YANG FENG WAS A FIFTH-GENERATION PUPPETEER who began performing with his father when only eleven years old. By the time he turned twenty-one, his father was lost to the Cultural Revolution and Yang Feng assumed his father's responsibilities as the head of the family, as well as, leadership of the puppet theater his father had founded in the 1950's.

THIS PUPPET TROUPE WAS SELECTED TO TOUR THE WORLD IN 1980, including several cities in the United States, which was our first cultural exchange with Çhina. Yang Feng led a collaboration between his theater and a film production company to produce elaborate puppetry programs, often employing up to 100 people; but it seems to have collapsed under too much bureaucratic weight and Yang Feng spent the next several years living and working outside China.

THE 1990'S FOUND YANG FENG IN SEATTLE when I first saw him perform. He became an American citizen in 1996; and he wouild split his time between performing around the world, visiting friends in China and sharing a modest home with his daughter's American family, humbly situated beneath a glorious cluster giant firs in Lynnwood, Washington.