Charles Wu

Charles Q. Wu was born and raised in Shanghai, China, and studied and taught at Beijing Foreign Languages Institute.  He left China in 1980 to pursue a Ph.D. at Columbia University in English literature with a specialty in romantic English poetry.  His dissertation explored a Taoist reading of William Wordsworth.

Dr. Wu is Professor Emeritus of Chinese and Humanities at Reed College, where he taught from 1988-2002.  He has published a translation of a contemporary Chinese play in Reading the Right Text: An Anthology of Contemporary Chinese Drama (University of Hawaii Press, 2003) and a revised translation of the play Thunderstorm for another anthology of modern Chinese drama to be published by Columbia University Press in 2010. He also served as a cultural advisor on the board of the Portland Classical Chinese Garden. Dr. Wu currently lives with his wife Diane Ma in Vacaville, CA.

Audio Excerpt

As an intellectual in Maoist China, Charles Wu was placed under solitary confinement. While there, Professor Wu wondered to himself, “Maybe it was people like us [Mao] had in mind to clean up all that was considered old and reactionary.” Those thoughts led Professor Wu to think of Shakespeare’s   Sonnet 29, which he transcribed in English in his diary. Here, Professor Wu reads Sonnet 29.

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Read on for interview excerpts

Interview Excerpts

PUTTING SHAKESPEARE IN DIFFERENT CULTURAL CONTEXTS

CHARLES WU: When I got to New York, you know, to do my graduate program at Columbia, there was a—an exhibition on Shakespeare, basically about different editions, you know, of Shakespeare. I went and looked at every item, you know, close—as closely as possible. Because Shakespeare was my major author in my graduate program. Among other things, you know.

And I was looking at the exhibits, one at a time, you know, carefully, and I was aware there was a—a gentleman following me. I think he was getting on in years. You know, gray-haired. And at a certain point we both stopped and he came up and asked me, you know, “Excuse me, is Shakespeare known in Japan?”

And I—I kind of smiled to myself and I said, “I don’t know about Japan, but as far as China goes, he’s very well-known.” And I didn’t tell him how much, you know, I, personally, know about Shakespeare and how other Chinese might know about him. But I—I—to this day I remember this, you know, chance encounter about how people are curious, or if I may use the word “ignorant”, you know, about what may be going on, you know, in Japan or China, as far as Shakespeare goes.

So, I—I’m not hinting at anything but it means, you know, Shakespeare needs to be put in different cultural contexts, not just in his native arena.

PERFORMING UNDER MAO

CHARLES WU: After The Importance of Being Earnest we were looking for next play. We were becoming more and more ambitious. And we said let’s do Shakespeare. And we had some discussion, you know, and I think we had a couple of other choices. One was Twelfth Night and the other was Merchant of Venice. You know, these were more or less—you know, comparatively speaking, lightweight, you know, plays by Shakespeare we could try our hands on.

But somehow—I don’t remember why—we thought we would do Othello. Okay, you either don’t do anything or you go the whole length. So, okay, we’ll do Othello. Say, and I’ll be Othello and my partner would be Desdemona. So it took us, you know, a long time to rehearse and learn our parts and so forth.

And finally we were almost ready but the political wind was not blowing the right direction, you know. Mao was going to clamp down on the kind of activity we had been engaged in, you know; considered it kind of bourgeois.

So that was already 1964 and our professor, who was one of the co-directors of this, you know, performance said, “I guess we better, you know, lay low. This is not the time to carry on. Maybe we’ll just—to satisfy ourselves—we will give a public dress rehearsal, not call it, you know, an official performance. So—and that will be it.”

So we did a full-length, you know, dress rehearsal to the English department, which had, you know, up to five hundred students, at least, plus faculty. And plus students of English from other universities in Beijing. So it was a great show and a kind of a good fulfillment for us, who had been engaging in this for such a long time.