Was going over my photos from fieldwork done at Microsoft Research Asia last summer and found these photos my friend Neema and I took when we were at the Beijing railway station. We had just asked the counter in one of the waiting rooms about our schedule, and here is a photo of his copy of the schedule:

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Continue readingArtifact miscellany: train schedules

Rex Wong, a Hong Kong UI guy, points out the problems of setting up a tag cloud in Chinese:

• Sorting: Do they sort by pinyin (preferred by Mainland Chinese) or by strokes (preferred by Hong Kong Chinese even though it’s hard to gauge how many strokes goes into a character)?
• Font sizing: Some Chinese fonts do not scale up well…

Continue readingThe perils of Chinese tag clouds

This week, an illustrated blog diary called 胖兔子粥粥的笔记本儿（Fat Bunny ZhouZhou’s Journal).

Translations in maroon.

The illustrated blog, via PostShow.

Free Hugs have made it over to China (well, at least Beijing). Douban has a group devoted to the movement.

Photo from Ladynow.org.
Link via PostShow.

An AJAX-powered job search engine, with personal and company profiles, email alerts, notes, and a really, really shiny logo.

There is already quite a large batch of jobs listed, and the site is offered in both Chinese and English (the jobs are mostly offered in Chinese).

http://www.meijob.com/

Now a treat for the Mandarin speakers…

Continue readingmeijob: ajax job searching

Held on the 3rd floor of a Beijing bookstore Disanji, we bring you a glimpse of some DIY craft by college students:

See original post for more details.
Via PostShow.

This week, a parody on Doraemon, a Japanese comic/cartoon popular in East Asia (see Wikipedia entry here). Found on a blog as part of a longer comic, which use shock value for humor.

As always, translations in maroon.

See full post here at the 3stupidman blog.

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Continue readingSunday Strip: Doraemon Parody

(Image dissection: shadow puppet head, woodcut clouds, modern-art paint splatting, Chinese red)

(Image dissection:  “For Rent” post-it’s and phone numbers common on unkempt walls mixed with sharp, modern dragon figure)

(Image dissection: bamboo scaffolding + construction + drippy paint)

Beautiful artwork on a (sadly) user-unfriendly site. Not sure if he…

Continue readingFeatured Artist: 乔西 (QiaoXi)

If you know what Threadless is, think of this as a China version without the designer flair.

If you don’t, MyTshirt.cn is a website to submit, share, purchase T-shirt designs.

(The above design is by ibuzzo, and is a combination of two Chinese characters. You can purchase it here. Or you…

Continue readingChina’s Threadless

A small shack, primitively built, on the corner of a road in Shanghai, surrounded by high-rise development. Owned by a strong old woman, patronized by night-time drivers.

update: ding zi hu (lit. “nail house”): person or household who refuses to move and bargains for unreasonably high compensation when the land is requisitioned for a construction project.

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Continue readingShanghai’s Strongest Nail House