The Fate of The Dragon Goddess of the Sea of Plays
Girl in the boudoir does not go out the door
She works with needle and thread forevermore
Worried whether she will ever find a mate
Sighing that the matchmaker god is so late
At the age of 88, with a voice that speaks of a life of ups and downs, Jiang Cimei sings the heart-song of the girl in the boudoir. Jiang laughs, saying that in so many years, “this is my first time singing this song. It’s really fun.” She made her debut on stage with this song at the age of 16. More than 70 years have passed. Jiang is not only from the first generation of female glove-puppet (Poo-te-hi) performers in Taiwan, but is also the driving force behind innovation in puppetry today. At one time, the Seden Foundation honored her with the title of "The Dragon Goddess of the Sea of Plays". She has become internationally renowned with this title.
From a Girl in the Boudoir to the First Female Puppet Performer
Jiang Cimei, born in Sankuaicuo, Nantou in 1933, is the founder of the Jin Kwei Lo Puppetry Company. Her great-grandfather Jiang Renhou was good at doing fengshui (geomancy). He calculated what her fortune would be like based on the time of her birth, then exclaimed, “This girl’s life will be really hard. She is destined to work hard and do the work that a man does.” Her hands are indeed a pair of hands that have seen much labor. From the age of sixteen or seventeen, she moved chairs, stools, and tables by herself, practicing the skills she would need for puppet performance, and figuring out how to imbue her puppet performances with spirit. She was talented and intelligent at a young age, and through self-learning, she could accurately grasp the emotional movements of various puppet characters — be it the mild temperance of a scholarly wensheng character, a young lady dan’s light footsteps, the boldness and roughness of a wusheng character with martial art skills, or a humorous chou's funny footsteps. With her hand-working hands, she helped uplift the glory days of Taiwan’s glove-puppet shows. In recent years, she has also helped her children and grandchildren's generations to help bring this art back to glory, and to take the international stage.
Jiang Cimei's lifelong relationship with glove puppetry results from the influence of her father, Jiang Tongsheng, who was a musician in a puppetry troupe. She recalled that in the third month of the lunar calendar in 1949, which was the big day of the goddess Mazu's birth, the troupe was severely short of staff. At that time, the patron would deduct money if they were short-handed, so her father asked her to help. The elders from that era often said: “The worst failure is to be a musician or a barber.” A saying even went that: “Parents who have no way to cope, send their children to learn the theater ropes.” Old concepts about social class held that being a musician or theater performer was a very hard job, with relatively low social status; thus, unless they had no other choice, few parents would be willing to let their children work in a puppetry troupe. Therefore, Jiang Cimei was reluctant to help, but owing to her father’s dignity and her grandmother’s persistent persuasion, she decided to help this one time. At the beginning, she was told to select puppets in the backstage and hand them over to puppet master. This work required a good eye and a fast hand; she couldn't grab the wrong puppet, nor even worse delay the performing rhythm of what was happening onstage. The wife of the head of the troupe taught her how to distinguish between good and bad characters, and also told her that characters that had died should be put on the ground and must never appear again. For Jiang Cimei, the memory of coming into contact with puppets for the first time is still as vivid as the day she was there. Back then, onstage, the troupe had puppet masters and puppet assistants, as well as several singers. The troupe leader’s wife quickly taught her the song “The Wealthy Lady and the Beggar”, and asked her to take the stage as a substitute singer. It turned out that her singing caught the audience’s attention; one audience member after another praised her for her good singing. Thus, Jiang was asked again by the troupe leader for help the next day. Since then, she has been “stuck” to glove puppetry; she has performed it for a lifetime.
In the past, glove-puppet shows performed in front of temples to express appreciation to the gods were called "temple shows". The performers were divided into the puppet master and the assistant. The puppet master was responsible for operating the puppets for lead characters and performing all dialogue. The assistant was then responsible for operating the supporting characters. From temple shows, Jiang Cimei took the opportunity to observe experienced puppet masters’ performance skills from her perspective backstage. With continuous self-learning and an innate talent for dialogue, she gradually cultivated her performing style and co-founded the Simeilou glove puppetry troupe with her father and brothers. Jiang Cimei was the lead puppet master in the troupe. Her name gradually spread, and she became a renowned female puppet master. In the 1970s, the Jin Kwei Lo ("Truly Happy") and Xinkuaile ("Newly Happy") puppet troupes were established. Three generations of family members were performing together on a single stage.
From Deciding to Retire to Getting Back in the Saddle Again
Jiang Cimei is connected by a thread of fate to the Seden Glove Puppetry Foundation. And the one who drew that thread between them is Zeng Wenlong, a member of the Seden Foundation board of directors. A long time ago, Jiang was invited to perform in Shuiwei, Nantou, where Zeng Wenlong lived; Zeng was deeply impressed by Jiang Cimei’s performing style. When Jiang Cimei was 60 years old, at the advice of her family, she announced her retirement. Zeng Wenlong, who was a member of the board of directors of the Seden Foundation at the time, went to visit Jiang personally. He said that since Jiang Cimei was in good health, she should continue to perform; otherwise, it would be a great pity that puppetry fans would not get to see Jiang’s performances anymore. At first, her family advised her to rest well, so Jiang Cimei declined.
Adhering to his passion for carrying on cultural heritage, Zeng visited Jiang again. He said, “Glove puppetry is now in decline. If you retire and stop doing it, this tradition will soon disappear.” He even invited the Jin Kwei Lo puppetry troupe to perform at the Seden Foundation. With the greater world changing, and puppetry culture in a gradual decline, Jiang Cimei was greatly moved by repeated visits and performance invitations from the Seden Foundation. She decided to perform again for a two-day show. It was due to this performance that she slowly returned to the stage and took up the puppets again.
In 1997, at the invitation of the Seden Glove Puppetry Foundation, the 65-year-old Jiang Cimei accepted a commission from the Preparatory Office of the National Headquarters of Taiwan Traditional Arts to complete the book Survey and Research of Taiwanese Glove Puppetry Actresses. In addition, she cooperated with Firefly Image Company to complete the documentary titled Looking for the Forgotten Artists: Jiang Cimei. The film was awarded with the 1997 Golden Harvest Awards for Local Culture Documentary Film and was selected as an exhibited work for the 1998 Singapore International Film Festival.
Jiang Cimei has nothing but praise for the founders of the Seden Foundation such as Chen Jinci. In the fact of disdainful social currents toward puppetry and its performers in the early times, these professors set the precedent for intellectuals to care about traditional puppetry culture. Whenever Jiang appeared on the stage, a researcher from the Seden Foundation would come to record the performance and conduct fieldwork. Jiang Cimei remembers each and every action. Normally, when the media or other research organizations would come to collect material, they had to apply with the troupe first; but any researcher from the Seden Foundation would be allowed directly to the backstage for recording or fieldwork, like members of the family. She says with emotion that it's lucky that Seden was so foresighted at the time, and has preserved many precious historical materials, including performance records from when her career reached its peak.
In 2007, at the age of 75, Jiang Cimei was invited by the Ministry of Culture’s Taipei Cultural Center in New York to lead Jin Kwei Lo puppetry troupe to perform in the United States. In 2009 and 2011, she was invited again for performance in the US. Later, she went to attend the Hungarian International Puppet Festival, the Paris Imagination Arts Festival, and the French World Puppet Festival to promote Taiwanese glove puppetry. She has performed in the United States, Japan, South Korea, the Netherlands, France, Italy, and other places to promote Taiwan’s traditional culture. Her performance has been highly praised by international fans. As a first-generation female puppet performer, she has traced more than 70 years in Taiwan’s traditional puppetry world. In the book Survey and Research of Taiwanese Glove Puppetry Actresses, Xie Dexi from the Seden Foundation honors Jiang with the title of “The Dragon Goddess of the Sea of Plays.”
Looking Toward Carrying On and Promoting Puppetry Traditions
As she looks back on her life, Jiang Cimei is grateful of the fact that the members of the Seden Foundation have maintained their enthusiasm for traditional culture. These members were not afraid to face changing times and a decline in puppetry culture. They continued to inject financial support and build social networks. Now precious historical records and objects are preserved at National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University. She is grateful that there were people in civil society who stepped forward to preserve traditional culture. This is a very nice thing.
Jiang is content that now her children and grandchildren will continue to perform puppetry that she has so devoted her life to. Their performances will bring innovation to glove puppetry. She also looks forward to the government and enterprises continuing to carry on and support the culture of traditional puppetry in the future.