Shadow play(皮影戏), a symbol of Chinese culture, is a famous Chinese art of storytelling. Although shadow play doesn't seem popular as it was, more and more young people start to love it again.
People cut leather(皮革) into a person, an animal or other things as shadow puppets. They are painted in red, white or black to show good and bad characters.
Shadow play is over 2,000 years old. Although there was lots of earlier information on shadow play, it wasn't clearly written in books until the Northern Song Dynasty(朝代). In the Tang Dynasty, shadow play became an art in China and was popular with people. People performed it when they had holidays and festivals. In the Yuan Dynasty, some other countries started to perform shadow play.
During the play, the performers stand behind a screen with a light behind them. They control(控制) the puppets with their hands and they put the puppets close to the screen so that people can see them clearly. They tell the story by singing. In fact, it's not easy to perform shadow play. Sometimes, one puppet needs two or more performers to control so that the show can be wonderful.
