【Editor's Note】The Spring Festival is one of the most important festivals in the mainland. How to celebrate this holiday? In the development of thousands of years of history, some relatively fixed customs and habits have been formed, and many of them have been passed down to the present day. The Spring Festival and Lantern Festival are important nodes for intangible cultural heritage exhibitions and folk customs activities throughout the country. At the beginning of 2022, the Central Broadcasting Network Culture Channel will sort out the folk skills that run through the New Year customs, and work with you to "celebrate the New Year"!
Shadow puppet performance scene (picture from CFP Central Broadcasting Network)
Shadow puppetry is an important traditional folk art in the mainland. During the Spring Festival, at temple fairs everywhere, shadow puppetry will always become the protagonist of the game. A white curtain between inches, a variety of character scenes, the appropriate combination of light and shadow, coupled with skilled performers and local unique music singing voices, constitute the unique exhibition effect of shadow puppetry. Between the singing and playing of craftsmen, the lively atmosphere of the Spring Festival will always make people linger.
According to the Southern Song Dynasty Meng Yuanlao's "Tokyo Dream Record", shadow puppetry has matured and flourished in the Song Dynasty at the end, and after the development of the four historical periods of Song, Jin, Yuan and Ming, the popular shadow puppetry throughout the country has shown a prosperous situation in the Qing Dynasty.
Shadow puppetry (picture from CFP Central Broadcasting Network)
The popular scope of shadow puppetry is extremely extensive, almost all over the country's provinces and regions, and due to the different sound cavities performed in various places, a variety of shadow puppet plays are formed, such as Huaxian shadow puppetry in Shaanxi, Huayin old cavity shadow puppetry, Agong cavity shadow puppetry, string plate cavity shadow puppetry, Gansu Huanxian Daoqing shadow puppetry, Shanxi Xiaoyi bowl bowl shadow puppetry, Hebei Tangshan shadow puppetry, Ji'nan shadow puppetry, Zhejiang Haining shadow puppetry, Hubei Jianghan Plain shadow puppetry, Guangdong Lufeng shadow puppetry, Liaoning Fuzhou shadow puppetry, Lingyuan shadow puppet play, etc. At present, 37 shadow puppet show projects from 37 production areas on the mainland have been included in the national intangible cultural heritage list.
Shadow puppet production (picture from CFP Central Broadcasting Network)
River Huang shadow puppetry
Hehuang shadow puppetry, also known as "Qinghai shadow puppetry", is called "shadow" or "shadow puppet" in the local area, mainly in the eastern part of Qinghai Province, and there are also a small number of shadow puppet plays in the Han settlements of ethnic minority autonomous prefectures.
River Huang shadow puppetry has a history of about two hundred years, and has formed some inherent characteristics in the long-term development process. It has an independent and mature plate cavity sound cavity system, with a dedicated string music plate and percussion music plate, and its singing cavity music cannot be used with other local dramas. Hehuang shadow puppet character design is unique, the image is rich and realistic, it is composed of 11 parts, mainly divided into two parts of the sub (head) and the body, the slight and the headdress are connected together, the limbs of the body and the costume are connected together. There are few written scripts in The River Huang Shadow PuppetRy, and the performances are all based on the oral inheritance of the artists, and in the process a special set of memory methods has gradually formed, and most artists have the ability to improvise. The shadow puppet class consists of five people, one of whom manipulates the roles of Sheng, Dan, Jing, and Ugly and also serves as rappers, while the other four are musicians and are responsible for all the musical accompaniment of The Bunbu Field.
Shadow puppet show scene (picture from CFP Central Broadcasting Network)
Sichuan shadow puppetry
Sichuan shadow puppetry mainly includes three types: earth shadow puppetry, Guang shadow puppetry (also known as "Weinan shadow puppetry") and Langzhong shadow puppetry. Among them, Langzhong shadow puppetry is the most distinctive.
Langzhong shadow puppetry is popular in 36 counties and cities in Nanchong, Guang'an and other areas centered on Langzhong City, covering an area of 530,000 square kilometers. This kind of shadow puppet play was created by the Wang Wenkun family, a folk shadow puppet master in Langzhong, and the ancestors of the Wang clan combined the advantages of earth shadow puppetry and Guangdong shadow puppetry to create a new type of Langzhong shadow puppet play. Langzhong shadow puppet production is extremely skilled, the carving technique is skilled, the lines are smooth and delicate, the hollowing is solid and decent, the shadow structure is balanced, the shape is handsome, the face is oval, the head hat and beard are not fixed, and the costumes are decorated with traditional patterns popular in northern Sichuan, and the appearance is exquisite and beautiful, with strong local characteristics. The singing voice of Langzhong shadow puppet opera mainly borrows the five loud voices of Sichuan opera, in addition to the popular folk mountain songs, minor keys and Buddhist and Taoist music, eclectic and self-contained.
Tarzan shadow puppetry
Taishan shadow puppetry is one of the important representatives of Shandong shadow puppetry, and its performance activities have been very frequent since the Ming Dynasty. Since the end of the Qing Dynasty and the beginning of the People's Republic, six generations have inherited this excellent folk art.
Taishan shadow puppet sound cavity is rich in variety, it not only inherits the early Shandong shadow puppet "Mo tune", but also widely absorbs other folk opera singing voices popular in Tai'an, forming a unique sound cavity system. The character image modeling of Taishan shadow puppetry mostly draws on Taishan folk paper-cutting and traditional opera faces, and gradually forms a face series with distinct regional characteristics. Tarzan shadow puppetry is a typical oral folk art, the performance has no script, and the actors rely entirely on memory performances. The repertoire is extremely rich, especially the "Taishan Stone Dare To Dang" series is the most famous.
Taishan shadow puppet artists have retained the traditional shadow carving, performance skills and oral scripts in the inheritance, and innovated and developed on this basis, such as the famous performing artist Fan Zheng'an widely absorbed the performance skills of Xihe Big Drum, Shandong Sibanshu, Shibu Xian and other performance skills, and created a shadow puppet performance technique that can be manipulated, sung and accompanied at the same time, which has become a must-have shadow puppet play in China today. Taishan shadow puppetry is an important part of Taishan culture, which integrates Tai'an folk art, music and opera, and has important reference value in the study of folk customs and local history and culture.
Luoshan shadow puppet play
Henan Luoshan shadow puppetry is gradually formed by the gradual evolution of ancient Central Plains shadow opera, and luoshan artists in the late Qing Dynasty absorbed the artistic experience of luanzhou shadow puppetry, so that Luoshan shadow puppetry has been further developed. Luoshan shadow puppet production process is exquisite in materials, fine and accurate engraving, and the shape of the characters and pavilions and pavilions has a Jianghuai style.
Luoshan shadow puppetry is deeply favored by the audience in Jianghuai region, often performed in Hubei, Anhui, Henan and other places, and the scope of activities is very broad. Its singing music contains elements of folk music in the Jianghuai region, and the true and false voices are easily converted when singing, showing a high-pitched, bright, euphemistic artistic style. The lyrics are witty and humorous, catchy, and reflect the characteristics of Jianghuai folk oral literature. There are 416 Luoshan shadow puppet plays that have been passed down through the generations, of which 231 are regularly performed, mostly based on classical literary masterpieces. At present, luoshan shadow puppetry has no successors, is on the verge of extinction, and urgently needs rescue and protection.
Huanxian Road Love Shadow Play
Huan County belongs to Qingyang City, Gansu Province, located at the junction of Shaanxi, Gansu and Ningxia provinces, with an area of 9,236 square kilometers, 20 townships (towns) under its jurisdiction, and a population of 340,000. It was once a place where xiongnu, Qiang, Rong, Di and other ethnic exchanges and ancient Qinlong culture and multi-ethnic culture collided and integrated with each other, and its special geographical location and profound cultural heritage gave birth to the national folk art of "Huanxian Daoqing Shadow Shadow".
Huanxian Daoqing shadow puppet is the product of the combination of "Daoqing" and shadow puppetry, which has a history of thousands of years. After experiencing vicissitudes, it has formed a unique Taoist shadow puppet play in Huanxian County. Through the reform and innovation of a generation such as Changchun at the end of the Qing Dynasty, the "Taoist Shadow Puppet Master" made it more perfect. It blends with the customs and beliefs of the local people, forming a sowing status quo in the surrounding areas of Huachi, Qingcheng, Ningxia Yanchi, Shaanxi Dingbian and other counties centered on Huan County.
When the drama class performs, one person at the front desk picks the pole to perform, and undertakes all the roles of the sitting singing and chanting, and four or five people in the background accompany and "Ma Gong", a singing crowd, rough and high-pitched, unique style. Daoqing music is a fine-tuned type, divided into "wounded tone" and "flower tone", sung at two speeds of tanban and flying board, and the song card body and the plate body coexist. The four strings, fishing drums, throwing sticks and simple plates in the accompanying instruments are all homemade and have a unique timbre. Among the more than 180 plays that have been sung, ancient cultural symbols such as "figure" and "volume" are still preserved. Thousands of original Qing Dynasty shadow puppets in the collection and folk circulation are wonderfully conceived, delicately carved and realistic, and have high artistic and research value.