Chinese Shadow Puppetry

Shadow Puppetry, also known as shadow play is generally the art of making puppets and presenting puppet shows. Chinese shadow theatre, dating back to 2,000 years ago, is an ancient form of theatre acted by colourful silhouette figures made from leather or paper, held by folk artists, accompanied by music and singing to tell a story. Chinese Shadow Puppetry is inscribed in 2011 on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.

It is the combination of folk arts and crafts, plastic arts and theatre, as well as the harmony of forms and contents, represented by the making of puppets and story-telling. It fuses both abstract and realistic ways to dramatize the figures and scenes and make them more animated and artistic.