Puppeteers prepare for an evening's performance. Photo: Yang Hui/GT

It's Monday evening and on a white screen a tortoise and a crane appear on a stage in Qibao Ancient Town, entrancing the audience in front who laugh wholeheartedly.

The audience is ready for a great show. Photo: Yang Hui/GT

 

This little girl holds a puppet tiger. Photo: Yang Hui/GT

Making the show come to life are members of the Little People Shadow Play Troupe, a traditional shadow puppet team comprised of dwarfs. The operators, who also provide the voices for the puppets, have an average height of 1.26 meters and because of their size they have had to adapt the puppets.

They make their own puppets and stage so that they can control the action. These puppets are smaller than the normal shadow puppets and the troupe use chopsticks to handle them.

Some of the troupe's puppets hang ready for appearances. Photo: Yang Hui/GT

Shadow puppetry, or shadow play, originated in the Han Dynasty (206BC-AD220) later spreading to other countries. Using colorful and mobile figures, shadow puppeteers project these images onto a translucent screen to tell their stories.

Behind the screen puppeteers Xu Meiling (right) and Liang Peng bring a story to life. Photo: Yang Hui/GT

A troupe member carefully makes a new puppet. Photo: Yang Hui/GT

In skilled hands the figures on screen can appear to move with amazing grace and fight, run or walk.

The head of the troupe, surnamed Lu said that, despite their size all the puppeteers wanted to help the art of shadow play develop. Shadow puppetry is one of China's intangible cultural heritages.

Global Times