UK, China audiences applaud 'moving' Song of Female Textile Workers performance
Model textile worker Huang Baomei (黄宝妹) attends as guest of honour
Chinese national Shanghai Yueju star performer Wang Rousang dances during Song of the Female Textile Workers
Song of the Female Textile Workers, which tells the poignant story of three generations of females and their interwoven love for the Party and the family amidst China’s industrial and post-industrial transformations, drew together UK and Chinese audiences at stage@Leeds on Thursday, 5 May.
The performance, led by Chinese national Shanghai Yueju star performer Wang Rousang, was simultaneously screened before a live UK audience and broadcasted to a digital Chinese audience via Zoom.
Song of the Female Textile Workers uses mixed reality, Chinese opera, and Chinese classical music to depict the history of China’s first female working class and their own art form, Shanghai Yueju, through the story of three generation of women. It takes the audience from the start of the industrial revolution in China in the early 20th century up to 2022, highlighting the post-industrial transformation through the laying off of factory workers in the mid-1990s.
This performance is one of the key outputs of an Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC)-awarded project Song of the Female Textile Workers, UK-China Digital Connectivity (2020-2021), which was entirely produced online by a UK-China creative team.
This practice-led research project aims to encourage UK-China audiences to identify their shared cultural identities through critically examining the concept and practice of Cultural and Creative Industries across the two nations. Meanwhile, the production process tests UK-China transnational multi-partner collaborations and the establishment of a “creative chain” contributing to long-term UK and China creative industries development.
In attendance via Zoom was Huang Baomei, who was received in person by Mao Zedong in the 1950’s as one of China’s model textile workers. Baomei was later commended by President Xi Jinping in 2021 for her lifelong contribution to China’s textile industry.
Model textile worker Huang Baomei (right) speaks with Dr Haili Ma (left) during post-performance audience dialogue on May 5
“We are extremely honoured to have had Ms Huang Baomei, a former textile worker at Shanghai Textile Factory and an awarded national model worker, attending our event,” said Dr. Haili Ma, the research project Principal Investigator, producer of the show, and Associate Professor of Performance and Creative Economy at the University of Leeds School of Performance and Cultural Industries.
The film “Huang Baomei”, in which Baomei starred as herself, depicted the close professional and personal relationship between the all-female Shanghai Yueju and Shanghai female textile workers. This film served as a key reference for the AHRC-awarded project Song of the Female Textile Workers, UK-China Digital Connectivity (2020-2021), and the mixed reality Song of the Female Textile Workers performance, according to Ma.
“We are delighted to have screened the mixed reality performance Song of the Female Textile Workers,” said Ma. “This is the first of a series of audience workshops of our latest AHRC-awarded project Song of the Female Textile Workers, past, present and the future (2022-2023).”
A live dialogue between the UK and Chinese audiences followed the performance. During the dialogue, guest of honour Baomei, who is in her 80s, praised the performance as “high quality” and “moving”. Meanwhile, the UK-China audiences applauded the “beautiful” performance for its cultural and historical elements, the plot which wove together generational tensions, heritage, and urban development, and the rich emotional force of the vibrant musical, visual, and the 3D digital effects.
In addition to the praise and “very best wishes” from UK and Chinese audiences, concrete feedback was provided in the form of audience questionnaires. The UK audience commented on their desire to see further UK post-industrial stories intersected with the Chinese narratives to further deepen UK and Chinese communities' mutual understanding and connectivity. “This is exactly the aim of this one-year-long newly awarded project,” Ma said.
As Ma mentioned, this performance is only the first stage of the latest AHRC-awarded project. Next up, she and her team are designing a new extended reality experience, Love of the Butterfly. The new performance will feature an avatar, Lu, who will share her personal narrative with UK audiences and collect stories from the local community. Love of the Butterfly will be launched in October 2022 at the Leeds Industrial Museum.
“The new mixed reality performance aims to collect UK-China community stories and to gain a deeper understanding of their shared culture and identity in the post-industrial era,” said Ma. “The collected stories will be made into a new piece of all-female Yueju by our project partner Shanghai Yue Opera House to celebrate 50 years of UK-China diplomatic relations.”