Liu Mancang

05-2413Shadow PuppetryTraditional OperaTongwei, GansuBatch 5 (2018)

Lineage & School of Heritage

Influenced from childhood by his grandfather Liu Shoushan, he began in 1970 to learn the striking of the pengling bells, the playing of the shuaiban clappers, the singing of the supporting bangqiang chorus and the making of shadow figures, and he performed with his grandfather's Zile ensemble.

Mastery, Signature Works & Repertoire

Male, Han ethnicity, born in August 1963 in Tongwei County, Gansu Province. In 1980 he was engaged by the Qin opera troupe of Changhe Township, Tongwei County. In 1986 he formed a troupe of his own to perform the shadow puppetry handed down in his family, and through continual study and exploration he absorbed elements from qu tunes, folk songs and Qin opera, making his performances more artistic and more enjoyable to watch. He now preserves forty-six traditional play scripts, four volumes of shadow puppet notation, and more than two hundred shadow figures; he commands some forty or fifty qupai tunes and more than ten aria patterns, and has formed the Liu family shadow tune, a relatively complete system of aria and rhythm, employing distinctive devices such as shifts of time and space in the plot and characters who ride the clouds and mist, and playing an active role in the protection and transmission of Tongwei shadow tune.

Honors & Recognition

Representative bearer of Shadow Puppetry (Tongwei Shadow Tune), a fifth-batch national intangible cultural heritage project.

References & Archival Sources

Liu Mancang · National Representative Bearer Archive

Representative Items of This Bearer

Profile

Representative item: Shadow Puppetry
Item code: Ⅳ-91
Category: Traditional Opera
Region: Tongwei, Gansu
Born: —
Batch: Batch 5 (2018)

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