If you’d like to be a tester for the new Chinese virtual world HiPiHi, and you speak Chinese or know someone who does and can help you, you’ll find an application form here.  If you’re REALLY interested and can’t figure out how to fill out the form, why not try sending an email directly…

Continue readingif you want to enter a new Chinese virtual world…

One of Sina BBS’s “HOT” threads last week: “People’s Congress Delegate Advocates Repealing Concept of Illegal Cohabitation, Do You Support?” It was posted by “eastinred,” who kicks things off with a long response titled, “This People’s Congress delegate’s proposal puts the incidental in front of the fundamental,” some of which I translate…

Continue readingon the BBS: cohabitation and the law

Everyone says sex makes the Internet go round; maybe it’s just a little more obvious in China?  Sandwiched in between Tianya photo posts on Qing dynasty-era embroidery and government officials planting trees is one of Tianya’s most popular ongoing photo threads of the year: an adult industry exhibition in Las Vegas. Over 400,000 have viewed the pages in the…

Continue readingsexual tourism in Virtual China

If you’re curious about how the new Five-Year Plan compares with previous Five-Year Plans, you can browse China Mapping Out the 11th Five-Year Development Guidelines, which reminds us that the 1st Five-Year Plan’s (1953-1957) goals were pretty different than today:

to concentrate efforts on the
construction of 694 large and medium-sized industrial projects,
including 156…

Continue readingfive-year plans, the official history

Okay, so I don’t know why these are so fascinating to me, but I couldn’t help but spend ten minutes comparing the lovely photos Jason blogged below (you really should see the whole set at PCAuto), with their counterparts from a map of Beijing that Rania Ho has on her Flickrstream, and which I …

Continue readingmore Beijing clovers

A growing facet of Virtual China: Maryann O’Donnell’s Shenzhen Fieldnotes has a great post on her thoughts about finding out that her local hospital in Nanshan is a leader in alternative stem-cell therapies for foreign patients. O’Donnell compares China stem cell blogs and
China adoption blogs. These two sets of online resources are major
contributors to understandings of China, outside of…

Continue readingChina’s stem-cell therapy blogs

Via the Asian Studies WWW Monitor, this set of 1940s Tibet photos taken by an American army expedition sent to Tibet from India to see about getting supplies to the KMT.  The collection of over 200 black and white photos is maintained by Dr Rob Linrothe, Associate Professor and Director of Art History at Skidmore College.  A few were published…

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Something to keep an eye on: Ultimate Springboard 3D Virtual Community 终极跳板３D 虚拟社区, a new community site for Chinese virtual world residents and creators. Its slogan, written along both sides, is “Your world, your dream. Virtual community helps you grow up.”  The site has articles and tips on how to make money, how to create objects, and so…

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I like going to Google Video and Youtube every now and then and doing some searching in English and Chinese for different China-related topics.  You never know what will turn up, and the randomness is the fun of it.  Today I checked out the variety on Vimeo, a sort-of hipster’s Youtube.  Searching "China" reveals 17 pages of…

Continue readingvirtual China: a tour on Vimeo

Folklorists, historians, and anthropologists of the future will have a huge new source of self-generated firsthand reports of folk customs around China, complete with photos and pretty soon, audio and video. Poking around Tianya trying to understand a bit more about some of the big forums, I came across this lively, descriptive Feb. 27 post titled [Chaoshan] Hometown Great Pig Contest. A…

Continue readingBBS: a new forum for folklore