Changli Shadow Puppetry

Changli shadow puppetry is an important branch of eastern Hebei shadow theatre, current around Qinhuangdao's Changli County, and was inscribed onto the national ICH list in 2011 as an expanded sub-item of "shadow puppetry." Sharing its roots with Tangshan shadow puppetry, it flourished in the Changli area in the late Qing and early Republic, a chief form of entertainment and moral instruction in eastern Hebei villages.

Its figures are carved from donkey hide, vivid in form and finely worked; in performance, puppeteers manipulate the figures behind a screen while singing and speaking the parts, accompanied by the four-string fiddle, suona and percussion, the singing high and impassioned, the dialect speech witty, often telling historical romances and courtroom tales.

Changli shadow puppetry is a fusion of eastern Hebei folk drama and the carver's art, carrying the aesthetic and narrative traditions of the countryside, and holds real significance for the study of how northern shadow theatre spread and how folk opera ecologies lived.