An exploration of virtual experiences and environments in and about China.
In January I attended an event in San Jose put on by market research firm In-Stat, looking at a range of small but growing markets in Asia and specifically in mainland China.
They have some great downloadable ppt reports that include basic background and informed forecasts of online gaming, IPTV (which they define as "video service displayed on a TV through a telecom carrier’s IP broadband network"), and digital music markets.
link [requires registration for downloads]
Cosplay, the whole world of dressing up as characters from video games, is alive and well in China. You can see a whole array of game-inspired art, masquerade, and photography here, at the game zone of Tom.com. Frankly, I can’t even begin to identify the games from which these characters come. Scroll down past the huge-eyed, long-haired anime girl wallpapers with titles like "CG美女.FUCK" to find cosplay photos. The bottom of the page has photos of boothbabes and kitschy game toys, for those who like that kind of stuff.
Link here to see photos from Tom.com’s "Full Dress Carnival Animation Festival," held in Beijing at the Chinese Military Museum [yes, really] in August of 2005.
Link here to see held the winners of the event’s cosplay competition.
QQ is starting to offer their own brand of instant noodles at net cafes. (The American equivalent would be AOL Instant Messenger branded instant pizza.)
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 in several camps:
One of the biggest immediate differences between mainland Chinese Internet practices and those here in the US, is the use of Bulletin Board Systems. A great place to start is this post at ESWN, which provides a "general comparative analysis" of news media in China, Hong Kong, and the US, and highlighting the relationship of China’s BBS to mainstream media. Excerpts:
What appears as news in mainstream media is usually formulaic and subject to official censorship and unofficial self-censorship…If you read one newspaper, you’ve read them all…
With the arrival of the Internet, bulletin board systems proliferated and [mainstream media workers]
gravitated to those forums (such as Yannan, Xici Hutong, Tianya Club, etc) in which they can express and exchange their ideas and opinions with like-minded people. Again, they are not advocating to topple the government, but they are just relating how they were kept away from the mining disaster victims or some such…All the while, they continue to work at mainstream media organizations, but their spare time is for them to use.
In China, the non-mainstream media sector (related to current news and commentary) is in fact
dominated by the mainstream media workers in exile on their spare time… So
the Chinese non-mainstream media scene on current news and commentary is
dominated by the media elite who are continuing to build their authority and
reputation, in the manner of American and Hong Kong mainstream opinion
columnists.
What happens with a major breaking event?…You may only see the short official Xinhua version in
every single newspaper… You do not go to the bloggers either. Instead, you go to BBS’s/forums such as Yannan, Tianya Club, and others like them, and you may find dozens of long comments.
Baidu opens a section of its website that searches within only Chinese government websites (e.g. websites suffixed with .gov.cn, the CCTV site).
Source: PostShow
China Web 2.0 Review notes the expansion of the Witao Chinese-language blog network:
Till now, it has announced 9 blogs, which cover topics ranging from coffee to software tips, from landscape design to visual art, from law and Humanities to extreme sports.
If all of them as are interesting as the visual art blog, xizhaojie (which produced the images above), and the coffee blog (noted by Jason here) it looks like a high quality network.
Witao will be in competition with the already established blogku, whose blogs focus on film, digital, and game media.
Another great interview from Pacific Epoch, this one from a company called Byread that’s developed a service for downloading and reading books for handsets, with content from over 200 Chinese publishing houses.
Long awaited 3G licensing should expand what is now available to mobile Internet users in China. In the meantime, a host of companies are developing services in anticipation.
excerpt:
Byread’s mobile reading solution has different versions that can
support a range of low-end to high-end handset models. Fifity to 60
high-end smart handset models and almost all basic Java handset models
can use our platform. Different handset models require different
solutions and will include different services. For example, for
high-end handset models our mobile reading solutions can offer audio
and video effects when users are reading our books while versions for
low-end handsets will not include the special effects.
Some Southeast Asian companies have contacted us about possible
partnerships, which we are considering. I do not think expansion will
be a short term goal because if we go outside of China, the lack of
content will be a big challenge because Chinese content is quite
different from content in other languages. This is the same reason that
large companies such as Adobe, which has a similar mobile reading
solution, have not yet been successful in China’s mobile literature
market.
With over 400 million mobile phone users and over 100 million
Internet users, the development of China’s mobile Internet is something
to watch in the next few years. Pacific Epoch has two interviews with competing WAP portals 3gnet.cn (7.5 million users) and 3GPP’s Pp.cn (3 million registered users).
excerpts:
(3GPP) There is not huge knowledge of and interest in value added services
among handset users in China right now, especially services such as
mobile shopping and online mobile gaming. We are waiting for handset
users to change their perception of a handset’s function.
The WAP market only began to see rapid growth in 2005. There is likely
to be explosive growth in this market in 2006 and 2007, which is a good
sign for the players in this industry.
Our main goal for the moment is to develop our Pp.cn portal into a
strong WAP brand among mobile phone users. We are aiming to become the
number one player in China’s WAP market. We have dropped some of our
less important businesses, and in the future will focus on our mobile
community and WAP portals.
(3G.net.cn)
[We are] positioned as both a WAP and
Internet portal company focused on entertainment for young people.
…We are preparing for 3G during this transitional stage and our users
will be able to use full-3G services when 3G is launched.
GPRS fees are a major problem, but the situation is being improved as
many regional mobile carriers launch GPRS packages. Mobile carriers
know that 3G is coming soon. In order to build a substantial user base
for 3G, carriers have been willing to lower fees for services such as
GPRS.
We were one of the first company to offer online mobile games and other
services such as real time updates of NBA games. We offer real-time
text updates of games on our site. Our NBA game updates sometimes
attract 30,000 to 40,000 concurrent users, which is an amazing number
even when compared with live Internet broadcasts. We will also have a
host that offers commentary on each game. Our online community Dream
Work and Avatar service 3G Show are also popular.
Pacific Epoch interview with WAP portal 3G.net.cn
Pacific Epoch interview with WAP company 3GPP
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