{"id":1277,"date":"2011-08-01T04:57:45","date_gmt":"2011-08-01T12:57:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/libidot.org\/blog\/?p=1277"},"modified":"2011-08-01T04:57:45","modified_gmt":"2011-08-01T12:57:45","slug":"wandering-dolls-cosplay-journey-across-east-asia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/libidot.org\/wp\/wordpress\/?p=1277","title":{"rendered":"Wandering Dolls: Cosplay Journey Across East Asia"},"content":{"rendered":"

So my new book just came out\u00a0and was\u00a0published by the Hong Kong publisher Roundtable Synergy Books<\/a>. The book is in both English and Chinese (left page vs. right page) and was translated entirely by Yang Jing. It is a book of travels to four different cities in “East Asia” (the big land mass covering Japan, China, HK, Korea, Taiwan, Singapore…. and what not), where\u00a0I search for animation fans who dress up as “characters”, and adult fans of Japanese or Korean dolls.<\/p>\n

It became a first-person travelogue essay with many photos, interspersed with interviews with Cosplayers and queer or queer-ish personalities. I say queer-ish because people develop deep attractions for animation and\u00a0games culture\u00a0through funky alter egos,\u00a0yet they often have very “normal”\u00a0aspirations in their actual lives. Especially so since\u00a0it is not easy to be alt, kinky, or extravagant in the East Asian region.<\/p>\n

It was a real pleasure to work together with Gary Wong, Miu Chan and Peter Kong of Roundtable Synergy books<\/a>, who are at the young and visionary vanguard of Hong Kong critical writing and independent political thought. Peter Kong<\/a> also did a marvelous\u00a0design job and came up with the idea of\u00a0the costumed girl with\u00a0(my) wandering doll. It is always a strange and special feeling when the book is out. I\u00a0like its experimental nature and aesthetic pretensions. It shows\u00a0who I am trying to be–as indicated by Prof. Eric Ma and Prof. Travis Kong–“palpable,” “infectuous,””on the edge of academia’ and yes\u00a0 “queer.”\u00a0 The queer-ish mosquito that zaps by and stings into unsuspecting flesh.<\/p>\n


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So my new book just came out\u00a0and was\u00a0published by the Hong Kong publisher Roundtable Synergy Books. The book is in both English and Chinese (left page vs. right page) and was translated entirely by Yang Jing. It is a book of travels to four different cities in “East Asia” (the big land mass covering Japan,… Continue reading Wandering Dolls: Cosplay Journey Across East Asia<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2,8,9,10,11],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/libidot.org\/wp\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1277"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/libidot.org\/wp\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/libidot.org\/wp\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libidot.org\/wp\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libidot.org\/wp\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1277"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/libidot.org\/wp\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1277\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/libidot.org\/wp\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1277"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libidot.org\/wp\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1277"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libidot.org\/wp\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1277"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}