Master of puppets

To ensure timely delivery, Lin has put in many extra hours.

The process for each character includes rough shaping, forming, coarse carving, intricate detailing, paper mounting, color application, facial sculpting and wax coating to create a puppet.

Quanzhou puppetry was named a national intangible cultural heritage in 2006, and, in 2012, the Quanzhou Puppetry Theater was added to the Register of Good Safeguarding Practices by UNESCO.

Lin has committed himself to the trade for more than 40 years. His works feature in the play Flaming Mountain, which was based on one of the four great classical Chinese novels, Journey to the West, by Wu Cheng'en of the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644).

In 2009, Lin was named a national inheritor of the intangible cultural heritage.

Lin joined the theater when he was 16, and he has carved about 1,000 puppets. Some of his works were featured during the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics and the 2010 World Expo in Shanghai, while some have found their way into museum collections across the country.

As one of the oldest and rarest forms of puppet theater in China, the Quanzhou puppet show enjoys a history of more than 2,000 years.