SWATOW HORIZONTAL STICK PUPPETS
Ch'aochow Puppets in contemporary China and overseas
83
Liu Fu-kuang §✯ an educated person of about 40, who is the most outstanding Ch'aochow orchestra-leader here, is closely connected with the Hsin-shun-hsiang puppet-troupe. He came to Hong Kong in 1959. According to him, puppet-troupes completely disappeared in Ch'aochow after the establishment of the People's Republic in 1949. This is probably because their performances were intimately connected with the festivals of the myriads of local deities, the worship of which was strongly discouraged by the Communists. In 1957, Liu Fu-kuang saw the last troupe, called Shant'ou Ying-hsi-t'uan 4⇓✯D (Shadow-play-troupe of Shant'ou) perform in Swatow. He believes that not even one troupe is now left in Ch'aochow, after a history of about one thousand years and a hundred active troupes fifty years ago.
People from Ch'aochow make up a large percentage of the Overseas Chinese population of South East Asia and Ch'aochow opera flourishes there; but there is said not to be one single "paper-shadow-play" troupe overseas. This shows that from the great tradition of puppet-theatre, only the two troupes in Hong Kong are left. It is therefore the last chance to savour and study this tradition before its extinction which, at least at the moment, appears to be inevitable.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Batchelder, Marjorie H.: Rod-puppets and the Human Theatre, Columbus, The Ohio State University Press, 1947.
Huang Chun-ming: The Forbidden Puppets' in Echo of Things Chinese, Taiwan, October 1972, pp. 24-34.
Jacob & Jensen: Das Chinesische Schattentheater, Stuttgart, 1933.
Margareta Niculescu: The Puppet Theatre in the Modern World compiled by Union Internationale des Marionettes under Margareta Niculescu, George G. Harrap & Co. Ltd., London, Toronto, Wellington, Sidney, 1967.
Tsim Tak-lung (compiler): Puppet-demonstration on pages 45-47 of ‘Chinese Theatre in Hong Kong', Proceedings of a Symposium, Nov. 22-23, 1968, Centre of Asian Studies, University of Hong Kong, 1968.
Burger, Helga: 'The Cantonese Stick-puppets', in Kaleidoscope, Hong Kong, March/April 1973.
"The Far Eastern Puppet Theatre' in Souvenir Book of the Hong Kong Arts Festival, 1974.