Immanuel Greene Greene 1Against the Current9-19-12AMDG

Digging to China

If you dig deep enough, you will get to China. This saying has several implica-

tions. One being the literal sense in which a group of people are actually blindly digging

straight down into the Earth and possibly ending up on the other side. But the more figu-

rative and more dramatic sense is the mystery of what is on the other side. Not literally

digging, but delving into the knowledge of the eastern culture. Just as China is seen to

be the other side of the world from The United States, the cultures correlate to be polar

opposites in the minds of many people. This opposite intrigues many people and

pushes a concept of the Eastern culture as being this mysterious, exotic, unknown cul-

ture needed to be explored. David Henry Hwang inquires his audiences with the ques-

tion of “What exactly is behind the desire to see the ‘exotic East’?” (DiGaetani 141). In

Hwang’s M. Butterfly the impulse behind the desire to see the ‘exotic East’ is the need

for mystery, and the need for a cultural opposite.

Even as far back as Jesus rising from the dead, people have always loved a

good mystery. Throughout M. Butterfly there is a continued desire to pursue a mystery,

thus beginning the excavation into the Eastern culture. Hwang tell us that Gallimard was

“not very good-looking...not handsome, nor brave, nor powerful” (Hwang 994, 996), so

when Song interacts with Gallimard for the first time he is shocked. Hwang even wrights

it into the stage direction. Hwang, in DiGaetani’s interview, comments on the mystery,

referring to Edward Said’s term of “orientalism”. He describes it as the East being “mys-

terious [and] inscrutable” (DiGaetani 142). Gallimard unconsciously jumps into the mys-

tery and further pursues a conversation and ultimately a relationship with an “Oriental”.

Hwang further extenuates Gallimard’s obsession with the mystery by having

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him discuss it with his wife directly afterwards. In that scene it is almost as if he is inves-

tigating by bouncing his opinions off the sounding board that is his wife. He wonders

about how she, must have been “educated in the West” (Hwang 1000), in order for her

to have been able to speak Italian. In his pursuit of the answers to his mystery his is

showing the “attitude of condescension toward the East” (DeGaetani 142) that Hwang

comments on in his interview. Gallimard’s need for mystery finally pushes him to see

the Chinese opera and, more importantly, see Song again.

The narration is a gateway into Gallimard’s conscience. The audience can see

Song’s comment of the fascination with the other culture being “also mutual” (Hwang

1001) bouncing around in his mind. Gallimard has to cling to this fantasy of Song being

interested in him and even tries to sort out the mystery of this fantasy in his dreams with

Marc. In his interview Hwang says that “such a fundamental component of the relation-

ship is the fantasy” (DeGaetani 146), telling the audience that both Song and Gallimard

must cling to this fantasy in order for the relationship to grow. Gallimard lives to answer

the question of the mystery and to quench the desert of his fantasy. He “returns to the

opera that next week, and the week after that” and he is “left each week with a thirst that

is intensified” (Hwang 1003). His longing to find the answer to this mystery is digging

him further down into the hole towards ‘exotic East’.

Opposites being attracted to one another is a basic law in life. Most of the world

sees China, or the Orient, as this ancient civilization surrounded by rice paddies and

bamboo chutes, but if you got their opinion on any Western civilization they would think

skyscrapers and concrete jungles. Along with the aforementioned mystery comes a

need to explore “the opposite”, or to continue this drilling into the Earth. When Gallimard

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first sees Song she “sang in Italian” and he even notes that “her French is very good”

(Hwang 1000). He is getting more of the same and if that need for “the other” was not

there he would have not gone to the Chinese opera. Hwang also shows the audience

Gallimard’s discomfort with the Western woman or “the same” with the Dutch student.

Gallimard tells the audience that she was “too willing so as to seem almost too...mascu-

line” (Hwang 1012), creating an irony the story. Hwang comments on this irony in his in-

terview when he tells DeGaetani that “you have a real woman who acts ‘masculine,’ and

a man who acts ‘feminine’” (DeGaetani 148). Gallimard does not want more of “the

same”. Hwang stated that the purpose of the Dutch student was “to show the difference

in what perceive to be the Western woman...and the Eastern woman” (DeGaetani 148).

Of course in the story Gallimard leans toward the Eastern woman, “the other” rather

than more of the same of his accustomed Western women.

While digging a hole to China there is this continued wonder of what exactly lies

on the other side. This wonder causes one to keep digging and as the goal becomes

closer and more visible the digging becomes more rapid and fierce, so is the story of

Gallimard and the Western culture. The concept of the ‘exotic East’ captures attention

and the continued mystery is the motivation to keep searching for the answers to all the

questions that form in the process of discovering “the other”. Hwang in both the play

and the interview illustrate this notion of the search for the East with the strong affinity to

the opposite culture. not only with Gallimard, but even his wife says that “in China, [she]

was happy” (Hwang 1019). It is the discovery of the mystery that cause people to seek

for the ‘exotic East’