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In the United States, Chinese theatres were prosperous in the 1920s, creating a vibrant Cantonese opera culture in several major cities. They staged performances daily, featuring stellar singers and elaborate productions. As cultural migration, operas played significant roles in Chinese communities, from entertainment to ritual worship, and from public face to daily practices. This article argues that the cultural space constituted an important part of Chinese American collective memory. The theatre space was complicatedly shaped by a list of players including the trans-Pacific network of merchants and performers, legal brokers, US Immigration officers at the port and in Washington, DC, as well as enthusiastic audiences and the social milieu. The theatres were subjected to many constraints and limited by them. By studying this cultural memory in its complicated layers, the article also explores the ways in which Chinese theatres and opera performances provide an important imaginary space for second-generation Chinese Americans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cantonese opera is a regional Chinese operatic genre, which because of its flexible and adaptive nature can be performed in diverse venues. Street performances of Cantonese opera occur in parks, community plazas, open-air car parks, and indoor shopping malls, with audiences usually composed of people from the immediate neighborhood. These performances are smaller in scale than Cantonese opera being performed in theaters and are termed 街檔 (Jie Dang), or “street booth,” reflecting the circumstances of their staging. Like many other types of street music, Jie Dang has a long history in Hong Kong, where Cantonese is a dominant social dialect. In the last ten years, Jie Dang has secured a position on the list of District Free Entertainment Programmes provided by the Leisure and Cultural Services Department of the Government of the Hong Kong Special Administration Region. Observations of live performances, interviews with artists and professionals in Cantonese opera, and government reports document the phenomenon of Jie Dang from four perspectives: sociological context; performance practice; geographical context; and logistics. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]