FT Review on 中山•逸仙

choi

Rahul Jacob, Sensitive Arias; A new opera about Sun Yat-sen has displeased the authorities in Beijing. Financial Times, Oct 8, 2011.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/a23495 ... 7-00144feab49a.html

Quote:

"his [Sun's] life is a minefield of sensitivities for Communist Chinese government censors – not least his support for pan-Asian co-operation with Japan, long seen as an enemy of China, his request in 1923 to the US and European governments to take over China’s provincial capitals to modernise them and his attempt towards the end of his life to curry favour with brutal Chinese warlords.

"It [the opera] ends, [librettist Candance] Chong says, with Soong 'confessing that he tried to stop the marriage between Sun and his daughter because he didn’t believe the revolution would succeed.'  Soong was right. Despite the reverence in which Sun is held today, few revolutions failed as spectacularly as the revolution of 1911. As Jonathan Fenby, the author of Penguin’s history of modern China, notes in a recent essay, it was the local Chinese military warlords and foreign colonial powers such as Britain, Germany and Japan that 'benefited most from the fall of the Manchus. This was a shift of regime, not a social sea change.'

"But, according to Fenby, in Guangdong Sun actually ran a regime characterised by rqacketeering.

The Qing court is furious, They are turning our country into a prison! But this cage cannot silence oppositional voices ... now there are debates with people urging change

Note:
(a) aria (n; Italian, literally, atmospheric air, modification of Latin aer):
"AIR, MELODY, TUNE; specifically : an accompanied elaborate melody sung (as in an opera) by a single voice"
www.m-w.com
(b) moot (vt): ": to bring up for discussion : BROACH"
(c) The report said Soong "was 26 years his junior."

Sun Yat-sen (Nov 12, 1866-1925) married Soong Ching-ling (1893-1981) on Oct 25, 1915, when he was 48 and she, 22.
(d) David Henry HWANG  黃 哲倫 (born in 1957 at Los Angeles)
'Chinglish'  中式英語
(e) Charlie SOONG:
宋 嘉樹 in English Wiki but 宋 嘉澍 in Chinese Wiki; 1863-1968; "原名韓教準; 生平早年贫困，1877年12歲前往美國波士頓，被過繼給無子女的舅父，改姓名為宋嘉澍." Chinese Wiki
(f) For the last quotation, see Sun Yat-sen
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Yat-sen
(section 8.1 Guangzhou militarist government: "In 1921 he started a self-proclaimed military government in Guangzhou and was elected Grand Marshal. Between 1912 and 1927 three governments had been set up in South China: the Provisional government in Nanjing (1912), the Military government 軍政府 in Guangzhou (1921-1925), and the National government in Guangzhou and later Wuhan (1925-1927). The southern separatist government in the South was established to rival the Beiyang government in the north.")