African Girl Changes Her Faces in China
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Sierra Leonean International superstar, Mariatu Kargbo has been in China for many years. In 2007 she won the fourth award at Starlight Broadway at CCTV, a highly popular program at China’s largest television network. In 2009, she received her two well deserved awards at the Miss World contest in Johannesburg, South Africa. She was Miss World Fashion Designer 2009 and Miss World Talent 2009.
Maria owes her Miss World Talent to face changing, a special performance stunt popular in China. She staged it at the pageant. She learned it from Hu Dongxiao with Zhejiang Wuju Opera Troupe. Hu Dongxiao is a disciple of Huang Daozheng, a master of Sichuan Opera, whose face changing is the best known in China.
Maria visited Hu Dongxiao many times in Jinhua, a city in central Zhejiang Province where Zhejiang Wuju Opera Troupe is based.
Maria’s Master
A Kongfu artist, Hu Dongxiao is now a deputy director of art creativity department of the troupe. Face-changing in Wuju Opera is different from the namesake in Sichuan Opera. It is usually not staged independently. It has to be a natural part of the whole opera play whereas face changing in Sichuan Opera is a little bit simple though more amazing. In order to change faces on the stage, an actor is said to wear a lot of silk thin facial masks, previously painted, on his face. Each silk mask, thin and soft, is worn on the face carefully one upon another. Each mask is attached with a silk thread. An actor dances and peels one face after another with the cover-up of dexterous movements of his arms. This performance is highly complicated and thrilling.
Hu Dongxiao learned the face-changing technique from his Wuju Opera masters. But he did not know how Sichuan Opera masters changed faces. After watching some face-changing stunts in some Sichuan Opera plays on television, he studied and experimented on what he thought was the right way. In 1998, Huang Daozheng, a face-changing master of Sichuan Opera, came to stage shows in Jinhua.
Intent on getting some important tips from the master, Hu Dongxiao tagged along. The self-appointed stage assistant eagerly carried the master’s baggage and theatrical costumes, chatted with the master and went to dinner with the master, watched the master’s performance from the side of the stage. In the master’s last night in Jinhua, the young kongfu artist showed his face-changing techniques to the master. Huang was deeply impressed by the eager young man’s diligence and cleverness. Huang commented that Hu got the basics right. The master gave Hu Dongxiao some tips on how to put peeled-off faces back instantly on the stage after changing from faces back to his face, and on how to make face masks.
Hu Dongxiao later used the techniques he had learned from the master in his performance. The effect was electrifying. Not content with the success, he has experimented more and developed his own system. Nowadays, he can change 20 to 30 faces in a show. And during the changes, he can also change back to his naked face and back to silk faces again repeatedly. Hu Dongxiao has performed his unique face-changing trick in foreign countries while traveling with the troupe.
Maria’s Studies
In 2004, 18-year-old Maria came to China first to attend the annual Weifang World Kite Festival in Shandong, a coastal province in eastern China. She competed for the Miss World Kite and came out ranking in the top three. During the festival she came down with appendicitis. Unable to speak Chinese, she telephoned a Chinese woman she had met in the train on her way to Weifang. The woman came and helped her out. Maria stayed in China and began to learn Chinese.
To prepare her competition for Miss World in 2009, Mariatu Kargbo wished to stage a special Chinese stunt. At that time, she was able to swallow fire, a magician’s trick she had mastered while still in her motherland. She turned to Wang Jianbing for help. Wang used to be a Wuju Opera artist in Jinhua and he was one of the many Chinese she made friends with while competing at Starlight Broadway in 2007. Wang mentioned to her in a chat that Hu Dongxiao with the troupe in Jinhua was able to change faces. Now Mariatu asked Wang Jianbing if he could make the request on her behalf.
Hu Dongxiao turned the request down immediately without much thinking. The stunt is the top secret in the Chinese opera circle. It is a well-guarded trade secret only a handful of Chinese know. Teaching the secret to a foreigner was out of the question.
But friends of Mariatu tried hard to lobby on the behalf of the Sierra Leonean girl. Hu Dongxiao became curious about Mariatu. He googled Mariatu online and got information about her. The facts established her as a girl who loves china and Chinese people and speaks very good Chinese. Hu changed his mind, thinking probably Maria could be a very good envoy to help spread Chinese culture farther.
After Mariatu pledged to guard the trade secret in the strict Chinese way, that is, she is not to reveal the trick to anyone else, not even to her dearest family members, Hu Dongxiao agreed to teach.
In September 2009, Mariatu came to Jinhua. At the rehearsal room, she began to learn the trick. She spent a week learning the basics. In the following months, she came to Jinhua three times to put her act together under the guidance of her master. Hu Dongxiao painted and cut the silk masks for her and placed an order of her costumes in Jinhua. It was in a big market in Jinhua that Mariatu purchased a large heap of fabrics, which fashion designers and tailors in Beijing made into some fashions under her instruction. It was these fashions that won her Miss World Fashion Designer 2009 and it was the face-changing that won her Miss World Talent 2009 in South Africa.
As a winner of Miss World pageant 2009, she toured and gave performances with other winners. Her face changing was absolutely a sensation at these performances. When asked how she learned the stunt, her reply is her gratitude to China and Chinese people. It is due to the love from China and the Chinese people that she learned the trick and is able to show the Chinese art to the world. It is said that Mariatu Kargbo will show the art at the birthday party of the Queen of UK in upcoming November.
She has added african elements to her performance. She uses African music and wraps up the performance with an African dance. The combination of Chinese and African adds exotic effects to her show. Mariatu has performed the face-changing on many occasions. Many of these performances have been televised. Many people have proposed to learn the trick. She has declined all the requests. She says she will never even teach her mother how to change faces. It is now her biggest secret. She does not allow anyone to see her face masks and how she puts them on before every show.
CCTV has made a two-episode documentary that relates her story and displays her face-changing performance. Two directors and a cameraman from CCTV visited Hu Dongxiao in Jinhua. It took the crew five days to finish their interviews in Jinhua.