A group blog about Chinese tech, media and design
You never forget these kinds of itinerant street performers once you’ve seen them live. They present a mix of acrobatics, feats of endurance and strength, and qigong body control that allows them to do things like swallow a sword, or force a live snake through the mouth and out the nose. Such performances, related to martial arts, have been going…
Continue readingdocumenting Chinese street performers
I’ve seen other photos on Chinese BBS of little kids smoking, but this one appears to be substantiated.
Jian Bing smoked his first cigarette at the age of 3 when a friend of
his father’s gave him one to try. The boy often spends time with his
father and his colleagues, who give him cigarettes for fun.…
Continue readingmaking the rounds of Chinese internet: smoker, aged 4
Check out the difference in number of categories to search at the very top of the page for 2 major American portals (Yahoo and MSN) and 2 major Chinese portals (Sohu and Sina).
Hans Juergen-Bucher (Media Studies, University of Trier) has a provocative 2004 paper titled Is There a Chinese Internet? which reports the results of user studies he conducted in Germany with Chinese Internet users. One of his most interesting points is about what he calls an “aesthetics of abundance” that shapes Chinese website design and interface.
In…
Continue readingaesthetics of abundance
A view on kungfu from Virtual China: how can we resist? Chinese netizens weigh in on photos from a recent performance of Shaolin monks in San Francisco on March 12. There are a few pictures from the performance plus a series of other stills from unknown sources. What are Chinese saying about the marketing of something seen as quintessentially “Chinese”? Commentators fall…
Continue readingNetEase BBS does Shaolin
Today on the Netease BBS: The 8th annual Shanghai Spring Real Estate Market, held last week at the Shanghai Exhibition Center, one-upped the booth babes of other trade shows with a real estate girl. As the BBS poster says (rough translation):
This is something that hasn’t been seen before in real…
Continue readingreal estate babes: BBS debate on the morals of marketing
MM/mm stands for meimei (妹妹, literally, “little sister”) stands for girls, chicks, hotties, or whatever term you choose. Mainstream sites in virtual China are rife with sexualized pictures and videos of women. It would be like having Playboy cover shots and links to porn videos on AOL, MSN, or Yahoo.
The photo above comes from the #4 most…
Continue readinggirls mm girls