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Shadow Puppetry

Ⅳ-91Traditional OperaYunmeng, HubeiBatch 3 (2011)Extension Item

01 · Historical Records

Zhoujiapailou is a border village of Anlu and Yunmeng counties, historically assigned to Yunmeng and now under Anlu's Xundian; hence the account that Yunmeng shadow puppetry originated from Mr Zhou Tiebao's great-grandfather, who brought it from Anlu. The story of his father Lu Dadu going in 1905 to the Yangjia pengzi south of Anlu city to learn from the famous master Yang Bike also corroborates this. Drawing on the oral accounts of Yunmeng shadow artists, its origin can be traced to the Zhou family shadow lineage at Zhoujiapailou, whose craft, introduced from the Anlu area, has continued for more than a hundred years in the tea houses and temple fairs of Yunmeng's towns and countryside.

02 · Core Techniques & Process

According to the memory of the famous shadow artists Lu Chunyuan and Xu Hanwen, Yunmeng shadow puppetry's history goes back more than a hundred years. The earliest shadow performers were the family of Mr Zhou Tiebao of Zhoujiapailou, Hujindian, four generations from his great-grandfather to him. Yunmeng's county town is where shadow houses are most numerous, with five from south to north. The preserved items include Zhan Qinchai, Shan Wa and the Phoenix Fairy and Liang Hongyu Beats the Drums to Fight the Jin Troops. Its figures are carved from oxhide, the faces and costumes combining carving and painting in bright colours; the operator can move several figures with both hands at once and has developed such feats as taking a head frontally in a gunfight and taking it on the turn, while the singing is clear and correct in diction, making audiences roar with laughter at the comic points and weep at the tragic ones.

Zhan Qinchai (Beheading the Imperial Envoy)

A preserved item of Yunmeng shadow puppetry.

Shan Wa and the Phoenix Fairy

A preserved item of Yunmeng shadow puppetry.

Liang Hongyu Beats the Drums to Fight the Jin Troops

A preserved item of Yunmeng shadow puppetry and one of the representative plays of the inheritor Qin Ligang.

03 · Regional Records & Related Items

Yunmeng shadow puppetry is distributed mainly across the twelve townships of Yunmeng county, Hubei, and the neighbouring counties and cities, often performed in tea houses, at temple fairs and on festivals; the Yunmeng county cultural centre is responsible for the project's protection and transmission.

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04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding

Qin Ligang (as recorded in the official dossier of an associated inheritor): male, Han, born in March 1949 in Yunmeng county, Hubei. In 1978 he took the old artist Liu Xiuchang as his master to learn shadow performance and in 1983 took the shadow performing artist Lu Chunyuan as his master, becoming his last disciple, skilled in making and performing. In 1985 he built the Mengze Shadow House on Dongzheng street in the county town, performing three hundred and sixty-four days a year. His singing is clear and well-formed and pleasing, making audiences roar with laughter at the comic points and weep at the tragic ones. His figure operation is nimble, scattering and fighting with ten figures in both hands, and he is skilled in such feats as taking a head frontally in a gunfight, taking it on the turn and taking two heads against three. Experts and scholars from the United States, Japan, Italy and France have come to watch his performances. His representative plays include Wu Song Beats the Tiger and Liang Hongyu Beats the Drums to Fight the Jin Troops, and his representative shadow works include Yuanmen Zhan Zi, Tianxian Pei, The White Snake and Huang Xiang. He is a representative inheritor of shadow puppetry (Yunmeng shadow puppetry) in the fourth batch of national intangible cultural heritage projects. With the tea-house shadow houses as an important vehicle, Yunmeng shadow puppetry preserves a large number of serial plays and carved figures and is a living sample for studying the theatrical form of Jianghan plain folk shadow puppetry; in recent years it has been sustained through shadow-house performances, opera-in-schools and video recording.

05 · Associated Representative Bearers

Representative bearers recorded under this item, organized by national nomination batch:

06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography

  1. Shadow Puppetry (Yunmeng, Hubei) · China ICH Official Project Archive
  2. Qin Ligang · National Representative Bearer Archive

Sources

China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)

Read the official ihchina.cn record ↗

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