China Marches On: A Play in Three Acts

As in The Hanging on Union Square, Tsiang primarily critiques systems rather than individuals, whatever their nationality or race. Thus, despite Tsiang’s startling suggestion in his dedication to And China Has Hands that “sixty million Japanese” might die in a war between China and Japan, his real target is not Japanese people but rather Japanese imperialism. Just as individuals of different races join together to march against the inequities of the capitalist system practiced at a cafeteria, so must individuals of different nations join together to oppose imperialism. Tsiang’s last published work, the play China Marches On (1938), effectively dramatizes this point: national loyalty ought not to prevent people of different national origins from cooperating to challenge injustice. And, like all of Tsiang’s works, China Marches On strongly suggests that individual desire and happiness must be deferred and subordinated to the greater goal of worldwide revolution against the interlocking systems of both capitalism and imperialism. Also characteristic of his style, China Marches On combines thematic and formal elements from both Chinese and U.S. literary traditions to tell his story.