Madame Butterfly: A Brief Summary Of Song Liling

This play is a story between a French diplomat Rene Gallimard and a Chinese Peking opera singer Song Liling. In the year 1960, the French diplomat Rene Gallimard met Song Liling in a German ambassador’s house for the first time. With his fascination with Madame Butterfly, Gallimard fell in love with Song at the first sight, because he believed that Song was his submissive Madame butterfly. Days later, Gallimard was invited to Song’s apartment and began a love affair with Song. During this period, Gallimard fall into a fantasy which he thought he was Pinkerton, the naval officer in Madame Butterfly, and Song was his butterfly, the spoony Japanese woman Cio-Cio-San in Madame Butterfly. However, Song, as a Peking opera singer, has another identity—a Chinese spy. Song was appointed to obtain diplomatic secrets from Gallimard and pass them to a Maoist cadre—Comrade Chin. After their being forced to separate on account of the breakout of China’s Cultural Revolution, Song was appointed to find Gallimard in Paris to carry out the task again in 1970. They lived together for the following fifteen years, during which Song continued to pass some secret government documents that got from Gallimard to the Chinese embassy. In the year 1986, they were accused of espionage and
Butterfly aroused wide attention in the society. With this play, David Henry Hwang became the first and the only Asia-American playwright who got the Tony Award. During these 30 years, the studies of M. Butterfly vary a lot. Some experts highly praise it and regard it as a great success of deconstruction of the Madame Butterfly. They think that this play breaks the Orientalism and the Western mythology of Madame Butterfly. However, some other critics disagree with it and view it as the strengthening of Orientalism. They think that it not only doesn’t totally break Orientalist’s stereotypes towards the Eastern image, but also deepen the stereotypes and step into the Orientalism