Chang Son village is one of the places where water puppetry arose in the 11th century, according to ethnology museum documents. He feels a deep sense of duty towards his ancestors' heritage. "This is a real pressing issue in our minds," Dau, 65, a retired army captain, said at the pond's edge. The pollution distresses troupe chief Nguyen Van Dau, whose skills as scriptwriter, carpenter and puppeteer were passed down over four generations. In the past three years, a pond in the heart of Chang Son has become unusable, polluted with sewage and plastic shopping bags. The puppet offered betel to audience members who removed the nuts and left money on the tray. Hang admiringly described a puppeteer skilfully manoeuvring a puppet to hold up a tray of betel nuts while it floated around the pond. Fifty years later, she still attends shows.
Village market vendor Phi Thi Hang said she first saw puppets when she was 15. Traditionally, offering betel was the way to start a conversation in Vietnam. One favourite in the furniture-making village of Chang Son in Ha Tay province about 45 km (28 miles) southwest of Hanoi is "Betel Nut Offering". The dolls are accompanied by musicians playing drums, flutes and other wind instruments while a narrator tells tales, some up to 90 minutes long, with titles such as "Water buffalo creeps into a pipe", "A hero fights a tiger", or "Fishing for Frogs". It takes years of practice to make the puppet's manoeuvring mechanism or to develop skills to move its body parts.
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For the past decade, women too have performed the task in professional arenas. These techniques are among the craft's most closely guarded secrets, passed down through a family's male line. The unseen puppeteers stand barefoot, wearing only their their underwear, in the pond or paddy and send puppet people, elephants, buffalo, snakes and other animals gliding along the water using a system of rods, strings, levers and hinges. Exploding firecrackers can add to the excitement, filling the air over the watery stage with smoke. Some scripts carry the audience into a fantasy world of dragons spitting flames, unicorns, dancing phoenixes and fairies. The puppets are painted red and black, orange, brown and green. Troupe members build wooden and bamboo pavilions in a pond, the roofs curved at the corners in the style of Buddhist temples.Īt show time, wooden puppets 25 cm to 47 cm (10-18 inches) tall emerge from behind a bamboo blind, often in a blaze of colourful flags. "If they cannot nurture their love for the art form, it will die," Huy said. They would not stand all day to perform," Professor Nguyen Van Huy, director of Vietnam's Museum of Ethnology, said of the farmers and carpenters who make up the troupes. "If they didn't love it, they wouldn't put their bodies in the water. They lack money and personnel while two professional indoor theatres thrive in the capital, Hanoi. Practitioners of the 900-year-old art in Vietnam's northern Red River Delta endure discomforts for love of their craft.īut the few surviving traditionalist water puppetry troupes struggle to keep afloat.
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The water puppet performers rub crushed ginger onto their skin and drink fish sauce to keep warm as they stand waist deep in cold rice paddies and ponds.
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