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The mysterious Chinese art of mask changing has come to Liverpool for the city's Capital of Culture celebrations.

As part of new commission muscian Jah Wobble has created Chinese Dub featuring singers from Tibet and Yunnan Province, dancers from Hangzhou along with the Sichuan Opera Mask Changers.

There is also an Anglo-Chinese dub band made up of bass, drums, guzheng, yangchin, bamboo flute, and gourd pipe.

Mask Changing is a form of Chinese expressionist theatre believed to be at least 300 years old documented.

The performers use different masks to express a range of emotions, expert performers can change over ten masks in under 20 seconds.

There are less than 200 performers in China who have mastered the skill and they are all sworn to secrecy about the method behind it.

According to Zi Lan, the composer of Chinese Dub, the secret of how the masks are changed so quickly is shrouded in mystery.

"Within a second they can have two masks changing leaving everybody wondering how they do it.

"It is like China's top secret, they're not allowed to tell anybody."

Jah Wobble says the idea for Chinese Dub came through a family connection, "The whole project started from a little acorn that is the Pagoda Youth Orchestra in Liverpool.

"My two sons are in it and my wife helps run it with her father.

"I kept hearing these Chinese tunes and kept thinking I could do something with it."

But even Jah Wobble isn't privy to the secret behind the mask changes, "I've asked a couple of times 'How do you do it?'.

"They're not having it at all, they're not going to tell me."