''Yama Zhao'' () is a play written by

Hong Shen Hong Shen (; 31 December 1894 – 29 August 1955) was a Chinese playwright, film director and screenwriter, film and drama theorist, and educator. He is considered by drama historians as one of the three founders of Chinese spoken drama, togethe ...

in 1922. It was first produced in Shanghai in February 1923, and Hong played the title role. The play strongly opposed the brutal warfare that plagued China at the time, which is now known as the Warlord Era. The play was well received and established Hong Shen's reputation as a playwright.

Inception

Hong got the inspiration of ''Yama Zhao'' in the spring of 1922, shortly after the first battle between two warlords

Zhang Zuolin Zhang Zuolin (; March 19, 1875 June 4, 1928), courtesy name Yuting (雨亭), nicknamed Zhang Laogang (張老疙瘩), was an influential Chinese bandit, soldier, and warlord during the Warlord Era in China. The warlord of Manchuria from 1916 to ...

and

Wu Peifu Wu Peifu or Wu P'ei-fu (; April 22, 1874 – December 4, 1939) was a major figure in the struggles between the warlords who dominated Republican China from 1916 to 1927. Early career Born in Shandong Province in eastern China, Wu initi ...

. Hong was on a train to northern China when he overheard some soldiers' conversation. They mentioned that Wu's army buried many of Zhang's soldiers alive after winning the battle in order to take possession of their enemies' belongings. This unnerving conversation eventually led Hong to dramatize this incident in ''Yama Zhao''.

Plot

Set in the Warlord Era, the play tells the tragic story of Zhao Da, a body guard to a commander of a battalion. Zhao is nicknamed Yama Zhao, meaning "Zhao, the king of Hell," due to his valor and experience on the battlefield. The commander has not paid members of the entire battalion for five months. Instead, he has pocketed the soldier's salaries and gambled away some of them. Under such circumstance, Zhao, disappointed by his unrewarded service and incited by his fellow soldier Old Li, takes hold of the payroll money and fled into a nearby jungle. He then loses his way and experiences a series of hallucinations before being shot dead by his pursuers. In the end, Li buries Zhao after the rest of the pursuing squad has returned. Li retrieves the money that Zhao has hidden around his waist and flees into the jungle. According to David Y. Chen, the nine scenes of the play can be roughly divided into three parts: "the first scene exposes hao Das struggle between duty and wealth which ends in his escape with his booty. The second scene begins with his entering the forest. From this point on, the rest of the play closely resembles the forest section of ''The Emperor Jones'', only in the illusions the past experiences of the Negro convicts are changed for those of the Chinese soldier."

Plagiarism controversy

Hong's ''Yama Zhao'' bears clear a resemblance to

Eugene O'Neill Eugene Gladstone O'Neill (October 16, 1888 – November 27, 1953) was an American playwright and Nobel laureate in literature. His poetically titled plays were among the first to introduce into the U.S. the drama techniques of realism, earlier ...

's ''

The Emperor Jones ''The Emperor Jones'' is a 1920 tragic play by American dramatist Eugene O'Neill that tells the tale of Brutus Jones, a resourceful, self-assured African American and a former Pullman porter, who kills another black man in a dice game, is jailed, ...

'' by " orrowingfrom its American prototypes the money motif, the structure of plot, the scene division, and the psychological treatment of hallucinations in a forest setting." Due to the similarities between Yama Zhao and The Emperor Jones, Hong faced charges of plagiarism from the Chinese literati when his play premiered in Shanghai in 1923. Hong later addressed the controversy in a 1933 article entitled "O'Neill and Hong Shen: An Imaginary Conversation (Ouni’er yu Hong Shen: yidu xiangxiang de duihua)."

References

Works cited

* *{{cite book , last1=Ye , first1=Tan , last2=Zhu , first2=Yun , title=Historical Dictionary of Chinese Cinema , url=https://books.google.com/books?id=javqwyBe0WoC&pg=PA75 , year=2012 , publisher=Rowman & Littlefield , isbn=978-0-8108-6779-6 Chinese Republican era plays 1923 plays