瀑瀉古岳雲眉棧

“Art functions as a cultural metaphor, mirroring a culture's ideas and values. Technology, colonization, exploitation, revolution, among other factors, have all contributed to affect changes in how humans live and interact with one another individually, and collectively.” (John D. Miles)

Taiwan, a country that has been ruled by four political powers in the past 150 years; Palmardrama, a cultural art that has been strived to survive under these political powers. During this period of time, palmardrama has changed a lot in response to the environment:

-        Late Qing-Dynasty: Changed from Wen-xi to Wu-xi, which enabled philistines to watch it.

-        Late Japanese Colonialism: Forced to change from Chinese play to Japanese play.

-        KMT Autocracy era: Changed from classical palmardrama to Jin-Guan/TV palmardrama.

-        Post KMT and DPP era: Changed from Jin-Guan palmardrama to movie/animation style.

Some of the changes reflected to the political environment, some of the changes were forced by government policies. Sometimes government tried to control the art, sometimes government just let it be, and occasionally government played an assistance role. Artists reacted to those policies in different ways; some of them temporarily changed their career, some of them learned new languages in order to earn their livings, some of them devoted to preserve the classical palmardrama, and some of them kept innovating in order to disseminating the art. Tradition and innovation, a paradox everlasting, a story never ends.

Palmardrama (Also called hand puppet show or hand puppetry)[i] originated in Fujian Province, China, in the 16^th~17^th century, and disseminated to Taiwan in mid-seventeenth century with the immigrant tide.[ii] There is a tale for the origin, “In the Ming-dynasty (1368-1644), a scholar named Liang prayed in a temple for success in the national exam in order to work for the emperor. After that he had a dream, a senior wrote “Success Lies in your Palm!” on his hand. When he woke up he thought this is a good sign; however, he failed again in the exam, felt desperate, so went back home and learn marionette from his neighbor, then invented palmardrama, which became popular so that he earned the reputation and finally realized the meaning of the dream.”[iii]

Just as the name shows, palmardrama is a drama played by palm. An old saying, “Life mirrors art, arts mirrors life” best describes how life is expressed through palm and puppets. “Similar to the Chinese opera, traditional palmardrama is divided into the front stage and the backstage.  The front stage, known as the "show platform", the audience is shown a demonstration by a master puppeteer on the stage.  The backstage consists of the puppeteer master, the orchestra, and the spoken parts.”[iv] 

On the other hand, the new palmardrama, or called TV palmardrama, performed more like movie. Although there is still front stage and backstage, but no audience is in front of stage as well as orchestra and dubbing parts at the back. However, unlike movie, background music and dubbing are accomplished in the studio before shooting.

A traditional puppet is constructed in at least the following parts: Body Frame, Clothing and Helmet/Hat. Body Frame can be subdivided into wooden head and hand, cloth body and leg, and shoes. A traditional puppet, in order to be controlled by one hand easily, is only about 8 inches in height.[v] The basic frame for TV puppet is similar; however, puppet is more delicate and flexible, with more accessories and looks more like human, which can make a fist, blink eyes, open mouth, etc.. A TV puppet is about 4 times larger than a traditional one; therefore, a puppeteer cannot manipulate two TV puppets at the same time.

Similar to the Chinese opera, there are mainly 7 kinds of characters in palmardrama, which can be subdivided into 60 characters.

1.     Sheng(生) – Sheng means mature or old man, normally for the leading positive character. This character is always well versed in both polite letters and martial arts.

2.     Chou(丑) – Chou is known as clown, used to entertain the audience.

3.     Dan(旦) – Dan means mature or old female. Puppeteer and vocal artist must be able to perform and dub a Dan like woman.

4.     Jine(淨) – Jine is for martial-art based character. In the classical palmardrama, Jine’s face is always painted to show his nature; but for TV palmardrama, Jine always looks very cool. 

5.     Ton(童) – Ton means child, whatever male or female. Ton is a dexterous character.

6.     Tsa(雜) – Tsa is a character for Taoism God, ghost, or all the other categories.

7.     Shou(獸) – Shou is the mandarin pronunciation of animal, all animals are categorize as Shou.

Like the Chinese opera, palmardrama can be divided into 2 styles, Wen-xi(文戲) and Wu-xi(武戲). Wen-xi emphasis highly stylized acting and traditional Chinese literature, such as poem and celebrated dictum.[vii]  For example, one of the most distinguishing features of palmardrama is that every important character will have its own opening poem, which requires parallel and rhyme. People who are really interested in the drama will try to know more about what is said or written in the play. This has a positive educational meaning, because the language used in palmardrama is much more elegant and refined Taiwanese/Chinese, so the drama helps preserve the literature as well as the language. “You get so much more out of it if you know something about what you are hearing – when you can follow the form and hear the development of the ideas,” Feves mentioned in the interview. (Susan 1998)

Wu-xi focus on acrobatic and martial-art skills, some skills cannot be easily performed by human beings can be done through puppet. 

With so many similarities between the Chinese opera and palmardrama, the drama in this industry is called Xiao-long (小籠) compared to Da-long (大籠) of the Chinese opera.[viii]

Nobody will deny it if you say that dubbing is the soul of palmardrama. Puppet cannot speak; therefore, at least 50% effort is from the art of vocalization.  If you know that all the characters in the play, whatever male or female, young or old, human or animal, are all dubbed by one person, you will be more astonished. Nowadays, the most famous vocal artist is Mr. Vincent Huang, General Manager of PILI International Multimedia – the largest palmardrama company in Taiwan, which I personally think can be attributed to Mr. Huang's great vocal talent.

“With an honorable title of "Eight Tone Genius", Vincent Huang is responsible for the part of vocal performance.  He dubs all characters’ voices by himself.  His rich voice is performed with full emotion that brought the characters to live, giving each wooden puppet its own personality and livelihood.  He is the best in this arena; even professional vocal artists from other countries are amazed by his talent.  Therefore, vocals are recorded first before filming. This is to give the director, puppeteers, and other production workers a chance to find each puppet's emotion and production inspiration through Mr. Huang's voice.”

       There is not too much historical data about palmardrama before the Second World War, but the drama can be basically demarcated in two eras.

Qing-Dynasty last for 267 years, as I mentioned before, palmardrama disseminated to Taiwan in mid-seventeenth century (around A.D. 1650).  About from 1650 to 1800, palmardrama is Wen-xi dominated, which was recognized by gentlemen and scholars.[x]  One of the reasons I think is that because Wen-xi is too hard for illiteracy or philistine to understand, only those who are able to understand it would like to watch it.  Nick Zangwill mentioned some audience theories in the journal – “Art and Audience”.  “According to Nelson Goodman, “A work of art imparts a kind of understanding (to an audience)”, In George Dickie’s earlier institutional account, a work of art is deemed by someone to be a candidate for appreciation, which is intentionally presented to the art world (a particular audience)”(Zangwill, 1999). Therefore, the candidate (gentlemen and scholars) must be able to understand and thus to be able to appreciate the art.

The musical instruments used at this time were mainly orchestral instrument, which is more noble and graceful. Besides, the play is called “Lond-di”(籠底); Long-di does not have too many scripts available and is much hard to understand for those without education.[xi]

In the nineteenth century, The Qing-Dynasty became weak, and many countries started to invade China. In 1894, “First Sino-Japanese War” exploded, the Qing-Dynasty lost the war to Japan and then, according to the Treaty of Shimonseki, Taiwan was therefore ceded to Japan for 50 years (1895~1945) until Japan lost the Second World War.[xii]

During this time, palmardrama also changed its form of performance. Instead of Wen-xi, Wu-xi replaced and dominated the play.[xiii] In my opinion, this is kind of reaction to the political environment. Because of the weakness of China, people started to recall the best of time when China is still quite strong. On the other hand, Wu-xi also has an effect of promoting martial arts, which taught people to fight back or at least training themselves. Besides, Wu-xi can be much easily understood by the general public because the language used in Wu-xi is much plain compare to Wen-xi. There is not data available to know if the change from Wen-xi to Wu-xi was government leaded, probably only a change to cater to the social trend. This is also supported by Murray Edelman’s “From Art to Politics”, in his book Murray mentioned that “The art is always a social product, never an individual fabrication, also means that it can both buttress democratic institutions and serve as a potent weapon for elites. The ideas that issue from works of art reflect group interests, as do the particular channels through which art becomes available to a susceptible public.” (Edelman, 1995)

1.     Wu-Zho-Yuan (Five-Continental) – founded by Hai-Dai Huang in southern Taiwan.[xv]

2.     Yi-Wen-Zen (As vivid as life) – founded by Tian-Lu Lee in northern Taiwan.[xvi] 

Mr. Huang (passed away this February at age 107) is being called the Pope of Palmardrama, the Huang family is still the most influential family in this industry, represents the innovative side. Mr. Lee (passed away in 1998 at age 88) enjoys equal fame as Mr. Huang; his organization represents the classical side.

        During the first forty years of the Japanese occupation (1895~1935), the Japanese did not has too much restriction on palmardrama, similar to what it was in the Ming and Qing Dynasty. At this time, Taiwan mainly treated as a supplier of goods and materials, especially agriculture product. However, after the Marco Polo Bridge Incident in 1937[xvii], China declared war to resist against Japanese aggression; on the other hand, in order to enhance its colonies’ loyalty, Japan started the “Kominka Movement”.[xviii]

Does government policy have a great influence on arts? The answer should be always true. Take government funding for example, if government cut funding to the arts, more art institutional resources would be spent on fundraising rather than on producing arts. On the contrary, “one huge advantage of government funding over private philanthropy is that it does not make the artist feel beholden.” (Kate, 2001)

There are many policies in the Kominka Movement, which encompass in all aspect. The Japanese empire required Taiwanese to speak Japanese, wear Kimono, live in Japanese style house, give up folk religious belief but go to Shinto shrine only, worship the emperor of Japan, change name to Japanese name, etc. In a word, Taiwanese should become real Japanese, so that government could recruit them to war. (Leo, 2001)

        Palmardrama, obviously did not match any of the requirements. It represents the Chinese culture. Therefore; in the early time of Kominka Movement, the Japanese firstly prohibited the using of traditional Chinese musical instrument. Then, the Japanese restricted scripts that are related to failure, nation’s doom, adultery, and any other that would affect feelings of citizenry about the government.  In 1941, because the war is not as smooth as expected, palmardrama and all the other Chinese operas were then totally banned.[xix]

        How did artists react to the Kominka Movement? The general public cannot accept palmardrama without traditional musical instrument, without those scripts that were on everybody’s lips. I remember many of the guest speakers, like Chad Irschick, Rob Pazdro and David Weaver all mentioned that being creative and decisive is important, you need to find your own way to survive.  Therefore, in the early time, Mr. Huang went to remote towns for performance, where there were not many Japanese spies. But in 1940, Wu-Zho-Yuan was forced to dismiss. Mr. Huang and his family had to stay at home and worked as temporary labour.[xx] Another famous organization, The Hsiao Hsi Yuan Puppet Theater[xxi], is forced to perform in China for three years, and had a really hard time. As for Mr. Lee, he stopped the performing of Yi-Wen-Zen from 1937~1941, and had been running tea and oyster businesse, but all bankrupted. He then went to other Chinese opera as director and temporary actor.[xxii] This is probably the worst of time, in order to survive, these artists also started to learn Japanese.

In 1942, a government official and a senior police officer suggested the entertainment department that, if totally forbid Taiwanese express their thanks to the gods on important dates, this might leads to rebellion. But if use arts as media to carry out policies, this will have a positive effect. Hence, the “Taiwanese Theatre Association” was set up.[xxiii] The rules are[xxiv]:

1.     Taiwanese can be spoken in the drama, but Japanese should be the majority language.

2.     Only western or Japanese music/musical instrument are allowed in the play.

3.     Puppets must wear Japanese clothes, perform Japanese literary works.

4.      Performance must be in the theatre only, which transfer the trend from outdoor to indoor.

At that time, there was not television available; watch drama performance is the major entertainment for the general public, just like watch TV in the 1990s. Bob Franklin wrote in his book “Social Policy, the Media and Misrepresentation” that,“Such Occasions have become routine events for government ministers and central to the process of policy presentation. The current emphasis on the media packaging of policy means that ministers are more likely to be seen on television opening a new hospital building or feeding their children beef burgers during a food scare than engaged in more traditional activities such as debating at the dispatch box in the House of Commons.”(Franklin, 1999)

Artists, in order to survive, are forced to join the Taiwanese Theatre Association. At that time, only seven palmardrama groups got the certificate to perform. However, the rules made the drama neither fish flesh nor good red herring. To combat with those rules, according to Mr. Huang, “In order to satisfy our audiences, in the later part of our performance, when the Japanese police officers were out for drinks, we changed back to the traditional music, and audiences will know we are going to perform the classical play! Sometimes this kind of extra performance was so hot that we were performed until mid-night.”[xxv]  Mr. Lee and other groups like Hsiao Hsi Yuan also did the same thing.

This is also similar to what described by our panel guest. In order to get support or have their work published, both David and Chad mentioned they have felt compelled to “distort” information so that producers are told what they want to hear, in some cases even resorting to lying. Nevertheless, cheat in this epoch would sometimes lead to very terrible result. According to Mr. Huang, they were caught twice and sued for this kind of smuggling performance, and many of the artists were beaten cruelly, even invalidated the license. Most seriously, Mr. Huang’s brother was imprisoned and tortured to death because he violated the curfew regulation and clashed with the police, which almost leaded to Mr. Huang’s early retirement.[xxvi]           

After the Second World War, palmardrama was no longer restricted. Suddenly, new groups emerged in large number throughout the whole island. Both indoor and outdoor performances were very popular. In 1949, KMT was defeated by CCP, and withdrew to Taiwan. Hence, palmardrama was totally independent from China.[xxvii]

“The Nazis rapidly seized control of the media's communication means for dissemination of political rhetoric, effectively severing the progression of German cultural art.”(John D. Miles)

Although KMT did not regulate the script to anti-communism only, it was highly recommended by the government to perform this kind of play. Many drama competitions and awards were hold in the name of anti-communism. In order to win the prize, many groups practiced and performed this kind of script in the theatre.[xxviii]

Because the anti-communism drama was very dull and with little scripts available, which did not appeal to the general public, it only last for few years. Until 1960s, only one group, Hsin Hsing Ku Puppet Show Troupe, was selected by government to continue this play for road show around Taiwan.[xxix]

Jin-Guang Palmardrama is another product under the regulation of indoor performance. This also has a significant effect on the puppet size, because those who sit at the back of theatre could hardly see the puppet; therefore, artists enlarged the puppet from 8 inch to 1.2~2 feet in order to attract more audiences and increase revenue. From this on, the conflict between classical and innovative palmardrama officially started. One argument is that the smaller puppet is much flexible and technical compare to the larger one.[xxx] 

Jin-Guang means golden light because it uses neon lights, dry ices, and sparks to make special effects. This kind of palmardrama has a huge difference between the classical palmardrama. Except for the puppet size and special effects, major changes are:[xxxi]

1.     Face – In classical palmardrama, the color on a puppet’s face represents the personality of the character. For example, black means rash, red means loyalty and green means sinister. Nevertheless, Jin-Guang palmardrama, although still follows the basic rule, focuses more on the modeling of the face and has much more varieties.  

2.     Clothes – In classical palmardrama, you can judge if the character is aristocrat based on its clothes.  Aristocrats’ clothes are embroidered with totems like animal, flower or fish. But in Jin-Guang palmardrama, clothes are much more simplified.

3.     Platform – In classical palmardrama, the platform is woodcarving and colored, which restricted to limited space but much more delicate.  On the other hand, Jin-Guang palmardrama uses painting and cloth curtain as background to provide more flexibility.

4.     Script – In the past, except for anti-communism and Kominka Movement, scripts are mainly based on Zhang-hui novel. However, Jin-Guang palmardrama, gradually decrease, or even does not use adapted script, but creates its own and modify it base on audiences’ reaction.

5.     Background music – Classical palmardrama must have an orchestra at the backstage, but Jin-Guang palmardrama replaces it with phonograph or tapes with non-traditional music.

6.     Front Stage Performer – Classical palmardrama performs small puppet in limited space, therefore maximum 2 puppeteers are required. But Jin-Guang palmardrama goes with multiple puppeteers in the front stage, which also leads to division of labor in this industry. A puppeteer no longer required to specialize in all the different moves of puppet characters.

As mentioned, in order to live under government policy, artists strive to increase revenue in the theatre.  Unlike outdoor, revenue came from those temples, their revenue were from ticket sales only, no government sponsorship at all. Palmardrama were therefore forced to do the above mentioned changes. Like Joseph Lampel mentioned, the paradox between Artistic Values Versus Mass Entertainment, “Cultural industries strive to remain loyal to artistic values, but they must also deal with market economics. The question that persistently confronts organizations in cultural industries is: Which one of these imperatives should drive decision making?”(Lampel, 2000)

Apparently the market and government policies has made the choice for the artists, during this 20 years, groups that performed classical palmardrama has decreased severely both indoor and outdoor. Until now, for those big organizations, only Hsiao Hsi Yuan and Yi-Wen-Zen is still performing the classical palmardrama.[xxxii]    

In 1962, the first TV station TTV was established by the government.[xxxiv] The same year, TTV invited Mr. Lee to perform “The Romance of Three Kingdoms” on TV for 1 year. At this moment, palmardrama officially moved to TV. However, Mr. Lee’s group is primarily classical based, which was not appreciated by the general public at that time. So the performance was not as popular as expected. Afterward, there were still some other groups performed on TV in mandarin and but still not appreciated by audiences.

In 1970, Jun-Xiong Huang (Pope of Jin-Guan palmardrama and son of Mr. Huang) transferred Jin-Guan palmardrama to TV. Suddenly, the play (Big Confucian Hero of Yun-Zhou) became Taiwan’s most famous play ever. It was performed on TV for 4 years (583 episodes), and the leading character Shi Yan-Wen became Taiwan’s hero at that time. This play created many unbreakable records every Taiwan’s history:[xxxv]

1.     Highest TV rating ever – 97% (Only 3 TV stations owned by government at that time).

2.     Students skipped classes, people stopped working, almost no vehicles or pedestrians on street when the show was on, and people crazily imitated the characters.

Therefore, in 1973, the KMT government banned all the TV palmardrama shows for two reasons – “Affect People’s Daily Schedule” and “Promoting Mandarin”.[xxxvi] The effect is Similar to what happened in BBC in 2004; the difference is that UK is a democracy country, government do not have, or not allowed to persecute the media. (Saunderes, 2004)

 “Once you begin to "control" art, art can no longer function properly in a society.  When artists become uncertain and afraid to express themselves, the fear spreads throughout the culture like a cancer, resulting in a people and culture as lethargic as that of Nazi Germany.” (John D. Miles) As I mentioned in class, in the past, it is not allowed to speak Taiwanese in school or formal occasions, otherwise you would get fine. The KMT government forbad TV palmardrama and promoting mandarin has once again seriously harmed the industry. Through education, Taiwanese language was deemed as a low class language for quite a long time. On the other hand, people’s taste has changed to TV instead of indoor or outdoor performance. Therefore, even though in 1981, the KMT government once again allowed TV palmardrama performance (but can only speak mandarin and only performed in 1 TV station), few people would like to watch it and regard it an inferior art.[xxxvii]  Before 1988, this cultural industry was almost died for the opening of foreign entertainment programs.

 Post KMT and DPP Democratic Era (1988~now)

        Christ Huang and Vincent Huang, in their earlier age, because of government education, did not like palmardrama at all. They had ever organized a pop band in their early twenty something. This tells us how horrible government policy could be, even in such a famous palmardrama family; its offspring still has this kind of feeling to the art.

Instead of oppressing arts, the government actively helps preserve the art. Especially in 2000, with the help of Lee Teng-hui, DPP ended KMT’s presidency and Taiwan became a real democratic country.[xliv] Many art museums or foundations like National Center for Traditional Arts, Litienlu palmardrama museum, and Se Den Society were established.[xlv] Government, PILI, and traditional palmardrama work together has given life to this industry. Highlights are:

1.     In 1998, PILI presented the first indoor play[xlvi] to National Theater & Concert Hall.[xlvii] This play was the first time palmardrama went on to National Theater in Taiwan, which means it is no longer an inferior art. It is also important to know that instead of making TV palmardrama in its film studio, PILI can still perform directly in front of the general public.

2.     In 2000, PILI presented the first palmardrama movie – Legend of the Sacred Stone[xlviii] This movie has been translated to English and Japanese and disseminated overseas, including film festivals like Fantasia in Canada, FFF in Sweden, FFH in Germany, etc..[xlix]

3.     In 2005, PILI’s TV play series won the Best Director Award in Golden Bell Awards.[l] This award is known as the Oscar Award in Taiwan, and the event was originally held by Government Information Office.[li] Since 2000, Broadcasting Development Fund was in charged of it, but the government still plays an important role to it. When palmardrama won the prize in 2005, many actors were not happy about it because they did not think they were worse than puppets. However, it is not about actors, but about directing.

4.     In Feb. 2006, PILI’s 2001 play were aired on Cartoon Network in the United States.[lii] Unfortunately, only for two episodes, the play was cut for its poor rating.

5.     In Feb. 2006, “Taiwanese hand-puppet has been voted by the public as the image that would represent Taiwan to the world.” (Chuang, 2006)

The Japanese animation has successfully got a place in the world market, can Taiwanese palmardrama follows the same model or find its own way, it will require everyone’s effort.

 

Susan, Allen. (1998).  Nonprofit and commercial music: three musicians’ experience. (The Arts and the Public Purpose) (Interview) Journal of Arts Management, Law, and Society. Vol. 28, Issue 2.

Zangwill, Nick. (1999). The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism: Art and Audience, Vol. 57, No. 3, pp. 315-332

Edelman, Murray. (1995). From Art to Politics: How Artistic Creations Shape Political Conceptions.The University of ChicagoPress.

 

Taylor, Kate. “Prize for best beggar a sorry sign of the times”. The Globe and Mail, November 29, 2001

 

Ching, Leo T. S. 2001. Becoming "Japanese": Colonial Taiwan and the Politics of Identity Formation. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.

Franklin, Bob. (1999). Social Policy, the Media and Misrepresentation. Routledge

Miles, John. “Politics and the Art of Cultural Control: Aspects of 20th Century Art Movements”

Web site: http://hunsmire.tripod.com/aspects.pdf

 

Lampel, Joseph, “Balancing Act: Learning From Organizing Practices in Cultural Industries,” Organization Science 11, No. 3, 2000, 263-269

 

Saunders, Doug. “Reporter’s resignation furls fear about the BBC”. The Globe and Mail, January 31, 2004

 

Chuang, Jimmy. “Hand-puppet voted best Taiwan image”. The Taipei Times, Feb. 18, 2006 Web site: http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2006/02/18/2003293501

 

 

 

 

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