◎Shadow puppet carving (a national intangible cult...
Tangshan shadow puppet carving is mainly made of donkey hide, so it is also called “donkey shadow puppet.” When Tangshan shadow puppetry reached its zenith, shadow puppet artists had a clear division of labor. Centered on Luanzhou, the center of Tangshan shadow puppetry, many shadow troupes appeared one after another along the southern coast. In Laoting County alone, there were 50 shadow play troupes by the middle of the Qing Dynasty. In the Qing Dynasty, it appeared in Fengrun County which is located in the north of Tangshan, a village specializing in shadow puppets carving — Heishangou Village. Hence, a prosperous scene was formed, with shadow puppet singing thriving in the south and shadow puppet carving in the north. During this period, the villagers of Heishangou made a living by carving shadow puppets for generations, and a large number of excellent carving artists emerged. They had a clear division of labor, with some people responsible for branding, some for processing the films, some for engraving and coloring, and some for distribution. This kind of professional and industrialized shadow puppet carving is very similar to that of the Huigeshe, an organization that boasted of colored decoration and engraving of puppets in Hangzhou during the Southern Song Dynasty, 400 years earlier than shadow puppetry's peak time in Tangshan. The similarity suggests that the production scale of Tangshan shadow play was very large.(https://www.daowen.com)
Tangshan shadow play features a full spectrum of roles, which are mainly distinguished by the shape of Touzha (facial makeup). There are six types of roles: hualian (male character with a painted face), qingyi and xiaodan (young females), laosheng (senior male), xiaosheng (young male), chou (comical role) and yao (fairies or monsters). The facial makeup is very complicated. The head of the puppet is a profile, its headdresses look as if being viewed from a certain angle, and its cap wings, braids and beards are almost fully showed. Only the shape of its eye is not changed. Most of the part below the shadow puppet costumes (chuozi) are drawn, and they are generally biased either toward the front side or toward the back side. The purpose is to show the overall beauty of the costume as much as possible. This kind of multi-sided shape can give audiences a natural, flexible and aesthetic effect during performance on the shadow window. It is the crystallization of the wisdom of shadow puppet artists of the past generations, so that museums and collectors around the world are competing to collect it.