WITH a box as a stage, a lamp as a light source and a piece of white paper as a screen, Hakobyan Aleta puts on entertaining performances on her handmade shadow play stage.

The 30-year-old shadow play fancier has uploaded several of her performances online, earning a great deal of attention from netizens. Aleta said she believes shadow play is an excellent way to tell stories of Chinese myths, legends, history and culture.

Aleta came to China from Armenia three years ago to work as an English teacher. She has visited many places like Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, Yunnan and Shandong. She said she likes the country’s beautiful natural sceneries and diverse customs, but what fascinates her most is the local folklore and mythology.

“They are gorgeous, charming and full of wisdom,” she said. For a long time, she had been looking for a unique and novel way to share the folk tales she has learned from people she has met.

Her love of the art form first started when she watched a shadow play show in a museum in Xi’an, capital of Northwest China’s Shaanxi Province, and realized that this was something she wanted to try her hand at.

In shadow plays, performers stay behind a white curtain, manipulate shadow puppets made from animal skins in time with music from an onsite orchestra. In 2011, shadow plays were inscribed on the UNESCO Representative List of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.

“I was very excited watching a shadow play for the first time. It was about a famous military general in Chinese history. The staff in the museum invited me to look at the leather puppets, and I was impressed by the bright colors and their flexibility,” Aleta recalled.

Then Aleta started researching how to make her own shadow play stage. Learning from videos, she built one using a box, a light, white paper and other tools. She also made shadow puppets but instead of the animal skins used for traditional puppets, she used paper. “I printed puppet figures on paper and then carefully cut out the silhouettes,” she said.

Her first shadow play told a touching love story from a Chinese legend. “The story is about hope for reunion, which coincides with the family reunion theme of the Mid-Autumn Festival in China,” Aleta said. “I spent the whole holiday preparing my first shadow play.”

To enrich her stories, Aleta has been studying traditional Chinese culture. When making scenes related to the Qixi Festival, or Chinese Valentine’s Day, she learned a lot about weddings in China.

Aleta’s shadow play videos have won over many audience members in Armenia. Her video about the beast Nian in Chinese folk tales even caught the attention of an Armenian TV station, which aired the video earlier in 2022. Among the online comments, some audience members have said Aleta’s videos have allowed them to better understand China.

This has encouraged Aleta to continue to make more videos. Currently, she is writing a new story based on ancient Chinese poetry. “When my Chinese is good enough, I will make shadow play videos about Armenian myths, legends and customs and share my country’s culture with Chinese audience members,” she said. (Xinhua)