A Love for Glove Puppetry That Has Never Faded
As you enter Li Hongxi’s house, what comes into view is a rich collection of books, political banners, and promotional materials all around, followed by a whole wall of souvenirs collected from places around the world that Li has visited. One corner in particular draws the eye, though: Two glove puppets given by the Seden Foundation. Perhaps this echoes how in Li Hongxi’s life, despite his busy schedule, he always makes space in his life for glove puppetry (poo-te-hi).
Glove Puppetry, the Only Comfort in His Childhood
Born in 1937, Li Hongxi recalls that there was nothing in his childhood except for turmoil, plague and foreign domination. “At that time, there was a saying among the people from Fujian and Guangdong who came to Taiwan: If your family had been able to get two meals a day, you would not have risked your life crossing that black ditch of ocean to Taiwan.” Li added that life was hard in those days; people didn’t even think of things like recreation or entertainment.
“I’ve been very hyperactive since I was a child, even in my mind; I see myself as a curious child.” According to Li Hongxi, when he was young, he often went out of home to make fun for himself by watching the ong-lok-a-sian itinerants selling medicine, or wandering in temples and observing the god statues and temple carvings.
The only entertainment at that time was those temple gatherings. Back then, only a few rich temples could afford to hire traditional Taiwanese opera (kua-a-hi) performances; instead, most temples hired glove puppetry (poo-te-hi) performances. The glove puppetry shows would bring with them other stalls to set up nearby, selling candied plum li-a-tshiam, honeycomb toffee, or malt candy that people could enjoy while watching the show. This was a happy memory shared by most children in those days.
Nevertheless, glove puppetry is not only a pleasant memory for Li Hongxi, but also a spiritual pillar for the younger Li. Li’s father passed away when he was seven, so the responsibility of raising all his siblings fell on his mother. “I worked all kinds of jobs back then, and it was tough for me as a child. Therefore, glove puppetry became the only thing that could bring me comfort.” During the period when the family was in extreme financial difficulties, Li couldn’t afford to pay for shows at the movie theater. For that reason, the glove puppetry so commonly found in front of temples became Li’s favorite. Watching and enjoying the performances allowed Li to escape temporarily from all the hardships of real life.
When Li Hongxi, who was born in Chiayi, recalls his childhood memories of glove puppetry shows, it’s like he was just there yesterday. The Rishengxuan, Changyixuan, Jingzhongxuan glove puppetry troupes, as well as the Wuzhouyuan troupe (headed by Huang Haidai in Huwei Township) and the Hsin Hsing Ku Puppet Show Troupe (headed by Zhong Renxiang and Zhong Renbi in Xiluo Township) were the glove puppetry troupes that Li most often watched. It is hard to imagine that these memories of events and people from more than 70 years ago haven’t faded at all.
When asked what puppetry troupe most impressed him, Li Hongxi answers, “Rishengxuan”. “It happened to be not far from our home. And they were remarkable at performing the glove puppetry; I used to go there when I was little to see how they performed and taught.” When Li was about seven or eight, he watched a play called How Song Jiang Slew His Mistress Yan Poxi by Rishengxuan, and felt that it was very lively the way that Song Jiang strutted with a majestic gait, while Yan Poxi moved her hips from side to side as she walked.
“I was impressed by the very delicate movements; it made me realize that this is really a tradition of Taiwanese culture.” Li describes how Yan Poxi held the mirror in her left hand and slowly combed her hair with a comb in her right hand, then held an embroidery frame to embroider stitch by stitch. Li doesn’t miss a detail of Yan Poxi gingerly biting the threads off; Li’s hands naturally start to move as he talks. Watching his gestures gives the feeling of what it was like watching the glove-puppets back then, as well as the amazement that Li experienced then.
As he grew up, Li Hongxi’s connection with glove puppetry remained unbroken; he began learning to control puppets’ heads, hands, and bodies. “Since becoming an adult, if asked about my favorite artist, I will always say Xu Wang from the Xiaoxiyuan.” It was only after Li got to know Xu Wang himself that Li realized it takes a master eight to ten years of practice to control a puppet through the seemingly-simple act of taking a seal-stamp out of its sleeves. Skills that take this long to master began more and more to not keep pace with modern society. When stages were moved from the temples to TV and movie studios, the glove puppets were also made larger, and lighting and animation effects were added. “Sometimes I want to see those glove puppetry skills on display; but shows that use the traditional techniques are getting fewer in number. They’re getting increasingly modernized.” For that reason, Li Hongxi has come to cherish the experienced puppetry masters who are still working in the profession of traditional glove puppetry today.
Not Street Performers, Glove puppetry Masters Are Men of Culture
During the interview, Li Hongxi takes out a book of his collection, titled 神々と人形と男たちの宴―台湾から人形劇の源流を求めて (The Feast of Gods, Puppets and Masters: Exploring the Origin of Glove puppetry in Taiwan), published by the Japanese puppetry expert Miyamoto Yoshio in 1984. “I feel ashamed that the Taiwanese people’s understanding of glove puppetry is not as delicate as what’s shown in this book written by Japan’s Miyamoto.” The book carefully organizes information on how Taiwanese glove puppetry (poo-te-hi) derives from China, and how the northern, central and southern schools of Taiwanese glove puppetry differ from each other. “According to Miyamoto, when he went to watch the shows in China, they were not as delicate as those in Taiwan,” Li added.
This is how a Japanese person sees Taiwanese glove puppetry. But how do Taiwanese people, who grew up in the same land with this aspect of culture, see glove puppetry?
“Xu Wang was very depressed for a while, as the government treated them like street performers; however, in my mind, they were Taiwan’s people of culture.” In the 1980s, traditional glove puppetry had relatively declined, and Xu Wang was feeling despondent about the situation. After learning he was feeling this way, Chen Jinci, one of the founders of the Seden Foundation, invited Li Hongxi and Yang Weizhe to console and encourage Xu. “When the three of us went to visit him and invited him to a meal, he was shocked.” Li recalled that when they arrived at the hotel, Xu Wang was touched by the presence of distinguished professors in the community who had gathered only to encourage him, and this boosted his confidence. Chen Jinci then suggested that the university professors establish the Seden Glove Puppetry Foundation. “Because the Xiaoxiyuan was an important northern glove puppetry troupe, and the guardian deities worshiped by the Taiwanese puppetry troupes are the Xiqin Wangye and the Tiandu Yuanshuai, [the Foundation’s name should derive from Xi and Tian (that is, Seden)]”. Li mentioned that the Foundation’s name was created in hopes of conveying the utmost respects to puppetry masters who have dedicated their lives to glove puppetry.
Xu Wang was invited to do the first performance to celebrate the establishment of the Seden Foundation. Additionally, Li Hongxi and his wife invited a number of professors to watch the performance. It was only after that day that Li only realized how significant it was for Xu Wang. “The number of people watching our show indicated that we were people of culture, not street performers,” Li Hongxi relayed what Xu Wang had told his apprentices after the performance that day.
Traditional culture and glove puppetry masters deserve to be cherished, and they should be cherished. Therefore, after Li Hongxi served as board chairman from early the 1980s until 1997, he traveled extensively to promote glove puppetry. At that time, as the founders, the three of them also put aside their roles as scholars to raise funds for Seden Foundation, and invited friends from the corporate world to join as directors. That was when the Seden Foundation was established, after a donation was received from Cai Chennan of Cathay enterprises. Subsequently, a stage was carved for the Seden Foundation; it was “about five feet wide, six feet four high, with a depth of less than 60 centimeters from front to back. I think this stage is an unprecedented creation in Taiwanese glove puppetry.” It seems like everything happened yesterday; Li Hongxi can describe the dimensions of the stage in detail. But today there are very few talented people left who would be capable of carving such a stage.
Looking back on those years, Li often says modestly that his contributions were nothing. “Chen Jinci and Yang Weizhe were the real insiders, more focused; I was only an amateur.” Apart from fundraising, Li wasn’t very involved in later internal operations. Even so, at that time, Li had many speaking engagements, and he would always encourage the organizers to invite glove puppetry troupes to perform. When Li went abroad to participate in conferences and international exchange occasions, he would always bring along glove-puppets to perform a few tricks. One reason is that he just liked glove puppetry; the other was that he wanted to share this aspect of culture to more people.
“We want to restore Taiwan’s culture, and treat street performers as people of culture.” With such a sentiment toward advocacy for glove puppetry, and due to his own promotion of the Taiwanese (Hoklo) language as well as government opposition, Li was under some pressure. There was, for example, always the possibility of attracting police attention if he wrote a preamble in Taiwanese. Despite all this, Li still spared no effort to invite Huang Haidai, the founder of the Wuzhouyuan Glove Puppetry Troupe, to teach at the Seden Foundation when Huang was 90 years old; nor did Li fail to write the preface for Li Tianlu’s A Life of Plays and Dreaming. He has done all this with an aim to record as much as possible about contemporary glove puppetry and these people of culture.
A Place Without Culture Is No Country
More than 30 years have passed; the relics of Seden Foundation are now taken care of by National Taiwan Museum and National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University for collection and promotion. “It would be a shame to let them shrivel up and die; but luckily Chairman Chen Rongxiang knows how to digitally preserve them.” Li Hongxi is also happy to see that through technology, there are more possibilities for the survival of these relics and the culture as a whole.
In 2020, when National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University held a press conference for the donation of cultural relics from the Seden Foundation’s collection, Li attended: “I was very impressed to see that remote control could really make glove puppetry come alive.” Additionally, he started to think about whether the intervention of technology could take cultural arts to a higher level. Rather than taking the approach that technology eliminates the traditional arts, it is better instead that technology incorporate more diversity in its connotations and presentations of traditional arts.
Even though technology and digitization have given the traditional arts a new lease on life, Li is not optimistic about the revival of glove puppetry in society: “I personally know that at the current speed of society, I’m afraid that it’s inevitable that glove puppetry will shrink and wither.” What is different from Li’s childhood is the rapid changing society today where countless channels of entertainment are available for people. For traditional glove puppetry to be in decline in such a world seems inevitable.
Nevertheless, Li Hongxi still hopes that traditional culture can be preserved in some way, to allow people in the future to be aware of an aspect of culture that Taiwan once had, and which deeply influenced the people of this land. As he says, “A place without culture is no country.” Perhaps, only when we really know where we came from in the past can we be more certain of where we should go in the future.