A number of cosplayers who have participated in the WCS event in the past visited CICAF in Hangzhou near Shanghai, China during the past Golden Week. CICAF was the host for WCS China representatives in 2005, 2006 and 2007. You may remember we visited the massive event in 2008 with WCS 2007 German team Anna and Katharina, you can see the posts here and here!

This year we went with (from the left) Alles,Tomi, Rie, Taketori, Shiguma, Akira, Goldy, Liz, Renee, Yuri and Eria.

Above is the massive 25 meter x 25 meter stage, the performance is Sangoku Musso. You can see the distinctive character of cosplay in China with their use of screens on stage for scene changes.

Here is another picture of the stage from another angle, coincidentally a Sengoku Mussou 3 performance. There were over 80 performances over 3 days averaging 15 minutes each. Judging was quite a challenge - for the dedicated it was an 8 hour a day effort.

This is Yuri and Rie, (WCS 2009 Champions) in the middle flanked by 2 cosplayers from China that they became very close with.

Akira and Shiguma are to the bottom right in this shot, surrounded by a Vocaloid team.

Here Goldy holds Eria in his arms as Rie watches on in shock. This was the booth area where a few of the cosplayers were selling goods to fans.

You may know this character as 'Qoo' from the popular Japanese drink. The cosplayers from Japan loved the character, especially the fact that it was inflatable and the feet of the person inside were sticking out.

I came across an advertisement for a sister event for the Italy preliminaries Romics. CICAF is the largest animation event in China with 700,000 guests this year - this is an ad for 'I Castelli Animati' in Rome.

Above is a picture of Shiguma signing for a fan while at the judging panel. At times behind some of the cosplayers there was up to 10 fans crouching looking for a signature.

On the last day we met up with Zhao Chin who was a special guest at CICAF this year, here she is posing with Renee.

It was a blast to go with such a large group of quality cosplayers and made for a good opportunity to find out about a very different approach to cosplay in a country very close to Japan.