Cao Yu's The Thunderstorm - Triceratops Home

with the goals of the May Fourth movement, the huaju movement, and the general
purpose shared by both: use what is good of the West to improve what is good of the
East.
The Thunderstorm in Translation
While Leiyu is somewhat well-known in China today, having been adapted into a
Bruce Lee movie in 1957 and used as the basis of the plot of Zhang Yimou's 2007 Curse
of the Golden Flower, its status in the West is sadly obscure, to the point where this thesis
may in fact be the only existing English translation of the prologue. There has been only
one commercial translation, published by the Foreign Language Press in Beijing in 1978
and translated by Wang Tso-liang and A. C. Barnes, and the only recorded English
language productions of The Thunderstorm occurred in 1986. This production probably
used either the Foreign Language Press translation or their own house translations, which
have disappeared if they existed in the first place. The most important thing to note is that
the Foreign Language Press translation does not include the prologue or the epilogue,
meaning that there is no easily accessible English translation of the play in its entirety. In
addition, the translation, while certainly good, has become slightly dated in its language.
The names of characters and places are all presented in the Wade-Giles format, which
was standard at the time but has since been replaced by the Pinyin romanization. The
translation is also slightly stilted, sounding at times quite unnatural. For example,
consider the following exchange between Fanyi and Zhou Chong:
FLP Translation: Andreas Translation:
Fanyi: You're reckoning without Fanyi: You're not afraid that your
your father—he may not father won't be pleased
approve. with you?