The Ancient Chinese Puppetry Sculley Described

The ancient Chinese puppet show with a long history is one of important Chinese traditional and folk culture resources, having widespread and deep influence in China. This disquisition is based on research productions in past, and further synthesizes relevant literature materials, field survey materials obtained by author and cultural relics and their research findings to present a new description and textual research on the evolvement course of ancient Chinese puppet show.This paper is constituted of three parties. The first part is a textual research on the origin of Chinese puppet show. The second part is a description on flourishing puppet show in Song-Yuan Dynasty, when civil literature and art developed fully and therefore puppet show art made significant achievements in many sides including its sorts, amount of actors engaging in puppet show, performing skills, contents and forms and so on. The third part recounts the further development of puppet show in Ming-Qing Dynasty, in which puppet show took on a new characteristic that water puppet was developed fully in palace of Ming Dynasty and local puppet shows came up one after another and gradually prevailed in folk society. The puppet show in Ming-Qing Dynasty is regarded as a peak in its evolvement history.