Play Review: "The Chinese Lady" at San Francisco's Magic Theatre

Writing & Photography by Sandy Daenerys

The Chinese Lady. Written by Lloyd Suh & Directed by Mina Morita. Presented by 42nd Street Moon at the Magic Theatre in San Francisco. Cast Featuring Rinabeth Apostol as “Afong Moy” & Will Dao as “Atung”.

The Chinese Lady, written by Lloyd Suh, ran between October 9th through November 3rd at the Magic Theatre at Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture in San Francisco, California. The cast includes Mina Morita as the Director, Rinabeth Apostol as “Afong Moy” and Will Dao as “Atung”.

As you arrive at the Pulitzer Prize-winning Magic Theatre situated in the historic Fort Mason Landmark District, you are greeted by one of the friendly staff members who guide you up to the 3rd floor. You enter the Magic Theatre and see that the stage has three sides. If you decide to see the performance a second time, I highly recommend seeing the play from a different side of the theatre in order to the actors from a different angle, and see how the actors’ expressions, movements and performances from a different angle as well.

The Chinese Lady is inspired by the real story of Afong Moy, the first Chinese woman to set foot on American soil in 1834. Her family has sold Afong for two years of service to Merchants Nathaniel and Frederick Carne. The Carne brothers brought Afong from Guangzhou, China, to New York, America; they were hoping that Afong would help with the promotional strategy to sell the Carnes’ oriental goods from the east. A young 14-year old Afong Moy is placed inside a room within a museum in New York City to be on display for an eager public that is interested in learning about the exotic Orient. Due to the initial exhibit being successful, Afong then embarked on a tour to nine other cities in the Northeast.

Sandy Daenerys (Left) & Rinabeth Apostol (Right)

Afong Moy is dressed in traditional Chinese “tang suit”, which is a Manchurian garment made from beautiful silk fabrics, can be traced back to the Qing Dynasty (1644 - 1911). Afong has bound feet, which brings endless fascination to the American audience. She shares with the audience the details that the museum go-ers at that time where paying attention to, and some of the comments that they had. She mentioned there was a lot of interest in her physical appearance but hardly goes into any details about her character or personality, or who she is beyond the surface.

Afong occasionally eats meals inside The Room and walks around The Room so that museum-goers can get a glimpse of her “astonishing little feet”. Much like an animal that is walking within a cage or fenced area, Afong is being watched from outside the cage, and her every move and sound is being closely observed by an audience that has likely never seen a Chinese person before. 

The set design is immaculate. There is a 8-sided platform that is on a pedestal; this is referred to as “The Room”. The foundation of the stage comprises of an octagonal shape; the number “8” in Chinese culture, is the luckiest number due to the pronunciation of the number as “baht”, which sounds similar to the word “faht”, which means “to prosper and brings a lot of fortune and wealth”. To the audience, it looks like we are peering into an aquarium or a cage within a zoo exhibit with animals or creatures that are moving about to delight our eyes.

Sandy Daenerys (Left) & Will Dao (Right)

The Room’s details are colorful and ornate; it is decorated with various types of Chinoiserie. There are traditional Chinese animals and motifs on the furniture, including phoenixes, dragons, peacocks and cranes. Small red lanterns dangle from the corners that make up each of the eight sides of the stage. There are silks hanging and ornate embroidery are present on the gold curtains. From each piece of furniture to each of the vases, there is a great deal of attention placed on making sure that it fits in with Chinese culture and art.

Traditional Chinese instrumental music is played between each performance act; each act ends with the gentle pulling of the mammoth golden chord in the front left side of the stage. I can hear the delicate and soothing notes by the Guzheng, Erhu, Pipa and Dizi. 

The real agony is the special relationship between Afong and Atung. For the majority of the performance, Afong is inside The Room, which is on a raised platform, whereas Atung is usually in the corner on the main level, which is slightly below the raised platform. They are physically separated but yet they are so emotionally intimate. These two characters are in this journey together from the very beginning, when Afong is 14, until she is 44. Atung is known to be much older in age than Afong. They are both believed to work inside Peale’s Museum for several decades; they have provided emotional support for one another.

Atung struggles to protect Afong throughout their time together inside the museum. Since Atung would prefer to shield Afong from what the Americans really think of her and her Chinese culture, Atung becomes the one that has to suffer in silence on his own because he cannot share the rude comments with Afong. Even when Afong senses that there is something wrong with their situation inside the museum, Atung reassures her and ignores her requests to know the truth. In this way, Atung shapes the history of what Afong may be aware of, simply due to the fact that he alters the information that is delivered to her.

Atung is incredibly protective of Afong Moy. In his role of translating for Afong, Atung has purposely edited the way that information that he has been told in order to protect Afong’s feelings. During the encounter with President Andrew Jackson, Jackson shares that he has always “adorned carnivals and freakshows”, when Atung is asked by Afong about what Jackson shared, Atung then alters the translation and mentions that Afong is a “special and most outstanding person, and that her work in this country is an important step in the fruitful exchange of cultures and the promotion of world peace” (The Chinese Lady by Lloyd Suh). Similar to the reality of history, what Atung has shared shapes the way the information that Afong receives, and therefore, shapes the way that she perceives the way Americans think of the Chinese.

As time passes, hundreds of years pass by us during this performance. We go from when Afong was just 14 in 1834, to when she is 199 in 2019. She speaks to us from different times in her life, by sharing her age with us. As we go along for the ride with Afong, you can observe the striking difference between her 14 year-old self and her much older 44 year-old self. When she was 14, she was a naive, hopeful, enthusiastic and ultra positive bright-eyed little girl who was filled with hope and dreams of sharing her Chinese culture with the Americans. She talked with great vigor, speed and enthusiasm, paired with an child-like fascination with the world around her.

When Afong reaches the age of 44, you see a completely different Afong Moy. She is older now; and is filled with feelings of sadness, distraught, loneliness, depression and pessimism. She is shown drinking and smoking herbal cigarettes. She hasn’t seen her family in over 30 years and she even tried to contact her family but only to realize that the Peele family that she stayed with never sent those letters for her.

This may have been due to the fact that Afong Moy was replaced by another 14-year old Chinese girl named Pwan Yee Koo in 1850; Afong was 30 years of age at this time. This may showcase the fact that people are only interested in novelty and youth, and once that is gone, then they’re onto something else that is more exciting. I think that that fact that Afong was replaced showcases the passing of time. Similar to Afong reaching the end of her career at Peale’s Museum, when we have reached the end of our lives and no longer exist on this planet, whoever comes after us will be the ones to continue sharing in our legacy, heritage and culture. The Chinese Lady invites each of us to think about how they perceive the world and the various cultures and peoples that they encounter on a daily basis, and also think about how the world views them back.

Lloyd Suh shares about Afong’s story through this unique two-hander performance that features Rinabeth Apostol as Afong Moy and Will Dao as Atung, Afong’s translator during her time in the US. The play encourages us to think about the way we see others and the way we are seen by others. It showcases that there is human progression; as a society, we are no longer viewing humans in museum exhibits like a freak show. Simultaneously, this type of sharing of a new culture to Americans was something really novel and different for the average American.

During the 19th century, when Afong Moy was on display, this voyeuristic perspective of viewing a human inside a room within a museum was very similar to a modern day freak show. Since not too much was known about the East at this time, “The Chinese Lady” was seen as a window into the oriental world of culture, art and design. Just as much as the museum-goers and the audience were looking at Afong Moy and wondering what her daily life is like, Afong Moy was just as curious in learning about what the Americans that were staring at her every day were thinking about her and Chinese culture.

Her bound feet was a physical symbol of the ancient and backwards traditions of Chinese culture; her feet were so small that she could only take small steps and is equivalent to someone who is physically disabled. Afong’s lifestyle was altered by the physically shaping of her feet’s form. “Bound feet were at one time considered a status symbol as well as a mark of beauty. Yet, foot binding was a painful practice and significantly limited the mobility of women, resulting in lifelong disabilities for most of its subjects” (Wikipedia). The fact that everyone was fascinated by Afong’s tiny feet, they were ignorant of the fact that they were actually looking at the physical appearance of someone with lifelong disabilities.

The audience plays a character in The Chinese Lady. Just as much as the audience is observing Afong Moy inside The Room; Afong is also observing the audience from within The Room. The lighting towards the last part of the performance starts to get brighter within the theatre, eventually lighting up the audience so that they become the ones being on display. It made me slightly uncomfortable as it was unexpected and it suddenly encourages you to think about the times when you are being on display on a stage or in public, where there are people (the cast), that are staring at you and observing your every move. When the audience turns from the audience to the subject of observation, Afong then shares “Let’s look at each other.” She invites the audience to switch roles and have a dual conversation with her instead of it just being a one-way street of the audience staring at the cast.

When we look at the way history has been recorded and shared, we have to also think about who was present to document certain events, and who was not present to document certain events. Similar to me not being aware of several of the atrocities that were mentioned in the series of events that were described within The Chinese Lady, if I wasn’t aware of these atrocities, does it mean that they didn’t happen? Certainly not.

These atrocities did happen. The documentation of history and the way it is remembered and recorded shapes the way that others and those after us will also remember it. In 1887, “The Snake River Massacre took place in Hells Canyon, Oregon. As many as 34 Chinese gold miners were ambushed and murdered by a gang of horse thieves and schoolboys. The crime was only discovered when the tortured bodies were found in the Snake River”. (Artslandia, The Chinese Lady, Magic Theatre) In this example of an event in Chinese American history, if the bodies of the 34 Chinese gold miners were not discovered, and no one shared this with anyone, would this event be documented within history books?

We all have a duty as people of this world to observe, remember and share what we experience with our senses. Just like the real-life 14-year old Afong Moy who was enthusiastic and utterly curious about sharing about Chinese culture, art and history, if we all had that level of curiosity and vigor that Afong Moy had, to share about our culture and heritage, we could then pass on the knowledge of culture and heritage to the next generation, and the many generations after that.