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From China to the Big Top: Chinese Acrobats and the Politics of Aesthetic Labor, 1950–2010

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 April 2016

Tracy Y. Zhang
Tracy Y. Zhang*
Affiliation:
Queen's University
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Abstract

Since the mid-1980s, North American circus shows have imported jaw-dropping acrobatic acts from the People's Republic of China. This article examines the shifting politics of body and labor that facilitate the international recruitment of Chinese acrobats. Drawing on oral history interviews and archival materials, this study analyzes how a socialist labor hierarchy and ideas of ownership shape acrobats’ relationships with the Chinese state. Since the 1980s, these politics of labor and body have shifted in accordance with the accelerated commercialization of acrobatics, facilitating the international export of acrobats’ labor. This historical investigation sheds light on an overlooked chapter in the history of temporary foreign workers.

Type
Precarious Labor in Global Perspectives
Information
International Labor and Working-Class History , Volume 89: Precarious Labor in Global Perspectives , Spring 2016 , pp. 40 - 63
Copyright
Copyright © International Labor and Working-Class History, Inc. 2016 

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References

NOTES

1. In Chinese media, Wang Junru is frequently portrayed as “a girl with a Chinese-style smile.” See, for example, “Talent Wang Junru Makes a Dash towards the Final Race; the Chinese-style Smile Lightens the Dream,” in the popular Sohu Entertainment News. The article is available online: http://yule.sohu.com/20130126/n364687607.shtml (accessed January 11, 2016). The Chinese online encyclopedia, http://www.baike.com, also has an entry for Wang Junru, which briefly describes her work experience at the Cirque du Soleil: http://www.baike.com/wiki/%E7%8E%8B%E5%90%9B%E5%A6%82 (accessed January 11, 2016).

2. In winter 2014, the Cirque's casting director told me that the proportion of Chinese artists has decreased to ten percent.

3. The literature on the histories of “guest workers” is vast. See, for example, Hahamovitch, Cindy, “Creating Perfect Immigrants: Guestworkers of the World in Historical Perspective I,” Labor History 44 (2003): 69–94 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For recent debates on the rights of “guest workers,” see Ruhs, Martin and Martin, Philip, “Numbers vs. Rights: Trade-Offs and Guest Worker Programs,” International Migration Review 42 (2008): 249–65CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4. For the literature on issues of labor/work in postindustrial economies, I consulted Arne L. Kalleberg, Good Jobs, Bad Jobs: The Rise of Polarized and Precarious Employment Systems in the United States, 1970s to 2000s (New York, 2011), 14–15, 57–58; and Carol Wolkowitz et al., eds., Body/Sex/Work: Intimate, Embodied and Sexualized Labour (New York, 2013), 12–15.

5. The Canadian policy for hiring circus performers is available on this website: http://www.esdc.gc.ca/eng/jobs/foreign_workers/higher_skilled/film/index.shtml (accessed January 11, 2016).

6. The information on the US policy for foreign cultural worker visa is available on this website: http://www.uscis.gov/working-united-states/temporary-workers/p-1b-member-internationally-recognized-entertainment-group/p-1b-member-internationally-recognized-entertainment-group (accessed January 11, 2016).

7. Since the mid-1990s, the Cirque recruited some Chinese professional gymnasts for trampoline or high bar numbers. Gymnasts were not subject to acrobatic troupes, and they could sign contracts directly with the Cirque. Under this circumstance, Chinese gymnasts can negotiate a higher salary.

8. Geraldine Pratt and Victoria Rosner, The Global and the Intimate: Feminism in our Time (New York, 2012), 4; Nancy K. Miller, Getting Personal: Feminist Occasions and Other Autobiographical Acts (New York and London, 1991).

9. This statistic was collected in 1997 by the China Acrobatic Association and published in Wang Feng et al., The Contemporary Chinese Acrobatics (Beijing, 1997), 430.

10. Arlie Russell Hochschild, The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling (Berkeley, 1983).

11. Witz, Anne, Warhurst, Chris, and Nickson, Dennis, “The Labour of Aesthetics and the Aesthetics of Organization,” Organization 20 (2003): 33–54 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Entwistle, Joanne and Wissinger, Elizabeth, “Keeping up Appearances: Aesthetic Labour in the Fashion Modelling Industries of London and New York,” The Sociological Review 54 (2006): 774–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Dean, Deborah, “Recruiting a Self: Women Performers and Aesthetic Labour,” Work, Employment & Society 19 (2005): 761–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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16. Fu Qifeng and Fu Tenglong, The History of Chinese Acrobatics (Shanghai, 2005).

17. Mark Elvin, Changing Stories in the Chinese World (Stanford, 1997), 79–81.

18. Richard Curt Kraus, The Party and the Arty in China: The New Politics of Culture (Lanham, MD, 2004).

19. Wang et al., The Contemporary Chinese Acrobatics, 430–34. This statistics does not take into account small troupes organized by quasi-government groups, such as factory unions.

20. Paul Clark, The Chinese Cultural Revolution: A History (New York, 2008), 13.

21. Wang et al., The Contemporary Chinese Acrobatics, 73.

22. Tracy Y. Zhang, “Bending the Body for China: The Uses of Acrobatics in Sino-US Diplomacy during the Cold War,” International Journal of Cultural Policy (published online on October 3, 2014) http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10286632.2014.956665#.VHpTxodetMY (accessed January 11, 2016).

23. Wang et al., The Contemporary Chinese Acrobatics, 7.

24. Zhang, Bending the Body, 10–13.

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27. Susan Brownell, Training the Body for China: Sports in the Moral Order of the People's Republic (Chicago, 1995), 57.

28. He Zhen, The Strategies of Era: The Inspirations that “Era” Offers to China's Cultural Industries (Shanghai, 2009), 190–93; Xiaoming, Zhang, “From Institution to Industry: Reforms in Cultural Institutions in China,” International Journal of Cultural Studies 9 (2006): 297–306 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

29. Kraus, The Party and the Arty in China, 64–65.

30. Wang Feng et al., The History of Shanghai Acrobatic Troupe, 1951–1990 (Shanghai, 1991), 100.

31. Ibid., 80.

32. Before 1980, commercial tours were organized sporadically as a diplomatic strategy. Song Tianyi, A Brief History of Performing Arts Exchange between China and Foreign Countries (Beijing, 1994), 136.

33. Zhao Shaohua, ed., Golden Memories: The Oral Accounts of Early Cultural Exchange Activities in New China (Beijing, 2013).

34. From the mid-to-late 1980s, the Shanghai troupe was allowed to sign contracts directly with overseas companies. However, the CPAA was involved again in the 1990s.

35. Kenneth Feld, “Kenneth Feld and His International World of Circus,” Souvenir Program & Magazine, 116th ed. (Ringling Brothers Barnum & Bailey Combined Shows, 1987).

36. Cogan, Thomas J., “Western Images of Asia: Fu Manchu and the Yellow Peril,” Waseda Studies in Social Science 3 (2002): 37–8Google Scholar. For more on the cultural construction of Fu Manchu and the yellow peril, see Jenny Clegg, Fu Manchu and the Yellow Peril: The Making of a Racist Myth (Trentham, 1994).

37. Wang et al., The Contemporary Chinese Acrobatics, 401–30.

38. Ibid.

39. Wang et al., The History of Shanghai Acrobatic Troupe, 112.

40. Li Ling, a woman acrobat who performed for the Ringling in 1998–1999, told me her payment was thirty dollars per day.

41. Currently, the household registration system regulates people's access to education, employment, medical care, social insurance, property rights, and more.

42. For discussion on China's soft power policy, see Weihong, Zhang “China's Cultural Future: From Soft Power to Comprehensive Power,” International Journal of Cultural Policy 16 (2010): 383–402 Google Scholar.

43. For more on soft power and Chinese acrobatics, see Chen Runha, ed., The Forum of the Acrobatic Industry: The Collections of Articles from the Beijing Forum (Beijing, 2009).

44. These five acrobats all had work experiences at the Cirque.