Group 7 | Blog Post #3

As none of us were able to make the Chinatown trip, Professor Zhang was supportive and happily put us in contact with David Lei. This past Friday, March 11th, we were able to speak with David to learn more about The Great Star Theater and the Chinese community during the 40’s through the 70’s and beyond, as well as even a bit about his memories surrounding the theater. We all prepared some interview topics we were interested in, and David spoke with us all about it!

He explains that the Great Star Theater was originally built for political reasons, specifically for the conflict between the Guo Min Dang and the Chinese Empire Reform Association, a very pro-women’s rights group, around 1916 to 1927. The two groups conducted many propaganda plays, the former at the Great Star Theater (called the “Great China Theater” at the time), and the latter did so at Dao Wu Tai.

The Great Star Theater began with Cantonese opera, which was very different from other Chinese opera in that it can be done impromptu. Their actors were trained so well that they were able to have new plays every day: “Here’s our theme, here’s a few lines to memorize, alright, go and perform!” As such, many plays were conducted as series over many days, so people would attend on the daily in order to keep up with the opera. The 1930s are considered the golden age of Cantonese opera; they were able to get better funding for better costuming and scripts.

The conversation approached the time period of WWII, where the theater began the transition towards movie showings. The Japanese had already begun their incursions around 1936, so many of the plays during this time were anti-Japanese. Given that social media had not yet been developed, and that most people were unable to read, the theater became the easiest and largest form of media for propaganda, news, education, and entertainment. Many of the Chinese in Chinatown would flock to the docks in order to stop ships loading scrap metals from leaving to Japan, as they felt they would likely become bombs. Theaters and many of their stars worked hard to spread the word through propaganda and raise money in support of the effort against the Japanese.

In terms of life during the 1940s-70s, the Chinese had to put up with a lot of racism and hostility from their surrounding community in order to make money here, a lot more than they could’ve back in China. With the 1960s came many major films, including The Blind Swordsman and one we’ve all heard of, Dragon Inn. David called this the Star Wars of Chinese movies. It was shown at the Bella Union Theater, but it was a very important movie that sparked interest in the entire genre of martial arts films. He recalls Lin Pei Pei, the heroine, flying all over the place: “a cutie and a toughie, and all the guys fell in love with her.”

These movies provided ABCs with many cultural connections and values. David himself learned lion dancing by watching films, and many learned their martial arts this way as well. Martial arts movies became the main attraction for guys, while women, being treated horribly by their husbands, went with boxes of Kleenex for the sob stories, which portrayed men as really bad husbands who went out to mess around and treat women poorly. David joked that in these movies, “there were a lot of tear-jerkers and men jerks.” These sorts of movies allowed women a sense of sad satisfaction, which was better than nothing in their tough lives. Gangs, while their own sort of creation, took after martial arts films’ values of revenge, loyalty, and justice.

Many gangs developed in the late 1960s, creating a dangerous environment about the theaters. Going to the theaters was risky, as rubbing a gang member the wrong way could result in getting beat up, or attendees might get caught in the midst of a shooting. This was one of the many factors contributing to the decrease in popularity of the theater over time.

David pointed to our group many possible resources such as Steven Gong, the director CAAM, Lambert Yam, Ruby Yang’s wife, and Chinese newspapers that we might find in the Ethnic Studies or East Asian libraries on campus. We found this conversation with David very enlightening, and we’re very glad he put aside the time to share his thoughts with us. In future blog posts, we’d be interested in exploring the resources he shared, possibly looking at newspapers during the 40s-70s, such as for movie reviews or thoughts about the Great China Theater.