The Chinese Lady holds up an unflinching mirror – and dares us to look past it

In 1834, 14-year-old Afong Moy was brought from China to New York by American merchants. They had made a deal with her father to display her in their museum for a period of two years. Meant to be gaped at by paying Americans, “The Chinese Lady” was a cultural curiosity and a capitalist commodity. 

When we enter the Studio Theatre at Crow’s Theatre to watch Lloyd Suh’s play The Chinese Lady  — a production of Studio 180 Theatre and fu-GEN Asian Canadian Theatre Company in association with Crow’s Theatre — Afong Moy (or more precisely, actor Rosie Simon playing the role of Afong Moy) is already on display, waiting patiently for show time. By taking our seats, we, too, become sideshow gawkers — at a performance of a performance of Chinese-ness that the original Afong Moy would have given.  

When the play begins, she thanks us for coming to see her, tells us it is 1834, and conjures for us the room in the museum in which she is being exhibited. Freshly arrived, she speaks no English, but is optimistic about the future and hopes to be a vehicle for cultural exchange. She anticipates returning to China after the contracted two years in New York. 

We learn how — with the aid of Atung (John Ng), a fellow Chinese expatriate, who collects the audience fees and brings her various props —  she performs her Chinese-ness at scheduled intervals. She eats with chopsticks, brews and drinks tea, and walks – more minces – on her bound feet. There is humour in this sad theatre: some biting laughs at the expense of those original New York oglers  . . . and ourselves.  

Under Marjorie Chan’s skilled direction, the play unfolds as a rhythmic cadence of repetition-with-difference that we experience through a stubbornly external, exoticizing gaze that we are never allowed to forget. In episodic time jumps over the next 90 minutes, the captivating Simon-as-Afong Moy will repeatedly thank us for coming, situate us in each new year and place, and disclose what Suh has imagined to be her evolving thoughts and experiences. But as the script and the performers smilingly remind us, this is not a biographical representation of the real Afong Moy. We do not have access to her real thoughts and experiences because they were outside the narrow scope of interest of the white spectator accounts of her “performances”.

It’s not a spoiler to say that Afong Moy does not return to China after the contracted two years. As she performs for ogling audiences through the decades, she acquires some English, some firsthand experience with American history, and an increasingly critical perspective on its mythology. And as she stays, Suh has imagined for her – and the magnetic Simon grippingly realizes — a growing restless, un-performative groping after agency and self-determination. 

Simon navigates Suh’s complex and layered script with energy and aplomb. On display for the play’s entire runtime, she smiles, looks us in the eyes, and speaks animatedly. Poised, pleasant and cool, she conjures untapped warmth, blunted aspiration and hidden depths. Ng’s Atung, the foil with whom she bickers like a marriage partner, is the king of the sidebar comment. He’s not the explicit focus of our gaze: he’s “irrelevant”, as Afong Moy will tell us – and that irrelevance affords him the ironic security of servitude and the twin luxuries of indirect speech and the ability to be overlooked. 

The play leads to a fascinating climactic moment of emotional transubstantiation, when the lens widens past the limits of Afong Moy’s imagined biography, and we confront our gaze directly.

The moment is thought-provoking, startling, and sincere. But is it profound . . . or perfunctory? And once we decide . . . once we exit the theatre . . . what will we do about it?

After 189 years and 90 minutes of gawking, it’s a question every paying onlooker needs to reckon with. 

The Chinese Lady is on stage at Crow’s Theatre until May 21, 2023. Reserve tickets on crowstheatre.com.

Audience Advisory: This play touches on mature themes of racism and trauma that may be challenging for some audiences, including the demonstration and mentions of historical anti-Asian racism; mentions of historical anti-Asian mass violence; and suggestions of non-consensual touch.

© Scott Sneddon, SesayArts Magazine, 2023