Reader’s Note

This post draws heavily on “妮妃雅的风与疯：亚洲第一皇后诞生，鲁保罗变装秀的夺冠幕后” (“The Style and Silliness of Nymphia Wind - the Birth of the First Asian Queen and Winner of RuPaul’s Drag Race”, my translation) by The Initium, written by Zhang Kaihong 章凯闳 and published on the 25th of April 2024. As the news did not receive much media attention (at least in my circles), I want to overcome the linguistic and cultural barriers by providing translated content and context.

A note on pronouns: The article uses “he” (ta 他) throughout, even when referring to the persona Nymphia Wind (Nifeiya 妮妃雅). In Chinese, “he” and “she” are homophones, only distinguishable in written form (ta 他／她). I will use “she” when referring to the persona, and “he” when referring to Leo Tsao who performs Nymphia Wind. Also, even if I greatly admire the art of drag kings and queens, I am not an expert, let alone knowledgeable of the history of drag.

Nymphia Wind Breaks the Asian Curse

RuPaul’s Drag Race has been going on since 2009 and I may have watched a couple of episodes, but never really caught on, also due to sheer lack of access. With season 16 and localized offshoots, audiences may have seen everything such a long-running show has to offer. Yet the winner of season 16 broke all records - Nymphia Wind, the first Drag Queen of Asia and the first from Taiwan. The final lip sync battle between Nymphia Wind and Sapphira Cristál says it all, from the dress asserting the milk-tea alliance to the performance itself: Wind reigns supreme.

Behind the persona is Leo Tsao (Cao Mi’er 曹米駬), who spent his early years in Los Angeles and Hong Kong, then grew up in Taiwan. After a Fashion Atelier degree gained in the UK and armed with all the skills needed for couture, he moved back to Taiwan in 2017, a turning point in Tsao’s career. Subsequently, he then collaborated with Li Yusheng 李育昇, a costume maker who specializes in traditional opera with 20 years of experience.¹ Steeped in Western fashion and style, with Li he learned all there is to traditional Asian arts.

Leo Tsao’s stunning skill, craft, and couture is visible everywhere in Nymphia Wind’s appearance: Every piece, every detail is handmade, stitched and sewn in hours upon hours in painstaking work, supported by “Wind Atelier”, close friends along his side during his arduous path to the crown. Yet it is not only his breath-taking skill that makes Nymphia Wind’s victory all the more memorable.

A Prominent Milk-Tea Victory

First and foremost, Nymphia Wind broke the “Asian curse”, as she says in an interview - the curse that before, none of any Asian contestants ever made it to the crown in RuPaul’s Drag Race. Not only that: It’s Taiwan that won the crown. “Of course I wanted to represent Taiwan, but didn’t want to do it in a cheesy way and just put a flag on my dress. I want people to remember it. The national drink of Taiwan is bubble tea - so I’m just going to be a bubble tea.”² And bubble tea she was in the final battle.

Her win, Taiwan’s win is also a stab at the country across the strait. Leo Tsao hails from Taiwan - where it can still be difficult to be queer out and loud - which nevertheless features a small drag scene. Across Asia, Taiwan is considered to be the most liberal place for LGBTQ+ people, with same-sex marriage legalized under President Tsai Ing-wen in 2019. A strong contrast to China, where everything surrounding queer culture and feminism has increasingly been restricted since Xi Jinping ascended to be the Great Chairman of Everything. To list just the latest prominent examples: Beijing’s long-lasting LGBT Center closed after fifteen years in 2021, and the Shanghai Pride was canceled in the same year. On the other hand, Tsai formally congratulated Nymphia Wind during her last days as presdient. Now try to imagine Xi Jinping.

The Style of House of Wind

Leo Tsao is well-versed in both cultures East and West, but also knows how to mix them as to ultimately create something unique, something of his own. This is what makes Nymphia Wind so appealing: She plays all the possible cultural registers to strike a chord in everyone, bridging gulfs that have widened across the years, yet never missing any opportunity for a campy moment.

Let’s talk about bananas, then. Nymphia Wind’s signature style is yellow - a take on the Asian “yellowness”, but also the color of bananas, the color for everything porn (huang 黃) and, last but not least, Taiwan as “the Kingdom of Bananas” (xiangjiao wangguo 香蕉王國). Consequently, Nymphia Wind portrays herself as the “Banana Buddha” (xiang fo 蕉佛), with her followers as the “Banana Disciples” (xiang tu 蕉徒).

For Western audiences, there can be only one who wears a banana skirt: Josephine Baker, the famous black superstar from the 1920s.³ She, also a woman of color, who made the Charleston famous, an ultimately sassy and campy dance-form and a perfect inspiration for today’s drag queens. No wonder Nyhmphia’s “House of Wind” (feng jia 風家) is also a pun on “style” (feng 風) and “craziness” (feng 瘋).⁴

Even in terms of East Asian culture, Leo Tsao creates something unique and new. In one of her appearances during the Drag Race, Nymphia Wang performs a classical “water sleeve” dance (shui xiu 水袖),⁵ stunning the jury and every kind of audience. The Western viewers watch a never-seen-before dance style, the East Asian ones see a creation by Tsao himself, deeply rooted in their culture but elevated to the next level. The Initium mentions that Leo Tsao is fascinated by the tiger statues that adorn temples and shrines. Consequently, the face paint of Nymphia Wind mimicks one of the eight members of the godly realm (ba jia jiang 八家將) with a tiger face paint (probably dong da shen 冬大神). For such a performance this does not follow tradition at all, but is recognizable to anyone familiar with the iconography and cultural background. As Li Yusheng, the costume maker, tells The Initium: “The strongest tradition is the one that transforms itself. Specialists will sense something, something that creates a resonance within ourselves, but cannot pinpoint it. He [Tsao] absorbed it and didn’t just create a collage, it became something of his own.”

Last but not least, there’s drag. Drag as Western cultural practice that has its roots in New York’s ballroom and queer culture of the 1980s.⁶ But drag has also its cultural mirror in East Asian culture. Chinese novels and tales are full of gender-bending protagonists in drag, sometimes miraculously, sometimes out of filial piety. On stage, the practice of gender-swapping is known as “kun sheng qian dan 坤生乾旦”, where men take on female roles (dan 旦), and women play the male roles (sheng 生). In another performance, Nymphia Wind’s appearance mixes adornments from a Chinese classical novel with visual nods to Mei Lanfang, a (male) performer of Beijing opera known for his female lead roles, all topped with a bird representative of Taiwan.

Leo Tsao’s/Nymphia Wind’s victory is - to my amateur knowledge - surely a milestone in the history of RuPaul’s Drag Race. Yet it is so much more: With immense skill and craft, Nymphia Wind manages to captivate all kinds of (sub)cultures: She appeals to queer and straight fans, captivates Western and Asian audiences, fascinates makers, sewists, artists, performers by being uniquely herself and acting out his/her own imagination.

Image source: Nymphia Wind / Facebook, Section “Instagram Photos”. No source of the photographer indicated. Instagram post.

Reader’s Note

Nymphia Wind Breaks the Asian Curse

A Prominent Milk-Tea Victory

The Style of House of Wind

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