The other day I went to a place called Sichuan Folk in Shanghai with my family. My wife is Japanese, and she heard about the place from one of her Japanese friends. The vast majority of the customers there were Japanese.

The restaurant serves spicy Sichuan food, and at about 7:45 pm daily the guests are treated to a one-man Sichuan mask performance.

Click to view more images on Picasa.

The Sichuan mask performance involves an elaborate colorful costume, but the main attraction is the mask itself, which instantly changes with lots of flourish at various times while the performer dances. Rumor has it that the actual method used to make the mask change over and over again is an official state secret of the PRC. Cool! You can read more about the Mask Performance (called Bian Lian 变脸) on Wikipedia. 

The crowd went WILD during the show. Lots of excitement. Everyone was out of their seats piling on the staircase to get a good view and take photos. The performer then ran around the restaurant and posed with the happy customers for photos. He even changed the mask a few times with customers standing right next to him making them scream in surprise. Most of the customers were Japanese and Chinese, so you can imagine the loud chants of "Ouuuu!!!!!" "Waaaaaahhh!!!!" "Sugoiiii!!!!!" The atmosphere was really fun.

The food at the restaurant wasn't all that great. It's not overpriced though, we went with four people, ordered too much, drank, and only spent about 350 RMB.

If you've got people in town that you need to entertain and are looking for something a bit different to do in Shanghai, take them to Sichuan Folk for a fun dinner show!

Related Links:

Official Sichuan Folk website

Sichuan Mask performance on Wikipedia

Learn Chinese from Stories

This looks useful.

http://www.rongshuxia.com/

http://www.xiaoxiaoshuo.net/

This phrase can me to have a quick success. Normally it means fruit.

Here's the logic.

像水一样快通过 to pass quickly just like water.

The key is 水 and the 通过 the last character 过 guo is pronounced the
same as the 2nd character of "FRUIT" 水果 (shui guo) which is also the
same character in 结果 which is "result." I'm pretty sure that's where
it came from.

Epic.

Chinese internet slang blows my mind quite frequently. It's like a
complex code only to be understood by the in crowd. I've never tried
to keep up with it, my Chinese just isn't to that point yet, but it
must be difficult even for Chinese people!

Here is where 果粉 guǒ fěn comes from.

The Chinese normal term for Apple Computer is 苹果电脑 píng guǒ diàn nǎo.
This literally means "apple (as in the fruit) computer."

The Chinese slang term for "fan" is 粉丝 fěn sī. Literally this means
like some kinda bean starch noodles... but it sounds sort of like a
China-fied pronunciation of "fan."

So, take the last letter in APPLE 苹果 and add it to the first letter of
FAN 粉丝 and you get a funny way to say Fan of Apple products.

I'm a 果粉 for sure.