It is known as the ancestor of a hundred plays, passed down for more than 2,000 years, today can also be touched and operated by hand, rated as the world's intangible cultural heritage, and both traditional and interesting, after a few minutes of guidance, you can get started to perform, it can be said that it is both art and technology, it is - shadow puppetry.
And today we are visiting this is called the Royal Shadow Puppet Show of the Jingxi Shadow Puppet, it sounds as if it is far away but close at hand, it is located in the Shangzhuang area of Beijing's Haidian District, where there is a cultural park about cultural shadow puppetry - China's Jingxi Shadow Puppet Intangible Cultural Heritage Park, covering an area of 20 acres, is a special intangible cultural heritage place to understand traditional culture.
Known as the "Holy Land of Shadow Puppetry", it can receive 1,000 visitors at the same time to watch shadow puppetry, visit museums, and handmade shadow artists. It is the first complex in China specializing in the collection, collation, shadow puppet stage art performance, shadow art exhibition, and leather carving handicraft research and development. One weekend afternoon, under the warm winter sun, Yiyang went to visit in person, and it was indeed very rewarding.
The traffic here is very convenient, because after all, it is only Haidian District, under the highway, a little bit of road into the village is a bit narrow, but it is okay, and then from Baishuiwa Road to the park gate there is a road of about 100 meters long, and there are all kinds of intangible cultural heritage photos and pictures on both sides, which is easy to find.
Walking closer, I saw a large courtyard, the red gate is quite antique, we rushed to the afternoon performance field, because in fact, here is also a shadow puppet research institute, every day in the morning and afternoon two periods open, a total of two performances and visits. This time, in addition to taking everyone to see the performance together, we will also carefully look at the various exhibition areas with the core theme of shadow puppet play intangible cultural heritage.
Opened at 2:00, at 1:30, a large number of spectators had gathered at the door, and Yiyang visually measured it, of which at least 2/3 of them were parents with children. It seems that everyone is very interested in this traditional art of intangible cultural heritage. The door finally opened, and everyone lined up in an orderly line to enter, sitting in the theater, waiting for the long-awaited start of this shadow puppet play that has been passed down for more than 2,000 years.
Through the host's explanation, everyone knows that the original performer is a "pocket person", that is, the dragon in the sky pocket people shadow puppet art troupe, perennial performance here, the troupe has 76 actors, all pocket people, their average age is 22 years old, the average height is 1.26 meters. It has the face and voice of a child, but has the same wisdom as an adult, and the performance style is flexible and unique, which is unique in the world.
Mainly based on shadow puppetry and puppet performance, it is currently the largest private puppet puppet performance art group with special characteristics in China. More than 200 media such as CCTV, Phoenix TV, Oriental TV, and Hunan TV have carried out many reports.
As soon as the performance began, the performance was very flexible, with the music, vivid, and the repertoire was also very new, it was a new row of Winter Olympic-themed fairy tale shadow puppet play "Looking for the Snow Girl": mainly about the mother elephant family, due to the warming of the earth, the collective north, to the north to find the ice and snow world.
On the way, Elephant Brother Dun Dun encounters the Ice Prince who has lost his partner. Coincidentally, a little penguin named Stupid complained that the weather was getting hot and was preparing to run away from home when he met the snow girl who was separated from the Ice Prince. Finally, they met in an ice and snow world in the north, and while they were happy, the baby elephant and the little penguin learned that the ice prince and the snow girl were figure skaters of the Winter Olympics and were training here and scattered.
But the curious elephant and penguin did not know what the Winter Olympics were, let alone the sports in it, so the Ice Prince and the Snow Maiden introduced them to the Winter Olympics, and showed them the skills of ice hockey and curling, and showed them the best figure skating.
Then he also performed a classic play "Wusong Fighting Tiger", and the tiger was very impressive. After the performance, there is also an experience link, you can personally experience the shadow puppet performance under the guidance, Yiyang also holds a tiger, feel it, very interesting, watch parents with children also play happy, you can also buy a simple version of the shadow puppet to take home to continue to play.
More coincidentally, I also met an old acquaintance of the troupe more than a decade ago, the heir of the "Jingxi Shadow Puppet", who was known to the troupe at the front door, when I had cooperated in an Internet children's education project, and today she was being interviewed by a TV station.
The park has set up three parts of the exhibition of "Carving Time", "Shadow Puppet Past" and "Shadow Drama Brilliant", which details the production process and development of shadow puppetry. The exhibits include a variety of shadow puppet performance props, as well as hand-copied photo scrolls collected and rescued from the people, which comprehensively show the unique cultural charm of shadow puppet art in various forms such as engraving, painting, music, and opera.
Among them, a 12-meter-long shadow puppet dragon was amazed. According to reports, this cowhide carved long dragon is made by more than 20 shadow puppet carvers collectively, they selected 24 pieces of fine cowhide, using traditional shadow carving techniques, it took more than two months to complete, and this is also the largest shadow dragon created in the field of Chinese shadow puppet art.
Speaking of the story behind it, Shadow Puppets, also known as "shadow plays" or "light and shadow plays", are folk dramas made of animal skins or cardboard silhouettes of characters to perform stories.
During the performance, the artists manipulate the shadow people behind the white curtain and tell the story with popular local tunes, accompanied by percussion instruments and strings, which has a strong local atmosphere. Its popularity is extremely wide, and due to the different sound cavities performed in different places, a variety of shadow puppet plays have been formed.
Old Beijingers call it "donkey shadow puppet.". According to historical records, shadow puppetry began in the Western Han Dynasty, flourished in the Tang Dynasty, flourished in the Qing Dynasty, and spread to West Asia and Europe during the Yuan Dynasty.
Yiyang also saw that many European historical celebrities played a great role in the spread of shadow puppetry in the exhibition, especially in Germany, which was impressive. On August 28, 1781, the poet and playwright Goethe's 32nd birthday, he entertained his guests in a somewhat different way: a shadow puppet show from the East.
At that time, shadow puppetry had just been introduced to Europe, and people could not calm down for a long time every time they watched it, and the strange art form became the most fashionable talk in aristocratic circles.
According to Rashideg, a Persian historian in the early 14th century, "After the son of Genghis Khan succeeded to the throne, Chinese theatrical actors went to Persia to perform a kind of drama hidden behind the scenes. It refers to "shadow play".
By the middle of the 18th century, a French missionary named Gualot was fascinated by the shadow puppetry of Tangshan and Beijing. When he returned to China in 1767, he carefully brought all the production and performance forms of shadow puppetry stage lighting and filmmaker sets back to France, and performed publicly in Paris and Marseille.
Soon, it caused a sensation in France, and subsequently incorporated local drama, creating French film drama and spreading it to other countries. In 1776, it was indirectly introduced to Britain.
In recent decades, the Chinese shadow puppet fever set off by France, Italy, Austria, Germany and other Western European countries has increased unabated. Germans, in particular, competed to buy and collect Chinese shadow puppets. According to incomplete statistics, there are at least nearly 100 national and private museums in Germany that currently house Chinese shadow puppets.
From the beginning of the Jin Dynasty, shadow puppetry began to appear in the Beijing area, and by the middle and late Qing Dynasty, the shadow art in Beijing reached its peak and began to enter the palace and the royal palace, becoming one of the forms of entertainment consumed by the upper class at that time.
The Wang family shadow puppet play class was the most popular shadow puppet group in the palace at that time. After the entertainer Wang Bingyi followed the general from his hometown into Beijing, he settled in Xishan, Beijing, and formed the team.
Because Jingxi shadow puppetry was born in the court of the Qing Dynasty, compared with ordinary shadow puppetry, the production of props is more exquisite, and the performance form is more delicate and complex.
It is said that in the Qing Dynasty, the upper class was very popular Kunqu opera, Peking Opera, the performance of Jingxi shadow puppet opera is also combined with Kunqu opera, Peking Opera actors sing in the background, shadow puppet actors perform shadow puppets, posterity will name this technique "drill barrel", known as "Peking Opera shadow puppet double pot"...
This afternoon, even watching the performance, taking the exhibition, let Yiyang have a more practical experience of this sentence: "One mouth tells the ancient things, hands to dance millions of soldiers", indeed, this has a history of more than 2,000 years, the long-lasting shadow puppet play, not only by the museums around the world to collect, but also frequently invited to appear on the stage around the world.
Yiyang believes that this art, which is called "the magic art of the East" by Western audiences, will shine newer and more brilliantly in the future, not only in the land of China, but also on the world stage!
The Way is:
"A yang new thing,
Play every time! ”
Let's see the next issue, don't see or disperse!
A yang
December 2021