If simply keeping up on the virtual world weren’t enough, there’s the real world as well!  Here’s a quick update on a couple of recent/ongoing important meetings shaping the future of Virtual China:

The first ever Internet Governance Forum (IGF), defined by Wikipedia as “a global venue under the auspices of the United Nations, established to
accommodate…

Continue readingkeeping up with conferences: Internet governance; Chinese bloggers

From a strip entitled 男人三十 (Man at Thirty).

As always, translations in maroon.

Link to comic on Sina.

Interlocals.net analyzes “the politics of spoof culture” by looking at the role of censorship in China, the tradition of spoof culture (“Lu Xun’s Old tales retold can be understood as an ironic spoof, Cui Jian’s Red Rock can be read as wild reflection, Stephen Chow’s Western Journey…

Continue readingThe Politics of Egao (spoof culture) & The Egao Gang

Is it uber-ironic fast food advertising with a nod to socialist realist art?  A straight ahead appeal to Chinese patriotism?  It’s ad copy and therefore a bit hard to translate, but given the rest of the copy I’d say Kentucky Fried Chicken is going for something like: “KFC. Changing for China. Creating the New Fast Food.”

The …

Continue readingthe revolution will be…”New Fast Food”?

More from Roland Soong at ESWN on how he does what he does.  In other words, tips on how to do cross-cultural media analysis.  Here he’s describing how he works with the Hong Kong media offerings on a daily basis–all of which he does online, by the way:

I begin by reading the English-language South China Morning Post and The…

Continue readingThe ESWN model, part two

We talked before about an online McDonalds ad campaign last time. Today’s example is drawn from a Flash animation entitled 《大话G游》 (A Chinese Odyssey).

The Flash video is a derivative of an old Stephen Chow movie about the Monkey King. The characters in the animation are modeled from the actors in the movie, and the…

Continue readingMarketing special: embedded Flash advertising

From a strip entitled, 圣斗士-勇闯十二宫 (Saint Seiya: Mad Rush Through the Twelve Temples). It is a parody on the Japanese Saint Seiya anime/manga.

As always, subtitles in maroon.

Link to comic on Sina.

Lu Xun is revered in China as the father of modern Chinese
literature, and was similar to Mark Twain in his ability to skewer the
morals and politics of the day (early 20th century China) through devilishly drawn characters, satire, and
brilliant language.  A few of those characters, Ah Q in particular, have endured through the last 70 years of change and…

Continue readingLu Xun 鲁迅 in Virtual China: 70th anniversary of his death

My brother sent me a link to this video entitled, 我不是刘德华 (I’m Not Andy Lau). It seems to be a homemade video made by a guy called 肖军 (left) who was once a stunt double for superstar Andy Lau 刘德华 (right). The video features him posing in various mock Andy Lau MTV poses (in costume!),  clips of pretend paparazzi, and…

Continue reading我不不不不是刘德华

China Rises is a website that supports a television documentary series about the current life situation of different citizens in China. The website is hosted by New York Times as part of their ‘specials’ and the television broadcast – to watch it, you will need the Discovery Times Channel – starts on the 23rd of October. They also offer a DVD…

Continue readingChina Rises