People around the world have used puppets for entertainment. People have used them to stage dramas and comedies and added musical entertainment and sound effects. Puppet plays of various types were popular in China. It is said that Mongol troops entertained themselves with puppet shadow plays as they conquered China and many countries to the west. There were several forms of puppet theaters in China. It isn’t known which developed first. The Chinese puppet theaters come in four forms: marionettes on strings or wires, rod puppets, shadow plays, and hand manipulated glove-type puppets.
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When one speaks of folk dances in connection with Chinese culture, most people today think of the quaint folk dances of ethnic minorities, forgetting that the forefathers of the "tribe" that would later be referred to as the Han Chinese were perhaps the first Chinese people to make use of ritual dancing. The early Chinese folk dances, like other forms of primitive art, were essentially ritual enactments of superstitious beliefs performed in the hope of a good harvest, or – in the case of the earliest Chinese folk dances – in the hope of a good hunt, since the earliest Chinese folk dances were performed by hunter-gatherer folk.
People in ancient India, Indonesia and China and other places used shadow puppet plays for entertainment and religious purposes. One can imagine that stone-age people sat next to campfires and watched stories told on rock walls by shadows cast by using hands or figurines. In China, people staged dramas on screens and added musical entertainment and sound effects. Shadow plays were one of the types of puppet theater that were popular in China before the modern era. Three other types of puppet shows used rod puppets, glove puppets or marionettes on strings or wires. Shadow puppet theater was mainly an evening entertainment. Even in rough camps of troops or primitive villages, the people could entertain themselves by moving figures against a screen or sheet illuminated by a lamp. For the royal courts or the rich people, the performers added refined music and sound effects, and the shadow theater performers might have been highly experienced. Shadow puppet theater was a popular entertainment in China for at least a thousand years, and sometimes it is still seen in different forms for visual effects or entertainment.
The theatrical or musical occupation was considered the lowest class in the society. Opera performance used to be a male dominated profession. Mixed performances were prohibited. All the roles were played by male. Most of the actors entered the Training School as apprentices in their childhood because their parents could not feed them. They had to absolutely obey the commands of the school master and teachers. Any of the failure or even success would result in some heavy slashes or other physical punishment. Far earlier than the dawn, they had to get up to practice their voice and performance skills and do their mandatory works. Director CHEN Kai-Ge's film Farewell my Concubine gives a picture of the situation. Female were rare and usually took this profession because of their family background. But this also gives an account on how hard they should practice their skill in order to be a successful player. It is said that a flash in the stage is a reflection of ten years unremitting hard work.
In the past, stages in most Chinese theaters were square platforms exposed to the audience on three sides, even all sides sometimes. In the latter case, performances could be watched from the back also. An embroidered curtain known as a shoujiu was hung over the platform, which was thus divided into two parts: the back stage and the stage.
