Great China Theater

May’s Photo Studio, Great China Theater, 1925, Wylie Wong Collection of May’s Studio at Stanford Libraries.

"The success of the Mandarin Theater became an impetus for further theater building. In 1925, a group of [largely Kuomintang-aligned] Chinatown merchants erected a rival theater called the Great China, located at 630 Jackson Street. Throughout the rest of the 1920s and into the 1930s there was an intense rivalry between the two theaters, due to the political affiliation, the Loyalists versus the Nationalists (Kuomintang).The Great China Theater was less Imperialistic, and depended less on the starring system, more on the drawing power of modern Chinese culture and Republican innovation. At the Great China Theater, the up-to-date young Chinese saw plays dealing with modern history and the drama of the Chinese revolution."

Edited Excerpt from Dr. William Hu’s The History of Cantonese Opera in San Francisco, unpublished manuscript, chapter 12.