◎Tangshan shadow play (a national intangible cultu...
It is not clear when the shadow play originated. However, it is said that there was a lantern and shadow show related to the story of the Han Emperor in Chang'an (now Xi'an) during the Western Han Dynasty, which should be the embryonic form of Chinese shadow puppetry. Over 1,000 years later, in the capital, Bianliang (today's Kaifeng City, Henan Province) of Song Dynasty, there were abundant records about shadow play. It is believed that the rich Central Plains area was the birthplace of Chinese shadow puppetry. The regionality of shadow puppetry is described in the Folk Shadow Puppetry edited by Professor Li Mianlu of the Academy of Fine Arts of Tsinghua University: “Chinese shadow puppetry had developed and matured until the Song Dynasty, and spread all over the country after the Yuan and Ming dynasties, but before the Yuan and Ming dynasties there was no regional division... It was only in the Ming and Qing dynasties when Luanzhou shadow puppetry flourished, the name of Luanzhou shadow puppetry or Laoting shadow puppetry, came into being to distinguish local puppetry from that in other areas. Later, the practice of naming shadow puppetry after its region gradually became more common.” Tangshan shadow puppetry was formerly known as “Lanzhou Shadow,” “Laoting Shadow” and “Lao Tie Shadow,” with distinctive regional characteristics.(https://www.daowen.com)