Documenting the Toishan-US migration

October 24, 2013 by Jason Li

I need your support to return to Toishan, China, and complete my photographic and historical documentary project tying together my family history and the larger story of the Chinese-American diaspora and emigration abroad.

Over the next several years, I will spend six to twelve months in China, photographing and interviewing Toishanese…

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Phone maker Xiaomi’s incredibly charismatic (and trilingual) Twitter account

October 17, 2013 by Jason Li

Much has been stated about Xiaomi as the rising star in China that’s making premium-but-affordable phones with its own UI for Android. But it seems like they’re also a formidable force on social media.

The tweets below come from their official account:

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Hong Kong’s First Online Petitions Platform

October 14, 2013 by Jason Li

Full disclosure: I worked on the design for this project.

Online petition platforms have taken off in the English speaking world, but what about a Chinese petition platform? In the US and UK, the government both run official petition platforms (remember the Death Star petition to the White House?) and there are a whole…

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Watch This Super Cute Animated Intro to Alibaba’s Personal Finance Product

September 30, 2013 by Jason Li

It’s pretty great. First, it pokes fun at how people are told to save and not spend. Then it introduces their product which allows people to save AND spend from the higher-than-usual interest rates if customers put their savings there.

Check out Alibaba’s Yuebao 余额宝 for yourself.

The Long-list King of China Bloggers Returns

September 16, 2013 by Jason Li

When I first started blogging about China, Roland Soong’s EastSouthWestNorth was an essential destination for any China watchers at the time. This was back in 2005. A former media analyst, and now heir to some formidable Chinese-literary estates, Soong would translate page-long excerpts from multiple newspapers and magazines about the same “suddenly breaking incident.” Then he would throw in a few terse…

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Apple dominates in the Chinese MOOC space even though it’s not a MOOC

August 27, 2013 by Jason Li

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Spurred by this article on MOOCs taken hold in Hong Kong, I decided to do a survey on MOOC adoption by Chinese institutions. I did not, as you can see, survey any Chinese MOOC platforms (are there any?), so it’s a bit of a biased selection.

WeChat: Buying their way to the top of the world?

July 29, 2013 by Jason Li

I saw a version of this (adorable) ad on local Hong Kong TV a few weeks ago – it surprised me that WeChat had gone to new lengths to advertise its service. Before this, WeChat had been buying up traditional ad space on the tops of skyscrapers and in subway stations in Hong Kong (in the case of the…

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Mini-documentary on Cult Youth on making comix in China

July 17, 2013 by Jason Li

CULT YOUTH from Diesel New Voices (by Coco Wang and Mi You) on Vimeo.

Just discovered this gem recently, an 8-minute mini-documentary about the people behind Cult Youth, one of the leading underground comic groups in China today. What comes off as surprising for a group whose motto includes “If you were…

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Example of a cultural mis-understanding forming a misleading business insight

May 20, 2013 by Tricia Wang

Reposted from Cultural Bytes.

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I love that The Atlantic has covered Red Associates’s work in ethnography and insights. They have brilliant ethnographers and I would recommend them as an awesome and insightful supplier.

Although the article contained a minor point that I believe is misleading.