Research Area B Rise of dan Actors (B5)
The Stuff Stars are made of: International Politics, Mass Media and the Rise of dan Actors in the Republican Era (1910–1930)
Project Leader: Catherine Vance Yeh
Project Members: Rui Jiang
The explosive development of Chinese urban entertainment culture in the first decades of the Republic after 1912 produced a most unlikely emblem for the new nation: Male actors playing women’s roles [dan] with Mei Lanfang as the most famous example. Once ‘call boys’ of the mighty at court, the young dan actors - without slogans, organization, or artillery - were upstaging men with power, cultural capital, or wealth. Mei Lanfang’s performances in China itself, in Japan, the US, and the USSR were interacting with politics, Western-style mass media, and the international avant-garde. They projected a “cultural China” through a man playing with great artistic sophistication a “weak” woman, who nonetheless stands her moral ground. The project explored the dramatic impact of a marginal area (opera entertainment), marginal figures (the dan), and marginal media (entertainment papers) on the international image of the Chinese nation.