4. Twentieth (and Twenty-first) Century Responses to the Novel

This is just a small smattering of the responses to the novel we see in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. I have chosen a sampling of genres–peepshows, opera, pingtan 評彈, and television shows.

According to Shang Wei, by the middle of the twentieth century, versions of the novel had appeared in more than thirty subgenres of regional theater and performance literature. (Shang in Lu and Schonebaum, 404)

In this section of the text, we will also have interviews with Bright Sheng and David Henry Hwang about their adaptation of Dream of the Red Chamber, as well as an interview with Pearl Bergad, of the Chinese Heritage Foundation in Minneapolis. The Chinese Heritage Foundation was instrumental in the generation of the opera; in this interview, Bergad describes their role.