Nymphia Wind, the pride of Taiwan’s queer community, on Friday night won the crown on the latest season of the US reality show RuPaul’s Drag Race, becoming the first East Asian drag queen and second Asian queen to win the vaunted title. For her final lip-synching performance, she shuffled onto the stage cloaked in a cape with exaggerated tapioca pearls and a cup of bubble tea balanced on her head. As the music swelled, she opened the cloak to release a dozen black balloons that floated away in a jubilant, and very drag, celebration of her roots.
Speaking to the online magazine Entertainment Weekly after her win, Nymphia — the drag persona of 28-year-old fashion designer Leo Tsao (曹米駬) — said she joined the competition to represent her country, “and I’m not going to do it by putting a flag on my dress. Boba tea is the national drink of Taiwan. We invented boba tea. Put that in your brain.”
It was just one of the many times throughout the season that she shared the glitzy pedestal with her country, telling her fellow competitors and the show’s enormous audience about the drag scene in Taipei and what it was like growing up queer in Taiwan. She also never shied away from calling Taiwan a country, taking full advantage of the opportunity to speak freely on one of the few platforms where Beijing’s influence does not reach.
Throughout the season, Nymphia served as an eloquent and enthusiastic ambassador for Taiwan and for Asian cultures as a whole. Everything is carefully considered, down to her signature use of yellow as a tongue-in-cheek nod to her ethnicity to pre-empt control of the narrative. She swings effortlessly between high camp — see her entrance look on Drag Race, in which Nymphia, wig piled high with sunglasses, threw open a trench coat to reveal a dangling, smiling banana — and high fashion, blending elements of Taiwanese opera or Japanese butoh dance into sickening looks.
Her immense talent has earned the self-styled “Banana Buddha” an army of “Banana Believers” that boasts members from around the world. Watch parties from Taipei’s Red House to New York were packed with yellow-clad supporters this weekend, cheering and shedding tears as Nymphia accepted the scepter. Holding it aloft, she shouted: “And Taiwan, this is for you.”
With Taiwan’s geopolitical troubles, there are only a handful of occasions in which it can speak in its own voice, unadulterated by Beijing’s filter. Yet the queer community is one of the few lights that can shine through that darkness, showcasing the best of the nation’s diversity and liberal values. It already carved out a place on the map when marriage equality was legalized in 2019. Now through Nymphia, the world is seeing the joy of Taiwanese creativity and excellence.
After Nymphia was crowned, President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) and president-elect William Lai (賴清德) took to social media to congratulate the queen and thank her for “living fearlessly.” This generated another round of jubilation online and in the news, showing that the nation’s president also watched her journey and solidifying Taiwan’s status as one of the most queer-friendly places in the world.
Posting on social media on Monday, Nymphia joked that she should be a cultural tourism ambassador, but if anyone has earned that title, it would be Nymphia. Few others have done so much for her nation. She is already slated to represent Taiwan as a performer at this summer’s Paris Olympics, while Taiwan is getting ready for her homecoming at the second International Drag Fest on May 25. In the meantime, Taiwan could not be prouder.
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