Watch This Face

I took in an almighty dinner and show while in Beijing last week, which left me not only full to bursting with Peking duck and mandarin fish and pork pancakes and gungbao chicken, but confident in exactly why the Chinese pick up so many gold medals come Olympic time.

The performance that accompanied the meal was a display of precision timing, athleticism and skill. For example, is it any wonder that China trumps the field in rhythmic gymnastics, when this woman did some ribbon twirling - with dough?

I don't recall competitive tea-drinking at the London Games, but there's got to be some reason why this fella has trained so hard to become a flamboyant Nespresso machine:

I thought alcohol reduced your motor skills, but it turns out not for this bloke:

And finally, nearby, there was a cat sitting on cigarettes, while other animals watched on:

OK fine, that wasn't part of the show, but HOW CUTE IS THAT PHOTO NO REALLY YOU GUYS LOOK IT'S A CAT SITTING ON CIGARETTES.

Anyway, the big showstopper at the restaurant turned out to be the Face Changer. The commentary was in Chinese, but I think his name was Yoshi. And he was AWESOME. Seriously cool stuff.

Now, I've yet to Google this particular art form and find out spoilers, so I'm theorising two possibilities on how it's done.

1) Sleight of hand. The masks are hidden about his costume, perhaps magnetised, and just attach onto his face when he whips his clock across.

2) Gadgetry. The masks are on a rollback springy type device hidden in his hat, and through the use of some sort of button, he's able to shift them up and away as needs be.

How do you think the Face Changer does it?