‘The Chinese Lady’ takes a hard but often-funny look at racism across the years

Denver Center production of Lloyd Suh’s play convinces us little has changed since the early days of our country

The Chinese Lady on its face is a relatively simple story about the first female Chinese immigrant to the U.S. Afong Moy is a young teen from Guangzhou, only 14 years old in 1834 when her father sells her into the service of a couple of traders, Nathaniel and Frederick Carne.

Based on a true story, Lloyd Suh’s 2018 play details Moy’s early years in New York, where the Carne brothers set her up as a sideshow of sorts to help sell the furniture and other goods they’re importing from China. For year after year — long past the initial two years of servitude — she sits in an “exotic” chair surrounded by exotic Chinese furnishings and paintings and demonstrates how to eat with chopsticks while audiences paying a quarter a pop gawk at her eyes, her clothing and her tiny, bound feet.

Historically, there’s not a ton of information about Moy hersefl, but in the play she’s portrayed by Narea Kang as a chirpy, highly opinionated girl who initially embraces her position as an emissary of sorts to let Americans know more about China and its people.

The Chinese Lady is unexpectedly funny for much of the play, with Kang rambling on about whatever crosses her mind, especially the misconceptions Americans have about her. Her foil is translator Atung (Sky Smith), a cynical older man who’s been in the U.S. for some time and speaks both languages well. It’s clear from the start that Atung takes a dim view of how Moy is being treated, but there are no heroics here as he simply listens to her babble and loosely translates what she says for several decades.

While action is in limited supply in The Chinese Lady, the story spun by Moy is that of a country still coming to terms with its identity. How the Americans in the mid-19^th century view her, the questions they ask, the way they treat her is emblematic of just about everything we know about the ways in which non-whites were viewed. Moy is comfortable if somewhat bored for year after year, but in the end is chewed up and spit out not only due to her age but by a populace growing increasingly uncomfortable with the number of Chinese in its midst.

Sky Smith as Atung | Photo by Adams VisCom

As Moy grows into middle age and beyond, she grows more disgusted by this treatment — particularly when the Chinese Exclusion Act is signed into law in 1882. At this point, much of the comedy seeps out of the show and the script takes a sharp turn into the diminishment of Moy as an attraction that mirrors the plight of the Chinese in the U.S.

It’s a tough story, and I’m not completely sold on how Suh chose to present so much of this history through the eyes of one woman. But Kang and Smith are wonderful together, going back and forth on their importance and relevance to one another as they bicker their way through their lives trying to make sense of the little box they’ve been put in. When they’re finally separated, Atung in particular looks stunned and saddened, but ultimately the two leave so much unsaid that it’s hard to know exactly what they may have meant to one another. If Hollywood were to get ahold of this, no doubt there would be plenty of sexual tension and, who knows, maybe even a wedding. But that’s not the world of this play, where despite her best efforts, Americans at the time decided the Chinese were sub-human and subjected them to all manner of horror as recounted by Moy.

Helpless and, in the end, alone, the pair don’t offer much hope for cross-cultural understanding. But by allowing Moy to age all the way up to current day, commenting on current events as well, Suh seems to suggest that all is not lost. Sueko’s inspired decision to have them appear as themselves at the top and end of the play allows Kang and Smith to make a connection with the audience — and demand to be seen.

It’s powerful stuff in a play that’s as intriguing to contemplate on the way home as it was on stage.