Defined by its distinct performance style, stage practices, and regional and dialect based identities, Cantonese opera originated as a traditional art form performed by itinerant companies in temple courtyards and rural market fairs.

In the early 1900s, however, Cantonese opera began to capture mass audiences in the commercial theaters of Hong Kong and Guangzhou—a transformation that changed it forever. Wing Chung Ng charts Cantonese opera's confrontations with state power, nationalist discourses, and its challenge to the ascendancy of Peking opera as the country's preeminent "national theatre." Mining vivid oral histories and heretofore untapped archival sources, Ng relates how Cantonese opera evolved from a fundamentally rural tradition into urbanized entertainment distinguished by a reliance on capitalization and celebrity performers. He also expands his analysis to the transnational level, showing how waves of Chinese emigration to Southeast Asia and North America further re-shaped Cantonese opera into a vibrant part of the ethnic Chinese social life and cultural landscape in the many corners of a sprawling diaspora.
| Cover Title Contents List of Illustrations Acknowledgments Note on Romanization Introduction Part I: Formation of Cantonese Opera in South China Chapter One: Itinerant Actors and Red Boats in the Pearl River Delta Chater Two: Urbanization of Cantonese Opera Chapter Three: Urban Theater and Its Modern Crisis Part II: Popular Theater and the State Chapter Four: The Cultural Politics of Theater Reform Chapter Five: The State, Public Order, and Local Theater in South China Part III: Local Theater, Transnational Arena Chapter Six: Popular Theater in the Diaspora Chapter Seven: Theater as Transnational Business Chapter Eight: Theater and the Immigrant Public Conclusion List of Characters Notes Bibliography Index | "A distinctive new contribution to our understanding not only of Cantonese opera itself but of the social conditions impacting Chinese theater more widely in the first half of the twentieth century... Ng's account is distinctive in coverage, and he makes a clear demonstration of the rich potential source materials available to the researcher of China's manifold opera traditions and its recent history. His focus on Cantonese opera in transnational perspective is a particularly timely extension of existing knowledge, one that encourages us to take seriously the longer history of the Chinese arts on a global level."—China Review International

"Ng's well-researched study addresses the rise in popularity of Cantonese opera in the early 20th century, tracing its origins in popular rural entertainment, the influence on it of Peking Opera, and its subsequent growth among the urban population. In showing the sociopolitical discourses that complicated this trajectory, Ng masterfully incorporates oral histories to reveal how the genre impacted not only the artistic, cultural, and ethnic spheres, but also the political and economic aspects of Cantonese society. . . . Ng writes in an engaging style, and he includes a comprehensive bibliography and footnotes. Recommended."—Choice

"A comprehensive and colorful picture of the birth and growth of what we know as Cantonese opera today. I applaud his achievement."—Daphne Lei, author of Alternative Chinese Opera in the Age of Globalization: Performing Zero
|Born and raised in Hong Kong, Wing Chung Ng is a professor of history at the University of Texas at San Antonio and author of The Chinese in Vancouver, 1945-80: The Pursuit of Identity and Power.