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Roar, China!

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Roar, China! was an artistic theme and the title of various artistic works authored from the 1920s through the 1930s which expressed solidarity with China. Significant works include the poem and play by Soviet Futurist Sergei Tretyakov, Langston Hughes' poem of the same name, and a wood cut by Li Hua.

Roar, China! works

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Sergei Treyakov poem and play

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In 1924, Soviet futurist poet and playwright Sergei Tretyakov wrote a poem titled, Roar, China![1]: 237  Shortly afterwards, he turned the poem into a play depicting fictional events similar to those which happened later in the 1926 Wanxian Incident, when the British military massacred hundreds of Chinese civilians.[1]: 237  In Tokyo, the Tsukiji Theatre performed Tretyakov's Roar, China! from 31 August to 4 September 1929, when authorities shut down the performances.[1]: 237 

Theatre Guild's 1930 production of Roar, China! was Broadway's first play with a majority Asian cast.[1]: 237  Chinese performers were recruited by the Chinese Benevolent and Dramatic Association.[1]: 237  The cast included economist Ji Chaoding.[1]: 237 

A British production of the play was banned by from being performed at the Cambridge Festival Theatre, but the play was later staged by The Unnamed Society in Manchester in November 1931.[1]: 238 

The play was also performed in Berlin, Vienna, and Frankfurt.[1]: 238 

Nikolai Bukharin described the global spread of the play as part of a historical process in which the throngs of workers would become revolutionaries.[1]: 238 

Tretyakov's Roar, China! poem and play also became popular in China, where they were translated multiple times.[1]: 238  In 1933, on the second anniversary of the Mukden incident, a production of Roar, China! was staged at the Hung King Theatre in Shanghai's French Concession.[1]: 238  Increasing pressure from the Japanese led authorities to censor the play, both in the foreign concessions and elsewhere in China.[1]: 239  A production which included Jiang Qing was among those banned by British authorities.[1]: 239 

Li Hua woodcut

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In 1935, Li Hua produced the woodcut Roar, China! (怒吼吧中国).[2]: 467–468  The woodcut depicts the front view of a "taut, muscular, and naked male body, bound and blindfolded".[2]: 468  The incisions create dark and angular lines, which academic Xiaobing Tang describes as giving "the constrained body a translucent quality, suggesting a radiating force that charges and electrifies the physical body".[2]: 268 

Langston Hughes poem

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On 29 August 1937, Langston Hughes wrote a poem titled Roar, China! which called for China's resistance to the full-scale invasion which Japan had launched less than two months earlier.[1]: 237  Hughes biographer and translator of his works into Chinese, Luo Xingqun, writes that Hughes was inspired to write the poem by his experiences in Shanghai and his encounters with Soong Ching-ling and Lu Xun.[1]: 290–291  Hughes used China as a metonym for the "global colour line."[3] According to academic Gao Yunxiang, Hughes' poem was integral to the global circulation of Roar, China! as an artistic theme.[1]: 237 

Hughes later wrote, but did not publish, a poem called China.[4] Academic Selina Lai-Henderson writes that the brief poem, which begins in medias res, may have been intended as a sequel to Hughes' Roar, China![4]

References

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  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p Gao, Yunxiang (2021). Arise, Africa! Roar, China! Black and Chinese Citizens of the World in the Twentieth Century. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 9781469664606.
  2. ^ a b c Tang, Xiaobing (2006). "Echoes of Roar, China! On Vision and Voice in Modern Chinese Art". Positions: East Asia Cultures Critique. 14 (2): 467–494. ISSN 1527-8271.
  3. ^ Huang, Kun (2024-07-25). "Afro-Asian Parallax: The Harlem Renaissance, Literary Blackness, and Chinese Left-Wing Translations". Made in China Journal. Retrieved 2024-08-06.
  4. ^ a b "A Closer Look: Langston Hughes's "China"". The Yale Review. Retrieved 2024-08-06.