Premier Recommends Chinese Romeo and Juliet in Geneva

By Gu Yubao

Led by Premier Zhou Enlai, the Chinese Delegation arrived in Geneva on April 20, 1954to attend the Geneva Conference. Before leaving for Geneva, the premier had asked staffers to bring “Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai”, a newly made Yueju Opera movie, to Geneva. During the conference, the Chinese delegation screened the movie to entertain diplomats and journalists.

“Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai” was the first colored opera movie produced after the founding of New China in 1949. The adaptation was based on a popular romance dramatized in Yueju Opera, a regional opera genre of Zhejiang Province. The movie starred Yuan Xuefen as Liang Shanbo and Fan Ruijuan as Zhu Yingtai. Directed by Sang Hu, the movie gave full play to the succinct and symbolic stage performance against the settings of traditional Chinese painting. It had won two international movie gold awards before it came to Geneva.

How to introduce the movie to diplomats and journalists became a big problem before the screening. Some worried that foreigners might not be able to understand the Yueju Opera. Some suggested that the name of the movie be translated as “The tragedy of Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai”. Some even suggested working out an introduction in detail. Premier Zhou Enlai vetoed the idea of a lengthy introduction, saying “I would not take a look at a ten-odd page introduction if I were a journalist. It is not supposed to be a professors lecture on social development.” In the end, the premier suggested the English name of Chinese Romeo and Juliet.

The name was printed on invitations. As expected, the audience understood the drama perfectly. At the end of the movie, the audience broke into a long standing ovation. The staff workers of the Chinese delegation admired the premier for his profound understanding of Chinese culture and foreign cultures.

The premier explained: It would be a great waste if we keep our good culture at home; we need to find the treasure of our traditional culture and we need to consider how to take the treasure to the world. The way foreigners think differs from ours and their languages differ from ours. We need to make endeavors to get our actions, thoughts and values across to foreigners. To achieve this objective, we need not only linguistic translation but also cultural translation. In other words, Chinese stories need international presentation.

Zhou Enlai had his ancestral roots in Shaoxing, Zhejiang. Shaoxing is the place where the Yueju Opera originated. He liked “Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai” very much. On October 16, 1955, he watched the movie again in Peoples Theater in Beijing.

In the autumn of 1958, students at Shanghai Conservatory of Music decided to compose a violin concerto based on Chinese elements. They could not agree on an appropriate subject. Meng Boyi, the party chief of the conservatory, recommended the Yueju Opera music of

“Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai”, citing the screening of the movie in Geneva.

So was born the violin concerto entitled “Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai”. Today, it is a representative Chinese composition of the 20th century. It is said it can be heard wherever there are Chinese people.□