This past Sunday, the Brothers Suen donned their UNIQLO One Piece tees and set off for the Hong Kong Convention Centre in the district of Wan Chai. We were on our way to the 13th Animation-Comic-Game Hong Kong 2011 (ACGHK)—or as it’s colloquially known, Ani-Com. Held annually, it’s a convention for manga, anime, comic book, and video game fans to gawk at the newest products and intriguing cosplay.

Below, we’ve gathered some of the best photographs from our journey—a mixture of comic and cosplay-related mayhem that might just encourage you to see for yourself:

All images are the property of 21CB, and licensed under the Creative Commons license.

This is the first post of a new series on street art in Asia, and we start in my current place of residence: China.

China is hardly the place one would expect to look for street art — what with the recent Ai Weiwei crisis and all — but surprisingly, many iconic, international street artists have been leaving their marks in the People’s Republic as of late.

Though street artists working in China have always limited their works to dilapidated buildings, fairs, and removable elements (pasted-on stencils, for instance), they’re slowly but surely beginning to take larger, more public risks.

Here are two of the top offenders:

1. Jef Aérosol

Born in Nantes (where yours truly studied abroad), Jef works with stencils and leaves a signature red arrow on all of his works, which are found in Paris, London, Lisbon, Venice, Rome, Amsterdam, Chicago, New York, Brussels, Zurich, Tokyo, Dublin, Belfast, and most recently… the Great Wall of China. Kudos, my brave man.

See more of his work in China here.

2. JR

Also hailing from France, JR’s large-scale portraits have spotted from Paris to Los Angeles to Kenya, and now he’s got Shanghai under his belt, too. He embarks on large series, such as his “Face 2 Face” exhibition, an illegal project where he posted giant portraits of Israelis and Palestinians in 8 Israeli and Palestinian cities on both sides of the separation wall.

In 2008 he completed a “Women are Heroes” project in France, Kenya, Brazil, and Cambodia where he used large images of women making funny faces to bring humanity to these often faceless victims of conflict. This project also includes a film; see the trailer below:

His Shanghai works, including the image at the beginning of this post, focuses largely on the elderly of China. His commentary is clear in his choice of location. Absolutely genius, and definitely worth checking out here and here.

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Angela Kung graduated from Bowdoin College with a degree in art history. Currently based in Shanghai, she blogs at kokomo.

(images via unurth)

What if K-pop artists  like SNSD, Wonder Girls, and KARA were world nations? South Korean netizens have taken on this thought exercise, drawing analogies between the situations of their favorite girl groups and those of various countries. The results of this discussion reveal not only the current status of each girl group, but also the perceptions that South Koreans hold regarding foreign nations.

The full diagram:

Comparisons were immediately drawn between the ever-popular SNSD (known to some as Girls’ Generation) and the US, as both were considered “the strongest in the world right now”. Meanwhile, KARA “could have rivaled SNSD at one point, but they had internal issues”, analogous to a post-Soviet Russia. Wonder Girls—whose hit song “Nobody” has received considerable international airplay and has been translated into numerous foreign languages—were compared to the British Empire of old as they were both “unbeaten by the ocean”.

Other apt (albeit unintentionally hilarious) comparisons included:

• Rising girl group 2NE1 was compared to China, as it is “a developing nation that can rival America [SNSD]“
• 4minute was compared to Brazil, for their rather sexually charged performances
• SNSD’s labelmate f(x) was compared to Canada, for being “economically dependent on America”
• The members of miss A were compared to Spain for their passion and mixed ethnic backgrounds (in reality, only Chinese and Korean)
• Brown Eyed Girls, who drastically changed their sound and image in 2009, were compared to France, having experienced revolutions both home (internally) and abroad (externally)
• T-ara, whose “problems in the past have not been acknowledged” was compared to Japan
• SECRET has been compared to Italy in light of the large gap between rich (big-breasted) and poor (small-breasted)
• After School, who have added 4 new members since fall 2009, was compared to India for having “the greatest population and economical growth”

(via allkpop)

What’s the most “typical” face in the world? According to National Geographic, that of a 28-year-old Han Chinese male. There are 9 million of them. Composite image above. (via The Lookout)

Think job fairs in the U.S. are stressful? Think again: check out this photo from a fair at the Huazhong University of Science and Technology in Wuhan, China this past Sunday! Despite the dreary weather, over 20,000 students lined up in the hopes of securing one of the 10,000 positions offered by 200 employers. (Shanghaiist)