八八吧 · 88 Bar – Page 43 – A group blog about Chinese tech, media and design

Why China’s eco-cities failed

April 15, 2009 by Jason Li

Article from Yale Environment 360 entitled China’s Grand Plans for
Eco-Cities Now Lie Abandoned:

Premise:

Big plans from the West: Planners included McKinsey, Arup and William McDonough himself.
Success on the ground in China: Zero.

Reasons:

In the case of Dongtan, as Paul French explains in a podcast…

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More than 1 million iPhones in China

April 14, 2009 by Jason Li

According to Kevin Li, an analyst at In-Stat Research, there were approximately 1 million iPhones running on China Mobile’s network in 2007. The number running on China Unicom was unknown (source).

Given that it is 2009, and iPhone popularity hasn’t waned, it must have exceeded the 1 million mark by now.

Via Shoujimobile’s blog.…

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Tension between national and regional languages in Chinese rap

April 4, 2009 by Jason Li

Subtitled interviews with hip hop artists in China about why they choose to rap in Mandarin or their hometown dialect.

Some vouch for the large reach of Mandarin, while others vouch for the authenticity and history of their regional dialects. Watch the tensions play out above.

(Via Patrick Searle’s Twitter.)…

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Ai Weiwei: lessons on dealing with Chinese officials

March 29, 2009 by Lyn Jeffery

There is something weirdly compelling about reading the transcripts of calls made to dozens of offices in search of specific numbers and names, part of Chinese artist Ai Weiwei’s attempts to force public clarity on data from the May 12, 2008 Wenchuan earthquake in Sichuan. You can read pieces of the list he and his friends have collected on his blog. …

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Ethnography of Tech

Design + anthropology + China = parent lock PC?

March 26, 2009 by Jason Li

intelparentlock

Excerpt from an Adobe think tank piece written by Dori Tunstall of University of Illinois (Chicago):

An example of the nature-nurture problem in design could be determining whether physical or cultural differences might account for different responses of Chinese children and Chinese adults to a technology. The methodological approach to this problem requires both ethnographic and ergonomic research. On…

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US to China, design to manufacturing

March 22, 2009 by Jason Li

bunniestudios

From an O’Reilly Radar interview with Chumby founder Andrew “bunnie” Huang:

The way it works is a lot of these large [U.S.] brands have almost no engineers on the inside… office consists of some product managers and maybe a couple of product engineers. And what they do is they just write kind of a Word document…

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Award-winning animated documentary from Hong Kong

March 7, 2009 by Jason Li

hiddenelders1

hiddenelders2

Above: “Hidden Elders” a RTHK documentary depicting the plight of the elders in the helter skelter modern Hong Kong. It was animated by Postgal Workshop and won the top prize last year at TBS Japan’s digicon.

Go to the awards page and watch the links labeled 2/3 and 3/3 -or- watch it from…

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KFC Ripoff Contest: Beijing vs Tainan

March 2, 2009 by Jason Li

From Tainan…

KLC: A family chain (of one), selling fried chicken and burgers:

klc1 klc2

From Beijing…

Yonghe Dawang: a nationwide chain first launched in Beijing, serving Chinese-style fast food:

yonghe1 yonghe2

KFC Ripoff Contest results:
Beijing 1, Tainan 0.

Photo credits:
Anonymous medical student…

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Account of an online group purchase (团购)

February 27, 2009 by Jason Li

tuangou

From Sam Flemming, over at the China IWOM Blog:

…Anyone interested in participating in the group purchase can join the QQ group and continue discussing the details of the purchase.
.
…The group leader plays a very important role in the group purchase process. On one side, he communicates with group members and…

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Tweeter meme: Hear some Chinese indie folk

February 22, 2009 by Jason Li

A listen-to-this meme has been passed around the China Twittersphere today, so I thought I’d share it with you: Seeded by Adam Schokora over at 56minus1, it states,

all music people out there, Chinese indie folk music, please listen and share your thoughts: http://tinyurl.com/chqtpf

I like the first song quite a bit, and I’ve stolen it here…

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