Located in Sanzhi District of the north coast shore, Li Tian-Lu Hand Puppet Historical Museum is established to commemorate the Hand Puppet Master of Taiwan, Li Tian-Lu’s (1910-1998) lifelong devotion to the art of hand-puppet culture. The Performance Hall is located on the first floor, where a stage of hand puppet show is established. Besides traditional hand puppet shows, the Performance Hall of Li Tian-Lu Hand Puppet Historical Museum also provides a space for avid drama lovers to do rehearsal and perform other forms of drama shows, including Taiwanese opera, Hakka drama, Peiking opera, and leather silhouette shows. From time to time, teaching seminars of hand puppet shows are held here for learners who are interested in the arts of hand puppet performance. The second floor of the museums displays the puppet masks, the costumes of the puppets, scripts used by Mr. Li, as well as a variety of musical instruments collected by Master Li for the puppet show performance.
Born in 1910 in the Japanese ruled colony of Taiwan, Master Li began learning puppet show at the age of eight from his father, who was the leader of a puppet show troupe. In 1932, Li Tian Lu set up his own puppet show drama group, called “Yi Wan Ran” (亦宛然) at the age of 22. After the Sino-Japanese war broke out in 1937, all traditionally China-related forms of drams were prohibited from performance in Taiwan as regulated by Japanese government. After World War II, as Taiwan returned to the government of Republic of China, puppet shows as well as other Taiwanese operas were revived and came back alive to the stage as the main entertainment popular then in Taiwanese society.
The origin of Hand Puppet Show can be dated back to the Ming Dynasty. The show gained its popularity as the immigrants from the Fu-Jian Province took interests in watching the show in leisure time in the late 1600s. The puppets were tiny and could be held in one hand. The fingers were the key points to manage the movement of the puppets. Masters of puppet shows need to adroitly manage the movements of the puppets so as to interpret the characters as the stories flows. The scripts are also important since interesting conversations play a dominant role in appealing the audience.
In the meandering flow of the three century old puppet show culture, Master Li adapted the traditional puppet show of the Wind Band of the South(南管) and the Wind Band of the North (北管) and Master Li combined the Peiking Opera with his own style and developed the Drama of Wai Jiang (外江戲). Unlike the Wind Band of the South which focuses on string instrument, the Wai Jiang Drama pays attention to performance of martial arts fitted into intriguing conversations. The music display is characterized by gongs and dramas, demonstrating energized scenes of dialogues, character development, climax, and finales. Master Li revised the traditional puppet show scripts which utilized scripts and ways of dialogues that had appeared more in “Ancient Classics Drama” (古冊戲). His “Sword Knights Show” (劍俠戲) attracted the audience with suspenseful dramatization of the play together with modern music or even western songs to gain popularity.
Master Li once said in an interview that the puppets had different souls. One can look into the puppets’ eyes and understand their souls. Because of the passion that Master Li devoted to the puppet shows, in the 1980s, French students were sent to Taiwan to study Taiwanese puppet show performance with Master Li. The “Little Wan Ran” (小宛然) puppet show troupe was established in Paris and the spread of traditional puppet show arts gained its impact and many puppet show troupes bloomed in different parts of the world. In this regard, Master Li was rewarded the “Award of Traditional Arts” and he was invited since then to act out in famous movies directed by Hou Xiao Xian(侯孝賢) such as “The City of Sadness” (悲情城市) and “Puppetmaster” (戲夢人生)—an autobiographical movie which portrays the life of Master Li—which also won the Jury Prize at the 1993 Cannes Film Festival.
Before Master Li died in 1998, he had been advocating the arts of puppet show performance in the elementary school for a long period of time. One of the well-quoted mottos of Master Li is that “Puppet show is the asset of traditional Taiwanese culture, which cannot and should not be bought by other countries, and which should be passed down from generations to generations.” The children learners of the puppet show nowadays believe that puppet shows should have their own traditional charms. Commercialized puppet shows are too westernized and vulgarized, which may lose the uniqueness of traditional culture embedded in the movement of puppet show as well as in the conversations, scripts, costumes, and music used in the dramas.
If you have the chance to come to the north coast shore, please drop by the Li Tian Lu Hand Puppet Historical Museum in San Zhi District. There, you can look at the puppets and appreciate their costumes, imagining how they were once active on the stage with fanfares of gongs and drams and firecrackers in front of the temples and plazas where the festivals and greetings of shrine activities took places. You can ponder the life of Master Li and think about how he managed to set out on the journey of puppet drama and how the scripts and words came out from his mouth just like several hundreds of different characters acting vividly and dramatically on the stage. On the background, the landscape of San Zhi District is quiet, with clouds rising up and white cranes fly over the picturesque country.
An ancient tree. A stage beside a cottage. A shine in front of a plaza. Far away, cows plowing in the terraced paddy fields and the audience, the old and the young alike, gather under a sky of stars to watch the puppets walked, ran, flew, and sang.