In extolling the genre as the “embodiment of China’s 5,000 years of civilization,” the NCOT playbill intended to garner popular support through the familiar Cold War rhetoric: the performances represented an epic battle between the responsible guardian of an ancient civilization and the reckless Communist “rebels” who ruined traditional culture. This branding shrewdly targeted the PRC, where the contemporaneous Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) purged the traditional repertoire from Beijing Opera and reduced it to a handful revolutionary model plays. To reinforce its legitimacy, the ROC government branded the NCOT as “Chinese Opera” rather than “Beijing Opera”. The NCOT was part of this counteroffensive. Still, it tried to disrupt the rapprochement between Beijing and Washington and continued to proclaim its standing as the government of “China”. By 1971, the ROC had lost its seat at the United Nations to the PRC. In 1949, the ROC’s territory shrank to mostly Taiwan, where the ruling Chinese Nationalist Party retreated after losing the civil war. Yet despite the PRC’s growing consolidation of international representation of “China”, its interpretation of Chinese culture remains contested even today. The ROC’s reliance on an American impresario to organize and market the performances contributed to its difficulties in disseminating the desired political messaging. However, the NCOT failed to generate widespread political support for the ROC. In 19, the Taiwan-based Republic of China (ROC) government dispatched its “ National Chinese Opera Theater ” (NCOT) to the United States in order to challenge the international image of its archrival, the People’s Republic of China (PRC).
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |