The art of light and shadow that has been passed down for thousands of years - Chinese shadow play

The historical origins of shadow play

Shadow play has a history of more than 2,000 years since it was recorded in writing. According to legend, during the Western Han Dynasty, Emperor Wu of Han's beloved concubine, Lady Li, died of illness. Emperor Wu missed her so much that he was in a trance and ignored state affairs all day. Minister Li Shaoweng went out one day and met a child playing with a rag doll on the road. The shadow was reflected on the ground and looked lifelike. Li Shaoweng had an idea and cut Lady Li's image out of cotton and painted it with colors, and installed wooden poles at the hands and feet.At night, he surrounded the square curtain, lit candles, and respectfully invited the emperor to sit in the tent to watch. Emperor Wu was very pleased after watching it and couldn't let it go. This love story recorded in the "Book of Han" is considered to be the earliest origin of shadow play.

From the Qing Dynasty's entry into the pass to the late Qing Dynasty and the early Republic of China, the art of Chinese shadow play reached its peak. At that time, many officials, royal palaces, wealthy families, and gentry were proud to invite famous teachers to carve shadow figures, keep fine shadow boxes, and privately raise shadow troupes. In rural towns and villages, shadow play troupes of all sizes can be found everywhere. It is not uncommon for a town or city to have 20 to 30 troupes.

Shadow play was already very popular in Beijing during the Qing Dynasty. In addition to being popular among farmers and citizens, it also entered the palace. During the reign of Emperor Kangxi, the Prince Li's Palace had eight officials with a salary of the fifth rank to manage shadow play. During the reign of Emperor Jiaqing, shadow play troupes were summoned to perform at home on festive occasions such as festivals. In the late Qing Dynasty, some local governments were afraid that shadow play venues would gather in the dark to start an uprising, so they banned shadow play and even arrested shadow play artists. Shadow play artists were also implicated in the White Lotus Rebellion in the late Qing Dynasty and were confiscated on the charge of "Xuan Deng Bandits". Before and after the invasion of the Japanese army, due to social unrest and years of war, the people were living in poverty, causing the once prosperous shadow play industry to wither and never recover.

After 1949, the remaining shadow puppet troupes and artists across the country began to become active again. From 1955 onwards, they organized national, provincial and municipal shadow puppet performances, and sent delegations abroad many times to perform and conduct cultural and artistic exchanges, which were quite fruitful.

Its own characteristics

China is a vast country, and shadow puppets in different regions have their own characteristics. However, the production process of shadow puppets is mostly the same. It usually goes through eight steps, including selecting leather, making leather, drawing, copying, engraving, applying color, sweating and ironing, and stitching. It is a complicated and wonderful process, with more than 3,000 hand-carved knives. The artistic creativity of shadow puppets draws on the techniques and styles of Chinese Han Dynasty silk paintings, stone reliefs, brick reliefs, and Tang and Song Dynasty temple murals.It embodies the superb wisdom of traditional Chinese craftsmanship and the ingenuity of successive generations of inheritors.

The production process is: first remove the hair and blood from sheepskin, donkey skin or other animal skins, then treat them with drugs to make the leather thinner and translucent, apply tung oil, and then artists draw pictures of various characters on them, carve them with various types of knives, and then apply colors. The five pure colors used for coloring are red, yellow, blue, green and black.

When carving, positive carving is generally used, and sometimes negative carving is used. Painting and dyeing pay attention to the patterns of flowers, grass, clouds, phoenixes and other patterns for women's hair and clothing, while dragons, tigers, water, clouds and other patterns are used for men. Loyal characters are five-point faces, and villains are seven-point faces. The character modeling is the same as that of drama characters, with all the roles of Sheng, Dan, Jing and Chou. The height of the finished shadow puppets is 55 cm, and the shortest is about 10 cm.

The limbs and head of the shadow puppet are carved separately and connected with threads so that they can move freely during the performance. A shadow puppet is controlled by five bamboo sticks. The artist's fingers are flexible and often dazzle the audience. Not only do they have superb hand skills, but they also have to speak, recite, beat, sing, and control gongs and drums with their feet. The screen for the shadow puppet show is made of a 1 square meter piece of white gauze. After being polished with fish oil, the white gauze becomes crisp and translucent. During the performance, the shadow puppet moves closely against the screen, and the human shadow and colorful colors are real and moving. Shadow puppet props are small, convenient for performance, and are not restricted by the venue. Actors do not need formal training, so they are deeply loved by the people. In areas where shadow puppetry is popular, people affectionately call it the "one-load-carrying" art.

Intangible heritage, inheritance

In the long history of more than 2,000 years, shadow puppetry has gradually spread all over China, forming dozens of categories with different regional characteristics, such as Sichuan shadow puppetry, Hubei shadow puppetry, Tangshan shadow puppetry, etc. At present, shadow puppetry projects from 37 production areas in my country have been included in the national intangible cultural heritage list.

The musical singing style and rhythm of shadow puppetry in various places have absorbed the essence of their own local operas, folk art, folk songs, and music systems, thus forming many colorful schools.
With the sea and land exchanges of the Silk Road, Chinese shadow puppetry has been introduced to Japan, Arabia, Britain, France, Germany, Italy and other countries and regions. Legend has it that in the 18th century, the great German poet Goethe used Chinese shadow puppetry to celebrate his birthday.

Since the founding of the People's Republic of China, with the advancement of science and technology, the development of shadow puppetry has entered a new stage. Through projection, digital animation and other methods, the originally fixed stage performances have been brought to the big screen; some shadow puppetry teams have tried to combine traditional shadow puppetry with modern drama, dance, pop music and other elements to create a novel performance form to attract more audiences' attention.

French artist Rodin once said: "The source of art lies in the inner truth. Your shape and color must convey emotions."

Each exquisite shadow puppet is interpreted by the craftsmen to bring life, joy, anger, sorrow and happiness to life on the light and shadow; and the perseverance and persistence of successive generations of inheritors have given the shadow play a long-lasting and vigorous vitality.

The charm of shadow puppetry lies not only in the audio-visual feast it presents, but also in arousing people's emotional resonance. The cultural history, folk customs and other contents it expresses are the most touching Chinese stories, Chinese spirit and Chinese power.