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Glove Puppetry - Chinese Art Web |
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 Glove puppetry, also known as budai mu'ouxi, shoucao kuileixi, shoudai kuileixi, chang-chung hsi, xiaolong, or zhihuaxi is a type of local opera using cloth puppets that originated during the 17th century in Quanzhou or Zhangzhou, in China's Fujian province, and has been historically practiced in Quanzhou, Zhongzhou, Chaozhou in Guangdong, Taiwan, and other parts of southern China. The puppet's head uses wood carved into the shape of a hollow human head, but aside from the head, palms, and feet, which are made of wood, the puppet's torso and limbs consist entirely of cloth costumes. At the time of the performance, a gloved hand enters the puppet's costume and makes it perform. In previous years the puppets used in this type of performance strongly resembled "cloth sacks," hence the name, which literally means "cloth bag opera."
Glove Puppetry performances
Glove Puppetry performances, similar to those other types of Chinese opera, are divided into a first half and a second half show. During the first half, known as the "show platform", the audience is shown a demonstration by a master puppeteer on the stage. The second half consists of the puppet master, the orchestra, and the spoken parts. Several key points of a show to be appreciated include: the dexterity of the master puppeteer's manipulation of the puppet, the accompaniment of the orchestra, and the poetic spoken parts of the voice actors. With few exceptions, from traditional pò·-tē-hì to modern performances, human vocal music and operatic singing is rarely heard.
Chinese opera
Chinese Opera is a popular form of drama and musical theatre in China. There are numerous regional branches of opera with its original root starting in the dynastic periods. As early as the Three Kingdoms period, Canjun opera was one of the first form of opera available. Though in general, the more organized form of Chinese opera began in the Tang Dynasty with Emperor Xuanzong (712–755), who founded the "Pear Garden", the first known opera troupe in China. The troupe mostly performed for the emperors' personal pleasure. To this day operatic professionals are still referred to as "Disciples of the Pear Garden". In the Yuan dynasty (1279–1368), forms like the Zaju, which acts based on rhyming schemes plus the innovation of having specialized roles like "Dan" (female), "Sheng" (male), "Hua" (painted-face) and "Chou" (clown) were introduced into the opera.
The dominant form of the Ming and early Qing dynasties was Kunqu, which came from the Wu cultural area. It later evolved into a longer form of play called chuanqi, which became one of the 5 melody that made up Sichuan opera. Chinese operas continue to exist in 368 different forms now, the best known of which is Beijing opera, which assumed its present form in the mid-19th century and was extremely popular in the Qing Dynasty (1644–1911).
In Beijing opera, traditional Chinese string and percussion instruments provide a strong rhythmic accompaniment to the acting. The acting is based on allusion: gestures, footwork, and other body movements express such actions as riding a horse, rowing a boat, or opening a door. Spoken dialogue is divided into recitative and Beijing colloquial speech, the former employed by serious characters and the latter by young females and clowns. Character roles are strictly defined. Elaborate make-up designs portray which character is acting. The traditional repertoire of Beijing opera includes more than 1,000 works, mostly taken from historical novels about political and military struggles.
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