Pay a visit to puppeteer

With the help of the school leaders and teacher Mr. Ma, we divided our team work and, this afternoon on Wednesday, October 17, 2012 we went to meet with teacher Mr. Tan who has been dedicated himself to the teaching for over 30 years and trained a large number of students. He is also a famous shadow play artist in Huangyuan County and has offered us some related first hand materials on the shadow play in Hehuang. We were so happy for that.

Speaking of the shadow play, Mr. Tan was soon absorbed himself in it and shared with us the origins of the shadow play. The shadow play in Qinghai Province was locally known as "singing with the shadows" and "light shadow play." It was a drama treasure filled with intense folk features for its developing creation worked out by the local folk artists in the past three hundred years. The handy and flexible shadow play in Qinghai was suitable for the plateau environment. In the past, a donkey carried a shadow box full of about 500 puppets materials, following after five or six actors who took the instruments and props, and went through towns and villages. Setting up a stage in the yard and a paper-made or fabric-made screen at the height of 3 feet and length of 5 feet, then a shadow play would begin. The audience could not enjoy it any more. There was only one actor manipulating the puppets, and four actors in the band playing the instruments. Each of them was skillful at playing three or four instruments. The instruments covered over twenty sorts, some of which were dry drum, battle drum, three-stringed instrument, four-stringed instrument, suona, trumpet and flute. The last person was responsible for handing over the puppets and playing the percussion instruments like the clappers and lamps. The songs in the shadow play were of single tune. And the stories were mostly about love and myths. Such as "the Romance of West Chamber," "Canonization of the Gods," “the Fourth Daughter of the God in the Heaven Descends to the Earth," "The Romance of Three Kingdoms," "Heroic Legend of the Yang's Family" and "Getting Together in Huating Pavillion." The common stories were over one hundred in number, most of which were inherited orally. A Qinghai shadow play would display the current vivid culture among the people, as well as the optimism and generosity of the plateau people there.

Technical support:Town and Talent Technologies (China) Ltd.Co