Member Profile | CPPCC member Ruxianguli: the ‘Flying-Card Fairy’ shows the world the charm of Chinese style
Member Profiles | Shenzhen Municipal CPPCC Member Ruxianguli: The "Flying-Card Fairy" Shows the World a Charming Chinese Style Shenzhen CPPCC
The following article comes from Shenzhen Yiwenhui, by Huihui
The official account of the Shenzhen Publicity and Culture Fund, dedicated to spreading truth, goodness and beauty, promoting Chinese style and drawing together the feeling of Shenzhen. Gathering and showing… Shenzhen CPPCC · Member Profiles
I found learning magic a natural process; I love magic, because it can bring people instant surprise and joy. — Ruxianguli Aibaidula
Her original "flying cards" technique can send out more than 400 cards at once, and has earned her the name "Flying-Card Fairy"
In her performances she often wears ethnic costume, showing audiences at home and abroad the charm of China's ethnic cultures — she is the magician
Ruxianguli has won the "Golden Lion Award," the country's highest honour in magic, and the Star of Magic Award at the 21st Monte-Carlo International Magic Grand Prix in Monaco. She receives the State Council Special Allowance and holds the title of "Guangdong Young and Middle-Aged Artist of Outstanding Virtue and Artistry." After so many years in magic, whenever she speaks of the work she loves, Ruxianguli still shows a girlish longing and excitement. She feels she will always pursue her ideals in magic and remain a "dream chaser" who is forever ardent.
Ruxianguli · Aibaidula
Part One From Acrobatics to Magic Twenty Years Without Pause Simply Out of Love
From the age of 8 to 18, Ruxianguli worked on the acrobatics stage for a full ten years. But as she grew older, her body found it harder and harder. An older magician in the troupe saw this and offered to take her on as his assistant. Little by little, Ruxianguli fell in love with magic and made it her lifelong career.
"Learning magic was a natural process for me; I love magic, because it can bring people instant surprise and joy," Ruxianguli said.
▲ Ruxianguli with her fellow trainees at the Acrobatic Troupe of the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.
Acrobatics is an art that fears no hardship and always climbs higher, and it gave Ruxianguli the qualities of enduring bitterness and fatigue and daring to take on challenges, laying a solid foundation for her later practice of magic. In those years, owning professional magic props was a luxury, so Ruxianguli cut out many plastic playing cards herself, to the size of a real card. Through practice day after day, she gradually worked out her own original "flying card" and "card throwing" techniques. Years of hard practice left both her hands covered in calluses.
▲ Ruxianguli receiving the "Golden Lion Award."
Hard work pays off. In 1993, Ruxianguli's act "Card Artistry" represented Xinjiang at the 3rd National Acrobatics and Magic Competition and won the "Golden Lion Award," the top prize presented by the Ministry of Culture, which also earned her the name "Flying-Card Fairy." Behind the award, however, lay effort and sweat beyond most people's imagination.
"I worked at it for three years, with no Saturdays or Sundays, practising without stop, twenty or thirty times a day. Every time I practised, I held myself to the standard of a real performance." The effort was finally rewarded; thinking of the support and encouragement of her teachers and elders over the years, Ruxianguli could not hold back her tears. "In acrobatic art, the road has held so much hardship. But because I love it, it never felt bitter."
Part Two Creating a Miracle of Magic at "Shenzhen Speed"
▲ Ruxianguli at Happy Valley Shenzhen.
In 1998, Ruxianguli was seconded to Happy Valley at Shenzhen's OCT. Magic in Shenzhen was then a blank page, and the OCT Group hoped to build Happy Valley into China's "Disneyland."
For Ruxianguli, who loves to create miracles and turn the impossible into the possible, Shenzhen was itself a city full of miracles. When she arrived at Happy Valley it was still one big construction site, and what struck her most was that it "changed every day." "Something I saw yesterday that hadn't been built yet was finished today — the lawn laid, the trees grown, just like magic," Ruxianguli said. "That speed, that passion, I had never seen in any other city."
▲ Tony, president of the International Magicians Society of the United States, presents Ruxianguli with the "Merlin Award for Best Female Grand Illusionist."
After coming to Shenzhen, Ruxianguli was amazed by the local people's enthusiasm for magic, and it made her determined to give the city's residents a richer feast of magic culture. Over more than twenty years, Ruxianguli and the creative team at Happy Valley have worked as one and achieved remarkable results: magic shows at Happy Valley have won more than twenty domestic and international awards, turning out fine work again and again, and the Happy Valley International Magic Festival has become a shining calling card for Shenzhen. In 2018
, the final of the 10th China Acrobatics "Golden Chrysanthemum Award" National Magic Competition was held at Happy Valley Shenzhen, confirming the standing of the south as a "magic stronghold."
Ruxianguli's other major contribution lies in the creation and staging of large-scale magic galas. In her words: "A magic drama must both bring out the technique and create a logical storyline, so that technique and plot blend together and reinforce each other." In 2000, Ruxianguli took part in the first China Acrobatics "Golden Chrysanthemum Award" magic competition, and her magic drama "Dreamland Divine Comedy" won a special award presented by the Acrobats Association of the China Federation of Literary and Art Circles; the piece also became the country's first large-scale magic drama.
▲ The magic drama "Dreamland Divine Comedy."
Why was "Dreamland Divine Comedy" able to be the first of its kind in the country? Ruxianguli says frankly that she and her team did not think too much during the creative process; they simply did their own work steadily. They never set out to be first, yet in the doing they became first. "That is exactly Shenzhen's spirit of daring to try," Ruxianguli said.
Part Three What Is National Is Universal Showing the World the Charm of Chinese Magic
Mention magic and people think at once of the standard tailcoat and top hat. Yet at Ruxianguli's performances one finds that she and her team always wear exquisite, brilliant ethnic costume, dance ethnic dances and play ethnic instruments, with confident smiles on their faces, showing audiences at home and abroad the beauty of Chinese culture with ease.
One act Ruxianguli carefully arranged for her disciples has them wear traditional costume with the flavour of Jiangsu and Zhejiang, scored with guzheng and pipa, scene and feeling merging into something exquisite. With its beautiful, romantic "Chinese style," the act moved the judges at the venue and finally won the overall championship of the Asian Magic Competition.
For Ruxianguli, magic is not only a display of a magician's consummate skill but also an expression of culture: "Putting on a tailcoat and a top hat — that is not the culture particular to our own people. What is national is universal. Chinese traditional culture has such rich content; it is wealth we were born with. Why not use it?"
Ruxianguli's magic has truly gone beyond China's borders and out into the world; she takes part in competitions and performances at home and abroad, showing the world the charm of Chinese magic. In 2006, at the invitation of the ruler of Monaco, she took part in the highest international gathering of magic — the 21st Monte-Carlo International Magic Grand Prix in Monaco — and won the Monte-Carlo International Star of Magic Award. "In cultural export, magic has a unique advantage: it is a universal language. Whatever the country, whatever the language, whatever the age group, magic can strike a chord deep inside people," Ruxianguli said.
Ruxianguli hopes to let Chinese magic "go out," to bring magic performance to every corner of the world and to work at telling the "China story" and the "Shenzhen story" well through magic.
▲ On a visiting performance tour to Venezuela.
In more than twenty years in Shenzhen, Ruxianguli has grown deeply attached to the city; when a plane lands, Shenzhen has become one of the places she wants to return to. Whenever she sees an international magic competition held in Shenzhen, she always feels a sincere pride.
Unlike her bold, outgoing self on stage, in real life Ruxianguli is rather quiet. She likes to think over her creations in silence, and likes to get up early for a morning run around a Happy Valley still empty of people. But the moment she stands on stage she is without fail that radiant, magnetic chief magician. "All my passion and energy have been given to the stage."