A group blog about Chinese tech, media and design
China’s major cities are seeing fierce competition for drivers to join ridehailing platforms like Uber and China’s homegrown leader, Didi Kuadi. I just spent a few weeks in China using the “People’s Uber” service, the cheapest Uber service that uses private cars, and interviewed 10-12 Uber…
Continue readingUber in China: A Driver’s View
We’ve been pretty quiet about it, but a while back, Tricia and I got together with our friend Adrianna to launch 88 Gong – the world’s first job board for tech/media/design gigs in Asia. Since its inception, we’ve had over 400 postings featuring jobs from not only China but also India, Singapore, Malaysia and countless other places. Plus, we’ve been…
Continue readingOur very own job board for tech/media/design in Asia
Our very own An Xiao Mina will be hosting an evening at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco next week (July 2). From their website:
Writer, critic, artist and technologist An Xiao Mina has designed an interactive program that will explore the visual culture of the Chinese Internet. First,…
Continue readingUpcoming event: memes, puns and selfies, a look at Chinese digital culture
On the way back to Shanghai from our fieldwork trip in rural Guizhou, Tricia and I decided to go shopping at Guiyang’s Hunter City Mall. Guiyang is the capital city of the poorest province in China, but it’s…
Continue readingPictures of Chinese People Scanning QR Codes
Now in its fourth year, the Maker Faire Shenzhen was bigger than ever. Aside from ever-larger booths and robot sculptures (see above), there was also a much larger corporate presence from sponsors, and, given Premier Li Keiqiang’s recent interest in “maker culture,” probably a great leap in government support. In short, Maker Faire Shenzhen has grown up.
As…
Continue readingRobots, Diaper Monitors and Putin: What We Saw at Maker Faire Shenzhen 2015
In light of Mary Meeker’s recent statistic from KPCB’s 2005 Internet Trends report (slide 163):
I wanted to revisit Stratechery’s previous article about Xiaomi’s ambition to become a high-end, all-purpose consumer electronics brand for China.
First they…
Continue readingLike Apple, Xiaomi has its own cult followers
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On the morning of his wedding day, my cousin’s fiancé waited impatiently for Likes so that he could retrieve his bride.
Inside the apartment building, he and his groomsmen would have other trials to face: drinking vile concoctions of vinegar and wasabi, doing pushups, and liberally bribing everyone for hints to impossible trivia questions. But…
Continue readingThree Moments With WeChat
This year’s Met Gala had the unfortunate theme “China: Through the Looking Glass”, which was, according to their curators, “not about China per se, but about a China that exists as a collective fantasy.”
Um. Oookay.
But what did the 600 million or so internet users in “China per se” think about the…
Continue readingWhat the internet users in China thought about the China-themed Met Gala