China · Puppet Making / Performance Craft
皮影戏 (Pí Yǐng Xì)
Piyingxi (皮影戏) is the two-thousand-year-old Chinese tradition of crafting articulated translucent figures from processed donkey or ox hide, then animating them behind an illuminated screen for theatrical performance. The craft encompasses both the making of the puppets — a nine-stage process of hide selection, soaking, scraping, drying, tracing, cutting, dyeing, assembly, and rod attachment — and the performance technique of manipulating multiple rods simultaneously while narrating and singing. Inscribed on UNESCO's Representative List in 2011. The making tradition is critically endangered as fewer than 50 master craftspeople can execute the full nine-stage process; performance troupes are declining rapidly outside Shaanxi, Hebei, and Gansu.
Risk level: Critically Endangered · UNESCO Representative List of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity (2011)
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