Born into a well-off family only to later fall into poverty, Chen Ming-shan (陳明山) has worked hard to become a master at hand-painting traditional puppet theater stages and backgrounds, as well as earn a living for his family. With his younger days behind him, the one thing he now has in mind is passing on the tradition.
“I was born into a well-off family and I did well in elementary school, but I never imagined that I would become a stage painter when I was a kid,” Chen said during an interview with the Taipei Times at his workshop amid rice paddies in Sikou Township (溪口), Chiayi County.
In his workshop are carpentry tools, large cans of paint, completed or half--finished puppet theater stage pieces, photos with celebrities, certificates of appreciation and numberous awards.
Photo: Loa Iok-sin, Taipei Times
Chen is one of the very few people who still hand-paints stages for puppet theaters and he has clients all around the country. In fact, his work extends to much more than just the puppet theater stage, as he also paints traditional Taiwanese opera stages known as yige (藝閣) and jiao (醮).
Yige stages are decorated parade floats used for the Lantern Festival or other traditional folk religious festivals, while jiao are stage-like constructions used to decorate areas where religious festivities are held.
Traditionally, both types are decorated with paintings of scenes from myths and images of deities.
At age 60, Chen has worked as a painter for more than four decades. However, he never thought he would become a painter until his family became destitute when he was 14.
Chen said he was shocked when he learned that his family was broke and he would not be able to go to junior-high school despite having passed the entrance exam — which was not common in the countryside where Chen grew up.
“I still have feelings of regret even when I think of it [not having attended junior-high school] now,” Chen said.
After the family lost its money, he was sent by his father to sell meat buns on the streets of Kaohsiung.
“I worked late into the night and I had to wake up early to make the buns, so I often slept about three hours ever night,” he said. “I worked until very late to make sure that I could sell 100 buns and bring back NT$100 to the boss.”
Technically, Chen was entitled to NT$20 out of the NT$100 in sales, but his boss would deduct the cost of a meal and a stall rental charge from his salary, leaving Chen with only NT$12 for his day’s work.
“I would always make sure that I save NT$10 a day, so that I could send home NT$300 at the end of the month,” Chen said.
One way to save the money was to not spend too much on food.
Chen said that he always brought a lunch box with him in the morning, but in the summer, the food would usually go bad by noon.
“I would put on a lot of chili sauce to cover up the sour taste so I could eat the food,” he said.
Chen sold meat buns for about half a year before deciding the job was too harsh and returned home. He worked briefly as a snack vendor at a local movie theater and a duck keeper until he finally became an apprentice with a local stage painter.
“I wanted to learn puppet stage painting because I’ve enjoyed watching puppet theater since I was a kid,” he said, laughing.
However, life as an apprentice was not easy. As an apprentice, Chen did not have to pay tuition, but he was not paid either.
“In the morning, I usually drank the tap water until I was full, so I didn’t have to buy anything to eat for breakfast,” Chen said. “But if I was really too hungry, I would buy a bun for NT$0.50, eat half of it for breakfast and leave the other half for lunch.”
For dinner, Chen usually hoped to work overtime because the master would typically buy everyone a noodle soup as a snack at 10pm.
“I would be quite disappointed when we were finished by 9:30pm or so,” he recalled.
When there was no overtime work to be done, Chen said he took his bicycle and cycled around the streets of the nearby Dalin Township (大林) at dinner time so that everyone at the workshop would think he was off having dinner.
One day, Chen said his master, sensing something was wrong because Chen was coming back to the workshop too early from dinner, asked someone to follow Chen and learned that he was not having anything to eat at all.
“One evening, the master asked me to sit at the dinner table with his family and told me that he knew I was not having dinner,” Chen said. “He told me that I could have dinner with them from then on and said that I must work hard and not let him down.”
“I was very touched and I decided I would work as hard as possible to return the favor,” Chen said, breaking into tears.
And he didn’t fail his master. Normally, it would take four years to learn all the skills, but Chen took just three years and four months and became a master painter at the age of 18.
From then on, Chen was able to work on his own to support himself and, later, his family. Chen soon became a popular stage painter because of his skills, his hard work and his creativity.
“When I was younger, I could finish six to seven stages a month, and sometimes I would stay awake for two to three days and do nothing but work,” Chen said. “I didn’t take any days off either.”
After decades of hard work, he added new elements into the traditional styles, such as using fluorescent paint or blending in some Western painting techniques.
“With fluorescent paint, it gets very interesting when you perform in the dark with black lights and you can play a lot of tricks with it,” he said. “I call it the ‘black light theater.’”
Now that all of his kids have grown up and have jobs of their own, he takes his time when he paints because he said “right now, money is not my concern, but I want to make sure that every piece of my work is perfect.”
While he could finish six to seven stages a month when he was younger, Chen said he now takes one or more months to complete one.
“If you want to order a painted stage by me, I couldn’t tell you when it would be completed and my old clients all know that they need to make an order a year in advance,” Chen said.
The thing that is most on his mind right now is passing on the tradition.
Although Chen had a few students, he said most of them grew impatient and gave up very quickly. Therefore, what he mostly does now is give as many lectures as possible, hoping to attract new people into the field.
“I’ve collected a lot of stuff related to traditional art and it would be nice if there could be a museum to display all the items,” Chen said. “I can’t do it myself, I need help from the government — I asked the Council for Cultural Affairs for help a few months ago, but I haven’t got any reply so far.”
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