Hong Fook Tong Chinese Dramatic Company

The Hong Fook Tong Chinese Dramatic Company (Cantonese: 鴻福堂劇團^[1], romanized: Hung⁴ Fuk¹ Tong⁴ Kek⁶ Tyun⁴)^{[2][3][note 1]} was an all-male^[4] San Francisco, California-based Cantonese opera company which became the first major Asian American theatrical company in the country, inaugurating the first phase of the history of Chinese opera^{[note 2]} in the United States.^[5] They were originally from China's Guangdong province.^[6]

Their debut performance was on October 18, 1852, with forty-two actors at the American Theater on Sansome Street in San Francisco,^[6] and was financed by a group of native Canton (modern day Guangzhou) merchants.^[4] It was the first Cantonese, (or for that matter Chinese,) opera ever shown in the country.^[7] They performed continuously between December 1852 and March 1853, "to the delight of both American and Chinese audiences,"^[4] and at one point had 123 actors simultaneously.^[1]

After their success was noted by George N. Beach, he offered them a ten-month contract in New York City to perform at the Crystal Palace Exhibition. When the troupe actually arrived in New York, however, Beach would no longer honor the contract. Without a sponsor or a venue they were soon left destitute, without even the funds needed to return to California.^[4] In an attempt to raise money, they performed at Niblo's Garden for US$0.50 per ticket, but at the time New York had essentially no Chinese people living there who would properly appreciate the performance.^[4] After a lukewarm reception (one critic compared the traditional Cantonese music to "the sound of distressed cats" fused with "ungreased cart wheels", and opined that perhaps the singers were in communion with Satan),^[4] the show closed after only one week open, leaving the troupe unable to even pay its hotel bill and having had to pawn their costumes for money.^[4] According to Su Zheng's research, some were able to find employ in a workhouse on Roosevelt Island, one attempted suicide, and the rest wandered forlornly through the streets, selling cigars and fabrics.^[4] Zheng states that what became of them after that, and whether or not they were ever able to return to California or China, is a mystery.^[4]

Historian John Kuo Wei Tchen would take the fate that the troupe suffered in New York as an extreme form of evidence that "authentic Chinese culture was too strange for New Yorkers' tastes" at the time.^[6] According to him, "faux Chinese" (yellowface actors and exaggerated, overwrought Oriental exoticism) was more profitable and less risky for theater producers and New York City investors alike throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.^[6]

In San Francisco, however, Hong Fook Tong's impact was almost immediately felt: by 1860, another act, the Hing Ching Yuen Dramatic Company began performing at the Commercial Street Bella Union Theater (貝拉聯合戲院), as Hong Fook Tong's success while in California had proven to the local immigrant community such ventures could be profitable in America.^{[8]: 55–57} By the 1870s, there were four theaters operating concurrently in Chinatown, and the performances shown there drew curious non-Chinese Americans tourists as well.^{[8]: 55–57 [9]} Indeed, tour guides of the period rated plays such as The Return of Sit Pin Quai as obligatory for tourists to San Francisco.^[10]

Genuine Chinese theater would not return to New York for thirty-seven years, when the Swin Tien Lok Royal Chinese Dramatic Company, a troupe of fifty actors financed by Wong Chin Foo, put on a show at the Windsor Theater for two weeks in June 1889.^[11] That act was also not profitable;^[12] it would not be until the mid-twentieth century that New York had regular profitable Chinese-American theatrical productions.^[8]

Further reading

• Koskoff, Ellen, ed. (2000). Garland Encyclopedia of World Music, Volume 3: The United States and Canada. Garland Publishing. ISBN 0-8240-4944-6.

References

Notes

1. Often misspelled as Hong Took Tong Chinese Dramatic Company.
2. Cantonese opera is a type of Chinese opera.

Footnotes

1. "戲劇" [Drama]. Ministry of Culture (Taiwan). 29 August 2012. Retrieved 2016-12-23. 19世紀末，大量大批華工前往美國巴特和瑪麗斯維爾等礦區擔任礦工，於是從舊金山有粵劇戲班定期演出，並且在紐約與舊金山經營粵劇戲院。粵劇為華人帶來了賴以生存的民間文化。當年擁有123名演員的鴻福堂劇團在美國大劇院首次登場，上演粵劇，大獲成功，並在唐人街建立自己的劇場。1920年代中有粵劇戲班在北美各地公演。 [At the end of the 19th century, a large number of Chinese laborers arrived in the United States. Some, in places like Marysville, worked as miners; while others in New York and San Francisco brought Cantonese opera with them with regular performances. Cantonese opera has helped Chinese folk culture survive. The Hong Took Tong Theater, with 123 actors, debuted first at the American Grand Theatre. Thanks to its success, they soon established their own theater in Chinatown. In the 1920s, opera troupes were performed in various other parts of North America.]
2. Lee, Jonathan H. X. (2015-11-12). Chinese Americans: The History and Culture of a People (1st ed.). ABC-CLIO. p. 259. ISBN 978-1-61069-550-3.
3. Block, Geoffrey; et al. (2015-03-01). American Musical Theater: Grove Music Essentials. Oxford University Press. p. 45. ISBN 978-0-19-026874-9.
4. Zheng, Su (2011-10-25). Claiming Diaspora: Music, Transnationalism, and Cultural Politics in Asian/Chinese America. Oxford University Press. p. 80. ISBN 9780199873593 – via Google Books.
5. Pang, Cecilia J. (September 22, 2005). . Comparative Drama. 39 (3–4): 361–396. doi:10.1353/cdr.2005.0015. Archived from the original on May 17, 2011.
6. Lee, Esther Kim (2006-10-12). A History of Asian American Theatre. Cambridge University Press. p. 9. ISBN 9780521850513 – via Google Books.
7. Zheng, Su. "Chinese Music". The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music. pp. 957–966.
8. Rao, Nancy Yunhwa (2017-01-11). Chinatown Opera Theater in North America. University of Illinois Press. ISBN 978-0-252-09900-7.
9. Hsin-Shao Chen [陳昕劭] (2015), 1906年舊金山大地震中國城的毀滅與重建 [Destruction and Reconstruction of the San Francisco’s Chinatown Under the Great Earthquake of 1906] (in Chinese (Taiwan)), Chin-Yu Chen [陳靜瑜], Chung Hsing University [中興大學學位論文], pp. 18–20, doi:10.6845/nchu.2015.00966, retrieved 2020-07-13
10. Chen, Jack (2019-08-15). The Chinese of America. Plunkett Lake Press. p. 72. ISBN 9780062501400.
11. "Amusements: Swintien Lok". The Sun. 1889-06-21. p. 8. ISSN 1940-7831. Retrieved 2020-07-13 – via National Endowment for the Humanities.
12. Seligman, Scott D. (2013-03-01). The First Chinese American: The Remarkable Life of Wong Chin Foo. Hong Kong University Press. p. 184. ISBN 978-988-8139-89-7. Wong [had a] long-standing dream of a resident Chinese theater troupe in Manhattan. By 1889, he had made progress in his quest by engaging the Swin Tien Lok Royal Chinese Dramatic Company to perform at the Windsor Theater. [...] Tom Lee underwrote the performances, which were neither well subscribed nor profitable.