Cao Yu's The Thunderstorm - Triceratops Home

Western classics, as well as the modern playwrights such as O'Neill and Ibsen, left its
mark on the up-and-coming playwrights of the 1930s, including Cao Yu.
Cao Yu wrote The Thunderstorm while in his final year of study at Qinghua
University in Beijing, and if legend is to be believed, he wrote it in one day's time. While
he was an actor and a translator, producing a translation of Romeo and Juliet during his
time at college, The Thunderstorm is his first original work. It is typical of the new
Chinese drama in that its characters are everyday people rather than the traditional opera
archetypes. The main characters can be divided into two halves: a businessman named
Zhou Puyuan, his wife Fanyi, and his sons Ping and Chong; and Puyuan's abandoned
first wife Lii Shiping, her husband Gui, her son Dahai, and her daughter Sifeng, who
works as a maid in the Zhou' s house. Over the course of the play, it is revealed that Dahai
is Puyuan's son, although neither of them know it, and is a labor agitator in Puyuan's
mine. Zhou Ping is also unaware that he is actually Shiping's son. The play opens with
Ping in an established relationship with Sifeng, and during the first act it is revealed that
he was also in an unwilling sexual relationship with his stepmother Fanyi. This is a
common plot of Chinese drama, especially those critical of the traditional family
structure. Zhou Chong is also in love with Sifeng, although this love is unrequited. At the
climax of the play, all the relationships are revealed, to the dismay of everyone involved.
Dahai and Ping kill each other offstage, Sifeng is unable to cope with the fact that she
was sleeping with her half-brother and runs outside into the aftermath of a thunderstorm,
electrocuting herself on a downed electrical wire. Chong tries to rescue her, but is killed
in the attempt. Fanyi and Shiping both go mad from the shock of the revelations and
losing all of their children within the span of five minutes. Zhou Puyuan, having set off