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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 March 2025
Challenging China’s official history since the establishment of the People’s Republic in 1949 is uncommon among Chinese theatre makers in the twenty-first century. Given the stringent rules that severely limit artistic expression, such attempts are rare and, aesthetically, noticeably obscure. Director Wang Chong (b. 1982) and his collective Théâtre du Rêve Expérimental nevertheless embark on an audacious journey of deconstructing and reassembling some of China’s most taboo historical moments in their productions The Warfare of Landmine 2.0 (Dileizhan 2.0, 2013) and Lu Xun (Da Xiansheng, 2016). Wang’s critical reconfiguration of deliberately forgotten violent events from the Maoist and post-Maoist eras is articulated onstage through the intermediation of far more visible and “stage-safe” historical moments that predate Maoist China. While obscuring the direct messages of the performances, Wang’s cunning technique of contesting Beijing’s memory of politically sensitive events manages to unearth “hidden” violent moments of which many Chinese youth today may be completely oblivious.
1 Seeking to extend its colonial powers in Asia, Japan occupied China’s largest east-coast cities, which resulted, among others, in the infamous Nanjing Massacre (1937) and the sexual enslavement of tens of thousands of women.
2 See Zhou, Min and Wang, Hanning, “Anti-Japanese Sentiment among Chinese University Students: The Influence of Contemporary Nationalist Propaganda,” Journal of Current Chinese Affairs 46.1 (2017): 167–85Google Scholar.
3 Wang clarified this detail in a personal email exchange in 2022. The official site of the festival also stated that although there was debate over the “portrayal of war as a game,” “[t]here was consensus … that [it] expressed a universal anti-war theme, rather than being about a particular conflict.” See “F/T Emerging Artists Program: F/T Award winner announced” (2013), at www.festival-tokyo.jp/13/en/news/2013/12/ft-emerging-artists-program-ft-award-winner-announced.html, accessed 14 August 2023. Moreover, Wang has often made it clear that his production is more concerned with exploring “the relation between men and their beastly nature, guns and wars.” See “Landmine Warfare Premiers in Japan, Wins the Only Prize of the Festival” (Dileizhan 2.0, Riben shouyan, huo xijujie weiyi jiangxiang), Phoenix Television (Fenghuang Weishi) at http://phtv.ifeng.com/program/xingguangdajuyuan/detail_2014_05/20/36408726_0.shtml, accessed 14 August 2023. (Unless otherwise noted, all translations from Chinese-language sources are by the present author.)
4 The original title of the film is Dileizhan (Landmine Warfare, 1962), codirected by Wu Jianhai, Tang Yingqi, and Xu Da. It is part of a patriotic series including also Didaozhan (Tunnel Warfare, 1965) and Nanzheng beizhan (From Victory to Victory [Fighting north and south], 1952).
5 See Zhang, Yingjin, “War, History, and Remembrance in Chinese Cinema,” in Divided Lenses: Screen Memories of War in East Asia, ed. Berry, Michael and Sawada, Chiho (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2016), 21–39, at 27–8.Google Scholar
6 See Pusey, James Reeve, Lu Xun and Evolution (New York: State University of New York Press, 1998), xii.Google Scholar
7 Wang Chong and Zhao Binghao selected the texts together. Zhao was born in 1988 in Zhengzhou, Henan Province. He is an independent artist, working as dramaturg and screenwriter.
8 Rothberg, Michael, Multidirectional Memory: Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of Decolonization (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009).Google Scholar
9 Ibid., 14.
10 Ibid., 25.
11 Ibid., 5.
12 This is a term used by Koleva, Daniela, Memory Archipelago of the Communist Past: Public Narratives and Personal Recollections (Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2022), 41 Google Scholar, as she argues for ex-communist countries’ tendencies to remember officially only the victimhood narratives shaping their recent past.
13 Rothberg, Multidirectional Memory, 3.
14 Schneider, Florian, China’s Digital Nationalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), 3.Google Scholar
15 Ibid., 4.
16 Naftali, Orna, “These War Dramas Are Like Cartoons: Education, Media Consumption and Chinese Youth Attitudes towards Japan,” Journal of Contemporary China 27.113 (2018): 703–18, quote at 709.Google Scholar
17 Tarryn Li-Min Chun has written extensively about Wang’s theatre praxis. See “Wang Chong and the Theatre of Immediacy: Technology, Performance and Intimacy in Crisis,” Theatre Survey 62.3 (2021): 295–391, at 299.
18 Ibid., 297.
19 Ibid., 295.
20 Wang Chong, in-person interview with the author, Beijing, 10 August 2017. In 2022, Wang left China temporarily while active on the international stage, from the United States to Australia and Europe.
21 More specifically, works such as Ying’er (1992), a novel written by the Chinese poet Gu Cheng (1956–93), and Jiang Rong’s (b. 1946) Wolf Totem (Lang tuteng, 2004) are referenced in this version of the performance, as is C. G. Jung’s (1875–1961) The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious (1959).
22 For the production in Tokyo, Wang used a slightly different collage of texts, adapting his references to the knowledge of the Japanese audience. As he states in the program of the festival, “I have nothing to say in the performance, because everything has been expressed by the Japanese, the Chinese, the landmines, Friedrich Engels, Yukichi Fukuzawa, Carl Jung, Albert Einstein, Osama bin Laden, and Conan Edogawa.” See Wang Chong in “Festival/Tokyo F/T 13: Emerging Artist Program” (2013), 11, www.festival-tokyo.jp/13/program/13/pdf/FT13_TP_koubo_web.pdf, accessed 10 February 2025.
23 See Zhou and Wang, “Anti-Japanese Sentiment,” 169.
24 See Wang Chong in “Festival/Tokyo F/T 13: Emerging Artist Program” (2013), 11.
25 Denton, Kirk A., Exhibiting the Past: Historical Memory and the Politics of Museums in Postsocialist China (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2014), 134.Google Scholar
26 Zheng Wang, in “History Education, Domestic Narratives, and China’s International Behavior,” in (Re)Constructing Memory: Education, Identity, and Conflict, ed. Bellino, Michelle J. and Williams, James H. (Rotterdam: Sense Publishers, 2017), 171–88Google Scholar, at 175), argues that “because its success in gaining national independence gave legitimacy to the CCP, victory in the ‘War of Resistance’ (against Japan) and the civil war (against KMT and the U.S.) have been central to official post-war histories.” After the 1980s, “‘China as victor’ was slowly replaced by ‘China as victim’ in nationalist discourse. This change of narratives is found in official documents, history textbooks, and popular culture.”
27 See Zhang, “War, History, and Remembrance,” 27.
28 See Tian, Mo, “The Legacy of the Second Sino–Japanese War in the People’s Republic of China: Mapping the Official Discourses of Memory,” Asia Pacific Journal 20.11.4 (2022): 1–17, at 7.Google Scholar
29 See Callahan, William A., China: The Pessoptimist Nation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012).Google Scholar
30 See Gao, Rui, “Cacophonous Memories of the War: Revision of the Official Narrative on the War of Resistance against Japan in Post-Mao China and Its Limitations,” in Routledge Handbook of Memory and Reconciliation in East Asia, ed. Kim, Mikyoung (London and New York: Routledge, 2016), 26–46, at 30.Google Scholar
31 Ibid., 33.
32 See Lijun, Yang, “A Clash of Nationalisms: Sino–Japanese Relations in the Twenty-First Century,” in China–Japan Relations in the 21st Century: Antagonism despite Interdependency, ed. Er, Lam Peng (Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), 83–101 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
33 Ferrari, Rossella, “Trans-Asian Spectropoetics: Conjuring War and Violence on the Haunted Stage of History,” Transnational Chinese Theatres: Intercultural Theatre Networks in East Asia (Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021), 207–79, at 226Google Scholar.
34 Ibid., 208.
35 Fu Jin, “Hong Kong: The Opportunities for Intangible Cultural Heritage Transmission,” quoted in ibid., 227.
36 Nakamura, Jessica, Transgenerational Remembrance: Performance and the Asia–Pacific War in Contemporary Japan (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2020), x.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
37 Ferrari, “Trans-Asian Spectropoetics,” 209.
38 Ibid.
39 Numerous Chinese reviews categorize this show as “antiwar” (fanzhan). See, for instance, “The Warfare of Landmine wins The Art Festival in Tokyo” (Xin bian huaju Dileizhan duode Dongjing yishujie guiguan), The Cultural Drama Web (Xiqu wenhuawang), at https://news.sina.com.cn/s/2013-12-09/000428918923.shtml, accessed 11 February 2025.
40 Tsu, Timothy Y., “A Genealogy of Anti-Japanese Protagonists in Chinese War Films, 1949–2011,” in Chinese and Japanese Films on the Second World War, ed. Tam, King-fai, Tsu, , and Wilson, Sandra (London: Routledge, 2015), 12–25, at 13 Google Scholar.
41 See Hiroshi Seto’s original Japanese version of “Destroying Traditional Values in Antiwar Performance Landmine Warfare 2.0 by Théâtre du Rêve Expérimental” (Dento-teki kachikan hakai to Hansen no ishi-maki-den jikken gekidan “Jirai-sen 2.0”), Theatre Arts 58 (Spring, 2014), at www.asahi-net.or.jp/~ir8h-st/tanbun_015.htm, accessed 10 July 2022).
42 The museum opened for the general public in 2005 and represents a tourist trademark for Chinese visitors to Haiyang City. See, for instance, “Shandong Haiyang Mausoleum of Landmine Warfare” (Shandong Haiyang dileizhan jinianguan), 4 December 2015, at https://m.krzzjn.com/show-1035-76627.html, accessed 18 July 2022.
43 Wang took the list of names from the Internet and integrated it into the script in the performance.
44 For China’s self-image as a regional peacemaker in East Asia, see Yuan, Jing-Dong, “Culture Matters: Chinese Approaches to Arms Control and Disarmament,” in Culture and Security: Multilateralism, Arms Control and Security Building, ed. Krause, (London and Portland, OR: Frank Cass, 2005), 85–128, at 118.Google Scholar
45 See Wang Chong in Liao Danlin, “Disarming Landmine 2.0,” Global Times, 21 November 2013, www.globaltimes.cn/content/826702.shtml, accessed 4 June 2023.
46 Yin, Qingfei and Path, Kosal, “Remembering and Forgetting the Last War: Discursive Memory of the Sino–Vietnamese War in China and Vietnam,” Trans-Regional and ‑National Studies of Southeast Asia 9.1 (2021): 11–29, at 11–12Google Scholar.
47 Ibid., 16.
48 Xiaoling Li, “Legacies of China’s Forgotten War: The Sino–Vietnam Conflict of 1979,” American Journal of Chinese Studies 14.1 (2007): 25–44, quote at 41.
49 Ibid., 25.
50 Ibid., 29.
51 Li, Gong, “The Triangle of Relationship between China, America and USSR during the Self-Defense War against Vietnam” (Dui Yue ziwei fanjizhan guocheng zhong de Zhong Mei Su sanjiao guanxi), Materials from CPC History (Dangshi wenhui) 8 (1995): 35–7Google Scholar, at 36, 37.
52 Ibid., 35, 37.
53 See Liu Jianyang, “National Defense Education won the Hearts of War Veterans on Campus” (Can zhan laobing jin xiaoyuan guofang jiaoyu ru renxin), Lei Feng (Lei Feng) 43.11 (2020): 87.
54 Yin and Path, “Remembering and Forgetting the Last War,” 23.
55 Rothberg, Multidirectional Memory, 9.
56 Koleva, Memory Archipelago, 41.
57 Wang referred to himself and the scene this way in his in-person interview with the author on 10 August 2017.
58 Nakamura, Transgenerational Remembrance, 72.
59 Carlson, Marvin, The Haunted Stage: The Theatre as Memory Machine (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003), 7, 2.Google Scholar
60 Nakamura, Transgenerational Remembrance, 66.
61 Townsend-Robinson, Joanna, “Expressing the Unspoken: Hysterical Performance as Radical Theatre,” Women’s Studies 32.5 (2003): 533–57, at 535–6.Google Scholar
62 Fitzpatrick, Lisa, Rape on the Contemporary Stage (Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), 144.Google Scholar
63 See Callahan, China: The Pessoptimist Nation, 164–5.
64 Gao, “Cacophonous Memories of the War,” 30.
65 See, e.g., Callahan, China: The Pessoptimist Nation, 198. This slogan emerged as a result of China’s humiliation during the Opium Wars (1839–42; 1856–60), the unfair Treaty of Versailles (1919), and the Second Sino–Japanese War (1939–45), when China suffered immensely at the hands of the Japanese occupiers.
66 Gao, “Cacophonous Memories of the War,” 29–30.
67 Thomson, Zoë Brigley and Gunne, Sorcha, “Introduction: Feminism without Borders—The Potentials and Pitfalls of Re-theorizing Rape,” in Feminism, Literature and Rape Narratives: Violence and Violation, ed. Gunne, and , Thomson (New York: Routledge, 2010), 1–20 Google Scholar, at 6.
68 See, for instance, Varutti, Marzia, Museums in China: The Politics of Representation after Mao (Woodbridge, Suffolk, UK: Boydell Press, 2014), 80 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
69 Thomson and Gunne, “Introduction,” 6.
70 Callahan, China: The Pessoptimist Nation, 179.
71 Ibid., 174. Moreover, Denton, Exhibiting the Past Historical Memory, argues that “Victims of atrocities—the ‘Rape of Nanjing’ … —did not fit well into this heroic narrative” prevalent during Mao (134).
72 Liu, Lydia H., “The Female Body and Nationalist Discourse: Manchuria in Xiao Hong’s Field of Life and Death ,” in Body, Subject, and Power in China, ed. Zito, Angela and Barlow, Tani E. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 157–77Google Scholar, at 161.
73 See Callahan, China: The Pessoptimist Nation, 179.
74 See Koyama, Hitomi, “On the Necessary and Disavowed Subject of History in Postwar ‘Japan,’” in Critical International Relations Theories in East Asia: Relationality, Subjectivity, and Pragmatism, ed. Kosuke Shimizu (London: Routledge, 2019), 120–37Google Scholar, at 125.
75 See Callahan, China: The Pessoptimist Nation, 179–80.
76 Chun, “Wang Chong and the Theatre of Immediacy,” 307.
77 Lu Xun was extremely active during and after the May Fourth Movement in 1919, a political, cultural, and ideological movement led by the Chinese students following the unfair Treaty of Versailles (1919), when China endured humiliation at the hands of the Western powers. Lu Xun proposed values such as science, democracy, and socially engaged literature as ways to “strengthen” and “save” China. On the other hand, the Chinese Civil War witnessed long acts of violence between the Nationalist and Communist parties that ended in 1949 with the establishment of the People’s Republic of China by Mao Zedong.
78 This and all other citations from Lu Xun have been translated by the present author, after transcribing the text from the recorded performance. However, David N. C. Hull also provided an official version of Li Jing’s text, Lu Xun (Da xiansheng), to which I had access.
79 Wang Chong in “Theatre Play Lu Xun to be Staged by the End of the Month: ‘Performing Lu Xun’s Stream of Consciousness’” (Huaju Da xiansheng yuedi shangyan “shi Lu Xun de yishi liu zai wutaishang liudong”), Interface News (Jiemian Xinwen), 16 March 2016, at https://m.jiemian.com/article/573570.html, accessed 19 February 2024.
80 See Yan Ping, “‘The Great Master’ Drama Brings to Life a Fresh, Genuine Lu Xun” (Huaju Da xiansheng chengxian er xinxian de Lu Xun), 28 September 2015, at http://ent.sina.com.cn/j/drama/2015-09-28/doc-ifxifmki9567706.shtml, accessed 5 July 2022.
81 Wang Chong, in-person interview, 10 August 2017.
82 See, for instance, Cheek, Timothy, Living with Reform: China since 1989 (Nova Scotia: Fernwood Publishing, 2006), 146 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
83 Ibid.
84 For more on the civil groups formed by the relatives of those killed during the 1989 Tiananmen events see Lim, Louisa, The People’s Republic of Amnesia: Tiananmen Revisited (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 105–32Google Scholar.
85 Wang Chong, in-person interview, 10 August 2017.
86 In China the performance was staged between 2013 and 2014 in Hangzhou, where it premiered at the Trojan Horse Theatre (Muma Juchang), as well as in Beijing and at the Shanghai Arts Centre.
87 See this comment (by Cheng Liyuanyuan) at www.douban.com/location/drama/25791184/comments/, as well as more audience reviews there or at www.douban.com/location/drama/25791184/comments/?limit=20&status=P&sort=time, accessed 18 July 2023.
88 Rothberg, Multidirectional Memory, 21.
89 Ibid., 3.
90 A number of audience reviews of Lu Xun may be consulted at https://www.douban.com/location/drama/26747660/, accessed at 17 July 2023. Additional reviews, such as Wang Run’s “Lu Xun’s Last Moments” (Da xiansheng-Lu Xun zuihou shike), may be consulted at www.chinawriter.com.cn/wutai/2016/2016-03-16/267721.html, as may Li Jing’s “All Puppets, but Lu Xun” (Chule Lu Xun, jie wei kuilei) at https://ent.ifeng.com/a/20160315/42589911_0.shtml, both accessed 1 December 2022.
91 Son, Elizabeth W., “Korean Trojan Women: Performing Wartime Sexual Violence,” Asian Theatre Journal 33.2 (2016): 369–94Google Scholar, at 382.
92 Rothberg, Multidirectional Memory, 270.
93 Ibid., 309–10.
94 Wang Chong in “Global Conversations / Sinophone Experimental Performance,” UCI Illumination, a live Zoom on 19 April 2023; YouTube video posted 12 June 2023, at www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0eaASx3UpU, accessed 15 February 2025, quote at 1:17:03.