Spitting Fire, Changing Face

In the Sichuan Opera there is, among other dazzling sights, a performance by the "Spitting Fire, Changing Face" magicians who rush out onto the stage from smoke and fanfare like multicolored demons. The two scariest ones blow huge plumes of fire from their mouths to the sound of gongs and old Chinese music.

The young ones leap and spin around like birds with sequined capes and elaborate headdresses, and with each clap of their hands or stomp of their feet and without touching anything they change their mask from red to blue, from a sad to an angry ghost face.

The music goes faster and the demons jump higher and kick and with each kick they change face again, to orange, to white, big-eyed green and red-rimmed black.

One after another they change their faces quicker than blinking and suddenly they're unmasked and smiling humans. Then again as they whirl around and back again it's the glowering monster, a surprised silver clown.

One came towards me and shook my hand and just as fast as I could give it to him he went from demon to man, and I was startled because i couldn't see anything at all that snapped his face up or down.

"No Chinese people know how they do it," said our friend afterwards as we walked home in the dark. "It's a family secret that's been passed down for thousands of years," he said, the secret of the Face Changers.

And so goes this country, changing faces as it dances around the wheel of earth. It pops up and now it's a menace, a tyrant, now a harmless old woman, a dreamer, a firebreather, a hermit, beggar, scholar, warlord; dancing all the time.

Underneath is something unchanging; the same stories told and the same gongs crashing through all the ruckus of time. Unmasked, it's the same girl smiling, playing her tricks, milennia old, and China knows this.

China knows all things have passed and will come again, and in this red dust, life is always the same.