Contemporary German–Chinese Cultures in Dialogue 3031267788, 9783031267789

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Global Germany in Transnational Dialogues Series Editors: Benjamin Nickl · Irina Herrschner · Elżbieta M. Goździak

Haina Jin Anna Stecher Rebecca Ehrenwirth   Editors

Contemporary German–Chinese Cultures in Dialogue

Global Germany in Transnational Dialogues Series Editors Benjamin Nickl, School of Languages and Linguistics, University of Melbourne, Parkville, VIC, Australia Irina Herrschner, School of Languages and Linguistics, University of Melbourne, Parkville, VIC, Australia Elżbieta M. Goździak, Institute for the Study of International Migration, Washington, DC, USA

Global Germany in Transnational Dialogues presents original research work from contributors in a cutting-edge collection of case and monograph studies in humanities, business, economics, law, education, cultural studies and science. It offers concise yet in-depth overviews of contemporary ties between Germany and nations in flux, such as Afghanistan, Korea, and Israel, as well as societies with longstanding ties to the Federal Republic. It serves as an arena for both scholars and practitioners to apply comparative and interconnected research outcomes connected to topics such as educational policies, Muslimness, refugee integration, nation branding and digital societies to other transnational contexts. This series is an interdisciplinary project to offer a fresh look at Germany’s relations to other countries in the 21st century. The bilateral concept is anchored in a renewed interest in Germany’s innovative stance on identity politics, fiscal policies, civil law and national cultures. The series caters to a renewed interest in transnational studies and the actors working across the boundaries of nation states.

Haina Jin • Anna Stecher • Rebecca Ehrenwirth Editors

Contemporary German– Chinese Cultures in Dialogue

Editors Haina Jin School of Foreign Languages and Cultures Communication University of China Beijing, China

Anna Stecher Department of Asian, African and Mediterranean Studies University of Naples “L‘Orientale” Naples, Italy

Rebecca Ehrenwirth Department of Translation University of Applied Sciences/SDI Munich Munich, Germany

ISSN 2522-5324 ISSN 2522-5332 (electronic) Global Germany in Transnational Dialogues ISBN 978-3-031-26778-9 ISBN 978-3-031-26779-6 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-26779-6 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Introduction: Contemporary German-Chinese Cultures in Dialogue

This book was conceived in a Spanish bar in Sanlitun, Beijing, where two of the editors—who had previously met at a conference in Sydney—met once again for dinner. It is part of a series initiated by experts in German Studies based in Australia, who had the idea that it might be interesting to do some research into GermanChinese cultural contacts. Despite this highly cosmopolitan, transnational starting point, all face-to-face meetings for the planning of this book soon had to be cancelled because of the pandemic. However, we took this juncture as an opportunity for collaboration and scholarly exchange, and as an occasion providing a perspective point for studying artistic works from the fields of literature, cinema, theatre, visual arts, and other creative practices in the contemporary world, as well as structures and policies, along with infrastructures which shape this exchange, and which are at the same time shaped by people who move across borders—inter alia across those between Germany and China. It is a book about ‘the tension between fluidity and friction in cross-border lives, practices and institutions’ (Yeoh & Collins, 2022, p.1), which according to the Handbook on Transnationalism should be a major focus of study in this vast field. It is also a book about ‘the way’—or many different ways—‘in which cross-border activities and connections are always facilitated, configured and impeded by states, institutions and social formations of various kinds’ (Ibid.). What brings all of the chapters of this book together is the fact that cultural exchange or transcultural dialogue always depends on the enthusiasm and commitment of individuals. These individuals (sometimes also organized in small groups) not only foster but, in the first place, enable cultural exchange between countries such as Germany and China through their reflections on, and engagement with, these cultural regions. In this book, we want to move away from Horkheimer and Adorno’s definition of the culture industry (Kulturindustrie) as a factory, which fabricates standardized cultural goods, such as movies and magazines, and shows that ‘transcultural culture’ or ‘trans-culture’ is indeed created by individuals and is therefore original and unique. We want to show that despite all obstacles, be it political, economic, or otherwise, ‘transcultural actors’, such as filmmakers, artists, v

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or theatre producers, always find ways to bridge the gaps between cultures, and to bring them closer together. Although this book is not about the pandemic, the chapters included in this volume were all written during this latter period, when the culture industry shifted from on-site to on-line, when China suffered a (further) image-loss which was also felt in the cultural sector, and when cultural exchange was reduced to a minimum. The chapters gathered in this volume however also attest to the fact that cultural dialogue can overcome obstacles and boundaries. They also highlight the multiple ways in which ‘transnational culture’ can be created during such times. Intercultural exchange has been studied from many different perspectives. Particularly in the past few years, there have been an increasing number of Englishlanguage publications on German-Chinese relations. One of the earliest attempts is Schrecker (1971), who examines the colonial venture of Germany in Shandong, China, and analyses German imperialism and Chinese nationalism. Others, such as So (2019) and Yang et al. (2018), focus not only on the colonial relationship between the two countries but also, and especially, on economic affiliations. Li (2013) draws a comparison between re-vocational education in Germany and in China. A few publications centre their research around cultural exchange and adopt a transnational and comparative approach. For instance, Musch (2019) traces the entanglement of Buddhism and Judaism in German culture from 1890 to 1940. Hertel (2019) offers a brilliant study of German engagement with chinoiserie and its effect in twentiethcentury German literature and German Expressionist painting. Joanne Miyang Cho has edited around ten books on German-Asian studies, two of them devoted particularly to China: Germany and China: Transcultural Encounters Since 1800 edited by Cho and Crowe (2014) explores the diplomatic, economic, cultural, intellectual, and religious interactions between Germany and China from the eighteenth century through to the twentieth century, with four chapters in part three devoted to cultural, literary, diplomatic, and political aspects of Sino-German relations, respectively, ranging from 1949 to 1990. Sino-German Encounters and Entanglements: Transnational Perspectives, 1890–1950 edited by Cho (2021) uses a transnational historiography and provides in-depth analysis of the enduring and complex relationship between the two countries from the end of the nineteenth century to the first half of the twentieth century. Recent publications in German mirror the interest in ‘ChinaKompetenz’, as this latter has been promoted in recent years (Hu et al., 2021). Their publications also indicate that one needs to study both structural aspects as well as artistic works in order to gain a better understanding of processes of transfer and exchange (Pietzcker, 2022). Available studies on contemporary German-Chinese cultural encounters are encouraging indicators of scholarly innovation. However, compared with the vibrant contemporary cultural exchanges between Germany—as well as other European countries—and China especially in recent (pre-pandemic) years, there have been only a few academic publications which use the transcultural perspective to focus on developments of the most immediate past and present. This book covers contemporary German-Chinese cultural exchanges in cinema, theatre, literature, and other areas which were often neglected in previous studies. Research emerging from this

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book draws attention to the study of existing structures and institutions for promoting cultural exchange existing in Germany and China. It examines the existing programmes and strategies, questioning how they shape intercultural dialogue and also questions what kind of intercultural exchange is encouraged. Offering original, fresh, in-depth research, this book delivers a timely contribution to the emerging field of Chinese-German studies and transnational studies in general. It proposes both scholarly studies dealing with a number of hitherto little or non-explored sources and issues, as well as conversations with individuals involved in transnational dialogue. By collecting information and experiences as well bringing up new perspectives, these latter might themselves function as sources for anyone who is interested in deepening research in this area. The book is divided into four sections: facilitators, creators, transmission, and transformation. Facilitators are placed in the first section in order to show our appreciation of the individuals who may not be artists, writers, filmmakers, or other cultural creators themselves but whose activities have been invaluable to cultural exchanges between China and Germany. Isabel Wolte discusses the dissemination of Chinese films in the German-language regions from the 1970s to the early 1990s with particular reference to the immense work done by three individuals: Manfred Durniok, Moritz de Hadeln, and Ursula Wolte. Though their identities differ greatly, ranging from businessman, film festival organizer to cinephile, the three have enabled the flow of Chinese films into German-speaking countries and have enhanced German-Chinese cinematic exchange and creation with their passion, knowledge, and open-mindedness. Anna Stecher contributes a conversation with Chen Ping, cultural attaché at the Chinese embassy in Vienna, who has been involved in the conception of many intercultural projects in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and other European countries. Focusing on important moments of exchange in the fields of art, theatre, and music, the conversation with Chen Ping addresses also the major changes in China’s foreign cultural policy in recent decades. The second section is devoted to creators, particularly transcultural creators, who have made artistic work resulting from their transnational experience. Teng Jimeng interviews Li Yang, a well-known Chinese screenwriter and film director, whose Blind Shaft won the Silver Bear Prize at the Berlin International Film Festival (Berlinale) in 2003. As a typical transcultural figure, Li reveals the motifs of his cinematic creation, his artistic journeys between China and Germany, and how his education and working experience in Germany have impacted him as a director. Winnie Yee closely investigates Ai Weiwei’s 2009 installation Remembering, which was exhibited at the Haus der Kunst in Munich, in commemoration of the Sichuan earthquake of 2008. She not only reveals the multi-layered meanings of this artwork but also discusses the tensions that arise when such a work is exhibited in a space with a highly nationalistic history, such as the Haus der Kunst. Also Rebecca Ehrenwirth’s chapter focuses on ‘Chinese’ art in Germany, which directly questions Germany’s obsession with Ai Weiwei’s art as the prototype of critical Chinese art. She not only questions the transcultural value of Ai’s art but, by focusing on female artist Duan Yingmei’s work, investigates this latter artist’s position as the

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‘inappropriate/d other’. In addition to this, Raimund Rosarius’s interview with the female performance artist Li Xinmo completes the discussion around ‘Chinese female art’ by adding her perspective on feminism and feminist performance art in China. By focusing on four Chinese individuals (two male and two female), the section offers diverse perspectives about transcultural art, film, and performance and about the way in which ‘trans-culture’ is created in/for Germany and disseminated. The third section focuses on the topic of transmission, examining how one country’s culture is shown and seen in the other. Jin Haina examines the distribution and translation of films from the German Democratic Republic, the Federal Republic of Germany, Austria, and Switzerland in the People’s Republic of China in the period from 1949 to 1966, a crucial period for the formation of a socialist state. Her research demonstrates how, and what kind of, German films were shown in this period in China, how they were translated, and what kind of impact they had on the Chinese audience. Wei Mei proposes a study on the representation of traditional Chinese opera in nineteenth-century travel notes left by eminent personalities such as Reinhold von Werner, Ernst Hesse-Wartegg, and others. In contrast to the frequently mentioned veneration for Chinese theatre at the royal courts of Europe in the eighteenth century and by the modernist theatre-makers in the twentieth century, these travel notes depict a negative image of traditional Chinese opera. Nevertheless, their descriptions are extremely valuable for gaining a deeper understanding of the real conditions of Chinese opera at that time as well as of the worldview of the authors. Wang Yihong, Zhang Yang, Zhao Xinna have carried out two large-scale surveys about Chinese cultural symbols, in 2012 and 2017, respectively, in Germany, in order to investigate just what kind of Chinese cultural symbols the people of Germany most favoured. Through the analysis of the results of these two surveys, the authors find that Chinese cultural symbols as ‘Chinese food’, ‘the Great Wall’, ‘traditional Chinese medicine’, and ‘silk’ have gained increasing popularity among Germans over the years and go on to analyse the reasons behind this growing popularity. Last but not least, the fourth section is about transformation; it is intended to demonstrate how one’s culture’s thoughts, ideas, and forms can be absorbed into another culture so as to generate exciting new ones. He Jun contributes a study on the interconnections of Gustav Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde with Chinese poetry from Tang dynasty. He proposes that we think about Mahler’s composition as a musical ‘Nachdichtung’, a poetical process which includes both imitation and creation. After carefully reviewing some of the major studies on Mahler and Chinese poetry, he discusses Mahler’s work both in the personal and social contexts of the author and his times. Anna Stecher has transcribed a conversation with Tian Gebing from the formerly Beijing-based (but now Berlin-based) Paper Tiger Studio and the German dramaturge Christoph Lepschy. The two have collaborated on different occasions. At the centre of this conversation is their most recent collaboration, staged at the Kammerspiele Theatre in Munich in 2021, Heart Chamber Fragments, which features once again a transcultural approach towards literary texts and performance cultures. Yang Guang contributes a discussion of the dialogue which, in Yang’s view, the German philosopher Heidegger implicitly conducted, in his late work, with

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Daoist thought in the form of the writings of Laozi and Zhuangzi. He argues that Daoist writing inspired Heidegger both on the level of ideas and on that of language and provided him with an opportunity to break free from Western logical and linguistic barriers. School of Foreign Languages and Cultures, Communication University of China, Beijing, China School of Foreign Languages and Cultures, University of Naples “L’Orientale”, Naples, Italy Department of Translation, University of Applied Sciences/SDI Munich, Munich, Germany

Haina Jin

Anna Stecher

Rebecca Ehrenwirth

References Cho, J. M. (Ed.). (2021). Sino-German encounters and entanglements: Transnational perspectives, 1890–1950. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. Cho, J. M., & Crowe D. M. (Eds.). (2014). Germany and China: Transnational encounters since the eighteenth century. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Hertel, C. (2019). Germany: Eighteenth-century Chinoiserie and its modern legacy. Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press. Hu, C., Lackner, H., & Zimmer, T. (Eds.). (2021). China-Kompetenz in Deutschland und Deutschland-Kompetenz in China. Multi- und transdisziplinäre Perspektiven und Praxis. Wiesbaden: Springer. Li, J. (2013). Pre-vocational education in Germany and China: A comparison of curricula and its implications. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften. Musch, S. (2019). Jewish encounters with Buddhism in German culture between Moses and Buddha, 1890–1940. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. Pietzcker, D. (Ed.). (2022). Drachenspiele. Dragon games. Historische und aktuelle Figurationen europäisch-chinesischer Beziehungen. Historical and contemporary figurations in European-Chinese relations. Baden-Baden: Ergon. Schrecker, J. E. (1971). Imperialism and Chinese nationalism: Germany in Shantung. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. So, F. W. L. (2019). Germany’s colony in China: Colonialism, protection and economic development in Qingdao and Shandong, 1898–1914. London: Routledge. Yang, J. Y., Chen, L., & Tang, Z. (2019). Chinese M&As in Germany: An integration oriented and value enhancing story. Cham: Springer. Yeoh, B. S. A., & Collins, F. L. (Eds.). (2022). Handbook on transnationalism. Cheltenham: Elgar.

Contents

Part I 1

2

Individuals as Gatekeepers: The Dissemination of Chinese Films in the German-Language Region from the 1970s to the Early 1990s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Isabel Wolte Blessed Bodies, Extraordinary Exhibitions and Missed Opportunities: Forty Years of Chinese-German Cultural Projects and Diplomacy—A Conversation with Chen Ping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Anna Stecher

Part II 3

4

5

6

Facilitators

3

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Creators

Digging Deep into Chinese Reality: An Interview with Li Yang About His Cinematic Trilogy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Jimeng Teng Performing Disaster and Trauma: A Cross-Cultural Dialogue Between Post-socialist China and Munich in the Age of Globalization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Winnie L. M. Yee The Invisible Person: Duan Yingmei as Centerpiece of German-Chinese Art . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Rebecca Ehrenwirth In an Ambush from All Sides: On the Conditions of Feminist Performance Art in the PRC—A Sino-German Encounter with Feminist Performance Artist Li Xinmo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Raimund Rosarius

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Contents

Part III

Transmission

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The Distribution and Translation of German Films in China (1949–1966) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117 Haina Jin

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Impressions of Chinese Opera in Nineteenth-Century German Travel Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133 Mei Wei

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Cultural Symbols: A Way to Boost Cultural Dialogues Between China and Germany . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145 Yihong Wang, Yang Zhang, and Xinna Zhao

Part IV

Transformation

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Textual Metamorphosis Along with Poetical Re-creation: The ‘Nachdichtung’ of Ancient Chinese Poetry in Gustav Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171 Jun He

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When Kafka Rode a Paper Tiger Towards the Peach Blossom Spring: A Conversation on Contemporary Performance with Tian Gebing and Christoph Lepschy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189 Anna Stecher

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Martin Heidegger and Daoism in Dialogue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207 Guang Yang

About the Editors

Haina Jin is a professor of translation, film, and communication studies at the Communication University of China. Her research interests include film translation, translation history, and film history. She is the chair researcher of the China National Social Science Foundation Major Research Project, ‘A General History of Film Translation in China’. She has published a monograph titled Towards a History of Translating Chinese Films (1905–1949) and is now working on a sequel, which will cover the 120-year history of film translation in China. Her publications have appeared in Babel, Perspectives, Target, Journal of Chinese Cinemas, among others. She is the translator of the three-volume General History of Chinese Film published by Routledge. She is the editor-in-chief of Journal of Chinese Film Studies (De Gruyter) and the series editor of Routledge Series in Chinese Cinema. She is on the boards of Journal of Specialized Translation, Cogent Arts and Humanities, and Journal of Audiovisual Translation. Anna Stecher is an assistant professor at the University of Naples, L’Orientale. Previously, she was an assistant professor in Sinology at Ludwig Maximilian University Munich. She studied Oriental History at the University of Bologna and Modern Chinese Literature at Beijing Normal University (MA and Ph.D.). She also holds a Ph.D. in Theatre Studies from LMU Munich. Her main research interests are Chinese theatre and modern Chinese literature. She is the author of Im Dialog mit dem chinesischen Schauspieljahrhundert. Studien zum Theater von Lin Zhaohua (In dialogue with the Chinese huaju-century. Studies on Lin Zhaohua’s theatre) and co-editor of two volumes collecting contemporary Chinese plays in translation. Her publications further include a number of literary translations from Chinese. Rebecca Ehrenwirth is an assistant professor of translation (Chinese-German) at the University of Applied Sciences/SDI Munich. She received her Ph.D. in Sinology from Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich in 2017. Her main research fields include Sinophone literature, Translation Studies, contemporary Chinese art, Queer Studies, and Anglophone literature. She is the author of Zeitgenössische sinophone xiii

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About the Editors

Literatur in Thailand (Contemporary Sinophone Literature in Thailand). An article on intertextuality in Sinophone literature in Thailand has been published with the journal Modern Chinese Literature and Culture. She is a founding member of the Society of Sinophone Studies and the current Secretary-Treasurer.

Part I

Facilitators

Chapter 1

Individuals as Gatekeepers: The Dissemination of Chinese Films in the German-Language Region from the 1970s to the Early 1990s Isabel Wolte

Abstract Cultural differences as well as political and economic constraints have shaped and limited the dissemination of Chinese films abroad. This chapter focuses on the contribution of individuals to the process of cross-cultural film dissemination. The following research draws on new sources such as personal accounts and interviews with representatives from China and German-language countries and reveals details formerly overlooked. Four case studies illustrate the role of the individual as gatekeeper, enabling and defining exchange. Cross-cultural film dissemination requires a dialogue between representatives from both countries. The distribution of a film is the result of negotiation between two sides. This chapter provides a new element of analysis in both film exchange and gatekeeping. Keywords Cross-cultural film dissemination · Gatekeeping · Gatekeeper · Individual

1.1

Introduction

This chapter deals with the dissemination of films from the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to the German-language countries of the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG, Germany) and the Republic of Austria.1 Research on Chinese cinema in German-language countries is scarce. With few exceptions, it is limited to individual film analyses and the discussion of selected auteurs. While some researchers have looked into aspects of film exchange between

1

Film distribution in the German-language region which consists of Germany, Austria, the Northern part of Switzerland, Liechtenstein, and Luxemburg generally includes Germany. Rarely is a movie imported only to one of the other countries in the region. I. Wolte (✉) University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 H. Jin et al. (eds.), Contemporary German–Chinese Cultures in Dialogue, Global Germany in Transnational Dialogues, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-26779-6_1

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China and German-language countries, the topic has not been the subject of systematic research. The focus generally lies on the political, social, and cultural conditions influencing exchange, often characterized as restrictive and difficult to navigate. Already in 1994 in his study on the dissemination of German films in China, Giesenfeld based his argumentation mainly on political developments in China (Giesenfeld, 1994). Most recently, Shen “traces the importation of Chinese films into divided Germany over the course of four decades” and describes the selected films as “receptacles or manifestations of Chinese modernisms” (Shen, 2019, p.123). For Shen, the selection and distribution of films expose ideologies and cultural practices. She does not discuss the concept of the selector in any depth. The present chapter brings to the fore a previously neglected factor in the process of crosscultural film dissemination: the individual. I, Isabel Wolte, author of this chapter, am active in film exchange and dissemination between China and the German-language region. I follow in the footsteps of my mother, Ursula, whose work is discussed below. During the course of our work, we realized how influential individual contribution is. The account presented here draws on personal experience and contacts. To demonstrate the role of individuals in cross-cultural film dissemination, I apply the concept of gatekeeping. I will discuss major players and their respective roles in China and in the FRG and Austria. In China, Yu Yuxi and later her colleague, Xiao Ping, were responsible for film exchange with German-language countries within the state structure. For Germany, Manfred Durniok, an independent filmmaker and producer, and Moritz de Hadeln, longtime director of the Berlin International Film Festival “Berlinale,” emerge as particularly significant. In Austria, Ursula Wolte, wife of the former Austrian Ambassador to China from 1980 to 1986, was responsible for bringing Chinese movies to the domestic audience. These three individuals also represent three types of persons dealing with China—the businessman, the representative of a specialized non-profit organization, in this case the film festival, and the enthusiastic self-made expert. I begin this chapter with a brief overview of the gatekeeping approach and the historical background. I then present the main gatekeeper in China and her position, followed by a detailed description of each of the gatekeepers in Germany and Austria. I conclude with a summary of my findings.

1.2

Gatekeeping

The concept of gatekeeping is commonly used in media studies and mass communication, particularly in the study of news selection (Shoemaker & Vos, 2009, p.20). In this context, the role of the individual as gatekeeper who influences and/or controls the information flow has been studied in some depth. It has been argued that the individual is interchangeable, meaning that his/her gatekeeping function is defined more by the position in the organization than by personal preferences (Shoemaker & Vos, 2009, p.16). Expanding into the cultural fields, gatekeeping is

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Individuals as Gatekeepers: The Dissemination of Chinese Films in. . .

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a model for a variety of processes, beyond the selection of cultural items.2 Steele’s work on the censorship of library collections (Steele, 2018) draws on Shoemaker’s important work (Shoemaker & Vos, 2009), but does not place much attention on the individual level of analysis. Regarding the movie industry, Roussel gives an important empirical analysis, highlighting the influential role of individual agents, but does not employ gatekeeping theory (Roussel & Bielby, 2015). Smits specifically applies the gatekeeping model in his study, which “combines an understanding of the organizational work practices of sales agents and distributors with an understanding of the operation of power to develop a critical analysis of gatekeeping in the evolving business of film distribution” (Smits, 2019, p.11). Smits’ study is a detailed analysis of the processes and gatekeeping practices in the distribution of independent films in the North American and European contexts. None of the previously mentioned studies offers a comprehensive view of the cross-cultural phenomenon of film dissemination. In this chapter, I draw on the work of Smits and Shoemaker to describe the different aspects of the individual as gatekeeper. Let us consider the tasks involved in introducing Chinese films to a German-speaking audience. In Gatekeeping in the Evolving Business of Independent Film Distribution, Smits examines the work practices and strategies of gatekeepers and shows how they affect processes of cultural flow. He identifies the following functions as integral to what he calls the “gatekeeping process”: The search and selection function: Developing relationships with cultural producers. Participating in networking events. The coordinator function: Influencing the creative and business process of cultural production. The representative function: Engaging with promotional and tastemaking activities. Connecting cultural works to audiences (Smits, 2019, p.102).

As I will show, the individual gatekeepers discussed below performed all these functions. It is important to emphasize—especially in the case of cross-cultural distribution—that gatekeepers facilitate and make accessible what might otherwise remain unknown and incomprehensible. Shoemaker and Vos provide the tools for the analysis of the gatekeeper on the individual level. They discern the following characteristics that come into play in the decision-making process: personality, background (including ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, education, religion, and class), values, professional role conceptions, and the diverse types of jobs (Shoemaker & Vos, 2009, p.42–48). Based on this classification, this chapter includes a brief description of the characteristics for each of the persons analyzed.

A recent example is the so-called career gatekeeping, describing how gatekeepers “affect the career trajectories of cultural producers more directly by controlling access to established social positions” (Hamann & Beljean, 2019, p.45). 2

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I. Wolte

Historical Background

A consequence of World War II was the division of Germany into the FRG, or West Germany, and the GDR, or East Germany, in 1949, the same year the PRC was founded. While the PRC and the GDR held diplomatic relations from 1949 until the reunification of Germany in 1990, the FRG established diplomatic relations with the PRC only in 1972. Diplomatic relations between the PRC and Austria were established in 1971. This examination begins with the establishment of diplomatic relations in 1972 and ends with the loosening of the state monopoly of China Film Export Import Corporation on film distribution in 1993. In the chosen timeframe, the conditions of dialogue with the PRC were similar for all foreigners. Therefore, the case studies presented here represent the specifics of the era and the dialogue process. After 1993, the situation changed considerably and now it is possible to acquire foreign distribution rights to Chinese films without dealing with the Chinese government. Until 1964, when Sino-Soviet relations broke off, a total of 48 features and 8 documentaries from the GDR were shown in Chinese cinemas (Dong, 1994, p.20). Because the GDR belonged to the sphere of Soviet influence, after 1964 exchange between the GDR and PRC was reduced to a minimum until the early 1980s. As for the FRG, until 1963 exactly six films were imported into China (Dong, 1994, p.50). It was only after 1979 that China slowly began to distribute foreign films domestically again, including some from the FRG. Equally, few Chinese films were shown in the GDR. According to Nobach and Shen, not a single Chinese movie was exhibited in a public screening in the FRG until 1972 (Shen, 2019, p.129–131 and Nobach, 2022). Only The Red Detachment of Women (Hongse niangzi jun, dir. Xie Jin, 1961) aired on German television on July 22, 1968 (Nobach, 2022). The first Chinese movies were screened at the “Arsenal” in West Berlin in October 1971, shortly before diplomatic relations were established (Shen, 2019, p.131). As for Austria, records indicate that the film version of the revolutionary model ballet The Red Detachment of Women (Hongse niangzi jun, dir. Pan Wenzhan, Fu Jie, 1970) was the first Chinese feature film to participate in the Vienna International Film Festival in March 1972 (Chen, 1984, p.347).

1.4

China

Starting in the 1970s, the FRG began to import Chinese films and, until 1993, obtained the commercial distribution rights for approximately 200 Chinese films, both older and newer productions.3 Film distribution in Germany often includes the rights for Austria, especially when considering that foreign features require dubbing 3 This number is based on the Manfred Durniok’s collection of Chinese films: after his death in 2003, his estate was divided and a large number of films from his collection is now in the Film

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or subtitling. For Austrian distribution companies, the limited Austrian market alone is not profitable. When releasing a foreign movie in the cinema, as a rule, the German-language distribution company will acquire the rights for the whole German-language region. This was also the case for the Chinese features that had a cinema release in the 1980s and 1990s, for example the first feature to win a Golden Bear at the Berlinale in 1988 Red Sorghum (Hong gaoliang, dir. Zhang Yimou, 1987) or Horse Thief (Dao ma zei, dir. Tian Zhuangzhuang, 1985). To help understand the process of how Chinese films were selected for dissemination in Germany and Austria, let me briefly describe the Chinese system. Until 1993, the only organization with the right to screen or sell films domestically and abroad was the “China Film Export Import Corporation,” a branch of the China Film Corporation (since 1999 the China Film Group). This was and is a state-owned enterprise, generally referred to as “China Film.” Therefore, all persons aiming to obtain the rights for Chinese films had to interact with the China Film Export Import Corporation, which represented and implemented the policies of the Chinese government. Given the language barrier, China Film Export Import Corporation employed graduates from language schools to communicate with foreigners. For the German-language countries, the responsible person was Yu Yuxi.4 In December 1970, she was assigned to work at China Film Export Import Corporation. It was her job to facilitate film exchange between China and the German-language region. Until the end of the Cultural Revolution in 1976, her tasks included on-set translation of foreign films for Chinese leaders. Following the Reform and Openingup Policy in 1978 and the increased Chinese interest in international exchange and cooperation, she had the opportunity to spend a term in Berlin in 1980 to improve her German language skills at the Goethe Institute. Yu remained responsible for relations with the German-speaking countries at China Film until 2003. In 1985, she was joined by Xiao Ping, also a graduate in German Studies, who in 2014 became General Manager of China Film Export & Import Company, one of the many subsidiaries of the now China Film Group Corporation and the only company in China with the right to import foreign films. Xiao Ping retired in 2021. Yu Yuxi and Xiao Ping covered all film relations with German-speaking countries, and both knew the individuals this chapter discusses. I had the opportunity to interview Ms. Yu and Ms. Xiao. Much of the information here was gathered thanks to their extensive cooperation (Yu, 2018; Xiao, 2017). Until 1985, Yu was the only German-speaking employee at China Film Export Import Corporation. Therefore, everyone from Germany or Austria who wished to cooperate with China Film first met with Yu. It is important to recall the situation in China during the 1970s and into the 1980s: foreigners were not permitted to travel

Archive Austria. Due to his agreement with China Film Export Import, he was allowed to keep a copy of each film after the rights had expired. 4 Yu Yuxi is from Shanghai, born in 1945. She studied German at the Shanghai Foreign Language Institute. After finishing her degree in 1968, she was sent to the countryside for “worker-peasantsoldier re-education.”

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freely and had to provide identification at checkpoints; there were specific hotels which accommodated foreigners; specific shops restricted to foreigners, a currency for foreigners, etc. To obtain a visa to travel to China, a local institution had to issue an invitation. The inviting institution would then designate a translator cum assistant to the foreign visitor who was responsible for the well-being of the visitor and for the smooth operation of his/her business in China. Therefore, due to the particulars of China at the time, Yu was not only the contact person and translator for the individuals mentioned below, but she also assumed the role of personal assistant, travel guide, and general consultant. All this beside her main task, which was to promote Chinese films and to choose German-language productions for import into China. Yu provided suggestions for both import and export, but she was not responsible for the final decisions. All films for export and import had to pass censorship at the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT or Film Bureau), until 1986 under the authority of the Ministry of Culture.5 The foreign individuals portrayed here had no knowledge of Chinese prior to coming to China and only one of them studied Chinese eventually. Thus, Yu was the only person who could understand and communicate in both Chinese and German. As the first person of contact, Yu often introduced the German-speaking guests to other officials, producers, or filmmakers. In meetings and negotiations involving other Chinese representatives, Yu was the translator. In this capacity, she had a certain degree of control over the conversation: she could decide how to nuance the content, whether to reveal or withhold information, etc. This translatorial agency can be thought of as being practiced in specific socio-historical conditions, as part of the inter-play of power strategies and influence attributed to the agents involved, and hence it is always a site of multiple determinations and actions. To address the idea of agency in translation is thus to highlight the interplay of power and ideology: what gets translated or not and why is always (at least partly) a matter of exercising power or reflecting authority. (Khalifa, 2014, p.14)

With time, Yu began to appreciate which Chinese films might be appealing to a German-speaking audience. Also, she came to understand which films would be suitable for export, from the point of view of the Chinese authorities. This was knowledge that developed through experience: there was no set of rules and the criteria varied. Sometimes the focus would be more on the artistic and aesthetic value of a movie, sometimes on the socio-political aspects. In an interview with Contemporary Cinema, Yu explains her thoughts when selecting films for exhibition abroad: “I only took into consideration the official Chinese viewpoint, that is, whether a film would obtain government approval, which film could represent China” (Bian, 2014, p.78). For the Chinese government, the predominant interest in film dissemination was to “represent China.” What this actually meant, is difficult to define. General legislation governing film censorship was formulated for the first time in 1988 (Yu & Yuan, 2017, p.99). Before this, there was “political censorship”

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The Film Bureau still exists today, but its position within the Chinese administrative hierarchy has changed a few times during the years.

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based on the principles of the Communist Party and largely defined by the leaders in charge. To this day, there is criticism among filmmakers that censorship is arbitrary (for example, see Gan, 2010). Domestic film professionals like Yu developed a sensitivity for the political atmosphere. She was able to ascertain which films were suitable for export and screening in film festivals. Also, she managed to suggest a large number of acceptable features for import into China. In the 1980s and 1990s, China imported an average of three German-language films per year, but not all of these were shown in cinemas. One very successful film was the musical Heintje – Einmal wird die Sonne wieder scheinen (dir. Hans Heinrich, 1970). Yu Yuxi explains that she had to defend her decisions to purchase the rights for light entertainment, like the TV series /The Dream Ship (Das Traumschiff, since 1981). Her German colleagues did not approve of her decisions claiming that these films showed a Germany that did not reflect the reality, which was not as good and beautiful. Yu responded, “Personally I like things good and beautiful” (Bian, 2014, p.80). Yu Yuxi’s outgoing and enjoyable personality combined with her professional competence and intelligence made her a most valuable facilitator of exchange and cooperation. At the same time, she functioned as a gatekeeper who influenced and restricted the selection, both for import and export.

1.5

Germany and Austria

On the German side, there were varied interests in screening or importing Chinese movies. The case studies below will describe three individuals and their personal specifics as gatekeepers.

1.5.1

The Businessman

The German filmmaker and producer Manfred Durniok (1934–2003) stands at the forefront of German involvement with Chinese cinema. He began film exchange between Germany and China. In 1971, driven by his personal interest in China, he went to the Chinese Embassy in East Berlin. Before the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and the FRG, the only way to access China and Chinese films was through the GDR. Durniok met the Cultural Counselor, Mr. Mei Zhaorong (born 1934), an attaché who in the 1980s became Ambassador of the PRC to the FRG. The result of Durniok’s first contact with official Chinese representatives was the purchase of the rights for the film version of two Chinese model operas Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy (Zhiqu wei hu shan, dir. Xie Tieli, 1970) and The Red Detachment of Women (Hongse niangzi jun, dir. Pan Wenzhan, Fu Jie, 1970). Durniok bought the rights for both the FRG and the GDR without having a plan or even an option for actually selling these rights to German TV. Durniok managed

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to obtain an invitation to attend a trade fair in Guangzhou and thus received a visa in 1971. From Guangzhou, he took a train to Beijing to meet with representatives from China Film Company. The young German translator, Yu Yuxi, who met him at the train station during this first visit to China, was to remain his supporting hand throughout his many years of exchange and business with China. China officially began to promote its movie productions abroad in the 1950s. The first representative office under the authority of the Ministry of Culture—as was the film industry in general at the time—opened in Prague. The main purpose of this office was the sale of classic Chinese movies from the 1930s to befriended “socialist countries” in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and the purchase of movies from the same region, including the GDR.6 China introduced films from the Soviet Union, some developing countries and some CEE countries to domestic audiences in these early years of the PRC. All exchange was terminated, though, with the outbreak of the Cultural Revolution in 1966 and the representative office in Prague was closed. It was into this void that Manfred Durniok ventured when he traveled to China in 1972. As a native of Berlin, he personally experienced the sensitive and complex political situation in the divided German capital7 and was able to use this knowledge to his advantage, especially in his early involvement with the PRC. He launched his activities making use of the GDR’s existing relationship with the PRC. Manfred Durniok became the channel for Chinese cinema in both Germanies during the 1970s. Durniok was himself a filmmaker, producer, and film distributor.8 Early on, Durniok established contacts with the socialist countries of CEE. Through his company ‘Manfred Durniok Produktion für Film und Fernsehen’ he was one of the first German producers to work with Eastern European directors. His fascination with China dated back to an early childhood experience. In 1971, he made a documentary with footage from international archives entitled China and the West (Zhang, 1989, p.47). This was the first film about China broadcast on West German television. Soon after his initial trip to China, he directed another documentary for German television called Meeting Place – Peking in 1974. More documentaries followed, e.g., Dynasty of Silk and Lacquer (1978), Sport in China (1983), Images of China (1988), China – My Life, My Dream (1990) about the German-Chinese photographer Eva Siao. Durniok also published two collections of his own photographs Faces of China (1979) and The Changing Faces of China (1981) (Manfred Durniok Produktion für Film und Fernsehen, 1996, 232ff). In the decades until his passing in 2003, Manfred Durniok’s name is mentioned in connection with most Chinese film-related projects and many Chinese cultural 6

Similar offices were eventually set up in Iraq, Bombay, Cuba, Cairo, and Algiers. All offices were closed during the Cultural Revolution (Xiao, 2017). 7 The city of Bonn was the provisional capital and seat of government of the FRG from 1949 until Germany’s reunification in 1990. East Berlin was the capital of the GDR. 8 http://www.manfreddurniokproduktion.de/. Having financed and made his first short film in 1957, he received a scholarship to study law at Harvard University, which gave him the opportunity to make his second short film “Black New York,” a film about Harlem, in 1958. He continued to write and direct about 100 films in his life, as well as produce a similar number.

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activities in Germany. Durniok sold two Chinese films to the German television station ARD in 1974, Tunnel Warfare (Di dao zhan, dir. Ren Xudong, 1963) and Heroic Sons and Daughters (Yingxiong er nü, dir. Wu Zhaodi, 1964). He assisted in the preparations for the first Chinese film delegation to attend the Berlinale in 1975. In the following years, he took care of the needs of Chinese film delegations in Germany whenever required. In 1978, the Berlinale showed a selection of six Chinese features and one animation film: Tunnel Warfare (Di dao zhan, dir. Ren Xudong, 1963), Hai Xia (dir. Qian Hong, Chen Huai’ai and Wang Haowei, 1975), The Naval Battle of 1894 (Jiawu fengyun, dir. Lin Nong, 1964), Hurricane (Bao feng zhou yu, dir. Xie Tieli, 1961), The Red Flower of Tianshan (Tianshan de honghua, dir. Cui Wei, Chen Huai’ai, Liu Baode, 1964), Gold und Sand (Da lang tao sha, dir Yi Lin, 1964) and Uproar in Heaven (Da nao tiangong, dir. Wan Laiming, 1964). Another retrospective was included in the Berlinale’s program in 1980 presenting classic movies from the 1930s and 1940s. Durniok secured the German-language region rights for most of these films. An intense exchange between German and Chinese professionals began in the 1980s on the basis of the Sino-German Cultural Cooperation Program signed in 1979. This program provided government support for cultural exchange activities, it still exists today in the form of the “Sino-German Agreement on Cultural Cooperation” (Auswärtiges Amt, 2021). Delegations traveled back and forth, and small film festivals were organized. The first extensive Chinese film retrospective in the German-language region, presenting 19 features and 6 animations, took place at the “Internationale Filmwoche Mannheim” in 1982. The accompanying book lists Durniok in the credits. In 1987, a Chinese Film Week featuring 12 productions from the PRC and international documentaries about China celebrated the partnership between China and Germany at the Industrial Fair in Hannover. Film delegations on the German side were mostly organized by Manfred Durniok, and he was always a member of the delegation. The program directors of publicly funded West German state and regional TV channels such as ARD and ZDF visited China. Durniok bought the rights for films these TV representatives suggested. For example, ARD showed a selection of contemporary Chinese films in 1985 including Under the Bridge (Da qiao xia mian, dir. Bai Chen, 1983), Voice from Hometown (Xiang yin, dir. Hu Bingliu, 1983) and At Middle Age (Ren dao zhong nian, dir. Wang Qiming, Sun Yu, 1982). Initially, the films were dubbed in German; later the original version with subtitles was shown.9 Durniok acquired the rights for the cinematic release of Chinese films. But rarely did he manage to find a distribution company for these films. In the early 1980s, mainly cinemas in the GDR exhibited the films Durniok had chosen. Only the 9

But it appears that the German-language audience was not (or not presumed by television programmers to be) really interested in Chinese movies, for those films were never shown during primetime, but rather broadcast around midnight and later. It is unclear what the viewer numbers or ratings were, but the scheduling has not changed to this day: if Chinese features are shown on German TV, it will be late at night. Documentaries about China have more appeal; they can be shown during primetime and receive a wide audience, especially if they are nature documentaries.

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internationally recognized, award-winning movies of the Fifth Generation10 filmmakers found their way into cinemas in FRG and Austria, e.g., Horse Thief, Red Sorghum, and others. Since Durniok was in Beijing regularly searching for films suitable for distribution in Germany, he was indirectly involved in the selection of Chinese films for the Berlinale. Most features shown at the Berlinale from 1975 to the early 1990s were in Durniok’s portfolio for distribution. After the success of Red Sorghum, which was the first Chinese feature to be awarded the Golden Bear at the Berlinale in 1988, China Film Export Import Corporation came to an agreement with Durniok. Yu gives the details: “Because time was so short, we asked Lao Du [Durniok] to take care of the translation and the subtitling [for Red Sorghum] in Germany. After this, we came to the agreement that Durniok would buy the rights to all films shown in competition at the Berlinale and he could keep the subtitled copy. So, I did not need to send the copies back and forth anymore, especially since nobody wanted the subtitled copy in China” (Bian, 2014, p.79). Durniok’s name appears frequently in Yu Yuxi’s oral history interview (Bian, 2014) as does his Chinese moniker “Lao Du,” which is what Durniok was respectfully and amicably called in China. Yu often refers to him as “my old friend Lao Du.” Durniok was a kind and knowledgeable man, with an acute sense of humor. He seemed reserved, had a somewhat mysterious air about him and was often alone. Though clearly ambitious and hardworking, he never boasted about his success. The relevance and importance of a businessman like Durniok developing a personal relationship with Chinese officials cannot be overestimated. While still valid today, it was especially true in the 1980s and 1990s that cooperation with China worked best for those who proved through many years of regular and consistent contact that they were trustworthy and genuine in their attempts for cooperation (regardless of the field). An established record of cooperation made possible many a development that initially might have seemed difficult to achieve. For example, the Oscar-winning film Mephisto (dir. Istvan Szabo, 1981), a co-production between Manfred Durniok Produktion, Hungary, and Austria, was released in China in the early 1980s. The film deals with an actor’s fate during the Nazi regime in Germany; in pursuing his personal success, the actor forgets his conscience and is politically exploited by the ruling party. Durniok’s personal standing in China as well as the Oscar made it possible for such a politicallycharged film to pass censorship. Equally remarkable is the fact that Durniok coproduced the first German-Chinese film Black Cannon Incident (Hei pao shijian, dir. Huang Jianxin, 1985). This is the debut feature of Huang Jianxin, one of the very few Fifth Generation directors who focused on contemporary topics. Black Cannon Incident is a black comedy about

10 General term to refer to the young filmmakers that graduated from Beijing Film Academy in 1982 and started making films in the mid-1980s. These filmmakers received international attention since Chen Kaige’s debut Yellow Earth (Huang tudi, dir. Chen Kaige, 1984) was screened at the Hongkong Film Festival.

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German-Chinese technical cooperation which deals with problems that might arise through misinterpretation or miscommunication. At the same time, it is a satire about Chinese bureaucrats. It is not clear whether this script would ever have been made into film without the financial support from Durniok and his overall involvement. Black Cannon Incident has since become a classic. In this case, the facilitator and gatekeeper Durniok confirms the general statement of Smits: It is thus important to acknowledge that the gatekeeper role of sales agents and distributors may also extend to the creative process of films. On the one hand, their interventions in creative processes may be necessary to support the commercial performance of films. On the other hand, they may undermine the creative work and vision of talent and producers. (Smits, 2019, p.86)

Durniok became friends with many Chinese directors, in particular one of the most distinguished representatives of the Shanghai film scene, Wu Yigong (Manfred Durniok Produktion für Film und Fernsehen, 1996, p.179–181). Early on, Durniok bought the rights for Wu Yigong’s first full-length film Evening Rain (Bashan yeyu, dir. Wu Yigong, 1980). In 1986, Durniok produced a second co-production Tribulations of a Chinaman in China (Shaoye de Monan, dir. Wu Yigong, Zhang Jianya, 1986), based on the novel of the same name by Jules Verne, this time working with Wu Yigong. The first comedy genre film after 1949, it was one of the most successful movies at the box office in the 1980s in China but did not fare as well in the German-speaking world. When in the early 1990s Wu Yigong, then Vice-director of the Shanghai Film Bureau, was assigned the task of creating an international film festival, it was his friend Durniok who paved the way for him to visit renowned film festivals worldwide and advised him on various matters. At the Second Shanghai International Film Festival in 1995, Durniok served as a member of the festival jury (Jin, 2021, p.31). These two talented and highly educated men, Durniok and Wu Yigong, had close friendly relations from their first meeting, notwithstanding that communication was usually dependent on a translator. Durniok also invited young directors like Huang Jianxin, Chen Kaige, and Huang Jun to Berlin. The goal was for these aspiring directors to develop treatments for potential co-productions. In the end, none of these treatments were made into film. Yet the authors reportedly valued the experience of living in Germany. They understood the difficulty of adapting to a foreign culture and trying to find creative ways of overcoming cultural differences.11 Durniok was an active supporter of Chinese animation film. He introduced Chinese animations to film festivals in Germany and bought distribution rights. In addition, in 1983 he coproduced the animated movie Secrets from the Book of Heaven (Tian shu qi tan, dir. Wang Shuchen, Qian Yunda, 1983) and commissioned an animation film based on Goethe’s Reynard the Fox (Huli Liena, dir. Ren Yumen, Qing Minjin, 1989) at the renowned Shanghai Animation Film Studio. Durniok’s financial investment supported the making of six puppet animation films in the years 11

The author had the opportunity to speak to all three directors about their experience in Germany.

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1995–2005 at the Shanghai Animation Film Studio. The last film, The Children of Captain Grant (Gelante chuanzhang de ernü, dir. Hu Zhaohong, 2005) was finished posthumously. At the time, Durniok’s investment was an important contribution for the struggling film studio. All six puppet animations are adaptations of Jules Verne’s novels. Throughout the century, no other works of Jules Verne were adapted in China, apart from those mentioned here, with Durniok’s involvement. Jules Verne was one of Durniok’s favorite authors. In his lifetime, Durniok purchased the rights to more than 250 Chinese films, including features, documentaries, and animations. It was arguably due to his foresight and business prowess as well as a basic understanding of political constraints on creativity that Durniok recognized the value of these Chinese features, at a time when the international community was still hesitant to deal with the PRC. Durniok was influential in establishing the city partnership between Beijing and Berlin. On September 29, 1999, Manfred Durniok was made an Honorary Citizen of Beijing.

1.5.2

The Festival Director

A counterpart of Manfred Durniok was the Swiss Moritz de Hadeln (born 1940) who in 1980 became director of the Berlinale (de Hadeln, & Partners, Film Consulting, 2018). Founded in 1951, the festival intended to make a political statement and serve as a ‘showcase of the free world’ in the divided city (Internationale Filmfestspiele Berlin, 1951). While screenings took place in both East and West Berlin, the festival initially barred films from socialist countries. This policy held until 1974, when a film from the Soviet Union was included in the program for the first time. When de Hadeln took the reins, it was his explicit wish to organize the festival as a bridge between East and West. Moritz de Hadeln’s mission to build bridges between East and West may seem obvious in the case of the socialist countries of Eastern Europe in the divided city of Berlin, but regarding his quest to discover Asian cinema, this mission resulted from his boundless joy of discovery. (Jungen, 2018, p.357)

An avid traveler, de Hadeln went to Asia for the film selection in 1981. In China, Yu Yuxi was ready to assist him during his stay in Beijing. Yu had met de Hadeln in 1980 during a governmental exchange program, when she was introduced to de Hadeln by ‘her old friend’ Manfred Durniok (Bian, 2014). But according to Yu, de Hadeln did not wish for any interference in the selection of Chinese films from Durniok, even though he was well aware that Durniok had been a driving force for Chinese cinema at the Berlinale. This is evident in the large overlap between the films Durniok purchased for the German-language region and the films shown at the Berlinale prior to de Hadeln. In this context, it should be noted that the name Manfred Durniok is not mentioned once in de Hadeln’s biography “Mister Filmfestival.” But instead, Erika [de Hadeln’s wife] and Moritz de Hadeln are

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particularly proud, to this day, to have discovered Chinese cinema and made it generally known (Jungen, 2018, p.399).12 To facilitate de Hadeln’s selection, Yu pre-selected films for viewing which she assumed would appeal to a German audience. De Hadeln states: “In the 1980s I watched most Chinese movies without subtitles, so I had to trust Yu Yuxi’s translation. And we often lacked basic information like the title or the name of the director” (Jungen, 2018, p.398). De Hadeln’s initial choice of movie for the Berlinale, made during this first trip to Beijing, was denied permission by the Chinese authorities to be sent abroad “because it revealed socially-critical overtones” (Jungen, 2018, p.359). Ultimately Come Back, Swallow (Yan guilai, dir. Fu Jinggong, 1980) became the first Chinese film to be shown in competition at the 1981 Berlinale. As can be seen, from de Hadeln’s first encounter with China onward, political concerns were part of the film selection. In 1982, two Chinese films were in competition, Longing for My Native Country (Xiang qing, dir. Hu Bingliu, Wang Jin, 1981) and the short animation, The Three Monks (Sange hesheng, dir. Yu Jingda, Ma Kexuan, 1981). The Three Monks was also the first Chinese film to win an award: it received the Silver Bear for Best Screenplay of a Short Film.13 The same year, special screenings of classic Chinese films14 were included in the Panorama section of the festival as well as Zhang Nuanxin’s Sport is my Life (Sha Ou, dir. Zhang Nuanxin, 1981). Regarding the lengthy list of Chinese films since included in the Berlinale there are two striking features: one is the sheer number, adding up to more than 180 films. The second is the inclusion of animated films and their popularity with the European audience. During the time Moritz de Hadeln was director of the Berlinale, Yu Yuxi participated in the film festival every year, as organizer and translator for the Chinese delegation. As a member of the China Export Import Corporation, she was also responsible for the Chinese cinema booth at the Film Market. Every year she managed to sell Chinese features to European distributors: she was most successful with animation shorts which she sold to various children’s programs on European TV. As for feature films, Manfred Durniok aside, sales were limited to award-winning films. De Hadeln could not travel to China every year for the film selection. A fact not mentioned in his biography is that he assigned Yu Yuxi as programmer for the PRC. In the interview with Contemporary Cinema, Yu confirms this but explains that she hardly acknowledged this publicly (Bian, 2014). She was not officially in a position

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Jungen makes the claim repeatedly with great emphasis that it was de Hadeln’s Berlinale that put Chinese cinema on the map and “surpassed Cannes” with respect to Chinese cinema (Jungen, 2018). Arguably though, this is not the case, e.g. see (Kuo, 2018). Apart from Durniok’s work in the 1970s and the early 1980s, Germany was in fact late to recognise the value of Chinese cinema (see Footnote 15). 13 The same award was given to another Chinese animation in 1984 The Struggle between Snipe and Mussel (Yu bang xiang zheng, dir. Hu Jinqing, 1984). 14 At the Crossroad (Shizi jietou, dir. Shen Xiling, 1937), Crows and Sparrows (Wuya yu maque, dir. Zheng Junli, 1949), Bright Lights of the City (Wan jia deng huo, dir. Shen Fu, 1948).

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to decide on the selection, but she did suggest films to the Film Bureau; in the end the decision was taken by the Film Bureau. The year that changed the fate of Chinese cinema was 1988 when Zhang Yimou’s Red Sorghum was awarded the Golden Bear. Western film critics had previously begun to pay attention to the innovative Chinese cinema recently discovered and France had already organized a retrospective of 141 movies in 1984 at the Centre Pompidou.15 But it was not until this international award that the general public became aware of the strength and creativity of Chinese movies. The Berlinale Archive recalls the year thus: The programme [of 1988], whose size critics were increasingly referring to as “gigantomanic”, also had other themes of course, such as the Asian focus spanning the various sections. The Competition film Zhang Yimou’s Red Sorghum, a bloody and ruthless ballad from 1930s China, was the first Chinese entry to win the Golden Bear. The jury’s decision not only honoured the outstanding cinematographic quality of the film but was also meant as a declaration of solidarity with the liberal forces in China. A quite courageous decision at the time—the Tianmen [sic] Square massacre was still to come. (International Film Festival Berlin, 1988)

Since 1988, many Chinese films have won awards at the Berlinale. The next Golden Bear, awarded to director Xie Fei’s The Women from the Lake of Scented Souls (Xiang hun nü, dir. Xie Fei, 1992) in 1993, presents a special case: the Golden Bear was awarded ex aequo with Ang Lee’s The Wedding Banquet (Xi yan, dir. Ang Lee, 1993) from Taiwan. Both Yu and de Hadeln give the details of this memorable Berlinale, deviating somewhat in their accounts (Bian, 2014; Jungen, 2018, p.383–387). De Hadeln remembers that in 1993 three features from Taiwan were in the program. As soon as the selection was announced, Yu sent a letter to de Hadeln on behalf of the Film Bureau to explain that the PRC did not recognize Taiwan and it would be inacceptable if the Berlinale referred to the films from Taiwan as from the ‘Republic of China’ or with their own flag. De Hadeln promised to use the term “Taiwan, China” and to only show the PRC flag. Then the Chinese Embassy in Bonn intervened, equally nervous about the terminology for Taiwan. Moritz de Hadeln responded with a letter confirming how much he cherished his good relationship with the PRC which he would not jeopardize in any way. Finally, the jury of the Berlinale decided to award both contributions from the PRC and from Taiwan the Golden Bear. Two diplomatic challenges followed. One was the name for Taiwan. The Golden Bear award for The Wedding Banquet was first engraved with “Taiwan-China” using a hyphen. As soon as the Chinese delegation became aware of this, they consulted with their superiors who demanded a change, it had to be “Taiwan, China” with a comma. The comma indicated indisputably that Taiwan

15 The first large-scale Chinese film retrospective was held in Italy in 1982 at the Torino Film Festival, a result of active involvement by Marco Müller, a former student of Chinese, and later director of the Venice Film Festival, who is still active in China. An even larger retrospective followed in Paris at the Centre Pompidou 1984/1985, co-organized by Marie-Claire Kuo, an expert on Chinese cinema who continues to be a key figure in researching and promoting Chinese cinema, in particular, animation, and making it accessible to a French audience (see Kuo, 2018).

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was an integral part of China. Yu vividly describes her distress with this situation. With director Xie Fei and Manfred Durniok at her side, she called de Hadeln in the middle of the night. She made it clear that without the correct reference to Taiwan on the Golden Bear, the delegation from the PRC would not accept the award for The Women from the Lake of Scented Souls (Bian, 2014, p.80). De Hadeln recalls that it was a tearful Gong Li16 who called him at 1 am to persuade him to have the engraving corrected (Jungen, 2018, p.386). De Hadeln complied. The second issue concerned the protocol for the award ceremony, which of the directors would go on stage first. De Hadeln claims that a compromise was reached and both Xie Fei and Ang Lee went onstage together (Jungen, 2018, p.386). But according to Yu’s account it was important that Xie Fei be the last to be called on stage since the final award is always the highest-ranking. Yu also recalls that her delegation ensured that they would be last to arrive at the luncheon for the award winners, thus claiming the highest level of honor for the PRC delegation (Bian, 2014, p.80). Comparing the details of these two accounts, it becomes clear that de Hadeln did not fully understand the nuances of Chinese cultural etiquette. But he did understand the importance of managing the Taiwan issue according to the PRC requirements to maintain his good relationship with the PRC representatives. From the mid-1980s onward, private funding became available in China in addition to state funding offered by established film studios. An increasing number of co-productions with Hong Kong and other countries appeared. Several movies directed by Fifth Generation filmmakers were banned after completion and not granted approval for exhibition. One of these co-productions with Hong Kong was The Blue Kite (Lan fengzheng, dir. Tian Zhuangzhuang, 1993). De Hadeln saw The Blue Kite and wanted very much to include it in the Berlinale program. But he was not able to convince Yu and her superiors to grant permission. In his biography, de Hadeln’s wife, who supported her husband throughout his tenure as festival director, is quoted as saying “For Berlin it was out of the question to show illegal copies of Chinese films. Because the Berlinale is an official festival subsidized by the government and cannot afford any diplomatic problems with other countries. Also, we needed to be able to continue to work with the Film Bureau in Beijing. They would never have given us another feature if we had shown The Blue Kite” (Jungen, 2018, p.375). Due to this clear political commitment to the government of the PRC, many films of the so-called Sixth Generation of Chinese directors17 which did not pass censorship were never screened at the Berlinale. Jia Zhangke is the exception. In 2001, One of the most-noticed films in the Forum was [. . .] Platform (Zhan tai) by Jia Zhangke. The young filmmaker had just founded the first independent production company in China

Famous actress Gong Li was invited to the 1993 Berlinale as a recipient of the “Berlinale Kamera” award. 17 The term Sixth Generation generally refers to the filmmakers who began directing in the early 1990s. 16

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I. Wolte and therefore represented new, daring Chinese cinema. The Berlinale had convincingly fulfilled its promise to provide a platform for Asian cinema, and the international press acknowledged this as a considerable achievement by Moritz de Hadeln. (Berlin International Film Festival, 2001)

After de Hadeln retired from Berlinale in 2001, the general commitment of the festival to support Chinese cinema did not change: there have since been two Golden Bears for Best Film, one for Tuya’s Marriage (Tuya de hunshi, dir. Wang Quan’an, 2007), and one for Black Coal, Thin Ice (Bai ri yan huo, dir. Diao Yinan, 2014), and a number of other awards. Without de Hadeln’s particular regard for Chinese cinema and repeated manifestations of his unwavering support for the PRC (Jungen, 2018, p.399), the Berlinale would not have become so important for Chinese cinema. This was due to Moritz de Hadeln’s personal investment as the gatekeeper for the Berlinale’s film selection. It is important to note, though, that de Hadeln was able to include these Chinese films in the Berlinale by virtue of his function as the festival director. Any other person in this position would have had the same opportunity to do so. As has been mentioned, in the early 1980s other European countries had already introduced Chinese cinema on a much larger scale than the Berlinale. One might say that “the time was ripe” for Chinese cinema and any festival director would have taken an approach similar to de Hadeln’s. De Hadeln comes across as a proud and self-confident person in his biography.18 In her interview, Yu emphasizes her friendship with Durniok; her relationship with de Hadeln was clearly also good but perhaps not as amicable (Bian, 2014). Jungen mentions that de Hadeln “is somewhat disappointed that he never received an official recognition from China. When the Chinese organized a grand celebration in honor of the 100th anniversary of the first Chinese film, they invited western experts like [..], Marco Müller or Tony Rayns. They forgot Moritz de Hadeln” (Jungen, 2018, p.399).19

1.5.3

The Enthusiastic Self-Made Expert

Beginning in 1987, the China Film Export Import Corporation began to organize the so-called Beijing Screenings. The idea was to give a platform to the newest Chinese films, keep distributors and experts from foreign countries informed about the latest developments in Chinese cinema, and encourage them to act as multipliers for an intensified engagement with China. Due to this initiative, every year about 30 Chinese films were sold globally (Xiao, 2017). From 1996 to 2017, the “Beijing Screenings” took place annually with a regular set of foreign visitors. One of these

18 19

I never met de Hadeln personally; my impression is based mainly on Jungen (2018). Wolte gave a speech at this event. Durniok had already passed away in 2005.

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regular participants was Ursula Wolte, the wife of the former Austrian Ambassador to China. It was Yu Yuxi who suggested to put her on the list of invitees. Wolte was an active supporter of her husband’s work in China during his term from 1980 to 1986. She learned Chinese and helped arrange cultural events at the Embassy. In this capacity, she inevitably became acquainted with Yu. Generally, the goal of events at the Embassy was to promote Austrian culture, but the result was mutual exchange. Through the Embassy events, Wolte met many influential persons in film-related government institutions as well as on the creative side. Ever since, she has built on these personal relationships for her involvement in the promotion of Chinese cinema and culture in Austria. Screenings at the embassy of classic and contemporary Austrian films were arranged for officials from the Film Bureau, China Film Company, the Beijing Film Studio, and professors and students from the Beijing Film Academy. Together with the other Chinese experts, Yu Yuxi, as the representative of China Film Export Import Corporation, would then decide whether the film was suitable for a Chinese audience. In this way, as one famous example, the most well-known and beloved Austrian film trilogy Sissi – Sissi (dir. Ernst Marischka, 1955), The Young Empress (Sissi – Die junge Kaiserin, dir. Ernst Marischka, 1956), Fateful Years of an Empress (Sissi – Schicksalsjahre einer Kaiserin, dir. Ernst Marischka, 1957)— found its way into Chinese cinema, TV, and DVD markets. Wolte’s position as the wife of an ambassador opened doors and provided possibilities that might otherwise not have been available. Through film, other forms of exchange were also set in motion. One example was the screening in 1983 of the Austrian youth film, What Price Victory? (Was kostet der Sieg?, dir. Walter Bannert, 1980). This is the moving story of a soccer team in a Viennese high school. It shows how success changes the personalities of the young athletes. Most importantly, the film deals with issues related to sports for handicapped children. An invitation to the screening at the Austrian Embassy was also addressed to Deng Pufang, son of Deng Xiaoping, who had suffered an injury during the Cultural Revolution and remained a paraplegic, confined to a wheelchair. Along with Deng, a representative of the China Association for the Blind and Deaf (Zhongguo Mangren Longyaren Xiehui) attended, at the time the only organization responsible for the handicapped. Due to this high-level approval for the film, China Film faced no obstacles with censorship when they applied for its import. In addition, as a result of this screening, Austrian and Chinese organizations dealing with the physically impaired started a working relationship. In 1984, the China Welfare Fund for the Disabled was established, of which Deng Pufang was president for many years. Ursula Wolte is different from Manfred Durniok and Moritz de Hadeln in that she has no professional interest or need to deal with China. Her motivation was always a sincere interest in Chinese culture. It was her enthusiasm that convinced the late director of the Vienna International Film Festival, Reinhard Pyrker (1949–1997), to stage in 1991 what still stands as the largest retrospective of Chinese cinema in the German-speaking world. Forty specially chosen films reflecting the history of Chinese cinema as well as the newest films by Fifth Generation filmmakers were screened during the festival. Again, it was Yu Yuxi who introduced Wolte to the

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I. Wolte

representatives at the China Film Archive. Wolte curated the program which clearly reflects her preferences. In addition to Chinese film classics that are generally shown at such retrospectives worldwide like Goddess (Shennü, dir. Wu Yongang, 1934) and Street Angels (Malu tianshi, dir. Yuan Muzhi, 1937), the selection included contemporary features that were otherwise not shown abroad, for example Unexpected Passion (Zaoyu jiqing, dir. Xia Gang, 1991) or the opera film Birthday Congratulations (Wunü baishou, dir. Lu Jianhua, Yu Zhongxiao, 1985). Wolte has a special interest in traditional Chinese opera. She also rejected some films specifically recommended by the Chinese authorities, for example Xi’an Incident (Xi’an shibian, dir. Cheng Yin, 1981). For this retrospective, Wolte also discovered the Sino-Austrian cooperation film Children of the World (Shijie ernü, dir. Jakob Fleck, Louise Fleck, 1941) which was made by the Austrian Jewish refugees Jakob und Louise Fleck in Shanghai together with acclaimed director Fei Mu. This unique feature has since received a lot of attention and was recently screened in an exhibition on Jewish exile in Salzburg 2019. The catalog Filmland China, which Wolte edited, offers in-depth articles on topics related to Chinese film production and art. Authors include Régis Bergeron, Marie-Claire Kuo, and the young Chris Berry, today one of the foremost scholars of Chinese cinemas (Wolte, 1991). In subsequent years, Wolte organized a number of specialized film festivals in different Austrian cities, for example children’s film festivals showing in schools as well as in cinemas, a presentation of Chinese Minority films, and others. She invited Chinese filmmakers and producers to Austria and accompanied Austrian film representatives to China. Wolte initiated and monitored the first, and to this day, only Sino-Austrian co-production On the Other Side of the Bridge (Fenni de weixiao, dir. Hu Mei, 2003). The all-star cast included Wang Zhiwen from China and famed actress Susi Nicoletti (1918–2005) in her final role. The movie premiered at the Montreal International Film Festival and received the Diagonale Innovative Production award. As mentioned above, the general release of a Chinese feature in German-language countries is very rare, and dependent on the involvement of a German distribution company. Therefore, despite her efforts, Wolte has only been able to work with cinemas to organize special film series rather than convince Austrian distributors to import Chinese films. Wolte serves as a consultant on Chinese films for Austrian and German film festivals and maintains good relations with many professionals in China. In October 2009 at the 13th Beijing Screenings, Ursula Wolte was awarded the Honorary Title of “Excellent Promoter of the Going Out Project” (Zou chu qu gongcheng youxiu tuiguangren rongyu chenghao) by the Organizing Committee of the Beijing Screenings. The annual award highlights the achievements of individuals, organizations, or film festivals in promoting Chinese cinema abroad. Ursula Wolte is an example of someone who believes in cross-cultural exchange for the benefit of both parties. She is convinced that via an increase in knowledge, understanding and better relations will develop. Wolte was able to make use of her diplomatic standing to make Chinese cinema known to a broader public in Austria. Based on Wolte’s personal connections and preferences, she functioned as a

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gatekeeper for a number of Chinese motion pictures other than those distributed. The choice of these films was based on her personal interests. She featured women directors specifically, showing, e.g. Sacrificed Youth (Qing chunji, dir.Zhang Nuanxin, 1985), Army Nurse (Nüer lou, dir. Hu Mei, 1985) and Women, Human, Demon (Ren gui qing, dir. Huang Shuqin, 1987). As for children’s films, which were screened in schools in the larger cities in Austria, she also chose some with educational value, for example The Ozone Layer is Decreasing (Daqi ceng xiaoshi, dir. Feng Xiaoning, 1990). But generally for children, the idea was to open their eyes to the lives of children in China, to show that they faced similar joys, similar pains in life. Wolte has a fascination for the culture of the nationalities in China, one example The Drummer from Flame Mountain (Huoyan shan de gushou, dir. Guang Chunlan, 1991). Compared to Durniok and De Hadeln, Wolte seems more personable, she is an open, warm-hearted woman who is respected and well-liked in Chinese film circles. She remembers an annual meeting of the China Film Association (Zhongguo dianying jia xiehui) which she attended in the mid-2000s: upon entering the conference hall, a security guard tried to stop her, claiming foreigners were not allowed to attend this private meeting. The director of the Association at the time, Wu Yigong, noticed this and called out: “Let us give a warm welcome to Ms Wolte! She is a true friend to Chinese filmmakers. We have only invited one foreigner to our conference; this is Ms Wolte who has done so much for Chinese cinema”. As he spoke, the members of the conference rose spontaneously and gave her a round of applause (Wolte, 2021).

1.6

Conclusion

The situation in China has changed in the past two decades. State institutions like the China Film Group Corporation and its subsidiary China Film Export Import Corporation are no longer the only seller of Chinese films, the distribution of Chinese films abroad is not controlled by the state. But the government still reserves the right to decide on participation in film festivals. In those cases, when films not approved by the Chinese government take part in international film festivals, the directors and/or producers of these films must be prepared to face repercussions. The role of the individual gatekeeper—as a person who selects, coordinates, and promotes—has lost neither its relevance nor its importance. Though the persons described in this chapter have quite different personalities, they share common traits: openness, ambition, persistence, and the willingness to deal with complicated situations. All saw advantage in cooperation and exchange.

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As has been shown, the persons discussed above functioned as gatekeepers. I describe their role mainly as facilitators. But if we consider that 8548 films20 were produced in China between 1972 and 1993, then even Durniok’s purchase of about 200 films is only a small percentage of the total output. Thus, the gate was in fact merely opened slightly and selection very limited. Certain aspects of individuals as gatekeepers, such as their background, their professional role conceptions, their jobs, and their personalities, have been described in this chapter. It must be emphasized that these three individuals from the German-language region are not a random sample from a larger group of persons dealing with China in the film business. They form the decisive core of a very small group of persons interested in film exchange with China from Germany and Austria at that time. They are in fact the only persons who developed a long-standing relationship with China in this field. It is hard to imagine dissemination of Chinese films in the German-language region without their personal investment. It was worth mentioning that these gatekeepers from the German-language region knew each other. Each worked individually, but they were all influenced to some extent by the others’ decisions. For example, Durniok worked closely with Yu Yuxi in the pre-selection for the Berlinale; de Hadeln took the decision on which films to include; Durniok gained the rights for the films at the Berlinale; and Wolte was inspired by these choices. Wolte, who in due course became friends with Durniok, profited from his close relations with some filmmakers like Wu Yigong and Huang Jianxin. Equally, Wolte befriended Marie-Claire Kuo and other individual gatekeepers from other countries. In the context of Chinese film dissemination in Europe and worldwide, there was and is a network of gatekeepers who sometimes exchanged views and experiences, again based on personal friendship.21 The amount of mutual influence within this gatekeeper’s network remains the subject for further research. The persons featured in this chapter can still serve as examples for basic principles of cooperation in the dissemination of Chinese films abroad: in China as well as in German-language countries; individuals who are capable of dialogue and compromise are equally important today as they were decades ago. The three types of persons dealing with China—businessman, festival director, and enthusiastic expert—remain valuable each in their own right in this process. The analytical model of the individual as gatekeeper is a valuable tool to determine the factors of their work as limiters or enablers.

Information provided by China Film Archive. A total of 8548 films, including 3071 features, 391 animations; the rest documentaries, educational films, and newsreels. 21 For example, another highly influential gatekeeper for Chinese cinema since the 1970s was the Swiss-Italian Marco Müller (see Footnote 5). Despite the fact that his native tongue is also German, there was no meaningful exchange or cooperation between him and the individuals mentioned in this chapter. 20

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References Auswärtiges Amt. (2021). Deutsche Vertretungen in China – Kultur und Sport. https://china.diplo. de/cn-de/themen/kultur Berlin International Film Festival. (1951). Yearbook. Retrieved February 20, 2021, from https:// www.berlinale.de/en/archive/jahresarchive/1951/01_jahresblatt_1951/01_jahresblatt_1951. html Berlin International Film Festival. (1988). Yearbook. Retrieved February 22, 2021, from https:// www.berlinale.de/en/archive/jahresarchive/1988/01_jahresblatt_1988/01_jahresblatt_1988. html Berlin International Film Festival. (2001). Yearbook. Retrieved February 22, 2021, from https:// www.berlinale.de/en/archive/jahresarchive/2001/01_jahresblatt_2001/01_jahresblatt_2001. html Bian, J. (2014). The Interview with Yu Yuxi. Dangdai Dianying [Contemporary Cinema] (1). Chen, Z. (Ed.). (1984). Guoji dianyingjie gaikuang [An Overview of International Film Festivals]. Zhongguo dianying chuban she [China Film Press]. De Hadeln & Partners, Film Consulting. (2018). Retrieved February 10, 2021, from http://www. dehadeln.com/MoritzBiog1.html Dong, H., (1994). Der deutsche Film in China - eine Bestandsaufnahme. In Augen-Blick. Marburger Hefte zur Medienwissenschaft. Heft 18: Deutschland im Spiegel der elektrischen Schatten. Der deutsche Film in China. S. 6–52. https://doi.org/10.25969/mediarep/710 Gan, Y. (2010). Zhongguo dalu dianying fenji zhidu tantao [Discussion of the Film Classification System in Mainland China: Through Research on Itself]. In Meijie Yanjiu [Media Research], (2). Giesenfeld, G. (1994). Wie von einem anderen Planeten. Zu einigen Grundvoraussetzungen der Rezeption ausländischer Filme in der VR China. In Augen-Blick. Marburger Hefte zur Medienwissenschaft. Heft 18: Deutschland im Spiegel der elektrischen Schatten. Der deutsche Film in China (1994), S. 64–82. https://doi.org/10.25969/mediarep/714 Hamann, J., & Beljean, S. (2019). Career gatekeeping in cultural fields. American Journal of Cultural Sociology, 9(1), 43–69. Jin, H. (2021). Translation and dissemination of German films in China (1994–2018). In I. Herrschner, K. Stevens, & B. Nickl (Eds.), Transnational German cinema (pp. 25–38). Springer. Jungen, C. (2018). Moritz de Hadeln Mister Filmfestival. Rüffer & rub Sachbuchverlag. Khalifa, A. W. (ed.), (2014) Translators have their say? Translation and the power of agency. Selected Papers of the CETRA Research Summer School 2013. Graz: LIT-Verlag 2014. https:// www.arts.kuleuven.be/cetra/papers/files/translators-have-their-say-translation-and-the-powerof-agency Kuo, M. (2018). Translation and distribution of Chinese films in France: A personal account. Journal of Chinese Cinemas, 12(3), 237–249. Manfred Durniok Produktion für Film und Fernsehen. (1996). Manfred Durniok – Films & Friends. Verlag Das Neue. Nobach, M. (2022). Filmdienst – Das Portal für Kino und Filmkultur. https://www.filmdienst.de Roussel, V., & Bielby, D. (2015). Brokerage and production in the American and French entertainment industries: Invisible hands in cultural markets. Lexington Books. Shen, Q. (2019). Raising the ‘Bamboo Curtain’: Chinese films in divided Germany. In C. Zhang (Ed.), Composing modernist connections in China and Europe (pp. 123–141). Routledge. Shoemaker, P., & Vos, T. (2009). Gatekeeping theory. Routledge. Smits, R. (2019). Gatekeeping in the evolving business of independent film distribution. Palgrave MacMillan. Steele, J. (2018). Censorship of library collections: An analysis using gatekeeping theory. Collection Management, 43(4), 229–248. Wolte, U. (1991). Viennale – Filmland China. Ludwig Blaha Verlag.

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Wolte, U. (2021). Qian aodili zhuhua dashi weide furen: ganen zai Zhongguo liunianban kuaile shiguang [Ms Wolte, wife of the former Austrian Ambassador to China: I am grateful for six and a half happy years in China]. In Ouzhou Shibao Oct 1–7, 2021. Xiao, P. (2017). Personal Interview with the author on December 12. Yu, Y., (2018). Personal Interview with the author on February 13. Yu, J., & Yuan, Z. (2017). Dangdai Zhongguo dianying zhidu yu dianying fazhan de shuangchong bianzou [The twofolded relationship between the Chinese Film System and the Development of Cinema]. Xiju zhi jia [Home of Drama], 24, 99–100. http://www.cqvip.com/qk/81832x/201 724/674275021.html Zhang, D. (1989). Freund Chinas und Förderer seiner Filme: Manfred Durniok. China im Aufbau, 4, 47–49.

Isabel Wolte was awarded a BSc in Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence as well as an MSc in Ancient Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh. She is the executive director of her own company, China Film Consult, which specializes in cultural exchange between German-language countries and China. She completed her PhD on World Literature in Chinese Cinema at the Beijing Film Academy in 2009 and lectured there from 2011 to 2015. Currently, she is a lecturer at the University of Vienna. She has published articles in German about Chinese cinema.

Chapter 2

Blessed Bodies, Extraordinary Exhibitions and Missed Opportunities: Forty Years of Chinese-German Cultural Projects and Diplomacy—A Conversation with Chen Ping Anna Stecher

Abstract To write about foreign cultural politics and projects in the ChineseGerman context is not an easy task: literature about intercultural projects mostly focuses on some specific genre; studies about foreign cultural politics or cultural diplomacy are extremely limited, especially when it comes to the most recent era. What follows here is a conversation with Chen Ping, Counsellor for Culture at the Chinese embassy in Vienna, who has worked for many years at the Chinese embassies in Switzerland, Germany and Austria. He has organized and co-curated events such as the Cultural Years of China in Germany and Italy, the Europalia China Festival in Belgium, the China-Fest in Berlin and many others. By discussing examples from the fields of the visual arts, theatre (including acrobatics) and music, the conversation outlines the major shifts in Chinese foreign cultural policy since the late 1970s and its interconnections with intercultural projects. Keywords Cultural policy · Cultural diplomacy · Acrobatics · Exhibitions · Performing arts

A. Stecher (✉) University of Naples, L’Orientale, Naples, Italy e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 H. Jin et al. (eds.), Contemporary German–Chinese Cultures in Dialogue, Global Germany in Transnational Dialogues, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-26779-6_2

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A. Stecher

Conversation1

Anna Stecher (AS): I have known you as an enthusiast for, and an expert on, theatre and as the editor of Mittendrin, a collection of contemporary Chinese dramas in German translation (cf. Knopp & Chen, 2016).2 However, I am of course aware that, in your position, you work in many different fields of culture. Therefore I guess that we might not just be talking exclusively about theatre today. Chen Ping (CP): Maybe I could start with a general outline of the cultural exchanges between Germany and China. Specifically, I would like to talk about the notable changes which occurred in Chinese cultural policy around the late 1990s. I believe they were of great significance. We all know of course, that China started a policy of ‘opening up’ in 1978: the focus was no longer on class struggle but on economic development and this led to many changes in China. For the economy, this meant that people in the countryside could once again be owners of their land and farm it as they liked it. Regarding the culture of the cities, Deng Xiaoping said that we need to educate our young people at the universities. Therefore, in spring 1977, shortly after the end of the Cultural Revolution, young people went back to the universities again. This is an important background for international cultural exchanges. Before the introduction of the policies of reform and opening up, there was very little international cultural exchange. If it took place at all, then it was exclusively related to state visits and for the interests of foreign policy. There was, for instance, a troupe of acrobats who travelled to the United States and to Europe, or a Kun opera troupe, but these examples were rare. However, with the implementation of the policy of reform and opening up, cultural exchanges become much more frequent—also between Germany and China: the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, for instance, performed in China already in 1979. At that time Beijing was very different from today. There were no concert halls. Therefore, the Berlin Philharmonic, with its conductor Herbert von Karajan, performed in the Capital Indoor Stadium. In those days there were also very few hotels in Beijing and the members of the Berlin Philharmonic were accommodated in the Qianmen Hotel, with only Herbert von Karajan himself and few colleagues staying in the Beijing Hotel. Some years later, in the early 1980s, the first theatre exchange happened: this was the performance of Lao She’s Teahouse (Chaguan) by the Beijing People’s Art Theatre in West Germany.

1

The conversation took place at the Chinese Embassy in Vienna on 19 October 2021, and it has been written up in revised form in October 2022. The language of the conversation was mostly German, with some Chinese. It was translated into English by Anna Stecher. My thanks go to Lisa Maria Herzog who spent many hours transcribing the conversation. 2 All in-text references have been added by Anna Stecher for the purpose of directing the reader towards additional sources, e.g. catalogues or other books published in the context of specific cultural events.

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AS: I know the translation, as well as the book about the play and the performance of it edited by Uwe Kräuter (cf. Lao She, 1980). CP: In the early 1980s, Uwe Kräuter worked at the Foreign Language Press as well as for the newspapers Beijing Review and China Reconstructs. AS: I actually read a very interesting interview with Uwe Kräuter recently (cf. Sinologie Heidelberg Alumni Netzwerk, 2011). There he narrates how the Teahouse was brought to Germany and how, in exchange, the production the Bockerer by the Nationaltheater Mannheim was brought to Beijing. He mentions that, in the beginning, the DAAD and the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not want to support the performance of the Bockerer in Beijing. CP (laughs): Exactly, they wanted Goethe and Schiller! AS: And not a black humour grotesque play from Vienna! In this interview, he explains how the theatre people on both sides stuck to their positions. This performance was such a big success in China, and it is also so important in Chinese theatre history. CP: Uwe Kräuter worked as a bridge and mediator. Firstly, he made arrangements so that the Teahouse could be brought to Mannheim. The artistic director Arnold Petersen as well as the administrative director Hanns Maier were both very open and agreed immediately to having the Teahouse, so this production came to West Germany where it was performed in 11 cities. In addition, it was also shown in West Berlin, in Zürich and in Paris. This was the first theatrical encounter. The performance was very successful in Germany. After this production, the Bockerer was performed in Beijing. AS: This play was originally written in the 1940s by Ulrich Becher and Peter Preses, and the Nationaltheater Mannheim had mounted a production in the 1970s. What I found very interesting is that after the performance by the Nationaltheater Mannheim in Beijing in the early 1980s, the Beijing People’s Art Theatre made its own Chinese translation and production of this play: Tufu. It was so successful. CP: This was, in fact, the whole point and question on that occasion: whether the first theatre production from Germany presented in China should be a classic or a contemporary piece. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs at the beginning said ‘No, we are going to be in China for the first time, we need to show our classics, Goethe, Schiller’. But the artistic director of the Mannheim theatre was firmly of the view that they should show a contemporary production. A discussion between the theatre and the Ministry followed, and eventually the Beijing People’s Art Theatre decided that they would be very happy with a contemporary play. AS: Kräuter mentions in the interview that the Beijing People’s Art Theatre knew very well, how the play would be received by the audience in China: focusing as it does on this butcher who somehow survives the Nazi period in Austria, in China it would be understood as a play about the times of the Cultural Revolution. I think that, without this background, it is hardly understandable why this play

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was so successful in China. The Bockerer is actually not very important for European or German theatre history. CP: It is funny that some things are not so important in Germany, but we like them a lot, like the movie Heintje—Einmal wird die Sonne wieder scheinen (Yingjun Shaonian), to this day many Chinese can sing the songs from the film. Actually, 3 days ago, a new production of the Bockerer premiered in the Theater in der Josefstadt here in Vienna. I think that, in the field of theatre, it was the first presentation of German theatre in China after the Cultural Revolution. If we talk about further encounters, we need of course to mention the collaboration between Lin Zhaohua and the Thalia Theater. First, Jürgen Flimm, who was the artistic director of the Thalia Theater, was invited to Beijing, where he directed Woyzeck by Georg Büchner in a production with the Beijing People’s Art Theatre (cf. Li, 2017). Afterwards, Jürgen Flimm invited Lin Zhaohua to Hamburg, where Lin Zhaohua worked on the Wild Man (Yeren) by Gao Xingjian. In the history of the Thalia Theater, it was the first production which was mounted by a Chinese director working with this theatre’s own actors. These exchanges would be very important later on. However, to get back to the aspect of cultural policy: in the 1980s China was interested in bringing her arts and culture abroad and, at the same time, China was interested in inviting foreign arts and culture to China. Therefore, many cultural encounters took place. However, what China sent to Europe, for the most part, was still traditional art. There were many exhibitions of Chinese art in museums; there was a big interest in Chinese art in Europe at that time; there was also an interest in Beijing opera and acrobatics. An important moment in the cultural exchanges between West Germany and China was the Horizonte Festival 1985, which took place in West Berlin (cf. Budde et al., 1985; Ledderose, 1985; Akademie der Künste, 1985; Rudolph, 1985). In that festival, China participated with Sichuan opera and Kun opera; the Martin-Gropius-Bau featured an exhibition of the Palace Museum in Beijing curated by Gereon Sievernich, who was the director of the Martin-Gropius-Bau for many years, actually a sinologist. I think that this Horizonte Festival was the first large cultural exchange and the exhibition was actually the very first exhibition presenting ancient China and ancient Chinese art in West Germany. Other important exhibitions were Jenseits der Großen Mauer—Der erste Kaiser von China und seine Terrakotta-Armee in the Museum am Ostwall in Dortmund in 1990 (cf. Ledderose, 1990), and China, eine Wiege der Weltkultur: 5000 Jahre Erfindungen und Entdeckungen in the Roemer and Pelizaeus Museum in Hildesheim in 1994 (cf. Eggebrecht, 1994). Very important was the exhibition Das alte China—Menschen und Götter im Reich der Mitte in the Villa Hügel in Essen in 1995, which was shown for 5 months and was visited by 220,000 people (cf. Goepper, 1996). Afterwards, this exhibition moved to the Hypobank Kunsthalle in Munich where it had 130,000 visitors again. Later on again, it moved first to the British Museum, then to the Kunsthaus Zürich, and then again to the Louisiana Museum in Denmark. It had five places of long-term exhibition in 2 years; it was an extremely important exhibition at that time.

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I also would like to talk about acrobatics. Starting from the mid-1980s, Chinese acrobatics was a highlight in Europe, especially in German-speaking countries. The first person, who brought Chinese acrobatics systematically to Europe was André Heller from Austria. The connection between André Heller and China was originally established because of a giant project that he had in Portugal and in Germany. The title of that project was Feuertheater. In June 1983, André Heller had a giant show in Lisbon. It was a firework show with classical music. In the early 1980s, these kinds of show were very successful and, according to the local authorities, on one evening some 800,000 people took part. One year later, Berlin invited him to organize this same show in front of the Reichstag. The fireworks they used for the show came mostly from China. This was the reason why André Heller travelled to China. Once there, he was introduced to different aspects of Chinese culture, especially to opera and to acrobatics. As Heller told me, nobody from Europe had ever seen these amazing acrobatics before. So he created the show Begnadete Körper (Blessed Bodies). At that time in China, all the projects for international exchanges were organized by two institutions that were directly subordinated to the Ministry of Culture: There was the China Exhibition Agency CEA (Zhongguo Zhanlan Gongsi) on the one hand and the China Performing Arts Agency CPAA (Zhongguo Duiwai Yanchu Gongsi) on the other. André Heller got in contact with the latter and the Cultural Ministry invited him with an official letter. AS: I see, so this was not just André Heller’s idea, but he was invited? CP: I think the idea of collaboration came from both sides. Heller was in China and came up with the idea of bringing these amazing acrobats to Europe. He had an innovative idea. But the Chinese side, the China Performing Arts Agency, was also happy to collaborate. Therefore, accompanied by the CPAA, Heller travelled through China and watched the performances of many groups. Eventually, he agreed with the Chinese partner to show acrobatics from Anhui and Beijing. In these cities, he spent quite a long time preparing the shows. He wanted to shorten every performance; some episodes traditionally lasted for more than 20 minutes; in his opinion, this was too long. He also decided that the episodes would not need to be extremely difficult. Begnadete Körper was a very successful show in Europe for many years and I believe that it was seen by millions of people. Heller also introduced the name ‘Chinese National Circus’. However, in China there is actually no national circus; there are just acrobatic troupes. Ten years later, Heller gave up the acrobatic shows and sold the license. But this show still exists, and others took it up and imitated it, of course. However, since 2000 or 2002, Chinese acrobatics are not so popular any more. AS: There is a recent book on the interconnections of politics and traditional Chinese opera performances in the United Kingdom (cf. Thorpe, 2016). How important was traditional Chinese opera in the field of Chinese German cultural exchanges in the 1980s?

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CP: There were no big tours of traditional opera in the 1980s. These tours started only in the late 1990s. One tour was organized by Qu Ping, a dancer and choreographer who had studied in Germany. He was the assistant of William Forsythe, and later on he was ballet director at the Theatre Ulm. He founded his own agency and organized a tour for 3 months with a Beijing opera ensemble from Beijing. This was in 1998. That was actually the only big opera tour in Germany and I think in Europe in general. It is very complicated to organize these tours, especially with a traditional Chinese opera ensemble. They really travelled to different cities in Germany, in Austria and in Switzerland. Only he organized this. There were, however, some important guest performances of traditional opera in Germany. In 1994, the third Sichuan Opera Company from Chengdu performed Der gute Mensch von Sezuan in North Rhine Westphalia; this was part of the cultural exchange program between Germany and China. In 2001, the Peony Pavilion by Chen Shizheng (full version, 18 hours) was shown in the Haus der Berliner Festspiele. In 2011, the production The Palace of Eternal Youth (Changshengdian) of the Kun Opera Ensemble Shanghai was presented at the Opera Cologne; this was organized by Wu Promotion. AS: Therefore, the acrobats were more important at that period? CP: At least they were more visible. In the 1980s and 1990s shows like Begnadete Körper played an important role in the international exchange between Germany and China. Some of my friends in Germany remember them most vividly even now. The presenter, a Chinese woman who spoke German with a strong accent, repeated the same sentence at the start of every performance: ‘Möge die Übung gelingen!’ (May the exercise be successful!) In the preparation for the shows, there were, for sure, many intercultural problems. But eventually everything worked out. We had an important slogan at that time; it can illustrate the attitude of the 1980s and 1990s: ‘Going out and inviting in’ (Zou chuqu qing jinlai). That was actually an important policy. We wanted to bring our culture to foreign countries and at the same time, we wanted to invite foreign arts to China. In that period many foreign artists came to China. One of the most important ones was Luciano Pavarotti, with the Opera from Genoa. That was in 1986, he performed La Bohème in the Tianqiao Theatre and gave a concert in the Great Hall of the People. The audience welcomed him and celebrated him euphorically. Barbara Alighiero, a former cultural counsellor at the Italian embassy, was a China correspondent for the news agency ANSA at that time. She once narrated that memorable moment to me. All the tickets were sold out, and in front of the Great Hall of the People, where the concert took place, the atmosphere was incredible. People standing on the stairs were asking to buy tickets for 150 Yuan! They had come from all over China. During the rehearsal, Pavarotti’s father had advised him to spare his voice but Pavarotti sang with all the power he had. The most special moment happened at the end of the concert when the audience asked for encore pieces. From the back of the hall, people were asking for Nessun dorma. Turandot was actually not allowed in China in that time.

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Because of the princess in the story’s hostility towards foreigners, it was never performed. But all the Chinese people in the audience knew the piece. It was in this way that Nessun dorma came to be performed in China for the first time, by Pavarotti in the Great Hall of the People. AS: I did notice that so many people in China know Pavarotti. In addition, Pavarotti is also mentioned in Guo Shixing’s play Bird Men (Niaoren). I always wondered how he had this idea of mentioning Pavarotti. CP: Pavarotti’s visit to China was indeed an important cultural event of the 1980s, not only because a world-famous singer came to China but also because China demonstrated in this way that she was interested in opening up and in engaging in cultural exchanges with other countries. Pavarotti also met Hu Yaobang—he was received like a politician. Hu invited Pavarotti for lunch and had a talk with him, he had read Pavarotti’s comments on ‘serious music’, and he liked them. He suggested to him that he talks about this with colleagues in China. He also complained that there were halls for banquets in China that could hold 6000 people but there were no opera houses that could seat 3000. He told him that China would build a Grand National Theatre within the next 10 years and he invited Pavarotti to perform there. It was also Hu Yaobang’s idea to organize the solo concert of Pavarotti in the Great Hall of the People. During his visit to China Pavarotti was accompanied by a film crew, who made a movie about him there. This movie premiered in Lausanne 1 year later and I actually saw it there. Because in August 1986 I came to Bern in Switzerland to work in the Chinese embassy, and in 1987 I received an invitation to participate in the premiere of the movie Distant Harmony: Pavarotti in China. Pavarotti was accompanied during the whole tour: you could watch him during the rehearsal, during his spare time, how he passed Tian’anmen square with his bicycle while singing La donna è mobile. He watched Beijing opera; he had Beijing opera make-up applied to his face; he gave a Master Class at the Conservatory etc. It was an important moment for China. The Chinese audience could watch these concerts. I think that Pavarotti’s visit to China aroused an interest in Western opera for Chinese people. AS: This is really interesting and it makes me think about some recent articles where I’ve read that, actually, new co-operations were established between Italian opera companies and the National Centre for Performing Arts in Beijing in recent years. Some Italian opera managers point out that people in China appreciate opera more than people in Italy. CP: At that time, Pavarotti was indeed a star in China. And his concert in the Great Hall of the People naturally was even more popular than La Bohème. Besides opera, there is another aspect which is very important in terms of intercultural exchange: popular music. You would probably never have imagined, would you, that the German Band BAP from Cologne performed in China already in 1987 (cf. Hirschfeld & Sander, 1989)? Udo Jürgens had travelled to China even 3 months earlier. He was accompanied by the well-known presenter Désirée

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Nosbusch from Luxemburg. ARD and CCTV made a co-production of Jürgens’s concert in China, where he performed with the Chinese singer Cheng Fangyuan. However, the first pop band to perform in China was the British band Wham!. Many Chinese musicians who are very successful today were in their show. I think that China was indeed extremely open at that time, because all of this was, of course, very different from both modern and traditional Chinese music. AS: Did these musical artists perform in Beijing only? CP: Pavarotti performed only in Beijing. But he also went to Shanghai—because of the movie Distant Harmony. Wham! also gave a concert in Canton. BAP performed in Beijing, Shanghai, and Canton. I would like to talk about another important aspect in the field of cultural exchange, that is visual arts and painting. There were several important exhibitions from Western European countries and the United States in China after the Cultural Revolution. The exhibition French Rural Landscapes Paintings in the 19th Century (Faguo shijiu shiji nongcun fengjinghua zhanlan) is still talked about today by many artists. This exhibition played an extremely important role because it allowed students and lovers of art for the first time to see these original art works and some works of Fauvism, modern art of Europe. At that time people in China had no access to this kind of art; there were no catalogues. In addition, it was difficult to travel abroad. Therefore, these exhibitions were extremely important also for students. In 1981, the Museum of Fine Arts Boston exhibited American abstract art in Beijing, a larger-scale display of modern art. In the same year, Beijing hosted the German Expressionist Prints Exhibition (Deguo biaoxian zhuyi banhua zhanlan), which was a more comprehensive presentation of the important German art school of the early twentieth century and had a great impact on young students in particular, exposing them to the work of German Expressionist artists other than Käthe Kollwitz. Another important exhibition was the International Touring Exhibition of Contemporary Artists: Robert Rauschenberg in the National Museum of China (NAMOC) in 1985, it was organized by the China Exhibition Agency. This huge exhibition in Beijing was a cultural shock. Because nobody in China was able to understand his art. Nevertheless, the exhibition was shown. Also in the publishing sector many things happened. After the end of the Cultural Revolution, publishing houses presented lots of new translations: novels, literature in general, and philosophy. Stefan Zweig, for instance, was one of the authors presented in China in these years. I actually listened to his novella Die unsichtbare Sammlung when I was in middle school. Audiobooks were extremely popular in China at the end of the 1970s and in the 1980s. There was a radio program on literature and poetry that I listened to very frequently. Stefan Zweig, Ernest Hemingway, and O. Henry—they were all read as audiobooks on the radio. The huge number of European classics which were published in translation at that time led to a ‘reading fever’. From 1981 to 1985 I studied at the Beijing Foreign Studies University and I remember a student who was 2 years my senior

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who studied Spanish. At our first meeting he started talking about Jean-Paul Sartre’s philosophy. My friends and I were impressed. I am telling you this because this example illustrates that, in those times, university students read many European classics and of course also contemporary literature and poetry. This applies to all the students, not just literature students, but to the whole generation. However, there were also many problems: one problem was that international exchange was exclusively financed by the foreign partner. If we sent an ensemble abroad, all the expenses were covered by the foreign side: trip, stay, performance, etc. At the same time, the program too was chosen by the foreign side. They only took projects, performances, and exhibitions that they liked. We could not do much about it. We did not have the financial capacity to send ensembles with our own money. But we found this to be OK, since the foreign partner tended to choose projects and performances that the audience would like. AS: Who were the partners? Like, in the case of Heller, was the partner Heller himself or was it the Cultural Ministry of Austria? CP: In the case of the acrobatics, these were commercial performances. Heller and his agency or his company produced these shows. They invited the Chinese artists and paid for the trips, the salaries, and of course also for the show, tents, theatres, etc. This was one variant. The other variant consisted in cultural exchange programs, which we had for a long time with Germany; however, in recent years the exchange was so intense, that the cultural exchange programs were not needed anymore. AS: I was wondering if there was this kind of cultural exchange also with the German Democratic Republic in the 1980s. As regards the 1950s, I’ve read many things: about Dessau for instance, there were performances of Chinese opera in Dessau, and there was even a team of architects from Qinghua University who designed an opera house, a national theatre which was never built, but the inspiration for this opera house’s design was actually the Anhaltische Theater in Dessau (cf. Xue, 2019). There was, of course, also exchange in cinema and students exchange with the GDR in the 1950s. Was there anything similar in the 1980s? CP: There was some exchange, but relatively little. AS: I heard from sinologists that in the GDR people who studied Chinese in the 1950s actually spent a lot of time in China during their studies. CP: That for sure. It was like that also the other way around. For the first generation of Chinese Germanists, Leipzig was a holy place. Mei Zhaorong, for instance, a former ambassador in Germany, and many of his colleagues, had studied in Leipzig. The People’s Republic of China was recognized early on by the Soviet Union and therefore also by the GDR, so until 1961 we had a good relationship with the GDR. Afterwards the relationship was not so close anymore, because of

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the deteriorating relationship with the Soviet Union. In the late 1960s there were many conflicts which were resolved only after China’s ‘opening up’. AS: Actually, also the exchange at the universities, and the student exchange, would merit more attention. CP: Yes, this is an extremely important aspect of cultural exchanges. In those times, we did not have any access to West Germany. The diplomatic relationship was established only in 1972. Before that, we did not have any official contacts. Especially in the 1950s, the relationship between the GDR and China was very good. On the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the founding of the GDR, the PRC made a donation of 250 objects from the Palace Museum to the GDR. I would like to return to the exchange projects of the 1990s. Starting from the late 1990s, we can observe a change in the big picture. The Chinese economy continued to developing and China suddenly had more money, so we could ourselves make some financial contribution when Chinese ensembles or exhibitions went abroad. In addition, with regard to cultural policy, we started to think that China should become more active. Previously, the way it had tended to go was that the representative of an institution would come to the State Administration of Cultural Heritage (Guojia Wenwuju) and he would explain that his museum was interested in a certain topic and ask for objects related to it. It had always been like that: an institution would invite a collection. However, now we wanted to be more active and have our own voice. If we collaborated for organizing a festival or a project, then we wanted to be able to express our own opinion. This kind of attitude arose in the late 1990s. Together with this came the policy of ‘Chinese culture going out’ (Zhonghua wenhua zou chuqu). This was an important change. It was the idea that we should not just wait until someone from Germany or from Europe would come and present an invitation. We should show initiative, develop our own ideas, make proposals and talk to institutions in Europe in order to develop new projects. This was also interconnected with the increasing financial capability. It was now possible to spend some money on these kinds of productions, so we were not exclusively dependent on our European partners. We were of the view that we should present more of our art and culture so that people in Europe could understand us better. AS: When exactly did the policy or idea of ‘Chinese culture going out’ emerge? CP: This was only in the late 1990s. However, there is an interesting example from the mid-1990s, a project which unfortunately was not realized. But it shows this kind of consciousness from the Chinese side. I am talking about the festival China Heute, which was supposed to take place in Munich, for 3 weeks, starting from June 1996. AS: I read about it! Was this the festival where Sha Yexin’s play Jesus, Confucius and John Lennon was supposed to be staged (cf. Knopp & Chen, 2016)? CP: Exactly! I was involved in the planning from the very beginning. It was a collaboration with Hahn Production in Munich. The idea was to have a festival in

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order to show contemporary Chinese art and culture in Munich. Hahn Production was commissioned by the Bayerische Staatskanzlei to organize the event; also the City of Munich and a number of cultural institutions supported it. They also talked to the Chinese Cultural Ministry, and after an exchange of ideas we were interested in this collaboration. The program for the festival was decided in collaboration between us and Jochen Hahn, the director of Hahn Production. It was very broad; both sides proposed ideas. The theatre part was extremely interesting: there was Lin Zhaohua’s Faust; that production had been sponsored by the Goethe Institute, and it had been staged in China in 1995. Then there was Meng Jinghui’s Si Fan; there was another production by Lin Zhaohua: The Chessmen (Qiren) written by Guo Shixing; the play Jesus, Confucius and John Lennon by Sha Yexin; The Hospital (Yiyuan) by Mou Sen. Five theatre productions! Besides theatre, there was a modern dance program with the Guangdong Modern Dance Company, the Beijing Dance Academy, and with Jin Xing. There was rock music—He Yong, world music—Wang Yong. And the band Baojia Jie 43 Hao, which was an important Chinese band in that time and performing in Lin Zhaohua’s Faust production, was supposed to play a concert in Munich. There was also some contemporary visual art, some art which was still considered ‘underground art’. Actually, we were not interested in showing this art, but Jochen Hahn was of the view that it was an important aspect of Chinese culture. At that period, contemporary art was not yet recognized in China. So we came to a compromise: we had an A-program and a B-program. The projects in the A-program were approved by both sides, and we would have been involved in the finances and in paying for the travel expenses of the Chinese artists on this program. The projects in the B-program would have been chosen and financed by Jochen Hahn. However, he would have to inform us about this part of the program. AS: I see. So it would still have been one festival. CP: Yes, everything under the same umbrella. Unfortunately, it was cancelled because of three political discussions which were organized by the City of Munich, the Goethe Institute, and the Beck Forum. AS: Lin Zhaohua’s Faust or also Meng Jinghui’s Si Fan are actually extremely experimental plays. Of course, something very different from the Teahouse. CP: It was such a pity that this festival did not take place! The stage props were already on their way, when suddenly at a press conference it was announced that three political discussions would be part of the program. What followed were different considerations on our side. We wanted to rescue the festival, if the organizer could just exclude the political discussions. Jochen Hahn said that the festival could work also without them. However, eventually we changed our minds because we did not agree about how things had been done. The discussions had been organized without letting us know, so we could not tolerate that. However, the cancellation of this festival was a catastrophe. And it was a great pity, because we missed the opportunity for showing this extremely fascinating

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Chinese cultural scene—theatre, music, dance and visual arts—abroad. Of course, the Germans too missed a great opportunity to get to know contemporary Chinese culture—not just terracotta warriors and ancient art. Five years later, we had the opportunity to make up for the loss. This happened in the context of the third of the Asia-Pacific-Weeks in Berlin in 2001, these had a focus on China (cf. Wiens, 2001). We organized a 2-week China-Fest in collaboration with the Senatsverwaltung für Kultur Berlin. Jochen Hahn was on board as well. The project was quite an extensively elaborated one. There were two performances directed by Lin Zhaohua, Richard III and Old Tales Retold (Gushi xinbian), the former was shown in the Haus der Berliner Festspiele, the latter at the Sophiensäle. Also, Kun and Beijing opera performances were part of the program. In addition, there was an exhibition of Buddhist sculptures from Qingzhou, presenting sculptures from the sixth and seventh centuries, in the Alte Museum in Berlin. Absolutely worth mentioning is also the exhibition of contemporary art in the Hamburger Bahnhof, Living in Time, featuring 29 contemporary artists from China (cf. Fan, 2001). This was the first exhibition of contemporary Chinese art which was officially financed by China. It was also the first time that a team of curators was engaged for an exhibition. There were three curators, two from the German and one from the Chinese side: Hou Hanru, who was living in Paris, had curated the French Pavilion at the Venice Biennale; Fan Di’an was the vice-president of the Central Academy of Fine Arts of China; Gabriele Knapstein was from the Hamburger Bahnhof. In the past, if China sent an exhibition abroad, we always worked with exhibition agencies. They would just collect some objects but there was no clear concept. However, after Living in Time, this curator system was implemented all the time, for instance for the contemporary art exhibition What About China? in the Centre Pompidou in Paris, held as part of the China Year of 2003–2004, or on the occasion of the China Pavilion at the Biennale in São Paolo. The exhibition Living in Time in the Hamburger Bahnhof was, in other words, the model for later international exhibitions which were officially recognized by the Cultural Ministry. It is also interesting that after this exhibition the notion of ‘underground art’, which was frequently used in order to describe contemporary Chinese art, disappeared. AS: I believe that festivals were actually an extremely important format in those years, especially for cultural exchanges (cf. Stecher, 2022). CP: Between 2000 and 2010 we co-organized and participated in many festivals in Europe. From Ireland, for instance, we invited a production of Waiting for Godot from the Irish National Theatre to China, and Ireland invited the Teahouse production from the Beijing People’s Art Theatre. Later we co-organized a festival in the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam. It took place for 2 or 3 weeks and focused on music, contemporary music, traditional music, and music of national minorities. Another important festival was Cinavicina in the Auditorium Parco della Musica in Rome in 2008. We showed the chamber opera Poet Li Bai, composed by Guo Wenjing, and a closing concert with three Chinese composers: Guo

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Wenjing, He Xuntian, and Wang Xilin. Part of the program was also a theatre production from Beijing People’s Art Theatre: I Love Peach Blossoms (Wo ai taohua), written by Zou Jingzhi, directed by Ren Ming; and a production from Shanghai: The Salty Taste of Cappuccino (Kabuqinuo de xianwei), written by Nick Yu. Afterwards we also collaborated for a huge festival in Belgium in 2009, the Europalia China Festival. It showcased 20 to 25 exhibitions for 4 months. During that time, I was departmental director for Western Europe at the Ministry of Culture. With the exceptions of the festival in Ireland and the Chinese Culture Year in France with its gigantic program, I participated in the work for all of these festivals. This all complied with the idea of ‘Chinese culture going out’, under the auspices of this watchword, we were extremely active. I was a co-curator of Cinavicina in Italy, of the Europalia China Festival in Belgium, of Culturscapes China in Switzerland (cf. Culturscapes, 2010), of the China Year in Italy, and the China Year in Germany. Theatre was an important aspect in all of these festivals. The Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin also organized a 6-week festival China—Between Past and Future in 2006. The program was very extensive and reflected the development of new forms, new individual languages in visual arts, music, opera and literature. At the festival, it was possible to experience how China dealt with rapid social and cultural changes. Some new, interesting things happened in the theatre exchange between Germany and China. What Jürgen Flimm and Lin Zhaohua had started in the 1980s, continued to grow more than 20 years later: In 2009 Joachim Lux became the new director of the Thalia Theater and in the autumn of the same year he came to China. When we met Lux said that he had heard about a theatre exchange between the Thalia Theater and China in the 1980s and that he was interested in reviving this. So I introduced him to Lin Zhaohua, they got along very well and a new exchange started: in 2011, the Thalia Theater invited Der Unterhändler (Shuike), in 2013, the theatre again invited Der Attentäter (Cike). In China, Lin Zhaohua presented the first edition of the Lin Zhaohua Theatre festival in Beijing in 2010. He invited Luk Perceval and his Hamlet production from the Thalia Theater. In 2011, he invited Luk Perceval’s production of Draußen vor der Tür by Wolfgang Borchert, and Johan Simons’s production of Lot Vekeman’s Poison, a Munich Kammerspiele production. When I came to Berlin in 2012, I talked to Joachim Lux about whether it would be possible to invite productions of other artists. Since he was very interested, afterwards also Meng Jinghui’s To Live (Huozhe) and Amber (Hupo), as well as The Crowd (Wuhe zhizhong) written by Nick Yu, were shown in Hamburg. In the meantime, China witnessed the appearance of many new theatre festivals, and all of them were interested in showing foreign productions. I always tried to recommend productions from Germany or German-speaking countries. In 2015, for instance, the Wuzhen Theatre Festival invited Herbert Fritsch’s production of Dürrenmatt’s Physiker, produced at the Schauspielhaus Zürich. During the last 10 years the theatre exchange between Germany and China experienced

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an unprecedented boom: 14 Chinese productions came to Germany and more than 30 productions from German-speaking countries came to China (cf. appendices). In addition, there was the project Theatertreffen in China—I am actually the initiator of this. I talked to Thomas Oberender from the Berliner Festspiele and Jiatong Wu from Wu Promotion and I brought them together. Today, Theatertreffen in China has become a highlight and it has many fans. In recent years, there have been many guest performances from Germany, at the Wuzhen Theatre Festival, at the Lin Zhaohua Festival; also the National Theatre organizes festivals from time to time. There was one edition with a focus on China in the journal Theater der Zeit in 2015, and the book Mittendrin, which you mentioned at the beginning, in 2016 (cf. Theater der Zeit, 2015; Knopp & Chen, 2016). I guess no other European country had this intense kind of theatre exchange with China in recent years. AS: Regarding all these theatre productions which were shown in China in recent years, were they also invited by the Cultural Ministry? For instance, the performances shown in the Lin Zhaohua Theatre Festival? CP: No, we did not sponsor the productions shown in the Lin Zhaohua Theatre Festival. That festival was organized by Lin Zhaohua himself. We sponsored only Chinese ensembles which come to Germany, such as the two Lin Zhaohua productions at the Thalia Theater, the two Meng Jinghui productions, and The Crowd by Nick Yu. We also sponsored the productions in the China Year 2012, among them three heavy metal bands which performed at the metal festival Wacken Open Air in Schleswig Holstein. I would like to talk about another important aspect, that is cultural exchanges related to museums. In the relations between Germany and China this exchange too has been very intense and the reason for that is one person: Martin Roth, the former director of the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen zu Dresden. In 2004, the Cultural Ministry invited five directors of German museums to China. Besides Martin Roth also Peter-Klaus Schuster, general director of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Reinhold Baumstark, general director of the Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, Christian von Holst, director of the State Gallery Stuttgart and Udo Kittelmann, director of the Frankfurt Museum of Modern Art, were part of the delegation. This was a very important visit, because German museums were able thereby to establish contacts with museums in China, and these again resulted in a number of co-operations. From 2006 to 2008 the above-mentioned five museums featured an exhibition of documentary photography from the Guangdong Museum of Art, Humanism in China (cf. Wang, 2003). In addition, in 2008, the NAMOC and certain museums in Berlin, Dresden and Munich developed a number of projects together. The NAMOC showed an exhibition of landscape painting from three German museums, Living Landscapes. A Journey through German Art, in 2008 (cf. Schuster & Roth, 2008). In the same year, a solo exhibition of Gerhard Richter was shown in China, and in exchange two exhibitions from NAMOC

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came to Berlin and Dresden: Chinese Gardens for Living: Illusion into Reality (cf. Tang & Tang, 2008). This was an exhibition of contemporary art and Chinese garden design, where tradition was combined with modernity and the avantgarde. Besides that, an exhibition of modern ink painting was shown in the Museum for Asian Art in Berlin. The Kunstsammlungen Dresden mounted a project in co-operation with the Palace Museum which was shown both in Dresden and in Beijing. This was an exhibition with collections from two king’s courts, one from Saxony and one from China (cf. Bischoff & Hennings, 2008). In this context, Martin Roth organized a panel discussion on China with former chancellor Helmut Schmidt, Kurt Biedenkopf, the former minister-president of Saxony, and Frank Sieren (cf. Phönix TV, 2008). When it comes to cultural exchanges and its wider meaning for German-Chinese relations, this was certainly also an extremely important moment. Later on, in 2011, museums from Berlin, Munich and Dresden organized the huge exhibition The Art of the Enlightenment in the newly-opened National Museum of China (cf. Mercator, 2013). This exhibition lasted for a whole year and was attended by half a million people. During the exhibition, the Mercator Foundation organized five forums and ten salons. These were visited by an audience of 7 to 8000 people. The Art of the Enlightenment was an extremely important project. There were a lot of debates and criticism about this in Germany. I can absolutely not understand why. AS: This exhibition ran from 2011 to 2012. I guess during the last 2 years there has not been much exchange? CP: Because of the pandemic there were almost no exhibitions or exchange projects. 2022 is actually the year of the 50th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between Germany and China. In 2012, there was the China Year in Germany. This was in the context of the 40th anniversary. There were a number of collaborations with cultural institutions in Germany. The Schleswig Holstein Music Festival, one of the most important European festivals for classical music, featured a ‘country focus’ on China in 2012. None of these kinds of events are happening at the moment. This is indeed a pity. The problem is that it is impossible to plan. AS: So there is no kind of plans at the moment? Is this just because of the pandemic or is it also related to the political situation? Some people say that the political situation in China is very different now. CP: In my opinion, the most important reason is the pandemic. If the Chinese government has lately begun to emphasize that we should pay more attention to our own tradition, this does not mean that we do not want international exchange. I agree that it is important to focus on tradition. Nowadays, young people in China grow up eating McDonald’s and KFC and watching American movies but they do not know their own culture. In that context, this focus is important.

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AS: Is this focus on tradition important for the exchange? CP: The policy is always the same. We cannot isolate ourselves. Also, President Xi Jinping has always said that we are an open country. We want to maintain and develop the international exchange. This is very clear. AS: Did Xi Jinping also meet an opera singer? CP: Probably not. But the situation nowadays is very different from the 1980s. When Pavarotti came to China that was not just a concert but a huge cultural and political event. In our time, concerts from world orchestras and ensembles are everyday matters. In the years before the pandemic the Vienna Philharmonic came to China every year. The Berlin Philharmonic—Wu Promotion is their agent in China—will come every 2 years to China for the next years. All of the big orchestras and opera ensembles have been in China in the meantime. They are very well known in China. Through the Internet, people in China have access to a lot of information. They know immediately which performances can be seen at the Salzburger Festspiele. I have actually been helping this year to organize the showing of the Jedermann production as a film at the Wuzhen Theatre Festival. AS: Would the Jedermann production from Salzburg have travelled to Wuzhen if the pandemic had not prevented it? CP: That is difficult to say. But without the pandemic there would have been at least two more exchange projects between Austria and China this year.3 Most likely, a production of the Vienna Volkstheater would have been shown in Beijing, and also a production of the Vienna Burgtheater would have been shown in Wuzhen. AS: Which productions would have been shown? CP: Regarding the Burgtheater, it was not yet decided. As regards the Volkstheater we thought about the Theatermacher, a play by Thomas Bernhard.

Appendix 1: German Theatre Performances in China (2010–2019)4 Date December 2010

Production, Director Hamlet, Luk Perceval

Ensemble Thalia Theater Hamburg

Context in China Lin Zhaohua Theatre Festival

Performance venue in China Beijing Capital Theatre

(continued) 3

Chen Ping is referring to 2021, which was the 50th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between Austria and China. 4 Many thanks to Chen Ping for sharing his lists of German theatre performances in China and Chinese theatre performances in Germany.

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Date December 2011 December 2011

Production, Director Gift, Johan Simons

Ensemble Kammerspiele München Thalia Theater Hamburg

October 2012

Draußen vor der Tür, Luk Perceval Woyzeck, Manfred Beilharz

Staatstheater Wiesbaden

September 2013

Ödipus Stadt, Stephan Kimmig

Deutsches Theater Berlin

September 2013

Tschick, Christopher Rüping

Thalia Theater Hamburg

May 2014

Jedermann, Bastian Kraft

Thalia Theater Hamburg

May 2014

Schaubühne Berlin

September 2014

Fräulein Julie, Katie Mitchell/ Leo Warner Brothers in Arms, Ana Zirner

Satellit Produktion

October 2014

Medea, Michael Thalheimer

Schauspiel Frankfurt

October 2014

Geschichten aus dem Wiener Wald, Michael Thalheimer Hamlet, Thomas Ostermeier

Deutsches Theater Berlin

June 2015

June 2015

October 2015

October 2015 May 2016

TRUST, Falk Richter/Anouk van Dijk NIBELUNGEN! Der ganze Ring, Antú Romero Nunes Physiker, Herbert Fritsch FRONT—Im Westen nichts

Schaubühne Berlin Schaubühne Berlin Thalia Theater Hamburg

Züricher Schauspielhaus Thalia Theater Hamburg

Context in China Lin Zhaohua Theatre Festival Lin Zhaohua Theatre Festival International Theatre Festival of NTC International Theatre Festival of NTC Beijing International Fringe Festival Tianjin Cao Yu Theatre Festival Tianjin Cao Yu Theatre Festival Beijing International Fringe Festival International Theatre Festival of NTC 6. Theatre Olympics

41

Performance venue in China Beijing Capital Theatre

Beijing Capital Theatre

National Theatre of China (NTC), Beijing National Theatre of China, Beijing National Centre for the Performing Arts (NCPA), Beijing Tianjin Grand Theatre

Tianjin Grand Theatre; Beijing University Hall Nine Theatre, Beijing

National Theatre of China, Beijing National Theatre of China, Beijing

Tianjin Cao Yu Theatre Festival Tianjin Cao Yu Theatre Festival Wuzhen Theatre Festival

Tianjin Grand Theatre; National Theatre of China, Beijing Tianjin Grand Theatre; Millennium Theatre, Beijing Wuzhen Grand Theatre

Wuzhen Theatre Festival Lin Zhaohua Theatre Festival

Wuzhen Grand Theatre Tianjin Grand Theatre

(continued)

42

Date

June 2016

June 2016

June 2016

July 2016

September 2016 October 2016 June 2017 June 2017

June 2017

June 2017

June 2018

September 2018 October 2018 November 2018 June 2019

A. Stecher Production, Director Neues, Luk Perceval Richard III, Thomas Ostermeier Common Ground, Yael Ronen John Gabriel Borkman, Karin Henkel Warten auf Godot, Ivan Panteleev Tartuffe, Michael Thalheimer Der Spieler, Frank Castorf Der die Mann, Herbert Fritsch Stolpersteine Staatstheater, Hans-Werner Kroesinger Terror, Frank Behnke Die 39 Stufen, Petra Luisa Meyer Five Easy Pieces, Milo Rau

Der Volksfeind, Thomas Ostermeier Dancer in the Dark, Bastian Kraft Der Sandmann, Robert Wilson

Ensemble

Schaubühne Berlin Maxim Gorki Theater Deutsches Schauspielhaus Hamburg Deutsches Theater Berlin Schaubühne Berlin Volksbühne Berlin Volksbühne Berlin Badisches Staatstheater Karlsruhe Staatstheater Nürnberg Staatstheater Nürnberg CAMPO Art Centre

Schaubühne Berlin Thalia Theater Hamburg Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus Thalia Theater Hamburg

Context in China

Performance venue in China

Tianjin Cao Yu Theatre Festival Theatertreffen in China

Harbin Grand Theatre; Tianjin Grand Theatre NCPA; Shanghai Daning Theatre

Theatertreffen in China

NCPA; Shanghai Daning Theatre

Theatertreffen in China

Shanghai Daning Theatre; NCPA

International Theatre Festival NCPA Wuzhen Theatre Festival Theatertreffen in China Theatertreffen in China

NCPA

International Theatre Festival NCPA International Theatre Festival NCPA Theatertreffen in China

International Theatre Festival NCPA Wuzhen Theatre Festival Shanghai International Arts Festival Theatertreffen in China

Wuzhen Grand Theatre Beijing Tianqiao Performing Arts Centre Beijing Tianqiao Performing Arts Centre

NCPA

NCPA

Tianjin Grand Theatre; Beijing Tianqiao Performing Arts Centre; Changzhou Grand Theatre NCPA

N Theatre, Wuzhen

Shanghai Grand Theatre

Beijing Tianqiao Performing Arts Centre; (continued)

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Date

July 2019

November 2019

December 2019

Production, Director Die Odyssee, Antú Romero Nunes Trommeln in der Nacht, Christopher Rüping Der kaukasische Kreidekreis, Michael Thalheimer Medea. Stimmen, Tilmann Köhler

Ensemble

Context in China

43

Performance venue in China Great Theatre of China, Shanghai

Kammerspiele München

Theatertreffen in China

Beijing Tianqiao Performing Arts Centre

Berliner Ensemble

Wuzhen Theatre Festival

N Theatre, Wuzhen

Deutsches Theater Berlin

Shanghai Dramatic Arts Centre

Appendix 2: Chinese Theatre Performances in Germany (2010–2019) Date February 2011 November 2012 November 2012

Production, Director Der Unterhändler, Lin Zhaohua Flowers in the Mirror, Moon on the Water, Meng Jinghui Tea—Zen, Zhao Liang

November 2012

A Madman’s Diary, Li Jianjun

November 2012

Reading-Mistake, Feng Jiangzhou/Zhang Lin Der Attentäter, Lin Zhaohua Cooking a Dream, Huang Ying

February 2013 January 2014 February 2014

Leben!, Meng Jinghui

October 2014

Totally Happy, Tian Gebing

Ensemble Lin Zhaohua Theatre Studio Beijing Young Dramatists Association Beijing Young Dramatists Association Beijing Young Dramatists Association Beijing Young Dramatists Association Lin Zhaohua Theatre Studio Full Show Lane Studio National Theatre of China

Context in Germany Lessingtage Chinesischer Herbst Festival

Performance venue in Germany Thalia Theater Hamburg Kühlhaus, Berlin

Chinesischer Herbst Festival

Kühlhaus, Berlin

Chinesischer Herbst Festival

Kühlhaus, Berlin

Chinesischer Herbst Festival

Kühlhaus, Berlin

Lessingtage

Thalia Theater Hamburg Altonaer Theater Hamburg; Gallus Theater Frankfurt Thalia Theater Hamburg; Deutsches Theater Berlin Kammerspiele München

Lessingtage

(continued)

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Date

Production, Director

January 2015

Bernstein, Meng Jinghui

July 2015

Das Teehaus, Yang Lixin

January 2016

Die Masse, Desmond Wai-Kit Tang

June 2017

A Man who Flies up to the Sky, Li Jianjun Popular Mechanics, Li Jianjun

April 2019

Ensemble Paper Tiger Theatre Studio, Beijing Beijing Young Dramatists Association Beijing People’s Art Theatre Shanghai Dramatic Arts Centre New Youth Group New Youth Group

Context in Germany

Performance venue in Germany

Lessingtage

Thalia Theater Hamburg

Lessingtage

Ruhrfestspiele Recklinghausen

Deutsches Schauspielhaus Hamburg Thalia Theater Hamburg Haus der Ruhrfestspiele Schaubühne Berlin

References Akademie der Künste. (1985). ‘... Ich werde Deinen Schatten essen’. Das Theater des Fernen Ostens. Frölich & Kaufmann. Bischoff, C., & Hennings, A. (2008). Goldener Drache, Weißer Adler: Kunst im Dienste der Macht am Kaiserhof von China und am sächsisch-polnischen Hof (1644–1795). Hirmer. Budde, H., Müller-Hofstede, C., & Sievernich, G. (1985). Europa und die Kaiser von China 1240–1816. Insel-Verlag. Culturescapes. (2010). Culturescapes China: Chinas Kulturszene ab 2000. Christoph Merian Verlag. Eggebrecht, A. (1994). China, eine Wiege der Weltkultur: 5000 Jahre Erfindungen und Entdeckungen. Philipp von Zabern. Fan, D. (2001). Living in Time. Staatliche Museen Preußischer Kulturbesitz. Goepper, R. (1996). Das alte China: Menschen und Götter im Reich der Mitte, 5000 v. Chr.–220 n. Chr. Hirmer. Hirschfeld, G., & Sander, J. (1989). BAP övver China. Vorwärts. Knopp, H.-G., & Chen, P. (2016). Mittendrin. Neue Theaterstücke aus China. Theater der Zeit. Lao, S. (1980). Das Teehaus. Mit Aufführungsfotos und Materialien. (U. Kräuter & H. Yong, Trans.). Suhrkamp. Ledderose, L. (1985). Palastmuseum Peking. Schätze aus der Verbotenen Stadt. Insel. Ledderose, L. (1990). Jenseits der Grossen Mauer: der Erste Kaiser von China und seine Terrakotta-Armee. Bertelsmann. Li, Y. (2017). Eine Zelebration der ‘Menschlichkeit’. In K. Cao, S. Heymann, & C. Lepschy (Eds.), Zeitgenössisches Theater in China (pp. 320–333). Alexander Verlag. Mercator. (2013). Aufklärung im Dialog: Eine deutsch-chinesische Annäherung. Mercator. Phönix TV. (2008). Nachbar China. Helmut Schmidt und Kurt Biedenkopf diskutieren. Retrieved November 20, 2022, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GuwRihTZRRQ&ab_chan nel=Observer Rudolph, J.-M. (1985). Mao Tse-tung: Die Kultur der Kulturrevolution. edition galerie.

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Schuster, P. K., & Roth, M. (2008). Living landscapes, a journey through German art. Walther König. Sinologie Heidelberg Alumni Netzwerk. (2011). In der Grenzüberschreitung: ein Interview mit Uwe Kräuter. Retrieved November 20, 2022, from https://www.zo.uni-heidelberg.de/sinologie/ shan/nl-archiv/2011_NL55.html#1 Stecher, A. (2022). Hutong-Festivals, Phantom-Opern und bayerisch-chinesische Künstlerpicknicks. Chinesisch-europäische Theaterräume als Infrastrukturen zeitgenössischer Gesprächskultur. In D. Pietzcker (Ed.), Drachenspiele—historische und aktuelle Figurationen sino-europäischer Beziehungen (pp. 363–381). Ergon. Tang, K., & Tang, Z. (2008). Chinese gardens for living. Illusion into reality. Staatliche Kunstsammlungen. Theater der Zeit. (2015). China. Theater der Zeit Spezial. 12. Thorpe, A. (2016). Performing China on the London Stage. Chinese Opera and Global Power. Palgrave Macmillan. Wang, H. (2003). Humanism in China. A contemporary record of photography. Guangdong Museum of Art. Wiens, B. (2001). China fest. Hahn. Xue, C. (2019). Grand theatre urbanism. Springer.

Anna Stecher is an assistant professor at the University of Naples, L’Orientale. Previously, she was an assistant professor in Sinology at Ludwig Maximilian University Munich. She studied Oriental History at the University of Bologna and Modern Chinese Literature at Beijing Normal University (MA and PhD). She also holds a PhD in Theatre Studies from LMU Munich. Her main research interests are Chinese theatre and modern Chinese literature. She is the author of Im Dialog mit dem chinesischen Schauspieljahrhundert. Studien zum Theater von Lin Zhaohua (In dialogue with the Chinese huaju-century. Studies on Lin Zhaohua’s theatre) and co-editor of two volumes collecting contemporary Chinese plays. Her publications further include a number of literary translations from Chinese.

Part II

Creators

Chapter 3

Digging Deep into Chinese Reality: An Interview with Li Yang About His Cinematic Trilogy Jimeng Teng

Abstract This dialogue took place on May 25, 2021, in Beijing, China, with a view to summarizing director Li Yang’s education and involvement in the world of cinema, particularly between 1987 and 2017. During this time, Li emigrated to Germany before returning to China, where he created his “Blind trilogy” of the Sixth Generation Chinese cinema, comprising Blind Shaft (Mangjing, 2003), Blind Mountain (Mangshan, 2007), and Blind Way (Mangdao, 2017). In these works, the first of which earned him the Silver Bear Award for Best Artistic Contribution at the 53rd Berlin International Film Festival in 2003, Li explores the motifs of compassion, doubt, and illusion through the use of narrative, cinematography, spectacle, and intercultural ideological engagements. Discussing his unique experience as a director working in multiple forms of media, this dialogue details Li’s critical cosmopolitical perspectives with reference to the intercultural journeys he undertook during his educational and filmmaking experiences. Keywords New Chinese cinema · Realism · Chinese reality · The Sixth Generation · Intercultural interaction

Teng Jimeng (TJ): Director Li, when did you begin your film study in Germany? Li Yang (LY): Well, as you may know, my college education was protracted. I first attended the Beijing Broadcasting Institute (Beijing guangbo xueyuan) in 1985, before leaving for Germany in 1987. While there, I attended three universities. First, I went to the Free University of West Berlin, then Ludwig-MaximiliansUniversity of Munich, although I didn’t finish my study at either, instead earning my master’s degree at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne (KHM) in 1995. While in Germany I did everything I could to integrate into the society, through much trial and error. I spent a lot of time and energy trying to familiarize myself

J. Teng (✉) Beijing Foreign Studies University, Beijing, China © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 H. Jin et al. (eds.), Contemporary German–Chinese Cultures in Dialogue, Global Germany in Transnational Dialogues, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-26779-6_3

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with the culture, to understand the social rules and value systems, as well as the German language. I made it, but it was a long journey. TJ: You’ve been fully immersed into the German culture then. LY: Yes, although I found it difficult to integrate completely into German society and culture. I found that I would always be an outsider even if I was able to write screenplays, create film scripts, or make films in Germany. For example, Manfred Durniok,1 a well-known German producer, approached me and some other young Chinese screenwriters to develop some film scripts about the cultures of China and Germany on his behalf. I worked for him for some time, but I remained an outsider. Language-wise, it was especially embarrassing that my response to punch lines was always slower than native speakers when I watched German movies. Sometimes I simply didn’t have a clue what the joke was, because I wasn’t familiar with the context. Native speakers understood since they grew up with these punch lines, but as an outsider, I had a track record of failing to understand the humor. TJ: Language proficiency can be a hurdle in intercultural communication then, is that right? LY: Yes, because non-native speakers don’t have the background knowledge necessary to fully understand the implication of everything that is said. That said, I do think that culture today is far more international, and films can transcend national boundaries. The whole world has become a global village because of digital technology, particularly the Internet, which is a universal tool. But at that time, culture had geographical boundaries. Even in China, the culture in the north is very different from that the south of the Yangtze River. TJ: Northern Germany is not the same as Southern Germany either. LY: Indeed. Cultural differences prevented me from fully integrating into German society, though I still wanted to realize my movie dream. I kept thinking of going back to China to do so, but when I returned, what I saw and heard felt like having cold water poured on me; in 1995 and 1996, the state-owned studios went bankrupt. Everyone had discouraged me from returning to China. But I had thought, “Why did I come to Germany? To learn the craft of filmmaking. After you’ve learnt the

Manfred Durniok (1934–2003) was a German film director, producer, and photographer who co-produced low-budget animated feature films in collaboration with the Shanghai Animation Film Studio. Collaborative projects between Durniok and the Shanghai Animation Film Studio include the puppet animated feature films Secrets of the Heavenly Book (Tian Shu Qi Tan, 1983), Reynard the Fox (Reineke Fuchs, 1989), and Around the World in 80 Days (Reise um die Erde in 80 Tagen, 1998). Durniok traveled to China in 1974 and made Meeting Place Peking (Treffpunkt Peking, 1974), a documentary film about life in China. He later produced Greetings from China (Grüsse aus China, 1979), which was the first big music program for German television. In 2000, Durniok become the first non-Asian honorary citizen of Beijing. 1

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Digging Deep into Chinese Reality: An Interview with Li Yang About. . .

51

craft, you have to make a movie, right?” I was so frustrated with being unable to completely integrate into German society that I’d return to China twice a year, and when I felt uncomfortable because state-owned studios went bankrupt in large numbers, no studios would fund art house movies, I’d go back to Germany again. However, during these shuttle trips I learned that some directors were making films underground (later known as indie underground), including Jia Zhangke and Wang Chao. Director Wang Xiaoshuai shared with me that they made movies with very low budgets, and it dawned on me that I might be able to realize my dreams in the same way. It was at that point that I decided to make the move back to China. Then, around 1998 or 1999, I met director Huang Jianxin,2 who told me that he was going to make a film. He said that he would like me to “join up as an assistant director,” an idea which I welcomed enthusiastically. Since I had studied international advanced filmmaking practices, I wanted to incorporate them into the local practice, in the same way that German Marxism was localized after being introduced into China. Therefore, I jumped at the opportunity to better understand the inner workings of the Chinese film industry. Although China was a backwater by Western standards, Chinese directors were happy with their own methods because they were suitable to local conditions. I assisted Huang Jianxin from pre-production to post-production, up to the film’s completion. TJ: According to My Way (Yi yi gu xing), a memoir you wrote in 2018 which is dedicated to your parents, you grew up in a family of performing artists, with both your father and mother having a profound influence upon you. Can you talk about this? LY: Because of my parents’ professions, I grew up in an artistic environment. I felt proud to be born into a family of artists. My father was a relatively famous actor in Shaanxi province; in fact, he was originally a stage actor affiliated with the National Theatre Company of China (Zhongguo guojia huajuyuan),3 although he was also very well educated, having studied law alongside acting prior to 1949. My mother worked as an actress in a Communist underground troupe in Harbin, Heilongjiang province. Both of them volunteered to relocate to the Northwestern province. They settled in Xi’an, where I was born in 1959. TJ: You grew up with two actors, both on- and off-stage.

2 Huang Jianxin is a Chinese filmmaker. He is normally considered as part of the fifth generation of Chinese filmmakers, due to shared traits in his works, although he was not strictly a member of the inaugural 1982 class of the Beijing Film Academy. Additionally, Huang’s films are distinguished from his contemporaries in that they focused on urban contemporary life, as contrasted to historical dramas. 3 The National Theater of China or National Theater Company of China (NTCC) was founded in Beijing on December 25, 2001, by merging the former China National Youth Theater and China National Experimental Theater. NTCC brings together a whole host of performing artists across the country, it offers a platform where Chinese tradition meets modern experimental theater.

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LY: Yes, I can say without exaggeration that I grew up around the stage, usually with my parents either rehearsing or performing, and me sitting quietly offstage watching them. TJ: This is why you developed an interest in acting? LY: I emulated my parents a lot and I was influenced by what I saw and heard growing up. Their impact on me was long lasting, especially my father, who created and played the male lead in the famous play Defending Yan’an (Bao wei yan’an, 1960). He was also involved in the creation of two major films produced before the outbreak of the Cultural Revolution. One is called Yan’an Guerrillas (Yan’an youjidui, 1961), in which he played a starring role as a guerrilla leader, and the other Silver Flowers in the Sky (Bi kong yin hua, 1963), which is about Chinese female parachutists and in which he played a political commissar. From a young age, I remembered his teachings––that life is a process of learning, and everyone should be a permanent student. He also wanted me to be decent, honest, and upright. TJ: I have seen your father’s stills and was impressed that he acted in all protagonist roles. How did you react to your father portraying a soldier on the big screen? LY: As I said, my first exposure to movies and my aspiration to work in the film industry came from my father, because of Yan’an Guerrillas. I’m often reminded of an episode from my childhood that occurred in the screening room of the Xi’an Film Studio, where I joined my father and some others watching the film. The story goes that I reacted strongly to the scene in which the guerrilla leader, played by my father, was captured by the Kuomintang soldiers and tortured with fire and whips. I was so terrified that I cried out and ran to his rescue on the big screen. I did not know it was a movie and took it to be real. Later, friends and family often teased me about that incident, but the experience was cemented in my psyche. In fact, when the Cultural Revolution ended in 1978, I made my way back to the National Theatre Company of China in Beijing where my father had worked, following in his footsteps to become an actor. TJ: You were admitted to the China Youth Arts Theatre (Zhongguo qingnian yishu juyuan) in 1978, and in 1982 you made up your mind to become a film director, which is interesting because 1982 happened to be the official debut of the Fifth Generation of Chinese directors.4 Do you agree that you are part of the Fifth Generation, or do you belong to the Sixth Generation?5 Does this classification mean anything to you?

4

The Fifth Generation is a group of directors who are drawn from the class of 1982 of the Beijing Film Academy. Its major figures include such directors as Wu Ziniu, Chen Kaige, Zhang Yimou, Tian Zhuangzhuang, and Huang Jianxin. 5 The Sixth Generation of directors began as a small group consisting of mainly graduates from the Beijing Film Academy (BFA) in the late 1980s, most notably Zhang Yuan, Wang Xiaoshuai, Jia Zhangke, He Jianjun, Lou Ye, and Wang Chao. In the early years, they were independent

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Digging Deep into Chinese Reality: An Interview with Li Yang About. . .

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LY: Generational divisions don’t mean much to me personally, because the notion was conceived by academics. Why is there no generation after the Sixth Generation now? Because for any given generation to sustain itself, one has to develop a theoretical concept, right? Of course, as an actor at that time I had a natural affiliation with the Fifth Generation, so when Chen Kaige6 came to our troupe to cast for The Big Parade (Da yue bing, 1986), I welcomed the opportunity to become a film actor. Chen Kaige was looking for the male supporting role, for which I felt I was very suitable. But the troupe administrator did not agree, which irritated me, and I made the decision to leave. TJ: Your theater company was a very elite unit, being where the country’s top theater actors worked. I surmise that your time with the troupe exposed you to both the art and film scenes in Beijing in the 1980s? LY: Indeed. TJ: Cultural historians would refer to that decade in terms of “cultural fever.” LY: The 80s was a period of cultural transition in China, and the art of cinema was developing rapidly during this time. Oftentimes there were foreign film weeks in Beijing, as well as screenings of the works of the Fifth-Generation directors. The Fifth Generation’s films were completely different from those which had come before; they were philosophically profound and visually provocative, and the directors were young men and women, all fresh from college. These young people had to wait for a long time before they could “make it” as film directors, often spending decades serving as assistants and script supervisors. But with the advent of the Fifth Generation, suddenly young people became directors, which was definitely tempting to me. In addition, many foreign films from Japan, Germany, America, and so on were available during movie weeks or exhibitions. This so-called movie cultural fever opened a window into a world unknown to me before, because according to the general public’s understanding of the world at that time, people in imperialist countries were living in an abyss of misery from which they and all of humanity had to be liberated. However, once we saw the movies, we realized that they were not living in poverty because their supermarkets were full of goods. This culture shock hit us so hard that we were totally overwhelmed. So, I spent lots of time watching both Chinese New Wave and foreign films during the cultural fever of the 80s. In fact, I watched so many foreign films that I filmmakers who chose to work outside the existing studio system. It was Li Xin, also a graduate from the BFA, who was the first one that called themselves the Sixth Generation. Thematically, their work featured marginal characters, semi-underground lifestyle, used low budget, and non-pros and improvised script. Overseas, they are also called the “urban generation” because their work represented contemporary Chinese cities in the era of zhuanxing (transformation). 6 Chen Kaige is a flagship director of the Fifth Generation. Born in 1954 into a family of filmmakers, he directed Yellow Earth (Huang tudi, 1984), and Farewell My Concubine (Ba wang bie ji, 1993), which won the Palm D’or at the Cannes International Film Festival.

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felt that the seeds of movie dream in my childhood had begun to sprout. However, I wanted to continue my film education first. My first step was to attend community college, then the Beijing Broadcasting Institute in 1985. It just so happened that the Sixth Generation of directors originated with the class of 1985. Films created by the Fifth Generation were characterized by grand narratives, such as One and Eight (Yige he bage, 1983) and Yellow Earth (Huang tudi, 1984), which featured exotic and forceful stories with spectacular visual effects. But the Sixth Generation of directors didn’t care about grand narratives. Instead, we trained our cameras squarely on marginalized individuals. While the Fifth Generation was making films within the existing studio system, the Sixth Generation were independent directors, with Wang Xiaoshuai’s The Days (Dong chun de rizi, 1994) widely acclaimed as the first film of the Sixth Generation. TJ: But what prompted you to give up your job at the China Youth Arts Theatre to join the Beijing Broadcasting Institute (Beijing guangbo xueyuan)? LY: A strange combination of circumstances made me decide to apply for the Beijing Broadcasting Institute. In fact, my first choice was the Beijing Film Academy. However, in 1985 the Beijing Film Academy, one of the four major professional institutions in China, did not enroll directors that year. As a result, I had to choose from the Central Academy of Drama (Zhongyang xiju xueyuan), the Shanghai Academy of Drama (Shanghai xiju xueyuan), and the Beijing Broadcasting Institute. The Beijing Broadcasting Institute was my second choice because I wanted to give up theater; I grew up around the stage and became a theater actor, so I really didn’t want to study drama anymore. The Beijing Broadcasting Institute specialized in television broadcasting and drama directing, and although they did not do art films at that time, our teacher, Mr. Pan Hua, belonged to the Fifth Generation of directors. In fact, he was in the same class as Chen Kaige, and he taught us a lot of new ideas and concepts. This was a time marked by experiment-oriented practice, as in Deng Xiaoping’s saying, “crossing the river by feeling the cobble stones.” Chinese people from all walks of life were experimenting by “crossing the river by feeling the cobble stones.” TJ: I learned that you did very well on the National College Entrance Exams (NCEs) and were admitted to the 4-year program at the Beijing Broadcasting Institute, although you dropped out again in less than 2 years. LY: Yes, after I was admitted by the Beijing Broadcasting Institute in 1985 I found that the distant horizon was still far away, and after watching a lot of foreign movies in which the stories portrayed were so unusual, I began to think about studying abroad. In fact, many Chinese film stars went overseas to further their study of cinema, including Zhang Yu, Gong Xue, Joan Chen, and many others. I was very excited about the prospect of seeing more of the world and learning from the West so that I could better serve my own country in the future. TJ: Why did you choose Germany? Germany was relatively distant from China, even from a cultural point of view. What motivated you to go and study there?

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LY: It was mostly a coincidence. First of all, my then-girlfriend wanted to go to Germany, although it was quite a difficult decision to make at that time because I had just started university and dropping out meant that I wouldn’t get my bachelor’s degree. Furthermore, I would lose my legal resident status in Beijing, without which I would be denied the right to own a passport. The second reason was that I had seen a lot of German films and found them artistically appealing. The new film Paris, Texas (1984) by Wim Wenders, and others I saw during the German Film Week such as Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Lili Marleen (1981), were shockingly realist films. Chinese culture has gained a lot from Germany, such as Marxism. The National Revolutionary Army during the Republican era was armed almost entirely with German weapons as well. Chinese culture is inextricably linked to Germany, so I thought Germany would be a very interesting place to study. German universities are also tuition-free, and Germany is close to France (the birthplace of cinema) and other European countries. TJ: Let’s talk about your years in Germany. Which university did you attend first? LY: The Free University of Berlin. TJ: What did you study there? LY: I enrolled in two majors, and I took courses in different subjects in both arts and sciences. TJ: Why was it that you transferred? LY: I transferred to Ludwig-Maximilians-University in Munich to study theater. At that time, I was doing a television series in Munich, which I found to be a good place to do more acting in films and drama, and even play-writing. Munich was also one step closer to my film dream, because there was a school where I could audit film classes. So, the journey started from Berlin, with one quick stopover in Munich before I went to the Academy of Media Arts Cologne. The rest is history. In retrospect, my German education made me learn to manage myself and to think independently, rejecting ideological indoctrination and drawing my own conclusions. Independent thinking, for me, is an internal metamorphosis. TJ: Before your admittance to the Academy of Media Arts Cologne you filmed three documentaries, including Happy Swan Song (Huanle de juechang, 1993). Can you tell me a bit more about the background of this film? LY: When I was at school in Berlin, I always tried to find ways to engage with films and film studies. Meanwhile, as I became more fluent in German, I was able to access more information through the press. I remember reading about a matriarchal society in Lugu Lake (Yunnan and Sichuan provinces) in a local newspaper. I thought to myself, “Well then, let me go back to China and start a documentary.” So I flew back to China in 1990 to learn more about this community. In Yunnan, with the help of my college classmates and other friends, I filmed the matriarchal life at Lugu Lake.

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I had made documentaries before I left China. They were called “special themed films” (zhuan ti pian) at that time and were propaganda films which evolved from the former Soviet system. When I was in Germany, I also watched a lot of documentaries, including those on the documentary channels of German television stations. I couldn’t go to a regular film school with a department specializing in film directing, so just like when I was in China, I taught myself by watching how other people made films. Kingdom of Women (Funv wangguo, 1991) was the first film I made after I returned to China, although I chose to use German methods of filmmaking. I also wanted to use the opportunity to pay tribute to the American silent film Nanook of the North (1922), which was widely acclaimed as the pioneering work of film and television anthropology. Kingdom of Women became a steppingstone for me to enter the Academy of Cologne, which accepted me based on a shortened 30-minute version. By the time I made my second documentary, Happy Swan Song, I had already attended the film school in Germany, where I had taken courses in German film theory. So, it was with a renewed sense of urgency and confidence that I went back to China to make this documentary. In making Happy Swan Song I focused on a very small family and tried to present the local culture through their stories, rather than imposing my own subjective commentary. In fact, I even shot the funeral of one member of the family. It took me 2 years to finish the documentary. I didn’t understand what the family were saying and I didn’t know anything about the funeral culture of this ethnic group, but I did care about their culture. TJ: Absolutely, the village itself serves as a locus through which to study the migrations and intersections of language, culture, and identity in this ethnic minority group. LY: Yes, in many ways it was like conducting field research. I slept on the floor in my host family’s house. Even though it was extremely hot in Yunnan, where they lived, they laid what seemed to be a kind of leaves rather than mats. I got up in the morning and found I had been bitten by bedbugs. Right below the floor where we slept were the pig and cow pens. Every night I fell asleep listening to the cows grunting and smelling the offensive odor of their dung. Exhausted, I fell asleep anyway. After recording all the interviews, I sought help from a local researcher with the Yunnan Academy of Social Sciences to translate the ethnic language, before re-editing it afterwards. I was hugely impressed by how deep this ethnic Chinese culture really was. Now, why was it called Happy Swan Song? This is because the deceased’s funeral determines the value of their whole life, which is part of Chinese culture more broadly. This community’s ancestors are the Qiang people, who migrated to the southwest from the northwest. As one of the oldest minority cultures in China, the Qiang people use funeral as an occasion to “make peace with death,” which means that one has to die with respect and decency. The idea is that if we are good and honest people when we are alive, after death our remains shall continue to be

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respected. So, a funeral which is attended by people from across the area is proof that the deceased was a respectable person, who is remembered for his benevolence, honesty, and moral integrity. The funeral is a measure of his life; that is, if you do evil in life, no one will attend your funeral even if your family is extremely wealthy. You’ll be quietly buried and forgotten. But if you do good in life your funeral may last 3 to 5 days, or even 7 days, and there will be a steady stream of local people coming from all over the mountains to pay their respects. Furthermore, the Qiang people also believe that the deceased’s soul is still alive, and it will be a blessing if one bathes in its presence. For example, if you go to attend a wedding after the funeral, the blessings you bring will be passed on to the newly wedded couple. This movie deepened my understanding of Chinese culture, and it was very well received in Germany after being aired there on television. It was also accepted by the Leipzig Documentary Film Festival. TJ: Blind Shaft (Mangjing, 2003), Blind Mountain (Mangshan, 2007), and Blind Way (Mangdao, 2017) have been grouped by film critics in China under the title of “the Blind trilogy.” Was the trilogy made in one go, or did it evolve gradually? LY: It evolved, because I wasn’t so ambitious that I set out to make a trilogy then. But I did want to make a feature film in China, especially after I was informed of the emerging indie film scene there. To begin with, I made some financial preparations. Using my personal savings meant that I didn’t need any investment from domestic film studios, so I became my own investor. Then, after I returned to China in 2001, I immediately started writing the script for Blind Shaft and scouting for locations. But before that I had to look for the subject matter, for which I first needed to touch base with the reality of life in China. I had lost touch with China since my departure for Germany in 1987 and, being deeply influenced by the Dogme 95 movement,7 I knew that if I didn’t understand China in depth, I’d only churn out films of illusory realism. I thought a low-budget docudrama could serve my purpose, but I was still undecided on the theme I should choose. Fortunately, Liu Qingbang’s novella Sacred Wood (Shen mu) was recommended to me by friends. TJ: According to Ron Holloway of the Kinema journal, the best German entry in the 2003 Berlinale (the Berlin International Film Festival) was Christian Petzold’s Wolfsburg, which deals with moral ethics and individual conscience. Blind Shaft,

Dogme 95 was an influential film movement started by a group of film directors in Copenhagen in 1995. The movement came into being against the larger background of the ending of the Cold War as well as the onslaught of globalization and capitalism on a global scale. Danish filmmakers Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg initiated Dogme 95. They put forward a manifesto commonly known as “VOW OF CHASTITY,” the purpose of which is believed to sanitizing the whole procedure of filmmaking by rejecting elaborate special effects or post-production changes through digital technology, as well as other gimmicks. Fellow Danish directors Kristian Levring and Søren Kragh-Jacobsen joined the movement, forming the Dogme 95 Collective. Dogme is the Danish equivalent for dogma.

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which is the first in your trilogy, also entered Berlinale in 2003. Do you think that Blind Shaft and the other two films in the trilogy share the same themes? LY: Absolutely, all three films are concerned with social issues. Their immediate purpose is to make the audience feel the pulse of a changing society and care about the people in the midst of social transformation, rather than presenting them with the image of a country lost in a mythical time and a society which bears no resemblance––either real or allegorical––to Chinese society and its development today. This is probably because I’m originally a documentary filmmaker. I wanted to present the relationships between man and man, man and nature, and man and society, which is why I also decided to make Blind Mountain and Blind Way. The idea for Blind Way was conceived before Blind Mountain, and inspiration came from a news report about the many juvenile delinquents living around Guangzhou. They were poor children who went to the big city and ended up joining criminal gangs, in which the adults instigated them to steal and kill. I wrote a script, but it didn’t pass the censorship. Blind Mountain was similarly inspired by news reports about abducted women; the film’s heroine, Bai Xuemei, was a victim of human trafficking and was humiliated and oppressed. I think that the tragedies in these films are shocking and thought-provoking, and I hope that I have raised some questions and aroused concerns by using film as a vehicle to critique and enhance awareness. But I must also stress that as filmmakers, we cannot play God. Many filmmakers or writers are eager to do so, to artificially exalt and propose solutions to social problems as if they could offer a cure-all remedy. In fact, the opposite is true. Human beings are constantly asking questions, proposing solutions to problems, and then rejecting the solutions and asking questions again. This way of thinking is related to my training in Germany, where I learned that there is no need for filmmakers to tell the audience what is right or wrong. TJ: Unlike the period spanning 1949 to 1966, when the big screen was filled with the so-called Socialist New Man,8 in films released between the 1980s and early 2000s we saw realistic faces that were very close to our everyday reality. This was due to the casting of non-professionals, which you’ve been very persistent in doing. Does this have anything to do with the influence of Dogme 95? LY: Indeed. When the Dogma 95 movement came about, I was thinking about the difference between Chinese and European cinema. I began to use more non-professional actors, which had been a prevailing practice in Italian

“Socialist new man” refers to the three categories of characters portrayed in films made by the Third Generation of Chinese directors during the First Seventeen Years (1949–1966) of the People’s Republic of China. The three categories of characters include the workers, the peasants, and the soldiers who are created based on the socialist values of patriotism, loyalty, volunteerism, and self-sacrifice. Therefore, films made by the third Generation stand as a gallery of “the images of the socialist new man,” which mark the beginning of the film industry of the P.R.C. with socialist realism as its official style.

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neo-realism cinema and later in German cinema, which I studied in German film school. Back in China I intended to practice what I had learnt in Germany, so I started casting non-professional actors who were more vivid and true to China’s gritty reality. That’s why I rejected the idea of casting a child star early on in the production of my first film, Blind Shaft. Instead, I instructed my assistant director to cast among rural kids who were not camera-shy, preferably with a little experience in filming. Even if the kid we cast couldn’t act, he had to be from the countryside; that is, he had to be himself. Likewise, the lead actress of Blind Mountain, Huang Lu, wasn’t a pro but a senior at Beijing Film Academy, and she had appeared in fewer movies. Similarly, the main male character in the film, Huang Degui, is a farmer, and actor Yang Youan’s parents were both real farmers. In addition to these casting choices, I also stayed true to Dogma 95s Vow of Chastity, which was why Blind Way was financed with crowdfunding, allowing multiple investors to be involved in a democratic manner. TJ: You mentioned the use of dialects, which reminded me of Wang Baoqiang’s use of Henan dialect in Blind Shaft and Huang Lu’s use of Sichuanese dialect in Blind Mountain. Are these examples of what film critics term “on location aesthetics,”9 which is practiced by the Sixth Generation in general? You asserted in your memoir, My Way, that you weren’t “doing any set construction.” LY: I’m not in favor of set construction at all, because the sense of reality I pursue. Urgency and spontaneity can’t be obtained through setting building or dressing. For example, I spent quite a lot of time location scouting to find the dark corridor which I imagined for Blind Way, because I knew that if I built a corridor, it would appear ridiculous. I couldn’t fake the remaining marks of honeycomb briquette on the walls, nor could I fake the illegal advertising seen on them, because these corridors have a life of their own. To me, all that on their walls is there for a reason and has a life of its own. We may change what we find in these places a little based on the scribbles on the wall, without destroying its sense of being on location. The entire social space is my “location,” in fact, including the language spoken there, the dialect. Mandarin is understandable by everyone, but it is most listenable after being sanitized. As a result, the vividness is removed, as dialects have more texture. The use of dialect in films emphasizes the regional characteristics of the culture and society being portrayed; it brings to life the local and the marginal. As a creator, the director must choose the aesthetics they want to use for each film. Not only do they have to worry about what kind of story to tell, but more importantly, they must decide what kind of method they will use to tell it.

“Xianchang aesthetics,” roughly translated as on location aesthetics, is initiated by documentary director Wu Wenguang in the early 1990s and heavily promoted by the Sixth Generation of Chinese directors such as Zhang Yuan, Jia Zhangke, and Li Yang. It refers to a highly popular practice employed by filmmakers of the same generation throughout the 1990s. Films created along the line were based on the more traditional values of story, acting, and theme, and excluding the use of elaborate set dressing and props. In terms of space and temporality, all social space has become the natural locations of the film. According to xianchang, the entire cast should not be professional actors, and the aesthetics of the film should be grounded in real locations by the use of local dialects. 9

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TJ: How many cameras were used to film the two murderers in the dimly lit restaurant in Blind Shaft? Just one? LY: No, there were several camera positions; there was even a camera filming the waitress delivering food and so on. In Blind Shaft and Blind Mountain, we used what I call “moving camera.” As such, these films consist of just 405 and 409 takes, respectively, although in both films multiple scenes appear to comprise one long shot when in fact, they are composed of numerous tracking shots stitched together by internal montage. Moving tracking shots like this, in which the camera follows the characters, were designed to imitate news reports in order to make the film appear more realistic, a technique also used in Dogma 95 films. To the same end, I did very little pushing, pulling, panning, or overhead shots. Blind Shaft, Blind Mountain, and Blind Way were all shot with mobile cameras. TJ: The Journal of Chinese Film Studies operates in conjunction with our German counterpart, the Springer, and will be disseminated in both Chinese and German academic circles, so we are very interested to hear your insights on German society and culture, especially film culture and aesthetics. Can you talk about the influence of German film directors, such as Wim Wenders and Rainer Werner Fassbinder, on your filmmaking? LY: In fact, neither Wenders and Fassbinder nor Werner Herzog and Volker Schlöndorff address quite the same issues in their films as I do in mine. For example, Fassbinder is even more concerned with social issues, and many of his films are quite cruel and graphic, such as Love Is Colder than Death (Liebe ist kälter als der Tod, 1969) and Lili Marleen (1981). Yet all these directors have had a great influence on me. German culture itself has also been a source of inspiration. Before going abroad, I was educated in China, where schools offered no courses on logic despite the fact that it is the foundation of philosophy. After I came to Germany, I started to study logic systematically, and with this training I learnt how to argue and reason. Indeed, German culture and education reorganized my whole way of thinking. For example, the Chinese often say “of course,” or “of course it is,” but in German culture and language the notion of “of course” is very different. To say “naturlich” in German is to imply that the statement to which one is responding is logical, because it literally means “logical” or “common sense,” which is a world away from the implication of its Chinese counterpart. Film culture-wise, Wim Wenders is an icon. His films mostly portray the impact of the environment upon people collectively, with the relationship between the two expressed through camera language, as in Paris, Texas (1984), and Wings of Desire (Der Himmel uber Berlin, 1987). In these films Wenders expressed himself differently from Fassbinder, who is more brutal and more directly concerned with the fate of individuals. The creative logic and philosophy of the two directors have had a strong influence on me. I am not Fassbinder, nor am I Wim Wenders, but their philosophies on humanity––and the way in which German culture more broadly (including German philosophy, psychology, and

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linguistics) regards humanity and human culture and society––have all helped shape my world view. At the same time, I learned to develop my own perspective on various issues; that is, on any given social phenomenon. One can tell stories of any kind about any subject, but it is crucial that one decides how to tell them and determines one’s perspective on them. I see Germany as my second home––my spiritual home, to be exact. I lived and studied there for almost 15 years, during which time I worked for television stations and media organizations, as well as theater troupes. Through these interactions I learned about German society, which inspired me to think about and adapt to changes in my own life. In Germany, for example, the so-called right and wrong are based on logical thinking and philosophical speculation; Germany is a speculative nation, whereas China is a pragmatic one. Yet while Chinese society may look chaotic, we always manage to create order from chaos; whereas though German society may appear very ordered, it ironically can be quite chaotic. Discovering this chaotic aspect of German culture had a great influence on me, especially in terms of problem-solving when making films, I tend to think carefully about potential issues––“chaos,” per se––before shooting starts. For example, so that we were fully prepared for filming, I spent 4 months researching the true nature of coal mines during pre-production for Blind Shaft, instead of simply reading and adapting the novella on which the film was based. This also had the benefit of allowing me to touch base with Chinese reality, from which my life had become detached. I wanted to understand the life of the miners, so I made trips to small coal kilns in various provinces, where I ate with mine workers and even went down the shaft with them. I also tried to strike up conversations with them so that I could attempt to understand their local dialects. When I was planning on making Blind Mountain I took the same rigorous approach, undertaking research into the phenomenon of the trafficking of women in rural areas. It was like a field investigation. Similarly, while preparing for Blind Way I learned about child trafficking by conducting interviews with victims of trafficking as well as government officials, and the script was ultimately based upon these conversations and the understanding of human nature that I developed from them. I do not conjure my work out of thin air; the more material you gather through interviews, the better you will understand the nature of the subject, and in so doing you may reach a deeper understanding of human nature. I also undertook a lot of research before I shot Happy Swan Song and Women’s Kingdom, spending a long time reading about the history of the Qiang people. I wanted to know why this matriarchal society was formed at that stage of social development, how a matriarchal society such as this evolves, and what does the nature of a society like this have to do with the environment in which it is situated. In short, I am talking about an attitude which I developed while I was a student in Germany: I constantly feel pressed to seek depth and truth. This has hugely benefited my process of artistic creation. My film school training in Germany greatly benefitted me in other ways. I was very lucky to have the chance to study in the Free University of Berlin, the University of Munich and the Cologne School of Film, Television and Media, as

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the curricula and methodologies offered at these universities introduced me to new ideas and concepts, which gave me a renewed sense of direction. For example, while at the University of Cologne I attended numerous seminars. I was so uncomfortable in these classes at first that I lodged a complaint at the chancellor’s office, but I was told that seminars were another way of learning, allowing students to learn from each other through discursive interaction. In retrospect, that seminar class was incredibly rewarding, not least because I had the fortune to witness the beginnings of fellow student Bernd Lichtenberg’s film career, the screenwriter of Goodbye, Lenin! (2003) which won the Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 2004. I also came to learn that these seminars were not only about being lectured to but, more importantly, were about sharing ideas. It was a forum of diversity and symbiosis where there was no right or wrong and no absolute standard, because each person sees things from a different perspective. “We are not God” was one of the most popular instructions by my German professors. Instead, through interactive dialogues we may slowly approach the truth or the essence of things, but there is no absolute truth in the world. For example, there is no such thing as a “bad person” or a “good person.” As such, when I write a script, I will not portray a person as heinous, because there is no entirely “heinous” person in the world. A person may do something which is heinous, but there must be various psychological motivations. No matter what these motivations are, he or she will certainly not act on impulse. In other words, the reasons why a person might seek revenge on society are complex and are based in the wider environment. This is the story that a movie is supposed to tell. But in many Chinese movies the characters are flat––either the absolute good guy or the absolute bad guy. It’s simply not human. A movie like this is just made for sensationalism, completely disregarding the basic logic of character portrayal. Under this premise, I modified the ending of Liu Qingbang’s Sacred Wood when I wrote the script for Blind Shaft. In the original ending, the character Yuan Fengming doesn’t take money from the con artists Song Jinming and Tang Zhaoyang because “they’re bad people, they’re murderers,” and the money is “stained with innocent blood.” However, I changed this ending drastically based upon the logic of character development. In the film Yuan takes the money because, after all, that’s what he was working for. Perhaps he took the money to pay his school fees. I created this abrupt ending because I felt it was more in line with the development of the character. I am always wary of jumping to conclusions about the nature of characters, which is related to my German cultural upbringing. The characters in Fassbinder’s films, for example, are complex in similar ways; they are flawed by many weaknesses, but there is also a part of their nature that sparkles. This is the complexity of human beings. Likewise, Wenders’ films may seem like stories of man and nature, of man and his environment, but his characters––such as those in his Paris, Texas––are lonely. Wenders encourages us to consider the reasons for this loneliness, using images of aloneness to affect the audience rather than simply expressing it with the character’s lines, as in Hollywood movies. Schlöndorff’s The Tin Drum (Die Blechtrommel, 1979) is also a case in point. This film is a classic chiefly because

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of its social criticism and profound depiction of human nature. Schlöndorff’s way of characterization, which is very accurate, has had a similar influence on me as that of Wenders. TJ: It’s been 3 years since the release of Blind Way (2018). I know that you are now working on your new project. Can you share the genre of your next film with us? LY: I am currently working on a more commercial film about a boxer’s love story, although it also contains quite a few action scenes. Yet while it is a combination of action and romance the film is also a social commentary, offering a critique of money-worshipping in contemporary China. Shooting started in 2019 soon after Blind Way was released in 2018, although with the COVID-19 pandemic raging in 2020, production was suspended for over a year. I’m now almost finished with the post-production, so I’m hoping it will be released in movie theaters across China this year. Unlike my previous films, Blind Shaft, Blind Mountain, and Blind Way, I’m experimenting with a new way to express my world view. Although I am not willing to fully cater to the audience, I must first ensure that the film is seen by audiences in China, so I’ve tried my best to find a balance between critical realism and market accessibility.

Jimeng Teng has worked in media, communications, and corporate consulting roles in China for more than three decades. Since 2001, he has been a media consultant and current affairs commentator for China Global Television Network (CGTN). As a film festival consultant, he has worked as a programmer and translator at the Beijing International Film Festival and Dubai International Film Festival. Between 1991 and 1999, Teng worked as a consultant for the 1993 Palm D’or-winning director and Fifth Generation filmmaker Chen Kaige during the shooting of Farewell My Concubine (Bawang bieji, 1993), and later for director Geng Jun as a subtitle translator and publicist for his 2017 Sundance Film Festival Grand Jury Award-winning film Free and Easy (Qingsong jia yukuai, 2017). As returned Visiting Fulbright Research Scholar (VRS) at New York University (1999) and Boston College (2015), Teng is currently on the faculty of the School of English and International Studies at Beijing Foreign Studies University.

Chapter 4

Performing Disaster and Trauma: A Cross-Cultural Dialogue Between Post-socialist China and Munich in the Age of Globalization Winnie L. M. Yee

My favourite word? It’s ‘act’. (Ai & Warsh, 2013, p. 6)

Abstract This chapter looks at the role art plays in commemorating traumatic events and inspiring discourse that departs from the mainstream or official discourse. Using Ai Weiwei’s Remembering (2009)—an installation that commemorates the Sichuan earthquake in 2008—as an example, the discussion focuses on the artwork’s power to communicate the fear and anger of the repressed to the world outside mainland China. The exhibition site, Haus der Kunst in Munich, Germany, contributes to the multi-layered meaning of the artwork by reviving collective memories of human suffering and the repetition of historical events. In such a setting, the massive destruction of the earthquake is interpreted as largely a consequence of human negligence and bureaucratic corruption, which also serves as a reminder of exploitation and sacrifice of human beings in the name of national glory or ethnic superiority. A cross-cultural dialogue is encouraged by this shared experience of art. Keywords Disaster · Art · Ai Weiwei · Haus der Kunst · Cross-cultural dialogue

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In The Imagination of Disaster (1965), Susan Sontag argues that everyday life in a consumer society is caught between the extremes of banality and terror. She maintains, ‘we live under continual threat of two equally fearful, but seemingly opposed, destinies: unremitting banality and inconceivable terror. It is fantasy, served out in large rations by the popular arts, which allows most people to cope with these twin W. L. M. Yee (✉) University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, Hong Kong e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 H. Jin et al. (eds.), Contemporary German–Chinese Cultures in Dialogue, Global Germany in Transnational Dialogues, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-26779-6_4

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specters’ (p. 42). Sontag offers science fiction as an example of fantasy that helps people cope with uncertainty while failing to address the real and pressing causes of their anxiety. There is, however, a type of art that looks squarely at the intricate relationship between imminent disaster and our efforts to combat banality and terror. Instead of offering an escape, memorial art grapples with the aftermath of disasters. This chapter examines the ways art is used to combat forgetting and to revive distant memories, and the ways cross-cultural dialogues can be facilitated by artworks and their settings. This chapter looks at a specific disaster—the earthquake that happened in Sichuan province in China in 2008. On 12 May 2008, an earthquake registering 8.0 on the Richter scale struck Sichuan province. Although the Chinese government was initially praised for its rapid emergency response and the ways in which it welcomed the media for transparent coverage of the aftermath, evidence later revealed that over seven thousand schools, scathingly described as ‘tofu dreg’ (Sorace, 2014, p. 412), collapsed due to their poor construction, resulting in the death of at least five thousand children. The anger of the parents of the dead students, however, was repressed in the mainstream narrative, and their demands for an open investigation were quickly silenced so that the image of China as world power would not be affected. In 2008, China hosted the Olympics: the year was supposed to mark the rise of China as a key player in international politics. Any criticism of the government would have to be suppressed. I have chosen to examine this event because it reveals that narratives of disaster expose the inherent tensions between various parties (in this instance, the Chinese government and the public). By examining the ways the earthquake’s effects have been documented, discussed, evaluated, and commemorated, this chapter will reveal the complexity of disaster and the emotions that were not included in the mainstream media. To portray such complexity, we turn to art. Art provides various means to narrate a disaster, often ones that counteract the mainstream account. In this chapter, I will focus on Ai Weiwei’s artwork Remembering (2009), which portrays natural disaster and systemic corruption and serves as a powerful critique of the Chinese bureaucracy’s handling of the Sichuan earthquake. The artwork and its setting, taken together, encourage reflection on historical cultural connections and shared human concerns. Remembering is an art installation that commemorating the Sichuan earthquake in 2008 and is dedicated to the students who died during the earthquake. Much of its power comes from the materiality of the objects—the plastic school bags, which signify the place where their lives were claimed and their identity as students. Nine thousand blue, red, white, yellow, and green school bags were displayed on the wall of the Haus der Kunst in Munich, Germany, which was built in 1937 to promote Nazi art policies. The traumatic memories embodied by Remembering is heightened when the visitors are being reminded of the painful history of its exhibition venue. Munich’s association with Nazism and the devastation of war add another layer to our perception of Remembering. Nazi Germany continues to represent the atrocities humans inflict on other humans. Its legacy connects to the traumas caused by wars, brutality, and human sacrifices demanded by corrupt governments. It should not be assumed that Ai’s Remembering will inevitably remind onlookers of the traumatic history of the Haus

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der Kunst, but, equally, there is the potential that they will be moved to consider the cross-cultural dialogue evident in relationships between the art and the exhibition space. The very title Remembering, given the Munich setting, can be understood as an appeal to this kind of cross-cultural reading and to the need to honour all collective memories. The meteoric rise of Ai Weiwei’s reputation in the West is testament to his talent and, perhaps even more importantly, to his media image. Ai as a person sometimes appears to be more attractive to Western critics than his artworks. German critics frequently note that Ai’s life is a ‘performance’, and that life, politics, and art are all one with him (Liebs, 2013). The discussions that dealt with the fact of the exhibition of Ai’s Remembering in Munich were more intense and livelier than the textual analyses of the artwork itself. Ai adopts many identities and fulfils many roles in the West. His artworks take many forms—installations, writings, videos, and films—and he allows his private life to be widely publicized. He has broadcast the Chinese government’s surveillance and has enlisted Twitter to fight against the repression of freedom. Critics have noted that his works ‘suggest a set of political ideals and contradictions firmly rooted in the tradition of Chinese Marxism and a critical perspective shaped by his experience growing up during the Cultural Revolution’ (Sorace, 2014, p. 398). Successfully straddling Chinese traditions and Western modernism, Ai acts as a cultural broker, capable of communicating with both cultures and revealing their significant differences. Ai has criticized a wide range of subjects and has used various media— sculpture, installation art, photography, online blogs—to express his views. His switch to documentary mode when dealing with the plight of refugees indicates his belief in the need to spark rigorous discussion on these issues. Ai’s art universalises his political message. For German art critics, the reconnection with a traumatic history that Remembering inspires is heightened by the exhibition venue in Munich. Remembering exposes not only the tragic aftermath of the Sichuan earthquake and the state’s repressive narrative of that event but also the commonalities of the trauma experienced in post-socialist China and the Germany of World War II. The meaning of Ai’s artwork must be situated in the context of Bavarian and German history: an exiled artist’s testament to a faraway catastrophe shows how memories are created and repressed by modern states. The Chinese government’s strategy to quell unofficial voices in the aftermath of disaster is familiar to the citizens of the many governments throughout the world that demand absolute obedience. While a natural disaster and war atrocities may be very different entities, both involve the sacrifice of innocent and helpless adults and children.

4.2

Narrating Disaster and Trauma

A catastrophe is typically conceived as something momentary in time, and explosive and spectacular in space. With the intensification of climate change, toxic drift, deforestation, acidifying oceans, and radioactive contaminations caused by wars and

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natural disasters, however, catastrophes can be conceived as something that Rob Nixon identifies as ‘slow violence’: a violence ‘that is neither spectacular nor instantaneous, but rather incremental and accretive, its calamitous repercussions playing out across a range of temporal scales’ (2011, p. 2). Kate Rigby notes that ‘catastrophe’ originates in Aristotle’s Poetics: ‘Literally denoting a sudden turn or overturning (kata, down, against; strophē, turn), this word is used by Aristotle to refer to the change that produces the final outcome in a work of tragic drama (also known as the denouément). Entering English with the classical theory of drama in the sixteenth century, catastrophe was subsequently adopted by geologists to describe those dramatic alterations in Earth’s history that some . . . attributed to violent geophysical events, such as volcanoes, earthquakes, and major floods’ (Rigby, 2015, p. 17; emphasis original). Such ‘dramatic alterations’ include the spectres that threaten the glorious image of post-socialist China as a world power. When catastrophes occur, they provide a space where intervention becomes possible. Storytelling, in this context, can be understood as a form of intervention. The story told by Ai’s art exposes hidden problems and provokes subversive discussion. In face of natural and man-made disaster, the stories told by works of art serve various purposes: bearing witness, repressing fear, and disturbing consciousness. As Rigby notes, however, ‘Stories. . . can potentially obscure as much as they reveal. In a perilously warming world, the kinds of stories that we tell about ourselves and our relations with one another, as well as with nonhuman others and our volatile environment, will shape how we prepare for, respond to, and recover from increasingly frequent and, for the communities affected, frequently unfamiliar forms of eco-catastrophe: disasters, that is, that radically disrupt a collective more-thanhuman dwelling place, or oikos, be that a village, town, or region’ (Rigby, 2015, p. 2). In the case of the Sichuan earthquake, different forces struggled for control of the mode of storytelling. In addition to ‘catastrophe’, the term ‘disaster’ applies to the earthquake in Sichuan. By identifying the ways the French term désastre enters into the English in the sixteenth century, Rigby suggests that ‘this word is commonly thought to have referred originally to the malign influence of an unfavourable planetary aspect or conjunction: “ill-starred”’ (Rigby, 2015, p. 16) and that ‘the use of this term bears the trace of a premodern cultural narrative in which nature is made to cop the blame for human suffering’ (Rigby, 2015, p. 16). Rigby further argues that the discourse of ‘disaster’ is used to mask the realities of human responsibility or irresponsibility. Writing about natural disasters can be adapted to any ideological purpose. Because of this malleability, different accounts compete for hegemony. As the narrative has a direct impact on the shaping of collective memories and the legitimization of the state, the control of the narrative must be maintained by the government in order to manipulate public opinion. In the case of the Sichuan earthquake, we have contradictory narratives: the official reports, on the one hand, and, on the other, the civilians’ documentation and expression of trauma, including Ai’s Remembering. Memorials can be embodiments of feelings that cannot be openly shared. What do memorials try to achieve? Are memorials intended to provide a means to transcend emotions and give voice to victims? Artworks created in memory of the

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natural disasters can be understood as ‘“archives of feelings” encoded in material form, narrative content, and the “practices that surround their production and reception”’ (Cvetkovich, 2003, p. 7). How does the materiality of the artwork contribute to this channelling of emotion? Erika Doss maintains that Remembering ‘embodies the affective dimensions, the structures of public feeling—feelings such as grief, fear, gratitude, shame, and anger, among others—that characterize contemporary life’ (2016, p. 109). The work also highlights the ways in which memory is inevitably ‘charged with the formation and reformation of personal, social, and national modes of identity’ (Huyssen, 1995, p. 3). The materiality of the artwork— the identical plastic schoolbags—registers the anonymity of the dead students and the dehumanization of the dead in the official narrative. The schoolbags symbolize the objects that are left behind; they epitomize absence. They are remnants that parents embrace with nostalgic yearning. The Chinese government portrayed the earthquake as a unique event and redirected attention to rescue and reconstruction efforts. The harmonious picture painted by the state came as no surprise: 2008 was one of the most important years in the history of post-socialist China. In that year, China was host to the Olympics and underwent rapid urban development that transformed the skylines of Beijing and Shanghai. Any references to the earthquake would threaten the new impressive image of the state. Against this backdrop, activists such as Tan Zuoren and Ai Weiwei took things into their own hands and initiated a public investigation to disclose the role played by the tofu-dreg schools and the human contribution to the carnage. The relationship between Ai and the state in 2008 was ambiguous. He was one of the architects of the Bird’s Nest (Beijing National Stadium), but his close association with the establishment did not stop him from criticizing the government’s response to the earthquake. Ai’s ambiguous connection with the state is reinforced by his international fame, which provides him with protection from government suppression. While the activists’ investigation strove to resurrect the individuality of each of the children who died in the earthquake, Ai’s Remembering refrains from focusing on the personal. The use of objects—schoolbags—rather than images of the children ‘remind[s] its viewers not only of the individuals who died in the earthquake, but also the specific conditions in which the earthquake occurred’ (Arnett, 2016, p. 29). The work draws attention to the schoolbag’s materiality and their placement at the façade of the Haus der Kunst highlights their performative intent. These elements represent a critique of the focus on material affluence, which has characterized the rise of post-socialist China as a world power. The work points specifically at the Government’s cost-cutting that created the tofu-dreg schools and, more generally, at the mass production that has brought death rather than life to the ordinary people of China. Kyra Nicole Arnett has criticized the fact that the exhibition of the memorial outside of China has disconnected it from its subjects, ‘whose life and memories these artworks are actually preserving’ (Arnett, 2016, p. 30). I would argue, however, that the exhibition venue in Munich heightens collective memories of trauma, and man-made trauma in particular. The fact that these schoolbags make a vibrant and colourful display is ironic. They draw the eye in a celebratory fashion, but mark

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a tragic event. The irony would not be lost on German visitors, who also struggle with the gap between difficult emotions and mocking means of expressing them. Remembering serves as a warning to international audiences, a reminder of the tragedies arising from human irresponsibility, and an opportunity for the world to offer its sympathy to the mourning parents who were unable to express their anger back home. The fact that the artwork was shown outside of China points to that country’s repressive state apparatus and materialistic ethos. At the Munich venue, emotions are doubly felt, first locally and then cross-culturally.

4.3

The Artist-Activist Ai Weiwei

Ai Weiwei is a popular figure in the Western media and the art scene. His background casts him as an ‘exotic’ dissident figure and his training in the USA gave him a familiarity with the West. The son of Ai Qing (1910–1996), Ai was born into a family that had undergone numerous traumas. Ai Qing, one of the country’s most revered modern poets, was jailed and tortured by the Kuomintang for his liberal views in the 1930s. The family were in exile to Xinjiang when Ai was an infant and then banished to a camp on the edge of the Gobi Desert during the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976). The harsh conditions of his childhood no doubt informed the art: in exile since 2015, he is considered one of the most prominent human rights activists worldwide. The Western media have described Ai as a ‘public intellectual’, one who uses ‘art and activism as forms of engagement for changing the public sphere’ (Ponzanesi, 2020, p. 216). This label is based on his open opposition to injustice and state power, his flexibility in working against or in concert with power in order to achieve his goals, and the playfulness and irony of his art. He is able to transcend conventional boundaries, providing a voice to marginalized people and insisting that subversive art forms deserve serious critical consideration. The role of the public intellectual is more difficult to assume if one is from the East because of the need to ‘juggle competing regimes of political representations’ (Ponzanesi, 2020, p. 218). Ai is under scrutiny by the Chinese government and has been accused of exploiting the suffering of the Chinese people. He moved from Germany to Great Britain in 2019 after severely criticizing Germany’s hostility to migrants. He recounted incidents of harassment by German citizens due to his ethnicity. For Ai, home is elusive: his frequent relocations are evidence of his lack of identification with his host countries. Ai is deeply ambivalent about his country of birth. At times, he appears to endorse the Chinese, and, at other times, he is deeply critical. This slipperiness, however, can be seen as a sign of his determination to straddle different spheres and circumstances. William Callahan has noted that Ai works for or against the state as he sees fit: ‘“Citizen intellectual” is useful because it accounts for the slippery nature of Chinese politics, where activists often have a complex relation to the state: sometimes they work with the state, and at other times against it—but always for what they see as the good of China, rather than just for the good of the party-state’ (Callahan, 2014,

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p. 900). Callahan adds that this flexibility allows for the interplay between ‘structure and agency, radical opposition and embedded action, and individual activity and community building’ (quoted in Ponzanesi, 2020, p. 218). The impetus for Ai’s art ranges can be local or universal. Installations such as the ‘Fuck Off’ series (1995–2003), which present his middle finger in front of representative sites including the White House, the Eiffel Tower, and Tiananmen Square, suggest that he is targeting at all sources of power and injustice, regardless of nationality. Alongside his reputation as a flexible and liminal figure, Ai is also known for his playfulness and irony. He has a deep appreciation of Marcel Duchamp’s ‘readymades’—found objects of ordinary life. Their elevation to the status of art and its implied criticism of the cultural value system are significant features of Ai’s art (Ponzanesi, 2020, p. 219). The way that Ai ‘recycles, displaces, manipulates, sometimes even destroys traditional objects like old furniture or ancient vessels, in order to create something new’ (Siemons, 2009, p. 7) conveys his disdain for the commodification of culture and the arts, and his celebration of the everyday objects that connect to the real lives of ordinary people. To produce his art, Ai often acquires traditional Chinese antiquities, ancient trees, or artefacts with spiritual signification, which he subsequently transforms. When he converts centuries-old temple beams into wooden maps and drops Han Dynasty urns onto flagstones, he forges new connections, explores how the old and new can coexist, and asks what a new tradition could look like. While he is famous for being a thorn in the side of the Chinese state, his art can reflect the party-state’s political and cultural campaigns. His Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads (2011) exhibit in New York, for example, commemorates the artefacts that were looted by the French and British armies when they torched Beijing’s Yuanming Yuan (old summer palace) in 1860. The exhibit clearly supports the party-state’s goal of returning plundered art to China (Callahan, 2014, p. 911). Other exhibits celebrate Chinese craftsmanship: Sunflower Seeds (2008) required the production of one hundred million seeds, which were fired at a temperature of 1300 °C and painted by hand on both sides, according to the ancient porcelain-making process of Chinese artisans from Jingdezhen. In the catalogue to Sunflower Seeds at the Tate Modern, Voon Pow Bartlett poses the question, ‘What does it mean to be an individual in today’s society? Are we insignificant or powerless unless we act together?’ (2011, p. 88). Ai is committed to asking important questions; his art, therefore, is not intended for passive contemplation but as a motivation to act. His emphasis on materiality can be seen as a comment on the current trend of ‘new materialism’, which stresses the power of material in the shaping and reconfiguration of human sensitivity. Ai’s activism, as we have seen, is not confined to China. His film Human Flow (2017) ‘sought to shed light on the securitization of migration and the hollowness of neoliberalism’s human rights discourse’ (Peterson, 2019, p. 187). To produce this documentary, Ai and his team spent three years travelling to over 23 countries and 40 refugee camps. Some of the camps were relatively new, such as those housing Syrian refugees. Others have been in existence for decades and are now sheltering their third generation of refugees. The effort invested in such an extensive project is a testament to Ai’s commitment to hold the world to account.

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Ai’s universality has been aided by his keen awareness of the power of new media. In the aftermath of the Sichuan earthquake, Ai realized the quickest way to bypass local censorship was to employ the Internet. Together with Tan Zuoren, he managed to gather eyewitness accounts from the parents whose children died in the earthquake, voices that had been suppressed by the official narrative. Barred from commenting on Chinese politics because of previous offences, Ai used social media platforms to spread his message across the world. When the government shut down his blog in 2008, Ai started a series of microblogs on the Chinese version of Twitter, which were swiftly identified and blocked by the Internet police. Today Ai is still very active on global Twitter; the brevity it demands suits his style. His Twitter account @aiww had 367,000 followers as of May 2021. When government officials trained their cameras on the entrance of Ai’s studio, he turned the tables back on them: in April 2012, he installed four surveillance cameras that streamed live video feeds of him at home, offering viewers a chance to ‘be just like the Chinese government’ and monitor his intimate life. To use the state’s tactics against itself shows that the instruments of repression can become those of resistance. The very playfulness of this act mocks the state’s assumption of the restraining effects of surveillance. Ai may also be mocking the gaze of the Western audience that treats him as an exotic alien.

4.4

Remembering Trauma: Materiality

Ten days after the earthquake in Sichuan, Ai, spurred by the government’s lack of transparency in the investigation process, led a team to survey and film the postearthquake landscape. Since public schools generally suffered more damage than surrounding buildings, many people felt that their substandard construction, the product of corrupt hiring practices, had led to their collapse. After the Party refused to investigate, Ai recruited volunteers online and launched a ‘citizens’ investigation’ to compile information about the student victims (a year after the event, Sichuan’s government had not published a list of their names). Ai’s insistence on preserving the names of each student was not only a way of honouring the dead but also a mark of his disgust with the ‘hierarchy of grief’ that invests certain bodies with significance and value while others remain anonymous and abandoned. Sandra Ponzanesi notes that Ai’s actions were ‘resonant of [Judith] Butler’s notion of a grievable life, according to which on a global scale some lives are more grievable and mournful than others because of the different cultural and economic value attached to them: If there were to be an obituary, there would have had to have been a life, a life worth noting, a life worth valuing and preserving, a life that qualifies for recognition’ (Ponzanesi, 2020, p. 221). Remembering was exhibited from October 2009 to January 2010. Much has been written about Ai’s poignant representation of the loss of lives, but little attention has been paid to the fact that the artist, an exile, chose to depict the dispossessed victims of Sichuan in Munich, a city full of traumatic reminders of World War II. The

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presentation and reception of artworks within a specific museum space can expose personal, social, and national aspects of identity. Ai’s work and its reception shows how dialogues can be effected between countries (China and Germany), between homes (birthplace and host country), and between views of the museum’s purpose (as a site of exhibition and a site of memories). One of the obvious interpretations of Ai’s art is that it represents his determination to reject the state propaganda machine’s affirmation of the Chinese people’s unity and strength. After the Sichuan earthquake, then-Premier Wen Jiabao toured the scene of destruction with media recording images of rescue and restoration. For people outside of China, the Chinese state appeared to be doing an excellent job in the aftermath of an earthquake that killed 87,000 people and displace more than 10 million others: ‘The state held a 3-day mourning period for the deceased, the first mourning for ordinary disaster victims in the history of the People’s Republic of China. The central and local governments mobilized tremendous resources to rebuild the quake area and restore the local economy’ (Xu, 2018, p. 483). To critics and scholars, however, the state’s need to control the discourse was evident: ‘Official commemorations of the Sichuan earthquake mostly consisted of a monologue from the state revolving around two stories: the state’s successful response to the earthquake and the benefits of the earthquake for the quake zone’s economic and social development. The monologue was “loud”: not only high-pitched in sound, which was the case in commemorative rituals but also grandiose in its epic plotline and heroic characters’ (Xu, 2018, p. 486). Ai opposed the government’s attempts to transcend the disaster, suppressing both the number of dead children and the anger and grief of the parents. Instead of observing the politically orchestrated process of national mourning, Ai demanded an investigation of the causes of the tragedy. The Chinese government has not wavered from the heroic narrative of the earthquake’s aftermath. On the first anniversary of the disaster, in May 2009, the government held a series of large-scale ceremonies for the earthquake victims in several of the most affected areas, including Yingxiu at the epicentre, where ‘local residents, government officials, numerous journalists, curious tourists, and volunteers and responders attended the commemorations and jammed the major roads on the anniversary day’ (Xu, 2018, p. 486). In subsequent years, the quake zone was the focus of social and economic development. The disaster sites were converted into revenue-producing ‘dark tourism’ (Lennon & Foley, 2000). One cannot help but wonder about those who lost their family members in the disaster and remain deeply broken. What account is being narrated for them? The Chinese government’s refusal to recognize this anguish is the reason that Ai’s memorial art has such power and has attracted international attention. The stark contrast between the bland official discourse and the politically charged Remembering exposes the need to hold the Chinese government accountable. Some critics have argued that the international circulation of Ai’s work within the capitalist system ‘produces a discourse that redirects attention away from the space where the earthquake occurred, and toward Ai’ (Arnett, 2016, p. 44). The site chosen to display Remembering, however, reinforces the shared pain caused by authoritarian governments that never hesitate to sacrifice the masses to protect the national reputation.

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The ability to reconnect distant and near histories and memories has made Remembering a work whose impact has exceeded its original goal. While Germany and China were active trading partners in 2009, activists in Germany were eager to welcome a critic of the Chinese government. This tension between profitable government relations and countercultural critiques may be one of the reasons Ai chose to come to Germany when he embarked on his diasporic adventure. The inspiration for Remembering came from a sentence in a letter that the parent of a victim, Yang Xiaowan, wrote to Ai’s investigation team: ‘She once lived happily for seven years in this society’ (Xu, 2018, pp. 492–493). In the installation, the simple sentence is slightly revised: a giant mural of 9000 backpacks spells out ‘She lived happily for seven years in this world’ in Chinese. The backpacks of children who died and the words of a heart-broken mother are a commemoration on a giant scale of human dignity and the importance of ordinary people’s lives. ‘Regarding this work’, Ai said, ‘the idea to use backpacks came from my visit to Sichuan after the earthquake in May 2008. During the earthquake many schools collapsed. Thousands of young students lost their lives, and you could see bags and study material everywhere. Then you realize individual life, media, and the lives of the students are serving very different purposes. The lives of the students disappeared within the state propaganda, and very soon everybody will forget everything’ (quoted in McMahon, 2012). Remembering is dedicated to the students who died during the earthquake. The exhibition draws attention to both the materiality of the museum (its four walls, and the façade) and the materiality of the school bags. The use of plastic school bags, in bulk, is a reproach to the materialization, commodification, and objectification that occurs when developmentalism and economic progress predetermine the discourse and future of the nation. The PRC, ‘the world’s factory’, relies on the exports of goods to accelerate the growth of its annual GDP and establish itself as a world power. The reduction of human lives to mass-produced school bags in colour blocks reminds the audience that the tragedy was man-made and manufactured rather than natural; it was the focus on productivity at all costs that led to the tofu-dreg schools. The myth that post-socialist China is a responsible participant on the international stage where citizens’ lives are valued is exposed. Putting the bags on the façade of the museum rather than the inside ensures that their audience extends beyond a privileged or designated group of viewers. The impact of the exhibition was huge, drawing the attention of all passers-by. The repetition of identical school bags is dehumanizing, mirroring the stifled grief and anger of parents who can call no one to account. The mute testament of the school bags gives a voice to the parents who failed to mourn in public. In 2010, before the second anniversary of the earthquake, Ai organized an online commemorative activity called niannian buwang (reading to remember). Participants in the commemorative activity were recruited online. Each selected a few names from the list of student victims compiled by Ai and his volunteers, read them aloud, audio-recorded their reading, and sent the recordings to Ai, who used them to create a long artistic recording entitled Nian (in Chinese nian means both ‘read’ as in ‘read the names aloud’ and ‘miss’ as in ‘we miss the children’). It was introduced as

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follows: ‘Nian is a work from twitter friends to the students killed in the Sichuan earthquake, expressing mourning for the passing of innocent lives and anger for [the government’s] covering up of the facts of tofu-dreg [projects]. Respect life, refuse to forget’ (Ai Weiwei Studio, 2010, qtd in Bo, 2012, p. 126). In stark contrast to the government’s portrayal of ‘the speedy reconstruction in the earthquake area [as] an ‘earthly miracle’, created by the strategic manoeuvres, decisive actions, and scientific actions of the Party’s Central Committee and the State Council, which galvanized the strength of the entire nation’ (Bo, 2012, p. 127), Ai’s Nian presented the voices of ordinary people. Zheng Bo borrowed Nancy Fraser’s term ‘counterpublic’ to describe Nian as an example of ‘discursive arenas where members of subordinated social groups invent and circulate counter discourses, which in turn permit them to formulate oppositional interpretations of their identities, interests, and needs’ (Fraser, 1990, p. 67).

4.5

The Cross-Cultural Significance of Art Space: The Sediment of History in Munich

The significance and impact of Remembering lies in many folds. First, Ai’s connections with the West allow international audiences to have a glimpse of issues that are generally considered exclusively Chinese and protected from exposure. The fact that Ai exhibited his work in Munich adds another layer of meaning arising from its associations with Bavaria, Hitler, and authoritarian government. The meaning of Remembering is powerfully enriched by cross-cultural memories. Can collective memories be transcended? Is it necessary to expose one country’s grief and remorse internationally? For Ai, the harsh reality of repression in mainland China and the bravery of the activists who oppose it needed to be brought to the world’s attention. Remembering represents an experiment drawing connection between the distant and local memories. It is also a comment on the role played by art and art-activists in times of crisis. The Haus der Kunst was ‘[e]rected in 1937 with design input from Adolf Hitler (he chose the red marble from which the striking first floor is built). . . .[It] was the site of numerous Nazi press conferences, including the Führer's announcement of his war on modern art; functioned as an object of, and vehicle for, denazification in the 1950s, with white paint and curtains installed to cover up or replace their red counterparts; and, most recently, beginning with its 2003 restoration to the original red marble and details, the museum became a symbol of national reckoning, and an enduring emblem of the nation's, and the city's, fraught relationship with the past’ (Somerstein, 2013, p. 10). The museum’s eagerness to reinvent its identity was shared by the surrounding city: ‘Munich was in the process of undergoing a re-evaluation and acknowledgement of its role as Hitler's power base through the inclusion of that history in its municipal museum’ (Greenberg, 2005, p. 57). The Haus der Kunst was one of the few cultural sites in Munich that was untouched by

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Allied bombing during World War II. It had been covered by camouflage nets that concealed the building. When American troops marched into Munich in April 1945, the American military government ‘used it to house an officers’ club with a restaurant, a dance hall, and several shops. Basketball court lines and markings were painted in oil paint on the stone floors of the exhibition halls’ (Haus der Kunst, 2021). After the WWII, the museum became renowned for its collection of contemporary art. Given the many roles that Haus der Kunst has played in German history, it is uniquely adapted to accommodate memories of various kinds. Situating an artwork that deals with the relationship between natural and man-made disaster in a venue with these historical associations creates an interesting dynamic that is beyond the scope of conventional art appreciation. The dialogue created between the artwork and its exhibition venue suggests larger, and more layered, possibilities of apprehension. This intrinsic relationship, which is generally unexamined by the critics, contributes to the interpretation: meaning is located in the interaction between art object and place. The site of exhibition becomes a chronotopic space that also speaks to the understanding of the artwork. In Bakhtinian terms, the museum setting is no longer a mere backdrop but an agent that contributes to the progression of narrative. The object and the place become one convoluted entity that shapes the reception of the artwork. The intersections between object and space, materiality and affect, and history and memory are revealing and powerful. The significance of the artwork is enriched if onlookers are aware of these subtle connections. In a way the artwork adapts itself to its audience.

4.6

The Cross-Cultural Significance of Art Space: Inside-Out Museums and Performance

Another striking aspect of Remembering is the fact that the work is exhibited on the façade of the museum. Turning the façade into an exhibition site is not an entirely novel practice: Paul MacCarthy’s ‘Flowers’ decorated the façade of the museum with the inflatable sculpture in 2005. Still, Ai’s decision to externalize and exhibit grief in this way reflects his commitment to performance. International audiences are attracted to Ai’s playfulness, his temperament, his loudness, and his blatant antigovernment rhetoric. His selective use of social media reveals his interest in the circulation of information. Ai depends on technology to combat the PRC’s repression of freedom of speech and ensure the wide dissemination of his message. His work relies on ‘translocality’: while translocality may reference specific sites, it cuts across localities and, in doing so, asserts that local events can destabilize borders and challenge global hegemonies. In her discussion of the ‘transhistorical’ museum, Mieke Bal argues that the preposition ‘trans’ can refer to ‘going through, without stopping, or changing one’s own view, or being affected by what one traverses’ (qtd in Rectanus, 2020, p. 5). The linking of ‘trans’ with ‘local’ creates a dialectical tension and analytical framework that captures the significance of context- and

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site-specific projects and creates the potential for productive frictions and connections across localities. Moreover, ‘trans’ also reflects Ai’s commitment to performance: ‘Trans- connects (a performer and an audience, the present soon to be past act and future histories) and opens the creative arts to embodiment, fluidity, duration, movement and change: transtemporality, transhistory, transgenealogy, transmigratory, transmogrification. Trans- epitomizes the tension between the local and global in understanding how performance and performative identities work’ (qtd in Rectanus, 2020, p. 5). Remembering confirms the importance of translocal dialogues: local events are globally discussed, circulated, and remembered because of their relationship to the exhibition space, and, in turn, the exhibition space is revisited by the shared pain and trauma expressed in the artwork. In his seminal work on the future of museums, Mark Rectanus observes, ‘museums are not only renegotiating global–local tensions through translocal interventions but also destabilizing the boundaries between “museum space” and “public space”’ (2020, p. 24). The complicated spatial relation creates new meanings and provides new entry points for reflecting on the meaning of the museum at large. Ai’s work involves a performance that draws attention to the constructed nature of the artwork and its distant/mediated/indirect connection to reality. The artwork does not bear the responsibility to reveal the truth, but it displays a mediated truth in the memory of disaster. It reveals that narratives are fabricated according to a human agenda. The performative aspect of the artwork also lies in its outward presence: it invites reactions from anyone passing by, not just those who are visiting the museum. The outward setting connects the work with the environment and turns the environment into part of the work. Remembering changes as the light of day changes, as foliage grows and withers, and as the weather affects it. The environment is a component that constantly changing the meaning of the artwork and turns it into a work in progress. The fact that the artwork is a memorial of natural disaster is enhanced by its inclusion of nature in its exhibition. The ongoing performance of the relation between the art and nature directly opposes the adamant, static, and exclusive narrative imposed by the Chinese state, which was constructed to restrict any variety in interpretation. Remembering, in contrast, is a narrative that is constantly reinventing itself and open to infinite interpretations.

4.7

Conclusion

In The Power of the Powerless (1978), Czech dissident and future president Vaclav Havel suggests that being a dissident can be counterproductive because it isolates intellectuals from the rest of society. Rather than supporting an elite movement bent on a grand revolution, Havel argues that individuals can make their own revolution by ‘living in truth’. Living in truth starts with rejecting the lies that the regime produces to buttress its legitimacy. It also involves engaging in ‘small-scale work’ to build parallel cultures and markets, and thus a parallel society that exists side-by-side

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with the party-state’s official version (Callahan, 2013, p. 35). Ai Weiwei and Tan Zuoren rejected the cover-up that was the investigation of the causes of the casualties of the Sichuan earthquake. The adherence to the truth is essential to the parents who lost their children in the disaster, as well as to the artist and the public. Remembering is a powerful cry for justice when the voices of the deceased and their parents have been silenced. Like many of Ai’s projects, it emphasizes the visibility and materiality of art. The mass of identical schoolbags reveals China’s commodification of human lives to an international audience, and the way that the artwork interacts with its environment creates a multiplicity of interpretations that challenge the official narrative. The traumatic memories of a tragedy caused by corruption and irresponsibility in China form a palimpsest on the memories of Munich during the Nazi period. The layers of sediment of human history are revealed. Long considered a cultural broker, Ai once again has connected an Eastern country with a Western country, the personal and the collective, and the distant and the immediate.

References Ai, W., & Siemons, M. (Eds.). (2009). Ai Weiwei: So sorry. Prestel. Ai, W., & Wash, L. (Eds.). (2013). Weiwei—isms. Princeton University Press. Arnett, K. N. (2016). Dislocating disaster: The problem with Ai Weiwei’s earthquake artworks. Thesis, Whitman College. Bartlett, V. P. (2011). The harmonization of Ai Wei Wei. Yishu: Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art, 10(1), 84–94. Bo, Z. (2012). From Gongren to Gongmin: A comparative analysis of Ai Weiwei’s Sunflower Seeds and Nian. Journal of Visual Art Practice, 11(2–3), 117–133. Callahan, W. A. (2013). China dreams: 20 visions of the future. Oxford University Press. Callahan, W. A. (2014). Citizen Ai: Warrior, jester, and middleman. The Journal of Asian Studies, 73(4), 899–920. Cvetkovich, A. (2003). An archive of feelings: Trauma, sexuality, and lesbian public culture. Duke University Press. Doss, E. (2016). Commemorating disaster and disobedience: National Park service initiatives in the 21st century. Social Science Quarterly, 97(1), 105–114. Fraser, N. (1990). Rethinking the public sphere: A contribution to the critique of actually existing democracy. Social Texts, 25/26, 56–80. Greenberg, R. (2005). Redressing history: Partners and the Friedrich Christian Flick Collection. kritische berichte-Zeitschrift für Kunst-und Kulturwissenschaften, 33(3), 53–63. Haus Der Kunst. (2000–2021). Haus Der Kunst. Accessed October 15, 2021, from https:// hausderkunst.de/en/history/chronical Huyssen, A. (1995). Twilight memories: Marking time in a culture of amnesia. Routledge. Lennon, J. J., & Foley, M. (2000). Dark tourism. Continuum. Liebs, H. (2013). Hitler war Mao ähnlich. (Hitler was Like Mao) Süddeutsche Zeitung. Accessed October 15, 2021, from https://www.sueddeutsche.de/muenchen/ai-weiwei-in-muenchenhitler-war-mao-aehnlich-1.28257 McMahon, J. P. (2012). Ai Wewei, ‘remembering’ and the politics of dissent. Khan Academy. Accessed January 2, 2021, from https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/art-asia/imperialchina/x97ec695a:people-s-republic-of-china-1949present/a/ai-weiwei-remembering-and-thepolitics-of-dissent

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Nixon, R. (2011). Slow violence and the environmentalism of the poor. Cambridge University Press. Peterson, A. (2019). Ai Weiwei and JR. Political artists and activist artists and the plight of refugees. Journal of Mediterranean Knowledge, 4(2), 183–202. Ponzanesi, S. (2020). The art of dissent. In R. Buikema, A. Buyse, & A. C. M. Robben (Eds.), Cultures, citizenship and human rights (pp. 215–236). Routledge. Rectanus, M. W. (2020). Museums inside out. University of Minnesota Press. Rigby, K. (2015). Dancing with disaster: Environmental histories, narratives, and ethics for perilous times. University of Virginia. Somerstein, R. (2013). We can’t remember what we haven’t seen: Media, war, and the future of collective memory. Afterimage, 40(4), 10–14. Web. Sontag, S. (1965). The imagination of disaster. October, 65, 42–48. Sorace, C. (2014). China’s last communist: Ai Weiwei. Critical Inquiry, 40, 396–419. Xu, B. (2018). Commemorating a difficult disaster: Naturalizing and denaturalizing the 2008 Sichuan earthquake in China. Memory Studies, 11(4), 483–497.

Winnie L. M. Yee is a senior lecturer of comparative literature and program coordinator of the MA Program in Literary and Cultural Studies at the University of Hong Kong. In 2019–2020, she was a fellow in Rachel Carson Center for the Environment and Society at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. Her research interests include ecocriticism, Hong Kong culture, contemporary Chinese literature and film, and independent cinema. She is currently working on a book project exploring the relationship between migrant workers and Chinese literature and independent film scene.

Chapter 5

The Invisible Person: Duan Yingmei as Centerpiece of German-Chinese Art Rebecca Ehrenwirth

Abstract Chinese contemporary art equals Ai Weiwei in Germany. No one seems to have heard of world-famous artists such as Qiu Zhijie, Liu Xiaodong, or Xu Bing, who have shaped the art world significantly over the last few decades, while Ai Weiwei was idolized as emblem of Chinese contemporary art in Germany until recently. People seem to believe that only he and his works are political and therefore carry a meaning. However, as provocative and in-your-face he and his works sometimes may be, is his art loved because of sensationalism or because of its transculturality? Why are other, less crude Chinese artists in Germany overlooked, especially women artists? Based on Trinh Minh-ha’s theory on feminism and her notion of the “inappropriate/d other,” the paper will focus on the female artists Duan Yingmei, who has been living and working in Germany for decades, and explores the status of Chinese female artists in Germany. Keywords Performance art · Duan Yingmei · Female artist · Inappropriate/d other

5.1

Prelude

In Germany, “Chinese contemporary art” and “Ai Weiwei” are one and the same. It seems as if no one in Germany has heard of such world-famous artists as Qiu Zhijie, Liu Xiaodong, or Xu Bing, who have shaped the art world significantly over the last few decades, that is, during the very period in which Ai Weiwei came to be idolized by German critics and public as the emblem of Chinese contemporary art. People seem to believe that only he and his works are political and only they, therefore, bear a meaning. Over the past centuries, Ai Weiwei had established close relationships with the German art scene and his German audience, which lead him to (temporarily) move to Berlin in 2015 to live with his son after he was released from house arrest in China. He and his works are seen as provocative and “in-your-face” as well as

R. Ehrenwirth (✉) University of Applied Sciences/SDI Munich, Munich, Germany e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 H. Jin et al. (eds.), Contemporary German–Chinese Cultures in Dialogue, Global Germany in Transnational Dialogues, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-26779-6_5

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transcultural. However, assuming that transculturality includes bridging the gap between cultures, how transcultural is Ai’s work indeed when it comes to Germany and China? I argue that oftentimes less crude and truly transcultural Chinese artists, especially women artists, are overlooked in Germany due to sensationalism and a gender-biased art scene. In this chapter I want to focus on one Chinese-born female artist, Duan Yingmei, who has been living in Germany since the late 1990s and who not only expresses transculturality but—in particular her older works—also her feelings as a marginalized individual in her art. As Trinh states in an interview with Marina Grzinic (1998): “We can read the term ‘inappropriate/d other’ in both ways, as someone whom you cannot appropriate, and as someone who is inappropriate. Not quite other, not quite the same.” Based on Trinh T. Minh-ha’s notion of the “inappropriate/d other” and an interview with Duan Yingmei, I will show that this latter is a transcultural artist who helps to bridge (cultural) gaps through her art. I want to raise the question of why other Chinese artists, especially women artists, are excluded from German cultural discourse, although they have proven to be essential for cross-cultural dialogue, especially between Germany and China. When Duan Yingmei took part in the collective artwork To Add One Meter to an Anonymous Mountain (Weiwu mingshan zenggao zimi) in 1995 in Beijing, she was part of the Chinese avant-garde. Since nonconformity is a priori a mark of the avant-garde, proponents of the Chinese avant-garde are in Trinh’s sense “inappropriate/d others” in both senses: they were artists whom the Chinese state could not be appropriate, but at the same time their art (and therefore themselves) were often seen as “inappropriate,” even by Western (avant-garde) standards (such was the case, for example, of Sun Yuan and Peng Yu, who used dead babies in their artworks). I argue here that, in contrast to Ai Weiwei, who actively contributed to his image of “the other,” Duan was made the “inappropriate/d other.” This chapter seeks to illustrate how Duan Yingmei reflects feelings of inappropriate(d)ness in her artworks, how, and by what means, she was made the “inappropriate/d other,” and how valuable this reflection is for German society.

5.2

Duan Yingmei: The Invisible Person

Duan Yingmei describes herself as a “curious observer who asks questions of all facets of life in order to continuously learn and develop” (Duan, 2022). Born in 1969 in Daqing, in the far Northeast of China, she came to Germany in the late 1990s and studied with Marina Abramović and Birgit Hein in Braunschweig in the 2000s. Before she left China for Germany, she participated in the collective performance art piece To Add One Meter to an Anonymous Mountain in 1995, initiated by the Chinese artist Zhang Huan. At that time, Duan was a member of the avant-garde art community Beijing East Village, whose members lived together in shelters built for migrant workers in the suburbs of Beijing. The leading artists of this group,

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besides Zhang Huan, were Zhu Ming and Ma Liuming, and together they focused on such topics as gender and sexuality, as well as exploitation. The live performance To Add One Meter to an Anonymous Mountain is considered important for the Chinese avant-garde because it draws attention to the naked body. The participating artists climbed Miaofeng Mountain in the northwest of Beijing, took off their clothes, and lay naked on top of each other. “These early performances were remarkable not only for their conceptual ideas but also because they were produced in an environment of rigid social constraint” (Kirkwood, 2004, p. 20). The performance highlights physical endurance as well as the body in its interaction with the environment. Although performance art per se in China is sociopolitically engaged as well as critical, and despite the fact that this and other works by Duan and her peers can be read as political statements, neither Zhang Huan nor Duan Yingmei has received as much attention from the German art audience as has Ai Weiwei. Ai is (still) considered in Germany and most of the world as “one of the most important [. . .] and loudest critics of China” (Hedemann, 2021). But this is not a chapter on Ai Weiwei and his art. I want to focus on Duan Yingmei, since I see her as an outstanding example of a transnational female artist: one who collaborates with colleagues around the world and combines Chinese and German cultures but who is nevertheless largely neglected by the German art audience and overshadowed by men. Because this is a chapter on differences and contradictions, its structure will also be different from the others: I will use the personal interview with Duan Yingmei, which was conducted by one of my former students, Zhao Kexin, and intersperse it with comments on topics raised in her answers to the questions posed to her.1 Zhao Kexin: What was the inspiration for the artwork To Add One Meter to an Anonymous Mountain? Duan Yingmei: The artists in Beijing’s East Village wanted to do a collaborative artwork. While Duan’s answer indicates a quite passive role in the conception of the artwork, which drew a lot of attention to the Beijing East Village and brought fame to the artists, her participation in this work did indeed have a great influence on Duan’s artistic development. It initiated her interest in performance art and especially in collaborative artworks. It also ignited her interest in exploring the human body. Prior to this project she had been dedicated to painting, especially self-portraits, for which she attended classes for advanced studies at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing (CAFA). However, after this collaborative performance, communication slowly became one of the key facets of her artistic creation, which is primarily visible in her works from 2000 onward. This communication

1

I want to thank Duan Yingmei for taking the time for the interview and for answering all our questions. I also want to thank my former student Zhao Kexin, who not only conducted the interview but also transcribed it. The interview was conducted in Chinese and translated by the author of this chapter.

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includes interaction with her partners but also with the audience and the artwork. This is especially remarkable due to the fact that in her childhood Duan was not able to speak properly due to a cleft palate. Because of this “abnormality” she was stigmatized by other children (Hill, 2013, p. 16). That is to say, she was seen as the “inappropriate/d other” already at a very early age, which had a huge impact on her later artistic creation. Considering that Duan hardly spoke till the age of 21 (Anklam & Ndikung, 2011, p. 79) and seeing that communication is now key to her works, this emphasizes her ambition to overcome physical but also psychological challenges. During the time in which she hardly spoke to people she started to communicate with the objects around her and created a fairy tale world in which fantasies and dreams were brought to life. This is also expressed in some of her artworks, such as Yingmei in Wonderland (Yingmei mengyou xianjing, 2007). ZK: The four basic elements of performance art are time, space, body and the presence of the artist/the interaction with the audience. How is the interaction with the audience realized in Adding one Meter to an Anonymous Mountain? DY: The artwork was actually more about the communication between the human body and Nature. Later, mainly pictures of the performance were exhibited or posted on the internet. So, everyone who sees the pictures has their own interpretation and communicates differently with it. The artwork is centered around communication, which took place on different levels: Firstly, between the artists and their environment in the live performance. By building a mountain of naked flesh on top of a natural mountain, their human bodies fused with Nature. Secondly, between the audience present at the live performance and the artwork. And thirdly, communication with the audience who later got to see the numerous photographs of the performance. Through these photographs the performance acquired an afterlife in which the audience interacted with the artwork by looking at and interpreting the pictures. In Add One Meter to an Anonymous Mountain as well as in Nine Holes (Jiu ge dong, 1995), for which the artists lay face down naked on their bellies on top of the mountain, one on top of the other or side by side with one another, so that the viewer is not able to identify them as male or female: “The bodies are as anonymous and natural as the mountain itself, as they lie outside social or gendered contexts” (Hill, 2013, p. 17). Both works highlight that the “inappropriate/d other” is constructed by the outside, by society and the norms that surround us. It is not something that is inherent in a person because of their (dis-) abilities, status, or gender. ZK: You have been living in Germany since 1998. What brought you to Germany in the first place? DY: I came to Germany for the first time in 1995 when I was invited by the Kunsthaus Erfurt in connection with the CONFIGURA-project for a solo exhibition, and again in 1998 to study at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste Braunschweig (HBK), where I studied freelance art. After Duan moved to Braunschweig in 1998 and studied with Marina Abramović and Christoph Schlingensief, the idea of communication as a key concept in her

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works intensified and was reflected in her artworks. Her early works, which she created at HBK, are mainly solo performances in which she focuses on being an object for the audience rather than a subject. Video performances such as Facing the Crowd and Fingernail Biting (1999) center around her as the object of attention. Although she does not like to be in the spotlight and usually prefers to be “invisible,” she confronts the audience with her nervousness and discomfort. She forces herself to be there for the audience and communicates her fears and anxieties through her natural behavior. In later performances she is even more passive, for instance in the live performance Old Water (2000), in which Duan is dressed in her red wedding dress and stands still against a wall. Next to her are buckets with freezing cold water, which the audience can splash at her. In this way she wants to illustrate the different sides of life—from “happy” at one moment to “shocked” (by the cold water) in the next. The red wedding dress is an emblem of Chinese culture, since red symbolizes happiness and prosperity. The cold water hints at the custom that marriages in China were traditionally arranged by the parents, so that bride and groom met for the first time only on their wedding day: a practice which was like “throwing them into cold water.” Without moving, Duan endures the whole procedure and shows that, no matter what, we go on living our lives. I see the indifference expressed in the work also as a hint to the passivity with which Chinese society often reacts to questionable measures taken by the government. For instance, social control through a broad surveillance system or the social credit system (shehui xinyong tixi) implemented in 2014, which many in China seem to accept, although they do not like it. ZK: When you first came to Germany, was there a cultural barrier for you, and if so, which? DY: Communication. Because when I first came to Germany, I basically only spoke Chinese, and no English. Despite the initial language barrier, Duan still kept on studying and working as an artist in Germany. The performances in her early time at HBK also highlight the fact that one does not need language for communication. Duan deliberately does not start a verbal dialogue with her audience but rather draws attention to the actions and (non-)reactions as a wordless dialogue. In her live performance Clown (2001) for instance, she painted her face like a clown and grinned stiffly at the audience. Her thick and artificial smile made the viewer uncomfortable; the heavy make-up highlighted the fact that there was something else hiding behind the whole costume. Duan uses her creative energy to create artworks which “speak” to the audience without recourse to spoken language and which challenge the viewer, almost forcing him or her to react. She thereby also emphasizes that we indeed do not necessarily need language for (cross-cultural) communication. For an open door event at HBK in 2002, dressed in a night gown, she randomly slapped one of the audience members after rising from her crouched position on the stage. Her live performance Sleepwalk was chosen by her teacher Abramović as the opening for the event and it left some of the audience speechless, even “outraged.” It felt like “an act of infringement,” as Jürgen Bernhard Kuck (2013, p. 39) has called it. In other words: inappropriate. Again, the initial reaction to Duan and her artwork is to

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make both artist and artwork into the “inappropriate/d other,” although it rather has a phatic function because what it tries to do is literally wake people up. ZK: You like to include and interact with your audience in your art. Why is this so important to you? DY: Interaction and collaboration are two very important elements in my artwork. It makes me think, opens my mind and helps me increase my wisdom. Artworks such as Talk to myself (2002), for which she filmed herself while doing garden work, show how verbal communication is indeed important to her. While her body is working, her mind is busy processing; this she expresses by talking to herself in her mother tongue, Chinese. In order to make this piece more accessible and transnational, translations are provided in the subtitles for the audience. This highlights the fact that (spoken) language is an essential part of Duan’s artistic practice. While her early works at HBK were solo performances, from 2003 onward Duan also started to do more collaborative artworks. Her works also became more transnational because she not only started to collaborate with artists from different countries but herself also worked in different regions of the world. For her live performance Friend (2003), for instance, she collaborated with Mirko Winkel at HBK, but also with Marco Mazzaro at the Biennale in Vernice. It was shortly after this that she developed the concept of Daily Life Performance (DLAP), which is about how performance can be integrated into daily life. The goal is to narrow the gap between the public and art, so that art becomes a more integral part of daily life. Duan began to work with DLAP in 2008 together with Chinese artist Feng Weidong (b. 1969), a photographer with whom she worked on Filial Piety. Filial piety is a traditional Chinese virtue of respecting one’s parents and ancestors. Since Duan had some disagreements with her family, she wanted to use different ways of communicating with them, such as letters, paintings, or talking in order to better understand her family while also letting them learn about her and her art (Kuck, 2013, p. 56). Initially, the project was supposed to last 1 year (starting in 2008), but on her personal website it is still marked as ongoing. Parts of it were used for the group exhibition Father & Mother (Part 1), which was shown in China and Tunisia in 2013, but also for other shows and collaborations. For these performances, one of which is called The Circle Dream, she works together with her parents, her brother and two sisters, two brothers-in-law, her niece and nephew as well as her husband. Also her collaboration partners worked together with their families for their part of the performance. This type of collaboration revealed the different opinions and interpretations of traditional concepts such as filial piety. For instance, for the live performance Filial Piety with her partner Feng Weidong, one can see Feng’s different understanding of filial piety, which might have to do with the fact that he still lives in China: for him it is all about spending time together with the family. For his performance, he recorded the dialogue between him and his parents for 1 year during different times. The audience could watch these recordings via the instant messaging service QQ.

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ZK: You have worked with Chinese artists such as Ma Liuming and Zhang Huan as well as with Christoph Schlingensief from Germany, among others. How have their works influenced you? DY: I have only collaborated with Ma Liuming and Zhang Huan on Beijing’s East Village Artists’ collective performance To Add One Meter to an Anonymous Mountain and Nine Holes. Besides Marina Abramović, Christoph Schlingensief was an important mentor of mine when I was studying in Germany. Marina introduced me to the field of performance art and Christoph helped me to build equal and collaborative performance art. When Duan met Christoph Schlingensief in 2005, her interest in collaborative performance art increased. She describes him as having “a great talent for working with many people and his work was very intriguing” (Kuck, 2013, p. 49). While she worked with him, she developed the idea of Equal Collaborative Performance (ECP): “I decided to collaborate with others on the basis of equality, extend my range of collaborative partners, and let people in different fields become involved in collaboration” (ibid.). Since then, Duan has realized more than 100 ECP-projects and collaborated with more than 30 different people including the performance charity-project Bluebell Wood Children’s Hospice (2010), for which she volunteered at a Children’s Hospice in the UK. She came to the hospice not only as a volunteer but also an artist and encouraged the children as well as the parents to draw their stories in order to make them process their feelings and emotions during this difficult time. In that sense, her art also has a therapeutic value. In addition, Duan painted 24 paintings during this time, in collaboration with the staff and with families, all of which were given to the hospice charity to support them. Her work symbolizes inclusion and diversity, which not only transcend boundaries but even erase them. She makes art accessible to the people, but also makes people more open toward art. ZK: How exactly did Marina Abramović influence your identity as an artist? DY: Without Marina, I would have developed differently. The specific way I practice art and do research as a performance artist would not have been possible without her. When Duan continued her studies at HBK in 1998, she had hitherto only experienced performance art through her collaboration with Zhang Huan on To Add One Meter to an Anonymous Mountain and Nine Holes. Her teacher Marina Abramović was the one who really introduced her to performance art and started to answer all the questions Duan had about it: “I also discovered that the medium of performance was the best method for me to express my artistic thought” (Kuck, 2013, p. 179). Through her studies in Germany, Duan found her true passion in life: performance art. ZK: As an artist, how does life compare to Germany versus China? Is there any difference for you between practicing art here (i.e. in Germany) and there (in the PRC)? DY: As an artist, life does not feel different. After coming to Germany, I spent the majority of my time creating art. I have been doing art for more than 30 years

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now; in the 8 years before I came to Germany, I mainly painted, but since I have been in Germany, I mainly do performance art. In the description appended to her live performance piece Friend (2003), Duan explains that, since there is no sex education in Chinese schools, at the age of 21 she still did not know anything about sex. To illustrate her curiosity, the audience can see a naked man standing out in the open, while Duan, wearing a light summer dress, is approaching from the background. She holds a magnifying glass in her hand, walking toward the naked man, drawing in closer to have a look at his penis through the magnifying glass. This live performance, which was also shown at the Biennale in Venice in 2003, lasts between 3 min and 3 h. Like Duan, the audience becomes a spectator who looks at a naked body. However, the audience does not know about the cultural difference regarding sex education in Germany and China unless they read the explanation provided by Duan. Duan’s live performance also shows that, depending on the cultural background of the spectator, they will look at the naked body with more or with less curiosity. Essential to performance art is the audience’s reaction; the audience can be active and take part in the performance, which sometimes goes as far as directly communicating with the artist. Immediacy is important for performance art, which of course can only be sustained as long as the performance lasts. Performance art is a dynamic process of action and reaction and the effects can only be seen in the moments during which the performance is going on. Nakedness draws attention not only to the body but also to the “inappropriate other”: In her live performance Performancebuffet (2007) Duan wanders around the exhibition Excellent at the VW Bank Braunschweig in order to start a dialogue with the other artworks exhibited. However, when she walked around naked, her performance was canceled. Her nude body apparently caused discomfort among the spectators, which led VW Bank to “exclude” her performance from the exhibition. Although she has been living and working in Germany for centuries, reactions like these show that her art is seen as inappropriate even in a seemingly open society, in which nudity should not be treated as unacceptable, particularly not in art. ZK: You were born in Daqing in Heilongjiang Province and now you live in Braunschweig, Germany. Do you think there are any similarities between these two places? DY: Actually, I haven’t compared the two places. But I feel that Daqing is not as densely populated and is therefore similar to Braunschweig; the food in Braunschweig is very similar to that of Heilongjiang Province, too: in both places people eat a lot of sauerkraut and potatoes. Also, the cooking style is very similar as they use mostly stewing. In another interview conducted by Stephanie Rosenthal, Duan states that the notes she used in her performance Happy Yingmei (2011) were references to her life in China, for instance the traditional education she received, but they also include references to Chinese geography and history (Kuck, 2013, p. 179). In self-reflection, she adds, that through her studies in Germany, she “accepted western thought” but

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she also emphasizes that her upbringing in China has deeply influenced her (ibid.). This attachment to China is also reflected in her works: For instance in her graduation piece for HBK in 2005, Duan created the live performance installation HBK, my love for which she used traditional Chinese rice paper. She reproduced HBK’s library, which is a glass cube, by including the Chinese rice paper as windows. Duan stands inside the cube, slowly swaying from side to side with closed eyes between the things she used for her studying, such as books and brushes, which are all covered by the Chinese rice paper. The thin paper surrounds everything, even herself since she is standing inside the cube, which can be seen as a metaphor for her and her work being “covered” by Chinese culture. ZK: In the exhibition Happy Yingmei in 2011 in Malmö (Sweden), the audience entered a dark forest and you handed the audience handwritten wishes while humming to them. Was the humming planned or did you improvise it? What is the function of adding music or tunes in performance art? DY: The inspiration for Happy Yingmei came from Oscar Wilde’s fairy tale The Happy Prince, which tells the story of a little swallow and a happy prince who work together to help the poor. The interaction with the audience takes place through the handwritten notes, which contain words related to the themes of love, understanding and helping. The tunes, hummed by me, were improvised. Improvised singing, the use of the voice and language in collaboration with different musicians are often part of my live performances and my art installations. It was in 2008 when Duan collaborated for the first time with Lilith Performance Studio in Malmö for the live performance Rubbish City. For the performance, the entire gallery space of 300 square meters was filled with garbage. The audience can walk along a narrow path that meanders through the wasteland. Duan is naked and moves quietly with a sad face through the space. Besides her, there is also a little girl, who wears a white dress and looks like an angel; a man dressed in a black suit, who stares at the audience; an old man, who mumbles something; and a pianist, who plays a harmonious tune which sometimes stops. When the audience walks through the wasteland, they become indistinguishable from the actors and fuse with the whole setting. This bleak performance stands in stark contrast to her second project with Lilith Performance Studio, which she realized in 2011 with Happy Yingmei. The performance was also included in the exhibition Art of Change—New Directions from China in the Hayward Gallery in London (2012). In the interview with Rosenthal, Duan mentions that the exhibition was challenging for her, since there was a huge audience which she had to include in her performance (Kuck, 2013, p. 178). Looking at the places where her performances have taken place, one can see that she is truly an international artist. ZK: Is your album Forty-Eight Years Ago, the Road an Ocean, which you released in 2018, part of performance art through songs? Does it resonate with more people because of its form? DY: Yes, I’ve always wanted to combine performance art with a more pure form of singing in order to appeal to a wider audience. Through this attempt, I think more

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and more people can also learn about performance art. It can be said that the completion of this album fulfills my wish of many years and is an extension of my work as a performance artist. In 2018, Duan released her first music album, which was launched in the same year at Capsule Shanghai. For the album she worked together with musician Han Xiaohan. In the album, she combines ten of her performances with ten songs, which she sings in Chinese with a soft voice that almost sounds like that of a child. With this album, Duan not only realized a dream of hers; by singing in Chinese she also highlights that her mother tongue is her preferred language of communication. ZK: Is it correct to say that the art world is still male-dominated? If so, how do you feel as a female artist among those famous male artists? DY: I think this may be different in every country. As a female artist, I have never experienced any gender difference during my travels around the world over the years, whether I was participating in exhibitions or working with male artists. “The Story of Art is an illustrated Story of Man,” writes Griselda Pollock (1999, p. 24) and she further adds that “despite the expanding volume of research and publications on artists who are women, Tradition remains the tradition with the women in their own special, separated compartments, or added as politically correct supplements” (p. 23, emphasis in the original). While Pollock is referring to the West by positioning the current situation of female artists within the framework of history, especially with regard to the women’s movement of the 1970s, this statement is equally true for China and the Sinophone world. Terms such as “women’s art” (nüxing yishu) or “feminist art” (nüxing zhuyi yishu) have been used since the 1990s to describe art made by female artists in China (Cui, 2015, p. 4). Yet there is no such term for art made by male artists. This shows the gendered power structures at work here, highlighting women artists as “the Other.” The marginalization of Chinese female artists becomes even more evident when looking at exhibition practices. When Gao Minglu, the curator for the exhibition Inside Out: New Chinese Art, which opened in the Museum of Modern Art in New York (MoMa) in 1998, was asked why so few women artists were included in the exhibition, Gao responded: “Because I only thought about the development of Chinese contemporary art, not about having female artists in the exhibition or not” (Gao, 1999, p. 249). What sparked even more uproar was the exhibition China!, focusing on contemporary Chinese paintings, which opened in 1997 in the Kunstmuseum in Bonn (Germany). Not a single Chinese women artist was included in that exhibition. The director of the museum, Dieter Ronte, tried to justify this decision by stating that there are no women artists in China; there might though, he added, be some overseas Chinese female artists, living in exile, who are interesting (Werner et al., 1998, p. 31). Yet the question remains: why not include the so-called interesting overseas Chinese female artists in the exhibit such as Duan Yingmei? Are their paintings not part of contemporary Chinese art? While Ronte was rightfully criticized for his comment, a team of curators organized another exhibition the following year in the Women’s Museum in Bonn, entitled Half of the Sky:

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Contemporary Chinese women artists, for which they invited 26 women artists from China. Although this exhibition was created to respond to gender-biased exhibition practices, it singles women out. The fact that one needs to design a whole new exhibition especially for women artists in a Women’s Museum, instead of including them in general exhibits on Contemporary Chinese Art, highlights their special position as figures separated from men artists in the art world. The fact alone that there is a Women’s Museum (not the only one in the world; however, there is no such thing as a Men’s Museum) speaks to the prevailing idea of women as “separated compartments” as Pollock has put it. Although female Sinophone artists (living in exile) might get more attention than their counterparts in China, they still operate in a male-dominated artworld and are often overshadowed by their famous artist-husbands. One example is Qin Yufen, who was born in 1954 in Qingdao and moved to Berlin in Germany in the mid-1980s as part of a smaller group of artists allowed to leave post-Cultural Revolution China. While still in China, Qin was influenced by Western abstract painting and she began creating abstract art herself in the late 1970s. Her art is often described as “feminine” (see, for instance, the websites of the Pearl Lam Galleries), yet it remains to be clarified what “feminine art” means. (See Chap. 6 on Feminist Performance Art and Lin Xinmo.) Qin shares her passion for abstract painting and the interest in “Chinese material” with her husband Zhu Jinshi, born in 1954 in Beijing, who was also a member of the Stars Group. He is often considered a pioneer of Chinese abstract art and installation although he and his wife started their respective careers as artists at about the same time. In contrast to her husband, Qin is described as “becoming an increasingly important and recognized ink brush and installation artist” (Pearl Lam, 2022). This speaks to a biased and gendered perception of Sinophone artists: whereas the man has apparently already made a name for himself, the woman is still working on it. Although the two often work together, Zhu became famous for his colorful oil paintings and due to his having been included in the 2013, 28 Chinese exhibition held at the Rubell Family Collection in Miami. Besides some of his oil paintings, one highlight of the exhibit was certainly the 50-ft long Boat in the North Court: a walkin installation made of 8000 sheets of xuan-paper, bamboo, and cotton. Amongst the 28 contemporary Chinese artists whose works were chosen to “bring together a multiplicity of practices and perspectives” (Asian Art Museum, 2019) were exactly two female artists—Fang Lu and Li Shurui. Both of them rather young artists, born in the 1980s, they belong to another generation of female artists in China. Some of these have been educated in the West and are considered as leading emerging Chinese female artists who are based in China. ZK: As a Chinese artist living in Germany, how have these two cultures influenced your artistic work? DY: I grew up in China and went through the Chinese education system. Although I have lived in Germany for more than 20 years, my way of thinking and habits are still more Chinese, but of course German culture also has a lot of influence on me. Over the years, I have been to many different countries to participate in art

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exhibitions and implement art projects, so many different cultures have influenced me in one way or the other. Especially Duan’s early works are often very personal. At age 16, she transferred to a major high school in her county and had to leave her family. As she explained herself, from that time on she slowly started to live her own life. This experience is reflected in her work Sixteen. Before Duan became an artist and moved to Germany, she studied oil exploration and development at the Northeast University in China. It was only in 1991 that she moved to Beijing to study oil painting and mural painting at the CAFA. Her emotions during this time in China are very vividly expressed through her early paintings: For instance in Kümmernisse der Jugend (Youth grievances, 1993) one sees a pale and sad-looking woman staring at the viewer. With her scraggy face and big sad eyes, she almost looks like a skeleton, who is disappointed and worried. Many of the oil paintings she produced during that time are dark and portray the sadness and desolation that Duan must have felt. Her “Corner”-Series (1996) shows a crouching naked person, who seems to be excluded and left alone— the “inappropriate/d other.” Since Duan has started to do collaborative works, her art is often inspired by the life of others and those she collaborates with. ZK: In your opinion, what is the role of culture in art? DY: This is a very macro perspective: Culture plays a role in all aspects of existence, not just in the arts. Through DLAP and ECP, Duan collaborated with people from different cultures, such as Nelson Mapako, a practitioner of professional theater art, with whom she realized the performance/research project Polygamy (2010). After having planned their project for over a year, Duan went to Swaziland to live in the countryside and experience life in polygamous families. Together, Mapako and Duan worked with the families through the art of acting and performing in order to answer such questions as “Does polygamy hurt women?” or “Why do women go to polygamous families?” In another project, Duan collaborated with the Indonesian artist ADI KUS MA FA. Together they created the interactive sound performance Life game (2010), for which they used different colored plastic bowls filled with water. By stepping into the bowls or clapping their hands in the water, they created a soundscape to represent memories of childhood. Duan’s oeuvre is transnational and transcultural because her collaborations are spaces of exchange—exchange across nations and cultures and without the interference or direction of the perceived center. As an artist, she does not want to be appropriated for the purpose of being a symbol for one culture, neither Chinese nor German; rather, she wants to be recognized as an unbiased artist who sees art as a way of communication, essential for everybody’s life. ZK: Art can be a way to bridge cultural differences. Do you think your art can contribute to connecting Chinese and German cultures? DY: I think that some of my works promote the integration of Chinese and German cultures. For instance, the performance artworks Happy Yingmei and Father &

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Mother. In Happy Yingmei (2011) I give a lot of notes, little notes about Chinese culture to the audience. Father & Mother gives the Germans an understanding of the Chinese concept of filial piety. The effect of artworks such as Filial Piety or Father & Mother is not only that the German audience is introduced to traditional Chinese virtues such as these, which still dominate Chinese society, but also that this audience is led to question the very idea that is associated with these virtues. Duan initially began to work on that topic because of the disagreements she had with her family about her lifestyle: Her parents expected her to lead a successful life and become wealthy. They compared her to her brother and sisters, who lead a different life, and they did not understand why she practiced art, if not for money. “The performance attempts to capture and mirror the clashing and distance that often characterizes different generations in China.” (Duan, 2022). It forces the audience to reflect upon their own values and virtues, while it critically analyzes the concept of filial piety for future generations. ZK: What kind of artwork are you currently working on? (Note by the author: the interview was conducted in 2021 before the exhibition had started) DY: Currently, I am working on an exhibition titled Spirit Labor: Duration, Difficulty, and Affect at the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art in Moscow, Russia, which will take place between September 10, 2021 and January 30, 2022. The title of the work is I Would Like to Know You. The viewer can scan a QR code on Instagram and connect with me. They can make an appointment and we can communicate online. If they want to post something, I will help them to do it together. Through this work, I learned a lot about people from Russia and about Russian culture. The project was realized before the War in Ukraine began. Before this chapter was finished, Duan was so kind to share her experience about this work of hers with me. Apparently, the exhibition’s curators had originally planned to divide the show in two parts: One was a 5-month-long exhibition, the other a 2-month-long performance event. However, due to Covid, they decided to cancel the performance and Duan was invited to take part in the exhibition. Duan wanted her artwork to go beyond the physical exhibition space and take part in the everyday life, therefore she planned a DLP and interact with people from different parts of the world through social media. The conversations she had with the audience were mostly about people’s lives and work. In the course of the exhibition, Duan chatted to around 600 people from all over the world and about 180 posts were made by Duan on Instagram during the 5-month period, which included pictures and text (see yingmei_d.uan). Although this artwork might look simple, it was actually hard work for Duan: Sometimes she would work 17 h a day. Duan also mentioned that this is one of her favorite art projects she has done so far. ZK: Have you ever had the feeling that you need to explain your art to the audience because of cultural differences? DY: Even if there are no cultural differences, artists need to explain their work to the audience so that the audience can understand the artist’s work more deeply.

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Epilogue

When Ai Weiwei came to Germany in 2015, everyone was excited. The Universität der Künste Berlin (UdK) offered a visiting professorship for 3 years, so that Ai could be with his wife and child. Ai Weiwei was happy because, after 4 years of house arrest in China, he was now finally able to leave; the UdK was happy because, since 2010, they had been trying to acquire the famous artist as a visiting professor; and the German public was happy because a famous, socially-critical artist was coming to Berlin. However, 4 years later, Ai Weiwei left Berlin because he felt ostracized by German society and also criticized the German government for their economic dependency on the PRC. The once-harmonious relationship between the Chinese artist and the German public was ruined. Germans did not understand his sudden accusations of their being a closed society which failed to respect other opinions; and Ai Weiwei seemed enraged about how he and his works were treated, or rather criticized, in Germany: for instance, his selfies with refugees or his recreation of the dead Syrian boy Aylan Kurdi, who died on the beach of Lesbos. His works were suddenly seen as inappropriate and, through his behavior, Ai Weiwei showed that he could not be appropriated. But in contrast to Duan Yingmei, who was made the “inappropriate/d other” first because of her perceived disability as a child and then because of her crossing of imagined borders in her artworks, Ai was never stigmatized because of his (dis-) abilities by the public. Whereas Duan overcame the stigmatization by confronting it and working toward a goal—the goal of using art as a means of cross-cultural communication—Ai simply left. Whereas Duan overcame all obstacles in her life and established herself as a Chinese female performance artist working in/from Germany, Ai obliterated the cross-cultural relationship he seemed to have established between himself and Germany and searched for a new audience. While Ai made himself the “inappropriate/d other,” Duan was made the “inappropriate/d other” based on her (dis-)abilities. Her works are by their very nature transcultural, while the effect of Ai’s works seems rather to be to contribute to widening the cultural gap between China and Germany. Arguably, Duan’s art is often more subtle in its critique. Yet it clearly encourages the viewer to critically reflect upon topics such as traditional values, waste management, and social exclusion in order to foster transcultural communication.

References Anklam, N., & Ndikung, B. S. B. (Eds.). (2011). Nomadic Settlers – Settled Nomads (pp. 78–79). Revolver Publ. Asian Art Museum. (2019). 28 Chinese. Retrieved from http://www.asianart.org/exhibitions_ index/28-chinese Cui, S. (2015). Gendered bodies: Toward a women’s visual art in contemporary China. University of Hawaii Press.

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Duan, Y. (2022). Duan Yingmei. Retrieved from https://www.yingmei-art.com/de/ Gao, M. (Ed.). (1999). Inside out: New Chinese art (p. 1999). Los Angeles. Grzinic, M. (1998, August 12). Shifting the borders of the other: An interview with Trinh T. Minhha. Retrieved from https://www.heise.de/tp/features/Shifting-The-Borders-of-The-Other-34413 51.html Hedemann, P. (2021, December 11). Künstler Ai Weiwei: “Wer könnte besser sein als ich?”. RedaktionsNetzwerk Deutschland. Retrieved from https://www.rnd.de/kultur/ai-weiwei-iminterview-ueber-china-berlin-und-die-oh nmacht-der-ku nst-YYUVMVBSJRD3 7PDEYKPRVLOPMI.html Hill, K. (2013). Yingmei Duan: A subliminal presence. In J. B. Kuck (Ed.), Yingmei Duan: Performance and performative installation art 1995-2013 (pp. 16–17). Lehmanns Media. Kirkwood, C. (2004). Chinese performance artists: Redrawing the map of Chinese culture. TheatreForum, 25, 16–26. Kuck, J. B. (Ed.). (2013). Yingmei Duan: Performance and performative installation art 19952013. Lehmanns Media. Pollock, G. (1999). Differencing the Canon: Feminist desire and the writing of art’s histories. Routledge. Pearl Lam Galleries. (2022). Qin Yufen. Retrieved from https://www.pearllam.com/artist/qin-yufen/ Werner, C., Ping, Q., & Pitzen, M. (Eds.). (1998). The half of the sky: Exhibition catalogue. Frauen Museum.

Rebecca Ehrenwirth is an Assistant Professor of Translation (Chinese-German) at the University of Applied Sciences/SDI Munich. She received her Ph.D. in Sinology from Ludwig-MaximiliansUniversity in Munich in 2017. Her main research fields include Sinophone literature, Translation Studies, contemporary Chinese art, Queer Studies, and Anglophone literature. She is the author of Zeitgenössische sinophone Literatur in Thailand (Contemporary Sinophone Literature in Thailand). An article on intertextuality in Sinophone literature in Thailand has been published with the journal Modern Chinese Literature and Culture. She is a founding member of the Society of Sinophone Studies and the current Secretary-Treasurer.

Chapter 6

In an Ambush from All Sides: On the Conditions of Feminist Performance Art in the PRC—A Sino-German Encounter with Feminist Performance Artist Li Xinmo Raimund Rosarius

Abstract Foreign spectators to the Mainland Chinese context might underestimate the courage it takes for a female artist in China to publicly identify herself as a feminist artist. The struggles for a feminist performance artist are even greater. A key proponent of outspokenly feminist performance art in China (nüquan zhuyi xingwei yishu) is the artist, curator, and essayist Li Xinmo (born 1976). Cooperating with her on manifold performance art projects and discursive formats in mainland China from 2017 onward, I soon realized how unique her position was in the context of her country, how vital her role in encouraging a young generation of female artists to emphasize rather than to disguise feminism in their work, and in their identity as artists. As a male German researcher and artist (born 1989), I have only begun to fathom, through 4 years of research, the legal, social, and cultural restrictions proponents of feminist performance face every day. This text is an expert interview with one of the key representatives of feminist performance. It aims to help a reader unfamiliar with this highly specific context understand the dispositive in light of which contemporary (and future) works of this art form come into existence. Keywords Xingwei Yishu · Chinese performance art · Feminist performance art · Chinese German performance interweavings

6.1

In Dialogue? A Chinese Performance Within a German Installation

Before letting Li Xinmo illustrate the ever more arduous production conditions of the art form she devoted her life to I want to supply the reader with two historic examples and elaborate on the structural and ever deteriorating marginalization of

R. Rosarius (✉) Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich, Munich, Germany e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 H. Jin et al. (eds.), Contemporary German–Chinese Cultures in Dialogue, Global Germany in Transnational Dialogues, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-26779-6_6

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feminist performance which they reveal. There are two main monographs that view Chinese performance independent of a broader visual arts context. These are Performance Art in China, published in 2006 by the French art historian Thomas J. Berghuis, and Beijing Xingwei, published by the US-based Taiwanese live arts scholar Cheng Meiling. While it is Berghuis’ achievement to establish a new discourse—at least in the West—Cheng is more precise in localizing that most of what is perceived as Chinese performance has roots in Beijing. Both studies foreground places but neither accentuates feminist positions or other distinct streams within xingwei yishu. This text and the Sino-German cultural encounter it represents are not to be confused with an artist’s portrait in which the work of either artist is discussed in detail, neither does it offer an aesthetic or discursive comparison with the state of the arts in Western feminist performance and its theory. When on the 17th May 2001 He Chengyao (born 1964) walked the Great Wall of China bare-chested, it marked her first steps toward becoming one of the most influential female artists in China. It is not overstating the case to say that this moment in its straightforwardness could be described as one of the dawns of specifically feminist performance art in China. With her first performance He Chengyao emerged not only as a female artist in the genre of xingwei yishu but also as a decidedly feminist performance artist. The context that spawned this performance, a performance that He later named Opening the Great Wall (kaifang changcheng), reveals a lot about the roots of feminist performance—and conditions of production remain as precarious nowadays as they were around the millennium. At that time, the Great Wall was lined with the German artist’s H.A. Schult’s Trash People sculptures. This lavish installation, traveling the whole world occupying the monuments of other cultures, contrasted with He Chengyao’s ephemeral work: simplistic, corporeal, local, and intrinsically ecological in nature (for a more in-depth discussion of the performance, cf. Cheng, 2013, pp. 200–204). Instead of praising her thoughtfulness, Chinese art critics were enraged. The action that according to He Chengyao happened spontaneously at the sight of Schult’s artwork “attracted a great deal of media interest [. . .] critics, fellow artists, and authors of numerous anonymous postings on the Internet criticized He for her ‘immoral action’ and, additionally, for her supposed intention of profiteering” (Sung, 2012, p. 123). The accusations toward He Chengyao were manifold. Apart from female nudity in public—generally perceived as offending against good morals in China—she was accussed of expediency, of exploiting the prestige of a German artist’s work. In fact, one cannot talk about He Chengyao’s first performance without mentioning a male German artist and his surrounding artwork. The asymmetry inscribed into this SinoGerman cultural encounter from the very start is striking. According to their creator the Trash People, human-shaped and sized objects made out of trash imported from Germany are “by now the most famous Germans” and Schult himself “the most famous living German artist in China” (Wahl-Immel, 2014). I cannot reconstruct the sentiments of the time when Schult’s work toured the world and made a stop at the Great Wall. However, from a contemporary point of view, Schult’s position as the most notable German artist is highly questionable. Maybe he was indeed the most prolific German artist but for a very limited time frame only. An artwork that

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blatantly contradicts its own ideology of criticizing environmental pollution while not taking its own carbon footprint into consideration was granted the symbol of China as a playing field, while a female Chinese artist was not given a stage. Claiming back the Great Wall with her body in the public eye she was instead confronted with the misogyny of her compatriots. As she said in an interview with xingwei expert Cheng Meiling, exhibiting her “less than youthful, postpartum maternal body” (He Chengyao qtd. in Cheng, 2013, p. 200) was ridiculed as the “miscalculation” (ibid.) of a female artists desperate for fame. Precisely such harsh reactions, however, had motivated her turn to performance art (ibid.): henceforth, the trained painter is mainly perceived as a performance artist (cf., e.g., Sung, 2012, p. 113).

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Defense and Self-Defense on Battlefields

More than a decade later the conflict has heated up even more. In her performance One Person’s Battlefield (Yi ge ren de zhanzheng) in May 2013 nüquanzhuyi xingwei artist Yan Yinhong (born 1967) addressed sexual violence against women and was brutally interrupted by two male artist colleagues that tried to rape her during her performance.1 The Chinese art world’s reception of the incident was unsympathetic and showed a crude distortion of offender and victim. Curator of the festival,2 Cheng Meixi, pointed to the psychological problems one of the male artists suffered from and added that they were not provided help in China (cf. Tatlow, 2013). According to the logic Cheng employs, the perpetrators are not to blame. Rather, Cheng argues, the perpetrators are to be commiserated for their mental state and situation. Even if the case for limited culpability could be made, this argument only serves to obfuscate the discrimination against female artists, especially when they are addressing feminist issues. Why did the live audience not intervene? Parts of the audience later apologized online for failing to offer assistance, an apology which they grounded in their belief that the assault was part of the performance (cf. Jacobs, 2015, p. 104). A myriad of excuses meet a lack of sympathy for a victim of both assault and an equally brutal depriving of artistic freedom and reveal the forsaken position of nüquan zhuyi xingwei artists. Li Xinmo—whose own performance within the same festival was also interrupted by yet another male artist—clearly sees a systematic operation against female artist which is in sharp contrast to isolated-case argumentation of Cheng Meixi and his likes.

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Yan Yinhong has sent me a recording of the interrupted performance. In the video documentation it becomes apparent that Yan Yinhong tries to take on two contradictory actions at once: She tries to shake off the interrupter whilst she also tries to continue her performance. From what I see in this video, it is very hard to imagine that one could perceive those violent interruptions as part of the performance. 2 Hai’an Cultural Arts Festival (Hai’an wenhua yishu jie).

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Art critic Wu Wei gives an uncoded, harsher example of misogynist thinking toward nüquan zhuyi xingwei artists. Wu Wei’s approach by far exceeds the usual chauvinist argument that Yan Yinhong provoked the actions of both men through exhibiting her body. He elevates the actions of both men in Yan Yinhong’s performance to “interactive art.” One Person’s Battlefield would cry out for such a behavior. It is true that Wu Wei signals that one of the artists had gone beyond what is decent when putting out his genitals, but at the same time he denies Yan Yinhong a deeper understanding of performance art. The denial of “interaction” with the “audience” (Wu is writing about the offender as the audience) would indicate an incomprehension of performance art’s essence. In the same critique he tilts at “Li Xinmo’s feminism” as “female hegemonism.”3 Within a polemic which acts like an artistic critique4 of Yan Yinhong’s piece alone, and with this framing tries to legitimize discursive authority, Wu launches a frontal attack on Li Xinmo, who had argued that mysogynic sentiments were systemic. This potshot not only indicates Li Xinmo’s vital role in defending her nüquan zhuyi xingwei colleague. Even more importantly, Wu’s attack reveals that Li Xinmo—both in her activism and discursive weight—is perceived as a threat to be silenced by male art critics and theoreticians who determine the discourse. It speaks volumes of her discursive weight in Chinese art circles that in turn marginalize her. Structurally bare of economic and social capital, she has accumulated this cultural capital through theory building alongside artistic practice from the very start of her career employing the pioneering spaces that the early phases of the Chinese web and blogosphere had to offer.5 The polemics concerning “female hegemonism” are a familiar trope. Two appropriations are entangled in this manifestation of antifeminism:6 Redefinitions of feminism, on the one hand, and postcolonialism, on the other hand, are emerging from, or actively supported by, the state apparatus. Those inner-Chinese appropriations of terms strategically designed and used to be compatible with international discourse have an increasing impact on it and lead to a further marginalization of nüquan zhuyi xingwei artists also on the international stage.

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Wu Wei’s critique which is briefly summarized in this paragraph was published on artintern.net. It is no longer available online, Yan Yinhong has supplied me with a copy of the critique from her private archive. 4 If judging Wu’s writing as art criticism alone, the question would remain why Wu does not notice the inconsistency between the title of Yan’s performance indicating one person fighting a lone battle and Wu’s call for a communitarian acting out of the piece. Furthermore, his premise that all performance art is interactive in essence is highly challengeable. 5 In the interview that follows, Li Xinmo will elaborate on the significance of theory building for her work. 6 Similar to but not identical with what Li Xinmo will repeatedly refer to as ‘masculinism’.

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Having to Choose Identities

In the spectrum of postcolonialism with Chinese characteristics, the theories of art critic and curator Zhu Qi are most obvious examples of such a reframing. Zhu Qi— notorious among Chinese art circles for his proximity to the central ideology7—has ironically managed to be translated and published in Jörg Huber and Zhao Chuan’s edited volume A New Thoughtfulness in Contemporary China: Critical Voices in Art and Aesthetics (2011). Zhu Qi develops a dichotomic history of contemporary Chinese art emerging from two milieus: artists groups that are prone to “rebellious art” and “responsible groups” (Q. Zhu, 2011, p. 146). In Zhu’s narration “rebellious” artists dominate Western discourse because of the West’s limited understanding of Chinese reality while he naturalizes their marginalization within mainland China: “Art groups well-known in the West have never really been accepted in Chinese society, not because of their Westernized language but mainly because they did not reflect the spiritual orientation of a responsible group which helps China progress.” (Q. Zhu, 2011, p. 146). Zhu’s attack is not limited to the reproach that experimental Chinese artists do not represent China—which is frequent in Chinese discourse. More importantly, he deadens their agency by depicting them as poodles of the West, as profiteers of a colonial art history enforced upon traditional Chinese culture. In this polemic, which hides behind a postcolonial claim, Zhu also doubts that the artists’ rebellion is authentic. Between the lines he accuses them of putting up a moral show for the West while merely seeking material advantages, of showcasing for Western customers. According to Zhu, Chinese art scholars would very much like to write their own alternative art history (which also means excluding those “rebellious” groups from it) but would not dare to. The only concrete detail of this project Zhu mentions is rebranding “Chinese Contemporary Art” into “Contemporary Chinese Art.” Minimally changing a word sequence could disconnect a wide range of artists from both Chinese and international discourse. Zhu’s scheme, deliberately vague in its description, would affect those artists not yet established in an international canon more tremendously than representatives of the already historic Chinese Contemporary Art, with its roots in the 1980s. If Zhu’s strategic use of postcolonial discourse succeeds, official art8 approved of and fostered by the state apparatus would not only experience a renaissance in Mainland China but for the first time dominate an international perception of Chinese art. Art Curator and sinologist Kim Karlsson, for instance, seems to fall for the logic of Zhu’s faction:

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Asking different Chinese experimental artists on Zhu Qi they straightaway referred to him as someone from the “inner-system” (tizhinei). His affiliation to the China Art Research Institute (guojia huayuan lilun bu) further supports this claim. 8 The categorization of Chinese art into official and non-official art is largely based on John Clark (2002) and reappears in as a dichtomy in his writing (cf. 2014). I owe this insight like so many to xingwei Luminary Thomas J. Berghuis (cf. 2012). Studies on xingwei would virtually be impossible without his groundbreaking monograph (2006).

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In China, voices are raised against the ‘threat’ to Chinese tradition through a cultural homogenization dictated by the West. In controversial debates, the question of cultural identity and the promotion of a contemporary art with Chinese characteristics is raised, as well as the need to develop an alternative and independent art theory and criticism from the Chinese art and cultural-historical context (Karlsson, 2010, pp. 62–63, trans. by the author).

Such an adoption of official art discourse does not seem to be knowledgeable of its origins in the Chinese state apparatus or tries to obfuscate it. “[C]ontemporary art with Chinese characteristics” is a reference to “Socialism with Chinese characteristics” and marks the configuration of international discourse, be it Socialism, Market Economy, or Contemporary Art, through the CPC. The “controversial debates” have long been decided structurally through what is sanctioned or welcomed by the state apparatus. At the same time, this painful void one should be sympathetic with is tried to be filled with nationalism in the Chinese specificity. This explains why Chinese contemporary artists like Li Xinmo stress the transcultural and transregional aspects of their work and refer to the questions their work raises as universal ones. With its critical nature and being thoroughly influenced by global feminist theory nüquan zhuyi xingwei could never operate beyond the margins of non-official art. Like all other non-official art forms, it would fall into oblivion if attempts like that of Zhu Qi were successful. Within this mode of appropriation, one that mimics postcolonial discourse, the threat to nüquan zhuyi xingwei in particular is even greater than that to Chinese Contemporary Art in general. What literary scholar Aijun Zhu elaborates on for female writers in developing countries, who are often asked “Which is more important to you, to be a woman or to be a Chinese/Black/Asian/etc.?” (A. Zhu, 2007, p. 9), is true for their live arts counterparts as well: With their exposures and critiques of various forms of sexism within their racial / national communities, they are frequently charged with misrepresenting racial or national communities, they are frequently charged with misrepresenting racial or national realities and accused of selling out or betraying their race or nation, thus perpetuating the racial / national (male) stereotypes as the primitive, backward, and exotic other vis-à-vis the White man who embodies civilization, truth and all other things that spell superiority. As a result, Third World women often find themselves stuck in unproductive and negative cultural debates. (A. Zhu, 2007, pp. 9–10)

In the same line, as we can see with He Chengyao, female performance artists are criticized for sacrificing their Chineseness for their female identity. Their identifying as feminist artists would apparently hinder a postcolonial Chinese emancipation interwoven with the new nationalism authorities actively promote. Having to choose between a female compatriot and a white male artist/expert figure, male critics and artists colleagues cast their lot with the latter, accusing He Chengyao of appropriation and seeking exposition through parasitic means. Male xingwei colleagues tax outspokenly feminist artists with sacrificing art for feminism. Estranging yet powerful dichotomies are constructed: Female artists are supposed to choose between feminist and ethnic as well as feminist and artist identities. Discrimination against feminism, of course, goes far beyond Chinese art circles, even though polemics and provocation make it particularly visible in this field. Traditional feminism (nüquan zhuyi) in China—associating itself with questions of

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human rights—is targeted by the censor. With reference to Mao Zedong who famously declared that “women can hold up half the sky” ( funü neng ding ban bian tian)9 questioning the situation of women’s rights since the establishment of the People’s Republic of China is marked as obsolete. The state apparatus depicts itself as progressive in that regard from the very start, indeed as an early and global authority in gender equality. According to such logic, Chinese feminists are accused of being obsessed by chasing a phantom, while in reality there is factual equality.

6.4

Competing Feminisms

It further adds to the conflict that there are two competing translations and readings of feminism, which is exactly why I have been referring to nüquan zhuyi xingwei. Nüquan zhuyi incorporates quan, rights or power, whereas nüxing zhuyi, the second and younger translation, puts xing, sex or gender, into the focus. In a qualitative study based on interviews with young Chinese women in Shanghai, Zheng Jiaran tells her “own feminist adventure and small victory: from a spoilt only daughter in a middle-class family in China’s capital [. . .] to a grown-up young lady who is today realizing her dream of completing her doctorate degree in the best university across the globe” (Zheng, 2016, p. V). Zheng’s thesis represents an emphatic study of (and manifestation of) nüxing zhuyi that, like a duck taking to the water, integrates careerism, the consumption of luxury goods, and the application of cosmetics into feminism. Dorothy Ko and Wang Zheng make a plea for “local histories of feminism” (Ko & Wang, 2006, p. 463) within their translation study and emphasize that nüquan zhuyi is a “derisive term in China today except for a small circle of scholars and activists” (ibid.). Nüquan zhuyi “connotes the stereotype of a man-hating he-woman hungry for power” (ibid.). Nüxing zhuyi, in contrast, features a “semantic flexibility [. . .] taken to mean an ideology promoting femininity and thus reinforcing gender distinctions” (ibid.). Ko and Wang also call this reading a “softer feminism” (ibid.) which—most probably fortifying gender stereotypes—would hardly be recognized as a feminist position at all outside of China but is nowadays favored by many Chinese scholars (cf. ibid). In an exemplary study on “Chinese digital feminism,” the blurb already anticipates the apology to traditional patriarchy: Chinese women’s self-empowerment through using social media is derived not from a straightforward struggle against the patriarchy or for woman power, but from a gentle, rational yet resolute stance that incorporates a new female identity into the ‘harmonious society’ enshrined in Confucian ideals, thus creating a new digital feminism with Chinese characteristics (Chang et al., 2018, p. 326).

The three authors’ abstract, shown above, tries to affiliate to international feminist discourse while it appeases the research community at home that nüquan will be

9 However, and this strengthens my argument, it is unclear whether this phrase can be attributed to Mao Zedong at all (cf. Zhong, 2011, p. 227).

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renounced. Gentleness (a gender cliché par excellence), the “harmonious society” (societal model under Chairman Hu Jintao), and Confucianism (feudal and patriarchal) are preserved for the digital age and build an ill-fated mélange considering the future of women’s rights. If academia continues to uncritically adopt this manifestation of nüxing zhuyi as a local specificity of feminism in China, Li Xinmo and likeminded artists are fighting a lost cause. While nüquan zhuyi is perceived as a destabilizing factor, nüxing zhuyi stabilizes the patriarchy of its surrounding system. The significance Li Xinmo and other nüquan zhuyi xingwei artists put on a “harder” feminism, with its focus on human rights in particular, and the violent repudiation they are confronted with, can be approximated with this background knowledge. Feminist xingwei is in An Ambush from All Sides. As I wanted to demonstrate in this introduction, it is not only the political authorities and official art closely interrelated with the state apparatus that limit the space of nüquan zhuyi xingwei. A new nationalism, mimicking postcolonial thought, polemizes against those artists by claiming that they betray traditional Chinese culture for a foreign audience and for a selfish cause and are concerned merely with one’s own gender. Traditional patriarchal culture, with its manifold gatekeepers, marginalizes this art form as much as a new, marketized “softer feminism.” The artists this text focuses on emphasize their openness to transcultural dialogue and depend on it, like most art forms that are marginalized in their native cultures. Knowledge of this cultural backdrop is necessary, if not essential. Hopefully, it will also encourage future dialogue.

6.5 6.5.1

Interview with Li Xinmo First Day: 05th February 2020

Raimund Rosarius: What was your initial motivation to create performance art?10 Li Xinmo: In 2008 I was in Tianjin. That year a lot of things happened. My child was born, and I became a single mother. I also graduated from my master studies at the art academy (Tianjin Academy of Fine Arts). Through my personal experience I occupied myself more and more with issues of gender. I created a series of works about women’s rights. At that time, I used to live at Xinkai River. Xinkai is a very large river and its pollution is serious. In the summer, the water is covered with cyano algae that spread a pungent smell. Each time I walked along the river I became incredibly sad. Those green hues glared and were turbid at the same time: life and death all in one. One day a girl’s body was recovered from the river. Later it was confirmed that she had been raped and murdered. This caused me to create

10

This interview was conducted through the mobile application Wechat (weixin). I asked the questions in English, Li Xinmo answered in Chinese. After conducting the interview, I translated her answers into English. I decided to ask the questions in English so that Li Xinmo would use her intuitive choice of Chinese translations.

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an artwork. It was my performance piece The Death of the Xinkai River (Xinkai he zhi si). I cannot swim, I am afraid of it even. Nevertheless, I went into this dead river. The performance resembled a theater amidst nature. I was also inspired by Ophelia’s insights. This river was a metaphor for the death of nature. I combined female death and the death of nature to an integral whole. It was a double metaphor that was in keeping with my own situation at that time as well as the realities that I observed. RR: You clearly position yourself as a feminist artist. This is a choice fraught with obstacles in China. What were your experiences over the years? LX: After I published a series of works that positioned themselves as feminist, published articles, and publicly committed myself to feminism, the art world’s response was strong, at the same time I was confronted with countless attacks and met with resistance. I discovered more and more that I was fighting a lonely battle. China is an eminently masculinist society, critics, curators, and artists are all men. They prefer well-behaved and compliant female artists and hate feminism. To insist on feminist positions means to isolate oneself, to be marginalized and even demonized. I must have been pretty brave at that time. I did not care about what other said just wrote one article after the other and published them online where a lot of people could read them. From 2008 until 2013, I continuously wrote articles, worked artistically, and participated in exhibitions. In the last years controls became tighter and the spaces smaller and smaller, it is difficult to raise the voice once again. RR: What does nüxing zhuyi mean for you in contrast to the nüquan zhuyi you refer to? LX: In my opinion, nüxing zhuyi should be concerned with human rights, women should not be discriminated against and face injustices because of their gender. First and foremost, it is about equality as a universal concept. Secondly, it is a new understanding and a new definition of sex. Nüxing zhuyi as a theory was developed on the basis of postmodernism that tackled logocentrism and discovered that it is problematic to divide the world into dualities, such as human and nature, man and woman. Those dualisms are repressive constructions, humans stand above nature, men are considered superior to women. Those ideas should be rejected. Nüxing zhuyi makes us understand the difference between gender and biological sex and explains that women are constructed by society. Thirdly, it is about female voices and female perspectives. Female modes of expression have always been suppressed and buried. Hence, the world should hear and see them anew, acknowledge them as creators and writers of history. Feminism has two translations in Chinese: One is nüquan zhuyi and another is nüxing zhuyi. RR: Hearing about the terrible incident at Yan Yinhong’s performance One Person’s Battlefield made me reconsider a lot of my views on the xingwei scene. However, the reactions by Chinese art critics shocked me even more. They hint at deep structural reservations of male agents in the art scene against their female colleagues. LX: That’s right, in this case sexual harassment has seized the performance stage, but the male critics explained it quite realistically. It is a widespread phenomenon

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that people condone a man laying hands on a woman. They also consider sexual harassment understandable. As China still is a patriarchal class society positions of power are exploited: That a teacher sexually molests a student or a superior an employee, for instance, is an ordinary phenomenon in China. RR: We often wrongly suppose that artists are ahead of their time: Having a liberated view on ethics and morality. Is this true for China? LX: I think that most of the artists in China still insist on a conservative notion of art, traditional and realistic painting are the mainstream. It is true that there are artists with own ideas, but they act rather commercially. There are very few artists solely who solely focus on art and explore it further. But all of that is very, very difficult. Maybe the avoidance of political topics as well as the lack of theoretical background is the reason for the contemporary Chinese art world to be coined by a superficial and one-sided cognitive structure. In the West feminist art is certainly nothing new but in China it still is in the initiation phase. RR: What brought you to theoretical feminism in particular? What kind of feminist works/sources influenced you? Initially and nowadays? LX: In university I came in touch with feminist art works for the very first time, it was an illustrated book that introduced Western feminist art. Those expressive artworks left a lasting impression. When I came in touch with contemporary art later on, I found out that feminist art is an important part of contemporary art. I started creating artwork and read theoretical writing because I found out that only making art is not enough, a theoretical system that carries the work is also necessary. Thus, I read a lot of writing on feminist theory: I prefer feminist theory to feminist activism because it lets me discover and think the world anew. Early feminist theory, queer theory, and eco-feminism all influenced me. Talking about art in general there are a lot of female artists that inspired me like Louise Bourgeois, Marlene Dumas, and Kiki Smith. In performance art Marina Abramović had the greatest influence on me. RR: What was it that intrigued you about Abramović’s work? LX: As I saw photos of her performance in a magazine for the first time, I was deeply shocked. It was her piece Lips of Thomas. She used a knife to engrave a fivepointed star on her belly. Her work had something very agonizing, it was her presence and her corporeality. I could feel her spiritual world and strong will. Her performance was so truthful, this kind of truth makes her performance appear to have a spirit. She made me understand that doing art is a state into which you put your whole body and heart. It is the presence of one person. RR: Even your pieces of fine art entail a strong corporeality. Why is the body that important in your work and for what reason? LX: I did a lot of performance art pieces. The most important characteristics of performance art are presence and body. There are artists who use different methods, of course. I prefer to use my own body to create. But the body I talk about also includes a series of performance processes. When I perform xingwei, I can better enter a mode of self-forgetfulness (wangwo taidu). This is a very special experience; one’s self disappears but becomes another kind of existence. In the depth of the soul I will be called up. If I only follow the calling, I can bring

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my audience into the same state. Maybe I like the communication between me and the audience amidst the depth of my soul, but I can only reach this state through my body. RR: You just described your process as a kind of flow-experience and also as spiritual. Do you understand your art as spiritual? LX: I like forms that combine rational and perceptual elements. When I conceive a new piece, I am extremely rational, from the concept to the logical connection of every step, I will also employ some rhetoric methods, and pay attention to the rhythm of props and acting. The description and elucidation of the whole work are very theoretical, but when I perform I will let myself enter a state selfforgetfulness. RR: Do you think that this mode of self-forgetfulness and feminism interact in a Chinese context? Or asked differently how would feminism and spirituality interact in a Chinese context? LX: I think this state of self-forgetfulness is a very individual production characteristics of my work, it is hard to extend it into the framework of feminism. In my experience from childhood on, I am a typical victim. I experienced all kinds of harm from the masculinist society. I had been weak until I discovered feminism. It made me stronger and stronger and made me to dare to speak out this harm. Therefore, I use my body to tell my story. I do not like to condescendingly talk about feminism. I show the real situation and state of Chinese women in order to make everyone put it into consideration. [After a pause] But I will not be a narcissist, I dissect myself as a cell of this society, to let people see the illness of the society. One person already is a society. Like a cell I will divide myself, magnify myself to a large society for a better understanding. [. . .]

6.5.2

Second Day: 06th February 2020

RR: When and why did you start curating? LX: In 2013 I started to conceive exhibitions. The first time I curated The Other Body (Yizai de shenti), an exhibition about women’s topics. This sparked great reactions. The exhibition was separated into two sections: photography and performance. Each artwork had a strong feminist grounding. The exhibitions sparked a lot of controversy because the works exhibited differed immensely from former women’s exhibitions in China, because it was very critical. This was one of my motives to start curating. I had noticed that there were only exhibitions for women’s art and women’s exhibitions but no truly feminist art. These are two completely different concepts. I wanted to express the basic concept what feminist art is. RR: How do you manage to create a productive environment for other feminist artists?

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LX: I think that both writing articles and curating is very important. China’s curators and critics are all men, additionally they have absolutely no feminist perspective. Thus, it is very hard for female artists to be understood and discovered. Female artists in general have no right of expression. This is why I think that both publicist and curatorial activities are very important. Through writing articles one can analyze and comment on genuinely feminist art. To curate feminist art can help female artists who do not dare to argue from a feminist stance to express their thoughts more courageously and produce work. Through my exhibitions outstanding feminist art surfaced. This work is very important, through my effort I could give a stage to suppressed, potentially feminist artist and strengthen their visibility. RR: Apart from your outstanding work, who do you consider important representatives of feminist xingwei that we should know of? And for what reason? LX: Yan Yinhong is a very good artist, her work One Person’s Battlefield (Yi ge ren de zhanzhi) is very expressive. There is an artist I would like to mention named Sun Shaokun (1980–2016), she was a very talented xingwei artist. Her works are great, she has created a series of feminist xingwei. A few years ago, she killed herself. I dedicated an article to her. RR: You are an artist, a curator, and an art historian in one person. How do you manage the balancing act of all your work and functions? LX: I like crossing borders, doing different things at the same time. I believe that my essential identity and work is that of an artist. But I hope that I can be an artist with my own theory building. My works are largely conceptual. Thus, I need a lot of space to think and write. The process of thinking then develops into writing. When there is a suitable opportunity, I will present the products of my thought in form of an exhibition. Doing this I merge different processes. It is most important to constantly develop ideas further, to maintain an attitude of sensitivity and research toward stories and reality. I think that art production and art theory are one thing, they are interwoven. To me both are very important. RR: What do you think about He Chengyaos 2001 performance Opening the Great Wall (Kaifang changcheng)? LX: Yes, I might add to your question that He Chengyao is a very renowned female xingwei artist in China. Her work Opening the Great Wall is very powerful. Actually, nudity is no innovation in performance art but being half-naked on the Great Wall, the symbol of China, doing such a work in a country as conservative as China needs great courage. Her later work 99 Needles (Jiushijiu zhen) is even better. RR: What kind of advancement does 99 Needles represent in your opinion? LX: Considering the language and expressive means of xingwei Opening the Great Wall is still quite simple, but concept and means of expression are very direct. 99 Needles in contrast employs a more extreme, unique language of expression. The background is the fate of two generations of women. RR: In my own experience as a foreign artist and curator in China, I perceived nudity as a much bigger issue than self-mutilations or explicit political content.

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You have a much deeper insight into production realities in China. Is my view from outside deceiving me? LX: In the time before 2012 China has actually been quite open, many works that included nudity did not pose a problem. The current situation is increasingly strict. Xingwei, nudity and political topics are all forbidden. Because of the cultural tradition and reality nudity is always in focus, people will solely pay attention to it and talk about it. He Chengyao’s Opening the Great Wall has caused an upset, which has to do with nudity. The Chinese audience does not understand feminism at all, but it understands quite well how to judge a woman’s body. He Chengyao was confronted with a lot of attacks at that time. In this context the piece is an important artwork in China. Additionally, it is of great significance as a feminist artwork. RR: Sex, sexuality, and nudity are dangerous topics in China, are they not? Apart from the censors’ perspective: What makes them such a taboo? LX: I think for the most part it is a cultural problem. Within traditional Chinese culture sexuality is limited to private life, one is not allowed to talk about sexuality in the public space. In Chinese painting there are very few direct representations of nudity. Landscapes, flowers, and birds are the main theme. Humans are depicted as paragons of morality. Only a moral role model can be depicted. But a moral role model, a female in particular, cannot be naked. The naked body is associated with offensive behavior. The tradition of Chinese culture is as follows: As an individual you are not considered. This has not changed until the present day. The basic rights and needs of people do not receive attention. Actually, the right to bodily self-determination is a basic human right but it is not granted. China has always been a patriarchal system that profits from a double standard. Powerful and wealthy men gain sexual power and sexual freedom, but abstinence is demanded of people with a low social status, especially women. RR: Do you have any explanation why traditional values are reinstated in recent years? Who profits from reactionary agendas? LX: China is still a totalitarian country, only for short time frames it opens up a little. But in the last years political control and totalitarianism intensified. The authorities call for a restitution of traditional Chinese culture. Back to Chinese tradition means back to monarchy, back to class society, back to a patriarchal social system. In the last years, a lot of courses for female morality have been established, women there are trained to become good wives and mothers. It even occurred that feet were tied up, a behavior like in feudalism. RR: You produce and curate a lot for venues abroad, how far does the art you produce and/or exhibit in China and abroad differ? Do you articulate yourself differently as a feminist artist abroad? LX: To participate in feminist activities and exhibitions abroad or in China are different experiences. In China, I am confronted with much more resistance, lack of understanding, and doubt. Abroad, I receive more understanding, praise, and support. My work focuses on the situation of Chinese women. Exhibiting abroad,

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I expand my horizon; I deal with problems of women at other places. In Germany, for instance, I did an exhibition on Arabic women. RR: Do you think your art production/curating is transcultural? LX: Yes, I have always tried to work that way, which mean to transcend borders, be it in art, gender, peoples, nations, or cultures. I pay attention to questions of humanity; questions of gender are human questions. The media and production methods I use are international, they are not limited to traditional Chinese methods. As a curator I employ a worldwide perspective, I pay attention to gender, identity, and ecology. Those are transcultural and transregional. RR: I remember your series ‘Performance Art and Postmodern Theater’ at the UCCA (Ullens Centre for Contemporary Arts) in Beijing. In your performance Drink Blue (he lanse de ren) you also cooperated with British dancer Amy Grubb and Chinese experimental musician Fen Ni. Initially you were inspired by a Paul Celan poem. Interdisciplinarity seems to be an important part of your mission? LX: In interdisciplinary producing and curating the most important question is how to find points of contact between the different disciplines that mutually support each other and cross-fertilize. Interdisciplinarity does not mean to simply piece together different disciplines but to give form to a new whole, to create a new wonder. Ultimately, it becomes a new kind of creation. RR: I do have the impression that female artists in China are keener on interdisciplinary work. Or is that a cliché? LX: This depends a lot on the individuals, different artists have different production methods, artists that do contemporary art tend toward border-crossing. But very clear interdisciplinarity is rare indeed. RR: How did the art market’s influence develop since your started creating? LX: I started turning toward contemporary art around 2008, at that time the world economy crisis had set in. Chinese contemporary art mainly lives on collectors from abroad, the direct influence of the economy crisis made the market for Chinese contemporary art shrink rapidly. The situation of contemporary artists became worse and worse. My work including performance and feminist art does not have a market. I have not thought a lot about the art market because if you enter the market you have to give up some things. I have always thought that doing academic and pure art is very important. In recent years, the pressure from the government and the demolition of art districts makes art exhibitions virtually impossible, doing contemporary art is getting harder and harder. This is even more true for feminist art. The government also suppresses feminism. Activities and exhibitions that relate to feminism cannot carry on. Thus, the art market is already closed. RR: How to survive then? Could you tell us from your own situation and from that of the artists you curate? LX: I am a university teacher; hence I can secure my livelihood. Some of my works are also collected. I know some female artists whose situation is extremely bad, especially in the field of performance art the situation is fierce. RR: Could you tell us how far you were influenced by your training/art school? And secondly, what to you try to convey to your own students?

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LX: At the art academy I studied traditional knowledge and painting techniques. I turned to contemporary art after I connected the different thoughts and concepts that I came in touch with outside of the campus. I wish to teach my own students the skill of independent thinking. This is what Chinese students lack most. RR: How important is technique particularly embodied technique? LX: I do not quite understand this question. What is your point? Do you mean the technique of artistic production? RR: The craft aspect. I mean learned elements, a kind of learned body language, in theatre for example there is the whole range of techniques, which are trained and can then be used as a medium of expression. Technique also in the sense of an articulated use of the body. LX: Ok, now I understand. [After a pause.] The importance of technique depends on the needs of each artwork. There are some art forms—like dance or theater including highly technical art works—that need an advanced technique to be achieved. But other artworks do not need technique at all, or they want to break with traditional techniques. The most important thing is the artist’s pursue and the final product. Most performance artists have not received body training, instead they rely on their natural instincts and intuition. Now many theater plays also search for performers without acting experience. I also have not received body training, but I seek for other ways to develop body language. RR: Do you think that there is a specific Chinese body language in xingwei? LX: I think one has to look at each individual artist, but in general performance art is a very international method of artistic expression, there are many universal and common elements. They are rather easy to understand for everyone. But there also are some Chinese performance art pieces that are close to the Chinese locality and culture. They may have some Chinese language features. Some of my artworks have those, too. For example, some movements, behaviors, or costumes. RR: Yet, the circumstances of production are very different. LX: That is right, performance art has an extremely different meaning and peculiarity in China. It exists in a depressive environment and in the dilemma that people cannot express themselves freely. It also gives Chinese performance art a special tension, it can only be understood in the specific Chinese context. RR: Could you elaborate on the importance of social media for your work, meaning the whole process from production to reception. LX: When I just started doing feminist art Chinese web-based media were very active. I wanted to spread my thoughts through the web because I knew that there were no magazines that could publish my articles and artworks. It was also hard to get a chance to exhibit my work. At that time some highly professional international art websites popped up. I made a blog there and I published my work and articles in the blog. I would not have thought that the click rate was so high every time. As a result, many people approached me to make exhibitions. My articles were also reposted by other big websites. For a while, I had a big influence. In the age of former traditional media this would not have been possible. I built a lot of connections through the web. I participate in a lot of international exhibitions that I found out about through the web. Later I built my own website, leading to

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curators from abroad approaching me to make exhibitions. I deeply thank the web; it gave me an opportunity to speak out. RR: And the particularities of the “Chinese web”? LX: Some years ago, the web in China played the role of enlightenment, many free thoughts and concepts started from the web, knowledge of contemporary art, performance art, and feminism all came from the web. But in the last years the government controls the web and oversees it. The true web is already dead. Now you basically cannot publish. Many of my former articles have been deleted. RR: This is terrible for such a valuable cultural legacy. In contrast: What are your hopes for the future? LX: Unless centralism ends, there is no hope. RR: Concluding words well chosen! Do you think there are important aspects that I forgot to ask for in this interview? Is there anything you want to add or specify? LX: No that is all, thank you! RR: Thank you so much for the interview, Li Xinmo. Thank you for your deep insights and patience! LX: See you again!

References Berghuis, T. J. (2006). Performance art in China. Timezone 8. Berghuis, T. J. (2012). Experimental art, performance and ‘publicness’: Repositioning the critical mass of contemporary Chinese art. Journal of Visual Art Practice, 11(2–3), 135–155. https:// doi.org/10.1386/jvap.11.2-3.135_1 Chang, J., Ren, H., & Yang, Q. (2018). A virtual gender asylum? The social media profile picture, young Chinese women’s self-empowerment, and the emergence of a Chinese digital feminism. International Journal of Cultural Studies, 21(3), 325–340. https://doi.org/10.1177/ 1367877916682085 Cheng, M. (2013). Beijing Xingwei: Contemporary Chinese time-based art. Seagull Books. Clark, J. (2002). System and style in the practice of Chinese contemporary art: The disappearing exterior? Yishu: A Journal of Chinese Contemporay Art, 13–33. Clark, J. (2014, May 24). Is the modernity of Chinese art comparable? An opening of a theoretical space. Journal of Art Historiography, 10. Retrieved from https://arthistoriography.files. wordpress.com/2014/06/clark1.pdf Huber, J., & Zhao, C. (Eds.). (2011). A new thoughtfulness in contemporary China: Critical voices in art and aesthetics. Transcript. Jacobs, K. (2015). The afterglow of women’s pornography in post-digital China. Palgrave Macmillan. https://books.google.at/books?id=9v2_CQAAQBAJ Karlsson, K. (2010). Tradition im Aufwind. In K. Schneider-Roos, S. Thiedig, & J. Cooiman (Eds.), Culturescapes China: Chinas Kulturszene ab 2000 (pp. 59–63). Merian. Ko, D., & Wang, Z. (2006). Introduction: Translating feminisms in China. Gender & History, 18(3), 463–471. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0424.2006.00451.x Sung, D. H. (2012). Reclaiming the body: Gender subjectivities in the performance art of He Chengyao. In B. Hopfener, F. Koch, J. Lee-Kalisch, & J. Noth (Eds.), Negotiating difference: Contemporary Chinese art in the global context (pp. 113–126). VDG. Tatlow, D. K. (2013, February 17). Artist’s take on sexual abuse turns ugly. Retrieved from https:// www.nytimes.com/2013/08/07/world/asia/07iht-letter07.html

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Wahl-Immel, Y. (2014, February 09). HA Schult: Der Macher Der ‚Trash People‘ Wird 75 Jahre Alt. Retrieved from https://www.welt.de/regionales/koeln/article129404209/Der-Macher-derTrash-People-wird-75-Jahre-alt.html Zheng, J. (2016). New feminism in China: Young middle-class Chinese women in Shanghai. Springer. Zhong, X. (2011). Women can hold up half the sky. In B. Wang (Ed.), Words and their stories: Essays on the language of the Chinese revolution (pp. 227–247). Brill. Zhu, A. (2007). Feminism and global Chineseness: The cultural production of controversial women authors. Cambria Press. Zhu, Q. (2011). Two histories of art: What arts represent China? In J. Huber & C. Zhao (Eds.), A new thoughtfulness in contemporary China: Critical voices in art and aesthetics (pp. 143–152). Transcript.

Raimund Rosarius is a writer, director, performance artist, curator, and a research fellow in Theater Studies at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. He also lectures in Dance Studies at the Paris Lodron University of Salzburg, from which he completed the Curating in the Performing Arts Program. He also holds an MA in Theory and Practice of Directing from the Central Academy of Drama in Beijing. Exploring the intersections between Performance Art and the Performing Arts, he has been curating Xingwei Yishu as well as directing Chinese plays. He is proud member of the SANPANG ART COLLECTIVE that defines as cosmolocal, political and cryptic.

Part III

Transmission

Chapter 7

The Distribution and Translation of German Films in China (1949–1966) Haina Jin

Abstract The article analyses the distribution and translation of German films in China in the 17-year period (1949–1966). Using such sources as archives, newspapers, memoirs, and extant films, the author examines the importation and distribution mechanism of German films in China during these years. A total of 62 films from the German Democratic Republic (hereinafter “the GDR”), the Federal Republic of Germany (hereinafter “the FRG”), Austria, and Switzerland were shown in China from 1952 to 1964. The author finds that the main themes of the 54 films imported from the GDR can be divided into five categories: the working class fighting against the capitalists, the imperialists, and the fascists; socialist construction; socialist friendship among the socialist bloc; German folktales and classic literature; and German historical figures or events. The themes of the five films from the FRG fall into the following two categories: calling for world peace; and criticizing Nazism and capitalism. The two films from Austria and one film from Switzerland were less political. In order to help the large illiterate population in China to understand foreign films most of the German films were dubbed, instead of being merely subtitled in Chinese. The author will, in the following study, go into the details of the dubbing process and use the Chinese translation of Der Hauptmann von Köln (The Captain From Cologne, dir. Slatan Dudow, 1956) as a case study to illustrate the strategies used in creating a Chinese dubbed version. Keywords China · Germany · Films · Translation · Dissemination At the end of the 1950s, when Eine Berliner Romanze (A Berlin Romance, dir. Gerhard Klein, 1956) was shown in Shanghai, the short hair of the heroine became very fashionable. Girls wanted to have a short haircut, and the hair salons began to post advertisements stating that they were able to do the hairstyle seen in Eine Berliner Romanze (Cheng, 2002, p. 17). Memories of watching German films in the

H. Jin (✉) Communication University of China, Beijing, China e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 H. Jin et al. (eds.), Contemporary German–Chinese Cultures in Dialogue, Global Germany in Transnational Dialogues, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-26779-6_7

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17 years discussed in the present study have been recorded in the dairies, newspapers, and novels of the past and are even recalled in the online blogs of today. A Peking University graduate shared his fond experience of watching films from 1959 to 1964 at the canteen turned cinema during his undergraduate years. The German films he watched included Eine Berliner Romanze, Professor Mamlock (dir. Konrad Wolf, 1961), and Der Hauptmann von Köln and more (Anon, 2020). German films shown in this period have impacted the life of Chinese people in various ways, constructing their collective memory of Germany in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and even shaping their understanding of socialism and capitalism. After the PRC was founded in October 1949, the newly established socialist government attached great importance to film and considered it an important tool for the education and entertainment of the masses (Jin, 2020, p.578). The 17-year period which extends from the founding of the PRC in 1949 to the start of the Cultural Revolution in 1966 was a crucial stage of “political, cultural, and economic transformations” for the Chinese socialist state (Braester & Chen, 2011, p.9). Due to the relatively limited production of domestic films, a great number of foreign films from the socialist bloc and politically progressive films from the capitalist countries were imported during this period. Chen (2014, p.93) has compared the number of imported films and domestic films in the PRC between 1949 and 1957 and finds that the imported films vastly outnumbered the domestic production, a 9-year total of 526 films to 232 films. Much of the research already done in this area has focused on the impact and influence of Soviet films in China during this 17-year period. Chen (2009) analysed Soviet films in China in the 1950s and their impact on constructing an international experience for the Chinese audience. Hu (2020) discussed the images and voices of Soviet allies in dubbed films in the 1950s China. Little research has been done, however, on German films in the PRC in the 17-year period dealt with here and essential questions remain unanswered, including: “what kind of German films were imported and shown in the PRC”? and “how were these translated into Chinese”? These questions are vital for the understanding of the cultural exchange between the PRC and German-speaking countries in the modern era. The author has collected archives from film studios, film dubbing studios, and film distribution companies in China, including Comprehensive Statistics of Changchun Film Studio (1947–1949), Comprehensive Statistics of Film Distribution and Exhibition in Hunan Province (1949–1979), and Comprehensive Statistics of Film Distribution and Exhibition in China (1958–1960), which contain valuable data on the screening and translation of German films in China. The PRC established its diplomatic contacts with the GDR in 1949 and with the FRG in October 1972. Interestingly, the PRC began to show films from the GDR in 1952 and from the FRG in 1956, which means that the cultural exchanges between the PRC and the FRG existed 12 years before their official diplomatic relations. As to the other two German-speaking countries in Europe, the PRC established diplomatic relations with Switzerland in 1950 and with Austria in 1971. The PRC imported one film from Switzerland in 1962 and two films from Austria in 1958 and 1963, respectively. This shows that the PRC began to have cinematic contacts with Switzerland only 12 years after their official diplomatic relations were established but had such

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relations with Austria 9 years before the establishment of their official diplomatic relations. The PRC’s importation of German films started in 1952 with the Chinese dubbing of Unser täglich Brot (Our Daily Bread, dir. Slatan Dudow, 1949) by Changchun Film Studio. This film importation activity continued until 1964, with the Chinese dubbing of Die Jagd nach dem Stiefel (dir. Konrad Petzold, 1962). The importation was suspended in the latter year this was because of the Sino-Soviet split. After 1964, only films from Albania, Romania, Vietnam, and North Korea, which were Chinese allies during the split, were still imported and shown in China (Li, 2019, p.61). This situation continued throughout the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976). China began once again to import German films, among films from other foreign countries, only after the Reform and the Opening-Up which began in 1978. From 1952 to 1964, the PRC imported, translated, and showed to Chinese audiences some 54 films from the GDR; 5 films from the FRG; 2 films from Austria and one film from Switzerland. The choice of the films, and how they were imported, translated, and presented to the Chinese audience will be discussed in the following sections.

7.1

Importation and Distribution

The China Film Distribution and Exhibition Company (formerly the China Film Company) was a state-owned enterprise established in 1951 and affiliated to the Film Bureau of the Ministry of Culture. It monopolized the PRC’s business in both exports and imports of film and oversaw international film exchanges including film exhibitions at home and abroad (Ma, 2016, p.43). The China Film Distribution and Exhibition Company also had provincial and municipal branches, which oversaw film distribution and exhibition in local areas. Its sole business partner in the GDR was Veb-Defa Aussenhandel (DEFA). In the FRG, by contrast, it had 18 business partners, including Imago Film Production Filmvertrieb, UFA-Filmverleih GmbH, etc. In Austria, it had six business partners, including Universal Film GmbH, Sascha Film GmbH, etc. Its business partners in Switzerland were diversified, including Filmgruppe De Veriningung Kulture and Volk, Mr. Max A. Stierli, Robinco A. G., Association Suisse de Football et d’Athletisme, and Dr. Miguel Salkind. In the GDR, the film imports and exports were much more centralized than in the other three countries. Film imports and exports between the PRC and the FRG and Austria were more commercial and mainly conducted through companies. The film exchange activities between the PRC and Switzerland were more informal, sometimes being carried out via friendly individuals and associations. Apart from the individual GDR films shown in cinemas among other domestic and foreign productions, the PRC held two large-scale GDR Film Weeks, namely in 1954 and in 1959, to celebrate, respectively, the fifth and the tenth anniversary of the establishment of the GDR. In 1954, the Chinese Ministry of Culture organized the

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first GDR Film Week, starting from October 7th of that year, in over 20 cities in China, including Beijing, Tianjin, Taiyuan, Shenyang, Harbin, Changchun, Nanjing, Guangzhou, Lanzhou, etc. Six films produced by DEFA were shown, including feature films like Die Unbesiegbaren (dir. Arthur Pohl, 1953), Geheimakten Solvay (dir. Martin Hellberg, 1953), Roman einer jungen Ehe (Romance of a Young Couple, dir. Kurt Maetzig, 1952), Jacke wie Hose (dir. Eduard Kubat, 1953), The Puppet Show from the Soviet Union, and Blaue Wimpel im Sommerwind (Anon, 1954a). In 1959, the second set of GDR Film Weeks were organized by the Ministry of Culture of the PRC in ten cities. Films by DEFA including Das Lied der Matrosen (The Sailor’s Song, Dir. Kurt Maetzig and Günter Reisch, 1958), Don’t Forget November, Nur Eine Frau (dir. Carl Balhaus, 1958), Polonia-Express (dir. Kurt Jung-Alsen, 1957), and Urlaub Auf Sylt (Holiday on Sylt, dir. Andrew Thorndike and Annelie Thorndike, 1959) were shown during these weeks (Huang, 1959). During the first GDR Film Festival in 1954, 987 screenings were organized, and the number of Chinese people who got to see these films attained more than 660,000. Additional screenings were provided in Wuhan, Taiyuan, and other cities to meet audience demand. Shanxi People’s Radio introduced the main contents of the films to the local audience. Newspapers in different cities also introduced the contents of the films and published film reviews by local audience members. The German film delegation visited China. Ilse Berger, the Star in Jacke wie Hose met the audience in Nanjing and gave a speech (Anon, 1954b). Apart from the two large-scale Film Weeks the Ministry of Culture of the PRC (Anon, 1964), the embassy of the GDR, and the German Chinese Friendly Association also organized film reception activities for Chinese elites, in which there also participated members of such high cultural circles as that of diplomats of other countries in the PRC, on occasions like the National Day of the GDR or the celebration of the victory over fascism. In May 1965, to celebrate the 20-year anniversary of the victory over fascism, 24 films from the Soviet Union, Albania, the GDR, Poland, Romania, and Czechoslovakia were exhibited in Beijing, Shanghai, Chongqing, Dalian, and other capitals of provinces and autonomous regions in the PRC. Such GDR films as Ernst Thälmann (dir. Kurt Maetzig, 1955 and 1954), Operation Teutonic Sword, and Der Rat der Götter (Council of the Gods, Dir. Kurt Maetzig, 1950) were shown during this event (Xinhua News Agency, 1965). In addition, dubbed German films were shown in Chinese cinemas or makeshift cinemas. By 1959, over 30 feature films and dozens of documentaries from the GDR had been brought to Chinese audiences. The total number of Chinese viewers had reached over 70,000,000, which showed the close relationship between the PRC and the GDR as well as the Chinese audience’s warm welcome to films from the GDR. Among the over 100 film reviews published in Chinese newspapers and journals, 94 recommended Ernst Thälmann, Der Hauptmann von Köln, and Operation Teutonic Sword (Huang 1959). Heidi (dir. Luigi Comencini, 1952) was released in China 10 years after its release in Switzerland. However, films from the GDR, the FRG, and Austria were imported into China 1–4 years after their release in their country of origin. Contrary to the common belief that the PRC was an entirely isolated state during this 17-year period,

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the fact is that Chinese audiences had access in these years to recent films from both socialist countries and capitalist countries.

7.2

What Kind of German Films Were Shown in China?

The PRC imported most German films from the GDR during the 17-year period. This is not surprising, since both the PRC and the GDR were in the socialist bloc. As early as 1951, China established one-to-one film exchange contracts with the USSR, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, the GDR, and Poland (Anon, 1951). Films from the GDR were mainly imported through the exchange contract. Comparing the German films from the above four countries, more films from the GDR and the FRG were charged with political messages. Films from Austria and Switzerland tended to be less political. The main themes of films imported from the GDR can be divided into the following five categories: the working class fighting against the capitalists, the imperialists, and the fascists; socialist construction; socialist friendship among the socialist bloc; German folktales and classic literature; and German historical figures or events. The establishment of the PRC was considered by the Communist Party of China to signify that the oppression of the imperialists, the capitalists, and the feudalists had been overthrown. Films which reflected the working class fighting against the capitalists, the imperialists, and the fascists could, therefore, fit well with the mainstream ideology of the PRC. Films which reflected the working class’s struggle against the capitalists and the imperialists included Die Unbesiegbaren, PoloniaExpress, Das Lied der Matrosen, Im Sonderauftrag (dir. Heinz Thiel, 1959), and Die Jagd nach dem Stiefel. Anti-fascist films from the GDR were in the majority among them, including Der Rat der Götter, Professor Mamlock, Stärker als die Nacht (Stronger Than the Night, dir. Slatan Dudow, 1954), Ernst Thälmann - Sohn seiner Klasse (1954), and Ernst Thälmann - Führer seiner Klasse (1955), Der Teufelskreis (dir. Carl Balhaus, 1956), Zwei Mütter (Two Mothers, dir. Frank Beyer, 1957), Lissy (dir. Konrad Wolf, 1957), Der Prozeß wird vertagt (The Trial is Adjourned, dir. Herbert Ballmann, 1958), Genesung (Recovery, dir. Konrad Wolf, 1956), Operation Teutonic Sword, Don’t Forget the November Revolution, Sie nannten ihn Amigo (They Called Him Amigo, dir. Heiner Carow, 1959), and Fünf Patronenhülsen (Five Cartridges, dir. Frank Beyer, 1960). Films dealing with the theme of socialist construction could resonate with audiences living through the rapid processes of socialist reform and reconstruction in China in the 1950s. Chinese filmgoers could find inspiration regarding how to construct a socialist country from the GDR, a fellow socialist country. The topics covered here included such themes as “which road to take: the socialist road or the capitalist road”?; “the construction of a socialist society by the people”; and the specific genre of “anti-spy” films. Films about socialist construction were in the majority, including Jacke wie Hose, Gefährliche Fracht (Dangerous Cargo, dir.

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Gustav von Wangenheim, 1954), 52 Wochen sind ein Jahr (52 Weeks Are a Year, dir. Richard Groschopp, 1955), Junges Gemüse (Young Vegetables, dir. Günter Reisch, 1956), Eine Berliner Romanze, Das Leben beginnt (Life Begins, dir. Heiner Carow, 1960), Der Arzt von Bothenow (Bothenow’s Doctor, dir. Johannes Knittel, 1951), The Prosperous GDR (1961), and Roman einer jungen Ehe (Story of a Young Couple, dir. Kurt Maetzig, 1952). There is one anti-spy film entitled Geheimakten Solvay (Secret Files of Solvay, dir. Martin Hellberg, 1953), in which spies try to sabotage the production of a soda factory in the GDR. Interestingly, “anti-spy” films about the public security forces of the PRC unveiling conspiracies conceived by spies from the Nationalist Party and the US also formed a popular genre within domestically produced films in the China of the 1950s. The purpose of these films was to keep the people alert while carrying out socialist construction. The “anti-spy” films usually combined the thriller and the suspense genre and were well received by Chinese audiences. A few films imported from the GDR celebrated the friendship between the socialist countries. These included Die Windrose (The Windrose, 1957), Das Lied der Ströme (Song of the Rivers, dir. Joop Huisken, Joris Ivens, Robert Ménégoz, and Ruy Santos, 1958), Fünf Tage – Fünf Nächte (Five Days, Five Nights, dir. Lew Arnstam, Heinz Thiel, Anatoli Golovanov, 1960), and The Puppet Show from the Soviet Union. Die Windrose was commissioned by the World Federation of Women and produced by DEFA in 1957. Five directors, including Joris Ivens, Yannick Bellon, Alex Viany, Gillo Pontecorvo, and Wu Guoying, collaborated in the making of this film. It is a documentary about the struggle of female workers in Italy, Brazil, the Soviet Union, China, and France. Das Lied der Ströme depicts the life of people living on the world’s great rivers, including the Amazon, the Mississippi, and the Yangtze, and shows the contrasting ways of life under capitalism and socialism. Puppet Show from the Soviet Union is a documentary about the puppet show performers from the Soviet Union National Puppet Theatre who had given a series of outstanding performances in the GDR. Films adapted from German folktales and from classic literature were also shown in the PRC, including Das kalte Herz (Heart of Stone, dir. Paul Verhoeven, 1950), Die Störenfriede (The Troublemakers, dir. Wolfgang Schleif, 1953), Der Teufel vom Mühlenberg (The Devil from Mühlenberg, dir. Herbert Ballmann, 1955), Zar und Zimmermann (The Czar and the Carpenter, dir. Hans Müller, 1956), Der Richter von Zalamea (The Judge of Zalamea, dir. Martin Hellberg, 1956), Die Geschichte vom kleinen Muck (The Story of Little Mook, dir. Wolfgang Staudte, 1953), Les Aventures de Till l’espiègle (Bold Adventure, dir. Gérard Philipe and Joris Ivens, 1956), Das singende, klingende Bäumchen (The Singing Ringing Tree, dir. Francesco Stefani, 1957), Geschichte vom armen Hassan (Story of Poor Hassan, dir. Gerhard Klein, 1958), Kabale und Liebe (Intrigue and Love, dir. Martin Hellberg 1959), Hatifa (dir. Siegfried Hartmann 1960), Die Schöne Lurette (The Beautiful Lurette, dir. Gottfried Kolditz, 1960). Interestingly, although these folktales often do not contain any political message, they could still be used in a political way. Das kalte Herz is an East German fantasy film directed by Paul Verhoeven and the first East German film made in Agfacolor. It is adapted from the fairy tale of the

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same name originally published by Wilhelm Hauff in 1826. Lu Dingyi, the then Minister of the Publicity Department of the Chinese Communist Party quoted the film when he spoke at the second meeting of the Party’s first National Congress, by saying “What Hu Feng did, was a battle of heart-digging in theory. To be more vivid, He Feng is like the Dutch devil in Das Kalte Herz, a German color film” (Lu, 1955). Film about German historical events and historical figures were also exhibited in China, including Die schwarze Galeer (dir. Martin Hellberg, 1962), Ludwig van Beethoven (dir. Max Jaap, 1955), and Schiller (1958). Both Beethoven and Schiller had been introduced into Chinese cultural life at the beginning of the twentieth century and had become, by this time, known figures in music and literature, respectively, among Chinese intellectuals. The PRC began to import films from the FRG as early as 1956 but ended up importing, in the period studied here, only five films from West Germany in total: Herz der Welt (No Greater Love, dir. Harald Braun, 1952), Die Ehe des Dr. med. Danwitz (Marriage of Dr. Danwitz, dir. Arthur Maria Rabenalt, 1956), Rosen für den Staatsanwalt (Roses for the Prosecutor, dir. Wolfgang Staudte, 1959), Wir Wunderkinder (Aren’t We Wonderful?, dir. Kurt Hoffmann, 1958), and Das Spukschloß im Spessart (The Haunted Castle, dir. Kurt Hoffmann, 1960). The first, Das Herz der Welt, was a biographical film about Bertha von Suttner, a pacifist and the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1905. Die Ehe des Dr. med. Danwitz was a critique of capitalism. The Chinese translation of its title is not literal but rather runs 失业的自 由 (The Freedom of Being Out of Work). The revised title emphasizes the social evil of a capitalist society. Rosen für den Staatsanwalt was intended to expose the resurrection of Nazism and Wir Wunderkinder is a light comedy which satirizes the resurrection of Nazism via the “coming of age” stories of two boys. Das Spukschloß im Spessart was a musical comedy which included a light satire on Nazism. Only two films from Austria were imported into China. One was a documentary entitled Omaru, Eine Afrikanische Liebesgeschichte (Omaru, An African Love Story, dir. Albert Quendler, 1955) and the other was Traumrevue (Dream Revue, dir. Eduard von Borsody, 1959) which was a comedy musical featuring an ice-skating show. Both were subtitled by the Subtitle Factory of China Film Company. China opened up friendly relationships with many African countries in the 1950s, which might be one of the reasons why Omaru was selected. As to Traumrevue, both musical interludes and ice-skating are rarely seen in Chinese films, which meant that the film was novel and interesting for Chinese audiences. China only imported one film from Switzerland, Heidi, which was adapted from a classic children’s novel written by Johanna Spyri, a Swiss woman writer. The film was dubbed by Changchun Film Studio and released in China in 1962. It depicts a touching story between Heidi and her grandfather in the beautiful landscape of the Alps. The importation of this film laid a foundation for the successful import of Heidi (2015) into the Chinese market in 2019.

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The Translation of German Films Translation Entities

In the 17-year-period considered here there were four state-owned entities which translated foreign films in the PRC: Northeast Film Studio (later Changchun Film Studio), Shanghai Film Dubbing Studio, the Subtitle Factory of China Film Company, and Central Studio of News Reels Production. All the foreign films imported into China were translated by these state-owned studios. Northeast Film Studio was the first translation studio to translate and dub German films in the PRC. The first German film dubbed by this studio was Unser täglich Brot. In total, the studio dubbed some 25 films from the GDR, 1 film from the FRG, and 1 film from Switzerland. Shanghai Film Dubbing Studio dubbed 21 films from the GDR, and 3 films from the FRG. Central Studio of News Reels Production completed the translation and dubbing of four documentaries from the GDR and the Subtitle Factory of China Film Group subtitled seven films, four from the GDR, one from the FRG, and two from Austria. When the PRC was established the population of China was 550 million and the illiteracy rate was 80% nationwide, reaching 95% in rural areas (Dong, 1951). In order to reach a vast illiterate population nationwide, the film translation studios mainly adopted the method of dubbing. Most German films were dubbed instead of subtitled in the 17-year period studied here. However, on exceptional occasions, when a film was only screened in a special Film Week or at a film reception event instead of being given a wide cinematic release, it would be subtitled by the Subtitle Factory of China Film Group. As to the dubbing process, Sun Yufeng, a senior dubbing director and actor at Shanghai Film Dubbing Studio, has provided details about this process in his memoirs (2014, pp.11–12). There were eight steps for dubbing a foreign film. The first step was to watch the original film. All the dubbing team of the film had to watch the film together in order to acquire a comprehensive shared impression of it. The second step was the translation of the dialogue list. The translator would need to consider the synchrony between the original dialogue and the Chinese translation. The third step was the first-round review, in which the translator, the dubbing director, and an adaptor would all participate. They would work together to produce a dubbing script which was such as to match the lip movements of each character, sentence by sentence. The fourth step was the selection of voice actors. The dubbing director would select a group of dubbing actors for a specific film. The fifth step was the second round of review, which would be attended by the translator, the dubbing director, the actors, and the sound engineers. The dubbing director needed to fully understand the film and grasp its general style, the characteristics of each character, and the relationships between the characters. The voice actors needed to check if the translated lines matched the lip movements and if they reflected the characteristics and emotions of the characters. If a scene was particularly difficult, a rehearsal could be requested. The sixth step was recording. The dubbing director guided the voice

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actors to dub each character well and record their best performances. The seventh step was appraisal and re-recording. All the team would attend the appraisal of the dubbed version to review the quality, including establishing whether the dubbing of a character deviated in any way from the original film, whether the emotions of the characters were well presented, and whether the relations between them had been properly demonstrated. Scenes which did not come up to par would be re-recorded. The eighth and last step was mixing, where the dialogue would be mixed with music and effects. The Subtitle Factory of China Film Company was established in Shanghai in 1954 and moved to Beijing in 1958. The main task of this workshop was to add translated subtitles to Chinese and foreign films. The seven German films which were subtitled into Chinese included Zar und Zimmermann, Fünf Patronenhülsen, Omaru - Eine afrikanische Liebesgeschichte, Traumrevue, Die Schöne Lurette, Das Spukschloß im Spessart, and The Prosperous GDR. Among these, Zar und Zimmermann, Die Schöne Lurette, Das Spukschloß im Spessart, and Traumrevue were musicals. Possibly due to the challenge of dubbing German musicals into Chinese musicals, or for the purpose of preserving the original singing, these four films were subtitled instead of dubbed. Central Studio of News Reels Production dubbed four German documentaries, including Die Windrose, Schiller, Operation Teutonic Sword, and Don’t Forget November. Central Studio of News Reels in fact participated in the making of Die Windrose by making the Chinese part. The other three films were documentaries which fell under the expertise of Central Studio of News Reels Production.

7.3.2

The Translation and Dubbing of Der Hauptmann von Köln

The translation and dubbing of German films into Chinese is not an easy task. Su Xiu, a renowned dubbing director and actor, recalled her experience of dubbing Das Spukschloß im Spessart. The film was subtitled into Chinese in 1963 by the Subtitle Factory of China Film Company and later, in 1980, dubbed into Chinese by Shanghai Film Dubbing Studio. Su Xiu worked as the adapter for the dubbed version and Wu Jingwei was the dubbing director. In the film, the father of the male protagonist wants to buy the castle of the female protagonist and sends his son to have a look at the property. The Chinese translation of the question posed by the father to the son immediately upon the latter’s return ran: “那个老太婆怎么样”? (“How is the old lady”?). Su Xiu felt baffled by this because the owner of the castle was actually a young lady. The young lady had an aunt, indeed, but her aunt had nothing to do with this purchase. Why, then, would the father ask about “the old lady”? Besides, the father did not even know of the existence of the aunt of the young lady. They all felt puzzled. Suddenly, Su Xiu remembered that, in Russian, objects— even lifeless objects—have genders. The same, he thought, might be true for

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German. So she asked the translator, who told her that German nouns have gender too. Su Xiu then asked her if “the castle” was feminine in German and she got a positive answer. She finally figured out, then, that “the old lady” meant the castle. On many occasions, only the translator knew the German language and the dubbing director and the adapter, as well as the dubbing actors, did not know it. Due to the low literacy rate and the unfamiliarity with the new medium, as well as the vast cultural differences, Chinese filmgoers often wrote to newspapers and complained that they could not understand the films very well. An audience member from Fujian province wrote to the People’s Daily that, during the China-Soviet Union Friendship Month, cinemagoers in his city had watched quite a few films from the Soviet Union and had felt quite well informed and educated by them. However, he and his fellow audience members had felt baffled at some of the films. When Lenin in 1918 was screened, many peasants and rural workers in the audience could not understand the theme and some could not even tell who Lenin was (Anon, 1953). In order to help the Chinese audience understand the dubbed films better, various methods were attempted by the dubbing studios. Shanghai Dubbing Studio and Northeast Film Studio sometimes added subtitles and explanations at the beginning of the film to introduce its main theme. In this section, I will use the German film Der Hauptmann von Köln to illustrate how films from the GDR were translated and dubbed into Chinese. Der Hauptmann von Köln was a political satire comedy directed by Slatan Dudow and produced by DEFA in 1956. Albert Hauptmann is an out-of-work waiter in Cologne. He is mistaken for a former Captain of the Nazi Army, because Hauptmann means Captain in German. Albert uses this to his advantage and becomes the Director of the Montan Corporation and a member of the West German Parliament. The film was dubbed by Shanghai Film Dubbing Studio in 1958 and was released in 1959. It was one of the most popular foreign films in China in 1959 (Fig. 7.1). The China Film Distribution Company prepared publicity material for the films, including posters and film plot sheets. The design of the Chinese posters was also interesting. The poster on the left, above, was a Chinese version of the German poster for the film. Albert Hauptmann wears a uniform which is half waiter’s uniform and half military uniform. He is holding a medal as a waiter would hold a wine glass and a white handkerchief is on his left arm. He is posing like a waiter ready to serve. This poster thematizes the double identity of the leading character, his identity as a waiter and his fake identity as an army officer. Interestingly, the China Film Distribution Film Company also made another poster featuring Daisy Pferdeapfel, the daughter of the tycoon head of the corporation in the story. She is not a leading character in the film. She makes her first appearance only later in the film and becomes engaged to Albert Hauptmann. She is wearing a glamourous strapless dress, holding a telephone, and admiring her beauty in the mirror. She symbolizes a decadent capitalist society. Her image was used by the China Film Distribution Company to attract Chinese audiences into watching this film in cinemas, as if luring them towards an experience of capitalist society.

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Fig. 7.1 Two Chinese posters of Der Hauptmann von Köln

The Chinese dubbed version of the film was produced by the Shanghai Film Dubbing Studio. The translator was Xiao Zhang, and the dubbing director was Shi Hanwei. The dubbing actor for Albert Hauptmann was Qiu Yuefeng. Xiao Zhang worked as a film translator at Doumer Theatre in Shanghai in the 1930s and 1940s. He then engaged in the drama and opera field. In 1949, he was enrolled into the Shanghai Russian School affiliated to the East China People’s Revolution University. After he graduated, he first taught at the Russian school and then worked at the Shanghai Film Dubbing studio as a translator up until the 1990s. He translated the Russian films The Idiot (Идиот, 1958), White Nights (Белые ночи, 1960), French films including The Red and the Black (Le Rouge et le Noir, 1954), and German films including Der Hauptmann von Köln and Heintje - Einmal wird die Sonne wieder scheinen (1970). Xiao Zhang learned English and Russian at school and later also taught himself German and French. Shi Hanwei (1916–1986) was the dubbing director of the film. As well as a dubbing director, he was also a dubbing actor and an actor. Qiu Yuefeng was the voice actor for Albert Hauptmann, the protagonist of the film. Qiu was one of the most talented voice actors of the Maoist era. As Chen Danqing (2003, pp.110–114) once commented, “Qiu is more Rochester than Rochester and more Chaplin than Chaplin. He is the Mozart of the dubbing industry”. At the beginning of the German film, the silhouette of Cologne Cathedral is seen at nightfall and a man is seen walking in the street nearby while a peddler is selling newspapers. There were, in the original German version, no subtitles or voiceover to indicate who the man was. German or European audiences were able to figure out where the story was to take place because of the image of Cologne Cathedral. However, it was unlikely that Chinese audiences would be able to grasp the meaning of this famous silhouette and recognize the site of the story. In order, then, to help

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Chinese audiences better understand the film, in the Chinese dubbed version of Der Hauptmann a Chinese subtitle and a voiceover in Chinese were added at the beginning. The subtitle ran: “在西德的科隆市里, 有一个失业的饭店招待, 名叫 汉斯
阿尔培特
霍卜曼。” (In Koln in the FRG, there was an unemployed restaurant waiter named Hans Albert Hauptman.) The Chinese subtitle clearly points out the location of the action, as well as the identity of the man and his name. The Chinese voiceover goes on: “霍卜曼是德国人的一个普通姓氏, 但德语中 的 陆军上尉也是同一个字。就是由于这种巧合, 在一次纳粹分子举办的军人 宴会上, 他竟然被认为是刚从国外归来, 被列为战犯的纳粹军官汉斯
阿尔培 特上尉, 由此引出了一个十分离奇又极富有真实性的故事。” (Hauptmann is a common family name for Germans. In German, Hauptmann also means Captain. Because of this coincidence, he was mistaken for Hans Albert, a Nazi officer who was listed as a war criminal and who had just returned from abroad. Thus, an absurd yet realistic story happened.) This voiceover was narrated by Qiu Yuefeng, who also dubbed the protagonist. This Chinese voiceover explains very well how the protagonist might be mistaken for the Nazi war criminal. Chinese dubbing requires perfect synchrony, which means that the translation will not only need to reflect the meaning of the original German lines but will also need to match the pauses, rhythm, and expression of the speaker. The following dialogue takes place when a group of army officers are listening to Albert Hauptmann brag (Table 7.1). The translator paid great attention to the pauses and length of the translation, so that each Chinese sentence was able to match up with each German sentence, even with the mouth movements of the speakers, particularly Albert Hauptmann. Take, for example, the passage where the German dialogue runs: “Und darin sitzt eine Frau, schlank, toll schick. Na ich sag mir ‘eine Frau Zucker”’. The German sentence has four pauses and the Chinese translation also has four pauses, “车里坐着一位女 士。很美, 很漂亮, 简直不能再漂亮了”. This means that the Chinese translation is able to match the rhythm of the German original. The translator also paid great attention to matching the lip movements. For instance, the German sentence “Na ich sag mir ‘eine Frau Zucker”’, ends with “ker” and the Chinese translation ends with “le”(了). The mouth shapes involved in pronouncing the two syllables are remarkably similar, so that the Chinese dubbing actor could make a perfect lip-synchronized version of the mouth-motions of the original German actor. Interestingly, the translator translated “Buenos Aires” as “the capital of Argentina”, instead of “布宜诺斯艾利斯”, which is a transliteration and often used as the Chinese name for the city. The reason for this could be that many Chinese cinemagoers in the 1950s would not have known where Buenos Aires was. They were more likely to know Argentina and could thereby form an idea about the location. In addition, Hauptmann described the car in German in the following terms: “Da stoppte auf einmal neben mir ein Cabriolet – hochelegant, elfenbein lackiert”. The Chinese translation runs: “忽然在我身边停下了一辆. . .. . .流线型. . .. . .的敞蓬汽 车。” (Suddenly next to me a. . .streamlined. . .convertible stopped.) The German description of the convertible, as “hochelegant” and “elfenbein lackiert”, is

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Table 7.1 The translation of the bragging scene Character Hauptmann

German Also, die Frauen da drüben, die fliegen nur so uns rein. Stellen Sie sich vor.

One listener Hauptmann

Aha. Eines Abends ging ich in Buenos Aires über eine Siedlung. Da stoppte auf einmal neben mir ein Cabriolet – hochelegant, elfenbein lackiert.

Hauptmann

Und darin sitzt eine Frau, schlank, toll schick. Na ich sag mir eine Frau Zucker.

Hauptmann

Sie winkt einem Zeitungsverkäufer und hebt einen 1000-Peso-Schein hin, ja an dem der Kerl natürlich nicht ausgeben. Ich rannte, bezahlte die Zeitung und überreichte sie der Schönen.

Hauptmann

Darauf sie, “Gracias, señor”. Dann forderte sie mich schlankweg auf, auf Spanisch natürlich, zu ihr einzusteigen. Ja, ich verstehe Spanisch. Ich hatte so das Lenkrad und ab mit 120 Sachen.

One listener Hauptmann

Na und dann?

Hauptmann

Hier, gerne. Entschuldigen mich mal. Ich kümmere mich ein bisschen um die Männer hier.

Achtung! Feind hört mit.

Chinese 女人像苍蝇一样, 老是跟着我们。 (Women are like flies. They always follow us.) 啊哈。(Aha) 告诉你们, 有一天晚上, 我在阿根廷 首都的大街上散步。忽然在我身边 停下了一辆. . .. . .流线型. . .. . .的敞蓬 汽车。(I tell you, one night, when I was walking in a street in the capital of Argentina, there suddenly stopped next to me a. . .streamlined. . . convertible.) 车里坐着一位女士。很美, 很漂亮, 简直不能再漂亮了!(A lady was sitting in the car. She was beautiful, very pretty, could not have been prettier.) 她叫住一个卖报的, 拿出一张一千比 索的钞票。这个穷人当然找不出。 于是. . .. . .我就跑过去, 付了报钱, 把 报递给她! (She stopped a newspaper vendor and took out a 1000-peso banknote to pay. Of course, the poor man couldn’t change it for her. So. . . I ran over there, paid for the newspaper and gave it to her.) 她就说 “格拉采阿司, 新尧!”。接着 她就请我坐上车。当然她说的是西 班牙话, 不过我说得也不坏。我就坐 上车, 两个人开了一百二十公里。 (She said, “Gracias, señor”. Then she said to get into the car. Of course, she spoke in Spanish, but my Spanish was not bad. I got into the car, took the wheel and we shot off at 120 kilometres an hour. 后来呢?(Then?) 要提防, 敌人偷听。(Attention! The enemy is listening!) 对不起, 先生们, 现在我想去看一看 我的士兵。(Sorry, gentlemen! I want to check my soldiers.)

translated as “流线型的(streamlined)”. Qiu Yuefeng’s complacent voice also adds an extra layer of charm. His way of bragging about it not only made the characters onscreen appear to be charmed by him but also charmed Chinese audiences off screen.

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The film was reviewed and recommended in the People’s Daily, the most authoritative newspaper in China at that time, and in Chinese film journals. Li Shaobai, a renowned film scholar at the China Academy of Arts, wrote a review published in the People’s Daily which was later reprinted in the plot sheets for the film by the Shanghai Film Distribution Company to guide the audience in understanding the film. However, the audience’s reception could not be totally controlled or channelled. Although the film was intended to criticize Nazism and capitalism, it proved in fact to be able to be received and interpreted in more than one way. As one viewer vividly recalled, “China was very much closed back then. Most of the Chinese people were out of touch with the world and seldom had a chance to see the modern world. Before the showing of Der Hauptmann von Köln, Chinese audiences had only briefly seen Paris in Sans laisser d’adresse (Without Leaving an Address, dir. Jean-Paul Le Chanois, 1951). This film took place in Köln in the FRG. Through this film, Chinese audiences could see the life of a modern capitalist society. In that era, that phenomenon was like opening a skylight which allured many young people longing for the Western lifestyle. The colourful life scenes, plus the outstanding Chinese dubbing, made it the most popular film among young people in 1959” (Anon, 2019).

7.4

Conclusion

From 1952 to 1964, 62 German-language films were imported into, and shown in, China. Of these, 54 were from the GDR, 5 were from the FRG, 2 from Austria, and 1 from Switzerland. The China Film Import and Distribution Company worked with different partners in the four countries to bring films into China. Films from the FRG and Switzerland were shown in the PRC years before formal diplomatic relationships with these countries were established. Films from the GDR and the FRG were more political than those from Austria and Switzerland. Due to the large illiterate population in China, most German films were dubbed instead of subtitled. This paper has described the dubbing process and demonstrated how a German film was dubbed into a lip-synchronized Chinese version. The 17-year period focused on here was crucial to the establishment of socialism in the PRC. German films distributed in China in this period became, so to speak, the Chinese people’s collective memory of Germany in the modern era and shaped their understanding of socialism and capitalism. By providing a preliminary introduction to the distribution and translation of German films in the PRC in this 17-year period, this article hopes to serve as a jumping-off point for future studies on GermanChinese cinematic exchange in the modern era.

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References Anon. (2019, November 5). qiu yue feng zhao shen zhi de pei yin ke lun shang wei 1956 [The dubbing of Der Hauptmann von Köln (1956) by Qiu Yuefeng and Zhao Shenzhi]. https://movie. douban.com/review/10631495/ Anonymous. (1951, July 20). 中国影片经理公司与苏联等兄弟国家交换影片[China Film Management Corporation exchanges films with the Soviet Union and other brother nations]. People’s Daily. Anonymous. (1953, January 16). “做好影片的宣传解释工作—读者来信综述” [“Take care to publicize and explain films—A summary of letters from readers”]. People’s Daily. Anonymous. (1954a, October 7). 德意志民主共和国电影周开幕式在京举行 [The opening ceremony of the GDR film week held in Beijing]. People’s Daily. Anonymous. (1954b, October 6). 为庆祝德意志民主共和国建国五周年,文化部决定在全国二 十个城市举办电影周[To celebrate the fifth anniversary of the National Day of the GDR, the Ministry of Culture of the PRC decides to hold film weeks in 20 cities in China]. People’s Daily. Anonymous. (1964, October 4). 民主德国驻华大使举行电影招待会庆祝德意志民主共和国成 立十五周年[The Ambassador of the GDR held a film reception to celebrate the 15th national day of the GDR]. People’s Daily. Anonymous. (2019). 邱岳峰/赵慎之的配音hh科伦上尉ii1956[The Chinese dubbing of Der Hauptmann von Köln by Qiu Yuefeng and Zhao Shenzhi]. Retrieved November 14 from https://movie.douban.com/review/10631495/ Anonymous. (2020, August 24). 大学时代看电影[Watching a film during my college years].今晚 报 [Evening Newspaper]. Braester, Y., & Chen, T. M. (2011). Film in the People’s Republic of China, 1949–1979: The missing years? Journal of Chinese Cinemas, 5(1), 5–12. Cheng, N. (2002). 上海探戈 [Shanghai Tango]. Xuelin Publishing House. Chen, T. M. (2009). International film circuits and global imaginaries in the People’s Republic of China, 1949-1957. Journal of Chinese Cinemas, 3(20), 149–161. Chen, D. (2003). 邱岳峰[Qiu Yuefeng]. In 多余的素材 [Superfluous Material]. Shangdong Pictorial Publishing House. Chen, T. (2014). An Italian bicycle in the people’s republic: Minor transnationalism and the Chinese translation of Ladri di biciclette/bicycle thieves. Journal of Italian Cinema & Media Studies, 2(1), 91–107. Dong, W. C. (1951). Xinzhongguo de jiaoyu [Education in new China]. Zhonghua Book Company. Hu, N. (2020). Familiar strangers: Images and voices of Soviet allies in dubbed films in 1950s China. China Perspectives, 1, 25–31. Huang, G. (1959, October 9). 欢迎德意志民主共和国电影周 [Welcome the GDR film week]. People’s Daily. Jin, H. (2020). Film translation into ethnic minority languages in China: A historical perspective. Perspectives, 28(4), 575–587. Li, J. (2019). Gained in translation: The reception of foreign cinema in Mao’s China. Journal of Chinese Cinemas, 13(1), 61–75. Lu, D. (1955, July 27). Speech at the Second Plenary of the First National People’s Congress. People’s Daily. Ma, R. (2016). A genealogy of film festivals in the People’s Republic of China: ‘Film weeks’ during the ‘Seventeen Years’ (1949–1966). New Review of Film and Television Studies, 14(1), 40–58. Sun, Y. (2014). 那年月, 我们用声音造梦[We created dreams with our voices in those years]. Dongfang Publishing House. Xinhua News Agency. (1965, May 8). 庆祝战胜德国法西斯二十周年各地今日起放映二十四 部影片[ 24 films will be shown in different cities in China from today to celebrate the 20th year’s victory against the Fascism]. People’s Daily.

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Haina Jin is a professor of translation, film, and communication studies at the Communication University of China. Her research interests include film translation, translation history, and film history. She is the chair researcher of the China National Social Science Foundation Major Research Project, “A General History of Film Translation in China”. She has published a monograph titled Towards a History of Translating Chinese Films (1905–1949) and is now working on a sequel, which will cover the 120-year history of film translation in China. Her publications have appeared in Babel, Perspectives, Target, Journal of Chinese Cinemas, among others. She is the translator of the three-volume General History of Chinese Film published by Routledge. She is the editor-in-chief of Journal of Chinese Film Studies (De Gruyter) and the series editor of Routledge Series in Chinese Cinema. She is on the boards of Journal of Specialized Translation, Cogent Arts and Humanities, and Journal of Audiovisual Translation.

Chapter 8

Impressions of Chinese Opera in Nineteenth-Century German Travel Notes Mei Wei

Abstract Influenced by the historical realities and theatrical culture of the time, the reception of traditional Chinese theatre in the nineteenth-century Germany was different from that in any other century. Compared with the ‘Chinese-themed drama fever’ prevailing in Vienna and the Dresden Royal Palace in the eighteenth century and the influence of Chinese theatre on German theatre in the early twentieth century, for instance the influence of Mei Lanfang’s performance on Brecht’s theory of theatrical ‘alienation’, the acceptance of traditional Chinese theatre faced great difficulties in the nineteenth century, especially for German-speaking Europeans visiting China at that time. When Prussian soldiers, military officers, journalists, and scholars landed in China, they found that the wonderful image of China created by earlier missionaries was incompatible with a realistic picture of Chinese society. The paper aims to examine the German reception of Chinese Opera through the lens of German travel notes of that time in order to find out what limited and impeded nineteenth-century Europeans understanding of the aesthetics of traditional Chinese performing arts. Keywords Impression of Chinese opera · Nineteenth century · German travel notes

8.1

Introduction

In the more than 300-year-long history of theatrical exchanges between Chinese and German culture, running from the ‘Chinese-themed drama fever’ in the theatre of German Jesuits and German court theatre in the eighteenth century, through Goethe’s unfinished Elpenor (an adaptation of the Chinese Yuan drama The Orphan of Zhao), right up to the twentieth century and Brecht’s theory of theatrical ‘alienation’ (Verfremdungseffekt) which, being introduced first in Brecht’s theoretical writings but later becoming an important part of stage practice both in his own productions and in the productions of those influenced by him, was inspired in part M. Wei (✉) Shanghai Theatre Academy, Shanghai, China © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 H. Jin et al. (eds.), Contemporary German–Chinese Cultures in Dialogue, Global Germany in Transnational Dialogues, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-26779-6_8

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by the acting techniques and methods of Chinese Opera,1 the preponderance of evidence would appear to indicate that traditional Chinese theatre (including the dramatic literature and performance techniques associated with it) was generally positively received in the German-speaking world. But this long-standing impression will be disrupted if we consider travel journals or travel notes, held in some libraries in Germany, which recount, among other things, certain nineteenth-century Germans’ travels in China. These journals reveal to us that the reception of Chinese Opera in Germany in the nineteenth century was different from that accorded to it in the German-speaking world in any other century, before or afterward. From the descriptions of, and commentaries on, the performance styles and musical accompaniment of Chinese Opera that we find in these travel notes, we have to conclude that these particular German authors at least displayed a resistant attitude to this style of dramatic creation and were more or less unified in the view that they neither understood nor wished to understand this foreign theatre form. The reason why Chinese culture was ‘given the cold shoulder’ by these German-speakers is surely inextricably linked, at some level, with the ‘Orientalist’ attitudes prevailing in Europe at the time. But here in this paper I do not intend to focus on the possible influence of Orientalism on the view taken by these writers on Chinese theatre but, rather on the differences in society, culture, and arts between China and Germany, especially the difference in performance aesthetics in these two cultures. Looking back at history, we know that the nineteenth century can be regarded as a century of revolutionary changes in Europe and China. It was not only the century when Germany achieved national unity, transformed from a backward agricultural region into a modern civilized power which then expanded eastward; it was also the century when the Qing empire (1636–1912) went into decline. The ‘horizon of expectation’ was broken. So the traditional Chinese Opera, which carries the spirit and aesthetics of Chinese culture, was rejected along with the backward social economy and dilapidated urban scene. In the notes and diaries that these Germanspeaking visitors wrote they used their own theatre and dramatic art as a standard to evaluate Chinese Opera, so that the aesthetics of this latter tended mostly to be rejected. Regardless of the perspective adopted, however, there can be no doubt but that these important first-hand materials can provide us with more details to help us in understanding and studying the reception of Chinese Opera by Germans at that time. An approach making full use of these first-hand historical testimonies, then, will surely prove to be more interesting than staying just within the sphere of abstract historical concepts or theoretical interpretations.

1 In 1936, Brecht published the text Verfremdungseffekte in der chinesischen Schauspielkunst (Alienation Effects in Chinese Acting) which still plays an indispensable role in world theatre today.

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8.2

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Historical Backgrounds

The travel notes is a form of writing that has a high degree of literary merit and can be considered an authoritative source for historical inquiry. After Alexander von Humboldt’s expedition to South America from 1799 to 1804 and the publication of his Voyage aux régions équinoxiales du Nouveau Continent (Journey to the Equinoctial Regions of the New Continent), travel became a very important way for European academics to obtain information about other parts of the world. For example, Charles Robert Darwin, a naturalist and natural historian, wrote the Zoology of the Voyage of H.M.S. Beagle on his visit to the Galapagos Islands in 1831–1836. Franz Wilhelm Junghuhn, a botanist, published his Topographische und naturwissenschaftliche Reisen durch Java (Topographic and Scientific Journeys in Java) and the various volumes of Licht en schaduwbeelden uit de binnenlanden van Java (Images of Light and Shadow from Java’s Interior) in the 1840s and the 1850s after his scientific trip to the Java Islands. Ferdinand von Richthofen, a geographer, completed his China: Ergebnisse eigener Reisen und darauf gegründeter Studien (China: The Results of My Travels and the Studies Based Thereon) during his field trip to China in 1868–1872. These are the most representative European travel notes from the nineteenth century. They made considerable contributions to the development and progress of the natural and human sciences. As the German historian Jürgen Osterhammel put it, the importance of travel in the nineteenth century was ‘far greater than in any other era’ (Osterhammel, 2016, p. 10). The nineteenth century was also a period of profound changes in European civilization. The West, or rather Britain, France, and Germany, underwent rapid scientific and technological advancements, they pioneered mass industrial civilization. But the consequent increase in demand for industrial raw materials and energy materials prompting their further eastward expansion through such projects as the British and Dutch East India Companies or the Prussian Expeditionary Fleets. In the East, the ‘Chinese Empire’ which, in earlier centuries, had been raised up as an ideal by European Jesuits and others was in decline due to political corruption and conservatism. It was thus that there emerged in the minds of Europeans the belief— constitutive of the ideology of ‘Orientalism’ in Edward Said’s sense of this term—of ‘European nations and cultures’ being ‘superior to all non-European nations and cultures’ (Said, 2019, p. 10). Driven by newfound nationalist sentiment further reinforced by technological advances, European attitudes towards the East (including China) changed dramatically. ‘The East’, previously celebrated by Europeans as symbolizing romance, exoticism, beautiful landscapes, and extraordinary experiences, was reduced to being a byword for poverty, ignorance, superficiality, and backwardness. The nineteenth century, then, was a period when the gap between Chinese and Europeans was at its greatest. However, one thing that remained similar was the role of theatrical activities in the lives of both Germans and Chinese, since watching plays was a part of daily life for both peoples. Especially in China, theatre had already penetrated both urban and rural areas on every level. The travel notes of the Prussian naval writer Reinhold von Werner, the

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travel writer Ernst Hesse-Wartegg, the young scholar Julius Wilhelm Otto Richter, the Saxon Chamber of Commerce representative Gustav Spieß, the interpreter A. Genschow, the geographer Vladimir Obruchev, and others all provide evidence of this fact. More importantly, these travel notes, above and beyond providing us with actual objective descriptions of the venue for the opera performance and its architectural structure, the performance atmosphere, the form of the performance and its musical accompaniment at the time, etc., also allow us to see all these things from a different cultural perspective than the one which produced them. The authors of the travel notes speak for European theatre audiences in general, and especially German audiences, in reporting, through the dual obstacles of a cultural gap and real cultural differences between China and Europe, on the performance style of Chinese Opera.

8.3

Differences in Theatre Architecture Between the Chinese and the Germans

On March 7, 1861, the naval officer and writer Reinhold von Werner, who was also the captain of the Elbe, a transport ship of a Prussian expeditionary fleet, arrived in Shanghai’s Wusongkou port (also today’s Shanghai Wusongkou International Cruise Port). Before his departure from the port of Hamburg, von Werner had been commissioned by the publishing house F. A. Brockhaus in Leipzig to send timely accounts of what he saw and heard during his eastern expedition back to the Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, so that the German people could also learn about the Eastern world. As a theatre enthusiast, attending the theatre was Werner’s first choice of remedy for travel fatigue. On a street not far from the Bund, von Werner saw a building ‘only a little bigger than an ordinary house’ (Von Werner, 1863, p. 172) and went inside to discover an opera house that was very different from the European theatres that he was familiar with. He wrote: Compared with other houses, the theatre’s uniqueness lies in its size, not in any way in its sturdiness or its precious stage set. Bamboo and rattan were the main materials used in the theatre’s construction: the former formed the entire roof-beam framework, while the latter was used for the walls and roof. The interior of the theatre was similarly primitive and simple. The stage was a raised wooden frame, with the orchestra sitting in the front of it. The stage was separated from the backstage by a painted wallpaper or a rattan wall, which also served as a background. The rough raw benches placed for the audience resemble the amphitheater. There were also special seats for the wealthy. In addition, there was a simple wooden shack at the entrance for the cashier and ticket inspector. At this point, the interior and exterior of a Chinese theatre are fully unfolded in front of us (Von Werner, 1863, p. 172).

Von Werner’s depiction of the Chinese theatre building, which to some extent matches up with images of little theatre or tea houses already recorded in the theatre history of China, presented what a traditional theatre looked like in a more tangible way. It is worth noting that this style of theatre building described by von Werner was popular not only in China but also in Singapore at the time.

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When the young academic Julius William Otto Richter and travel writer Ernst Hesse-Wartegg, travelling on the ship of the Prussian expeditionary fleet Arkona, arrived in Singapore, they saw a Chinese theatre, during a brief stopover in September 1860, which was also ‘a rectangular building made of wood and bamboo’ (Richter, 1908, p. 22). As Hesse-Wartegg writes: ‘the stage was raised a few feet above the ground; the middle space was occupied by benches on which a large Chinese audience sat; and there was a rather narrow entrance on one side of the theatre’ (1897, p. 158). Unlike ordinary Chinese theatres, this theatre made Richter’s companion, Gustav Spieß, feel that the Chinese showed ‘great respect and friendship to all Europeans’. For only half a dollar, people could go on stage and ‘be arranged on rough chairs and bench seats in the most friendly way’. However, Spieß also felt that ‘the theatre according to the European conception of this latter is not to be found here’ (1864, p. 113). What were the differences between the appearance and structure of European theatre buildings and the Chinese theatre buildings that these travellers saw at that time? Theatres are not only buildings intended for performances, but also reflect the development of societies as a whole. In terms of European theatre development, European theatres featured complex structures, magnificent exteriors, and luxurious interiors as early as the Baroque period. The Margravial Opera House in the town of Bayreuth, Germany, which still maintains its original appearance, is a prominent representative of such an architectural style. By the mid-nineteenth century, all German states basically had their own permanent theatres, including the Residence Theatre in Munich, the Thalia Theatre in Hamburg, and the Deutsches Theatre in Berlin. It can be observed that there was a huge gap in theatre architecture between China and Europe in the nineteenth century. This gap would remain very large up right up until the first half of the twentieth century. On February 23rd 1932, famous Peking-Opera performer Cheng Yanqiu, who was studying in Europe, wrote to his colleagues in the Nanjing Opera and Music Academy Beiping (Beijing) Branch Institute, ‘On the 25th of January, I was in Moscow. Thanks to the hospitality of Mr. Liuzhen Mo, I visited several large theatres, all of which were magnificent and beautiful. I was ashamed when I thought of the low-rise, weakly lit and dusty theatres in our country’ (Cheng, 2010, p. 22). An essential part of a theatre building is the stage. Its technological development and application often reflect societal progress. The invention of gas lighting in the nineteenth century, for example, led to new stage lighting technology in European theatres. Since then, stage lighting has not only been used for illumination but also to enhance whatever is presented on the stage and to create the right atmosphere for each component of the story. By the late nineteenth century, with the influence of new stage aesthetics—naturalism—, in order to create an illusion of reality through a range of theatrical strategies was stage machinery in frequent use in European theatres, so that the stage sets were able gradually to become more realistic and visually impressive. Chinese audience members were amazed on seeing theatre stages achieve this level of spectacle. On the evening of May 8th 1866, Bin Chun and Zhang Deyi, officials of the Qing dynasty’s mission to Europe, watched the

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performance of Don Giovanni at the National Opera of Paris and were prompted to exclamations of admiration by the rich and varied stage sets: The mountains, rivers and waterfalls. The sun and the moon shone brightly, and suddenly the God statue showed up. Dozens of goddesses descended to the middle of the stage, while the auspicious light shoots beamed on people, which was wonderful and incredible. Day and night, rain and shine, the sun, the moon, lightning, clouds, light and shadow; wind, thunder, spring and rain, color and sound; mountains and seas, carriages and boats, buildings and lanes, flowers and trees, gardens, birds, fish and animals made their appearance on the stage, all of which was extremely impressive (Zhou, 2018, p. 160).

It is no wonder, therefore, that these German travellers found the hut-like theatres of China to be primitive and rough. There is, of course, no necessary connection between a theatre’s size, sturdiness, and technology and the quality of the performing arts presented there. But the differences in these regards between Chinese and German theatres certainly reflected a gap between the two civilization’s respective developments. Consequently, the gap in the development of industrial civilization between China and Germany at this time cannot be ignored in the study of cross-cultural reception.

8.4

Performance and Musical Characteristics

The most prominent differences between Chinese and European performing arts in the nineteenth century were aesthetic ones. Just as Huang Zuolin once succinctly put it in his Rambling on the Concept of Chinese Opera (Mantan xiju guan), traditional Chinese operas tend to aim at creating high symbolic performances, while Western theatre emphasizes a natural performance style (Huang, 2006, pp. 34–40). Specifically, in that time Western theatre took realism and accurate representation of daily life as its most important aesthetic principle. Therefore, in contrast to the admiration expressed by Bin Chun and Zhang Deyi for the ‘marvelous’ stage settings in Europe, in the eyes of von Werner highly symbolic and stylized Chinese Opera settings and performances encouraged a ‘primitive and naïve’ attitude in the audience: ‘Wings’ and other such stage devices do not exist in the Chinese theatre, if one does not count the painted paper screens which stand in fixed positions on the stage and behind which the characters of the play step and take cover during periods when they are not involved in the action. It is left up to the audience themselves to envisage in their own minds any scenery the play might require, using all the imaginative power at their disposal, on the basis of ‘hints’ about what should be envisaged that display an astonishing degree both of novelty and naivety. For example, if a general is sent on an expedition to a distant province, he appears with a set of reins in one hand and a whip in the other, which he loudly cracks. Accompanied by a deafening racket of gongs, drums and trumpets, he walks three or four times right around the stage, then stops and informs the audience that he has arrived at this or that destination. If the journey imagined in the play is a sea-journey, the actor playing the general picks up a model of a Chinese ‘junk’ and walks across the stage with it tucked under his arm. Horses are represented simply by broomsticks, and any time that the scene of the drama changes one or another actor takes on the role of director and provides the audience with the necessary explanations (Von Werner, 1863, p. 172).

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Similarly, Hesse-Wartegg describes in his travel notes how: The stage layout of Chinese theatres displays the same laughable simplicity as did our own theatres in the age of Shakespeare. In the background is some sort of canvas screen through which two doors lead to the actors’ dressing room. It is through these doors that the actors rush out with grotesquely painted faces and in equally grotesque costumes, scream out their roles, and then vanish again, while all the while the music makes the most tremendous racket. The musicians sit off in the background on one side of the stage and there is likely no relation at all between the racket they are making and what is being sung by the actors. The stage layout is completed by a few chairs, cases and boxes set up on the stage, and these stage props are moved around or piled on top of one another by the employees of the theatre even while the action on stage is going on. It is assumed that these men moving boxes will be effectively invisible to the audience. Rather excessive demands, indeed, are made on the audience’s powers of imagination. I remember seeing in Canton an actress—that is to say, a male actor disguised as a woman—climbing effortfully up a great pyramid constructed out of chairs and cases. It was meant to represent a mountain and the movements of the ‘lady’ were intended to indicate that she was making her way through a forest. On another occasion I saw six sturdy fellows lying down, one on top of the other, in the middle of the stage. There rushed in on them, from both sides, other actors fantastically costumed as warriors. Some of them rolled the piled-up fellows in the middle to the side, in order to be able to come to grips with the others. My interpreter told me that these fellows in the middle had represented the wall of a fort!—On another occasion I saw an actor dressed as a warrior rushing diagonally across the stage making a gesture clearly intended to represent riding a horse. Once at the edge of the stage, he seemed to hand over a letter to some invisible person. I found out that this was a rider who had been dispatched by one of the characters in the play to Mongolia. But so that the audience understood this as well, the actor himself explained, as he stood on the edge of the stage with the letter in his hand, that he had now arrived in Mongolia and was completing his mission (Hesse-Wartegg, 1897, p. 158).

The above excerpts show that von Werner and Hesse-Wartegg were aware of the symbolic and abstract nature of performance and performance techniques in the Chinese theatrical arts. Nevertheless, they characterized these arts and techniques as ‘laughably simple’ and ‘primitive and naive’. At that time, these sentiments towards Chinese Opera were not limited to German audiences alone. The German-speaking Russian geographer Vladimir Obruchev, who watched Beijing opera performances in 1895, also wrote in his own travel notes: There were no scene changes. Only a few new tables, chairs or benches were dragged in before the audience. Mountains and trees, the sun and the moon, the rivers and streets, houses and temples, and towers and gates could only be ‘seen’ by the audience through their own imagination in combination with the faintest hints of the Regisseur (troupe leader). The requirement for such imagination is quite demanding (Obruchev, 1897, p. 95).

When the first major character (with stylized movements) appeared on the stage, Obruchev expressed his disapproval towards the stylized movements of Chinese opera. He felt that the actor and his character were ‘like a poor man afflicted with foot gout, walking on the stage with very unnatural and stiff legs’ (Obruchev, 1897, p. 95). In Otto Richter’s view, the performance method of Chinese opera actors was ‘absolutely restrained, artificial and exaggerated; the recitation and gestures looked completely strange’. Only the comedian’s performance method—‘close to natural presentation’—was normal in his eyes (Richter, 1908, p. 22).

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If it was the stylized acting style of Chinese opera that made it difficult for European audiences to comprehend, then how did the German audience, who grew up listening to the works of musicians such as Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven, react to Chinese opera music? Chinese opera music is created based on the qupai or banqiang style;2 or rather it is governed by the oblique tones of the Chinese words and accompanied by traditional Chinese instruments. For Gustav Spieß, the music of Chinese opera sounded as if ‘all the actors were screaming high in falsetto’, ‘as if to show that only he [all the roles were played by male actors] could win the title. And these high-pitched sounds, which were sung with all their might, become desperate outbursts to our ears. Such artistic presentation is only painful to the ears’. Spieß found it ‘difficult to describe’ the noise of the musical accompaniment in Chinese Opera, and ‘only the falsetto of the actors could break through the clutter and the most discordant tones’ (Spieß, 1864, p. 113). According to Vladimir Obruchev, the opera actors ‘used all the ranges from the highest falsetto to the lowest grunt, as well as all the harmonious and discordant tones that the human organs can produce’ (Obruchev, 1897, p. 95). Even Genschow, who could speak fluent Chinese, ‘would rather stay in a small hotel and lie quietly’ than enter a Chinese theatre again to endure the ‘horrible noise that can hurt a European’s ears’ (Genschow, 1905, p. 35). Of course, not all Germans approached Chinese opera music in the same evasive manner as Genschow. Ernst Hesse-Wartegg, who had always been interested in ‘other cultures’, tried to understand Chinese Opera music. To appreciate Chinese Opera music, Hesse-Wartegg tried very hard to find its rhythms, melodies, and playing methods in the terrible noise of the gongs, pipa, and violin players squatting on the stage. (This is not a reference to the violin as a Western instrument, but rather an analogy that the author found for European audiences based on the sound and playing methods of the music instruments erhu and jinghu.) But unfortunately, he never succeeded. What puzzled him was that ‘the Chinese speak with different tones for each word [the four tones in Chinese] but sing with a monotone voice’ (HesseWartegg, 1897, p. 156). After watching several Chinese opera performances, Reinhold von Werner, who was well versed in Western music principles, discovered a major conceptual difference between Chinese and European music. He pointed out the difference in expression and composition: ‘The Chinese do not yet know much about semitone, counterpoint [Kontrapunkt, a polyphonic music writing technique] or the division of phrases; there is no fixed key in their musical performance, only constant shifts between major and minor keys. One can hear a frequently recurring melody, but there is no harmonic’ (Von Werner, 1863, pp. 176–177). What von Werner did not comprehend was that what he labelled as ‘shortcomings’ were the main features that distinguished Chinese opera music from European music. For example, the absence of a fixed rhythmic division of phrases is the sanban (lyrical

2

qupai- and banqiang-style are two different music forms of Chinese opera music, which is considered to be the basis of the combination of melody and lyrics, both forming an indivisible unit. Music of Kun-Opera belongs to the qupai-style. Music of Peking-Opera is the banqiang-style.

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and loose mode) of Chinese opera music; the frequently recurring melody is probably the main tone of qupai (melody model with text); the reason for ‘not yet know much about semitone’ is the unique Chinese pentatonic scale. The evaluation of Chinese opera music by these German writers demonstrates that differences in aesthetic approaches leads to negative receptions and prejudices. Another way of putting it is that the ‘horizon of expectation’ these German-speaking writers had with regard to the Chinese theatre was circumscribed. They used their own theatre and dramatic art as a standard to evaluate other cultures, and this caused the negative reception of the Chinese performing arts at that time. German academics complained that the sound produced by musical accompaniment in Chinese opera is ‘a noise that can hurt a European’s ears’. This is understandable. Because in terms of music instrumental precision and articulation, the production of musical instruments in the nineteenth-century China was not good. For example, in a study of the scale, pitch, and intonation of the average hole flute, a traditional flute that is commonly used as the main accompaniment in Kunqu, it was found that its scale was not the same as the standard pitch of the heptatonic scale (CDEFGAH). In short, the five diatonic intervals of C–D, E–F, F–G, A–H, and H–C, which are played by the flute, are larger compared to the pitch of two adjacent white keys on a piano, but the diatonic intervals of D–E and G–A are smaller than the heptatonic scale (Wei, 2009, pp. 39–40). Moreover, the product-quality of Chinese instruments (their intonation and timbre) was uneven in the nineteenth century. Therefore, for most audiences having their first contact with Chinese opera music, it was difficult to adapt quickly to its unfamiliarity and the unfamiliarity of its external expressive features and to identify its intonation.

8.5

Reflections and Conclusion

Goethe once said, ‘It is part of the nature of the German to respect everything foreign for its own sake and to adapt himself to foreign idiosyncrasies’ (Eckermann, 1930, p. 48). Historically, the Germans really did learn a lot from other cultures, including England, France, China, ancient Greek, and Roman cultures, etc. But in middle of the nineteenth century, this tolerance of reception from other Cultures suddenly started to change. The reasons were political. On the one hand, a not yet united Germany was eager to acquire national and cultural identity, and begin to establish its own cultural foundation and confidence, they began to resist the influence of French culture. On the other hand, Prussia failed to gain control of its ports in China as Britain did, therefore, they were disappointed at the ‘non cooperation’ of the Chinese government, which to some extent also affected the objective evaluation of Chinese culture by the Prussian. This is most clearly exemplified by a commentary on Chinese opera by von Werner, the Prussian captain of the Elbe: ‘The Chinese drama is not designed to make great artists. Dramatic literature has an unusually strong representation in China, and some of the best dramas have been translated into English or French at different times. [. . .] Its poetic creation failed to rise above

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mediocrity. One cannot find a deeper intuition or vivid appeal in either the old Chinese dramatic works or the new ones. Although their tragedies seemingly resemble the works of the ancient Greeks, they are far less valuable compared with achievements made by Sophocles, Aeschylus, or Euripides’ (Von Werner, 1863, p. 174). Interestingly, while von Werner complained that ‘Chinese poetic creation failed to rise above mediocrity’ and ‘one cannot find a deeper intuition or vivid appeal’ in these works, around the same time, academics introduced, translated, and adapted a number of Chinese dramas following the translation of The Orphan of Zhao. The British Sinologist John Francis Davis, for example, translated Ma Zhiyuan’s Autumn in the Han Palace (Hangong qiu) in 1827. The French Sinologist Stanislas Aignan Julien translated Li Xingdao’s The Chalk Circle (Huilan ji) in 1832, based on this translation there appeared some adaptations in German: the indologist Wollheim da Fonseca’s Der Kreidekreis (Four acts plus a foreplay) in 1875, Alfred Henschke’s Der Kreidekreis (Five acts) in 1925 (Walravens, 2016, p. 43). Two years later, the sinologist Alfred Forke translated this Yuan-drama from Chinese into German. Obruchev obviously would not have expected the ‘stiff and pretentious’ stylized acting of Chinese opera where ‘holding a whip suggests riding a horse, and a chair can be a door’, became a source of inspiration for European theatre practitioners of the twentieth century. In fact, it is easy to see from the passages cited above from the German travel notes that these German-speaking writers did not (or did not want to) observe and perceive Chinese opera from the perspective of its unique cultural lens but rather tried to understand it in terms of their European theatrical arts. Specifically, they were more accustomed to the representation of real life, the pursuit of naturalistic acting, and the historical accuracy of visual impressions. Historically, Chinese Opera produced different impressions in European travellers in different periods. From the notes of missionary Matteo Ricci in the sixteenth century, through the ‘Chinesethemed drama craze’ by German Jesuits theatre and German Court theatre in the eighteenth century, to Goethe’s unfinished Elpenor, an adaptation of the Chinese Yuan drama Orphan of Zhao, to the negative comments in these German travel notes of the nineteenth century, and to the early twentieth century and Brecht’s praise of traditional Chinese performance aesthetics, Europeans have always changed their evaluations of Chinese Opera based on situational contexts. Thus, cultural differences can be either a source of attraction or a gulf that hinders understanding. Compared with the cultural differences between the reception subject and the object, the former’s society and its spirit of the times have a greater influence on the basic attitude towards and evaluation of the reception of ‘other cultures’. Whether the horizon of expectation generated on this basis can be fused with the object determines the degree of ultimate reception. But ‘China, as an inexhaustible source, brings new impressions to every traveler again and again, and with its inhabitants, its customs and habits, make it valuable to those who crave knowledge’ (Genschow, 1905, p. 9).

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References Cheng, Y. (2010). Cheng Yanqiu xiju wenji [Cheng Yanqiu drama Collection]. Huayi Publishing House. Eckermann, J. P. (1930). Conversations of Goethe Quotes. (J. Oxenford, Trans.). Havelock Ellis. Genschow, A. (1905). Unter Chinesen und Tibetanern. Volckmann & Wette. Hesse-Wartegg, E. (1897). China und Japan: Erlebnisse, Studien, Beobachtungen auf einer Reise um die Welt. J. J. Weber. Huang, Z. (2006). Rambling on the Concept of Chinese Opera [Mantan xiju guan]. Shanghai Theatre, 34–40. Obruchev, V. (1897). Aus China: Reiseerlebnisse, Natur- und Völkerbilder (Vol. I). Verlag von Duncker und Humblot. Osterhammel, J. (2016). Shijie de yanban: 19shiji shi [The Transformation of the World: A Global History of the Nineteenth Century]. (C. Qiang & F. Liu, Trans.). Social Sciences Academic Press. Richter, J. W. O. (1908). Die preußische Expedition in Japan 1860–1861. Stephan Geibel Verlag. Said, E. W. (2019). Dongfang xue [Orientalism]. (Y. Wang, Trans.). SDX Joint Publishing. Spieß, G. (1864). Die preußische Expedition nach Ostasien während der Jahre 1860–62. Verlag von Otto Spamer. Von Werner, R. (1863). Die preussische Expedition nach China, Japan und Siam in den Jahren 1860, 1861 und 1862: Reisebriefe. F. A. Brockhaus. Walravens, H. (2016). Chinesische Singspiele, Novellen, Essays und Gedichte in deutscher Sprache im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert. Zur frühen Kenntnis chinesischer Literatur in Deutschland. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. Wei, M. (2009). Studie zum Kunqu in Geschichte und Gegenwart. Cuvillier Verlag. Zhou, Y. (2018). Qingtin shituan fang Ou guanjukao [Study on the Qing Mission’s European Theatre Visit]. Dushu, 4, 159–166.

Mei Wei is an Associate Professor of Theater Studies at Shanghai Theatre Academy. She is the author of Studie zum Kunqu in Geschichte und Gegenwart (Göttingen, 2009) and Zur Erneuerung der Kunoper: Renaissance der klassischen chinesischen Kunoper am Anfang des 21. Jahrhunderts (Göttingen, 2015). In addition to these two monographs, she has written a number of research articles on intercultural theatre, German theatre, and comparative musicology. Her other research projects include the reception of Chinese opera in German-speaking countries and Construction of Theatre Studies as a discipline in China.

Chapter 9

Cultural Symbols: A Way to Boost Cultural Dialogues Between China and Germany Yihong Wang, Yang Zhang, and Xinna Zhao

Abstract As cultural symbols play an important role in intercultural communication, Chinese cultural symbols favored by Germans can enhance cross-cultural exchange and understanding between China and Germany. Two online questionnaire surveys, one in 2012 and the other in 2017, were made in Germany to identify what Chinese cultural symbols were known by Germans and which were their favorites. The two-survey result reveals that Germans’ recognition of all the Chinese cultural symbols investigated has been improved, and such Chinese cultural symbols as “Chinese food,” “the Great Wall,” “traditional Chinese medicine,” and “silk” have gained increasing popularity among Germans over the years of our surveys, which means cross-cultural communication has improved by deepened understanding between the two nations. In conclusion, it is advisable to improve Sino-German intercultural understanding through Chinese cultural symbols favored by the Germans and organizing relevant cultural exchange events in Germany. Likewise, it is recommendable to investigate the popularity and the recognition of German cultural symbols favored in China to enhance Sino-German intercultural communication. Keywords Cultural symbols · Sino-German · Intercultural communication · Chinese symbols

Y. Wang (✉) Peking University, Beijing, China e-mail: [email protected] Y. Zhang Tianjin University, Tianjin, China X. Zhao Beijing Institute of Petrochemical Technology, Beijing, China © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 H. Jin et al. (eds.), Contemporary German–Chinese Cultures in Dialogue, Global Germany in Transnational Dialogues, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-26779-6_9

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Introduction

Nowadays, intercultural communication relies partly on the exchange of cultural symbols. Lizardo (2016) defines cultural symbols as “motivated mappings between external form and cognitive meaning, used for both the private evocation of and the public externalization of those meanings.” He explains that cultural symbols have cultural power: “cultural symbols, rather than constituting our subjective semantic potential. . . the semantic pole of a cultural symbol is typically linked to a set of perceptual symbols in their role as the simulators for the concept(s) that constitutes the meaning of the symbol” (Barsalou, 1999). Thus, cultural symbols are important because the cultural power they possess can help improve intercultural communication by conveying the meaning of the symbols. The friendship between China and Germany dates back to ancient times. At the end of the thirteenth century, Marco Polo, after traveling along the Silk Road (Seidenstraße)1 to China and back to Venice by sea, published a book on China that was then translated into Middle Highland German, making “China” known to more Germanic people. In the late sixteenth century, Juan González de Mendoza, a bishop in Europe, published another book about China, which gave a detailed introduction to Chinese society, customs, and culture. The book was translated into German as well in 1589. While spreading Western culture in China, most of the early missionaries who came to China also introduced Chinese culture back to Europe. For varied reasons, however, the missionaries portrayed an idealistic image of China: shrewd monarch, developed and prosperous country, stable and peaceful society, rational and happy people. From the fourteenth century to the nineteenth century, cultural communication between China and Germany was rarely recorded in books. In 1950, China and East Germany (German Democratic Republic) established diplomatic relations; and in 1980, Chinese leader Xiaoping Deng and the President of the German Social Democratic Party met and agreed to develop cooperative relations despite ideological differences (Wu, 2003). In the twenty-first century, intercultural communication has been increasing between China and Germany. In 2012, the “Year of Chinese Culture” was held in Germany, which is among the largest events held jointly by the two nations throughout those years (Kong & Yin, 2012). The “Perception of China” activity held on May 17, 2015 brought Chinese culture such as special forums, literary performances, intangible cultural heritage performances, picture exhibitions, China film week, and China Food Festival to the German audience (Anonymous, 2021a). “China 8: Contemporary Art,” an exhibition held in Germany in 2015, is the largest institutional exhibition of Chinese contemporary art ever seen anywhere in the world (Anonymous, 2021b). Germany is one of China’s largest trading partners in Europe now (Wirtschaftsund Handelsabteilung der Botschaft der Volksrepublik China in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, 2021). The Sino-German trade triggers the development of the world’s 1

The Silk Road (die Seiden Strasse) is named by the Germany geographer Ferdinand von Richthofen in the nineteenth century.

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second and fourth largest economies. Political contacts, tourism, economy, and trade between China and Germany have been increasing for decades (Wirtschafts- und Handelsabteilung der Botschaft der Volksrepublik China in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, 2015). An article released on the website of Handelsblatt, a German newspaper, on February 25th, 2020, states that the understanding of Chinese culture among Germans needed to be improved, and people with better understanding of Chinese culture were in short supply in Germany (News for Reference, 2020). Therefore, identifying Chinese cultural symbols that are recognized or preferred by German respondents can, to some extent, help build a bridge to connect the two nations in cultural exchange. Thus, we conducted two surveys, one in 2012 and the other in 2017, to analyze Chinese cultural symbols recognized and preferred by Germans with a longitudinal study in Germany.

9.2 9.2.1

Literature Review Cultural Symbol and Its Cultural Power

In the domain of social anthropology, culture is a catchword for the patterns of thinking, feeling, and acting (Hofstede et al., 2010). Hofstede thinks that culture is a collective phenomenon, because it is shared among people who live in the same social environment. He also proposed the definition of symbols as “words, gestures, pictures, or objects that carry a particular meaning that is recognized as such only by those who share the culture” (Hofstede et al., 2010). In Saussure’s Semiotics, “sign” is composed of the “signifier” and the “signified” (Saussure, 2011): the signifier is a concrete object (symbolic form), whereas the signified is a psychological concept (symbolic content). Because the symbol itself has no meaning, the connection between the “signifier” and the “signified” is arbitrary. Barthes (1983) extended Saussure’s study to semiotics and focused on the distinction between the denotation and connotation of symbols: denotation refers to the external meaning of the sign (the signifier), whereas connotation (the signified) refers to the meaning derived from the social or cultural context of the sign. Instead of direct expression, symbols serve as a metaphor or metonym. It is through the “metaphor” and “metonym” discourse that the meaning of a symbol has the space to expand. Cultural symbols are used to construct a personal, organizational, or national image due to the connotation from a constructivist perspective. We can conclude that symbolization involves two processes: one is to symbolize things, and the other is to bring the symbolized things into a value judgment system—to represent a symbol, object, or behavior (non-self) by virtue of the consensus reached by members within the cultural body who uses it. The subject and the object generate great “cultural productivity” through the association of thoughts, entities, and symbols. As for the interaction between subjects, Roland Barthes (1983) maintains that the coder and decoder of symbols should be mutually accessible, share commonality, and have sharing of mind. The

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perception of symbols is interpreted by cultural groups. Stuart Hall (1980, pp. 128–138), known as the father of cultural studies, has noted that the connotation refers to highly naturalized meaning, which reduces the barriers to communication between different cultural groups because the cultural symbols can be recognized from the biological level. “The potential to invoke a given semantic content must pre-exist the establishment of a link between the external form of the symbol and the specific slice of mental experience that constitutes its cognitive meaning (Lizardo, 2016).” “In this respect, cultural symbols (in contrast to perceptual symbols) do not mean anything directly; instead, they serve as prompts for persons to engage in (individual or collective) acts of meaning construction” (Shore, 1996, p. 326; Lizardo, 2016).

9.2.2

Intercultural Communication

As a form of communication, intercultural communication emphasizes the interactive characteristics in the process of cross-border information flow. Intercultural communication between countries is to reduce cultural barriers by dint of the intention and content of the communication. Cultural symbols can in some sense accomplish this goal by the denotation and connotation that refers to highly naturalized meaning. Gudykunst (2005) interpreted intercultural communication by three theories: cultural communication, cultural variation, and heterogeneous culture. Heterogeneous culture focuses on the influence of culture on communication between people from different cultural backgrounds. As mentioned above, the barriers to the spread of heterogeneous cultures are the differences in the underlying structure of cultures. Cultural differences lead to challenges in understanding each other’s social behaviors, values, and emotions. Hofstede’s onion diagram provides an interpretation of cultural differences. From the inside to the outside (practice), the diagram consists of four dimensions—symbols, heroes, rituals, and values (Hofstede et al., 2010). Lizardo (2016) stated that “this is the most important in the case of rituals (and other complex cultural symbols), where conceptual knowledge must be evoked in the right sequence and in the prescribed occasion. While this account does not go as far as postulating that cognition would be impossible without external symbols, it does recover a workable and potentially empirically generative version of the original insight shared by Saussurean, Durkheimian, and Geertzian approaches to the issue of cultural power.” Actually, it is inevitable to use cultural symbols in intercultural communication to remove cultural barriers. We analyze the value of cultural symbols and rituals, as well as the values they are related to, so as to deepen mutual understanding in intercultural communication. Thus, we can analyze Chinese cultural symbols that are always popular from time to time in Germany and identify the reason for their popularity. Our research questions are as follows:

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In 2012, what kinds of Chinese cultural symbols were well known in Germany, and what kinds of Chinese cultural symbols are favored by Germans? In 2017, what kinds of Chinese cultural symbols are well known in Germany, and what kinds of Chinese cultural symbols are favored by Germans? What kinds of Chinese cultural symbols remained popular and gained increasing popularity among Germans in the four years of our surveys, and why?

9.3 9.3.1

Methods and Samples Methods

A special triangulation method was adopted to improve the validity and reliability of our survey results. Quantitative research methods and qualitative methods were used in different steps of research to ensure the reliability of the investigation and analysis results. Kelle (2005a) made a comparative analysis of various meanings of triangulation application and found a comprehensive method as the content of qualitative and quantitative research (Flivk, 2011). Trigonometric correction of a triangulation method has developed into different types. The first is investigation triangulation, which includes the investigation of different researchers. The second type is collection triangulation, such as initial data, secondary data, literature, observation data, field record, and image data. The third is the triangle rectification of three methodologies, such as the combination of qualitative and quantitative studies. This can be divided into two sub-categories. The first refers to a variety of specific methods, but they are all qualitative or quantitative methods, such as focus group interviews and expert interviews that are qualitative methods; the second refers to mixed methods, such as the combined use of qualitative and quantitative methods in the same research. The third type of triangulation method was used in the present work. First, initial data were analyzed and field investigations were performed. Meanwhile, for qualitative research, pilot interviews were performed for open questions in the questionnaire. Then, pretest questionnaires were designed. Second, a semiopened question was asked in focus group interviews. According to the grounded theory (Glaser, 1992; Kelle, 2005b), focus group interviews were used to generalize the framework of integration. Third, in order to obtain effective quantitative survey data, the questionnaire was rearranged and some items in the initial questionnaire were deleted after data cleansing. Fourth, a large-scale questionnaire survey was conducted to analyze the questionnaire. Fifth, the result of the analysis was followed up with an in-depth field research. Accordingly, the research is divided into three stages—pre-prediction, quantitative research implemented in actual investigations, and field research analysis.

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Pre-prediction

In the present work, the questionnaire survey method was employed as the major research method. During the design and analysis of the questionnaire, multiple qualitative research methods were applied for one-on-one interviews and group discussions. In order to improve the validity and reliability of the questionnaire, the questionnaire was constantly modified and improved based on interview results. Quantitative and qualitative investigations and analyses were conducted both in China and Germany. The first pilot interview started in October of 2008, and follow-ups were from January 2009 to November 2011. Between March 2012 and April 2013, a large-scale survey was carried out in Germany, and most of the survey was processed in 2012, thus named the “2012 survey.” Between December 2016 and March 2017, another large-scale survey was carried out in Germany, and as most of the survey was processed in 2017, it was termed the “2017 survey.”

9.5

Quantitative Research in Actual Investigations

In both 2012 and 2017, Beijing e-Panel Survey Company, a certified member of the European Society for Opinion and Marketing Research (ESOMAR), was entrusted to conduct two large-scale questionnaire surveys in Germany using the “online accessible sample database” survey method.

9.6

Field Research

Relevant contents in 2012 and 2017 were analyzed in depth during data analysis. Data used in the present work were principally from the surveys in 2012 and 2017. Questionnaire surveys and subsequent in-depth interviews were carried out based on statistical analysis results.

9.6.1

Samples

In the 2012 survey, the Beijing e-Panel Survey Company collected more than 10,000 questionaries, among which 1119 were valid, and after cleansing, 939 samples (84.2%) were obtained and used for the analysis of the survey results. Six aspects of the sampled respondents were explained in detail: 1. Age The respondents were mainly young and middle-aged people.

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Cultural Symbols: A Way to Boost Cultural Dialogues Between China and Germany

Fig. 9.1 Age distribution of respondents in the 2012 survey

151

30.00% 23.4%

25.00%

24.9% 20.6%

20.00% 15.00%

10.10% 10.00% 5.00% 0.00%

Under 15

16-45

46-64

Above 65

Fig. 9.2 Gender breakdown of respondents in the 2012 survey

female 52%

male 48%

People aged 20–29 accounted for 28.4%, and those aged 30–39 accounted for 29% of the total. The percentage of middle-aged and old people was 27.6%, while the teenagers under 20 were less (14.1%). Figure 9.1 shows the age distribution of respondents in our 2012 survey. 2. Gender The proportions of male and female respondents were basically the same, which were 48% and 52%, respectively, as shown in Fig. 9.2. 3. Annual income Respondents with an annual income of 10,000–39,999 euros before the tax took up the largest proportion (48.4%), and the low-income group (less than 10,000 euros) also accounted for a moderate proportion (30.5%). In contrast, the proportion of high-income group with an annual income of 40,000 euros or more before tax was the smallest (20.5%). From the perspective of annual income before family tax, German respondents were mainly at the middle-income level. 4. Ethnic group More than three fifths of the respondents were German. The rest of the ethnic groups accounted for a small proportion (about 5%) and the distribution was relatively even.

152 Fig. 9.3 Age distribution of respondents in the 2017 survey

Y. Wang et al. 35% 30% 25% 20% 15% 10% 5% 0%

29% 25% 14%

13%

11%

8%

15-24 25-34 35-44 45-54 55-64 Above 65

5. Living area The distribution of respondents’ living areas is as follows: nearly half of the respondents came from central Germany (45.47%), 27.9% of them were from the south, and those from the north took up the smallest proportion (26.62%). 6. Education About one third (34.61%) of the respondents graduated from secondary schools, and 23.96% of them were from secondary specialized schools. People who received higher education accounted for 25.90%. Among the interviewees, general clerks (office workers), college students, technicians, and others took up a high proportion (all more than 10%), while farmers accounted for the smallest proportion (0.96%). In the 2017 survey, 1004 valid questionnaires were returned. The six aspects of the respondents are presented as follows: 1. Age As shown in Fig. 9.3, the proportion of respondents aged 15–24 and those aged 25–34 accounted for the third and fourth largest among all age groups. The group aged 35–44 and that aged 45–54 accounted for the second and the first largest age groups, respectively, which is consistent with the age breakdown of the German population in 2017. Respondents aged 55–64 were also involved in the present work as required by researchers from the e-Panel Survey Company. 2. Gender The proportions of male and female respondents were basically the same, which were 48% and 52%, respectively, as shown in Fig. 9.4. Male and female respondents took up basically the same proportion, which is consistent with the population census result in Germany in 2012. 3. Annual income Nearly one third of the respondents’ income was below 10,000 euros (including no income), which belonged to the low-income group in Germany, while 4.7% earned more than 800,000 euros per year, belonging to the high-income group in Germany. In addition, the middle class with an annual income of 10,000–39,999 euros accounted for nearly half of the total respondents.

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female 52%

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male 48%

Fig. 9.4 Gender breakdown of respondents in the 2017 survey

4. Ethnic group In the 2017 survey, 97.2% respondents were German, and 0.7% were Turkish and non-German Europeans. The ethnic composition was consistent with the real situation in Germany. 5. Living area According to the geographical division of Germany, 28% of the population lived in northern Germany, 31% in the central region, and 41% in the south. This was consistent with the regional distribution pattern of respondents in our 2017 survey. 6. Education In the 2017 survey, only 1% of respondents had no education background; 1% of respondents obtained a doctoral degree; 9% had a master’s degree; 13% obtained a bachelor’s degree; and 5% were in undergraduate education. Secondary specialized school graduates accounted for the largest proportion (38%), and secondary school graduates accounted for 22%.

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Measure

In our research, the fondness degree is measured using Likert scale. We added a zero to the variables to indicate that a respondent knew no Chinese cultural symbols, thus creating a scale of 0–6 for each cultural symbol. Cultural symbol items in our 2012 survey were selected according to a report released on Newsweek, an American journal. The samples of the released report were from the USA, Canada, Britain, and some other countries.2 A list of Chinese cultural symbols proposed by the project entitled “Research on the Development Strategy of Chinese Cultural Soft Power” was considered.3 On the basis of the questionnaire in 2012, we changed Chinese cultural symbol items in our 2017 survey. The new symbol items included modern science and technology symbols, entertainment symbols, agricultural civilization symbols, and cultural symbols of ethnic minorities. Besides, we have deleted items of similar symbols, such as the same festive symbols for the Mid-Autumn Festival, the Qingming Festival, and other festivals. The new cultural symbols surveyed were divided into 11 types: architectural symbols (Great Wall and Potala Palace), animal symbols (dragon and giant panda), quotidian symbols (cooking, tea, medicine, Spring Festival, silk, Tangzhuang/Qipao), and sports symbols (Chinese Kungfu or Taijiquan), art symbols (calligraphy, Chinese porcelain, Peking opera, Chinese painting, Chinese gardens, terracotta warriors and horses, folk music), philosophy symbols (Confucianism, Taoism, Taiji Yin-Yang diagram), education symbols (Peking University, Tsinghua University), language and literature symbols (Chinese/Chinese characters, Tang and Song poetry), modern science and technology symbols (China high-speed railway), game symbols (Chinese chess), and agricultural civilization symbols (Honghe Hani terrace). All these Chinese cultural symbols were listed in German language and some of them were in pictures (such as the pictures of the Great Wall, panda, Honghe Hani terrace, etc.) to facilitate understanding. The respondents were given the lists of these symbols beforehand and asked to choose which they knew and favored. Analysis of the questionnaire surveys revealed some interesting findings, as interpreted and contextualized in the following paragraphs.

2

Chinese cultural symbols are Chinese characters, the Forbidden City, the Great Wall, Suzhou gardens, Confucius, Taoism, Sun Tzu’s art of war, terracotta warriors, Mogao Grottoes, Tang Empire, silk, Chinese porcelain, Beijing opera, Shaolin Temple, Kung Fu, journey to the west, Temple of Heaven, Chairman Mao, acupuncture, and Chinese food. 3 According to the survey of college students across Germany, the top 20 most representative Chinese cultural symbols selected by the respondents are Chinese (Chinese characters), Confucius, calligraphy, the Great Wall, the Five-Starred Red Flag, traditional Chinese medicine, Mao Zedong, the Forbidden City, Deng Xiaoping, terracotta warriors, the Yellow River, the Analects of Confucius, the Old Summer Palace, four treasures of the study, Dunhuang Mogao Grottoes, historical records, papermaking, classical poetry and Beijing opera.

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Chinese Kungfu

155

30.75%

Panda

31.79%

The Terracotta Warriors

32.42%

Chinese porcelain

33.26%

TCM

38.51%

Dragon

38.61%

The Fobidden City

40.92%

Chinese food

47.11%

The Yin-Yang Diagram

51.31%

the Great Wall

84.89%

29.00% 39.00% 49.00% 59.00% 69.00% 79.00%

Fig. 9.5 Recognition of Chinese cultural symbols by Germans in the 2012 survey The Terracotta Warriors

22.25%

Chinese Garden

22.56%

The Fobidden City

24.45%

TCM

24.76%

Silk Dragon

26.44% 29.28%

Panda

The Yin-Yang Diagram Chinese food the Great Wall

36.62% 44.07% 49.95% 60.86%

20.00% 30.00% 40.00% 50.00% 60.00% 70.00%

Fig. 9.6 Top 10 most favored Chinese cultural symbols among Germans in the 2012 survey

9.7 9.7.1

Results Analysis of the 2012 Survey

Figure 9.5 shows the top 10 most widely recognized Chinese cultural symbols in the 2012 survey, including the Great Wall (84.89%), the Yin-Yang diagram (51.31%), Chinese food (47.11%), the Forbidden City (40.92%), dragon (38.61%), Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) (38.51%), Chinese porcelain (33.26%), the Terracotta warriors (31.79%), panda (31.79%), and Chinese Kungfu (30.75%). Figure 9.6 shows the top 10 most favored Chinese cultural symbols among Germans in the 2012 survey, including the Great Wall (60.86%), Chinese food (49.95%), the Yin-Yang diagram (44.07%), panda (33.62%), dragon (29.28%),

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silk (26.44%), TCM (24.76%), the Forbidden City (24.45%), Chinese gardens (22.56%), and the Terracotta warriors (22.25%). By comparing Figs. 9.5 and 9.6, we found that for the vast majority of Chinese cultural symbols, the number of people who recognized them was higher than the number of those who like them.

9.7.2

Analysis of the 2017 Survey

The top 10 most widely recognized Chinese cultural symbols among respondents in our 2017 survey were the following: Chinese food (92.40%), the Great Wall (90.20%), TCM (87.90%), silk (87.50%), Chinese porcelain (85.70%), Chinese Kungfu (Taiji) (85.50%), cheongsam (83.90%), Chinese garden (83.70%), tea (83.50%), and the Yin-Yang diagram (82.70%) (Fig. 9.7). As Fig. 9.8 shows, the most preferred Chinese cultural symbols among the respondents in 2017 were Chinese food (67.70%), the Great Wall (56.40%), Chinese garden (56.20%), silk (50.60%), TCM (50.10%), tea (44.60%), the Terracotta warriors (39.30%), Chinese porcelain (38.80%), the Yin-Yang diagram (38.70%), and Chinese Kungfu (Taiji) (33.80%).

9.7.3

Comparison

Compared with the results of 2012, all symbols investigated have become better known. The recognition rate of Spring Festival symbols increased from 7.87% to 76.70% (by 68.83%), that of Chinese music symbols increased from 8.50% to Fig. 9.7 Top 10 most recognized Chinese cultural symbols among Germans in the 2017 survey

The Yin-Yang Diagram

82.70%

Tea

83.50%

Chinese Garden

83.70%

cheongsam

83.90%

Chinese Kungfu

85.50%

Chinese porcelain

85.70%

Silk TCM the Great Wall Chinese food

87.50% 87.90% 90.20% 92.40%

75.00% 80.00% 85.00% 90.00% 95.00%

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Chinese Kungfu

33.80%

The Yin-Yang Diagram

38.70%

porcelain

38.80%

The Terracotta Warriors

39.30%

Tea

44.60%

TCM

50.10%

Silk

50.60%

Chinese Garden

56.20%

the Great Wall

56.40%

Chinese food 30.00%

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67.70% 40.00%

50.00%

60.00%

70.00%

Fig. 9.8 Top 10 most favored Chinese cultural symbols by Germans in the 2017 survey

74.50% (by 66.0%); for Peking Opera symbols, the rate increased from 3.99% to 65.20% (by 63.17%); for Peking University symbols, the percentage increased from 8.50% to 74.50% (by 61.21%); and the rate for Chinese Poetry symbols increased from 5.98% to 67.10% (by 61.12%). The results show that recognition of Chinese cultural symbols improved among Germans over the 4 years of our surveys (Fig. 9.9). Compared with the results of the first survey, many symbols gained popularity from 2012 to 2017 (Fig. 9.10). The top 10 cultural symbols that witnessed the sharpest increase in popularity were the following: the popularity of Chinese garden increased from 22.56% to 56.20% (by 33.64%), that of TCM increased from 24.76% to 50.10% (by 25.34%), that of silk increased from 26.44% to 50.60% (by 24.16%), that of Spring Festival increased from 6.30% to 29.30% (by 23.00%), that of Chinese porcelain increased from 19.20% to 38.80% (by 19.60%), that of Chinese food increased from 49.95% to 67.70% (by 17.75%). Chinese food, the Great Wall, Chinese gardens, silk, TCM, the Terracotta warriors, and the Yin-Yang diagram appeared on the list of the top 10 favorite cultural symbols both in 2012 and 2017. Among them, four cultural symbols showed a sharp increase in popularity: Chinese food, Chinese gardens, TCM, and silk. Thus, these four Chinese cultural symbols that remained popular in both years and increased sharply in popularity are analyzed from the aspects of value, rituals, and the way they have spread in Germany.

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Spring Festival

76.70%

7.87%

Chinese music

74.50%

8.50%

Peking Opera

70.20%

7.03%

Peking University

65.20%

3.99%

Chinese Poetry

67.10%

5.98%

Chinese Garden Chinese Painting

72.00%

11.54%

Silk

87.50%

27.60%

Taoism

67.70%

8.18%

Confucianism Tsinghua University

83.70%

22.98%

73.00%

16.47% 56.80%

1.05%

Chinese characters

80.10%

25.08%

Chinese Kungfu

85.50%

30.75%

Chinese porcelain

85.70%

33.26%

TCM Chinese food

92.40%

47.11%

Panda

69.00%

31.79%

The YinYang Picture The Terracotta Warriors

32.42%

51.31% 56.40%

the Great Wall 0.00%

87.90%

38.51%

20.00% Year 2017

40.00%

60.00%

80.40% 90.20% 84.89% 80.00% 100.00%

Year 2012

Fig. 9.9 Comparison of most recognized Chinese cultural symbols in 2012 and 2017

9.8

Discussion

As the surveys show, four Chinese cultural symbols including Chinese food, TCM, Chinese gardens, and silk were popular in Germany, and the reasons for their popularity were analyzed as follows.

9.8.1

Chinese Food

Chinese food was the most popular cultural symbol in Germany in 2017 and the second most popular symbol in 2012. Chinese food is a representative symbol of Chinese culture. It appears in Chinese people’s daily life, social events, and religious rituals. For instance, Chinese often greet each other by asking “Have you eaten” (much like the casual greetings like “hello” or “hi”), and some special food is reserved to celebrate traditional festivals, such as dumplings on Spring Festival,

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Chinese Garden

56.20%

22.56%

TCM

50.10%

24.76%

Silk Spring Festival

26.44% 29.30%

6.30%

porcelain

49.95%

Confucianism

Chinese Painting

Taoism Chinese Gongfu Peking University Peking Opera Chinese Poetry Tsinghua University Chinese characters Chinese music

50.60%

38.80%

19.20%

Chinese food

The Terracotta Warriors

7.14%

the Great Wall The YinYang Picture 25%

0.00%

20.00%

Year 2017

67.70%

24.40%

39.30% 22.25% 26.20% 11.33% 18.80% 4.83% 33.80% 20.67% 14.30% 1.89% 14% 2.31% 16.70% 6.51% 9.90% 1.15% 15.60% 10.91% 8.90% 5.56%

Panda

159

56.40% 60.86%

38.70% 44.07% 36.62%

40.00%

60.00%

80.00%

Year 2012

Fig. 9.10 Comparison of most favored Chinese cultural symbols among Germans in 2012 and 2017

moon cakes on the Mid-Autumn Festival, and yuanxiao (sweet glutinous rice balls) on the Lantern Festival. Besides, Chinese enjoy talking business at dinner, an occasion intended to increase group bonding (Hofstede et al., 2010). Special food and eating habits give expression to desires and feelings. They bear connotation and denotation meanings. As Levi-Strauss stated, food conveys culture in both material and cooking ways (Ashley et al., 2004). Food satisfies physiological needs, psychological needs, and social needs. Moreover, food passes down information from generation to generation. In our results, food has fulfilled its role as a medium of information transmission from culture to culture. Chinese food symbolizes the Chinese social structure and Chinese traditional culture from an anthropological perspective (Qu, 2011). Chinese symbolize their wishes in their food. For instance, they make steamed bread in the shape of peaches for longevity, and noodles are a must on their birthday. Rice embodies harvests in the northeastern part and most southern parts of China. Chinese food is shaped by the long-term values in Chinese culture. The population of Chinese in Germany has increased over these years. Besides, as the Chinese become richer and spend more money on food, more Chinese

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Fig. 9.11 Chinese restaurants in Berlin on Tripadvisor

restaurants are opened in Germany, allowing Germans to taste Chinese food. For example, there were 167 Chinese restaurants available in Berlin when we searched online (Fig. 9.11). Another reason why Germans like Chinese cuisine may be its integration with German tastes. After more than 200 years of adaptation, it is inevitable that Chinese food will be “reformed” in Germany (localization). With the development of Chinese food in Germany, Chinese food has gradually adapted to the local “taste” of Germans. Besides, there is also a shift in eating manner in German Chinese restaurants: Chinese are used to eating together and sharing dishes, whereas Germans prefer serving individual dishes by sitting on a long or square table. In Chinese restaurants in Germany, groups of people eat together, but they can choose to order their own share of dishes and pay for their own separately. We found that Chinese food had adapted to local catering culture to reduce the cultural difference. As a cultural symbol, food is more easily accepted by heterogeneous cultures because it provides a sense of happiness at social and biological levels. It can also improve the understanding of cultural values because our dietary experience is associated with our self-understanding and social expression (Lalonde, 1992). Thus, it is no wonder that Chinese food is the favorite cultural symbol and enjoys increasing popularity in Germany.

9.8.2

Traditional Chinese Medicine

Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) is one of the oldest streams of medicine in the world, which embodies Chinese culture and philosophy incisively and vividly. From

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the perspective of TCM, the human body is regarded as a whole, and diagnoses are performed through looking, listening, questioning, and pulse feeling. TCM doctors use traditional Chinese herbs, acupuncture, scraping, cupping, and diet therapies for treatment. It embodies man–nature unity in Chinese philosophy, pursuing harmony and unity of organs connected to other parts of human bodies. Besides, the meridian and collateral theory is constructed based on the Yin-Yang theory, the central idea of which is to allow differences, promote coexistence, and reduce conflicts. German medicine belongs to western medicine. However, Germans have a special interest in ancient medicine, and Germany is one of the European countries that allow qualified TCM practitioners to practice medicine. The earliest medical document in the world was left by Egyptians on papyrus (paper made from papyrus stems), and many medical principles specified within that document are similar to those of TCM. In 1875, the document was purchased and published by a German named Georg Ebers, and hence later it was called Ebers Papyrus. In 1890, H. Joachim translated the Papyrus into German and published it in Berlin.4 After 1980, many TCM and acupuncture clinics were established across Germany in cities like Berlin, Hamburg, Munich, Bonn, and Bremen, but they were generally small in scale. Since 1990, large-scale TCM organizations and institutions have emerged and developed rapidly in Germany.5 Besides, there are journals published by the International Association of TCM in Germany, such as Deutsche Zeitschrift für Akupunktur. There are also books published in German on TCM techniques like pulse-feeling. Lisi Du, a German who studied Chinese medicine for years, insists that TCM is philosophy whereas Western medicine is science, but the two are by no means opposite (Xu, 2021). To sum up, the medical principles that TCM and German medicine share set the stage for the spread of TCM clinics in Germany, leading to the emergence of cultural symbols of TCM in the Germans’ daily life. All these contribute to the increasing popularity of TCM in Germany.

9.8.3

Chinese Gardens

There are two kinds of Chinese gardens. The gardens in the form of royal family in northern China are grand in scale, magnificent in architecture, and hierarchical in content, symbolizing the majesty of imperial power or family; the gardens in the form of private gardens in southern China are elegant and beautiful in architecture, with the natural and peaceful charm of southern landscapes.

4 Joachim, H. 1890. Papyros Ebers: Das älteste Buch über Heilkunde. Berlin: Druck und Verlag von George Reimer. 5 Website of SMS–SOCIETAS MEDICINAE SINENSIS (Internationale Gesellschaft für Chinesische Medizin e. V.). 2021. The website shows the list of other agencies who work with the SMS. Updated on January 1, 2021, from http://www.tcm.edu/Home.aspx

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Chinese gardens are a profound embodiment of Chinese philosophy and culture. Traditional culture of patriarchy and hierarchy is shown in royal gardens like Imperial Palace, Beijing’s Grand Palace Museum and Shenyang Palace Museum, and other northern gardens. Inside the buildings, the front and back parts of the courtyard are connected, forming a layout that goes deep into the inner house layer by layer, which reflects the characteristics of hierarchy as well as internal and external differences. Typical southern gardens in China highlight a close bond with nature through artificial creation of “natural integration,” which reduces the power structure and emphasizes Chinese philosophical values like man–nature unity, Yin-Yang harmony, etc. The non-linear architectural layout in southern gardens features “winding paths leading to seclusion.” Typical southern gardens, such as Zhuozheng Garden, are completely different from Western buildings that have linear and geometric patterns. These differences give Germans a sense of “extraordinary diversity.” In southern, central, and western Germany, there are large and small gardens with Chinese characteristics built jointly with Chinese cities, such as Fanghua Garden, Chunhua Garden, Yingqu Garden, and Duojing Garden. Fanghua Garden, located in Westpark of Munich, is the first Chinese-style garden in Europe. The garden, a typical southern Chinese garden designed and constructed by Guangzhou Garden Bureau, was built for International Garden Expo in Munich Westpark in 1983. Chunhua Garden, a Chinese garden completed in 1989 in Frankfurt in central Germany, is a gift from the municipal government of Guangzhou to Frankfurt. “Chunhua” means prosperity. In the garden, there are not only ponds, woods, and grass lawns, but also Chinese-style bridges and gates. Yingqu Park is located at one of the largest zoos in Duisburg in northwestern Germany. This garden was donated by Wuhan, a friendly city of Duisburg, in 1995 (Anonymous, 2011). In addition to animals from Asia, the main exhibition there is the poetic and philosophical Asian garden art. For example, “Futang” and “Fengxue Pavilion” are brightly colored, which are integrated with surrounding plants and zoos, reflecting harmony between human and nature in traditional Chinese gardens. Additionally, these Chinese gardens are often mixed with other Asian gardens, which may confuse the locals or weaken the specific Chinese garden characteristics in the way of architecture. Besides, Panda Garden, built in Zoologischer Garten in 2017, has made Chinese gardens more popular in Germany. The building, painted in red and green, is a typical Chinese hexagonal pavilion. Chinese leader Jinping Xi and Germany’s leader Merkel attended the opening ceremony of Panda Garden (Figs. 9.12 and 9.13). Both Chinese and German journalists reported on the ceremony, which may lead Chinese gardens to more popularity in Germany.

9.8.4

Silk

As the inventor of sericulture in the world, China enjoys a long history of planting mulberry and raising silkworms. In the era of the agricultural economy in which men

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Fig. 9.12 Opening ceremony of Panda Garden

farm and women weave, silk was of unparalleled importance. The clothes of emperors and nobles were mainly made of silk, and the plebeians were proud of wearing silk. In the traditional farming culture, silk also played a part in shaping Chinese aesthetic consciousness with the excellent visual and tactile experience it provided, and hence became a symbol of aesthetic ideal in China. “It has incomparable cultural value and implication. Silk, as a cultural symbol, is used to convey information to the outside world, which shows that silk culture has a nationality and is an excellent national symbol” (Zhang, 2011). As early as in 1731, a merchant ship began trading between China and German ports, and many Chinese handicrafts, including those made of silk, were also transported ashore (Eberstein, 2008). With continuous exchanges between Chinese and German merchant ships, Chinese handicrafts were constantly transported to Germany. In the late 1970s, China opened its door to the outside world, and cultural exchanges between China and Germany increased rapidly. In eastern Germany, there were even silkworm breeding projects as early as in the 1970s (Naber, 2019). After the reunification of Germany in 1990, Chinese handicrafts were not only sold in German shopping malls but also exhibited in museums all over the country, which contributed considerably to the quick spread of Chinese culture. In the early twenty-first century, China put forward the “Belt and Road Initiative,” with a vision to build a partnership with countries along the road and promote intercultural communication. The initiative was covered by the press in Germany, which made silk more popular among Germans.

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Fig. 9.13 Architecture of Panda Garden

9.9

Conclusion

The objective conditions or social systems of China and Germany have not changed much, but fondness for some popular Chinese cultural symbols has increased considerably over the years of our surveys. This may be attributed to the following reasons. First, cultural symbols have become more influential when integrated into local life: there have been an increasing number of Chinese medicine clinics and doctors in Germany, and Chinese gardens have been built in Germany rather than merely appearing in paintings or photos. In Hofstede’s perspective, rituals are connected to symbols by practice. Cultural symbols that appear in rituals will

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reinforce the memory of these symbols by people from another cultural background. Rituals, where conceptual knowledge is evoked in the right sequence and on the prescribed occasion, are important (Lizardo, 2016). What is more, intercultural communication between countries is affected by domestic and international politics. The relationship with another country will influence people’s fondness for the country’s cultural symbols. Thus, the fondness degree of cultural symbols can reflect the political closeness between countries. As partners, China and Germany have held cultural events to improve communication. The “Year of Chinese Culture” in 2012 is one of the largest events held by China and Germany to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the establishment of their formal diplomatic relations. The two major themes of the event are cooperation and dialogue. Throughout the year, 150 projects and more than 500 activities involving music, drama, dance, literature, film, exhibition, dialogue forums, and others are held in Germany. Globalization and the development of Internet have strengthened the ties between the two countries. Multi-sensory triggers like videos and pictures on new media can lead to positive intercultural communication (e.g., Dumas et al., 2017; Kolo et al., 2018; Park et al., 2017). This may shed light on why the recognition of all Chinese cultural symbols has increased among Germans after 4 years of the first survey in 2012. In the present work, we try to improve the understanding between China and Germany by investigating Chinese cultural symbols recognized in Germany for the promotion of Sino-German intercultural communication. In the future, we expect to do more research in a more qualitative manner to gain insights into how cultural symbols as the “surface culture” change the action or understand the core value as the “deep culture.” Acknowledgment The article is supported by Social Science Foundation in China: 08&ZD057, 14ZDA53 and 21ZD07.

References Anonymous. (2011). Yiqu Garden in Duisburg, Germany. Architecture and Gardens Website. Retrieved April 7, 2011, from http://chla.com.cn/htm/2011/0407/80550.html Anonymous. (2021a). The ‘Experience China’ event of Asia-Pacific weeks in Berlin opened. Embassy of the People’s Republic of China in the Federal Republic of Germany. Retrieved December 2, 2021, from http://de.china-embassy.org/chn/zdgx/201505/t20150525_28212 50.htm Anonymous. (2021b). CHINA 8|Contemporary Chinese Art in Rhine & Ruhr. Stiftung für Kunst und Kultur e.V. Bonn. Retrieved December 2, 2021, from https://www.stiftungkunst.de/kultur/ en/projekt/china-8-contemporary-art-from-china-on-the-rhine-and-ruhr/ Ashley, B., Hollows, J., Jones, S., & Taylor, B. (2004). Food and Cultural Studies. Routledge. Barsalou, L. W. (1999). Perceptual Symbol Systems. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 22(4), 577–660. Barthes, R. (1983). Empire of signs (1st pbk. ed.). Hill and Wang.

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Dumas, T. M., Maxwell-Smith, M., Davis, J. P., & Giulietti, P. (2017). Lying or Longing for Likes? Narcissism, Peer belonging, Loneliness and Normative Versus Deceptive Like-seeking on Instagram in Emerging Adulthood. Computers in Human Behavior, 71, 1–10. Eberstein, B. (2008). Hamburg-Kanton 1731: der Beginn des Hamburger Chinahandels. Ostasien Verlag. Flivk, U. (2011). Mixing Methods, Triangulation, and Integrated Research. Qualitative inquiry and global crises, 132(1), 1–79. Glaser, B. (1992). Basics of Grounded Theory Analysis. Sociology Press. Gudykunst, W. B. (Ed.). (2005). Theorizing about Intercultural Communication. Sage. Hall, S. (1980). Encoding/Decoding. In S. Hall, D. Hobson, A. Lowe, & P. Willis (Eds.), Culture, Media, Language: Working Papers in Cultural Studies, 1972–79. Hutchinson. Hofstede, G., Hofstede, G. J., & Minkov, M. (2010). Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind (Rev. 3rd ed.). McGraw-Hill. Kelle, U. (2005a). Sociological Explanations between Micro and Macro and the Integration of Qualitative and Quantitative Methods. Historical Social Research, 2(1), 95–117. Kelle, U. (2005b). ‘Emergence’ vs. ‘Forcing’ of Empirical Data? A Crucial Problem of ‘Grounded Theory’ Reconsidered. Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung/Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 6(2), Art. 27. Kolo, C., Widenhorn, S., Borgstedt, A., & Eicher, D. (2018). A Cross-cultural Perspective on Motives and Patterns of Brand Recommendation in Social Media. International Journal of Online Marketing, 8(2), 27–44. Kong, J., & Yin, F. (2012). German Cultural Year in China. Phoenix TV news. Retrieved December 2, 2012, from https://news.ifeng.com/c/7fbLSGzKed5 Lalonde, M. P. (1992). Deciphering a Meal Again, or the Anthropology of Taste. Social Science Information, 31(1), 69–86. Lizardo, O. (2016). Cultural Symbols and Cultural Power. Qualitative Sociology, 39(2), 199–204. Naber, C. (2019). Silk: The dream fabric (C. Beisswenger, Trans.). Mingei. Retrieved December 3, 2019, from https://www.mingei-project.eu/silk-the-dream-fabric/ News for Reference. (2020). German media: Germany’s lack of ‘China experts’ in its exchanges with China. Baidu. Retrieved February 28, 2020, from https://baijiahao.baidu.com/s?id=1 659765899831354185&wfr=spider&for=pc Park, M., Park, J., Baek, Y., & Macy, M. (2017). Cultural values and cross-cultural video consumption on YouTube. PLoS One, 12(5), e0177865. Qu, M. (2011). The Symbol Hiding the National Soul–On the Symbolic Culture of Chinese Food. Yunnan University Press. Saussure, F. D. (2011). Course in General linguistics. Columbia University Press. Shore, B. (1996). Culture in Mind. Oxford University Press. Wirtschafts- und Handelsabteilung der Botschaft der Volksrepublik China in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland. (2015). From January to October 2014, the bilateral trade volume between Germany and China was 127.32 billion euros, a year-on-year increase of 8.52%. Ministry of Commerce of the People’s Republic of China. Retrieved February 4, 2015, from http://de. mofcom.gov.cn/article/jjzx/201502/20150200888475.shtml Wirtschafts- und Handelsabteilung der Botschaft der Volksrepublik China in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland. (2021). In 2020, China remains the largest trading partner of Germany. Ministry of Commerce of the People’s Republic of China. Retrieved February 24, 2021, from http://de. mofcom.gov.cn/article/jjzx/202102/20210203040818.shtml Wu, X. (2003). Contacts between the CPC and the German Social Democratic Party. The Contemporary World, 3, 23–24. Xu, J. (2021). Traditional Chinese medicine clinic of German landlady. The Body Daily Website. Retrieved January 1, 2021, from http://www.360doc.com/content/11/0908/11/3068016_14 6660505.shtml Zhang, J. (2011). On the cultural metaphor and symbolic characteristics of silk. Silk, 9, 50–53.

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Yihong Wang is an associate professor at the School of Journalism and Communication, Peking University, received her undergraduate and graduate degrees in Shanxi University, received her second graduate degree in Peking University, received her Ph.D. degree in Hamburg University and finished her post-doctorate research in Peking University. Her research focused on theories about Intercultural and International Communication, transnational New Media Communication, International and Chinese Immigration. Her academic interest is in triangulation/mixed method as well. She has published more than one hundred articles and finished more than ten academic research projects for national fundings and distinct academic research fundings. Yang Zhang is a lecturer in Tianjin University. She earned her bachelor and master degrees in electronic engineering area from Tianjin University and Peking University, respectively. She got her doctoral degree from Peking University and was an assistant researcher in Tsinghua University. Author of publications in cross-cultural communication and computational social science area, her research interests explore the cross-cultural communication effects with computational method. Over the past five years, her research attracted thousands of downloading. Her papers were also accepted by ICA and IAMCR and other international conference and journals. She is a reviewer of several journals and conferences. Xinna Zhao is an associate professor in the School of Economics and Management, Beijing Institute of Petrochemical Technology. She received her Ph.D. in the Guanghua School of Management at Peking University. Her research focuses mainly on Operations Research, Management Science, and International Communication with both methodology and empirical studies. Dr. Zhao’s research has appeared in Decision Support Systems, Sustainability, Journal of Coastal Research, Environmental Engineering and Management Journal. She also authored two books including China’s Low-carbon Transition Performance Analysis with the Perspective of Supply Side, and Input-output Accounting and Application with the Perspective of Low-carbon transformation.

Part IV

Transformation

Chapter 10

Textual Metamorphosis Along with Poetical Re-creation: The ‘Nachdichtung’ of Ancient Chinese Poetry in Gustav Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde Jun He

Abstract This article deals with the ‘Nachdichtung’ of Classical Chinese poems in Gustav Mahler’s song cycle Das Lied von der Erde (The Song of the Earth). Besides giving an overview of current studies on the Chinese sources of the song texts, the author also provides a detailed account of the additional alterations made by Mahler to the poet Hans Bethge’s already significantly altered versions of the original Chinese poems, on which he relied in a major way. Furthermore, the paper discusses the various backgrounds of Mahler’s adaptation, such as his physical and mental crisis, the resorting of European intellectuals to Chinese cultural resources, especially Taoism, considering the epistemology of death, and the social context of antiSemitism in fin-de-siècle Vienna. Keywords Gustav Mahler · Das Lied von der Erde · Nachdichtung

10.1

Introduction

As a musical masterpiece, Gustav Mahler’s The Song of the Earth, which celebrated its 110th anniversary in the year of 2019, has been regarded as an amazing cultural attraction ever since its creation. Mahler’s song cycle entailed complex and delicate textual revisions, in which the composer also took on the role of poet and translator in a broader sense. The adaptation of Chinese verses in Mahler’s orchestral song cycle constructs a dialogue across Chinese and European cultures, even though the texts set to music diverge greatly from the Chinese originals as regards their poetic images and the tone of the sentiments evoked. The process of Mahler’s incorporation of these poems into his orchestral song cycle could be described using a more precise word in German: ‘Nachdichtung’, a term which designates a poetic act lying somewhere midway between imitation and creation, with the ‘Nachdichter’'s J. He (✉) Southwest Jiaotong University, Chengdu, China

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 H. Jin et al. (eds.), Contemporary German–Chinese Cultures in Dialogue, Global Germany in Transnational Dialogues, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-26779-6_10

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originality marked by imagination and rewriting full of self-initiatives. It entails imitation, interpolation, rewriting and other strategies which aim at goals quite other than that of a literal correspondence, in a philological sense, between original and ‘Nachdichtung’. This article studies the process of transformation to which Mahler submitted the poems, forcing them to undergo various metamorphoses more than once, as well as his different strategies of ‘Nachdichtung’. After giving an overview of the earlier studies on the recovery of the traces of the original poems in Mahler’s work, especially the two puzzles in the second and third movement, I turn to Mahler’s creative re-phrasing of Bethge’s rendition, which latter was itself also a ‘Nachdichtung’, and then go on to make an inquiry concerning the personal, social, cultural aspects of Mahler’s re-creational adaptation of Chinese poetry in general. Compared with the previous studies, which focused on the internal aspects with respect to the rendition from the source language into the target one, this paper also provides a degree of external research in light of the paradigm of cultural and sociological translation studies.

10.2

The Tracking of the Sources of Mahler’s Texts

The retrieving of the original Chinese poems behind Mahler’s orchestral song cycle was a task which was placed especially high on the agenda after the visit of a German orchestra to Beijing in the May of 1998 (Chen, 2002, pp. 47–48). The successful and moving performances given on this Sino-German occasion gave impetus to the unveiling of Chinese elements in the German texts. Moreover, the challenging task attracted the attention of the government and gained the support of the vice prime minister of the State Council of the People’s Republic of China at that time, Li Lanqing (Ibid., p. 48).

10.2.1

Chinese Anthologies in French and German

It is well known that the texts used in Mahler’s orchestral song cycle were derived from an anthology of classical Chinese poems (1907) which had been translated or, to be more precise, paraphrased by Hans Bethge: namely, Die Chinesische Flöte (The Chinese Flute). As Hamao (1995, p. 83) has pointed out, Bethge, who was a poet but had no knowledge of the Chinese language, just relied heavily here on another anthology, i.e., Chinesische Lyrik (Chinese Lyrics) by Hans Heilmann (1905), which itself had been based on two French renditions: the Marquis d’Hervey-Saint-Denys’ Poesies de l’époque des Thang (Poetry of the TangDynasty, 1862) and Judith Gautier’s Le livre de jade (Book of Jade, 1867). The impact of Bethge’s anthology extended far beyond the borders of the German-speaking countries, so that it was rendered into English, Danish, and

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Dutch versions (Jiang, 2000, p. 331). It is perhaps a point of some interest that the title of Bethge’s anthology consisted of the name of a traditional Chinese instrument, the flute. It may also have been this that attracted the composer’s interest. Indeed, it is a fact that several poems with an explicit relation to flutes were included in the anthology, along with some other poems which made passing reference to the flute, although this was not emphasized in their titles. Actually, Heilmann had pointed out (1905, p. XXXIV) in the foreword of his own anthology the close interaction between poetry and music in ancient China. More interestingly, Bethge’s posthumous reputation was linked to Mahler’s almost exclusively due to the masterpiece The Song of the Earth remaining an important part of the composer’s legacy. Bethge had such a deep admiration for ancient Chinese poetry that he published, in 1920, another anthology entitled Pfirsichblüten aus China (Peach Blossoms from China). Not surprisingly, Bethge dedicated this volume to Mahler, the creator of The Song of the Earth. It is noteworthy that Mahler’s masterpiece turned out to be a landmark in Bethge’s encounter with China and thus linked Bethge’s two anthologies together.

10.2.2

Two Puzzles Concerning the Original Poems

Regarding the original Chinese texts which were here made subject to orchestral adaptation, literary and musical circles have collaboratively reached agreement on most of them. However, owing to the varied and even re-created renditions of the texts, there is still considerable controversy over the second and third movement. As for the poem used in the first movement, Das Trinklied vom Jammer der Erde (The Drinking Song of the Earth’s Sorrow),1 a consensus has been reached that it was based on Li Bai’s Song of Sorrows (Beige xing) (Mitchell, 1985, pp. 162–163). Regarding the fourth song, Von der Schönheit (Of the Beauty), there is no longer any disagreement about its having been adapted from another poem of Li Bai’s, LotusPlucking Song (Cailian qu), which is full of cheerful and even effusive ambience (Ibid., pp. 266–67). The song in the fifth movement was also derived from Li Bai’s poem, Feelings upon Awakening from Drunkenness on a Spring Day (Chunri zuiqi yanzhi) (Ibid., pp. 306–307). As far as can be ascertained, two poems with similar artistic characteristics were merged in the last movement: namely, Staying at the Eminent Monk Ye’s Chamber, Awaiting the Friend Ding Da in Vain (Su Yeshi shanfang dai Ding Da buzhi) from Meng Haoran and The Farewell (Songbie) from Wang Wei (Ibid., pp. 328–330).

1

All the translations of the suite titles and quoted verses are from Mitchell (1985).

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The Source of the Second Movement

As regards the original Chinese source of the poem used in the second movement, scholars have come to a wide range of different conclusions. Some scholars have argued that the source was Li Bai’s The Crows Cawing at Night (Wuyeti) (Hamao, 1995, p. 87). Arguments have also been made that the source was Li Bai’s Endless Yearning III (Changxiangsi III), since the Chinese word for ‘yearning’ (xiangsi) in the title could have been mistaken for a poet’s name, since this latter has a similar pronunciation (Tschang Tsi) (Qin, 1999, p. 5). In order to decode the text, the eminent translator Xu Yuanchong has even resorted to the splitting-up of the Chinese characters, a popular technique of paraphrase used by the American Imagist poets represented by Amy Lowell, Florence Ayscough, etc. Xu (2005, pp. 316–318) indicated that the text was based on a mixture of two poems, Qian Qi’s In Imitation of the Old Poem ‘The Autumn Nights are Long’ (Xiao gu Qiuyechang) and Zhang Ji’s Mooring at Night by Maple Bridge (Fengqiao yebo). Nonetheless, it can be safely asserted that the source of Qian Qi’s poem is the most persuasive (Hamao, 1995, pp. 86–91). Only four lines of the whole poem, however, were paraphrased, with a creative expansion of each line into four phrases, with the other six lines being omitted. The image of the sky (Han) in the first line was replaced by that of the river, a mistranslation that had already been committed by Gautier and then perpetuated by Bethge and Mahler. Since the ambiguous Chinese character ‘Han’ possesses two meanings—namely, ‘Han River’ and ‘Milky Way’— the mistake in question is one which could only possibly have occurred in the context of Qian Qi’s poem, thus proving this latter to be the real original, so that ‘it is understandable that Gautier then changed the proper noun to the common noun’ (Hamao, 1995, p. 89).

10.2.4

The Source of the Third Movement

As for the tracking of the original poems, the most controversial one concerns that forming the text of the third movement, since it is the most drastically altered of all the poems. Although the findings of numerous studies differ significantly, Hamao (1995, pp. 91–94) has advanced a quite convincing and widely approved hypothesis to the effect that the original poem must have been Li Bai’s Banquet at Tao’s Family Pavilion (Yan Taojia tingzi). The variation or transformation of this poem is clearly displayed under two aspects: namely, the mistranslated polysemous word ‘Tao’ in the title and the detailed description of the guests’ activities at the banquet. It is this misrepresentation that has obviously confused the community of scholars and researchers and caused various problems in the process of identifying this enigmatic poem. As for the title, the word ‘Tao’, which actually represents a Chinese family name, was falsely translated by Gautier as referring to the famous ceramic material ‘porcelain’.

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As is well known, porcelain had been a symbol of esteem for a long time, as a Chinese cultural symbol in the sense of chinoiserie, and thus inextricably linked with that ancient country. The misleading rendition, as Hamao (1995, p. 94) has convincingly argued, can be traced back to the exhibition of a Chinese pavilion made of porcelain (Pavillon chinois) at the Paris World Fair in 1867, the same year that Gautier’s Le livre de jade was published. Due to the preconceived notions awoken by the spectacular popular exhibition, Gautier, the initiator of this error, who was herself from Paris, set the erroneous precedent. Obviously, another reason for her misrepresentation was that she had not acquired a solid knowledge of the Chinese language, despite having a Chinese tutor by the name of Ding Dunling (1831–1886) whose presence in France has never been fully explained. Another aspect is the addition of detailed description of the dressed-up guests who were drinking, talking, and improvising. These activities were not mentioned at all in the original poem, which had placed the emphasis on depicting the host’s house and its surroundings. However, Hamao (1995, p. 92) has argued that the corresponding reference of their activities can be found in Wang Qi’s2 description of the place named Jingu, a luxurious residence in a remote location.

10.3

Double Paraphrase: Mahler’s Alteration of Bethge’s Versions of the Poems

Remarkably, Mahler’s texts not only display divergences from the originals but also dissimilarities even with Bethge’s versions of these latter, although the disparities in this latter case seem to be minor. In fact, Mahler’s seemingly tiny revisions were not supposed to be casual or accidental reactions but underlay the accommodation to the textual scenario and musical setting as a whole. For this reason, Mahler’s variations, which might be understood as an indication of ‘re-reception’ (Jiang, 2000, p. 338), were indeed not insignificant at all. This can be illustrated by the following examples:

10.3.1

The First Movement

As for the first movement, only the first half of Li Bai’s original was included in Bethge’s paraphrase, so that it was only this first half that passed into the text of Mahler’s orchestral song cycle. Although the second half was omitted, the form of the original four stanzas, with a repetition, was retained. However, the declamatory refrain had appeared, in the Chinese original, at the beginning of each stanza, whereas, in Mahler’s version this declamatory expression occurs at the end. The 2

Wang Qi (1696–1774) turned out to be the most influential compiler of Li Bai’s completed works.

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original declamatory expression ‘How sad! How sad!’, which had established the tone and structure of the poem, was paraphrased as ‘Dunkel ist das Leben, ist der Tod’ (Dark is life, and so is death). Special reference was made, in other words, through the repetition of this lamenting judgment, to what is perhaps the most constant cause of the deep sadness that often underlies human experience: the necessary finitude of life, despite the possession of wealth and fame. Such an outlook was conveyed explicitly as a rhetorical question and an affirmation, respectively, by means of juxtaposition of the above-mentioned two images, life and death, in the poem. But the view of the speakers in Bethge’s and Mahler’s rendition was more pessimistic, frustrated, and hopeless than that of the original, since for them the life in this world and the farewell to it are both dark. Another change is the replacement of ‘die Gemächer meiner Seele’ (the chambers of my soul) by ‘die Gärten der Seele’ (the gardens of the soul) which served as a symbol of cyclical rebirth (Wenk, 1977, p. 34), injecting the mood of renewal and correspondingly weakening the desperation. The symbol of the garden is again implicated in the third stanza, which begins ‘Das Firmament blaut ewig’ (The firmament is blue eternally) (Ibid., p. 34), whereas the following line also underwent a conspicuous modification, namely from ‘Und die Erde/Wird lange feststehn auf den alten Füssen’ (and the earth will stand for a long time on its old feet) to ‘Und die Erde/Wird lange fest steh’n und aufblüh’n im Lenz’ (And the earth will stand for a long time and blossom in spring). Once again, this alteration enhanced the vitality of a new life brought about by the rebirth. As an interpolated motif, the image of the blossoming of the earth in spring reoccurs at the end of the last movement and thus recreates another cycle. To sum up, in this movement both Bethge’s and Mahler’s versions of the poem deal with the central theme of eternality and ephemerality, as exemplified by nature and life, while the difference between Bethge’s and Mahler’s versions lies in ‘the emphasis on the inclination to endurance or renewal’ (Ibid., p. 33).

10.3.2

The Second Movement

While spring in the first movement represented the beginning of life, autumn in the second movement implied the later phase of life with its transitory character. The connection between mortality and autumn is vividly illustrated by an often-heard Chinese phrase: ‘Man has but one life, grass sees but one autumn’. By changing the protagonist in question from ‘die Einsame’ (the lonely woman) to ‘der Einsame’ (the lonely man) in the title, Mahler altered the gender of the lyrical persona and let a male speaker come up, although this movement was indeed attributed to a female alto voice, as various performances of this suite hitherto have shown. Compared with Bethge’s version, Mahler made some other replacements, such as ‘See’ (lake) instead of ‘Strom’ (river), ‘Blüten’ (petals) instead of ‘Halme’ (stems), and ‘Ruh’ (rest) instead of ‘Schlaf’ (sleep). By means of these slight alterations the composer

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created a motionless, sensitive scene full of tranquillity and tenderness in which the speaker thirsted for a place of rest and consolation. The primary scenario of this poem is filled with deep resignation and submission. But the last two lines, with the image of sunshine neutralizing the coldness and darkness in the former stanzas, once again provide a ray of hope and ‘reintroduce the notion of renewal’ (Wenk, 1977, p. 35), a predominant motif in the whole song cycle. Moreover, the sunshine is endowed here with the nature of ‘tenderness’, which might be taken to enhance the symbol of the sunshine as a symbol of love and thus to emphasize its function of alleviating anguish.

10.3.3

The Third Movement

Compared with the other poems adapted in Mahler’s musical work, the poem in the third movement, which contains the least sorrow and gloom, Der Pavillon aus Porzellan (The Pavilion of Porcelain), has provoked the deepest interest among plenty of European intellectuals. This is not only because of the interesting textual metamorphosis, but also owing to the exotic sounds that are reminiscent of a sort of ‘Chinese Rococo style’ (Hefling, 2000, p. 95). This movement even attracted the attention of the famous cultural theorist Theodor Adorno and was considered as ‘a miniature piece of chinoiserie’ (Adorno, 1992, p. 150). Even aside from a misinterpretation occurring already in the title, the rendition of Li Bai’s poem, which was initiated by Gautier and continued by other translators, has undergone a huge number of variations in the German-speaking world, with the poet Carl Albert Lange publishing, just after World War II (1946), a volume containing no less than 12 of these (Cf. Lange 1946). They touch upon an interesting aspect which actually was not mentioned in Li Bai’s original, namely the reflection of the pavilion. Another aspect in the various renditions, the arch of the tiger’s back and the jade bridge which bring forth a unity with pleasing symmetry, is also worth notice. This image was also vividly presented as a motif picture on the cover of Lange’s small book. More interestingly, the image of the arch bridge and its reflection in the pool fascinated Böhm, who produced a magnificent translation of Gautier’s anthology from French into German, representing this particular poem in a wholly new visual form: that of a precisely symmetrical diamond (Fig. 10.1). This deeply impressive art of pictographic poetry might be seen as a form of concrete poetry, with the accentuation of the visual dimensions of language. Bethge’s rendition of this poem involves an evidently symmetrical text configuration, which is indicated by the recurrence of two lines in the first and last stanza. However, this symmetry was clearly altered in Mahler’s version by reversing the second last and the last stanza. In this way, Mahler referred more clearly to the welldressed guests drinking and talking rather than to their images in the pool.

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Fig. 10.1 The German translation of Gautier’s Le pavilion de porcelaine by Böhm (1873, p. 82)

10.3.4 The Fourth Movement The fourth movement, with the image of lotus-flowers, presents counterparts to images in preceding movements (Wenk, 1977, p. 38) and thus constructs a form of intertextuality. The picture of flourishing flowers ‘recalls the garden in the opening movement’ (Ibid.). But in contrast to the opening movement’s mood of darkness, the scenario here is primarily cheerful, except for the last line which depicts the flowers bowing on their stems. The scene of the flowers could just as well be projected back into the second movement, where it was not the autumn wind but the tramps of horses with robust lads that caused the same result. In comparison with Bethge’s version, Mahler made only minor alterations, such as the insertion of ‘plucking lotus-flowers’ in the second stanza to specify the type of flowers. This slight amendment could indicate that Mahler had also consulted Heilmann’s Chinesische Lyrik, which itself served as the source of Bethge’s version, since the word ‘lotus-flowers’ came up in the same poem paraphrased by Heilmann, although not directly in the title. Unlike the original title ‘Plucking Lotus-Flowers’, Heilmann’s ‘Nachdichtung’ was entitled An den Ufern des Jo-yeh (At the Shores of Jo-yeh) and referred to the location of the activity of plucking lotus-flowers, actually the first part of the first original poem line.

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The last stanza of Mahler’s text is completely incongruent with that of the Chinese source, since the original focus on the humanity–nature relationship has shifted here to the person-to-person relation after the adaptation. While the original text presented the lament of the group of lotus-picking girls troubled by the sight of horses trampling over the flowers, Mahler’s adaptation paid particular attention to the most beautiful of the maidens and stressed instead her yearning for the passionate love of a young, robust horseman. The accent placed on the feeling of longing is also revealed by the modification of certain words, such as the replacement of ‘Sorge’ (care) with the key word ‘Sehnsucht’ (yearning), and the insertion of ‘In dem Dunkel ihres heißen Blicks’ (In the darkness of her passionate glance). It is this sense of longing of a maiden towards a man that led to the association of this movement with sexual implications and furthermore with Mahler’s marital crisis, considering the possible autobiographical reference of this song cycle (Feder, 2004, p. 148).

10.3.5

The Fifth Movement

The poem adapted in the fifth movement underwent a double change of title: namely, first from Feelings upon Awakening from Drunkenness on a Spring Day to The Drinker in Spring, and then from this latter to The Drunkard in Spring. This seemingly minor change, the image of ‘drunkard’ being reminiscent of a Dionysian spirit, indicates ‘the great impact of Nietzsche’ (Danuser, 1986, p. 77) on Mahler. As a movement which ‘celebrates the endless renewal of life in a light-hearted manner’ (Wenk, 1977, p. 40), the song bears a striking resemblance to the opening movement in terms of ‘the basic idea of cycle’ (Ibid.). The close connection with the opening song, which also took up the theme of drinking, is ‘reinforced by replacing various words in Bethge’s text with the corresponding ones in the first movement’ (Ibid.), such as ‘Leben’ (life) for ‘Dasein’ (existence), ‘Seele’ (soul) for ‘Leib’ (body), ‘Firmament’ (firmament) for ‘Himmelsrund’ (round sky). Moreover, the sense of cycle is conveyed by the repetition of phrases such as ‘Ich trinke, bis ich nicht mehr kann . . . Und wenn ich nicht mehr trinken kann’ (I drink till I can drink no longer . . . And when I can drink no longer) in the first and second stanza. The perception of cyclicality or circularity is also strengthened through a parallelism between stanzas five and six, ‘Und singe, bis der Mond erglänzt . . . Und wenn ich nicht mehr singen kann’ (And sing, until the moon shines bright . . . And when I can sing no longer). Intertextuality is here constructed once again by means of replacement and reiteration.

10.3.6

The Last Movement

The mixture of two poems in the last movement has a close connection with the blueprint of Mahler’s texts, namely Bethge’s version, since this latter version had

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involved two poems, a factor which influenced and confused Mahler’s adaptation. One factor here is the order of the poems of Meng Haoran and Wang Wei, since the two were arranged in close proximity to each other, which might have given the false impression of their being a single poem. Another misguiding aspect can be found in the note which Bethge appended to his version of Meng Haoran’s poem, which took the friend that Meng was waiting for to be someone called ‘Wang Wei’ (Bethge, 1918, p. 112), actually the author of another poem, instead of the monk Ding Da pointed out in the title of the original poem. This note of Bethge’s presented matters as if this ‘awaited friend Wang Wei’ then went on to improvise a poem with the title The Farewell (Ibid.), something which was not in compliance with the facts of the original texts at all. One of the features of Mahler’s adaption, interpolation, appears evident in this movement. The protagonist ‘woodcutters’ (qiaoren), in the original Chinese line ‘The woodcutters are almost home’ (qiaoren yu guijin), was superseded, in Bethge’s version, by the phrase ‘arbeitssame Menschen’ (hard-working people) and once again underwent the substitution of ‘müde Menschen’ (weary people) by Mahler. Thus, Mahler’s line is marked with a more universal characteristic that goes beyond a group with a certain profession or identity. In this stanza, several phrases from a poem that Mahler himself had written in 1884 were inserted (Kennedy, 1974, pp. 135–36). The interpolated line ‘Die Blumen blassen im Dämmerschein’ (The flowers grow pale in the twilight) introduces once again an image full of hesitation, grief, and despair which recalls the imagery of the fin-de-siècle. With the insertion of ‘Die Erde atmet voll von Ruh’ und Schlaf/Alle Sehnsucht will nun träumen’ (The earth takes deep breaths of rest and sleep/All desires now turns to dreaming), the idea of seeking repose and solace by means of abandoning all earthly desires is accentuated, which reoccurs later in the last stanza. In the same stanza, an adverb of purpose ‘Um im Schlaf vergess’nes Glück/und Jugend neu zu lernen’ (To learn in sleep anew forgotten joy and youth) was also inserted into the text, which could be considered as a gleam of hope in an apparently hopeless world. Through the interpolation of ‘Ich harre sein zum letzten Lebewohl’ (I await him to bid the last farewell), Mahler expressed the speaker’s burning desire to see the friend who had broken the appointment specifically in order to bid farewell. A more significant alteration was made at the end of the first poem in which the line ‘O kämst du, kämst du, ungetreuer Freund!’ (Oh would that you had come, you, unfaithful friend!) was replaced with a totally different one: ‘O Schönheit, o ewigen Liebens, Lebens, trunk’ne Welt!’ (Oh beauty, oh world intoxicated with eternal love and life!). This substitution changes the focus of the poem, from the speaker’s anxiety, disappointment, and effusive solicitousness towards the friend who had stood him up to the enjoyable aspects of the eternal world, specified by beauty, love, and life. The most conspicuous alteration in the second poem lies in the variation of composer’s voice or, to use a more specialized word, his personae. In contrast to the persona that varies from one movement to the next and meanwhile stays relatively fixed inside of each movement, the final movement seems to present three personae with a number of different speaking voices addressed to various groups (Wenk, 1977, p. 41). With the change of the pronoun from ‘ich’ (I) to ‘er’

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(he) in the first stanza, the perspective is switched from that of a participant in the conversation to that of a narrator. The insertion of ‘Ich wandle nach der Heimat, meiner Stätte’ (I’m wandering to the homeland, to my resting place) is reminiscent of the longing for homeland and resting place, a motif which has been stressed in the third stanza. Another significant alteration and extension have been carried out, namely, that from ‘Die Erde ist die gleiche überall’ (The earth is the same everywhere) to ‘Die liebe Erde überall/Blüht auf im Lenz und grünt aufs neu! /Allüberall und ewig blauen licht die Fernen’ (The dear earth everywhere/Blossoms in spring and grows green again!/Everywhere and forever the distance shines bright and blue). Especially the image of ‘the firmament remaining blue eternally’ and ‘the earth blossoming in spring’ recalls the same imagery presented in the opening movement, thus creating once again a sense of cycle. Quite amazingly, the end of this movement makes the impression of a unity of man and nature, a goal that the Taoists have always striven for, even though Mahler, who had converted to Catholicism, placed his own hope in Heaven symbolized by the eternally blue light.

10.4

The Contexts of Mahler’s Adaptation

Although Gustav Mahler was far from an expert on Chinese culture in terms of Chinese poetry or music, he must certainly count as one of the Western pioneers who utilized ancient Chinese cultural elements in the European arts. Besides classical Chinese textual resources, Mahler also had an exposure to Chinese music (Meng, 2008, pp. 156–157) and made use of related elements in his The Song of the Earth, such as ‘Chinese pentatonic idioms and orchestration inspired by traditional Chinese instruments’ (Ibid., p. 157). As for the contexts of Mahler’s adaptation, besides his personal background, the socio-cultural context of that time should also be considered, especially the prevailing Chinese cultural influences in Europe and Mahler’s Jewish identity which was a source of struggles and difficulties for him throughout his whole life.

10.4.1

The Personal Fate of Mahler

It is generally recognized that the protagonist of Thomas Mann’s novel Der Tod in Venedig (Death in Venice), Gustav von Aschenbach, was partly modelled on Mahler, with whom he shares a first name. As the story develops, von Aschenbach spends his holiday in Venice and comes across a handsome boy. Although the whole city is infected with cholera, the highly aesthetic von Aschenbach indulges himself in the sight of the boy, until the artist himself is infected by the disease and in the end meets his doom. Although Death in Venice cannot be viewed as a biography of Gustav Mahler, there definitely exists an allusion to him here, especially in terms of his aesthetic sensibility and artistic vocation and of his untimely demise.

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Around the time of his composition of The Song of the Earth, Mahler found himself in the most difficult phase of his life, which is documented in the memoirs of Mahler’s wife Alma Mahler (Mahler, 1946). Mahler was suffering deeply from trauma: the reluctant quitting of his position in the Vienna Court Opera, the death of his beloved oldest daughter Maria, augmented by an acute awareness of his own severe physical limitations, which proved to be fatal to his health and thus made him stand at the edge of life and death. At this crucial time, he encountered Bethge’s Chinese anthology. Inspired by some of the poems, he conceived the musical work during a summer spent in the village of Toblach at the border of Austria and Italy. Although Mahler had never been to China, nor had any real familiarity with Chinese culture, he did somehow manage to get in touch with the traditional cultural resources of this ancient country. This was the case even though he had only ‘limited exposure to Chinese music’ (Meng, 2008, p. 156), especially around the time of his composition of The Song of the Earth. Another intermediary source of great importance was Mahler’s friendship with Friedrich Hirth (1845–1927). This sinologist, who had stayed in China for 27 years and emigrated in 1902 to the USA, might have aroused Mahler’s interest in Chinese culture as well. As noted in the memoirs of Mahler’s wife, the couple spent the Christmas Eve of 1908 in Hirth’s company, with Hirth ‘telling them wonderful stories of China the whole night long’, which made them ‘feel as though they had stepped out of the real world’ (Mahler, 1946, p. 133). In this year, Mahler resigned from his position in the Vienna Court Opera and worked with the Metropolitan Opera in New York, while Hirth coincidentally completed his magnum opus The Ancient History of China. Nonetheless, it was not Hirth that offered Mahler the book of Bethge. Instead, Mahler received Bethge’s anthology in the summer of 1907 from a friend of Alma’s father (Ibid., p. 111).

10.4.2

Chinoiserie in Mahler’s Musical Work

As a typical instance of artistic and cultural integration, Mahler’s utilization and adaption of Chinese cultural resources might be viewed as a part of the inter-lingual and cross-cultural process between China and Europe rather than as an isolated and individual phenomenon. In this sense, it is suggested that the large context of chinoiserie which had been almost omnipresent on many levels of society in Europe since the seventeenth century be considered. As for Mahler’s composition, it referred specifically to the issue of life and death in the eyes of Taoists.

10.4.2.1

Chinoiserie as a Cultural and Artistic Trend

Bethge’s anthology and its translations into different languages attracted a wide range of European readers, especially after World War I. Made uneasy and insecure by such ideas as that of ‘the decline of the West’ articulated around this time by Oswald Spengler, so many Westerners could find consolation in the mild and

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tranquil Chinese culture evoked by its traditional icons represented by porcelain buildings, silk products, jade utensils, Chinese gardens with pavilions, and Chinese plants such as tea plants, bamboos, etc. The visual vocabulary of chinoiserie included such typical images as moonlight shadow, refreshing breezes, the twitter of birds, and fragrance of flowers, etc. Not at all surprisingly, many German renditions of classical Chinese anthologies therefore not only mainly consisted of such poems with the above symbols and images, but also even chose them as titles. The texts used in Mahler’s song cycle underwent several successive substantial literary metamorphoses and cultural variations, so that the Chinese original tended to become somewhat misread and very little remained of the Chinese features. One might criticize the unreliable adaption in terms of the criterion of loyalty and further blame the composer for the discrepancy between the sentiment in Chinese poetry and that in the music (Yan, 2000, pp. 17–23). It is this immense discrepancy that has prompted so many critiques judging and dismissing Mahler’s texts as exoticizing products of mere Chinese fashion. However, where Mahler’s use of Chinese poetry is considered only in terms of textual equivalence, or lack thereof, the philological and semantic aspect can be overestimated and the true artistic intention overlooked. More attention needs to be paid to Mahler’s identity as a musician instead of as a sinologist or philologist. This view is also applicable to other translators of Chinese anthologies: Except for d’Hervey-Saint-Denys, others are poets without, or with extremely limited, knowledge of Chinese language and literature. The question of the adaptors’ identity has an inextricable connection with their rendition, or ‘Nachdichtung’. To put it in a Chinese way, the European intellectuals from a cultural background far away from the Chinese one had the intention of relieving their own depression with the help of ‘liquor from another’s glass’. German renditions in the style of ‘Nachdichtung’ emerged in large numbers and dominated overwhelmingly the reception of classical Chinese poems at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth century. This went on throughout the first half of the twentieth century, so that the rendition of Mahler’s work could be viewed as an integral part thereof. Remarkably, this paradigm, especially for the paraphrased or rewritten poems contributing to certain modern themes, also displays a correlation with ‘the function shift of poetry towards discourse’ (Klawitter, 2013, p. 110) at that time. One might also pose the question of whether Mahler’s texts could be assessed as a cultural crystallization representing ‘Orientalism’ in the sense of this term developed by Edward Said (Cf. Deruchie, 2009). Someone may wonder if there is created in Mahler’s work an ‘oriental world’ which is neither independent nor real, expressing such clichéd ‘Far Eastern’ motifs as collecting lotus-flowers, with a view—as Said and others have shown to have been the case in so many other similar products of Western art—to serving the Western intellectual construct and fulfilling other aims in the context of West-Centrism, such as gratifying the curiosity of Westerners about the exoticism of the Orient and reflecting their superiority in a post-colonial paradigm. But, on the intellectual journey across different languages and cultures, the composer Mahler, who could be viewed as a poet as well as a musician, went farther. The Chinese cultural resources provided him with a means to deal with difficulties in his personal life. By looking beyond his own cultural borders, Mahler even went one

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step further and dug into an issue concerned with a more fundamental and universal outlook on life and death. Indeed, the composer had already so often wrestled with the mysteries of life and death, which are also interestingly articulated in the (sub)titles of the worldwide Mahler research bibliography (Cf. Mooney, 1968; Mitchell, 1985; Li, 2005). Mahler himself was reluctant to number The Song of the Earth as his ‘ninth symphony’, which in a sense it was, as neither Beethoven nor Bruckner had reached a tenth before their death and ‘hence it was a superstition of Mahler’s that no great writer of symphonies got beyond his ninth’ (Mahler, 1946, pp. 103–104).

10.4.2.2

Epistemology of Death in Taoism as a Beneficial Source

Obviously, the composition of the song cycle was one of the most important and also intimate events in Mahler’s life. As he claimed, the work was the most personal thing he had ever created. In the musical works of Mahler death remains a recurrent theme or motif, as the composition of Kindertotenlieder (Songs on the Death of Children) indicates. As explicated above, a series of afflictions brought about Mahler’s desperation and caused him to approach the topic of death. Thus, Mahler’s choice of texts from a Chinese anthology reflected a strong connection between the poems or, to be more accurate, between the emotions conveyed in the poems and his own life situation. However, the context would be overly narrowed if the composition were primarily positioned with respect to Mahler’s biography and his personal crushing issues. One would be right to argue that the anthropological and cultural history of death should be considered as well. By the early twentieth century, the concept of death had altered drastically so that ‘the notions of comforting, romantic and even sublime death became hopelessly lost ideals’ (Deruchie, 2009, p. 77), ideals which could no longer be adapted to the situation at that time. And it was these new challenges to European attitudes, values, and world outlooks that impelled Mahler to resort to the philosophical and religious resources offered by ancient China for a new way of confronting death (Ibid.). Furthermore, the era of the fin-de-siècle witnessed encroaching modernity and posed a series of challenges. As a response, a substantial number of intellectuals like Mahler in Europe began increasingly to seek the meaning of human existence in what they viewed as the eternal wisdom of ancient China, such as Taoism. What Taoists, in the pursuit of harmony and unity between mankind and the natural world, felt compelled to confront was the apparent incongruity between the transience of human life and the permanence of nature or the cosmos (Ibid.). To solve this inevitable problem, there existed, in principle, two schemes: One was the goal towards which the alchemists strove, namely human immortality, a part of the so-called occult sciences to which the Emperor Qin Shihuang (259–210 B.C.), who had unified China for the first time, devoted himself for the whole of his life; the other was an ideological and epistemological one, which was proposed by Taoists, whose thoughts can be considered as a philosophical as well as a religious resource.

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This spiritual solution prevailed especially after the material, body-related plans of the alchemists ended in total failure. Whether philosophical ideas or religious thoughts, the core concept of Taoism stemmed from the phenomenon that nature is essentially cyclical and that human life also displays the form of a circle. It is evident that Mahler’s song circle consists of so many cyclical elements, such as the integration of four seasons and continuum of death and rebirth in terms of the texts; meanwhile, a cyclical motif of life and death always runs like a red line throughout the musical work. These cycles might be inspired from the sources of Taoists whose ideas and thoughts made the cross-cultural dialogue in a broader sense possible. In contrast to Confucianism, an ideology with a key role in Chinese culture, the textual contents in Bethge’s anthology bear far more reference to Taoism, evoking as they do such essential Taoist concepts as quietism, passive inaction, priority of spiritual cultivation over material enjoyment, and harmonious oneness or unity with nature, etc. Those who embrace Taoism are in persistent pursuit of a retreat from the bustling urban life and a space for inner peace, as exemplified in the works of American writers Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau such as Nature and Walden. The core conception of Taoism also coincides with the primary idea of classical Chinese aesthetics, which is ‘the submission of the self to the cosmic measure . . . resulting in a great degree of non-interference in artistic presentation’ (Yip, 1997, p. 27). As to the practical aspects of Taoist philosophy, Taoism is embodied in a laissez-faire policy in terms of state governance and definitive naturalism in ethics including interpersonal relationships. In contrast to the socially and collectively oriented teachings of Confucianism, the orthodox doctrine of which advocates social construction and hierarchy and asserts the prime importance of worldliness, Taoism advocates rather the spirit of the ‘hermit life’, that is to say, of a retreat from the world and a pursuing of one’s private existence instead. In ancient China, the officials were selected among the literary elites with high-level educational backgrounds. However, the literati had always a double personality in that they adhered to Confucianism due to official duties but inclined towards Taoism in their deep hearts. Mahler presented a manner of coming to terms with death particularly at the end of the last movement where the word ‘forever’ sounds seven times, and in the form of four plus three. In terms of the symbols of Christianity, the numbers three, four, and seven signify Heaven, something earthly, and a sort of closure or accomplishment, respectively (Andraschke, 2011, p. 204). The seven recurrences of ‘forever’ in the structure of four plus three is symbolic of the journey from Earth to Heaven (Ibid.). In striking contrast to the description in the Apocalypse, Mahler illustrated the transition to the other side, e.g. Paradise, without any element of fear. His attitude towards death, as shown above, resulted from the influence of the ancient Chinese philosophical and religious heritage of Taoism which considers death and rebirth to form a circle of life.

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The Socio-cultural Background of Anti-Semitism in Fin-de-Siècle Vienna

Mahler’s mental crisis around the time of his creation of The Song of the Earth was also connected with his Jewish identity crisis, which tormented him throughout almost the whole of his life. Having been born in a family in the east of Bohemia, a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Mahler, along with his family members, belonged to a small ethnic group of minority German-speakers with little popularity. What’s more, being Jews, they were also ill reputed in the small community. The experiences ensuing from these circumstances in his childhood had a profound impact on him and made him feel a sense of belonging nearly nowhere for the whole of his life. Mahler often used to say: ‘I am thrice homeless, as a native of Bohemia in Austria, as an Austrian among Germans, and as a Jew throughout the entire world; everywhere an intruder, never welcomed’ (Mahler, 1946, p. 98). The Jewish identity got him into trouble during his career in Vienna, so that he had to convert from Judaism to Roman Catholicism in February 1897 in order to be engaged as a conductor at the Vienna Court Opera. However, owing to his inherent Jewishness, the undermining of his colleagues and his segregation by the government seemed never to cease. He even married a gentile and achieved remarkable success in his musical career as both conductor and composer but he continued to suffer from the storm of abuse among numberless racists, until he rested in peace and was buried by a Catholic priest. The obvious reason was that for a long time the term ‘Jew’ in Europe was not a religious category but a racial one (Knittel, 1995, p. 259). At that time, anti-Semitism enjoyed broad popularity among an overwhelming majority of the population in Europe, especially in Vienna, even among musicians including Richard Wagner. Even today, the question remains in dispute of whether Mahler’s Jewishness was just part of his personal identity or whether it really had a major influence on his musical works. As for The Song of the Earth, Adorno (1992, p. 149) suggested that Mahler employed inauthentic, exotic Chinoiserie as a cover for hidden Jewish elements in his music. Knittel (1995, p. 258) even argued that Mahler was viewed as a ‘Jewish conductor’ because of his style of body language, exemplified by his gestures and movements. The many images and descriptions of Mahler as an ‘energetic’ and ‘hypermodern’ conductor represented implicit references to Mahler’s Jewishness that had everything to do with fundamental differences in body, mind, and essence from ‘mainstream’ society, supposedly characterized by ‘Viennese gracefulness’ (Ibid., pp. 258–259). Given the fin-de-siècle context, the link between Jews and the more grandiose concept of modernity was particularly intense in the German-speaking countries, at least among the anti-modernists (Ibid., p. 265), so that Mahler’s Jewish identity inevitably caused immense anxiety in many influential circles in Vienna.

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Conclusion

Mahler’s process of ‘Nachdichtung’ constructs an intellectual and cross-cultural dialogue in a broad sense rather than being merely a philologically oriented rendition. While the imitation of several Chinese lines creates, indeed, an exotic impression of chinoiserie, the metamorphosed texts concentrate in fact on two central themes, often referred to the complex of specifically fin-de-siècle ideas: On the one hand, the rewritten texts convey resignation, melancholy, and world-weariness in the face of the transitory nature of a merely this-worldly existence, which indicates a sense of impending doom (i.e. World War I); on the other hand, through the interpolated lines, one senses joyful hope and celebration of the eternal renewal of life, the concept of ‘the circle of life’ rooted in classical Chinese philosophy which considers death as a blissful rebirth rather than as a painful farewell. Because of the presence of this fundamental motif about life and death and the potential religious elements in Mahler’s song cycle, I would recommend that the Chinese translation of the title be Chenshi zhi ge (The Song of the Earthly World) instead of the prevailing Dadi zhi ge (The Song of the Ground). Dedication The author would like to dedicate this paper to his beloved father, a teacher of English who passed away much too soon. Acknowledgement I am grateful to the National Social Science Fund of China for the support of the research project ‘Studies on Eurasian Literature Exchanges and Mutual Learning in the eighteenth Century’ (21 & ZD278).

References Adorno, T. (1992). Mahler: A musical physiognomy. (E. Jephcott, Trans.). The University of Chicago Press. Andraschke, P. (2011). Gustav Mahlers Der Abschied: Semantische Überlegungen. Archiv für Musikwissenschaft, 68(3), 195–204. Bethge, H. (1918). Die chinesische Flöte. Insel. Böhm, G. (1873). Chinesische Lieder. Aus dem ‘Livre de jade’ von Judith Mendés in das Deutsche übertragen. Ackermann. Chen, B. (2002). Shui neng poyi liangshou Tangshi de Mima? [Who can decode two poems of the Tang-Dynasty?]. In C. Wang & M. Bi (Eds.), Male ‘Dadizhige’ Yanjiu [Studies on Gustav Mahler’s ‘The Song of the Earth’] (pp. 46–52). Shanghai Yinyue Chubanshe. Danuser, H. (1986). Gustav Mahler. Das Lied von der Erde. Fink. Deruchie, A. (2009). Mahler’s farewell or the Earth’s song? Death, orientalism and ‘Der Abschied’. Austrian Studies, 17, 75–97. Feder, S. (2004). Gustav Mahler: A life in crisis. Yale University Press. Hamao, F. (1995). The sources of the texts in Mahler’s ‘Lied von der Erde’. 19th-Century Music, 19(1), 83–95. Hefling, S. (2000). Mahler: Das Lied von der Erde. Cambridge University Press. Heilmann, H. (1905). Chinesische Lyrik vom 12. Jahrhundert v. Chr. bis zur Gegenwart. Piper.

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Jiang, Y. (2000). Die chinesische Flöte von Hans Bethge und Das Lied von der Erde von Gusatv Mahler. Vom Textverständnis bei der Rückübersetzung. In W. Gebhard (Ed.), Ostasienrezeption zwischen Klischee und Innovation. Zur Begegnung zwischen Ost und West um 1900 (pp. 331–354). iudicium. Kennedy, M. (1974). Mahler. Oxford University Press. Klawitter, A. (2013). Wie man chinesisch dichtet, ohne chinesisch zu verstehen. Deutsche Nachund Umdichtungen chinesischer Lyrik von Rückert bis Ehrenstein. Arcadia, 48(1), 98–115. Knittel, K. (1995). Ein hypermoderner Dirigent: Mahler and anti-Semitism in fin-de-siècle Vienna. 19th-century. Music, 18(3), 257–276. Lange, C. (1946). Der Pavillon aus Porzellan. Li-Tai-Pe’s Spiegelgedicht in zwölffacher Abwandlung. Alster. Li, X. (2005). Sheng yu si de jiaoxiangqu: Male de yinyue shijie [symphonies of life and death: The music world of Gustav Mahler]. Sanlian Shudian. Mahler, A. (1946). Gustav Mahler: Memories and Letters. (B. Creighton, Trans). Viking Press. Meng, R. (2008). Mahler’s concept of Chinese art in his Das Lied von der Erde. Maynooth Musicology: Postgraduate Journal, 1, 154–178. Mitchell, D. (1985). Gustav Mahler. Songs and symphonies of life and death. Faber. Mooney, W. (1968). Gustav Mahler: A note on life and death in music. The Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 37(1), 80–102. Qin, J. (1999, October 21). Male ‘Dadizhige’ di er di san yuezhang shijie [A trial tracking of the sources of the second and third movement in Mahler’s ‘the song of the Earth’]. Guangming Ribao. Wenk, A. (1977). The Composer as Poet in ‘Das Lied von der Erde’. 19th-Century Music, 1(1), 33–47. Xu, Y. (2005). Yibi Shenghua [Brilliant translation]. Wenxin Chubanshe. Yan, B. (2000). Shi ‘Shijimo Qingxu’ haishi Tangshi Yijing: Tan male ‘Dadizhige’ de Yinyue Neihan’ [‘Sentiments of fin-de-Siècle’ or conception of tang-poetry? On the musical connotations of Mahler’s das lied von der Erde]. Yinyue Yanjiu, 2, 17–23. Yip, W. (1997). Chinese poetry. An anthology of major modes and genres. Duke University Press.

Jun He is an associate professor of German Language and Literature at the School of Foreign Languages, Southwest Jiaotong University (Chengdu, China). He obtained his Ph.D. degree at the University of Duisburg-Essen. His research interests are sociolinguistics (language policy and language planning) and translation studies.

Chapter 11

When Kafka Rode a Paper Tiger Towards the Peach Blossom Spring: A Conversation on Contemporary Performance with Tian Gebing and Christoph Lepschy Anna Stecher

Abstract Since 2012, Tian Gebing and Christoph Lepschy have collaborated on a number of theatre productions, which are distinguished—among other characteristics—by their bringing together Chinese and German texts and performance cultures. Best-known among these are Totally Happy (2014), 500 Meters (2017), and Heart Chamber Fragments (2021). Taking the premiere of Heart Chamber Fragments as an opportunity for reflection, the following conversation touches on topics such as trans-cultural theatre, displacement, different readings of texts written by Heiner Müller, Franz Kafka, Jean-Luc Nancy, and Tao Yuanming, and divergent understandings of humour. In the last part, it documents the exchange of ideas between Tian and Lepschy for possible future collaborations. Keywords Paper Tiger Studio · Displacement · Trans-cultural theatre · Kafka · Peach Blossom Spring

11.1

Introduction

This conversation took place in Christoph Lepschy’s home in Munich on the 21st of October, 2021. This was 2 weeks after Heart Chamber Fragments (Mouzhong leisi yu wo de didong: xinshi pianduan), the fourth major collaboration between Tian Gebing and Christoph Lepschy, premiered at the Munich Kammerspiele Theatre. Like Totally Happy (Feichang gaoxing, 2014), 500 Meters (500 mi, 2017), and Infection, State of Emergency, Beethoven (Ganran, jinji zhuangtai he Beiduofen, 2020) Heart Chamber Fragments too is a production based on joint work. Its starting

A. Stecher (✉) University of Naples, L’Orientale, Naples, Italy e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 H. Jin et al. (eds.), Contemporary German–Chinese Cultures in Dialogue, Global Germany in Transnational Dialogues, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-26779-6_11

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point is not a dramatic text but rather a topic which is explored by the various participants in the production.1 Besides Tian Gebing and Christoph Lepschy, Wang Ya’nan, Liu Chao, and myself, Anna Stecher, also participated in this conversation. As the title suggests, Heart Chamber Fragments does not provide a complete story but rather many pieces of text in the form of images, voices, and movements. The booklet reveals that its most fundamental engagements are with the texts The Burrow (Der Bau) written by Franz Kafka, The Intruder (L’intrus) by Jean-Luc Nancy and The Peach Blossom Spring (Taohuayuan ji) by Tao Yuanming. ‘As part of the development of a play, the Beijing theatre collective Paper Tiger and the ensemble of the Munich Kammerspiele set out on a performative research into the labyrinthine systems of passages that lie both under our skin and under the surface of the soil’ (Kammerspiele, 2021).2 For many people in the audience, as for myself, this was the first live theatre performance after the long lockdown. The pandemic, however, continued to shape the atmosphere inside the theatre: only a few rows with seats set far apart from one another were installed around the square-shaped performance space in the Therese Giehse Hall—the most experimental performance space available at the Munich Kammerspiele. In addition, everyone had to wear an FFP2 facemask during the entire 2-h performance. ‘What does it mean to get a new heart? How does a home become a prison’? (Kammerspiele, 2021). These questions seemed to resonate already with the life of the times, in which there were reports of triage in the hospitals and many lived in apartments which had become prisons for their inhabitants. How had this production been developed? How do Christoph Lepschy, Tian Gebing and their respective teams work together? And what can the answers to these questions tell us about the shapes, the possibilities, and the topics of the trans-cultural in contemporary theatre? These are some of the questions, which will be discussed in the following pages.

11.2

Earlier Productions

Anna Stecher (AS): When I watched Heart Chamber Fragments a few days ago in the Kammerspiele, my first impression was that this production is very different from earlier Paper Tiger productions. However, after I came home I started watching some DVDs (Paper Tiger Studio, n.d.-a, n.d.-b, n.d.-c) of these earlier

1

The working method of Tian Gebing and the Paper Tiger Theatre Studio has been explored by Andreea Chirita in her recent work on 500 Meters, see Chirita (2022). Basic information about the Paper Tiger Theatre Studio as well as about many productions can be found on Paper Tiger Theatre Studio (n.d.-d). 2 If not indicated otherwise, all translations from German or Chinese are mine. The conversation itself was in German, English, and Chinese. It has been translated and re-translated for the publication process. My special thanks go to Alexander Reynolds who has assisted in the final revision of the chapter.

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productions and I was struck by the similarities that I found to exist between Heart Chamber Fragments and, for instance, Killers Don’t Mind the Cold and Hamlet Virus Mutations (Shashou bu xian leng he Hamuleite bingdu bianyi, 2003). In that last-mentioned production you were working on the theme of the SARS epidemic of 2003, and in Heart Chamber Fragments, at least such was my impression, you address some issues related to the COVID pandemic. Tian Gebing (TG)/Wang Ya’nan (WY): Killers Don’t Mind the Cold and Hamlet Virus Mutations was a very early production, the one on the DVD is from 2003. But actually, we performed it for the first time already in 1998. In 2003, suddenly SARS emerged. The whole situation brought a lot of fear, so we made this version. It deals with the theme of viruses, both in the biological and in the metaphorical sense, in medicine and in society. The new production Heart Chamber Fragments relates to the pandemic in a very special way. We took Kafka’s short story The Burrow as our point of departure. This text deals with the question of feeling safe. In Kafka’s story, the reason for the construction of the burrow is the fear of not being safe. However, every time a new safety measure is installed, some new hidden danger appears. This leads to a never-ending process of torment. The feeling of danger is linked to an unknown ‘enemy’ outside the burrow, and the burrow is built in order to erect a fortress between the ‘self’ and the dangerous ‘other’. You can see a link here between this text and our social reality as experienced in recent years. AS: When did you decide to work with this text of Kafka’s? Or, to put it differently, how did this text come to enter into this relationship with the current situation? TG: We started working on the development of Heart Chamber Fragments in 2017. Already at that time we did some research and discussions around The Burrow. In 2018, we began to develop an interest in the topic of heart transplantation, this led us to start to think about the body as a ‘burrow’. In the past, heart transplantation was a sign of technological and medical progress. However, just like any innovation, it also leads to new problems. This all is actually also Kafka’s topic: how humanity is trapped by its own creation. This is a modern fear. In 2019, the pandemic started, and in 2020 the whole world found itself inside a burrow like the one Kafka described. And suddenly we felt that our theatre work was, in a mysterious way, interconnected with reality (Fig. 11.1). In 2017, our production 500 Meters worked with Kafka’s text The Great Wall of China (Beim Bau der chinesischen Mauer). Exactly a hundred years ago, Kafka expressed his reflections on the collapsing Austro-Hungarian Empire by using the Great Wall of China. A hundred years later, we read Kafka’s text again, this time in the historical moment of the realization of the ‘Chinese dream’ and of huge construction projects such as the Belt and Road Initiative. The Burrow was written in 1923. This was close to the time of the Spanish Flu. On one of the recent evenings after the performance a person in the audience asked if Kafka’s Burrow was actually influenced by the experience of the Spanish Flu. We have not found any evidence for this. But for sure the text was written just after the Spanish Flu epidemic. The text could also be related to Kafka’s health. He had

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Fig. 11.1 Heart Chamber Fragments. Svetlana Belesova, Stefan Merki, Erwin Aljukić, Komi Togbonou, Chao Liu. Photograph: Judith Buss. Courtesy of Munich Kammerspiele

life-threatening lung problems. It was extremely interesting that in the very moment in which we were working on The Burrow and investigating issues such as the impact of medical technology on the human body or the disappearance of the natural body of humans, in that very moment, and 100 years after The Burrow was written, the global COVID pandemic started. It seemed that the real world outside was dealing with the same issues, at the same pace, as we did in our production. All the quarantines and lockdowns tried to encircle an invisible ‘other’ . . . the virus, or the imaginations of the virus. Later, of course, came the vaccine, mRNA . . . all of these too could be interwoven directly into themes raised by Kafka’s Burrow. One could almost say that we had too much material. How were we to organize all this? Eventually, we chose a very simple structure: the structure of four fragments. The text of one fragment is Kafka’s text itself. By means of ‘displacement’, it takes leave of Kafka, then eventually creates Kafka once again. This is one characteristic of this production. Like the animal in the burrow, it moves away from the burrow, but then it comes back again. These sudden moves activate the space; we aim at activating Kafka. However, what is your view about this production? Did you watch Totally Happy? AS: Maybe Totally Happy was more about China, and about Chinese history? TG: That is true in some respects. In Totally Happy we started from ‘Chinese issues’, such as mass movements, collectivism, the Cultural Revolution. But if you look at these issues from another perspective, you can discover that, actually, they are not only Chinese; they are not limited to one cultural context. Western history can

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also be seen as a process determined by the interplay of collectivism and individualism. In addition, Chinese history of the last hundred years is intimately interconnected with global history. All this actually led us to abandon a vision focusing only on one single culture. Of course, a lot of material in Totally Happy came from China. Maybe that actually matched the audience’s expectations from a director with Chinese background. But the topic is not only Chinese. But I understand what you mean. In Heart Chamber Fragments there is actually no Chinese material, aside from the Peach Blossom Spring. Nothing relates to contemporary Chinese politics. Perhaps Kafka’s Burrow took us into a more universal dimension, just as the pandemic we are now experiencing is affecting all humankind. In this situation, it is very difficult to focus just on the Chinese or just on the German aspect. Of course, you could also look at a big topic from a small perspective. But Heart Chamber Fragments does not aim at doing that. AS: In the case of SARS, that was in fact more a situation related to China. TG: To compare Heart Chamber Fragments and Killers Don’t Mind the Cold and Hamlet Virus Mutations is actually very interesting. Both are about epidemics or pandemics but the historical background is very different and also the dimension of the pandemic is very different. In addition, China’s role in the world is different, and our identity and the place where we live is different.3 In 2003, we were looking at Chinese problems from a Chinese perspective. However, also in such a way that there was a meaning and an interconnection there with the world outside. We realized that there are actually no purely local or purely personal issues. All issues have the potential for deeper research. For this reason, around the year 2010, we started getting interested in the intercultural. We started to question our narrow identity and our Chinese perspective. We aimed at breaking out of our obvious comfort zone, so we started the process of displacement. Displacement and flow became our strategies for dealing with the era of globalization, not just in terms of our work, but also as regards our own lives. We were constantly looking for empty spaces, for gaps in history, in culture, and in systems, in order to find a more global perspective. We wanted to try a more global performance culture. This is in fact what we have been doing for more than 10 years now. AS: Your productions are somehow changing in step with the world. I really like the opening of the play Killers Don’t Mind the Cold. It opens with a character who sells kites and he asks: ‘How did you spend your time during SARS’? He goes on to say that kites are useful, because flying kites can help you to train your body, improve your health. When I watch this now I feel that these questions about health, about the body, about staying healthy are so important for our times. You did this production about SARS in 2003, but it speaks directly to me in this very moment.

3

The members of the Paper Tiger theatre collective used to live in Beijing, and—as mentioned also at the end of this conversation—moved to Berlin in 2019.

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WY: All the kites featured portraits of famous people from all over the world. At a certain moment the kites with the portraits fell down on the actors, who were just eating noodles. That was such an absurd moment. I can still hear them laughing. TG: When I was going to school it was the time of the Cultural Revolution. There were many portraits on the walls: Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, and Mao Zedong. These were the holy figures in those times. Later on, the normal schools and examinations came back. The walls now featured portraits of Copernicus, Galileo, Marie Curie, Shakespeare, and famous painters. Later on it was the era of economic development, so the new portraits were of sport stars and movie stars. The most important ones were ‘foreign’ and had some transliterated names. This power game is still having its effect. Now, there was SARS; it did not have a portrait, but this transliterated name communicated something similar. In the time of SARS the only outdoor activity one could do in Beijing was flying kites. Therefore, we had the idea to use kites on stage. We printed all these portraits on them just from our memory and we let them fly. They were metaphors of viruses, we wanted to explore how these symbols can control our mind by means of mutation. AS: We also have a mutation now—the Delta variant. TG: For that work we used the concept of mutation in order to discuss our culture. We realized that these cultural mutations are everywhere. This is also the reason for the title Killers Don’t Mind the Cold and Hamlet Virus Mutations. We used the word ‘Hamlet’ like the word ‘SARS’, in order to indicate a virus (laughs). Liu Chao (LC): ‘SARS’ and ‘Hamlet’ are good examples for such words. They stand out in a Chinese sentence. They are transliterations, transplanted concepts. You have no idea what they mean, but they carry a sense of authority and credibility. TG: For people in China who are not interested in theatre, ‘Hamlet’ and ‘SARS’ mean the same thing—something foreign that nobody understands. However, why would we choose ‘Hamlet’, precisely, for the name of a virus? With this production we went to participate in the Heiner Müller Theatre Festival in Tokyo. Everyone knows Hamlet Machine, for this postmodern work Müller also used the symbol of Hamlet; he added the ‘machine’, the force of the industrial revolution. All the productions in this festival were performances based on Heiner Müller’s plays. Our performance was different. It was not related to his dramas. In order to somehow relate what we were doing to the theme of the festival, we added the spoofy ‘Hamlet virus’ to the title of our play. By replacing ‘machine’ with ‘virus’ we were trying to point up that this is actually the nature of theatre after the postmodern. Interestingly, a critic from Japan said that our production was the only one in the whole festival which had a real connection with Heiner Müller. Christoph Lepschy (CL): Indeed, a deep, an underground connection. AS: Because it was so interconnected with the current situation. TG: Exactly. It was about current politics and about conflict. Perhaps that is the core of Heiner Müller’s thought, and this is also what the critic from Japan meant. AS: Was this Heiner Müller Festival your first connection with German theatre? TG: Actually, our relationship with German theatre is much older. In 1996, I met Martin Gruber at the Central Academy of Drama. He was teaching there—now he

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is at the Acting School Ernst Busch in Berlin, and the year after we collaborated for a performance in Beijing. I would say that this collaboration was actually the start of my own work as a theatre director. After this performance in 1997, we did not have any relationship with German theatre for a long time. And then in 2007, Maria Schwägermann invited us to perform in Berlin and in Zürich. In 2011, Peter Anders, the director of the Goethe Institute in Beijing, offered a lot of suggestions and it was my first project working closely with Christoph Lepschy. AS: Could we talk a bit about another one of your older productions, about Reading (Langsong)? WY: When I was small, it was the classroom practice that all pupils would read the textbook together, in a loud voice, while the teacher would pace up and down in the aisles between rows of student desks. That was actually the highlight of every day in school. When reciting collectively, the individual can hide in the voice of the collective, so your voice will be very loud. You can encourage one another and you can put a lot of emotions into what you are doing. Reading is the only Paper Tiger production where I did not participate in person because in 2010 I gave birth to my son. However, the reports of the prenatal exam and the birth plan were used on stage and were recited by five male actors during the performance. The interesting aspect here was that the words recited in unison and the movements of the body would not match up with one another at all.4 AS: How did you choose the words for this production? TG: As Ya’nan said, we chose texts, such as the pregnancy report, which had not been used for recitation on stage before. In Chinese, the word langsong itself is linked to memories of the Cultural Revolution, when reciting collectively was extremely popular. Our aim in Reading was to activate both the memory of the audience and also their reflection on how language and body influence each other. In the past, we had actually lost our faith in language and in most of our works we had not used language at all. Our productions were just games of bodies and of the visual.5 WY: In Cool (Ku), for instance, a production from 2007, we only used some numbers and some well-known traditional stand-up comedy (xiangsheng) text. During the 70 minutes of performance, the actors would work with actions, visual effects, bodies, decorations, numbers, cabbage, ropes, fights, flour, colours—but not with real language. AS: I noticed that some of your early plays do not have any English subtitles. Now I know why. There is actually not much to translate. TG: Reading is a watershed in Paper Tiger’s work. It is an experiment with words and bodies. If someone chooses texts for reciting, usually these will be poems and essays. But we went for radically different qualities in texts. Besides Ya’nan’s

4

On the importance of the body in Paper Tiger productions, see Chirita (2022), Li (2020, pp. 238–262), and Tian (2017). 5 On the importance of the work of Paper Tiger in Chinese juchang or post-dramatic theatre, see Li (2022).

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pregnancy reports, we also recited exercises from textbooks, governmental reports, texts fragments from Internet slang and others. We claim these are official texts. AS: There is also some ‘reciting’ in Heart Chamber Fragments, or at least some ‘reading’: at one point a passage from Kafka’s Burrow is read out on stage. I just noticed something else: the English translation of this production is Reading; however, it seems to me that you are actually more interested in the reciting and not just in the reading? TG: For me, the most interesting aspect in Reading was to juxtapose words and bodies which do not match, and to look at the potential for conflict that there is in that. Usually, the one who recites and performs will learn his or her text by heart, as if the text were his or her own. That is to say, he or she pretends that the text belongs to him or her. But we asked the performers to hold the texts in their hands and to display the conflicting relationship between text and body. When movements do not obey the words, language and voice try to obstruct these movements and this leads to even stronger movements. This all creates a feeling of humorous rebellion. WY: Actually, in all the works after Reading we directed our attention to the relationship between body and language. There is actually one passage in Heart Chamber Fragments which works in the same way: the tall, strong man speaks anxiously to himself, like an animal in his burrow, and the thin small women tries several times to break through the door. In one and the same place, then, two stories are intertwined and do not meet. In the end, this is after all a passage about the relationship between body movement and verbal language. CL: I think that the ways of dealing with texts in Reading and in Heart Chamber Fragments are quite different. The ways in which text and body are interconnected in these two productions are not the same. As Tian and Ya’nan described, in Reading the approach is clear: how does speaking affect your body? In Heart Chamber Fragments, it’s always about the mutual relation of body and language. Moreover, we paid more attention to the resonance between the different texts on stage. If you think about Kafka, there is a dramaturgically important moment in The Burrow, where the text relates in a very specific way to space and to the body: It’s about an uncanny—presumably imaginary—noise, that cannot be located and therefore disturbs the feeling of safety within the space of the burrow. This absence of conceivable signs affects the body fundamentally.

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Heart Chamber Fragments

AS: I have the impression that the texts you chose for Heart Chamber Fragments are more distant from the present. The texts in Reading are closer to the reality of that period, such as for example governmental reports, the school books . . . TG: Kafka’s text is very close to our times. This is why we chose it. AS: Who decided to use the Kafka text? Is Kafka important in China?

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TG: Kafka is important everywhere. Everyone has Kafka on the bookshelf. For any young intellectuals in China, for anyone who reads Kafka is basic knowledge. Maybe not everyone has read his books but at least they know his name. In order to describe some absurd situations in China’s reality, people sometimes say: ‘this is so Kafka’! And this is true. China is the place closest to Kafka’s world. CL: We rather use Kafka’s text in order to look for some resonance with regard to contemporary situations. We use it as a tool, as a Sonde, as a probe that you put inside your body in order to look for something. TG: We use it as a tool for scanning problems in our present reality. CL: We put it in a certain context. That’s what we did already when we did 500 Meters. For that production, we put Kafka’s text into the context of huge architecture. In Heart Chamber Fragments, we put a Kafka text into the context of heart transplantation or, speaking from a broader perspective, into the context of a politics of the body. AS: Could you tell us more about how you started working together and about what the most important aspect is when you collaborate? Do you have a method? TG: Christoph and I first met in 2009 and in 2012 we collaborated on Totally Happy. Afterwards the collaboration continued. CL: We talk a lot. That’s the foundation of it all, actually. We talk a lot and discuss things. TG: When we met to talk about Totally Happy for the first time, we talked for 1 week. We continued our discussion every day for maybe 10 hours a day. The question is whether you can find common ground. Especially at the beginning, when you start developing something, you need to find topics on which you can expand. Some people talk to each other for 2 hours and they are done. However, if you talk to someone for 10 hours a day, that means that you can continue talking. Totally Happy was a very important experience for us, not just because of our collaboration, but also because of the rehearsal process. We had never put so much effort into research before. In Beijing, we had a theatre studio, which was open to anyone, and a lot of people participated in performance workshops during these 2 years. These workshops were part of our research on the topic of masses and individuals. This approach was similar to a sociological study. Afterwards, we started to work with the Kammerspiele, this well-known German theatre, which of course has its own system. Therefore, actors from the Kammerspiele, and actors from China, who both had very different ways of doing theatre, needed to work together. This was a very important experience and one reason for its success was the work of Christoph and Jeroen Versteele. As dramaturges, they did a lot of work in between both sides, in order to bring together this big bunch of very different people. The German actors travelled to China for rehearsals, and later on the Chinese actors travelled to Germany both for rehearsing together and for performing. In this way, actors from both sides experienced similar situations. In that time, we put forward the concepts of ‘being the context for each other’ and

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‘becoming a story for each other’.6 We thought that, by bringing people together, maybe a third context could emerge. We were not interested in presenting a ‘Chinese performance’. In such a case, there is this Chinese text; you bring it to Europe; Europeans understand it, consume it. It’s the same if you bring a European production to China; it is consumed there; this is a famous ensemble, a famous director. We wanted to challenge his. We wanted to hold a discussion on a shared topic. CL: We wanted to work together and it was Tian’s impulse to work in this way. He was interested in the topic of the masses and mass movements. In China, this topic has many, and very grave, implications related to revolutionary mass movements. Tian wanted to investigate this topic in a different context and he came up with the idea that a collaborator from Germany could contribute a quite specific point of view on the topic of the mass movement, for instance, with regard to the traumatic history of mass movements in Germany during the Nazi period. Our collaboration actually started from the content side. It was very interesting, and provided many insights, to look at the concept of ‘the mass’ in our respective backgrounds and eventually this became our way of working together. We are not doing international projects for the sake of an abstract idea of ‘intercultural theatre’. Of course, we are interested in our respective cultures, this is a base. But, at the same time, we are looking for topics or texts that make us curious and that are promising as regards their being explored in different cultural contexts. That was the case for 500 Meters, for Infection, State of Emergency, Beethoven and of course for Heart Chamber Fragments. AS: Maybe you could introduce 500 Meters for us. CL: When we talk about Heart Chamber Fragments we are talking about the second part of a trilogy. We are actually working on a Kafka trilogy. 500 Meters was part one of the Kafka trilogy. It started from the text The Great Wall of China, where Kafka brings up very important and emotional topics. Kafka talks about architecture on a huge scale, architecture that is too big to be conceived—like the Great Wall. For us this is interesting, because we are living in a world that is shaped very much by this kind of architecture, especially in China, but not only there. During the last decades, China has become an impressive construction site, with countless buildings on a massive scale literally popping up everywhere, for instance in the context of the Belt and Road Initiative. AS: Perhaps we could use the concept of ‘infrastructure’7 for that? CL: Yes. Actually, this production is about infrastructure. The Great Wall is infrastructure. With Kafka’s observations in mind, we investigated the contemporary attempts to ‘build a Great Wall’. Interestingly, these buildings are no longer walls, rather they aspire—like the New Silk Road—to be means of connection. However, at the same time, BRI is an attempt to create contemporary

This concept is also explained as ‘mutual contexts’ in Chirita (2022, pp. 71–72). For my understanding of ‘infrastructure’ and ‘infrastructural violence’ I am indebted to Deljana Iossifova. 6 7

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architecture in terms of representation of power. In this context, the production 500 Meters was actually not about architecture but about the effect of architecture on humans. AS: You make me think about ‘infrastructural violence’. CL: Yes, exactly! That is precisely what Kafka’s text is talking about. Interestingly, it also talks about how to organize the power that is able to achieve such infrastructural developments. At the time of our project Kafka’s text was exactly 100 years old. When he wrote about China—Kafka had actually never been to China—he must have had in mind the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He might have used the image of the Great Wall of China in order to reflect on the collapse of this empire around 1917, the year of his writing. AS: This method sounds so Chinese to me. It also makes me think about Max Frisch’s play The Great Wall of China (Die chinesische Mauer). TG: There are many examples like this. Brecht for instance. He also used Chinese material in his writings. I cannot say if these can be called trans-cultural writings. But Kafka’s China material is still very special. When I read his texts I am surprised about his knowledge about China. AS: I also find myself thinking about some operatic works from those times which feature China: Puccini’s Turandot for instance, or The Land of Smiles (Das Land des Lächelns) by Franz Lehár. CL: These were very exotic representations. But it is true that China was a big topic at the time. Kafka’s interest went beyond such exoticism. He read Richard Wilhelm’s translations of the Chinese classics, Zhuangzi, Confucius, Laozi. He actually received this tradition of thinking. Perhaps this is one reason why he is now having such a strong resonance in China. Actually, this was really intriguing for me: I always thought that I know Kafka quite well, but through this production and through our discussions it was like seeing him with new eyes. TG: At the beginning of this project we organized a small reading group in Beijing. We read Kafka, and more than 20 young people with different professional backgrounds participated. Everyone shared their impression of The Great Wall of China. I thought that maybe Kafka was too dry for young people but surprisingly everyone built a relationship between Kafka’s text and their own life. AS: How do you understand the humour or the comical in Kafka’s text?8 TG: For me his texts are full of wit and humour. CL: There is a strong sense of humour in it. Certainly black humour, which comes from his obsession with bureaucratic absurdities. The grotesque results from the precision in describing his observations in the greatest possible detail. At the same time, it is really existential. It’s frightening. LC: The full title of this production was 500 Meters: Kafka, the Great Wall or Images from the Unreal World and Daily Heroism (500 mi: Kafuka, changcheng, bu zhenshi shijie tuxiang he richang shenghuo zhong de yingxiong zhuyi).

8

The question of humour, of the absurd, and of paradoxes in Paper Tiger productions is also addressed in Chirita (2022).

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CL: It was coproduced with Theater der Welt, the Thalia Theater in Hamburg, Stary Teatr in Krakow, and the International Co-Production Foundation of the GoetheInstitut. It was shown in Hamburg and subsequently in the Ming Contemporary Art Museum in Shanghai and at the Wuzhen Festival in 2018. After that it was invited to Shenzhen but that had to be cancelled, because of the pandemic. Since then, no more touring has been possible. AS: I would like to come back to the humour. Because I find that Paper Tiger’s work has a lot of humorous aspects.9 TG: That is true. Do you think that the new Heart Chamber Fragments is humorous? AS: A little bit less. There is a lot of black humour and grotesquerie in Cool, and in Killers Don’t Mind the Cold. TG: Humour and the comical have always been a characteristic of Paper Tiger. But, since you mention it, I feel that we are becoming less humorous. WY: You actually mentioned that before we started performing . . . TG: Maybe Kafka’s Burrow took us to a dead end. Maybe this is a joke that Kafka’s text is playing on us. AS: I had the impression that there was a lot of humour in Killers Don’t Mind the Cold. And I didn’t find quite so much humour in Heart Chamber. However, maybe there were some moments of humour. TG: Maybe we did not have enough time to fully express our sense of humour. CL: But certain moments in this production surely are humorous. The appearance of Stefan Merki for instance. That’s the actor who, at the beginning, is talking about xenotransplantation, and then he comes back. And he has a short text: ‘We tried our best. Maybe you are disappointed now, because this evening we are not taking up any position as regards current politics, nor are we proposing any alternative nor any action that might be taken in this regard . . . we cannot say anything more about the problem; we are part of the problem’. AS: I found some other humorous moments as well. But the day I watched the performance in the Kammerspiele, nobody was laughing in the audience. In contrast, if you watch the DVD of Killers Don’t Mind the Cold, you can hear the audience laughing very much. LC: There is comedy there. It is a key to Paper Tiger works, xixue, which is a verb not easy to translate. It means to subvert and deconstruct with a joke. It is more than parody. TG: Making jokes. We are pretty good at this. Maybe this time a little bit less. CL: 500 Meters was not so obviously humorous either. TG: 500 Meters carried a great sense of humour on the performance level. The humour was not in the text but in the actions, certain movements on stage.

There is some humour even in the name ‘Paper Tiger’ itself. An entire chapter in the Little Red Book, the Quotations from Mao Tse Tung (Mao Zedong yulu) is actually devoted to ‘paper tigers’ (zhi laohu). In ‘Imperialism and All Reactionaries are Paper Tigers’ the term naturally occurs several times. The chapter starts with: ‘All reactionaries are paper tigers. In appearance, the reactionaries are terrifying, but in reality they are not so powerful’ (Mao 2000).

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LC: There is some humour in Heart Chamber Fragments. But it is not the Paper Tiger ‘grotesque’ humour. AS: There is a crazy grotesque humour in the play Cool. It opens with a character who tries to catch a fly. As he can’t get the fly, he takes out a pistol and points the pistol at the fly. And in the end he shoots himself. TG: So humour gets lost in the trans-cultural process? CL: Maybe all the questions concerning the heart, the self, our identity, it’s all very close. Probably we are too much involved ourselves to be able to look at the situation from a distanced point of view. TG: This is one reason. Another reason is that the rehearsal process was a bit complicated. We worked with many texts and translations of texts. This took us a long time and the rehearsal was over before we got to the point of working out the humour. One challenge for us was that all three source texts were unknown to most of the audience. Although we employed a simplified structure, the performance appeared complex. This displacement approach, to move away from Kafka in order to work on Kafka, leads to a kind of dizziness. This is what we wanted. But for the audience it would still be difficult. This was an obstacle. Perhaps humour would actually have been a good way of balancing things out. AS: How did you choose the Peach Blossom Spring? TG: This was the contribution of a curator who participated in our research in Beijing. She even curated an exhibition with the title From the Burrow to the Peach Blossom Spring. Her focus was on the issue of space: both Kafka’s Burrow and Tao Yuanming’s Peach Blossom Spring work on imagined spaces. The Burrow imagines a closed interior space, while Peach Blossom Spring imagines an open, outside space, where two worlds are interconnected through a cave, a burrow. For us, the Peach Blossom Spring became a continuation of Kafka’s Burrow. AS: I noticed that the ‘peach blossom spring’ is such an important image in Chinese culture. Could you briefly talk about how you understand it? TG: In China, the Peach Blossom Spring is extremely famous. It is mostly understood as utopia. Chinese intellectuals traditionally have this ideal of the hermit, and the ‘peach blossom spring’ is often understood as the space of the hermit who has left this world. This is the traditional understanding. However, in today’s youth culture, people sometimes understand it as a ghost story, as a ghost world. Once you get there, you cannot get back anymore. We connected the Peach Blossom Spring and the Burrow, because for us they are somehow complementary, they propose two perspectives. Maybe inside of the ‘peach blossom spring’ you can actually find Kafka’s ‘burrow’. There is danger everywhere. But for the one who is outside, this is a very beautiful world! On the other hand, it is also possible that people inside the ‘peach blossom spring’ imagine the world outside as extremely dangerous. This structure of inside and outside, and the imagination about it, is something that we are extremely familiar in the pandemic. Harsh lockdowns and home-quarantine policies, especially in China, have led to the idea that the world outside is dangerous. If you’ve had the opportunity to travel on a plane during the pandemic, you’ll have gotten this impression that you are

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Fig. 11.2 Heart Chamber Fragments. Svetlana Belesova. Courtesy of Munich Kammerspiele

travelling through different worlds. You would have had an experience of the ‘burrow’ and of the ‘peach blossom spring’ in one go. When you board the plane you step inside the burrow; when you get off you have arrived in another world. In Heart Chamber Fragments, the Peach Blossom Spring has been interpreted in a very direct way, both in terms of images and in terms of texts. Our interpretation is closer to the ghost world; it is not utopia. But when it was translated into German I had the impression that most of the audience understood it as a fairy tale. Is this an ambiguity caused by translation? I don’t know. If you look at the overall structure of the performance, you could say that it starts with the concrete issue of heart transplantation, then it becomes more abstract; and when it reaches the Peach Blossom Spring it enters a very far space . . . maybe the space of the fairy tale? AS: I really liked the moment with the pink stones. The stage is filled with these pink stones and then the actors sink inside and down with their bodies. I thought; now they are all falling inside the ‘peach blossom spring’ (Fig. 11.2) TG: These images are, of course, open to any kind of imaginative interpretation. But the question is still, what is the ‘peach blossom spring’? Utopia? A ghost world? A fairy tale? We thought about the disappearance of humans, the disappearance of humanity. Specifically, we were interested in the issue of how humans disappear in the face of technology. Also, Michel Foucault spoke about the disappearance of the human.

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CL: There is one thing we have not talked about yet regarding Heart Chamber Fragments. There are three texts. We have talked about Peach Blossom Spring and Kafka, but we have not talked yet about Jean-Luc Nancy and about the whole issue of transplantation. This is an important part of our performance. We started the whole work with Kafka and a strong notion in Kafka’s text is the question: What is an intruder? How do we imagine an intruder? Is there any intruder at all? And then we came across this text written by Nancy: The Intruder. And the more we read Kafka the more we understood that the burrow is not only an architecture but also a body, a living being. There are some moments where the Self even merges with the burrow, where the Self thinks; maybe it is me, maybe I am looking at myself, maybe I am looking at the burrow as if it were myself. This perception of the burrow could be conceived in terms of transplantation. Hence we started to investigate this field of ideas, and Nancy’s text is, in a beautiful way, a kind of resonance to Kafka’s Burrow. Because he is dealing with all these issues of obsession, of being afraid, he raises similar questions: Who is the intruder? Is the intruder already inside? After all, for Nancy the intruder is his own heart: once he can feel that the heart is there—because the heart rhythm is irregular—it becomes a foreigner. He is no longer able to live with this heart and therefore he needs a new heart. But the new heart is an intruder as well. As we know, there is always the danger of a strong immune-system reaction after every transplantation—the ‘rejection reaction’. I think somehow the texts resonate with one another in this respect in an interesting way. This is how we started our investigation. Moreover, there is this historical aspect of heart transplantation, which we somehow tried to integrate. And there is of course also the contemporary research. All these questions which are raised in Kafka and in Nancy, and somehow also in Peach Blossom Spring, are about: What does this moment of transgression towards another world mean? How do we understand this movement of an intruder, might he or she be real or imaginary? Are we able to integrate him or her? All these questions are related to the issue of heart transplantation. And they get even more urgent if you think about it in the context of the recent achievements in research into xenotransplantation. When we are ready to transplant pig hearts into humans, what does it mean after all to the question of the self, which Nancy is raising: Who am I, if the heart of another person is beating inside me? What is the meaning of this sort of transgression between human and animal? In an exemplary way, these questions are connected to our understanding of humanity: how it develops, how we deal with it, or what we know about it at all. Xenotransplantation is just one small example. The research about it has been going on for decades—for the obvious reason that we have a significant lack of organs and thousands of people are dying every year, because they do not get a new organ in time. But in fact, most people do not know much about it. In the audience talks we always got the question: ‘Is this true with the pig heart or is this your invention? Is this fiction’? (Fig. 11.3). TG: This performance was actually a kind of surgery. Kafka was at the core of this work; then we went to Nancy; and afterwards to Tao Yuanming; and eventually

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Fig. 11.3 Heart Chamber Fragments. Svetlana Belesova, Erwin Aljukić, Manel Salas Palau, Stefan Merki, Martin Weigel, Ya’nan Wang, Komi Togbonou, Cindy Ng, Chao Liu. Photograph: Judith Buss. Courtesy of Munich Kammerspiele

we returned to Kafka. The end of The Burrow is ‘Aber alles blieb unverändert, das—’. The last word in the German text is ‘das’. It is an unfinished sentence. The thought is not yet finished but there are no more pages of the story among Kafka’s manuscripts. For us, this sentence became like a heart which suddenly stops beating and dies. Our performance too finished there. This is just one way of looking at this. How can Kafka’s works be adapted for the theatre? This is a good question. If you stick to his text, you will not go very far. Because his writing and his language are very strong. As said above, we wanted to use Kafka as a ‘probe’, in order to look at our contemporary world. One might say, in the end, that we wanted to start from the ‘probe’ and arrive eventually at performing a kind of ‘surgery’ by means of this play.

11.4 The Third Part of the Kafka Trilogy: Possibilities for the Future AS: What will be the third part of the Kafka trilogy? TG: We have not decided yet. CL: There are some ideas. TG: I actually think that The Trial would be a great point of departure.

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CL: The Trial? TG: Or In the Penal Colony. CL: The Diaries. TG: The Diaries is a good idea; these are fragments. However, I want to do something radically different from Heart Chamber Fragments. We need to find a story, a narrative . . . a character with a story. CL: But The Diaries would not really be a narrative. TG: They are a narrative . . . CL: I like them very much. They give such inspiring insights into the process of writing and thinking. And they consist of many fantastic and simple fragments of narratives. Of course, we would need to make a selection. TG: In 2022, a man reads Kafka’s Diaries, this is the title. There is a story. Maybe it has nothing to do with Kafka but it is very similar in style. In China recently, there appeared a news item about a prison break. A man broke out of a prison in Jilin. Actually, he had come illegally from North Korea. He was a refugee, he had no passport, no ID, no legal status, no residence permit, no job, no money. How was he to live? I read that he was in a robbery; that was the reason why he ended up in the Jilin prison. Since he behaved very well, he obtained a commutation of his sentence. He would only have needed to wait for two more years, then he would have been free. At this very moment he broke out of the prison. And everyone watched him. Prison break is a severe crime. When he is caught, he will have to spend a lot more time in prison. This made me think: maybe this was actually his plan, maybe he wanted to get caught, so that he could continue to stay in prison. CL: Because otherwise he would be sent back to North Korea? TG: Maybe for him the prison is actually a safe place? Maybe we have returned to The Burrow? We could make a story: There is a man in prison; he reads Kafka’s Diaries. Maybe this is the only activity he is allowed for leisure. He reads and he copies Kafka’s Diaries. For me, this story of the prison break itself actually has something Kafkaesque about it. LC: If we work on The Diaries, it still means you get the quality of Kafka. But at the same time, you get rid of the burden of the canon. CL: I am very interested in the form of Kafka’s Diaries, and I also would like to continue our approach to that part of his works that lies beyond his most famous texts. TG: Maybe we could just start from the idea of prison break. It doesn’t have to be this specific story. After all, our life sometimes is very similar to a prison. There are different kinds of prisons. A city can be a prison. Perhaps keeping a diary is the only activity that one could undertake in this prison. AS: Do you keep a diary, Christoph? CL: Not really on a regular basis. TG: I have never kept a diary before. But after I moved to Berlin I started to keep a diary. I had the feeling that I was experiencing so many things. When something slips my mind, then it is like it has never happened. AS: When did you move here? TG: 2018.

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WY: 2019. TG: You see, I already forgot.

References Chirita, A. (2022). Redefining borders in contemporary Chinese theatre: Paper Tiger Theatre Studio performing Kafka’s ‘The Great Wall’. Modern Chinese Literature and Culture, 34(1), 66–96. Li, Y. (2020). Juchang performance in contemporary Chinese society (1980–2020). Ten interviews. Utz. Li, Y. (2022). Hans-Thies Lehmann’s postdramatic theatre and the new aesthetics. In K. Tuchmann (Ed.), Postdramatic dramaturgies. Resonances between Asia and Europe (pp. 47–54). Bielefeld. Mao, T. (2000). Quotations from Mao Tse Tung. Retrieved October 19, 2022, from https://www. marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/works/red-book/ch06.htm Münchner Kammerspiele. (2021). Heart Chamber Fragments. Retrieved October 10, 2022, from https://www.muenchner-kammerspiele.de/de/programm/5214-heart-chamber-fragments Paper Tiger Theatre Studio. (n.d.-a). Shashou bu xian leng he Hamuleite bingdu bianyi. Killers don’t mind the cold and Hamlet Virus Mutations. DVD. Paper Tiger Theatre Studio. (n.d.-b). Ku. Cool. DVD. Paper Tiger Theatre Studio. (n.d.-c). Langsong. Reading. DVD. Paper Tiger Theatre Studio. (n.d.-d). Paper Tiger Theatre Studio. Retrieved October 21, 2022, from https://www.papertigertheater.com Tian, G. (2017). Vom Selbst so viel wie von anderen: Der Körper im Gegenwartstheater. In K. Cao, S. Heymann, & C. Lepschy (Eds.), Zeitgenössisches Theater in China (pp. 280–293). Alexander.

Anna Stecher is an Assistant Professor at the University of Naples, L’Orientale. Previously, she was an Assistant Professor in Sinology at Ludwig Maximilian University Munich. She studied Oriental History at the University of Bologna and Modern Chinese Literature at Beijing Normal University (MA and Ph.D.). She also holds a Ph.D. in Theatre Studies from LMU Munich. Her main research interests are Chinese theatre and modern Chinese literature. She is the author of Im Dialog mit dem chinesischen Schauspieljahrhundert. Studien zum Theater von Lin Zhaohua (In dialogue with the Chinese huaju-century. Studies on Lin Zhaohua’s theatre) and co-editor of two volumes collecting contemporary Chinese plays. Her publications further include a number of literary translations from Chinese.

Chapter 12

Martin Heidegger and Daoism in Dialogue Guang Yang

Abstract The German philosopher Martin Heidegger is one of the few Western thinkers who take a serious interest in the Chinese tradition of Daoism—he once tried to translate the canonical text Daodejing into German with the help of a Chinese scholar. Even though his attempt at translation did not succeed, his congenial reading of Laozi and Zhuangzi has been viewed as a creative appropriation of a philosophical school from another cultural tradition. Drawing upon current discussions in Heidegger research, this article will address Heidegger’s interpretation of some key concepts of Daoism, including ‘emptiness’, ‘uselessness’, and ‘nothingness’. This will show the extent to which Daoist thinking provides a new possibility for understanding Heidegger’s later philosophy, especially the question of Being. Keywords Daoism · Being · Metaphysics · Uselessness

12.1

Introduction

Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) is considered by many to be the greatest Western thinker of the twentieth century, although his political involvement in Nazi Germany has tainted his reputation to a considerable degree. What is remarkable about his philosophy is that he draws upon a wide range of philosophical resources to develop his own thinking and tries at the same time to twist free of the dominant tradition of Western philosophy, i.e. metaphysics. Heidegger’s attempt at another new beginning of thinking in the 1930s and the 1940s is characterized by a recourse to the more primordial origin of Western tradition in Pre-Socratic thinking and in other alternative thinkers, such as the German Poet Hölderlin, and Nietzsche, another harsh critic of Western metaphysics. In keeping with such a recourse, Heidegger cultivates a significant interest in East Asian thought and culture. Apart from many personal

G. Yang (✉) School of Humanities, Tongji University, Shanghai, China e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 H. Jin et al. (eds.), Contemporary German–Chinese Cultures in Dialogue, Global Germany in Transnational Dialogues, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-26779-6_12

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encounters and conversations with scholars and Buddhist thinkers from Asia or from an Asian background,1 Heidegger is known to have carried out serious cross-cultural philosophical dialogues over many years. In this respect, Chinese Daoist philosophy, as represented by Laozi (Lao-Tzu) and Zhuangzi (Chuang-Tsu), stands out as the partner in a fruitful dialogue which develops during a time of crisis in his thinking and life. Heidegger was familiar with German translations of the Daodejing or Tao Te Ching and of Zhuangzi, and even undertook to collaborate with a Chinese scholar on translating the Daodejing after World War II (Hsiao, 1987, pp. 93–103). Had it been finished, the translation project, which was broken off, could have constituted a major event in the world history of intercultural exchange and dialogue. Amidst the debris of war, Heidegger was undergoing de-Nazification proceedings in the southern German city of Freiburg, due to his previous entanglement with the Nazi movement and was forbidden to teach at the University of Freiburg for a number of years. As he started to work on the translation in 1946, he must have envisaged certain elements in the Daodejing that could somehow contribute to overcoming the crisis of his philosophy and life. Heidegger’s engagement with Daoism has been dealt with only sporadically in the Heidegger scholarship in the West (May, 1996; Parkes, 1987; Pöggeler, 1999). In East Asia, however, the influence of Daoist thought on Heidegger and his unique ontological understanding of Daoist ideas have been intensively investigated. Against the backdrop of the recent publication of the controversial Black Notebooks, in which Heidegger had written down some infamous anti-Semitic remarks, mostly in the 1930s (e.g. Heidegger, 2014, p. 97), it is all the more telling that the Daodejing and Zhuangzi figure so prominently in Heidegger’s works during the turbulent years near the end of World War II and its immediate aftermath. Reciprocally, Heidegger’s original reading in turn triggers feedback from contemporary Chinese scholars who were able to consider their own tradition from a novel perspective. In this case, it is reasonable to speak of mutual influence and a truly cross-cultural dialogue on a deeper, philosophical level, which sheds light on both Eastern and Western thought, and thereby hones our sensitivities to, and understanding of each other’s tradition. Some Heideggerian scholars in China have recently come up with an interpretation which suggests that Heidegger’s philosophy underwent a ‘second turn’ in the 1940s after the first ‘turn’ (Kehre) from the 1930s (Nelson, 2019; Xia, 2017). And this ‘turn’ is significantly informed by Daoist concepts such as ‘uselessness’ (wuyong), ‘nothing’ (wu), and ‘emptiness’ (kong), which have been intensively explored and further developed in recent research (Davis, 2020; Heubel, 2020, pp. 87–122; Schönfeld, 2020, pp. 295–304; Xia, 2021). These can be read as possible ways out of Heidegger’s politically-loaded labyrinth of thinking in the 1930s. In what follows, I will argue that Daoist thought plays a critical role in the important transitions of Heidegger’s thinking by demonstrating how he ingeniously interprets Daoist ideas

1

Keiji Nishitanti, Shuzo Kuki, Paul Shih-yi Hsiao, Chung-yuan Chang, and D. T. Suzuki among others are the most prominent scholars to name (May, 1996, pp. 1–11).

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and—sometimes not without interpretative violence—appropriates them for his own thinking of Being, the paramount Heideggerian question.

12.2

Precursory Signs of Dialogue: Overcoming the Subjectivism of Modern Western Philosophy in Heidegger’s Thinking Before the Turn

One important marker on Heidegger’s path of thought is his constant critique of Western modernity, which is characterized, in his view, since the Renaissance, by its subjectivist mode of thinking. Subjectivity can be construed as the cognitive Cartesian ego, as self-grounding will, or as transcendental consciousness in Husserl, whose phenomenology inspired Heidegger’s own philosophy but from whom he distanced himself in many respects very early on. For Heidegger, one of the severe consequences of subjectivist thinking is that modern Western man objectifies the world and attempts to dominate and consume nature by means of technology and natural science. In this respect, things turn into ob-jects (Gegen-stände) which are filtered through the lens of a subject and lose their natural closeness to human life. Along with the objectification of worldly things, a barricade is set up between the insular subjects in relation to each other and between subject and the objective world. Against the background of subjectivist philosophy, the early Heidegger conceives of man’s being-in-the-world as ‘Dasein’ (Being-there) which distinguishes itself from the isolated, purely cognitive subject. For the most part Dasein lives in the everyday world and relates to things around in a familiar way, as in the case of a handworker dealing with his tools (Heidegger, 2001, p. 70, 2010, p. 66). Dasein has a tacit and implicit knowledge about things of use, in an already discovered world which in turn antedates and lays the foundation for his or her approach to natural things. Such inconspicuous knowledge, which Heidegger calls ‘circumspection’ (Umsicht) in Being and Time, is not constative and theoretical. Instead, it seems to ‘withdraw’ (zurückziehen) itself (Heidegger, 2001, p. 69, 2010, p. 69),2 when a tool is being put into usage. As the sinologist and philosopher Graham Parks points out (Parkes, 1987, p. 116), this is reminiscent of Laozi’s dictum in Chap. 64 of Daodejing: ‘He who grasps, loses it’ (Lao-Tzu, 1993; Laozi, 2004, p. 301). In other words, the implicit knowledge of dealing with things around us eludes our intellectual grasp. In Being and Time, Heidegger makes a significant distinction between ‘handiness’ (Zuhandenheit) of tools and the ‘objective presence’ (Vorhandenheit) of mere things (Heidegger, 2001, p. 69, 2010, p. 69). A craftsman’s manual dexterity is a special kind of practical knowledge by hand rather than a theoretical ‘look at the “outward appearance”’ of things (Heidegger, 2001, p. 69, 2010, p. 69). This can be 2

The page numbers refer, respectively, to the English translation and the original German version.

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easily brought into conversation with the Daoist conception of manual skill as depicted in several passages from Zhuangzi, such as the story of the wheelwright Pian in the chapter ‘Ways of Heaven’ (tiandao), who thinks his skill in chiselling wheels cannot be put into words. Nevertheless, one can sense it in one’s hand and feel it in one’s mind (Zhuangzi, 2013, p. 107, 2020, p. 415). In the celebrated parable of cook Ding in Zhuangzi, the butcher cook Ding cares more about the ‘Way’ (Dao) and transcends thereby the mere skill of cutting up oxen (Zhuangzi, 1998, p. 59, 2013, p. 19). Quite in line with Heidegger’s critique of theoretical and static gaze at the abstract surface of things, the cook Ding learns to gradually give up looking with naked eyes at the contour of the entire ox and can, in the end, instead attain an intuitive knowledge of its inner structure and texture. The perfect coordination of body and mind in the tale has an implicitly ethical dimension of ‘self-cultivation’ (Lau, 2020, p. 94), as the phenomenologist Kwok-Ying Lau points out. Lau tries to illustrate cook Ding’s perfect skill of controlling the knife and moving the blade subtly like playing between the joints of the ox (you ren you yu) in the light of the French phenomenologist Merleau-Ponty’s idea of ‘body-schema’ (Lau, 2020, p. 95). Even though Heidegger did not touch upon the allegory of cook Ding directly in his lectures and other texts, he did, however, elaborate once the image of a cook cutting through an animal skillfully and harmoniously without breaking off its parts in his interpretation of Platonic dialectics (Heidegger, 1992, p. 332, 2003, p. 230).3 In both cases, the practical dimension of thinking is highlighted. Furthermore, the inconspicuous proximity to things in the meaningful context of a pre-objective world is vividly displayed, a proximity in which no opposition between subject and object is to be found. The life praxis of cook Ding reveals, in David Chai’s words, ‘a higher state of familiarity with the world’ (Chai, 2019, p. 49), which resonates with our Being-there in the world dealing with tools that are ready-to-hand. There are certainly divergences between Heidegger’s characterization of Beingthere and Zhuangzi’s description of cook Ding. The chapter from which the parable is taken is entitled ‘The Secret of Caring for Life’ or ‘Nurturing life’ (Yangshengzhu) (Zhuangzi, 2013, p. 19), which indicates the intent of this chapter. By contrast, Heidegger’s ontological project in the first division of Being and Time is about the determination of human Being-there as Being-in-the-World, which seems to go beyond a practical self-cultivation that follows, e.g., the oriental wisdom of life. Everyday Being-there in the world has basically three modes of existence, namely attunement or disposition (Befindlichkeit), understanding (Verstehen), and discourse (Rede) (Heidegger, 2001, p. 133, 2010, p. 130). Furthermore, man encounters others in the meaningful context of world and his ‘Da-sein in itself is essentially beingwith’ others (Mitsein) (Heidegger, 2001, p. 120, 2010, p. 113). In this context, one tends to ask the notorious epistemological questions of intersubjectivity and empathy, i.e. how can one person put himself in the place of another and understand what another feels. Or to put it in Heidegger’s terms: can Dasein understand and

3

I interpret this passage in detail elsewhere (see Yang, 2016, pp. 53–55).

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empathize with others’ feelings simply because of the fact that he is together with them in the same world? Who, and for that matter, what are the others? In 1930, after a lecture in the city of Bremen, Heidegger was confronted with this very same predicament of modern philosophy. To the surprise of his host and audience, he took recourse to Zhuangzi, reading a few passages about the legend of the joy of the fishes from Martin Buber’s abridged translation of Zhuangzi (Petzet, 1993, p. 18). This anecdote is the earliest evidence of Heidegger’s engagement with Daoist philosophy and has been commented on by scholars from West and East alike (Ma, 2008, p. 122; Pöggeler, 1987, p. 52). What is at stake here is more than the use of a simple quote from a canonical text of a foreign culture to illustrate one’s own philosophical point. Rather, it is about the fundamental relationship of human beings with the world. In the exchange of arguments and counterarguments about whether one can know what a fish enjoys, neither Zhuangzi nor Huizi, his partner in the dialogue, could convince each other. The dialogue ends in a climax with Zhuangzi’s response to Huizi’s obstinate insistence on the insurmountable epistemological barrier between him and Zhuangzi as another human being, and between human beings and fish: ‘Let’s go back to your original question, please. You asked me how I know what fish enjoy—so you already knew that I knew it when you asked the question. I know it by standing here beside the Hao [river]’ (Zhuangzi, 2013, p. 138, 2020, p. 513). The return to Huizi’s original question is also an invocation of a primordial and implicit knowledge of the world which is presupposed unconsciously in Huizi’s question. Following the analysis in Being and Time, the world as a meaningful context is always already disclosed to us in a similar way, and ‘understanding’ constitutes man’s Being-there in the world as equiprimordially as the other two factors, ‘attunement’ and ‘discourse’ (Heidegger, 2001, p. 133, 2010, p. 130). By the same token, strolling along the dam of the Hao river, the two interlocutors in these lines from Zhuangzi are already affectively attuned in a certain way, presumably in a happy mood as Zhuangzi would tell us. Such a mood goes hand in hand with a kind of intuitive mutual understanding that breaks the interpersonal cognitive barrier. The image of minnows swimming around joyfully suggests, furthermore, that man’s empathy can even reach other creatures, which clearly undercuts the subject–object opposition found in modern Western philosophy.

12.3

Twisting Free of the Basic Principles of Western Logic

Heidegger’s thinking contains a revolutionary gesture that appears to be unparalleled in the whole Western tradition of philosophy, excepting perhaps Nietzsche and Derrida. The critical thrust of Heidegger’s anti-metaphysical enterprise does not, however, lie in the reversal of a certain school of thought as is the case with Nietzsche’s reversal of Platonism. His criticism of Western metaphysics goes deeper and is directed at both the content and the form of traditional Western philosophy. Along his path of thinking Heidegger has developed his own unique philosophical style that irritates many conservative and dogmatic philosophers in the West, and

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more importantly, some of his key ideas seem to violate the basic laws and principles of logic that underlie the Western tradition of metaphysics. From very early on Heidegger has sought to go beyond the discursive and logical way of thinking, often unfolding his thoughts around a single word root such as ‘hand’ in the aforementioned words ‘to-hand’ (zuhanden) and ‘on-hand’ (vorhanden) (Heidegger, 2001, p. 71, 2010, p. 71). Over the years, Heidegger’s thinking tends increasingly to bring together what does not belong together in the strict logical sense, for instance the concepts of possibility and impossibility, force and non-force, life and death. In 1957, Heidegger remarked explicitly and critically on the basic principles of thinking which include the principle of identity, the principle of contradiction, and the principle of the excluded middle (Heidegger, 2006, p. 127, 2012, p. 77). Following Heidegger’s interpretation, it all boils down to the question of the identity of something (A) which cannot be its opposite (-A) under any circumstance. Heidegger’s own thinking, however, shows paradoxical traits from its very outset, challenging the validity of those principles and finding, on the other hand, congenial echoes in the Daoist tradition. In fact, it is a general tendency of Western oppositional metaphysics to keep at bay those dimensions of the world that are deemed negative, for example darkness as the opposite of light and, with regard to Heidegger, nothingness in opposition to Being. In contrast, the Way (Dao) of Daoism does not exclude the negative moments of life and world; moreover, it disguises itself sometimes ironically as ‘non-Way’ or even as purposeless ‘garbage’, as the Sinologist philosopher Ziporyn sharply observes (Ziporyn, 2021, p. 768). The aforementioned principles of thinking are perfect examples of a one-dimensional metaphysics to the extent that they represent only the superficial illumination of knowledge in form of logical formulas (Heidegger, 2006, p. 138, 2012, p. 89). Heidegger’s paradoxical thinking, with its seemingly contradictory traits, on the contrary, seeks to do justice to the interdependence of opposite poles on each other and thereby to let nuanced in-between states come to the fore. In the early Heidegger’s phenomenology that revolves around human’s Being-there in the world, man’s existence is characterized by the modality of ‘possibility to be itself or not to be itself’ (Heidegger, 2001, p. 12, 2010, p. 11). In other words: the negative possibility of not being oneself belongs to the essential character of Being-there as much as the positive. The intertwining of possibility with its negation is even more obvious at the limit of Being-there’s possibilities or potentialities, that is, death: ‘With death, Dasein stands before itself in its ownmost potentiality-of-being. . . . As a potentiality of being, Dasein is unable to bypass the possibility of death. Death is the possibility of the absolute impossibility of Dasein’ (Heidegger, 2001, p. 250, 2010, p. 242). Death is not a state external and opposite to life, such that one could take it up as an occasional subject for consideration (Heidegger, 2001, p. 316, 2010, p. 302, Cf. Parkes, 1987, p. 124). Rather, it is such an essential part of Being-there that its very existence is described as ‘beingtoward-death’ and ‘anticipation of this possibility’ (Heidegger, 2001, p. 263, 2010, p. 251). The copresence and interlacing of life and death and the switch in perspectives between Being and nonbeing are not strange to Daoism either. In one of the Inner

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Chapters of Zhuangzi, ‘The Great and Venerable Teacher’ (Dazongshi), a group of four masters are discussing following questions: ‘Who can look on nonbeing as his head, on life as his back, and on death as his rump’? ‘Who knows that life and death, existence and annihilation, are all a single body? I will be his friend’! (Zhuangzi, 2013, p. 47, 2020, p. 222). Life and death belong together and constitute a unity. This corresponds to Heidegger’s determination of human existence as running ahead towards a death that is inherent in life. The later Heidegger goes even further, distinguishing mortal human beings from animals because only human beings ‘capable of death as death’ (Heidegger, 1971, p. 176, 2000a, p. 186). Death becomes ontologically more significant here and points to a nothingness that is entangled with Being. ‘Death is the shrine of Nothing [. . .], death harbors within itself the presencing of Being [. . .] death is the shelter of Being’ (Ibid.). The relation between Being and Nothing is thereby conceived as one of intimate overlapping and interpenetration, and death at the centre of nothing is compared to a holy place in which we as mortals could exist and relate to Being. Admittedly, there are significant discrepancies between Daoist ways of treating death with detached serenity and irony and the Heideggerian mood in which death is disclosed, namely anxiety (Angst) (Heidegger, 2001, p. 266, 2010, p. 254). This goes beyond the scope of the current discussion (Davis, 2020, pp. 179–185; Parkes, 1987, pp. 125–126). A paradoxical way of thinking figures more prominently as Heidegger’s philosophy proceeds after his magnum opus Being and Time. Already, in Heidegger’s inaugural address of 1929 in Freiburg, the Nothing, which is oftentimes rejected by science and analytical philosophy, begins to penetrate into the heart of Being itself. Nothing is not the negation of being in the logical sense, but that which manifests itself in Being-there’s mood of ‘anxiety’ (Angst) (Heidegger, 1976, p. 111, 1998, p. 88) when Being as a whole is unveiled. The overlapping of Being and nothing seems to be self-contradictory, and philosophers of the analytical tradition of philosophy in the West, such as Carnap, criticized Heidegger for being nihilistic and too metaphysical in his discussion about nothing (Nelson, 2019, p. 366). In contrast, Heidegger’s lecture found resonances in the East among his Japanese colleagues very early on. Furthermore, the Heideggerian idea that ‘the nothing is encountered at one with beings as a whole’ (Heidegger, 1976, p. 113, 1998, p. 90) is obviously reminiscent of the Daoist paradoxical logic, according to which opposites like nothing and being give rise to each other (Laozi, 2004, p. 80). Therefore, it could be well argued that there was a profound affinity between Heidegger’s philosophy and Daoist thinking even before he began to read and study Laozi and Zhuangzi extensively. Another seminal trace on the path of Heidegger’s reception of Daoism is the citation of a line from Chap. 28 of Daodejing in the important text ‘On the Essence of Truth’: ‘Whoever knows its brightness, cloaks himself in its darkness’ (Zhi qi bai, shou qi hei) (Laozi, 2004, p. 183; Heidegger, 2012, p. 89, 2014, p. 397). This quote is about the dialectical relation between light and darkness, and Chap. 28 is among those chapters with which Heidegger was quite familiar (Wohlfart, 2003, p. 47). It was omitted in the first published edition but resurfaced both in later published versions of the text and in another text written over 20 years later in 1957 (Heidegger

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2012, p. 89; Zhang, 2002, p. 44). In this context, the invocation of the Daodejing helps to challenge the one-sided orientation towards one pole of the dialectical relation, i.e., the light of knowledge, which has supposedly overcome the darkness of ignorance. And it points to the ‘mystery’ (Geheimnis) that as ‘concealment of beings as a whole’ lies in the heart of truth in the Heideggerian sense of ‘Unconcealment’ (Unverborgenheit) (Heidegger, 2014, p. 370). In a similar vein, the deep, mysterious, and elusive Dao is characterized as the ‘gateway to all mystery’ (zhong miao zhi men) at the beginning of Daodejing (Laozi, 2004, p. 73; Nelson, 2019, p. 365). Therefore, one could argue that it is from the very core of his own philosophy that Heidegger starts to build a philosophical bridge to Daoist thinking.

12.4

The Use of the Useless

The countermovement and passing-into-one-another of Being and nothingness does not only operate on an ontological and abstract level. The openness of Being as a whole calls for an open place amidst beings. In The Origin of the Work of Art Heidegger calls it ‘clearing’ or ‘lighting’ (Lichtung) (Heidegger, 1971, p. 51, 1977, p. 40). The German word ‘Lichtung’ which obviously stems from ‘light’ recalls the metaphor of the sun at the beginning of Western philosophy, namely in Plato’s Republic (Plato, 2004, pp. 208–212). However, as the self-proclaimed German Euro-Daoist Günter Wohlfart has tried to demonstrate, there is a hidden etymological link between clearing and the Daoist nothingness (wu), which can—according to Wohlfart’s etymological investigation—designate ‘forest-clearing’(Wohlfart, 2003, pp. 46–47). This aligns itself with the priority Heidegger gives to the opening lighting of Being in contrast to the transcendent and transcendental light of knowledge in traditional metaphysics (Heidegger, 1988, p. 74). In the passage from The Origin of the Work of Art Heidegger himself did not refer to the Daodejing to establish the aforementioned link, but he did bring the clearing into relation with the nothing which surrounds beings (Heidegger, 1971, p. 51, 1977, p. 40). This paves the way for Heidegger’s more explicit engagement with Chap. 11 of the Daodejing in the 1950s. It is striking—and certainly not coincidental—that Heidegger’s engagement with Daoist thinking reached a climax precisely in a period of time when Nazi Germany was losing World War II and later, when Heidegger himself was suffering in the aftermath of the war. Based on newly published materials, especially from the controversial Black Notebooks of Heidegger, some commentators speak of a ‘Daoist turn’ (Nelson, 2019, p. 362; Xia, 2017, p. 7) after the famous ‘turn’ (Kehre) in the 1930s, whereas others have suggested that Heidegger was perhaps taking refuge in Daoist thoughts to evade the question of his political entanglement and disillusionment (e.g. Pöggeler, 1999, p. 112). However the case might be, it must be taken into account that the so-called Daoist turn takes place within the framework of Heidegger’s later philosophy. His creative and sometimes arbitrary appropriation

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of Daoist philosophy is driven by his increasing criticism of modern technology, in a bid to free things from their technological enframing (Gestell) and release human beings from the will to power of modern Western philosophy. More importantly, his later idea of ‘releasement’ (Gelassenheit) and the engagement of Daoist thinking can be read as a tacit self-critique of and as a break with his overemphasis of the significance of the will in his thinking during the troubled times of the National Socialism (Davis, 2007, pp. 78–84).4 After World War II the motive of the Nothing that is inscribed in the heart of Being is now reformulated by Heidegger and has found new expressions in such Daoist ideas as emptiness (kong) and uselessness (wuyong). In 1943—even before the adventure of translating the Daodejing with Hsiao Shih-yi—Heidegger drew upon Chap. 11 of the Daodejing to illustrate his concept of Being in contrast to concrete and determinate beings. Heidegger’s revealing translation of the Chinese character Wu (Nothing) as ‘emptiness’ (kong, Leere) indicates that he is now more concerned with the fact that the invisible, spatial emptiness and openness are the prerequisites for the functioning of useful things such as a wheel, a pot, or a room (Heidegger, 2000b, p. 43; Laozi, 2004, p. 115). His translation of the last word of the chapter, ‘use’ (yong) as Being is even more intriguing and provocative and has been critically discussed in the research (Ma, 2008, p. 120). Here Heidegger is implicitly criticizing modern technology that is solely oriented towards practical usage and thereby levels out the uniqueness of things. The emptiness does not pertain to things alone. At the end of this text on Hölderlin from 1943, Heidegger put ‘the internal’ (das Innere) and ‘the emptiness of human beings’ (Heidegger, 2000b, p. 44) together, out of which human spirit and soul receive their essence. This invites comparison with the Daoist concept of ‘fasting of mind’ (xinzhai), which is different from physical fasting before religious sacrifice and designates the ‘emptiness’ of heart and mind instead; more importantly, the Way or Dao gathers in such emptiness alone (weidao jixu) (Zhuangzi, 2013, p. 25, 2020, p. 139). The emptiness of human beings leads accordingly to giving up the active will of a subject and to the Heideggerian idea of ‘Non-willing’ (Nicht-wollen) (Heidegger, 2007, p. 58, 2010, p. 37), which bears conspicuous resemblance to the Daoist insight of wuwei (non-acting) (e.g. Laozi, 2004, p. 239, Chap. 43). In this context, Heidegger develops his central thought of ‘releasement’ (Gelassenheit) that also has a strongly Daoist tone to it (Heidegger, 2007, p. 108), and this convergence has garnered special attention recently among Heideggerian scholars (Davis, 2020, p. 167; Li, 2019, pp. 213–217). From a practical point of view, the whole discourse of emptiness and non-acting seems to be unnecessary given that German people were living in a time of destitution and need. After the end of World War II Germany was trying to rebuild itself into an industrial country supported by modern technology. So why did Heidegger try to call our attention to the sense of the useless and unnecessary? For

Bret Davis has delineated in detail the itinerary of how the idea of will figures in different periods of Heidegger’s thinking.

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Heidegger, without reflection on the sense and meaning of the whole world in general and the significance of the useless and unnecessary (wuyong) in particular, merely useful things would remain senseless (sinnlos), as Heidegger says to a group of teachers at a vocational school in 1962 (Heidegger, 2020, pp. 1175–1178). To illustrate this point, Heidegger invokes Zhuangzi on several other occasions, and one of them happens at the end of a fictive dialogue which is supposed to take place between an older man and a younger man in a prisoner camp in Russia. Heidegger refers to Wilhelm’s translation without naming the two interlocutors from the Miscellaneous Chapters (zapian) of Zhuangzi, namely Zhuangzi and Huizi. The dialogue reads in English translation: Huizi said to Zhuangzi, ‘Your words are useless!’ Zhuangzi said, ‘A man has to understand the useless before you can talk to him about the useful. The earth is certainly vast and broad, though a man uses no more of it than the area he puts his feet on. If, however, you were to dig away all the earth from around his feet until you reached the Yellow Springs, then would the man still be able to make use of it’? ‘No, it would be useless’, said Huizi. ‘It is obvious, then’, said Zhuangzi, ‘that the useless has its use’ (Zhuangzi, 2013, p. 231, 2020, p. 824; Heidegger, 2007, p. 239). Heidegger’s quote from Wilhelm’s translation of Zhuangzi brings an abrupt end to the conversation between the younger man and the older man and leaves room open for further speculation and interpretation. In these lines, the sudden change and turn of perspective from a common scene in daily life to the extreme situation of ‘Yellow Springs’ (huangquan, underworld) is very characteristic of Zhuangzi’s style of thinking. Accordingly, the leading interlocutor interrupts the generally established perspective and forces the dialogic partner to question the standpoint that he has hitherto taken for granted. Wilhelm’s rendition of the key term ‘useful’ as ‘nötig’ in German is overtly controversial (Nelson, 2019, p. 375). However, it highlights the ambiguity of the German word ‘Not’ which means among others ‘urgent need’ and signifies therefore ‘necessity’ (Notwendigkeit). Some commentators have followed Heidegger’s hint and established a close but at first sight paradoxical relation between ‘Not’ in the sense of urgent need and necessity (Notwendigkeit) by pointing up the aspect of ‘turning’ (wenden) implied in the German word ‘Not-wendigkeit’ (Heubel, 2020, pp. 25–31; Xia, 2017, p. 138). What appeals to Heidegger about this parable is not merely the usefulness of seemingly useless things. Nor is Heidegger interested in logical necessity as a form of modality. In this context, it is the necessity of our sensibility and consciousness of the significance of uselessness and emptiness, lacking in modern Western philosophy, that Heidegger wants urgently to awaken through his engagement with Daoism. The need for such an awakening and turning is all the more urgent since in an industrial and highly developed technological society people have lost the sense for the unnecessary (das Unnötige) and live in apparent need-lessness (Notlosigkeit).

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Conclusion

Heidegger’s exegesis of the two ancient Chinese thinkers Laozi and Zhuangzi goes beyond an occasional interest in exotic literature from another alien culture. What is also noteworthy is that he does not care that much about Confucius’ Analects, the I Ching or about other schools of thought in the Chinese tradition. It is rumoured among some Heideggerian scholars that Heidegger possessed a copy of Confucius’ Analects. But Heidegger has made no significant remarks about Confucius, which could have in turn revealed his knowledge of the Confucian canon. His concerted interest in Daodejing and Zhuangzi concentrates on a handful of chapters with thematic emphasis on the relation between Being and nothing, life and death, and on emptiness, stillness, and usefulness. In other words, Heidegger finds congenial ideas in the two canonical texts of Daoism that resonate with his unconventional path of thinking and serve thereby as inspirational sources for opening up new possibilities for his own philosophy. Furthermore, the fragmentary, half-poetic character of the Daodejing and the playful and yet insightful parables and dialogues of Zhuangzi showed Heidegger new styles and gestures of thinking that helped him break free from the objectifying language and logical laws of Western metaphysics. Against the broad background of German history in the twentieth century, Heidegger’s involvement with Daoism takes on a world-historical dimension. In German-speaking countries Heidegger is not alone in drawing from Daoist thinking in order to reexamine his own tradition and face up to the intellectual and cultural crisis of the last century (Nelson, 2017, p. 142). Heidegger’s ingenious and intriguing appropriation of Daoist ideas shows us that a return to the origin of another resourceful tradition could well be a new chance to twist free of one’s own fixed and constrictive tradition. In the context of intercultural dialogue and transcultural philosophy, Heidegger’s dialogue with Daoism, though still at an inchoate and nascent stage, undoubtedly sets an example of how a real dialogue of philosophical character can take place despite all the linguistic and cultural barriers. Acknowledgement This article is part of the project ‘Heidegger from the Perspective of Chinese Philosophy’ (2020JG008-BZX841) sponsored by the Shanghai Philosophy and Social Science Program.

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Guang Yang is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Tongji University, Shanghai. After receiving his B.A. in English literature from Nankai University in 1997, he went to Freiburg, Germany, to pursue his master’s and doctor’s degree in philosophy. There he studied among others with the philosopher Günter Figal. His dissertation on Martin Heidegger, Versammelte Bewegung (summa cum laude) was published at Mohr Siebeck Press in 2017. He is the co-editor of Paths in Heidegger’s Later Thought and author of dozens of research articles in Chinese, English, and German. His research interests include phenomenology, Greek philosophy, German aesthetics, and contemporary art theories.