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
Reading the recent review of the April 8 Rolling Stones concert in Shanghai by New York Times writer Howard French, I decided to see if I could find some online photos or reviews of the concert. First stop: Flickr. Perhaps there aren’t any Chinese Flickr users who could afford the tickets to the show in Shanghai, but…
Continue readingconcert content in virtual China?
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
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
I recently came upon the amazing work of Natalie Behring, a professional photographer living in Beijing whose work has appeared in The New York Times, The Globe and Mail, and the Chicago Tribune among many other forums. In addition to the two series above, “Beijing Prepares for 2008” is also well-worth spending a bit of time with.
Continue readingfrom e-waste to young acrobats: natalie’s photos
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
Talk about a different perspective, a different time, a different world. The way history shows up in virtual Chinese conversations is something to watch.
Here you see Nixon sitting next to Mao Zedong’s wife, Jiang Qing, who
was later to be put in prison for life for her role in the Cultural
Revolution.…
Continue readingToday’s BBS photos: remembering Nixon in China
Everything under the sun is happening in China.
“Open up your perspective: the best of Chinese farmers’ wisdom” (my loose translation) shows us some of the DIY projects taken on by those deemed “farmers” (农民) in the current Chinese social system. The car drives on land and in water; the submarine is one of a…
Continue readingwhat’s on the BBS today: the inventiveness of farmers