Full Script 

PROLOGUE

 Not all paths on My Dark Path are truly dark and foreboding. Some are just…unfamiliar. Stephen King says one of the scariest things he can think of is to have everything in your home removed and replaced with an exact replica. It all looks the same, but you just know something is different. Today’s story is a little different than our usual fare, but we hope it still has the power to stick with you. So, with apologies to Charles Dickens, today’s path is a tale of two cities, and also two birthdays. 

 Once upon a time, I was in Shanghai, and I needed a birthday present for a friend. 

 Shanghai is a captivating city; one I love to visit. I always enjoy my time there. It’s vibrantly alive with culture, history, and commerce. For many years it was called “The Paris of the East,” due to its cosmopolitanism, and its sophistication. I love it so much that my next novel, Like Clockwork, is based in this incredible city.

 On this particular day on this particular trip, I went to the shopping district around Nanjing Road. There are so many little shops and stalls mixed with western brands crowding the marketplace that you can easily lose your bearings if you’re not careful. Just standing in the market is an experience of sensory overload all its own: the voices of shopkeepers hawking their wares customers haggling, a thousand conversations in countless languages; music flowing out of dozens of stalls, everything from traditional Chinese to K-Pop, Michael Jackson through Beethoven’s Seventh to Revolutionary Opera; the smells and sounds of cooking and eating from dozens of small food stalls in the market – every kind of cuisine imaginable. Flashing lights, bright colors – more souvenirs than you could dream up in a year, all available for purchase. Every shopkeeper has their own approach for luring you in. Some simply smile, while others enthusiastically summon you to enter, offering, quote, “best deals.” You could spend hours browsing here and never be bored.

 You see a lot of foreigners in the Market, all united in their quest to score a bargain. And there are tips you need to remember in order to get the best experience possible. A savvy traveler will tell you that must absolutely never pay the asking price. In fact, if your first counteroffer is even half or a third of the asking price, you’re likely to be marked as easy prey. The word will race through the marketplace faster than you could imagine, you’ll get a great deal of friendly attention from the other shopkeeps for the rest of your day, and you’ll end up parting with far more of your money than you needed to.

 In a market like this, items are usually marked up five to ten times their actual price. Driving a bargain is a game, or maybe more like a dance; it’s part of the culture and learning to play your part allows you to enjoy it more. An experienced friend told me there is nothing truly antique, original, or unique in markets like this – you need to accept that you’re not going to find some rare treasure, it’s going to be tourist trinkets and brand-name knockoffs. But the latter is exactly what I was looking for. I wanted to buy my brother a fake luxury watch.

 I found the store that same friend had recommended.  To this day, the husband and wife of the shop named Fancy Goods, are friends I see every time I’m in the city.  But on my first visit, the wife came over and started her customary routine, showing off items that were packed into the small storefront.  There were speakers, headphone, luggage, t-shirts and more.  She espoused their quality and distinctiveness, how exceptional each item was. There were handbags hanging from a rack, scarves draped around a stand, a little bit of everything for sale. Nothing that seemed quite right for the gift, though. Fortunately, I had been told in advance about another trick that not all the other tourists would know.

 I asked the shopkeeper, “Where do you keep the good stuff?” She shot me a knowing smile and then nodded to her husband, who led be through a beaded curtain, up a steep staircase to a back room.  Here was their home – her mother was cooking on a small range.  She turned to a wall with several shelfs, clicked a hidden lock, and we walked into a room packed floor to ceiling with exquisite, glittering wristwatches. The brand names said Chopard, Omega, Cartier, Rolex. The finest craftsmanship. The ultimate luxury timepieces. Except that they weren’t. They were designer replicas – genuine fake watches that could pass for the real thing, provided you did not know too much about how to tell the difference. I picked up a so-called “Panerai” that I thought my friend would love, and examined it while the shopkeeper promised to make me a good price. 

 “Is it real?” I asked, jokingly.

 “If you cannot tell the difference,” she asked, “does it matter?” 

***

Hi, my name’s MF Thomas; I’m an author and a lifelong fan of strange stories from the dark corners of the world. Growing up, I was enthralled by any hint of exciting, forbidden knowledge that waited behind the names and dates we learned in school. And these days, as I travel the world, there’s nothing I enjoy more than to get off the traditional tourist map and find a place or story that has been overlooked, dismissed or ignored.

This is the My Dark Path podcast. In every episode, we explore the fringes of history, science and the paranormal.  We explore unique topics that will intrigue and excite; and every once in a while, send a shiver down your spine. So, if you geek out over these topics…. you’re among friends here at My Dark Path.

To see content related to every episode, visit MyDarkPath.com.  When you’re there, register for the My Dark Path newsletter and you’ll be entered for frequent drawing for a unique book or other curiosity.  Lastly, thank you for listening.  You have more choices than ever about where to spend your time.  I’m grateful that you’ve chosen to spend time here, with me, walking the Dark Paths of the world, together.  Let’s get started.

***

PART ONE

My shopping trip in Shanghai got me thinking about what we mean by something being “real.” The genuine fake Panerai I gave my friend that year was not designed to trick him – I told him up front that it was a fake from China. He laughed, and perhaps was even more excited than if I had given him a real one. The genuine fake had value in and of itself for being a genuine fake from Shanghai. It was a conversation piece, a story to be told, and it also kept the time really well.

In certain countries in the world, if you buy something that looks like historic art and need to get it through customs, you need to get a certificate declaring it to be a “genuine fake”. It’s an effort to slow down the theft of cultural artifacts by tourists, you have to promise that anything you’ve purchased is, for lack of a better term, not real. It’s not authentically what it appears to be; because for one reason or another, you’re not supposed to have the real thing.

To make things even more confusing, there is a black market for fake versions of these certificates. See if you can follow this – a buyer purchases (or steals,) a real artifact, and, in order to smuggle it across the border, buys a fake certificate which identifies the real artifact as a fake. It can make your head spin. 

Many times, the priceless antiques and masterworks you see in museums are, in fact, replicas. Sometimes you’ll see a small, out-of-the-way sign, explaining that the exhibit is a reproduction, and the genuine items exist elsewhere. Sometimes this is for security, or for preservation; sometimes it’s because the actual artifacts have been returned to their place of origin. So in our visit to the museum, we are sometimes seeing a recreation rather than the real thing, but we’re having the same experience we would have looking at the museum exhibits which are real. Like that shopkeeper asked, if you cannot tell the difference, does it matter?” 

That visit to China made me realize what a moving target authenticity can be. What makes something real? What makes something fake? Even more interestingly, what makes something a genuine fake? It turns out that China is the ideal place to examine the question. My friend got a real watch for his birthday, it told the time for real, and the enjoyment he got from receiving it was real. But I want to talk about another birthday in China, one that took place centuries, which ushered something important into the world which was both genuine, and fake. It was one of the most culturally influential birthdays in history, the 80th birthday of Hongli, the Qianlong Emperor, fifth Emperor of the Qing Dynasty.

The Qianlong Emperor took the throne in 1735, and reigned for 61 years, one of the longest-reigning rulers in the history of the world. China, just like today, was one of the largest nations on Earth, a far-flung empire with many peoples and cultures. And he took his role as a keeper, preserver, and promoter of culture seriously. For much of his reign, he promoted both the preservation of traditional cultures, and the creation of new works of art.

One of his greatest accomplishments was known as the Four Treasuries Project – an entire library of books, meant to gather a comprehensive record of Chinese history, philosophy, and literature. 

It’s hard to grasp the sheer scope of this endeavor. In March 1773, an editorial board consisting of hundreds of scholars, editors and copyists was created by the Emperor in Beijing, with the order to gather and reproduce the most important books of the day. Once this board made their choices, they hired almost 4,000 scribes, whose job it was to copy every text considered important. This took over a decade; but when it was finished, there were seven complete copies of the Four Treasures. Each copy contained a set of over 3,500 separate and unique titles, published in over 36,000 volumes. Like I said, it’s hard to fathom an accomplishment of this size – they wrote an entire library out, by hand, seven times. And did I mention that China had working printing presses? They had developed movable type in the 11th century, four hundred years before the Gutenberg Press. But their culture considered the act of writing to carry more prestige, more authority and value. And so all seven original copies of the Four Treasures were made by hand.

Of the seven originals, four were kept by the Emperor in Beijing. Each one was placed in a special library created just to house that copy of the Four Treasures. The other three copies were distributed to libraries in the south of China, in the cities of Hangzhou, Zhenjiang, and Yangzhou. War and rebellion destroyed three of the copies; but, incredibly, four of them still remain, including one in the National Library of China in Beijing. The preserved history, wisdom, and culture contained within it makes it truly one of the great treasures of human civilization.

But as incredible as it is that the Emperor created such a record of China’s contributions to humanity, it needs to be said that there were many books, thousands, in fact, that were left out. These rejected books were all written by loyalists to the Ming dynasty, the dynasty the Qing dynasty had replaced. The Qianlong Emperor wanted any support for the Ming destroyed. Of course, we have a thorough record of which books were rejected – because a list of their names was included in every copy of the Four Treasures. So when we see these volumes, do we consider it real, authentic history, even knowing that something has been left out? 

But back to the Emperor’s 80th birthday. It’s 1790 – over in the newly-independent U.S.A., George Washington is early in his first term as President. And Hongli, the Qianlong Emperor, makes the sort of request that only really powerful rulers can make – one that, whether he intended it to or not, created a new art form.

PART TWO

Maybe you’ve heard about Beijing Opera. It might be the most famous representation of Chinese culture. It’s a complex art from that combines song, dance, acrobatics, mime, acting, elaborate makeup and costumes, telling stories of romance, war, heroism and villainy. It’s something like a mashup of an opera, a circus, and a martial arts action movie – once you learn a little bit of what you’re watching, it can be spectacular, thrilling, hilarious, and like nothing else you’ve ever seen. It’s been celebrated in films like Farewell, My Concubine, but even if you’ve never seen it; you’ve probably seen what its performers are capable of. Many of China’s most famous martial arts movie stars, like Jackie Chan, trained in Beijing Opera, developing a mastery of physical performance that has entertained fans all over the world. 

But Beijing Opera would never have come about, were it not because of the Emperor’s birthday. The celebration lasted for a full year, and he summoned all the major theatre companies of the Chinese empire to come to Beijing and perform. Masters of traditional regional styles of theatre that had been evolving for hundreds of years were, for the first time ever, performing in the same city.

The name for all Chinese opera is Xiqu. China is so large and diverse that, unlike in, say, Shakespeare’s England, you could find an incredible variety of regional performance styles. Sure, they all integrated dance, music, and acting in some way, and they usually drew on the same stories from Chinese history; but from there, over a hundred regional versions evolved. Each one of these local operas developed organically and holistically, and reflected the local audience’s tastes and preferences, even the different languages spoken across the vast Empire. Think about it like the United States – popular music may have similarities, but compare the music of Texas to the music of Kentucky to the music of Brooklyn, New York. Xiqu was the same; only it was rare that you heard any kind but your own. It was like the local radio only had one station.

Kungju, or Kun Opera, evolved from the music found in the city of Kunshan, a city in the south of China to the immediate west of Shanghai. Kun Opera is very melodic, and over two centuries of popularity developed a rich library of songs and stories. Meanwhile, elsewhere in China, an actor named Wei Changsheng was revolutionizing the portrayal of a traditional operatic character. Chinese opera features four main character types – a warrior known as the Sheng, a colorful and expressive character known as The Jing, and acrobatic clown known as The Chao, and a feminine character called The Dan. Just like over in Shakespeare’s England, in the early years the Dan was played by men pretending to be women; and Wei Chansheng was one of them. He developed a special technique for moving on-stage which became known as the “false foot”. It depicted the way a woman’s gait would change if her feet had been crippled by binding; and after that, any performer who wanted to play The Dan needed to master this technique.

So imagine a powerhouse of regional music like a Kun Opera company, meeting an innovative performer like Wei Chansheng. Multiply encounters like this by a hundred more distinctive companies; by thousands more artists. Imagine them performing night after night, observing one another, learning. 

Throughout 1790, these companies celebrated the Emperor. And, as they competed for his favor, they weren’t going to say no to borrowing the most exciting and popular ideas they saw coming from other performers. 

When the celebration was ended, a new style had been created, and China’s leading companies returned home to present it. It became known as Jingju – Capital Opera. The melding of styles and techniques, honed and tested before a powerful audience, produced an art form that became the dominant one across the whole nation in just a few years’ time. The masters of it trained new generations, traditions took hold. Two of the four companies that helped develop it were still performing into the 20th Century. 

And it only existed because of the power of an Emperor making a request. So when we explore this idea of what’s real, of what’s authentic, how does that make us feel? Is it only natural that a nation with a strong identity should have a national art form? Did it interfere with the development of these regional forms to have a strong central government apply this kind of leverage? Is it genuine, or a genuine fake; a replica of real, regional opera that’s not exactly like any opera which came before?

And does it change the answer if Chinese citizens back home loved and embraced the new style? Kim Jong-Il, the late dictator of North Korea, was known to be a huge movie fan, and essentially forced a North Korean film industry into being. He even kidnapped filmmakers and performers that he liked from South Korea and other countries. North Korean citizens may have gone to see those films because they were afraid of the consequences if they didn’t, but you won’t find a lot of real fans. Can a dictator make something into culture without the consent of the people?

Questions like these suit Beijing’s historical role in China. It’s the capital, the seat of Emperors, the location of the Forbidden City. As the center of such immense power, perhaps that’s just how it creates art, by using its overwhelming gravitational pull. If we went somewhere else, maybe somewhere far removed from Beijing, we might get a different view on authenticity. 

Let’s go back into the history of Shanghai – the city that has often acted as China’s face to the outside world. The city where international influences have always mingled together; long before I bought a fake Swiss watch there. 

PART THREE

Unlike the Imperial city, which is what most Westerners think of when they think of China, Shanghai is simultaneously very Chinese, and not Chinese at all. If I were to blindfold you and set you on a street in the downtown Pudong District, you’d see the 128-story Shanghai Tower dominating a skyline of skyscrapers, and clearly know you were in some large city somewhere on Earth; but you might not know you were in China at all. Partly this is because Shanghai is so cosmopolitan. Partly it has to do with Shanghai’s history with western imperialism. 

None of this was planned; but great cities rarely start because there was a plan. They usually evolve from some alchemy of history, location, struggle, and economic opportunity. Shanghai began as a fishing town like many others; but its location, where the Yangtze River flows into the East China Sea, ensured that it wasn’t going to stay small. By the year 1279, at the end of the Song Dynasty, it was already one of the most important ports in the Eastern Hemisphere. That’s well over seven centuries as a global crossroads. In 1732, the Qianlong Emperor, early in his reign, moved the customs office for Jiangsu province to Shanghai and gave the city the right to collect all customs for the province. This cemented the city as the primary hub for business and trading in that part of the world.

The wealth and prosperity of Shanghai made it an enticing target for western powers keen to exercise their imperial goals over the east. During the First Opium War, the British occupied Shanghai. The Treaty of Nanking in 1842 ended the war, but forced Shanghai to stay open to foreign trade. Other powerful nations continued to apply pressure, and later treaties with Britain, France and the United States forced China to grant concessions to each nation. The British and Americans controlled land outside the city walls, and joined their property together to form what became known as that International Settlement. The French got their own version, called the French Concession. The colonizers had complete authority over these lands until World War II – they had their own police forces, their own governments, they built with their own architectural styles and trends. Shanghai had become an international city in a way Beijing would never be – it was home to the first permanent, European-style opera house in China. You could dine on German sausage, wash it down with an Italian beer, then walk across a bridge for some authentic local dumplings.

After the War, with the rise of the Communist People’s Republic of China – foreigners and global commerce were driven out of the city for decades. But, starting in the 1990’s, economic reforms started to open Shanghai back up, and before long it had retaken its place as one of the most cosmopolitan cities in the world, a financial hub and place of extraordinary wealth and culture. Shanghai has a whole nation’s worth of its own fashion, sports, museums, world-class universities, and a unique cuisine that comes from its many centuries absorbing the influences of other countries. I hope you get to experience it for yourself someday – Shanghai food is like no other food in China.

If Beijing embodies a strictly Chinese identity, trying to unify all the voices and identities within its borders, Shanghai is something else; maybe what happens when China acts as a citizen of the world. Outward-facing, forward-looking, accepting of the influences that pass through instead of seeing it as some kind of corruption or dilution of its identity. Someone from Beijinig might see someone from Shanghai as being too trendy, as not proud enough of being Chinese. Meanwhile, someone from Shanghai might see someone from Beijing as being too provincial, too rigid, afraid of change. As an American, I certainly recognize this tension and division in our own country.

Since we talked about Beijing Opera, the theatre is an ideal place to see the difference between these two great cities in action. In China, modern theatre began in Shanghai, and, as befits the city, it was a surprisingly international affair.

 On September 19, 1906, a typhoon struck Guandong province on the south coast of China, followed by a huge tsunami. Hong Kong, Macao, and even Guanzhou, 85 miles to the northwest, were all devastated. It was a national catastrophe; and people all over the world were looking for ways to help. A group of Chinese students, studying abroad in Japan, decided to hold a fundraiser so that they could send relief to the flood victims back home. Their idea was to stage a play.

Now none of these students were trained performers, so they didn’t mount a Beijing Opera. They chose to stage a western play, in what they considered western style. The play they selected was “Heinu yutian lu;” translated in English: “The Black Slave’s Cry to Heaven”. It was a Chinese adaptation of George Aiken’s stage version of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s world-shaking book, Uncle Tom’s Cabin. 

You heard me correctly. The first modern stage play produced by Chinese performers was an adaptation of an American novel, and presented in Japan.

Uncle Tom’s Cabin is set in the South before the Civil War, and tells the story of two slaves, Tom and Eliza, whose Kentucky owner decides to sell them. Eliza, unwilling to be separated from her son, takes him and attempts to escape to Ohio. Tom, meanwhile, is sold to Simon Legree, a brutal plantation owner who eventually has him beaten to death. Along the way, however, Tom’s Christianity compels him to save a white girl from drowning, and to refuse to harm his fellow slaves no matter the cost to him. He is presented as a decent and kind human denied his freedom and suffering to the point of death. This put a very different face on slavery; Southern states had always proclaimed that their slaves were happy, well-fed, and grateful for the opportunity to live and work on plantations.

The book didn’t just have an impact in America, it was hugely popular in Asia long into the twentieth century, because the easily-distinguished heroes and villains and universal yearning for freedom transcended cultures. It may have been melodramatic; but this isn’t always a bad thing. If you remember the famous sequence in The King and I where they stage the same work; that was inspired by real history. The real-life King of Siam was so genuinely moved by Uncle Tom’s Cabin, he offered President Abraham Lincoln a regiment of elephants to help fight the Confederacy. Lincoln didn’t accept, but he was quite moved by the offer. It’s said that when the President met Harriet Beecher Stowe, he said “So you’re the little lady that wrote the novel that caused this great big war.”

The staging performed by these Chinese students got such an overwhelming response, that they took it home, to China. Specifically, they took it to Shanghai, which had been visited for many years by western theatre artists in the form of missionaries, expatriates, and touring troupes from America and Europe. But now, for the first time, a fully Chinese company with an all-Chinese cast was performing western-style theatre. They called themselves the Spring Willow Society; and they started a revolution in the performing arts in Shanghai. 

Far from the athletic, rigidly-disciplined, spectacular fantasies of Beijing Opera, this was a more natural style, working to present real-world characters, performed realistically. Chinese society had no reference point for this, they called it “Huachu”, which sort of translates to “spoken opera”. But however you described it, the floodgates were open and this new style started spreading.

And by the way, in case this cuisine wasn’t international enough yet, remember that the whole notion of realistic dramas and naturalistic acting was developed across multiple nations like France, Norway, and Russia. So here we have a book, written in the 1850’s by a woman from Connecticut, adapted for the stage by a man from New York, translated into Chinese by students in Japan, and performed half a world away in a style developed in Europe. It didn’t come from the top down, imposed by an Emperor; it was innovated from the ground up, by performers who created something that caught fire with their audience. Its cultural relevance is now in the same realm as Beijing Opera. But is it more authentic?

Uncle Tom’s Cabin became one of the foundational pillars of modern Chinese theatre; and my belief is that this could never have happened in Beijing, it could only have happened in Shanghai. While Beijing has carried the torch for traditional art forms, Shanghai has been the thriving center of modern theater and film. Its openness to what the tides and currents of global culture bring in made this, perhaps, inevitable; and that openness goes all the way down to the street level, and that marketplace where we started this journey. I would never find a fake Panerai of such quality in Beijing.

PART FOUR

At the Yinyang Market, as you walk the narrow passages between stalls, past the walls of “genuine replicas” of Nikes, “genuine replica” quality Tumi luggage, past the flocks of “designer replica” Coach scarves, suits and boots, ties, sunglasses, toys, it is easy to forget that you are in the People’s Republic of China, a communist nation. You can shop to your heart’s delight, or head back across the river to the Bund, to the upmarket stores that cater to the high-end tourists and the elite of Shanghai. If you’re looking for the real versions of Gucci, Prada, Dolce & Gabana, you’ll find them there; and at the same time, go to the Number One Department Store and buy tea and cigarettes with the face of Chairman Mao on the packages. Personally, I think the real fun is to be found here, the market at the end of the subway line.

If you’re ever here, do everything with a smile – shopping here is a friendly activity, not a competition. Think of it as yourself and the shopkeeper sharing the same goal – a sale price that makes both of you happy. Refunds are impossible, so you had better be content with your purchase before you hand over your money. 

It is the smallest, most ground-level version of a cultural connection, diplomacy in microcosm. Two people seeking an understanding, adapting to a stranger in real-time; all you need is an objective and a sense of openness. 

I told you today would not be our usual dark path, but I think these questions about culture, about authenticity are deceptively important; the more you consider them, the more you realize that this path is moving in parallel with the heaviest of historical issues – of imperialism, of colonization, even of erasure.

Both the strange concept of genuine fake watches, and the creation of an enduring form of theatre at the behest of an emperor, are part of the same idea – the power to create culture. Where should such power be vested? In the regular people of Shanghai, igniting a movement for modern theatre based on a mixture of international influences? Or in an Emperor, who created an awe-inspiring repository of Chinese knowledge and history, but on his terms; and benignly but forcibly combined the best ideas of organically-evolved Chinese culture, using the power of his throne. Or does it belong with private enterprise? The Rolex Corporation has created a zealously-guarded culture of luxury and elite sophistication. They can charge you a hefty price to feel like you’re a part of that culture; but at the end of the day, a Rolex is simply a watch. And someone in Shanghai can make a watch, too. What were you buying? The name? The membership in that elite group? Or just a fashionable-looking way to tell time? These aren’t idle questions – Chinese piracy of American intellectual property, whether in culture, technology, or any other field, is one of the biggest ongoing disputes between two global superpowers. The question of what is authentic is the stuff that starts trade wars. 

For us, though, the regular people on the ground, it has a funny way of bringing us together. It seems like cultural mixing and remixing is inevitable and constant. Two strangers who spend a half-hour together might change their speaking patterns just trying to make a connection with one another. It’s in our nature; part of how our earliest ancestors learned how to survive. Anthropologists call it Cross-Acculturation. Many of the world’s great philosophies, inventions, and religions, were borne of conversations in settlements on the marches between empires.

A negotiation in the Yinyang Market is, in its way, a kind of theatre. We each have our role to play, and a script which has been honed over the course of billions of performances like it. When the shopkeeper presents the item, it’s a fake. When they tell you the price on the tag, that’s a fake. And the confidence I project that I somehow know the “real” price that should be paid? That’s fake, too. But somehow, by the time I buy that watch for my friend, it feels like that shopkeeper and I have accomplished something that’s as absolutely authentic as it gets. 

Who can really say if it’s real? But if you can’t tell, does it matter? 

***

Thank you for listening to My Dark Path. I’m MF Thomas, creator and host, and I produce the show with the indispensable Emily Wolfe. This story was prepared for us by Kevin Wetmore. Our senior story editor is Nicholas Thurkettle and our lead researcher is Alex Bagosy; big thank yous to them and the entire My Dark Path team.

Please take a moment and give My Dark Path a 5-star rating wherever you’re listening. Lastly, thank you for listening.  You have more choices than ever about where to spend your time. I’m grateful that you’ve chosen to spend some time here, with me, walking my Dark Path together. And don’t hesitate to reach out via email – explore@mydarkpath.com. I’d love to hear from you. I really would!

Again, thanks for walking the dark paths of history, science and the paranormal with me, your host, MF Thomas. Until next time, good night.