If you follow the Fooleum, you will have gathered that there is a relative paucity of images of Chinese jesters and related entertainers, at least when compared to the pictoral plethora in Europe.
So I was delighted to discover this Eastern Han dynasty (25-220 AD) tomb mural featuring a fully paid up juggler, among other entertainers. It’s from these kind of images that we can begin piecing together a tentative sense of what Chinese jesters might have looked like.
And here is a fine earthenware Chinese figurine of a (probably foreign) entertainer, apparently carefully balancing something on his nose.
Image credit: A banquet scene mural featuring jugglers and other entertainers, in the Dahuting Tomb 打虎亭汉墓, late Eastern Han Dynasty (25-220 AD), in Zhengzhou, Henan, China. The tomb has vaulted burial chambers with murals depicting daily life; Wikimedia Commons
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