The Happy Hsiungs

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Release : 2014-03-01
Genre : Biography & Autobiography
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Book Rating : 179/5 ( reviews)

The Happy Hsiungs - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook The Happy Hsiungs write by Diana Yeh. This book was released on 2014-03-01. The Happy Hsiungs available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. "Try Something Different. Something Really Chinese" The Happy Hsiungs recovers the lost histories of Shih-I and Dymia Hsiung, two once highly visible, but now largely forgotten Chinese writers in Britain, who sought to represent China and Chineseness to the rest of the world. Shih-I shot to worldwide fame with his play Lady Precious Stream in the 1930s and became known as the first Chinese director to work in the West End and on Broadway. Dymia was the first Chinese woman in Britain to publish a fictional autobiography in English. Diana Yeh traces the Hsiungs' lives from their childhood in Qing dynasty China and youth amid the radical May Fourth era to Britain and the USA, where they rubbed shoulders with George Bernard Shaw, James M. Barrie, H. G. Wells, Pearl Buck, Lin Yutang, Anna May Wong and Paul Robeson. In recounting the Hsiungs' rise to fame, Yeh focuses on the challenges they faced in becoming accepted as modern subjects, as knowledge of China and the Chinese was persistently framed by colonial legacies and Orientalist discourses, which often determined how their works were shaped and understood. She also shows how Shih-I and Dymia, in negotiating acceptance, "'performed" not only specific forms of Chineseness but identities that conformed to modern ideals of class, gender and sexuality, defined by the heteronormative nuclear family. Though fêted as 'The Happy Hsiungs', their lives ultimately highlight a bitter struggle in attempts to become modern. "In the 1930s, China became briefly fashionable again, after decades of Fu Manchu-style demonising. This switch coincided with the rise of anti-fascism in the West and a new visibility of Chinese art. In a path-breaking contribution to the study of artistic production by British Chinese, Yeh recovers the Hsiungs' forgotten history, their role in this new China wave, and their struggle against hostile stereotyping. Shedding light on a history few can have expected, the book shows high narrative skill and the author's strong empathetic imagination brings everything to life." —Gregor Benton, author of Chinese Migrants and Internationalism and The Chinese in Britain "Through the riveting story of a successful couple of British Chinese artists, the Hsiungs, this book contributes to our understanding of the real struggles involved in the acceptance of 'Chineseness' not as a fixed identity governed by unchanging tradition (as Western Orientalism would have it), but as a resolutely modern performative invention shaped by a confluence of globally circulating hybrid ideas, concepts and images." —Ien Ang, author of On Not Speaking Chinese: Living Between Asia and the West "Thanks to the phenomenal success of his play Lady Precious Stream, Shih-I Hsiung was a household name in the US and UK during the 1930s. Diana Yeh explores the Hsiungs' role in representing China and Chineseness to the rest of the world forcing us to rethink our vision of the British Chinese as invisible and insular, with little social, cultural or political impact on wider society." —Anne Witchard, author of Lao She in London and Thomas Burke's Dark Chinoiserie "The story of Shih-I and Dymia Hsiung fills a gap in our understanding of the Chinese experience in England—and highlights how very different it is from that in America. Yeh does a remarkable job in unravelling the relationship between the Hsiungs, the couple who landed in London in the 1930s, and the Hsiungs as personas, constructs designed to suit as well as to subvert British tastes for and preconceptions of Chineseness." —Ronald Egan, Professor of East Asian Languages and Cultures, Stanford University

Shih-I Hsiung

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Release : 2020-09-29
Genre : Biography & Autobiography
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Book Rating : 076/5 ( reviews)

Shih-I Hsiung - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Shih-I Hsiung write by Da Zheng. This book was released on 2020-09-29. Shih-I Hsiung available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. In 1933, Shih-I Hsiung (1902–1991), a student from China, met with Allardyce Nicoll, a Shakespearean scholar at the University of London, to discuss his PhD study in English drama. After learning about Hsiung’s interest and background, Nicoll suggested that he should consider studying Chinese drama for his dissertation and writing a play of a Chinese subject. Hsiung took the advice to heart and set out to write Lady Precious Stream, a play based on a classical Beijing opera. In six weeks, the writing was completed; six months later, the manuscript was accepted for publication by Methuen; and not long after, Little Theater in London agreed to produce the play, which ran for 900 successive shows. The phenomenal success turned Hsiung into stardom all at once: he became the first Chinese to write and direct a West End play in England; in 1936, the play had its Broadway premiere and subsequent performances in Chicago, Cleveland, Boston, and other U.S. cities; and it has been produced and staged in Europe, North America, South America, Africa, Asia, and Australia ever since. Following the success of Lady Precious Stream, Hsiung translated into English the Chinese classic The Romance of the Western Chamber; in addition, he wrote a number of plays, novels, and essays, in both English and Chinese, as well as the biography The Life of Chiang Kai-shek.Shih-I Hsiung: A Glorious Showman unfolds the transnational and transcultural life experience of an extraordinary showman: a literary master, a theater man, and a social actor bold and impassioned on socio-cultural stages. Hsiung introduced English and American literature to readers in China through his translation works in the 1920s and early 1930s. After his arrival in England, he began writing in English for audiences not familiar with the Chinese culture. His works were known for their originality, humor, and a deep sense of cultural and historical engagement. Later in his life when he was residing in Hong Kong, he was devoted to education and was also active in Chinese literary and theater circles.

Transnational Narratives in Englishes of Exile

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Release : 2017-11-15
Genre : Literary Criticism
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Book Rating : 467/5 ( reviews)

Transnational Narratives in Englishes of Exile - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Transnational Narratives in Englishes of Exile write by Catalina Florina Florescu. This book was released on 2017-11-15. Transnational Narratives in Englishes of Exile available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Monolingual, monolithic English is an issue of the past. In this collection, by using cinema, poetry, art, and novels we demonstrate that English has become the heteroglossic language of immigration – Englishes of exile. By appropriating its plural form we pay respect to all those who have been improving standard English, thus proving that one may be born in a language as well as give birth to a language or add to it one’s own version. The story of the immigrant, refugee, exile, expatriate is everybody’s story, and without migration, we could not evolve our human race.

Chiang Yee and His Circle

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Release : 2022-04-13
Genre : History
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Book Rating : 130/5 ( reviews)

Chiang Yee and His Circle - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Chiang Yee and His Circle write by Paul Bevan. This book was released on 2022-04-13. Chiang Yee and His Circle available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. This book, Chiang Yee and His Circle: Chinese Artistic and Intellectual Life in Britain, 1930–1950, celebrates the life and work of Chiang Yee (1903–1977), a Chinese writer, poet, and painter who made his home in London, England during the 1930s and 1940s. It examines Chiang’s relationship with his circle of friends and colleagues in the English capital, and assesses the work he produced during his sojourn there. This edited volume, with contributions from eleven distinguished scholars, tells a story of a Chinese intellectual community in London that up to now has been largely overlooked. It portrays a dynamic picture of the London-based émigré life during the years that led up to the war and during the conflict that was the catalyst for many of them moving on. In addition, the book broadens our understanding of cultural interactions between China and the West in Hampstead, one of the most vibrant artistic communities in London. ‘The collected essays convey a striking portrait of a community of Chinese intellectuals in England during World War II and how it interacted with cultural elites in London and elsewhere both as artists and as anti-fascist activists. As a whole, the volume makes significant points about how people claim status as “authentic” interpreters of a cultural tradition, a process that can pit friends against each other.’ —Kristin Stapleton, The University at Buffalo, SUNY ‘In this delightful collection of essays, a team of experts in literature, history, and the arts bring to light a world of literary interconnectedness and wartime collaboration seldom explored in scholarship. The perfect resource for anyone who values the humanistic common ground between the East and the West.’ —Jenny H. Day, Skidmore College

Transcultural Encounters in Knowledge Production and Consumption

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Release : 2017-09-22
Genre : Social Science
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Book Rating : 203/5 ( reviews)

Transcultural Encounters in Knowledge Production and Consumption - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Transcultural Encounters in Knowledge Production and Consumption write by Xianlin Song. This book was released on 2017-09-22. Transcultural Encounters in Knowledge Production and Consumption available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. This book is a distinctive collection on transcultural encounters in knowledge production and consumption, which are situated at the heart of pursuit for cognitive justice. It uniquely represents transcultural dialogues between academics of Australia, China and Malaysia, located on the borders of different knowledge systems. The uniqueness of this volume lies in the convergence of transcultural perspectives, which bring together diverse disciplines as cultural studies, education, media, translation theory and practice, arts, musicology, political science and literature. Each chapter explores the possibility of decolonising the knowledge production space as well as research methodologies. The chapters engage with ‘Chinese’ and ‘western’ thought on transcultural subjects and collectively articulate a new politics of difference, de-centring the dominant epistemologies and research paradigms in the global academia. Refracted through transcultural theories and practices, adapted to diverse traditions, histories and regional affiliations, and directed toward an international transcultural audience, the volume demonstrates expansive possibilities in knowledge production and contributes to the understanding of and between research scholarship which deals with collective societal and cultural challenges within the globalised world we live in. It would be of interest to researchers engaged with current critical debates in general and global scholars in transcultural and intercultural studies in specific.