Memories of a Flash Flood

Sichuan was inundated with heavy rain during the summer of 2018, causing flash floods in many areas.

Two brothers, Wang Biao and Wang Fang, are the 7th generation to run the northern Sichuan shadow puppetry school known as “The Wang School”. On July 11, they packed their shadow puppets into wooden and cardboard boxes as soon as they received the flood warning, and took turns to monitor the water level.

The river continued to rise. The morning of July 12, the Wang families decided to begin moving more than 30,000 items of shadow puppets from their usual teaching site to the Wang’s Shadow Museum further inland.

However, the ancient city of Langzhong has no roads for motor vehicles, since most of them are for pedestrians. The families could only use the slow-moving electric vehicles designed to ferry tourists around to transport their assets. More than 10,000 items were safely transferred to the museum before 1 o’clock in the afternoon. Nevertheless, the river’s water level suddenly began to rise again, so much so that by 2 o’clock the streets along the riverside in Langzhong were underwater.

In the end, eight cardboard boxes, two sound systems, and a number of cowhides were left behind, remaining underwater until July 13.

By that afternoon, the floodwater that had laid siege to the ancient city began to recede. The Wang brothers immediately returned to the site to find the floors covered in mud.

Shadow puppets are made of cowhide and are therefore very vulnerable to water and fire. Although cowhide normally needs to be soaked in water before it can be used to make shadow puppets, this process takes no more than half an hour.

This time, the shadow puppets were underwater for 30 hours. By then, some were like jelly and it was impossible to save them. The cowhide of the shadow puppets that could be saved had been contaminated by dyes, rendering them almost useless.

When Wang Biao’s mother saw the shadow puppets lifted from the muddy water, she could only turn away and weep.

To salvage the shadow puppets that had been underwater, Wang Biao bought 20 pieces of laminate that were around 8 feet long and 4 feet wide.

He laid the puppets on the laminates to dry them in the sunlight before pressing them. Until the afternoon of July 18, some shadow puppets hadn’t dried out yet.

During this flood, over 2,000 large shadow puppets (2.6 feet tall), over 2,000 medium-sized puppets (1.6–1.9 feet tall), and over 2,000 pieces of headgear were flooded.

It takes seven days to finish a piece of headgear, from selecting the leather to engraving and dyeing it. In the case of a large, 2.6-foot shadow puppet, a skilled worker can only finish three pieces a month. Depending on the plotline, a full shadow play will need between three and five characters at least, and can involve more than a dozen characters in some cases.

After being soaked in water, almost all of thees shadow puppets were declared lost as a result of the cowhide being damaged and contaminated by dyes. The direct financial loss was estimated at 6 million renminbi (around $840,000), not to mention their artistic value, which was incalculable.

In addition to the shadow puppets, more than 4,500 Chinese paper cuttings were also lost, because they could not be transferred in time. What saddened the Wang brothers most was the fact that over 100 paper cuttings bequeathed to them by their grandfather, Wang Wenkun, were also damaged beyond repair by the flood.

The shadow puppets that were salvaged after air-drying will be stored in the museum and repaired. Part of the collection will then be put on display to help remember the grief caused by the damage to these shadow puppets.

The flood happened more than a year ago, and yet Wang Biao is still full of regret and guilt whenever it is mentioned. Sighing, he says, “We must never overlook the importance of protecting our antiquities. We must never take them for granted.” Cultural assets are incredibly vulnerable in the face of natural disasters. Only by ensuring they are adequately protected and digitized will it be possible to pass our cultural heritage on to future generations.