Saturday, April 05, 2008
Second Thoughts?
My wife has had friends from Sydney visiting all this week. She has accompanied them by day and I have joined them at night for dinner. They are Australian Chinese of Malaysian and Singaporean origin aged between 72 and 85. They are retired of course and have enough money, sensibly invested, to allow a lot of travel.
Susanna has taken them to all the usual tourist spots in Suzhou, Humble Administrator's Garden, Tongli, Mudu, Hanshan Temple, Huqiu Pagoda and also spend time around the Jinji Lake eating at the great restaurants there. But on Friday, which was the new public holiday here of Qingming, when one is supposed to spend the day tending the grave of one's parents, we had dinner in Shanghai at the Baguo Buyi Restaurant which they had requested.
Baguo Buyi, or Sichuan Folk Restaurant is a chain of restaurants in Beijing and Shanghai which serve typical Sichuan food, but which feature a nightly show of the Sichuan folk speciality, Bianlian, or Mask Switching Performance - an extraordinary performance in which an actor, dressed in the fashion of an opera general, rapidly changes the soft fabric masks over his face during a lightning like swish of an arm across his face. The effect is electric, especially towards the end of the performance when the performer mingles with the crowd and asks someone to touch the mask. Before the hand can touch his face the mask is stunningly switched without apparent movement by the artist. I looked around at my worldly companions at this point - their jaws dropped as the full house roared their delight. We clapped until our hands ached.
The performance had lasted no longer than 10 minutes but we felt as if we had witnessed something extraordinary - at the end the performer tore away the last mask only to give us another shock. It was a female performer! The art of Bianlian has been one restricted to males only and effectively limited to Sichuanese only.
Recently in China there has been a scandal. An African student had somehow managed to persuade someone to teach him this arcane skill. When he performed it on one of the many 'talent shows' which welcome foreign performers, there was uproar and the hapless African was forced to make an abject and tearful apology for this flagrant attempt to steal Chinese culture. Strangely he went on to give other performances. I was half expecting him to be our performer that night.
Years ago my wife told me that a famous Hong Kong actor, Andy Lau, had taken part in a film about a Bianlian artist and had requested training in the technique - it was denied him on traditional grounds. That would have been in the 90's so things must have changed a lot in the time being.
It is an interesting observation that my wife and I have been to Shanghai only a couple of times together in the past year and each time to an exceptional restaurant which really makes us realise that although our live in Suzhou is comfortable and quiet, Shanghai is really the place to be for sensory stimulation. I suppose we don't need that a lot at our age, but we do feel an odd feeling of regret whenever we go to one of these extraordinary restaurants that you can only get at the great cities of the world - cities who can provide a full house of excited diners night after night throughout the week to justify the huge investment such restaurants. Suzhou just can't cut it I'm afraid. It's lucky for us Shanghai is only two hours away by car.
My wife has had friends from Sydney visiting all this week. She has accompanied them by day and I have joined them at night for dinner. They are Australian Chinese of Malaysian and Singaporean origin aged between 72 and 85. They are retired of course and have enough money, sensibly invested, to allow a lot of travel.
Susanna has taken them to all the usual tourist spots in Suzhou, Humble Administrator's Garden, Tongli, Mudu, Hanshan Temple, Huqiu Pagoda and also spend time around the Jinji Lake eating at the great restaurants there. But on Friday, which was the new public holiday here of Qingming, when one is supposed to spend the day tending the grave of one's parents, we had dinner in Shanghai at the Baguo Buyi Restaurant which they had requested.
Baguo Buyi, or Sichuan Folk Restaurant is a chain of restaurants in Beijing and Shanghai which serve typical Sichuan food, but which feature a nightly show of the Sichuan folk speciality, Bianlian, or Mask Switching Performance - an extraordinary performance in which an actor, dressed in the fashion of an opera general, rapidly changes the soft fabric masks over his face during a lightning like swish of an arm across his face. The effect is electric, especially towards the end of the performance when the performer mingles with the crowd and asks someone to touch the mask. Before the hand can touch his face the mask is stunningly switched without apparent movement by the artist. I looked around at my worldly companions at this point - their jaws dropped as the full house roared their delight. We clapped until our hands ached.
The performance had lasted no longer than 10 minutes but we felt as if we had witnessed something extraordinary - at the end the performer tore away the last mask only to give us another shock. It was a female performer! The art of Bianlian has been one restricted to males only and effectively limited to Sichuanese only.
Recently in China there has been a scandal. An African student had somehow managed to persuade someone to teach him this arcane skill. When he performed it on one of the many 'talent shows' which welcome foreign performers, there was uproar and the hapless African was forced to make an abject and tearful apology for this flagrant attempt to steal Chinese culture. Strangely he went on to give other performances. I was half expecting him to be our performer that night.
Years ago my wife told me that a famous Hong Kong actor, Andy Lau, had taken part in a film about a Bianlian artist and had requested training in the technique - it was denied him on traditional grounds. That would have been in the 90's so things must have changed a lot in the time being.
It is an interesting observation that my wife and I have been to Shanghai only a couple of times together in the past year and each time to an exceptional restaurant which really makes us realise that although our live in Suzhou is comfortable and quiet, Shanghai is really the place to be for sensory stimulation. I suppose we don't need that a lot at our age, but we do feel an odd feeling of regret whenever we go to one of these extraordinary restaurants that you can only get at the great cities of the world - cities who can provide a full house of excited diners night after night throughout the week to justify the huge investment such restaurants. Suzhou just can't cut it I'm afraid. It's lucky for us Shanghai is only two hours away by car.
