Tradition | The Long and Winding Road

Singapore’s last traditional puppet stage maker?

3 08 2022

Puppet shows once made appearances around Taoist temples scattered all across Singapore. Like the Chinese street opera and the more modern getai performances, they were usually put up for the pleasure of visiting Taoist deities on their earthly sojourns, or for hungry ghosts who as belief would have it, roam the earth when the gates of the underworld are opened during the Chinese seventh month. Puppet shows also found great appeal with the common, especially amongst the young ones. These days however, the distractions of the modern world hold sway and the appeal of tradition seems to have waned. Just a handful of troupes still perform around today leaving supporting craftsmen such as Mr Leong Fong Wah, whose lifetime’s work has been in painting and putting together puppet stages, a dying breed.

A typical Chinese puppet stage is really an assembly of pieces of plywood on which colourful decorations and backdrops are painted on one side and reinforced on the other. All it takes is a few weeks to add the decorative work before a stage can be put together. This quick turnaround time, the lack of a customer base, and the fact that a stage can be used and reused for as long as ten years, does mean that there is little in terms work in the area for the business that Mr Leong runs, Leong Shin Wah Art Studio. Having been started in the 1940s by Mr Leong’s father, whose name the business is identified with, the workshop must have been involved in putting together a countless number of stages. With nothing in way of puppet show stage orders in sight beyond an order that Mr Leong is currently in the process of fulfilling, this last stage that he is building may be one of the last, if not the last, traditional puppet show stages being made not just at Mr Leong’s workshop, but also in Singapore.

A typical traditional puppet show stage set up:

A puppet stage set up at Telok Ayer Street.

The stage set up also hides puppeteers and musicians behind a backdrop and other decorated plywood panels.

Chinese Puppetry in Singapore:

A lifelong passion pulling strings (Henghwa string puppet troupe)

The last performance of the Sin Sai Poh Hong puppet troupe (Teochew Rod Puppet Troupe)

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Tags: Chinese Puppetry, Chinese Traditions, Dying Trades, Dying Traditions, Leong Fong Wah, Leong Shin Wah Art Studio, Photographs, Photography, Puppet Show Stage Making, Puppet Show Stages, Singapore, Tradition, Traditional Forms of Puppetry, Traditions, Vanishing Trades
Categories : People in Places, Performing Arts, Personalities, Photography, Photography Series, Reminders of Yesterday, Singapore, Traditions, Vanishing Trades

My Shanghai Story: contrasting escapes from the tempests in teapots and more

11 05 2014

One of the fabulous things about Shanghai is that there is a great abundance of places not just to chill-out in, but also find the escape that does appear to elusive amongst the crowds and frenzy of its rather busy streets. Ranging from the many modern cafes and bars that are in keeping with the sophistication of contemporary Shanghai, bars that offer the best views in the city, to teahouses that offer a feel of the more traditional side of Shanghai, there are a great variety of places that offer a contrast in the experience of chilling-out in the city.

What the two full days of the Shanghai Adventure did provide was a chance to have a feel for some of the variety of experiences, starting with the traditional and which also included an experience of the ‘high-life’ that the modern side of Shanghai does have to offer …

The Traditional

Set in a pavilion that in being surrounded by water to which one must negotiate a path of right angles on a bridge with nine corners is the Huxinting (湖心亭) Teahouse. Well protected from the unidirectionally inclined demons of the old world, it is where one does find an escape from the demons that now plague the new world.

Time seems to stand very still in the Huxinting Teahouse.

In its interior, bathed in the earthy hues of its wooden walls, screens and furnishing, one finds a side of Shanghai that does seem forgotten in the city’s relentless march towards modernity.

The calm provided by its wooden interior.

The teahouse, now a veritable Shanghai institution, has been an occupant of the 16th century Ming Dynasty wooden pavilion for most of the time since it first occupied it in the mid 1800s. Despite the teahouse today being more of a destination for out-of-towners, it is over a pot of tea sitting by the window at one of its marble topped tables, that one does find that slice of a charming old world from which one can also observe the demons of the new that lie, at what does seem to be an arms length away, just across the crooked bridge.

Huxinting Teahouse and the nine-cornered bridge.

A pot of tea starts off at around 60 yuan, and if you either have a preference for a caffeine free beverage or take joy in the sight of a dried flower coming seemingly alive whilst being infused in a clear glass teapot, flower teas are an option. Tea is also served with several bite-sized snacks, which include small tea-eggs made with quails’ eggs. And if you do decide to have a pot of tea, do keep a look out for a photograph of Queen Elizabeth II, having tea – not in a manner she would be accustomed to, in the teahouse.

Pots of flower tea.

Watching the world go by at Huxinting.

The interior.

The early ‘crowd’.

The upper floor.

A ‘window seat’.

An employee of the teahouse.

A member of the teahouse’s staff serving tea.

The French Connection

An area of Shanghai that does have a huge appeal for me is the former French Concession, with its wonderful works of architecture, its history and the atmosphere one does now find in and around many of its tree-lined streets. The French Concession does also have an abundance of establishments to dine in, as well as to chill-out in, from the cafes of Ferguson Lane, to several other street-side cafes and bistros, some set in gorgeous works of architecture dating from the Treaty Port era of Shanghai.

Reflections on a cafe. The street side cafes of the French Concession are great modern places to chill-out in.

Rumors Coffee on Xingguo Road, promises a peek into the world of new Shanghai in its ‘coffee culture’.

Some of the bloggers on the Shanghai Adventure having a good time over coffee and cake.

A street side view.

Just next door to Rumors on Xingguo Road, a bistro that is said to offer some of the best cocktails in the city.

Just next door to Rumors on Xingguo Road, a bistro, Mardi Gras, that is said to offer some of the best cocktails in the city.

A room inside the Mardi Gras off Xingguo Road. The Mardi Gras occupies a Spanish-style villa, one of the magnificent examples of the rich architecture of the Treaty Port era of Shanghai.

High Points

One of the must-dos in and around the area of Shanghai’s Bund has to be to elevate oneself to the roof tops of one of the high points, to take-in some of the best views one can possibly get of old and new Shanghai on both sides of the Huangpu. Perched on the roof (levels 32 and 33) of the Hyatt on the Bund’s West Tower, the Vue Bar, for a 100 yuan cover charge, provides just that – the best views not just from the glass protected interiors, but also an open wind swept terrace on level 33 at which you can literally chill in a very inviting whirlpool and feel quite literally, on top of the world,

The entrance to the Vue Bar.

Inside the Vue Bar.

Wine racks are part of the bar’s decor.

A whirlpool with a view. The open-air terrace at Level 33 of the Vue Bar.

The view of Pudong that the Vue offers.

And a view of the Bund.

A view of the Waibaidu Bridge or Garden Bridge. The bridge is the first all-steel bridge and the only surviving example of a camelback truss bridge in China.