Li Tian-lu

Li Tien-lu (24 December 191013 August 1998) was a Taiwanese puppeteer. He is best known to the international audience for playing principal characters in several Taiwanese films directed by Hou Hsiao-hsien.

Biography Born in Taiwan in 1910, He founded the puppet theatre troupe Almost Like Life in 1932, aged 22. The group ended performances in 1937, soon after the Second Sino-Japanese War began and Japanese authorities censored Taiwanese Hokkien entertainment. Almost Like Life returned to the stage in 1941. They became even more well-known under the Kuomintang government. Penso established the Theatre du Petit Miroir troupe in Paris in 1975. Other students of Li included his sons Chen Hsi-huang and Li Chuan-tsan, Madeleine Beresford, and Margaret Moody.

Li also performed Peking opera, Taiwanese opera, and Hakka opera. In 1995, the government of France named Li a knight of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. He died at the age of 87 on 13 August 1998.

Commemoration Li Tien-lu was the subject of a Google Doodle on the occasion of what would have been his 110th birthday on 24 December 2020.