Lei Xianyuan
Lineage & School of Heritage
He was born into a family of craftsmen and from childhood studied paper effigy making, clay sculpture, calligraphy and architectural painting under his father.
Mastery, Signature Works & Repertoire
He has a thorough command of the craft of making shage opera figures, with rich practical experience at every stage: conceiving the scene, designing the frame, erecting the armature, modelling heads, faces and limbs in clay, delineating facial makeup and costumes, and making the scenery and props. After retirement he devoted himself to studying the shage opera figure craft, improved and refined the art of paper effigy making, and passed all his skills on to his second son Lei Wangsheng. He also worked with others to reproduce eight sets of shage opera figures that had been lost. His representative works include “Loyalty Protects the State”, “The Land of Shatuo”, “The Thirteen Passes”, “Sima Village”, “Broken Bridge”, “Cleaving the Palace Hall”, “Yellow Crane Tower” and “A Bed Full of Tablets”.
Honors & Recognition
Male, of Han ethnicity, born in July 1929 and deceased in August 2018, a native of Pingyao County, Shanxi Province. National representative bearer of Pingyao Shage Opera Figures, a fourth-batch national intangible cultural heritage project.
References & Archival Sources
Representative Items of This Bearer
- Pingyaoshagexiren Ⅶ-101
Profile
This static English edition is rendered at the edge for search engines, AI crawlers and readers without JavaScript. Compiled from official national representative bearer archival records, organized by topic and translated into English. 阅读中文版。