Lloyd Suh’s The Chinese Lady is a disturbing portrait of race relations, particularly between Asians and Caucasians, in past and present America. The play opens with a present-day Afong Moy, an ageless Chinese woman, seated in a make-shift room. The furniture, rugs and tapestries are all generically “Oriental,” as is Afong’s attire, highlighting the superficial understanding Americans had and still have of Asian culture. Everything in this impractical room, including Afong herself, faces the audience, on display, functioning solely for everyone’s viewing pleasure.
After a brief introduction by Afong, the curtains close and we are transported back to where it all began. It is 1842 and Afong is a 14 year-old girl, freshly imported from China. Contracted to be on display for the American public for what she believes will be two years, Afong’s role is to simply live– eating, reading and walking–in hopes of showing the American public that Chinese people are no different than them. Her sentiments are innocent and naively hopeful, and this is endearing to an American audience that already knows how this story will end.
Throughout the play, the curtain repeatedly closes and reopens, signaling the passage of time. We witness Afong’s resolve gradually erode as she slowly accepts her fate. Afong’s descent into despair is masterfully portrayed by Keiko Agena, as each one of her dreams–seeing her family again, bridging the cultural divide, and eventually escaping her current trappings–fade into black. In perhaps the most heart-wrenching moment of the play, Afong is sold to the Ringling Brothers Circus. It is a harsh realization that, to many Americans, Asian culture is merely a commodity to be bought and sold, consumed and discarded.
In the final scene we see Afong in the present-day. She sits in the same unchanging room. Not all prison cells have steel bars after all. We understand that this Afong, with her neon Converse All-Stars, is not the same person we had met from 1842 but instead, a current representation of Asian people in America. Seeing American Asians in 2024, still being objectified and commodified, still being held captive under constant scrutiny, challenges our understanding of what freedom truly is and makes us wonder who actually gets to experience it.
