We speak with some of Hong Kong’s beloved drag queens about who they are on and off the stage
“Thanks for putting this togayther,” Brad Wharakura quips after we wrap our interview. I met him at night not as Brad, but somewhere between Brad and his drag queen persona, Madame Mincemeat, and somewhere between 2020 and 2021. It was last New Year’s Eve at a mutual friend’s home and he was standing by the bar in full make-up, a flesh-toned chest plate hanging from his bare, broad shoulders. During the day, Wharakura is a trainer at Pure Fitness, where he teaches a range of classes including indoor cycling, TRX and Bodypump.
“Madame Mincemeat is an extension of me,” he tells me months later when we get “togayther” for a chat. “I wouldn’t say she’s an alter ego but she’s me, dialled up. She amplifies parts of myself that might not be appropriate in certain settings.” Wharakura’s foray into drag began when friends bought him his first pair of heels as a birthday present. He then began experimenting with make-up, learning through YouTube tutorials.
He made his debut as Madame Mincemeat at Hong Kong music festival Clockenflap in 2015, where he lip-synced the song Frank Sinatra by Miss Kittin, a “weird spoken word track about a fashionista who likes to hang out with her friends in limousines”, says Wharakura, who recalls performing that evening in thigh-high black boots and a black wraparound dress he bought at a second-hand store, adding, “Two minutes into the performance, I took it all off and just kind of pranced around in a leotard.”
It also gave him a boost of confidence. “A lot of the toxically masculine gay men tend to separate themselves from other gay men who do things like drag,” he says. “I stopped caring what people think. That was the initial jumping off point.”
He started performing regularly, mostly at private events, then in April 2017, teamed up with fellow queen XXXotica to launch a series of drag brunches at restaurants around the city, which they continue to host.
“Those brunches really built my confidence,” says XXXotica, real name Leon Yee, a Hong Kong native and a pole dancing instructor by day. “It forced me to make new friends and get into Hong Kong’s nightlife scene. Otherwise, I would just stay at the pole studio or be at home playing video games.”
It’s hard to imagine Yee as the shy and retiring type when, in drag queen lingo, he really is “doing the most”. He’s been covered widely in the press for defying gender stereotypes in pole dancing, and appeared as XXXotica in a recent campaign by the Hong Kong government to promote HIV self-test kits, and a local campaign for American beauty label Glam Glow.
“In Hong Kong, you always see the same skinny girl with the light brown hair and the big eyes selling the same things. I’m so happy that someone finally said ‘Let’s change it up’,” says Yee. “After all, we could really use a bit more colour, especially in the area of public health.” He says seeing queer people in such campaigns is a refreshing example of awareness of the community, and an important reminder that representation matters.
Though still in its infancy compared to other major cities, Hong Kong’s drag scene has been steadily gaining traction. In 2019, RuPaul’s Drag Race: Werq the World tour made a stop in Hong Kong. A 2020 tour date was cancelled due to the pandemic.
“Seeing drag become more accepted, a lot of that came down to the popularity of RuPaul’s Drag Race,” says Wharakura. “It really demystified what drag is.”
