Puppets In The Rice Fields

BY PERRIN

Vietnam has many rice fields.  Actually, the majority of the Vietnamese are farmers.  All day they harvest or plant or tend their fields under the hot Vietnam sun with their conical bamboo hats and towels wrapping every piece of exposed skin.  But they are people, and people like to have fun.  They must have had some kind of entertainment while working in the rice fields... So what was it?  They invented water puppets!  Water puppets are wooden figures about a foot tall that have movable joints controlled by strings.  They are made out of the lightweight wood from a jackfruit tree so they float and then are lacquered with bright colors so they are waterproof.

We went to a tiny village in Vietnam to see a water puppet show and we loved it!  Instead of doing the show in the rice fields like they did in the 11th century, the puppets were performed in a big, rectangular, concrete, manmade pond in the middle of the village.  The water was far from clean and there was a big structure that looked like an ornate temple on stilts in the middle of the pool.  We watched as the show started with the music and voice accompaniment coming from a shaded area to our right.  The voices were high pitched and screechy and the instruments were all traditional Vietnamese instruments including drums.  There was also a man narrating the play but we couldn't understand him because he was speaking Vietnamese.

The puppets started appearing from behind the cloth hanging in front of the temple structure.  They paraded in the water around the front of the pond.  After the parade, two puppets came out and started fighting with each other and then some water buffaloes fought too.  The whole scene looked incredibly real and the people controlling the puppets were all the way behind the screen!  I can't imagine being able to do that.  The other scenes were of traditional fishing techniques and an intriguing scene of frog fishing.  The puppeteers made a puppet holding a fishing pole hook the line onto a frog puppet.  It was incredible how they maneuvered the puppets while the puppeteers were more than 2 meters away!

Our tour guide, Diep, translating the explanation of the water puppets.

When the show ended after about 30 minutes, we were invited to go back to where the people controlling the puppets were.  Putting on puppet shows wasn't their job but they did it for fun.  Most of them were farmers.  When we went behind the screen and structure, we saw that the men were up to their chests in water.  Two of them were on a platform not in the water so they could hand the puppets to the people in the water.  The puppets were on long sticks and had strings to control them but lots of them require several people to make them work.  All of the farmers have had years of practice to learn how to work the puppets and sometimes even carve them.  When we had to leave, we said, "Gam un," which is thank you in Vietnamese.  I loved the show and learning about this incredible Vietnamese tradition.  It is amazing that it has survived for 1,000 years and I hope the tradition isn't forgotten in the future!