the third sex

The Chinese are fascinated by ladyboys. If you visit almost any of the ladyboy cabarets in Thailand, you will see busloads of Chinese tourists being shipped in to see the show. These are not just from mainland China, but from Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, and anywhere else with a significant Chinese population.

In Bangkok, one of the biggest of the ladyboy cabarets is the Golden Dome. I have photographed many of their cast members over the past few years. Golden Dome is especially well known overseas, because they run tours through some of the Asian countries.

Golden Dome Cabaret has recently opened up in Aberdeen, in Hong Kong. I read in the South China Morning Post the other day that it is so successful the organiser is considering staging Hong Kong’s first international transvestite beauty pageant.

Nearly all of the five cabaret shows a day at the Wah Fu Estate venue – which can fit 700 people – are selling out even though there are no local advertisements, according to the SCMP.

“We don’t want to advertise. We have too much business from mainland tours already. We don’t need any Hong Kong tours. If someone wants a walk-in ticket they have to book in advance,” Apichar Sirichantakul, executive director of Golden Dome (HK) International, is reported as saying.

At first sight, the Aberdeen location – on the quiet southern side of Hong Kong island – seems an odd one, although when you think about it, it makes perfect sense. Apichar says he chose this place because it is near Ocean Park, and people can go to one of the five shows after their day there.

With mainland Chinese visitors now flooding into Hong Kong, and the numbers projected to increase, the potential is clearly enormous.

The news of the cabaret’s success comes at a time when public controversy is stirring over low attendance at the newly opened Hong Kong Disneyland. Disney announced that a million people visited the theme park in the first 100 days – an average of 10,000 a day.

But Disney is not an automatic attraction for mainland Chinese: just 26 percent of the visitors were from the mainland. If you do the math you’ll find that’s 2,600 to disneyland, 3,500 to the ladyboys

At Golden Dome, Apichar believes the next logical step is to stage a transvestite beauty pageant. Transvestites from all over the world would be invited to compete, he says, with the winner given a free sex-change operation and plastic surgery as well as the chance to perform with a tour of the cabaret show.

He says they will start organising the contest once their Vietnam operation is set up, which itself is news.

Apichar, who calls himself “daddy of the boys”, said that because many transvestites face discrimination, they usually have only two roads in life: to be a performer or to be a prostitute. The contest would give them a good start.

Golden Dome does in fact take a parental interest in its girls. The 30 performers, comprising transsexuals and transvestites, all live in a dormitory, eat together and have to be in bed (alone) by 2am.

Perhaps they should take equally solicious care of the audience. A 60-year tourist from Kunming, who was with a tour group from Yunnan, died a few days ago after collapsing in his seat during a show.