WeChat Cats, Romantic Blunders & Lightning Dogs: Paradise Systems Year 1

October 9, 2018 by Jason Li

“Paradise Systems publishes exemplary comics from the United States and China.” This is the story of their first year, broken up into three acts.

Our story begins in Brooklyn, where long-time translator and former China resident Orion Martin sets out on his publishing adventure. Wanting to foment a a cultural exchange of comics, he tests the waters…

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How the V&A Museum is collecting & preserving WeChat for the 100-year future

September 26, 2017 by Jason Li

The following is an excerpt from the Brendan Cormier (V&A)’s article on How We Collected WeChat:

During our filming at the WeChat campus, the design team pulled us aside and handed us a phone. They had come up with a possible solution for the acquisition. On the phone was the WeChat app. We poked around on it, and asked…

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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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Starting Up in Shenzhen

How the internet is making hardware startups as fast as software in Shenzhen

October 3, 2016 by An Xiao Mina

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Editor’s note: The following is an excerpt from ‘Created’ in China: Shenzhen is making hardware like Silicon Valley makes apps, written by An Xiao Mina and originally published on Fusion.

China is amidst a massive transition from a country primarily of manufacturers to one of makers. Lei Gao is part of this new generation…

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Debunking Silicon Valley myths about WeChat’s conversational UI & other findings

August 24, 2016 by Jason Li

The Nielsen Norman Group recently wrapped up a great study involving 26 individuals in Beijing and Tangshan about their use of WeChat. Their report, WeChat: China’s Integrated Internet User Experience is well worth a read. But in case you’re pressed for time, we’ve written up our annotated highlights below.

Early on, Cheng and Nielsen (the authors of the article) point out…

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Multi Entry

Advanced Red Envelope Techniques

February 15, 2016 by Christina Xu

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Red envelopes used to be a simple joy. On a festive occasion like Chinese New Year, people exchanged perfumed red-and-gold paper envelopes stuffed with cash to signify good will. For Chinese kids, it was like Trick or Treat but infinitely better—kneel in front of your elders in a New Year’s greeting, and you’d walk away with cold, hard cash to spend on…

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Multi Entry

Are You Scanning Me, or Am I Scanning You?

January 25, 2016 by Christina Xu

Photo of QR code tattoo — Sol, a film producer, shows me her QR scanner tattoo in Beijing.

During a ten week trip through China, I added over 150 contacts on WeChat, China’s overwhelmingly dominant messaging app. If we weren’t being introduced by mutual friends online, we usually used the most common way for people to add each other in…

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Mobile-only design trumps mobile-first on China’s internet

November 18, 2015 by Jason Li

Kendra (whose writing we previously featured) writes about the state of Chinese web design in 2015 in Smashing Magazine’s On China’s Bleeding Edge: Web Design Trends 2015. Reporting on the advent of responsive, mobile-first design in China, she discovers that companies are instead going for a Wechat-friendly, mobile-only approach. In an interview with Saber Zou, head…

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Ethnography of Tech

Your surrogate-cool-cousin guide to creativity and karaoke in China

July 23, 2015 by Jason Li

In case you haven’t noticed, organizational designer and ethnographer extraordinaire Christina Xu has joined us here at 88 Bar. She was responsible for our articles about Chinese people looking at QR codes, Chinese public mascots, amongst many others.

Just today, she’s announced her latest endeavor: Multi…

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Tag: WeChat