and cultural relics.As far back as the Tang Dynastyit was one of China"s four foreign trading ports and the starting point of the Silk Road on the sea with a unique human geography and a long history of business and trade and rich cultural development.
The monolithic statue of Laozi founder of Taoism and the local dramas and martial arts have imbued this city with traditional culture and native flavor.Meanwhileforeign influences can be found everywhere.There are China"s earliest Islamic mosquesand the world"s only surviving stone sculpture of a Manichaeism Buddhist.
Another wonderful art is the puppetry of the most charming city of Quanzhou.
It is said that puppetry originated in the Han Dynasty and became prosperous in the Tang Dynasty;the wooden puppet of Quanzhou
has a long history of over 2000 years.At firstit evolved from gurines of musicians and dancers that were buried with the dead.After the N orthern Qi Dynasty(550-577)they were used dramas.The wooden puppet of Quanzhou has kept the rich artistic traditions and exquisite performances,and they are well-known.They can be divided into string-drawn puppets and palm puppets.
Among the wooden puppets of Quanzhou the most famous are the string-drawn puppets,which belong to a rare ancient theatrical variety known as“suspended silk puppets”or“thread plays”popular in south Fujian Province.
With regard to string-drawn puppets is this interesting story: Liu Bang, Emperor Gaozu (256–195 BC), was surrounded at Pingcheng(Datong of Shanxi Province of today)by the army of King Modu(?–174 BC)of the Huns,whose strong troops were led by his wife Yanzhi.After over a month,the Han army in Pingcheng ran out of supplies and Liu Bang was extremely anxious.When Lieutenant Chen Ping of Liu Bang’s army learned that Modu was fond of women and that his wife Yanzhi was very jealous,he ordered mechanics in the army to make many wooden figurines of beautiful women—each attached with several silk threads—and ordered the soldiers to carry the puppet beauties to dance at the openings of the city wall. The puppet beauties were graceful and attractive. Yanzhi mistook them for real beauties and worried that after conquering the city her husband would choose the beauties to be his concubines. She ordered her troops to withdraw and as a result the besiegement was broken.In recognition of the meritorious service of the puppet beauties,Liu Bang granted to them titles of high-ranking imperial concubines and collected them in the imperial warehouse as state treasures.By the time of Emperor Wendi,the Music Office of the imperial household made copies of the puppets and gave performances with them.
Operating the wood en puppets is extr em ely complicated.Each puppet is attached to more than a dozen strings.In performance,the players control them accurately by dragging the strings from a high platform.
Acts included unbuttoning clothes,drawing out swords,accepting umbrellas and all kinds of other dazzling stunts.Wooden puppets can be used to perform grand dramas in both traditional and historical plays as well as modern dramas and pantomimes.
The wooden puppet is at once a stage performing art and a folk art treasure of world renown.Camphorwood is used to carve out the head,which is polished and painted with colors and dressed in beautiful clothes.The craftsmanship for making such puppet heads,especially the carving and coloring skills,is special.
A head of a puppet can be completed after many processes.A carved wooden head must be primed with“cassia”clay,which is named after its cassia-flower color,and then carefully polished with a poisonous fish skin dipped in water.
This head must be carved again before it can be painted with colors.Then,it will have to go through such processes of waxing,combing of hair,fixing of the beard and embellishing with decorative articles.Each process is a careful piece of work and it usually takes a month to make a head.The hair used for the wooden heads is genuine hair bought from hairdressers and the dyestuffs are prepared by the craftsmen themselves.Some wooden puppets have only one head each; some have three to four heads.The chins of the puppets are movable,enabling the mouth to open and close naturally.
The puppet-makers of Quanzhou have inherited the styles of carvings and paintings of the Tang and Song dynasties.The shapes of the heads are graceful and dignified with innate charm.In making wooden puppets in modern times,the artists have inherited the traditional skills and on this basis have continued to innovate,with an emphasis on exaggeration and distortion.The shapes are more changeable and beautiful.The puppets are collected because of their high artistic value.
The best of the wooden puppet heads were made by Master Jiang Jiazou(1871––1954).His posthumous works have been collected by the state as top grade relics.Jiang Jiazou made bold artistic renovations to wooden puppet heads,having added fine carvings and beautiful color drawings,and the images of human figures have become vivid and their characters rare.He was also good at digging and probing the types of roles and reflecting them in profiling the wooden heads.He was adept in applying all kinds of skills and had high artistic achievement.He has been honored with the title of“father of the wooden puppet heads of Quanzhou.”
Wooden puppets of Quanzhou have been handed down from thousands of years ago and many excellent works of art and fine artists have emerged one generation after another,forming a unique art of wooden puppets of Quanzhou,and the historical and cultural city of Quanzhou has been reputedly known as“the city of wooden puppets.”