Two thousand years before the advent of cinematography, Chinese people had already started to use tricks of light to create moving images telling stories. Shadow puppetry first appeared in the Han Dynasty (206 BC - AD 220) and has remained an influential part of the Chinese culture ever since.
Many believe that shadow puppetry was even the forerunner of Chinese opera, which itself has developed many forms, including the relative newcomer, Pingju Opera. Though for a while such forms of entertainment fell from grace, in recent years performers in Hebei Province have been finding new audiences with encouragement from the provincial government and the new vision they are bringing to their art.
Casting a Ray of Hope
There are many legends about the origin of shadow puppetry. In one version, one of the concubines of Emperor Wudi of the Han Dynasty fell ill and died. The emperor, devastated, ordered his court officials to bring his beloved back to life. The officials made a model of the concubine using separate pieces of donkey leather, giving her joints that allowed her body to be animated. They adorned her with clothes by painting them onto the leather and, using an oil lamp, made her shadow move as if she still breathed. In time, the simple moving shadows became shadow plays with plots and dialogue.
For several centuries, the shadow plays entertained rural China after sunset. But with economic development and the accompanying spread of television and cinema, shadow plays have become scarcer and scarcer. Its future seemed gloomy, but thanks to support from the central and Hebei provincial governments, shadow puppetry is seeing a resurgence.
One sunny Wednesday morning, China Today went to the rehearsal space of the Tangshan City Shadow Play Troupe, where we were treated to an excerpt from the traditional Chinese fable The Turtle and the Crane. On a white backdrop a frog appeared as if from nowhere, only to be suddenly attacked by a turtle. This is a tale that has made countless children burst into laughter for generations.
Years of preparation go into performances like this. In Tangshan, prospective puppeteers study for three to five years in one of several schools offering specialist training and then spend up to two more years as apprentices.
Troupe leader Da Jianguang told us that all together the troupe gives around 1,000 performances every year and often go overseas to perform. In September 2011, some of the 40 performers were touring in Japan, and Da himself had just returned from the Chinese Culture Week in Washington D.C.
For Da, their tour in Brussels in particular was quite unforgettable. The troupe brought the story of the city’s iconic Mannekin Pis to life to much local acclaim, depicting in shadow and light how the little boy saved the whole of Brussels by pissing on the burning fuse that would have ignited explosives destroying the city walls. “The friendly Belgians later gave us a chocolate statue of the pissing boy as a gift,” Da recalled with a huge grin.
Da explained to us how shadow puppetry is an ideal medium for sharing Chinese culture with an international audience curious about China. “Plays like The Turtle and the Crane have no dialogue, so audiences from other countries can understand them without any difficulties,” Da said.
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