Unintended Experience

This volume gathers a collection of diary-like texts, posted in 2015 by Evelyn Taocheng Wang on her Facebook page, recording the experiences she had as an undercover transgender masseuse in a massage parlour in Amsterdam. The vignette-like chapters retrace the daily routine at the parlour, incidents with clients and conversations with fellow workers. A series of watercolours by the artist accompanies and illustrates the texts, interpreting her anecdotes in colourful visions.Also includes personal reflections that deftly mix bursts of humour with moments of tension, poetical notes and an acute sense of observation.Through transcriptions of discussions between Chinese immigrant women working together, the author proposes an unconventional portrait of the Chinese diaspora. Inaccuracies of language are an integral part of the narrative.