Taken to tusk: preserving the art of shuaya

Seeing Xue Qiaoping wearing a short jacket, a leather beret and a pink scarf, it is hard to imagine how she would look on stage with 10 tusks protruding from her mouth.

Xue is an exponent of shuaya, meaning "teeth play", a highly unusual performance that is part of pingdiao (flat tone), a local folk opera of Ningbo, Zhejiang province.

Before going on stage, actors insert tusks - which are about 6 to 8 centimeters long and taken from a male wild boar - into their mouths. The tusks are moved in and out using the mouth and tongue to reflect characters' changes of emotions, as songs are sung and lines spoken.