Work hours haven’t been fruitful for me since returning from
Nepal. The problem is that my employers have designated summer intensive
courses elsewhere due to my planned trips to Oz and previously mentioned Nepal.
I had a brief stint as a tennis instructor to fill some time, but was later
informed late on Monday night that I was surplus to requirement as they didn’t
have enough students signed on <sad at a missed opportunity face>.
Last night, I checked my computer for things to do. Shanghai is blessed with many good Western What’s Going On
internet sites. I had a quick look at the most popular of these:
smartshanghai.com, and found a festival called Cosplay happening over this
week-end.
COSPLAY
Cosplay, to my knowledge, is where computer game loving folk
dress up as their favourite anime character and prance around for the public. So it
surprised me when we turned up at this massive EXPO center that was like a dozen or so
aircraft carrier buildings linked together. How many prancers are there I thought!
The first few were empty and we walked through with the
public wondering where this festival was at.
Finally a ticket barrier and we paid 50 RMB to get in.
Housemate Sean nudged me telling me to look at these two ladies at 2 O’Clock.
Fair enough, girls like that were hard to find in the daylight. They were perennial ladies of the night.
We weren’t really ready for what Aircraft hanger 9B had in
store for us.
We were hit by a flurry of activity. The music was loud.
There were lots of people but in a very unbalanced ratio.
See the people who had bought tickets to this event were
men. Men ranging from the teenage geeks wearing shirts celebrating World of
Warcraft to middle aged men whose front set of yellow, gaunt teeth seemed to be
permanently sticking out. All with a camera at the ready.
What they’d come to see was plain to see.
There were cosplay characters who were walking around with massive swords, crazy hairstyles and cool dress wear. But they weren't the source of most of the attention even though they were quite cool.
There were cosplay characters who were walking around with massive swords, crazy hairstyles and cool dress wear. But they weren't the source of most of the attention even though they were quite cool.
As we
delved deeper into the hangars, we found it was basically a big computer game
roadshow. Promoting each computer company were a number of scantily dressed
Chinese woman. These women and there were hundreds of them, were the most beautiful in their sheer quantity and quality that I've seen in China.
I don’t know how much these girls were paid. But they no way
had any care towards the computer company. They were told to pose, and pose
they did. It was incredible, quite astounding. I’ve never seen women so open to having their photo taken on a constant basis by so many nerds.
What was just unbelievable was the hurry and care to which
the creepy men would run around with their camera and take hundreds and
hundreds of pictures of these women. It wasn't just from far away in slight embarrassment, these men were zooming in on these girls and they didn't care one iota. With no porn in China, I imagined that it
was a years worth to these guys Banks.
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To be honest I soon got involved, Zoolander style.
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In one of the hangars the
stages were a lot more interactive.
If you wanted to be selected to come up on stage you had to
scream loud enough to be recognized by the stage host. I had the advantage
here, as basically the guys around me could produce no more
than a whimper and I was selected frequently.
I really wrapped up to the delight of Alex my Chinese work colleague who got it all on
camera. EA Sports had a American Football throw comp with some Chinese
Quarterback, you basically had to throw some balls with him. Simples. There was another stage where there was a SCREAMOTETER, again wrapped up on the prizes.
On stage.
With the stage hosts and my prize an anime cap!
When selecting the winner from the group of selectees the
host would call for the ‘Weiguoren’ (Foreigner). I stood out like a sore thumb.
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This city is unique. One day they will have an event where
the biggest geeks mix with the most beautiful girls, then the next
day/tomorrow, the city plays host to the biggest name in Hip Hop, DR DRE. Surely there is no other city where these two events can happen.
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