Staying out of the shadow

Behind a translucent white cotton screen in a community center in Shanghai's Xuhui district, weathered hands twirl thin bamboo rods with practiced ease. On the screen, the folk hero Wu Song, known for his triumphant battle with a tiger, leaps into the air, his leather limbs moving fluidly as he fights the big cat.

In front of the curtain, a crowd of children and parents watch in rapt silence, fascinated by the rhythmic beats of traditional Chinese drums and string instruments that match every strike and dodge.

For many of the children present, accustomed to digital graphics and animation on screens, this raw, handcrafted spectacle is their first encounter with Shanghai Shadow Puppetry — an intangible cultural heritage with a history spanning more than 140 years in the city.

Behind the curtain is 78-year-old Shen Mingquan, leader of the Guilin Shadow Puppet Troupe. Every Saturday afternoon for the past 21 years, Shen and his troupe members have performed weekly shows for neighborhood residents for free, keeping an ancient art form alive in the heart of a modern metropolis.

Shen says, "It hasn't been easy doing this show every Saturday since 2006, but as an inheritor, I have a duty and a responsibility to pass it on."

Shen first saw a shadow puppet show in the 1950s. In the countryside outside Shanghai, entertainment was scarce then. "Whenever there was a show, we all went," he says. "I'd carry a stool and push to the front."

The performances came after the autumn harvest, when the village celebrated with a stage built on haystacks. "Shanghai Shadow Puppetry was rooted deep in childhood," he recalls.

What he didn't know then was that he was watching a tradition that had arrived in Shanghai in 1880, when a man named Mao Gengyu returned from neighboring Zhejiang province with a set of puppets and staged the first performance in Qibao town. Mao's troupe, the Hongxu Hall, played to packed houses.

The art he brought to Shanghai was never anyone's main job. Mao's successors were carpenters and tailors. Shen's uncle, Xu Shunlin, who founded the Guilin troupe around 1954, was a carpenter. "They all did this in their spare time," Shen says. "You couldn't make a living from it."

The troupe stayed largely dormant for more than two decades. In 2006, the Kangjian subdistrict office in Xuhui district revived it as part of a push to preserve intangible cultural heritage. Shen, recently retired, was invited by his uncle to learn the craft and help keep the troupe going.

Today, the Guilin Shadow Puppet Troupe is likely the only group in Shanghai still performing full-length traditional shadow puppet plays, including historical epics such as Romance of the Sui and Tang and Xue Rengui's Eastern Campaign. Today, traditional grand epics have gradually given way to shorter, simpler tales such as The Monkey King or Wu Song Fights the Tiger to suit young audiences.

According to Shen, the troupe now has eight members and the youngest is nearly 70. They rehearse and perform every weekend, free of charge, for whoever shows up, which is usually a few families from the surrounding neighborhood. Shen acknowledges the difficulty, but they still perform.

Faced with a fast-changing culture and the realities of an aging troupe, Shen remains pragmatic. Rather than despairing over the decline of commercial stages, he has embraced a mission he calls "sowing seeds".

"It is unrealistic to expect these kids to make shadow puppetry their main job when they grow up," Shen says. What the troupe can do, he adds, is to scatter seeds, from kindergartens and middle schools to night classes for young working professionals.

For eight years, Shen has run a program at the Kangjian Foreign Language Experimental Middle School, teaching students not only how to manipulate the puppets, but also how to carve leather, paint faces, and understand the classical literature behind the stories.

But there is a structural problem. Students in fourth and fifth grade can participate, but because of educational pressure, they prepare for high school by the sixth grade.

"If these students move on to high school and college, and their careers, and the concept of shadow puppetry stays with them," Shen says, "that will be fine … Whether it will flower, we'll have to see."

This year, the subdistrict office launched a new "inheritance class", a smaller group of dedicated adult learners, drawn in part from past community-class participants, who might someday help carry the troupe forward.