From Honolulu to Havana

Though the Cantonese opera network spanned the Americas, its manifestation in any particular place varied according to local conditions. This chapter considers three Chinese theaters (in Honolulu, Vancouver, and Havana) of the 1920s to offer further perspectives on the renaissance of Cantonese opera during that decade. Through this study, we gain a fuller appreciation of how Chinese opera theaters were linked to, steered by, and shaped by the larger transnational performing network, and in turn, how the larger network was affected by them. Kue Hing was the company based in Vancouver that brought opera theater to Honolulu. Meanwhile, in Vancouver a theater was reestablished in the name of Mandarin Theater, though no owned by the theater of the same name in San Francisco. Finally, through a recently discovered set of correspondences among family members disbursed in US, Cuba and Canada, the chapter unveils the working of transnational network at the ground level.