Games and Amusements
For Confucius, the company of friends engaged in lively conversation was sufficient to define leisure. In pursuit of pleasure, contentment, and happiness—yet rarely explicitly for fun—and usually in the company of others, Chinese adults and children have enjoyed board games, musical and puppet performances, flying kites, and the companionship of birds and crickets for millennia. While even a dabbler can pursue any of these games and amusements, each is nonetheless a challenging activity demanding skill in order to master and enjoy it fully. Once technique is perfected and tradition is inculcated, both Chinese opera] and puppetry are elevated above the level of a mere hobby. Although these traditional pastimes have evolved over time, in today’s China they retain a significant degree of popularity even as they compete with the appeal of globalized hobbies, sports, and entertainment that all too often entice the young to dismiss traditional amusements as personally unsatisfying.
Bird Cages
It has been said that China is the only place in the world where people walk their birds and eat their dogs. In truth, dogs as well as cats today are no longer considered either a foodstuff or a bourgeois indulgence and have joined birds and crickets as favored pets. Yet, birds as pets remain prized in China, especially among senior citizens, because of the ease of caring for them and the pleasure gained from interacting with them.
Every morning throughout China, as has been the case for centuries, old men saunter leisurely toward parks, other open spaces, and even teahouses with a birdcage or two, each cage draped with a cotton cover. The walk provides exercise for the bird as well as the man, because the cage is usually swung vigorously, forcing the bird to grip its perch securely while tightening its wings. Sometimes bird cages are attached to the back of a bicycle or tricycle for the journey to a distant venue. Upon arrival in a shaded location, each cover is removed and the cages hung by hook near the cages of other bird lovers, either directly on tree branches or on wires strung among the trees. Almost immediately, with the fresh air, the clustered birds commence singing in chorus while the old men begin to talk. Besides chatting nostalgically, gossiping, and teasing each other, bird fanciers often swap stories relating to their birds. When they return home, attention turns to the birds as they are fed small meals throughout the day and sprayed with water in summer to keep them cool. Countless hours are spent patiently training birds to do tricks, speak, and sing, with rewards often nothing more than a seed. An important aspect of maintaining birds is talking to them, especially in the hope that they will mimic pleasant phrases.
Bird singing contests are often held on Sunday mornings in some cities, sometimes in parks but also in designated flower, bird, fish, and insect markets. Among the most common caged songbirds are Mongolian and Zhili larks, which, while plain in color, have a boisterous voice. Other popular caged birds include the intelligent myna, melodious canary, and colorful parakeet, as well as various singing thrushes, skylarks, nightingales, and grosbeaks.
Birds must be caged in a structure large enough for them to have some freedom to fly but small enough to carry. While bird cages in the West are typically made of metal, those in China are usually crafted of varnished bamboo, wicker, and wood. Simple cages are square or rectangular, while others are tubular in shape with an arched top. In southern China, bird cages are frequently works of art, including multitiered pagodas and polygonal structures that are virtual palaces and cannot be carried outside the home. Bird-breeding cages usually have two tiers with a divider between that can be removed so the birds can mate. Birdcage accessories for holding water and food are usually made of ceramics with auspicious ornamentation.
Bird cages crafted of bamboo, wood, and metal wire come in a vast array of shapes and sizes. Most of those shown here are hung outside as their owners participate in a morning bird singing competition in shanghai.
Cricket Cages
The Chinese fascination with “singing” and “fighting” crickets, fragile insects that are phenological harbingers marking the change of seasons, is matched by their efforts to house them in handsome containers and cages. Moreover, because of the homophonous relationship between the common word for crickets and “joy,” both pronounced xi, crickets have a long history as propitious decorative visual motif, in paintings, on porcelain, and embroidered on cloth. Yet, it is the maintenance of crickets at home as auspicious objects of enjoyment and companionship—pets—that underscores the Chinese affection for the living creature.
In the past, common people as well as literati and royalty trapped crickets in the wild during the evening or purchased them in markets or from itinerant peddlers. Even today, between May and the end of July in many parts of China, crickets, cicadas, katydids, and grass-hoppers, in great variety and distinguished by their forms, colors, and sounds, are available for purchase. Sought after by connoisseur hobbyists and the general public, insects are kept in a variety of containers that include not only simple cages made of bamboo, but also pottery jars covered with lids to keep them cool in summer, and specially fashioned gourds, which are sometimes painted or engraved, with perforated covers for use in autumn and winter. Gourds are trained to grow into a mold while on the vine, thus creating a desired shape that will provide suitable acoustics and amplify the chirping. Traditional covers have always been intricately decorated pieces of sandalwood, ivory, coconut shell, and even jade, with open work as well as high relief. According to a report by Dun Lichen in 1900, the infatuation with expensive gourd containers for crickets led to the impoverishment of some nobles, proving that “... the ways in which they squander their riches do not stop merely with music, women, and precious stones” (82).
Besides the clay and gourd containers, miniature show cages fashioned out of bone, bamboo, wood, horn, brass, and even walnut shells, in myriad shapes, have long served as accessories to display and transport prized crickets. Each handcrafted cage includes vertical openwork slats with a sliding door and a knotted handle on top for hanging and carrying. Other paraphernalia to coddle the insects include ceramic feeding and watering plates, boxes for sleeping, and saucers for bathing, while scales are used for weighing, bowls serve as pits for fights, and ticklers made of rat whiskers or fine hair stimulate either melodic singing or active aggression.
The pleasant “singing voice” of crickets is actually produced by the motion of their wings as they rub against each other, which creates a “chirp,” the onomatopoetic word for the sound in English. Immature crickets chirp in short spurts, while adults produce sounds continuously. In recent years, cricket singing contests in which loudness, timbre, and resonance are judged have been held in many Chinese cities. Cultivating fighting crickets was a pastime for fanciers in imperial China, a blood sport that continues even today, with flourishing underground gambling dens. Although cricket fighting was banned after 1949, the activity has been revived and has increased in popularity. The Shanghai Star reported in 2003 that about ten million people throughout the country were raising crickets for fighting. Web sites offer guidance concerning suitable diets, including ground worms, blood-fattened mosquitoes, tofu, water chestnuts, apple pieces, and crushed calcium tablets and ginseng, to strengthen the bodies of the fighters. Breeders focus on developing large heads, robust maxillae, and strong mandibles as the necessary weaponry for these aggressive male gladiator crickets.
Cricket cages sometimes mimic birdcages, even though they are much smaller. canisters and jars with a perforated end keep crickets warm in winter. Markets in many chinese towns and cities offer cricket aficionados opportunities to purchase and trade crickets as well as grasshoppers for enjoyment as well as competitive fighting.
Kites
Chinese kites are not merely toys for the amusement of children. Indeed, kites emerged in China more than two thousand years ago, first as instruments of warfare, including even a man-lifting kite that made it possible to soar high above the enemy for spying and signaling. It wasn’t until the Tang dynasty that commoners and the elite discovered the enjoyment and challenges involved in flying kites. Over the centuries, kites have evolved, with a multiplicity of forms, materials, and ornamentation. Few would deny that virtually all Chinese kites are impressive works of folk art, with respect both to their ingenious structures and aesthetic qualities. To most adults, kite flying is a seasonal activity that peaks during the transition to spring each year.
Whether triangular, lozenge-shaped, face-shaped, or articulated, kites are employed for solitary pleasure or competition with others. the elaborate dragon kite shown here has a heavy head and a “body” reaching upwards of fifty feet. lift is created by extended tail segments, with feathered stabilizers added along the sides.
Chinese kites are almost always more varied than the diamond-shaped, single-plane flat kites common in the West. Kites can be classified using a variety of basic categories, including fixed or collapsible frames, rigid or flexible wings, and single unit or multiple articulated units. Each of these can be subdivided by subject matter and size into distinct regional traditions. Large composite kites are often several hundred yards long, while small ones can fit into one’s hand. Kites may be flown throughout the country, but it is in Weifang, Tianjin, Beijing, Xi’an, and Nantong that one finds the most illustrious histories and some of the country’s most prominent kite craftsmen. These cities also celebrate their cultural heritage with annual kite festivals. Among the most celebrated and ingenious Chinese kites are those that replicate articulated centipedes and dragons, both of which have a dramatic three-dimensional head followed by a trailing set of interconnected disks as well as a host of leg-like outliers. More common are flexible kites that mimic the shape of a huge variety of living fish, birds, dragons, lizards, and myriad insects, while some recall fantastical creatures from Chinese myths and legends.
Pliant split bamboo is the material of choice for the delicate framework of a modular kite. Tying and gluing of the bamboo joints must be done with meticulous care in order to insure the integrity of the airborne kite as it encounters the aerodynamic forces that challenge the control of the person holding the line that tethers it. The joints of some kites are reinforced with small copper rings. Once the frame is completed, its components are covered with silk or paper, although today sometimes nylon is used. Most kites are painted with saturated colors and covered with depictions of auspicious images such as bats, gourds, peonies, and peaches. It is common for a series of fabric streamers to trail off the end of a Chinese kite.
Weifang in Shandong Province boasts the world’s largest kite museum as well as an international kite festival held in April each year, a time of changing seasons when the air is most turbulent. In Beijing, the ideal place for flying life-like swallow-shaped kites is the spacious expanse of Tiananmen Square, where locals and tourists marvel at the size, complexity, and drama of soaring kites that often crowd the sky. At night, some kites flown there trail neon-lit tails. Smaller kites are sent skyward within the precincts of temples and alongside lakes in the capital. A few of the kite makers in Beijing are said to be descendants of craftsmen who made kites for the imperial family. From atop the old city wall that surrounds Xian, where nothing obstructs flight, kites provide spectacular displays of swooping and diving in an incomparable setting. Nantong town in Jiangsu Province, which is close both to the East China Sea and Yangzi River, is famous for the unique “singing” of its kites, an acoustic effect arising from the placement of a series of small bamboo whistles with different voices along its surfaces. It is commonly remarked that the skill required to fly a Chinese kite is more significant than the craftsmanship of the kite itself.
Mahjong Sets
It is reasonable to assume that mahjong is an ancient Chinese game that has evolved over many millennia like other quintessentially Chinese traditions and practices. Even though there are those who espouse the idea that Confucius himself devised mahjong, scholars have found no written record of the game before the nineteenth century. Strangely, even missionaries who chronicled the customs of the Chinese during the late imperial period did not mention it, although they wrote about other Chinese games of chance. Yet, when Stewart Culin, whose knowledge of “games of the Orient” was legendary, wrote about mahjong after the tile game had already become popular in the United States, he asserted that it had a “remarkable ancestry” linked to cards and dominoes and “may be numbered with silk, printing type, porcelain, tea and paper money among China’s important contributions to Western civilization.” The older predecessor card form employing “narrow strips of flexible cardboard from three-sixteenths to three-eighths of an inch in breadth” with “three money-derived suits of nine cards each and three extra cards” was still being used by Chinese immigrants in America in the early twentieth century (Culin 1924: 153-154).
This mahjong set with 144 pieces is stored in an elegant wooden box with brass fittings that is easily transportable.
The shift from woodblock-printed paper cards to solid engraved bamboo, bone, and ivory tiles was less an inspired invention than a gradual evolution. Whatever the catalyst, by the beginning of the twentieth century a “new” game had emerged, spreading first to Korea and Japan before reaching both the United States and Europe in the 1920s, when it became a rage. Abercrombie & Fitch, a venerable New York outfitter of sporting goods and indoor games with a thriving mail-order catalog business, is credited with scouring Chinese villages for authentic mahjong sets that fed a burgeoning American market, selling some 12,000 in their stores. Besides numerous display ads throughout the 1920s, the New York Times published articles with such titles as “China’s Fascinating Super Game” (September 3, 1922), “Mah Jongg Taking Place of Bridge” (January 28, 1923), and “Newport Plays Mah Jongg: Popularity of Chinese Game Leads to Formation of a Club” (July 21, 1923), with many minor articles highlighting the entrance of the game into the world of society women and charity events.
An auxiliary catalyst came about somewhat fortuitously. Joseph Park Babcock, a civil engineer, was sent to Suzhou in Jiangsu Province in 1912 as a representative of Standard Oil. While there, he and his wife were introduced to what was then an exotic game, which they enjoyed to the degree he wrote a brief booklet called Babcock’s Rules for Mah-Jongg: The Red Book of Rules. Published first in 1923 by the Mah-jongg Sales Company of America, located in San Francisco, his 117-page book simplified the game, thus increasing its accessibility to the public even as variant forms emerged. One variation, called American mahjong, was popularized by the National Mah Jongg League, which was formed in New York in 1937 with 32 members. Today, according to the organization’s Web site, it has 275,000 members, who play a game that is now commonly called Maajh and differs from Chinese and other international forms in various ways.
This undated lithographic print shows a group of women enjoying a game of mahjong.
A set of mahjong tiles includes three groupings of nine that are referred to in english as circles or dots, characters, and bamboos; directional pieces called winds and red, green, and white dragons; as well as four flowers and four seasons.
This boxed mahjong set includes four sliding drawers and a front panel that slides into place.
In spring 2010, the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York City mounted an exhibition titled “Project Mah Jongg” that explored “the history and meaning of the beloved game that became a Jewish-American tradition.” Although some in the earlier days had criticized Mah Jongg as a vice because of its association with gambling, the game “became a fixture in the Jewish communal world,” as it offered “relaxation, companionship, and a way to raise money for worthy causes.” Described as “an entertainment ritual in suburban Jewish homes,” “a leading device in Jewish women’s philanthropy,” and “an inspiration for fashion, jewelry, music, food, parties, and pageants,” the simple game played within China and in the Chinese diaspora has become entrenched in American popular culture (Project Mah Jongg, 2010).
Mahjong remains popular in China, especially in the south. While there are many who play the game on a daily basis as a form of relaxation in senior citizen centers as well as in teahouses and temples, others encounter the game only during wedding banquets and New Year celebrations. Addiction to mahjong is frequently reported in Asian newspapers, especially with respect to gambling losses. The press in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Japan also periodically report that scientific studies show that playing the game is beneficial to those with memory problems or suffering from dementia. Because of such reputed links to the improvement of cognitive function in the elderly, some hail the institutionalization of “mahjong therapy” as an exercise for the brain. On the mainland since 1998, mahjong has been accorded the status of a “team sport,” a wholesome activity to be practiced without smoking, drinking, or gambling. Wildly popular in Japan, mahjong is featured in both anime and manga as well as in online competitions. Virtual mahjong is played on a touch screen, with only the simulated clack of tiles but none of the unique tactile qualities of the traditional game played on a table covered with a cloth.
Musical Instruments
Sometime during the Zhou dynasty (1046–221 BCE), the various types of Chinese musical instruments, which numbered in the hundreds, were classified into eight categories, using evocative words that suggest both their different materials and sounds: metal, stone, silk, bamboo, gourd, earth, leather, and wood. These “eight sounds” or ba yin, with roots in the natural world, are brought alive as sound-producing devices when a human being activates them by plucking, bowing, striking, or blowing. Some believe there is a cosmic resonance that links the natural world from which the instruments take shape and the music that humans are able to extract from them. As in the West, Chinese value very old instruments. However, unlike other antiques, musical instruments are more than a curiosity that can be appreciated only visually, since they sometimes can be played to bring enjoyment to a contemporary listener with music from times past. Those who are educated as well as the less sophisticated living in the villages enjoy Chinese music played solo or in small ensembles. Employing similar instruments, the folk music heard at weddings and funerals and in local operas in the countryside echoes that experienced in imperial palaces and in the cities.
Instruments made of metal, usually bronze, include cymbals as well as bells and gongs that can be played individually or arrayed in sets. In 1978, an array of sixty-four elliptically shaped bells called bianzhong, which had been cast in bronze, was excavated from the tomb of the Marquis Yi in Hubei Province. The largest bell is some 60 inches tall, while the shortest is only 14-½ inches; altogether they weigh 5,500 pounds. Mounted on three-tier-high racks, which intersect at a right angle, these percussion instruments were once played by a team of six musicians. Underground for more than 2,400 years, they still were capable of producing melodies after being cleaned and have been played publicly using both traditional Chinese and Western scores. Of similar significance in court ritual were L-shaped instruments made of stone, which in English are referred to as chimes and in Chinese as bianqing. Suspended on ropes from a beam as a set, bianqing are struck with a mallet in the same way that a xylophone is played.
Enjoying quiet time in a Kunming park, this amateur musician is playing a yueqin, a moon-shaped lute with four strings that are plucked.
The “silk” classification for instruments referred to the strings that give them voice. This group contains the greatest variety, including instruments that are bowed, plucked, and struck. Among the ones that are bowed is the erhu, often called a two-stringed fiddle, which is in a large family of string instruments called huqin, each with different sound boxes covered with snakeskin or delicate wood. Python skin traditionally was used to cover the sound box of erhu. Since 1988, when China became a signatory to the United Nations Convention on the International Trade of Endangered Species, the sourcing of python skin has been tightly regulated, with most of the pythons coming from farms rather than the wild. A pair of pegs threaded into the neck provides the musician with a means to tune the erhu. Since there is no fingerboard on the instrument, the player stops the vibration by simply pressing the strings. Held by the performer with an underhand grip, the bow, which is made of horsehair, is threaded between the two strings. Thought to have originated in Central Asia, the erhu today is a staple solo and ensemble instrument in variety shows as well as in traditional opera performances.
This five-man group of musicians includes those playing the erhu (fiddle), yangqin (dulcimer), dizi (transverse flute), sanxian (three-stringed lute), and dahu (bowed lute).
No Chinese “silk” instrument is more celebrated than the seven-string qin or guqin, usually referred to in English as a bridgeless zither. Considered a refined instrument, its unparalleled sound is produced by plucking both open strings and stopped strings. While various thicknesses of silk were traditionally used for strings, steel strings are used widely today in China with these instruments.
Bamboo musical instruments are almost all woodwinds. Indeed, the Chinese sense of “bamboo” is as broadly encompassing as the English term “woodwind.” Wind instruments made of wood, even stone, for example, are also classified as “bamboo” just as they would be called woodwinds. The dizi, like the Western classical flute, is an instrument that is held sideways and horizontally for the musician to blow across the holes. Unlike simple flutes that have finger holes and blowing holes, a dizi has one additional hole covered with a thin membrane, whose purpose is to add a resonating effect. In contrast, the end-blown flute, called xiao, is held vertically at an angle of 45 degrees from the body. Some are thicker than others, and the number of finger holes is either six or eight. Both dizi and xiao, as well as other named flutes, differ from one another in the type of bamboo used in their manufacture.
The most prominent instrument characterized as “gourd” is the sheng, which consists of multiple bamboo sound tubes of different lengths inserted into a base. It is often called by Westerners a Chinese mouth organ. At one time, sheng bases were exclusively made of specially shaped gourds, produced through the time-consuming procedure of placing a young gourd inside a mold in the shape of the instrument’s base until it grew into the desired form. Most sheng bases today are made of metal, with finger holes drilled into the wind chamber. Playing a traditional sheng, the musician activates sound by pressing his fingers directly on the open holes.
Instruments made of earth or clay, such as the xun, are flute-like in that they are blown and have holes to control sound, but are egg-or globe-shaped. Instruments made of leather or hide are almost all drums, called gu, which vary in size from those held in one hand to those that must be supported on a stand. Gu are usually played with a pair of sticks or a beater of some type. Wooden instruments are usually of the percussion variety, either as a wooden box or blocks that must be struck.
While J. Dyer Ball at the end of the nineteenth century felt comfortable stating that “The Chinese do not appreciate our music any more than we do theirs” (1892: 269), today this is much less true. Moreover, modern Chinese music often incorporates both Western instruments and traditional Chinese ones, creating a welcome blend of musical styles. Well-known composers like Tan Dun and performing artists like Yo-Yo Ma have played important roles in expanding the worldwide acceptance of a blended Chinese-Western instrumental repertoire.
Two of the three children shown in this late imperial photograph are playing instruments, the pipa (pear-shaped lute) and erhu (two-stringed fiddle).
Opera Masks
While Chinese opera and Western opera are similar in that both combine vocal and instrumental music with dramatic acting, Chinese opera is a unique art form that also incorporates choreographed acrobatics and martial arts, stylized movements, and well-defined pantomime in creating an auditory and visual spectacle. Traditional string and percussion instruments provide a boisterous rhythmic accompaniment to all of the action onstage, including suggestive mime actions such as riding a horse or opening a door. There are many regional forms of Chinese opera, each with distinctive characteristics yet common narrative themes, but the best-known is Beijing (Peking) opera, or, as the Chinese call it, Jingju and Jingxi. Beijing opera has its roots in Kunqu opera in central China, having been brought to the imperial capital only in 1790 as part of the birthday celebration for the Qianlong Emperor. Over the past two hundred years, Beijing opera has served as a medium for transmitting traditional values as well as, more recently, revolutionary ideology. As popular interest declined after 1949, efforts were made to reform traditional approaches and techniques, including altering the slow pace of the performances and restyling staging for television.
The faces of opera performers—as with their costumes, the items they hold, and their gait—identify clearly who the characters are. left to right are cai shen, the god of Wealth; dian Wei, loyal bodyguard to the legendary cao cao; and Kong Xiu, general under cao cao. cao cao, dian Wei, and Kong Xiu are featured in the historical novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms.
One notable characteristic of Chinese opera is that faces are vividly painted with makeup to express the personality traits of individual characters, whose multitude of roles can be resolved into four principal types: sheng, dan, jing, and chou, all of them traditionally played by males. Sheng are the main characters in an opera. When appearing with a red face and lush beard, he is easily identified as Guan Gong (also, Guan Yu), a general known for his moral qualities and good deeds. Guan Gong’s exploits are legendary and have been a fixture of Chinese popular culture for centuries, chronicled not only in the fourteenth-century historical novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms but also in contemporary films and TV series. Dan characters are women, whose roles were played by men with body types and pronounced gestures suggesting a lithe and innocent younger woman, a lively female warrior, or a wise older woman. A jing character is a supporting male role wearing an enriched painted face with more colors and lines than a sheng character, while the chou actor adds levity to the narrative with humorous pantomime and quick movements.
The painting of opera masks not only follows conventions of line and coloring but also must be adjusted to the contours of individual actors’ faces. Audiences expect to grasp quickly the nature of a character by glimpsing the painted clues that will aid in following the opera’s plot. While there are literally hundreds of discrete faces in the Beijing opera catalog, there are also similarities between them based on color and composition that are both exaggerated and nuanced. Those characters whose faces are dominated by the color red are known for their loyalty, righteousness, and courage. Black similarly represents loyalty and uprightness, while purple symbolizes wisdom and resourcefulness. White faces are differentiated by whether the color is a “watery” white, in which case the individual is known for his trickery and malevolence, or an “oily” white, which exposes the individual as domineering and conceited. Blue suggests a character who is unyielding, while green represents someone with a chivalrous character. Those with predominantly yellow faces are cruel, vindictive, and ambitious. While one color usually dominates, faces also have clearly marked black lines and dark shading, especially around the eyes, that help to accentuate the main color as well as any complementary colors. A clown will have a pronounced white spot in the middle of his face, usually on his nose, while a frustrated character will be marked by an arrow shape on his forehead. The application of facial makeup is a tedious process accomplished by a skilled artist. Hats, helmets, garments, and hairstyles also underscore the distinct personality of each character. Although painted masks are normally not worn by performers, vivid hand-painted papier-mâché or plaster masks are available as decorative collectibles for hanging on a wall or placement on a shelf. Some Beijing opera masks are reproduced widely in China on T-shirts, kites, scarves, ties, lanterns, mugs, toys, key chains, ball-point pens, bottles, bottle openers, paperweights, and slippers. There are even hand-painted wooden combs whose serrated teeth represent the beard of the opera performer, and in some cosmetology shops in China, it is possible to have one’s nails painted with a full series of ten elongated opera masks.
As depicted in an early twentieth-century print, this toy seller in beijing carries a rack on his back filled with small objects made of paper, cardboard, tin, and scrap wood, including a prominently placed opera mask hanging on the side.
The face of a dan, a young woman without a prominent role; and Jiang Wei, a military general who served under Zhuge liang.
Two women performing in a chinese opera with minimal identifying facial adornment.
Puppets
Puppetry—the animating of inanimate objects to narrate a story— is an ancient folk art with roots in India that has a history of at least 2,000 years in China, where it has evolved into several distinct forms. In the West, puppets bring to mind a performance geared toward children, while in China puppetry always has been a theatrical experience principally for adults. This is because most of the themes are related to Chinese opera, a quintessential form that unites vocal and instrumental performance with dance and acrobatics and a popular repertoire drawn from traditional stories known by all. Because puppet theater generally flourished in Chinese villages and in poorer urban neighborhoods where funds were insufficient to engage an opera troupe, it has sometimes been called the opera of the poor.
Puppets vary in form from region to region and can be roughly classified as string, rod, shadow, and glove puppets. As in Chinese opera, where music is an essential component, most puppet performances include four musicians, one playing various wind instruments, another strings, a third percussion instruments, and a singer who assumes all the dramatic roles by mimicking the phraseology of characters of different age and gender.
Side-by-side, three master puppeteers perform with traditional rod puppets at the china puppet theater in beijing.
While Quanzhou in Fujian Province is known as the marionette capital of the country, string puppetry is widely performed throughout southern China and is found in northern China as well. It is common to see small-scale string puppets at temple festivals. On the other hand, the Quanzhou Marionette Troupe, which includes some thirty manipulators and a full orchestra, performs in an auditorium and has toured internationally. Some twelve to sixteen inches tall, each string puppet is made of multiple wooden pieces, including a head fashioned out of a block of camphor wood, a torso, and limbs. Chinese marionettes are manipulated by anywhere from a dozen to thirty-six strings, some of which are attached even to the mouth, eyes, nose, and ears in order to bring the puppet to life. The long strings are directly attached to the manipulator’s hands or to positions along bamboo strips rather than to articulated panels that are common with Western marionettes.
With his stage on one end of a carrying pole and boxes stuffed with puppets and props on the other, this itinerant puppet master wanders the lanes of beijing.
Three rod, or stick, puppets.
Puppets manipulated using wooden or bamboo rods are found throughout China. They vary greatly in size, from those approximately three feet in height that are activated directly in front of a person to those famous in Sichuan that are fully human in size. In the simplest rod type, one of the puppeteer’s hands directly controls the head while the other hand manages two rods, sometimes hidden in the puppet’s sleeves, that give motion to arms and hands. In other cases, three rods are used, including not only articulated rods attached to the elbow and wrists but also one to the head. Independent mechanisms within the head make it possible to move both the mouth and the eyes, essentially by flipping the wrists. Puppets of this type normally do not have feet but only loosely hanging legs that can be thrust up to suggest kicking.
Two-dimensional shadow puppets, called piying, or “shadows of hides,” appear as solid silhouettes on a white backlit screen. Originally made of paper, for centuries they have taken shape from the hides of buffalos, donkeys, and sheep. The northern Chinese tradition employs thin translucent hides with smaller figures, while puppets of the southern tradition are generally larger and formed from thicker hides. Cut into multiple pieces that are connected at the wrist, elbows, waist, and knees by threads, each shadow figure typically has a large head and smaller tapered body. Three sticks, one at each wrist and the third at the back shoulder, provide the only means of manipulation. As with other puppet types, elaborate and colorful costumes hint to the audience of the figure’s character, which typically is also conveyed by the symbolic colors of the face, following the traditions employed in Chinese opera: red, uprightness and loyalty; black, selflessness and fidelity; white, treachery and craftiness; and green, sinister and threatening. A shadow puppet troupe is made up of five individuals, including a single puppeteer who may manipulate up to five puppets simultaneously, with his ten fingers controlling as many as fifteen threads.
In Taiwan, Fujian, and Guangdong, hand or glove puppets have evolved from simple cloth bags with a wooden head to magnificently costumed personalities with wooden hands, wooden legs with boots, and heads capped with elaborate headdresses that rival those on the Peking Opera stage. A master puppeteer manipulates the puppet by using only three fingers—index finger for the head and thumb and middle finger for the arms. Only through exercise and practice is it possible to bend the index finger to the degree that exaggerates head movements for maximum effect. It is not uncommon for a glove puppet to leave his master’s hands in order to somersault in midair before returning to the hand, or even to juggle dishes. Today’s glove puppets, which have grown in size in comparison to traditional ones, are now featured on television as well as at temple fairs. With plots that are fast-paced and action-packed, as well updated sound design, lighting, and special effects, conventional stories have been enhanced with even sci-fi themes, for example, in order to draw in younger viewers. This has helped keep the traditional art alive.
The audience has no difficulty understanding that the puppetry story is that of the classic tale Journey to the West, because of the presence of sun Wukong, the Monkey King, and Zhu baijie, usually called pigsy in english.