Facial Make-up in Peking Opera

Lianpu (facial make-up in Peking Opera) is a unique way to portrait characters, which is native to China. It refers to the color patterns painted on the faces of opera performers. Some people argue that the make-up is similar to the mask. Nevertheless, there are great differences between the two in that masks are separate from the face.

Specific types of facial make-up are exploited in Peking Opera to symbolize the personalities, characteristics, and fates of the roles. Usually, red faces have positive meanings, symbolizing brave, faithful, and wise men. Another positive color is purple, which signifies wisdom and bravery.

Black faces, for their part, usually have neutral meanings, symbolizing just brave men; however, they can also represent uprightness. Blue and green faces also have neutral meanings that symbolize the hero of the bush, with the former also hinting at strength and intrepidity.

Meanwhile, yellow and white faces have negative meanings that symbolize ferocious, treacherous, and crafty men.

Finally, gold and silver faces symbolize mysteriousness, and stand for monsters or gods.

Making facial makeup is a special skill for Peking Opera professionals. When a character's face needs to be exaggerated, a makeup type is painted. The most common facial makeup types are jing and chou. Jing is an actor with a painted face and chou is the role of a clown.

For different roles with different makeup types, ways of color application and painting are different. For some makeup types such as one for a hero, color is applied to the face with hand; no paintbrush is used. For most types of warrior, colors mixed with oil are painted on the face, and meticulous attention is paid to shades of coloring, the size of eye sockets, and the shape of the eyebrows. For treacherous court officials, the face is painted white, with the eyebrows and eye corners slightly accentuated and a couple of "treacherous" lines added.

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