Chinese shadow puppetry is a performance form that dates back over a millennium ago. As one of the most widespread puppet forms in China, shadow puppetry lineages became literal archives of their community's stories with just a few practitioners from each generation charged with retaining the cumulative repository of shared experiences. As modern China and increasingly globalizing forces puts pressure on the circumstances that cultivated this long tradition of shadow puppetry, questions of continuance have been on the minds of the practitioners and their audiences since the early 1900s. If the transmission of shadow puppetry ends, unable to engage apprentices to inherit or find audiences to receive, where will those thousands of years of stories and their ghostly lineage go? This thesis utilizes an apprenticeship research method to follow two main lines of inquiry: (1) what are the particular ways in which Chinese shadow puppetry, a traditional vernacular puppetry form, is resistant to current methods of preservation (2) how can new preservation theories and practices be approached to better support traditional vernacular puppet forms? Ancillary to this, can creative artists outside the lineage of Chinese shadow puppetry contribute to this endeavor? 
The research shows that while current methods for preservation and safeguarding intangible cultural forms, especially puppetry, are enacting some change, the results are mixed and often detrimental to the form they are designed to protect. The goal for this dissertation is to catalyze a re-examination of safeguarding policies and current theories on the (im)possibilities of preserving traditional vernacular puppetry forms in order to posit a new approach to safeguarding that prioritizes (1) apprenticeship, (2) practitioner-driven creativity and (3) performance as the central mode of dissemination. Considering these three tenets is not intended to replace the roster of safeguarding methods currently in place, but adds to them to include necessary elements that have so far not been adequately considered. This thesis hopes to shift the current focus of preservation methods, which prioritizes objects and products, back unto practitioners as central to any method of preservation.

Immaterial Remains: the (im)possibilities of preserving China's shadow puppet tradition

Abstract:The Mulian story is one of the oldest and most popular religious xiqu (\"Chinese opera\") narratives. Its overt Buddhist theme and ritual purpose caused the story to fall into disfavor after the establishment of the People's Republic of China, to reemerge gradually over the last three decades as the animus against tradition is replaced by its valorization as Intangible Cultural Heritage. The Mulian narrative has recently been the subject of a large-scale revival by the prominent state-owned company in Putian, Fujian Province. With that production as a case study, this article argues that state-led theatre reform is both reviving and altering the practices of \"traditional\" performance.

Rescuing Mulian's Mother in the Xi Era: Reviving Ritual Xiqu in Contemporary Fujian

Over a total of thirteen weeks, the authors accompanied Professor Ye Mingsheng of Fuzhou, Fujian Province, and his graduate student Huang Jianxing on a survey of Chinese string, rod, and glove puppetry. Covering thirteen provinces and municipalities, they documented rehearsals and performances by both large, state-supported contemporary puppetry troupes and small, rural, traditional companies engaged in ritual performances.

A Survey of Puppetry in China (Summers 2008 and 2009)

Asian ancestral deliverance narratives are epitomized, in the Chinese puppet show stories of Mulian rescuing his mother and the Balinese puppet show tale of Bima saving his parents. The Mulian story with links to the Hungry Ghost Festival and Bima's story with ties to cremation ceremonies in Bali are comparable, showing that puppetry across different Asian religious and national divides has link to rituals honoring the dead.

Ancestral Deliverance and Puppet Performance: Mulian Rescues his Mother and Bima Goes to Heaven

Puppets, a kind of wooden figure whose movements are manipulated by artists, were frequently used in ancient Chinese singing and dancing activities and dramas. The uniqueness of substituting human beings for puppets has drawn tremendous attention from scholars. However, despite previous research on the long development process of puppet dramas, a considerable number of details remain neglected, and behind these details lies an abundance of complicated religious factors. Therefore, this paper uses several fragments as entry points in terms of puppet dramas’ modeling, materials, craft, rites, function, artists, organization, and other aspects to comprehensively analyze the influence of witchcraft, Daoism, and Buddhism on China’s puppet dramas. This research first unveils that a ferocious appearance and mahogany as a material, both used in puppets, are outer manifestations to reveal the magical power of witchcraft. Next, the rites performed in Li Yuan Jiao using ritual puppets were characterized by mystery in their implication and ambiguity in their religious sect, which was related to the attempt to hide their notorious identities as wizards on the part of the artists. Third, general puppet artists enjoyed a fairly high social status, conferred by their semi-religionist identity and the puppet dramas’ historical status. Finally, the improvement in the puppet-making process and the emergence of skeleton-style puppets embody the secularization of the spread of Buddhism.

/pdf/belief-in-drama-a-study-of-the-religious-factors-in-ancient-24e04b4r.pdf

Belief in Drama: A Study of the Religious Factors in Ancient Chinese Puppet Dramas

Marionette theatre in Quanzhou

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Marionette theatre in Quanzhou

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Immaterial Remains: the (im)possibilities of preserving China's shadow puppet tradition

Rescuing Mulian's Mother in the Xi Era: Reviving Ritual Xiqu in Contemporary Fujian

A Survey of Puppetry in China (Summers 2008 and 2009)

Ancestral Deliverance and Puppet Performance: Mulian Rescues his Mother and Bima Goes to Heaven

Belief in Drama: A Study of the Religious Factors in Ancient Chinese Puppet Dramas

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