The respected Mr. Bao was a pale-faced scholar in the Song dynasty. He was portrayed as a judge whotried or heard a case in this world by day and settled a lawsuit in the nether world at night in the printed versions ofthe prompt-books used by popular storytellers in Song and Yuan times and the poetic drama. His face gradually be-came black and ugly. In the opera of the late Qing dynasty, His facial features felled into the pattern of swarthy facewith a crescent moon on his forehead. The change of his appearance contains the rich traditional cu...
