Imagine puppets blazing through fire-spitting stunts and switching faces in milliseconds like mystical shape-shifters. This isn’t CGI—it’s the 1,000-year-old Xiaoyi stick puppet tradition from Shanxi Province, now fused with Sichuan Opera’s iconic face-changing artistry! 🪄
🧵 Behind the strings: Puppeteers spend decades mastering these jaw-dropping techniques. The secret? Precise hand movements (think Olympic-level finger gymnastics 🤸) and clever prop engineering. One wrong move and—poof—the illusion breaks!
‘It’s like conducting a symphony with your fingertips,’ says master puppeteer Li Wei, 58.
🔥 Why it’s lit: This collab bridges ancient folk art with dramatic opera flair, creating TikTok-worthy spectacles centuries before social media existed. Next stop? Global stages!
