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Shadow puppetry finding new audiences and performers
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CHINESE shadow puppetry is one of the oldest theatrical traditions in China, using carved leather figures, screens and music to tell stories more than 2,000 years old.
Puppeteers animate figures behind a lit screen, their voices and instruments giving life to tales of history, folklore and morality.
The art was added to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2011.
Its origin is often traced to the Han Dynasty (206 BC-AD 220), when shadows were used to console grief for the dead.
In the Song Dynasty (960-1279), the form of theater was public entertainment. By the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), it had spread across the country.
The puppets are made of cowhide or donkey hide, processed until thin and translucent. Artisans carve the figures with fine knives, paint them with mineral colors and assemble the pieces with movable joints.
A single puppet may have 12 to 24 parts. Manipulating them requires dexterity. Puppeteers also sing in falsetto, improvise lines, and play drums, gongs and stringed instruments at the same time.
Performances once marked weddings, funerals and temple fairs. Large troupes of up to nine artists staged plays that lasted all night.
In smaller villages, two or three performers carried the art on makeshift stages during slack farming seasons. Scripts were memorized, improvised or handed down in notebooks.
Regional styles grew in the eastern province of Zhejiang, Hebei in central China, Sichuan and Yunnan in the southwest, as well as the northwestern provinces of Shaanxi and Gansu, each with distinct puppet carving, dialects and musical ensembles.
In Sichuan’s Langzhong, shadow puppetry has been preserved by the Wang family for seven generations.
Current inheritor Wang Biao once left to work elsewhere but later returned. In 2007, he recruited women students into his troupe for the first time in its history. Wang told Xinhua news agency that he could not let the art disappear in his hands.
In Gansu’s Huanxian County, 83-year-old Jing Tingyou continues to perform Daoqing shadow puppetry in a cave dwelling.
His younger brother plays the four-stringed instrument that supports the show. The brothers have kept the tradition alive for decades, performing folklore and history in evening gatherings.
Modern entertainment has challenged the art. Films and television draw younger audiences, while the skills of carving and performance demand years of training.
Many old puppets and scripts have vanished, but preservation efforts are under way. Schools include shadow play in cultural courses, museums collect puppet sets, and local governments provide funding for workshops and shows.
Daoqing shadow puppetry is now taught at colleges in Gansu. Master Jing Dengkun teaches eight classes a week.
“Many young people have taken a liking to Daoqing puppetry,” he told China News Service.
Overseas, the art has found new audiences.
In 2019, an exhibition called “Art of Light and Shadow” opened in Rabat, capital of Morocco in north Africa. Visitors saw antique puppets and attended workshops.
“This kind of performance is so interesting. I like Chinese culture,” a Xinhua report quoted a 10-year-old Moroccan girl as saying.
In New York, the China Institute presented an exhibition of antique puppets and a reconstructed theater. Workshops invited visitors to try and make their own puppets.
Marketing director Jeremy Willinger told Xinhua that shadow puppetry was “a wonderful way to tell interesting tales from Chinese history and tradition.”
Artists in China are also experimenting with new technologies. In Tengchong, Yunnan Province, performers staged a 4D shadow play that used holographic projection with traditional puppetry.
“It’s such a novel performance. I didn’t know shadow puppet shows could be enjoyed in such an immersive way,” an audience member told the People’s Daily after the show.
For many, shadow puppetry remains part of daily life. In rural Gansu, villagers still gather during the Spring Festival to watch troupes perform classic tales as firecrackers fade. Children laugh at comic scenes while elders explain the meanings of stories passed down for centuries.
At a school in Urumqi, capital of northwest China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, inheritor Yang Shan leads a student puppetry society. Since 2017, more than 1,000 pupils have learned to carve and perform. Few choose it as a profession, but some adapt its images for jewelry and fashion, bringing the old art into modern design.
The preservation of the craft rests on patient training. Masters often describe their work as more than performance.
Lin Shimin, a shadow puppeteer from northeast China’s Liaoning Province, told Xinhua that the art requires “voice, carving and heart together.”
After each performance, she shows audiences the half-finished puppets she carved, both old and new, to demonstrate the unseen work behind the screen.
“The figures may wear out,” she said, “but the stories will not.”
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