Most foreigners may know something about Chinese drama when they come to learn Mandarin in China. However, they may not know that the Anti-Japanese War had great influence to the development of drama. When the war broke out, Chinese drama stepped into the state of big popularity, great development and prosperity. The most important influence of the war to Chinese drama was positive because it was beneficial to arouse Chinese people’s patriotic feeling and fighting strength in the war background in the process of gradual prosperity.

In the year of 1937, with the happening of the July 7th Incident, the drama workers performed the drama “Safeguarding Lugou Bridge” on August 7th in Shanghai and 13 drama teams were rapidly formed to perform different places to publicize the war fighting. On the date of December 31st, the National Drama Association for Fighting was founded in Wuhan. When it came to the summer of 1938, the drama teams and drama workers were distributed to different places of China under the lead of political department of the national government military committee.

The drama teams also combined with the drama organizations spontaneously established, thus forming a wide spread publicizing area in the whole towns and villages. Many overseas students may have heard many famous dramatists when they attend to Chinese school to study Mandarin such as Cao Yu and Song Zhi. The first session of drama festival was held in October of 1938, during which many famous dramas were performed. What’s, more, many famous representative dramas were created during the war time.

In the period after 1939, the center of drama movement began to move from rural areas to urban areas. As a result, a series of drama teams were established in Chongqing city such as China Wansui Drama Group and Central Youth Drama House which were professional dramas with great influence. The excellent dramas like Yi Nian Jian and Night of Shanghai as well as Mist of Chongqing were created at that time.

During the period from February to April in 1944, the first session of drama exhibition in the southwest with large scale was held in Guilin. 27 dramas were performed by 28 theatre groups, showing the achievements made in drama. In all, drama played great importance to arouse Chinese people to fight against the war.