Avenues of dramatic transadaptation for Chinese Narratives: Euro-American and Inter-Asian Routes

This article examines two different paths of transmission of Chinese dramatic narratives, using the broader concept of 'transadaptation' to encompass both translations and adaptations. The first strain, the Euro-American, is represented by the Sinophile Vincenz Hundhausen’s versions of Chinese theatre in German from the 1920s and 1930s, while the second inter-Asian strain is instantiated by Jakarta's Teater Koma (and its founder Nano Riantiarno), which has been adapting Chinese stories since the 1980s. These admittedly disparate cases are used to illustrate a thesis: while Euro-American transmission of Chinese narratives has been small, elite and based on literary contacts, the transmission of Chinese narratives to Southeast Asia has been more substantial and closely tied to migration. The bias towards attention to anglophone contact and interest with the Chinese world has tended to obscure the true proportions of Chinese dramatic narrative careers abroad, which have been most substantial along inter-Asian routes rather than 'Western' ones.