Taiwanese Glove Puppetry

I'm working for my research writing about Taiwanese glove puppetry. Glove puppetry is what we call "Budaixi" in Taiwan. "Tell a thousand ancient stories from a single mouth, and create a million troops with ten fingers" (GIO, 2004), this sentence proforms Taiwanese puppetry. Glove puppetry has been lasting for a long time since the middle of 19th century. It was brought to Taiwan by immigrants who came from southern China's Fujian Province - Chuanchow and Changchou. Puppetry has been experiencing a lots of challenges and reformations from immigrating until now, such as assimilation, growing to mature, reforming, and innovating. Now, it is showed through various way. Therefore, we can enjoy puppet performances from TV, movie, or outdoors live show. My purpose of this research is that I think glove puppetry will continue for the next ten years in Taiwan. Although glove puppetry has been owning its status, it should be still preserved in the futher. As a result, puppetry's continuation needs many people's efforts. Gradually, puppeteers create new style for puppetry. For example, they improve the music, sence, and puppets' costumes to make it animated and various. Moreover, our government realizes that conserve this traditional art is important. They start to hold many activities to promote in order to treasure this national cultural treasure. I think glove puppetry in Taiwan will keep going for ten years to come because of all puppeteers' insistence, government's promotion, and new changes in puppetry. It will be hard to deleted in many Taiwanese's mind forever.

Ferby