Turkish shadow play has ties to Silk Road

Xinhua | Updated: 2024-03-21 06:20 Children play with the shadow puppets in a classroom in Guang'an, Sichuan province, in late February. However, trade isn't limited to goods, it encompasses culture," says Berkant Demir, a young puppeteer at the Intangible Cultural Heritage Museum in the Turkish capital Ankara. Demir, who is a practitioner of Turkiye's traditional shadow puppetry tradition Karagoz, highlighted how cultural exchange along the Silk Road over the centuries forged strong connections between peoples and nations, notably between the Chinese and the Turkish people. Taking the Turkish art that was recorded by UNESCO on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2009 as an example, some historians trace the origins of Karagoz back to Central Asia, who drew inspiration from Chinese shadow puppetry, a form of cultural heritage that is well-preserved in China to this day. The plays, initially staged by nomadic people in Central Asia in their tents, found its place in Ottoman theater about 700 years ago in Bursa, a city located in northwestern Turkiye that was the seat of the Ottoman Empire in the early 14th century, and where shadow puppetry first rose to popularity in the 16th century, says Oztahtali.