八八吧 · 88 Bar

Japanese style poster of Neocha (partial poster, see link for full poster)

Last Saturday, April 14, I took part in an exciting youth party held by www.neocha.com. I was so impressed to see so many young people, some were local while some were obviously from other countries, eg. America, Britain and Japan, Korea…

Continue readingNeocha first event in Shanghai

[Note: this post written by Nan Yang in Shanghai: we’re hoping she’ll become a regular on Virtual China! –Lyn]

I know three middle aged/old Chinese persons using internet, not only for fun.

Here are their stories.

The first story is about my mother and her internet lovers.

My mother is an English…

Continue readingChinese internet old aged users: three stories

Two interesting features I noticed on 花花世界 (roughly translated as “Beautiful World”), the blog of 原小娟, a well-known food critic and magazine editor:

1. As she was diagnosed with cancer, her blog’s focus went from food & drink to her illness. Interestingly enough, some of the new posts meld the two topics together — for example, a post about a…

Continue readingBlog analysis of 花花世界

In case you didn’t see it, Roland Soong at ESWN has translated a news item on a Hainan pharmaceutical worker who was detained for nine months on charges of re-posting an essay online.  The facts are not in dispute–on a pharmaceutical industry discussion forum, Zhang Zhijian had reposted an essay that he found online describing alleged fraud between another pharmaceutical…

Continue readingwhen re-posting becomes a crime

One of the areas I’m curious about (see previous posts here and here) is the development of practices and laws concerning virtual property in China.  China currently has a system of mixed ownership models (private, state, cooperative, joint venture, etc.) and a range of legal protections for different kinds of property (the recent nailhouse events are an example of this). …

Continue readingQQ numbers: property under law?

Apparently my IFTF colleague Mike Liebhold isn’t the only one who thinks Bladerunner when gazing across the Shanghai skyline, especially Pudong.  Flickr has 16 photos tagged Shanghai + bladerunner; Google images has over 4000.
Enjoy.

Pudong’s Jinmao tower in the fog.

(Tokyo is still the bladerunner grandfather: on Flickr…

Continue readingshanghai + bladerunner

As my Institute for the Future colleague David Pescovitz likes to say, if you’re trying to understand the direction of change, watch what artists are doing. That’s why a site recently pointed out by another IFTF colleague, Mike Love, is helpful and intriguing. Startdrawing.org is curated by Singaporean artists Josef Lee, a designer /…

Continue readingstart visiting startdrawing: chinese art

For Chinese folks experiencing information overload, there is lifebang — a Chinese lifehacking site that contains mostly translations of productivity and Getting Things Done literature, such as Networking for People who Hate Networking or Ten More Ways to Create a Breakthrough in Your Life (from lifehack.org).

Gwen Yip (an HK artist / advertising art director) has recently begun to blog, in the form of a visual diary, her time in London. Here’s an excerpt from her entry about her conversation with someone from Wieden + Kennedy:

This type of illustrated blog and even the line-art style seem particularly popular with creatives…

Continue readingA glimpse into an HK art director’s mind…

Go here to see a real-time map of Twitters–short messages from random people who are letting us all know what they are doing. Warning: it’s hypnotic.  You can see the different Twitters popping up nonstop all over the world…people in the middle of the night, just leaving the house in the morning, getting ready to go to bed, pondering.  The map isn’t…

Continue readingTwittervision of China