Puppetry Master

In His Prime—  Mr. Jiao handling the marionette “Guan Yu“ 65 years ago

In 1979, the second year after the end of the Cultural Revolution, Mr. Jiao directed the Legend of the White Snake for the troupe and was one of the leading actors who played the protagonist Xu Xian (He also dubbed the character). This picture shows how he worked.

My master grandfather Jiao Feng merits to be called a "guru" of the puppet world! He is a versatile artist who can compose, guide, and act. He was born in a family of folk artists before the liberation of the country. It was a family that produced three generations of puppet artists, and the five brothers and sisters are engaged in puppetry. The contemporaries have praised the family as the "Jiao-Class” full of talents and resources. The National-Treasure-level Master Huang Yi Que once praised the family: "There are five amazing Tigers in Jiao family!" Jiao family delivered many sessions of performance at piers in Hangzhou, Jiaxing, and Wuhu area. A large wooden boat constitutes the habitat and entire wealth of the troupe family ". Starting from the origin of his memory, "difficult to sing year after year" has been a stable number for Jiao, which sings about the hard days of displacement.

The roaming and idyllic life that belongs to vagabonds has always fascinates me. My taste bud has been piqued to experience the flavors of the legendary life: from bitter to sour, from sweet to spicy. Jianghu, meaning the society of legend that ebbs and flows, is receding.The only “legend” left now is for the 80-year-old master Jiao to transport me, with him, into another ambience of Jianghu. Huffing from shouldering a full box of puppets, the two of us were invited to the primary school, middle school, and university to roll out our voluntary promotion of puppetry and its access into campuses as an intangible cultural heritage.  The lecture adopts the form of "three dimensions" that encompassed“speaking while acting”, “pictures and texts”, and “audience interaction”.Every time when we play, I have always been very impressed by effortless style of Jiao to leverage up a round of thunderous applause. By osmosis and subtlety, Jiao unreservedly dripped his flair bit by bit into my vessel of curiosity, like the plot of Jin Yong's novels. As part of my obsession, I often saturated my brain with a variety of scenes: a man carrying a puppet with his apprentice, sauntering in the bustling world, performing their own miracles. I, as the apprentice, by all serendipity and in all innocence, would lure the Master of the Masters to teach me his secrets, while fully snared by my reveries of seizing the pinnacle of the puppet skills.

Now perching at the summit of this art, I wallow in the yearnings of the audience.