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China, the CLC and WW1 Comes to the Stage – Forgotten at the Arcola Theatre, London

Posted: October 9th, 2018 | No Comments »

As regular readers will know during the last four years of the anniversary of the centenary of WW1 a lot has been happening about the old Chinese Labour Corps – the Chinese who came and worked the battlefields during the conflict. Sadly, despite the Penguin China and WW1 series of books, various conferences organised etc, knowledge of Chinese participation in WW1 remains very low.

Now another attempt to raise the CLC’s profile….Forgotten is a play by Daniel York Loh, directed by Kim Pearce – details below – it’s on at the Arcola Theatre in Dalston, London from 13/10/18 to 17/11/18….

‘The foreign devils will be entranced by our performance and line our path back to Shandong with gold and cherry blossoms…’

1917. Shandong Province, Northern China. Times are tough in Horse Shoe Village. Old Six and Second Moon struggle to earn enough to feed their young child. Big Dog struggles to overcome opium addiction and for Eunuch Lin, the fall of the Imperial Dynasty couldn’t have come at a worse time. Could a fierce war far away in Europe present an opportunity to put both themselves and their struggling nation on its feet?

遗忘 means ‘Forgotten’. ‘Left behind’. ‘Erased’.

Forgotten 遗忘 is inspired by the little-known story of the 140,000 Chinese Labour Corps who left everything and travelled half way around the world to work for Britain and the Allies behind the front lines during World War One.

More details and tickets here



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