How a "History of Theatrical Transformation" Was Pieced Together

This article offers a critical examination of the historical narrative constructed in the interview "Zhang Fuhai on the Transformation of Chinese Theatre since the Modern Era." The interview imposes a preconceived "classical–modern–contemporary" framework upon the history of Chinese theatre, linking Liang Qichao's discourse on fiction, Shanghai-style Peking opera, modern revolutionary Peking opera, and the contemporary crisis of traditional theatre into a linear narrative of development. This construction, however, contains numerous factual, conceptual, and methodological problems. It confuses dramatic structure, musical and vocal systems, and theatrical form; exaggerates the influence of intellectual discourse on theatrical practice; invokes positivism to explain the realistic tendencies of Shanghai-style theatre; recasts the institutionally enforced dominance of model operas as an aesthetic triumph; and employs insufficiently defined concepts such as "human nature" and "modernity" to determine the historical stages of Chinese theatre. These are not isolated inaccuracies but consequences of a method that begins with predetermined conclusions and then selects, rearranges, or distorts historical materials accordingly. The resulting account is therefore not a historical explanation of the transformation of modern Chinese theatre, but an assemblage shaped by evolutionary assumptions, intellectual elitism, and Western-centred standards.