The Anthropawlogist

Last month, I tagged along with my classmate to their (I have elected to use a neutral pronoun to protect their identity) field site: a drag queen’s solo live singing at a live house near the West Kowloon Waterfront Promenade. My classmate has been thinking about researching drag performers in Hong Kong so naturally they are interested in the scene. As for me, I knew next to nothing about drag. It was therefore my foray into the drag world and honestly, I wasn’t sure what to expect.

Field Record

The venue itself was just a cozy little live house with a small stage tucked against one wall. The slightly elevated platform was nothing fancy, no over-the-top decorations, nor balloons, nor glitter, just a clean, minimalist setup with a keyboard, a drum kit, and a mic for the drag queen’s band. Including the drag queen, there were only four performers in total.

We had actually arrived early enough to catch the pre-show rehearsal. It was a striking sight to say the least. The performer was midway through their transformation, with shoulder-length hair, dramatic eye makeup, bright lipstick, and a thick layer of white foundation, yet dressed in an ordinary short-sleeved t-shirt and blue shorts. The contrast between the glamorous makeup and the completely mundane outfit was so unexpected that I couldn’t help but stare.

Eventually, the performer disappeared backstage, presumably to finish getting ready. The live house suddenly became much quieter, and my friend and I finally got the chance to catch up properly while we dined.

By the time the show started, every table was full.

Looking around, I noticed most of the audience looked to be in their 20s to 40s, with slightly more men than women, though I did realize, as Besnier (2003) said, “defining ‘man’ or ‘woman’ in any social context is neither feasible nor fruitful” (Besnier, 2003: 284). My classmate later pointed out that several audience members were themselves drag performers. Out of drag that evening, they had come to support a fellow drag performer.

There also appeared to be quite a few ‘Western faces’ among the ‘local’ crowd. I briefly caught myself wondering whether this reflected the reach of drag culture in Hong Kong, or whether certain forms of cultural upbringing make one more likely to encounter or be willing to encounter spaces like this. But I digress. Without meaningful data, I will keep speculations and conjectures to myself. I figured I had done enough amateur demography for one evening, settled down my thinking cap and enjoyed the show.

Then the performer walked back onto the stage.

The transformation was remarkable.

Gone was the ordinary t-shirt and blue shorts. In their place was a shimmering crimson ensemble that caught the stage lights with every movement, glittering and glimmering beneath the spotlights. The asymmetry of the costume was particularly striking. The right arm was adorned with an elegant spirally sleeve, its chiffon drapes trail gracefully with every movement. In contrast, the left was covered by a glittering red arm sleeve, whose solid texture gave her gestures a greater sense of strength and precision. Together, the contrast lent every movement a theatrical flair.

The singing itself was extraordinary. Costumes and makeup may have drawn the eye, but it was the voice that held the room. Her vocal range was remarkable, moving effortlessly between powerful notes and softer, more intimate sections without sacrificing stability or control. There was a magnetic quality to her voice that allowed her to convey both strength and vulnerability, often within the same song.

Yet singing was only part of the performance. Before each song, she would launch into a short comedic monologue, part storytelling, part stand-up comedy, effortlessly setting up the mood and the song. The jokes were genuinely funny, drawing constant laughter and heckles from the audience.

Safe Space and Empowerment

After the show, my friend and I naturally slipped back into academic mode and began comparing notes. My first instinct was to relate it to my own fieldwork experiences at maid cafés and underground idol concerts, noticing some similarities since each venue offers performers a dedicated safe space where a particular persona or performative self can proudly take centre stage, be it a maid singing cutesy kawaii songs or a drag queen singing about her grind on Grindr.

Like maid cafés and underground idols, the drag scene cultivate its own community, with shared humour, references, and norms that outsiders might not immediately relate to or understand (cough cough…). These spaces are not necessarily exclusive, but they do feel curated for those already familiar with their codes. As an ‘outsider’, I was welcomed, yet I was also constantly reminded that I wasn’t the primary audience.

One difference, however, stood out. Unlike maid cafés or underground idol concerts, which are tucked away in units inside industrial buildings, hidden within Hong Kong’s concrete jungle, this performance took place in one of the city’s busiest public spaces. Anyone strolling by could see it. This difference also made me question my own comparison. If maid cafés and underground idol concerts derive part of their appeal from being tucked away, then what happens when that space becomes highly visible? Does greater public exposure make the community more accessible, or does it dilute the very sense of refuge that makes it meaningful?

Fan Culture

Another notable difference is fan culture. Admittedly, this comparison comes with an important caveat. I have attended only one drag performance, and perhaps an atypical one at that. It was a solo performance by an exceptionally talented singer, whereas lip-syncing, as I was told, seems to be rather common in many conventional drag performances. In underground idol concerts, fan engagement are at times, part of the performance itself or rather, perhaps I should reframe it as a separate performative entity alongside the on-stage performance. Fans perform a series of pre-learned chants, known as calls (コール, 打call), led by an experienced fan who knows exactly when to cue each chant. Equipped with an acute sense of rhythm and timing, the leader initiates the chants at precise moments, allowing the entire audience to respond in perfect synchrony with the song being sung on stage. On occasions, fans also engage in lifting (リフト, 起飛) by forming human pyramids to hoist particularly devoted fans up and toward the stage for a brief moment of hand-to-hand contact with their favourite idol (oshi, 推し).

At the drag performance I went to, audience members certainly laughed, cheered, and shouted back, particularly during the performer’s stand-up-style introductions. However, their observable participation feels ‘conventional’ as it resembled the dynamics of a comedy club or live music venue rather than the ritualized participation characteristic of underground idol culture.

Now, of course I am not saying all performances need to have ritualized participants on the part of the audience nor am I saying one is better or academically more interesting than the other. I am simply trying to say that the difference has left me wondering whether fan culture might offer another lens through which one can study drag performance. Much like underground idols, the literature on VTubers has shown how audiences and the performer co-construct performers’ identities through interactions (Suan 2021, Bredikhina & Giard 2022, Lee 2022), I wonder whether drag identities are similarly negotiated between performer and audience, albeit through different and more subtle forms of participation. An evening of observation from an etic perspective is hardly enough to answer that question, but it is certainly enough to make me curious.

English, Marginality and Extra-locality

My classmate also pointed out that drag performers tend to use English rather than Cantonese. I don’t know enough to evaluate that claim but it immediately reminded me of my own fieldwork, again, sorry. During underground idol concerts, every performaning group on stage would introduce themselves in Japanese. Even members who clearly do not speak Japanese are expected to memorize the introduction, often producing a kind of pseudo-Japanese that only someone with a keen ear for the language, not me, could ever hope to decipher. The song lists, too, are almost exclusively Japanese, although some groups occasionally sneak in a non-Japanese song or two. The unspoken rule governing song choices seems noticeably more relaxed than that of self-introduction.

The comparison made me wonder whether this reflects a broader tendency among certain subcultures, if drag can indeed be considered sub, to retain elements of the language associated with their historical or cultural origins. Whether these linguistic choices signal authenticity, pay homage to ‘traditions’, or simply reflect established community norms is a question I cannot answer. Still, the parallel struck me as an intriguing one. And speaking of parallels, it also reminded me of a chapter I read written by Niko Besnier on Fakaleitī in Tonga.

In the chapter, Besnier (2003) argues that the identity of Fakaleitī, feminine-presenting males, in Tonga is constructed not only through gender performance but through the use of language to invoke a sense of extra-locality. He shows that English encodes a sense of cosmopolitanism and modernity, and that through code-switching, even non-fluent speakers can create prestige and an identity that extends beyond the local Tongan context. As a result, “English represents for many Fakaleitī a symbolic escape hatch out of social marginality” (Besnier, 2003: 296). I cannot help but wonder whether a similar dynamic can shine a light on the linguistic preference observed by my classmate.

Having said that, I would caution applying the framework of extra-locality too readily, as the socio-cultural contexts differ substantially. Fakaleitī perform in public spaces in front of audiences who both laugh with and at them. They also face the threat that “drunken men or women [would] try to rip [their] outfits and expose them as what they ‘really’ are” (Besnier, 2003: 294). As Besnier noted, many Fakaleitī occupy materially oppressed social positions, making the symbolic escape and resistance offered by extra-locality particularly significant to their identity.

Whether the same can be said of drag performers in Hong Kong is less clear. I know too little about their social backgrounds to draw any conclusions but from what I did hear, some drag queens have well-established professional careers and make considerable efforts to keep those identities separate from their drag persona. Perhaps Besnier’s framework does not apply particularly well here. Or perhaps “extra-locality” serves a different function in the context of drag, not as an escape from material marginality, but as a resource for other forms of self-expression, empowerment, or community-making. That, however, remains a question rather than a conclusion.

I have since sent Besnier’s chapter to my classmate, and I hope they have had a chance to read it by now. I can’t wait for more opportunities to visit my classmates’ field sites and reflect on them alongside my own field experiences. This exercise has been far more fruitful than I had expected.

References

Besnier, N. (2003). Crossing genders, mixing languages: The linguistic construction of transgenderism in Tonga. In J. Holmes & M. Meyerhoff (Eds.), The handbook of language and gender (pp. 279–301). Blackwell.

Bredikhina, L., & Giard, A. (2022). Becoming a virtual cutie: Digital cross-dressing in Japan. Convergence, 28(6), 1643–1661.

Lee, M. (2022). [TECFIC] Beings: The live fiction of virtual YouTubers. Mechademia, 15(1), 233–251.

Suan, S. (2021). Performing virtual YouTubers: Acting across borders in the platform society. In M. Y. Roth & P. Hiroshi (Eds.), Japan’s contemporary media culture between local and global: Content, practice and theory (pp. 187–225). CrossAsia-eBooks.

Disclaimer* This is a reflective piece written as part of my own thinking process and writing practice. I am not familiar with the scholarship on drag performance and thus some of the questions I have raised might already have been addressed by existing literature. Should that be the case, I would greatly appreciate being directed to the relevant works.