Shadow play is an art form with a long history and wide influence in Tengchong County, commonly known as leather puppetry, leather play, and lantern shadow. It is said that it was introduced from the Central Plains during the Hongwu period of the Ming Dynasty, and has a history of more than 600 years. After continuous penetration and integration of local culture, it has innovated two major schools, "Western tune" and "Eastern tune", with diverse singing styles, rich repertoires, and humorous dialogues, which are deeply loved by local people and compatriots of various ethnic groups in the surrounding areas. Tengchong shadow play repertoires are mostly based on legends, novels, and folk tales, especially the Three Kingdoms play, the various nations play and other series of plays, according to statistics, there are nearly 400. Hundreds of years of shadow play performances have been performed in Tengchong and many counties and cities in western Yunnan. Repertoires such as "Victory of the Anti-Japanese War" and "The 36th Regiment Entering Tengchong" vividly portray and record the major historical facts of Tengchong in modern times. After the founding of New China, it has emerged in the national, provincial, and municipal ethnic drama performances and has been well received. It has become a cultural and artistic form that not only maintains the Central Plains shadow play style, but also has obvious border characteristics. The production of shadow puppet backrests is the highlight of Tengchong shadow puppetry. It is not only a performance prop, but also a rare artistic masterpiece. The backrest is composed of the head, hands, feet, and body, and can be moved by pulling the string. A body backrest can be combined with countless head backrests to form several different characters, plus general tents, tables and chairs, halls, court rooms, carriages, sedan chairs, weapons, mounts, temples, animals, flowers and plants, etc., to meet the needs of different repertoires. The backrest is exquisitely carved and lifelike. It is made by dyeing, painting, overlapping, dotting, blurring, and hooking with different shades of colors, and the colors are bold, rich and harmonious, and quite charming. The backrest is made of the best yellow cowhide, which is divided into 6 processes: nitre skinning, shoveling, grinding, carving, connecting, and coloring. The saltpeter skin is mixed with water such as Glauber's salt, chicken manure, lime, etc., and buried in the clear water riverbed. After half a month, the skin is taken out and dried, and then it can be carved, connected and colored. Finally, cowhide glue or "foreign medicine" (i.e. transparent watercolor) is used to fix the color and shape. The production tools are relatively simple, only a small number of tools such as scissors, foot knives, electrician's knives, and awls are needed. The wax board used as a mat is particularly particular. The raw materials are camellia petal ash, beeswax feces, bitter bamboo ash and dam oil (sesame oil). Its characteristics are moderate hardness and softness, no damage to the carving knife, knife marks can be restored, and the tip of the knife will not take away the wax. Tengchong shadow puppets are high and heavy, almost two or three times larger than those in other places, so they are called "Yunnan Big Shadow Puppet". Exquisite carvings and lifelike images are unique among domestic shadow puppets. They have high artistic aesthetic value and collection value. They are one of the influential folk crafts in Tengchong. With the popularization of modern media such as film, television and the Internet, the protection and inheritance of Tengchong shadow puppetry has been impacted. Currently, the only troupe that can carry out shadow puppet production and performance activities normally in Tengchong is the Liujiazhai shadow puppet troupe in Gudong Town, and its representative artist Liu Yongzhou is also facing the worry of lack of successors.