Cantonese Opera in Canada: Cantonese Opera in Canadian Literature

In Denise Chong’s exceptional family story set in Vancouver’s Chinatown in the early 20th century, the cultural identity of the protagonist Chan Hing was largely shaped by the legends and traditions of the Cantonese opera that she experienced during her childhood. As a child, Hing got a season’s pass to watch the opera at one of Vancouver’s Chinatown’s two theatres. She “loved the world of the opera” and demonstrated her deep understanding and identification with this culture in the following reflection:

“She understood the symbolism of the costumes and makeup. The emperor wore yellow, honest men wore black and good persons wore red; faces painted red or purple were persons of strong moral character, while faces painted predominantly white were of bad character. She identified with making something out of nothing: a table was a table in one scene, in another it became a cave, a bed, even a mountain. … She identified with the masking of emotion, recognized fear in a trembling arm, weeping in a palm slowly raised in front of a face. In the dark, Hing’s tears of laughter or sorrow ran freely” (Chong 130-131).

Chan Hing’s early childhood immersion of Cantonese opera provides her an understanding of her Chinese self. She obtains a glimpse of where she is coming from in terms of her culture, identity, history, value system and tradition in preparing to develop her transcultural identity embracing her Chinese past and her Canadian presence.

In Choy’s award winning novel The Jade Peony (1995), Jook Liang, the protagonist in the first story of this trilogy, transcends the reality, achieves her desire and imagines her own identities with the cultural figures portrayed in Cantonese opera: “[W]earing Stepmother’s old dresses, her junk costume jewellery protruding from my tied-back hair, hung about with silk scarves, I mimicked the Chinese Opera heroines: the warrior-woman, the deserted wife, the helpless princess” (38). In Jook-Liang’s reflection, these play acts allow her to create a world where she “belonged, dressed perfectly, behaved beyond reproach, and was loved, always loved, and was not … mo yung [useless]” (40). As demonstrated in Choy’s writing, Cantonese opera provided him the imagination and literary sources that enable the formation of his own transcultural identity as a renown Chinese Canadian writer, and the projection of his literary figures in a transnational and intercultural manner.

In this memoir, Choy traces his childhood experience of Vancouver Chinatown in the early 1940s. There is an entire section, Chapter 3 – At the opera, that recalls his opera-going experiences at Sing Kew Theater to illustrate the world of his fantastic cultural imagination as a child growing up in Vancouver’s Chinatown. As perceived by Choy, the Chinese community delved into “the life that blossomed all over the auditorium, as it were a busy village square. … the Sing Kew was a place to ‘be home’ as in back home in Old China – a place to pass the time, to meet friends, to gossip, and now and again to focus on the stage” (50). For Choy, the Cantonese opera was so intimate and immediate to him that he “no longer felt separated from the stage” and developed a sense of belonging to this cultural imagination initiated by the stage performances and the stories rendered and passed down to him by his mother (54). In his own words, “the Cantonese opera at night bestowed upon me such a wealth of high drama, of myth, that I lacked for nothing in the ordinary world. … I wanted to become what I saw before me: the general, the warriors, and the frightened guards who led the way to prison” (52).

“This story is set in the early part of the 20th century, when Chinese immigrants to the Pacific coast struggled to keep the ancient art of Chinese opera alive. Motherless Wei lives with his father and grandfather, both of whom are opera singers. Ba always plays the part of a brave, powerful general; Grandfather, following Chinese tradition that kept women off the stage, used to play female roles. Although Wei longs to follow them onto the stage, Ba believes that there is no future for his son in this dying art form and refuses to instruct him. However, Grandfather secretly teaches young, high-voiced Wei the women's songs he sang long ago. After Grandfather returns to China, Ba's troupe hits hard times, and a shortage of performers forces him to play both general and lady. Using the skills Grandfather taught him, Wei coaches his father for the unfamiliar role, and then shares in his success on opening night.” (Margaret A. Chang, School Library Journal)

“From the corner of Spadina and Dundas in the heart of Toronto’s Chinatown, two friends, Helen and Justin, find themselves led to an old and abandoned theatre after receiving a cryptic note. Known as The Standard in the early 1920s, during the height of Canada’s Chinese Immigration Act, this venue had a history of renting its space to Cantonese Opera performers. Once inside, Helen and Justin run into the theatre’s mysterious and charismatic caretaker, Mr. Sing, who muses enthusiastically about the theatre’s history of Cantonese Opera performance.”