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Chinglish - a New Broadway show by the award winningplaywright David Henry Hwang

Henry Hwang of "M.Butterfly" fame just had hisnew comedy play "Chinglish" opened on broadway to very good reviews."Chinglish" is of course the word used to describe the Chineseattempt to speak  and use broken Englishand the often comical results. I have previously written about the problems of"Language and Translation" in a series of blog articles. Hwang's playis about an American businessman attempting to do business in the interior ofChina without the benefit of Chinese cultural and language knowledge.Conversely, the few persons who in remote Chinese cities have some rudimentaryknowledge of English and serve as translators can be difficult to function anddeal with. The resultant comical interactions among these participants arehilarious. More importantly, I was very impressed with Hwang's appreciation ofthe current Chinese  environment (not thestandard fare one reads in superficial western articles about Beijing orShanghai in most print media). However, I suspect that some of the subtle humorthat require deep bi-cultural understanding may be lost on the average Americanaudience. But there are enough universal comical situations and clever dialogthat may sustain a long successful run of the play on Broadway.

I feel fortunate to be able to enjoy the play last nightin NYC and meet the author afterwards to personally congratulate him on hisperceptive study of Chinese-American personal interactions. All ChineseAmericans will love this show.

I don't know if the play will ever get performed in China.Although in my opinion there are nothing offensive or political in it'sdialogs, authorities may nevertheless consider some of the comical situationsto be "insulting" (actually there are equal amount of"insulting" situations for America and Americans in the play. ButAmericans are used to be made fun of and can take good natured criticisms instride).