論文

When Opera Meets Film: Early ChineseSound Filmmaking in A Transnational
Perspective
Zhu Lin
The 1930s witnessed a pivotal decade in the Chinese film industry’s transition
from silent picture to sound film production.1 In 1931, using four songs from
Chinese opera, dubbed by the opera master Mei Lanfang, Shanghai’s Mingxing
Film Studio produced China’s earliest sound film The Songstress Red Peony(Genü Hong mudan 歌女紅牡丹, 1931). 2 Following in its wake, in 1933, Shanghai’s
Tianyi Film Company produced the first Cantonese-dialect talkie White Golden
Dragon (Bai Jinlong白金龍 , 1933), an adaptation from a namesake Cantonese opera.
Soon it became a hit in Hong Kong-Guangdong region and other Cantonesespeaking communities in Southeast Asia and North America. 3 In the same year,
in San Francisco, another Cantonese talkie Romance of Songsters (Gelü qingchao
歌侶情 潮 , 1933), concerning the lives in a trans-Pacific Cantonese opera troupe,
was produced by Grandview Film Company, funded by local Chinese community.
What lies behind the earliest Chinese sound filmmaking attempts was the
cross-regional/border feature of the cinematic activities which epitomized
different local dialects and popular cultures. It seems a coincidence that first
Chinese-language sound films, either made in Shanghai, Hong Kong or in San
Francisco, were all based on Chinese opera.4 These examples suggest that whenfilmmakers at home and abroad began to experiment with sound, they wereconscious of integrating various kinds of opera music and singings into thefilms. Why did Chinese films have an initial connection with opera? When talkie
hit the scene, how did the Chinese-language talkies manifest regional, culturaland linguistic differences? How to observe the early history of Chinese-language
filmmaking crossing national border? This essay revisits the earliest scenes ofChinese sound film productions by focusing on the opera-film relation andanalyzing the interaction between opera culture and motion picture not only
within the national boundary but in a transnational viewpoint in the 1930s.
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Despite overseas Chinese’s pioneering engagement in the early making ofChinese talkies, most scholarship rarely discussed it for various reasons. 5 The
most important reason lies in the solidified interpretation of “Chinese cinema” infilm historiography, which mostly describe the filmmaking associated with thenation-state of “China”.6 Therefore, transnational filmmaking and filmmakers
became invisible under the hegemonic national paradigm. This essay challenges
the national paradigm and attempts to reveal an alternative Chinese cinema
rooted in Chinese diaspora culture which was characterized by a complex ofissues of nations, communities, languages, traditions and modernity.
Although this paper mainly focuses on three earliest Chinese-language soundfilms, its narrative weaves together materials across various national, culturaland linguistic boundaries. Thus, the complexity of the historical and social
context necessitates the transnational approach of the study. In this paper, thetransnational approach could extricate Chinese filmmaking and opera culture
from the constraints of national borders and provides a nuance and a broader
notion of “Chineseness” in worldwide. In this way, we could evaluate the impact
the diasporic filmmaking and opera culture might have on the mainstream or
popular cinema within either a national or transnational context.

“There is Something in Common”:When Opera Meets Film
Since its fledgling stage, cinema has engaged with theater in many aspects
such as genres, aesthetics and personnel. Nineteenth-century theatrical genres
such as melodrama and vaudeville impacted many popular film genres in its
primitive era. In 1904, Georges Méliès produced La Damnation du Docteur
Faust, a thirteen-minute silent film based on Gounod’s opera. In 1909, Thomas
Edison launched his series of “Grand Operas”, which were a series of adaptions
from classic opera sections into motion pictures. During the late 1920s and early
1930s, Warner Bros. produced abundant opera shorts using the Vitaphone
technique, signifying the arrival of the sound technology in film industry.7
Directors, writers, actors, and personnel also worked across these two media. D.
W. Griffith was a stage actor and playwright before he became a movie director,
and Sergei Eisenstein directed plays and designed scenery on the stage before
he started making films. During Hollywood’s golden years (from the late 1920s
to the early 1960s), the basic music of a film was from opera. Alfred Hitchcock’s
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films was the best example. For example, the film Rear Window (1954) openswith Johann Strauss Senior’s “Radetzky March” being played in the streets,
signifying that the elder Waltz King rules. 8 As Hitchcock once noted, “It may
sound far-fetched to compare a dramatic talkie with opera, but there issomething in common: the techniques of opera allow music that ‘echoes’
dialogue and ‘subtly comment[s]’ upon action.”9 All the examples demonstrated
the internal connections between stage and screen. “In all its complexity andambivalence, the historical interplay of opera and film is a fascinating topic unto
itself.”10
Traditional theatrical attraction to cinema during the early stage of the
motion picture was not limited to western cultures. In Japan, traditional
theatrical genres, such as Kabuki, Noh, and Bunraku, also strongly imposed
their artistic conventions on early Japanese cinema during the first decade of
the twentieth century.11 According to Chinese film historian Cheng Jihua, thefirst film made by the Chinese is Dingjun Mountain (Dingjunshan 定軍山 , 1905),produced in Beijing12; Hong Kong film historian Yu Muyun identifies Zhuang Zi
Tests His Wife (Zhuang Zi shiqi 莊子 試 妻 , 1913) as the first film made in HongKong.13 Dingjun Mountain is a documentary staging of an episode of a famous
Peking opera; Zhuang Tests His Wife is an adaptation from a popular Cantonese
opera with the same title. These records show that Chinese opera (including
both Peking and Cantonese opera) was the original source for the earliest daysof filmmaking in China in different regions. In the traditional Chinese context,
the common form of stage opera is called xiqu, referring both to drama andsong. As an audience, the action of going to enjoy an opera performance is tingx i, “to listen to a n opera .” Music a nd si ng i ng a re cent ra l to t he opera
performance. Therefore, Chinese opera films in the silent era are deprived ofmost of their stage charm. When major theaters in Shanghai imported new
projectors from the United States to prepare for the coming of sound in 1929,
opera again became the themes and elements of the first sound films in China.

“Never Heard Mr. Mei Singing in a Movie”: China’s Earliest
TalkieIn 1931, China’s largest film studio, the Mingxing Film Company (Star,
founded in 1922), produced the first sound film in China ― The Songstress Red
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Peony (Genü hong mudan, 1931). The dialogue and four opera songs of this film
was recorded onto cylinder wax in Shanghai’s Pathé studio, which produced
most records in China at the time. Besides being the first talkie, The Songstress
Red Peony is notable for another reason: it features China’s opera master, Mei
Lanfang (1894-1961), known for his playing of China’s most memorable female
characters on stage. As a close associate of people in the film industry, Mei
agreed to sing in The Songstress Red Peony, by dubbing over the vocals of thelead actress, Hu Die.
In fact, Mei’s engagement with sound picture was earlier than his dubbing in
The Songstress Red Peony. Almost one year ago, in early 1930, Mei Lanfang
had already appeared in a sound film documentary made by Paramount
Pictures during his sensational Peking opera tour in America. In 193 0,
accompanied by about twenty Peking opera performers, musicians, artistic
consultants, Mei Lanfang, a top Peking opera actor, toured the United States forabout six months with carefully prepared performances. In Seattle, New York,
Chicago, San Francisco, San Diego, and Honolulu, the audience came to see the
top Chinese woman impersonator of his day.14
In the Paramount’s opera short, a female announcer of Chinese descent
greeted American audiences settling into their seats for the highly anticipated
Peking Opera performances of Mei Lanfang, “Mr. Mei Lanfang takes the partof women characters, but he is not a female impersonator, according to thewestern sense of the word. He does not imitate the real woman in nature, but
through lines and movements, he tried to create an ideal woman.”15 Mei thenappeared on the stage, performing an episode of a traditional Chinese opera“Killing the Tiger General” (Fei Zhen’e Cihu). Wearing exquisite costume, Mei isplaying an ancient young woman who was gently conversing with a military
officer. “General, you are the peerless hero, the pillars of the nation.〔將軍乃蓋世
英雄，王朝良棟。〕” “Princess, I am just an ordinary man. You are flattering me.
〔豈敢，過虎不才。怎當公主稱美。〕” “How about having a drink with me?
〔只是還要請將軍陪奴壹杯。〕” “Oh, drink with you?〔哦 要我陪壹杯？〕” “Yes.〔正是。〕”“Of course. Let the maidservants pour the liquor.〔使得使得，侍女們斟酒。〕”16
W hen Mei was cont inuing his six-month tour in America , this short
documentary had already imported and screened in the Zhenguang Theater(True Light) in Beijing. An audience was exclaiming, “I have never heard Mr.
Mei’s singing in a movie. And it is made in U.S.? The singing, the dialogue and26

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the movement are all fantastic. What a lively performance!”17
Many scholars associate Mei Lanfang’s crossover from stage to screen, and
his American tour in 1930 with the nationalism approach. The 1930s witnessed
the imminence and the anticipation of war and a yearning for nationalist
empowerment characterized by the social atmosphere in China. In the film
industry, professionals are embarking on the construction of a national cinema.
To critics and scholars, Mei Lanfang is a pure nationalist and a cultureambassador because of his innovational cooperation with filmmaking andtransnational performances. As Laikwan Pang pointed out, “professional
concerns were also inevitably caught up with … the use of music and dialects
translated into terms of homogeneity and diversity in the making of a national
culture.”18 Stephen Teo also noted, the opera-film encounter was “at thevanguard of historical experiments serving as a test model for the very
development of cinema in China,” therefore, it became “a quintessential
embodiment of a cultural-nationalist form in Chinese cinema.”19 Yueh-yu Yeh has
described the process of “sinification” by which cinematic genres are granted
Chinese characteristics so that cinema, being foreign to China, can develop in a
Chinese environment. 20 The problem lies behind the “cultural-nationalist”
approach is that it observes the internalization of the Chinese sound picture asa monolithic nationa l building cinematic effort a nd ig nores its vibra nt
negotiations and interactions across the boundaries like the nation, language
and culture.
Mei ’s crossover to the silver screen and starring in opera shorts anddocumentaries was a collaborative attempt carried out by both Chinese andforeign cinematic powers. Performing on the international stages such America,
Japan and the Soviet Union in his early time, Mei had already bypassed thenational and cultural boundaries. Mei’s intimacy with cinema provided an
example of the bidirectional interactions between the Chinese opera and cinema.
However, Mei is not the sole example to explain Chinese opera-film liaison. To
observe a more unabridged picture of the times of emergence of Chinesetalkies, it is inevitable to shift the vision to a broader scale which bypassing
linguistic and national boundary.

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Cantonese vs. Mandarin: Xue Juexian and the First Cantonese
TalkieChinese opera encompasses a variety of genres in relation to many regions
and dialects. In China, the two major opera genres have coexisted for a longtime. In the late Ming Dynasty (around the year of 1600) Cantonese opera aroseas the most prominent regional style performed in the Guangdong and Guangxi
areas. While Peking opera originated in Anhui Province and came to Beijing in
the mid-Qing dynasty (in the year of 1790) and became fully developed andrecognized by the mid-19th century. Peking opera dominated the northern partof China, such as Beijing, Tianjin and Shanghai while Cantonese opera ispopular in the South such as Guangdong, Guangxi, Hong Kong, Macau andamong Chinese communities overseas such as Southeast Asia and the North
America. Among the different styles and variations in language, in the 1920s,
with the overwhelming popularity of legendary Mei Lanfang and a series of
new theatrical innovations, Peking opera is touted as the most sophisticatedmodel, while in terms of its popularity and melodious music Cantonese opera
runs a close second.
The competition between Peking opera and Cantonese opera prolonged theera of the motion picture. “Cantonese filmmaking was always torn between
political alignment with the nation and its pursuits of commercial interest andentertainment value.”21 To maintain “the linguistic and political unification of thenation”, the Nationalist government implemented strict screen policies towards
Cantonese films. However, stirred by the success of Mingxing Film Company’s
The Songstress Red Peony, filmmakers were confident to get rid of the restrictions
and prepared to make dialect films of their mother-tongue. They also got
inspiration from the theaters.
In 193 3, Runje Shaw (189 6 -19 75) of Shanghai ’s Tianyi Film Company
cooperated with a prestigious Cantonese opera star named Xue Juexian (Sit
Gok-sin, 1904-1956) from Guangdong Province to produce the first Cantonesesound film in Shanghai, White Golden Dragon (Baijinlong, 1933). This film wasan adaptation of the Xue’s popular Cantonese opera of the same name. In 1930,
adapted from a Hollywood silent film The Grand Duchess and the Waiter, theCantonese opera “White Golden Dragon” debuted in Shanghai. By 1930,
Shanghai had become a cultural and commercial hub for migrants from various
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regions in China with a sizable Cantonese-speaking community. Therefore, thiswestern-style Cantonese opera won the favor of the Cantonese audiences inShanghai. The success of the opera gave Xue confidence. He also perceived themassive movie market in Cantonese-speaking area was promising. Therefore,
with the fina ncial support of a Sha nghai-based film compa ny, Xue wasdetermined to make Cantonese talkie in Shanghai. In 1933, Xue produced thefirst Cantonese talkie, which became a huge hit in Shanghai, Guangzhou, Hong
Kong, and Southeast Asia. 22
During the production, Xue absorbed elements “from facial cosmetics
application to the introduction of violin and saxophone as regular instruments,from the more agile northern martial arts (of Peking [Beijing] opera) to theaesthetic of the silver screen.” 23 His pioneering creation of various elementsfrom Beijing opera, modern drama, and Hollywood cinema reflected his artistic
interests in different art forms and cultural media. 24 Brough up and educated in
Hong Kong, learning and earned fame in Guangzhou, making the earliest
Cantonese talkie in Shanghai, Xue Juexian’s versatile life and career was
influenced by multi-cultures and social environments. Compared with Mei
Lanfang’s the documentary-like opera shorts made by others, Xue’s White
Golden Dragon and his later Cantonese films took the initiative of making
enterprising experimentation with new media technologies and genres.
With the arrival of sound in Chinese films, language or dialect became acritical factor to cater to film audiences. Xue Juexian’s success in making thefirst Cantonese talkie predicted a promising future for the Hong KongGuangdong region as the largest production center of Cantonese talkies,
exporting its product not only to Cantonese-speaking communities in South
China, but also to the Chinese diaspora in Southeast Asia and North America.
In its rivalry with Shanghai-based Mandarin films for market share andcultural supremacy, Cantonese cinema was inevitably engaged in a wider
spectrum in cultural politics on local, national, and transnational levels. Xue
Juexian’s trans-regional and transnational filmic endeavor inspired other soundfilm pioneers on the other side of Pacific Ocean.

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文“Let’s Making Cantonese Talkie in San Francisco”: Kwan
Man-ching and Joseph Sunn Jue’s Encounter in America
In the same year of 1933 when Xue Juexian made White Golden Dragon,
Romance of Opera Singers was made in San Francisco with Kwan Man-chingas the producer and Joseph Sunn Jue the director. Kwan Man-ching was bornin Guangzhou and was educated in Hong Kong and America. He had learned
filmmaking techniques in Hollywood and worked as a consultant for director
D.W. Griffith on the latter’s Broken Blossoms (1919). Joseph Sunn Jue was bornin a Chinese merchant family in San Francisco. He also had the experience ofworking in Hollywood as art director for a silent film featuring Anna May
Wong.
In 1933, Kwan Man-ching, then an employee of Hong Kong branch of Lianhua
film company came to America to sell Chinese film productions in the UnitedStates. His plan was to hunt for business opportunity and to raise money for hiscompany which then had financial problems. 25 In his luggage, there were two
feature films and a documentary of Lianhua: Reminiscence of Peking (1930),
Three Modern Women (1933). Shanghai Battle (1931). The last is the documentaryfeatures Chinese resistance against Japanese army in 1931. Exporting film andfinding its audience outside China was a reasonable choice for major companies
like Lianhua at a time when Hollywood films is dominant in the domestic
market and the political environment was unstable. Also, the emergence ofsound films at the early 1930s provided a good chance to distribute films in
Chinese communities abroad for a shared language and cultural roots.
In his autobiography, he recorded the cities he went to America and Canada:
San Francisco, San Diego, Chicago, Washington D.C, New York, Boston, Ottawa,
Toronto, Vancouver and so on. The reception was successful. 26 Among thescreened films, the documentary aroused most sense of nationalist feelingamong immigrants for recording the ongoing wars in China. People told Kwan
two years ago when the battle was reported in local newspaper, they immediately
sent money back to support the resistance against the Japanese army. Whenthey heard the victory of a battle via newspaper, they set off firecrackers, a
traditional way of celebrating events and festivals in China. Why were they
concerned so much about the political situation of China? Chinese overseas had
a long history of distanced-nationalism since the late Qing Dynasty. For the30

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early migrations in the nineteenth and early twentieth-century, traditional
concept of “Luoye guigen” was among them. Literally translated as “falling
leaves settle on their roots”, it reflected their cultural and political loyalty totheir homes and motherland. “Gen” refers to “roots” which “take on additional
meanings as Chinese culture and a geographic entity called China. It is thisbond between overseas Chinese and China that undergirds the unique racialand cultural identity of the overseas Chinese.”27 Therefore, the political situationin China directly influenced immigrants’ sojourned life and retired life.
As an elite with social connections in both China and America, Moon Kwan’stransnational identity and social status enabled him to have a more loosenfeeling towards “distance” between Chinatown and motherland. In his mind,
Chinese long-distance national feeling and their actual sojourned life reconciledwith each other through the fresh visual experience. Witnessed the enthusiasmof the local people towards Chinese films, Kwan further believed the propitious
future of releasing Chinese films in North America. Kwan and Jue then set up
the Grandview Film Company to produce Romance of the Songsters.
Setting in San Francisco, the film told a love triangle in a traditional
Cantonese opera troupe. The storyline was inspired by the new romantic
literature which was popular among youngster in China while some scenes
reflecting opera actors and actresses’ stage performance was particularly
designed by Moon Kwan to cater the audience who were the fans of Cantonese
opera. After watching the sample, Kwan was satisfied with the sound and lighteffects and actor’s performance and promised him the related publication in
Hong Kong. Meanwhile he urged Jue to raise money to buy recording machineso that they could make Cantonese talkie in Hong Kong28. Also, he suggested
Grandview to become the proxy of Lianhua to distribute the second-roundscreening of Kwan’s films, preparing itself for bigger projects and cooperation
between the two companies.
Kwan accomplished his mission for successful distribution of Lianhua films.
Moreover, he bridged the contact between San Francisco-based Grandview andHong Kong/Shanghai-based Lianhua before his tour in America. From then on,
he and Jue and other transnational film pioneers strived for deeper cooperation
between San Francisco and Hong Kong filmmakers for a long period.
In July 1933, Romance of the Songsters premiered in San Francisco andquickly made a stir in Chinese communities around America. Chinese ethnics in
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theme and San Francisco’s familiar landscape made the audience feel a sense ofdual intimacy. More importantly, unlike the Lianhua films brought by Moon
Kwan made in Shanghai with the northern accent of Mandarin Chinese,
Romance of the Songsters was as Moon Kwan called it “the first Cantonesesound feature”. The familiar accent of a native place on screen further
stimulated people’s nostalgia feeling and their contemporary home - Chinatown.
It shortened the distance from the home country. The disparate two places
seemed harmoniously blended on screen. Until the 1930s, most Chinese
immigrants were laborers and small businessmen. Living in a different country,
hometown is distant for all the Chinese immigrants who esteemed themselves
as sojourners and outsiders, especially when Chinese Exclusion Act still tookeffect and anti-Chinese attitudes was prevailing in the host society.
When Romance was released, Kwan had already shipped back to Hong Kong.
Later he received the pamphlet of Romance from Jue and the good news of its
popularity in America. He immediately reported it to Lianhua’s manager Luo
Mingyou who afterwards invited Chiu to Hong Kong for releasing the film. In
January 1934, Romance of the Songsters was released in Hong Kong and won asound applause. To Hong Kong audience, it is a Cantonese film with an exotic
foreign setting. They enjoyed the familiar storyline but were more attracted tothe purposely left landscape of Gold Mountain and Chinatown. This is for the
first time an American-made Chinese film was exhibited and made a hit inChina, showing a promising future for filmmakers across the ocean (bothChinese and American-born Chinese) to produce transnational and multiculturalfilm products in the following years.

Conclusion:
Before the invention of motion pictures at the end of the nineteenth century,
Chinese opera, which included a variety of spectacles including music, singing,acrobatic choreography and drama, was the most popular pastime for Chineseaudiences at home and in the diaspora. During the pioneering period of
filmmaking, opera practitioners like Mei Lanfang and filmmakers like Kwan
Man-ching and Joseph Sunn Jue, functioned as cultural threads connecting
diasporic Chinese communities in and out of China by “reinvent[ing] filmic
language and acting styles to blend the visual and the aural.”29 In this sense, the32

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early sound films, like Chinese opera, were not pure commercial products but
also cultural texts with shared identification on a transnational level into earlytwentieth century.
When examining the opera-film encounter in Chinese context, it is moreaccurate to observe their dynamic interactions within the larger space ofChinese-language cinemas and the transnational connections between Hong
Kong, Guangdong and South China, Shanghai, Southeast Asia, and Hollywood.
By examining the production and distribution of the three earliest Chinesetalkies The Songstress Red Peony, White Golden Dragon and Romance of theSongsters and showing the development of the opera-film relation in the 1920s
and 1930s, we can gain insight into the Chinese diaspora film history in its
initial stage and rewrite a chapter in the hybrid history of transnational Chinese
visual and stage culture invisible under the national paradigm of Chinese film
historiography. Early Chinese-language sound filmmaking evolved with interflows of personnel (Chinese immigrants, filmmakers, and opera performers),
capital from patrons of opera theatres and film companies, techniques such as
gramophone records, sound and colour film, and culture (traditional stage opera
art and Hollywood film).
Finally, by adopting transnationalism as the research methodology, this paper
reveals the lively Chinese opera-film interacting scenery across the ocean
during the 1920s and the 1930s. In this way, our understanding and observation
towards Chinese opera and film could be more flexible and diverse, jumping
through the stereotypical distinctions between “center” and “periphery” andbetween “inside” and “outside” in both Chinese and American national context.

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Notes
1

Silent film production continued throughout the transitional period in the 1930s. This
decade witnessed the releases of some of the most highly regarded works of Chinesesilent cinema. As Li Suyuan and Hu Jubin point out, somewhat paradoxically, it was only
after the advent of sound that silent cinema reached its heyday as an art form in China.
Li Suyuan, Hu Jubin 酈 蘇 元 , 胡 菊 彬 Zhongguo wusheng dianying shi 中國 無 聲 電 影史
[The History of Chinese Silent Film] (Beijing: Zhongguo dianing chuban she, 1996),1.
2 For film titles, I have used the English titles in general circulation and included both apinyin romanization and characters of the Mandarin for its first appearance, e.g.,
Romance of the Songsters (Gelü qingchao 歌 侶 情 潮 , 1933). Afterwards, I use only the
English titles. For names of Chinese people, film companies and places, I have used thepinyin romanization and with some exceptions whenever there are common usages andthe pinyin romanizations are unfamiliar to the public, e.g., Kwan Man-ching rather than
Guan Wenqing.
3 In 1925, Runje Shaw and his brothers founded the Tianyi Film Company (Unique) in
Shanghai and established a film distribution base in Singapore. In 1934, after the
success of White Golden Dragon, they established the Tianyi Studio in Hong Kong to
make Cantonese films.
4 Yeh Yueh-yu, “Historiography and Sinification: Music in Chinese Cinema of the 1930s,”
Cinema Journal 41.3 (2002), 78,
5 There is a proliferation of studies on Chinese diasporic cinema from the 1970s that focus
on film genres specific to China (such as Chinese martial art films) or well-known
contemporary filmmakers with Chinese origins (such as Ang Lee 李 安 and Wayne
Wang 王 穎 in the United States). There are only a few studies that examine early
diasporic Chinese filmmakers and the social, historical, and cultural conditions in which
they and their films emerged and developed. See Han Yanli 韓燕麗 , Nashonaru shinema
no achiranete: Chūgokukei iminn no eiga to nashonaru aidenntiti ナショナル・シネマの彼方にて― 中国 系 移民 の 映 画とナショナル・アイデンティティ [Beyond National Cinema:
Overseas Chinese Cinema and National Identity] (Kyoto: Koyo Shobo, 2014).
6 For discussions on the concepts of “national cinema” and “transnational cinema”, see Will
Higbee and Song Hwee Lim, Concepts of Transnational Cinema: Towards a Critical
Transnationalism in Film Studies,” Transnational Cinemas 1.1(2010), 7-21.
7 Vitaphone was a sound film process used on features and during the brief period from1926 to 1932, it was used for nearly 2,000 titles predominantly produced by Warner
Bros. It was the most successful of the sound-on-disc processes before the emergence ofthe sound-on-film. The earlier sound technology did not allow the soundtrack to beprinted on the actual film; instead, it was issued on a separate 12 to 16-inch phonographrecord. The discs were separately played while the film was being projected. Many
early talkies, including The Jazz Singer (1927), used the Vitaphone technique.
8 Jack Sullivan, “Hitchcock and Music,” in A Companion to Alfred Hitchcock, eds. Thomas
Leitch and Leland Poague (Hoboken: Wiley-Blackwell Publishing, 2011), 221.
9 Alfred Hitchcock, “On Music in Films.” Interview by Stephen Watts. 1933–34. Hitchcock
on Hitchcock: Selected Writings and Interviews. ed. Sidney Gottlieb. (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1995), 241–245. For more discussions on the relation ofopera music and early films, see David Schroeder, Cinema’s Illusions, Opera’s Allure:
The Operatic Impulse in Film (New York: Continuum, 2002).
10 Quoted from the website of a research project called “The Profanation of Opera: Music34

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11

12
13

14

15

16

17

18
19

20
21

22

23
24
25

26

and Drama on Film”, conducted by João Pedro Cachopo on a Marie-Skłodowska-Curie
Fellowship. https://www.propera2020.com/about.html (accessed 15 Sep. 2019).
Ibid., 10. According to Jeongwon Joe, the very first cinematic attempt in Japan was thefilming of two Kabuki shosagoto (dance) plays. See more in Keiko McDonald, JapaneseClassical Theater in Film (London and Toronto: Associate University Presses, 1994), 23.
Cheng Jihua 程季華 , Zhongguo dianying fazhan shi 中國電影發展史 [The History of theDevelopment of Chinese Film] vol. 1 (Beijing: China Film Press, 1981), 13–14.
Yu Muyun 余 慕 雲 , “Xianggang dianying fazhan shihua 香 港 電 影 史 話 ” [Notes on theDevelopment of Hong Kong Cinema], in Xianggang dianying bashi nian 香港電影八十年[Eighty Years of Hong Kong Cinema] (Hong Kong: Urban Council, 1994), 12.
Barbara E. Scott, “We Bow to Mei Lan-fang: The American Triumph of China’s Matinée
Idol”, The North American Review, vol. 229, No. 5(May 1930), pp.572-575. Tan (or dan“ 旦 ”) refers to the female lead roles in Chinese opera. Mei’s exclusiveness in play theroles of “dan” won him another title as “Queen of Peking Opera” in China.
The announcer, Soo Yong (1903-1984), is an interpreter for Mei’s 1930’s American tour.
She is also an actress who acted in more than twenty films and many television shows.
For more detailed information of Soo Yong, see Yunxiang Gao, “Soo Yong (1903-1984):
Hollywood Celebrity and Cultural Interpreter,” Journal of American-East Asian
Relations, no.17, (2010): 372–399.
The recorded play is an episode of a traditional Kunqu (one major Chinese opera genre)“'Killing the Tiger General” (Fei Zhen’e Cihu).The short clip is available as a YouTube
clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WStGktr5plg (accessed 22 September 2019).
Qin Xiaolin, Yang Weiping 秦曉琳 , 楊衛平, “Mei Lanfang dui Zhongguo xiqu dianying degongxian 梅蘭芳 對中國 戲曲電 影 的 貢 獻 ” [The Contribution of Mei Lanfang to Chinese
Opera Film], in Dianying wenxue 電影文學 [Movie Literature] vol. 15 (2009), 67.
Laikwan Pang, “The Making of a National Cinema,” in The Chinese Cinema Book, eds.,
Song Hwee Lim and Julian Ward (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 56.
Stephen Teo, “The Opera Film in Chinese Cinema: Cultural Nationalism and CinematicForm,” in The Oxford Handbook of Chinese Cinemas, ed. Carlos Rojas and Eileen
Cheng-yin Chow (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 209.
See Yeh Yueh-yu, Cinema Journal, 78-87.
Kenny K.K. Ng, “The Way of The Platinum Dragon: Xue Juexian and the Sound of
Politics in 1930s Cantonese Cinema,” in Kaleidoscopic Histories: Early Film Culture in
Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Republican China, ed. Emilie Y.Y. Yeh (Ann Arbor: Michigan
University Press, 2018), 159.
Led by the eldest Shaw Zuiweng, the renowned Shaw brothers had established a
network of film production and distribution in home and Southeast Asia since mid-1920s.
In 1925, they founded Tianyi Film Company (Unique) in Shanghai and established a film
distribution base in Singapore. In 1934, after the success of White Golden Dragon, they
established the Tianyi Studio in Hong Kong to particularly make Cantonese films.
Wing-chung Ng, The Rise of Cantonese Opera (Urbana: University of Illinois Press,2015), 72.
Xue Juexian’s versatile in innovating traditional Cantonese opera and film probably
related to his younger experiences of life background.
Lianhua is one of the dominant film production companies in China in the 1930s.
Originally set up in Hong Kong in 1930 by Luo Mingyou (Law Ming-yau) and Li Minwei(Lai Man-Wai) and next year transferred to Shanghai.
See more in Moon Kwan’s autobiography Zhongguo Yintan Waishi中國銀壇外史 [Unofficial

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History of the Chinese Silver Screen]. Hong Kong: Guangjiaojing chubanshe, 1976.
27 L. Ling-chi Wang, Roots and Changing Identity of the Chinese in the United States.
Daedalus, vol. 120, no. 2, (1991), 182.
28 Kwan’s boss Luo Mingyou noticed the promising future of Cantonese talkie in Southeast
Asia where has the biggest Chinese diaspora. In his reply to Kwan’s telegram,
29 Laikwan Pang, The Chinese Cinema Book, 56.

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Journal of American-East Asian Relations, no.17, (2010): 372–399.
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Kong, Taiwan and Republican China, ed. Emilie Y.Y. Yeh, 156-176. Ann Arbor:
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Ng, Wing-chung. The Rise of Cantonese Opera. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2015.
Pang, Laikwan. “The Making of a National Cinema.” in The Chinese Cinema Book, eds.,
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When Opera Meets Film: Early Chinese Sound Filmmaking in A Transnational Perspective

Abstract

When Opera Meets Film: Early ChineseSound Filmmaking in A Transnational
Perspective
Zhu Lin
While maintaining a number of traditions, Chinese operas witnessed thedevelopment of a new visua l a nd acoustic art form: the sound film. By
introducing the three earliest Chinese talkies, Shanghai-made The Songstress
Red Peony (1931), White Golden Dragon (1933), and San Francisco-madeRomance of the Songsters (1933), this essay discusses an opera-film encounterin the early 1930s in different regions in and out of China. With a close
observation towards the innate relationship between opera and film in Chinese
theater culture, I argue that sharing same continuous tropes, stories, techniques
and performers, early Chinese film-opera cooperation and negotiation served as
an important cultural phenomenon among Chinese communities on a global
scale.
Keywords
Chinese opera, Chinese sound film, Chinese diaspora, transnational perspective

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