By Violet Nguyen, Class of 2028
Prof. Kim Hunter Gordon is an Assistant Professor of Chinese and Performance Studies at Duke Kunshan University. He has over a decade of experience in stage translation for Kunqu and actively participates in the avocational singing circuit in China. At DKU, he currently leads two CSCC-funded projects: “Kunqu in the Community” (a CSCC Community Service Project) and “Archival Recordings of Senior Kunqu Singing Masters Accompanied by Bamboo Flute” (a CSCC Faculty Research & Creative Activity Grant). He is also a member of the Meanings, Identities, and Communities Cluster and, with support from the CSCC, has organized two annual Kunqu festivals that bring together students, scholars, practitioners, and local audiences. As part of these ongoing efforts, Prof. Gordon’s forthcoming book, Kunqu: China’s Classical Song-drama (Forms of Drama) (Bloomsbury, Methuen Drama, February 2026), introduces Kunqu from its origins in the poetic tradition and its refinement in the southern salons of the 16th century, to its 18th-century theatrical heyday and patriotic revival in modern times. Together, his teaching, research, and community engagement highlight Kunqu’s enduring role in shaping cultural life and its significance within China’s artistic heritage.
Kunqu, one of the oldest forms of Chinese theatre, is celebrated for its refined aesthetics, poetic singing, and long cultural legacy. Yet for many outside of China, it remains unfamiliar. By combining research with cultural programming and student collaboration, Prof. Gordon works to bridge this gap, making Kunqu both a subject of scholarly inquiry and a living practice on DKU’s campus. We spoke with Prof. Gordon about his journey into Kunqu studies, his ongoing projects, and his vision for the future of this art form at DKU and beyond.
Hi, Prof. Gordon, could you start by telling us a bit about your academic journey—what first drew you to Kunqu and Chinese performance studies?
The first time I watched Kunqu was a performance of Peony Pavilion by the Northern Kunqu Troupe in the Forbidden City Concert Hall in Beijing in 2009. Part of what made that evening so special was because this venue uses concert hall acoustics without electronic amplification, which can result in much of the musical nuance being lost. So, acoustically, it was wonderful. The intricacies of the voices and instruments that really struck me. I had been drawn to Chinese theatre for some time before then, but at that moment I decisively shifting my focus to Kunqu specifically.
What is Kunqu exactly?
It is essentially a way of singing poetry, rooted in China’s medieval poetic tradition. What makes it distinctive is how the melody and the words are inseparably linked: the tones of the words themselves determine the music. Because of this, Kunqu has always been considered an elevated form of culture, closely tied to poetry and literati practice. In contemporary China, it holds a kind of classical status. Many regard it as the foundation for all indigenous performance forms. This is also part of what makes Kunshan so significant for DKU: the very name Kunqu comes from this region, and one of its formative figures, a singing teacher named Wei Liangfu, lived nearby.
Wei and other singers in the region wanted to bring elements of courtly language, which had preserved in the South, back into the canon of literati song in China. That combination of northern and southern lyrical tradition became the basis for Kunqu.
Later, when the Manchu rulers of the Qing dynasty sought to establish themselves as true inheritors of the Chinese tradition with the southern literati, they became important patrons of Kunqu as a symbol of their legitimacy. Therefore, Kunqu is not only an artistic form but also carries deep political and historical meaning. That is what drew me in: for me, Kunqu is not just performance, but a cultural window into Chinese history.
Your archival recordings focus on capturing “qingchang”, a form of “just” singing that most people never get to hear through commercial recordings. Why is it so important to preserve this tradition, and what makes the artistry of its practitioners unique?
When people hear I work on Kunqu, they often ask me what it sounds like. Strangely, I never quite know which recording to play for them. That is because the best singers, the ones with the most precision and artistry, are often not the professional, commercial stage performers. Professional Kunqu actors are trained to do many things: they must move gracefully, dance, act, and present themselves beautifully to an audience. Singing is a part of that, but it is often subordinated to the larger theatrical aesthetic.
There is, however, another side to Kunqu that focuses purely on singing poetry. In this practice, every Chinese character is carefully articulated and shaped, with extraordinary subtlety in the sound. Ideally, you hear this accompanied only by a bamboo flute, without an orchestra overwhelming the delicate nuances. The problem is that most recordings of these masters are informal, captured on phones at social gatherings rather than in a studio setting. What we lack is a careful, high-quality archive of this avocational singing tradition. And that matters, because when Kunqu is presented in this way, it becomes much easier for people outside China to appreciate its value. Western audiences might not always connect with the grandeur of full-orchestra productions, but when Kunqu is experienced as intimate, sung poetry, its beauty speaks for itself.
There is often tension between “authenticity” and adaptation. How do you navigate this tension in your work? For instance, should Kunqu remain as it was, or evolve to meet modern tastes?
I think the way this question is often framed, as a choice between “authenticity” and adaptation, can in part create the tension. A living performance tradition inevitably changes over time. Unlike a book or painting, it cannot remain fixed. Ironically, calling a performance ‘authentic’ often produces a more modern adaptation, since it rests on present-day notions of the past rather than the past itself. A useful example is the way Ming dynasty plays like Peony Pavilion appear much more conservative in performance today than they did in the 1980s—or even the early 1960s, as recordings show.
In practice, every performance is a product of its own moment, no matter how it is advertised. Much of the repertoire we see onstage today only took its basic shape within the last century, and each generation of actors has modified and enriched it, negotiating their work within the social and political environment in which they live. This process is even audible in vocal technique. Because the language itself shifts, so too does the sound of Kunqu singing. For instance, the word ren 人 was sung differently in the past (as rin) than it is today, since vowel qualities have changed. In the 1990s in Shanghai, there was a strong push to make Kunqu sound closer to putonghua for accessibility. Later, the pendulum swung back, with advocates insisting on a more antiquarian and elite sound. These shifts in values continue and Kunqu evolves with them.
As part of your community project, you organized a Kunqu exhibition. What was it like? What kinds of objects were shown, and how do material artifacts tell a story that complements performance?
Yes, the exhibition was held in May 2024 as part of the first DKU Kunqu Festival. We displayed objects from a local collector, including calligraphy and paintings by Kunqu masters, rare folded booklets depicting performance scenes, and costumes handmade by Zhang Chonghe, a former avocational Kunqu singer who later moved to Yale and became highly influential in promoting Kunqu in the United States.
The exhibition contained calligraphy and included a variety of other artifacts that reflect Kunqu’s broader cultural context. These objects show that Kunqu is not only about theatre; it has always been intertwined with the literati culture of poetry, painting, and intellectual exchange.
Alongside the exhibition, we hosted a festival featuring performances by DKU students, students from universities like Nanjing University and the Shanghai Theatre Academy, and a professional troupe from Kunshan. We also organized a “singing gathering”, bringing local avocational Kunqu societies onto campus to sing alongside university students. We repeated the festival again in 2025, and we hope to make it an annual tradition.
How do students react to these performances, especially those with little prior knowledge of Kunqu? Have you noticed differences between international and Chinese students, and if so, how do those different reactions influence the way you present Kunqu across cultural contexts?
International students are often very curious when they first arrive. But the learning curve to get more deeply involved is quite steep, especially if they do not speak Chinese, and students are often extremely busy here at DKU. As a result, their initial interest does not always develop into deeper engagement. That is a challenge I constantly think about: how to sustain international students’ involvement over time.
However, I do believe that Kunqu can be an incredible tool for international students learning Chinese. Because the singing is tied closely to the tones of the language, it offers a more intuitive way of understanding pronunciation and tone than memorizing rules in a classroom. It helps them feel the rhythm and musicality of the language.
Interestingly though, when we host performances on campus, I often notice that there are more international students than Chinese students in the audience. Even if they do not understand every word, subtitles allow them to appreciate the performance. Chinese students, on the other hand, are more likely to take it further by learning to sing and perform themselves. So the nature of engagement differs between the two groups, but both find meaning ways to connect with the art.
For DKU students who might never step into a Kunqu theatre, why should they care about this tradition? What can Kunqu teach us about art, history, or even ourselves?
Kunqu scenes are like performance vignettes that have been perfected over centuries. Watching them offers not only a glimpse into the past but also a sense of how the past continues to shape the present.
For Chinese students, Kunqu often makes the familiar feel unfamiliar; it highlights aspects of their culture they may never have noticed before. I often hear them say things like, “I never realized my culture was so rich and complex.” For international students, it provides an entirely different perspective on China, one that goes deeper than surface impressions.
But I do not approach it by telling students, “You should watch Kunqu because it will help you understand your culture better.” That alone is not persuasive. Instead, I invite them into the theatre. Once they see a performance, they discover that it’s genuinely enjoyable: the singing is beautiful, the stories are funny and moving, the characters are compelling. It is simply very good theatre. And once that spark is lit, students naturally begin to explore further.
Looking ahead ten years, what is your dream for Kunqu at DKU and in Kunshan? Do you envision a permanent archive, a larger festival, or new international collaborations?
My hope is for DKU to become a lasting and integral part of Kunqu culture in Kunshan. That means working closely with local singing societies and singing experts.
At the same time, I want us as a university to support forms of singing and performance that are increasingly hard to maintain on commercial or tourist stages: unamplified performance, carried by the natural voice, in settings where the audience learns how to listen and respond. For DKU students, that means not only classes in singing, translation, and performance, but also a chance to experience Kunqu as part of their own liberal arts education.
I’d love for the recordings we’re making now to be widely accessible—whether on streaming platforms or in libraries—so that anyone searching for Kunqu can find multiple renditions And for the broader Kunshan community, which has only seen Kunqu return here in the past decade or two, I hope DKU can help show that Kunqu is not just a local heritage label, but part of a literary inheritance that goes back centuries, where poetry and song have always been inseparable. If in ten years Kunqu is mindfully performed and studied at DKU, then we will have done something meaningful both for Kunshan and the Chinese liberal arts.
