Chinese Shadow Puppets
Last Wednesday night, Myles, Brigid, and I were at the Bookworm (yes, again!) for a program on Chinese Shadow Puppetry. This was something I had a vague awareness about, but really wanted to know more. We have not in eight years had any opportunity to see a tradition Shadow Puppet show, and the only examples of Shadow Puppets we have seen have been for sale in souvenir shops.
The talk was presented by Richard Hardiman, an environmental scientist that became interested in Shadow Puppets in his earliest days in China decades ago. Over the years he amassed an extensive collection and academic-level knowledge about the art. Even though Shadow Puppetry was something he pursued in his spare time, it was obvious how devoted he was to preserving this craft.
As he was setting up the A/V, a friend of his, Mr. Zhou, was helping unpack some of Dr. Hardiman's puppets. The kids and I were looking at one of them and I asked Mr. Zhou if it were really donkey skin (驴皮 lǘpí), one of the only things I knew about Chinese Shadow Puppets before that night.
No, he told us. It was from 内蒙古 Nèiménggǔ (Inner Mongolia) so it was 牛皮 niúpí (cow skin).
The program hadn't even started and my knowledge of Shadow Puppets had already doubled.
More after the jump
Dr. Hardiman began with the character pictured above, named 大手 Dàshǒu, meaning "Big Hand." This is the first character to appear in the play, and represents the Buddhist deity Guanyin. It sits above the stage after his introduction, so it was an appropriate character for Dr. Hardiman to talk about first.
大手 is unique among shadow puppets in that he is the only character that has an attached head. All of the other characters' heads are removed in storage. The reasons date back to the earliest days of Chinese shadow puppetry, a tool for telling Buddhist stories and spreading Buddhism. There was a strong belief in these puppets actually having some sort of spiritual dimension, so detaching the heads from the puppets kept order among the puppets and subsequently the world at large. If they kept their heads outside of the scripted plays, the thinking went, the puppets could behave in chaotic or even indecent ways outside of the script. Only 大手 could be trusted with a permanent head.
Dr. Hardiman then proceeded to discuss the two major schools of shadow puppetry in China. The legend holds that the first shadow puppets in China were crafted during the Qin Dynasty. As the story goes, the emperor was distraught following the death of his wife (or concubine), and his court kept his spirits up by creating a life-like shadow puppet. The historical record, however, shows that shadow puppetry in China was introduced in two major waves of Buddhist propagation which resulted in two different schools of artistry. Dr. Hardiman distinguished these as the North West school and the North East school. He confessed a personal preference for the puppetry of the North West, and I guess it is likely because that was where he first became interested in shadow puppets.
The North West school of shadow puppets likely accompanied a Buddhist movement out of India during the Tang Dynasty. The puppets from this school are usually made from cow hide, and have round eyes, bulging foreheads, and large features in general. These puppets can be found in places like Inner Mongolia, Shanxi, Shaanxi, and Gansu. There are local differences as well from province to province or even town to town, but in general, the shadow puppets of the North West school are of similar appearance.
The North East school of shadow puppets came from the spread of Tibetan Buddhism during the Yuan Dynasty. For Beijingers, these puppets are the most familiar. Made of donkey hide, these puppets tend to have aquiline features, smaller eyes, and more elegant shapes. In addition to Beijing, this style dominated the areas now in modern Hebei, Heilongjiang and Liaoning. Again, local differences exist within this class of puppets. Puppets from these areas are easily distinguished from North West school puppets.
The production of puppets and plays is an amazing craft and follows established conventions. The techniques have been handed down for centuries from fathers to sons, masters to apprentices. The hides, whether cow or donkey, are treated chemically and sculpted to create levels of transparency, and then painted according to prescribed color and feature specifications. The process in many ways reminded me of Orthodox Iconography, where colors and design follow traditional rubrics. For Chinese shadow puppets, craftsmen often employed mnemonic poems to guide them through the traditional process. The rhymes would remind them the characteristics for a given character.
The colors, too, had meaning--red, black or white--so the audience immediately knew if a puppet were righteous, or steadfast, or treacherous. These colors are the same as in the telling of The Three Kingdoms: General Guan Yu is red-faced, General Zhang Fei is black-faced, and Prime Minister Cao Cao is white-faced.
At the close, Dr. Hardiman showed a video of a shadow puppet performance. It was, in English, called Recruit a Husband to Support a Husband. It related the story of a man who sold his wife, and then appealed to a local official for monetary support from the new husband. There were laws, apparently, that governed this sort of arrangement stipulating that the buying husband was financially responsible for the selling husband, including something like alimony, all the way up to providing for the first husband's burial. (Interesting side note: Dr. Hardiman commented that bride-selling was so culturally ingrained that in the local dialect of their first place he lived in China, to ask a woman if she were married, the question was phrased 你卖了吗 Nǐ màile ma? Have you been sold?)
While Shadow Puppetry has suffered a loss of interest in both production and even cultural preservation, there are some champions yet who do not want the form to die away. In Beijing, there is a shadow puppet hotel operated by an enthusiast named Mao Mao (who was also in attendance at the Bookworm). The Shadow Puppet Hotel stages productions nightly. For anyone interested in collecting retired puppets, Dr. Hardiman's fried Mr. Zhou continues to sell them out of a shop in Panjiayuan Market. Myles was completely riveted by Dr. Hardiman's talk (Brigid---not so much except when he brought out the puppets). It had enough history, art, and performance to keep his attention. Afterwards, Myles hoped to buy a puppet from Mr. Zhou, but we had run out of time. Later this summer, I guess, we might have to find our way to Mr. Zhou's stall at Panjiayuan. I had been avoiding this famous market since we arrived in Beijing, but these shadow puppets might prompt us to go there after all.
The talk was presented by Richard Hardiman, an environmental scientist that became interested in Shadow Puppets in his earliest days in China decades ago. Over the years he amassed an extensive collection and academic-level knowledge about the art. Even though Shadow Puppetry was something he pursued in his spare time, it was obvious how devoted he was to preserving this craft.
As he was setting up the A/V, a friend of his, Mr. Zhou, was helping unpack some of Dr. Hardiman's puppets. The kids and I were looking at one of them and I asked Mr. Zhou if it were really donkey skin (驴皮 lǘpí), one of the only things I knew about Chinese Shadow Puppets before that night.
No, he told us. It was from 内蒙古 Nèiménggǔ (Inner Mongolia) so it was 牛皮 niúpí (cow skin).
The program hadn't even started and my knowledge of Shadow Puppets had already doubled.
More after the jump
Dr. Hardiman began with the character pictured above, named 大手 Dàshǒu, meaning "Big Hand." This is the first character to appear in the play, and represents the Buddhist deity Guanyin. It sits above the stage after his introduction, so it was an appropriate character for Dr. Hardiman to talk about first.
大手 is unique among shadow puppets in that he is the only character that has an attached head. All of the other characters' heads are removed in storage. The reasons date back to the earliest days of Chinese shadow puppetry, a tool for telling Buddhist stories and spreading Buddhism. There was a strong belief in these puppets actually having some sort of spiritual dimension, so detaching the heads from the puppets kept order among the puppets and subsequently the world at large. If they kept their heads outside of the scripted plays, the thinking went, the puppets could behave in chaotic or even indecent ways outside of the script. Only 大手 could be trusted with a permanent head.
Dr. Hardiman then proceeded to discuss the two major schools of shadow puppetry in China. The legend holds that the first shadow puppets in China were crafted during the Qin Dynasty. As the story goes, the emperor was distraught following the death of his wife (or concubine), and his court kept his spirits up by creating a life-like shadow puppet. The historical record, however, shows that shadow puppetry in China was introduced in two major waves of Buddhist propagation which resulted in two different schools of artistry. Dr. Hardiman distinguished these as the North West school and the North East school. He confessed a personal preference for the puppetry of the North West, and I guess it is likely because that was where he first became interested in shadow puppets.
The North West school of shadow puppets likely accompanied a Buddhist movement out of India during the Tang Dynasty. The puppets from this school are usually made from cow hide, and have round eyes, bulging foreheads, and large features in general. These puppets can be found in places like Inner Mongolia, Shanxi, Shaanxi, and Gansu. There are local differences as well from province to province or even town to town, but in general, the shadow puppets of the North West school are of similar appearance.
The North East school of shadow puppets came from the spread of Tibetan Buddhism during the Yuan Dynasty. For Beijingers, these puppets are the most familiar. Made of donkey hide, these puppets tend to have aquiline features, smaller eyes, and more elegant shapes. In addition to Beijing, this style dominated the areas now in modern Hebei, Heilongjiang and Liaoning. Again, local differences exist within this class of puppets. Puppets from these areas are easily distinguished from North West school puppets.
The production of puppets and plays is an amazing craft and follows established conventions. The techniques have been handed down for centuries from fathers to sons, masters to apprentices. The hides, whether cow or donkey, are treated chemically and sculpted to create levels of transparency, and then painted according to prescribed color and feature specifications. The process in many ways reminded me of Orthodox Iconography, where colors and design follow traditional rubrics. For Chinese shadow puppets, craftsmen often employed mnemonic poems to guide them through the traditional process. The rhymes would remind them the characteristics for a given character.
The colors, too, had meaning--red, black or white--so the audience immediately knew if a puppet were righteous, or steadfast, or treacherous. These colors are the same as in the telling of The Three Kingdoms: General Guan Yu is red-faced, General Zhang Fei is black-faced, and Prime Minister Cao Cao is white-faced.
At the close, Dr. Hardiman showed a video of a shadow puppet performance. It was, in English, called Recruit a Husband to Support a Husband. It related the story of a man who sold his wife, and then appealed to a local official for monetary support from the new husband. There were laws, apparently, that governed this sort of arrangement stipulating that the buying husband was financially responsible for the selling husband, including something like alimony, all the way up to providing for the first husband's burial. (Interesting side note: Dr. Hardiman commented that bride-selling was so culturally ingrained that in the local dialect of their first place he lived in China, to ask a woman if she were married, the question was phrased 你卖了吗 Nǐ màile ma? Have you been sold?)
While Shadow Puppetry has suffered a loss of interest in both production and even cultural preservation, there are some champions yet who do not want the form to die away. In Beijing, there is a shadow puppet hotel operated by an enthusiast named Mao Mao (who was also in attendance at the Bookworm). The Shadow Puppet Hotel stages productions nightly. For anyone interested in collecting retired puppets, Dr. Hardiman's fried Mr. Zhou continues to sell them out of a shop in Panjiayuan Market. Myles was completely riveted by Dr. Hardiman's talk (Brigid---not so much except when he brought out the puppets). It had enough history, art, and performance to keep his attention. Afterwards, Myles hoped to buy a puppet from Mr. Zhou, but we had run out of time. Later this summer, I guess, we might have to find our way to Mr. Zhou's stall at Panjiayuan. I had been avoiding this famous market since we arrived in Beijing, but these shadow puppets might prompt us to go there after all.
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