Student summer research presentations

Each semester, APSI organizes several events under the banner of our Asia-Pacific Forum. These informal sessions are opportunities for students, faculty, and members of our community to gather and discuss topics of interest, including research projects and opportunities.

At this event, four students will share findings from their summer research: Anqi Yan (PhD student, Cultural Anthropology); Lilia Yan (MA student, East Asian Studies); Yu Hsuan (Trisha) Liao (PhD student, Music); and Yu-An Kuo (PhD student, Cultural Anthropology).

Lunch will be provided to registered participants.

Presenters + Abstracts

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Yu-An Kuo—“Salivating Production: Swiftlets, Sound, and Survival in Malaysia”

abstract

This project examines how sound reconfigures production and the social order of multispecies relations through the historical and ongoing trajectories of the edible bird’s nest (EBN) industry in Malaysia. EBN, made from swiftlets’ saliva, has long been valued as a medicinal delicacy in Chinese food culture, primarily consumed in China but harvested across Southeast Asia, particularly in Indonesia and Malaysia. Archaeological evidence indicates that the EBN trade between Borneo and China dates back to the 15th century (Beavitt, 1992) and continues into the present. In 2010, the Malaysian Ministry of Economy introduced the Tenth Malaysia Plan 2011–2015, which promoted high-value agriculture, including swiftlet farming—a sector that contributed about 1% to GDP in 2009.

Before the rise of birdhouses in the 2000s, EBN was traditionally harvested by Indigenous communities in caves in Malaysian Borneo. The development of sonic technologies has facilitated the proliferation of modern birdhouses built largely by Chinese Malaysians. These structures broadcast recorded swiftlet calls to attract the birds. These sounds are heard as crucial techniques for farmers, companions’ calls for untamed swiftlets, and noise for neighbors. Whereas caves represent fixed natural resources, birdhouses function as a constructible mimicry of caves beyond spatial limitations. Drawing on in-depth ethnographic and archival research, this project explores the tensions surrounding environmental change, sensory practices, and livelihood challenges in birdhouse farming and cave-nest harvesting. By extending analysis of an animal-based product to the dynamic production of the globalized food supply chain, the project brings multispecies relations into conversation with the anthropology of sound.

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Trisha Liao—“Mountain Sound Studies: The Silence, Etiquette, and Risk in Taiwan Alpine Hiking”

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In this summer preliminary fieldwork, my research focus on the how the alpinesonic actors spatially and ontologically entangle across Taiwan’s history to shape cultures distinct from urban environments. I pursue this question in two registers: the ways that people sensing the mountains with sound, and the historical-cultural politics along the hiking trails. My fieldwork based on two sites: the Japanese-built Batongguan Traversing Trail (八通關越嶺道) which is Indigenous traditional living area for centuries, and the world’s first “silent trail”——Cuifeng Lake Circular Trail (翠峰湖環湖步道).

Taiwan’s terrain is steep, with at least 268 peaks rising above 3,000 meters. Frequent earthquakes and typhoons create fragmented, rapidly changing mountain landscapes, making routes highly hazardous. My sites ranged from 1,000 to 2,800meters and are accessible only through backpack hiking combined with sections of rock scrambling. In such high-risk mountain environments, people construct the sensory cultures that emphasize on verticality and spatial depth, and the scale of listening and naming methods in the mountains differ notably from those in urban settings. For a scholar who lived in cities, these conditions also mean that accessing Taiwan’s mountains demands a higher level of survival skills, environmental literacy, and risk assessment for the fieldwork methodologies.

This preliminary investigation has established an empirical foundation for the core arguments of my dissertation. Moving forward, I hope to deepen the connection between empirical and theoretical framework. Based on research findings, this year(2026) will focus on: embodied knowledge exploration, vertical spatiality and worldviews, sensing places and scale perception from acoustic, and reevaluating“risk” and “etiquette” both in indigenous and modern hiking contexts.

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Anqi Yan

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This project shows that extraction and protection are co-constitutive. Since the 17th century, China has been the world’s largest consumer of jadeite jewelry, while Myanmar’s Kachin State has remained its primary source. Jadeite extraction, which accounts for nearly half of Myanmar’s GDP, has long been organized by regimes that profit from protection. Here, protection refers not only to legal or regulatory measures but also to practices that commodify security and legitimizes violence. Drawing on multisited ethnography, oral histories, and archival research, my project follows the social life of jadeite and the human actors who protect and trade it. These range from 19th-century colonial tax collectors to contemporary militias and state agencies.
Previous scholarship has romanticized inter-Asian borderlands as “Zomia,” where people historically avoided state control and assimilation. Scholars have also tended to focus on the mobility of people while overlooking extracted non-human objects moving across the border. In contrast, this project shows how jadeite has both shaped and been shaped by protection practices. It also demonstrates how human–non-human interactions redefine sovereignty in the borderlands. Ultimately, it advances anthropological debates on sovereignty, materiality, and inter-Asian borderlands by showing how natural resources and their protectors together shape transnational political economies.

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Lilia Yan—“Reconstructing Heterosexual Romance and Female Masculinity: Cosplay Commission in Chinese Otome Game Fandom”

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This research investigates “cosplay commission”, a subcultural practice within the fandom of otome games in China. Otome games, a genre of romantic simulation games targeted at female players, feature carefully crafted heterosexual narratives in which players form emotional attachments to idealized male characters. In recent years, some fans have extended these virtual romances into real-life interactions by hiring female cosplayers to embody their favorite male characters from Chinese otome games. These cosplayers participate in scripted, in-character encounters that closely replicate in-game romantic experiences.

This practice raises important questions about gender performance, intimacy, and the reimagining of heterosexual romance in contemporary Chinese ACG (Anime, Comic, Game) fandom spaces. Why do female fans seek romantic experiences with fictional male characters performed by women rather than with real men? How does female cross-dressed masculinity challenge or reinforce heteronormative structures in these fan-driven spaces? What insights does this practice offer into evolving forms of female agency and desire within China’s digital and neoliberal media culture? Through ethnographic engagement with fans and cosplayers, this research aims to illuminate how these interactions shape emerging norms of gender, queer aesthetics, and intimacy in the context of China’s digital economies.