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| Shaw’s
longevity is less because he lived long, but because
the host context receiving him and his work allows him to live on. This
paper shows that in China,
the interest in Shaw persists because of a “Pygmalion Effect.” In this
country, which always has a mind of
its own, the effect of Shaw on China
is like that of an unintentional Professor Higgins upon an Elisa who
used his
elocution lessons to construct a personality considerably different
from what
he would have wanted. The Chinese
Galatea would have been quite a surprise to Shaw. And that refers to
not just the political
spin they put on his plays but other surprising ways they used, and
still do
use, him, as in “CyberShaw.” Two examples will be used as
illustrations: 1)
Shaw’s tutelage of Wang Tjo-ling, who became a significant theatre
authority in
modern China, and 2) the use of Shaw on the
Chinese internet, a phenomenon I
name: “CyberShaw.” A Chinese Eliza once invited Shaw to be Pygmalion-Higgins. In 1925, Wang Tjo-ling, a nineteen-year-old Chinese young commerce student from the University of Birmingham, sent Shaw a play script to show how he admired the playwright and Ibsen. Shaw refused to be Pygmalion-Higgins to a Chinese Galatea. His answer to Wang Tjo-ling denounced the master-apprentice relationship, and advised Wang that if he wanted to succeed, he should not be a disciple, but follow his own self-declaration and create his own style. Shaw treated his relation to Wang Tjo-ling as a cross-cultural encounter, in which each culture has something good to offer, and each culture has something to learn from the other. Although Wang’s later works were impressionistic and deviated from Shaw’s work, he has followed Shaw’s advice and developed China’s own national dramatic system. Now in “CyberShaw,” Shaw again played Pygmalion-Higgins as quotes from him are pervading the Chinese websites. I would like to coin the word “CyberShaw” to refer to the activities involving Bernard Shaw on the Chinese internet. CyberShaw enables ordinary Chinese people to encounter Shaw in their everyday life. However, China as Elisa-Galatea makes use of these elocution lessons in ways that would be unimaginable to Shaw. They are literally elocution lessons helping the Chinese to learn English and to get along with English-speaking people. The elocution lessons also change the Chinese Elisa-Galatea, for Shaw is used in civil service and business examinations, and to show the strengths of modern China. While Shaw was introduced as a faraway English writer at the beginning of the twentieth century, now he is a gateway to the West. Bernard Shaw has become “Shaw with Chinese characteristics.” Therefore, Shaw in China eventually demonstrates a “Pygmalion Effect.” China like Eliza-Galatea, acquires a mind of its own in CyberShaw. While the ways China makes use of Shaw may be quite surprising to the playwright, China is also following the advice Shaw gave Wang Tjo-ling in 1937: “Up, China. Nothing can stop you in the Eastern world. Go ahead with your plays -- only don’t do mine.” While CyberShaw is definitely enabling ordinary Chinese to reach out to the world, Shaw is also kept alive in China by CyberShaw. |