Abstract
With the British finally securing trading rights with the Qing Empire through Canton in the 1760s, the author suggests that there was an increased interest in experiencing China in London in contradictory ways: through the reasoned categorisation of Chinese culture leading to the advent of sinology and fantasy imaginings that seemed to defy it. He analyses the first ‘serious’ British academic studies of Chinese drama undertaken by Sir John Francis Davis, showing how they were as much a product of the desire for increased trade as they were of genuine curiosity. He also explores the display of Chinese opera in a number of imperial exhibitions across the second half of the nineteenth century, culminating in the 1884 Health Exhibition, which witnessed the first performance of Chinese opera in London. He concludes by analysing The Yellow Jacket, a play that transferred from Broadway to London in 1913, and which brought together sinology, fantasy and exhibition for the amusement of London audiences.
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Thorpe, A. (2016). From Page to Stage: Chinese Opera and the Rise and Fall of Empires, 1759–1913. In: Performing China on the London Stage. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-59786-1_4
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