Sarah Shin Directs The Chinese Lady

Powerhouse performing artist Sarah Shin is a multi-talented creative whose work as an actor and director has taken her across the country. She now brings her directing talent to Stages for this season’s production of Lloyd Suh’s The Chinese Lady. Afong Moy, the play’s titular character, was brought to the U.S. by the Carnes brothers in 1834 to promote their import goods.

At 14 years of age (or 18 in some historical records), Afong Moy was, for many Americans, their first experience with the exotic other, while displaying her bound feet and advertising the Chinese decorative goods that were available for sale after the show. Though accounts exist of audiences’ first reflections on seeing her show, the historical record is silent of Afong Moy’s own personal narratives. As is the case in unearthing many women’s histories, we are left to fill in the gaps of her story—from consumer goods exhibitor, to New Jersey public poorhouse, to sideshow act for PT Barnum—in the few short decades before America passed the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, its first race-based restrictive immigration law.