Chen Xihuang: A Living Treasure of Taiwan Glove Puppetry

　　By Liao Canhui, Associate Professor of Chinese Drama at Chinese Culture University

　　1. Foreword

　　Glove puppetry (Budaixi in Chinese), introduced from southern Chinese mainland to Taiwan, quickly became apopular entertainment that appeals to all as the best received type of operawhich found its way tobe a part of folk culture. Its two hundred years of progression in Taiwan has manifested powerful vigor and vitality. Against the backdrop of ever-changing social circumstances and trends of times, the original graceful, slow-pacedLongdi wenxi(civil plays)gradually transformed to a battlingworld of martial arts, and finally evolved into typical Taiwanese glove puppetry in its own unique style.

　　In its heyday, Taiwanese glove puppetry swept over the entire province with up to over a thousand theaters, which kept its fans chasing after the troupes from temple to temple or fixing their eyes on TV until the end of the performances.While developing deep richness of folk culture, it went all the way from outdoor stages to international palaces of art, brought Chinese folk artto the whole world and raised the status of Chinese national art. Therefore, it can be said that the glove puppetry played an important part in Taiwanese's innermost memory of this land.

　　The techniquesof Taiwanese glove puppetry were mostly passed down within closed circles, for example, from fathers to sons or from masters to apprentices. Inheritance between generations seemed naturally justified, so a person who was born and raised in a family of glove puppetry would naturally grow attached to such an art over time and enter into the world of hand puppetry. Taiwan boasted a great many time-honored families of glove puppetry, such as Xv Tianfu and Xv Wang from "Xiao Xi Yuan" troupe;Huang Ma, Huang Haidai, Huang Junxiong, Huang Wenze from "Wu Zhou Yuan" troupe;Zhong Wu, Zhong Quan, Zhong Denglu, Zhong Renxiuzhi, Zhong Renxiang, Zhong Renbi from “Hsin-Shing-Kuo” troupe, among which Xu Jinmu, Li Tianlu, and Chen Xihuang from Taipei "I Wan Jan Puppet Theater" were most talked about because of their legend of three generations under three different family names.

　　2. Master Alu from I Wan Jan

　　Glove puppetry was introduced to Taiwan from Quanzhou, Zhangzhou in Fujian Province and Chaozhou in Guangdong Province in around the middle of Qing Dynasty. At the beginning, "Nanguan"(traditional music of southern China) or "Chaodiao"(music for Chaozhou opera) was the primary music genre. Later, the score for the puppet shows were replaced by the then-popular "Beiguan"(Quanzhou folk music) or "Peking opera". The performances with small puppets at front stage and live band at back stage were called "traditional glove puppetry" or "gong-drum glove puppetry". Puppet shows featured one person uttering words while holding puppet with two hands. The puppeteer "performed traditional tales behind the curtain" onstage, and took care of the spoken parts (dialogues) and manipulations (actions) all by himself, which can be considered as an extension of Pingshu (a traditional storytelling art formin China).

　　During Japanese rule in Taiwan (Qing Dynastyduring the reign of Emperor Guangxu), Chen Po, a renowned glove puppeteer from Quanzhou, Fujian, was recruited to travel across the ocean to Taiwan for public performances in Monga (Wanhua) district of Taipei. He excelled in civil plays with polished stage speech and floweryeloquence, which earned him immense praises among audiences. His expertise was passed down to his disciple Xu Jinshui from "Chu Yang Tai" troupe, then from Xu Jinshui to Xu Jinmu from "Hua Yang Tai" troupe, and then from Xu Jinmu to Li Tianlu.

　　In 1931 when Li was 22 years old, he established the "I Wan Jan Puppet Theater Troupe". His performances were accompanied first by Nanguan music and then by Peking opera music. He won over the audiences with his fast-paced Romance of the Three Kingdomsthemed puppet shows, and secured the position of "I Wan Jan" as the leading glove puppetry troupe which was known as the "Waijiang school", and earned himself the honorific title of "Master Alu" by the viewers (Alu is a nickname for Li Tianlu).

　　The years following the retrocession of Taiwan in 1945 witnessed the boom of glove puppetry on the island, as evidenced by an ever-growing number of puppet shows on outdoor stages of temples and indoor stages of theaters later. As Li continuously sharpened his performance skills, eventually he stood out and led I Wan Jan to such a massive success that the troupe had as many as 35 shows in a solar month of 31 days, they even had performances in the morning. His huge popularity in Taipei made him the best choice for the very first puppeteer performing on the screen of Taiwan Television (TTV)after the establishment of the station in 1962, where he had been performingRomance of the Three Kingdoms for half a year.

　　In 1978, Li announced his retirement, but he became even busier than before. In addition to teaching glove puppetry in Juguang Elementary School and Chinese Culture University, he was recruited to perform puppet shows in Chinese mainland and a dozen countries like the US, Japan, South Korea, Italy and France. He also played the role of "Ah-gong" in TV shows like Family of Heroes and several films including Dust in the Wind, Caidao and Six Friends, A City of Sadness, The Puppet Master, etc. His natural and spontaneous performances earned him both wide popularity and the nickname of "Ah-gong" among audiences.

　　Li's son, disciples, and disciple's disciples founded in succession "Xin Wan Jan" (by Chen Xihuang), "Si Wan Jan" (by Lin Jinlian), "Théâtre du Petit Miroir" (in France), "Ru Wan Jan" (in Australia), "Yi Wan Jan" (in Japan), "Ye Wan Jan"(in America), "Zhong Wan Jan"(in Chinese Culture University), "Wai Wan Jan" (in Juguang Primary School), "Qiao Wan Jan" (in Ping-Deng Elementary School), "Shao Wan Jan" (inGer Jyh Senior High School), "Hong Wan Jan" (by Wu Rongchang), "Shan Wan Jan" (by Huang Wushan), " Xue Wan Jan"(in Sanzhi Elementary School), "Long Wan Jan"(in Xinglong Elementary School), Zi Wan Jan"(by Cai Suzhen), etc. The disciples of Wan Jan troupes all over the world stood as a testimony to his fruitful promotion of this national art.

　　Throughout his life, Li had received numerous awards, such as the "Outstanding Art Award" by the committee of "Festival Mondial des Théâtres de Marionnettes" and Knight of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by France's Ministry of Culture. Especially the National Artist award by the Taiwanese Government, which is the equal of China's "First-rank Actor" and "Living National Treasure" of Japan and South Korea, affirmed his extraordinary performing skills and lifelong contributions to Taiwanese glove puppetry.

　　3. Master Ahuang from Xin Wan Jan

　　In 1929, Li Tianlu married into the Chen Family at the age of 20. When his son was born two years later and took his wife’s family name, Li established I Wan Jan in May of the same year on his own, which marked the beginning of his lifelong career of glove puppetry that overwhelmed the entire Taiwan. Meanwhile, his son Chen Xihuang was also destined for a lifelong career in glove puppetry.

　　Chen Xihuang once worked in a printing house after graduating from primary school. Later he tried several different jobs, but none of them lived up to his expectation. At the age of 16, he began to follow in his father’s footsteps, running around mountainous areas of Taipei County with the puppet troupe, where his learning started from stage set construction. Whenever his father was handling a puppet onstage, Chen Xihuang would carefully watch the performance and practice it in his spare time— “I used toimitate all his movements, and also come up with newideas where applicable.” Clever and adept as he was, Chen Xihuang was so favored by his father that he was promoted to Li's assistant puppeteer. Li even hired Wu Tian to teach his son Chinese, in hope that Chen could stand out and hold his own with both external and internal cultivation.

　　At the age of 21, once Chen Xihuang absent-mindedly took wrong puppetone after another during a puppet show.After being severely beaten by his furious father for negligence, he ran away from the puppet troupe and switched to sell fruit.However, he was no good at business. Failing to make ends meet, he had no other way but to work for Zhong Renxiang, director of Hsin-Shing-Kuo Puppet Show Troupe. While making puppets’ costumes and hats for the troupe, Chen Xihuang studied the performing skills of Zhong Renxiang and Huang Haidaiat every opportunity.He even traveled to Tainan in order to see how Huang Shunren handled puppets. The fierce punches by Zhong Renxiang and Huang Haidai, the kicksby Huang Shunren, especially the handling of young female characters and martial clowns by Zhong Renxiang left a deep impression on him. Such precious experience became his nourishment, and would inspire him to develop and innovate with his acute insight in days to come.

　　In 1953, Chen Xihuang found his own troupe Xin Wan Jan. Apart from himself, there were puppeteers Liu Jinsong and Zhang Xun on front stage; backstage musicians included Chen Qichun (drum and vocal), Zhan Wenyi (drum), Lin Yaoqi (strings, wind instruments and vocal), Zhang Caiming (strings, wind instruments and gong), Chen Chaosheng (sound). The backstage played Beiguan as background music, taking beiguan as the primary vocal style. Sometimes the vocal style of Ping Opera or Peking Opera was an alternative to their singing.

　　Xin Wan Jan mainly performed in the open air, sometimes they also played in indoor theatres. Over the years they have toured all over Taiwan, based in Taipei County and Jilong City. They performed at Jilong theatres such as Xinle, Jiyi, Nuannuan and Taipei County theatres such as Sijiaoting, Ruifang, Xizhi, Nangang and Danshui. They performed ten days in a row at each theatre, and the staff members of the troupe slept on the stage at night.

　　The exterior of New Wan Jan’s puppet theatre stage was a wood carved structure, while the interior were scenic sets. During the day, they usually performed wuxia (martial)plays, such as Flying Sword and Legendary Swordsman, The Legendary Swordsman from Kong Tong Mountain, Shaolin Temple, 300 years Resentment of Ching Palace. At night, they performed traditional tale plays such as Journey to the West, The Seven Heroes and Five Gallants, Judge Peng’s Cases, Judge Shi’s Casesand storiesfrom Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Once Chen Xihuang asked storyteller Yong Zai to write The Legend of Sun Bin and The Skeleton Knight for him, by which he established his own style of wuxia puppetry. Chen Xihuang was especially good at civil plays, handling young female characters and clowns so vividly that people call him Master Ahuang (Ahuang is a nickname for Chen Xihuang).

　　In 1962, Chen Xihuang and his father appeared on TTV to perform the glove puppetry Journey to the West, which was his masterpiece. Targeted at children, the 23-episode TV puppetry was shown from 6:00 to 6:30 PM once a week for six months. Its dialogue was dubbed by pupils from Taipei Municipal Zhongshan Elementary School, while Master Ahuang only need to handle the puppets. However, Taiwan audience did not appreciate dubbings by different voice actors, plus that the TV puppetry show was shot in black and white and can only be watched by audience north of Hsinchu City, Journey to the Westdid not perform well in viewership and popularity.

　　With the passage of time, it became harder and harder for Master Ahuang to employ backstage musicians, meanwhile, mass media like television and movies are taking place of traditional arts. In 1970, he had to dismiss Xin Wan Jan and went back to work as his father’s assistant puppeteer. Later he also worked as assistant for Xu Wang from Xiao Xi Yuan Troupe.

　　After Li Tianlu passed away, Master Ahuang left I Wan Jan. In 2000, Taiyuan Asian Puppet Museum was established and they organized a puppet troupe called Taiyuan Puppet Theatre. Chen Xihuang accepted their offer to act the leading role in new plays and traditional operas such as Macro Polo, The Wedding of the Mice, Liao Tianding, The Ancient City of Taipei and Flying sword and Legendary swordsman. In the puppet showLa Boîte, a cooperation with France in which actors performed onstage together with puppets, he played a puppeteer, showing excellent acting skills no less than a professional actor. This marked a new beginning of his puppetry career.

　　On Jan 8, 2009, the 78-year-old Master Ahuang announced the establishment of Chen His-Huang Traditional Puppet Troupe. “I’ve got an incurable disease of ‘puppetry cancer’! As you know, traditional puppetry is just like a candle flickering in the wind, it would be such a pity if it finally disappears, so I have to work hard and keep performing,” he said, with such an admirable passion for puppetry. In the same year, he was awarded “Master of Taiwan” by the Council for Cultural Affairs of Taiwan as an acknowledgement of his achievement in puppetry, which markedthe summit of his career.

　　4. Development and Innovation

　　Master Ahuang kept company with his puppets every day. He repaired the old and broken puppets in the first place and then started to rack his brains for breakthroughs of puppetry. After hard work of research with his valuable experience and knowledge, he improved the puppet making, and innovated the performance. The examples below show how he developed and innovated the puppetry to its fullest potential.

　　(1) Puppet Making

　　(a) Measurements

　　Hua Yuan Head was a type of puppet famous for its sculptor, Jiang Jiazou, a renowned artist in Fujian. But the craftsmanship looked diminished due to the 8 cun* height and the square-shaped outline of the puppets. Master Ahuang studied ideal human body proportions, and then he enlarged the size of the puppets to 1.2 chi** and made the lower body longer than the upper body. The puppets in proper anatomical proportions presented better appearance onstage.

　　(*1 cun≈33.33 mm; **1 chi≈333.3 mm)

　　(b) Underclothes

　　The northern style puppets used to be difficult to manipulate as the front side of their underclothes were longer than the back side. He found that the underclothes of the puppets from Hsin-Hsing-Kuo Puppet Show Troupe were the opposite. Their puppets looked better when manipulated and were easier to perform actions such as somersault, rolling, jumping, and to grasp. After comparison and practice, he made the front side of his puppets’ underclothes shorter than the back side.

　　(c) Legs

　　The puppets’ legs were made of fabrics that were sewn into tubes and used to be filled with rice husks. The legs looked limp. He then filled the legs with fabric scraps instead, so that the legs looked firm and well-made, and were easier to manipulate.

　　(d) Transparent Costumes

　　During the early days of his career, he taught lessons at Juguang Primary School. He tried to explain his finger movements to the students, but they found it difficult to understand as the puppets’ costumes blocked their view. He later found inspiration from raincoat, and then designed new costumes made out of transparent plastic fabrics so that the students could see his finger movements through the transparent costumes. The lessons were much better received.

　　(2) Performance

　　(a) Smoking

　　When the character Lao Gong Mo was smoking onstage, there was not any smoke effect before his innovation. In order to create smoke effect, he made a pinhole in the puppet’s mouth and connected a piece of slim plastic tube to pinhole. When the puppet inhaled smoke and put the smoking pipe down, his assistant would inhale smoke from a cigarette and exhale through the slim tube, and then the smoke would come out of the puppet’s mouth. It looked as if he breathed life into the puppet.

　　(b) Combing

　　He placed a piece of “zhi tong” (small wooden stick) inside the left sleeve of the costume of a young female character. He could manipulate the puppet’s left arm to reach for its back with Zhi Tong. When a young female character appeared onstage, the puppet would take a strand of hair to its front side, and comb the hair with its right hand, and then pull the hair from front to its back with left hand. These detailed movements made the puppet more lifelike.

　　(c) Northern Steps

　　The Northern and Southern styles of Chinese martial arts are said to be different as the term “Southern fists and Northern kicks” (Southern fists and Northern steps) implies. The fighting movements in glove puppetry usually emphasized on hand techniques and rarely exhibited legwork. He studied the puppets’ legwork by Huang Shunren from the Mei Yu Quan Puppet Show Troupe, and drew inspiration from fighting movements of Chinese martial arts and wuxia films, and then designed “Northern steps” movements himself. When two puppets were fighting bare-handed, one puppet would jump off the stage. Its right foot would step on the right hand of its opponent, and its left foot would step on the opponent’s shoulder. Then the puppet would turn aside and hook around the opponent’s neck with its left foot, and kick the opponent with its right foot. The opponent would turn around and try to escape. The puppet’s right foot would step on the opponent’s back, and its left foot would step on the opponent’s shoulder once again. Then the puppet would hook around the opponent’s neck with its left foot and strike the opponent with one last right kick. The opponent would run off the stage. His design turned the fist fight onstage into the flying kicks in mid-air, and utilized more stage space, and made the fight scenes more dramatic.

　　(d) Plate Spinning

　　Zhong Renxiang, director of Xin Xing Ge Troupe invented puppet plate spinningmuch favored by puppetry audience. However, the iron stick held by the puppet could only spin around the bottom edge of the plate, making it easy to fall off. Master Ahuang came up with an idea of drilling a pinhole in the center of the bottom surface of the iron plate, so when the puppet spun the plate several rounds, the iron stick would slide into the pinhole. In this way, the plate could spin in a smooth and steady way for a longer time, which often made the audience lost in wonder.

　　(e) New Plays

　　Following in his father’s footsteps, Chen Xihuang performed puppetry in foreign countries such as the US, Japan and France. As it is difficult for foreigners to follow dialogues in Taiwanese (Southern Fujian Dialect), he created a new puppet show A Chance Encounter, which was a mime about a story of a hero saving a beauty with a happy ending of their marriage. This show included basic manipulations of male, female and clown characters; movements such as young male role opening a fan, young female character combing hair and opening an umbrella, old man smoking,and plays like street matial artistsfighting with a rattan shieldand plate spinning. Their performance skillsalwaysdazzled foreign audiences, making them reluctant to leave the theatre after the end of the show.

　　In his twilight years, Master Ahuang dedicated himself to teaching puppetry in schools such as Juguang Primary school in Banqiao district, HsinPu Junior High School, Yangmingshan Ping-Deng Elementary School，Ger Jyh Senior High School as well as Chinese Culture University and Puppetry Art Center of Taipei. Meanwhile he also appeared in movies like The Puppet Master, A Drifting Life, Such a Life, The Youth and Ba Jia Jiang and Sweet Degeneration. His excellent performance in Such a Lifeearned him the award for Best Supporting Actor at Changchun Film Festival.

　　5. Afterword

　　Li Tianlu’s apprentice Lin Jinlian once said, “Speaking of handling puppetry, Master Ahuang is marvelous in both the spoken parts and actions. I can only wish that I could achieve one third of his expertise.” Being honest and sincere, Chen Xihuang is not much a talker, but anagile mind. He believesthatthe puppetry is the love of his life and dedicateshimself to this career for a lifetime. Through earnest endeavors, he practices his own skills while learning from others, achieving expertisewith his refined and lifelike performance, and that is why he can stand out and outperform his predecessors as a self-taught role model with unique performance styles.

　　It is extremely rare that father and son like Li Tianlu and Chen Xihuang chose the same career path and were both awarded “Master of Taiwan”, which were well deserved. Chen Xihuang claimed, “We have to spare no effort to pass down our traditions. As long as there are people who want to learn, I will not quit teaching, and how much they learn all depends on themselves.” He accepts every student, no matter who they are, and teaches them everything he knows without holding any knowledge back. Chen Xihuang, a puppet master who touches our heart with his great enthusiasm and persistence,created a lifelong puppet theatrical opus with his everlasting efforts to revitalize the traditional art form.