"Four or five people with thousands of troops and horses, six or seven steps through the state and the country." A platform, two or three puppets, eight or nine people, one move, one style, one play and one singing can interpret the fantasy mysteries of Chinese mythology, the grandeur of history and the complicated worldly common feelings.
In Yaowang Village, Yangping Town, Lingbao City, Henan Province, Li Xuewu, a 77-year-old puppeteer of the intangible cultural heritage project, is nearly eighty years old and has been watching over and accompanying his lifelong favorite puppets for half a century, inheriting ancient culture, so that more people can understand China's excellent traditional drama and feel the infinite charm of puppets.
Lingbao puppet shows have a long history. According to legend, in the late Spring and Autumn Period, after Lao Tzu wrote the Tao Te Ching in Hangu Guan, he was chanted and chanted by later Daoist disciples in the form of puppets, which later became a Taoist drama. In the late Qing Dynasty, The Lingbao puppet and the Lingbao Taoist sentiment were organically combined and widely circulated in the local area.
Born in 1945, Li Xuewu loved literature and art since he was a child, and he entered the Lingbao County Puppet Troupe when he was a teenager and studied puppetry with old artists. For various reasons, the puppet troupe was scattered and scattered, although it went through several twists and turns, but Li Xuewu never gave up. In the early 1990s, Li Xuewu and the troupe Nengla sang together, and after the masterful Taizhu Zimou, he was approved to establish the Lingbao City Puppet Art Troupe again. At that time, the actors gathered in his home to copy the script, tune the singing voice, and arrange the scene, and successively restored and newly choreographed many plays such as "Little Cargo Lang Turning the Box", "The Biography of the Daughter", "Returning the Soul Belt", "Lin Gongzi Surrendering", "Little Two Mouths Fighting", "Zhang Lian's Wife", "Poor Relatives" and so on.
Li Xuewu said that the puppet is about 1 meter tall, and the performers manipulate the main pole connected to the head and the hand pole to make a series of facial expressions such as opening the mouth and blinking the eyes. In the form of the performance, some of them are sung by themselves, some are specially picked puppets in front, and some people in the back are singing. Because there are few troupe personnel, the singing staff always has to play the role of several people, often a play down the voice are hoarse, and the singing and performing staff must cooperate with tacit understanding, in order to be emotional and lively.
In order to purchase the props and equipment needed for the puppet show, Li Xuewu not only spent all the family's savings, but also borrowed money from relatives and friends, and even went to the bank for loans. Lack of puppets, he relied on his previous work experience in the county theater troupe, familiar with the process of puppet production, special attention to find the most suitable poplar and paulownia knife and knife meticulous carving, after polishing, painting and other processes, the puppet character image vividly displayed.
Every time you go to a foreign performance, because there is no vehicle, you can only rely on leasing, and in the long run, only the car rental fee is also a big expense. In recent years, in order to reduce expenses, he gritted his teeth and scraped together 18,000 yuan to buy a large tricycle with a canopy, which was specially used to transport the puppet troupe's "belongings", and the transportation conditions were improved. As for the costumes worn by the puppets, part of them came from the skillful hand-making of Li Xuewu and others. They often buy back cloth from the market, and then according to the needs of the character, they carefully cut it all night, and then stitch it one by one, saving a lot of money.
Over the years, Li Xuewu has led the puppet troupe to Tongguan in Shaanxi And Sanmenxia and Lushi in Henan Province, and often participated in some major events in Sanmenxia City and Lingbao City to perform in various places, and each performance was very popular. In June 2009, Lingbao Puppet Show was included in the provincial intangible cultural heritage protection list by the provincial government. In January 2013, Li Xuewu was named the inheritor of the Provincial Intangible Cultural Heritage Project (Puppet Show) in Henan Province by the Provincial Department of Culture.
In February 2013, Li Xuewu was invited by a place in Xinxiang to lead a team of nearly 20 people to perform at a local temple fair for the first time. In order to attract the audience, he specially understood and mastered the situation of Xinxiang City, folk culture, etc., and according to the audience's appreciation needs, he created and arranged "Four Fairies Kwa Xinxiang" overnight, which was widely praised by the local audience after the performance, "They signed a 7-day contract with us at once." ”
"Our Lingbao puppet show has also been on CCTV!" Li Xuewu said excitedly. In August 2017, in Sanmenxia's participation in the "Charming ChinaTown" campaign, after many experts and judges screened layer by layer, Lingbao Puppet Show was successfully selected. This made him both excited and feel pressure, specially rushed to Xi'an to buy costumes, update props, organize and choreograph the mythological drama "Three Gorges of Dayuzhi", after three days of intense rehearsals, after successful auditions, successively in Lingbao, Sanmenxia, Zhengzhou and other places for performance, and finally broadcast on CCTV.
In order to enable children to love Lingbao puppet show more and achieve artistic inheritance, in recent years, Li Xuewu and his puppet theater team have successively choreographed children's plays such as "Nezha Noisy Sea", "WuSong Fighting Tiger", "Pig Eight Commandments Back Daughter-in-law" and other children's plays, which are well received by children during performances. In addition, he said that he would continue to pass on the traditional skill of Lingbao puppetry for the rest of his life. He often goes to the school in Lingbao City to perform "intangible cultural heritage" on campus, hoping to better pass on the Lingbao puppet show. (Courtesy of Lingbao Rong Media Center)