For those who are following the tuangou scene: www.xcar.com.cn, one of the most popular Chinese car websites, has a section for tuangou that you can see here.  As the image above shows, you’ll see a list of cars and information about the model type, the organizer, the dates of registration (in this case a…

Continue readingtuangou: team buying cars

In case you didn’t see it, Roland Soong at ESWN has translated a news item on a Hainan pharmaceutical worker who was detained for nine months on charges of re-posting an essay online.  The facts are not in dispute–on a pharmaceutical industry discussion forum, Zhang Zhijian had reposted an essay that he found online describing alleged fraud between another pharmaceutical…

Continue readingwhen re-posting becomes a crime

One of the areas I’m curious about (see previous posts here and here) is the development of practices and laws concerning virtual property in China.  China currently has a system of mixed ownership models (private, state, cooperative, joint venture, etc.) and a range of legal protections for different kinds of property (the recent nailhouse events are an example of this). …

Continue readingQQ numbers: property under law?

Apparently my IFTF colleague Mike Liebhold isn’t the only one who thinks Bladerunner when gazing across the Shanghai skyline, especially Pudong.  Flickr has 16 photos tagged Shanghai + bladerunner; Google images has over 4000.
Enjoy.

Pudong’s Jinmao tower in the fog.

(Tokyo is still the bladerunner grandfather: on Flickr…

Continue readingshanghai + bladerunner

As my Institute for the Future colleague David Pescovitz likes to say, if you’re trying to understand the direction of change, watch what artists are doing. That’s why a site recently pointed out by another IFTF colleague, Mike Love, is helpful and intriguing. Startdrawing.org is curated by Singaporean artists Josef Lee, a designer /…

Continue readingstart visiting startdrawing: chinese art

For Chinese folks experiencing information overload, there is lifebang — a Chinese lifehacking site that contains mostly translations of productivity and Getting Things Done literature, such as Networking for People who Hate Networking or Ten More Ways to Create a Breakthrough in Your Life (from lifehack.org).

Go here to see a real-time map of Twitters–short messages from random people who are letting us all know what they are doing. Warning: it’s hypnotic.  You can see the different Twitters popping up nonstop all over the world…people in the middle of the night, just leaving the house in the morning, getting ready to go to bed, pondering.  The map isn’t…

Continue readingTwittervision of China

Recently came across this running drama (apologies if it’s been covered to death elsewhere); I’m so cynical these days about online reality that it did cross my mind that it’s a very clever, extremely well acted online soap opera masquerading as a real situation.  However, it does seem real since one of the clips is a TV interview. …

Continue readingChinese online saga: tracking down deadbeat Dad

Check out the new Chinese weekly online magazine, Memedia, a cooperative effort among over 100 (and counting) prominent Chinese bloggers.  It looks like a blog but at present is a weekly, with hopes to eventually become a daily.  So far, issues no. 1 and 2 offer super condensed, link-heavy news about web, tech, media, and international events–it’s a mirror of…

Continue readingmemedia: collective Chinese wisdom

Earlier we blogged about the “nail house” 钉子户 in Shanghai–these are the residences of urbanites whose neighborhoods have been “moved” 动迁 and who are the last hold-outs–they stick out like nails in an otherwise modernized environment.  Making the rounds of Chinese portals and BBS in March, this “greatest nail house in history,” from Chongqing, which is renowned across the city.…

Continue readingpersonal rights: another Chinese housing hold-out