Curse of Golden Flowers and Thunderstorm

Author: caren_zuo Date: 2006-12-21 03:38

The experience of the Curse of Golden Flowers by Zhang Yimou let me review the dialogue of Thunderstorm by Cao Yu. Zhang Yimou used this drama and adapted it into a tragedy of royal court. Anyway, no one would say he is not a good story-teller despite there is a funny and bizarre atmosphere when players' dialogue filled with tones more like a drama than of a movie. I would like to introduce more about the drama.

Thunderstorm is a tragedy involving complicated blood relationships and numerous inevitable tragic coincidences. It is a dramatic feat with profound connotations and heart-stirring artistry. As the chairman of the board of directors of a modern coal-mining company, Zhou Puyuan, a male character in the play was cold-blooded, selfish and hypocritical, he was a also dictator in his home. The story unfolded around him.

Thirty years earlier, Zhou Puyuan fell in love with a maidservant Shiping who laid birth two sons for him. In order to marry a woman from a big He thought she must have drowned herself in a river. Zhou thought Shiping was drowning herself. However, she was saved and married Lu Gui, a lower-rank manservant. By a quirk of fate, thirty years later, Lu Gui worked at the Zhou's as a servant. Furthermore, his daughter Sifeng also became a maid of the Zhou's just as her mother had been three decades ago. Sifeng fell in love with Zhou Ping (the eldest son of Zhou's) and was pregnant. Another woman, Fanyi who who had kept a wrong love relationship with Zhouping, was envious of their love. Shiping, also Zhouping’s mother, came to pick Sifeng up and arrived at the Zhou's. She was shocked when she met Zhuou Puyuan again and found that her another daughter Sifeng fall in love with her brother.

As soon as the cloud over the blood relationships was cleared, a terrible tragedy occurred – Sifeng was electrocuted and Zhou Chong, the youngest son of Zhou's died the same way in trying to save her; Zhou Ping shot himself with a pistol and Fangyi went mad. Shiping was dumbfounded in the face of all these tragic scenes. As the arch- criminal for all these tragic and sinful events, Zhou Puyuan was still there at the end of the play to swallow all these dismal results.

Cao Yu once said that Fanyi was the stormiest character in the play. She was eccentric and capricious all along - sometimes calm and sometimes wild. In addition, her freak love and strong lust drive reminded the audience of a sudden and violent thunderstorm.

As Zhou Puyuan's second wife, she wanted very much to hold her own life. Despite a boring, apathetic, lonely and gloomy family life, a flame of love was still burning at the bottom of her heart. Because of her love for Zhou Ping, she was "neither like a mother as a mother nor like a sweetheart as a sweetheart." Her pursuit for dreamy happiness rendered destruction to herself and others.

About Caoyu:Cao Yu, a renowned modern Chinese dramatist who is dubbed as the Shakespeare of China, was born into a declining bureaucrat family in Tianjin. His father once served as President Li Yuanhong's secretary. Later he lost his job and stayed at home, depressed with no opportunity to achieve his ambitions. Cao Yu's mother died when he was young. As he grew up in a depressing environment, he developed an introverted and melancholy character.