Entering old age, I love to reminisce about the past, especially some things in my childhood are always haunting my mind and presented to my eyes, which makes me unable to calm down. Recently, the shadow puppetry of the hometown has been hovering in the brain again and again, and although the unique folk art has been around for a long time, it is still timeless and vivid, and it is unforgettable.
Shadow puppetry, like puppetry, is an upgraded version of self-singing class singing. In our village, puppets are played during the day and shadow puppets are performed at night. The stage of shadow puppetry is relatively simple, you only need to remove the curtain in front of the small stage for puppetry, hang a large screen and a vegetable oil lamp with multiple wicks, and you can perform. Shadow puppets are made from concocted cowhide, with hundreds of characters such as sheng, dan, net, end, and ugly. Although these characters are only profile images, they are realistic and colorful. During the performance, each character is connected with three to five small wooden sticks in the shape of chopsticks, and by operating the small wooden sticks, you can show the various movements of the characters, which is flexible and natural, and very interesting.
As a child, we were very interested in shadow puppetry. Watching shadow puppet plays, the closer you get to the screen, the more realistic it is, for this reason, every time there is a performance, we will not even eat dinner, take a piece of steamed bun and go early to occupy the seat. If there are small stools, bring small stools and put them in the front; if there are no small stools, they will bring a stack of bricks. In order to occupy a good position, we often quarreled and even quarreled, and were repeatedly reprimanded by adults. The shadow puppet plays in our village often performed traditional plays such as "Xue Rengui Zhengdong", "Fan Lihua Zhengxi", "Zhongbaoguo", "Golden Beach" and so on, and most of us could not understand these at that time. Our favorite to watch are mythological dramas such as "The Legend of the White Snake", "Heavenly Immortals", "Sun Bin Sitting In the Cave", and "King Wen of Zhou Visiting Xian". In particular, "Sun Wukong Makes a Big Fuss in the Heavenly Palace" is not tired of watching. As soon as Son Goku appeared, it was shocking. He flipped a dozen times in a row, and then flipped to the middle of the stage, followed by a few ear scratching and cheek scratching movements, which made us laugh forward and backward. His fight scenes with many gods are even more amazing, and each battle is earth-shattering and shocking the mountains and rivers. We are originally a little bit of greed, usually the first dip pillow, immediately into sleep, but look at the shadow puppet play is very focused, energetic, never doze off, you can see how the shadow puppet play is attractive.
Shadow puppet plays will also interject some self-written programs written by artists in between the performances of folding plays. Once, the clown performance of "Talking About Lazy" still makes me remember it vividly: "Talk about lazy people, lazy people, lazy people are annoying everywhere." I don't get up in the morning and don't wash my face, and I don't wash my dishes after eating. Clothes are not changed for five years, and urinals are not bad for three days. The hair grows to cover the face, and the body is scabed and curled, which makes people feel annoyed..." Its language is witty and humorous, and people can't help but be funny.
Watching shadow puppetry made me have a lot of feelings. The first is the worship of the fathers and fellow villagers in the self-music class. Their group of people, usually rough and wild, have a thick voice, but they can express danjiao's singing voice as tender and delicate, gentle and melodious; they are thick and clumsy, and their bones are prominent, but they can play the orchestra accurately and loudly, harmoniously and beautifully; they are basically illiterate people who do not know a sack of big characters, but they can remember all the lyrics in the whole play, and speak those confessions written in chinese with precision and smoothness. It can be seen that my father and fellow countrymen do not lack artistic cells, and my fathers and fellow villagers contain extremely rich artistic talents. The second is the admiration for the fathers and fellow villagers in the self-music class. Their performances were hard, often staying up until midnight, but no one sent them a sip of water, no one handed them a cigarette, and only a few occasional applause or applause made them very satisfied. This kind of selflessness, kindness, generosity, simplicity, and affinity have had a particularly profound impact on me, and I have always been engraved with it and never forgotten. Nowadays, don't say ask the famous actors in the provincial city to sing a play, it is necessary to spend a lot of money through certain relationships, that is, amateur actors who sing in the "Voice of Qin" of Shaanxi Television Station and get the ranking, but also have to pay thousands of yuan in performance fees. In contrast, how can I not make people love and respect my fathers and countrymen more?
Fifty or sixty years have passed, and I have been away from my hometown for more than forty years. When will you ever catch a glimpse of the fun shadow puppet shows of your hometown?
Source: Herald from all walks of life Old Friends Weekly And Culture Edition
Author: Zhu Yaoru