Wai Shui-kwan is a man of many faces. Sixty of them, to be exact. And he's working to increase that number every day. 'My goal is 100,' the 61-year-old says proudly.
And he might just make that target, with the help of his children in his act.
Wai is arguably Hong Kong's first and only master of bian lian, or face-changing, a centuries-old art form widely practised in Sichuan in which a practitioner wears many masks reflecting different characters and moods, and then quickly peels them off or replaces them with a sleight of hand, usually to music.
Wai won't reveal the tricks of his mask technique, but he changes faces in a flash. Donning the costume of a Chinese general in a video demonstration, he wears a mask portraying his character's sternness in one second and - with the flip of a long, wide sleeve across his face - happiness in the next.
Amiable and cheerful in his Tsuen Wan office bedecked with trophies and mementos from his shows, Wai explains how he's taken his act around the world for 20 years. He's performed for Chief Executive Donald Tsang Yam-kuen, Premier Wen Jiabao, Taiwan's President Ma Ying-jeou and actor Jackie Chan, but he rocketed to fame on CCTV in 2007 when he changed 44 faces in three minutes, and set a Great World Dsjjns record - the Chinese equivalent of Guinness World Records - of 58 face changes in five minutes in February last year.
Wai says he owes his success to the stage training he received as a youngster and the encouragement of his opera-performer father. Born in Nanning, in Guangxi province, by the age of 12 he was honing his Chinese opera, martial arts and acrobatics skills at the Guangxi Peking Opera Troupe. He later progressed to the Tianjin Opera School, spent his twenties as an actor and instructor at the Guangxi Peking Opera Troupe and in 1982 sought better prospects in Hong Kong.
