Chapter 67: Gloomy Clown X Wooden Puppet Epic

  What is she doing out here with a baby in the middle of the night? I finally got a good look, it's that terrifying wooden puppet, an important character from "The Puppet Master".

  Li Moli didn't sleep, she was talking to the wooden puppet, shaking her head sometimes, nodding sometimes, calm sometimes, and fierce sometimes, a bit falling into a crazy state.

  I find it very strange, I wanted to go ask, but suddenly thought that Li Manli must be secretly practicing her own lines - her acting skills are so refined, she must have put in efforts that ordinary people can't see, so she was still working hard to improve her acting skills while others were sleeping.

  I didn't go over to disturb her, quietly returned to the dormitory and fell asleep beside Chen Qiuyang who was sleeping like a dead pig.

  The next day, we had breakfast early and started filming the scene where the male and female leads of "Phantom of the Opera" meet while watching a wonderful performance at the circus. We gradually walked into the Guangjie Circus. Actually, it was my first time entering this kind of tent-like circus to watch a show. Especially after watching "American Horror Story: Freak Show", I had an overall bad impression of circuses, always feeling that they hide many secrets, with much injustice, darkness and intrigue.

  For filming, the Crown Acrobatic Troupe performed entirely as they would in a regular show. In the audience seats, however, filming equipment was set up. The first act was a fire-breathing performance, with two performers riding unicycles on stage and breathing fire, putting on an extremely strenuous show.

  While Chen Xue Xia and Li Man Li were filming, I left the audience seat alone. Because I was entrusted by Chen Xue Xia to come, I went to their backstage to take a look.

  The backstage of the Crown Acrobatic Troupe has become very colorful and bright, unlike the eerie darkness that Chen Xue Xia saw back then. The performers are coming in and out, but everyone is busy rushing around, completely ignoring me.

  I visited several rooms and finally arrived at the puppet group. There were three puppet experts, one named Li Weihong, one named Chen Jianying, and one named He Shaofeng, all of whom were over 50 years old.

  Chen Jianying is the oldest, with a very thin and long face, giving off an otherworldly aura. He's a very enthusiastic person. As soon as he saw me, he said: "Young man sneaking backstage to watch us prepare for the show! Come on, Uncle will teach you how to play with puppets."

  Chen Jianying's enthusiasm made me a little surprised, he walked to the door and pulled me inside. On the long table, there were many wooden puppets, these puppets looked quite scary, especially when they were arranged in a row of five colors. These puppets had men and women, mythological figures and cartoon characters. I suddenly saw that one of the puppets looked like the photo I saw at Lei Yongchang's house in Xiayuan Village before, similar to Thai puppets.

  "Come on, I'll teach you how to operate them and bring them to life," said Chen Jianying with a smile. He picked up a wooden puppet and began teaching me how to manipulate it while sharing his knowledge of puppets with me:

  "In the Book of Rites, wooden puppets are called "yong", used for burial. In 1979, 13 wooden puppets were unearthed from a Western Han tomb in Lai Xi County, Shandong Province, one of which had movable joints all over its body. According to shape and manipulation techniques, there are four types: palm puppets, string puppets, stick head puppets, and wire puppets. The ones we use for performances now are mostly palm puppets and wire puppets."

  The production of wooden puppets is very complicated, including the installation of carvings, costumes, hair and limbs. The most important thing is the carving of the head image. The production of wooden puppet heads can be divided into two major processes: woodcarving and painting. Woodcarving involves selecting light, easy-to-carve, non-rotten woods such as camphorwood and elm, cutting them into triangular shapes with a height equal to that of the puppet's head, drawing the facial midline, determining the position of the five senses; hollowing out the neck part for the actor's fingers to enter; carving the head image; installing movable mouths and eyes. Before painting the face spectrum, first apply cotton paper to the wooden puppet head, apply a mixture of water glue and filtered fine mud paste, polish it after filling the gaps and repairing the light, then powder, paint the face spectrum, wax, and finally add hair and beard...

  The other two people, Li Weihong and He Shaofeng, smiled at all of this and said: "Young fellow, what's your name?"

  "My name is Zhu Thirteen, you can just call me Thirteen."

  He Shaofeng said, "Thirteen, just forgive Old Chen, we're all old now. But now the wooden puppet show is slowly disappearing, fewer and fewer people know how to play with wooden puppets, and fewer and fewer people are interested in it, especially children. Nowadays, children only like watching movies and playing computers. Alas, this ancient Chinese culture is slowly disappearing..."

  Her voice was filled with sorrow. A sad atmosphere slowly rose in the room.

  Chen Jianying said with embarrassment: "Don't say such sad things, I believe there will still be children who like puppet shows. As long as one child likes it, we should continue to perform."

  At this time, the crew came over and said: "Hey, you're about to perform, we need to take pictures, please come out."

  Chen Jianying's face was full of proud accomplishment, holding a wooden puppet and leaving with them, leaving only me alone.

  These rooms were separated by simple curtains, and I suddenly saw a gap between the curtains, and I saw an arm slowly stretching in. It was obvious that the person on the other side didn't know I was inside, so they saw this arm slowly reaching in, feeling around on the table.

  But this arm looked too strange, because it didn't look like a human arm. A normal person's arm is one that can see the skin wrapped around it, full of elasticity. But what I saw now was an arm that looked like wood or bamboo, with brown varnish applied to it, polished and very smooth.

  He wore white gloves on his five fingers, and the five fingers were invisible. His movements were very slow, as if he had set the slow motion when watching a movie. I quietly approached to take a closer look, this arm was absolutely not human hands, it should be a wooden puppet's hand.

  But now, the arm of this wooden puppet is actually moving slowly like a human hand. I saw that the elbow joint was not broken, and it had connected joints just like the puppets Chen Xue Xia described seeing all those years ago.

  The situation I am facing now gives me two options: one, I grab the puppet's arm and pull it into my room from the opposite room; two, I quietly exit this room and go to the room where the puppet is to see what's going on.

  I thought for a second and immediately chose the second option. Firstly, I couldn't be sure if this arm was really a puppet's or not; if it was, that would be too eerie. Secondly, if it were a person's, grabbing their arm like that wouldn't make sense. Besides, this arm hadn't done anything harmful, it just stretched out on the table and felt around as if searching for something.

  I tiptoed out of the room and entered an adjacent one, based on the location of my room. I was quite sure that this process actually took less than 20 seconds, but when I walked into what should have been a room with a wooden puppet or a strange person, I saw nothing at all.

  The room next to the puppet room I just came out of had a lot of performance costumes, colorful, with princess dresses, prince dresses, and two sets of clown costumes, clown wigs...I thought this was too strange, that arm I saw its movement judging it's actually slow and sluggish, but when I came into this room, it suddenly disappeared. Could the owner of this arm fly?

  I gazed at the towering, fluffy theatrical costumes standing upright in the room and felt that the owner of this arm must have hidden inside one of them just a second before I entered. Seeing no one around, I quickly walked over to the costumes and began searching with my hands. The first costume I searched was a princess dress because it had an enormous, inflated skirt underneath, like a giant umbrella, which reached all the way down to the floor, making it perfect for hiding inside.

  But what disappointed me was that inside, it was all layers of fabric, and there were no monsters hiding. I continued to plan to search for the second costume, a huge clown suit. But when I got in front of the clown suit, a cold voice came from behind me: "Don't touch my clothes."

  I turned around to see a middle-aged uncle with a stout body, big belly and loose pants, but his hands were very muscular. He was staring at me coldly. Later I found out that the middle-aged uncle's name is Li Shaojie, 45 years old, a professional clown from Dongguan. On stage, he played a humorous and funny clown, loved by children. However, off stage, he was extremely introverted, aloof and icy, like a block of ice with sharp icicles, always alone and never willing to talk to others.

  I felt uneasy as I met his cold gaze, it was the first time I saw someone's eyes that were like a sharp sword, making me feel uncomfortable all over. I felt like I had done something wrong and been caught, with a very awkward feeling, I apologized: "Sorry, I just accidentally came in and saw this clown costume is very beautiful, wanted to touch what material it was made of, sorry."

  "Has your family never taught you that when entering someone else's room, you should first get the consent of the owner?"

  His words made me even more ashamed, I really wanted to find a seam to drill into.

  "I'm going to change clothes for the performance, can you leave immediately?"

  I could only say "sorry, sorry" as I quickly ran out. As soon as I left the room, he covered the door with a cloth. I felt extremely embarrassed and hurried away. However, when I passed by the wooden puppet room, I saw that eerie arm stretching out again, it picked up an iron box on the table, slowly pulled it back, and then the gap was sealed.

  This discovery filled me with confusion, that is to say, when I came out of the dressing room, my arm stretched out again in that room. Does this mean that Clown Li Shaojie was in a room where he could see the "owner" of this eerie arm?