Puppet Show for the Gods
An old blue truck arrives about four o’clock and parks in front of the tu di gong or village shrine. The shrine is one of ten thousand that populate every neighborhood in Taiwan. This one is located on the side of an auto repair shop’s parking lot. Like most shrines there is a furnace for burning ‘god money’, a sink for washing hands, an offering table, and some benches for sitting.
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A news board has posters tacked to it advertising the puppet show, but no one has showed up. The blue truck is placed directly in front of where the god statue sits in his cubby overlooking the offered food, which include oranges, apples, bananas, cookies, small packages of hard candy. The foods are selected based on what they represent. This association is derived from the sound of the foods name. For instance, ‘apple’ in Chinese, ping gwo, sounds like ‘peace’, ping an.
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A middle-aged couple begins setting up, opening the back of the truck to reveal the stage and hand-drawn side boards. There’s an ancient outdoor speaker attached to the front of the truck. About four-thirty music starts blaring out of this trashcan-sized funnel and the show begins.
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There is no one watching, but from the back of the truck the couple is moving around vigorously, grabbing various puppets, turning pages on the program, changing background screens. The recorded music and voices can be heard from half-a-mile away. The first half of the show consists of a few famous stories and continues until intermission, which is about six o’clock. It’s then that I walk behind the truck and start asking the couple questions. The husband walks away to smoke a cigarette and relax, but the wife still has energy after their aerobic workout to chat.
Her name is Shu-fang Xu, and she’s a lively person, speaking enthusiastically about what she does. Shu-fang tells me they inherited the business from her father-in-law, who started puppeteering in 1967. This form of glove-puppet show has been popular in Taiwan and the China’s Fujian province since the mid-17th century. There is still a nationally-broadcasted TV show being produced with elaborate stories and sets that might be described as half Italian opera, half Japanese-style anime.
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The stories are mostly from history, but there’s a good heaping of legend and mythology tossed in. They have over a hundred different puppets in the truck. The characters include numerous Shao Lin kung fu heroes, Bao Gon the incorruptible judge, and the Monkey King from ‘Journey to the West’. The puppets are hand-made with elaborate clothing and detailed faces painted on. You can see they’re old, but well maintained.
Shu-fang says the public is welcomed to watch the show, but the show has been put on for the temple god, to celebrate his birthday. Twenty years earlier, the neighborhood children would gather and sit around to watch. But like so many things this form of entertainment has been superseded by six-second Youtube videos and Nintendo game systems and oh-I-can’t-even-name-what-kids-do-now.
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Technology has taken over, even in the puppet show. The music used to be from a three or four-person orchestra, the voices used to be from puppet masters. But now that’s all prerecorded. Shu-fang and her husband get paid 6000 Taiwan dollars ($200 US) per four-hour show. With an orchestra it would cost about 20,000 Taiwan dollars. Puppet masters are becoming rare. It’s not a great career choice and has become more an act of devotion than anything else. The shows are paid for by patrons of the shrine seeking favor from the neighborhood god.
Shu-fang shows me the book with the script. It’s one part that hasn’t been digitalized, but I worry about how long this form of puppet show can go on. At six-thirty the second half of the show begins. It will continue for two more hours. Occasionally someone from the area will stop by, give a couple bows of prayers, and light a few joss sticks. Usually it’s an old person. They might watch the show for a few minutes before continuing on their way.
A while later I leave and start walking up the street. I can still hear the horns and gongs and dramatic voices clearly from a block away. I hope at some point Shu-fang and her husband put on a show for children. It seems like a waste not to. And I hope their puppet shows continue, even if no one watches.
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