An exploration of virtual experiences and environments in and about China.
51xxU! (numeric for 我要谢谢你！= I want to thank you!) is a Google-interfaced site for what is essentially public text-based greeting cards. You have a choice of sending your (registered-with-51xxU) friend a 感谢 Thank You, 祝福 Blessing, 道歉 Apology, 期望 Wish, and 建议 Suggestion.
FYI: 51xxU’s precedent is the popular use of SMS for holiday-greetings, especially during Chinese New Year when almost anyone would be bombarded with templated greetings.
Source: PostShow
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.
Danwei has a post on Chinese gaming giant Shanda Entertainment’s recent educational online game, "Learning from Comrade Lei Feng." Lei Feng was a model of self-sacrificing youth, held up by the Chinese Communist Party as an inspiration to millions during China’s Cultural Revolution.
Rather than beating bosses, players prevent crowds from wrong acts such as spitting, littering, and trampling on the grass, according to a CRI article. Their reward? "When the four points, fame and loyalty rise to a set standard, we have
a chance to see Chairman Mao at magnificent Tian’anmen Square," said a 12 year old Chinese player.
Broken Toys blog has a wonderfully detailed write-up, and Slashdotters have plenty to say as well.
What have Chinese net commentators been saying about the game? Some (very roughly translated!) excerpted comments from the Netease 163.com conversation (in Chinese):
I think it’s a great game. Some of our social habits definitely need to be changed, and perhaps this game is a good start…
Why not make a game where Mao Zedong is the lead character and it’s about liberating all of China?
Games are about entertainment and relaxation. It’s not right to make everything about education.
parent: Where did you go after school?
child: I went to study Lei Feng.
parent: You’re making progress! Where did you go to do your good deeds?
child: I went to an Internet bar to learn from Lei Feng how to sweep floors.
parent: To an Internet bar to learn from Lei Feng how to sweep? Can’t the people in the Internet bar sweep their own floors?
child: Yes. I went online to play the Lei Feng game.
parent, angrily: Now Lei Feng is bad, too! Going online to trick children! No more learning from Lei Feng for you! Now get home and start studying!
How many parents have cried, how many homes have been broken, how many youth have destroyed their educational careers…while the businessmen laugh. Online games are a drug like heroin, a form of social pollution, and should be eradicated.
Nobody’s going to play this game anyway.
What an idea! It’s harming our younger generation! Lei Feng would never agree with this! What a stupid idea! It’s all just to make money!
Shanghai Daily.com reports that the woman who crushed a kitten in a video and was subsequently tracked down by outraged Chinese netizens (see earlier VC post) has made a public apology that has been posted on a government website. After the identities of the woman, the video photographer, and the video seller were revealed online, two were suspended from their jobs.
(via A Glimpse of the World)
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 popular photo series for March 17 2006 on Sina.com’s BBS site. The series of relatively tame "art photos" of bathing starlets received 60,004 hits in 24 hours.
The #2 most popular photo of the day, with over 70,000 hits in 24 hours, is not a series but two photos of a couple having sex.
A China Net Investor post from earlier this year lists some popular Asian knowledge-sharing, community-based sites that compete and (in the case of Naver) even edge out search engines like Google.
Naver’s success in Korea has been an example for other companies in the business of delivering relevant information with community Q&A: last year Yahoo rolled out Yahoo Answers, Sina has its iAsk, and Baidu now has "Baidu Knows". As China Net Investor put it, "This time western internet giants are learning from the East."
Current exhibit at the famed ShanghART gallery in Shanghai: a video and installation piece by 31 year old Xu Zhen who took a team to the top of Everest with ice saws and pulleys, sawed off a 1.86 meter (his own height) slice of the peak, and brought it home for display.
Who cares how tall Everest really is, and why does it matter? There’s a running argument between the Chinese government and expeditions from other countries, about the "true" height of Everest–and who gets to decide what it is. The Chinese see it as 8848 meters, while a 1999 American GPS reading pegged it at 8850 meters. The PRC recently sent another team to re-measure the peak.
Xu Zhen explains:
"Audiences may not believe that this [piece of the peak] is real, which is similar to how
people rarely question whether the height of Everest truly is 8848
meters. This relationship between belief and doubt has to deal with
questions of standard, height, reality, and borders… The work points to the
ridiculousness of people’s belief in "facts" and "universal truths"."
You can find a translation of Xu Zhen’s narration of the event on ShanghART’s site.
Note: ShanghART Gallery is a must-visit site with comprehensive photos and bios of the Shanghai artists they exhibit–all in English.
Tencent, the company that runs China’s most popular online chat service, QQ, has made a move into the already crowded C2C market in China. Paipai.com is Tencent’s now formally opened site, and includes online stores, a games area, and virtual products. Tencent plans to eventually leverage QQ with the new trading platform. According to a recent report from China-based Analysys International, Chinese online auctions brought in about US $1.7 billion in value in 2005, an increase of 235% from 2004. The sites’ market share breaks down as follows:
Taobao, part of the web portal Alibaba, accounted for
57.74% of the total transaction value in 2005, followed by eBay with
31.46%, 1Pai, part of Yahoo! China, with 5.75% and PaiPai with 3.76%.
(via ChinaTechNews.com)
A bridge space: where Chinese and non-Chinese can collide and create new online experiences and connections.
Jason blogged the English beta version of Douban.net, which opened in 12/2005, below. Something like All Consuming, the original Chinese-language version Douban.com went live in 3/2005 and now has (according the the Douban website) over sixty thousand registered users, over a million collections and ratings, and over 13,000 full-length reviews.
The English-language Douban.net looks like it hasn’t reached critical mass by any means, but it should
be a good place to browse every now and then, or even to participate in
and make connections in virtual China. A recent visit revealed a review of Wei Hui’s Shanghai Baby and groups called blogger, douban fans, design, and learn language mutually, among others.
A brief look at the Douban.com Chinese homepage shows reviews of recently published Chinese novels, and postings by users like JameSentiment in Hong Kong who is listening to Beijing-born singer Shunza’s album Songs for Lovers and recently watched Japanese director Katsuyuki Motohiro’s 2000 film Space Travelers.
Lyn pointed an article out to me on China Web 2.0 Review this morning that mentioned an English version of 豆瓣 Douban (think Flickr interface + books/movies social bookmarking; touted as a leader in China’s Web 2.0).
Douban English (beta) = http://www.douban.net
Douban Chinese (original) = http://www.douban.com
Content as well as membership are stored separately on each site, probably for language-related logistical reasons. My question is, will they be allowed to overlap (socially) in the future for those who read both Chinese and English?
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