Tales of the Strange in Southern Shandong: Old Rouge

The opera stage in an old street in southern Shandong collapsed. Liu Hongyi was forty-seven.

Her father sold her to an opera troupe when she was twelve. She performed as a leading female role for thirty-five years, acting out other people's partings and reunions onstage, while no one ever painted her eyebrows for her offstage.

Layer upon layer of rouge made her a star. Only when she washed it off, layer by layer, was she Liu Hongyi again.

The stage had collapsed, the troupe had disbanded, and her water sleeves had grown old. Yet the person in the mirror looked more and more like the little girl from Liugou Village all those years ago.

This time, Records of Strange Tales from Southern Shandong tells no stories of dragon bones or formation cores. It tells only how a performer sang her entire life into her rouge, and how, after the show was over, she removed her makeup alone.

"There is a show onstage and people below. When the show ends, the people grow old."