The old man with the hooked face

When I was doing an interview with a “non-heritage craftsman”, I accidentally came into contact with Mr. Sheng Hua, who is a Beijing Dongcheng District-level inheritor of “Beijing opera face painting”.

Although he is already seventy years old, he is hale and hearty and does not show any signs of old age. He was very talkative, and when he talked about the past, especially when he mentioned the Peking Opera face painting, he couldn’t turn off the conversation once he opened the box.

Sheng Hua is sketching the face (Photo by the author) Sheng Hua is sketching the face (Photo by the author)

In 1958, an enrollment brochure was published in the Beijing Daily, which read, “Free food and costume management – China Opera School (predecessor of China Academy of Opera).”

This statement was like a ray of light to Sheng Hua, who was 12 years old at the time.

Sheng Hua was a native of Wanziying village in Chaoyang District, Beijing, and his parents were both honest crofters who had nothing to do with Peking Opera. In those days, the countryside was a difficult place, and for him, to be able to eat and wear warm clothes was his greatest wish in life. At that time, he, singing, reading, doing, playing, none of them have learned, but after the preliminary examination and the re-examination, he actually broke into the pear garden line all the way through – nothing to say, this is called “God rewarded food to eat”.

After entering the opera school, he was assigned to the net line, learning to sing the flower face. The “net” is the best way to identify the line in Beijing opera, no matter in which play, where the face painted with colorful “big flower face” role, such as big flower face Bao Zheng, two flower face Cao Cao, red face Huang Gai, black face Yuchi Gong, purple face Xu Yanzhao, etc., all belong to the net line.

When a newcomer learns a new play for the first time, he often asks his predecessors to hook his face. Guo Yongqing, Zhao Rongxin, Zhao Rongpeng, Lin Shengzhu, Sun Shengwen and other famous predecessors have all hooked their faces for young Shenghua, so Shenghua remembers the faces of the Peking Opera characters he played on stage very well.

After only six months of attending the theater school, Sheng Hua made his first appearance on stage with the play “The Second Palace”, and went to Huairen Hall in Zhongnanhai with Li Weikang (a famous Peking Opera actor), who was enrolled in the same year, to perform for President Liu Shaoqi’s birthday. Little Shenghua had a shaved head and was given the role of “Xu Yanzhao” by Mr. Zhao Rongxin (a famous Peking Opera performer, associate professor of the Chinese Academy of Opera and Opera Educator), who told him as he was hooking his face: “Remember, ‘Xu Yanzhao Remember, ‘Xu Yanzhao’ is a purple six-point face, the character is an old warrior general, the score is very simple, when you come across the role of ‘Huang Gai’ in the future, just change the purple to red.”

In 1960, Sheng Hua, who was in his second year at the theater school, took part in a performance of “The Village of Evil Tigers” for the whole school, playing the role of “Pu Tian Diao”. This role was “born with a face like a pot bottom, five short and three long, good at using a single sword”, one of the “four small southern battlers”. At that time, Sheng Hua did not know how to hook the face, in the backstage, he asked Mr. Bai Qingxiang old man to help.

Mr. Bai was from the famous Peking Opera class “Bin Qing She” in Beijing in the Republic of China, and he had a solid background. When Sheng Hua raised his face, his eyes went up and down, left and right, the old man held the pen in one hand and his chin in the other, and after a few minutes of work, he put aside the pen, patted his shoulder and said, “Kid, it’s done!”

Sheng Hua looked in the mirror, “Huh? Why did Mr. Bai only draw half of my face?”

“Draw the rest yourself!”

“But I’ve never drawn …… before.”

“If you don’t know how to draw your own face, how can you sing in the future? You can’t bring a teacher to every performance? Do it yourself!”

It was like rushing a duck onto a shelf, Sheng Hua picked up a pen and awkwardly traced one stroke at a time, while Mr. Bai was telling him how high to draw here and how long to draw there, after a lot of effort, finally finished.

“Mr. Bai, do you think my drawing is okay?” Shenghua asked.

“No, not here, I need to change it.” Old Mr. Bai took his finger to him to erase a place, “Remember, in the future to play ‘Pu Tian Diao’ have to hook themselves, can no longer find a teacher!”

This incident deeply touched the teenager Shenghua, he thought to himself: “Singing flower face can not hook their own face, just like a soldier can not hit the target. In the future, I must learn to hook the face.”

The “Pu Tian Diao” with the face of “Purple Flower and Three Tiles” was on the stage, with his bold eyebrows, big eyes, vertical eyebrows, and full of aura in every move, and his interpretation had some taste. After the curtain call, sitting in front of the makeup mirror, he stared at the “Pu Tian Diao” as if the person in the mirror was another self.

Sheng Hua hooking his face (Photo by the author) Sheng Hua hooking his face (Photo by the author)

At the end of the eight years of theater school, 30 or 40 plays were performed, and the naive young man became a young man of great courage. But when the students were sharpening their fists and thinking of going to a bigger stage to show their skills, the Cultural Revolution swept the country. The students of the theater school were scattered all over the world, and Sheng Hua and some of his classmates went to the army in Zhangjiakou to participate in labor exercises and receive re-education.

It was a long ordeal, and everyone was looking forward to returning to the Peking Opera stage as soon as possible. In Zhangjiakou, I was talking to my old classmates late at night and drinking, and when the cups touched, it was the sound of broken dreams. As long as the good things about Peking Opera are mentioned, Sheng Hua is always talking about it: “The cultural heritage of traditional Peking Opera is as vast as the sea, and most of the interpretations are historical stories, and the Peking Opera lyrics are concise, condensed, and regular, with a focus on rhyming, rhyming, and singing in a subtle and pleasant manner, and the literary context is far-reaching and vast… …”

In 1972, Sheng Hua, who had been in Zhangjiakou for three years, finally returned to Beijing, where he had longed to be, and was transferred to the recently formed Beijing Military District War Friends Peking Opera Troupe. But within a year, he was transferred to the logistics department of the military district to do administrative work.

At that time, the traditional Beijing opera was banned and the face painting disappeared from the world. After parting from the Peking Opera stage, Sheng Hua’s love for Peking Opera stopped at face painting, and his study of face painting became deeper and deeper, and he spent almost all his spare time on collecting and painting faces.

At that time, there was a lack of materials and it was hard to find face painting molds. Sheng Hua had a thought and locked his eyes on eggshells, and began to try to sketch faces on eggshells. At that time, eggs were supplied by ticket, and each household was supplied with two pounds per month, which was quite expensive. Shenghua found copper wire, nesting it into a circle, and when selecting eggs, he put the eggs into the copper circle and compared them to the right size, then picked them out, and after processing the eggshells inside and out, he sketched the faces on the eggshells. I don’t know how many of them were hooked, but relatives and friends found them interesting and came to the door every now and then to ask for them – there are hundreds of egg shells in the bookcase now, and if he hadn’t stopped them, they would have disappeared.

Restoring the original Beijing opera faces on eggshells not only released Sheng Hua’s long-suppressed emotions, but also improved his face-hooking skills. In those turbulent times, after work and dinner every day, Sheng Hua would dive into his study of a dozen square meters, and the world of face painting was his grand garden of fun.

“At this age, I can’t even draw with a brush, look how fine this is!” When interviewed, he picked up an egg-shell face painting and examined it carefully, as the sun rose and the moon set.

After the reform and opening up in 1978, material life gradually became more abundant, and Shenghua was in a position to start drawing the faces on the blank molds made of clay. Traditional Peking Opera resumed performances, but many repertoires were lost. The Peking Opera Repertory Dictionary contains thousands of plays, but only a hundred or so can be seen on stage today, most of which have been lost.

For more than a decade after that, he kept his face painting skills under wraps, but he kept a very low profile, so much so that his colleagues who had worked with him for many years did not know that he spent most of his spare time here. At that time, Sheng Hua had already started a family, and his lover thought it was a good thing that his husband insisted on it, and his children supported him, so he hardly had to interfere with household chores. Like before he got married, he came home from work, ate, washed his hands carefully, and then sat down at the table and concentrated on drawing the faces.

In the process of drawing and systematically studying the face painting of Peking Opera, Sheng Hua learned from the side that Mr. Liu Zengfu, a researcher of Peking Opera, had written a monograph on the face painting of Peking Opera and had painted 424 pairs of face painting.

As early as in the 1950s, his face painting level was so unique that even Master Mei Lanfang praised him: “He has mastered the characteristics of each school of face painting skillfully, and is indeed unique.”

Mr. Liu Zengfu looking at Sheng Hua’s long scroll (Photo by the author) Mr. Liu Zengfu looking at Sheng Hua’s long scroll (Photo by the author)

In 1994, through the introduction of Geng Qichang (a first-class actor of the National Peking Theater of China and the lover of Li Weikang), a classmate of the Chinese opera school, Sheng Hua was able to get to know Mr. Liu Zengfu. On his first visit, although he knew that Sheng Hua also came from a professional class and had sung flower faces for eight years, and had his own way of hooking faces, he did not agree to be his teacher for the first time, but inspected Sheng Hua for almost a year.

In July of the next year, Sheng Hua, who had already reached the end of his life, finally got what he wanted and became the only student of the old man to study face painting at that time. The old gentleman’s acceptance of students was based on character first and skill second. The day of formal worship, came dozens of famous Peking opera actors and actresses came to support the congratulations. In accordance with the old rules of the pear garden line, Sheng Hua to Liu Lao perform the ceremony of worship.

Sheng Hua used “like a fish in water” to describe his state of mind at that time, in his eyes, at that time, he was like a frog at the bottom of the well, although the previous also drew a lot of face painting, but the historical background and human connotation behind the face painting lack of in-depth understanding, the color of the face painting and the use of spectral style is also quite lack of fire.

In addition, Liu has sung more than 150 Peking operas, just like an encyclopedia of Peking opera, and when someone reports a play, he can explain everything from the plot, lyrics, costumes and face painting.

Although Liu Lao has never been an artist in his life, there has always been a legend of him in the Peking Opera world. Many people from this field, the ticket industry and researchers, often visit his door to consult with him or ask for advice in person. The famous calligrapher Ouyang Zhongshi, who studied under Xi Xiaobao, one of the four great scribes in his early years, holds Liu Lao in high esteem. Xi Xiaobao was a boxer and had not received any training in juvenile arts, so he did not learn many operas compared to the professional actors, and when he arrived in Beijing, he approached Liu Lao and said, “Liu Lao, there are some operas I don’t know, you have to tell me about them. I can not sing these plays myself, but I can’t not know them.” In view of Mr. Xi’s humility, Liu taught Xi Xiaobao several plays.

Liu Lao also came from a boxer background, and in 1938, he studied under a famous teacher – Wang Rongshan, whose stage name was “Old Qilin Boy”. This old man in the capital opera world is known as the “drama baggage”, know a lot of plays to envy others. The master teaches and gauges the play, and the disciple is surprised to find out that the cold programmed actions can be so moving and attractive after being decomposed and assembled and understood by the master. It is the same with face painting.

The same is true for face painting.

If he encountered a play that he had not seen for many years, Liu told Shenghua that he had to judge the character of the play according to the specific plot of the play and then draw the corresponding face. Inspired by Liu’s advice, Sheng Hua created a large number of Peking Opera face patterns. Whenever he sees his disciple’s newly created Peking Opera face painting, he praises him with words of praise: “Good! This is the way to do it! The face is drawn by people, and you are the one who sings the flower face, so if you know the rules and regulations, you can draw it boldly!”

In order to promote his disciple, Liu gave Sheng Hua 214 frames of his own hand-drawn face painting, and drew for him 46 frames of various characters that had been extinct for many years, and also left his original materials for learning face painting since 1936 to his disciple.

In 2004, he collected and published the “Chinese Peking Opera Face Book”, which contains 640 frames of face patterns, half of which are characters that have not been performed on the Peking Opera stage in recent decades or even centuries, and some of which have appeared before but have been forgotten by many people.

The roles that require face hooks in these plays that have not been seen on stage for many years, or are even on the verge of being lost, have been restored by Sheng Hua with the characters’ faces based on the only surviving storylines and singing words in the available historical materials. For example, in the Peking Opera “Shuang Guan Xing”, which has not been sung for nearly a hundred years, the faces of “Wang Yan Zhang” used to be sketched with a few strokes, but it was only after generations of old artists enriched and perfected them that the frog-like face pattern of Wang Yan Zhang was created – because “Wang Yanzhang” knew a little bit of sorcery, and half of his face was painted with frogs spitting out bubble patterns, while the other half of the frog was combined with a human face.

When talking about Beijing opera face painting, Sheng Hua’s face would light up, and the joyful molecules in his tone would rush and wave around. In his excitement, he would get up and point to the 450 Peking Opera stage faces of various colors and styles drawn by him in his living room from the ancient times to the Northern Song Dynasty, and explain them to people on the spot.

Similar to literature, the face painting is impressionistic and exaggerated, and the colorful faces are carefully colored, not just for looks. The actor’s eyes, forehead and cheeks are usually painted with various patterns such as bats, butterflies or swallow wings to exaggerate the character’s appearance, personality, moral character and other comprehensive features, and the rendering effect is divine.

People generally know that red face is loyalty, white face is treacherous, and black face is upright. But just seeing the red, yellow, blue, green and black faces, how many names can be seen? Everyone knows that Cao Cao is shown with a white face, the intention is to disguise the true face of the character. So, how to show his inner treacherous character? –Cao Cao is very suspicious and hides a knife in his smile, therefore, the eye sockets are hooked into ‘small triangular eyes’, the eyebrows are hooked into mantis eyebrows, and the seal is hooked into oblique bat lines. Therefore, the eye sockets are hooked into ‘small triangle eyes’, the eyebrows are hooked into mantis eyebrows, and the seal is hooked into oblique bat lines.

In many people’s inherent impression, Zhang Fei is a grumpy, courageous, brave, and brave man image, in the standardized style of Beijing opera face, to “Zhang Fei” hook black face, if not hooked “leopard head and eyes” style, will be biased.

But Zhang Fei’s eyebrows are a pair of bats image, why? Because Zhang Fei actually also makes good use of strategy. In the Beijing opera “Chang Ban Po”, the “cross-horse Danyang Bridge”, in the face of Cao Cao’s army of 100,000, Zhang Fei only used dozens of cavalry to scare back, to the “fierce Zhang Fei” eyebrows hooked into a flying bat, is to highlight the role of the character still has a clever side.

Zhang Fei in the Peking Opera “Chang Ban Po” (stills from “Chang Ban Po”)

“The civil official who hooks the black face is generally to show the character’s rigidity and uprightness, the typical character is Bao Zheng, who is iron-faced and selfless; the military general has a black broken flower face Yang Qilang, with a Chinese calligraphy cursive ‘tiger’ character in the center of his forehead, signifying that he is a black tiger star coming down to earth, and a wavy pattern on both sides of his cheeks resembling tears, signifying that he will eventually be charmed by the treacherous minister Pan Renmei with medicinal wine and tied to a banana tree to be shot to death by random arrows; Xiang Yu’s face is also predominantly black, using only black and white, and the three deformed ‘Shou’ characters on his face imply that he is a short-lived man, with large drooping bags under his eyes, signaling his rigidity and self-absorption, distinctly portraying him as a tragic figure ……”

Sheng Hua said, “face” two words split, “face” refers to the face of the person, “spectrum” refers to the norms and rules, which play, which role with what spectrum chart, to be based on the evidence, do this business, can not be messed up.

Hearing him say so, some people are muttering: the old ancestors summed up the formula, want to change a change will not be hanged?

Shenghua said, then you should listen to the story of Qian Jinfu.

In the late Qing Dynasty and early Republican period, there was a face actor named Qian Jinfu, who was a minister of the Qing court’s Shengping Office (the institution in charge of the court’s opera performance activities in the Qing Dynasty). This old man’s face painting was known as “one of the best in the world”, with both realistic and brushwork, and his lines were well-proportioned and smooth, whether it was an old face, a whole face, or a broken face, they were all very handsome and highlighted the comprehensive characteristics of the people in the play.

At that time, in the Peking Opera “Ding Jun Shan”, the face of “Xia Hou Yuan” was a broken face, and anyone who looked at it would think he was a “straw man”, without the style of a great general. Qian Lao thought about it, always felt that Xiahou Yuan’s face is not right – Dingjun Mountain is a place of war, if Xiahou Yuan does not have the ability, proficient in the art of war Cao Cao can send him to guard it? Although Xiahou Yuan eventually lost Huang Zhong dragging knife plan to kill, but he was killed in battle, died in the right place, although defeat is still honorable. This play is mainly to show the veteran “Huang Zhong” wisdom and fearlessness, if only to set off the veteran’s style, Xia Houyuan’s face was designed to be a wine bag image, not relevant, but also did not play a good effect.

Money old by repeatedly sketching in their own face to find the feeling, and finally designed and stereotyped a brave and resourceful, majestic Xiahou Yuan face, the character image before and after a world of difference. Once this face was released, it became a sensation in the whole Peking Opera world. It is said in the literature that when Qian Lao played the role of “Xiahou Yuan”, the opera house thundered with applause, and many people even bought tickets to the opera house just to see the new face of Xiahou Yuan sketched by Qian Lao. Since then, although there are differences in the brushwork of the faces drawn by different schools of thought on the Beijing opera stage, all performances of the character “Xiahou Yuan” basically follow this new face of Qian Lao.

Another classic face drawn by Qian Lao is Huang Chao in the traditional Peking Opera play “Xiangmei Temple”.

This play tells the story of Huang Chao, a monk of Xiangmei Temple, who hid in a big tree when Huang Chao was on the move.

Huang Chao in the Peking Opera “Xiangmei Temple” (stills from “Xiangmei Temple”)

In the past, the face of Huang Chao was characterized by crossed eyebrows, money on his face, three holes in his nose, and exposed fangs, but Qian Lao drew Huang Chao’s face with a red background representing “loyalty” and outlined it as “red flowers and three tiles “This is a clever borrowing of the “irony” technique commonly used in literary creation, using the base color to satirize the darkness and corruption of the court of Emperor Xi Zong of Tang; the eye sockets are teasing and twisted asymmetrically, signifying his unbalanced mentality, screwing up his strength and confronting the court; the left eyebrow is hooked upwards with a phoenix head, the phoenix being the king of birds; the right The right side of the eyebrows hang down to the nose, hooking out the Ruyi pattern, only the emperor holding the power can wear Ruyi – in this way, Huang Chao’s inner world is clearly revealed.

Over the years, many seniors, out of their love for Peking Opera and concern for their juniors, have constantly encouraged Sheng Hua, exhorting him to carry this banner of practical face painting on the Peking Opera stage, so that it does not go out of style and is passed on from generation to generation.

Mr. Zhu Jiayi, researcher of the National Palace Museum and opera researcher, inscribed for him, “The brush is exquisite, the ink is exquisite, and each is in its own way”; Mr. Ouyang Zhongshi, educator and calligrapher, inscribed for him, “Chinese Peking Opera Stage Faces”, saying, ” Brother Shenghua, the character I inscribed to you is different from others, with the addition of the word ‘stage’, which emphasizes that we are painting the faces applied on the stage, the authentic Peking Opera faces.”

Last year, after more than ten years of hard work, Sheng Hua finally fulfilled a wish, collecting and organizing a collection of 1036 face charts and framing them into a 46-meter long scroll. These charts are the faces of many characters that have been extinct on the stage before and after the birth of New China, and they are the only materials of Peking Opera faces for stage application in China. Whenever he talks about it now, he is as happy as a child getting a new dress, and he doesn’t know what to do.

And what makes Sheng Hua even happier is that more people are willing to get in touch with face painting nowadays. Last July, Sheng Hua held an apprenticeship ceremony at the Guoguoji Hotel in Beijing and took in nine disciples.

Whenever these times come, Sheng never forgets the two words that Mr. Liu Zengfu exhorted him six years ago on his deathbed.

“To do justice to the face of Peking Opera!”

“To do the inheritance work for the face painting of Peking Opera!”

The old days when he was young and walked on horses, those small years when he hung his voice and pressed his legs, those various roles he played in costume, always came to him unawares, reminding him all the time: “Peking opera is not dead, the stage is still here!”

“All these years, I have tried my best to live up to my master’s expectations.” Sheng Hua picked up an unformed Lu Zhishen monk wearing a golden helmet, “In the future, I will put more effort into making a batch of similar Peking opera characters. I can’t help it, although I haven’t sung on stage for 40 or 50 years, but I still can’t quit my fascination and obsession with Peking Opera.”