The Intangible Cultural Heritage Project

Nearly every time I talk with a shadow puppet practitioner in China about inheritance, future or preservation, “非物质文化遗产”or “The Intangible Cultural Heritage Project” is the next subject that follows. It’s a bit of an urban legend everywhere you go; everyone has heard of it, fewer know about the actual particulars of the project, and most rare are those who have actually received the benefits of its inception. But, as mixed as the tangible results may be, it is clear that the project’s reputation and shadow puppetry’s recent inscription onto the coveted list, has brought a sea change of pride and validation to the working artists.

The Intangible Cultural Heritage Project (ICH) was started in 2003 by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in an attempt to staunch the hemorrhaging of the world’s cultural practices before it was too late. So far, it’s registered nearly 300 intangible cultural heritage practices in dozens countries. Chinese shadow puppetry was inscribed on a national level just around the time I was ending my Fulbright trip in 2011. It was an instant boost in moral, a charge to the heart of shadow puppetry. It made it seem as though things were picking up, that help wasn’t too far away. However, talking with artists in 2012 and 2013, it was clear the realities hadn’t met with their expectations. But, what were the realities and why were those expectations universal? I couldn’t seem to get a straight answer from anyone. The larger truth slowly appeared as anything but concrete; anytime you mix politics with art, it gets complicated.

I finally sat down last summer to read through the available material UNESCO provides on the subject. The slickly designed pdf’s on Register of Best Safeguarding Practices and Operational Directives for the Implementation of the Convention were beautiful and inspiring, but did little to inform me of the day-to-day workings of the project. I was confused and long days of deep googling did nothing to clarify things. So, I decided to go to the source.

During my stop over in Beijing in early May, I popped into the UNESCO office for a meeting. My pestering had finally got the best of them and a gracious project manager, named Julien Glenat, agreed to give me an hour of his time. And, as suspected, much was cleared up in that little hour.

Julien clarified that UNESCO merely writes a convention, loosely, and leaves all of the regional implementation up to the local Ministries of Culture (MIC). In this way they are incredibly hands off. No accountability, no policing, just suggestions. Julien stated that “each country is quite free to implement it as they wish. More importantly, as the local community wishes. I think the central notion of the convention is the communities – what they consider as intangible heritage.” This distinction is important. UNESCO and the ICH project keeps the language intentionally vague in order to avoid exclusion of the world’s great diversity of ICH practices. Sometimes, though, the vagueness of language leaves governments confused, wishing instead for an ICH ‘to do’ list.

I asked specifically about China, whether this vagueness in language had stunted their efficiency in anyway. I was happy to hear that China has stepped up in the Eastern region as a role model and have been progressive in their work with ICH. They’ve even established an independent ICH office in nearly every province to assist with more efficacious planning. (Again, UNESCO’s offices only guide and assist; China’s Ministry of Culture does all of the actual implementation and policy making.) The Ministry of Culture is even working to establish an annual ICH conference with most of the bureau’s in attendance: science, education, business, etc in order to spread awareness and develop collaborations.

We talked for a while longer about the efficacy and possible corruption in the local offices, the awkward collaboration between politics and artists, and my worries about tacit learning and embodied transmission from master to apprentice (which is not mentioned in their ‘best practices for safeguarding’). After all my questions were answered, I asked Julien what his primary concerns for the immediate future were as he is there, everyday, witnessing the swift and irrevocable changes. He says he is most concerned with China’s tendency to direct their ICH woes to the tourism industry with a lot of speed and little reflection. I echo the same worry with Chinese shadow puppetry. Too often, when this shift is done in haste, it tends to only benefit the businesspeople, not the artists, and leaves the soul of the practice somewhere in limbo.

We bemoaned our shared feelings of inadequacy at times – is what we’re doing really effective? Does anyone care? Are we making things worse? But, Julient, who no doubt has thought about this more than I have, declared that there was “no small effort for culture.” And, I sincerely hope he’s right.

Thanks for reading~

*Thanks to Julien Glenat and the UNESCO Beijing office for their time.

A for Effort

In the midst of my chaotic China welcome, I snuck in a trip to the outskirts of Tangshan and an overdue visit to the Lu family cutters. It’s been almost three years since I’ve been out east of Beijing and I was anxious to check in.

I was happy to find the Lu family unchanged in the ways that matter: still ineffably warm, earnest and thriving in their multiple modalities. Both father and mother Lu, while busy helping son Tianxiang set up his new apartment in preparation for a wife, catch me up on their latest happenings. The apartment is on the fifth floor of the third building in a large complex of newly built identical high-rises, which are no stranger to the China skyline.

The apartment building is so new, there are only a few neighbors as of yet – everyone in a different state of preparation.

In the Lu’s apartment, the electric kang (traditionally a steam-heated brick bed) is the only piece of furniture in the place so far. His father is working on the baseboards, his mother on making new buckwheat husk pillows and Tianxiang is intent on patching in the light switches. The pride of having his own place shows in Tianxiang. He lights up when he talks about how he’ll decorate the walls with his father’s shadow puppetry and display his cutting tools on a specially designed shelf. I am honored to be the apartment’s first guest and sleep like a log on the kang.

The next morning, I see that the hustle and bustle of movement and improvement within the small household is no different from the small town of Han Cheng itself. Just a 20 minute bus ride outside of Tangshan proper, Han Cheng is starting to outgrow its dirt roads and farmland feel. There’s a few fast food chains setting up shop in the first floor of the new high-rise apartment buildings and the street’s nightlife reveals a swarming population of younger folk. Tianxiang’s building complex is just one of a few that now break up the previously flat horizon of corn and millet fields.

Shortly after breakfast, Tianxiang takes me to the small village another 20 minutes further out of Tangshan, named Damengang. Here, in collaboration with a few progressive educators, Tianxiang has been developing shadow puppet curriculum with a small village school. The program has been a success from the beginning, clearly evident with a tour through the school’s exhibition room. The pieces on display are creative, careful and wonderful.

This cutting sample is made by a student out of thin, flexible plastic – a more economic learning material than leather.

Later, I am privileged to meet the artists themselves. In the hallway, a band of students are studiously at work carving leather pieces on wax boards and painting the finished parts with watercolor.

In the music room, there is another group manipulating shadow puppets with help of a local troupe and when they see their teacher has arrived, they ready themselves for performance. We are treated to a short set of shows with students at the helm of each. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t tear up a bit seeing the young and the old working together behind the screen.

Like everything else he does, Tianxiang has created this program with the utmost care and thought. From the choice of plastic for the beginning cutters to the beautiful wax boards for the advanced students, this is no afternoon activity. A well-laid lesson plan of shadow puppet making integrated with performance practice, encouraged by both its long tradition and the pressing need for creativity — this is the kind of thing shadow puppetry needs. Who better to inherit and evolve the craft than China’s youth?

Tianxiang drops me off at his new apartment after a full day at the school. Shortly, he will head back to his parents house for the night. There isn’t much that needs to be said. He knows how much it has meant to me and I know how much it means to him. This work, this toil he offers on his days off, free nights and free hours from his day job in the city — it is something. They cycle of inspiration continues and we carry on.

The Lus at their “old home” in western Han Cheng

Thanks for reading~

For previous stories on the Lus: 

It’s a Family Affair, Part 1

It’s a Family Affair, Part 2

Luanxian or Bust

For more recent stories on the Lus:

一生一世 // One’s entire life

As The World Turns

I’m back in mainland China for a 10 week fieldwork trip, focusing on shadow puppet troupes and puppet making methods in Gansu and Yunnan. Somehow I finished the first year in my PhD program and left for China within the span of just a few days. I’ll try not to ever do that again. The mental quiet and focus that the school year has demanded has softened my fieldwork rigor for the moment. I was wholly unprepared for the deluge of stimuli and the unforgiving pace of Beijing upon arrival. But, slowly, I can feel myself steeling up again: remembering to carry toilet paper and water with me, abandoning my expectations that anything will start on time and always (always) managing to recheck my assumptions.

As usual, I’m starting my trip in Beijing. It’s the perfect place to recover from jetlag, get my belly used to the oil and spice and get my brain firing in Mandarin again. It is also home to a growing number of shadow puppet friends from all walks of life. Beijing, from the beginning, has never been a place I thought I would invest much time into, as most of what remains here are modern shadow puppet troupes. Still, it grows increasingly undeniable that China’s capitol is the center of many things in this country, which continues to draw artists and innovators, including shadow lovers. Within just a few calls to some of my pals, I see that I’ve lucked out with my timing: so and so has an exhibition, so and so has a new theatre and so and so is opening their new shadow puppet collaboration tonight. Never a dull moment in China, ever.

Hanfeizi, the brother and sister company I first profiled in 2011, is currently busy with a few projects. Most notably, they are participating in an exhibition of handicrafts for the ART BEIJING expo happening. I attended on press day, a day before the exhibition officially opened, and was impressed to see a large showing of journalists, supporters and general enthusiasts. The shadow puppet corner takes up one of the 4 main walls and boasts a small, but classy collection of Dongbei style shadow puppets.

Hanxing, left, beside two of the event organizers, his father and mother.

Liu Laoshi and the Longzaitian Troupe are also doing well. This troupe of little people remain some of the best trained and most enthusiastic students of shadow puppetry in the country. The manager, curious about my continued returns (this being my third in 3 years), decided I must be serious about shadow puppetry and welcomed me in with decided earnest. He explained that while the troupe’s reputation was growing steadily, with three branches in Beijing and 3 outposts in other provinces, the financial situation was still tight. The government does assist the troupe with things such as rehearsal and performance space, but does little else. They are still mostly subsisting on commissioned collaborations, ticket prices and some private funding. Because I had toted my friend Serge along as well, we got an extra special private showing of their prized blacklight show. So much neon! 

Over at the Shichahai Shadow Puppet Themed Hotel, which is one of the nicest boutique hutong hotels around, my friend’s Larry Reed and Maomao have just teamed up together to launch a new shadow puppet performance of The Butterfly Lovers for the hotel’s audience. It was exciting to attend their opening night and I was impressed with the amount of work they managed to accomplish in one short week of rehearsal. It’s a great story to translate into shadow and will add to their growing repertoire of shows.

Reading for the audience. Isn’t that screen gorgeous?

As the luck of my timing continued, last year’s hutong shadow tour team is all in Beijing at the same time: Julie, my great friend who works with Miao textiles and shadows and Serge, my friend from Holland who works in contemporary painting and performance. Recently, I connected Serge to my friend Tianxiang to help him make leather puppets for some upcoming experimental animated films. Together, Julie, Serge and I did what we like to do. We made some shadow friends, took them to the hutong alleyways and lit up the night.

All in all, a raucous and unrelenting beginning to my trip. I have no false expectations that this good timing will continue, only grateful to have been apart of the convergence. Can’t wait to see what the next two months has in store.

Thanks for reading~

How to Make a Simplified Colored Plastic Chinese Shadow Puppet

In February, I got to visit the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts to present a demonstration/workshop combo to a huge number of visitors to their ‘China Day’ festivities. The development team and I talked quite a bit about how to handle such a large number of audience members in a very short amount of time. I ended up developing some simplified colored, plastic Chinese-style shadow puppets that are simplified (only 2 rods and 6 joints) from the original Chinese shadow puppet design (3 rods and 9/10 joints).

This simplified design helps kids and beginners start manipulating the puppets better, sooner – without sacrificing much of the puppet’s agility. And, they’re sturdy enough to hold up to hundreds of kids doing their worst and enchant them with awe at the same time. Win, win.

*Though some of the steps in the process can be fussy, it’s worth the effort. Please message me if you need additional clarity and I can edit as necessary. Of course, feel free to modify the materials and joints/etc however you see fit – “there’s many ways to skin a cat” as they say.

Tools & Materials

• Your design in color/Color print out of traditional shadow puppet *For Chinese shadow puppet pics, click here: www.chineseshadowpuppetry.com (and go to the aesthetic tab – all photos can be downloaded)
• Dura-lar, acetate or other clear plastic sheeting (.030-.040” thick)     *(you’ll need about a 8.5×11” area for one 12” puppet)
• A Black Permanent Marker
• Colored Permanent Markers
• A sharp scissors
• 16 – 20 Gauge Wire (about 1’ per puppet)
• Wire snips
• Needle Nosed Plier
• An Awl or Needle Tool
• 1/8” Wooden Rods (12”-16”long) or Chopsticks
• Duct/Gaff Tape (6”)

Begin by printing your design onto paper. (You can browse through any of the pictures in the slideshow here and download your favorite one.)

Once you pick your favorite shadow puppet template, you will be tracing/coloring and cutting out the following pieces (as illustrated in the picture below):

1. Head and torso, plus one full arm
2. One upper arm piece
3. One lower arm piece
4. One hand
5. One hip piece
6. One front leg with foot
7. One back leg with foot

Lay this design under your piece of dura-lar plastic and tape to secure if needed. Keep in mind that you’ll be cutting out separate pieces of the design, so to maximize your plastic, push them as close together and to the edge as possible – like when you cut cookies out of rolled dough.

I start out tracing the outline in black marker, then filling out the colored patterns within the piece and going over the entire piece with black marker outlining. Of course, expriment and find which way works best for you.

After you’ve traced all your pieces and colored them in, simply cut them out with a sharp scissors.

Here comes the hard part: putting those pieces together!

Line your pieces up where they should be joined together and make a hole through both pieces with your awl or needlepoint tool.

Looking at some of the finished designs, you can get a sense of where to place these joints (hint: they’re placed almost exactly where they are on the human body – i.e. shoulder, elbow, knee.) This will give you a good approximation of where to start, but know that you might get it wrong the first time and have to try a few more holes. You’ll know the holes are in the wrong place if the puppet, at rest, hangs at an awkward angle. The more you do it, the better you’ll get at it.

Once you’ve made the joints in the correct place, now it’s time to make your wire joints. Cut a piece of wire about 1” long (step 1). Make a small circle, the size of your needle-nosed pliers, on one end and flatten it, perpendicular to the rest of the piece (step 2).

Push the straight end of the wire through the joint hole.

With the straight end on the other side, make another circle and press flat (step 3). Repeat as needed! (If these joints don’t move freely, loosen the two circle ends away from the plastic joints. Play with it until it hands just right.)

Once your puppet is fully jointed together, you’ll want to attach control rods for your hands to be able to manipulate the puppet. These are usually placed (one) at thefront or back of the neck and (one) on the free hand. (See below)

For your two control rod wires, cut a wire piece about 4” long (step 1). Make a hole on the top part of the hand (where indicated) and at the back or front of the neck. In the middle of the 4” piece of wire, make a perfect circle with your needle-nosed pliers about 1/8”–1/4” in diameter (step 2).

Slide one through each hold: neck and hand.

Once through, pinch and twist the excess wire into a tight spiral.

Tape that excess to your rod using very tacky tape (duct, gaff, etc). If your tape is 2-3” wide, rip it in half lengthwise.

Now, you’re ready to start puppeting!

*Check the http://www.chineseshadowpuppetry.com’s DIY page to figure out screen and lighting options

Thanks for reading~

Reach Out and Touch Someone

As I’ve continued to delve into the world of Chinese shadow puppetry, it’s become clearer and clearer to me that the form’s continued obscurity is one of its main obstacles to survival. In North America, when I begin to tell someone what I do, and they’re kind enough not to glaze over in the eyes, I usually get one of a few standard responses: 1) You mean like the Muppets? 2) Like Being John Malkovich? 3) Or, they put up their hands in a complicated tangle of fingers and say ‘like this?’ In China, the problem isn’t that much better. Everyone has heard of shadow puppetry, but very few have ever seen a live performance.

For numerous reasons, China wasn’t a large exporter of their cultural forms throughout the middle part of the 1900s. Even now, though China has ostensibly become increasingly open, the focus remains on economics, the environment and politics, which leaves little room to push the arts as ambassadors. Even if they had, most of their folk arts forms haven’t warranted enough attention to be exported, even when that has been the trend. There has been the odd article here, the occasional post or book there, but for the most part Chinese shadow puppetry still remains out of the general consciousness.

This lack of attention has seemed to stutter my research at times, making me divert my attention away from the work simply to publicize. But, over the years, this has actually helped hone the work, my goals and continues to reinvigorate what the true mission of my research should always be: sharing and engaging. Just when I think I’m tired of hitting the book, writing papers, conducting fieldwork – I am gifted a moment of true sharing and it does wonders to propel me forward.

Just this past spring, I’ve had the great honor to present a lecture/workshop at the Atlanta Center for Puppetry Arts (aka puppet-wonderland) and a demo/workshop at the incredible Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. Both experiences, while acting as platforms for me to share Chinese shadow puppetry, were also vehicles towards sharpening my own understanding of how to share the work and what about it is relevant to a diverse North American public.

In Atlanta, the workshop participants were largely made of up adult educators and puppet professionals. The center’s educational outreach has also mastered the webinar format – allowing participants from as far away as Hawaii and Australia to participate as long as they have an internet connection! This was a first for me.

 The webinar audience is supported by a team of folks who video and moderate questions and information.  It’s fabulous if you’re stuck in the boondocks but want to join in puppet workshops.

They all delighted me with deeply considered questions about the history, but more interestingly, they wanted to know about the making process: how was the leather handled, what types of blades are used to cut the hide, what pigment options are out there, what are the joints and rods made out of, etc. This engineering minutia is the aspect of my work that I have shared the least. Hearing their curiosity confirmed that I’m not alone in my interests here.

In Virginia, the museum’s incredible art education and events staff and I developed a new set-up for large groups of festival goers to partake in both/either shadow puppetry or a make-your-own shadow puppet project.  With a family audience of around three thousand people in a matter of a few short hours, we knew we had to make both activities easily accessible and feasible, but also engaging and interactive.  Most successful were the new simplified child-proof Chinese-style shadow puppets I created that are sturdy enough for the rowdiest of kid rebels, yet beautiful enough to warrant enchantment. (A Do-It-Yourself Post will follow in a few weeks.)

A plastic, child-proof Chinese shadow male clown figure, ready for play.

I’ve toyed with plastic before and never loved the results, but these satisfied me. And, most importantly, the kids (and adults) fell in love with them.

 Parents often ‘help’ their kids get acquainted behind the screen, but really end up enjoying it just as much as their half-pints.

I love the natural curiosity to see what’s going on on both sides of the screen, even when you’re the one doing the puppeting.

We had kids who were there so long, I had to request they make room for others only to find them back again after a short pause. At moments in the chaos, I’d look around the mob of children at the screen or studiously making their shadow puppet and felt profoundly encouraged. There was a reason Chinese shadow puppetry survived and thrived for so long, and there is a reason it should continue – it’s just taking a little time to catch up to this crazy modern world. Proof is in the puppet.

Thanks for reading~

Princeton’s Gest Collection of Chinese Shadow Puppet Figures now Online!

For any of you who are interested in a thorough catalogue of shadow puppet types, I’ve got some good news for you! Princeton has just made their online catalogue of Chinese Shadow Puppets public and ready for your viewing! The Gest collection is of the Luanzhou 灤州 or Leting 樂亭 style, particular to China’s northeast region.  Thanks to Mary Hirsch and her work cataloguing and identifying the collection in 2006, the photos are well labeled and easily searchable.

http://gest.princeton.edu/shadowfigures.php

This link will be permanently linked on the Links tab.

I can’t wait to dive in.

Thanks for reading~

Fake It Till You Make It

For any of you who have been following this blog for awhile, you already know the issue of machine-made puppets within the world of Chinese shadow puppetry.  Two years ago, I wrote specifically about their growing dominance of shadow puppet market and how this newer/faster/cheaper specimen is hard e to distinguish from the real thing, and more urgently, how it is rapidly depleting whatever market was left for handmade puppets.

I’ve stated this before and I’ll state it again: I have no problem with machine-made objects or mass-produced copies of an original.  What I do have a problem with is the exploitation of a public’s lack of expertise and knowledge in order to sell these mass-produced machine-made objects as something else; in this case, a hand-cut shadow puppet.

This machine-made issue continues to be a problem wherever shadow puppets are sold.  A fellow puppeteer recently told me he bought some puppets off eBay.  Without even asking him about it, I knew they had to be laser cut.  With a cursory search, I turned up a number of options labeling themselves as ‘Chinese Handicrafts’, even ‘Vintage Chinese Shadow Puppet’ although – at anywhere from $9.99-$29.99, I’d bet my shorts there is nothing handmade or vintage about the thing.  And they’re not.  Just hold your cursor over the photos for magnification and you’ll see the tell tale sign of the laser cut (covered in this earlier post).

Find it here.

 Find it here.

Find it here.

And as crabby as that makes me, a newer, more complicated threat has been creeping in on the shadow puppet horizon as of late.  It’s a sneakier, smarter knock-off that’s been duping the best of them.  China is now beginning to create hand-cut faux antique pieces.

I first encountered these when I went to visit a dealer friend of mine at the legendary Pangjiayuan ‘Antique Market’ in Beijing during my Fulbright year (2011).  I’d met him earlier on the shadow puppet circuit, most memorably at the shadow puppet conference in Gansu province.  I contacted him to do a bit more research on the going prices for shadow puppets from different regions (as the market has jumped notably in the last 5 years or so) and he gave me much more of an education than I bargained for.

After we were done chatting about regional styles, going prices, and machine-made puppets (of which he had a few), he took a long pause and gave me a sideways glance.  “See that puppet up there?” he asked.  “The small Northeastern style male figure?” I asked.  He nodded.  “What do you think?” he asked coyly.  I walked over to the small Eastern Beijing style puppet hanging on the line and looked a little closer.  It was hand cut.  Ok.  I looked closer.  It had a dark patina on it, which usually indicates usage/wear/age as smoke lanterns and oil from human hands darkens the leather, but this one was different.  It looked slightly dusty and crusty, instead of well worn.  Upon even closer inspection I could see that there was no additional wear marks on any of the control rod connections or joints.  This really piqued my curiosity.

“What is this?” I asked.  Not wanted to make a claim I would be too embarrassed to retract.  Again, he paused for a long time.  I wasn’t sure he was going to tell me.  “They’re fake old puppets.”

Sh*t.

We spent the next 30 minutes or so going over the details, the things to note, the sensorial features of faked antique puppets and at some point I threw up my hands.  It was hard to tell on some of them.  “How will I, can I, ever be sure?”  He reminded me that now, after seeing so many machine-made puppets, I could pick them out of a lineup.  Well, that’s what it would be like with fakes once I got more experience.  It’s simple connoisseurship.  I bought a few fake samples to take home with me, just in case.  I thanked him, deeply, and said my goodbyes.

My fake-antique samples.  Look pretty good, don’t they?

Although it’s a few years back, I remember this day and this meeting with such clarity.  Probably because it gave me such a royal shakedown.  After a day or two of feeling defeated, I tried hard to revive my spirits.  I reminded myself that there wouldn’t be fake-antiqued puppets if there wasn’t money to be made from them.  China has been knocking off their antique jade and porcelain for decades, successfully selling their wares to local and foreign museums and collectors.  Shouldn’t I feel happy that shadow puppetry has achieved the honor of being forged?

Over the last few years, those wishy-washy feelings of forced optimism have faded completely.  The fake issue within the shadow puppet market of China needs to be controlled.  The best way to do this is to devise an easy method(s) to identify fakes and transmit this knowledge to those who need it.  In my initial research, I’ve secured a wonderful museum with a solid Chinese shadow puppet collection – who I believe has a few fakes – to allow some testing and further experimentation to be done.  With some cooperation from a few puppet cutters in China who have sourced a few possible chemicals used for the shadow puppet patinas and some connections in North America from museum archivists on how to go about devising a test, I believe we have a starting point.

Since my first encounter with a faked-antique, I’ve seen thousands more puppets in numerous collections and museums on both sides of the globe.  My connoisseurship is far above what it was 3 years ago.   Seeing the real and the fake, the old and the new old, has repeatedly set me on course.  We owe it to the incredible masters who have given their life to doing it the hard way, every day.

Thanks, so much, for reading~

Additional reading on museum fakes and China:

A Hebei Province museum closes when it’s discovered that most of its artifacts are fake:                          http://www.theguardian.com/culture/2013/jul/17/jibaozhai-museum-closed-fakes-china

Forging and Art Market in China/NY Times: http://www.nytimes.com/projects/2013/china-art-fraud/

Bloomberg weighs in on China’s growing global antique market and the number of fakes:                                                        http://www.bloomberg.com/video/89827873-growing-number-of-fake-antiques-in-china.html