The Painted Skin

The Painted Skin is a novel by the Hong Kong writer Yi Shu. Its title is taken from the famous tale of the same name in Pu Songling's Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio, but the story is relocated to contemporary urban life. The protagonist, Wenchang, is eighteen when she is in a car accident: her parents are killed, and her own face is destroyed. Repeated skin grafts fail because of cell rejection, so she must wear a mask in public for a long time, hiding her real scars behind a painted face. Her elder sister, Wenjing, hires a highly skilled makeup artist; made up, Wenjing looks twenty years younger, and even her husband fails to recognize his wife, absurdly pursuing the beautiful stranger instead. This turns Wenchang's interest toward the craft of makeup. She studies under the artist and applies her solid grounding in art to painting prosthetics: she paints skin tones, knuckles, nails, and veins onto the artificial limbs of disabled children, making them look like real limbs and helping the children enter the world more naturally. Her skill grows; she opens a studio with her mentor and a fellow apprentice, and she also goes through a partner's jealousy, misplaced love, and illness in the family. Taking appearance as its thread, the novel shows how an urban woman carves out a place for herself among looks, money, love, and self-respect, and it also shows the calculation and sincerity hidden behind pretty faces.