Rod puppets were popular in Guangdong, Fujian, and Guizhou provinces during the Ming Dynasty. Rod puppet shows with many types of roles were widely distributed in China during the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911). They could be found in Hangzhou City (of Zhejiang Province), in the provinces of Guangdong, Sichuan, and Shanxi, and in Beijing Municipality among many other places. Rod puppets in Sichuan came in three sizes - large, medium, and small. Rod puppets in Shanxi were divided into central and southern Shanxi type.
Rod puppetry in Beijing was actually another form of Peking Opera. The art was introduced to the royal palace and was therefore popularly referred to as dataigongxi (grand palace theater). There were four well-known troupes in Beijing including the Jinli and Siyi troupes. They often invited outstanding Peking Opera artists such as Jin Xiushan and Liu Yongchun to provide background narration and songs for the shows.
String puppet shows were already highly developed in Shanxi's Heyang County during the Ming Dynasty. During the reigns of the Qing emperors Qianlong and Jiaqing (1736-1820), they were very popular in more than 30 counties in the border areas between Shanxi, Shaanxi, and Henan provinces, and in Heyang alone there were over 30 string puppet troupes. String puppets also enjoyed popularity in Hangzhou and Quanzhou and in Fujian's Shanghang County in particular during the reign of the Qing Emperor Guangxu (1875-1908). During the last years of the Qing Dynasty, string puppet troupes from Jiangsu Province toured Southeast Asia and were well received.
Wire puppets began to take shape near the end of the Qing Dynasty and became very popular in eastern Guangdong and western Fujian. Gunpowder-activated puppet shows were performed in Pucheng County of Shanxi Province during the Fire God Festival. Their representative plays in Qing times were The Goddess of Heaven Scatters Flowers, Wu Song Overpowers the Tiger, and Monkey King Subdues the White Bone Demon Three Times.
After the 1911 Revolution, cultural circles in Shanghai took the lead in producing modern plays. During the 1930s, in an attempt to reform traditional puppet shows by introducing modern stage design, lighting, and sound effect, Yu Zheguang and others created and staged new puppet shows such as Wen Tianxiang, The Swan, and The Eternal Grief. As a result, the scope of subject matter for puppet shows and the space for their performances were enlarged.
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