76-year-old inheritor practices shadow puppetry show in E. China
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Liu Fan, one of Zhang Kunrong's apprentices, prepares before a shadow puppetry show in Haining City, east China's Zhejiang Province, Nov. 21, 2018. [Photo: Xinhua]
Zhang Kunrong, 79, a locally born shadow puppetry player, is an inheritor of the Haining shadow puppetry, a form of traditional theatre acted by colorful silhouette figures made from leather or paper, accompanied by music and singing. A typical variety popular in south China, Haining shadow puppetry, a national intangible cultural heritage, has a history of about 900 years dating back to the Southern Song Dynasty (AD 1127-1279). Obsessed with the shadow play since childhood, Zhang Kunrong was recruited to the provincial shadow puppetry troupe in 1958 and soon became a mainstay after two year's practice and in the later years staged performances at home and abroad as Haining shadow puppetry grows popular. Nowadays, Zhang works more on script writing, directing and teaching apprentices. Haining shadow puppetry was listed as one of the state-level intangible cultural heritages in 2006 and was included in the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity list in 2011.
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