Chinglish ─ A Comedy by David Henry Hwang

英語喜劇 《中式英文》

Description

Chinglish is a farcical comedy by contemporary American Chinese dramatist David Henry Hwang about an Ohio businessman named Daniel who falls into the cultural translation trap of mutual misunderstanding with his hosts in China. Desperate to launch a new enterprise away from the US, Daniel arrives in the bustling Chinese province of Guizhou hoping to score a lucrative contract for his family’s sign-making firm. He soon realizes that the complexities of the venture far outweigh the expected differences in language, customs and manners, which calls into question for him and for the audience even the most basic assumptions about the universal nature of human conduct. Hwang says of the protagonist in his latest play “There are only three things standing in his way: He can't speak the language. He can't learn the customs. And he's falling in love with the one woman he absolutely can't have. The US and China are at a critical moment in history—each nation is deeply interested in, but knows very little about the other. During one visit to China, I toured a new arts center where everything was first-rate—except for the ridiculously translated English signs. It was at that moment I thought of writing this play.” The play opened in Chicago in 2011 and transferred to Broadway in New York in 2012. It featured in the Hong Kong Arts Festival in 2013, and has become one of Hwang's most popular plays.