"The first time I played a Street Fighter game was on a plane (in-flight entertainment), when choosing my character I immediately honed in on the Chinese fighter girl Chun-li. I chose her not because I knew about all her moves or stats, but because of her country of origin and her gender. My favourite games were always the ones where you could customise the character (Dragon Quest 9 is a good example), it felt easier to immerse myself and relate to the story. Chun-li made a huge impression on me as a result, from the way she dressed and the way she fought. I wanted to be like her, a strong lady with muscly legs- I think that still holds true to this day with my personal activities and interests.
As I grew up, I signed up to learn different forms of martial arts, until I settled on some favourites. It became my favourite activity and I did my best to achieve different milestones. I seemed to focus on training my legs and kicks, perhaps as a way to unconsciously follow in the footsteps of Chun-li. (And no, I cannot do the spinning bird kick :p) I wanted to be like her, a strong lady with muscly legs.
In her most iconic outfit, Chun-li wears a qipao, I don’t know how much of that influenced my love for this specific type of clothing, but I often find myself searching the web or purchasing traditional and variants of the qipao. I love seeing the style, wearing it and drawing them on my characters. My favourite characters I ever came up with often wore clothes similar to Chun-li’s, a qipao with a high-waist split and some chunky combat boots- despite this these characters weren’t copies of Chun-li, they each had their own palettes, stories and styles and methods of combat. Though looking back, I find that a couple of early-childhood drawings I had of myself were often characters with hair buns like Chun-li too."
Written by Bean from London and Hong Kong
Illustrated by @dearmacherie
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