21 Chinese Cartoonists Unite in a Dragonball Fanfic to Fight the Coronavirus

January 31, 2020 by Jason Li

A fight sequence between the heroes and villains of Dragonball. Goku starts casting a spirit bomb.

The villain is defeated by the spirit bomb that collects the energy of the people of the earth.

Setting the scene for our current disaster: the coronavirus in Wuhan.

A Hubei hero is trying to cast a spirit bomb but requires more energy. An SOS text message is sent to the rest of the world requesting their help.

People around the world raise their hands to give energy to the spirit bomb, part one.

People around the world raise their hands to give energy to the spirit bomb, part two.

People around the world raise their hands to give energy to the spirit bomb, part three.

…

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China Meme Report · Ethnography of Tech

Follow the Magpie, a rare stream of primary research about social media in China

November 17, 2017 by Jason Li

Christina Xu, Tricia Wang, and Pheona Chen just launched a new newsletter about the conversations and trends happening on the internet in China today and we should all subscribe now.

In their opening essay about the project, they write:

Our goal is to create something…

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A Cross-Cultural Comparison of Online Harassment

January 25, 2017 by Jason Li

Last October, designer & researcher Caroline Sinders made a three week trip to Shanghai, Hong Kong, Tokyo and Sydney to study their cultures of online harassment. Today, she shares some of her findings on Buzzfeed:

More generally, in Hong Kong, journalists told me that personal data is so widely accessible that most internet users don’t see or…

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China Meme Report

Has the Grass Mud Horse been defanged?

January 6, 2017 by An Xiao Mina

The Grass Mud Horse （草泥马） emoji in Sina Weibo appears alongside other harmless puns like the “Spirit Horse” （神马）, a pun for “What”, and jiong （囧）, a character that looks like a sad face.

A few years ago, I observed a curious addition to the emoji set on Sina Weibo: a Grass Mud Horse. It was a little confusing to…

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Watching the Election from The Post-Truth Future

November 22, 2016 by Christina Xu

(This is the expanded version of a series of tweets I posted on Monday; they’re collected in a 88 Bar post here.)

Weibo pushes out about a dozen general news notifications a day about everything from trending topics to celebrity gossip to major world events. Monday afternoon, on my way…

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Explaining why Twitter is worth less than its “Chinese clone”

October 19, 2016 by Jason Li

A few days ago, Tech In Asia published the provocatively titled article, Twitter is now worth less than its Chinese clone. Coming fresh off the heels of Twitter’s recently-failed acquisition talks, the article definitely resonated with many members of the tech community. But as many of us know,…

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Multi Entry

Interview: Oamul, Illustrator

May 17, 2016 by Christina Xu

A photo posted by 卤猫 (@oamul) on Nov 16, 2015 at 6:04am PST

Oamul (卤猫/Lu Mao) is a 27-year-old illustrator based in Xiamen, China. He’s animated in person, quick to laugh and constantly bolting out of his chair to show me something he’s working on or offer me snacks.…

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Multi Entry

How to say “hipster” in Chinese and other internet slang goodness

August 17, 2015 by Christina Xu

Editor’s note: The following is an excerpt from Christina’s Kickstarter campaign: Multi Entry – Telling the Stories of Young, Creative China:

Since a few of you responded enthusiastically to last week’s impromptu slang lesson, I thought we’d do another one! Today’s crop: 5 common slang words that are used a lot online and in texting. Figure out a…

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Ethnography of Tech · Multi Entry

Three Moments With WeChat

May 13, 2015 by Christina Xu

On the morning of his wedding day, my cousin’s fiancé waited impatiently for Likes so that he could retrieve his bride.

Inside the apartment building, he and his groomsmen would have other trials to face: drinking vile concoctions of vinegar and wasabi, doing pushups, and liberally bribing everyone for hints to impossible trivia questions. But…

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Ethnography of Tech

Coming of age in a culture of information paternalism in China

May 13, 2014 by Jason Li

Editor’s note: this is a summary of some of the ideas that are presented in Tricia’s recent talk the Berkman Center, Talking to Strangers: Chinese Youth and Social Media. The video of the full talk is now online, and we highly recommend watching it in its entirety.

Tricia’s research discusses how Chinese youth are experiencing their coming of…

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