Bernard Shaw’s Bridges to Chinese Culture

'Kay Li's study of Bernard Shaw's relationship with a number of leading Chinese figures and the assimilation of his plays into Chinese culture is a significant addition to her important previous work on Shaw and China. This new book expertly situates Shaw in wide-ranging spheres of Chinese culture, while also demonstrating the complexities of cross-cultural literary relations. It is a major contribution not just to Shaw studies but to interdisciplinary approaches to cultural dialogue.' - L.W. Conolly, Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, Emeritus Professor of English, Trent University, Ontario, Canada and Honorary Fellow, Robinson College, University of Cambridge, UK
This book explores the cultural bridges connecting George Bernard Shaw and his contemporaries, such as Charles Dickens and Arthur Miller, to China. Analyzing readings, adaptations, and connections of Shaw in China through the lens of Chinese culture, Li details the negotiations between the focused and culturally specific standpoints of eastern and western culture while also investigating the simultaneously diffused, multi-focal, and comprehensive perspectives that create strategic moments that favor cross-cultural readings.
With sources ranging from Shaw's connections with his contemporaries in China to contemporary Chinese films and interpretations of Shaw in the digital space, Li relates the global impact of not only what Chinese lenses can reveal about Shaw's world, but how intercultural and interdisciplinary readings can shed new light on familiar and obscure works alike.