A teenager from Garðabær, just outside Reykjavík, has become an unlikely celebrity in China — and the whole thing began with a cartoon. Leon Alexander, now 13, was five when he watched Kung Fu Panda and asked his mother if he could learn kung fu and Chinese. Eight years on, he speaks fluent Mandarin, performs the traditional opera art of face-changing, and has been to China eight times.

His teacher, Hongling Song, arrived in Iceland around the same time and taught Chinese at the University of Iceland. She started giving Leon private lessons there, and after five years began teaching him at home — she now comes three times a week. By her assessment, his Chinese matches or beats students graduating in the subject from the university. He reads characters fluently, though he admits he can't write them all.

The turning point came in 2023, when Leon, then ten, travelled with his parents and Hongling to Chengdu — the home of the face-changing tradition. He learned the technique, where a performer switches masks in a split second using a fan to hide the swap. He started with four masks, moved to eight, and can now handle thirteen. He also keeps training in kung fu and is learning the bamboo flute.

Leon's rise in China has been fast. A year ago he joined RedNote, the Chinese social platform similar to Instagram or TikTok, and has already gathered 74,000 followers by showing his everyday life in Iceland. That led to TV appearances, a reality show and a presenting gig in a video about Shanghai. Hongling, who has 400,000 followers and has also become an influencer, notes that few foreign creators actually speak Chinese — a big part of his appeal. He was featured by state broadcaster CCTV in a seven-minute news segment the reporter described as a short documentary, with a correspondent flying to Iceland to film it. These days he gets recognised on the street in both China and Iceland.

For travellers, the story is a nice reminder of how a single film can open a door to a country and a culture — and that Chengdu, with its opera houses, teahouses and pandas, is a genuinely rewarding corner of China to build a trip around. Face-changing (bianlian) performances are a Sichuan specialty you can still catch live there, and seeing how demanding the art is makes Leon's thirteen masks even more impressive.