Shehuo Mashao Facial Makeup
These colorful handicraft is Chinese Shehuo Mashao
The colorful handicraft shown in the pic is Chinese Shehuo Mashao. Mashao means “horse feed spoon”.
At first farmers painted shovels for horse feed with colorful guardian spirits to protect their horses from diseases. Later on people started to paint and hang wooden spoons on the wall for protection from the guardian spirits. The practice became more popular with Shehuo festivals; people not only paint guardian spirits but also characters from folklores and Shehuo performances.
The artists select high-quality wood as material, carve out a shape of ladle or other living utensils manually by knife. Most of the patterns of facial makeup came from the Chinese folk stories or dramatis personae.
The ladle facial makeups used to be the talismans that were believed to exorcise and bring up with blessings and auspicious wishes.
--by Cathryn, your tour guide in Beijing
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