On stage, a magician conjures a goldfish out of thin air, an escape artist breaks free of a tangle of ropes and illusionists levitate centimeters above the ground, to gasps and cheers from the audience.

It may sound like the sort of spectacle people would travel to Macao or Las Vegas to see, but all this actually took place in a small village in Wuxiang county, North China's Shanxi province.

Nearly half of Liyu village's 900 residents can do some form of magic and more than 200 are fully fledged stage performers.

In less than a decade, the villagers have turned a hobby into a booming business thanks to Wang Zhuhong, Liyu's 50-year-old village head.

"It's really eye-opening that we can see such good performances in a village like this," said a tourist from Taiyuan, capital of Shanxi.

Liyu, in the Taihang Mountains, is a two-and-a-half hour drive from Taiyuan.

It is well-known locally for the role it played in the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression (1937-45), when villagers helped fend off invaders using land mines.

But by the time Wang became head in 2008, the village was impoverished and lacked fertile land or natural resources.

As a lifelong lover of magic, he had already mastered many tricks that he tried to teach his fellow villagers, in the hope of gifting them a new way of making a living.

But few were willing to learn at first and many had their doubts about whether magic could really provide for their futures.

The turning point came in 2010, when Wang first performed on local television.

Seeing their village head winning praise for entertaining others, a number of villagers approached him to learn about his tricks.

With time, hundreds were practicing magic and it was all anyone seemed to talk about during the village gatherings.

"At first, I felt like it would be far too difficult and that I was too old. My eyes are not as sharp, nor my hands as flexible, as they once were," said Hao Lanying, a villager in her 70s.

"But Wang encouraged me all the time. He said I might be able to make a living from it."

Though it took her longer than some of the other villagers, Hao was able to master the skills required with practice and patience.

As the number of able performers in the village rose, Wang began to shift his focus from teaching tricks to events promotion.

He invested 600,000 yuan ($86,600) in props and costumes, and the Liyu Magician Troupe, with more than 230 tricks in its repertoire, was born.

They have since been invited to perform all over Shanxi and have even ventured as far as Beijing to compete in reality TV shows.

"We never expected our troupe to be this influential," said Wang, proudly.

"Now the villagers perform in more than 20 shows a year, and earn extra annual income of more than 3,000 yuan per person."

To further boost their profile, the village has invested more than 1 million yuan in a new performance venue, measuring 600 square meters, which is due to be completed on May 1.

"We plan to stage magic shows regularly in our village, probably on Saturday afternoons and Sunday mornings, to attract more visitors," Wang said. "We want to be the top magic village in China."

(China Daily 01/13/2017 page7)