A group blog about Chinese tech, media and design
Blockchain Chicken Farm: And Other Stories of Tech in China’s Countryside
By Xiaowei Wang
FSG Originals, 256 pp.
Prototype Nation: China and the Contested Promise of Innovation
By Silvia M. Lindtner
Princeton University Press, 288 pp.
It’s really hard to get an on-the-ground view of…
Continue readingLooking at China and Seeing Ourselves: Two Ethnographies of Tech in China
Editor’s note: This post includes some of our favorite Instagram fieldnotes by An Xiao Mina from her latest trip to Shenzhen. This is part one, which focuses on the aesthetics of the city.
Shenzhen at night. The urban aesthetic of China’s major cities includes a…
Continue readingShenzhen gothic not so gothic
Editor’s note: Below is a select excerpt of An Xiao Mina’s Instagram posts from her recent trip to China.
At the world epicenter of fidget spinners. I see them in my head, spinning spinning spinning in Berlin, New York, Manila, suddenly viral, suddenly memetic.
…
Continue readingPhoto Essay: Fidget Spinners, AR Guns and Panda Cams in Shenzhen
Shenzhen: The Silicon Valley of hardware
By WIRED Video, 68 minutes, $0.00
Learning from Shenzhen: China’s Post-Mao Experiment from Special Zone to Model City
Edited by Mary Ann O’Donnell, Winnie Wong, and Jonathan Bach
University of Chicago Press, 283 pp., $35.00
I…
Continue readingFantasies of Shenzhen
Editor’s note: The following is an excerpt from ‘Created’ in China: Shenzhen is making hardware like Silicon Valley makes apps, written by An Xiao Mina and originally published on Fusion.
China is amidst a massive transition from a country primarily of manufacturers to one of makers. Lei Gao is part of this new generation…
Continue readingHow the internet is making hardware startups as fast as software in Shenzhen
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…