Chinese Student Association to perform ‘The Butterfly Lovers’

Tears fall down Yingtai Zhu’s cheeks as she leans toward the grave of her beloved Liang. Played by second-year business economics student Xiaoyi Chen, Zhu is a young Chinese girl fighting for her love in an ancient feudal society.

The Chinese Student Association will hold their annual Heritage Night at Schoenberg Hall Saturday. This year, they will perform a traditional Chinese folktale, “The Butterfly Lovers.”

“The Butterfly Lovers” is a well-known Chinese love tragedy written during the Eastern Jin Dynasty about Yingtai Zhu, a young girl bravely pursuing love in a feudal society. She falls in love with Shanbo Liang, a poor student, while attending school disguised as a boy. However, her parents arrange a marriage for her with a rich but vicious man. The young couple is separated by force and pressures from societal norms.

Yanzhe Liu, a third-year computer science student and the producer of “The Butterfly Lovers,” said unlike previous years’ productions that focused more on the Chinese society as a whole, this show focused more on the emotional relationship between characters.

Chen said she admires Zhu’s courage to stand up and fight feudal society’s oppression of freedom and love.

Chen said the audition process helped familiarize her with the cast members and other roles in the production.

“They provided the scripts for us, asked us to read out the scripts and interact with other cast members,” Chen said. “They asked me to try out several roles: Zhu, another older woman figure and a lesbian girl.”

Dingxin Chen, a fourth-year business economics student and the acting director of “The Butterfly Lovers,” said the show can be interpreted as an acceptance of homosexuality.

“Liang fell in love with Zhu when she was disguised as a boy,” Dingxin Chen said. “Homosexuality was a taboo topic for traditional Chinese society, but ‘Butterfly Lovers’ shows that all love is equal.”

Chen said he added a new character, Wangchun, a young man who is in love with the male lead character, to emphasize the equality of love.

Liu said Chinese Student Association members spent a year preparing for Heritage Night. The student group held multiple auditions during fall quarter and focused on rehearsals during winter and spring quarters.

“We started planning and reserving a venue right after Heritage Night last year in April,” Liu said. “In the summer, we decided the story of our show and we adapted modern elements into the script to make the show relatable.”

Liu said he was part of the Heritage Night cast last year, and he would sometimes wonder how things would be different had he been the director. Liu said filling the role of producer has been the best decision he has made in college.

Liu said the primary difficulty he faced as the producer was getting enough funding. The Chinese Student Association received approximately half of the funding through UCLA, and found sponsorship and held fundraising events to fund for the rest.

“It is a stressful process and you just have to plan ahead of time,” Liu said. “Sometimes we need to make a compromise (like attending other discussions) to fulfill our commitment.”

Liu said the story is quite similar to “Romeo and Juliet,” and the student audience will have no difficulty understanding the theme.

“The theme this year is love,” Liu said. “Hopefully the audience will have a better understanding of what love is to the ancient Chinese people after the show.”