Marionette in Yongding Tulou

Marionette is a kind of ancient traditional puppet show. It is also one of the art forms first created by Chinese. When performing, artists use strings to pull puppets to perform actions, also known as “puppet show”, which is popular in Hakka areas and has formed a set of stable and complete performance regulations for hundreds of years. During the Song and Yuan Dynasties, there were puppet shows in the areas of Hakka in West Fujian, although they were not put down in writing. In the Mid-Qing Dynasty, “Luantan” (general term for Chinese opera melodies other than Kunshan and Yiyang melodies in the Qing Dynasty) was in vogue. Many puppet troupes changed their songs into it one after another. Gradually, the coexistence of “Luantan” and “Gaoqiang” (a kind of rhyme scheme of Chinese opera) came into being. Most Gaoqiang puppet shows are inherited by family brothers, or fathers & sons. By the middle of the Qing Dynasty, Luantan was inherited by learning from teachers, while in the contemporary folk still was inherited from masters and disciples. And the professional groups ran classes to train and inherit skills.