Shenzhen Artists | Ruxianguli: the ‘Flying-Card Fairy’ shows the world the charm of Chinese style
Learning magic was a natural process for me. I love magic, because it can bring people a moment of surprise and joy. — Ruxianguli Aibaidula
Her self-created "flying cards" technique can send more than 400 cards through the air at once, which earned her the name "the 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
Ruxianguli has won the "Golden Lion Award," the country's highest award for magic, and the Magic Star Award at the 21st Monte-Carlo International Magic Grand Prix in Monaco; she receives a special State Council allowance and holds the title of "Guangdong Young and Middle-Aged Artist of Both 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 believes she will always pursue her ideal in magic, and remain a forever ardent "dream chaser."
Ruxianguli · Aibaidula
Part One From acrobatics to magic — twenty years without a break, out of love alone
From the age of 8 to 18, Ruxianguli spent a full ten years working on the acrobatics stage. But as she grew older, the physical demands became harder to bear. An older magician in the acrobatic troupe noticed, and offered to take her on as his assistant. Little by little, Ruxianguli came to love magic, and made it her lifelong career.
"Learning magic was a natural process for me. I love magic, because it can bring people a moment of surprise and joy."
▲ Ruxianguli with her fellow trainees during her time as a student at the Xinjiang Autonomous Region Acrobatic Troupe.
Acrobatics is an art that fears no hardship and always climbs higher, and it gave Ruxianguli the qualities of enduring hardship and fatigue and daring to take on a challenge — a solid foundation for the magic she would later practise. In those days professional magic props were a luxury, so Ruxianguli cut out many plastic playing cards herself, to the size of real ones. Through day after day of practice, she gradually worked out her own original "flying cards" 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 highest award conferred by the Ministry of Culture — which is how she came to be called "the Flying-Card Fairy." Behind the award, however, lay effort and sweat beyond most people's imagining.
"I worked at it for three years, with no Saturdays or Sundays, practising nonstop, twenty or thirty run-throughs a day. Every time I practised, I held myself to the standard of a real performance." The effort finally paid off; recalling the support and encouragement of her teachers and elders over those years, Ruxianguli could not hold back her tears. "The art of acrobatics — there has been so much hardship along the way. But because I love it, it never felt bitter."
Part Two Creating a miracle of magic's growth at "Shenzhen speed"
▲ Ruxianguli at Happy Valley Shenzhen.
In 1998, Ruxianguli was seconded to Happy Valley Shenzhen in the OCT district. 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 creating miracles and turning 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 had not yet been built 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, presenting Ruxianguli with the "Merlin Award for Best Female Grand Illusionist."
After moving to Shenzhen, Ruxianguli was surprised by the public's enthusiasm for magic here, 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 side by side to notable effect: magic shows at Happy Valley have won more than twenty major domestic and international awards and produced one fine work after another, and the Happy Valley International Magic Festival has become one of Shenzhen's
shining calling cards. In 2018 the finals of the 10th China Golden Chrysanthemum Award for Circus Arts National Magic Competition were held at Happy Valley Shenzhen, confirming the city's standing as a "stronghold of magic" in the south.
Ruxianguli's other major contribution lies in the creation and staging of large-scale magic galas. As she puts it: "A magic theatre piece has to show off technique and also build a coherent plot, so that technique and story blend and support each other." In 2000, Ruxianguli took part in the first China Golden Chrysanthemum Award for Circus Arts magic competition, where her magic theatre piece "Dreamland Divine Comedy" won a Special Award from the Acrobats Association of the China Federation of Literary and Art Circles; the production also became China's first large-scale magic theatre work.
▲ The magic theatre piece "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 about it much while creating it; 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 picture the standard tailcoat and top hat. Yet at a Ruxianguli performance you find her and her team always in exquisite, brilliant ethnic costume, dancing ethnic dances and playing ethnic instruments, confident smiles on their faces, showing audiences at home and abroad the beauty of Chinese culture.
One act Ruxianguli carefully staged for her disciples had them in traditional costume with the flavour of Jiangsu and Zhejiang, scored for guzheng and pipa, scene and feeling merging into something exquisite. The act's romantic, aesthetic "Chinese style" moved the judges on the spot, and it went on to take the overall championship at the Asian magic competition.
For Ruxianguli, magic is not only a display of a magician's consummate technique but an expression of culture: "Putting on a tailcoat and a top hat — that is not the culture our own people have. What is national is universal; our Chinese traditional culture has such rich substance, wealth we were born with. Why not use it?"
Ruxianguli's magic has genuinely 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 in magic — the 21st Monte-Carlo International Magic Grand Prix — and won the Monte-Carlo International Magic Star Award. "For 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 help Chinese magic "go out" into the world, taking magic performance to every corner of the globe and working to tell the "China story" and the "Shenzhen story" through magic.
▲ On a visiting performance tour to Venezuela.
After more than twenty years in Shenzhen, Ruxianguli feels deeply attached to the city; when the plane touches down, Shenzhen has become one of the places she wants to come back to. Whenever she sees an international magic competition held in Shenzhen, she feels a sincere pride.
Unlike the flamboyant figure on stage, the Ruxianguli of daily life is fairly quiet. She likes to think quietly about her creative work, and 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 unfailingly that radiant, magnetic principal magician. "All my passion and energy have been given to the stage."
Previously recommended ◆ Notices of the COVID-19 Prevention and Control Headquarters of Futian District, Shenzhen (No. 209 and No. 210)
◆ Shenzhen reported 1 new asymptomatic case between 12:00 and 24:00 on 1 July ◆ Shenzhen reported 1 new confirmed case between 00:00 and 12:00 on 29 June ◆ Shenzhen reported 1 new confirmed case and 2 asymptomatic cases between 12:00 and 24:00 on 28 June ◆ Urgent notice of the epidemic prevention and control group of the Guangdong COVID-19 Prevention and Control Headquarters Office on adjusting centralized quarantine management measures