China Meme Report

Chinese video meme hit used for PLA recruitment ad

Posted on by Jason Li

Excerpted from Quartz’s excellent What China’s 2014 internet memes said about the country’s hopes and fears:

Little Apple. A retro-sounding dance hit by two former Youku stars, the Chopstick Brothers, is China’s version of “Gangnam Style.” The song xiao pingguo, or “Little Apple,” is irreverent, annoyingly catchy, and bizarre, with a politically incorrect …

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Book Review

Book Review: Understanding China through Comics, Volume 4: The Ming and Qing Dynasties (1368 – 1912)

Posted on by Jason Li

UnderstandingChinaThroughComics4

The fourth volume of “Understanding China Through Comics” takes us through the final six centuries of imperial rule in China. In it, we find the final emperors of China attempting various reforms in the face of foreign invasion, occupation and, ultimately, humiliation.

Liu continues his formidable task of tackling the entirety of Chinese history, with an increasing focus on policy…

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China Meme Report

How the Umbrella ‘Revolution’ meme hurt the movement in Hong Kong

Posted on by Jason Li

HKClassBoycottSelfies

 

The ongoing protests for democracy in Hong Kong have been dubbed by many as the “Umbrella Revolution.” But days before the term was created, the dominant internet meme supporting the protests was built around student selfies accompanied by hashtags #HKClassBoycott and #HKStudentStrike. This was in line with what was then a students-only protest. Supporters participated by finding a photo…

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Ethnography of Tech

Drawing inspiration from China’s subtitling and dating communities

Posted on by jinge

Editor’s note: Our very own Jin Ge recently spoke at The Conference by Media Evolution 2014 on how designers can draw inspiration from China’s subtitling and dating communities. You can watch the entire talk above.

Some of the highlights include:

  • How his team at IDEO learned that subtitling groups, who volunteer to…

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Typography Design

Kendra Schaefer’s Field Guide to Implementing Chinese Fonts in CSS

Posted on by Jason Li

Beijing-based designer Kendra Schaefer has created an incredibly valuable resource in writing up: Chinese Standard Web Fonts: A Guide to CSS Font Family Declarations for Web Design in Simplified Chinese. While you’d best head to Kendra’s site for the full details, we’ve included some highlights below:

Good Rules for Using Chinese fonts in CSS

Use the Chinese…

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Xiaomi’s vaguely familiar design and a Chinese bitcoin mine

Posted on by Jason Li

In case you’re not following consultant-turned-VC Benedict Evans‘ newsletter on mobile technology (which is excellent and highly recommended), here are the China-related gems from this week:

Xiaomi unveiled the latest version of its custom flavor of Android. Lot of interesting and innovative features in there. The design language, though, looks… vaguely familiar. Link

Apple is…

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