A Midsummer Night's DREAMING Under the Southern Bough made a splash in Beijing Tuesday. Students from the University of Leeds performed a contemporary adaptation based on the Chinese ancient play Nanke Ji. (Photo/China Daily)
Four hundred years ago, when William Shakespeare was writing his sonnets with a quill, Tang Xianzu was recording verses with a brush nearly 6,000 kilometers away.
Four hundred years later, to commemorate these literary giants from east and west, plays by both have been staged together in eastern China's Fuzhou city, Tang's hometown.
"They were in the same contemporary period," said Juliet Short, mayor of Shakespeare's hometown Stratford-upon-Avon. "They are very similar, in different aspects, even though they lived in totally different cultures."
This year marks the 400th anniversary of the death of Shakespeare and Tang. China and Britain have been hosting a series of events to commemorate the anniversaries.
On Saturday, Tang's date of birth, a three-day festival was launched in Jiangxi Province, where people can pay tribute to Tang, open a memorial for him, put on drama performances and hold seminars.
UP AND DOWN IN CHINA
Tang was born in 1550 during the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), a period where he saw much corruption and restrictions on women. His masterpiece, the "Peony Pavilion," tells of a romance between an official's daughter and a poor scholar, as they pursued love and freedom.
In the 1950s, the local government constructed a building close to Tang's tomb and named it after "Peony Pavilion," but it was destroyed during the Cultural Revolution (1966-76).
Much Chinese culture was under threat at this time, but Tang Tingshui, a 13th generation descendant of the playwright, managed to preserve the book of his family tree by burying it in cattle dung.
The study of Shakespeare in China was almost halted during the same period.
Shakespeare's name first appeared in Chinese books in 1839. Scholar Zhu Shenghao was the first Chinese translator of Shakespeare's 31 plays, before he died in 1944, and the complete works of Shakespeare in Chinese was published in 1978.
Today Shakespeare is arguably the most influential western playwright in China, and an excerpt from "The Merchant of Venice" is used in middle school textbooks today.
