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HK Book Fair 2016: 100Most steals the day, homegrown dim sum comics and a wuxia novels exhibit

Posted on by Jason Li

HKBookFair2016-1

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…

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The History of Chinese Typewriters Needs Your $upport

Posted on by Jason Li
Photo of Chinese Typist
Chinese Typist In 1928
1950s Propaganda Poster Featuring Chinese Typist
1950s Propaganda Poster Featuring Chinese Typist

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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Online translation communities in China, a brief overview

Posted on by Jason Li

From Chuan Yu’s Online Translation Communities in Chinese Cyberspace [we’ve added screenshots of the sites mentioned for extra context]:

Since the arrival of the Internet about 30 years ago, the practice of translation has also moved online. A number of online translation communities have been established for various purposes. In general, there are two types: audio-visual and text-oriented translation communities.…

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Why US trash ends up in China (not because labor is cheaper!)

Posted on by An Xiao Mina

From Susan Jake’s LARB review of Junkyard Planet by Adam Minter:

The reason most US trash flows to China is not, as is popularly believed, because of China’s low cost of labor and weak environmental protection (or, at least, not primarily). If it were, Minter says, we’d send our trash to Sudan, and Sudan wouldn’t be sending its…

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The Politics of Pork Industrialization In Modern China

Posted on by Jason Li

A friend pointed me to this superb paper by Mindi Schneider on “Meat, manure, and the politics of agro-industrialization in contemporary China.” In it, Schneider highlights plenty of interesting facts, figures and findings about the social, economic and environmental impact of the pork industry in modern-day China.

On the historical context of pigs and pork in agricultural China:

…

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A status update on China’s high-end industrial development

Posted on by Jason Li

China recently announced it will begin producing and selling its first large passenger jet (since 1980 according to Wikipedia). In response, James Fallows penned two great posts, with accompanying charts, about what this means for China’s industrial development. Here’s his summary from the second post:

The chart was a shorthand for the theme I had…

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Mobile-only design trumps mobile-first on China’s internet

Posted on by Jason Li

Kendra (whose writing we previously featured) writes about the state of Chinese web design in 2015 in Smashing Magazine’s On China’s Bleeding Edge: Web Design Trends 2015. Reporting on the advent of responsive, mobile-first design in China, she discovers that companies are instead going for a Wechat-friendly, mobile-only approach. In an interview with Saber Zou, head…

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Occupy Hong Kong one year later: the coming colonization of cyberspace

Posted on by Jason Li

Governments are increasingly playing catch-up and sometimes even leapfrogging ahead of social movements in the use of digital tactics.

A recent paper by Lokman Tsui, a professor at the School of Journalism and Communication of the Chinese University of Hong Kong and longtime member of Global Voices, offers a chilling look at how authorities in Hong Kong outdid…

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