She is making a salient point about the Chinese languages that are gradually becoming extinct in Singapore. “My grandchildren have never come to see me perform, but even if they did, I doubt they would understand anything I am singing,” she says. One of his performers, Chua Mui Hua, 76, agrees. None of them is interested in continuing his trade. He has three children who are English-educated and in their 30s. “It’s not something you do to make money,” he says with a slight smile. The money is mostly redistributed among performers, who are all older people or retirees, with the rest going back into the maintenance of the puppets. In good months, puppet troupes such as Sin Hoe Ping can earn between $5,000 to $7,000, performing at a number of temple festivals every week, but for the most of the year, income is much harder to come by. Then, upon the latter’s retirement, he bought the puppet collection for approximately $1,500 and continued running the show with other troupe members. He studied with a puppet master until his 20s. I have known everything by heart for my entire life, and I keep doing it now because it’s what I know.” My grandfather taught me the scripts, the songs and how to move the puppets when I was seven. “I don’t feel that I’m doing something noble. Yeo is a laconic and stout man who does not romanticise the work he does. These elements include handwritten theatre scripts used for puppet shows, which have been passed down for generations and can today cost up to $1,000. The Chinese diaspora in Singapore, who arrived as immigrants from the southern Chinese provinces during the late 19th century, ironically preserved many elements of Chinese puppet theatre that have become almost extinct in their country of origin due to the brutal effects of the Cultural Revolution. Numbering approximately 20 in total, though this figure is also dwindling steadily with Singapore’s ageing population, these troupes faithfully represent traditions that emerged from southern China as early as the Song dynasty in the AD 1000s. One died recently, and after the rest of us go, nobody will know the art of Chinese puppetry in Singapore any more.” “We now have five or six regular performers left. He attributes this to the lack of interest in temple rituals, which are often elaborate, time-consuming and costly. Yeo, who makes and repairs his collection of up to a 100 puppets from his apartment, says that demand for puppet shows has declined in recent years. Many of the performers are hired on an ad hoc basis, whenever feast days are held to commemorate Taoist deities. Rooted in ancient folk religion, they appear almost to be vestiges of the past that have stubbornly survived to challenge the modern skyscrapers and apartment blocks that are crammed across the tiny island country. Sin Hoe Ping is one of the last Chinese puppet troupes active in Singapore, and the very last troupe performing in the Henghua language, spoken by those with ancestral roots in Putian, a part of Fujian Province in China.įrequently sidelined for the more flamboyant sensibilities of Chinese opera, these puppet troupes are something of an anomaly in cosmopolitan Singapore. “After all, if I don’t, who will?” Vestiges of the past “I’m going to do this for as long as I can,” he says gruffly. The only people in the audience are a little boy in a uniform, presumably on his way home from school, and his grandfather. As they begin to sing a high-pitched, mournful sounding song while manoeuvring the puppet characters around the makeshift stage, Yeo Lye Hoe, the 67-year-old troupe leader, shuffles off to an open area outside the tent where the festival is taking place. The medium, along with the getai singers whose traditional performance dates back to the era of the Japanese occupation, will be the star of the event.īut the members of Sin Hoe Ping don’t mind being out of the limelight. Two life-sized figures of Da Yi Er Bo glower at them from behind, macabre guardians of a dark curtained area where a spirit medium will be offering consultations to devotees in the evening. Knowing that they will be singing for two hours without a break, the grey-haired puppeteers are clad in loose, comfortable clothing and slippers. It is the first feast day at the shentan or shrine festival for these deities, and the troupe wants the celebrations to begin smoothly. It is 1.30pm on a rainy, humid December afternoon and the Sin Hoe Ping puppet troupe is busy making sure that everything is in place before they perform for Da Er Ye Bo, the two Taoist gods of the underworld.
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