Afternoon - the craft
Shaanxi shadow puppetry has its workshops in the counties east of Xi'an, at Huaxian and Huayin, and the figures are cut from oxhide rather than paper. The leather is scraped, softened, drawn and pierced with a set of small knives, then dyed with transparent colours, pressed flat and joined at the shoulders, elbows, wrists, hips and knees with thread so the figure can be worked on three rods. A single character needs a set of interchangeable heads, kept in a wooden case like a book. At the workshop you will pierce and colour a figure yourself, assemble the joints and fit the rods, and try it against a lit screen - which is the moment most people realise how much wrist control the art actually needs.
Afternoon - the music that goes with it
Shadow play in Shaanxi is played with two local styles. Wanwan tune, named for the small brass bowl struck as a bell, is the one most often heard in the theatre, and Laoqiang - the 'old tune' of Huayin, a raw shouted style sung over a small ensemble - is the other. In both cases one singer voices every character, backed by a sanxian, a yueqin, a banhu fiddle and percussion, and the man working the rods is often also the man singing. The screen is a cloth of about a square metre lit from behind by a lamp, and the audience sits on the lit side; a troupe of six once played a village temple fair for a whole night.
Late afternoon - the performance
The programme at the small theatre is a mixed one. It opens with a shadow-play excerpt - a comic piece or a battle scene from a familiar story - then moves to rod puppets (zhangtou mu'ou) and string puppets, worked in full view of the audience, which is part of the pleasure: you watch the puppeteers' arms as much as the stage. The best-known venue of this kind in the city is the Ming courtyard house on Beiyuanmen, where performances run daily in a small hall; the guide will confirm the day's programme and substitute a theatre or a longer version if you want one.
Cultural Insight - why the screen survives
Shadow puppetry was the village cinema of the Guanzhong plain, and television took its audience away almost completely; by the 1990s most of the Huaxian troupes had stopped performing. The revival since then has been driven by the national intangible-heritage list of 2006, the UNESCO listing of Chinese shadow puppetry in 2011, and paying audiences in cities like Xi'an and at overseas festivals. The carving workshops, though, still live on commissioned work rather than on village performances, which means that watching a show and buying a figure are not tourist formalities here - they are what keeps the knives sharp and the old repertoire in the hands of people who can still sing it.
Practical notes
The workshop element is suitable for adults and for children over about eight; earlier start times can be arranged for families, and the carving can be simplified for younger hands. Dinner afterwards is in the Muslim Quarter, a few minutes' walk from the workshop, or can be left out if you want an early evening. The theatre is small and the seating is unreserved, so the guide arrives early to hold places. Guests who become interested in the craft should ask the guide about the Huaxian workshops, which can be visited on a day trip east of the city.
Meals
Dinner
Accommodation
Day tour - no hotel night included.
