Chinese craftsman reinvents business model to promote traditional opera

Guizhou: It has become a daily routine for Qin Fazhong, a 49-year-old craftsman, to colour masks after he gets up in the morning.

Qin lives in the village of Zhouguan, Anshun city, southwest China's Guizhou province. This region has kept a traditional opera called Dixi, which was passed down from the Ming dynasty more than 600 years ago and was added to a national list of intangible cultural heritage in 2006. Dixi performers wear various masks while performing operas about history and rituals to ward off evil spirits.

Zhouguan is home to many craftsmen like Qin who specialize in making masks, especially for Dixi. In the 1980 and 1990s, the mask industry here was moving towards fast lane, thanks to the rapid development of the market economy.

Qin started learning mask-carving skills from the village's older generations. After becoming a master himself in his early twenties, Qin chose to start a business. He set up a factory and hired workers. And his masks soon gained popularity overseas, owing to his hard work and exceptional carving skills.

Although Qin earned a lot of money, he was not very happy, because he found that customers or visitors who liked masks didn't understand the expressions masks bear and even few craftsmen could interpret them.

So Qin spent 10 years studying the stories and history of the masks by reading books and consulting the older generations, while collecting different types of masks. In 2016, he established a private mask museum in his house and started telling mask stories to visitors. Since then, his museum has witnessed more than 200,000 visits.

Qin said that the happiest thing for him to do is to share his understanding of masks with visitors from home and abroad, and he has determined to be a cultural communicator. The good news is that more and more people like Qin step up and devote themselves to spreading traditional cultures.