八八吧 · 88 Bar

Via the Asian Studies WWW Monitor, this set of 1940s Tibet photos taken by an American army expedition sent to Tibet from India to see about getting supplies to the KMT.  The collection of over 200 black and white photos is maintained by Dr Rob Linrothe, Associate Professor and Director of Art History at Skidmore College.  A few were published…

Continue readingphotos of 1940s Tibet

Something to keep an eye on: Ultimate Springboard 3D Virtual Community 终极跳板３D 虚拟社区, a new community site for Chinese virtual world residents and creators. Its slogan, written along both sides, is “Your world, your dream. Virtual community helps you grow up.”  The site has articles and tips on how to make money, how to create objects, and so…

Continue readingChinese virtual world forum

I like going to Google Video and Youtube every now and then and doing some searching in English and Chinese for different China-related topics.  You never know what will turn up, and the randomness is the fun of it.  Today I checked out the variety on Vimeo, a sort-of hipster’s Youtube.  Searching "China" reveals 17 pages of…

Continue readingvirtual China: a tour on Vimeo

I’m months late reporting about this, but PostShow posted a link to Microsoft Research Asia (read: Beijing)’s Chinese New Year couplet (i.e. coupled greetings) generator.

Not much new, but I appreciate the incorporation of Chinese calligraphy elements in the user interface.

http://couplet.msra.cn/

Real China’s tagline reads (according to Babelfish translation): “According to of ブログ name, the Chinese truth is introduced.”

Of interest I found:

• A translation of a Sohu IT post about why Prison Break is so popular in China (Answer = the subtitled version of the show running loose on p2p (I don’t know how this…

Continue readingReal China, Japanese ‘Virtual China’ blog

Folklorists, historians, and anthropologists of the future will have a huge new source of self-generated firsthand reports of folk customs around China, complete with photos and pretty soon, audio and video. Poking around Tianya trying to understand a bit more about some of the big forums, I came across this lively, descriptive Feb. 27 post titled [Chaoshan] Hometown Great Pig Contest. A…

Continue readingBBS: a new forum for folklore

Second Life has no Chinese port yet. Welcome to HipiHi, a China-produced and Chinese language version of Second Life.

There’s been some buzz about it over at Second Life Insider, and at various blogs in Virtual China: LaoBai has written a post about it, and a Chinese blogger who reports heavily…

Continue readingHipiHi = Chinese Second Life?

A very smart, balanced, readable report, “How Much Inequality can China Stand?” has just been issued by Nick Young at China Development Brief.  The report relies on Chinese scholarly and government data to give a succinct summary of some of the key areas of inequality in China today: gender, income (including intra-rural inequality), access to basic services and…

Continue readingpolitical sustainability of Chinese inequality

Jay Dautcher alerted me to the current number one video on Google Video.  It’s been seen over 280,000 times, almost 100,000 of those in the last 24 hours.  It’s a 77 minute video called The Rape of Nanking (Nightmare in Nanking), originally produced in English by a Dr. Rhawn Joseph and his Brainmind organization, and now voiced over…

Continue readingtop google video: sensationalist “Rape of Nanking”

Check out the great article on Tao Ran’s Beijing military hospital Internet addiction clinic in the Washington Post yesterday.  It’s the best inside description I’ve seen yet.  One thing it does is highlight the pressure Chinese kids are under to perform academically in middle and high school, the pressure Chinese parents feel to ensure their children’s future success, and the perception that the…

Continue readingcreating successful children: no Internet?