Author: Lyn Jeffery

Lyn Jeffery is a cultural anthropologist and researcher at the Institute for the Future, a nonprofit group in Palo Alto, California. She studies new experiences enabled by connective technologies.
Virtual China

China’s top keyword searches: hard to find on english language web

Posted on by Lyn Jeffery

Popkart

The leading Chinese search engine, Baidu, lists top searches of the day just the way Google Zeitgeist does.  Link to today’s top keywords.  Arrow indicates growth rate, followed by number of searches, and my translations.

1     mp3     ↑     99199
2     qq     ↑     78692 [QQ is China’s most popular instant messaging platform]
3     电影     ↑     72689 [movies]…

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Virtual China

aesthetics of abundance

Posted on by Lyn Jeffery

Cqxicibbs
Hans Juergen-Bucher (Media Studies, University of Trier) has a provocative 2004 paper titled Is There a Chinese Internet? which reports the results of user studies he conducted in Germany with Chinese Internet users.  One of his most interesting points is about what he calls an “aesthetics of abundance” that shapes Chinese website design and interface.

In…

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Virtual China

a list of favorite Chinese blogs

Posted on by Lyn Jeffery

The folks at Danwei have done us all a good deed by listing their favorite Chinese-language blogs–and a few of the most popular BBS.  You’ll have to read them in Chinese.  If not, you can at least check them out to see if you spot anything that’s visually interesting.

link

Virtual China

CyberAsia conversations

Posted on by Lyn Jeffery

There is a series of conversations being organized in the Netherlands on Chinese online politics and culture, which appear to be things you can stream live and participate in via IRC, or at the least, download and view after the fact.   One took place last night (ahem…should have read those emails earlier!), but the others are happening tomorrow and later in the month.  Here goes:…

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Virtual China

Vblogging from urban China, in English

Posted on by Lyn Jeffery

Danwei_tv_2

Jeremy Goldkorn has been one of the most visible people behind the Chinese advertising and media-watching blog Danwei for the last several years.  Check out his latest contribution to virtual China — “Danwei TV.”  They’ve got two brilliant clips, one on the big buildings going up in Beijing in preparation for the 2008 Olympics; and one that introduces…

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Virtual China

Stats on IPTV, digital music, online gaming

Posted on by Lyn Jeffery

In January I attended an event in San Jose put on by market research firm In-Stat, looking at a range of small but growing markets in Asia and specifically in mainland China.

They have some great downloadable ppt reports that include basic background and informed forecasts of online gaming, IPTV (which they define as “video service displayed on a TV…

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Virtual China

for cosplay fans

Posted on by Lyn Jeffery

cosplay2_2

cosplay_3

Cosplay, the whole world of dressing up as characters from video games, is alive and well in China.  You can see a whole array of game-inspired art, masquerade, and photography here, at the game zone of Tom.com.  Frankly, I can’t even begin to identify the games from which these characters come.  Scroll down…

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Virtual China

NetEase BBS does Shaolin

Posted on by Lyn Jeffery

Shaolin

A view on kungfu from Virtual China: how can we resist? Chinese netizens weigh in on photos from a recent performance of Shaolin monks in San Francisco on March 12.  There are a few pictures from the performance plus a series of other stills from unknown sources. What are Chinese saying about the marketing of something seen as quintessentially “Chinese”? Commentators fall…

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