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Though antiquated, the peep show still entertains
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TUCKED away in alleyways chock-a-block with tourist souvenirs in downtown Shanghai’s Yuyuan Garden, a small shop keeps alive the old tradition of the Chinese peep show.
Follow the sound of laughter and you will find people sitting on two long wooden benches, their faces pressed against wooden boxes in front of them. To the side, using a loudspeaker, a man dressed in a traditional Chinese garb, with a pigtail hanging from the back of his cap, pulls strings and puts on a performance of repartee and songs.
The performer is Shi Weihua, 39, and he has been delighting onlookers with his peep shows for 14 years.
The tradition is a far cry from the contemporary use of the term “peep show” to refer to pornographic material viewed through slits. Its purer origins can be traced back to 17th-century Europe, when “peep boxes,” also called “raree shows,” created the illusion of three dimensions by manipulating the perspective.
The Chinese peep show emerged as a popular folk entertainment in the 19th century. In the north of the country, it’s known as layangpian, or literally “pulling Western picture cards.” In the south, it’s called xiyangjing, or “the Western lens.”
“In early times, pictures with Western figures were very popular with both Chinese and foreign audiences, but the Chinese peep show is purely indigenous,” Shi says.
He follows in the footsteps of his father and grandfather, who were masters of the craft in their hometown in Henan Province. As a teenager, Shi quit school to learn the trade from his father, who traveled around China giving shows at festivals.
His installation at the Yuyuan Garden is a crude amphitheater. Six wooden boxes, closely adjacent and painted maroon, sit on an elevated stage. They are about 80 centimeters high and 30 centimeters wide.
Through the little round pieces of glass inserted in the boxes, the audience can view alternating pictures, while Shi narrates the stories on the side. “Traditional peep show installations use a convex lens to magnify smaller pictures, but I replaced it with plain glass because I think it’s friendlier to children’s eyes,” Shi says.
The pictures, illustrated on paper, are about 1 meter wide and 75 centimeters high, placed about 60 centimeters behind the glass. A light fixture above illuminates the pictures. On the side of the boxes hangs a set of drum, gong and cymbal, which Shi uses during his narrative performance.
“It took me about a month to create the whole thing by hand,” he says. “I’m not a trained carpenter.”
The stories told in Chinese peep shows are usually drawn from Chinese literary classics or based on well-known historical figures.
Among Shi’s repertoire are the “Monkey King’s Fight with the White Bone Demon,“ the “White Snake’s Flooding of the Jinshan Temple” and the “Worshipping of General Guan Yu.“
The pictures are prepared by Shi and a professional painter. Two of Shi’s relatives assist him at the site.
In the story of the Monkey King, Shi depicts how the hero defeated the demon, who then turned from a woman back into a stack of bones. At that dramatic point in the tale, in the same picture, the woman figure disappears and the bones appear.
“After hundreds of experiments, I found the right way to use paint that will hide or show the content in a certain light,” Shi says.
At the end of every show, there is the refrain, “Oops, it disappears again! Isn’t it magical?”
The narrative, music and singing that accompany the shows are critical and engaging. Many tourists who don’t understand a word of Chinese stop to watch.
“They don’t have to understand the language to enjoy my show,” Shi says.
He charges 10 yuan (US$1.60) for a three-minute peep show with eight pictures.
Despite the repetition of performances all day, Shi never falters in giving customers their money’s worth. “I’m an artist and it’s my job to satisfy every audience member,” he says.
Historically, peep shows provided cheap fun before the advent of television and movie theaters. Nowadays, they have been eclipsed in popular culture by contemporary entertainment.
At Shi’s stall, many people in their 20s and older say they had heard about peep shows, but most children have no idea of the concept.
Shi says he once rejected a Japanese tourist’s offer to buy the whole installation for 150,000 yuan, although it cost him only 1,000 yuan to make.
Shi says he knows of two other peep show artists in China — one in Beijing and one in Shandong Province — but neither is performing regularly anymore.
“The peep show is always considered to be a lowly trade,” he says, “but I am committed to it for life. It takes both talent and experience to become a good peep show performer, and I hope we can somehow encourage the continuity of the tradition.”
The Chinese peep show was so popular in the past that it spawned several idioms in the Shanghai dialect.
Kan xiyangjing (看西洋镜): To watch or to be acquainted with something curious and unusual, especially when it comes to something for free.
Chaichuan xiyangjing (拆穿西洋镜): To find out about something in disguise.
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