Striking Their Own Poses: The History of Cross-Dressing on the Chinese Stage

The Chinese May Fourth New Cultural Movement, initiated by young intellectuals in the mid-19Ios, proclaimed an overall reform that had a profound impact on society. The movement generated debates that ranged from the Republic's organization of its political system to the character of the new nation's artistic activities. One of many debates was concerned with "women's questions": How could women leave the confinement of their "embroidered chamber" (xuo fang) and participate in the revolution? The May Fourth intellectuals' discussion of the "women's question" eventually overlapped with a proclamation for theatre reform, which had two tangible effects on Chinese performance. First of all, it encouraged young dramatists to create a new type of female character-xin nuxing (New Woman)-in huaju, or spoken drama, the Chinese generic description for dialog plays in the Western style.' Secondly, it invited women to perform on the modern stage, challenging the prejudice against actresses on the traditional stage that had begun in the late 1700s with the banning of women from the stage. Actually, one of the most distinctive and revolutionary characteristics of modern drama's representation of xin nuxing is that these roles were performed exclusively by women. In the early years of the May Fourth Movement, the xin nuxing characters were impersonated by men. In 1923, Chinese dramatists began to cast women in women's roles and men in men's, departing not only from the stage practice of female impersonation, which had been dominant for three centuries, but also from a more ancient history of male impersonation. Under the influence of Western realism, Chinese artists began to abandon traditional stylistic acting conventions and gradually to liberate themselves from the convention of cross-dressing as well as the traditional ideology of gender difference encoded in its gestures and costuming. To the May Fourth radicals, casting women in women's roles signaled a new gender ideology. First of all, it liberated women-especially well-educated women-from the confinement of domesticity, inviting them to consider stage performance as a professional career, to accept a public role, and to work side by side with men. Secondly, this new technique, which emphasized the direct conformity of the performer's biological sex with his or her stage