Cross-Cultural Reinterpretation: The Evolution of Mime in 1980s China

Yiping HUANG*

Abstract

This article analyses the introduction and transformation of Western mime in mainland China during the 1980s within the framework of the state’s project of constructing socialist cultural modernity. It argues that mime in China was not a matter of imitation but a strategic reconstruction shaped by aesthetic and ideological objectives. Using Wang Jingyu’s Chi Ji (Eating Chicken) as a case study, the article shows how this Western body-based theatrical form was reinterpreted within the realist tradition of Chinese theatre. While Chinese mime retained certain visual and technical features of French mime blanche, it was aesthetically reconfigured into an alternative realist, text-based practice. This cultural translation secured the form’s legitimacy within the national cultural system and facilitated its integration into the existing Chinese theatre system. At the same time, it demonstrates how Chinese mime, as a distinctive practice of the 1980s, selectively absorbed and reworked elements of western theatrical aesthetics, producing a unique mode of Chinese theatrical practice.

Keywords: Chinese mime, Western mime, cultural translation, Wang Jingyu, socialist cultural modernity

From Western Mime to the Term “Chinese Mime”

During the so-called “mime boom” of the 1980s and 1990s, Chinese theatre practitioners and scholars became increasingly interested in the genre of mime, which entered the Chinese theatrical vocabulary through complex processes of cultural translation. While existing studies have tended to frame this phenomenon primarily in terms of Western influence, less attention has been paid to how the term “mime” was introduced, reinterpreted, and localised within Chinese theatrical discourse. This section argues that the emergence of “Chinese mime” during this period should be understood not merely as an instance of Western influence, but as a process of discursive negotiation through which Chinese theatre redefined and recontextualised Western mime within their own pedagogical and ideological frameworks. Focusing on the terminological formation of “Chinese mime”^[1] reveals that its emergence in mainland China was not a matter of one-way cultural reception. Rather, it represented a process of cultural translation and mediation. Understanding how the term was produced and adapted is therefore essential to explaining how a distinctive discourse on physical theatre took shape in 1980s-1990s China.

Western mime was originally rendered into Chinese as yaju (哑剧) or moju (默剧), both denoting a form of theatrical practice that dispenses with spoken language. This translation choice was largely attributable to the fact that the Western mime practices popular in mainland China during the 1980s were predominantly associated with a specific form within the French modern mime tradition: mime blanche.^[2] At the same time, theatre education in mainland China during this period was heavily influenced by the Soviet training system. Consequently, mime blanche, which forgoes speech and conveys textual meaning exclusively through physical movement was reinterpreted by Chinese practitioners through the lens of the Russian theatre artist Konstantin Stanislavski’s system. Within this interpretative framework, it came to be described as a form of “Wu Yan Xiao Pin（Wordless Sketch 无言小品).

As a term born out of a context of cultural translation, “Wu Yan Xiao Pin” embodies the process through which mime blanche was interpreted and localised within Chinese theatrical discourse. The term “Wordless” (Wu Yan 无言) signifies the understanding of mime blanche in the Chinese context as an art form characterised by silence, whereas “Sketch” (Xiao Pin 小品) reflects the interpretation of Western mime through the lens of the Stanislavskian method of actor training. Within Stanislavski’s framework, a sketch refers to a staging exercise designed to develop an actor’s acting technique. This suggests that, at the level of terminological translation, the use of the term “Wu Yan Xiao Pin” (Wordless Sketch 无言小品) to describe mime in mainland China not only signified a distinct Chinese reinterpretation of Western mime but also implied that such practice may have been regarded as an informal or marginal form of theatre within the broader theatrical system.

Additionally, in mainland China, mime continues to be translated interchangeably as yaju or moju, both of which connote “wordless” or “silence.” In this article, the distinction between the terms Yaju and Moju as translations of Western mime in mainland China is not the primary focus of discussion. For the sake of convenience, the term “Chinese mime” is used throughout to refer collectively to both yaju and moju.

Western Mime Practices in China

Western mime made its first appearance in mainland China in January 1981 (Wang, Yaju 15). The mime artist Samy Molcho (1936– ) presented thirty-four short pieces at the Cultural Palace of Nationalities, including My Language, Egg, He and She, The Value of Freedom, Man and Tree, Band, Bench in the Park, and others. On 25 October of the same year, Molcho delivered a lecture at the Central Academy of Drama in Beijing introducing his mime practice, in which he acknowledged the influence of artists such as Étienne Decroux and Marcel Marceau on his own work. Speaking of the principles underlying his creations, Molcho remarked, “We must weaken the existence of our own body to the greatest extent so as to present the role’s character… we shall take the body as a tool to display various characters and emotions” (107).

Samy Molcho as a young Israeli artist. Photo: Web/Wikimedia/Public domain/Israel National Photo Collection

In September 1982, Molcho’s teacher, Marcel Marceau (1923-2007), brought his mime character “Bip” to perform in Beijing, Nanjing, and Shanghai (Wang, Yaju 21). Reflecting on this moment, the Chinese mime artist Wang Deshun observed that “Molcho and Marceau together launched the mime boom in Chinese theatre circles in the 1980s” (159). According to the performance programme from Marceau’s 1982 tour in China, the nine pieces he performed included Sculptor, Painter, Kite, Park, Court, Fake Mask Producer, The Courtyard of Luna, Creating World, and Street Performer. In the same year, Marceau delivered a lecture at Shanghai Theatre Academy. In order to ensure that his mime concept was more readily understood and accepted within a Chinese context, Marceau described his practice as a form of “magic” (38), that is, the ability to use body movements to express content that is often conveyed through spoken language in text-based theatre. He drew an analogy between his own white-faced, illusionistic mime (mime blanche) and the silent films of Charlie Chaplin (1889–1977), so that the audience could better grasp the role of the body in his performances. Marceau emphasised that, although Chaplin’s “Tramp” and his own “Bip” did not exist in real life, their bodies were rigorously trained, and the characters they portrayed were conveyed through a highly refined corporeal language executed by the performers themselves. As a result, this body language could be readily understood by audiences, just as easily as reading words in text-based theatre practices. From this perspective, Marceau concluded, both artistic practices could be considered successful (38).

Marcel Marceau as Bip the Clown in 1974 (1923-2007). Photo: Web/Wikimedia Commons/Public domain

In June 1983, a mime troupe from the Theatre on the Balustrade (Divadlo Na zábradlí), led by Ladislav Fialka (1931–1991), visited China to give a series of mime performances. According to Chinese mime artist Wang Jingyu, this was the first instance of collective mime (that is, a mime performance involving more than a single performer) to be staged in China, and only the third recorded presentation of Western mime in the country (Yaju 25).

At the Capital Theatre in Beijing, Fialka’s troupe presented fifteen works, including Etude, Chess, Time, Sweet Life, and Butterfly. With the exception of Butterfly, which was created solely by Fialka, all fourteen remaining works were performed collectively (Wang Yaju 28). In July 1983, The Moving Picture Mime Show—established by graduates of the L’École Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq, Toby Sedgwick (1958–), Paul Filipiak (1950–), and David Gaines (1952–) was performed in Beijing. According to the performance programme, the event comprised two mime works: Seven Samurai and Handle with Care (Lu 2). In the spring of 1985, the British mime artist David Glass (1930–) visited China to give a mime performance, presenting eight works including Gymnastics, Hand, Thief, and Evolution.

It was during the 1980s that China entered a vigorous period of modernisation. In December 1978, the Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central Committee of the Communist Party of China defined the country’s developmental stage as one of “reform and opening up” and the construction of “socialism with Chinese characteristics.” Within this historical context, then paramount leader Deng Xiaoping’s state policy of “internal reform and external opening” was operationalised through cultural development strategies that emphasised both the introduction of Western cultural forms and the rediscovery of traditional Chinese culture (48). This meant that, in the course of modernisation during the 1980s, attention was directed not only towards the transformation of economic systems and technological means, but also towards the reconstruction of modernity at the level of aesthetics. In other words, following the easing of the extreme ideological controls of the Cultural Revolution, the Chinese government recognised the need to establish a new cultural order, one that reflected state leadership while shaping public aesthetic tastes, and which could be characterised as “modern.”

For the state, the arts constituted a key arena in which elements of Western modernity could be selectively incorporated at the formal level while maintaining the primacy of state ideology in content. As scholar Xiaomei Chen has argued in her book Occidentalism: Theory of Counter-Discourse in Post-Mao China, this form of cultural management exemplified the post-Mao condition of Occidentalism, a mode of counter-discourse in which China’s modernity was constructed through both imitation and negotiation with the West. Seen in this light, the influx of theatre artists from abroad during this decade was not merely a sign of cultural openness, but part of a broader process of cultural translation through which the Chinese state sought to reconcile artistic modernity with socialist ideology.

Here, Xiaomei Chen’s theoretical framework is further employed to explore the cultural phenomenon of the introduction of Western mime into China, in order to examine in greater depth what the continued performances of Western mime in China during this historical period signified for the construction of Chinese cultural modernity. According to Chen, Occidentalism, or more specifically Chinese Occidentalism, refers to the Chinese strategy of appropriating Western discourse in the post-Mao era, which emerged in the late 1970s. Chen argues that the purpose of introducing Western culture into China’s modern cultural construction was to use Western culture as raw material for producing a new political discourse that incorporated elements of Western culture while remaining distinct from Western ideological systems and firmly grounded in Chinese socialist cultural ideology. At the same time, this ideological formation served two purposes that, as Chen notes, “significantly overlapped” (51). First, the Chinese government sought to pursue nationalism and reinforce its internal authority through the “essentialization” (50) of Western culture. Second, Chinese intellectuals aimed to engage with the existing ideological structures in China through the reconfiguration of Western cultural images. Consequently, the formation of China’s so-called cultural modernity presupposed the appearance of Western culture within the Chinese cultural field.

The Western mime form, which had been relatively unfamiliar to the Chinese theatrical sphere prior to the 1980s, could therefore be framed as a “modern” artistic practice within the 1980s Chinese cultural context. Utilising the body as the principal medium of theatrical expression and eschewing spoken dialogue, it offered a performance style markedly distinct from the text-based realism theatre works prevalent in mainland China at the time. Moreover, Western mime resonated strongly with China’s cultural objective in the 1980s of transcending the theatrical aesthetics that had dominated during the Cultural Revolution.

Once the introduction of Western theatrical forms in the 1980s is understood as part of the ideological construction of socialist cultural modernity, another question arises: why was Western mime, rather than other Western theatrical forms, brought into the Chinese theatrical context during this period? This article argues that the openness towards body-based theatre practices in China at that time indicates that the politics of the body had begun to be incorporated into the ideological framework of socialist cultural modernity. Mao Zedong, in his “Directive on the Use of Nude Models in Art Education” (Mao Zedong Wenji my translation 419), overturned the previous ban imposed during the Cultural Revolution and explicitly permitted the use of nude models in art education. This policy statement carried symbolic significance: it marked the re-legitimisation of the body within China’s cultural production and signalled that the body in artistic creation was no longer considered an ideological taboo. From this perspective, the reappearance of the body in Chinese cultural production after the 1970s foreshadowed an important ideological shift, one in which the body was reintegrated into both artistic representation and ideological formation.

If we interpret this cultural phenomenon through Michel Foucault’s theory connecting the body and politics, the moment when politics comes to encompass the body as a primary site of intervention signifies a transformation in the domain of power. For Michel Foucault, the body becomes a field subject to the intervention and regulation of power (143). Likewise, Giorgio Agamben, in Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, argues that the body constitutes the very foundation of modern sovereign power: “Corpus is a two-faced being, the bearer both of subjection to sovereign power and individual liberties” (125). This implies that the body can function as an active force engaging with state ideology. Consequently, the incorporation of the body into the ideological construction of cultural modernity once again corresponds to Xiaomei Chen’s earlier argument. On the one hand, it serves to reinforce nationalist control within the state; on the other, it enables intellectuals to challenge existing ideological structures.

In addition to examining such strategies of state-led cultural translation within the domain of cultural politics, it is also necessary to consider the transformation of Western mime within Chinese theatre from the perspective of its internal structures. Western mime is a body-based theatrical form that stands in stark contrast to the realist theatre tradition established in China since 1954, which is text-centred and relies on spoken dialogue to convey meaning. Within this structural divergence, Western mime was transformed, not merely as a recontextualisation of artistic form, but as a collision between the internal performance systems of Chinese and Western theatre. As a result of this process of cultural transformation, by the 1980s mainland China’s theatrical culture had entered a new phase: at the formal level seeking alignment with Western practices, technically grounded in the aesthetics of realist theatre, thematically adhering to socialism with Chinese characteristics, and, through cultural translation, constructing a modern theatrical aesthetic subject to regulation. In the following discussion, this article examines the case of Wang Jingyu, a representative Chinese mime artist of the 1980s, in order to explore more concretely the strategies of cultural translation operating in this period.

Wang Jingyu: A Representative Figure of Chinese Mime in the 1980s

**1. Background of the Chinese Mime Chi Ji (Eating Chicken)**

Western mime did not enter mainland Chinese theatrical culture through mere cultural importation or formal imitation; rather, it became embedded within a broader cultural project shaped by state-imposed ideological adjustments and the demands of aesthetic modernisation. The complexity of this process is exemplified in Chi Ji (Eating Chicken 吃鸡), a work by Wang Jingyu, one of the leading figures in Chinese mime during the 1980s.

Originally created in the early 1960s but only authorised for nationwide public performance in the early 1980s, Chi Ji reflects not only the realist aesthetic conventions characteristic of Chinese mime, but also the transformation of Western body-based theatre into a concrete and legitimate art form within the Chinese theatrical context. As examined in this section of this analysis, Chinese mime, situated within the Chinese realist theatrical tradition, underwent a complex process of cultural transformation characterised by de-verbalisation, re-narrativisation, and re-politicisation. This process encompassed both the domain of cultural politics and the reconfiguration of theatrical aesthetics.

*Chi Ji (Eating Chicken*). Photo: Cao Xilin. Courtesy of the author

In 1983, Wang Jingyu made his first nationwide appearance on the stage of the CCTV Spring Festival Gala, performing his representative work of Chinese mime, Chi Ji (Eating Chicken) (Wang, Muhou 31). Subsequently, he created a series of Chinese mime works, including The Conductor, The Goalkeeper, The Banquet, Wire Walking, Over-confident, The Travel of the Files, The Tiger Fighting against Wu Song, Cold or Warm, Dispute on the Television, and Rushing About. According to documented accounts, Wang performed all of these works in China, and, as a representative of Chinese mime, he was invited to perform abroad in Japan, Italy, Singapore, and Malaysia in 1985, 1987, 1988, and 1990, respectively (Wang “Mantan” 18). His final stage performance took place in 1994 at the Shanghai International Mime Festival—the only international mime festival ever held in China.

According to Wang Jingyu, Chi Ji (Eating Chicken), one of his most significant works, originated from a coincidence in 1961. As he recalls, the piece was conceived during a meal (Muhou 1). Wang graduated from the China Youth Art Theatre in 1958 and began his career as an actor in spoken drama. Between 1958 and 1962, the collectivisation of agriculture and the Great Leap Forward movement resulted in a nationwide famine and acute grain shortages. Many actors were unable to sustain themselves, and theatre operations became increasingly difficult to maintain. To ensure their survival, the entire theatre staff relocated from Beijing to Guangzhou, where material conditions were comparatively better at the time. In Guangzhou, Wang Jingyu had access to meat and vegetables. However, given the poor economic conditions prevailing across China at the time, such food was often not fresh and sometimes even past its best. This circumstance constituted the primary inspiration for the depiction of the tough, unchewable chicken in Chi Ji. According to Wang Jingyu:

In the Flower Garden, we could eat chicken almost every day. The chicken meat was tough and hard to chew. If you wanted to bite off a good piece, you must have good teeth. Even if you had good teeth, you must have strength. It was said that there was something wrong with our way of eating and that we did not know how to eat properly. You had to put down the chopsticks, grip the meat hard with your teeth and then tear it off with your hands. Sometimes the meat could be stretchy. You went through all the trouble to bite off one piece, but it bounced back before you could put it in your mouth, leaving you covered all in its juice. But we did not complain. We were satisfied just having something to eat (Muhou my translation 2).

The passage above is fully rendered in Chinese mime by Wang Jingyu in his work Chi Ji (Eating Chicken). Through the creative deployment of highly charged physical gestures, Wang recreates with striking realism the acts of “gnawing,” “tearing,” and “dripping chicken juice.” This corporeal re-enactment, grounded in lived experience, is presented entirely without spoken dialogue. Variations in bodily rhythm, the interplay between movement (eating chicken) and the prop (a mimed chicken), and the continuous modulation of facial expressions together convey a lived predicament that oscillates between humour and absurdity. In its visual impression, the aesthetics of Chinese mime in this work bears certain affinities with the mime blanche in France, although Chinese mime does not involve painting the performer’s face white.

**2. The Cultural Politics of the Chinese mime Chi Ji (Eating Chicken)**

Although Wang Jingyu completed Chi Ji (Eating Chicken) in the 1960s, it was prohibited from performance during the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) because it was regarded as a satire and critique of the Great Leap Forward. At the time, one dazibao (big-character poster) described it as follows:

There is no doubt as to Wang Jingyu’s counter-revolutionary intention in his work Chi Ji (Eating Chicken). In his attack on the Great Leap Forward, he uses insinuations, charging that it resulted in a shortage of grain in China and left the Chinese people so weak that they could not gnaw on a scrawny chicken. In order to expose Wang’s malicious intentions, reduce his influence, and ensure that his plot is thoroughly destroyed, we must take decisive action (Muhou my translation 16).

Upon the conclusion of the Cultural Revolution, national cultural policy gradually aligned with the modernising transformations discussed earlier. Chi Ji (Eating Chicken) was broadcast nationwide on China Central Television’s Spring Festival Gala in 1983, bringing it to the attention of audiences across the country and securing its status as one of the most recognisable works of Chinese mime. This shift in the work’s cultural status signified a transformation from being interpreted as a metaphorical sign of social critique to being embraced as a state-sanctioned emblem of comedy. Implicit in this change was a process of cultural translation that entailed the state’s re-narrativisation and re-politicisation of Chinese mime.

In this process of cultural translation, the body movements in Chi Ji (Eating Chicken), created in 1958, no longer function as a recollection or restatement of historical experience. Since the piece employs no verbal text, it can be readily reinterpreted as a manifestation of optimism — an attitude of resourcefulness in the face of adversity. The actor intends to perform the act of eating a real chicken for the audience, yet the actual chicken prepared for the performance has already been eaten beforehand. Consequently, in order to complete the performance, the actor cleverly employs body gestures to represent the act of eating a chicken that does not physically exist on stage.

From the perspective of semiotic transformation, the tough, unchewable chicken in the 1958 version of Chi Ji (Eating Chicken) was originally linked to the severe economic difficulties that China faced at the time. The country’s economic development had suffered major setbacks, and as a result, people were largely unable to obtain fresh food. Even in relatively affluent cities such as Guangzhou, people had to find ways to consume meat that was often past its best and difficult to chew. In contrast, in the 1983 version of Chi Ji, the chicken was presented as one detached from its historical context. Consequently, audiences in 1983 could no longer perceive the reason why the chicken was so difficult to chew. This indicates that the performative act of eating chicken no longer evoked reflection on the social and historical conditions of scarcity from which it had originally emerged. At the same time, the 1983 Chi Ji did not provide the audience with any information about whether the actor was hungry. In other words, what the audience perceived was not an expression of hunger but rather the image of an actor who, through a series of individual physical actions, managed to tame a chicken that resisted being eaten.

A comparison between the 1983 performance and the 1958 original reveals that the body signs which once signified material deprivation and the hardship of life had been reinterpreted as a game-like play with the chicken. The body gestures of eating chicken, which in the original work metaphorically evoked people’s struggle against poverty, were recoded as performative postures of mastery that embody an individual’s conquest of an opposing force through the exercise of personal will and physical ability.

In this process of theatrical and semiotic re-encoding, the 1983 Chi Ji (Eating Chicken) was stripped of its historical specificity. The work’s meaning was redirected: rather than evoking collective endurance in the face of hardship, the performance was repoliticised to emphasise the spirit of individual effort and perseverance. In large part, this symbolic transformation corresponded to the ideological shift in post-1978 China’s modernisation project, which moved from a revolutionary ethos of “struggling against reality” to one of “creating reality through individual endeavour.” Because Chinese mime, as a theatrical form, dispenses with spoken language and is compact in scale, it became one of the most adaptable media for such reinterpretation and ideological re-inscription. Accordingly, Chinese mime was incorporated into the state’s cultural narrative as a harmonious artistic language within the national theatrical system.

In its subsequent performances, Chi Ji (Eating Chicken) consistently functioned as a state-sanctioned emblem of comedy, encapsulating an ethos of optimism and perseverance until its final staging on 1 July 1997, when it was performed at the official celebrations marking Hong Kong’s return to China. The historical circumstances of its creation and its possible underlying political tensions were no longer addressed in these later performances. To a certain extent, this repoliticised reinterpretation may be viewed as a selective transformation of cultural history. At the same time, it reflects the distinctive characteristics of Chinese mime: while sharing certain visual similarities with Western mime practices, it is a theatrical form created by Chinese artists that satisfies the state’s demand for a culturally modern art form. Mime’s cultural transformation within the Chinese theatrical context thus constitutes to a “national cultural project,” whereby mime was endowed with a legitimised functional role and incorporated into the state’s cultural narrative under the guidance of cultural policy. In Jameson’s theoretical framework, to some degree, this national cultural strategy can be viewed as a “nostalgia mode” in which “real” history is supplanted by the history of aesthetic styles (20).

**3. Theatrical Aesthetic of the Chinese Mime Chi Ji (Eating Chicken)**

In addition to the cultural-political dimension of Chinese mime, it is imperative to draw a clear distinction between Wang Jingyu’s practice of Chinese mime and the historical trajectory and aesthetic traditions of Western mime. Such a distinction facilitates the identification of historical evidence of visual similarities between Western mime and Chinese mime, and, more importantly, enables us to discern the fundamental differences in their creative aesthetic principles.

In general, Chinese mime developed within the context of China’s realist theatrical tradition. During the 1980s, the pedagogical methods employed in Chinese theatre education were largely based on the psychological realism acting system developed by Konstantin Stanislavski. According to historical records, a group of Soviet acting-training specialists was invited to Beijing (The Central Academy of Drama) in 1954 to help establish a pedagogical framework grounded in Stanislavski’s method of psychological realism (Jiang 7). As Wang Jingyu recalls:

[…] my mime exercises were derived from the ‘absent object exercise’ developed by Soviet experts at the Central Academy of Drama. It was not until 1983, when I saw a performance by Molcho, that I realised that this type of performance had long been known as ‘mime,’ that is, telling a story solely through physical movement without the use of speech (“Interview” my translation 3).

We can observe here that Wang Jingyu applied the theatrical knowledge he had acquired at the Central Academy of Drama to offer a new interpretation of the Western mime practices he encountered in China, namely. For Wang, mime is a theatrical art form in which physical movement is employed to convey textual meaning rather than speech. According to Jean Benedetti, who comments on Stanislavski’s concept of physical action, “the body language of the cast will convey much of the meaning if, for some reason, the dialogue cannot be heard or understood” (40). This suggests that, when Wang Jingyu applied Stanislavski’s understanding of theatre to the interpretation of mime, Chinese mime came to be defined as a theatrical form in which the body replaced dialogue in conveying meaning, thereby constituting an alternative realist, text-based practice—one that reinterpreted body-based theatrical expression within the framework of psychological realism. In other words, this Stanislavskian reading re-integrated the bodily theatrical aesthetics of Western mime into the tradition of Chinese realist, text-based theatre aesthetics.

Such an interpretative approach differs fundamentally from the aesthetic tradition of Western mime. In the Western mime tradition represented by Étienne Decroux and Marcel Marceau, the autonomy of the body as an independent semiotic system is emphasised; the meaning of bodily movement does not depend on a pre-existing narrative text or a realistic setting, but is instead generated through rhythm, spatial relationships, and variations in corporeal form, producing a polysemous aesthetic experience in the perception of the audience. Decroux defined realist theatre practice as “the printed text” (26). In other words, in the Western mime tradition of Decroux and Marceau, the body serves as the sole medium of narration, rather than as a means of representing or substituting a predetermined text. As Decroux remarked, “We are not the slaves of realism” (qtd. in Leabhart 80). In Wang Jingyu’s understanding, however, Western mime becomes a form of realist theatre practice in which the absence of spoken language is compensated for by the body, its aesthetic principle being the use of bodily expression to replace verbal expression in realist theatre, rather than to create an entirely new, non-textual space of meaning.

It would appear that the body language employed in Chinese mime is used to facilitate character development as well as to advance the narrative logic, rather than functioning as a polysemous and autonomous corporeal sign system. Certainly, this aesthetics created favourable conditions for the acceptance of mime in China by reducing its unfamiliarity and enabling it to be associated with realist theatre within the cultural context of the time, thus allowing audiences to readily comprehend and accept it. However, as a result of this cultural translation, Chinese mime lost the modernist critical dimension that it carried from its Western context, thereby depriving it of its fundamental challenge to the logocentrism of theatre. Consequently, in the 1980s Chinese mime developed into a distinctive theatrical form: while retaining the silent feature and certain movement techniques of Western mime, it continued to follow the narrative logic and social function of realist theatre in its creative strategies. Wang Jingyu’s representative works, such as Chi Ji (Eating Chicken), The Conductor, and The Goalkeeper, are all grounded in the theatrical reproduction of social reality and the imitation of the behavioural logic of characters, with audience comprehension of the work often relying on shared or resonant experiences of lived reality.

*The Goalkeeper*. Photo: Cao Xilin. Courtesy of the author

It is worth noting that Wang Jingyu’s Chinese mime practices also attracted public criticism in the mid-1980s. In 1986, at China’s First Shakespeare Symposium, some theatre theorists characterised Wang’s work as “extremely superficial” (Wang Muhou 47). Confronted with such criticisms, Wang candidly acknowledged in his writings that they were not entirely unfounded. He wrote with evident anguish: “The content of the mime pieces I have practised is indeed rather shallow, and I am still far behind many mime artists, such as Marceau and Molcho, who are able to distil and generalise life at such a high level” (Muhou 47).

He further reflected:

Mime removes and abandons the most important means of expressing thought and emotion, language. Therefore, for many deeper ideas and multi-layered ways of thinking that must be expressed through language, the means available to the art of mime are indeed powerless (Yaju 47).

However, it is also important to consider the intellectual and ideological positions of those who voiced such criticisms. It is possible that some of the critics, who were trained primarily in literary scholarship and dramatic textual analysis, lacked the interpretive ability to appreciate mime’s visual and corporeal expressivity. Moreover, their responses might have been shaped by a broader ideological conception of theatrical modernisation that privileged psychological realism, linguistic sophistication, and literary heritage over embodied, non-verbal forms of performance. From this perspective, Wang’s mime, with its physical aesthetics, might have appeared to them as clownish or naïve, diverging from their expectations of what “serious” modern Chinese theatre should look like. While Wang’s self-criticism was sincere and self-reflective, it is equally crucial to question the authority and motivations of the commentators who dismissed his work as superficial.

Taken together, Wang Jingyu’s criticisms and personal reflections, the perception of body theatre in 1980s Chinese theatre can be discerned: within the realist aesthetic framework dominant at the time, language was regarded as the primary vehicle for conveying meaning, while bodily movement was viewed as an effective auxiliary means. When the body, as an alternative language, replaced speech itself, such body-based theatre practices were inevitably perceived, from the perspective of theatrical meaning-making, as a regression. This was because the Stanislavskian realist aesthetic training employed in Chinese theatre pedagogy during the 1980s had never abandoned the binary between language and body; the body’s presence in theatre was intended to assist language in the production of meaning.

As such, Wang Jingyu’s interpretation of Western mime as the basis for creating Chinese mime practices constitutes a form of cultural translation. As exemplified by Wang, Chinese mime practice was not merely an imitation of Western mime but a deliberate reconstruction, adopting its movement system at the level of performance technique, while embedding its theatrical narrative and aesthetics firmly within the realist aesthetic tradition of Chinese theatre.

Conclusion

This study examines the introduction and transformation of Western mime into Chinese mime during the 1980s, revealing the dual reconstruction of this Western body-based theatrical art within the context of socialist modernity. In terms of form, it retained, to some extent, the body techniques and silent features of mime blanche; in its strategies of meaning-making, it became deeply embedded in the Chinese realist theatrical tradition, which centres on textual logic.

A case study of Wang Jingyu’s Chi Ji (Eating Chicken) demonstrates that Chinese mime did not emerge as a passive imitation of Western mime, but as a strategic act of cultural translation positioned between the objectives of national cultural policy and the modernisation of theatrical aesthetics. This process ensured the legitimacy and communicative power of the form within the cultural context of the time, enabling Chinese mime to establish itself as a distinctive theatrical practice within the global network of theatrical cultures.

Endnotes

^[1] To ensure greater precision in defining the geographical scope of this study, the term “China” in this article refers exclusively to mainland China. In other words, the Chinese mime practices under discussion are those specific to mainland China.

^[2] Representative artists of the French mime blanche tradition include Étienne Decroux, Jean-Louis Barrault, and Marcel Marceau, among others.

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Mao, Zedong. “Directive on the Use of Nude Models in Art Education” (18 July 1965). Mao Zedong Wenji [Collected Works of Mao Zedong 毛泽东文集], vol. 8, People’s Publishing House, 2001, p. 419. Translation mine.

Marceau, Marcel. A Mime Performance Program. Chinese Performance Company, 1982.

—.“Marceau Talks about Mime” [“马索谈哑剧”]. Drama Art, no. 2, 1982, pp. 38–40.

Molcho, Samy.“Samy Molcho’s Speech in The Central Academy of Drama” [“莫尔肖在中央戏剧学院的演讲”]. Drama Art, no. 1, 1982, pp. 105–107.

Wang, Deshun. Huo Diao Su: Wang Deshun He Tade Xingti Yuyan Yishu [Living Sculpture: Wang Deshun and His Art of Physical Language 活雕塑-王德顺和他的形体语言艺术]. New World Press, 2015. Translation mine.

Wang, Jingyu.“Interview,” by Yinan Li, Oct. 2018. Unpublished interview transcript. Translation mine.

———. Yaju Yishu Yu Wang Jingyu [Wang Jingyu and the Art of Chinese Mime 王景愚与哑剧艺术]. China Theatre Press, 1988. Translation mine.

———. Muhou: Wang Jingyu Zishu [Behind the Stages: Wang Jingyu’s Self-Narrative 幕后: 王景愚自述]. China Drama Press, 1999. Translation mine.

———. “Mantan Yaju Yishu” [“The Ramble of the Dumb Theatre Art” 漫谈哑剧艺术]. Shanghai Artists, 1994, pp. 18–20. Translation mine.

*Yiping HUANG holds both a bachelor’s and a master’s degree from the Central Academy of Drama in China, and a Master’s degree from the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, University of London, where he is currently pursuing his PhD. His research focuses on dramaturgy and contemporary Chinese theatre practice. Over the past decade, he has collaborated with both state-funded and independent institutions in China and the United Kingdom, working as a director, dramaturg, producer, and performer on a range of artistic projects. He has translated several academic works into Chinese, including The Dimensions of Dramaturgy (Kai Tuchmann, 2018) and The Theatricalization of Public and Private Life (Carol Martin, 2013).