Gang of Five

The Gang of Five are a group of five male Chien Tan students whose evolving performances turn stereotypes about Asian men into material for their own humor and self-presentation. First known as the Gang of Four, they become five as the summer progresses; their staged photographs and final beauty-contest act recast the act of representation itself, from a label imposed on them into a spectacle they control.

Formation and Changing Name

The group first appears under the name Gang of Four, with Marc, David, Peter, and two other students forming a human pyramid in the rain while a fifth guy photographs them. When Ever asks what they are doing, Marc explains that they are taking back their stereotypes and calls the project the Gang of Four Manifesto. Their joking declaration gives the pose a purpose beyond silliness: the students make a statement to the world by choosing how to present themselves.

On a later trip south through Taiwan, the group has expanded to five: Sam, David, baby-faced Benji, Peter, and Marc. The new number is reflected in the name Gang of Five, but the group’s method remains recognizably the same: pose together, invent a comic identity, and make the image part of an ongoing collection. The change from four to five is thus both literal and a continuation of their shared project.

A Repertoire of Reversed Stereotypes

During the southern journey, the buses pass through the Tropic of Cancer on the way to Taiwan’s southernmost tip. The students walk between green fields toward the water, where three seas meet. Against that expansive landscape, the Gang of Five line up with fingertips joined in prayer before a rock shaped like Nixon’s head. Asked which stereotype they are reclaiming this time, Marc answers with closed eyes that they are Five Wise Asian Sages; Sam follows by intoning that Asians are so wise.

The performance turns an expectation of Asian intellectualism into an exaggerated group identity. Its deliberate solemnity, prayer pose, and comic setting make the image a joke the students author rather than an image assigned to them. Ever responds by taking their picture for the Take-Back-the-Trope photo collection, connecting their running series to her own growing sense that she, too, can take charge of her identity.

At Sun Moon Lake, the group offers a different tableau for another photograph. Sam, David, Benji, Peter, and Marc raise arms and legs in crane kicks, cock doubled dragon fists, and bare their teeth as Magical Martial Arts Gurus. The exaggerated pose makes the stereotype conspicuous by enlarging it into theatrical comedy. The image also serves the group’s practical role in the Chien Tan benefit concert: Marc volunteers the boys for a seven-minute block, and Ever adds their act to the developing program.

The Beauty Contest at Chien Tan

The group’s largest performance comes during the benefit concert, when Sophie announces them as the final act before Ever’s own. Instead of presenting the martial-arts pose again, the students appear in a mock Ms. Chien Tan Beauty Contest. One of the girls takes the microphone and introduces the contestants as Marquette, Sammi, Vida, Ben-Jammin’, and Petra, inviting the audience to cheer and vote.

The names and format turn the Gang of Five into contestants in a pageant, with Marc, Sam, David, Benji, and Peter performing as the would-be queens. David has shaved his goatee. The audience responds with cheers and whistles, and the act deliberately takes back the effeminate Asian male stereotype on the students’ own terms. Their earlier photographs used brief, composed poses; here, the group builds a full stage event that draws the audience into its joke.

The contest runs far beyond its allotted time as the contestants strut and the audience votes them down one by one. The final contest is between Ben-Jammin’ and Marquette. Marquette removes a fur coat and reveals a faux-skin leotard beneath it, then shows the audience the Dragon’s green qipao. In the front row, the Dragon rises in her matching qipao, grinning and raising her clasped hands overhead as she turns in the stage lights and accepts the applause. The moment shifts the performance from parody into shared celebration: the students’ joke includes the camp leader, who visibly joins the spectacle rather than shutting it down.

Significance and Narrative Role

Across the photographs and the stage act, the Gang of Five make performance a form of self-definition. Their humor draws on familiar images of Asian wisdom and martial arts, and the beauty contest takes up the feminized stereotype of Asian men; rather than simply rejecting those images, the group enlarges and rearranges them until the students control the terms of display. The shift from a rain-soaked pyramid to a pageant that commands the theater’s attention shows how their recurring project grows from a declaration into a public event.

Their performances also intersect with Ever’s account of identity. She has felt measured against media stories about exceptional Asian American boys, whose achievements her parents encounter in the World Journal. By contrast, the group does not seek recognition through another résumé of prodigy accomplishments. Its members make collective images, exaggerate stereotypes, and invite laughter. Ever’s affection for the Five Wise Asian Sages and her decision to photograph them place her inside this creative counterpractice: she recognizes that she is not the only person at Chien Tan taking charge of an identity shaped by other people’s expectations.

The group’s final appearance also contributes to the benefit concert’s atmosphere of improvisation and fellowship. Their act goes overtime, wins the theater, and leaves Ever moved enough to say it cannot be topped. The Gang of Five are therefore more than a recurring comic interlude: their self-authored images offer a model of solidarity in which stereotype becomes material for invention, and a performance’s meaning belongs to its performers as well as its audience.