Taiwanese Puppetry: Pulling Strings to Dispel a Myriad

After six one evening, on a temporary stage in front of a Taipei department store window, Lin Tsan-cheng, the winner of a National Heritage Award, is dressing puppets about to go on stage, attaching pink and green scarfs, helmets or ornate hair pins before putting on their sleeveless jackets. The properly costumed puppets are then left to hang on a rack, their slanty eyes slightly open. When a wind blows, they move limply and reflect the bright lights around them, giving the scene an eerie otherworldliness.

Once the performance begins, the fighting pup pets vigorously thrust their arms and kick their feet, and the female puppets hold their delicate fingers in front of their breasts, cocking their heads coyly to the side. Behind the curtain, the puppeteers are in turn fierce and graceful, moving as the puppets do.

When the puppets come, even the ghosts worry: Except for this kind of "cultural performance" in the cities, in Taiwan rarely is puppetry done as part of "a show" to "entertain" people. And it is even rarer to see so many young parents coming with their children to cheer on the performers. "In Taiwan most puppet theater is combined with operatic music to dispel evil spirits," explains Sung Chin-hsiou, assistant researcher in the Taiwan History Field Research Office of the Academia Sinica, who has been researching puppets for years. In northern performances of puppetry, unlike other forms of theater, the crowds stay away, fearing that the ghosts being busted might bust them.

Few are in attendance at these exorcisms, and getting the chance to attend one isn't good luck. This year, in the seventh month of the lunar calendar, more than ten fires of various sizes broke out in the area around Tehui Street. In the most serious blaze, someone died. "As soon as you heard a fire engine's siren," said one local resident, "you felt afraid." As a result, the chief of Chungshan District's Hsin- chuang li, which is a diverse mix of over 2,000 households, took donations for a Taoist priest to come and perform a pu-tu (making offerings to the spirits and pleas for universal mercy) as well as paying for a puppet troupe to dispel the evil spirits of fire.

Before a ceremony, notices are supposed to be posted in the streets and alleys, advising people of the time and reason for the ceremony and warning the particularly vulnerable--children, pregnant women and those in mourning--to be elsewhere so as to avoid the evil spirits. But this time, no mention of it was found on the li's notice board. "City people don't put much stock in all of this," the li chief explains. "Those who donated the money were all the older residents of the neighborhood. We couldn't go to the offices or the families of the newer residents for donations."

Hitting the road after having one's fill: It was after 2:00 in the afternoon, and under the temporarily assembled tent the four big, round tables weren't big enough to hold all the offerings that the residents brought. Amid the hubbub and confusion, the Taoist priest was chanting, pacing among the residents' gifts and making offerings to the spirits. Directly opposite the altar of the Taoist priest, Lin Chin-lian was preparing the equipment for the exorcism. Under the table, a cock and a white duck tried to break free of their ties.

At the right moment came the sounds of firecrackers mixed with the sharp sounds of suonas (clarinet-like wind instruments) and the ceremony to dispel the spirits began. Lin Chin-lian burnt paper money as an invitation to the gods and put the blood of the cock onto a charm. Next he burnt a salted rice charm, put it into a bowl of salted rice, and scattered the rice to all sides, making it into the soldiers and generals of countless gods. Then, after burning a charm for the ghost-busting water, the ashes were dipped in a bowl of water and a branch of a banyan tree was used to shake the water while calling upon thousands of waves to dispel the evil spirits of fire.... At last the god Chung Kuei was invited to appear. Holding a sharp sword in his hand, he quickly made a show of his fighting moves and walked with the Taoist priest to the sites of the fires to exorcise the evil spirits. After returning from his walk, the Taoist priest asked the gods to go home and take their troops with them.

A curious middle-aged man couldn't help but ask, "During ghost month we offer food to the ghosts. Why then do we want to get rid of them now?"

Lin Chin-lian had a wonderful response: "We make offerings to the good ones and exorcise the bad ones."

Yet, in truth, whether or not it's the ghost festival, the pu-tu--with its offerings--is always performed before an exorcism. "The carrot before the stick" is how Lin Tsan-cheng of the Hsin Fu Hsuan Troupe describes it. Hsu Chien-hsun, the retired head of Fu Lung Hsuan, stresses that evil ghosts are also pathetic spirits of the dead with nowhere to go. It's best to first invite them politely to enjoy the offerings before taking them to hell where they will wait for judgment and reincarnation. "If you get tough right off the bat, you'll never get them to go get reincarnated. You should never get mean until it's absolutely necessary." In folk belief, this strategy of making offerings to them before driving them out is a way of showing a merciful heart to these lost and wandering souls.

Similar kinds of ceremonies to dispel spirits, Sung Chin-hsiou explains, are performed even more carefully in the Lanyang area. There, when exorcising spirits of fire, they won't hang the red banners with Chinese couplets written on them used by most troupes for fear that the color red will induce fire. Instead, they use a blue cloth banner with the lines "Respectfully sending off the southern god of fire; welcoming in the northern god of water," which is exchanged for festive red couplets after the ceremony.

Idlers run for cover: Generally speaking, these exorcisms are rather simplified in the cities. The deeper one gets in the countryside, the greater the chance of coming upon a complete ceremony. One such complete exorcism took place this year in the ninth month of the lunar calendar at the opening of a new temple in Pafenliao of Shihting Rural Township of Taipei County. Its ceremony was notable especially for the fervor at its beginning. At the appointed time, Hsu Wen-han, a fifth generation puppeteer of the Fu Lung Hsuan troupe and local religious figures shouted "idlers run for cover" to dismiss the great crowd. Those who had to stay behind, including the puppeteers, wore safety charms.

With the blasts from the souna and the clang and bang of the gongs and drums, Hsu Wen-han held his breath in concentration and forcefully pushed a seven-star dagger into the front of the stage and stomped his foot. The atmosphere changed from noisy excitement during the pu-tu to nervous solemnity. It differed greatly from the mood during ur ban ceremonies, where circles of curious onlookers gather.

Inviting gods, dripping chicken blood on the charms before burning them, exorcising evil spirits and inviting the god Chung Kuei: These are common elements of any Taoist exorcism. Yet according to convention, only performing the exorcism is "half a tent." Only by adding on the other half is the performance complete.

The suona, gongs and drums were sound once again, and the "Drama of the Gods" now appeared on stage. The eight immortals of Taoism took turns on stage and the audience gradually started to come back. Then they performed scenes from such plays as Peach Blossom Lady Fights the Duke of Chou, Chen Ching-ku Subdues Monsters, The Flame Mountain of Journey to the West and The Upright Judge Pao Cheng. At the end a scholar in official mandarin dress and a female character with a powdered face came out and bowed to each other and the audience, thanking them for watching. Only this counts as a full performance. After the evil spirits were expelled and thanks given to the gods, with easy hearts people returned to the normal order of their lives.

The puppet blues: "We come to perform in these puppet shows with heavy hearts," says Lin Tsan-cheng of the Hsin Fu Hsuan Company of Ilan, giving voice to the frustrations of the modern puppet master.

Lin Tsan-cheng remembers one year back during the Japanese occupation of Taiwan, when he wasn't yet 20. Coal mining was at its peak in the area around Juifang, and accidents often occurred. Once the Shihfenliao Mines caught fire. By the time they rushed to the scene, the mouth of the mine had already spewed forth 40 charred corpses. Women by his side who had lost their husbands howled with hoarse voices. Their wails combined with the tender sobs of the children made his spirits plunge.

When Hsu Wen-han, the leader of the troupe in its fifth generation, first picked up the reins in 1967, he performed an exorcism for the opening of a temple near the sea. The night sea wind picked up the sand around the temple and scattered it everywhere. Not yet 18, he was quite afraid. Once he went with his father from Santiaoling to the Mutan Train Tunnel to dispel evil spirits. They had to walk in the tunnel for nearly two hours and his father fell and hurt himself shortly after entering it. Hsu Wen-han felt as if "we were never going to walk out of that tunnel."

Giving thanks to God: In contrast to this gloomy experience up north, puppetry in the south is a much happier affair. In the Kaohsiung-Tainan area, at midnight of the ninth day of the first lunar month (the Lord of Heaven's birthday), puppet troupes are invited to perform in temples or residential homes to give thanks for the kindness of heaven. This is the busiest day of the year for the southern puppet troupes. The Weitzunei troupe of Hunei Rural Township of Kaohsiung County once made six different performances on the same night. But thanks to heaven isn't only given on the birthday of the Lord of Heaven. It is also customary to thank the Lord of Heaven for one's blessings on such major occasions as when a baby reaches one month old, when a man is wed or on one's 60th birthday. Weddings in particular provide great opportunities for employment, and conversely during the in-auspicious seventh month of the lunar calendar--"ghost month"--the puppet troupes are largely idle.

At the end of September in the Kushanarea of Kaohsiung City, 26-year-old Huang Hsin-chang was taking a wife, and his family invited a puppet troupe to come to the wedding. At 11:00 p.m. the groom was urged repeatedly by his elders to go to his room and change into a completely new set of clothes. At the same time, his parents and younger brother, who also had to kneel down to show their gratitude, specially put on socks and shoes to show politeness. An altar set up for the Lord of Heaven was full of such offerings as noodles, paper money and vegetarian dishes that look like ox, sheep or pigs. Wine, tea leaves and fruit tea, were placed in front of the thurible. With the offerings, the Taoist priest and the puppets, the evening must have cost about NT$40,000.

Five performances a night become five a month: After the Taoist priest reported to the Lord of Heaven and read out the name of a drama, Two Joyous Occasions for One Family, the father of the groom kneeled on the ground and threw crescent-shaped divination blocks, immediately gaining the Lord of Heaven's consent for that puppet show to begin. Directly opposite to the altar, the puppet group used the ground as the stage, and two puppets came out saying that a scholar was the happy recipient of news that he had scored highest on the exam for mandarins. Then a female puppet came out and bowed. In the show, a couple of songs were sung and then the performance was over. The father once again threw the divination blocks, and "The Birthday Party of Tzuyi" was selected. Its name suggests it should be very festive, but the performance wasn't much different. Four puppets came on stage, and in ten minutes or so it was finished.

After the show was over, the two musicians packed their bags with an ease that betrayed their experience. The puppeteer told the groom and his family to put the glutinous balls of rice symbolizing union on the table as an offering to the gods and pointed out the proper places for such other symbols of good luck as nails for giving birth to sons and money water for making a fortune. Then he uttered propitious phrases to everyone, quickly packed up his basket and slipped into the night, hurrying to his next engagement.

"Both puppet troupes and the public think that puppet theater just needs to bring luck and a festive atmosphere," says Chiang Wu-chang, author of a book about puppets who works in the center for traditional culture of the National Institute of the Arts. "They don't care about plot or technique." "Parade of the Highest Scoring Mandarins," for instance, which was originally a two-hour opera, is turned into a ten-minute puppet show. A series of three plays that used to go on till dawn and was hence called "Three Shows Until the Break of Dawn" can now be finished in an hour.

Not only has the content been cut and simplified, but the opportunities for the puppeteers to work their craft are ever fewer. A neighbor looking at the performance from the side said that people like himself, 50 or so years of age, simply don't really under-stand ceremonies like puppet performances to give thanks to the Lord of Heaven. "There used to be four or five shows a night," says Wu Teng-huang, the fifth-generation head of the Weitzunei puppet troupe. "These days there are only four or five a month. It's getting really bad." Now his main job is with a telecommunication cable company, and he only moonlights as a puppeteer.

Gaining supernatural power, losing technique: Puppet theater never had a particularly wide following in Taiwan. Imbued with a mysterious air, the northern troupes dispelled crowds as well as demons. And the southern troupes performed in the middle of the night. Hence there was no basis for an audience.

Besides having few opportunities to perform, the northern troupes, to provide an appropriate atmosphere for the dispelling of demons, tend to have rather eerie repertoires, and the shows that can better display the puppeteers' talents are growing less familiar by the day. And the southern troupes, under the principle of keeping things to a minimum, "cannot cut the ceremonial parts and so must cut from the script!" says Chiang Wu-chang. Often one can see a troupe in the middle of a performance only to stop when the person who hired them so beckons. The pleasure brought by the art and the puppeteers performance skills have both suffered.

Seeing that performance skills were being lost and that current practitioners lacked successors, the Shih Ho-cheng ten years ago took 30 college students and teachers to come serve as apprentices and pass along the art of puppetry. Among these were Chiang Wu-chang and Wang Li-chia, who are still doing research about puppetry. They haven't, however, focused their energies in tackling the difficult techniques of the art.

The props of a puppet company include "36 bodies, 72 heads, a dragon, a tiger and a horse." A puppet is divided into the four major parts of head, body, arms and legs, and the arms are divided into the elbow, wrist and hands. Southern puppetry further divides the hand into the middle finger, ring finger and pinkie, for the purpose of such minute motions as holding one's beard and holding a glass. And the standard number of strings on a puppet is 11 or 14. Huang Yi-chueh, a master mainland puppeteer, has used 20-string puppets, seeking to have the puppet resemble a person in even its smallest motions.

Puppets are two or two-and-half-feet tall and are made from thin and flat strips of bamboo to keep them as light as possible. Nonetheless, they still tip the scales at four to six kilograms. Hence, neophytes have got to strengthen their arms so they can maintain steadiness when controlling a puppet's string board. One starts holding for ten minutes, keeping one's arm parallel to the ground, and then gradually lengthens the time. Otherwise, one won't have what it takes to put on a half-an-hour show.

Because puppets are heavy and hard to manipulate, and the minute and complicated Peikuan rhythmic shifts of the accompanying music are difficult to sing, puppetry is the only traditional performance art whose study cannot be promoted in elementary schools. It's no wonder that although 72-year-old Lin Tsan-cheng won a National Heritage Award, he can't help but sigh and say, "In teaching others I'll never have any success. A few students may have gone on to get doctorates, but the art still has no future!"

Strengths on both sides of the Strait: Because academic students have wanted only to do research on the art and others have wanted to study only how to exorcise ghosts in order to get work for a troupe of their own, only the most superficial understanding of the techniques is being passed along. "It's really a case of taking apprentices only to have the skills lost," says the old master, sighing still deeper. People believe that current puppetry in the mainland is strong in technique, lively and variable. In the mainland master Huang Yi-chueh's signature rendering of "Flooding Gold Mountain Temple," a young monk shrugs his shoulders when seeing a green snake. When scared out of his wits, the young monk falls on his bum. When proud, he scratches his head, raises one leg over the other and shakes it. His puppets' motions are spirited and lively. "Our puppetry is really weak as an art form!" laments Wang Li-chia, who started out studying theater before going to France to get a master's.

Yet Sung Chin-hsiou, who originally studied anthropology and who looks at the state of Taiwan's puppetry from a cultural angle, says there are two sides to the coin: "Only by filling the traditional role of exorcising ghosts and making offerings to heaven in traditional culture has Taiwanese puppetry's religious character been able to be so completely preserved!"

And what about the Third International Puppet Festival of the Netherlands? After having been dazzled by the art of Chuanchow puppetry, its organizers grew interested in the solemn and religious style of Taiwanese puppetry, and they came to Taiwan especially to invite Hsin Fu Hsuan of Ilan to go to Holland to perform.

Hard to see: In fact, if you want to see a performance by this award-winning troupe, it's just as hard to see it in Taiwan as abroad. For starters, the performers are getting along in their years, and secondly, Lin Tsan-cheng and Lin Wen-teh both also serve as Taoist priests, spending most of their time performing such rites as paying homage to deities or celebrating the opening of a temple, where there are greater opportunities to stand in the spot light and more money. And it's the same trend for the Fu Lung Hsuan troupe, which does more exorcisms than any other. In the last five years, it has performed half as frequently as before.

Has society changed? Today, everywhere you turn, you can see ground is being broken for building houses or temples. Everywhere mountains are being opened up and the sea is being filled in. With the number of car accidents higher than ever, opportunities for puppet performances have not disappeared. It's just that people's conceptions have changed. "It's probably just that people have seen the strange so much that it's no longer strange," Hsu Wen-han guesses, laughing bitterly. "And they don't need anymore to dispel demons, placate the gods, pay respects to heaven and thank the earth!"

[Picture Caption]

Chung Kuei is invited to descend to the world of men by offering three meats and five fruits.

At a ceremony to open a temple, a Taoist priest makes a dragon out of rice and a fish's scales out of money. This burning of incense is called "pacifying the dragon."

Shooting incense sticks like arrows in all directions ("respectfully sending off the tiger"), the evil air is first dispelled from the temple door. The puppet theater then takes over to send it far away.

After the exorcism, the puppeteer walks a puppet around the streets to make them clean, and the Taoist priest follows behind with a pot of hot oil to burn the fire demons out.

(Above) The green, white, red, black and yellow of the "five-colored cloth" represent the troops of the five directions of north, south, east, west and center, whereas the stack of porcelain bowls represent the 28 stars that are generals of the Gods, which are invited before the ceremony to purify the five directions.

(Below) A puppet performed exorcism is a complicated affair. Of charms alone, more than ten kinds are needed.

Completing the solemn ceremony of exorcising the demons is only "half a tent." It's got to be followed by the festive "play of the gods" and formal dramas, which represent the giving of good fortune, in order to count as a "full tent" of puppet theater.

Besides a puppet of Chung Kuei, Chung Kuei's tablet has also been asked to be put out in order to add to the god's power.

Because of taboos about watching the exorcisms that employ puppetry, even when regular puppet dramas are being performed, the audience in front of the stage is small.

Off stage and back stage the puppets are covered with a face cloth. But it's not a taboo--it's just to keep them looking new.

Chung Kuei is invited to descend to the world of men by offering three meats and five fruits.

At a ceremony to open a temple, a Taoist priest makes a dragon out of rice and a fish's scales out of money. This burning of incense is called "pacifying the dragon.".

Shooting incense sticks like arrows in all directions （"respectfully sending off the tiger"）, the evil air is first dispelled from the temple door. The puppet theater then takes over to send it far away.

After the exorcism, the puppeteer walks a puppet around the streets to make them clean, and the Taoist priest follows behind with a pot of hot oil to burn the fire demons out.

（Above） The green, white, red, black and yellow of the "five-colored cloth" represent the troops of the five directions of north, south, east, west and center, whereas the stack of porcelain bowls represent the 28 stars that are generals of the Gods, which are invited before the ceremony to purify the five directions.

（Below） A puppet performed exorcism is a complicated affair. Of charms alone, more than ten kinds are needed.

Completing the solemn ceremony of exorcising the demons is only "half a tent." It's got to be followed by the festive "play of the gods" and formal dramas, which represent the giving of good fortune, in order to count as a "full tent" of puppet theater.

Besides a puppet of Chung Kuei, Chung Kuei's tablet has also been asked to be put out in order to add to the god's power.

Because of taboos about watching the exorcisms that employ puppetry, even when regular puppet dramas are being performed, the audience in front of the stage is small.

Off stage and back stage the puppets are covered with a face cloth. But it's not a taboo--it's just to keep them looking new.