My Puppetry Mom and I

When I was 9 years old, Master Wang began to teach me the Yangzhou staff puppet show. Wang asked the old craftsman to make me a small puppet that is convenient for kids at my age. I cherished this first little puppet in my life. I imitated every move and gesture of the master. During every class, I was wistfully craning from the windowsill into the distance for the appearance of Wang. I would scurry towards the master once I saw her, and my heart was glittering with happiness. Those days marked the most splendid period of time in my childhood memory, overflowing with the fragrance of pleasure, with which I had been enamored for many years.

The basic skill of learning puppet show was practicing static lifting, that was, two hands took turns to hold up the puppet. At the beginning, I couldn’t even hold a few minutes. My master develops her own tack against me: for every extra 5 minutes that I hold, the master would teach me a new action of my favorite puppet show: long silk dance. Long silk dance was type of show that fixed 10 meters long colored silk on the hand of the puppet, forming the illusion of the extension of the arms. What was stretching out with the silk was also the millions of wisps of thoughts. The style of Long Silk Dance contains hooking, picking, weighting, rushing, stroking, and winnowing. It also allows for a series of delicate and complex movements such as, hitting, shaking, winding, rolling, and spinning. The pattern of the dance includes "wave roll,” “Wheel Fly," "Sky Rainbow, " "Dragonfly Water," "Butterfly Dance" and more than 10 other different styles. Then the viewer would be dazed in the scene as if they were drowning under beauty of the paintings of Chinese classical ladies who were fluttering their skirts. The performance was mesmerizing and spoke to people’s hearts.

Every time when the practice fatigued me is also my most joyful time, because I would sit on the ground to see the master demonstrating performance. Lost in my memory, I would daydream about the day when I can be fully transported into this elegant realm. Small Puppet, once falling into the hands of the master, would spring into life. Through the master’s manipulation, the inanimate puppet would become a person of flesh and blood, full of artistic aura. I have done a social survey, which showed that the vast majority of people were exposed to the puppet show through the network video, and very few people would go see live shows. Once the puppet show becomes an image, it is immediately "betrayed" by the small screen, customized to be “suitable enough” for panoramic viewing of the puppet show on the TV, it is hopeless to expect the clumsy and foolish performance to represent the real charm of puppetry, which is regrettable.

I was fortunate to see the master’s vivid live performance, through which I could perceive that Puppetry is a continuous birth of the essence of humanity. From Beijing opera "Drunken Concubine" to Huangmei Opera "female Bridegroom", from Sichuan Opera to Kun Opera, from the classical Dance "Chang ' e" to the modern Tibetan dance, from the shooting day Hou Yi to Snow White ... I am living in all the different plays across, while traverse into the various roles of life, as if I walked into a kaleidoscope that is dizzying and dazzling. What awaits me was a long immersion in this colorful dream of a dreamer who never wants to wake up.