Essay: The play Chinglish – David Henry Hwang

The world today is much more diverse than it used to be. This is the same case with America wherein people of all nationalities can be found. The mingling of all sorts of people has generated challenges and difficulties in communication. This is true in the case of English as a second language where most immigrants are not native speakers of the dominant English language. These encounters between different peoples can be at times frustrating, difficult, or funny. Asian-American playwright David Henry Hwang has a canon of work that discusses or examines the many issues encountered between the East and the West in terms of language, culture, beliefs, and stereotypes. In his play “Chinglish” which won critical acclaim, David Henry Hwang tackled the importance of language in understanding other cultures.
“Chinglish” is an appropriate stage play considering the tremendous efforts made by China to fully integrate itself into the global economy. Its accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) emphasized its growing economic clout or influence in world affairs. In the play, “Chinglish” which initially opened on Broadway on October 27, 2011, American businessman named Daniel Cavanaugh was overly eager but also desperate to start a business in China with the hope of saving his firm. His attitude is like that of most business expatriates who dream of making it big in China by overestimating their prospects but underestimating the difficulties of doing business in a foreign and altogether entirely different culture.
Chinese is the world’s most difficult language to learn and the Chinese people also in many ways have different cultural beliefs,, social values, and political practices. When China gained admission into the WTO in December 2011, it was just a formality since China had been gaining economic prominence long before when it started to open up its own economy to capitalism as espoused by the late Deng Xiaoping to modernize China. Foreign businessmen trooped to China hoping to cash in on its billion-plus population of consumers. Daniel in the play “Chinglish” was one of such naïve businessmen who endured a lot mis-encounters and a grave misunderstanding of a culture and language he hardly has any idea of.
China for the past two millennia (except for two centuries during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries) had been a regional power in most of Asia and hoped to recapture its past glory with a strong drive towards modernization of its economy although it retained most of its political power structure and hierarchy. Opening its economy to the whole world enticed a lot of businessmen to try their luck in China but without first fully understanding the nuance of its culture and language. The misadventures of Daniel in the play highlight the importance of first learning the culture and language of a country before success is attained. The situation Daniel found himself in was funny or humorous but illustrated the importance of language.
Foreign businessmen going to China are often overconfident of achieving their aims but experience showed otherwise. In many instances, access to vital business relationships is not easily attained but rather takes time and painstaking process of developing what is called as “guanxi” or literally meaning the personalized network of contacts and influential persons that one must first have to gain entry into some exclusive club or organization. Guanxi opens doors to previously inaccessible business contacts if a person invests time and effort in it. The practice of guanxi requires patience to gain trust but there is also an implicit understanding of someday reciprocating a certain favor but without making explicit demands (Gordon 45).
The Western approach to doing business is vastly different from the Eastern way of doing it. In particular, the Oriental or Chinese way of doing business is quite serendipitous or circular and rarely or never very direct. This is because another cultural concept that is lost to most foreigners is the value of “face” in Chinese society and political circles. The face is the very distinct concept of preserving the public image or persona such that a businessman in China will never put the other party in a position of losing face or the sufferance of humiliation or a public embarrassment. Most East Asian also value “face” such as the Japanese and the Korean people who are in many ways influenced by Chinese culture, especially its Confucian values.
“Chinglish” is a big success because it resonates with audiences worldwide. Whether a person who is watching the play is an American, a Chinese, an Asian-American, a Chinese-American or of whatever race or color, the message and the medium is the same. This is due to the increasing globalization of the world due to trade, technology (Internet), and movement of people, goods, services, funds, and ideas across a border-less world from the neo-liberalist economic principles of deregulation and liberalization. The play itself is very authentic due to the efforts made by playwright Hwang, its director Leigh Silverman, and the play’s producers in traveling to China to feel firsthand what it is like to be in the midst of an economic boom. Their party visited the fictional setting of “Chinglish” in the ancient and previously backward provincial city of Guiyang, the capital of China’s poorest province of Guizhou (Smith para. 3).
Although there are many prominent Asian-American writers, David Henry Hwang distinguished himself in “Chinglish” because he had the advantage of an early start in his writing career. He was “first out of the gate” so to speak and he had the unique luck of having the mixed ancestry that gave him the precious perspective and ability to depict certain stereotypes but insights on how to demolish these stereotype images with a definite finesse and humor. In the interview he granted to journal editor Stephen Marino, he appeared demure about claims to being of the same stature as the great Arthur Miller but he certainly comes close.
The play “Chinglish” can be considered as a welcome addition to the global effort to promote better cultural understanding. David Henry Hwang showed the complexities of being an Asian-American (in particular, of a Chinese-American) and the positive response of global audiences to his play further cements his reputation as one of America’s leading playwrights today. America and China, as the two leading superpowers, are deeply interested in each other but unfortunately knows very little about the other side, as observed by Hwang himself. His play helps dispel the clouds of anxiety and opacity to promote transparency in human, social, and even geo-political relations that advance greater understanding and world peace. Mr. David Henry Hwang admits the issues that consume him the most are those concerning East-West relations because he happens to straddle both worlds. He is now working on a new project tentatively titled “Kung Fu” whose theme is the same as most of his other plays where his characters often portray themselves with conflicted identities (Boles 35).