During her final years of high school, Chinese teenager Xu Yunting found an unusual way to make some pocket money: transforming herself into male video game characters and taking their female devotees on dates.
The trend, called “cos commissioning,” has gained traction in China recently, with social media posts garnering millions of views as an increasing number of young women use their purchasing power to engineer a meeting with their dream man in real life.
One early morning in Shanghai last month, Xu carefully inserted contacts to enlarge her irises and adjusted a tangerine wig to transform into “Jesse,” a character from the romance quest mobile game “Light and Night.” A tall and sensitive musician, he is one of five characters that woo players throughout the game — and for client Feng Xinyu, a vivacious 19-year-old, the ideal partner.
Photo: AFP
“I don’t have a boyfriend because I’m not interested in 3D men,” Feng said, using a term for “real-life” men. “I like anime characters a little bit more, they’re more appealing to me.”
“Light and Night,” made by tech giant Tencent and aimed squarely at young women, promises a “brand-new interactive experience of highly immersive love.”
Players like Feng, who form strong emotional connections with characters in such games, are known as “dream girls” — and cos commissioning takes the immersion to the next level by dragging those 2D beaus off the screen and into the real world. Feng has commissioned Xu twice before, for a fee of around US$70. Last month, she spent US$2,800 on a multi-day trip with another Jesse cosplayer to a different province.
Photo: AFP
But she decided she preferred Xu’s portrayal and hired her for a third date. “We really click,” Feng said. “She’s just like the character from the game, it feels like we were meant to be together.”
RECONSTRUCTING GENDER RULES
Feng was waiting for Xu at a metro station, and grinned in unabashed delight when she spotted her. The two appeared relaxed, holding hands and chatting happily as they headed to their first activity.
Photo: AFP
Their date — all planned and paid for entirely by Feng —lasted all day, beginning with tea and ending with a hotpot meal and a romantic stroll. At both a doll-painting workshop and cake-decorating class they attended, they were one of many cos commission pairs. Staff at the latter business said they had noticed more and more couples coming in over the past year — sometimes dozens on busy days.
Part of the appeal, experts studying the phenomenon say, is that it gives young women a way to perform an idealized heteronormative relationship. Conservative social attitudes towards women remain widespread in China, often reinforced by state media and popular culture.
Aside from assuaging safety concerns, hiring a female cosplayer ensures a level of equality and understanding not necessarily guaranteed in a real-life relationship.
Photo: AFP
“I don’t think it’s important what gender the person being commissioned is,” Fudan University’s Tian Qian said. “What is important is that (the cosplayer) is a vessel, because the client needs a vehicle for their emotions.” Another academic, Zhou Zixing, wrote that cos commissioning allows women “to gain a voice that is fully respected by the opposite sex ... responding to, breaking, and reconstructing the gender rules of the real world.”
HEALING EFFECT
At the cake-decorating class, Feng leaned over the table, fondly watching Xu pipe generous amounts of icing onto a sponge cake. Afterwards, Xu gently helped Feng remove her apron, modelling Jesse’s gentlemanly behavior.
“The guys in the games are all quality guys,” Xu said. “I think (clients) will be able to improve their requirements in real life in terms of what they want from a man, so that they don’t settle for low-quality guys.”
Her mother Fang Xiuqing admitted her initial reaction when she learned what Xu was doing was: “How could this happen to my daughter?” But she has since come around to the idea. “I don’t think it’s a profession, it’s a hobby,” said Fang. “She gets enjoyment from it, and she also brings joy to others.”
Tian said cos commissions can act as “emotional sustenance.” “Although this is a paid interaction, it still gives a sense of being seen, which has a certain healing effect to it.”
Towering high above Taiwan’s capital city at 508 meters, Taipei 101 dominates the skyline. The earthquake-proof skyscraper of steel and glass has captured the imagination of professional rock climber Alex Honnold for more than a decade. Tomorrow morning, he will climb it in his signature free solo style — without ropes or protective equipment. And Netflix will broadcast it — live. The event’s announcement has drawn both excitement and trepidation, as well as some concerns over the ethical implications of attempting such a high-risk endeavor on live broadcast. Many have questioned Honnold’s desire to continues his free-solo climbs now that he’s a
As Taiwan’s second most populous city, Taichung looms large in the electoral map. Taiwanese political commentators describe it — along with neighboring Changhua County — as Taiwan’s “swing states” (搖擺州), which is a curious direct borrowing from American election terminology. In the early post-Martial Law era, Taichung was referred to as a “desert of democracy” because while the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) was winning elections in the north and south, Taichung remained staunchly loyal to the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT). That changed over time, but in both Changhua and Taichung, the DPP still suffers from a “one-term curse,” with the
Jan. 26 to Feb. 1 Nearly 90 years after it was last recorded, the Basay language was taught in a classroom for the first time in September last year. Over the following three months, students learned its sounds along with the customs and folktales of the Ketagalan people, who once spoke it across northern Taiwan. Although each Ketagalan settlement had its own language, Basay functioned as a common trade language. By the late 19th century, it had largely fallen out of daily use as speakers shifted to Hoklo (commonly known as Taiwanese), surviving only in fragments remembered by the elderly. In
William Liu (劉家君) moved to Kaohsiung from Nantou to live with his boyfriend Reg Hong (洪嘉佑). “In Nantou, people do not support gay rights at all and never even talk about it. Living here made me optimistic and made me realize how much I can express myself,” Liu tells the Taipei Times. Hong and his friend Cony Hsieh (謝昀希) are both active in several LGBT groups and organizations in Kaohsiung. They were among the people behind the city’s 16th Pride event in November last year, which gathered over 35,000 people. Along with others, they clearly see Kaohsiung as the nexus of LGBT rights.
RSS