Have you ever tried to “save face” in an embarrassing moment? Or been afraid of “losing face” in front of other people? Perhaps you’ve “put on a brave face,” had an “about face,” felt that you’ve had “egg on your face,” or experienced a “slap in the face”? There are nearly 200 English idioms (expressions having their own meaning aside from the words that comprise them) that use the word “face.” But did you know that the very complex concept of “Face” that many of these idioms allude to has its origins in Chinese culture? Let’s explore the Chinese concept of “Face” and how it connects to Yellow Face, both in the play’s story and its creation.
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Mianzi Mianzi as Mask The Yellow Face Mask of the Playwright Reflect and Connect References
Mianzi
The Chinese word mianzi (面子) literally means “face,” but its meaning goes further than merely skin deep; mianzi is a sociological concept that refers to honor, dignity, prestige, or respect, and it functions as a key dynamic in most every social interaction within a community. According to the Journal of Pragmatics, it is reflective of social status. In Western cultures, honor can be an element of individual or personal identity; a person may have honor as in self-worth. However, in Chinese culture, mianzi is not just determined by one’s sense of self-worth, it is strongly determined by how others see you. Mianzi is mostly a relational concept, meaning it's rooted in the relationships within a community and expressive of one’s place in that community. In other words, it’s all about how others see you, and they can give or take away your Face. In Face, Harmony, and Social Structure, P. Christopher Earley describes it as a “code of behavior” or a “social exchange currency that can be gained or lost with each and every social interaction.” As a social construct, “Face”—honor, power, reputation—can be acted upon by another. It can be earned, lost or won, given or taken away, sought, borrowed, injured, or protected, always by another. Every interaction between members of a community is a way of experiencing the exchange of “Face.” The dynamics of mianzi is a vast and complex system of unspoken rules and expectations that explores and defines status, and one that maintains social order.
In his book, On Saving Face: A Brief History of Western Appropriation, Michael Keevak argues that despite its complexity, “Face” was appropriated through colonialism toward the end of the 1800s and originally reduced to two phrases, “lose face” and “save face,” in an effort to devalue, condescend, and dehumanize the Chinese. Through the years our understanding has evolved, and Face is better understood as a complex sociological concept, a cultural value and national characteristic that’s important to learn, understand and respect, especially in the context of Chinese belief systems, sociological constructs, and individual behaviors.
Mianzi as Mask
In The Remaking of the Chinese Character and Identity in the 21st Century: The Chinese Face, Dr. Wenshan Jia explains, “[T]o give face is to give a protective mask to prevent fear and insecurity . . . [to give] sense of belonging. . . . to give the other person power and make him or her feel elevated socially.” Faces and masks have an ancient and deeply connected history. Yellow Face is a play about losing, regaining and saving Face, and the face one wears is sometimes referred to as a mask. In the play, the character Marcus says, “the face we choose to show the world reveals who we really are.” Later, toward the end of the play, DHH challenges him: “Take off your mask... I’m willing to go out there and lose my face. How ‘bout you?”
Literal masks have been used for thousands of years across the globe by the Mayans, Ancient Romans and Greeks, Native Americans, and many Asian cultures. Masks added magical, ritualistic, and theatrical effects; they enhanced the powers of storytelling, of protection or connection, thus creating a spiritual, transformational, or transpersonal experience. For example, masks in ritual or in theatre were worn for disguise, to create a character, honor the dead, or to connect with gods and spirits. Still today masks are celebratory elements in festivals such as Carnevale di Venezia (Italy), Día de los Muertos (Mexico), FESTIMA (West Africa), Andong (South Korea), Paro Tsechu (Bhutan), Mardi Gras (USA), and of course, we see them everywhere at Halloween. Pop culture is reflective of the continued relevance of masks: Michael Jackson’s “Behind the Mask,” The Masked Singer, Star Wars, even Superman (where Clark Kent functions as a figurative mask for Superman).
Masked actors portray the Chorus of Old Men of Argos in THE ORESTIA by Aeschylus at the National Theatre, London, in 1981.
Many have written about the use of masks as offering freedom for the wearer to experience “heightened spontaneity, vulnerability, and truth.” In drama therapy and psychodrama, masks are used “as the protection, so that the true self can be revealed.” In an article in Early Theatre, Philip Butterworth notes, “Revelations . . . are created by both donning the mask and removing it.” In Masks in Modern Drama, Susan Valeria Harris Smith states:
The mask liberates man. Behind it he is free both to express joy, pain, or anger without social or religious restraints. . .The mask allows for efficient visual expression of abstract ideas.
Libby Appel, theatre educator, administrator, and the first woman to run the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, wrote in her book, Mask Characterization: An Acting Process:
[The] masked actor represents someone other than himself, and this anonymity produces a miraculous sensation of freedom. With the mask acting as a “permission-giver,” the actor can do anything, be anyone. . . By covering, the actor uncovers.
The same might be said of the playwright.
The Yellow Face Mask of the Playwright
“Yellowface” is the racist practice of non-Asian actors using stage makeup and costume to play Asian roles or the whitewashing of Asian characters and stories. Hwang’s play, with its two-word title, Yellow Face, examines this practice and so much more. By choosing to tell the story through a mask—the mask of the character named for him, DHH— he is free to grapple with and uncover truths in this very personal story. The play becomes about an individual and examines questions of identity and personhood, as his own “Yellow Face” is front and center. In Theatre and AutoBiography, Sherrill Grace describes how this dramatic device functions:
Something is going on out there in front of the lights; someone’s real life story is being staged, performed, revealed, or re-discovered, and we have been invited to watch, participate in, and discuss. . .The playwright uses the theatre to embody and perform a process of self-creation, recreation, and rediscovery.
In his own process of rediscovery in Yellow Face, Hwang sets out to explore “how our multiracial society could move forward together” (from the Miss Saigon battle) to revisit and keep moving the conversation forward he’d begun in his earlier play, Face Value, which had closed before it opened in 1993—something Hwang considers an embarrassing failure. With Yellow Face he was more successful; the Asian American Literature: Discourses and Pedagogies journal describes the play as:
[S]imultaneously self-mocking and self-examining. . . [the play] will make you laugh . . . but it will also make you look inside yourself to see your own prejudices and false perceptions.
In an interview with American Theatre magazine, which called Yellow Face an “autobiographical satire,” Hwang himself called it a “mock stage documentary” written to “poke fun at some of the absurdities of the multicultural movement.” He goes on to say, “It seemed easiest to poke fun at myself, since that way I would be offending only me. It’s really more about our country, about public image, about face.”
In the play, the character DHH says “Years ago, I discovered a face—one I could live better and more fully than anything I’d ever tried. But as the years went by, my face became my mask.” In an interview with The Washington Post, Hwang expands on his avatar character’s discovery:
That’s what I’m really proud of—that we can talk about race and people can laugh at it because we don’t have many opportunities in modern society where we can have a discussion about race and still feel comfortable enough to laugh. . .The play isn’t about what race you pretend to be, as much as it’s your sense of self—your identity. And identity is comprised of a number of different things—race, ethnicity are a part of that, but that’s not the answer. That doesn’t define you in and of itself.
Perhaps Hwang wrote Yellow Face to save Face. Or even—perhaps—to give us Face.
REFLECT AND CONNECT
What are some of the unspoken rules and expectations that you experience in our society? What is one way that you might attempt to ‘save face’ after losing mianzi in a social situation?
Post-Show Discussion: How did David Henry Hwang feel about his own mianzi at the end of the play?
References
Note: Members of the New York Public Library can access JSTOR and many other research databases through the library’s Articles & Databases page.
Appel, Libby. Mask Characterization: An Acting Process. Southern Illinois Univ. Press, 1982.
Common Expressions With “Face” | Britannica Dictionary.
Butterworth, Eric. “Putting On and Removing the Mask: Layers of Performance Pretence.” Early Theatre, Vol. 21, no. 1, 2018, pp. 33-58.
Dancyger, Lilly. “Turning Real People into Characters Is an Act of Translation.” Writer’s Digest, 25 April 2024.
Earley, Christopher P. Face, Harmony, and Social Structure: An Analysis of Organizational Behavior Across Cultures. Oxford Univ. Press, 1997.
Fang, Jenn. “Yellowface, Whitewashing, and the History of White People Playing Asian Characters.” TeenVogue, 8 Aug, 2018.
Feccomandi, Andrea. “Author Surrogate Perspective Technique Explained.” bibisco.com.
Grace, Sherrill and Jerry Wasserman. Theatre and AutoBiography: Writing and Performing Lives in Theory and Practice. Talonbooks, 2006.
Ha, Quan Manh and JM Christiansen. “David Henry Hwang’s Yellow Face: Fictional Autoethnography and a Parody on Racialization.” Asian American Literature: Discourses and Pedagogies, vol. 12, 2023, pp 29-46.
Harris Smith, Susan. Masks in Modern Drama. Univ. of CA Press, 1984.
Hiltunen, Sirkku S. M. S. “Transpersonal Functions of Masks in NohKiDo.” International Journal of Transpersonal Studies, vol. 23, 2004, pp. 51-64.
Ho, Benjamin Tze Ern. “About Face–The Relational Dimension In Chinese IR Discourse.” Journal of Contemporary China, vol. 25, no. 98, pp 307-320.
Hwang, David Henry. “David Henry Hwang: Racial Casting Has Evolved—and So Have My Opinions.” The Guardian. 12 May 2014.
Jia, Wenshan. The Remaking of the Chinese Character in the 21st Century: The Chinese Face Practices. Bloomsbury, 2001.
Keevak, Michael. On Saving Face: A Brief History of Western Appropriation. Hong Kong Univ. Press, 2022.
Phrases That Contain the Word: FACE. Phrases.com.
Simon, Eli. Masking Unmasked: Four Approaches to Basic Acting. Palgrave MacMillan, 2003.
Soo Hoo, Winyan. “Bearing the ‘Yellow Face’: Q&A with David Henry Hwang.” The Washington Post, 22 Feb. 2014.
Viertel, Jack, “Fun With Race and the Media.” American Theatre, April 2008.
Wang, Yanyu and Robert Guang Tian. “Face Culture and Conspicuous Consumption: A Case Study of Wuyi Rock Tea Drinkers in China.” Society, Pub. by Springer Science+Business Media, vol 59, no. 2, Apr. 2022, pp 157-168.
Zhang, Long. “Mianzi (China).” Global Informality Project, 2021.
Published on September 9, 2024.