Combining literature, music, painting, arts and crafts, and theater in a great synthesis, shadow puppetry can be considered a truly multimedia art. In Chinese history, this type of performance had its heyday in the Song dynasty.

To the sound of wind and stringed instruments, gongs and drums, when a Budai Opera performance starts the eyes of the audience would follow the puppets, the emperor and ministers, the armor-clad generals, the female characters in long robes, scholars in scholars’ gowns and demons dressed in strange attire, performing delicate and reserved moves of a singing play or earth-moving fighting scenes.