Lucas de la Cal Shanghai
Shanghai
Updated Thursday, February 29, 2024-00:08
Almost 14 million people watched live as Tuzi, the new queen of makeup in China, turned a 72-year-old woman into a young Caucasian princess with blonde hair, blue eyes and glittering eyelids, without a single wrinkle on a teenage face.
The incredible transformation broadcast on Douyin, TikTok's Chinese brother, was a success.
Fans of the elderly woman, Grandma Tian, a popular rural
streamer
with 35 million followers, praised the makeup artist for making the lady "regain" her youth.
Several celebrities
from the Asian giant have passed through the hands of the twenty-year-old Tuzi
.
A few days ago, the radical change of image of Tang Jianjun (57 years old), one of the most famous comedians in the country, who became a handsome soap opera heartthrob, was a trend on social networks.
Every morning, hundreds of thousands of Chinese women of all ages follow live makeup tutorials that Tuzi broadcasts from her studio in Yunnan, in the southwest of the country.
This
influencer
has become an icon for those who long for eternal youth.
In addition to being a maker of extraordinary makeovers, cosmetic brands raffle Tuzi to promote all types of elixirs, from herbal creams, such as ginseng, goji berries and licorice root, to one of the products stars in traditional Chinese medicine for skin care: ejiao, a kind of gelatinous porridge produced from collagen extracted from boiled donkey skin.
In ancient writings, ejiao appears as a potion to rejuvenate the faces of the women of the imperial court of Beijing.
Today it remains so popular that around 4.8 million donkeys are slaughtered for their skins each year.
The problem is that China does not have as many equines to meet demand, which has led to the emergence of a thriving African donkey trafficking industry.
The first historical references to Chinese women's obsession with beauty treatments appear during the reign of Empress Wu Zetian (624-705 AD), who applied powdered pearls mixed with clear pearls to her face every night. of egg.
Facial massage with a jade roller and the consumption of tremella, a mushroom rich in antioxidants and vitamin D, were also popular in the dynasties.
In today's
millennial
China , more and more fans of perfect skin are visiting beauty clinics and hiring the services of South Korean dermatologists, with a reputation in the region for being the best in the world.
In a genuinely sexist society, the idea that looking eternally young has a very close link with professional success remains deeply rooted.
Fashion magazines and television shows glorify to the extreme mature women with huge cheeks, shaped noses and perfect complexions.
Appearance continues to open many doors in the richest cities.
In the younger urban generations, in addition to spending a fortune on creams, the usual thing is that, before entering university, they undergo surgery to have a blepharoplasty, eyelid surgery to enlarge the eyes, as well as lengthen the nasal bridge and reduce the size of the nostrils.
They look for faces that look like the
filtered
selfies they upload to social media.