My name’s Alisha. I’m 12 years old. My dad is from London and my mom is from Beijing. I speak (说) Chinese and English.

Dad’s family is very big and I have eight cousins. Amy is my favorite cousin. She’s 13. She’s very nice. She is in New York. I will go there to see her next Monday.

I have a brother. His name is Damian. He is 15 years old. He likes tennis. He plays tennis with his friends every Tuesday and Thursday. He watches tennis games every Friday.

I don’t like playing tennis. That’s too boring. I like taekwondo (跆拳道). My friend Skye and I are in a taekwondo class this term. We think it’s useful. I like computers. I want to be a computer engineer (工程师) one day. I think that is very interesting.

When Wang Haiyan was young, her favorite toy wasn’t Barbie dolls. Instead, she started learning to make shadow puppets (皮影戏偶) from her father at 13. Now 43, Wang has spent 30 years practicing and spreading the art Shadow puppetry is a form of theater that use puppets made from leather (皮) or paper, accompanied (伴奏) by music and singing. It was invented during the Western Han Dynasty (206 BC-AD24). It tells us about folk tales and historical stories, passing down culture and customs over thousands of years.

Shadow puppetry is all about creating the puppets and performing with them. Wang’s hometown of Hua county (县)，Shaanxi, is known as the birthplace of the folk art. Puppet- makers must follow 24 steps to make the puppets including washing the leather, carving (雕刻) and painting, according to Wang. Carving is the most difficult part.

“We have a special carving skill-moving the leather under the knife” Wang said. It took Wang three years to master this skill. She used a brick (砖) to make her left hand more powerful while practicing. It takes about 3, 000 carves to make a shadow puppet. “The complex (复杂的) steps make it hard to pass down the folk art,” she said.

But Wang has found ways to do so. In recent years, she has made shadow puppets about traditional cartoons and given live streaming (网络直播) peformances. “I hope more and more young people enjoy shadow puppetry and pass it down,” she said.