Open the Box: Take the Puppets Out, Dust Them Off, and Set Them on Their Feet

This is the beginning of a story—but not my story—it’s Fugui’s story.

In 2021, I took a survey course in Chinese film taught by Anatoly Detwyler at the University of Wisconsin. As further education, it was incredibly fun. We met once a week from 2:30 to 5:00 for a discussion of the film we viewed the week before and an introduction to the evening’s film, which we watched from 6:00 to 9:00 p.m. Between the discussion and film, I would eat dinner at the nearby Babcock Hall Dairy Store. Only three of the twenty students were Americans; the rest were Chinese students studying abroad. So, the discussions as well as the films were an introduction to Chinese culture.

To Live (Huozhe) (1994)

The first film we watched, To Live, followed the fortunes of a Chinese puppeteer named Fugui from the 1940s to the 1970s as he lives through the political changes of twentieth-century China. The title made sense to me, in a rough way, because the last words (or wishes perhaps) of dying characters to their loved ones in Asian dramas is often “live on.”

As a result of his gambling addiction, Fugui loses the family home as well as his beautiful wife and children. Longer, the man who won Fugui’s home, gives him a box of puppets so that he can earn a living.

In 1949, while performing in the countryside, Fugui and his troupe are press-ganged into the Nationalist Army of Chiang Kai-Shek, which is losing the war to the Communists under Mao Zedong. When their unit is killed, they surrender and begin performing a new version of the puppet show for the Liberation Army. Despite the ideological differences, the soldiers on both sides share a common culture. This is the tragedy of civil war. And the puppets? They survive up to a point, but I will leave it to you to discover their fate. You can watch the entire film with English subtitles at:

I recommend this film very highly—the historical sets and costumes, the acting, the simplicity of the dialog, and the depiction of the history will take you to another place. I cried through much of this film, as did the young Chinese student beside me. He asked me for a tissue. At the next class, I brought him an old-fashioned men’s handkerchief. We had twenty-one more films to watch.