Writers › Writer / Poet
Liang Huang
Tang poet of the Tianbao era and palace halberdier whose quatrain on a carved string puppet is a key Tang witness to marionette theatre.
Mural of the cultural record “String Marionettes”, which this person is tied to.
- Roles
- Writer / Poet
Liang Huang was a Tang poet; the Complete Tang Poems notes that he served as a halberdier of the guard, lived in the Tianbao era and left fifteen poems. His quatrain On a Wooden Old Man describes a puppet carved from wood and worked by strings, its wrinkled skin and white hair just like life, and ends by likening the brief show, over in a moment, to life as a dream. The poem is an important written witness that string-puppet performance existed in the Tang and is widely cited in histories of puppet theatre.
Life and times
Dates Dates unknown; active in the Tianbao reign (742–756)