Debunking Silicon Valley myths about WeChat’s conversational UI & other findings
Posted on by Jason Li
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.
The psychedelic art of an Adventure Time-inspired Chinese webcomic
Posted on by Jason Li
Electrocat and Lightning Dog is an indie webcomic set in a futuristic world of talking animals, aliens and psychedelic strawberries. Inspired by Pendleton Ward’s Adventure Time, it follows the tried-and-true formula of two best friends going on random adventures, except that Electrocat and Lightning Dog is even more zany and non-linear than its progenitor.
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Dear activists, please stop telling everyone Telegram is secure
Posted on by Jason Li
By Jason Li, Lokman Tsui
A Traditional Chinese translation of this article was first published on Inmedia on August 4, 2016.
Activists at this year’s Hong Kong July 1 march made a big push for mobile chat app Telegram, but for all the wrong reasons. While we marched…
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Hong Kong’s Animation-Comic-Games Convention 2016: Mostly a frenzy of shopping with a shrinking presence of local creators
Posted on by Jason Li
It was business as usual at this year’s ACG (Animation-Comic-Game) Con in Hong Kong. Big international videogame and toy brands dominated, and attendees diligently lined up to shop for Japanese manga merch, to play test games in VR, or to marvel at finely-crafted toy figurines from Japan or the US. This 90% off gacha booth was, for example, swamped…
HK Book Fair 2016: 100Most steals the day, homegrown dim sum comics and a wuxia novels exhibit
Posted on by Jason Li
The Hong Kong Book Fair 2016 continues the city’s longstanding tradition of hosting consumer-obsessed, discount-supermarket-style book fairs. As with previous years, it was mobbed with students towing suitcases to buy in bulk, 20%+ discounts all around, and bookstore-publishers cross-selling each other’s books (but promoting their own most prominently). The books themselves include both fiction and non-fiction, with a large selection of titles…
The History of Chinese Typewriters Needs Your $upport
Posted on by Jason Li
Tom Mullaney (professor of Chinese history + technology at Stanford) is running a Kickstarter campaign around exhibiting and preserving the fascinating history of the Chinese typewriter. One highlight of his exhibition will be centered around how Chinese engineers cracked the puzzle on creating a typewriter…
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An indispensable traveler & buyer’s guide for the electronics mega-market in Shenzhen
Posted on by Jason Li
The Essential Guide to Electronics in Shenzhen is a niche travel guide to the famed electronics market/complex – often referred to as SEG or Huaqiangbei – in Futian, Shenzhen. The guide draws on the author Bunnie Huang’s many years of experience as an engineer, entrepreneur and foreigner in Shenzhen. In a way, this guide is the physical, book version of…
Ping Pong #03: a visually-stunning package of risograph comics
Posted on by Jason Li
Ping Pong #03 is all about the printed, physical object, and the results are stunning. Eschewing the convention of a single, bound book, Ping Pong #03 comes as a lushly-packaged set of seven booklets, written and illustrated by seven different artists. While every booklet looks visually distinct, they all bear the mark of the risograph printing process: bright,…
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Online translation communities in China, a brief overview
Posted on by Jason Li
Whacky on Weibo: Dick Ng’s collected webcomics
Posted on by Jason Li
Ng’s webcomics are snappy, short and whacky. His comics are native to Weibo (a Twitter-like service), his strips thrive as self-contained, single-page gags. While other cartoonists in China might publish 100+ page works on Douban (a Tumblr-like service) or one of the many webcomic portals (e.g. 有妖气), Ng focuses primarily on creating short comics on Weibo where…
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