China Traditional Culture Shadow Play Knowledge

Shadow play, formerly known as "shadow play" or "light shadow play", is a kind of folk drama that uses light sources such as candles or burning alcohol to illuminate the silhouette of people made of animal skin or cardboard to perform stories. During the performance, artists manipulated the opera characters behind the white curtain, sang stories with local popular tunes (sometimes in dialects), accompanied by percussion instruments and strings, which had a strong local flavor. In rural areas such as Henan, Shanxi, Shaanxi and Tianshui, Gansu, this simple Han folk art form is deeply loved by people.

"Shadow Play" is the general name of shadow play and shadow play characters (including scene props and scenery) products. Shadow play is a form of drama, which allows the audience to watch the light and shadow of the plane doll performance through the white curtain to achieve artistic effect; The plane dolls and scenes in shadow play are usually leather products drawn by folk artists by hand and knife carving, so they are called shadow play. Shadow play used to be one of the most popular folk entertainment activities before film and television. Shadow play is an ancient traditional art of Han nationality in China, and the old Beijingers call it "donkey shadow play". Shadow play is not only a puppet art, but also an authentic handicraft. It is made of cowhide, donkey skin, horse skin and mule skin through several processes such as material selection, carving, coloring, sewing and painting. Influenced by many factors, such as the external environment, differences in animal cortex and so on, the modeling styles of shadow play vary from place to place. [