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Frog in a Well has an interesting article about print culture and publishing in historic China:

Happily, China had a thriving printing culture for a good thousand years before the introduction of western-style printing machinery in the late 19th century created a modern publishing industry, so we know something about this.  The Chinese reluctance to adopt movable type  is even now sometimes…

Continue readingPrint culture in ancient China

Ice scupltures by Joseph Ellis

Alfredo Martinez at work

The New York Times has an interesting article about various artists who have chosen to go to China to maximize their creativity. Reasons include the cheap costs of materials and (other people’s) labor, an escape from the spotlight of the New York art scene, and…

Continue readingForeign artists find a safe haven in China

The Financial Times has a narrated slideshow that speaks about the displacement of migrant workers during the ongoing rapid expansion of the city of Beijing.

While none of the facts are spectacular, the narration is low-key and subtle (in a good way) and the photographs do tell a rich emotional story.

See it here…

Continue readingSlideshow of displaced migrant workers

I hadn’t noticed that the human flesh search phenomenon (moarality-driven smart mobs in China) had spawned its own search engine + news site. See above.

Interesting to see that the phenomenon has persisted for so long — I’d love to see where it goes in a few more years.

Via China Observer.

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Continue readingHuman flesh search dot com

From Techcrunch’s coverage of the 3G Industry Summit in Kunshan:

LEG3s is an award-winning mobile job hunting service specifically targeted at China’s 200 million migrant workers. The service informs those people about open positions, salary levels, the current situation in the job market etc. in over 100 cities in China. LEG3s has so far attracted 3…

Continue readingMobile startup targetting migrant workers!?

Quote from Christopher Knight’s LA Times review of the Beijing painter Song Kun:

Nowhere is it more engaged than in the triptych, where three panels show different views of a rock band playing on a club’s stage, fronted by a young female singer. In the lower left quadrant of each view, illuminated by stage lights that variously blare into…

Continue readingFeatured artist: Song Kun

CNNGo, CNN’s Asia travel guide, recently published top “people to watch” lists for Asia, Shanghai and Hong Kong. The lists include an interesting mix of artists, entrepreneurs and corporate heavyweights, which gives a good albeit skewed flavor of what is going on at the fringes of (the well-polished side of) society.

So go now, to CNNGo’s…

• 39 hot people…

Continue readingCNNGo’s hot people in Asia list

I recently caught wind of the recent explosion of popularity of QQ’s Happy Farm  farming game:

Happy Farm is a farm management game — you grow crops, trade with others and steal from your neighbors. It’s so popular that QQ has had to cap the number of new players to 2 million per day.

People are addicted —…

Continue readingThe Happy Farm explosion

Excerpts from NeochaEDGE: first Matt Niederhauser’s photo of the Chinese indie music scene:

And second Win’s Hiromura Masaaki-inspired art:

“NeochaEDGE is a daily-curated, bilingual website and discovery engine dedicated to showcasing leading-edge creative content and emerging youth culture in China.” …

Continue readingWhere to find China’s indie bits & pieces

Though pearl milk tea (or bubble tea) has been waning in Hong Kong for a while, it’s apparently still able to draw a crowd — particularly when it caarges only 12$ HK for a big cup.

Above: Come Buy, a Taiwanese chain in Mong Kok.

Source: Casey’s Fist of Fun.

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Continue readingPearl milk tea makes a comeback in Hong Kong