| Chinese American playwright David Henry Hwang is a leading figure in the prosperous period of American drama history in the 1980 s. By right of his famous play M. Butterfly, he becomes the first Asian American playwright who won Tony Award for Best Play in the history. Since his first play FOB came out in 1979, David Henry Hwang has written more than thirty scripts including long and short plays, musical plays, films and TV show scripts, which have obtained wide acclaim and awards from American critics and mass media.His works, rich, vivid, and with profound meaning, not only fully present the differences and collision between Chinese and Western culture, but also display the great efforts Chinese American writers have made to pursue their own Chinese identity, making up an indispensable part of Chinese American literature and contemporary American literature and exerting positive and great influence on later generations. Golden Child, one of his representative works, not only won him the Obie Award, but aroused high attention and hot discussion among critics all over the world. Critics have explored this play from various perspectives. This thesis aims to analyze the collision and conflicts between Chinese and Western culture from the perspective of culture, and points out the root of the cultural conflicts and the process of achieving cultural integration and transcendence in the end. Meanwhile, the thesis means to remind Chinese Americans how to make two cultures coexist and harmonious in the cross-cultural context, thus constructing and perfecting their own double cultural identity.This thesis consists of six parts: introduction, four chapters and conclusion.The part of Introduction presents a brief account of David Henry Hwang, his play Golden Child, and summarizes domestic and overseas research on this play, followed by the research purpose and research significance.Chapter One mainly focuses on the expansion of new culture in modern times in this play. New culture represented by Christian culture brought to the old China the Western morality, order and new ideas. Doing business in the Philippines over a long period of time, the protagonist Tieng-Bin in this play was influenced by the Western ideas and the missionary Baines’ indoctrination, and he became the leader of the new culture in his family. In the meantime, as the disseminator of the new culture, Baines also became the intruder, burying the old culture.Chapter Two explores First Wife Siu-Yong’s adherence to the Chinese traditional culture under the collision of Chinese and Western culture. Modern China experienced the complex and hard period of history, which contained violent social unrest, complicated contradictions and struggles at home and abroad. As the orthodox culture of China, in a sense, Confucian culture represented Chinese culture at that time. Siu-Yong as the hostess was the vindicator of the male-dominated culture in the family when Tieng-Bin was out for business. Since Tieng-Bin brought the new culture to the family, Siu-Yong cherished opposition to it all the time. Finally she safeguarded and adhered to the old feudal culture at the cost of her own life.Chapter Three studies vacillation represented by Third Wife between the two cultures. The doctrine of “everyone being equal” Christianity preached struck seriously the country’s monarchy, patriarchy, and manus, essentially subverted ethical relation based on blood relationship in the patriarchal society, and would inevitably lead to cultural and interpersonal conflicts and resistance. Second Wife Luan was the utilitarian between the two cultures, who took advantage of the new culture and satisfied her own selfish desire. However, Third Wife Eling, as the vacillator between the two cultures, finally died in childbirth between struggling and wandering.Chapter Four probes into the cultural integration on Tieng-Bin’s next generation Ahn, and illustrates the cultural transcendence on Ahn’s son Andrew, a representative of the younger generation of Chinese immigrants. The heroine Ahn, under the influence of new ideas his father brought, came into contact with new culture, abandoned the stereotyped feudal system, converted to Christianity. And then she left her hometown and went to the United States, got physical and spiritual emancipation, and achieved cultural integration in the end. Although free Ahn converted to Christianity, she never forgot her own homeland and faith. Therefore, her ghost appeared in her son Andrew’s dream and persuaded him to carry on the family line. While growing up in a foreign country, Andrew did not understand the homeland feelings of his deceased mother at all. Under the repeated persuasion of his mother’s ghost, he was aware of the ethical values and powerful vitality of ethnic culture, returned to Chinese culture, went to the reunification in his mind and the ghosts of ancestors finally rested in peace. What’s more, the impending birth of his first child “Little Golden Child” will also take on the family’s hopes and dreams, and gestate the dramatist’s core ideas about cultural transcendence.In the part of the conclusion, the thesis reveals that the differences and conflicts between the two cultures brought the tragedy to this family; in the meantime, it had positive influences that the heroine Ahn unbound her feet, gained physical and spiritual freedom. Under the persuasion of his mother Ahn’s ghost, Andrew was deeply shaken by the powerful ethnic culture in his mind, realized cultural integration and transcendence at last. As can be seen, Chinese Americans should fully realize the cultural differences in diverse cultural context, absorb the cultural essence and get rid of the dross, try their best to reach cultural harmony so as to make themselves step over the wide gap between the cultures, construct and perfect their double cultural identities, thus beginning a bright and unique life. |
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