Abstract: The Moon in the Yellow River is a play written by Irish playwright Dennis Johnston in 1931. The key image in the play, “Li Po's Embrace of the Moon,” has long been neglected by scholars. On the one hand, the image proves the sustaining presence of Chinoiserie, through the cross-cultural propagation in the Anglo-American New Poetry Movement, in the early 20^th-century Ireland and, on the other, indicates not only Johnston's use of the Eastern image as a metaphor of his political attitude and cultural proposition, but also a disguised acceptation in the context of the Irish culture and politics in the 1930s. The fact that Li Po's political failure and romantic temperament, as indicated by his indulgence in alcoholism and vagrant behavior, had a resonance, though delusional and futile, with the radical Irish nationalists' political disappointment and their tragic and incontrollable violent behavior seems to have turned the play into Johnston's elegy for the Irish nationalistic politics.

Key words: Johnston, The Moon in the Yellow River, "Li Po's embrace of the moon", Chinese image, Chinoiserie