Author: Jason Li

Jason Li is an independent designer, artist and educator. Once upon a time, he studied engineering and ran a news site about fan translations of video games.

Historical artifact: 汉字组字扑克 (Chinese character combination poker)

Posted on by Jason Li
A view of the box package for 汉字组字扑克 (Chinese character combination poker) from the top. The box is green and has various designs combining typography and illustrated playing cards.
Some photos of cards, showing how they might be combined by placing the cards next to or on top of one another.

I purchased this children’s educational card game in Penang, Malaysia in 2023. Its name is 汉字组字扑克, which roughly translates to “Chinese character combination poker.” This box set did not come with any instructions, but its name and design suggests it’s a kind of “扑克 [poker]” game where cards (with Chinese characters/radicals written on them) are grouped together into Chinese…

Continue readingHistorical artifact: 汉字组字扑克 (Chinese character combination poker)

Typography Design

Digitally Typesetting Rare, Ancient and Esoteric Chinese Characters

Posted on by Jason Li

The short answer

Install the BabelStone Han font, which supports “57,000 Han characters… [and] includes many rare or archaic characters that are not found in most CJK fonts” on your computer. Then look up the character on Unicode’s Unihan Database Lookup website (using the Stroke-Radical Index) and copy-and-paste it from there.

Update: Andrew West, the maintainer…

Continue readingDigitally Typesetting Rare, Ancient and Esoteric Chinese Characters

AI or no AI, China’s manufacturing engine to stay in the lead

Posted on by Jason Li

From Dan Wang’s China notes, July ’23: on technological momentum:

Americans are now integrating these [AI] tools into their lives. And they will start showing up in productivity statistics, perhaps even soon. The longer that most Chinese are unable to work with them, the greater the risk that China will be left behind in some way…

Though…

Continue readingAI or no AI, China’s manufacturing engine to stay in the lead

There Is More Than One Chinese Language: Dictionaries for Cantonese, Teochew, Toisanese, Shanghainese, and more!

Posted on by Jason Li

A bird with a long beak and glasses reading a big thick book. Hovering near it area two browser windows and one phone screen that show different screenshots from different Chinese dictionaries

As we say in The Hanmoji Handbook, “Here’s the thing about spoken Chinese: it refers to many different languages — dozens, in fact — used by people in various parts of China, today and throughout history.” So when we discovered that the United Nations created an official, singular Chinese Language Day (celebrated annually on 4/20…

Continue readingThere Is More Than One Chinese Language: Dictionaries for Cantonese, Teochew, Toisanese, Shanghainese, and more!

Correcting the record (and oriental gaze) on Radiolab’s China Mixtape episode

Posted on by Jason Li

A soldier with red star cap and uniform holds up a casette tape and a machine gun, drawn in the style of a Communist China propaganda poster from many decades ago.
A still from Radiolab’s trailer for its Mixtape series (from Youtube)

Many moons ago, Krish Raghav raised some serious concerns about a Radiolab episode on the emergence of the rock music scene in China. “Framing China’s musical lineage as ‘Revolutionary operas to John Denver’ is such a frustrating half-truth,” he said, “[and]…

Continue readingCorrecting the record (and oriental gaze) on Radiolab’s China Mixtape episode

Innovating through manufacturing, the China way

Posted on by Jason Li

Dan Wang writes in Foreign Affair about how China is gaining ground over the US in the tech space by challenging the Western model where scientific discovery reigns supreme:

Unlike the West, China has grounded its technology sector not in glamorous research and advanced science but in the less flashy task of improving manufacturing capabilities. If Washington is serious about…

Continue readingInnovating through manufacturing, the China way

The Great China R&D Squeeze of 2021 & the US Obsession with China’s Collapse

Posted on by Jason Li

Lots of gems in this year’s edition of Dan Wang’s annual letter. It is really worth the long read, but today we’re going to hone in on two sections of his analysis on where China is today. First, on the 2021 squeeze on tech companies:

Beijing’s attitude marks a difference with capitalism as it’s practiced in the US. Over…

Continue readingThe Great China R&D Squeeze of 2021 & the US Obsession with China’s Collapse

Chinese Comics Review

David: a comic exploration of a hybrid identity

Posted on by Jason Li
Book cover with a pencil drawing of a man with a bird's head wearing a suit sitting on a park bench

David is a graphic novel that explores what it means to be different, a misfit caught between two worlds, and it does so through its half bird half man protagonist. The story opens with David as he goes about mundane human activities. These bird-man gags are mirthful and witty. It helps that author-illustrator Yi Li uses a delicate touch, ever…

Continue readingDavid: a comic exploration of a hybrid identity

Book Review · Starting Up in Shenzhen

Looking at China and Seeing Ourselves: Two Ethnographies of Tech in China

Posted on by Jason Li

Two book covers. The first is for Blockchain Chicken Farm which features an agragrian landscape. The second is for Protoype Nation and features a ballerina in the middle of a factory.

Blockchain Chicken Farm: And Other Stories of Tech in China’s Countryside
By Xiaowei Wang
FSG Originals, 256 pp.

Prototype Nation: China and the Contested Promise of Innovation
By Silvia M. Lindtner
Princeton University Press, 288 pp.

It’s really hard to get an on-the-ground view of…

Continue readingLooking at China and Seeing Ourselves: Two Ethnographies of Tech in China

Chinese Comics Review

This quintessential Chinese millennial is a seal, and she is adorable

Posted on by Jason Li

A cute, rotund, cartoon seal clutches things on these two book coveres

Upon first glance, Seal (海豹) looks like just another cute character dreamed up by the internet, lolling about on her futon, joyfully procrastinating with her friends. Seal embodies these positive qualities in her print debut, No Big Deal If You Like Me (喜欢我也没关系), and in the cult favorite Tumblr. But if you dig deeper into the larger…

Continue readingThis quintessential Chinese millennial is a seal, and she is adorable