Found in the Shadows: McDonald’s turned 6,000 restaurants into puppet theatres

In the 1950s, 48 shadow puppetry troupes toured across China. By 2025, only two remained.

McDonald’s China found a surprisingly good use for the warm light inside its restaurants. For Lunar New Year, Found in the Shadows turned more than 6,000 restaurant windows into stages for the fading art. Created by LEO Shanghai, the campaign gave shadow puppetry something it urgently needed. Thousands of new places to perform and a new generation to perform for.

The Stage Was Already There

Chinese shadow puppetry works by placing colourful leather or paper figures between a light and a translucent screen. Music, singing and movement bring the characters to life. UNESCO added the art to its Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2011.

McDonald’s restaurants already had the two things every shadow play needs. Large glass windows and plenty of light behind them. During the Spring Festival, those windows became screens facing the street.

The idea gave the performances a place in ordinary city life. Families could walk past a McDonald’s and suddenly find a centuries-old Chinese art playing inside. Across the country, the restaurant shows reached more than seven million people, according to the campaign team.

Employees Became Puppeteers

The campaign went much further than projected displays. LEO Shanghai partnered with Wang Shadow Puppetry, led by fifth-generation inheritor Dang Feihua, to create the performances.

More than 1,000 McDonald’s employees were then trained to operate the puppets and perform live inside the restaurants. Meanwhile, the traditional figures were adapted so they could be controlled more easily with one hand. Some had moving faces, several arms or long tongues that could spring into action during the show.

The performances also travelled beyond the restaurants. A mobile theatre visited 12 cities, while a shadow puppet boat brought the show to the Qinhuai River in Nanjing. Still, the restaurant windows remained the heart of the idea. More than 6,000 locations hosted the performances, giving the art a stage far larger than any cultural venue could offer on its own.

Twenty-Five Million Children Joined the Show

Watching was only one part of the campaign. McDonald’s also redesigned its meal packaging as DIY puppet kits. Children could remove the pieces, build their own characters and start performing at the table.

As a result, the restaurant became both the theatre and the workshop. A child could watch an employee perform behind the window, then learn the same basic movement with a puppet from their meal box.

The physical experience was joined by a Lunar New Year film created with Shanghai Animation Film Studio. The film mixed shadow puppetry with Shaanbei storytelling and followed young people finding their own way through familiar family moments during the festival. It extended the campaign across Douyin, Bilibili and Xiaohongshu while keeping the traditional visual language intact.

What Made It Different

According to the campaign’s award entry, McDonald’s distributed 25 million puppet kits, generated 1.67 billion impressions and recorded more than 36 million interactions. The brand also reported its strongest Spring Festival affinity scores since 2020, record sales speed for its seasonal products and a 0.3-point increase in market share.

The numbers are large, but the smartest part of Found in the Shadows is much smaller. McDonald’s noticed that every brightly lit restaurant window could already perform the basic job of a shadow puppet screen.

A window became a stage. A meal box gave children their first puppet. Families found an old art during a meal they were already having. For a few weeks, shadow puppetry was no longer something people had to search for. It was playing at the McDonald’s down the street.

Credits

Found in the Shadows (2025) — McDonald’s China, by LEO Shanghai. Cultural partner: Wang Shadow Puppetry. Animation partner: Shanghai Animation Film Studio. Part of McDonald’s China’s “Wishing You a Golden Arches Year” Lunar New Year campaign.