Just a little over 32 years ago, a small group of students in Tokyo look over modern Japanese drama, organised the "Spring Willow Society" and presented in translation such plays as "La Tosca" and "La Dame aux Camelias." Shortly afterwards the group transferred its plays to Shanghai and thus was born the new Chinese Theatre movement.

The public took a stand-offish attitude because the new art was without music and for countless years the Chinese mind has associated art with music. The old music-drama has formed a means of escape from humdrum existence, and the ordinary man was not willing to be brought up against the problems of life that stared him In the face every day and that is what this western drama meant. Also a conservative element of the Chinese was always against anything having Its roots in Western culture. Rut the students and intelligentsia representing modern youth, demand realism and truth, to face situations rather than escape and poetry.