Hey! Here is one of the most unique rooms in this museum. This room is decorated theater-like with hundreds of seats and a big stage. If you take the first visit to the room, you must be a “stranger” to Chinese culture, I mean, the earliest Chinese culture in America. Now, here is our protagonist, Afong Moy! “Hello. My name is Afong Moy … I will be here for your education and entertainment. I will be on display here at Peale’s Museum, at 3 pm and 7:30 pm on select Tuesdays through Sundays, at a price of 25 cents for adults, and 10 cents for children. Thank you for coming to see me.”
INTRODUCTION
The production of The Chinese Lady written by Lloyd Suh and directed by Ralph B. Pena was priced from $60 in Ma-Yi Theater company, which rebuts in the air in 2022 recovering from the cut-off of the Covid-19 pandemic.
This play takes the first Chinese woman, Afong Moy, who stepped into the state of America as the prototype to illustrate the darkness of the American slave trade in the innocent and ignorant gaze of a fourteen-year-old girl. Following the merchants from the other end of the world, Afong first thought she was an ambassador who narrates and exchanges Chinese culture with the Americans. When Afong came to New York City in 1834, mass immigrants didn’t flourish, and she was the first openly representative of a Chinese woman: Americans look at this living Chinese girl embodying “strange” traditions and appearances with curiosity just like looking at a brand new commercial importer from East Asia; while Afong keeps playing how a cup a tea can be made, what Chinese rooms look like, how she can use chopsticks to eat, and how she can walk with her foot binding. However, it is ironic to see a girl embodying passions and enthusiasm towards her work and mission, while in the audience’s eyes, she is no more than a live display in the museum, just like beautiful blue-and-white porcelain displayed under a soft-centered spotlight.
“I think the motivation for why people did [that] was really out of curiosity, but I think that curiosity was cruel. I think it’s very possible to be curious without being cruel. I think it’s possible to be cruel without being curious. In this instance…the way in which that curiosity is exercised in those situations is just deeply and inherently cruel.” — Lloyd Suh
CHINESE BEAUTY STANDARD AND THE ONE WITHIN BARBARITY
Sad stories are never illustrated in a sad way; the core of comedy is a tragedy. Obviously, the Chinese Lady is dealt with in a humorous way. According to the playwright, Lloyd Suh, he wants to make the audience get access to Chinese history during the 1800s without direct recreating but through personal narrating. Tacking back to history, China in the early 1800s experienced the cracks of its long-lasting self-sufficient economic environment as Great Britain imported opium to China. Numerous Chinese get addicted to opium and from that time, Chinese were then labeled as “sick men of Asia:” just like the film figure Chan Chen-Pang in Rough, Wan Jung in The Last Emperor, etc. Not only China, but imperialism also invaded other states like Africa, during the 1800s, “human zoos” in the colonial past were popular in Europe and America, displaying live people from other cultures to native people in the name of “education” and “entertainment,” such exhibition stresses not only cultural differences but also body and skin differences – for example – intimate and sexual areas of African women, and the bones and skeletons after these “objects” died.
Humor sometimes reveals cruelty, especially when the contrasting cognitions between the insider and the outsiders of a cultural entity seem to reach a superficial agreement: Afong (the insider) is laughing for she indeed thinks her life is happy; the audience (the outsider) is laughing for making fun of her life that the insider affirms is happy. When Afong Moy shows her binding feet to her audience, hardly can walk, the audience as cultural outsiders perceive this old tradition as barbaric and cruel because this tradition makes women’s feet less than 5 cm by double backing the toes to reach the soles of feet in order to fit a pair of small shoes. However, foot binding was the Chinese beauty standard at that time, demure and reserved, perfect for a domestic character, a condition to acquire a good husband. Most upper-level women are proud of this torture of beauty, the symbol of high social status. The cultural shock here is that Americans perceive exotic culture as barbaric, while these Chinese women are proud of this – just like the insider could never realize its problem. But it is extremely ironic here, how about the slave trade? The reason why Afong stands here to show her binding feet in the live human exhibition is the slave trade. So in this case, has the insider realized its problem?
“META” TO CONTEMPORARY MEANING
Narrating this history directly is cruel, however, what the special about The Chinese Lady is it utilizes the concept of “meta” to reveal that period of history, pushing the audience back to the Peale’s Museum in the 1800s: while Afong Moy is “displayed” onstage, the audience is visiting her in the theater, and what is happening inside is relevant to what is happening outside of the theater. Moreover, the diction of humor is also matched with the intention of displaying live humans at that time – entertainment, allowing the audience to be immersive into the visit in 1834. However, the ironic effect will be more strong for the contemporary audience and what the diction brings after is poignancy but not just solemn tragedy by direct revealing this history. The form of “meta” serves as a time machine: the audience in the old time came to see Afong’s show with cruel curiosity, however, the present audience trackback to the long history with the time machine but the difference is that they possess contemporary views. When they back to the present, they may obtain something new and profound.
It is more important to learn from history than to know the history; similarly, it is more important to receive a person’s story than to learn her story. “Learning” means getting access to knowledge, while “receiving” means incorporating and appreciating while following the progress of society and people’s consciousness. Contemporarily, Chinese Americans are no longer “the outside part” of this land; they have contributed to the history of the land for hundreds of years. They no longer serve as the exotic exhibition to America, but as a foundation part of this “museum,” so are other immigrant groups.
The Chinese Lady offers a unique and domestic perspective to reflect America, also reflecting race, gender, and sexuality for Chinese Americans. It is a matter of making cultural connections, and it is a matter of envisaging history.
“What is happening is a performance. For my entire life is a performance. The words I am speaking are not my own. The clothes I am wearing are not my own. The Room in which I am seated is intended to be representative of China, just as I am intended to be representative of The Chinese Lady: the first woman from the Orient ever to set foot in America, and yet this Room is unlike any room in China, and I am unlike any lady to ever live.” — Afong Moy