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FAR EASTERN SHADOWS
arrow launched against him, notch the shaft in his own bow, and bring down a couple of birds with a trial shot before transfixing his foe; or, if the audience demands it, he will cut off the heads of four bold generals with one sweep of his sword, leap, as only a shadow can, across a torrent to fell a fifth, and stand ready to face an entire army. In the White Serpent play The Flooding of the Monastery of the Golden Mountain the serpent goes to battle with the priests in order to win back her husband who has been lured into the monastery. When she challenges the abbot he hurls down his staff, which in its descent changes into a dragon lusting to fight the intruder, but instantly water demons come to the snake's aid and fifteen great fountains shoot up, threatening to engulf the monastery. The abbot, strengthened by Buddha, covers his opponent with his alms-bowl and the sorceress is forced to flee in her true guise, that of a gigantic, terrifying reptile.
The essentially visual character of the Chinese shadow show is manifest not only in heroic and supernatural pieces of the kind just described but in simple plays in which there is no real climax or denouement and only the flimsiest strand of narrative. Such is the Ming shadow show Picking up the Jade Bracelet. The heroine, Sun Yu-chiao, the daughter of an indigent widow, is sitting at her embroidery when the play opens. It is spring and all her movements indicate that she is restless and cannot concentrate. As she laments her lot, the young and handsome Fu Peng passes by. He is instantly captivated by her charms and, hoping to win her favour, places a jade bracelet on the threshold of her house. Yu-chiao walks with small quick steps to the door and hovers about the bracelet, the inhumanly supple yet perceptibly jerky movements of her shadow-puppet limbs and head expressing a long-drawn-out struggle between desire and propriety which Fu Peng watches from a distance. At last Yu-chiao succumbs to the temptation, picks up the bracelet, and vanishes into the house. An old crone who has witnessed everything now comes forward and calls to the young girl. Yu-chiao comes to her door once more and the old woman persuades her to confess what has happened and to admit that she would be grateful for the services of a matchmaker. She then hobbles off with one of Yu-chiao's tiny shoes as a pledge to Fu Peng. That is all.
A description by Lafcadio Hearn of a shadow show he saw in 1907 in the courtyard of the temple at Matsue on the occasion of a great night festival suggests that the Japanese shadow theatre closely resembled that of the Chinese.
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