During her final years of high school, Chinese teenager Xu Yunting found an unusual way to make some pocket money transforming herself into male video game characters and taking their female devotees on dates.
The trend, called "cos commissioning", has gained traction in China recently, with social media posts garnering millions of views as an increasing number of young use their purchasing power to engineer a meeting with their dream man in real life.
One early morning in Shanghai, Xu carefully inserted contacts to enlarge her irises and adjusted a tangerine wig to transform into "Jesse", a character from the romance quest mobile game Light and Night.
A tall and sensitive musician, he is one of five characters that woo players throughout the game and for client Feng Xinyu, a vivacious 19 year old, the ideal partner.
"I don't have a boyfriend because I'm not interested in 3D men," Feng said, using a term for real-life men as opposed to those on the page or screen.
This story is from the September 12, 2024 edition of The Citizen.
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This story is from the September 12, 2024 edition of The Citizen.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
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