Taiwan Today

For many people in Taiwan, particularly those well into their forties or older, the evenings spent watching puppet shows remains one of the best memories of childhood. The plays, usually based upon episodes from historical or literary works such as the Romance of the Three Kingdoms or Journey to the West, were outdoor events, presented on portable stages set up in the courtyard of a local temple.

No living folk art remains unchanged, and the hand puppet play is no exception. Eventually, the shows were also performed in indoor theaters, where they adapted to different stage and lighting conditions, and in the late 1960s, they made a highly successful leap into television. By this time, there were some rather striking departures from tradition, including the size and construction of the puppets.

The new developments began to worry many puppet play purists. Finally, in 1985, three National Taiwan University (NTU) professors formed a foundation, called the SeDen Society (西田社), to save the traditional puppet shows from being completely driven off the stage because of the popularity of the so-called "flashy puppet shows."

"At first, we just thought that such a refined play should be preserved," says mathematics professor Chen Jin-tzu. "So we visited some old puppeteers and invited them to perform again. The audience response was unexpectedly warm." Eventually, in order to hold regular puppet shows, the professors raised enough funds to establish the SeDen Society. The characters se (西) and den (田) - transliterated in Taiwanese pronunciation - refer to the two guardian gods of Taiwan's puppet troupes, Lord Hsichin (西秦王爺) and General Tientu (田都元帥), who were both prominent figures in the Tang dynasty twelve hundred years ago.

The professors' concern about preserving traditional puppet shows was well founded, because puppetry had already gone through a number of major changes since it first began in mid seventeenth-century China, toward the end of the Ming dynasty. Even though the basic nature of the hand puppet play, also called palm puppetry, remained fairly constant over the centuries, there have been significant shifts in the construction of the puppets, in the selection of stories and style of narration, and in the musical accompaniment.

The folk art, which is thought to have originated from string puppetry in the southern Chinese province of Fukien, crossed the Straits to Taiwan in the late eighteenth or early nineteenth century along with Chinese settlers relocating to the island. "There is no direct evidence, but Chinese hand puppetry was possibly influenced by the Indian and Indochinese puppet plays performed in Chuanchow, which had been an international port in Fukien province since the Yuan dynasty," says foundation member Hsieh Teh-hsi (謝德錫). "Since the period of the Manchu emperor Kaotsung [1736-1796], the stage, puppets, the hundreds of plots in the repertoire, and the skills of the puppet masters and musicians have all gone through a process of evolution."

For example, the earliest shows in Taiwan were accompanied by the nan kuan musical form from southern China, which is characterized by slow and delicately performed compositions. The shows were filled with sentimental songs and rhymed dialogues based on classical literature. In the early twentieth century, the shows became livelier as they shifted toward the use of the pei kuan music more favored in northern China. The pace was swifter, different (and louder) musical instruments were used, and the plays were more action-oriented, including duels and pitched battles. Music from Chinese opera, both Peking and Taiwanese style, were also adapted with great success.

At first, the puppet plays were performed in local temples as part of religious rituals. People sponsored the public shows as an expression of gratitude to deities for granting wishes. The shows soon became a popular form of entertainment as well. The repertoire was almost always performed in the Fukien dialect (Taiwanese). But in 1937, the Sino-Japanese War brought a crackdown on performances, because the Japanese authorities worried that the shows would stimulate Chinese patriotism. After the war, the plays regained rapid popularity. Before long, there was an estimated five hundred pei kuan puppet show troupes. But the war years had taken a toll on the folk art: the old nan kuan style was unable to regain its popularity, and was lost forever.

The fate of puppetry in the mainland is even more depressing. By the time the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) finished its attempt to destroy traditional Chinese culture, few people paid much attention to puppet plays or the puppets themselves, which slowly deteriorated in dust-laden baskets and trunks, or were sold to foreigners. As a result, only limited numbers of the puppets have survived on Taiwan and the mainland.

In Taiwan itself, the revived pei kuan style of puppetry faced extinction because of the rise of the "flashy puppet show" in the 1960s. The rapid-paced, action-filled shows became an island craze, and audiences drifted away from the more stately, classic style of puppetry. Only a few well-known puppeteers like Li Tien-lu (李天祿) and Hsu Wang (詐王), known as ''Taipei's two masters of puppetry," held to the old ways of production and were able to draw substantial audiences.

According to Li Hong-si (李鴻憘), one of the society's founders and a professor of law, lovers of traditional puppet shows were more than a little displeased when the flashy puppet play took center stage and started to reform the old ways. For example, instead of relying on the direct movements of the puppeteer's hand, the new-style puppets employ springs and levers to open and close their eyes and mouths, and use mechanical devices to make it possible for the puppets to jump and do somersaults on stage - crass, ugly, and low-class additions from a purist's point of view.

Professor Li adds that the antics cater to less refined tastes, as do the flashing lights and taped music (classic or pop, Western or Chinese) that accompany the shows. "The theme songs in these shows are played over and over again," Li says, "and it's really irritating." But most of all, Li decries the mindless plots. ''They repeat the same thing over and over again - just fights among gangsters."

To meet the demands of television camera close-ups, the puppets are several times larger than the traditional ones, usually two to three feet tall. Because of their size, they are too large for the puppeteers to manipulate with facility. They look clumsy on the screen, and to lovers of traditional puppetry, the new intruders lack subtlety and delicacy.

One of the first priorities of the SeDen Society was to find and preserve a collection of the classic puppets before they were lost forever. "In fact, before we came along, no systematic collection was built up on either side of the Taiwan Straits," Hsieh says.

A primary task was to stop the emigration of puppets to collections in the U.S., Canada, France, and Japan. Because the SeDen Society remains strapped for funds, it had to borrow several million NT dollars from foundation members and friends in order to begin a project to collect, identify, repair, and categorize traditional puppets. "We bought and bought; there was no time to hesitate or be finicky about quality," says Li Lai-fu (李來富), the society's secretary-general.

Li and her husband are NTU graduates, and they became interested in SeDen through their acquaintance with the founders. "I knew almost nothing about puppetry before I joined," Li says, "I had never even sat through a full play." But she still has vivid and warm childhood memories of watching outdoor Taiwanese puppet operas with her brother, and being captivated by the stories. The reason she joined the society was simple: "I just hope that someday my sons can experience the same feelings I had standing in front of the outdoor stage."

The foundation has already collected around eight hundred puppets. Most of them came from the mainland, and were acquired through antique dealers at prices from hundreds to thousands of NT dollars each. Most of the collection are hualien (花臉), male characters with hairy, painted faces. These puppets usually represent strong characters on stage.

The SeDen Society's collection of sheng (生, young men) and tan (旦, young women) puppets is smaller, because more people are interested in collecting them. The foundation tries to preserve the original appearance of the puppets as much as possible, but almost three-fourths of the collection thus far has required repair. For example, the puppets' clothes are often falling apart. To keep the puppets looking as close as possible to the original, restorers try not to replace the outer garments, just the threadbare inner layers. When it is absolutely necessary to replace the outer apparel, the foundation tries to find traditional puppet clothing with embroidery work done on the mainland.

Terribly worn and duplicated puppet characters are used as a source of parts for other puppets. Still useful parts, such as hands and shoes, are then carefully added to other puppets. In addition, some of the puppet heads were in bad need of repainting. But problems arose here, because considerable skill is necessary to paint the small faces in the traditional patterns. "Our craftsmen here lack the artistic ability of mainland craftsmen," Hsieh says. He adds that the son of the famed puppeteer Li Tien-lu was even invited to attempt some repainting, "but the results were unsatisfactory." Eventually, arrangements were made to send the puppet heads to craftsmen on the mainland.

Classic puppets are approximately one foot high and almost as wide as a man's outstretched palm. Thus, they are easily manipulated by hand on the elaborately designed 5x3-foot stage. The puppets have heads carved from gingko wood, cloth bodies, stuffed legs, and carved shoes, and they wear bright-colored clothes decorated with heavy embroidery. But it is the heads, with their delicate carving and painting, that are always considered the soul of the puppets. The most outstanding types of traditional puppet heads are called Tumen (塗門) and Huayuan (花園), after the street and the village in Chuanchow district where the originators lived.

Tumen heads were made in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries by Huang Liang-ssu (黃良司) and his brother. They initially made string puppets, whose strikingly human characteristics greatly influenced the design of Tumen heads. (String puppets were made to look as human as possible, because they were used in religious rituals to commemorate the dead.)

There were only thirty-six different Tumen characters (and head designs), because the repertoire at that time was limited to romantic stories. "But now Tumen has become a lost art because the Huang family died during a plague," Hsieh explains. Thus far, the foundation has been able to find only twenty of the head types for its collection.

By the middle of the Ching dynasty (1644-1911), a wider repertoire had been added to puppet plays. Myths, historical fiction, and martial arts stories were mined for plots and action-packed scenes. A number of new characters were also needed for the various stories, particularly puppets representing deities and evil spirits. Before long, Huayuan puppets were being added to the stage.

"Chiang Chia-tsou (江加走), the master artist of Huayuan and the greatest craftsman in Chinese puppetry history, produced a total of 285 characters for the new repertoire," says Hsieh Teh-hsi. Chiang, the son of a Buddhist figure sculptor, was born in 1871 and spent all his life crafting puppets. His Huayuan puppets, smaller than Tumen, are only eight inches tall. One distinguishing characteristic of Huayuan puppets is their exaggerated facial features and expressions. Even a layman can easily tell the personality of Huayuan characters at first sight.

By and large, Chiang's sheng and tan were modeled after figures in Chinese paintings, and after real people as he observed them. The other characters are mostly based upon his imagination and creativity. In total, he made over ten thousand puppet heads. Although his puppets make up half of the society's collection, SeDen has yet to acquire an example of each of the 285 characters. Master craftsman Chiang died in 1954, at the age of eighty-four, but his son and grandson are still working on Huayuan heads in the mainland - and are reported to be making a good income.

Besides Tumen and Huayuan puppets, the foundation also collects some locally made puppets. The most famous are Ahsen heads, named after the craftsman, Hsu Chi-sen (徐祁森). "Puppets made on the mainland were no longer available after World War II, so Taiwan troupes could only use local puppets," Hsieh says. Hsu has also produced puppets for television. His most successful puppet figures, Shih Yen-wen and Liu San - both figures from an action-packed Chinese story called Yun Chou Ta Ju Hsia (雲州大儒俠) - gained islandwide fame in a television series that ran for 583 episodes, many of them highlighted by fighting scenes.

The variety of puppet characters is similar to Chinese opera, only greater. Chinese opera has five, hand puppets have nine. They can also be further categorized by the age, status, or the shape of the characters. "Then we divide the puppets into groups according to the repertoire," Hsieh says. "For this we bought illustrated classic editions (first published in the Ching dynasty) of Chinese literary works." Most of the foundation's puppets were used in plays recounting episodes from the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Journey to the West, The Legend of Deification, and The Seven Heroes and Five Gallants.

The project requires considerable expertise. "With the help of puppet masters like Li Tien-lu and his son, we finished the identification project under the sponsorship of the Hsin Yi Foundation, the Council for Cultural Planning and Development (CCPD), and the Ministry of Education," Hsieh says. Although the project was initially scheduled for completion in July 1991, photographs are still being taken for pictorial handbooks which will be published sometime in the future. The portraits are being collated with scenes from various stories in the repertoire. "We also borrow puppets for photographic recording so that we can have a more complete categorization," Hsieh says.

Recently, mainland authorities have re-evaluated hand puppets, and they are now regarded as national treasures. "People on the mainland are trying to buy puppets back from us," says Li Lai-fu, "but their attempts have been in vain, even though we are short of funds."

The SeDen Society is operating on the interest from a fund of only US$35,000. Thus, annual income amounts to only US$3,000, far less than what is needed to cover overhead expenses. "The collation project is our top priority, because it's a task that must be undertaken immediately," Li says. Nevertheless, the project has almost driven the foundation into bankruptcy. Professor Chen Jin-tzu once planned to close the foundation for financial reasons, but Li was so reluctant to see it happen that she volunteered to handle the job of secretary-general.

Finances remain a problem. "Once we were forced to give some duplicate puppets away to another foundation in return for a donation," Li says. Government sponsorship is sometimes possible, but the funds are usually limited. The foundation operates out of a small, rented apartment in downtown Taipei. Crowded into 130 sq. ft. are the foundation office, an ornate puppet stage, and a puppet display room. "Limited finances mean we don't have a proper exhibition site," Li says. "Even though the Chinese have a rich tradition of puppet plays," she laments, "neither Taiwan nor the mainland has a puppet museum."

Foundation members would like the govemment to set up a museum, but they are not optimistic that it will happen. As a result, SeDen has been trying to find a private collector or institution that has the funds and know-how to preserve the valuable puppets. "This would be a better solution than just leaving these national treasures in the bottom of trunks under poor conditions of temperature and humidity," Li says.

The SeDen Society is also promoting the performance of traditional puppet plays as part of its activities. For example, to encourage the growth of a new audience, they have sponsored more than one hundred plays for primary school students throughout the island, and they are also conducting puppetry courses. Assisting with the activities are five members of the recently founded NTU puppetry club. "The major difficulty the students have is their inability to adequately communicate in the Taiwan dialect," says Chang Chun-cheng, former head of the NTU puppetry club. "They are all right at listening, but poor at the speaking roles in the plays." But as more people complete the puppetry courses, the society becomes more able to establish its own experimental theater and give regular public performances.

The foundation is also undertaking field work, such as compiling oral histories from master puppeteers like the ninety-year-old Wang Yen (王炎), the oldest puppeteer in Taiwan. "Every time we spoke to him, we had to talk louder because he doesn't hear very well anymore," Li says. The interviews with Wang are now completed, and will be published under the sponsorship of the CCPD. The next set of interviews will be with Huang Hai-tai (黃海岱), creator of the puppet character Shih Yen-wen, and father of the most famous television puppeteer, Huang Chun-hsiung.

Despite all its work at preservation, SeDen Society members sometimes fear they are fighting a losing battle. "If we don't pass on the art in time, we're afraid that the next generation will only be able to see Chinese hand puppet plays performed by foreigners," Li says. Yet there is reason for optimism. In June 1989, the government included puppet master Li Tien-lu in the group of Masters of Folk Arts honored by the CCPD. The event gave traditional puppetry a higher profile. And now, more grade school and college puppet troupes are being formed. Thus, as the members of the SeDen Society preserve as many of the old puppets as possible in their collection, they are also promoting a "living collection" - for what is preserved on the stage is even more important than what is displayed in museums.