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Enchanted Stories: Chinese Shadow Theater in Shaanxi
Treasures from the Shaanxi Provincial Art Gallery
A Web-Companion to China Institute's Spring 2008 Gallery Exhibition

Introduction
Chinese Shadow Theater
Chinese Theater, Opera, and Related Arts
Chinese Shadow Theater--Stories and Characters
Shadow Theater Outside of China
Puppetry and Puppets
Curricula
Other Resources
Books, Etc.

Opera Stories (Chinapage.org)

Synopses of some major stories performed in Chinese opera including Orphan of the Zhao Family and Story of the White Snake.

Sun Wukong (Monkey King)

Essay from Encyclopedia Mythica on the Monkey King.

Life of Hanuman

Hanuman, the monkey deity from the ancient Indian epic Ramayana, is probably the inspiration for China's Monkey King.

What is Popular Religion? (Asia for Educators, Columbia University)

The Nianhua Gallery (James A. Flath, University of Western Ontario)

"Nianhua" are the New Year's woodblock prints that decorated homes throughout traditional China. The gods, heroes, and literary figures depicted in them were also the stuff of shadow plays.

Bodhisattvas (Visual Sourcebook of Chinese Civilization)

Avalokitesvara (Guanyin)

Bodhisattvas are beings who delay entrance into nirvana to help others reach enlightenment. They're of central importance in Mahayana, the school of Buddhism that spread from India to East Asia in the early centuries of the Common Era.

Over the centuries, the Indian Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara became Guanyin, the Chinese Goddess of Mercy.

Chinese Hell Scrolls (Kenneth E. Brashier, Reed College)

Buddhism introduced the concept of Hell and its punishments to China. The gruesome punishments awaiting the dead inspired shadow theater story tellers.

<Chinese Theater, Opera, and Related Arts || Shadow Theater Outside of China »

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