Pulling the strings for cultural treats

In 2022, they wrote Chinese Shadow Puppetry, a book to help students better appreciate the culture and craftsmanship behind the art.

Hou Yangjun, a senior member of the Chinese Folk Literature and Arts Association, says the book is a good fit for children, and demonstrates the professionalism and pragmatism of the authors.

Huang Panwei, an official at the People's Education Press, says the work done by Wang and her team is a creative transformation and an innovative development in traditional folk art, adding that the publishing of the book is also a good example of the inheritance of traditional Chinese culture.

During their years of involvement, Wang and her husband have built up a collection of around 20,000 shadow puppets from the Ming and Qing dynasties (1368-1911), and have caught the attention of the local government in the process.

To make full use of these cultural treasures, with favorable policies from the government, the couple set up a shadow puppetry museum in the capital's Haidian district which opened to the public last November.

"For the first time, the museum has put on display more than 500 ancient shadow puppet collections from various schools, including those of Beijing, and Shaanxi, Gansu, Henan, Hebei and Zhejiang provinces, as well as many shadow puppetry artifacts from the Ming and Qing dynasties," says Lin, who is the museum's curator.

Wang says shadow puppetry is not her family's art but the country's.

"We will be happy if the shows are appreciated by more people as a result of our efforts," she says.

They have taken part in a number of Spring Festival celebrations and are now working on creating multilingual shows.

"We are working with the Beijing Foreign Studies University now, and we have come up with shows in English and Russian," she says. "Japanese, German and French versions are in the works too, so, hopefully, this traditional Chinese culture will go global."