodicalness once he had embarked upon a project—here, introducing foreign drama to China. Chang seems to have abandoned collecting books in a systematic fashion later in life, according to Stanley, unlike his good friend Y. R. Chao. When I asked Stanley about his father’s library in the family home in Nutley, he replied that his father did not have a particularly large collection. One of the books from his father’s collection that Stanley later read was Arnold Toynbee’s study of Western civilization, A Study of History. Like his son, Chang had a very good memory and did not need to consult books once he had read them. (Chang had, however, a large collection of records that the two sons divided between themselves after his death.)

      During his drama training, Chang had been considerably impressed by several directors from the West, including the German director Max Reinhardt and the English director Gordon Craig. Chang also visited Russia twice and got to know the director and theorist Konstantin Stanislavski. Moreover, when Chang had come to the United States as a student, the Little Theatre Movement had begun to make itself felt in theatrical circles across the country, above all in its hometown through Chicago’s Little Theatre. This theatrical form, which had also been inspired by Max Reinhardt, advocated small-scale productions and intimacy between the stage and auditorium and aimed to stage plays of major social relevance.⁶

      In his capacity as director of Nankai’s new drama group, Chang developed a close collaboration with actor Cao Yu, who in 1928 played the lead role in Chang’s production of A Doll’s House. The figure of Nora in A Doll’s House became an important role model for many Chinese women in their efforts to achieve emancipation, with Chang’s advocacy of Ibsen’s plays undoubtedly playing a major part. In traditional Chinese theater, female roles had regularly been played by men, but from the 1930s, it became increasingly common for women to perform women’s roles in theatrical productions. In 1929, Chang staged John Galsworthy’s play Strife, which was the first occasion when female actors performed alongside males. Chang also directed the play Lady Windermere’s Fan by Oscar Wilde.

      Toward the end of the 1920s, Chang’s life, in addition to theatrical activities, was characterized by administration, teaching, and educational development work. For example, he and his brother met with Chinese political leaders and foreign guests from American universities in order to discuss potential ways to reform China’s educational system. Chang’s family also continued to grow. A son, Chen Chung, was born in October 1927, and another son, Yuan-Feng (today, Stanley) in October 1928. Both of them went on to become academics. Chen Chung became a professor of mathematics at the University of California, achieving fame in the fields of logic and model theory (his PhD supervisor was the famous logician Alfred Tarski); Yuan-Feng became a professor of applied physics, holding posts at a number of institutions, including the University of Nebraska, Lincoln.

       The Twentieth Century’s Second Chinese Revolution and Chiang Kai-shek

      How was China developing politically during the 1920s and 1930s? The Chinese leader Sun Yat-sen died of cancer in spring 1925 and thus did not live to see the temporary union of an array of different provinces under the so-called Northern Expedition, a coalition between Sun Yat-sen’s nationalist Kuomintang party and the Communists. In 1926–1927, this Soviet-trained army forced the divided regions, including the Shanghai region, to accept national rule. Peking was captured by the National Revolutionary Army in June 1928. During the fighting, one soldier distinguished himself, “Generalissimo” Chiang Kai-shek, who subsequently turned on his Communist former allies, killing several of them once Shanghai had fallen. The new regime was thus initiated in 1927 with a domestic bloodbath in Shanghai. The Kuomintang and the Communists would henceforth be mortal enemies.⁷

      Chiang Kai-shek succeeded Sun Yat-sen after the latter’s death, ushering in a period of Chinese history known as the Nanking period (1928–1937). In 1928, a new Chinese government was announced in Nanking, which lent its name to what has come to be called China’s second revolution of the twentieth century (the first being the revolution of 1911 against the emperor, and the third being the Communist revolution of 1949).

      Nanking thus became the country’s new capital and there began a period of attempted modernization, including educational reforms, industrial investments, and new infrastructure. The position of women was improved during this period. In 1934, Chiang Kai-shek also began promoting the New Life Movement as an ideological alternative to communism.

      Chiang Kai-shek converted to Christianity in 1931 partly because of the influence of his wife at the time, Soong May Ling. His new philosophy was an attempt to modernize China by emphasizing Confucian norms such as diligence, loyalty, and a modest, healthy way of life.⁸ This philosophy had minimal impact in the Chinese republic, to judge from the rising levels of materialism and corruption. At the same time, Chiang Kai-shek strove to underscore the importance of science and modern technology for the development of society, and he fought against a variety of superstitions. He stressed the importance of the family and harmony and order in society, and he was completely against the Communist creed of class warfare.

      Despite their ideological differences, the Kuomintang and the Communists had a number of points in common. Both parties stressed the value of frugality, and they wanted to unite China and liberate it from foreign influence.⁹ They also sought to implement modernization and liberation from traditional mythologies and religious attitudes. The Kuomintang’s supporters and the Communists also shared the Leninist perspective of the party as the primary political entity in society. A national collectivism and solidarity was also emphasized. During the Nanking period, however, the Japanese encroached upon China in a growing number of ways, and the Kuomintang regime became increasingly drawn into conflicts with the various Communist groups. The end result was an undermining of the republic’s capacity to create the modern and unified China that had been Sun Yat-sen’s great vision. Chiang Kai-shek shared this vision, too, and wanted to unite China with the Kuomintang as its ruling party. Chiang’s attitude toward the Communists found expression in his famous aphorism that the Japanese were a disease of the skin but the Communists, a disease of the heart.¹⁰

      Opinions on Chiang Kai-shek have changed throughout history. What stands out are his authoritarian tendencies as well as his inability to prevent the spread of corruption during the final years of the republic. He was also accused of having been capitalism’s errand boy. This latter accusation is debatable, however, given that Chiang Kai-shek initiated state industrial projects, in the spirit of Roosevelt’s New Deal, during the global depression that prevailed throughout the 1930s. What is more, he also worked closely with the League of Nations to counteract and mitigate the effects of natural disasters, such as that which resulted from the Yangtze River’s flooding in 1931.¹¹ His famous retort was also uttered in the context of his failure to prevent the Communist seizure of power in 1949. At the same time, a number of commentators regard the failings of his early career as having been partly compensated for by his subsequent career as the co-creator of the modern and economically successful republic of Taiwan following the Communist seizure of power on the mainland.¹²

      How did Peng Chun Chang view Chiang Kai-shek and the political changes that took place during the first decades of the twentieth century? Stanley Chang relates the following:

      My father had a lot to say about the political upheavals in China. He characterized the political changes in China as being like a child experiencing a succession of diseases of childhood: mumps, chicken pox, etc. The original toppling СКАЧАТЬ