A five-year-old Malaysian boy has gone viral on Chinese social media for performing face-changing routines in China, China Press reported.
The child’s mother shared videos of him dressed in traditional Chinese opera garb and performing lightning-fast bian lian routines which wowed netizens in China.
According to the mother, the son saw a performance at a hotpot restaurant and decided that he wanted to learn the artform. He is currently under the tutelage of a face-changing master and has gained many fans on Chinese cyberspace.
It was reported that face-changing, known traditionally as bian lian, was a dramatic art that is part of Sichuan opera.
Performers wear masks with vivid colours depicting well-known characters in Chinese opera and will change from one face mask to another with the swipe of a fan, a movement of the head or a wave of the hand.
Traditionally, bian lian is an artform which is passed down from one generation to the next within families to prevent its trade secrets from being leaked to outsiders.
> Despite being in his 70s, martial arts veteran Sammo Hung announced he has no plans to retire from making films yet, Sin Chew Daily reported.
“In my past life, I think I may have been a bull,” he said, referring to his stubbornness and refusal to quit.
The 72-year-old said he has never stopped thinking about his next project since joining the movie-making industry when he was only 16.
“Every time after I finish filming a movie, I will think of something new I could do in my next film. Even if I am filming one movie after another without rest, I do not feel tired at all,” he said during a recent appearance at the 37th Tokyo International Film Festival.
When asked if he had any wishes for the future, Hung replied saying that he wanted to be healthy, happy and see a revival of the Hong Kong film industry.
“I hope the audiences will continue to support Hong Kong movies,” he said.
To date, Hung’s film career has spanned more than 50 years.
● The above article is compiled from the vernacular newspapers (Bahasa Malaysia, Chinese and Tamil dailies). As such, stories are grouped according to the respective language/medium. Where a paragraph begins with this ' >'sign, it denotes a separate news item.
