ABSTRACT
This chapter demonstrates how Chinese localisations of Shakespeare covering filmic spinoffs (A Time to Love, The Banquet, The Prince of the Himalayas), TV sit-coms (Life for Drama), online entertainment and trans-media references (Shakespeare as Love Tutor) exemplify trans-cultural, trans-medial and trans-temporal-spatial deployment of the Bard to cater simultaneously to a global and a local market. Transcending nations and hierarchies of elite and popular, original and adapted texts, these Shakespeare appropriations propagate humanist values, exploit his popular appeal and also promote Chinese soft power, revealing the construction of a new Asian global in the media trans-sphere which is both modern and postmodern, reinforcing yet challenging Shakespearean hegemony.
